During the past two weeks US President Donald Trump exhibited everything one would expect of him. Unfortunately, expecting things to happen cannot prepare you for the feelings of utter dismay and horror so many of us experienced when the events actually took place. As every parent can attest, no amount of warning by others can prepare you for the actual feelings of love you experience when your children are born. It is one thing to know stuff, quite another to feel them.

On Friday, Israel finally escalated its conflict in the Middle East with an attack on Iran. Its stated aim is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, echoing President Trump’s explicit statement a couple of days before that Iran could not be allowed to have nuclear weapons. The development is a predictable outcome of Trump’s failed diplomatic efforts which started way back in his first term in office when he pulled the US out of the multilateral negotiated agreement Iran had agreed to. Although the idea of Iran developing nuclear weapons is an unsavoury prospect, one can hardly dismiss the logic of Iran travelling that path given the hostility that it is facing.

This is the drama the world is living in Trump’s world. All logical choices in an illogical world are bound to be bad ones.

Similarly, with the events unfolding before us in Los Angeles where protests, against the heavy-handed approach by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, have predictably ended up with national guard and marines being sent by the president onto the streets of LA. 

Protests degenerating into riots have happened before in the US. Some of them had even turned so violent that national guard troops were called in a coordinated effort by state and federal government. What makes these riots different is that they had not reached a level where they could not be handled locally, and allegedly they were being toned down until the involvement of federal troops came into play. The president ordered the troops in without consulting with the California governor who expressed his fierce disapproval and has now secured a court order to stop them.

The presence of federal troops in LA is a sign of President Trump’s playbook and an indication why he chose Pete Hegseth as his defence secretary, a man unqualified for the real job but willing to go ahead and accommodate Trump’s fight for the “enemy within”.

I have spoken before about the many similarities that exist between Germany in the 1930s and current day US. Today’s immigrants seem to be the equivalent of the German Jewish community back then. ICE actions strike me how the SS terrorised the Jewish community in Germany, slowly at first and then with increasing ferociousness.

I am not the only one to see the analogy with the 1930s. Ray Dalio the billionaire founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates wrote in his recent book “How countries Go Broke”: “When I say that the policies President Trump is using to ‘make America great again’ are remarkably like the policies that those of the hard-right countries in the 1930s used, that should not be controversial.”

To cement the similarities, on Saturday June 14, President Trump was supposed to preside over the first military parade in the US, using a tactic that was used by Hitler himself that was central to the Nazi regime’s image-making and control strategy. At the time of writing, I have no way of knowing whether the parade has gone ahead, as God himself seemed to intervene by arranging a hurricane on the day. Trump, however, may have other ideas and strike a deal with the weather.

The manufactured crisis that Trump has instigated in LA had of course another objective in mind. That was, to remove from the news the very public fight that broke between the president and Elon Musk, until then his first buddy. Again, many people had predicted the fallout. The only surprising thing was how Musk, allegedly a very clever individual, did not see it coming. Like many individuals before him, he cosied up to Trump (spending over $250 million in getting Trump elected), believing that Trump would bring about the change in an area he had close to his heart – in Musk’s case improving the efficiency of government.

Like many others who have helped Trump, such as Mitch McConnell the ex-Senate minority leader who helped Trump capture the Supreme Court, Musk has joined the litany of people believing at first that Trump was the person to deliver on their pet project only to find out that Trump simply uses people to get what he wants and does not really care about anything else, apart from promoting his power and image.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election”

I have often said that in forming an opinion about someone, one should look at his character and not simply rely on whether there is a particular topic with which one may find himself/herself in agreement at a particular point in time. Trump is evidently lacking in character. “Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” Mr Musk wrote on X. “Such ingratitude.”

Ingratitude indeed! This matters little to Trump. He has no concern for these things. The way he exercises power has no respect for public norms or the rule of law. I found this particular exchange in the public spat with Musk as quite revealing. When Musk alleged that Trump was included in the Epstein files – Jeffrey Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors and was awaiting trial until he supposedly killed himself in prison – Trump retorted that he would cancel all government contracts with Musk’s companies, a move that would cost Musk billions. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts” he said.

The revealing phrase of Trump’s state of mind came next. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” Trump added, effectively acknowledging that he looks at the government as his personal instrument for dispensing favours to friends and penalising those who cross him.

I fear that Trump will continue on this path towards autocracy and will have no hesitation to use force to crash any resistance that the people in the US may express. Sometime ago, an anonymous writer, a former US diplomat, wrote in the Guardian (“A plea to the west: help us save America’s democracy”, May 1) imploring the rest of the world not to give up on America. He asked for nations not to remain silent but express their support for the institutions and the people of the US.

I cannot really see what the rest of the world can do apart from calling things the way they are. Unfortunately, as Elon found out first hand, these words are falling on deaf ears.

Loukis Skaliotis is an economist