Is this the week Trump went too far? – The Latest

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:11He certainly wants to terrify the international community and make them bend the knee. We've seen the old world dying this week, but we have also seen the beginnings, a glimpse of the new one that is waiting to be born. In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice. the middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu. He is the dominant figure of our time. But I think what you're now seeing is everyone else saying, how can we escape from this domination and being domineered? And the answer is for people to come together. And I think there's some hope to be taken from that.

0:46It's been a bumper week in the Trump circus. And if you're feeling a bit bamboozled by all of the chaotic geopolitics, you're not alone. From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoff.

1:02I'm joined by Jonathan Friedland, Guardian columnist. So, I mean, it has been a pretty staggering week, hasn't it? We've had Davos, the World Economic Forum at Davos, totally dominated by the Trump circus. We've had Greenland, the threat of Greenland, which then receded. We've had the Board of Peace in Gaza. We've had new threats to NATO. He's now turning his attention back to Ukraine. What a week. It's what Donald Trump loves, the attention economy in which he is the global dominant player. He just loves it, being the centre of attention. Davos was ideal for him. And indeed, actually, the Board of Peace venture is about, again, putting him at the dead centre of world affairs with him playing the role of a kind of global emperor, sitting on his throne, putting the thumbs up or the thumbs down, freeing peoples, conquering peoples, inviting them to sit at the top table, making global peace.

2:02It's great power politics, but really great ego politics with him as the number one in all respects. Yeah, and boasting at the signing of the Board of peace in Davos, of a richer, safer world. When he makes that boast, who is the audience there? Who is that for? His domestic base or the international community? He certainly wants to terrify the international community and make them bend the knee. He believes that all his predecessors have been stupid because they have wielded this huge power, the power of the American economy and the American military, and yet they've not used it. They've had it, but they've not used it.

2:41And he can't understand that. He just thinks, like you would in New York real estate, if you've got more money and more land, why on earth wouldn't you use it to dominate and crush your opponents and rivals? The idea of rules and systems and multilateralism is a nonsense to him. The only people who would ever want to do that are the weak, are those who didn't have power. But America does have power. So he thinks it's there to be used. It's not an audience domestically in terms of politics. The MAGA base don't like this stuff. They wanted him to be a non-interventionist, an isolationist, America first president.

3:22So the MAGA base do not like this foreign policy adventurism, nor does the American public, a staggering 86%, according to one poll, of Americans were against a proposed military conquest of Greenland and a big majority against buying it even. So they don't like it. I think Donald Trump is looking at the history books, he's looking at his legacy. And he loves the idea that he might have been the man to make the map covered in, you know, the stars and stripes. I think he's thinking about McKinley and Monroe, and he's thinking of big American presidents and wants his place alongside them. Yeah. So, I mean, again, we've moved from Greenland to talks going on in the United Arab Emirates today on Ukraine.

4:10But there's also been this fresh kind of insult to NATO saying that NATO troops were nowhere near the front line in Afghanistan, which has gone down really badly with European leaders. Certainly it's gone down badly here amongst UK politicians. And people have been quite unusually robust in saying that this is really offensive. Yes. I mean, here in Britain, it's a good indicator of it, but it is across the NATO allies. There was a coalition of close to 50 countries who fought alongside the US in Afghanistan, and many of them shed blood. And it's an absolute taboo, a red line to insult the war dead.

4:49He's done it actually in the United States. You know, he was known to have said that they were suckers and losers, people in filling America's military cemeteries. So he's got form on this. He himself, of course, dodged military service, dodged the draft in Vietnam with a supposed medical complaint of bone spurs in his feet. But it hasn't held him back insulting those others. And I think he's hit a real nerve here because even people on the right of politics who might otherwise be quite well disposed to Donald Trump. This is a taboo too far. You know, you just have to listen to phone-in shows and the like here in Britain to know that this is a deep insult.

5:29It's seen as a kind of affront to people who otherwise might have been well disposed to him. So, but whether he'll care or not, different story. But he's really left a deep wound, I think. Yeah, we were talking to John Henley, our Europe correspondent on the show yesterday, about a week where it feels like European leaders have really found their mettle in seeing off a threat by Donald Trump to Greenland, whether in tariff terms or through the use of military force and using language that we haven't seen from Europe before towards the White House. that was then matched or perhaps even superseded by Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, who gave a barnstormer of a speech in Davos talking about this not being a moment of transition in the world order, but rather a rupture.

6:18It was a really big speech, wasn't it? Yeah, I thought it was a hugely significant speech and may come to be seen as the defining text of this period. I mean, I've just written a column that argues that we've seen the old world dying this week, but we have also seen the beginnings, a glimpse of the new one that is waiting to be born. So far, Mark Carney has advocated or sketched that out more clearly than anyone. It's the notion of saying in a world where previously many nations, the middle powers relied on the US, its economic heft and its defence muscle. those middle powers are instead going to have to club together combine and defend themselves and that is a very very new vision and it will it reshapes politics actually and that's the argument i'm making is that if you think about it those countries that have enjoyed a peace dividend since the end of the cold war had more money to spend domestically will now have to spend huge sums on defense taxes will have to go up and the whole britain relationship with europe has to be rethought now because obviously, in a world where you can't rely on the US, Britain can't just be on its own.

7:32That makes no sense. It will have to club together with its nearest neighbours, plus Canada, I think, maybe others. So a new formation of the West minus the US is beginning to take shape, I think, and Donald Trump has accelerated it. So middle powers being a country like Canada or the United Kingdom compared to a great power like the United States or China or Russia. So it's squaring up directly to the strongman politics of Trump that was met with a standing ovation, very rarely in Davos, and does seem to have irked Trump, who today has withdrawn Canada's invitation to join his Gaza Board of Peace.

8:09So certainly it doesn't seem like that's gone down well with his administration. I think Carney's really got the measure of Trump. And Carney's exactly the kind of person who Trump would hate because he's very smart and he's in a way as fluent and skilled, who knew? I mean, the former governor of the Bank of England, but as skilled at capturing the moment. He absolutely caught the moment in that speech at Davos. It was a zeitgeist that was sort of taking shape and he gave it coherence. So Trump likes no rivals for global attention. Carney got a lot of global attention this week and so Trump is having his revenge.

8:46And Johnny, you had a fascinating conversation on our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America, about the phrase coined by a journalist for the Atlantic magazine, Trump exhaustion syndrome. I wonder how you yourself are coping with such a syndrome and what advice you may have. Yeah, and it's been a long decade. He is obviously the dominant figure of this era. It is exhausting. If you think about the news events of this year, so far, it's just been a month, but they would rank alongside any 12-month period already. I mean, Venezuela, Greenland, the up here. I think one thing we shouldn't miss out from this week is this Board of Peace, originally billed as being just for Gaza.

9:29It's got way more grandiose than that. It's nothing less than an attempt by Trump to replace the United Nations. I mean, it's an attempt to supplant the entire international architecture and replace it with a kind of Mar-a-Lago style members club, where he sits permanently in the chair. It's not the president of the United States. It's specifically him threatening in a way to stay there even after he's left or his term has expired. And he can designate his successor, you know, as if it's some dynastic global empire. So that's just all part of this, too. He is the dominant figure of our time. But I think what you're now seeing is everyone else saying, how can we escape from this domination and being domineered?

10:12And the answer is for people to come together. And I think there is some hope to be taken from that. Thank you so much, Johnny. Thank you. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Jonathan Friedland. And do head over to theguardian.com where you can keep up with his columns, but also our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest, the new evening edition of Today in Focus. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoth. It was produced by Bryony Moore. The lead producer was Zoe Hitch. This is The Guardian. You