I thought at the weekend of an old 1978 Time magazine cover story, about the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles. It said, if I remember right, “If Charles Phillip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor did not exist, who could invent him? Consider:” It then listed the many qualities of the then bachelor prince, including his many royal titles, that he was the first member of the British royal family ever to earn a university degree, who anchored an 8-part television history series, is an expert horseman, a plus 7 handicap polo player, a paratrooper, a deep sea diver, an Alpine skier, a Grand Prix motor racer, a Samba dancer, an Army Colonel, a Navy Captain, a helicopter pilot, a fighter jet pilot, Honorary Colonel of 80 regiments and patron of 500 clubs and associations, among the things I remember.

Last Tuesday night and Wednesday morning when I sat up all night to watch results trickling in from the US midterm elections, one thought crossed my mind. That, “If Donald John Trump did not exist as a 21^st Century President of the United States, which newspaper editor, novelist, fiction writer or film director could invent him? Consider:” He is the first US President to use insulting words against his predecessors, notably Joseph Biden and Barack Obama. He is the first US President to turn his Cabinet meetings into televised monologues, when his predecessors held theirs’ behind closed doors to allow for robust discussion. He has surrounded himself with fawning yes-men and women; Trump has no one around him like Cyrus Vance, who in 1980 resigned as Secretary of State to protest President Jimmy Carter’s decision to order a military operation inside Iran to rescue American hostages.

Trump is the first US President to deport 2300 Mexicans to rogue prisons in Guatemala. He unleashed ICE agents across American streets to grab and deport suspected illegal migrants, shooting and killing some citizens in the process. He told an untold number of lies, including that US is in a Golden Age, that he ended seven wars around the world [nobody knows who they are], that US is now much respected in the world when the reverse is true. He has tried to stampede Norway’s fiercely independent Nobel Prize Committee to award him a Nobel Peace Prize, which would have completely discredited the prize.

Thinking back to Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, the two Bushes, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Donald Trump is the first US President to exchange hot words with the Canadian Prime Minister, British Prime Minister, French President, Spanish Prime Minister, German Chancellor, Danish Prime Minister and Italian Prime Minister. He launched a war against 600 of his country’s most renown universities, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Cornell and Chicago, accusing them of condoning anti-Semitism because their students protested against Israel’s actions in Gaza. He made the most shocking appointments, including a Fox newsroom anchor as Defence Secretary. He insulted newspaper reporters who asked him searching questions and variously described them as stupid and silly. He has described some of his country’s biggest news organisations as “fake news.” 

To the consternation of the whole world, he maltreated a visitor, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office, on live television. He tried to do the same thing to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa; he even brought a fake picture and alleged that it was genocide of Whites in South Africa, when it was a scene from Congo. He tried to add his name to Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts and when that did not succeed, he financially starved it. He converted the once famously non-partisan Department of Justice into a personal retribution machine to go after James Comey and anyone else who offended him during his years out of power.

He snatched the President of Venezuela from his bed in the dead of night and hauled him off to an American prison. He sent warships and planes to shoot boats in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, claiming they were drug boats, even though the media and the world saw no proof.

Donald Trump has waged a stiff tariff war against all of his country’s trading partners, under the mistaken notion that the whole world rips off the United States, when the truth is the other way round. He waged a bitter trade war against Canada, ending centuries of the chummiest relationship between two countries that share the world’s longest undefended border.  He alienated all his NATO allies by threatening them to pay for their own defence and to no longer rely on the American military umbrella since World War II.

He wrecked the NATO consensus over the war in Ukraine, adores Russian President Vladimir Putin, pressures Ukraine to reach a settlement by giving up parts of its territory, called on Ukrainians to shove aside their president, the comedian turned war leader Volodymyr Zelensky. He attempted to browbeat China through tariffs, but found that China is unbrow-beatable because it swiftly retaliated by withholding the export of rare earth minerals, forcing him to beat a hasty retreat. He endorsed a right-wing candidate in Brazil’s elections, who lost to the left-wing Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Donald Trump threw a monkey wrench in NATO by starting a move to snatch Greenland from Denmark, an unheard-of case of a NATO member snatching territory from another member, the first intra-NATO clash since the “cod war” between UK and Iceland in 1974. Donald Trump said Italy’s female prime minister sought a photo op with him, but she denied it.

He dismantled the internationally well-regarded aid agency USAID and sent the heartless trillionaire Elon Musk to ravage the US public service. In one fell swoop, he withdrew the US from 66 international organisations, including Paris Climate Change Treaty; World Health Organisation; UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Economic Commission for Africa; Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean; International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance; International Institute for Justice and Rule of Law;  International Union for Conservation of Nature; Pan American Institute of Geography and History; Office of the Special Adviser on Africa; Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict; Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict;  Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children; Permanent Forum on People of African Descent; UN Alliance of Civilizations; UN Democracy Fund and United Nations University.

He has used the presidency to increase his personal wealth. According to The Guardian of UK, he reaped $2.2 billion in 2025 from cryptocurrency holdings, benefitting from wealthy foreign interests and expanding his Truth Social business. He accepted the gift of a luxury plane from the Emir of Qatar, which shocked us here in Nigeria because, in 2000 AD when President Bill Clinton visited a local community in FCT and was given the gift of a white stallion, the US Embassy in Abuja returned it, saying US officials do not accept gifts worth more than $20.

He made moves to topple the Cuban government, after it has endured American hostility, pressure, isolation and sanctions under fourteen US Presidents since 1959.  He continued to supply Israel with deadly weapons while the siege on Gaza continued for a year. He pretended to be negotiating with Iran in 2025, only to launch a sudden attack on it. Donald Trump started the Iran war without justification, without consultation, without Congressional authorization and without an exit strategy, saying Iran must not have a nuke, when it signed an agreement during the Obama Administration that provided for regular inspection of its nuclear facilities.

Trump stopped FIFA-graded Somali referee Omar Artan from entering the US to officiate a World Cup football match. He muscled aside the President of Latvia during a photo op at a NATO meeting. He tried to rename Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and tried to punish National Geographic and Google for not recognizing the change. He tried to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America in order to spite Canada. He repeatedly says Iran wants to make a deal to end the war when he is the one who is desperate to make a deal. Donald Trump has toyed with the idea of running for third term in office, against the tradition set by George Washington in 1797 and against the 22nd amendment to the US Constitution, passed in 1951.

No wonder, Americans themselves are fed up and in last week’s midterm elections, they recorded a lot of anti-Trump first. They include thefirst Black female governor, in Georgia; the first Muslim senator, Abdul El-Sayed from Michigan; California’s first elected Latino governor, Xavier Becerra; Texas’s first Latina governor, Democrat Gina Hinojosa; the first female Native American governor, Deb Haaland in New Mexico; Florida’s first Black governor, Republican Byron Donalds; the first openly gay man elected to US Senate, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire;  the first Native American woman elected to Senate, Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota; the first Black governors of Wisconsin and Nevada, David Crowley and Aaron Ford, both Democrats; as well as  the first female governors of Ohio, Minnesota and Tennessee, Amy Acton, Amy Klobuchar [both Democrats] and Marsha Blackburn, a Republican, respectively; and overwhelming victory for his pet-hate, Somali-born Representative Ilhan Omar in Minnesota.

If Donald Trump did not exist, who could have invented him?