Post Davos, there’s naturally a lot of horrified commentary in the USA. This post contains a fraction of it, though even this might well be too much for most readers . .

First, a graphic . . .

As if we didn’t know, Trump thinks that dictators are sometimes necessary. And that unflattering polling about him should be a “criminal offense”.

From ‘Taco’ to the ‘Donroe doctrine’: a year of Trump 2.0. Twelve charts illustrate the first 365 days of the US president’s tumultuous second term.

Rachel Maddow says that Trump’s governing philosophy is:-

• Coercion over partnership
• Propaganda over policy
• Dominance over diplomacy

She adds that, with the Greenland ‘deal’ as an example, Trump’s fraudulence is almost mechanically predictable. There never is a plan. His ‘plan’ is always to sound like he has a plan long enough to get through the news cycle. His language of concepts replaces accountability with narrative. The Greenland ‘deal’ is a classic example of Trump selling an imaginary wins to compensate for real humiliation

Laurence O’Donell says that Trump’s long story of a conversation with Macron was a complete fabrication, which the French government has labelled ‘fake news’. And that his ‘plan’ to reduce US drug prices is a demand that European nations raise theirs to the US level, to give the impression that the latter are no longer so high. Contrary to his claim, no European leader has agreed to do this, nor ever will.

A few nice quotes

• Every single claim he made during his address was a lie.
• Trump is not just embarrassing, he’s corrosive.
• If you don’t worry about being humiliated, the world is yours.
• This is not a transition, it’s a rupture. Nixon was a long American nightmare. Trump is the world’s nightmare now.

No one should really be surprised at how Trump is and how he acts. Wayne Barrett was an outstanding reporter who first spilled the beans on Trump in 1992, in a book called Trump: The Deals and the Downfall, later re-issued as Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth. This biography is a rich and layered excavation of the dirty-dealing, insiderism, and blind greed that made Trump a powerful figure in 1980s New York, and which eventually brought him down, beset by a string of bankruptcies, a scandal-plagued public divorce, and a forced retreat from public view—which proved, to our great national misfortune, a temporary one. In 2016 Barrett talked in interviews – here and here – about what he’d learned about Trump over 40 years.

Someone has mentioned a ‘thesaurus of adjectives’ that could be applied to Trump. That reminded me of the one that I first drew up in 2016, I think. Many years ago, anyway. This is the latest version of it. A man less suited to be the leader of the free world is hard to imagine.

A	Arrogant, Autocratic, Alienating, Anti-intellectual, Angry
B	Bullying, Boastful, Braggart, Belligerent, Bigoted, Blowhard, Bad-tempered
C	Chaos-creating, Clueless, Cheating, Combative, Child-like, Childish, Capricious
D	Disruptive, Dishonest, Deluded, Divisive, Destructive, Disorganised, Devious, Dissing/Disrespectful, Despotic, Demented
E	Exaggerator, Egotistical, Egocentric
F	Fox News-Obsessed, Follicly challenged, Fraudulent, Fantasist, Fast-food-Guzzler
G	Garrulous, Global-warming-denying, Gaffe-prone
H	Hyperbolic, Hateful, Heartless, Humourless, Hollow
I	Idiotic, Insulting, Insensitive, Irreligious, Incompetent, Inconsistent, Ignorant, Islamophobic, Inattentive, Insecure, Inimical, Incoherent, Illogical, Irrational, Intemperate, Inept, Impatient, Intimidatory, Insane
J	Jealous
K	Kinglike, Kinky, Know-all
L	Liar, Lazy, Low esteemed, Laughable
M	Misogynistic, Media-obsessed, Menacing, Mad
N	Nauseating, Narcissist, News cycle obsessed
O	Obsessive, Orange-hued, Obnoxious
P	Paranoid, Putin-admiring, Petty, Pussy-grabbing, Populist, Posturing, Pugnacious, Poseur, Philandering, Phony, Politically inexperienced, Psychologically suspect. Performance obsessed
Q	Quixotic, Querulous
R	Russia-dependent, Rabble-rousing, Reckless, Racist, Resentful, Revengeful, Ridiculous
S	Short-attention-spanned, Self-centred, Self-obsessed, Stupid, Self-vaunting, Susceptible to flattery, Swaggering, Small-minded, Self-interested
T	Twitter-obsessed, TV-obsessed, Tyrannical, Trade-disrupting, Threatening, Triumphalist, Thin-skinned, Throwback,
U	Unfriendly, Unfaithful, Unintelligible, Unreliable, Unwilling to listen, Unaware, Untrustworthy, Unpredictable, Undisciplined, Un-self-aware,
V	Vocabulary-deficient, Vengeful, Victim, Vain. Vulgar, Vindictive, Vandal
W	Wearisome, Weird, Whoring, Worrying, Wrathful, Wrong-headed, War-mongering, Would-be dictator
X	Xenophobic
Y	Yankee . . .
Z	Zig-zagging