Trump hat einen katastrophalen Fehler gemacht – und gezeigt, wie instabil er ist

An old saying holds that “there is nothing quite so terrifying as a mad sheep”. Who first said this is uncertain, but if they watched President Donald Trump’s press conference on Thursday, in which he showed himself sunk deep in delusions about his attack on Iran, they might confess themselves mistaken.

Far more terrifying than a deranged sheep is a US leader, a man able to destroy the planet, being detached from reality, looking increasingly paranoid, threatening violence against others and, in the most serious cases, committing actual violence against perceived enemies.

Though Trump [showed signs of chronic instability](https://inews.co.uk/news/world/videos-trumps-decline-barnstorming-speeches-rambling-confusion-4303463?ico=in-line_link) during his first term in the White House, these have become more florid and consequential since he was re-elected in 2024, and especially since the launch of a surprise attack on Iran in association with Israel in the midst of diplomatic negotiations that were making progress.

Three weeks into the war, he still cannot give a coherent explanation as to why he started it and why it is in America’s best interest. As for its devastating impact on the world economy, his response has been to deny that his “short-term excursion” is having such a calamitous effect, though every screen in the world is showing towering flames and black smoke shooting up from the oil and gas fields of the Gulf.

I used to quote a former aide of Trump who described the President as “a cunning nutter” because the phrase succinctly summed up his bizarre mix of shrewd political operator and all-too-real nuttiness. Neither were to be underestimated, but it is in his second term – and above all in the last few weeks – that the shrewdness has diminished and the nuttiness deepened.

Deterioration in Trump’s judgement is often compared to the [megalomania shown by several world leaders who came to believe that they possessed semi-divine powers](https://inews.co.uk/opinion/trumps-administration-gone-full-fascist-4275449?srsltid=AfmBOooi7hYIDgAEvKEkZRx-MHANrVqEjjnhb3n4CA3T51Q-o8bvDeYE&ico=in-line_link). This led Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990 and Vladimir Putin Ukraine in 2022 – and Trump to attack Iran on 28 February, 2026, in apparent expectation of a quick victory.

As with the disastrous Iraqi and Russian invasions, his decision was encouraged by his tight circle of courtiers, while sceptics were ignored or demonised as disloyal. Megalomania is common among the powerful, but in Trump’s case it combines with pre-existing traits, such as a lack of conscience, remorse, truthfulness or empathy which may go along with impulsiveness and over-confidence.

Yet, deeper questions must be asked about why a person with such a personality should have become US President? In many societies, his glaring faults would disbar him from holding any post of authority, but Americans have twice voted to send him to the White House. Why do his failings make such an exact – and for him productive – fit as an antidote or disguise for the failings of America? American and European commentators may be too invested in a benign vision of America – even when they detest Trump – to take an unsparingly objective view of what his imperial dominance tells us about the United States.

Profound, if unsettling, explanations for America’s embrace of Trump come from the Vietnamese political commentator, Sony Thang, who shows no such pro-American inhibitions. Writing on X, he says: “There is a stage of decline where empire no longer seeks competent managers. It seeks performers… That is Trump’s function. America has lost wars, lost trust, lost legitimacy, lost the future. Trump converts decay into theater. He takes civilizational shame and recycles it as swagger… Takes moral collapse and sells it as strength. He is not solving the contradiction [between the two]. He is making it dance. That is why he fascinates even those who fear him. He turns decomposition into content.”

All too true, a skilled and experienced performer like Trump is able to get away with incompetence, theatrics, swagger, moral collapse and national decline for an astonishingly long period. Failures are simply relabelled as successes. But the one door the performer must never open is the one that leads to war, [when mendacity and gross errors](https://inews.co.uk/opinion/trumps-delusions-ripped-open-new-war-zone-4290466?srsltid=AfmBOoqu-gEL9oeUGQbbPhQ10sCcHib-JIFK87BGdZJIu8g056quznOp&ico=in-line_link) are paid for in human blood.

Trump has now made this mistake and it has instantly shown up his inability to deal with a real crisis. This happened before not in war but at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 when he suggested exploring the idea that people might inject themselves with disinfectant to escape the coronavirus.

A feature of all-powerful and paranoid leaders is that they are easily manipulated by those able to exploit their fears and fantasies. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an expert at doing just that and persuaded Trump – reportedly at the end of last year – that victory against Iran would be cheap, easy and in American interests.

„a“?

Just now? Not like, most of the past decade?

Just the one?

**American voters have made a disastrous error

Gas prices won’t come down for 6 months or more!

Feel like I’ve seen this exact headlines dozens of times

The right will never know. State media never shows them what they need to see. All they hear about is hi doing a great job.

„We voted for Biff Tannin and got what we deserved.“

oh please. Whatever he’s done lately won’t phase the morons who still follow him and the rest of us have known he’s an idiot racist rapist piece of shit since before he was elected the first time. I don’t even need to open this article to know literally NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

This is a daily headline.

Thank god Trump is this stupid, imagine MAGA would have had a competent leader.

I am so tired of Trump doing this, doing that and so many other things that would have gotten him impeached if not thrown into jail decades ago. (Nixon was a Republican).

He is just the visible rot of a decayed, poisoned system. From House members who are outright alt-right fascists, Senators who bend the knee to big money, and Justices who want to turn the country back to the antebellum for everyone but themselves and their billionaire patrons are all to blame.

And let’s not forget the power of the Internet to create Plato’s Cave(s) echo chambers that basically rot the person into believing whatever they are told to believe. And this goes for any side because this incessant manipulation works on everyone

I mean, he already showed that he was incapable of managing any kind of serious situation multiple times in his first term, most notably with Puerto Rico and COVID and there was terrible human suffering as a result of his inadequacy.

I honestly don’t know if there’s another person in modern history who has killed more people out of sheer *incompetence.*

Trump is an evil child rapist but even if he was a nice guy, he would still be a shit president because he is simply unqualified to do the job. He doesn’t even know what his job is and he doesn’t care. He just wants to sit in the chair and push the buttons.

What’s worse this time around is that he didn’t send hurricanes or viruses out into the world in his first term, those were just bad things which happened and his reaction to them was poorly plotted, self-serving and full of hubris.

This time around it’s the same except he is creating his own chaos, he is the originating event behind many of the world’s current disasters, and in the process he is brazenly showing off the animalistic brutality festering in his mind behind his pedantic childlike stupidity.

What’s happening now is what a lot of people spent four years trying to prevent in his first term. He is a belligerent drunk trying to land an airplane in a blizzard and refusing help from anyone telling him he’s doing it wrong, and we are all his unwilling passengers.