By Mark Kenny

A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.

Suspend reality for a moment for this surprisingly instructive "thought" experiment.

Imagine that US President Donald J. Trump has called an Oval Office press conference, which began with a bombshell something like this.

"My fellow Americans, democratic friends and allies around the world, what I have to say now is grave and will shock you like nothing has ever shocked you before.

"It's all been a tremendous ruse. Unknowingly, you all have been part of a meticulously executed experiment, a test if you will, which Melania and I devised and had privately code-named "Operation Orange Oligarchy".

"And, frankly, you all failed."

As if to visually emphasise this unfathomable "reveal", Trump then commences to wipe the Mikado-thick foundation from his pseudo-tanned face as he elaborates. It is a telling gesture.

He explains that the experiment was designed to strip the veneer from America's smug boast as a rule-of-law society when its people plainly prefer more "entertaining" alternatives, vengeful populism and narcissistic demagoguery.

Focusing first on the domestic, he expresses sadness at the ease with which venerable American public agencies charged with vouchsafing, health, probity and accountability were handed to a shameless grifter class, especially once the fourth estate was discredited - either tamed or tainted, crooked or craven. And, once the republic's courts had ceased protecting the people and had become an extension of executive power.

"I set out to show that with enough bombast and 'showbiz', Congress, courts, even policing, could become plotlines in a reality TV show," our hypothetical Trump explains.

"The people would be conscripted to surrender their own rights - the turkeys really would vote for Christmas if it came wrapped in enough flags or plain old schadenfreude.

"I aimed to prove how quickly America's norms could be discredited - ridiculed as elitist, dismissed as 'woke' and Democrat-aligned. I wanted to see if the Constitutional protections we've talked about endlessly could be either turned to a president's uses or simply neutered by a Supreme Court handpicked for that task.

"We wondered, too, if the world's greatest military could be deployed domestically against American discontents without a murmur from most citizens, and if that same military would breezily ignore international law by bombing a sovereign country on incomplete, strongly contested, and ultimately unverified intel.

"And I've got to tell you, the experiment has yielded deeply worrying results, both within America, but also throughout the international community. Once-proud nations have prostrated themselves to catch any crumbs from the American table. For this favour, they have readily ceded control of their spending priorities, weakening the universalist principles on which their own welfare states and the United Nations system were built."

Trump cites the Volodymyr Zelenskyy Oval Office incident as an example, admitting that JD Vance and he had provocatively humiliated the Ukrainian before the world's press.

He depicts the Ukrainian president as "undoubtedly one of the great heroes of our era, perhaps the 21st century's closest equivalent to Winston Churchill", while lamenting that within days of that Oval Office ambush, nary a critical word was being said by America's allies.

In fact, Trump notes, the egregiousness of the Zelenskyy "lesson" had only increased the tendency in succeeding months for other world leaders to pre-emptively kowtow to America lest they too get "mugged" on live TV.

"Basically, it paid forward. Bigtime".

Exhibit One is the recent surrender of NATO countries to allow the US to set their defence allocations. NATO boss Mark Rutte heaped praise on the American for that outcome, even calling him "Daddy".

Of course, this is all a total fantasy, yet it is a measure of the world's democratic backsliding and its tendency to normalise Trump's outrageous behaviour that the fictional criticisms above still hold.

Remember when the newly inaugurated 47th president renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America? America's "brave" media did little substantive when the White House ostracised Associated Press for continuing to use the Gulf's established name.

Our hypothetical version of Trump would have been rightly amazed at how unreservedly a vainglorious President could behave. Astounded even that there seemed no theatrical limit or petty animosity to which he could go that would burst the bubble.

Hence, proposing to invade Greenland, annex Canada as the 51st state, seize the Panama Canal, or to "clear out" Gaza and develop it as a resort strip, led neither to a Republican revolt, nor any serious blowback.

Trump-friendly media forthrightly defended these crazy, illegal plans, and even good journalists quickly moved on.

Outrages have a short life because there is always something else - acceptance of a half-billion-dollar aeroplane from a foreign government, for example. Old news.

Likewise, the open monetisation of the presidency via Trump cryptocurrency coins, a Trump watch and even a Trump Bible!

What about the new "fragrance of a winner" 45-47 Trump cologne?

"Trump Was Right About Everything", beamed Benjamin Netanyahu just days ago, brandishing a signed hat featuring the words.

OK, so there is no experiment. But where, in any of this, was there ever any evidence of a serious attempt at national and global leadership?

The tragedy is that this presidency has always been a shakedown, and it has occurred right out in the open.

Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.