Trump is an elected dictator, and men like him almost always go too far. Sooner or later, their megalomania is their undoing. Hitler attacked Poland in 1939 while General Franco confined himself to Spain, ruled for 36 years and died in bed. If Adolph had stuck to Austria and the Sudetenland, he too could easily have been in power until the 1970s. Trump's attempt to annex Greenland is his watershed moment, one that will bring him down eventually. He has imposed tariffs on countries that oppose the move, his go-to solution for every problem, and hasn't ruled out using military force. It would be a surprise to me if there wasn't a group in the Pentagon right now planning how they would occupy Greenland if he gave the green light.
He is not the only nutjob at the upper end of American politics. Trump actually has some support among Republican colleagues. Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, for example, thinks Trump is on the right track. Others aren't so sure. I don't believe Trump could muster a majority in either house for occupying Greenland, and he could easily find himself being impeached.
Trump's approval ratings are tanking, and there must come a point when senators and representatives perceive Trump as more of a liability than an asset. Take a look at these numbers:
Trump underwater on issues that got him elected, polling shows https://www.axios.com/2026/01/15/trump-ice-foreign-policy-economy-immigration-polls https://www.axios.com/2026/01/15/trump-ice-foreign-policy-economy-immigration-polls— US Political Politics News 💙🌈🦋The Fighting Liberal (@us-political-news.bsky.social) 15 January 2026 at 23:06
Voters want Trump to focus on the cost of living and boosting the economy. At the same time, his priorities are immigration and foreign adventures, and there is no way that jacking up tariffs on a weekly basis or deporting cheap, skilled workers is going to grow the US economy in the way people expect. It will do the precise opposite.
He is a unique dictator, apart from his moronic ignorance (or perhaps because of it), in that other world leaders hesitate to openly criticise him or condemn what he's doing. Canadian PM Mark Carney gave a speech in Davos yesterday, which talked about the "rupture in the world order, the end of the pleasant fiction and the dawn of a brutal reality in which great-power geopolitics is unconstrained."
It was a call for "middle powers like Canada" to recognise that if they work together, they can "build a new order that integrates our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states."
Macron, too, spoke at the World Economic Forum of a "shift towards a world without rules" and talked of an era marked by international law being "trampled" and the law of the strongest taking over.
But neither leader mentioned Trump by name. Imagine Churchill in 1938 making impassioned speeches about the threat to peace in Europe without naming Hitler. You have to admit it's rather odd. Until you realise they are dealing with a 300lb unpredictable gorilla with the nuclear codes. And I'm not talking here about atomic weapons necessarily, but about how America and American businesses control the world, and they are now all under Trump's control.
US firms dominate the internet, credit cards, international payment systems, and virtually everything we depend on. And they are just as scared of Trump as Carney, Macron and Starmer. Trump could pull the plug on it all, just like that. The only people cheering him on are those like Putin and Xi Jinping, who can't wait to see the Western alliance collapse
Trump will have to be removed from office before his term is up, but his legacy will last decades. What his presidency has shown Europe is that 35-40% of the US population is completely incapable of electing rational, reasonable, sensible politicians who believe in the basics like the rule of law, the sovereignty of nations, diplomacy and using international institutions to resolve disputes. A new Trump could come along at any time.
The US has become all-powerful, not just militarily but through commerce and technology. Trump, or a future occupant of the White House, could do immense economic damage to us in Europe if he chose to. It must be obvious to European leaders that America can no longer be trusted, and reliance on US businesses, ones that are willing to do the president's bidding, however crazy or cruel, is a mistake. The EU will I am sure begin to pivot away from America and begin building its own capacity.
And this will come at a huge cost to US power and wealth in the long term.
For us pro-EU voices, Carney's speech in Davos was a clarion call to create bodies like the EU. This is part of what he said:
"This is not naive multilateralism. Nor is it relying on diminished institutions. It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations. And it is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities. Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not.
"But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.
"In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact. We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield it together."
If Starmer doesn't pivot towards EU membership now, we are truly lost.
