The Ming Doctrine: Trump’s War on Truth and Those Who Tell It

We’re living in a slow-motion sci-fi tragedy. Not the kind where rebels win and balance is restored. The other kind. Where the villain consolidates power while the world looks away.

In the 1950s and 60s, our parents gathered around televisions to watch Flash Gordon. They warned us TV would rot our brains. But the programming they consumed? It glorified power—caped, ruthless, and admired more for domination than justice. Enter Ming the Merciless.

For those unfamiliar, Ming is Flash Gordon’s arch-nemesis—a tyrant from the planet Mongo, created in 1934. Cunning, cruel, obsessed with control, he ruled by fear, not consensus.

He’s the original space despot, the prototype for Palpatine, Thanos, Voldemort. And he wasn’t just a villain. He was the system

Ming’s fatal flaw was always the same: he refused to hear the truth. Bad news was a death sentence for the messenger. Dissent was treason.

Across over 100 Flash Gordon episodes and adaptations, he dominated. He ruled through fear, demanded loyalty, punished disobedience. And every time, his empire decayed from within.

This isn’t just fiction. It’s a mirror.

Ezra Reuveni wasn’t a rebel. He was a veteran DOJ attorney, 15 years in, doing his job. Not grandstanding. Not leaking. Just telling the truth in court.

He told the court, plainly and under oath, that Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Salvadoran asylum-seeker deported to a maximum-security prison—should not have been removed. He admitted he didn’t even know why Garcia had been arrested.

“I am also frustrated,” he told the judge, “that I have no answers for you on a lot of these questions.” The next day, he was placed on leave. No leaks. No grandstanding. Just the quiet removal of someone who let honesty slip into the record.

Attorney General Pam Bondi made the message clear: “Every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States. Any attorney who fails… will face consequences.” Except what she really meant was that every attorney must zealously advocate for Trump. That's never been the role of the Department of Justice.

Imagine that line delivered in a villain’s gravelly rasp, as the room goes cold:  “Any attorney who fails… will face consequences.”

This wasn’t about one case. This was doctrine. Loyalty over law. Obedience over outcomes. Performance over principle.

We’ve seen this before—in fiction, yes, but also in the history books.

Tyrants aren't just punishing failure. They punish doubt.

From Shakespeare’s Richard III to Orwell’s Big Brother, from Scar to Voldemort, the logic is always the same: fear keeps people in line, and the truth is a threat that must be neutralized.

In the real world, Trump isn’t improvising. He is following a pattern—an old and dangerous one. History is full of strongmen who built regimes on fear and collapsed them with their own denial.

• Stalin purged his best minds. Bad news meant death; fantasy replaced strategy.

• Saddam demanded applause, then executed loyalists anyway.

• Ceaușescu censored crop yields and weather reports. His illusion of control ended in gunfire.

• Putin receives filtered war reports, his obsession with image bleeding into failure.

• Kim Jong Il fed generals to dogs and obliterated officials—for show.

And Trump? He admired it. Called Kim “a smart guy,” praised how “his people sit up at attention,” and bragged about exchanging “love letters.” That wasn’t diplomacy. That was admiration.

And he didn’t just admire the playbook. He applied it.

Because when people are afraid of retribution, they’re afraid to speak. And when they stop speaking, bad ideas multiply. Truth turns toxic. Systems begin to rot.

Reuveni’s exile wasn’t just political overreach. It was a flare in the dark. A signal to anyone inside the machine: speak carefully, or be replaced.

The most capable get purged. The ones who remain can’t fix what’s broken. Loyalty becomes the only credential. Reality gets recast as sabotage.

Reuveni was the canary. The mine is already toxic.

The people who once formed the backbone of American institutions—civil servants, watchdogs, national security staff—are being replaced by loyalists with no brakes and no conviction. They aren’t stabilizing the train. They’re greasing the tracks.

When cruelty becomes policy, no one objects. When bad decisions get enforced, no one resists. And when the truth leaks out, the truth-teller gets purged.

That’s not law. That’s performance. That’s fear.

And here’s the villain’s tell: he always brags. He can’t help himself. He gives the game away—right before it all collapses.

Ming believed his empire would last forever.

They always do.

So the only question left is: Who’s going to stand up?