EDITORIAL: It’s Donald Trump’s world, we’re all just living in it

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

We might be about to find out.

The unstoppable force in this version of the classic paradox is Donald Trump; the immovable object America’s hallowed Constitution, an amendment to which states “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”.

Mr Trump has made no secret of his desire for a third term.

Speaking in March, he said he was “not joking” about the possibility of becoming only the second president since Franklin Roosevelt to serve more than two.

Now he’s floated the idea again, saying: “I would love to do it: I have my best numbers ever.”

Is this just typical Trumpian hyperbole or something more serious? It’s impossible to tell with Mr Trump, who loves nothing more than riling up his opponents with apparently batshit proclamations and disregard for political norms.

But as he has proven time and time again: write him off at your peril.

That’s a lesson the rest of the world has learned. Unconstrained by convention, Mr Trump’s power continues to grow.

World leaders are at his beck and call. Even royalty receive him with fawning pageantry.

Prime ministers and presidents fall over themselves to sign trade deals which hem themselves into unfair tariffs. Better to swallow that now than risk an even greater punishment down the line.

Take our own Anthony Albanese, who not so very long ago confessed Mr Trump “scares the shit out of me”.

The pair are now firm friends, following their first White house meeting earlier this month. Mr Albanese has even invited the President on a reciprocal visit to Australia.

It’s Donald Trump’s world. We’re all just living in it.

His abrasive and unorthodox to the presidency have yielded some undeniable successes. We’ll never know if a different president could have persuaded Hamas and Israel into an agreement to end their grinding war. But it is fair to say it looked unlikely before Mr Trump strong-armed them into doing so.

Potentially even less likely was the prospect of European NATO member countries taking up more of the responsibility for their own defence. Thanks to Mr Trump’s arm twisting they’ve now agreed to invest 5 per cent of their countries’ gross domestic product by 2035.

That deadline — seven years after the scheduled conclusion of Mr Trump’s second and supposedly final term — would have helped some countries give that undertaking with fingers crossed behind backs. A problem to be sorted out another day, with a different American president.

Perhaps not.

Some of Mr Trump’s behaviour — rejecting the result of elections, siccing prosecutors onto his opponents, attacking the media as the “enemy of the people” — has already strayed into the realm of authoritarianism. He openly admires dictators — it’s not much of a leap to imagine a future in which he decides to hold onto power beyond what the Constitution allows.

Through this, there’s been the assumption that as powerful as Donald Trump has made himself, American democracy will always be stronger. That’s an assumption that may be put to the test.

Responsibility for the Editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore.