The U.S. president’s 80th birthday celebrations over the weekend, planned around an MMA-style venue on the White House grounds, are not a mere entertainment anecdote but a calculated geostrategic statement.
If King Herod held ancient games in Caesarea to cement his rule, then in Trump’s worldview the upcoming opening of the World Cup, set to unfold over a month, and the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, are modern spectacles designed to entrench his status. He blends the world of entrepreneurship and real estate with a conception of politics as a constant arena of confrontation where victory is essential. His ultimate goal is to secure his place in history as the greatest of all time. His historical and quasi-messianic ambitions extend beyond politics, and he actively maintains this messianic image, not hesitating to compare himself to Jesus, as reflected in recent social media posts portraying him as healing the sick.
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The U.S. president’s 80th birthday celebrations are not a mere entertainment anecdote but a calculated geostrategic statement
(Photo: AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Beyond symbolic rhetoric, Trump sees himself in practice as the defender of Christians worldwide, a view that has also taken operational form when he, in his capacity as commander in chief of the armed forces, ordered the U.S. military to pursue the terrorist organization Boko Haram in Africa.
To understand the logic guiding Trump in his current term, one must analyze his trajectory as an unprecedented phenomenon in American politics. Trump is the ultimate outsider, a businessman who had never held public office before entering the White House and was elected president twice. The mechanism driving him is the logic of an entrepreneur who always lands on his feet and returns stronger, larger and more driven. He survived his years in political exile and faced complex legal proceedings while successfully leveraging the image of a “martyr” figure, rising again and returning to lead the free world. His success rested on a precise analytical reading of feelings of alienation among the working class and the ability to communicate with them directly, bypassing the traditional establishment.
The updated Trump 2.0 doctrine moves away from classical state-centric thinking, as he did not emerge from diplomatic or military institutions, and adopts an operating model in which international relations are evaluated through a profit and loss framework. This approach gains added weight amid the massive technological competition with China and preparations for the acceleration point of artificial intelligence, expected around October 2027. This point marks the moment, according to expert assessments, when humans will no longer be able to control machines and the human “super-programmer” will lose to AI supremacy.
This decisive technological race will be settled during his current term and depends entirely on control of the supply chain of critical minerals needed for chip production and AI model training. In this arena China currently holds about 80% of global supply and uses it as a strategic weapon against the United States.
To ensure technological dominance, Trump understands he must first establish energy and physical dominance, and for this purpose he is deploying aggressive political and economic power. His administration is promoting a massive return to oil and gas production in order to meet the enormous electricity demands of data centers powering future AI models. This strategy also explains his uncompromising interest in Greenland, where melting ice exposes rare mineral deposits critical to the chip industry, leading to threats of annexation toward Denmark.
In Africa, he is working to establish peace between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo despite a historically bloody rivalry that included genocide, in order to stabilize the region and secure access to cobalt mining and other essential resources. These moves cross borders, from pressuring friendly states such as Panama to sell control of the canal to an American company, through targeted political involvement in Canada and encouragement of a referendum in Alberta aimed at its fragmentation and the annexation of its “energy fortress,” to direct actions in Venezuela and economic and kinetic warfare with Iran, all to secure full resource independence and sovereignty.
The current period, marked by the 4 July celebrations of 250 years of US independence, hosting of the World Cup and his 80th birthday, provides Trump with the perfect backdrop for shaping his final legacy. These events align with the unprecedented personality cult he is cultivating, which includes official coins bearing his image, initiatives for a 250-dollar bill, a special passport design featuring his likeness and an explicit aspiration, now a legislative proposal, to carve his portrait on Mount Rushmore alongside the four historic presidents of the nation: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
To solidify his diplomatic standing and win the Nobel Peace Prize, he seeks historic achievements in the Middle East while viewing Israel as a partner. This is why Trump sees himself as holding the key to peace between the two sons of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael, after thousands of years of conflict.
One must therefore understand his repeated claims about his desire to resolve a 3,000-year conflict as the worldview of a leader who believes history has been waiting for him to arrive to bring peace between the sons of Abraham in what he called the Abraham Accords during his first term.
At 80, Trump is no longer conducting a politics of compromise or balance, but a comprehensive strategic campaign over the future of the West in general and the United States versus China in particular, as well as his own place in history. For him, the Middle East and Israel are not merely arenas for crisis management but cornerstone elements in the new global architecture he is determined to leave behind. Ultimately, this term is his true MMA arena, a final and decisive gladiator fight in which victory will be measured not only in immediate gains but in shaping the face of the next century.
Dr. Kobi Berda, senior lecturer at Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) and senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI)