Beware of the wounded beast: Trump can still cause a lot of havoc

Let me tell you about the wounded beast. Not the one in the zoo with the wet nose pressed against the glass, dreaming of an antelope dinner. This is the much more dangerous political animal. The one who has just lost the House and the Senate and is now standing in the rubble of his own making, looking around for something else to break. That's Donald Trump. And now that the voters have spoken—loudly, rudely, the way voters do when they've had enough—don't expect the beast to go quietly. It never does.One hears these things. Wounded beasts don't think about tomorrow. They lash out. And when the beast has the nuclear codes, a penthouse full of grudges, and an X account that should have stayed confiscated, the lashing out gets interesting. Not the ha-ha interesting kind. But the kind of interesting you feel when you realise the plane's other engine is on fire.So the Senate is gone. The House is gone. The subpoenas are already being drafted, the committee chairs are sharpening their pencils, and somewhere in Washington a man in a grey suit is practising the phrase "will you please raise your right hand". Robert Garcia (D-CA) is the incoming Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and is set to officially take the gavel when the new Congress convenes in January 2027. He will lead the charge against what has been termed the "Trump Crime family".A normal president would lawyer up, endure it, maybe write a memoir with a tasteful cover. Trump is not a normal president. He will not go gently into the night. He will try to make his pain stop by making everyone else hurt more. For now don't expect grace. For starters he began talking about rigged elections before the last vote was even counted.The claims of non-citizen voting, the talk of federal agents at polling stations, the whole choreography of distrust—it's all been rehearsed, like a wedding where the bride's family has already decided to leave early. He doesn't need proof. He needs a narrative. And the narrative is: if I lose, it's theft. The recount demands are orchestrated to muddy the waters. It won't change the result. It will change the mood of the country, which is the point. Then comes the governing-by-arson phase. A Democratic House and Senate mean investigations. Subpoenas. People asking awkward questions about financial dealings and vanity projects and the odd phone call to a foreign leader. Like I just said, a normal president would lawyer up and endure it, but Trump is Trump. He can willfully shut down the government. Refuse to sign anything. Veto bills out of spite, then blame the other side for the mess. The machine of government becomes a hostage. He's already priced in the loss, apparently, and he's relishing the idea of two years of vetoes and fights and blaming Congress for a string of fresh shutdowns. This isn't governance. It's performance art with real consequences.But the real havoc, the kind that keeps foreign ministers awake at night, is the ripple effect abroad. Because a wounded beast doesn't care about alliances. It cares about looking strong. And what looks stronger than a war? He's already got the Iran conflict on his ledger, an unpopular little adventure that sent petrol prices up and his poll numbers down. Now imagine him with nothing left to lose at home. The logic of the wounded beast is simple: if I am going down, I will take the furniture with me. He's talked about bombing Iran. He's threatening to pull out of NATO or demand Greenland or do something else so spectacularly disruptive that the world has to pay attention to him rather than his domestic troubles. Europe is already frozen, rabbit-in-the-headlights style, trying to work out whether the man who says "I don't need international law" is bluffing or just stating a preference. The answer, of course, is that he's not bluffing. He's just waiting to see what he can get away with.And here's the bit that should make for a pause.The beast isn't stupid. The people around him are "highly capable", as one European diplomat muttered—and one does hear these mutterings, from people who were in the room, or near the room, or had a cousin who was near the room. Their mission is to advance American interests by whatever means necessary. That's the frightening part. It's not chaos for chaos's sake. It's chaos with a spreadsheet. They know exactly what they're doing. They're dismantling the machinery of the post-war order piece by piece, and they're doing it with the confidence of people who have decided that the old rules were for losers. Trump himself said it: the only thing that can stop him is his own morality. And mortality.That's not a policy. That's a warning label. The only restraint is himself.So what can he do? He can make the United States ungovernable. He can turn a clear election result into a credibility contest that the system loses. He can pick a fight with Europe, with Iran, with anyone who looks at him sideways, and he can do it because he no longer has to pretend to be a unifier. He's not running for reelection. He's not building a legacy. He's a man with a grievance and a microphone and 24 months left of relevance, and the combination is combustible.- Ends