With his presidency on the line as Americans weighed the consequences of the third war in the Middle East waged by the United States over the past 25 years, Trump declared victory. Iran’s nuclear programs and ambitions were “obliterated”. It was a description Trump insisted all his advisers and generals emphatically embrace.

Trump was wounded by the preliminary report of the Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency that the attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites resulted only in their setback of several months. This implied that Iran could quickly recover and resume its nuclear ambitions, and therefore the attack was a failure.

Subsequent assessments by the US, Israel and the International Atomic Energy Agency have concluded that in fact Iran’s production capacity for a weapon was effectively destroyed. Still, crucial questions remain whether Iran moved and protected its stocks of enriched uranium for future use.

Trump has not won this war with the American people. In both the run-up and aftermath of war with Iran, sentiment was very guarded, with roughly 40 per cent of voters approving of the strikes and 50 per cent disapproving. Three-quarters of Democrats disapproved and 75 per cent of Republicans supported the campaign.

But Trump has won his argument with NATO. As Trump travelled to The Hague, he laid down his markers. With Trump, there is performative anger and truly wrenching personal anger. When in Trump’s eyes Israel was not complying with the ceasefire he crafted, he was in a palpably ropeable mood. “They don’t know what the f--- they’re doing. Do you understand that?” History will record that we all got that.

Trump is an irresistible force... (b)ut he has not yet met an immovable object.

That was the mood he carried onto Air Force One, when asked if he supported Article 5 of NATO – that an attack on one is an attack on all?

“Depends on your definition,” he said. “I’m committed to being their friends … I’m committed to saving lives. I’m committed to life and safety.”

The future of NATO was up in the air as he landed. But as the legendary Hollywood star Mae West once cooed seductively, “flattery will get you … everywhere”.

In a stunning display of political disarmament, the NATO member nations (except for Spain) capitulated to Trump’s demands for a massive increase in their defence spending as a percentage of each country’s GDP. NATO chief Mark Rutte wrote to Trump, “you will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done”. Trump got that one up immediately on Truth Social. Trump had mellowed further by the time he went home. “These people really love their countries. It’s not a rip-off, and we’re here to help them.”

If anything, Trump is an irresistible force. But he has not yet met an immovable object – not in Congress, not in the courts, not in the media, not in the bureaucracy and not in NATO or in Denmark’s Greenland, or at the Panama Canal. Trump has reopened his massive trade war with Canada. Trump has not given up on those imperial acquisitions he hungers for.

In the wake of all this, how will Trump treat Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Australia when they meet in person? Trump will be fully briefed on Albanese’s posture against NATO’s percentage-of-GDP number for defence, on Australia’s votes against Israel in the United Nations, on Australia’s support for the International Court of Justice, on the PM’s equivocation on whether the Iran strikes violated international law. Trump knows Musk, Meta, Google and Amazon are infuriated by Australia’s social media controls and local news content payment laws, and want them scrapped.

It would never occur to Trump, if he wants more success in his trade wars, to say to those countries who are not playing ball, “You want a better deal with me? Well, take a look at Australia. They have a trade deficit with us. I reward them with minimal tariffs. You want to escape the weapons I use on trade? Be more like Australia.” Trump is incapable of saying that. He will prefer instead to put tariffs on Australia’s pharmaceuticals.

At week’s end, the Supreme Court further ratified Trump’s extraordinary executive powers. The court has now barred federal judges from imposing nationwide injunctions on suspect executive orders. The court is likely to reinterpret the precise words in the constitution that bestow citizenship on anyone born in the United States. States may well be able to say whether a child born in their borders is a US citizen – or stateless.

Trump’s assaults on the media are more brutal than ever. He hated CNN’s Iran coverage. “Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should immediately be reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog’.”

Trump is demanding that Congress defund public media – PBS and NPR, “the radical left monsters that so badly hurt our country”. The Senate will vote on that in July.

Trump is injecting a sepsis-like infection of political expression. Trump shocked the world with his F-bomb. It capped a decade of his resort to obscenities, denigrations and defamatory rants. The United States now lives in a race to the bottom of an echo chamber of vulgarity. California Governor Gavin Newsom last week attacked Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” pending in Congress: “The Republican One Big Bullshit Bill proves that we’ve known all along. They don’t care about you.” So the BS word is now lingua franca with the F-bomb.

That legislation, which embodies Trump’s entire domestic policy agenda, really is too big to fail. Losing his megabill in a Congress controlled by his Republican Party would be a political catastrophe for Trump. Musk headbutted Trump: the bill is “utterly insane and destructive”. Up to a dozen Republicans in both chambers are not prepared to vote yes. If they hold out to the end, that would be Trump’s Waterloo.

This July 4 is the 249th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. One thing is clear to Americans: King George III and the British Redcoats did not know what the f--- they were doing. You understand?