Empires in decline tend to drop the mask, not because they become more honest, but because maintaining the mask requires resources, coordination, and a functional ruling class capable of sustained strategic thought.
Late-stage empires get cruder.
Not more evil. Cruder.
Less able to sustain the complexity of the justificatory architecture.
Less able to recruit the talented people needed to build and maintain it.
Less able to coordinate the allies needed to give it international legitimacy.
Trump is not the cause of that crudeness.
He is its symptom and its accelerant.
The empire was already losing the capacity to sustain the mask when he arrived.
He simply has no interest in trying.
What you are watching is not a uniquely dangerous man seizing control of a healthy institution.
You are watching a hollowed institution find the leader it deserved.
The man and the moment are perfectly matched.
That is what makes it, in the most grim possible sense, historically coherent.
To be fair, Trump doesn't lie about everything. He is just after having said that the goal in Iran is to "assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela..."
There's no pretence about "spreading democracy" or "fighting terrorists". Trump is perhaps the most authentic face of the western empire there has ever been.