Under the Loving Care of Father Trump

How our dear leader has taken a page from North Korea

At an Iowa campaign rally in 2016, Donald Trump famously said:

The people, my people, are so smart. Are you know what else they say about my people? The polls. They say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?

Time magazine reported the remark as if it was serious, with only two sentences of context. Leftists took it as evidence of psychopathy. Writing for The Psychoanalytic Activist, political psychologist Stephen J. Ducat argued the point literally, redacting the quote and presenting it as a “murderous vision” that demonstrates a “malignant narcissism and psychopathy that threatens us all.”

But everyone else understood he was making a point. Namely, that he’s fully aware his core MAGA base sees him as the Second Coming — and he appreciates the blind loyalty. These are not the “Lincoln men” who loved Honest Abe, Camelot and Kennedy, or the Obamacons with their faith of the converted. These are Beatlemaniacs, Moonies, followers of the QAnon Christ.

After President Trump announced “Liberation Day” on April 2, the Dow sank 350 points and the S&P 500 recorded a historic three-day loss.

Trump hit our own allies South Korea and Japan with gouging 25% and 24% tariffs, respectively, straining diplomatic ties and pushing them closer to China — a realignment that could profoundly undermine U.S. strategic interests in Asia, and make the whole world less safe.

But never mind the regional security risks, or the fact that this should’ve been done through negotiation with our allies rather than unilateral action, what’s perhaps most remarkable about this event is the way it has been received by the MAGA faithful.

Tariffs are added when imports enter America, and companies will pass these costs onto Americans consumers, making them essentially a tax on imports. Looking just at Japan and South Korea, we can expect dramatic price hikes on cars (especially from Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia), electronics (Samsung, Sony, LG), appliances, and more. Also, countries may retaliate with tariffs on American exports like agricultural products, tech components, or industrial goods. That’s going to hurt American farmers, manufacturers, and exporters.

American manufacturers don’t build everything from scratch in a Norman Rockwell workshop. They rely on high-quality, cost-effective components from places like Japan and South Korea — countries that, incidentally, aren’t trying to dismantle the liberal international order. Slapping tariffs on these inputs is like taxing your own oxygen supply. It gums up production, raises costs, and ripples across critical sectors like autos, semiconductors, and even defense — because the F-35 has a supply chain too.

Export-heavy industries — agriculture, advanced manufacturing, even services — tend to get hit hardest when trade barriers go up and markets retaliate. Rising costs mean tighter margins. Tighter margins mean layoffs. That pain doesn’t land on Wall Street, despite what midwits like Batya Ungar-Sargon keep yelling. It lands in the Rust Belt, in farm towns, and on shop floors.

At a moment when the U.S. is trying to counterbalance China’s growing influence, antagonizing Japan and South Korea — our two most capable partners in the region — is strategic malpractice. These tariffs send the message that we value short-term bluster over long-term alliance. That’s not America First, it’s America Alone, and it leaves us poorer, weaker, and less prepared for the actual competition we’re supposed to be worried about.

And in all this, the problem as I see it is the cult of personality that keeps spinning out of control, because Trump supporters are becoming less and less willing to acknowledge his mistakes. Jordan Peterson has this great line, “When does the left go too far?” Well, the MAGA counterpart to that is, “Name something big Trump screwed up.” Because most supporters cannot or will not do it.

Let’s start with the obvious. Donald Trump is not a dictator. He doesn’t run labor camps. He doesn’t have death squads roaming the countryside. Congress still meets. Elections still happen. Journalists still publish. But he has mastered something from his days with WWE and The Apprentice that many in power routinely overlook. In the modern world, power begins with performance, and Trump is nothing if not a performer.

The problem is the role he chooses to perform. It’s not dictatorship, but it is a style that bears more than a passing resemblance to the early days of authoritarian regimes, a political theater that increasingly borrows from the aesthetic instincts of the dictators he openly admires.

Consider the North Korean principle of Juche. This is a self-reliance ideology that sounds noble on paper but in practice sealed the country off from the world and turned it into a militarized cult. Trump’s America First doctrine isn’t Juche, but its rejection of alliances, multilateralism, and basic economic reality echoes the isolationist impulse to define strength as purity and independence, no matter the cost.

As for the MAGA movement itself, it has warmly embraced what we might call aesthetic fascism. Not fascism in policy, but posture. The strongman worship. The loyalty oaths. The grievance politics. The contempt for weakness and nuance. It’s all there. And I don’t make such comparisons lightly. I’ve dragged thinkers like Robert Reich for calling Trump fascist. But you cannot deny the startling similarity between what’s going on in MAGA now and the heart of the North Korea system — Juche.

Juche is the ideology of radical self-reliance and the idea that profound personal sacrifice, often in the form of poverty, must be made for the good of the Nation.

Now to be clear, the United States and North Korea are ideological opposites. One is a liberal constitutional republic rooted in Enlightenment values, while the other is a dynastic totalitarian state ruled by bloodline and belief. But it’s precisely because the U.S. is so different — so open, so democratic, so pluralistic — that the adoption of fascist aesthetics is alarming. Not because we are North Korea. But because no nation is immune to the seductive language of grievance, strength, purity, and fear.

And yes, loosely comparing Trump to Kim Jong-un makes no sense. One is a real estate mogul, reality TV star, and the 45th president of the United States, while the other is the hereditary dictator of a hermit kingdom that punishes wrongthink with labor camps. But zoom out. If we stop thinking about authoritarianism as a system and start thinking about it as a style, or political vibe shift, things get uncomfortable quick.

Because in an era where left-right binaries are being destabilized by strongman populism, what Trumpism represents increasingly echoes not traditional American conservatism but something far closer to the moral aesthetics and performative nationalism of North Korea. At the heart of North Korean governance lies the deification of the Kim family, an engineered mythology rooted in Confucian filial piety and Marxist-Leninist party control. The whole country is basically one big stan account for the Kims. Their portraits are required in every home. Their origin stories are mythic and absurd — such as that Kim Jong-il invented the hamburger or that he never took a shit — and their every move is the subject of reverent state coverage.

Now pan to America where MAGA rallies feature chants like “We love you!” Witness his followers gather with religious devotion to watch a woman weep in ecstasy as she paints his portrait. Listen to people on social media respond to Trump’s tariffs by claiming that they are proud to see their portfolios wiped out because they have faith in their Dear Leader. Listen to right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson respond to Trump’s tariffs by saying with a straight face, “Losing money costs you nothing.”

Except money, you imbecile. Or listen to anything Batya Ungar-Sargon has to say. I mean, here is someone who endlessly talks about how she has forsaken her formerly woke idiocy, but has clearly decided to only change the woke part. Nowadays, she increasingly sounds like the North Korean news lady Ri Chun-hee, forever yelling into the camera about how our Dear Leader is the only one who fights for the workers.

And never mind that political loyalty under Trump is measured not by policy positions but proximity to his ego. From the “Only I can fix it” rhetoric to the reactionary intolerance of criticism, Trumpism centers political legitimacy on the man himself. Not our institutions. Not our republic.

But none of that makes the comparison hold up. We simply don’t have concentration camps in America. We don’t fire ballistic missiles over our neighbors’ heads every other Tuesday. Trump doesn’t murder his own staff. But his attacks on intelligence agencies are self-serving, his attacks on law firms threaten our justice system, not to mention his attacks on the judiciary and its “so-called judges.” His repeated attacks on journalists are by now what lawyers call a judicially noticeable fact, meaning so widely known and indisputable that a court can accept it without requiring proof.

But the most worrying element here is that Trump’s nationalism diverges from Reaganite optimism and aligns more with the ideological isolationism of North Korea than the market pragmatism of the GOP.

Trump is often described as “transactional.” People say this a lot about him, implying a shrewd pragmatism, as if he doesn’t care about ideology, just getting the best deal. But this misunderstands the nature of his political commitments. And if you look closely, many of his decisions. have been deeply impractical and personally costly, except for one thing — they serve the narrative. Loyaly tests. The Big Lie. The government shutdown over the wall. The threats aimed at North Korea. The annexation of Canada. Or Greenland. It’s not about what works. It’s about what makes him look strong. He’s not transactional so much as theatrical.

The attempt to overturn the 2020 election was not a strategy to retain power through legitimate means but a moral narrative in which any loss could only be explained by betrayal. In both regimes, practical governance is eclipsed by a worldview in which the leader is the victim of internal sabotage and external conspiracy.

Here’s another thing. North Korea’s mythic economy is a Potemkin system of parades, fabricated statistics, and “model villages” that obscure mass starvation and institutional collapse. North Korea’s whole state is propaganda. Fake factories. Made-up economic data. Glossy parades of synchronized military bravado. Trump doesn’t have state-run media, but he doesn’t really need it. He’s built a parallel info ecosystem through Fox, Truth Social, and a network of loyalist influencers.

And the economic messaging? Right out of Pyongyang. “The greatest economy in the history of the world.” “We beat COVID.” “Liberation Day.” Trump’s White House routinely deploys a kind of postmodern propaganda with exaggerated job numbers, denial of pandemic failures, and the most extreme hyperbolic language. Meanwhile, what North Korea institutionalizes through state media, Trump achieves through symbiosis with partisan outlets and social media spectacle. CPAC’s golden Trump statue wasn’t just kitsch, but the tongue-in-cheek sacralization of our leader.

It goes even further than that. While Trump governs like someone doing method acting as a dictator in a low-budget prestige drama, some of his supporters literally see him as their savior chosen by God.

But perhaps the most disturbing echo with North Korea lies in the ethical construction of purity. Trump has mocked disabled people, disparaged POWs, and expressed scorn for the “losers” of society. As markets continue their free fall and American workers see their savings annihilated, what is Trump’s response?

Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!). Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be the result!

In other words, if you end up getting gutted over this, and you question his decision, it’s just because you’re a weak and stupid nobody. That’s the part that really bothers me the most, the callous lack of empathy, or the reframing of empathy as weakness.

Yes, we have too many illegal immigrants. Yes, we should deport a lot of people. But while the left struggles to admit these facts to the point that it ends up looking like they just want to throw the floodgates open — and indeed, many of them literally do — Trump supporters struggle to express compassion even when the administration gloats in ghiblified ways about deporting weeping women. This isn’t standard American conservatism, which at least gestures toward Christian charity or bootstrap optimism. It’s the same aesthetic logic that drives North Korean propaganda: the pure race, the strong soldier, the unquestioning citizen. You can support his deportation efforts and still find all the chuckling and sniggering gross. Because it is gross.

In summary, Trumpism is not simply populist or conservative. It is a leader-centered, grievance-fueled, loyalty-driven political formation that, in many ways, overlaps more closely with North Korean illiberalism than with American conservatism. But don’t misunderstand me. The danger is not that Trump will build gulags or install a dynasty, though a family political succession with Baron seems increasingly thinkable. The danger is that he will erode the democratic foundations through the same instincts that drive every autocratic regime: propaganda over truth, loyalty over law, image over substance, and grievance over governance.

So no, Trump is not some North Korean dictator wannabe. But he doesn’t have to be. Because the real peril isn’t that he imitates Kim Jong-un in function. It’s that he channels him in form. You see, we don’t need a dictator in order to lose the republic. We just need enough people to think one would be entertaining to have.