King Charles III and Queen Camilla were at their most emollient in Washington, where they exchanged a flurry of presents with Donald and Melania Trump. The King’s gifts to President Trump included a framed copy of the design plans for the Resolute Desk, which was originally given to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880. Trump appeared to shelve his hostility toward the United Kingdom for declining to participate in the Iran war, but he quickly made up for his forbearance by pummeling another NATO ally.
Like Emperor Augustus who boasted “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble,” Trump is seeking to remake Washington in his own image
After speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday for 90 minutes, Trump dispensed with his previous bonhomie. He upbraided Germany, whose conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz had the temerity to dub the inconclusive Iran War an embarrassing humiliation – “the Americans clearly have no strategic plan.” Trump responded: “The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction of Troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next period of time. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Like Gwendolyn in The Importance of Being Earnest, who avers that “I never change, except in my affections,” Trump has a marked proclivity for veering all over the place when it comes to America’s ties to longstanding allies in Europe and Asia. But given that the American military relies upon the Ramstein air base for coordinating attacks in the Middle East, Trump has more to lose than gain by upending, or even attenuating, America’s military commitment to Germany. If anything, Trump may discover in the course of his study and review that Germany – intent upon a military expansion that includes an active-duty force of 260,000 troops and a reserve of 200,000 – harbors few inhibitions about waving auf Wiedersehen to its fickle patron.
Other Europeans, it must be said, are wising up as well. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has snubbed Trump. France’s Jordan Bardella, in between courting Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, described Trump’s approach to Iran as “totally erratic.” He added that “this situation harms the reliability and credibility of the United States on the international stage.”
Doubts also proliferate in America about the hapless conduct of the war. Meanwhile, Trump’s lieutenants are trying to shoot the messengers. Testifying before the Senate yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fulminated that a Dolchstoss, or stab in the back, was occurring – “the biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and Republicans.”
Those Republicans include the likes of Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter and Curt Mills. On X, Mills, the executive director of the American Conservative, wrote that Hegseth was “speciously impugning the patriotism of critics on the right (far more numerous now), engaging in gutter partisanship to survive a news cycle.” A top Pentagon official estimated to Congress yesterday that the cost of the war has reached $25 billion, but this likely does not include the cost of repairing American bases in the Middle East that have been struck and damaged by Iranian missiles and drones.
The strange thing is that Trump could have secured a big military victory had he only supported a different war. Instead, he and his chums have repeatedly dissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who has battled Russia to a standstill. After surviving a harsh winter and halting Russia’s advances, the mood in Kyiv is buoyant. America has much to learn from its dominance in drone technology. Yet during his lengthy phone call with Putin, Trump apparently agreed with him that the real obstacle to peace is Zelensky’s refusal to surrender to the Kremlin’s demands.
Things are going as badly for Trump at home as abroad. Gas prices are setting fresh records. A new Gallup poll indicates that a majority ofAmericans say that their finances are getting worse, not better. A Reuters poll has Trump’s popularity rating at 34 percent. The GOP is headed for a battering in November midterm elections.
But Trump’s indifference to the Republican party’s sagging electoral fortunes is increasingly palpable. He has other concerns – namely, himself. A new essay in the Atlantic based on interview with a variety of administration officials confirmed that in his second term, Trump not only feels unbound, but also sees himself as a world-historical leader on the level of Napoleon or Alexander the Great. Like the Emperor Augustus, the “subtle tyrant” of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, who boasted “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble,” Trump is seeking to remake Washington in his own image – from constructing an opulent White House ballroom to plastering his visage on passports and government buildings alike.
For good measure, he has unveiled a gold statue of himself at the Doral golf course in Miami, Florida. Known as “Don Colossus,” it is already drawing comparisons to a similar one in bronze and gold of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il at the Mansudae Grand Monument in Pyongyang. Meanwhile, Trump’s children are busily burnishing their own images and pocketbooks. The Wall Street Journal reports that Don, Jr. is in talks with Amazon to host his own reality show – a revival of the one that made his father’s name, The Apprentice.
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