Trump Turns Us Into Villains Who Will Ultimately Lose

Froma Harrop
Wed, 21 Jan 2026 11:41:24 -0800
Opinion

A most American of movies, "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," is a morality tale about what happens when intimidation goes unanswered. The Clanton gang marauds through Tombstone, flashing their guns and humiliating townspeople. Feeding on fear, their bullying escalates as decent people avoid confrontation and outrageous behavior becomes routine.

But the moment comes when Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and their allies finally call the Clantons' bluff. They order the gang to put their guns down. The Clantons refuse. The gunfight erupts, and it doesn't end well for the Clantons.

Set aside growing concerns, including from the right, that 79-year-old Donald Trump is slipping into dementia. He's up in the wee hours sharing crazy thoughts on his Truth Social site. (He once posted 150 times in one night.)
Updated: Thu Jan 22, 2026

A most American of movies, "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," is a morality tale about what happens when intimidation goes unanswered. The Clanton gang marauds through Tombstone, flashing their guns and humiliating townspeople. Feeding on fear, their bullying escalates as decent people avoid confrontation and outrageous behavior becomes routine.

But the moment comes when Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and their allies finally call the Clantons' bluff. They order the gang to put their guns down. The Clantons refuse. The gunfight erupts, and it doesn't end well for the Clantons.

Set aside growing concerns, including from the right, that 79-year-old Donald Trump is slipping into dementia. He's up in the wee hours sharing crazy thoughts on his Truth Social site. (He once posted 150 times in one night.)

Columnist Holman Jenkins went there in The Wall Street Journal. He wrote that Trump's obsession with owning Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark, would be better addressed in "therapy" than in an international forum. Jenkins goes on to note that a Trump-like figure depends on something else: "the willingness of weaker personalities to subordinate themselves to the neurotic needs of stronger ones."

Trump lackeys tried to downplay Trump's threat, "We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not." It is a negotiating strategy, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) declared unconvincingly. And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the offended allies to "relax" and "don't retaliate."

Put another way, this could be a TACO move. Trump Always Chickens Out is the belief that Trumpian bombast is an opening move that he later moderates. And sure enough, Trump has already done a pirouette, saying the next day that the U.S. won't use force to acquire Greenland.

Tomorrow he'll say something else. In the end, it's a sick need to always keep the spotlight on him. Naturally, he made a personal reference in Davos to himself, citing his European ancestry. Like that mattered.

But the game has changed.

In a normal negotiation, positions are taken, a middle ground is found and then life resumes. There's no "reset" after Trump-level insults, threats of violence and the torching of trust. In couples therapy, there is such a thing as irreconcilable differences — dangerous behavior that cannot be talked through.

At the meeting of economic powers in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that compromise no longer works. He said the period of uncontested U.S. power has been "ruptured" and "the rules-based order is fading." He said, "The middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu."

This wasn't a reference to the O.K. Corral, though it could have been: "There is strong tendency for countries to go along to get along," Carney said. "To accommodate. To avoid trouble."

Carney's speech drew a standing ovation from countries that were our brothers-in-arms. After the 9/11 terrorist attack on the U.S., NATO for the first and only time invoked Article 5 for collective defense. Denmark sent military forces to fight in Afghanistan, where they suffered serious losses.

Between now and the time you read this, lots more will have happened in Davos. But there's no going back to square one. What was a secure marriage of Western interests will never be the same, and Americans will hurt as a result. The financial markets will continue to convulse. The tariffs will come right out of Americans' pockets. And American companies will have a harder time bidding on contracts in Europe.

Donald Trump has dragged America into an international gunfight, and this is the crazy part: The villains threatening our allies are not Russia or China or North Korea. They are us. We are the Clantons, and like those bullies, we will lose in the end.

Follow Froma Harrop on X @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.