This weekend, I was surprised to learn that Donald Trump seems to see himself in the same way I do: as a would-be monarch spraying the citizenry with excrement.

On Saturday, perhaps stung by the enormous nationwide “No Kings” protests, Trump posted an artificial intelligence-generated video on Truth Social that inadvertently captured his approach to governing. In it the president, wearing a crown, flies a Top Gun-style fighter plane labelled “King Trump” above American cities crowded with demonstrators, dumping gargantuan loads of faeces on them. Amplifying it on social media, White House communications director Steven Cheung gleefully wrote that the president was defecating “all over these No Kings losers!”

A screenshot of Donald Trump’s AI-generated video, in which he dumped excrement on ‘No Kings’ protesters. Credit: Truth Social/@realDonaldTrump

It is not at this point surprising that Trump holds half the country in contempt, or that he treats urban America as a group of restive colonies to be brutally subdued. This is a man who told the military it should use our cities as “training grounds” for foreign operations, and who has sent both troops and federal agents to terrorise Los Angeles and other cities. The president’s attempts to demote the residents of blue America from citizens to subjects have become so routine they barely make headlines anymore.

What’s curious, then, is not Trump’s eagerness to degrade us, but his uncontrollable urge........

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