What did Donald Trump do today?

He made his dictator fetish about as clear as he possibly could.

In the last few days, Trump has attacked and blockaded Venezuela, renewed threats to annex Greenland, tried to force Ukraine to surrender to Russia, and threatened violence against a laundry list of countries including but not necessarily limited to Cuba, Canada, Mexico, Iran, Syria, Denmark, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Colombia, Panama, and NATO as a whole.

Trump made two more alarming comments in an interview released by the New York Times today. The first came when he was asked if there were any limits on his powers to invade, harass, or overthrow other nations. He responded:

Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.  

In reality, Trump is above neither domestic nor international law, although he can't be prosecuted while he remains in office—especially since he made a point of appointing his personal defense lawyers to run the Department of Justice. 

The second alarming thing Trump said today is that he thinks that Xi Jinping, the authoritarian ruler-for-life of China, has the same rights where Taiwan is concerned, saying of Xi that "it's up to him" whether China breaks over 70 years of US-imposed stalemate and reconquers the island. This follows concerns that China, Russia, and other authoritarian regimes looking to expand their regional influence might follow Trump's lead in Venezuela. 

Trump's branding for the idea that he can attack, colonize, or extort any country that isn't the special province of another authoritarian ruler is the "Donroe Doctrine." That's meant to be a play on the Monroe Doctrine from the early 1800s. There's a more accurate historical analogy, though: the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact), in which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Europe into their respective spheres of influence.

Why does this matter?

• "I am accountable to nobody on the planet except myself" is what a cartoon supervillain says, not the leader of a democracy. 

• The "morality" of a convicted felon, tax cheat, rapist, fraudster, and longtime close friend of Jeffrey Epstein isn't going to stop him from doing anything. 

• Empowering dictators is a bad idea for the United States but it is what you'd expect from a man who openly admires them and their tactics to the point of worshipfulness.