Perhaps Trump was testing the waters, seeing how people would respond to the idea of him personally killing someone. He’d long ago advocated for the killing of the Central Park Five. Thirteen years later, the five were exonerated when DNA evidence and a full confession from the actual perpetrator proved their innocence. When Trump learned he would have had five innocent youths killed, he didn’t apologize. He never does.
In an interview that Trump gave the year the teens were arrested he promoted hate as a means to accomplish good.
“Of course I hate these people," he said, "and let’s all hate these people because maybe hate is what we need if we’re gonna get something done.”
Based on Trump's history, it seems unlikely that it’s a coincidence that “these people” he wants everyone to hate happened to be Black.
During Donald Trump’s first term (January 20, 2017 — January 20, 2021), the United States carried out multiple military operations that resulted in deaths.
Examples include: a January 2017 counterterrorism raid in Yemen; various operations in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria; airstrikes in Afghanistan, in Somalia against al‑Shabaab, and Yemen against AQAP.
These operations resulted in combatant and, in some cases, civilian casualties, as documented by the Department of Defense and independent monitoring groups.
If Trump could be said to have a favorite, it would have been the January 2020 strike on Qasem Soleimani. This was a high‑profile U.S. military strike in Baghdad that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, Abu Mahdi al‑Muhandis, and several others traveling with them. Trump regaled visitors at Mar-a-Lago with the countdown to the killings.
“They’re together sir,” Trump said a military official told him. “Sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds. No emotion. ‘Two minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They’re in the car, they’re in an armoured vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. Thirty seconds. Ten, 9, 8 …’ “
“Then all of a sudden, boom,” he said. “‘They’re gone, sir. Cutting off.’”
“I said, where is this guy?” Trump continued. “That was the last I heard from him.”
Every president has ordered actions resulting in deaths. Pacifist Jimmy Carter has done it. So has Barack Obama. None other than Trump has found joy in killing others, as his words would later reveal.
With the notable exception of General Soleimani, most of the deaths that occurred happened on Trump’s watch, but were not personally ordered by him. By his second term, Trump found a way to get more personally involved in having people killed. He ordered the U.S. Military to destroy small boats near Venezuela and in the Caribbean Sea, alleging without documentation they were bringing drugs to America, and that each boat destroyed saved 25,000 American lives. For the record, drug boats leaving Venezuela generally carry cocaine, not the more deadly Fentanyl, and none of the boats seemed headed towards America.
“Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike…”
Trump has bragged about the killings. Even supporting the murder of survivors clinging to the partial hull of a destroyed boat, purporting them to be a danger to the United States.
“They were trying to return the boat back to where it could float, and we didn’t want to see that because that boat was loaded up with drugs.”
At least 46 boats have been destroyed, and at least 157 people have been killed in U.S. strikes in the Caribbean, Eastern Pacific, and waters near Venezuela since September 2025. In his recent public comments about the boat strikes, Trump has spoken about the killings in a way that many observers interpret as disturbingly gleeful. Reporters have noted that he reenacted the explosions, emphasized the deaths with theatrical detail, and even justified a second strike that killed survivors by saying, “They were trying to return the boat to where it could float, and we didn’t want to see that because that boat was loaded up with drugs.”
Critics argue that this tone suggests he is not merely defending the policy but relishing the violence itself, raising fears that he may feel emboldened to authorize further lethal actions simply because he enjoys the spectacle they create. As the murder of South American and Central American brown people proved to be less and less a distraction from the Epstein Files, Trump needed to step up the killing. Dragging America into a war of his choice in Iran, and he’s already threatening to take over Cuba.
Trump has long considered people who die or suffer for their country, “suckers and losers.” He has downplayed the deaths of American soldiers with comments like: “Things happen in war,” “That’s what happens in war, ” “War is messy,” and “It’s a war. Bad things happen.” Trump has no idea what happens in war, having used five deferments to avoid the Vietnam War, citing “bone spurs.” Across five generations of the Trump family in the United States, no known male family member has served in the U.S. military, in wartime or peacetime. Even worse, Trump has used a photo of himself during the dignified transfer of dead American soldiers in a fundraising letter.
As if all this isn’t enough. Trump recently told NBC News he might order more strikes on the Iranian Kharg Island, “just for fun.” Who says things like that? In the history of America, no American president has said out loud that they might risk American lives “just for fun.”
Trump has become the full-fledged, bloodthirsty narcissist, only hinted at during his first term. Having been granted immunity in advance by the Supreme Court for any official acts while president, no guardrails are keeping him from killing others, including women and children, who coincidentally happen to be non-white, as all of his victims have been historically.
Trump has said that his own morality is the only thing constraining any expansive foreign-policy action.
God help us if we are depending on Trump’s morals to stave off disaster. All three of his wives have seen what comes from relying on Trump’s morals.
It’s actually a fallacy that some animals, once having tasted human blood, become bloodthirsty and can’t keep from killing again and again. Their behavior is learned; humans are slower than most food in the wild, and it’s the aged and infirm hunters who opt for human prey because people are easier to catch. Trump has taken to killing people on small boats near Venezuela and shooting missiles at Iran because he views these things as war games.
The danger isn’t simply that Trump has grown comfortable with killing. It’s that he has discovered how easily violence can be repackaged as strength, how quickly spectacle can drown out scandal, and how reliably death can serve as a distraction from the truths he cannot outrun. Every strike, every boast, every reenactment is a reminder that he has crossed a line no American president crossed before, not in policy, but in pleasure.
If this is what he is willing to say out loud, imagine what he is willing to do when no one is watching. The question is no longer whether Donald Trump has tasted human blood. It’s whether the country will recognize that he intends to keep drinking it, and whether we will finally admit that the cost is being paid by people who never had a choice in the first place.