AT BOTTOM HE'S AGRIPPINA:

The oddest moment of a surreal week even by Donald Trump's standards was when the US president extolled America's ties with ancient Rome. Mr Trump surely did not mean to spark thoughts of Caligulan dissolution. His actions this week nonetheless conjured up images of a capricious Roman emperor. The peak was the release of a letter in which Mr Trump begged Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to kill thousands of Kurds. "Let's make a deal!", Mr Trump urged his Turkish counterpart, "Don't be a tough guy!" Mr Trump proclaimed the next day a great one for civilisation after he persuaded Mr Erdogan to call a brief pause in Turkey's invasion of the Kurdish-held areas of Syria.

In reality, Mr Trump was abandoning America's hardiest regional ally, which has lost 11,000 lives fighting Isis. The Kurds "were no angels", he said. What happened on a faraway border was of no concern to America. It would be tempting to mark Mr Trump's abject manoeuvre as his nadir. As Mitt Romney, the Republican senator, said: "What we have done to the Kurds will stand as a bloodstain in the annals of American history." But there is little basis to suppose the president has hit the bottom.

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