Once again, the global glitterati have ascended the Swiss Alps to Davos, a place where the air is thin, the egos are bloated, and the carbon footprint of 'saving the planet' is roughly equivalent to a small volcanic eruption. It is the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum, an event where billionaire philanthropists and career bureaucrats meet to congratulate themselves on surviving another year of wealth accumulation while the rest of humanity struggles to afford a dozen eggs. This year, the specter of Donald Trump looms over the proceedings like a vengeful orange fog, and the 'experts' are finally catching up to a reality that anyone with a functioning frontal lobe recognized years ago. Larry Sabato, the Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, has stepped forward to offer the world a revelation so obvious it borders on the insultingly redundant: Trump is essentially a domestic version of Vladimir Putin, and European leaders—bless their naive, bureaucratic hearts—never quite understood the game until the board was flipped over and the pieces were being thrown at their heads.

Sabato’s dissection of the Trumpian foreign policy is less of a surgical operation and more of an autopsy performed on a patient who is still screaming. He points to a presidency defined by chaos, retribution, and a pathological need for revenge. This is news to precisely no one who has lived through the last decade, yet for the denizens of Davos, this remains a profound geopolitical mystery. The European elite, who pride themselves on 'norms,' 'diplomacy,' and 'multilateralism'—words that Trump likely views as various brands of premium bottled water—have spent years trying to apply a 19th-century diplomatic handbook to a man who treats international treaties with the same reverence he gives a fast-food wrapper. The 'miscalculations' Sabato mentions are not just tactical errors; they are the fundamental failures of a European leadership class that is too performative to handle a leader who doesn't care about their performative disapproval.

The comparison to Putin is the centerpiece of this academic hand-wringing. Sabato notes that Trump, much like the czar of the Kremlin, views the world through a purely transactional lens. There is no 'liberal world order,' there is only 'what have you done for me lately?' To Trump, a NATO alliance isn't a sacred shield of democracy; it’s a protection racket where the clients are behind on their payments. To the Europeans, this is horrifying. To the cynical observer, it is simply the mask falling off the American Empire. The difference between the 'civilized' politicians and the 'unpredictable' Trump is largely a matter of aesthetics. The former will drone-strike you while reciting a poem about human rights; the latter will do it because you didn't offer him a favorable trade deal on steel. Both paths lead to the same graveyard, but the Europeans are upset because the second path lacks a certain decorum.

Sabato paints a portrait of a world struggling to work with a leader who ignores norms. But let’s be honest: what are these 'norms' other than a polite agreement between elites to maintain a status quo that benefits them? Trump’s chaotic approach isn't a rebellion against injustice; it's the id of American capitalism finally gaining a Twitter account and a nuclear football. He is the mirror held up to a decaying system, and the Europeans hate what they see because they see their own irrelevance reflected in his total disregard for their 'values.' They spent decades basking in the security provided by the American military-industrial complex while sneering at the culture that produced it. Now that the monster has turned on its masters, they find themselves clutching their pearls in the high-altitude luxury of Davos, wondering why the rules don't work on a man who doesn't believe in them.

Domestic disillusionment in the United States only adds flavor to this bitter stew. While the Left engages in a never-ending cycle of performative outrage and the Right descends further into a cult of personality centered around a man who would sell his own supporters for a slightly higher Nielsen rating, the actual governance of the country remains a secondary concern. Retribution and revenge are the only currencies left in Washington. It is a spectacle of total societal failure, where the only thing more pathetic than the leaders are the people who still believe that any of this matters. The world is 'struggling to work' with this leader, but the struggle is largely because the world’s leaders are terrified that the transactional, chaotic, and norm-shattering nature of the Trump era is not an aberration, but the new global standard. Davos is no longer a forum for the future; it is a hospice for an old world order that is too vain to realize it’s already dead. And as Sabato correctly identifies, no amount of academic insight or European 'understanding' will change the fact that when the person at the top doesn't play by the rules, the rules cease to exist for everyone else.