President Donald Trump's administration appears to be acting like a movie villain, but one analyst says there is more to it than it seems.
David Rothkopf argued in a new essay for The Daily Beast that Trump is using the powers of government to reward a "sinister" network of characters worldwide. Some of those attempts include pressuring a foreign country to drop charges against a former president who attempted a coup, and capitulating to Russian President Vladimir Putin in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
While the analogy isn't perfect, there is enough similarity to be terrifying, Rothkopf argued.
"The primary difference between real life and cinematic spectacle, however, is that what we are currently witnessing in the White House is much worse than anything screenwriters might have imagined or producers would have permitted to be filmed," he wrote.
"Yes, that’s right, as if incipient fascism was not enough, our fascists are also a combination of the villains of SPECTRE and Quantum from the Bond movies, the Apostles from Mission Impossible, the High Table from the John Wick franchise and the nasty financiers who hired the Jackal in the Day of the Jackal TV series," Rothkopf aded.
"And who knows, depending on what Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel are up to, we may even have a little bit of Treadstone from the Bourne movies going on in some form or another?" the essay continued.
Rothkopf argued that Trump's descent into fascism is a means to an end, one where Trump and his friends "advance their criminal plots."
"TThe Trump Administration and the dark forces behind it are not just dismantling our institutions and stripping away our rights and freedoms, they are also seeking to use the power of the government they have hijacked to advance their criminal plots—whether over-the-top scams that seem more worthy of Dr. Evil than any of the more self-respecting villains on the above list to outright collaboration with companies that seek to destroy the environment for profit or to unleash new dangerous planet-altering technologies without a hint of government control," Rothkopf wrote.