'Sociopath' Trump burns US power as world leaders 'stop paying attention'

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures after delivering remarks at Red Rock Casino Resort Spa in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., August 5, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

While President Donald Trump’s political success has largely depended on his reputation as a dealmaker, today, “that has been exposed as a fiction” as a growing number of world leaders “stop paying attention” to his “bluffs and bellicosity.” This is according to Salon political columnist Heather Digby Parton, who on Friday explained not only how the world has seen through Trump’s facade, but why his bluster will leave the United States “vulnerable for a long time to come.”

As Parton writes, the perception that Trump is a savvy dealmaker came from his book “The Art of the Deal,” the ghostwriter of which has since expressed “deep remorse for creating this erroneous image.” Had he written the book today, said ghostwriter Tony Schwartz after Trump announced his run for president in 2015, he would call it “The Sociopath,” saying at the time, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes, there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

His words revealed something that many would only come to recognize too late: that “the man who touted himself as the world’s greatest dealmaker was a pathologically dishonest hype artist with the attention span of a four-year-old, described by Schwartz as having ‘a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance’ who seemed ‘driven entirely by a need for public attention.’ His alleged negotiation prowess was actually nonexistent, as the multiple failures of his businesses should have made clear.”

Over the course of his presidency, asserts Parton, Americans have seen this play out on the global stage. As she writes, “The president has confused his ‘Art of the Deal’ with the art of diplomacy, and they are most definitely not the same thing. Even if he were actually talented at the former, which he is not, it would have no bearing on the latter, and the consequences of that are turning out to be substantial and damaging.”

Parton says that Trump fundamentally misunderstands what diplomacy is, writing, “The aim is to manage relations between countries over the long term to maintain stability and predictability; it’s not a ‘winner take all’ proposition." Credibility is everything for a country like the United States, and now, without it, the U.S. is unleashing powerful forces that will be very hard to control. "Trump is a pathological liar,” and over the past decade the world has come to recognize his “damaged personality.”

According to a recent report by the Washington Post, writes Parton, “The world is no longer taking the U.S. seriously, leaving the government with no credibility. As a result, international relations are unstable and dangerous.” World leaders now know that American policy is determined by Trump’s whims, which change from minute to minute.

“The world has decided to stop paying attention,” argues Parton. Here she cites the Washington Post report, which declared, “Most consequently, Iran refuses to bend under American bombs and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and Russian President Vladimir Putin persists in his war in Ukraine. Europe met Trump’s recently renewed demands for Greenland with a collective sigh, and trading partners have shrugged off the latest tariffs.” According to Parton, “Jeremy Shapiro, director of the U.S. program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the Post he was surprised at how long Trump’s bluffs and bellicosity had worked, crediting it to the ‘awesome power and deep, long-stored-up diplomatic capital of the United States’ that Trump has ‘finally started to blow through.’”

Because of this, writes Parton, “The president’s threats are now seen as empty, and his so-called deals aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. This was most recently on display in mid-July when he made a big, splashy announcement of a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. Within a day, Trump added a poison-pill requirement by way of a Truth Social post that left the Saudis reeling. His threats to annihilate Iran are now falling on deaf ears because he’s all over the place, usually lying about the progress of diplomatic talks, showing that he’s full of bluster and bombast but lacks a strategy to win and ideas about how to get out.”

Parton concludes on a dire note, writing, “America’s political dynamics have us all just trying to hold on until he’s out of office so we can try to rebuild from the rubble. But the loss of credibility, the exposure of the nation’s weaknesses and the people’s willingness to put such a man in charge will not be easily repaired. The long-term damage to our international reputation, coupled with the weakness we are demonstrating in any number of areas, will leave us vulnerable for a long time to come.”

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