The self-styled strongman reveals his weakness

Has an American president ever wasted so much political capital, so quickly, for so little gain? As Donald Trump flew into Davos last week, he appeared to be the lord of all he surveyed. He would take Greenland by force, be it military or economic. Canada too, he joked, might one day be his. Meanwhile, his new Board of Peace would supplant the United Nations, making him king of the world for life.

By the time he flew out of Davos on Thursday, the charade had collapsed. Undone by a single great speech, a united front from supposedly lesser powers, and his own bizarre behaviour. Make no mistake, this was the moment when the rest of the world realised that Donald Trump – who tries so hard to show off his supposed strength – is weak.

He only has himself to blame – not that a man with such an outsize ego would be capable of such self-reflection. Every time he opened his mouth, he dug a bigger hole. There were three moments in Davos that sealed his fate.

The first was his set-piece speech in front of an audience of business leaders and politicians. For those who don’t watch Trump very often – or have only seen him in front of a partisan whooping crowd – his incoherent, at times incomprehensible, speech was shocking.

On four occasions, the 79-year-old who boasts of his regular cognitive tests (“I got every answer right,” he said last month), even confused Greenland with Iceland. In a reminder that the White House now lives in a world of alternative facts, his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, later insisted that your lying ears had deceived you.

It was also deeply racist. He denigrated Somali Americans as people of “low IQ” and after a rant about immigration claimed that the “progress that built the west did not come from our tax codes – it ultimately came from our very special culture. This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common.”

Part two came the following day with the official launch of the Board of Peace. It would be, he boasted, “one of the most consequential bodies ever created”.

But as the cast of autocrats, sycophants and princes shuffled on to the stage, it became clear that this was nothing of the sort. If these are the only people Trump can persuade to join his club, maybe the emperor has no clothes.

Had Trump been smarter, he could have persuaded some European leaders to join – or at the very least made it too awkward for them to refuse. As we report today, Jared Kushner floated the idea with Keir Starmer in December. Had the White House pushed for an answer then, it might have been yes. But after Venezuela and Greenland, the rest of the west now realises Trump is not their ally.

The third and final moment of his Davos nightmare came during an interview with Fox News when Trump insulted the memory of every Nato soldier who fought and died in Afghanistan by claiming that they had “stayed a little off the front lines”.

It felt like the moment that the dam burst. Rightwing supporters of Trump, from Kemi Badenoch to Nigel Farage, lined up to criticise their hero. Even Starmer eventually described the words as “frankly appalling”.

As the president flew home, the main news story in the US was Trump’s paramilitary occupation of Minneapolis, the use of children as young as five as “bait” to snatch their parents off the streets, and the astonishing civilian fightback it has provoked. The ailing king, with bruises on his hands, and the anger of America’s supposed allies ringing in his ears, would not be returning to a hero’s welcome.

And yet this is not a moment to celebrate. A weak Trump is still a wild Trump. A flailing autocrat who is losing authority over his party and his country – yet still has control of the world’s most powerful military – can cause untold damage over the next three years, both at home and abroad.

He can still side with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine. He can still choose to invade another country in the western hemisphere. He can still, despite everything that happened in Davos last week, choose to occupy Greenland. And as the residents of Minneapolis can attest, he can still inflict terror on his own population.

But if last week has taught us anything it is that from the streets of Minneapolis to the halls of Davos, the only option is fighting back.

Photograph by Angelina Katsanis/AP Photo