Allegations of Donald Trump’s kompromat by Russian spies at sex parties in Moscow and St Petersburg may – or may not – be salacious apocrypha, but there is no doubt the international kidnapper and blackmailer is partial to a golden shower.

He euphemistically calls his latest one the Board of Peace (BOP) and is offering sovereign states permanent membership for a joining fee of “more than $1 billion United States dollars in cash”.

He intends stacking it with renowned peaceniks Vladimir Putin and Binyamin Netanyahu – both wanted for war crimes – and is filling the executive board with his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Washington’s nodding dogs Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, and Tony Blair, America’s co-invader of Iraq in 2003. What these likely lads all have in common is money. The editorial board of The New York Times has calculated, conservatively, that Trump, the self-appointed chairman, has made $1.408 billion (€1.2 billion) in the past year by exploiting his presidency of the US.

This is the shower he is convening to pee all over the law-bound world order. On Tuesday, he was asked if BOP would replace the UN. “It might,” he replied. What he had originally presented as an oversight body for the reconstruction of Gaza has morphed into a vanity project for Trump to exert global sway, even after his presidency expires.

As he was talking, Israel began demolishing the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) in Jerusalem while Russia attacked Ukraine with a squadron of drone........

© The Irish Times