What is it about the Americans who have inflicted Donald Trump on themselves and their fellow citizens as president? It can’t just be that the Democrats have consistently fielded weak and unappealing candidates for the job. Why the Democrats do that is another story altogether. But Trump – the idiot king – emerged as the candidate of the Republican Party. Why did they choose him in 2016 and again prostrate themselves before him between 2016 and 2020? Why did they forsake all of the rival contenders for the Republican nomination?

That Trump is now demonstrating what most sensible people always knew about him may well lose him popular support among American voters. But the fact remains that he has been implanted in the Oval Office by a party which used to be respectable – the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, George Bush snr and, yes, even Ronald Reagan.

How did Tea Party extremists become the reactionary tail that wagged the US legislature? How can it be that in Trump’s cabinet we have rivals who likened him to Hitler, questioned his sanity, and utterly rejected his suitability for office?

How humiliating is it for ordinary Americans to be led by a man who demanded the Nobel Peace Prize and hijacked the award from María Machado? How crass. Are decent Americans not sickened and ashamed by this........

© The Irish Times