Trump’s Insatiable Greed Is Destroying Us All

Donald Trump, once an icon of 1980s American consumer culture and the (heavily edited) tycoon celebutante of The Apprentice, is the logical consequence of flawed character unchecked by the normal bounds of finance, laws, or decency.

Mr. Art of the Deal’s own dealmaking floundered and by the early 2000s, he was a society page punchline. He burned through hundreds of millions of dollars (underwritten by his father’s money, connections, and tax avoidance schemes). He filed six times for business bankruptcy and tended to make more headlines for his divorces and social appearances than his business acumen (yet his devotees refuse to hear of it).

Last week, Trump hosted the Stanley Cup Champion Florida Panthers, who offered him gifts: a golden hockey stick and a personalized Trump 47 jersey. Gazing over the goods, Trump declared, “Ooh, that looks nice. I hope it’s the stick and not just the shirt. That stick looks beautiful … Maybe I get both, who the hell knows,” he said. “I’m president. I’ll just take them.” This was just hours after Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Machado gave Trump her Nobel Prize. But such offerings are incapable of satiating Trump’s magpie desire for shiny objects.

In his recent interview with The New York Times, Trump explained, in part, his wish for the United States to own Greenland, because ownership is “what I feel is psychologically needed for success.”

His craven desire for more, more, more is currently destabilizing the world order in such an extreme way that it would be considered cartoonish if the geopolitical implications were not so frightening.

***

The first signs of our president’s insatiable appetites were made clear to the American public at least as far back as 2016, with the release of the Access Hollywood tapes. Trump proclaimed, “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful … I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab them by the pussy.”

Over the years, at least 23 women have accused Trump of assault or rape. E. Jean Carroll was awarded $83.3 million in a civil suit in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and later defaming Carroll. (Trump’s lawyers continue trying to reduce the damages or overturn the judgment.) According to numerous reports from alleged victims, Trump is a person who takes from other people’s bodies.

The staggering history of allegations of sexual violence were not enough to disqualify him in the minds of many Americans, including white evangelical leaders who traded their purported moral propriety for Trump’s support in reshaping the Supreme Court. I picture the taint of unhinged appetites growing like a virus out from Trump, a figure who had already gotten away with too much, now elevated by some as chosen by God.

When Trump’s ego is not fed, when his judgment is questioned or his worldview — that his appetites should be unfettered — is threatened, he lashes out. It’s a way of laying waste to those who try to stand against him. It’s not entirely without merit to argue that if former President Obama hadn’t mocked Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011 (following Trump’s baseless birther claims), Trump might not have set his sights so eagerly on the presidency. Being made to feel small attracted Trump to the largest, most revered platform he might hope to claim: a spotlight for a narcissist.

Donald Trump seems genuinely confused when the flavor of that attention does not meet the quality of accolades he craves. Falling approval ratings and increased economic anxiety among the hoi polloi do not compute for Trump, so he lies, concocting a reality of glory. It’s a fiction of consumption as brash as his own: “Growth is exploding. Productivity is soaring. Investment is booming. Incomes are rising. Inflation is defeated,” Trump said at the Detroit Economic Club just days ago, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Remarkable civil disobedience has swept cities across the nation as the Trump administration deploys ICE in hyperlocal campaigns of kidnapping and random violence. He has cast everyday Americans as “paid protestors” who should be “thrown out of the country.” Before any investigation into Renee Good’s killing by a federal immigration officer, Trump administration officials started calling Good a “domestic terrorist.” Trump’s own caustic language — which has been echoed and perpetuated by his administration — seeks to silence dissent in order to make his own power absolute, no matter that his claims are regularly not based in fact.

***

Much as every day of a Trump presidency is cause for stress and bafflement for many Americans, I think understanding Trump’s legacy of escalating consumption is a useful framework for contemplating his lack of concern for those who do not prop up his power — or actively stand in the way of his next acquisition.

It is entirely consistent with Trump’s consumerist worldview that he withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. His administration captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with transparent interest in acquiring access to and selling Venezuelan oil, even as oil executive CEO Darren Woods from Exxon deemed the prospect “uninvestible.” Trump responded with threats he was inclined to “keep Exxon out.”

While Trump is breeding conflict geopolitically and stoking terror in the everyday lives of many Americans, this wall-to-wall anxiety — and valid fear — is useful to Trump. It distracts us from the Epstein files (and any threat of culpability for his violation of victims’ bodies). It distracts from Trump’s advance attempts to manipulate the midterms, distracts from the sheer unconstitutionality of his impulses.

It might be easier to understand Donald Trump as a cartoon villain, although I am torn as to which one — he’s an amalgamation of so many of them. In some ways, Trump closely resembles Atari’s Pac-Man, infinitely gobbling everything in his path. Unfortunately, the governmental “ghosts” who should be inserting checks and balances in our system are in fright mode, cowering in the corner, scared they too will be devoured if our erratic president turns his raging appetites their direction.

***

In a message to Norway’s Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, Donald Trump blamed the country for failing to give him a Nobel Peace Prize (an independent committee awards the prize) and cited the snub as rationale for his shifting perspective on Greenland and peace itself.

Støre had sent a message (on behalf of himself and Finnish President, Alexander Stubb) seeking to de-escalate. Trump replied:

Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper’ for the US.

Further, Trump claimed, “I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States.”

This utterly illogical attempt at punishing European allies does not compute in a world of sovereign states or human rights — a world populated by people each deserving to be treated as innately valuable and each possessing their own rights to life and liberty. Even if they were born outside the U.S. Even if they are beautiful, not looking to have their bodies violated. Even if they hurt his fragile ego by awarding a coveted prize to someone else.

Such a traditional understanding of sovereignty and human rights does not compute when others — their bodies, their rights, their land — are understood as consumable. Morality has no gravity when it requires a quid pro quo of accolades and prizes.

The 69,000 human beings in ICE detention as of January 7, 2026 and over half a million people deported in 2025? It’s the cost of doing business and could grow as the administration aims to build seven large-scale holding centers.

In a world on the ecological brink due to human habits of consumption and pollution, Donald Trump is a unifying embodiment of short-sighted greed and unbridled desires. He, and the billionaire class in his orbit, keep snapping away with their hungry maws, each bite reshaping the world left for the rest of us.

***

Many years ago, I wrote a story about one of my favorite childhood shows, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, and I got to interview one of the creators. In the kids’ environmental hero show, the planeteers face perpetual confrontation with a cast of villains. Some seemed set on spoiling the earth out of accelerated vice. Duke Nukem was obsessed with nuclear power. Hoggish Greedly was a wasteful glutton. Lootem Plunder was an industrialist who dabbled in deforestation.

During our interview, the creator likened Donald Trump to these villains. “He’s all of them,” she told me, “and he’s surrounded himself with villains as well.” I don’t know that Trump is fixated on nuclear power — more power in general, but the rest tracks. The gold toilets. The veneer of wealth. Destroying the East Wing of the White House for a state ballroom that has already doubled in cost (now estimated at $400 million). In November, Democrats on the House Committee on the Judiciary released a report claiming to expose the Trump family’s multi-billion-dollar crypto empire, a grift fueled by self-dealing and corrupt foreign interests.

Donald Trump’s appetites are so extreme, likening them to cartoons might be the only way for those of us with more typical palates to grasp the Leviathan’s hunger that motivates him.

I wonder if the hyperbole of cartoon might be useful for framing a response as well.

In the old Captain Planet show, for instance, Gaia (Mother Earth) enlists five young people as “planeteers.” They learn over and again that they are stronger working together than acting separately in confronting the insatiable appetites of the series’ villains. Each planeteer wears a ring to represent one of the five elements: earth, fire, wind, water, and heart. (Yes, heart is a vital power in the Captain Planet universe.) When the kids get in a real bind, their powers combine to call on their hero. He’s actually fairly fragile — much like our democracy, it turns out. Without the scrappy kids constantly doing their bit, the villains would just keep laying waste to resources and breeding hate (such habits of selfishness are often paired). Knowing the villains would return, as insatiable as ever, Captain Planet didn’t brag about his own power as our president is apt to do. He reminded the planeteers, “the power is yours!”

It seems the opposite — and, perhaps, necessary treatment — for untamed chaos and consumption is unified reclamation of power through shared sacrifice. In a way, human beings demonstrate the vital significance of each of our lives by what we risk in putting our time, energy and safety on the line. We exhibit qualities that cannot be bought or mindlessly consumed: courage, mettle, unity across our differences. The sort of traits that populate our hero myths and defy a wanton impulse that blindly devours — in so many stories, that’s all most monsters know how to do in the end.

At this point, millions of Americans have put themselves out, marching against Trump’s unfettered thirst for power. In increasing numbers, Americans are putting themselves in harm’s way to protect neighbors they may not even know. The promise of a $50,000 signing bonus and $60,000 in student loan repayment has been enough to churn out a secret police force of poorly trained, masked agents for the administration. But witnessing Trump’s cruel appetites embodied in ICE and watching our international allies scramble over his senseless targeting of other lands, has activated a rising tide of concern, protest, and selflessness across our country and the globe.

It’s as if the antidote to cartoonish villainy is the hero’s journey, spelled out in millions of choices to march, to question, to pass out whistles, to protect neighbors, to stand on the international stage and call for peace.

As Donald Trump meets in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, and EU leaders consider retaliating to his brash talk with a trade bazooka, it’s clear the consequence for Trump’s appetites will fall downstream, hitting everyday Americans. It is daunting to consider how much instability we have collectively faced due to one man’s hunger to claim everything he can.

Much as Donald Trump wants to play-act authoritarianism, still now, the ultimate power in this country is not his, as much as it is ours. We can see the antidote to Trump the Devourer in people who keep putting their own comfort, their own safety second to our more vulnerable neighbors. Those out in the streets of Minneapolis and Columbus and so many cities, are enacting a peace Donald Trump neither values nor understands. They know we are a people of rights, who cannot be bought, sold or abducted with impunity. They may represent the only check on Donald Trump’s appetites: a wall of resistance from American people who stand firm that no more should be consumed by him.