Transcription
Donald Trump claims to be a so-called peace president. In his inauguration speech as he started his second term as US president, Trump declared that he would be a peacemaker.
"Our armed forces will be freed to focus on their sole mission, defeating America's enemies. Like in 2017, we will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end. And perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That's what I want to be, a peacemaker and a unifier."
Similarly, in the victory speech that Trump gave after he won the November 2024 presidential election, he claimed falsely that during his first term as US president, there were no wars being waged. That's a complete lie. But he also claimed in his victory speech that he would not start any new wars in his second term as president.
"What a strong and powerful military and ideally we don't have to use it. You know, we had no wars. Four years, we had no wars. And but we had no wars. They said he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars."
Well, here we are now in 2026, and we can clearly say that Trump lied. Trump has been the exact opposite of a peace president. In fact, in just one year in 2025, Trump bombed seven countries: Venezuela, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Yemen, and Somalia. And when you combine Trump's first and second terms as US president, he has bombed 10 different countries, meaning that Trump has now bombed more countries than all other presidents in US history. And in addition to already bombing 10 countries, Trump is currently threatening to attack at least four more countries, including Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland. And he wants to colonize Greenland and forcibly turn it into US territory.
In fact, on Christmas in 2025, Trump bombed his ninth country, which was Nigeria. And then a week later on the 3rd of January he bombed Venezuela, the 10th country. So this is the list of the 10 countries that have been bombed by Trump: Nigeria, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Venezuela.
And of course, I'm not trying to claim that Trump here is unique when it comes to being a warmonger and a war criminal. Every US president in modern history has been a war criminal. So, let's be clear. George W. Bush bombed five countries. Barack Obama bombed seven countries. And what's even more ridiculous is Obama won the so-called Nobel Peace Prize. And then the Obama administration went on to bomb Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and Iraq. Seven countries. And Trump also bombed those seven. And then he added three more countries: Nigeria, Iran, and Venezuela.
So again, I'm not trying to absolve other US presidents in any way. They're also war criminals. And if international law were truly impartial, and if there were actually justice for the crimes committed by the US Empire, every US president in modern history would have faced charges at the Hague for the crimes that they committed. This goes back to Nixon bombing Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, and Ronald Reagan, and George HW Bush, and Bill Clinton. They all carried out war crimes in many countries around the world.
In fact, the wars waged by the US after September 11th, 2001, in the next 20 years, these US wars caused a death toll of at least 4.5 million people. This is according to a study done by researchers at the elite US university, Brown University. Again, 4.5 million deaths in two decades of these US wars. They also found that 38 million people were displaced, were turned into refugees because of these US-fueled wars between 2001 and 2019. 38 million people, which caused the largest refugee crisis since World War II. And again, this has been bipartisan. All US presidents since 9/11 have been complicit in this.
But what's especially hypocritical about Trump is his administration is constantly spreading propaganda claiming that he's the so-called peace president. The White House constantly claims this. But Trump has now bombed more countries than every other president in history: 10 countries. He's broken the record. Just in 2025, in the first year of Trump's second term, he launched more than 500 bombings of countries around the world. 500. The independent monitoring group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, ACLED, calculated that Trump launched more air strikes on foreign nations in the first 6 months of his second term in office than Joe Biden did in all four years he was in office.
And let me be clear here. I'm not in any way trying to absolve Biden of the horrific crimes that he oversaw because Biden also gave tens of billions of dollars of weapons to Israel as it was carpet bombing Gaza and committing horrific crimes against humanity. Although I should point out that Donald Trump has continued doing the exact same thing. Trump is also selling billions of dollars of weapons and military equipment to Israel to help it continue to colonize Palestinian land. This is totally bipartisan.
So, I'm not trying to absolve Obama and Biden and the Democrats who also carried out war crimes around the world, but I just find it very frustrating that a lot of Trump supporters and Republicans conveniently ignore the many wars that Trump is overseeing as we speak, as he is constantly bombing more and more countries. And they absurdly claim that he's a so-called peace president. They believe his propaganda.
A good example of this hypocrisy is after Trump bombed Venezuela on the 3rd of January. He claimed that supposedly no one died because the US government only cares about the lives of US soldiers. The US government doesn't care about the lives of people in the countries it's bombing. In reality, more than 100 people were killed in Venezuela in this US attack, which was an act of war. And of course, Trump also abducted the internationally recognized president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.
But in addition to that, the US killed more than 100 people, and the US bombed civilian sites in addition to military sites. For example, the US bombed a medical supplies distribution center. The US destroyed a warehouse which stored supplies for dialysis patients, meaning now that thousands of Venezuelans will probably die because they cannot get the dialysis treatment they need to survive. Another civilian site that was destroyed in this Trump administration attack was the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research, which was bombed by the US military, and the US destroyed its centers on mathematics and physics and chemistry and ecology.
This is the true face of the so-called peace president who claims to be a peacemaker while he's bombing medical supplies in Venezuela and abducting its president in blatant violation of international law in a clear attack on the sovereignty of an independent country.
And then of course we have one of the most ironic hypocrisies of all, which is that Trump claims to be a so-called peace president. And yet he also boasted of renaming the Pentagon from the so-called Department of Defense to the Department of War. Now, at least that's an accurate name. It's a much better name than the euphemistic Department of Defense, which is, you know, Orwellian. The Pentagon truly is a Department of War. That's all it does is wage war everywhere.
But it is just infinitely ironic seeing this insane contradiction where Trump claims to be a peacemaker and a peace president, and yet he's boasting of renaming the Department of War. And the former so-called Secretary of Defense, now the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, is an insane, mouth-foaming neoconservative war hawk. And right after Trump bombed Venezuela, the 10th country to be bombed by Trump, Pete Hegseth went out and made comments where he threatened China and Russia. And US Secretary of War Hegseth said that the US attack on Venezuela was a message to China and Russia.
But what's even crazier is just a few days after Trump bombed Venezuela, he announced that he's going to increase the US military budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion in order to wage war around the world. For context, in 2024, the entire world's military spending was $2.7 trillion. Which means if Trump succeeds in increasing the military budget this much, and he probably will because again, this is bipartisan, not only Republicans but also Democrats support just giving an infinite amount of money to the military to wage war everywhere. If they succeed in raising that military budget, just the US will make up around half of global military spending in one country.
In 2024, the US spent more on its military than the next nine largest military spenders in the world combined: more than China, Russia, Germany, India, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, France, and Japan, all combined. And most of those countries are US allies, by the way. And Western propaganda constantly tells us we should fear China. By the way, China has not fought a war since 1979. And yet, the US is waging war everywhere constantly. China's military budget that year was between $250 billion and $300 billion, compared to $1 trillion in the US.
In 2024, just the United States made up nearly two-thirds of the entire world's military spending, 37%. Even before this massive increase, US military spending in 2024 made up roughly half of total discretionary spending by the US government. 47% of discretionary spending went to the military to wage war around the world. Fortune magazine reported that if Trump does raise the military budget to $1.5 trillion, the US will spend more in its military than the next 35 highest spending countries in the world combined. Or the US will spend more in its military than every other country on Earth combined except for China. I repeat, think about how crazy this is. If the military budget does rise to $1.5 trillion dollars, as Trump says he wants to do, the US will spend more than every other country on Earth except for China, all combined.
This is also deeply ironic because Trump has claimed repeatedly that he's going to reduce the massive US government debt. But a report by the nonpartisan Committee for Responsible Federal Budget found that increasing the military budget to $1.5 trillion will add $5.8 trillion to US federal debt over the next decade. And Trump claimed that supposedly the tariff revenue that the US government makes will cover this increase in military spending. That's not true. Tariff revenue is estimated to be around $300 billion per year. That is significantly smaller than the additional cost of increasing the military budget to $1.5 trillion.
And by the way, I should point out that this assumes that the tariff revenue stays this high. The point of tariffs is over time it's supposed to reduce imports and encourage domestic consumption. So over time you would expect that if that actually happens, and I don't think it's going to happen, I think that's just propaganda. But if that does happen, you would expect tariff revenue to fall over time through import substitution industrialization as US customers buy more products domestically instead of importing products from abroad.
And I should also add that these tariffs are a tax. Trump constantly claims that other countries supposedly pay for tariffs. It's not true. It's a lie. It is US consumers who pay the tariffs. It is a tax on consumption of imported goods. And this is an extremely regressive tax. The biggest burden by far is felt by poorer Americans who spend much more of their paycheck on basic goods and imported goods because the US has de-industrialized and doesn't produce that much anymore.
So the Trump administration is massively increasing the federal debt, which it claimed was going to cut, and then trying to make up for some of that, a very small part, which is not actually helping, by increasing taxes on consumption of imports, i.e. tariffs, which is a regressive tax falling on the shoulders of working-class Americans. Meanwhile, Trump also has been cutting taxes on the richest Americans. The big beautiful bill that he oversaw and his tax policies will result in 69% of tax cuts going to the richest 20% of Americans and only 1% of tax cuts going to the poorest 20% of Americans. 94% of Trump's tax cuts will go to the richest 60% of Americans.
And when you factor in the tariffs, which again is a tax, we will actually see that under Trump in his second term, the bottom 95% of Americans will actually see their taxes go up. And the poorer you are, the higher the percentage of your income will go to paying taxes to the Trump administration, while only the richest 5% of Americans will actually see their taxes fall. Because even though Trump did cut taxes in one area, he increased taxation in the other area in the form of tariffs.
And you just cannot overstate the incredible hypocrisy of all of this because just like Trump claimed to be a peace president and he actually bombed more countries than every other president. Meanwhile, Trump oversaw the so-called DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, which he appointed the world's richest billionaire oligarch, Elon Musk, to oversee.
"The chainsaw for bureaucracy."
And they claimed that they would cut US government fraud and waste and they would reduce the massive US government debt, which is 120% of GDP. And what happened? Surprise, surprise. DOGE did not actually cut spending. The Trump administration is continuing with these massive deficits, which Trump now plans to increase by another $5.8 trillion over the next decade by raising the military budget to $1.5 trillion in order to wage war all around the world.
Moreover, Trump's big beautiful bill will cut $186 billion from SNAP, that is food benefits, food stamps for poor and working-class Americans through 2035. So poor and working-class people are going to suffer from hunger. Trump is cutting government food assistance for the poorest people in the country while planning on spending $1.5 trillion for war to benefit the military-industrial complex. I mean, this is a class war.
In addition to all of the imperialist wars that the US is waging around the world in Latin America and Africa and Asia, the US government is also waging a class war against its own population, implementing policies that benefit a small handful of billionaire oligarchs and corporate elites who buy elections. More than 90% of the candidates running for the House of Representatives who have more funding, more campaign contributions from big corporations and rich oligarchs, more than 90% win the election. And in the Senate, more than 80% of candidates with more campaign contributions win the election. This is the best so-called democracy that money can buy. And US government policy serves those rich elites while hurting the vast majority of poor and working-class people in the country. This is a class war.
"They're leading a revolution in business and in genius and in every other word I think you can imagine. There's never been anything like it. Uh the most brilliant people uh are gathered around this table. This is definitely a high IQ group and I'm very proud of them. I know all of them indirectly and uh I know some of them very well but I know everybody at the table."
So this is why it's very important to connect the warmongering policies of the US empire, which is bombing countries around the world. It's very important to connect that to the policies at home, to the exploitation of people at home on behalf of the same corporate elites from the military-industrial complex who get richer and richer off of these wars while exploiting people more and more at home. It's part of the same war. That's why people say that all wars are a form of class war.
On that note, I'm going to conclude. I am Ben Norton. I want to thank everyone for joining me today. Please like and subscribe. Please share this. I will see you all next time.