Around 9:45am, Donald Trump spoke to the UN and threatened genocide: “Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly… Do I drive them into hell?”
Then, a few hours later, he sat down beside Andy Burnham, smiled, shook his hand, and said: “We’re doing very well”. In any normal world, we would ask what the British prime minister must do to contain this gibbering buffoon. But in this world, which makes no sense, we instead ask whether the British prime minister has suitably flattered him.
The US President appears functionally insane. People sometimes like to argue this point, but the evidence is overwhelming. The last few weeks offer plenty of examples. On 21 August, he threatened to militarily intervene in the bond markets in order to bring down bond yields. On 15 September, he claimed that the Democrats tried to assassinate him. On 18 September, he threatened to stop trading with all countries the US has a trade deficit with in order to blackmail the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates. And yesterday, he claimed to have ended two wars which never existed.
His actions do not correspond to reason. His arguments do not recognise any normal sense of cause and effect. His words are quite literally meaningless. He seems to have retreated into a private fantasy land in which he has lost all sense of truth and falsity.
Trump is also a moral degenerate. He first started threatening Iran with genocide in April, when he insisted that “a whole civilisation will die tonight”. He has repeated this threat several times since, including yesterday at the UN.
The headlines for yesterday’s meeting between the two leaders read like they’d been beamed in from another reality.
Left-wing papers focused on the meeting passing off without a major incident and cited Trump’s warm words towards the Prime Minister. “Don well?” tentatively concluded. “Trump praises Burnham but says Chagos deal is terrible,” reported. Right-wing papers, for their part, have developed a curious celebratory tone whenever Trump attacks a British prime minister, as if any lingering sense of patriotism has utterly deserted them. They focused on areas of disagreement, with a framing that emphasised Burnham’s submissive posture. “Burnham bows to Trump on Chagos,” said.
The BBC’s Chris Mason reported on events as if he were speaking about any other US president: “As I crouched between the cameras, determined to catch Donald Trump’s eye and ask a question, I listened to a President seeking to be magnanimous.” You would never have known that just moments earlier this man had threatened to eradicate a people.
If this all sounds eerily familiar, it’s because we already went through this a couple of years ago. When Trump was re-elected, the British media went into a state of inexplicable obsequiousness towards the US President. The coverage adopted the power dynamic mentality with which Trump himself views the world – headlines would constantly use phrases like “bow the knee” or “kiss the ring”.
The fact that Sir Keir Starmer survived his first meetings with the US President without being shouted at was considered an achievement. Reporters would describe it as a great foreign policy accomplishment. Just over a year later, Trump began vitriolically attacking the British prime minister. “This is not Winston Churchill we are dealing with,” he said. Yesterday he insisted that “the rhetoric from your last prime minister was too nasty”.
These outbursts were due to Starmer’s decision not to involve the UK in Trump’s war in Iran. With a neat sense of symmetry, this proved to be Starmer’s most popular action as prime minister. When the obituaries were written for his time in power, it was this policy which was most celebrated, across the political spectrum, and by Starmer himself.
The Starmer example demonstrates two things. First, that it does not matter that Trump was polite to Burnham, because any moment now he will viciously attack him. And second, the only way to stay in Trump’s good books is to submit your country entirely to his will, so he can use it as a plaything.
We have now seemingly forgotten all of this, but it remains the case. It pays more to be resolute in the face of Trump’s attention, rather than to try to win his approval.
This is no longer the US President Starmer first met, at the height of his powers. The Iran war eradicated any sense of authority Trump once possessed. He is responsible for the most humiliating demonstration of American military weakness since the Vietnam War. He has orchestrated a series of events which led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and an ensuing wave of inflation which is battering his popularity at home.
Last week, the Federal Reserve responded to that wave by raising interest rates. Trump tried desperately to stop them. Once the decision was taken, he railed against it in his customary way. None of it made any difference. People hardly noticed. He was like a man shouting at the wind.
The new head of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, has no incentive to submit to him. He is in position for at least four years, whereas Trump is a lame duck US President with only another two years left in him. His polling is in the toilet. The midterms are coming and they look to be a bloodbath. Even the most supportive domestic broadcasters, like Fox News, appear to have lost patience with him.
And yet in the UK, nothing has changed. Despite all the evidence of recent years, despite his apparent madness and wickedness, despite his weakness and lack of popularity, his meeting with Burnham is still treated as a test the Prime Minister needs to succeed.
America has clearly wised up to what Trump represents: irrationality, self-harm, depravity, foolishness and disaster. But British journalists still seem trapped in early 2025, worshipping the emperor long after the world has acknowledged that he is wearing no clothes.