It’s easy to dismiss President Trump as a mere “Showman-in-Chief,” but it might be more apt to call him the Binger-in-Chief. Trump doesn’t just watch media; he consumes it, processes it, and – most concerningly – turns it into policy. To this president, the world is viewed through the only lens he knows: the silver screen. This creates a dangerous feedback loop where movie magic bleeds into intelligence briefings and Hollywood plot points become official U.S. policy.

The United States isn’t being led by statecraft; it’s being led by the Hollywood release schedule. For POTUS, the worthiness of an idea is secondary to the “strength” of the narrative. If the medium is the message, then for the Trump Administration, the message is the media.

It’s easy to dismiss this as outlandish, but when the evidence is laid out, the picture becomes more stark than a collection of shredded intelligence reports. In reality, the paper trail looks more like a collection of movie stubs.

Take Greenland. With its potential military annexation back in the headlines this month, it’s useful to remember that Trump first floated the idea of purchasing the territory in 2019 to global laughter. But just one year prior, the disaster movie Greenland – a film about the U.S. government relocating to decommissioned Cold War shelters in Greenlandic rock – was announced. Fast-forward to today: Greenland: Migration just hit theaters across the United States (unfortunately, there’s only a very limited Canadian release). U.S. foreign and disaster policy has become reactionary to a sequel’s release window.

Then there was the time Trump retweeted a rumor about Muslim prayer rugs being found in northern Mexico, implying Islamic terrorists were infiltrating the border. If that image sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the literal plot of the 2018 film Sicario: Day of the Soldado.

And who could forget his 2024 proposal for “one rough hour” or “one real violent day” for police to end crime? That isn’t a policy proposal; it’s The Purge. Trump isn’t debating crime statistics; he’s proposing a rewrite of the Constitution as a horror script.

Last year, when Trump launched strikes on narco-boats, I was reminded of Tom Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger, where a president authorizes an illegal secret war while deliberately bypassing Congress. In reality, Trump authorized questionably legal strikes that raise the same alarms about executive overreach. If U.S. drug policy is being written in Hollywood, a re-release of Requiem for a Dream would shake up American politics overnight.

Even his branding is borrowed. “Sanctions Are Coming” was a direct ripoff of Game of Thrones. And why does he cite Silence of the Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter when discussing political asylum? It seems that every time he hears the word “asylum,” he envisions a padded cell. I can only hope criminal justice policy isn’t dictated by a 30-year-old thriller.

It’s clear Trump prioritizes the visual over the briefing. He seeks staffers from “Central Casting” and reportedly plays Patton on a loop, and not for the military nuance, but for George C. Scott’s “look.” He doesn’t want experts; he wants a cast.

The implications of a President who treats the Situation Room like a writers’ room are profound. The U.S. faces a cinematic distortion where complex geopolitics are sacrificed for plots that “feel” like movies. It leads to a manufactured “season finale” mindset where crises are gamed for maximum media effect.

The United States is left with a leader seeking a dramatic ending instead of a diplomatic one. It might be fun for him to watch these “movies” play out on his TV, but the dangers are real. Voters need to ask: is the President getting his intelligence from the CIA or Rotten Tomatoes?

Until the American populace reckons with this, the global audience is trapped in a theatre we didn’t buy tickets for – and many don’t want to see.