Trump’s court: The folly and fear of a wannabe king – Max Hastings

Key topics:.Trump rules like a monarch, demanding loyalty and unchecked power.His court thrives on fear, falsehoods, and attacks on perceived enemies.America risks trading its republic for a leader driven by impulse, not reason..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Max Hastings___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Donald Trump never wanted to be president in the traditional sense, subject to the tiresome constraints imposed by the US Constitution. Indeed, he tried that and didn't like it. Today, instead, he plays at being king. .He displays the vanity, mood swings, pettiness, rancor against perceived enemies and — above all — determination to showcase his mastery that for millennia characterized absolute monarchs. America's king and Prince JD Vance, his mouthpiece in Munich last week, have put US allies on notice that henceforward they must approach his throne as vassals and suppliants — or not at all. .Anybody who has seen the BBC drama series Wolf Hall, set in the 16th century reign of Henry VIII, can catch the flavor of courts with their mingling of glitz, intrigue, whimsy and, above all, fear. Every man and woman who sought to traffic with kings and queens knew that they were taking their lives in their hands. When the will of the ruler was the only arbiter, their destinies hinged upon his goodwill. If this became forfeit, they were ruined or executed. "Off with their heads!", cries the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. Henry VIII and his regal kin said the same, for real. Meanwhile, corruption was institutionalized — power, or at least influence at court, was the only path to riches..In the palaces of monarchs, falsehood was a way of life. Most of those condemned for alleged treason were innocent of any properly indictable offense. Instead, they merely committed the capital crime of being deemed disloyal to the monarch. .The nursery song about the emperor's new clothes has resonated for centuries because it is founded in a reality. Absolute rulers permit no one to say that they have lost a vote, an argument, a war — or that they are parading naked through the streets rather than wearing the new suit they boast of — because such an admission of fallibility would threaten their entire self-image. .Read more: Gayton McKenzie: The GNU & VAT; AfriForum & America – and the Zuma threat in 2029.In the great 1660s diary of Samuel Pepys, an official of the British navy under King Charles II, there are many moments of private joy, but its running theme is apprehension, indeed fear..The diarist wrote despairingly in 1663 about the dissolute conduct of the court: "No care is observed to be taken…either for maintaining trade or opposing of factions which, God knows, are ready to break out, the King and every man about him minding so much their pleasures or profits." .Uncertainty is scary, and when a nation is at the mercy of a king, uncertainty is its default condition. This is bad enough when a ruler appears sane. It grows worse, however, when, like King Ludwig of Bavaria in the 19th century, many czars of Russia and King George III, who occupied the British throne from 1760 to 1820, they drift in and out of madness. .At the lower end of the scale of folly, young Emperor Franz-Josef of Austro-Hungary ordered cavalry to exercise before his palace when the parade ground was sheet ice. Horsemen died. . Wars represent the most serious of regal self-indulgences. Shakespeare made Henry V a heroic figure for his 1415 battlefield triumph over the French at Agincourt. In truth, Henry, like many mediaeval rulers, was the brutish begetter of misery and death through his lust for achieving greatness through conquest, as is today Russia's Vladimir Putin, the object of Trump's admiration. .The moral is, of course, that it is fatal to liberty to allow any leader to exercise unchecked authority. Even if they don't claim a divine right of kings, such as was asserted by Britain's King Charles I, such people often display the petulance and immaturity of spoiled children. Germany's last royal fool, Kaiser Wilhelm II, called for champagne to be served to his suite in July 1914, to celebrate the outbreak of World War I, which he had done so much to precipitate. .By contrast, as a historian of World War II, I never cease to marvel at the fashion in which the two great democracies, Britain and the US, retained the checks and balances of peace, even while they waged total war. Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of America's greatest presidents, but he remained constantly mindful of Congress, and of his Republican isolationist foes there. .Winston Churchill understood America better than did most of his compatriots, but even he never quite grasped how much Roosevelt was constrained by the US legislature, especially about anything to do with money and aid for allies. .In wartime London, though Churchill exercised greater personal authority than has any other elected British leader, he never lost the rightful humility of a prime minister in a democracy. President Trump is said to have restored Churchill's bust to the Oval Office, but I doubt that he is familiar with the following story of the greatest Englishman:.Read more: SA's Budget crisis proves the ANC needs its coalition partners.One day in 1942, the prime minister was in a fractious mood as he prepared to address the House of Commons, knowing that after he had unfolded a tale of battlefield defeats and indeed disasters, critics would heap coals of fire on his head. His personal chief of staff, Hastings "Pug" Ismay, said emolliently: "Why don't you just tell them all to go to hell?" Churchill turned on him furiously and said: "You should not say such things. I am the servant of the House." .It was a sort of miracle that Churchill directed his nation through the greatest crisis of its existence at least half-believing what he said to Ismay. Parliament sometimes drove him to fury and exasperation, but he never questioned its constitutional supremacy..The fear — and it is indeed fear — that suffuses much of the world after these first weeks of the Trump presidency derives from a belief that the great engines of American democracy are being shut down. A supine Congressional majority and a partisan Supreme Court decline to check Trump's absolutism, and he marches roughshod over the law. He aspires to be a Sun King — contemporaries' name for France's Louis XIV (1638-1715) — making all those around him captives of his rays, and doomed if his warmth is withheld..Vance's abusive speech in Munich was directed much less toward the audience of Europeans whom he faced, than to his master's subjects back home, to show them how foreigners are being humbled. Here is a significant difference between the conduct of America's new monarch and his royal forebears: Kings observed elaborate courtesies, even when they were committing appalling acts. The House of Trump doesn't do politesse..Some commentators strive to identify a grand design guiding the new reign. It seems more likely, however, that no plan exists. There is only the conceit of majesty; the substitution of impulse for reason, of vacuous verbiage for policy; the renunciation of any moral dimension in government. .Those of us who are old anticipated many possible misfortunes in our 21st century world, but never that Americans, whose leadership we have gratefully accepted since 1945, might acquiesce in the substitution of a monarchy for the republic in which, since the Founding Fathers, they have taken such just pride..Read also:.RW Johnson: SA is sleepwalking to catastrophe – ice is thin, water below icy and deepRob Hersov: Re-think giving in SA – charity papers over fixing the root causeEU deepens relations with SA amid Trump's rising criticism.© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

Trump’s court: The folly and fear of a wannabe king – Max Hastings

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