As Trump plays the role of Mad King in Davos, America stands embarrassed and belittled. Embarrassed because only a pathological narcissist would write an official letter to Norway’s leaders admitting he was pursuing the takeover of Greenland because he didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize. Belittled because Trump is single-handedly destroying America’s global leadership, while giving China huge openings to rise as the preeminent nation and failing to stop Russia’s resurgence in Ukraine and beyond.

There’s some validity to the argument Trump’s insistence on conquering Greenland serves to divert public attention from rising grocery prices, the war against Ukraine, a failed tariff policy that continues to increase the price of goods for American consumers, and ICE policies and tactics that are threatening our national security from within. But it’s equally clear that as Trump begins his second year in office, his daily chaos (even over just the next year until the mid-terms) will result in a greatly diminished America.

Columnist Tom Friedman sums it up well in Wednesday’s New York Times:

“Trump is the most un-American president in our history. It was obvious from the day Trump trashed Senator John McCain, an authentic American war hero and patriot, for having been shot down in combat and taken prisoner. What kind of American would denounce McCain, who was held captive for over five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp after spurning early release, knowing it would be used as propaganda? No American that I know…

“Trump’s worst un-American impulses and intellectual laziness were contained in his first term in the White House by a group of serious advisers. This time around, there is no one to contain them. He has surrounded himself with sycophants. So, Trump is now basically running our country the way he ran his companies — as a one-man show free to make terrible deals.

“That management style led to six bankruptcy filings by his companies. Unfortunately, today we’re all his shareholders, and I fear he is going to bankrupt us as a nation — morally for sure, if not one day financially and politically.

“Trump’s behavior has become so reckless, so self-absorbed, so obviously contrary to American interests… that the question must be asked: Is America now being ruled by a mad king?”

Friedman concludes that while Russia and China have long sought to upend America’s leadership in the world — supported by its strong and loyal democratic allies in Europe and around the world — they were unable, until Trump led that unraveling at the start of his second term.

“Russia and China dreamed that one day something would happen where America would lose its allies and NATO would be fractured. Without economic allies, America could never be as influential in trade negotiations with China, and without America’s military might, NATO would be hard pressed to prevent Russia from retaking parts of Central and Eastern Europe that it lost control over after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“And then one day their dreams came true. The American people elected a man who, no matter what he tells us, is taking us to a future not of ‘America first,’ but of ‘America alone’ and ‘Me first.’”

The evidence to prove Friedman’s case is growing more abundant with each passing day.

Angelo Lynn