China and America’s unpoetic bilateral goal is “constructive strategic stability”. It must be getting harder by the day for the Chinese to recite it with a straight face. Confronting a midterm electoral defeat amid intractable wars, Donald Trump announced on Sunday that his planned Washington triumphal arch would also be a “top grade military complex”.
This monument to himself will stock drones, snipers and a big ammunition depot. Trump did not say against whom this firepower would be directed. Nor have we been told which win his “arc de Trump” will commemorate. We do know that he nowadays talks of little else.
To say that Trump has checked out of the business of governing is an understatement. It would also imply that he had previously checked in. Yet in his first year, Trump had a plan and executed a lot of it. This included the big beautiful bill of tax cuts, a trade war against the world, Ice (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) deportation round-ups, Elon Musk’s assault on the administrative state and a government-wide DEI purge. The phrase “Trump’s war on . . . (universities, science, law firms, fill in the blank)” became a media cliché. Whatever you thought of his choice of targets, Trump had them in his sights.
In his second year, however, the president’s mind has increasingly been colonised by monuments to himself. Aside from ego, few can credit the depth of Trump’s obsession with these kitsch monstrosities. Richard Painter, who was ethics chief in George W Bush’s White House, said that Trump’s arch should be dedicated to the US constitution’s 25th Amendment, by which a president can be removed for incapacity, including insanity. He meant it as a joke. There is less chance of the US vice-president, JD Vance, invoking the 25th against his boss than of Trump converting to Buddhism.
That said, Trump appears serenely indifferent to his party’s likely midterm defeat. In spite of promising to bring prices down, his actions have only fuelled inflation. This stems from his kaleidoscopic tariff rates, the now seven-month-old Operation Epic Fury war on Iran and the rapidly growing US budget deficit about which he has said nothing. US public debt topped $40 trillion last month, which is double what it was when Trump first took office in 2017.
On AI, Trump seems to be going out of his way to inflame voter fears. Though Republican voters are just as worried about data centres as Democrats, Trump last month said “let data reign”. He added that any parts of America that refused such investments were condemning themselves to poverty. His response to public fears about AI threatening humanity was to hold a push poll on Truth Social last weekend on people’s preferred substitute term for “artificial” intelligence, which he said was inaccurate. “Supreme” intelligence, which was Trump’s first choice, did not win the poll (“superior” did).
There are hints that Trump may be acknowledging the AI blowback — much of which has been coming from his Maga allies, including Steve Bannon. On Saturday, he announced plans to create an “AI force” and appoint a new AI tsar. In the same post, however, he dismissed AI fears as a “hoax” and vowed that he will not “in any way hinder or stifle” the sector’s breakneck expansion. With regulation such as this, who needs free-for-all? It’s little wonder that swing-state Republican candidates are not agitating for Trump to join them on the campaign trail.
The term “lame duck” would be haunting any other president’s sleep. But the concept is alien to Trump. He spends more of his time telling people about his architectural plans than he devotes to Iran, AI or the economy. Insoluble problems hold little interest. Simple projects, such as the new White House ballroom, which will also include a “massive” military complex beneath it, are his main object of fascination. To wit, Trump last week said he would halt renovation of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after courts undid his decision to rename it after himself. The centre, which was thriving 18 months ago, now faces the threat of dilapidation.
There is no foreseeable off-ramp from Trump’s war in Iran. Trump’s critics should remember that there is also no off-ramp from Trump until 2029. I can think of no example of a US president losing interest in their job with two-and-a-half years still to run. This includes Trump in his first term and Joe Biden’s progressively more lacklustre single term. This presents America and the world with an unusual spectre. At a time of careening global instability, America’s president is simultaneously stoking it and uninterested in doing anything about it.
- Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
