Davies is a podcast consultant, host and solutions journalist at daviescontent.com.
I'm constantly amazed by how social and political trends skip borders, continents and oceans — especially between the U.K. and the USA.
I've lived and worked in both countries and saw the similarities first hand.
Britain and America of the 1980s turned sharply right with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Their styles were very different, but both were enormously popular for much of their time in office, and ushered in a period of firm leadership after the drift and malaise of the ‘70s.
Then came the “third way” politics of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair for much of the 1990s. Both men were center-left, easily won reelection, and benefited from pragmatic policies and successful economies, while standing up to the hardline progressives and socialists in their parties.
From 2000 to 2015 the U.K.-U.S. political parallels faded, but then came the Brexit shock, and the election of two charismatic, yet deeply flawed populists — Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.
During their time in office both of these unserious men gleefully broke the rules of normal political behavior. More than almost any other American or British leader, Boris and Donald simply don't think the rules apply to them.
"Like America’s former president, Donald Trump, the more he hung on the more he disqualified himself from office," The Economist wrote last wee k. "In his departure, as in government, Mr Johnson demonstrated a wanton disregard for the interests of his party and the nation."
The tawdry events of recent weeks in London have echoes in Washington with the highly disturbing findings of the House of Representatives' Jan. 6 committee.
"Boris Johnson was a very very silly person to make Prime Minister," wrote the contrarian conservative columnist Chris Stirewalt. "How he ended up in 10 Downing Street and persisted there for so long despite massive ineptitude and scandal is very much like how America ended up with a similarly silly president who nearly ended up winning re-election despite his chaotic, corrupt tenure."
Now we are prompted to ask two questions: How the heck did this happen and will both the Yanks and Brits make the same awful mistakes again?
The answer has much to do with whether politics on both sides of the Atlantic is seen as mere entertainment or the serious stuff of governance.
At their rallies and public events, Trump and Johnson often appeared to be having the time of their lives. Both were adored by their supporters, who laughed at their jokes and roared with approval as they lit into the establishment.
As time went by the exhausted majority became sick of them. Perhaps ... hopefully ... an era has passed.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.