Trump’s politics of death extend far beyond Iran

Going to war should be one of the most difficult decisions a president can make. People will die. That is the very definition of war. But instead of acting with gravitas following his choice to start a war with Iran, Donald Trump and his administration have celebrated the killing and devastation.

In comments to reporters at his Miami resort on March 9, nine days after the war began, the president raised the possibility of all but destroying Iran if they don’t “behave.” He boasted about killing their “sick,” “crazy” and “demented” leaders, calling it “a great honor.”

According to CNN, more than 1,300 Iranians have been killed. At least 3,000 people have died across the region. More than three million Iranians have been displaced by the war. Thirteen American service members have been killed, with more than 200 wounded, and the Pentagon is apparently considering sending more troops to the Middle East.

When asked about the American casualties, Trump has shown little emotion or concern. “We expect casualties,” he said, “but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world.” His lack of respect extended to the dignified transfer of remains ceremony at Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base where, as the flag-draped coffins of the first six dead were carried past him, he failed to remove his cap. Worse yet, with “USA” on the brim and “45-47” on the side, it promoted his own presidency and is listed for sale in his online store. Now a political action committee linked to Trump has used a photo of him saluting the coffins in a fundraising email.

But it’s not just the president. The callousness extends to his entire administration. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reveling in his role as a de facto warlord, declaring that the U.S. should give “no quarter, no mercy to our enemies.” That statement is particularly concerning. Taken to its logical end, it would endorse the killing of wounded and surrendered enemy forces, which is a war crime under the Geneva Convention. This possibility isn’t far-fetched; Hegseth does not believe in the rules of engagement.

The Pentagon and White House are also creating official propaganda reels that depict the war as a video game, or a Hollywood action movie akin to something we would see in “Starship Troopers” or “RoboCop.”

Military veterans and other professionals are disgusted by these propaganda videos. “It just seems detached from reality,” Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, told POLITICO. “Our allies look at this, and they wonder, what the hell is going on? It doesn’t look like we’re serious.”

Dr. Gary Slutkin, former head of the World Health Organization’s Intervention Development Unit and author of the new book “The End of Violence: Eliminating the World’s Most Dangerous Epidemic,” warns that Trump’s callousness about violence is a function of a “disease” infecting our government and culture.

“What we are watching from this administration in Iran is not just a lack of strategy, recklessness or incompetence,” he said in an email. “As someone who has spent decades studying how violence spreads, I recognize it as something more specific: what I have come to call authoritarian violence disorder. Violence is a disease, with characteristic signs and symptoms that cause disability and death. But AVD is the most lethal form, distinguished by its scale, its cruelty, and its potential for mass death.” 

While the Trump administration’s gleeful response to death and destruction in the war against Iran is obscene, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. American conservatism and the broader right have cultivated a culture of violence and death for more than a century. Trump’s embrace of cruelty as official policy, both at home and abroad, is the distillation of those values and forces.

Social scientists have repeatedly documented that Republican and conservative policies across a range of issues are correlated with higher rates of measurable harm and negative outcomes to public safety, health and well-being. As psychiatrist James Gilligan argues in his book “Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others,” this dynamic is greatly amplified when the GOP holds the presidency.

The damage is not abstract. A 2021 Lancet report estimated that approximately 461,000 excess deaths resulted each year from the first Trump administration’s policies — and that was before the Covid-19 pandemic. Other research has found that failures by the Trump administration and Republican leaders at the state level contributed to around one million excess deaths during the pandemic.

Trump’s second term has continued this pattern of death. Researchers at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania estimate that the president’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, with its cuts to health care, housing and the social safety net, could kill more than 51,000 Americans annually. A new report from the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine projects that the administration’s rollback of environmental regulations, vaccination requirements and workplace safety rules will produce millions of additional deaths from respiratory illness in the coming years.

The harm extends far beyond America’s borders. In the next four years, an estimated 15 million people will die because of the administration’s cuts to humanitarian aid. A disproportionate share of them will be children.

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

There’s a word for this: democide. The Republican Party’s embrace of science denialism, and its refusal to act on the worsening climate disaster, will result in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.

Why do Trumpists and other members of the right-wing support this culture of death, violence and misery?

Red states and other parts of the country that voted for Trump generally have worse health outcomes, higher rates of violent crime, lower incomes and less education than blue states. They also have higher rates of religiosity and Christian nationalism. In total, this produces a kind of numbness to death and a tendency to rationalize failures of government as part of “God’s plan.”

Research suggests that conservatives, as a group, have higher mortality salience and death anxieties than liberals and progressives, which could explain their attraction to strong, even authoritarian leaders for safety and protection. This connection gives Republican politicians a perverse incentive to keep their constituents’ lives worse, not better. If their lives were improved, those voters might make different choices.

Conservatives and liberals do not experience empathy the same way. For conservatives, harm is real only when it touches them or someone they consider part of their family, community or tribe. Liberals tend to have a more universal view of empathy that extends beyond their immediate community.

Conservatives also have a heightened sensitivity to threats. This dynamic can contribute to legitimizing violence against a perceived enemy, even framing it as good and necessary. 

The right-wing media machine — which includes cable outlets like Fox News; independent media companies such as Newsmax and One America News Network; podcasters including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens; and influencers like Nick Fuentes and Jake Paul — functions as a closed system, amplifying this emotional conditioning into an unofficial culture of death.

Slutkin explained the disturbing neurological and biochemical dimension to this culture of violence: It feels good. The infection spreads “fast and wide,” he said, with “exposure [and] normalization,” and it explodes when amplified by the president and other political leaders. “But new science also helps explain something that puzzles many people: the apparent joy and pleasure this administration seems to take in cruelty.”

“Violence enters the brain through centers that do not distinguish right from wrong or good from bad,” Slutkin observed. “These centers are agnostic. But they move from the pain carried by a leader and his followers up pathways involving dopamine toward cruelty and destruction, producing what appears to be a genuine high. This is part of the disease. It is not normal.”

Authoritarianism and Trumpism are rooted in destruction. The president’s authoritarian project in the United States is inseparable from his militarism and love of violence abroad: in Iran, Venezuela and, soon, in Cuba. They are not distinct and separate. This is what is known as the “imperial boomerang.”

Authoritarians do not compartmentalize. What they tolerate and celebrate abroad — the killing of civilians, the contempt for the rule of law, the glorification of destruction — they bring home. And if they practice it in their own countries, they import it around the world.

Authoritarian violence disorder, Slutkin said, “caused the near-total destruction of dozens of cities and between 80 and 100 million deaths in the 20th century.” 

As America faces it again, we are learning the painful lesson that the disease does not stop at the water’s edge. In the words of Slutkin, it “has to be interrupted, deliberately and urgently, before the costs [become] even greater and irreversible.”