Trump Takes His American Decline Tour to Davos

Have you seen Laurence Olivier in the 1960 film The Entertainer? Olivier plays a seedy music-hall performer named Archie Rice. The film is a specimen of England’s gritty “kitchen sink” realism from the 1950s, but it’s also an allegory in which Archie represents a declining postwar Britain. Archie loses his son—killed at the Franco-British rout at Suez—as well as his elderly father, formerly a more successful music-hall star, who, moments before a planned joint performance to bolster Archie’s sagging career, dies in the wings. “Better to be a has-been,” Archie’s wife Phoebe observes sadly, “than a never-was.”

Trump’s Davos speech (video; transcript) reminded me of The Entertainer’s haunting final scene. In a mostly empty theater Archie sings a few bars of his theme song, “Why Should I Care?”:

If they see that you’re blue

They’ll look down on you

So why oh why should I …

Archie stops, thanks the audience for coming, then says with a downward swipe of the hand: “Let me know where you’re working tomorrow night. I’ll come and see you.”

Trump’s supporters (most recently, House Speaker Mike Johnson) often advise that we take Trump “seriously, not literally”—a condescending formulation coined in 2016 by the conservative writer Selena Zito. Listen to the music, not the words. I tried to do this on Wednesday morning while watching Trump’s Davos speech. Like most of his recent public appearances, it was an endless stream-of-consciousness recitation of preposterous lies, childish boasts, and angry insults, most of which we’ve heard before. The words said: I make America mighty, you Europeans make yourselves weak, plus you are so goddamned ungrateful, shame on you. The music said: I’m losing my wits, I’m losing my power, and I sort of know it, but:

If they see that you’re blue

They’ll walk out on you

So why oh why should I

Bother to care.

Until now, Trump’s political story has been the pride that goeth before the fall, except the fall keeps getting delayed. To render a different comparison from the entertainment world: Trump is like a popular streaming TV series that delivered a riveting first couple of seasons, but then alienated the critics and more discriminating viewers by delaying the climax again and again with wildly implausible plot twists. The logical endpoint to the story was January 6, 2021, but the producers got greedy and gave Trump a not-remotely-believable second term in which he threatens to invade Greenland and throw the Federal Reserve chairman in prison. Trump’s show runner is out of ideas; the Greenland story arc, for instance, is an obvious steal from Borgen’s bleak final season.

On stage at Davos, however, Trump looked like he might be entering his final season, and that what’s left of Trump’s brain is starting to realize it. Consider:

• In the speech, Trump said “I won’t use force” to acquire Greenland. This was a sign of weakness. To be clear: It isn’t weak to say America won’t invade Greenland. It’s weak (and foolish) to suggest repeatedly that America will invade Greenland, and then back down. (Most foolish of all, of course, and disastrous for NATO, would be for Trump to follow through on his threat and invade Greenland, which he may still do because his word has never exactly been his bond.)

• After the speech, Trump backed away from his threat to slap 10 percent tariffs on eight Western European countries, set to rise to 25 percent in June, for opposing the United States’s acquisition of Greenland. This is another sign of weakness, following the logic described above. (And as explained above, he may change his mind on this as well.)

• In the speech, Trump said the word “tariff” 16 times. But the Supreme Court is expected to render Trump’s insta-tariffs, which effectively give Trump power of the purse, null and void (though now probably not until late February at the earliest).

• During the speech, Trump’s solicitor general argued before the Supreme Court that Trump should be permitted to fire Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook (and, by implication, Fed chair Jerome Powell). It didn’t go well. Reading between the lines, the conservative justices are annoyed with Trump for complicating their efforts to overturn Humphrey’s Executor (1935), which protects independent agencies from presidential interference. They’d rather not have to explain why they’d maintain independence for the Fed but not for other independent agencies. (The answer is that they disdain the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Trade Commission as nanny-statism but respect the Fed because it protects their 401ks). Now they may have to.

• Before the speech, Trump’s administration suffered another humiliating defeat when two federal judges effectively removed Lindsey Halligan from her job as United States Attorney. Halligan was installed to manufacture indictments against two perceived Trump enemies, James Comey and Letitia James. The indictments were both thrown out by judges, and two subsequent attempts to indict James failed to persuade grand jurors.

• In the speech, Trump didn’t mention the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, which Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, urged Trump for months to pursue. With every passing day it becomes clearer that the Justice Department has zero basis to investigate Powell. In his speech, Trump didn’t mention the investigation; instead, he mocked the Fed chair as “Too-Late Powell.” He also acknowledged with Archie-Rice-like bitterness that whoever he names to succeed Powell will “change once they get the job”:
  

You know, they’re saying everything I want to hear. And then they get the job. They’re locked in for six years. They get the job. And all of a sudden, let’s raise rates a little bit. I call them. “Sir, we’d rather not talk about this.” It’s amazing how people change once they have the job. It’s too bad. Sort of disloyalty, but they got to do what they think is right.

• In the speech, Trump said, about Venezuela, “Every major oil company is coming in with us. It’s amazing. It’s a beautiful thing to see.” This being Davos, every person in that room knew Trump was lying. Except for Chevron, which is already in Venezuela, major oil companies aren’t especially interested in the place. Exxon Mobil Chair Darren Woods angered Trump at a White House meeting by calling the country “uninvestable.” Woods said further: “Significant changes have to be made to those commercial frameworks, the legal system, there has to be durable investment protections, and there has to be a change to the hydrocarbon laws in the country.” But this is exactly the sort of nation-building for which Trump has no appetite. He won’t even unseat the Chavista government!

• Before the speech, Trump was upstaged by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (video; transcript). This, and not Trump’s rambling oration, is the speech people will remember from Davos. It was a powerful statement of America’s loss of influence under Trump. “For decades,” said Carney, “countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order.” “We knew,” Carney continued, that “the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient.” But “this fiction was useful” because American hegemony “helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.” Now, Carney said:

This bargain no longer works…. Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

This wasn’t just rhetoric. Carney explained that Canada has initiated a “strategic partnership with the EU,” including on defense procurement, and has entered into new partnerships with China, Qatar, India, ASEAN, Thailand, the Philippines, and Mercosur. “Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu… We know the old order isn’t coming back [italics mine].” Trump ended it forever.

Trump replied in his own speech that Carney “wasn’t so grateful,” a remarkable statement given that a year ago Trump was threatening to annex Canada much as he’s now threatening to annex Greenland. “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.” Here Trump was not unlike Archie Rice answering the public’s indifference by angrily threatening to stalk his audience to their place of work. But Trump didn’t dispute Carney’s assertion that he, Trump, has trashed America’s old, rules-based international order, and that it isn’t coming back. Like most sufferers of malignant narcissism, Trump is constitutionally incapable of recognizing that relationships, both interpersonal and international, are a two-way street. Gratitude can’t be extorted.

The United States is being ushered off the international stage. History will remember that as Trump’s most significant contribution. Trump won’t acknowledge that his influence is fading because if they see that you’re through they’ll walk out on you. And it seems to me that, like Archie Rice, he’s starting not to care that his curtain is ringing down.