America's image abroad has taken a beating over the past few decades but what we're witnessing now is nothing short of self-mutilation. It is difficult to think of a time in its history when the U.S. was led by a more boorish, incompetent, self-interested president. Even the hapless young Bush who committed so many serious foreign policy blunders now looks sensible by comparison. 

However guarded their comments might be in public, there can be no doubt the other G7 and NATO leaders were appalled not only by Trump's incoherence and indifference on global affairs but by his bizarrely disrespectful behaviour.  

How could its allies in Europe - already jaded by Brexit, domestic terror, and a menacing Putin - find comfort in a White House so beset by intrigue and scandal? They might hope the other branches of government will eventually manage to rein it in but also worry no doubt that the best years of America's place in the world are now well in the past.