Alan Zendell, August 18, 2026

Anyone who aspires to be president of the United States would have to possess a large ego and extreme self-confidence. Donald Trump has both, to great excess. But a president requires other characteristics to be effective and successful, among which are sound judgment, a moral center, empathy, and a general regard for the things he swears to defend, namely, the basic rights of all Americans and the Constitution. Donald Trump does not possess any of those things.

Trump is driven almost entirely by vanity and a desperate need for adoration if not worship. In the midst of a war he wrongheadedly started with Iran that threatens to spin out of control and has already exposed frightening shortcomings in our military preparedness, what grabs Trump’s attention? First, there are his vanity projects: his ballroom, which he began touting as a luxury icon in 2010, the reflecting pool, plastering his name on every monument he can find, and imposing his view of history on the Smithsonian Institution.

Then there are his personal vendettas against anyone he deems insufficiently loyal; his treatment of foreign leaders that resembles an adolescent ego-driven schoolyard competition more than competent diplomacy; and politically motivated indictments which distract the Department of Justice from its primary mission, which according to Gemini AI, as codified under Title 28 of the U.S. Code, is to enforce federal laws, provide legal counsel to the federal government, and oversee federal law enforcement and prosecutions.

He showed his true colors with respect to average Americans last week, charging in a childish whining voice that Americans complain too much about inflation and gas prices, which he said were a small price to pay for Trump’s courageous war to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He finally spoke the truth, that the plight of average Americans struggling to pay for housing, food, and health care for their families was “a yawn.”

Here at home his mafia-like gang of billionaires, sycophants, and enablers have established a pattern of threat and intimidation that has been extremely effective at silencing political opposition. But internationally, Trump is frustrated that he can’t have his way. Like a four-year-old, he throws a tantrum whenever he doesn’t get what he wants, but the worst a four-year-old can do is kick holes in walls. Trump’s ill-advised communication style can destroy alliances, upset the world order, and risk massive wars and destruction. He seems intent on all of the above.

He has spent his entire second term attacking our staunchest ally, Canada, with crippling tariffs and slanderous rhetoric. A few months ago, he announced that he was reducing our forces on the ground in Europe, because not a single NATO country offered to help him defeat Iran, while he simultaneously boasted that he didn’t need their help. Last week, furious over leaks about our rapidly decreasing inventory of strategic weapons and the appallingly bad conditions aboard several U. S. Navy vessels deployed to the Persian Gulf, including the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, he ordered the carrier George Washington to leave its station in the western Pacific where it was the principal bulwark against Chinese aggression to the replace the Lincoln.

And yesterday, he attacked two more staunch allies while praising a brutal dictator who is sending tens of thousands of ground troops to aid in Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. In the midst of ongoing joint war games with South Korea, Trump announced that he would be scaling those games back because his friend Kim Jong Un, the North Korean Dictator, considered them threatening to his regime. When asked by reporters why he was doing that, Trump responded as he did when asked about reducing support for NATO: when we asked for help with Iran, which of course, we don’t really need, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said he wasn’t interested.

Perhaps the most absurd thing Trump said yesterday was that if another reliable ally, Oman, got in the way of his dealings with Iran, he would “bomb the shit out of them.” Oman not only must deal with Iran, across the Strait of Hormuz, but it has been a dependable intermediary attempting to help Trump negotiate an end to the war he has trapped himself and all of us in. Beyond that, his outrageous threat to Oman raises the spectacle of attacking the tiny nation with bombs and missiles against which Oman would be defending with missile systems purchased from the United States and Europe.

It becomes more apparent every day, in the contradictory way that almost everything Trump says, that Make America Great Again actually means the systematic dismantling of everything that has made America what it is since World War 2. I  don’t know if America qualified as “great” before Trump came along, but we were surely the most prosperous, generous, and successful nation in the world as well as its best hope for the future. The America Trump projects to the world is mean-spirited, uncaring, and self-destructive.