Trump’s vicious presidency looks more beatable by the day |
This was the year Donald Trump returned triumphantly to the White House, bathed himself in praise, bent US institutions to his will, bullied America’s allies and sucked up to its enemies.
He accumulated political power and personal wealth at a clip, yet ended up looking smaller, pettier and diminished in stature. Trump’s “shock and awe” presidency looks more beatable by the day.
A quiet, decent America remains beneath the brutish invective of the Make America Great Again movement. But will it survive another three years of Trump’s executive overreach?
Even at Christmas, Trump couldn’t resist putting himself front and centre of the narrative. He, or more plausibly, his staff churned out nearly 150 social media tirades. This bilge continued to be pumped out while he was tucking into dinner with Melania and his father-in-law at Mar-a-Lago.
Not a day can slip past in Trumpworld without the President ranting about “Radical Left Scum”, fuming about the unfairnessness of his 2020 election defeat, or raging against his entanglement in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, his current obsession.
And, as a gift to his Christian evangelical supporters, he announced a wave of US military strikes on “Isis Terrorist Scum” in north-west Nigeria, which concluded festively with: “MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead terrorists.”
Trump chronicler Michael Wolff observed on the Daily Beast podcast: “It’s really more helpful to think of him in terms of being an actor than in terms of being a........