Date: Sunday, 11 May 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/trumps-monarchical-military-purely
https://theduran.com/trumps-monarchical-military-purely-top-down-management-style
Trump’s Monarchical, Military, Purely Top-Down, Management-Style
10 May 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
U.S. President Trump has a style of management that reflects his authoritarian background, as that is reflected in this summary from the Wikipedia article about him:
Early life and education
[photo of him] At New York Military Academy, 1964
Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in the New York City borough of Queens, the fourth child of Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump.[1] He is of German and Scottish descent.[2] He grew up with his older siblings, Maryanne, Fred Jr., and Elizabeth, and his younger brother, Robert, in a mansion in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens.[3] Fred Trump paid his children each about $20,000 a year, equivalent to $265,000 a year in 2024. Trump was a millionaire in inflation-adjusted dollars by age eight.[4][a]
Trump attended the private Kew-Forest School through seventh grade. He was a difficult child and showed an early interest in his father's business. His father enrolled him in New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, to complete secondary school.[5] Trump considered a show business career but instead in 1964 enrolled at Fordham University.[6] Two years later, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a Bachelor of Science in economics.[7][8] He was exempted from the draft during the Vietnam War due to a claim of bone spurs in his heels.[9]
The founder of the Trump dynasty, or “patriarch” of the family, was (1869-1918) Friedrich Trump, of whom Wikipedia notes:
He was also approaching the age of eligibility for conscription to military service in the Imperial German Army. He quickly decided to immigrate to the United States, later saying, "I agreed with my mother that I should go to America."[6]: 30 Years later, his family members said that he departed secretly at night, leaving his mother a note.[6]: 30–31 As a result of Trump fleeing mandatory conscription required of all citizens, a royal decree was later issued banishing him from the country.[13]
Immigration to the United States [edit]
U.S. Immigration records. Line 133 notes "Friedr. Trumpf." age 16, born in Kallstadt, Germany.
In 1885, at age 16, Trump immigrated via Bremen, Germany, to the United States aboard the steamship Eider, departing on October 7[6]: 32 and arriving at the Castle Garden Immigrant Landing Depot in New York City on October 19. As he had not yet served the mandatory military duty of two years in the Kingdom of Bavaria, this immigration was illegal under Bavarian law.[14]
He went on to establish, starting in 2008, a real-estate business in the borough of Queens, NYC, which his son Frederick (Christ) Trump Jr., or Fred Trump, helped him with, and continued building up, and grandson Donald built still further.
So, he arrived in the United States as an outlaw in his home-country. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on 28 October 1886, a year after his landing here, and its inscription reads: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” So, Donald Trump’s grandfather was the type of person whom his grandson Donald is now trying to expel — it would be to a prison in Germany — or maybe even to one in El Salvador. Fortunately, however, for all of the Trumps, Friedrich made a fortune in the Yukon Gold Rush as a hotelier, restauranteur and brothel-owner.
Trump returned to Kallstadt in 1901 as a wealthy man. Biographer Blair said that "the business of seeing to his customers' need for food, drink and female companionship had been good to him."[5]: 94 He quickly met and proposed to Elisabeth Christ (1880–1966), the daughter of a former neighbor; she was eleven years younger than Trump.[19][better source needed] Trump's mother disapproved of Christ because she considered her family to be of a lower social class. Trump and Christ married on August 26, 1902, and moved to New York City.[5]: 95
Soon after the family arrived in Germany, Bavarian authorities determined that Trump had emigrated from Germany to avoid his military-service obligations, and he was classified as a draft dodger.[5]: 98 … In February 1905, a royal decree was issued ordering Trump to leave within eight weeks due to having emigrated to evade military service and failing to register his departure with the authorities.[21] … He and his family departed for New York on 30 June 1905.[5]: 102 Their son Fred was born on 11 October 1905, in Bronx, New York.[5]: 110
Frederick (Christ) Trump Jr., or Fred Trump, expanded his father’s real estate business, and at the age of 22, in 1927, attended an anti-Catholic Memorial Day KKK march and rally in Jamaica, Queens, in NYC, and was one of seven men who were taken to the police station after it led to a brawl with the Irish-Catholic police, but he was the only one of the seven who was released instead of charged with assault (as the others were charged).
On October 1973, Donald Trump and Fred Trump and their company were charged by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, for systematically excluding Blacks and Puerto Ricans from renting their apartments, and signed a consent decree on 10 June 1975 promising not to do it again and accepting that the U.S. Government would follow up by monitoring the Trumps’ compliance with that consent ruling. The first compliance report, dated 23 January 1978, asserted “We are compelled to say that we are not satisfied that Trump Management has complied substantially with the terms of the Consent Order. We believe that an underlying pattern of discrimination continues to exist in the Trump Management Organization.”
On 23 January 2016, the Washington Post headlined a report that was actually a summary ot this case covering the period from 1968 though 1978, and it was titled “Inside the government’s racial bias case against Donald Trump’s company, and how he fought it”. It said that the Trumps’ argument was that their “company wanted to avoid renting apartments to welfare recipients of any color but never discriminated based on race,” and “‘What we didn’t do was rent to welfare cases, white or black,’ Trump wrote in his 1987 autobiography.” And, “If that happened [letting poor people in], Trump said, ‘there would be a massive fleeing from the city of not only our tenants, but communities as a whole’.”
In other words: the Trumps were arguing that they didn’t discriminate based on race but instead based on wealth — and that the public do, too; and, so, if they were to allow poor people to rent in their apartments, then the Trumps’ business would fail.
There is nothing in the case-file to indicate that the Government did any second compliance-report or took any action against Trump Management.
The U.S. Government’s entire record on racial discrimination has been to pretend to oppose it while constantly not pressing the matter when it comes to actually enforcing its laws against it. In fact, even the most progressive U.S. President, FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) actually institutionalized racial discrimination in his Federal Housing Administration, the FHA. As the Wikipedia article on Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump (“Frederick Christ Trump Sr.”) correctly notes: “Trump made use of loan subsidies created by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) not long after the program was initiated via the National Housing Act of 1934,[27] which also enabled the discriminatory practice of redlining.[50]” It’s blamed on the banks, and on realtors, but it is instead due to failure and worse by the U.S. Government itself. And this is a failure (and worse) by BOTH of the billionaires-controlled political Parties.
America’s anti-discrimination laws are a farce because they’re based on ‘race’ (etc.) instead of on wealth, which is the type of discrimination that goes deeper and is even more difficult to address and overcome than the inter-ethnic type is, and which is the type of discrimination that only progressives — a tiny percentage of the public — even care about. When Trump admitted that he was discriminating against the poor, the Government had no answer to that; and, so, it simply backed off.
Every king or other potentate is basically similar to Trump. They serve only their aristocracy. That is wealth-based, not necessarily ‘race’-based. Ultimately, the wealthiest become the Deep State, the aristocrats who rule in a ‘democracy’.
But what does all of this have to do with “Trump’s Monarchical, Military, Purely Top-Down, Management-Style”? I have here been describing the background, and practices, of a king.
A king is totally a top-down ruler, and considers the public only as something to exploit as warriors, employees, and consumers, but not really to serve (because a king fears ONLY his aristocracy, who can overthrow him, and whom he actually serves). Everything else is pure PR.
On May 9th, the AP headlined “‘Don’t get in my way,’ the new acting head of federal disaster agency warns in call with staff”, and reported that Trump’s new choice to head the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) — the federal agecy for responding to disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. — addressed FEMA employees on Friday May 9th. His background is in the Marines — NOT in any civilian disaster-response field — and he addressed his employees as a military officer addresses his troops, by saying that they are to be unquestioningly obedient to his commands: communication will be purely top-down, no bottom-up, and anyone who questions what he says will be fired. And in this instagram
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJc_RLkSw9E/?igsh=Z3hraDQydTdjczRv
you will see and hear him saying:
Within FEMA, I and I alone, speak for FEMA, okay? I am the President’s representative at FEMA, and I am here to carry out President Trump’s intent. That’s why I’m here. Now, this is the tough part. Most of you know this by intuition, but nobody’s ever told you this. When somebody comes to an organization, and there is going to be change, it’s recognized that everybody’s somewhat nervous or concerned. Understandable. What’s not known is that between 10 and 20% of personnel will embrace change. They’ll welcome it. And they understand that change [unintelligible] progress. And they understand that it’s necessary. And they’ve seen that it needs to be made. That’s somewhere between 10 and 20%. Something like 60% don’t care. They go along to get along. And I completely understand that. I’ve been in a situation before where I went along to get along. However, there’s somewhere south of 20% that decide they are going to get in the way of change. You can ask anybody that those 20% of people are a problem. And they have to be sidelined. So, don’t get in my way if you are those 20%. I know all the tricks. Okay? I know them from lance corporals. I know them from staff sergeants, lieutenants, federal employees, my own employees and indeed myself. Okay? I’ve played the games, too. Obfuscation, delay, unddermining. If you’re one of those 20%, and you think those tactics are going to help you, they will not, because I will run right over you. I will achieve the President’s intent.
Here is the White House’s May 2nd explanation to Congress of its proposed budget cuts to FEMA:
The Budget reduces wasteful and woke FEMA grant programs, refocusing the agency on sound emergency management. FEMA under the previous administration made “equity” a top priority for emergency relief and declared that DEI was mandatory. The Budget would end activities such as webinars promoting the distribution of disaster aid based on “intersectional” factors like sexual orientation and prioritizing “investment in diversity and inclusion efforts...and multicultural training” over disaster prevention and response. FEMA will no longer “instill equity as a foundation of emergency management.” FEMA discriminated against Americans who voted for the President in the wake of recent hurricanes, skipping over their homes when providing aid. This activity will no longer be tolerated. Programs like “Targeting Violence and Terrorism Prevention” were weaponized to target Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. Other eliminated programs, such as National Domestic Preparedness Consortium lack authorization from the Congress and duplicate the efforts of existing Federal and State programs. FEMA’s Preparedness Grants Portfolio, as well as State-level programs, are better suited to dealing with this range of issues. The Budget reduces bloat and waste while encouraging States and communities to build resilience and use their unique local knowledge and ample resources in disaster response.
What is the interim Trump-appointed leader of FEMA saying?
He is saying that any employee who wants to report to him problems that are assoociated with carrying out his commands will be sacked. Communication in the military is ONLY top-down, NO bottom-up. This is Trump’s management-style.
Maybe Trump learned this at the New York Military Academy. Or at the Wharton School. Or from his father. But this is how he rules.
And he selects, for each of his Administration’s officials, this military structure: pure top-down. It is what almost all billionaires also demand in their organizations.
The king answers to his aristocrats, and they answer to him; but the public are merely the rulers’ pawns.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
