The second Trump administration’s tour of terror is nothing more than a get-rich-quick scheme, argues one former Yale professor.
Timothy Snyder, a historian specializing in the history of the Soviet Union, Europe, and the Holocaust, said on The Daily Beast Podcast that President Donald Trump’s attempts to emulate fascism in the modern era fall flat because of one fatal flaw: greed.
“The fascists weren’t in it for the money, right? And these guys are in it for the money," Snyder, 56, told Daily Beast Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty. “It’s like, they have fascist moments, but they’re distracted by their desire to die incredibly rich.”
“Fascists understood they needed to win wars, right? Whereas these guys don’t. I mean, they like to talk about winning, but they don’t have the wherewithal to think about what it actually means to win a war,” the Institute for Human Sciences fellow continued.
Despite countless claims of victory from administration leaders such as Trump or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the war on Iran that the president initially said would last no longer than four to six weeks has entered its eighth, with no immediate end in sight.
After threatening to attack the nation with “lots of bombs” once the ceasefire ended on Tuesday, Trump chickened out and initiated an indefinite ceasefire until Iranian delegates come together with a “unified proposal” to end the war. Iranian representatives refused to attend peace talks in Islamabad until the U.S. removed its blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.
A CBS News report published on Wednesday found that despite Hegseth and Trump’s claims that Iranian military capabilities had been “decimated,” the nation’s military is more capable than the White House and the Pentagon have admitted.
“These guys are failed fascists,” Snyder said. “They want somebody else to do the work of fascism for them—they want to delegate it. Like, they want to do the prancing and the preening part, but they don’t want to do the other part.”
“I’m talking about Trump and Vance,” the professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto added. ”First of all, the person who matters in the war story, and the person who is most responsible for the superpower’s suicide, has got to be Trump himself."
“But then there are the people around him,” he continued. “In terms of this war, Hegseth, obviously. I mean, there’s somebody who seems to be clearly imprisoned in a set of ideas about how the world works, which are demonstrably false.”
Hegseth, 45, has not been shy about his idea of the world. The former Fox & Friends Weekend host and self-styled “Secretary of War” has preached that his military inflict “overwhelming violence” on its enemies, and has attempted to proselytize it under his far-right Christian worldview, despite the U.S. Constitution’s longstanding separation of church and state.
“On the practical side, making tons of money for yourself personally is inconsistent with the functioning of the state,” Snyder continued. “And so if you’re putting... Steve Witkoff or Jared Kushner or Donald Trump, for that matter, in front of a choice, and the choice is: you would like to have a thriving American civil service, or you would like to have $3 billion, I think it’s pretty clear which those men—there’s a record, let’s say—an empirical record about which they would choose.”
Trump has used the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion since he took office, The New York Times reported in January.
The president’s son-in-law, Kushner, became a billionaire thanks to Middle Eastern backers he acquired through his proximity to Trump, according to Forbes. Witkoff has also boosted his net worth through his relationship with the president through a joint crypto venture with the Trump family.
“And so with Trump; sure, he would like to have lots of power, but I think, the people who are naturally around him are chaos makers who tend to see the disruption, to use a word they like, as an opportunity to take lots of money,” the professor said.
The Daily Beast reached out to Vance, the Pentagon, Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, and Witkoff’s firm, The Witkoff Group, for comment.
Reached for comment, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly shared three separate statements with the Daily Beast:
“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media. President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.”
“Mr. Kushner’s record of success in helping to develop the Abraham Accords, to resolve GCC dispute, and to end the war between Israel and Hamas speaks for itself. The President and Special Envoy Witkoff often seek Mr. Kushner’s input given his experience with complex negotiations, and Mr. Kushner has been generous in lending his valuable expertise when asked. He does so in his capacity as a private citizen, and the entire administration appreciates his willingness to step away from his family and livelihood in order to help address these complex problems.”
“Special Envoy Witkoff has spent considerable time away from his family, while paying all of his own expenses, to advance President Trump’s goals of peace around the world. It’s shameful that the legacy media is obsessed with lodging smears against the Special Envoy while he is working incredibly hard to save lives, and his results speak for themselves. Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and the Special Envoy’s efforts, the Israel-Hamas War has ended, there is peace in the Middle East, and Americans detained abroad have returned home.”
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