The American president has repeatedly shown his disregard for democratic norms

Trump’s occasionally atrocious behaviour, incompatible with the dignity of his office, has deteriorated further Credit: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo

Simon Heffer

20 December 2025

When in November 2016 Donald Trump became president of the United States of America – and, as such, leader of the free world – there was consternation even among some who supported the Republican party or sympathised with its causes.

How could such an uncouth, ill-disciplined braggart have acquired a position of such power? I recall failing to console an American friend, distraught at the event, by saying that however vulgar and irrational Trump was the outcome of a democratic poll must be accepted; but that experienced officials in the American state machine would protect their country from any excesses he might seek to perpetrate.

To an extent, that proved so. The worst damage Trump did came at the very end, when in January 6 2021 he did little to persuade the fanatics who support him to desist from their attack on the Capitol in Washington DC. That incident is the subject of his defamation suit against the BBC (or, rather, the British licence-fee payer) for the biased editing of a speech he gave that made him appear to encourage the rioters. There was no explicit exhortation, which is where the BBC committed its grave error.

However, Trump did commit the sin of omission by failing to use his massive authority over these lunatics to call them off. One can never know someone else’s motivation, but it looked as though Trump wanted these insurrectionists to prevail, such was his determination to remain president despite losing an election.

What we discovered subsequently was perhaps even worse: an hour-long telephone conversation with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, telling him to “find” 11,780 votes that would let Trump win that state, even though Raffensperger confirmed there had been no irregularity; there at been at least three similar calls to other states beforehand.

Trump also bullied the decent but hitherto misguided vice-president, Mike Pence, to have him decline to authorise the election of Joe Biden. To his eternal credit, Pence refused to do such an outrageous thing.

In a sane world, that would have been the end of Trump, and of his national and international credibility; but ever since he has referred to the “stolen” election. No proof has ever been found of electoral fraud; but he keeps alleging it, perhaps believing that if you tell a lie often enough, people (including the liar himself) come to believe it.

Biden’s mismanaged re-election strategy, Kamala Harris’s apparent inability to utter a coherent sentence, and Trump’s nakedly vulgar appeal to America’s masses who, with good reason, had felt disfranchised by the Democratic party’s condescending wokeness, led to his return to the White House in January this year.

He gave an impression of immediate action and dynamism by signing dozens of executive orders. But he also embarked on a rule of vindictiveness and spite against those he felt had wronged or slighted him, displaying self-obsession and narcissism unprecedented even by his standards.

This had grave consequences, not merely for America, but for the world, and especially for that bloc over which America claims through its status as a superpower and its democratic culture to be leader.

In his determination to settle scores, but also in his infantile desire to promote himself and his colossal ego, Trump acted, and continues to act, with complete disregard to his country’s laws and customs. Because of his record of sacking any public official who defies him – and defiance includes trying to ensure that American law is upheld, to protect the liberties it supposedly guarantees – many have resigned, and those who are left act sycophantically and turn a blind eye to Trump’s systematic disregard of the law.

Those who defy him are hounded, notably his former national security adviser John Bolton, ex-FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James.

Judges who try to uphold that law – as in various attempts made to deport illegal immigrants without a hearing – may eventually find judgments thrown out by a supreme court packed with Trump supporters, and the legal process interfered with by his supplicant attorney-general.

There are several possible explanations for Trump’s behaviour, which is even more erratic and extreme than in his first administration. He may simply be a power-crazed megalomaniac; he could be a form of fascist, with the totalitarian’s desire to eliminate the trappings of democratic governance and the rule of law that tyrants find inconvenient; or he may be literally mad (some psychiatrists have suggested that his rambling speech, lack of self-awareness and wildly capricious acts indicate early-onset dementia: he will be 80 next June).

A sign of where the so-called Land of the Free is heading came last June. Alistair Kitchen, an Australian, was deported when trying to enter America through Los Angeles airport for articles written about the Israel-Palestine conflict and the protests at Columbia University. Before deportation he was questioned extensively by officials from the Department of Homeland Security about his views on the conflict.

A fortnight ago there were proposals that the social media posts for the preceding five years of all immigrants should be subject to scrutiny. Like all tyrants, Trump abhors criticism.

Recently, however, Trump’s occasionally atrocious behaviour, incompatible with the dignity of his office, has deteriorated further. The world saw the depths to which he could effortlessly sink last February, when he humiliated Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, egged on by his toadying vice-president, JD Vance.

It set a new low standard for alleged diplomacy: but then Trump has long admired Vladimir Putin, even if they have the occasional lovers’ tiff, to the extent that the recent peace proposals for Ukraine appeared to have been drafted by Putin’s men.

Then, after the shocking murders last week of Rob Reiner, the Hollywood director, and his wife Michele, Trump displayed a complete disconnection from common humanity.

Far from deploring the deaths and sympathising with the bereaved, he described Reiner (a committed Democrat) as “very bad for our country”. He said this in defending even more shocking remarks he had made on Truth Social that Reiner’s death was linked to “Trump derangement syndrome”.

Two months before his death, Reiner had accused Trump of governing in a manner that might lead to “full-on autocracy”, which the president may have felt alarmingly close to the truth.

Then, a couple of days later, Trump addressed his fellow Americans on prime-time television with a rant that suggested if anyone was suffering from derangement, it was he.

Realising the economic miracle he promised when imposing tariffs on America’s trading partners had not arrived, affecting his popularity ratings accordingly, he spoke for 18 minutes about how his nation’s ills were the fault of his hapless predecessor. By contrast, his first year back in office had been one of constant success.

The tirade featured Trump’s usual regard for facts. He was scathing about Biden having allowed “25 million” illegal migrants into America; the consensus is that 7.4 million documented migrants entered during Biden’s presidency, rising to perhaps 10 million to include undocumented migrants.

But then Trump was not even capable of stating truthfully the price of petrol, boasting about how he had brought down its cost: he claimed it was $2.50 a gallon, whereas it is $2.90 a gallon, according to the US government’s own Energy Information Administration. It appears many Americans were also astonished by his claim to have cut household energy costs by $3,000, for which he offered no factual evidence.

But perhaps the most telling sign of his irrationality, or at least of his worrying infantilism, insecurity and need to be top dog, is the series of pictures he has hung in the White House signifying past presidents, accompanied by plaques with his interpretations of them and their legacies.

Thus President Obama is “one of the most divisive political figures in American History”, and “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst president in American history”. The point of the great Ronald Reagan was, apparently, that he was a “fan” of Trump.

Such idiotic acts of self-degradation are America’s private grief, and it is unlikely Trump can be stopped. The 25th amendment enables a president to be removed on the grounds of insanity, but requires the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet to vote for it, which they will not, and two-thirds of each house of Congress to approve it, which they won’t either.

Nor is impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanours” – for which there is already a strong case – likely. However, that part of the rest of the world that has hitherto shown America deference does not have to tolerate his corrosive absurdity.

Many countries are feeling the effects of Trump’s economically illiterate tariffs; but the real damage is in his chaotic and incoherent foreign policy. His desire to annex Canada and Greenland is mad enough. His unwillingness to see that Putin is not morally equivalent to Zelensky is repugnant.

Other Western leaders see this, but because of decades of decadence in preferring to spend money on welfare rather than warfare, their countries have become over-reliant on America to defend their interests: a point about which Trump is right, though Barack Obama argued it long before him, in 2009.

The West’s readiness to accept Trump as its “leader” rests entirely on this: that it would rather not spend money on defence against the threat from Russia, or those posed in a different fashion by Iran or China. It is easier to suck up to Trump – such as by inflicting him on our King for an unmerited second state visit, or having the secretary-general of Nato routinely tell him how wonderful he is – than to take difficult decisions about spending priorities that might aggrieve those choosing to live off the state.

Western leaders should convene a meeting of the G7 to discuss whether America is a sufficiently rigorous democracy to be allowed to remain a member. Trump must be included, to put the case for why he is not a pathological liar with disregard for his own constitution who thinks nothing about operating outside the rule of law.

At that point the other six should discuss a future in which America is put at a remove, and where they decide on a new notional leader – a difficult job given the present lack of talent, but necessary nonetheless.

Otherwise, the democratic West becomes a laughing stock in the eyes of the enemies of freedom and democracy, and an even softer target than it is now.

Another difficult job will be paying for it, requiring serious spending decisions that we shall simply have to take, however many Labour backbenchers, in their parallel universe with fellow leftists from around Europe, whine about it.

However, the security of our countries, our way of life and our people is paramount. Trump is long past the point where he offers any credible support for it.

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From Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger against Trump :