By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on September 24, 2026
“A bully doesn’t just threaten the person right in front of them. They need others to be watching. They need an audience.” foto: AFP
Like so many people, I’ve been watching the international scene these days with a mixture of astonishment and alarm. Not because lies, violence, betrayal, or the abuse of power are anything new. What is disturbing is that they are once again being peddled as virtues; that threats are passed off as leadership, humiliation as firmness, and bluster as foreign policy. And here is Donald Trump now, speaking from the United Nations podium to remind the world who has the biggest stick.
History warns us not to confuse the grotesque with the harmless. Hitler also seemed like a joke, and so did Mussolini. Seen today, those men with their chests puffed out against the horizon of their own greatness might make us laugh; they don’t because we know what came next. They turned posturing, oversimplification, propaganda, and the cult of the alpha male into instruments of punishment. Moreover, they understood very well the political value of spectacle, but also the exemplary power of fear. It wasn’t enough to punish; they had to make sure everyone saw the punishment and understood the message.
That’s why I think of Martin Niemöller. Before becoming a symbol of resistance in Germany, he had supported Nazi ideas. Later, he opposed Hitler’s interference in the Church; from 1937 to 1945, he spent his time between prisons and concentration camps; and after the war ended, he turned his own guilt into that warning that begins with “First they came for the communists…” It was not literature, but a confession about the price of remaining silent while the powerful choose their next victim.
That memory came back to me when I heard Trump speak at the UN. The organization was founded precisely to counter the logic that might makes right. Trump, on the other hand, spoke of Venezuela using the conqueror’s favorite phrase: “The spoils belong to the victor.” And he wrapped this display of power in a torrent of claims that do not stand up to scrutiny. He claimed to have ended eight wars, to have reduced drug trafficking by 97 percent, asserted that the United States possesses an almost inexhaustible supply of ammunition, and stated that his country and Venezuela account for more than 60 percent of the world’s oil. Analysts from around the globe have pointed out these and other claims as nonsense, falsehoods, and inaccuracies.
But it was with Cuba that the bluster took on a more concrete meaning. Trump called it an “absolute failed state,” claimed that it “will fall,” announced that Marco Rubio is fully engaged in negotiations, and promised that “freedom will come to Cuba.” The Cuban delegation walked out of the room. Two weeks earlier, however, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez had stated that there were no negotiations or agenda, though there was a willingness to maintain contact. Two incompatible versions of a negotiation that, according to Washington, exists, and, according to Havana, does not.
Rubio’s hardline policy toward Cuba has a long public history, but he now wields power he did not have before. At the “Shield of the Americas” meeting at the UN, he joked about dropping Rubio off on Cuban soil upon his return from Iran: “We’ll use one of those huge, magnificent aircraft carriers to take him there and leave him there, and he’ll take care of the rest.”
It would be unwise to dismiss this as merely a joke. Back in May, Trump had already publicly fantasized about stationing an aircraft carrier off the coast of Cuba to force its surrender. The image is militarily grandiose and geographically absurd—the Cuban island platform is, in large areas, very shallow, and not even Trump can get a 100,000-metric-ton naval vessel with a draft of more than 12 meters to reach the shore—but that is almost beside the point. What matters is the language—the rhetorical antics the U.S. president employs to publicly turn intimidation into a spectacle. And behind the farce lies the message.
Meanwhile, the war with Iran—which Trump claimed he would resolve in a matter of days—has been dragging on for months, and his foreign policy does not have a blank check. A poll by Quinnipiac University—one of the most reputable in the United States—recorded on September 10 a 33 percent overall approval rating and a mere 29 percent approval rating for his handling of Iran among registered voters. November will reveal how that discontent translates at the polls, but if this trend continues, the Republicans could lose control of Congress, and Trump would spend his remaining two years with a legislature ready to rein him in.
The term “bullying” describes a way of exercising power where threats are meant to replace reason, force to replace rules, and victory to replace justice. But there’s more to it than that. The bully doesn’t just threaten the person standing right in front of him. He needs others to be watching. He needs an audience. Because an essential part of his power lies precisely in the fact that the punishment of one serves as a warning to all.
Niemöller learned too late that looking the other way protects no one. Each reader can judge the term for themselves. The facts, unfortunately, are already there.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English