Barack Obama's left-wing critics have for years warned about the drone assassination and mass surveillance programs that the Democratic president had drastically expanded. They were met with bile and smears from a liberal establishment invested in shielding their leader from any criticisms.

Now, bigoted billionaire Donald Trump — the Republican demagogue who ran a far-right, overtly racist, misogynist and jingoist campaign — will be in control of the very same programs that establishment liberals were so eager to defend.

Under Obama, the use of targeted assassinations via drone grew enormously. The Democratic president carried out 10 times more drone strikes than his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, killing thousands of people, including many civilians.

"Obama's embrace and vast expansion of drone strikes against militants and terrorists will be an enduring foreign policy legacy," wrote Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in The New York Times.

Even "more consequential than the growth in drone strikes," Zenko added, "is the Obama administration's efforts to institutionalize and normalize the practice."