Donald Trump wants to be king – and could usurp Prince William

All that’s missing are the crown and sceptre. In all other ways, President Donald Trump has proclaimed himself America’s King. If there were ever any doubts about his intentions, they disappeared this week when he trumpeted in a self-congratulatory post on social media: “Long live the King!”

The official White House social media account on X repeated the boast, alongside a faux magazine cover illustration depicting a smiling Trump in a golden crown.

The nation founded 249 years ago to overthrow the British monarchy now finds itself under the fat thumb of another ruler bent on wielding absolute power.

The Coronation is complete.

In just one short month since returning to the White House, Trump has hurled a royal executioner’s axe at democratic political norms, flouting the US Constitution and rule of law, bending them to his will. He has single-handedly decimated the civil service, fired government watchdogs, and run roughshod over Congress and the courts – and so far nobody has stood in his way.

Congress has obsequiously stepped aside without objection, and Trump seems unlikely to be challenged by a Republican-appointed Supreme Court supermajority heavily in his favour.

His flouting of statutes is nothing short of “programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness,” says New York University law professor Peter Shane.

Trump, aged 78, who promised to be “a dictator on day one,” has established himself as a monarch answerable to none, acting every inch the King – with the obvious exception of class, nobility or grace.

Laws evidently only apply to lesser mortals. Echoing words attributed to Napoleon, Trump said: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”

He may as well have said “L’état, c’est moi.”

Like Louis XIV, Trump has filled his court with sycophants and lapdogs: a Cabinet and administration of what Hillary Clinton might call “deplorables.”

Vice president JD Vance disturbingly declared that Trump’s agenda could not be overruled by anyone, even the Constitution, saying: “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legislative power.”

Except that’s exactly what the courts are supposed to do.

After surviving two assassination attempts, Trump is convinced he has divine backing to enforce his royal will, saying: “I’d like to think that God thinks I’m going to straighten out our country.”

He even has royal infallibility: the Supreme Court’s decision last year to grant him immunity from criminal prosecution for any action taken as president.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned recently: “Our founders were hell-bent on ensuring that we didn’t have a monarchy.” But she is in a minority on the nation’s highest court, and her admonition is likely to fall on deaf ears.

As any American schoolchild can tell you, the US government consists of three equal branches: the executive, which comprises the president and his cabinet; the legislative, which is the Senate and House of Representatives; and an independent judiciary, led by the Supreme Court. A time-honoured system of checks and balances between the three branches preserves democracy.

But Trump has trampled the legislative and judiciary underfoot, carpet bombing America with a series of Executive Orders attempting to circumvent laws without having to pass through the elected Congress.

By law, Congress holds America’s purse-strings – “an incredible power,” says Justice Sotomayor – and the president cannot arbitrarily cut any funding that its 535 elected members have approved. But that hasn’t stopped Trump.

America is suffering whiplash after King Donald unleashed a Blitzkrieg on national institutions.

Within days of taking office he withdrew from the Paris climate accord, opened the door for oil and gas exploration without environmental studies, eliminated ‘woke’ federal diversity and equity programmes, declared there are only two genders, and pardoned more than a thousand criminals convicted for their roles in the 2021 Capitol Building insurrection.

He appointed the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to indiscriminately slash government spending, despite multiple conflicts of interest and overstepping myriad laws.

Trump fired inspector generals who oversaw federal agencies and independent agency board members in defiance of statutes against arbitrary removal, ousted senior FBI agents he believes conspired to investigate him, and is holding accountable government officials who accused him of election interference.

On the international stage he demanded to buy Greenland, threatened to seize the Panama Canal, and declared that Canada should become America’s 51st state. He began carving up Ukraine with Vladimir Putin, and proposed ethnic cleansing to remove Gaza’s war-torn population to make way for a US-owned luxury resort.

He has launched international trade wars with China, Canada and Mexico, instituting punitive tariffs that leading economists warn will plunge America into economic disaster. He closed US doors to refugees, illegally slapped a 90-day hold on foreign aid, and denied citizenship to children born in the US to non-citizen immigrant parents, in contravention of the Constitution.

Despite a governmental system of checks and balances, Trump did all this solo, like a king issuing a death sentence with the sweep of a hand.

Legal challenges to many of Trump’s executive orders are beginning to make their way through the courts, but a Trump-friendly Supreme Court is likely to offer little in the way of resistance.

The president this week patted himself on the back and proclaimed: “Long Live the King!” after arbitrarily axing New York City’s congestion pricing programme, similar to London’s.

New York’s horrified Governor Kathy Hochul hit back: “New York hasn’t laboured under a king in over 250 years. We sure as hell are not going to start now.”

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker echoed: “We don’t have kings in America, and I won’t bend the knee to one.”

For more than two centuries Congress, not the president, has created and funded the executive branch’s departments and agencies. Exercising his royal prerogative Trump has grabbed control.

Congress had enacted statutes barring the arbitrary firing of independent board agencies, but Trump ousted Democratic members from three government watchdogs responsible for labour relations, equal opportunity, and civil liberties. The Republican-led Congress has so far sheepishly acquiesced, pledging fealty to its liege.

Ordering the shut-down of America’s international aid agency USAID, Trump denied that only an act of Congress could freeze its GBP 47 billion in funding..

“I don’t think so,” he said, adding without evidence: “not when it comes to fraud. These people are lunatics”.

Cynics might say it takes one to know one. Just as King George III in 1776 was whispered to be mentally unsound – he was widely known as “Mad King George” – similar concerns are now being voiced about King Donald.

More than 200 mental health professionals recently signed a letter warning that Trump showed signs of cognitive decline, and is dangerous because of “his symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder – malignant narcissism,” making him “grossly unfit for leadership.”

Worryingly, Trump repeatedly voices his desire to ignore the Constitution and run for a third term, remaining on his Oval Office throne until 2033 or longer.

Trump also announced plans to visit Britain “very soon,” posing a diplomatic dilemma for King Charles, who Trump would like to oust as Head of State when he takes over Canada. Trump has previously praised Charles as a strong leader and called Prince William “tall, handsome, and brilliant”, but his desire to usurp them in Canada could make for an embarrassing State Dinner.

It also leaves many unanswered questions.

Will Trump expect Charles and William to bow in his presence? Will Trump put in a bid to buy the Crown Jewels? And is there even a crown big enough to rest on Trump’s head without disturbing its fragile soufflé of backswept hair?

The last time a monarch ruled over America, it did not end well. Could King Donald’s reign provoke the same revolutionary response?