DRUNK WITH POWER

Damning record one year into 2nd term

- CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN

DONALD Trump returned to the White House, vowing dominance, discipline and delivery.

A year later, his second term reads like a catalogue of recklessness, broken promises and self-serving ego.

The dangers are multiplying: fraying alliances, deepening domestic unrest and a looming electoral reckoning that could yet end his presidency altogether.

The President boasts of having ended wars. The claim collapses under scrutiny. He has plunged into global conflicts armed with economic threats, declaring peace where none is secure.

Trump has undermined NATO, treating collective defence as a protection racket. That sense of transactional brinkmanship was underlined by his attempt to now claim Greenland.

He authorised a direct operation that removed Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela. Sold as law enforcement and liberation, it set aside international law and treated a sovereign nation as a problem to be solved by force.

Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves, and Trump has never hidden his belief that power belongs to those who take it.

In the Middle East, he has taken credit for deescalation without delivering durable settlements.