Donald Trump: A Real Life Farquaad?

DreamWorks 2001 / CNN Politico

Few characters from my childhood stand out for their ridiculousness quite like Lord Farquaad from Shrek—and lately, I can’t help but feel like we have our own President Farquaad right here in the United States.

Humor me, if you will.

Farquaad is a fantastic representation of vanity, theatricality, and greed, juxtaposed with a small, whiny, and deeply insecure man—qualities that Trump embodies like no one else in American politics, or maybe even global politics.

First, we have the phenomenal quote from Farquaad before the arena fight to determine who will be sent to rescue Princess Fiona from the dragon. (If you aren’t following, this article may be a bit too Zillennial-core for you.) He woefully and passionately proclaims:

“Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.”

Absurd! Hilarious! Animated film gold.

But oh man, when applied to real life, it gets dark.

So many examples come to mind, but the freshest is Trump’s proposal for 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico—our neighbors and allies. For a party that campaigned on lowering the price of gas and eggs, taxing consumers on foreign imports is a hell of a terrible idea. But the GOP (minus a few pseudo-libertarians) is all in! Even Trump himself acknowledged that prices on some goods will rise and that Americans will feel “some pain.” The guy who pretended to be so concerned about families affording eggs is now willfully raising prices.

Side note: Where is South Carolina’s Nancy Mace—Ms. “$8 for a gallon of bacon” herself? (Yes, she really said that.) Oh, don’t worry, she stopped tweeting about eggs and gas prices months ago to dedicate more time to filming in bathrooms and shopping for even bigger cross earrings to express her love of Christ in between cheering on ICE raids. But I digress.

Meanwhile, Republicans across the country are scrambling to slither their way around basic economics, desperately avoiding admitting that Trump’s tariffs will be a disaster. The excuses have ranged from the bizarre to the downright laughable: Kristi Noem and Eric Schmitt screamed “Fentanyl!”… JD Vance muttered a bunch of incoherent nonsense on Fox News, including “we’ll see what happens”… and Lindsey Graham claimed the tariffs are meant to “punish bad behavior.”

Despite the spin, it’s blatantly obvious to economists—and to anyone who’s ever written a DBQ about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930—that tariffs like these are going to hurt everyday Americans. But Trump, like Farquaad, simply doesn’t care.

Then there’s Farquaad’s approach to rounding up and deporting fairytale creatures, declaring:

“I’m not the monster here, you are! You and the rest of that fairytale trash, poisoning my perfect world.”

I mean, come on—the parallels write themselves. Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric about undocumented immigrants over the last decade (oof) has escalated into a full-blown mass deportation plan. And, like Farquaad, he wants to pick and choose who gets thrown out—bastardizing the 14th Amendment and vastly increasing the number of non-criminals and children being deported.

While these comparisons are meant to be comical, they carry a laugh-so-you-don’t-cry energy.

Yet, there is one massive difference between Farquaad and Trump (well, two, if you count Farquaad’s much better hair).

Trump is not a dictator—at least, not yet. But he desperately wants to be.

And that’s where the humor ends.

If the last several years have taught us anything, it’s that Trump’s authoritarian instincts aren’t just a joke—they’re a clear and present danger. From attempting to overturn the 2020 election to promising retribution against his political enemies, he has consistently shown contempt for democracy. His plans for a second term—expanding presidential power, weaponizing the DOJ, mass deportations, and flooding the government with loyalists—are ripped straight from the autocrat playbook, and quite directly from Project 2025.

Yet Democrats, despite knowing all of this, continue to underestimate him. They cling to the belief that America’s institutions will hold, that the courts will stop him, that voters will come to their senses. But history has shown that democracy doesn’t collapse overnight—it erodes while good people sit on the sidelines, assuming someone else will stop it.

Trump isn’t a cartoon villain; he’s a real and immediate threat. And if Democrats don’t act with the urgency he demands, we may soon find themselves in a country where the joke is on all of us.