Trump is the world’s greatest showman – and the weakest strongman it has ever seen | Jonathan Freedland

His capitulation to Putin over Ukraine reveals a pattern. He's the patsy: giving everything away, getting little in return

He parades as a strongman, but in fact he's weak, weak, weak. In the face of America's adversaries Donald Trump is, as he might put it, a patsy, a sucker, a pushover. He folds like a pack of cards. He's a human doormat. A loser.

Just consider the gifts he has handed Vladimir Putin this week. He has brought Russia in from the diplomatic cold after three years of ostracism following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, whose anniversary is nearly upon us. Sergei Lavrov, Putin's foreign minister, was meant to be persona non grata; he remains under international sanctions. Nevertheless, this week in Riyadh he met Trump's secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in so-called peace talks.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist