Trump's failing grip on global power

Long before the internet put unchecked power in the hands of billionaire technofascists, there was a kid's doll which emitted insults when you pulled a cord. It was funny. Briefly.

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Australia's Washington-based journalists now have Donald Trump for the same trick. They shout out lame questions like "how do you feel about Australia, Mr President?" and bingo!

It is not as funny, but just as predictable.

On cue, we get pseudo-revelatory reports of the President's ongoing umbrage. It is "news" created from the equivalent of asking defeated football fans how they rated the umpiring.

If these news-breaks are a joke, they suit the unseriousness of everything about the Trump era, sans the shocking institutional and environmental damage caused. Those are all too real.

Thankfully, night show comedians like Jon Stewart are on hand: "We. Are. Tired," he intoned wearily the other night, slumping forward on his desk, "the presidency is supposed to age the president, not the people!"

Perfect political satire.

Despite his looming octogenarian status, Trump's burger-bloated constitution shows few signs of tiring, even if his cognitive state is failing faster.

As my dearly departed mother used to say, "the good die young".

Trumpism will end, eventually, and media which normalised it will have some reflecting to do.

Last August, we spent a few weeks in Budapest and were surprised by the number of Hungarians who eagerly raised Australia with us.

"You have a proper government, one of the best in the world, we have criminals," volunteered the first of many uber drivers. It became a theme. Most of these drivers and others working in hospitality had university qualifications. Many held down two jobs. All were bilingual.

Few thought Viktor Orban's nearly 16-year-old government could be defeated despite having levied an impoverishing 27 per cent VAT (goods and services tax) - the highest in Europe - and controlling all media, suborning courts and rigging the electoral boundaries. All to retain power.

Now, Orban, the anti-woke authoritarian with the most severe centre-parted hair in central Europe, has been swept away in a landslide of committed, coordinated people-power.

Despite being a tough-guy beloved of Trump and JD Vance, or perhaps because of it, Orban's oppressive state, which had seemed impregnable, is over, lamented only by the oligarchs who were gifted lucrative state-owned monopolies. And of course, by the murderous regime of Vladimir Putin.

How could the West have become so morally decrepit, so blind to its own decay, that it tolerated open American support for a Russian-backed autocracy?

Trump's political impunity may be cracking now too, along with his mental acuity. As The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum noted drily, both he and Vance railed against foreigners interfering in Hungary's election, while ... wait for it ... interfering in Hungary's election.

Their support only did him harm.

Now both of these "spotless" men have launched themselves into a verbal contest on the Gospel and its teachings with Leo XIV, the Holy Father of the Catholic Church, the Vicar of Christ, the Pope!

This is not a fight they can win. The question is, why do it?

Even Italy's far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, couldn't cop it, calling Trump's abusive rants on the Pope, "unacceptable". Meloni, who has since also suspended a defence pact with Israel citing concerns over Lebanon, was the only foreign leader at Trump's inauguration.

In Trump's case, the attack on the first American Pope is probably easier to explain. He is simply not rational. Just days ago, he used social media to depict himself as Christ laying on his hands and healing the sick. Just days after promising to wipe out an entire civilisation, there was no universe in which that was ever going to fly. At any level.

It came in what we now know was a flurry of rancorous after-midnight posts railing against Biden and all manner of things.

The chorus of senior US figures calling for Trump's removal due to mental incompetence now includes former CIA director, John Brennan.

But Vance? The "intellectual" guy who is known to have opposed Trump's Iran campaign?

Just two days after his boss hits 80 in June, this man described in The New York Times as "the country's most powerful Roman Catholic politician," will launch his new memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.

Yet here he is, on the eve of that publication warning the Pope to "be careful" on matters of theology. The arrogance. The pride. The epic lack of self-awareness.

As these indulgences distract leaders who, need it be stated, are actually at war, America's actual competitors are re-assessing, retooling, and repositioning.

Trump claims he is expressing unrivalled strength, but to America's foes in other vital theatres, it has never looked weaker.

Chinese president Xi Jinping used the moment to state four principles to safeguard peace in the Middle East:

Stay committed to the principle of peaceful coexistence.

Stay committed to the principle of national sovereignty.

Stay committed to the principle of the rule of law.

Stay committed to a balanced approach to development and security.

Applebaum reminds us that Orban's electoral ouster proves the survival of authoritarian government is hardly "inevitable". A point worth remembering.

Neither, though are other things considered permanent, like our own democracy, and credible, reliable American leadership.

Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast. He writes a column every Sunday.

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Trump's failing grip on global power

© Canberra Times