Trumpus Maximus   

It’s getting to the point where it’s easy to imagine Trump arriving for inauguration astride an elephant decked in MAGA red, accompanied by a retinue of tech titans and dispensing largesse to the adoring crowd.

When Donald Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, evangelicals cheered him as a modern-day Cyrus and liberals sneered at the monarchical pretensions.

They’re not laughing any more. As his second term looms, Trump has gone full-blown imperial. With the aplomb of a Habsburg negotiating the absorption of a minor principality, he spent last week floating various proposals to enlarge the United States.

First it was the turn of Canada to become a satrapy. Then Panama heard rumblings about re-Americanizing its Canal. Then came the patriotic — and unilateral — renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”