Back in 2016, just after the shock election of Donald Trump to the White House, one of the authors of this article suggested, rather hopefully we must admit, that someone would write a great book one day entitled The Education of Donald Trump. A book that would show how a large part of Trump’s sloganeering, racist, misogynistic and other coarse and offensive language would not affect the fundamentals of US global power: those fundamentals of an imperial power were locked in, they would not be moved by the populist bluster of Donald Trump.We must admit, we did not foresee how long it might take to teach Trump a lesson in imperial power politics. Nor how much damage he would do at home to American democracy and the Constitution, and life as lived and experienced by millions. But educated he now surely is. His graduation is evidenced by his increasingly unhinged Truth Social posts.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 brandishing the MAGA “America First” banner, vow to end “endless wars,” prioritise American workers, secure borders, and avoid foreign entanglements that drained US blood and treasure. Yet barely 15 months later, his administration has launched or expanded military operations across at least seven countries – including strikes in Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Nigeria, Syria, a dramatic kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and coordinated US-Israeli strikes on Iran. This represents one aspect of the education of Donald Trump – a brutal tutorial in the iron logic of American armed supremacy and global primacy. As his imperial establishment programme collides with stiff resistance both abroad and at home (the second lesson) – including from within the MAGA base and traditional “America First” voices – Trump’s signature insulting language, inflammatory rhetoric, and personal disrespect have sharpened dramatically. His increasingly unhinged and incendiary language – never previously (at least publicly) used by an American president – signals his personal frustrations with the total failure of his art of the deal when it comes up against the immovable force of Iranian resolve. The blithely ignorant transactional nationalist who once mocked neoconservative adventures has morphed into a blunt-force warmonger whose public spewings grow ever more profane, contemptuous, and unmoored.What Trump took advantage ofTrump’s 2016 and 2024 campaigns masterfully exploited widespread war-weariness. He condemned the Iraq War as a catastrophic mistake, derided nation-building as “stupid,” and promised a narrower, self-interested nationalism: no more subsidies for “freeloading” NATO allies, no more regime-change wars sold under humanitarian guises, and a laser focus on economic rivalry with China.This resonated because it named real failures: decades of bipartisan adventurism that produced trillions in costs, domestic deindustrialisation, and a foreign-policy class immune to accountability. Trump was the self-declared American saviour – the outsider who would drain the swamp and put “America First.” He was the Son of God in waiting.Yet even in his first term, cracks appeared. Record military spending, the Soleimani strike, and aggressive trade policies coexisted with “America First” branding. In the second term, the mask has slipped entirely. Counterterrorism expansions, retaliatory operations, the Maduro kidnap, Houthi campaigns, and the Iran escalation reveal a president who now treats military force as a routine lever of primacy – often while denying any contradiction with his original slogan.Coarseness of rhetoricWhat distinguishes Trump 2.0 is how global and domestic resistance has intensified his personal style. As operations meet setbacks – Iran’s dogged resilience, retaliation from Hezbollah and Hamas, impacts on markets of disrupted oil flows, and mounting U.S. casualties – Trump’s language has grown markedly more vicious and profane.He has deployed crude insults against adversaries (“crazy bastards”), issued apocalyptic threats (“a whole civilisation will die tonight”), and resorted to profanity-laced demands on platforms like Truth Social. Domestic critics fare no better. Prominent MAGA-aligned voices questioning the Iran campaign — including Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Candace Owens, and others — have been branded “losers,” “stupid people,” “traitors,” or worse. Trump accuses them of seeking publicity, betraying strength, or failing to understand “winning.” Even longtime allies like Erik Prince have faced implicit or explicit dismissal when they highlight inconsistencies with “no more forever wars.”This escalation is not accidental. Resistance exposes the tension at the heart of Trump’s project: “America First” rhetoric collides with the structural demands of sustaining US hegemony. When challengers (state or non-state) refuse to yield, when allies hedge, when oil markets spike, or when his own base fractures, the response is not reflection but rhetorical escalation. Insults substitute for strategy; personal disrespect becomes a tool to enforce loyalty and project dominance. The more the imperial machine grinds against multipolar realities and domestic scepticism, the coarser and more contemptuous the language grows.Trumpism in tattersTrump’s evolution stems from the same forces that constrain all presidents pursuing primacy: The entrenched national security bureaucracy and military-industrial interests generate momentum for “force projection”, also known as imperialism, especially in a world moving towards multipolarity. Elite consensus views unquestioned U.S. military superiority as non-negotiable for leverage in trade, technology, and geopolitics. Geopolitical competition with China and regional disruptors leaves little room for pure retrenchment. Domestic incentives reward spectacles of strength, even as they risk quagmires.Yet the populist element adds a distinctive volatility. Parts of the MAGA coalition – long sceptical of Middle East wars, nation-building, and entanglements that prioritise Israel or other allies over US workers – see betrayal. Voices once central to the movement now label the Iran operations “always America last” or elite-driven adventures disconnected from campaign promises. Trump’s response? Heightened personal attacks that deepen the rift rather than heal it.Abroad, resistance from resilient adversaries, sceptical allies, and a fragmenting global order produces similar blowback: harsher threats, more unilateral posturing, and rhetoric that strips away even the thinnest veneer of restraint. The “madman” negotiating style, once tactical, now risks strategic overstretch as insults alienate potential partners and embolden opponents.This madman theory is rapidly showing how crazed Donald Trump is when reality finally dawns.Continuity with a vengeful twist Trump has not abandoned “America First” so much as redefined it in the language of raw armed supremacy. Liberal internationalists once wrapped primacy in multilateralism and human-rights talk; Trumpian nationalism discards the wrapping and celebrates dominance enforced by superior firepower – all while lashing out at anyone who notes the contradiction.This hybrid carries heightened dangers. Coarsened rhetoric erodes soft power, normalises collective punishment or civilisational threats, and coarsens American public discourse itself. It accelerates the imbalance between coercion and consent that already strains US hegemony. When even core MAGA supporters question the direction, the president’s instinct is not course correction but escalation of disrespect – calling dissenters disloyal or naïve.The education of Donald Trump thus teaches a broader lesson: populist outsiders who inherit the imperial machinery rarely dismantle it. Faced with resistance, they often intensify its operation while their rhetoric grows more venomous to mask the gap between promise and practice. The student has not only graduated but turned instructor – schooling critics in the limits of anti-establishment rhetoric when power’s logic asserts itself.Unlearned lessonsRight now, President Trump continues to frame his actions as tough, deal-making realism that restores American greatness. Yet the pattern is unmistakable: denial of original MAGA restraint in favour of policies aligned with longstanding US armed primacy, accompanied by rhetoric that has grown more insulting, profane, and personally vindictive precisely as global pushback and domestic fractures mount.Whether this produces short-term tactical gains or long-term strategic disaster remains open. Empires rarely self-correct through internal education alone; they typically require external shocks or sustained domestic exhaustion. Trump’s second term, marked by military aggression abroad and rhetorical radicalisation at home, illustrates both the resilience of the American imperial system and the corrosive effects when a populist leader’s style collides with its unyielding demands.The real test lies ahead – in mounting costs, blowback, or further alienation of the very base that once saw Trump as the antidote to endless war. For now, the outsider has been fully schooled in power politics, and his increasingly disrespectful discourse reveals the frustration of a programme meeting reality it cannot fully bend.Indeed, reality is bending Trump. He first bowed to the foreign policy establishment. Iran is his finishing school, administering the sort of violent lesson that he understands.Inderjeet Parmar is professor of international politics and associate dean of research in the School of Policy and Global Affairs at City St George’s, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and writes the American Imperium column for The Wire. His Twitter handle is @USEmpire. He is the author of several books, including Foundations of the American Century, and is currently writing on the history of the US foreign policy establishment, and Trump and the crisis of American Empire.Bamo Nouri is a Visiting Lecturer at City St George’s, University of London, an independent investigative journalist and writer with interests in American foreign policy and the international and domestic politics of the Middle East.