On Saturday, February 28^th, President Trump launched an undeclared war on Iran without even the formality of the watered-down version of a Congressional declaration of war, an authorization to use military force (AUMF). Unfortunately, like most of Trump’s unconstitutional actions, this was not unprecedented. Barack Obama launched his war in Syria even after Congress voted to prohibit him from doing so. But it was the first time a president embarked on a full-blown war without even attempting to make a case to the public.

Americans generally acquiesce to foreign adventures if they’ve been made to feel they were part of the decision, delusional as that may be.

What makes Trump’s war so shocking is its brazenness in betraying his voters. Not involving the United States in a new war was a pillar of Trump’s campaign. If curbing illegal immigration was his first and foremost promise, not doing precisely what he’s doing in Iran was at least tied for second, alongside imposing mercantilism on the American economy.

Right behind those, especially after Elon Musk joined his 2024 campaign, was a promise to shrink the size of government by taking a cleaver to the administrative state. Trump seemed well on his way to following through on this when USAID was dismantled, complete with video of the sign on the door being ceremoniously removed.

It was a symbolic gesture, to be sure. USAID only cost taxpayers about $20 billion per year out of the government’s almost $7,000 billion per year budget. But USAID punched far above its budget, being a key mechanism for funding the NGOs the empire uses in fomenting coups in other countries (and maybe this one on occasion).

Moreover, Trump talked about it at the time as if it were only the beginning. Bigger administrative game was to be hunted, he said, especially the long promised (by Republicans) abolition of the Department of Education and even saying the Department of Defense would be cut.

Given the start the Trump administration got off to, the startling difference in cabinet appointments from the first Trump term, and the antiestablishment momentum Trump and MAGA seem to have coming into power, even libertarians had reason to believe some good might come out of the supposed revolution.

It may not have been realistic to hope for what’s really needed – 200,000 troops ordered home from overseas, repeal of the New Deal root and branch, and an end to the Federal Reserve – but perhaps an end to involvement of the Ukraine War, if not Israel’s war in Gaza, and the elimination of a department or two. Perhaps, if all the stars lined up, a fiscal year spending number lower than the year before for the first time when a Republican president is in office.

Instead, we got precisely the opposite on all fronts. In less than a year, Trump has gone from talking about cutting the DOD to increasing its budget by fifty percent. The Department of Education got a haircut at best once you do the accounting the same as it was done up until 2025. But worst of all, Trump launched a war of choice against Iran, the war neoconservatives have dreamed of this entire century but that even War on Terror presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were wise enough to avoid.

Trump’s most loyal diehards are trying to spin this as a defensive action, or not a war at all, or anything other than a complete betrayal of one of Trump’s most important promises and the America First philosophy in general. But everyone else who supported Trump, in principle or pragmatically, has whiplash.

For those who supported Trump primarily because they hoped his second term would at least be a break from nonstop military adventurism and runaway federal spending, the experiment has completely failed.

Why? Many have suggested Trump has no political principles; that he acts purely on instinct and political dealmaking. But that’s not true. Trump has a clearly defined philosophy that he consistently articulated for decades before entering politics.

No, it’s not fascism.

As I wrote about a decade ago, when the establishment first started taking Trump’s campaign seriously, Trump’s political philosophy was not fascist, but rather firmly rooted in one of the two dominant political philosophies of the founding fathers – the big government one. Trump has always been a Hamiltonian, right down to his “Make America Great Again” slogan and guiding political theme.

For Trump, the “greatness” of the nation collectively is the primary goal, not securing the inalienable rights of the individual. That was the goal of Hamilton’s and the Federalists’ opponents, the Jeffersonian Republicans. They fought a long political war against each other during the 19^th century and, although neither Hamilton nor his Federalist Party survived, Hamilton’s philosophy prevailed.

Most Americans alive today believe the Republican Party has always been the party of small government, free markets, and traditional values. And while the traditional values part might be a sincere, if completely unsuccessful, component of the party’s ethos, the small government/free market planks were a relatively brief innovation during the 20^th century and almost entirely empty rhetoric.
 

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? 

 Tom