The only thing Trump does better than looting is projecting.

Donald Trump walked Chinese President Xi Jinping down the White House colonnade, showing off what he calls his Presidential Walk of Fame, a row of portraits of every man who’s held the office. They reached Trump’s two terms. “Trump, and then Trump,” he says, gesturing proudly. Then they reach the next frame, and instead of a portrait of Joe Biden, there’s a picture of an autopen. “And this is the autopen,” Trump says. “It’s Biden.” Xi laughs. His entourage laughs along with him. And Donald Trump, beaming, has absolutely no idea what just happened. Trump, a bottomless pit of petty insecurities, thought he was humiliating his predecessor, Joe Biden. To Trump, that he was doing so to the leader of America’s chief rival was a bonus. What our president didn’t realize is that he’d just turned the presidency and the United States itself into a punchline. I saw a tweet from Sarah Matthews of The Bulwark about the moment and it got me thinking that this has been happening for Trump’s entire life. "Nothing says 'America First' like mocking a former American president in front of a communist dictator. Trump may think he's humiliating Biden, but all he's doing is humiliating the United States." This short moment is, in fact, the whole moral arc of Donald Trump. Even from the very beginning, Trump could never get the approval he so desperately craved. Trump grew up in Queens, an outer borough kid who spent his whole life desperate for the approval of the Manhattan elite across the river. The old money, the society pages, the people who decided who really mattered in New York. When he finally made his fortune, he built his answer to them in gold. Lots of gold. He splashed his name across buildings. Then across steaks, vodka, an airline, and wine. He put gold leaf on everything imaginable. Trump was so proud of himself. He thought his gilded lifestyle broadcast wealth and taste. The people he was trying to impress thought it did the opposite. To the Manhattan elite, the gaudy towers and the shameless self-branding weren’t proof he’d arrived. They were proof he never would. The very brand that made him a household name, the one that eventually carried him to the presidency, was, to the people whose approval he wanted most, an embarrassment. He never got the invitations he was chasing. Today, instead of Manhattan’s high society, Trump now craves the approval of the world’s strongmen. When Xi arrived at Joint Base Andrews, Trump rolled out the red carpet, literally, and a video went viral of American service members on their hands and knees in the final moments before Xi’s plane door opened, scrubbing and smoothing that carpet while Chinese officials looked on from the doorway. A little over a year before that, Trump gave Vladimir Putin the same treatment in Alaska, personally greeting him on the tarmac, honoring him with flyovers, rolling out a summit on American soil for a man who invaded his neighbor and has never once returned the courtesy of a real concession. Trump believes that showering of these men with the spectacle of American power is how you earn their respect. It isn’t, and the people watching from China, Russia, and other rival nations know exactly what they’re looking at. Trump is so weak and he projects his weakness across the globe.