Why the Trump experiment was a failure in shrinking government or ending ‘forever wars’

On Saturday, February 28^th, President Trump launched an undeclared war on Iran without even the formality of the watered-down version of a Congressional declaration of war, an authorization to use military force (AUMF). Unfortunately, like most of Trump’s unconstitutional actions, this was not unprecedented. Barack Obama launched his war in Syria even after Congress voted to prohibit him from doing so. But it was the first time a president embarked on a full-blown war without even attempting to make a case to the public.

Americans generally acquiesce to foreign adventures if they’ve been made to feel they were part of the decision, delusional as that may be.

What makes Trump’s war so shocking is its brazenness in betraying his voters. Not involving the United States in a new war was a pillar of Trump’s campaign. If curbing illegal immigration was his first and foremost promise, not doing precisely what he’s doing in Iran was at least tied for second, alongside imposing mercantilism on the American economy.

Right behind those, especially after Elon Musk joined his 2024 campaign, was a promise to shrink the size of government by taking a cleaver to the administrative state. Trump seemed well on his way to following through on this when USAID was dismantled, complete with video of the sign on the door being ceremoniously removed.

It was a symbolic gesture, to be sure. USAID only cost taxpayers about $20 billion per year out of the government’s almost $7,000 billion per year budget. But USAID punched far above its budget, being a key mechanism for funding the NGOs the empire uses in fomenting coups in other countries (and maybe this one on occasion).

Moreover, Trump talked about it at the time as if it were only the beginning. Bigger administrative game was to be hunted, he said, especially the long promised (by Republicans) abolition of the Department of Education and even cuts to the Department of Defense..

Given the start the Trump administration got off to, the startling difference in cabinet appointments from the first Trump term, and the antiestablishment momentum Trump and MAGA seem to have coming into power, even libertarians had reason to believe some good might come out of the supposed revolution.

It may not have been realistic to hope for what’s really needed – 200,000 troops ordered home from overseas, repeal of the New Deal root and branch, and an end to the Federal Reserve – but perhaps an end to involvement of the Ukraine War, if not Israel’s war in Gaza, and the elimination of a department or two. Perhaps, if all the stars lined up, a fiscal year spending number lower than the year before for the first time when a Republican president is in office.

Instead, we got precisely the opposite on all fronts. In less than a year, Trump has gone from talking about cutting the DOD to increasing its budget by fifty percent. The Department of Education got a haircut at best once you do the accounting the same as it was done up until 2025. But worst of all, Trump launched a war of choice against Iran, the war neoconservatives have dreamed of this entire century but that even War on Terror presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were wise enough to avoid.

Trump’s most loyal diehards are trying to spin this as a defensive action, or not a war at all, or anything other than a complete betrayal of one of Trump’s most important promises and the America First philosophy in general. But everyone else who supported Trump, in principle or pragmatically, has whiplash.

For those who supported Trump primarily because they hoped his second term would at least be a break from nonstop military adventurism and runaway federal spending, the experiment has completely failed.

Why? Many have suggested Trump has no political principles; that he acts purely on instinct and political dealmaking. But that’s not true. Trump has a clearly defined philosophy that he consistently articulated for decades before entering politics.

No, it’s not fascism.

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Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and host of the Tom Mullen Talks Freedom podcast.

War and socialism

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But I repeat myself

War and socialism have a lot in common. Many would argue that war is, in fact, socialism. After all, the government owns the means of production of war. It is centrally planned, completely funded with other people’s money and therefore devoid of market discipline, and directed by a hierarchy of government employees barking orders at the people directly below them.

The warmongers would vehemently disagree. War, they maintain, is a legitimate and necessary security service that is delegated to government only because it is impossible or impractical for the market to provide it. Defense of life and property is necessary to the security of a free state, free markets, and for truth, justice, and the American Way to prevail. Or something.

But being wholly owned and operated by the government isn’t the only similarity between war and socialism. They’re also both sold the same way and tend to go the same way over time. It’s almost like the same Hollywood scriptwriter wrote both movies. And they both have lousy endings.

The sales talk for socialism sounds great to most people. Who wouldn’t rather have “free” food, education, healthcare, etc. than have to pay for it? Especially when the price is so high. Forget that these things are only unaffordable due to previous government interventions demanded by the voters themselves. It’s much simpler to blame evil rich people. “We’ll make them pay their fair share,” say the politicians. And the crowd goes wild.

Then, the politicians get elected, the industries are nationalized, and the “real socialism” phase begins. “Real socialism” is the period at the beginning, when the government is handing out all the free stuff. It’s a nonstop party. “Greed has been defeated,” say the politicians, and they promise it will just keep getting better. Anyone who warns it won’t end well is ridiculed or demonized.

Then comes the “not real socialism” phase. It starts when the government has run out of other people’s money, the economy has been rendered completely unproductive, and all the zoo animals have been eaten. That’s when the rationing begins and the government becomes even more overtly authoritarian. Those who tried to warn the public and whose predictions came true are demonized as enemies of the state and scapegoated. “It’s the kulaks,” politicians say. “That’s why it didn’t work.”

Later, socialism’s supporters will say “that wasn’t real socialism.” But it was. We know this because the pattern is always the same.

The war script isn’t identical, but it rhymes. Instead of telling the suckers that rich people are the reason they’re miserable, people in another country are blamed. That evil country, or more precisely that country with the very evil government.

(In Jack Nicholson voice): “Is there another kind?

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Trump’s attack on Iran violated the War Powers Resolution

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And, as usual, nobody cares

President Trump commenced “Operation Epic Fury” this morning, a joint military action with Israel against Iran. He did not receive authorization from Congress and was not responding to “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” Therefore, he has violated the War Powers Resolution (WPR) and should be impeached.

Given that Congress has already impeached Trump twice during his previous term for far less egregious reasons, if they were valid at all, it would seem uncontroversial to suggest that for illegally and unconstitutionally taking the nation to war, impeachment would be a slam dunk. But it isn’t, and not just because Republicans control the House of Representatives.

The truth is presidents are far more likely to be impeached for trivial violations that don’t affect the lives of their constituents than for egregious flouting of Congress’ most important laws. It would be to hard argue there is a more important statue than the one defining the circumstances under which the president can initiate military action. The War Powers Resolution is very clear on this:

(c) Presidential executive power as Commander-in-Chief; limitation

The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

That’s it. Simple. There is no ambiguity here. None of the three conditions the law stipulates have been met. Therefore, President Trump’s action this morning was illegal. Period. And nobody cares.

The law goes on to impose reporting requirements on the president and sets a 6-day limit on any military action the president has taken without Congressional authorization. But all that only applies after condition 3) above has been met.

No, the law does not authorize the president to undertake any military action he wishes for sixty days. Many people get confused about this because they want to be confused. The law does not allow the president to initiate military action for a day or even an hour if one of the three conditions aren’t met.

Trump’s statement regarding his reasons for the attack does not even attempt to justify them under the WPR. He cites Iran’s 1979 seizure of U.S. hostages without mentioning it being in retaliation for the U.S. overthrowing the Iranian government in 1953 and propping up a dictator over them for the next twenty-six years. He then lists a series of attacks on the U.S. military Iran is alleged to have funded on U.S. military in the Middle East, where they shouldn’t be stationed in the first place. He ends with alleged Iranian funding of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which is irrelevant to any justification of U.S. military force.

One can debate the veracity of the various accusations against Iran, whether any of them rise to justification for war, and what the U.S. response should be. And that’s just what the Constitution calls for – a debate. The members of Congress certainly have the constitutional authority to consider everything Trump has cited and decide whether to declare war on Iran or authorize a military response that falls short of war.

Even the latter option for Congress is constitutionally dubious. In fact, a compelling case can be made that the declaration of war power doesn’t even give Congress the power to start a war. It gives it the power to declare one. And one can only declare something that already exists.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupidand Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

The Epstein Saga and the Libertarian Delusion

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Libertarians are often characterized as a fringe movement, advocating limiting government far beyond what most Americans would even consider and prone to promoting conspiracy theories.

All of that is true.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t right, even about the conspiracy theories. We almost always are. We were right about the war on terror. We were right about Obamacare. We were right about the intelligence community conducting unconstitutional mass surveillance on Americans, that it was a fundamental violation of our most basic liberties, and that it wouldn’t catch a single terrorist (it didn’t).

We were right when we predicted the free market would solve deplatforming and online censorship without government intervention. We were right about Covid hysteria.

The Epstein saga has been a different story. Most libertarians believe the basic tenets of the narrative – that Epstein not only was “trafficking” underage girls to a vast number of prominent “elites,” but also filming their indiscretions to use as blackmail for…well, it’s not clear what for but something really, really bad that’s for sure.

After multiple releases of the so-called “Epstein Files,” there is still no evidence of any part of that story. On the contrary, there is quite a bit of evidence against the idea that anyone other than Epstein sexually abused minors. This is the official position of the FBI:

“The files relating to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography. Teams of agents, analysts, attorneys, and privacy and civil liberties experts combed through the digital and documentary evidence with the aim of providing as much information as possible to the public while simultaneously protecting victims. Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing. Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose any additional third parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing. Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography.

This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.” There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

Now, this writer certainly doesn’t take the FBI at its word. But in this case, it isn’t just the FBI’s statement that is persuasive, it is the sheer volume of files (over three million) released that seem to be completely consistent with this statement.

To this, proponents of the Epstein narrative reply that the government is holding back the incriminating material. They also point out that there are still redactions in the released files that are concealing perpetrators. On this point, the first six names unredacted under pressure from Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna were a colossal failure.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupidand Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Where will the rudderless Trump administration drift next?

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Following Attorney General Pam Bondi’s disastrous testimony in Congress, all attention is currently focused on the Epstein scandal. And while the appearance of both rank incompetence and a sinister cover-up further damage the Trump administration’s approval ratings, it also provides a momentary diversion from a much bigger problem: Trump’s failure to deliver on his core campaign promises.

Aside from partial success on immigration issues, the Trump administration has failed to deliver on any of the others. A large part of the reason is lack of effort. Instead of working with Congress to deliver the America First agenda, the administration squandered its first and most important year in office on foreign military adventures.

It bombed Iran, invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president, and has rattled its saber at several other countries, none of which pose a threat to the United States. Trump has also talked about acquiring Greenland, either voluntarily or by vaguely implied force, depending upon his mood. He has entertained the Prime Minister of Israel seven times since taking office himself. And he has cozied up to arch neocon Lindsey Graham while making yet another effort to get libertarian Thomas Massie, who supports much more of the MAGA agenda than Graham, booted out of Congress.

Just six months after having declared Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program “totally obliterated” during the 2025 airstrikes, the administration sent massive military resources to within striking distance of Iran, making that nation an offer it couldn’t accept rather than couldn’t refuse. But after more bluster, it again backed off, just as it did during Trump’s first term, rendering yet another fool’s errand on behalf of a foreign nation just one more waste of time and resources, albeit this time without significant loss of lives.

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Summarily Murdering Venezuelan “Narco-Terrorists” is Profoundly Un-American

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President Trump said on Tuesday that in addition to the airstrikes on Venezuelan boats suspected of trafficking drugs to the United States, the U.S. military would begin hitting targets on land. Not only are all these strikes unconstitutional by any construction, but they are also unprovoked acts of war against a country that poses no threat to the United States.

Since September, the administration has carried out at least twenty-one attacks on civilian vessels in the Caribbean, resulting in eighty-three deaths. Not one of those killed by American forces was charged with a crime in any court, much less convicted at trial. This behavior wouldn’t pass muster under Magna Carta, written by barbarians by our standards today, much less the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

This doesn’t require any fanciful 20^th-century reading of the Bill of Rights, like the one that produced Roe v. Wade. That this is impermissible is firmly rooted in constitutional interpretation dating to the man who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights himself.

There were several reasons for the War of 1812, not all of them legitimate. A certain faction among the war hawks of the day just wanted to steal Canada from the British empire. But foremost among the legitimate grievances cited by James Madison in asking Congress for a declaration of war, and frankly the only one most people remember, was the impressment of sailors on American ships into service in the British Navy.

It is important to understand the complaint was not against returning true deserters from the British Navy to Great Britain. As Madison said in his address, “And that no proof might be wanting of their conciliatory dispositions, and no pretext left for a continuance of the practice, the British Government was formally assured of the readiness of the United States to enter into arrangements, such as could not be rejected, if the recovery of British subjects were real and sole object.”

The problem the Madison administration had was that, in addition to disrespectfully boarding American ships by force, the British “so far from affecting British subjects alone, that under the pretext of searching for these, thousands of American Citizens, under the safeguard of public law, and of their national flag, have been torn from their country and from everything dear to them.”

That’s the whole point of due process. The government not only has to prove a crime was committed, but that they have indeed arrested the right person, which they frequently haven’t. This is why the mobbish retort, “narco-terrorists don’t deserve due process” is so counterintuitive. Without it, we don’t even know if the government has arrested the person they believe they have, much less whether this person committed a crime.

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Venezuela could be the necons’ ticket back to power

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Their demise has been greatly exaggerated

MAGA is riding high these days, convinced they’ve finally exorcised the neoconservatives who controlled the Republican Party for decades. Supposedly gone are the days of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the trillion-dollar boondoggles sold as “spreading democracy.” Trump promised to drain that swamp, and his base believes he’s done it—putting America First and mocking the old guard like John McCain and Liz Cheney.

I hate to burst that bubble, but the neocons are far from dead. At best they’re playing possum. And President Trump’s looming military action against Venezuela could be their golden ticket back to power, co-opting the very movement that thought it had buried them.

Let’s start with the obvious: the demise of the neocons has been greatly exaggerated. Sure, their poster boys like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney couldn’t win a presidential primary at the moment. But look who has staffed both Trump’s administrations. Mike Pompeo, the quintessential neocon hawk, served as Secretary of State the last time, pushing regime change agendas from Iran to North Korea.

Now we’ve got Marco Rubio in the same spot, a guy who’s never met a foreign entanglement he didn’t like. Rubio’s been a darling of the interventionist crowd since his Senate days, advocating for arming Syrian rebels and toppling dictators throughout the Middle East. Trump himself has been more restrained—no full-scale invasions on his watch yet—but that’s a far cry from the drastic change some in MAGA envisioned.

Trump hasn’t decreased overseas troop deployment on net whatsoever and the Pentagon budget has risen significantly in both of his administrations. As for Rubio, he’s trying to sound as America First as he can while serving the current boss but make no mistake: the push for action in Venezuela reeks of his influence, along with other holdovers like Elliott Abrams, who’s been knee-deep in Latin American meddling since the Reagan era. Throw in unconditional support for Israel’s wars, and you’ve got essentially a new Bush administration disguised as America First.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

The school system teaches people to make terrible political decisions

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In addition to teaching the three Rs, we’re told public schooling is essential in a “democracy” to produce informed voters. In reality, it fails miserably at the former and everything it teaches relevant to the latter – especially history, economics, and government—is so systematically inverted that after twelve years the average graduate is programmed to make the worst possible political choices for himself and everyone around him.

Let’s start with the story every kindergartener can recite before he can tie his shoes: the Pilgrims. American five-year-olds spend weeks on the Mayflower, the First Thanksgiving, and those construction-paper buckles on black pilgrim hats. What they never, ever hear is why the Pilgrims almost starved to death for two solid years. It was not the harsh New England winter. It was not a lack of farming know-how. It was socialism, pure and simple.

William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth, wrote it himself in his journal. The colony’s charter required that all the output of their labor go into a common stock, out of which each person would be given an equal share “according to their general admission.” Result? Half the colony dead by spring. Bradford called it rightly: when men are “commanded to produce the fruits of their labor for other men,” they will “produce little and with a bad will.” As soon as they abandoned the communal system and assigned each family its own plot of land—“so as each had land assigned him according to his family”—the famine ended overnight and they had surplus to trade.

You will not find that passage in a single elementary-school textbook in the United States. Why?

A few years earlier and a few hundred miles south, the Jamestown settlement went through the identical experience. Half the colonists starved in the winter of 1609–1610 even though game was plentiful and the local Indians were willing to trade food. John Smith’s own writings are crystal clear: the “common store” system meant no one had incentive to work more than the laziest man among them. Only when they instituted private plots—“when our people were fed out of the common store and laboured in common together, they would rather starve than work”—did the colony survive.

Textbooks blame mosquitoes and “unfamiliar crops.” They never mention socialism.

So, the very first economic experiments on American soil proved, beyond any rational dispute, that private property and free exchange produce abundance while socialism produces starvation and death. If there is any reason to teach children about these colonies at all it is to learn this lesson. And this is the one thing the schools make damn sure no child ever learns.

No wonder polls show a huge percentage of young people prefer socialism to capitalism.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

No, Elon, AI will not make work optional or money obsolete

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Socialists have been telling us machines will replace human labor for over a century

Elon Musk told the U.S. – Saudi Investment Forum last Wednesday that within a few years, artificial intelligence will be so powerful that “no one will have to work” if they don’t want to. Work will become “optional.” We’ll all live in a post-scarcity paradise where robots do everything and money itself becomes obsolete.

It may sound exciting to youngsters, but the rest of us have heard this before. Socialists like Musk have been saying it for well over a century. Oscar Wilde predicted machines would replace human labor in 1891. John Maynard Keynes doubled down in 1930, predicting his grandchildren would work 15-hour weeks because technology would solve the “economic problem” forever.

Fast-forward to the 1990s. Jeremy Rifkin’s bestseller The End of Work declared that computers and the internet were the final nail in the coffin of human labor. Less than 20% of us would still have full-time jobs by the early 21st century. Wired magazine ran cover lines screaming “The Death of Jobs” and “Work Is Dead—Get Over It.”

With each new technological breakthrough – steam, electricity, the assembly line, computers, the internet, and now Artificial Intelligence (AI) – dreamy socialists have predicted a world without scarcity and thus without the need for human labor. And every single time they’ve been wrong. Not just a little wrong. Spectacularly, catastrophically wrong.

Why?

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Tom Mullen

The FDA is a Corporate Protection Scheme and MAHA is Making It Worse

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RFK, Jr. is sincere and was great on the Covid Regime, but he’s still a progressive

Libertarians cheered when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the podium the 2024 Republican National Convention, his voice a rare blast of sanity against the Covid-era madness of lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Here was a man who had refused to bend the knee to Fauci’s fear machine. For a movement long starved of allies in the war against authoritarian overreach, RFK seemed like a godsend. And in many ways, he was—on those specific battles.

But as he’s settled into his role as Director of Health and Human Services under the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) banner, a troubling pattern has emerged. Kennedy’s political principles aren’t libertarian; they’re progressive through and through. His tenure isn’t dismantling the regulatory leviathan—it’s entrenching it deeper, turning the FDA from a mere gatekeeper into an even more impenetrable fortress for corporate giants. What libertarians mistook for a wrecking ball is, in fact, a reinforcement rod.

To understand why this matters, we must first dispense with the fairy tale that the regulatory state exists to protect consumers from “unsafe” products. That’s just sales talk. As any student of Austrian economics knows, regulations aren’t about safety or fairness—they’re a protection racket for large corporations. Sold to a gullible public as shields against rapacious capitalists, these laws and agencies primarily serve to erect barriers that crush small competitors who can’t afford the compliance costs. Giant firms, with their armies of lawyers and lobbyists, thrive. Mom-and-pop operations? They fold. The result: near monopolies, higher prices, and innovation starved in a cradle of cronyism.

This isn’t “conspiracy theory;” it’s history. Take the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the grandfather of the FDA. It was rammed through Congress amid a manufactured panic over “embalmed beef” and filthy slaughterhouses, sparked unwittingly by Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle. Sinclair, a committed socialist, later admitted his aim wasn’t food safety but “exposing” the exploitation of immigrant workers in Chicago’s meatpacking plants—a clarion call for communist revolution.

The book painted a hellscape of wage slavery, urging readers toward proletarian uprising. Yet, the reforms it inspired had nothing to do with uplifting the working man. President Theodore Roosevelt, the “trust buster” who only busted Rockefeller firms while ignoring the Morgan empire, signed the Act on June 30, 1906, alongside the Meat Inspection Act.

As Murray Rothbard’s work on the Progressive Era makes clear, this was because TR’s administration was packed with “Morgan men”—loyalists to J.P. Morgan, the robber baron who had sunk millions into an agricultural trust aimed at cornering the beef market. Each foray failed spectacularly, as thousands of small ranchers and packers flooded the market with cheaper alternatives, hammering Morgan’s monopoly dreams.

The 1906 laws changed that. Overnight, federal inspectors, lab tests, and labeling mandates turned meatpacking into a capital-intensive game only the big players could play. Small outfits, lacking the resources for compliance, vanished. Morgan’s losses turned to windfalls. Safety? A convenient sideshow. The real win was cartelization under the color of consumer protection.

This template—panic, progressive piety, corporate payoff—has defined every regulatory “reform” since. The FDA itself slouched into existence during the New Deal, that orgy of central planning under Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR’s brain trust brimmed with Rockefeller operatives, from economists whispering in his ear to officials steering policy toward Standard Oil’s interests.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?