There is an old rule in courtrooms: when a witness repeatedly changes his story, judges and juries are entitled to question not merely the details but the credibility of the witness himself. If the account changes from “war” to “ceasefire,” from “ceasefire” to “war again,” and from “the strait is open and toll-free” to “the strait is open, provided everyone pays us 20 per cent,” one would normally expect cross-examination, not a military salute.
Yet Donald Trump is not an unreliable witness in an obscure civil dispute. He is President of the United States, commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful armed forces, and the political leader of the country that remains central to NATO’s military structure. His improvisations therefore do not merely confuse a courtroom. They move aircraft carriers, alter oil prices, frighten allies and create the possibility that a sentence composed during a television interview may become tomorrow’s rules of naval engagement.
The latest performance concerns the Strait of Hormuz. Only weeks after declaring that there would be no further American naval blockade and presenting the reopening of the strait as part of a diplomatic achievement, Trump announced that the blockade was back. He then proclaimed the United States the strait’s “guardian angel” and proposed collecting a 20 per cent reimbursement fee on cargo passing through it. The fee, he explained, would compensate the United States for providing security.
Twenty per cent of what, precisely?
Twenty per cent of the cargo’s market value? Twenty per cent of the freight charge? Twenty per cent of the oil, with one barrel in five politely siphoned into an American tanker? Is there to be a cashier’s booth in the middle of the Gulf? Will vessels be asked whether they would like a receipt? Might there be a reduced rate for NATO members, a family discount for container ships, or a loyalty card offering every tenth passage free?
International navigation has apparently entered the age of surge pricing.
The absurdity is not merely that a president has described a strategic waterway as though it were a privately operated toll bridge. It is that the proposal followed a sequence of reversals concerning war, truce and renewed military action. A ceasefire reached in the spring was repeatedly violated; in July, the United States and Iran again exchanged major strikes, while commercial vessels were attacked and maritime traffic slowed. Trump then declared the truce effectively over before simultaneously suggesting that negotiations might continue.
Perhaps this is meant to be the famous “madman theory” of foreign policy. The theory, however, assumes that the leader only pretends to be unpredictable so that opponents fear what he might do. It becomes less impressive when allies, markets, military commanders and the president himself appear equally uncertain about what he will do next.
No responsible observer can diagnose a person’s neurological or psychiatric condition from political speeches alone. But neither should concerns about presidential capacity be dismissed merely because clinical terminology is inappropriate. The relevant public question is not whether Trump satisfies some remote diagnostic criterion. It is whether his observable conduct demonstrates the consistency, comprehension and judgment required of a person capable of ordering military operations.
On that question, “he has always talked like this” is not a reassuring defence. A man shouting contradictory instructions in the cockpit does not become safe merely because passengers have heard him shouting for years.
The more serious failure belongs to the American political system surrounding him. The White House and the president’s allies routinely treat contradiction as strategy, confusion as flexibility and impulsiveness as strength. Every reversal is retroactively declared part of a master plan. War becomes peace through strength; peace becomes renewed war through even more strength; free passage becomes a 20 per cent fee; and a naval blockade becomes an international public service for which the public will apparently receive an invoice.
The effect is to abolish the possibility of presidential error. When every statement is genius by definition, incoherence ceases to be recognised as incoherence. It becomes merely another unexplained dimension of the leader’s brilliance.
Meanwhile, the domestic exercise of federal power has become increasingly violent. Immigration officers have fatally shot people during enforcement operations, including men who were not the intended targets of the operations in question. In recent cases, the Department of Homeland Security has said that officers fired because vehicles were being used or appeared likely to be used as weapons; witnesses and relatives have disputed elements of those accounts, and the absence of body-camera footage has intensified demands for independent investigation.
It would therefore be inaccurate to declare, without qualification, that ICE agents are simply roaming the country deliberately murdering American citizens. The documented reality is already grave enough: lethal force is being used in disputed circumstances, some victims were not the people agents originally sought, official narratives are contested, and meaningful accountability remains uncertain. Reports have identified a growing number of fatal shootings associated with federal immigration enforcement during Trump’s second term.
A functioning republic would respond to such incidents with transparent investigations, enforceable limits, body cameras and congressional scrutiny. It would not require citizens to accept the government’s account merely because the government has supplied one. Nor would it treat the president’s verbal instability as harmless entertainment when the agencies under him possess weapons, detention powers and broad executive authority.
Renee Nicole Good, She was an innocent civilian and the mother of a toddler. ICE agents shot and killed her without lawful justification, yet they face no punishment. What a strange country America has become.
Impeachment, of course, is a constitutional remedy for serious abuses of office, not a medical procedure for removing a president whom commentators consider irrational. But the near impossibility of meaningful congressional restraint reveals a deeper constitutional illness. Partisan loyalty has become so complete that legislators who would regard identical conduct by an opposing president as evidence of tyranny now describe it as leadership. The constitutional machinery remains in the building, polished and displayed behind glass, but few appear willing to switch it on.
Trump’s influence also extends beyond America’s borders. His administration has pressed NATO allies to raise defence spending dramatically, and the United States continues to occupy a central position in the alliance’s military capacity and strategic planning. Decisions made in Washington therefore impose risks not only on American voters but also on allies whose security policies, economies and military commitments may be transformed by presidential improvisation.
That is why the usual indulgence—“Trump says many things; do not take every word literally”—is no longer adequate. When a private citizen says the Strait of Hormuz should charge 20 per cent admission, he has produced an eccentric social-media post. When the President of the United States says it, admirals, diplomats, insurers, shipping companies and foreign governments must determine whether it is a joke, an order, a negotiating tactic or the first announcement of a policy whose legal basis nobody has yet invented.
The danger is not simply that Trump may be confused. It is that the American state has trained itself to convert his confusion into policy.
A president announces war, then peace, then war again. He announces free passage, then a 20 per cent toll. His officials explain that every contradiction demonstrates strength. His party prevents effective scrutiny. His armed agencies act with lethal authority while accountability struggles to keep pace.
And the world is expected to call this stability.
Perhaps the United States truly has become the guardian angel of the Strait of Hormuz. But this particular angel appears to be carrying a credit-card terminal in one hand, a missile-launch code in the other, and no clear memory of what he announced last week.
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