Trump and the thrill of raw power now

There is a great scene in Lawrence of Arabia when Peter O'Toole’s Lawrence comes back from battle and meets with Gen Edmund Allenby, his British superior in Cairo.

- Maureen Dowd

The bookish Lawrence tells Allenby he executed an Arab ally with his pistol and: “There was something about it I didn’t like”

Allenby reassures him that his distaste is to be expected. “No, something else,’ Lawrence explains. “I enjoyed it”

Mr Donald Trump was always an impresario of chaos. He told me that when violence broke out at his rallies, it added sizzle to the proceedings. He seemed proud of the anarchy and bloodshed in his name on Jan 6.

Yet he was not that keen on military adventurism, even though he liked military parades. He came to see W’s imperialism in Iraq as “a big, fat mistake” He thought our occupations of Muslim countries were a waste of time and money. He was more into deals than invasions, dreaming of beachfront hotels rising in North Korea and the Gaza Strip. But now, in his second term, he has morphed into Donald of Deliria. He is mad to make the military do his bidding.

At a White House ceremony on Thursday honouring the Florida Panthers, the Stanley Cup champions, Mr Trump mused about the players flanking him: “Young, beautiful people. I hate them. You hate standing here with all this power behind you. But I got power, too. It’s called the United States military. I don’t care.”