SUSIE WILES HAD it right. On her assessment of Trump, at least. When she pulled back the Oval Office curtain for author Chris Whipple’s sensational Vanity Fair profile, her assessment of Trump was pithy and penetrating.

Trump, his Chief of Staff observed, “has an alcoholic’s personality. He “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

Over the past year, it’s become abundantly clear that Trump’s addiction is fuelled by two cravings: self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement. One feeds off the other.

And it’s also clear that the adulation and attention his first term delivered – the non-stop rallies, the cheers of thousands of MAGA supporters are no longer enough to slake his thirst for attention and adulation.

Trump has always revelled in the exercise of raw power as President. But since his return to the White House, he has discovered the raw thrill of siccing the US military on global adversaries – or ‘blowing shit up’ as his former adviser Miles Taylor puts it.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bounced him into ordering strikes on Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities last June, it provided Trump with a much bigger dopamine hit than cracking the heads of Portland hippies.

The June 2025 strikes on nuclear facilities in Fordow and Natanz were reckless. But none of the worst-case scenarios predicted by foreign policy geeks and armchair generals – nuclear contamination and radiological casualties, the ignition of a regional war, terrorist attacks by proxy sleeper cells in US cities – materialised.

Pro-democracy iranians celebrate with chants and flags during a demonstration outside Iranian Embassy in London in solidarity with the regime change in Iran. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The regime’s uranium enrichment programme wasn’t obliterated as Trump had claimed, but this clean, consequence-free strike at the heart of Iran’s nuclear ambitions thrilled and emboldened Trump.

It was always unlikely this would be the ‘one and done’ that Trump pledged to a sceptical MAGA base. That he was on a high from the outcome – hopped up on his hitherto untapped powers as Commander in Chief of the world’s biggest military superpower was evident in his reenergised appearances in the days that followed as he exulted in the ‘monumental’ and ‘spectacular’ success of Operation Midnight Hammer.

Soon, he was looking around for new targets. Pete Hegseth, his reckless and oft-ridiculed Defence Secretary and Marco Rubio, his quiescent Secretary of State and national security adviser, were only too happy to oblige.

It transpired you could blow up small boats in the Caribbean on a daily basis, whilst claiming victories in the war against drugs. The annihilation of fishermen or small-time drug smugglers by US drones and military provided more consequence-free fixes. They were the gateway drug for a much bigger dopamine hit; the audacious midnight raid that led to the decapitation of Venezuela’s authoritarian regime.

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