Don’t be fooled. When it comes to Donald Trump, what might look like a full retreat is almost always a mere tactical withdrawal, designed to buy time. He’ll step back when he’s forced to, under pressure, but will then revert the instant the pressure lets up. Too often, his opponents, whether at home or abroad, allow themselves to be played, confusing a mere pause for a surrender – and the risk is strong that they’re making that same mistake all over again.

This week, the US president won praise in some quarters for moving to “de-escalate” the war he has been waging on the people of Minneapolis. Following the killing of Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse who posed no threat and yet was shot at least 10 times by masked agents of Customs and Border Protection or CBP, Trump signalled that he wanted to calm things down.

He shipped out the man who had become the face of the campaign of terror conducted by both CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, Gregory Bovino, a buzzcut cliche of a villain whose chief mission appeared to be the generation of “content”, specifically images of himself strutting around Democrat-led cities like the general of an occupying army, right down to the SS-style greatcoat.

Next, Trump subjected his homeland security secretary, the puppy-killing Kristi Noem, to an emergency Oval Office meeting, from which his chief domestic policy adviser and the architect of the anti-immigrant purge, Stephen Miller, was pointedly excluded. To complete the picture, Trump spoke to Democratic leaders in Minnesota, later saying that he and they were now on “a similar wavelength”.

That he felt compelled to make these moves is testament to the depth of revulsion prompted by Pretti’s killing. Video footage, as well as the dead man’s........

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