A documented record of who Donald Trump has attacked, in what order, and what it means
Verblendung (German): the state of willful blindness in which a person or a people becomes so captivated by a figure or ideology that they lose the capacity to see what is plainly in front of them. Not mere ignorance. Not deception imposed from outside. The kind of blindness you choose, and then forget you chose.
There is a question worth asking plainly: when you line up everyone Donald Trump has attacked since his first term in office, what do you see? Not what his supporters say you see, and not what his critics fear you see. Just the list, in order, with the facts.
What you see is a pattern. And patterns, unlike individual events, tell you something true about intent.
First Term (POTUS 45, 2017 to 2021): Establishing the Template
The first term was about identifying who could be attacked without serious political cost. Trump started with groups that lacked political power, were easy to demonize, and whose suffering would be invisible to his base.
Muslims came first, via travel bans targeting majority-Muslim nations. Then asylum seekers and migrants, through the family separation policy, zero tolerance prosecutions, and children held in detention facilities that a federal court later described as barbaric. Then Mexico, threatened with tariffs and accused of sending rapists and criminals. Then NATO allies, threatened with abandonment unless they paid more. Then Iran, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew the nuclear deal in 2018 before ordering the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Then China, via a trade war. Then the press itself, declared the enemy of the people.
The template was simple: pick a target, remove their legal protections, and see what happens. Nothing serious happened. So he came back.
Year One of POTUS 47: The Targets Expand Inward
Undocumented Immigrants
On his first day back in office, January 20, 2025, Trump signed executive orders expanding expedited removal nationwide, suspending refugee resettlement, and instructing agencies to detain people to the fullest extent possible. ICE was given permission to raid schools, hospitals, and places of worship. Agents in unmarked vehicles, wearing plainclothes and face coverings, began conducting door-to-door enforcement in immigrant neighborhoods based on what internal documents described as apparent race.
Legal Immigrants and Asylum Seekers
The administration then retroactively made over a million people illegal, including those who had used official government programs like CBP One appointments and Temporary Protected Status. People who had done everything the right way were reclassified as undocumented overnight. In May 2025, with Supreme Court permission, the administration revoked the protected status of 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants in what advocates described as the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern U.S. history.
International Students and Foreign Nationals with Political Views
The administration revoked the visas of hundreds, possibly thousands, of international students across dozens of states. Many were arrested, detained, and deported or threatened with deportation not for any crime but because of their political speech, particularly support for Palestinian rights. The First Amendment was treated as a privilege that expired at the border.
U.S. Citizens
This is where the pattern became impossible to dismiss as immigration enforcement. By October 2025, ProPublica had confirmed at least 170 American citizens detained by ICE. The detainees included elected officials, disabled adults, children receiving cancer treatment, Puerto Ricans, and Indigenous people. The deportation of U.S. citizens from the United States is illegal. It happened anyway.
The administration announced plans to strip citizenship from 100 to 200 naturalized Americans per month. The DOJ directed prosecutors to pursue denaturalization cases. An executive order attempted to revoke birthright citizenship from U.S.-born children of immigrants, a right enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment.
Elected Officials and Protesters
Protesting near an ICE operation became grounds for arrest. Accompanying an immigrant to a scheduled court hearing and asking officers to produce a warrant became grounds for arrest. Asking the Secretary of Homeland Security a question became grounds for arrest. These things happened to members of Congress. The message to everyone less powerful was obvious.
The Foreign Wars: Seven Countries and Counting
While the domestic crackdown accelerated, the military campaign abroad expanded at a pace that broke all modern records. Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project documented 622 air and drone strikes across seven countries in 2025 alone.
Somalia (February 2025 onward)
The U.S. conducted more strikes in Somalia in 2025 than under the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations combined. Both al-Shabaab and ISIS-Somalia remained intact and active by year's end, with al-Shabaab gaining ground and advancing toward the capital.
Yemen and the Houthis (March to May 2025)
Under Operation Rough Rider, Trump ordered more than 1,100 strikes on Houthi positions, spending over a billion dollars in a matter of weeks. Human Rights Watch documented a strike on the Ras Isa port in April that killed more than 80 civilians and called for a war crimes investigation. A ceasefire brokered by Oman ended the campaign in May. By July, the Houthis had resumed attacks on shipping.
Iraq (March 2025)
A U.S. strike in al-Anbar province killed Abdallah Malli Muslih al-Rifai, identified as a senior ISIS commander, in coordination with Iraqi and Kurdish authorities.
Syria (December 2025)
Following an ISIS attack in Palmyra that killed two U.S. soldiers and a translator, the U.S. struck 70 ISIS positions across Syria on December 19. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it a declaration of vengeance.
Nigeria (December 25, 2025)
On Christmas Day, Trump ordered what he called powerful and deadly strikes on alleged ISIS affiliates in northwestern Nigeria's Sokoto State, framed explicitly as protecting Christians. Nigerian officials disputed the characterization. Terrorism experts questioned whether ISIS even operated in the targeted region. Hegseth marked the occasion with: Merry Christmas. More to come.
Latin America and the Caribbean: The Boat Strikes (September 2025 onward)
Beginning in September 2025, the U.S. carried out at least 45 strikes on vessels alleged to be drug trafficking boats in Latin American and Caribbean waters. Monitoring group Airwars documented 151 people killed. The United Nations rejected the legal basis for the strikes, calling them unlawful extrajudicial killings. The Trump administration described drug trafficking as a form of armed attack on the United States.
Venezuela (January 3, 2026)
U.S. Special Forces raided Caracas overnight and abducted President Nicolas Maduro in an operation called Operation Absolute Resolve. At least one U.S. missile struck an apartment building in the port city of Catia La Mar, killing an 80-year-old woman as she slept. Trump described the attack as successful and perfectly executed. Legal experts and lawmakers from both parties called the operation illegal under U.S. and international law. Trump invoked what he called the Donroe Doctrine, a rebranding of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, and declared that American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.
Iran (June 2025 and February 2026)
In June 2025, the U.S. struck Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan during active diplomatic negotiations. In late February 2026, joint U.S.-Israeli strikes were launched in what Trump described as major combat operations aimed at regime change in Tehran. The Iranian Red Crescent documented at least 201 killed in the initial wave. Iran launched a counterattack on the U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Trump has already threatened to strike again.
The Countries Threatened But Not Yet Struck
Greenland and Denmark were threatened with military annexation. Denmark's prime minister warned that a U.S. attack on a NATO ally would collapse the entire alliance. Mexico has been threatened repeatedly over cartel activity, with reports that drone strikes inside Mexican territory were seriously considered. Cuba and Colombia were targeted with threats after the Venezuela raid. The list is not shrinking.
The Conclusion the Record Demands
He is not fighting enemies. He is manufacturing them.
Every escalation follows the same logic: identify a target that a portion of the public will not defend, attack them, normalize that attack, then expand the definition of who qualifies as the enemy. Undocumented immigrants became legal immigrants became visa holders became naturalized citizens became U.S.-born citizens became elected officials became protesters became anyone who asked a question. Abroad, terrorist groups became sovereign nations became a NATO ally in Greenland.
The violence is the point, not the means. A leader genuinely focused on security, drug trafficking, or nuclear threats would use diplomacy, law enforcement, and coalition building. Instead, each solution maximizes spectacle, cruelty, and personal political benefit. Deporting children receiving cancer treatment. Bombing a sleeping 80-year-old woman. Striking Iran during active diplomatic negotiations. These are not policy failures. They are features.
He has successfully inverted the law. Following the law now gets you arrested. Breaking it is called strength.
The domestic and foreign violence are the same project: a unified assertion that the executive branch may use lethal force against anyone it designates an enemy, with no court, no Congress, and no international body having the authority to stop it.
The word autocrat is accurate. But what the documented record describes is what historians call the consolidation phase. The dismantling of courts, oversight, civil rights protections, press freedom, and citizenship itself. The use of military force against civilians at home and abroad. The imprisonment of political opponents. The targeting of allies. This is not where authoritarianism peaks. This is where it accelerates.
The fact that large portions of the American public oppose these actions is, in this framework, not a constraint. It is the next problem to be solved.
Consolidation does not stop on its own. It stops when institutions, allies, or the public make the cost of continuing higher than the benefit. That is where history currently sits.
Sources: Al Jazeera, Council on Foreign Relations, Vera Institute of Justice, American Immigration Council, ACLU, ProPublica, Airwars, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, Wikipedia
Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!
JZ Murdock is a retired Senior Technical Writer/IT administrator, and an active award-winning author/ filmmaker, documentarian, and writer based in Bremerton, Washington.
He publishes commentary on the state of things at murdockinations.com and on his creative works over at Substack. He also posts on Slasher.com on the horror genre.
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