Trump Isn’t Playacting When He Invokes Napoleon
The president is fawning over strongmen past and present because he wants to emulate them.
L’Etat c’est moi.
Photographer: Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg
President Donald Trump invoked Napoleon over the weekend, inspired, it would appear, by Rod Steiger’s portrayal of the military dictator and reformer in a 1970 film, Waterloo (shot in part, by the way, on location in Ukraine and jointly produced with the Soviet Union).
Trump, possibly on the verge of abandoning Ukraine amid his own joint production with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, took to his social media account on Saturday to note: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” The origins of the quotation aren’t clear, but the closest proximity is a similar Steiger line from Waterloo. I can’t imagine a book inspired the post. Trump doesn’t read. But he’s an avid movie fan who thinks about himself cinematically — and he also shared another post featuring the quotation and an image of Napoleon.