The radical honesty of Donald Trump

Why the world will miss hypocrisy in American foreign policy.

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Although US President Donald Trump lies a lot, even by the standards of American presidents, a bleak, transgressive honesty about how the world really works has always been core to his peculiar political appeal:

Politicians are corrupted by big donations; only stupid people pay higher taxes than they can get away with; he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a vote. "You think our country's so innocent?" he once replied when asked about the murderous record of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Trump's forthrightness about his interest in Venezuela is of a piece with this politics and worldview. He is not intent on regime change, let alone on spreading democracy.

In fact, he seems content with regime stabilisation, as long as the regime recognises America is "in charge", because what he wants most is the oil. "We're going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground," Mr Trump said after American forces snatched the country's despotic leader, Nicolas Maduro.

Because gaps between a politician's stated principles and his actions supply the easiest targets for his critics, Mr Trump's unabashed cynicism lends him a shield. Some may whinge that Mr Trump is violating his "America First" standards, but on this point he is no hypocrite. To him, the slogan does not imply isolationism. It licenses American aggression in pursuit of naked self-interest.

Other objections to Mr Trump's lightning strike seem even less likely to gain purchase.

Democrats may keep complaining he violated the Constitution by assuming Congress' authority to declare war, but so what? Presidents have been doing that for well over a century.