Donald Trump lurches further into delusion on the world stage

It began Tuesday with a surprise announcement from the presidential press secretary. Donald Trump was returning to the Brady Briefing Room. Sound the klaxons. 

After an hour of the president’s listless word-salad monologue, it occurred to me, as he unraveled his greatest hits, that he wants “to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening,” as Alice Roosevelt said of her father Teddy, our 26th president. 

With the advent of hologram technology, I’m sure Trump would like to one-up Roosevelt; he has probably already produced his own eulogy. He certainly loves talking about how great his presidency is— “Nobody’s seen anything like it,” he reminds us. 

Mary Trump, the president’s niece, says that every time her uncle glorifies himself he is speaking to an audience of one. “He’s still trying to prove himself to my grandfather. And he’s been dead 30 years,” she said recently, before adding that if she could say one thing to her uncle, it would be “I’m sorry nobody ever loved you.”

The press briefing this week gave us “Great-Grandpa” Don — the best cure for insomnia. Trump strode into the briefing room with reams of paper, snapped a binder clip and joked that he could snap off his finger with the clip and he wouldn’t say a word about it. Many reporters nodded off as Trump rambled through his briefing. Some smiled, warmed by the thrill of being in the same room with a president they love. His slow monotone and low-energy delivery eventually felled most people in the room. Apparently, according to some reporters in the room, even members of his staff briefly nodded off. 

Trump mused that his public relations were failing due to his staff. Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt was sitting in the room. I wonder if she, chief of staff Susie Wiles and communications director Steven Cheung were aware the president would say that. Either way, I’m sure there was a debriefing later. 

This set the stage for his appearance at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday. The trip began with a bit of drama that some later conflated: Air Force One, enroute to Davos, had to turn around because of an electrical problem in the Boeing 747. Defense reporters everywhere were not surprised. Even less surprisingly, the aircraft had apparently gone through its annual maintenance recently.

Perhaps it was because of this delay that when the president got to Switzerland, we saw “Mean Don” hit the stage. We haven’t seen that version of him since his Christmas speech. Trump insulted our allies, said he didn’t like NATO, cheered on our enemies, told our closest friends they’re lucky they aren’t speaking German — or perhaps a little bit of Japanese — and metaphorically stuck his tongue out at everyone. Some who witnessed it live called it juvenile. And then he talked about Greenland, teasing his remarks as if he were standing on a junior high school stage introducing an eighth-grade production of “We’re No Angels.” He looked incredibly small as he proceeded to threaten Europe. 

“All the U.S. is asking for is a place called Greenland,” Trump said. “We want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won’t give it. You can say yes and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember.”

Yeah. You can do it the easy way or the hard way. Comic book mobsters talk this way. In fact, it was actually more like a scene from “The Incredibles.” We caught him monologuing again: if he’d only gotten the Nobel Peace Prize. If our borders were only as solid as North Korea’s. If only the world would listen to Vladimir Putin’s peace plan.

At the end of the day, Trump played everybody — especially the press who had to cover him. A short time after the meeting, the president posted on Truth Social that he’d had “a very productive meeting” on Greenland with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, in which they “formed the framework of a future deal” on the island “and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region.” 

What’s this framework? Can we touch it? Can we see it? Can he describe this framework? To hear Trump tell it, without offering any details, it will be the best deal ever: “This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations.” He also announced that he was revoking the additional tariffs he had imposed on eight European countries — including the United Kingdom, France and Germany — after they sided with Denmark and Greenland against Trump’s threats. 

The irony of this entire debacle in Greenland is this: Trump calls climate change the biggest scam on the planet. But the sea lanes opening up in the Arctic because of climate change is the reason that Greenland is suddenly a larger security concern. The president understands that. I wonder, however, if he can connect the dots. 

But never mind the facts. It was another day he didn’t have to talk about Jeffrey Epstein, Venezuela, killing American citizens or needlessly investigating his Democratic opponents out of spite. It’s all good.

At nearly the same time Trump took the stage in Davos, Ed Davey, a British member of Parliament and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, called Trump an “international gangster,” a bully and “the most corrupt president the U.S. has ever seen.”

As John McClane told us in “Die Hard”: “Welcome to the party, pal.”

It’s certainly a different party than the first Trump administration, which was chaos in a blender — and Trump operated the blender. Now? I’m not so sure he isn’t in the blender himself, although unfortunately he still has his finger on the nuclear button.

He bragged in Davos about the American economy and seizing oil from Venezuela. He told the world that the American military is stronger than they understand after bragging that he had kidnapped the leader of a small country and took his oil. Nicolás Maduro, the deposed president of Venezuela, is not well liked in his own country, nor among many world leaders, but few could miss the implied threat Trump was making. “Unless you’re Russia or China, with few exceptions, you are up for grabs,” I was told by a Senate staffer, who echoed a recent statement by the German president.

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“It’s obvious he doesn’t understand international diplomacy,” a Republican senator explained to me. As usual, they are much braver when their names aren’t attached to their opinions. Nobody crosses the Donald — though many want to.

The president is obviously faltering. As a source close to the White House explained to me, “I may not be a mechanic, but I know when there’s something wrong with the car.” Trump is the car. I don’t know if he’s out of gas, has a busted radiator, flat tires or is suffering from dementia. I can only report that this is not the Trump I covered in the first administration.

That Trump was more cogent and could read a room a lot better than the current version, leading one to wonder if he’s just fronting for the worst instincts of people who work for him who have far darker visions of America than even he does. Yes, I’m talking about Stephen Miller. He’s practically the deputy president right now, and every action taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is apparently  organized, orchestrated and implemented by him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Miller was in charge of the president’s vitamin E injections.

Trump is quickly becoming irrelevant to the MAGA movement. Peter Thiel’s surrogate is warming up in the bullpen, which is a potentially worse scenario than having Trump for the next 1094 days. 

The question isn’t whether we have had enough of Donald Trump. The question is what will Donald Trump do when he finally realizes that? If what Trump did to Michael Cohen is any indication, the chances of Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi and others spending time behind bars grow exponentially daily. The president knows no loyalty. If he believes it would be better to throw his confidants under a bus, his past actions show he will do so eagerly. Maybe the Democrats, along with some Republicans, should try to convince him to flush a few. 

Trump’s trip to Switzerland was embarrassing on nearly every level. He looked okay. Makeup and a clean suit can do wonders. But from cursing wind power, to saying that our allies are lucky they’re not speaking German is the mark of an ignorant bully. It wasn’t civil. It wasn’t diplomatic. It wasn’t professional. It was beneath his office. But nothing is beneath Donald Trump.

As a reporter, I’d almost feel sorry for Trump if he weren’t president. But since he is, I cannot go there. His actions are irretrievably dangerous not only to himself but also to everyone on the planet.

Trump’s first administration was disastrous. Standing in front of him every day and trying to ask him salient questions was often futile. At the end of his first administration, when he refused to admit he’d lost to Joe Biden, I asked him to his face why he was so delusional.

This version of Trump is so delusional that he not only won’t admit he lost the 2020 election, but he also claimed on an international stage that he won the 2024 election by a major landslide when anyone literate enough to spell their own name in the language of their choice knows that he’s lying through his whistling dentures. Not to mention that gas still isn’t $1.99 a gallon anywhere in the United States, and why would our allies care if it were?

The question is not if Trump has already leapt into instability. He has. The question is will his swan dive send us all over the cliff into oblivion. There are a growing number of people who believe that he would burn it all down to rule over the ashes. And that is madness.

The first month of the year isn’t over yet, and already the new Trump kaleidoscope of chaos has dished out the murder of a young mother by ICE goons, a claim by federal officers that they don’t need a warrant to enter your home, the kidnapping of a head of state, the search of a reporter’s home and ham-fisted moves against Greenland. 

It certainly makes you wonder what the mad man will do next. “The only way to achieve the impossible is to believe it is possible,” the Mad Hatter told us. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump turned and asked, “Would you like some more tea?

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