Rather than being a shining beacon of hope for democracy, a title which the US itself used to proudly claim for itself, the nation is increasingly becoming an embarrassment around the world.
Mr Trump and his team of toadies are drawing the curtains against the light.
His administration is intent on sowing so much chaos, it’s difficult to know where to start critiquing their efforts of the past 12 months.
It would be easy to take a laid back Kiwi view of what is going on, say that Mr Trump is the US’s problem, they voted him in after all, and let them sort it out.
Unfortunately, that would be lazy and wrong.
Many of those gathered around him in the Oval Office are intoxicated by the thought of power and of having ever more of it. Their ignorance of how the world works, combined with their out-of-control sycophancy, is a dangerous combination for all of us across the globe.
When you carry out a quick mental stocktake of what Mr Trump has done in the past year, it is hard to think of anything aimed at improving the lives of non-billionaire Americans. Nor, for that matter, anything much for the nations of the world and their people, despite what he claims.
Everything he does is carried out in the context of "what’s in it for me?".
That’s not to say that, in the eyes of reasonably minded people, he has posted a few positive achievements we haven’t heard much about. The mainstream media, especially in the US, is admittedly largely anti-Trump.
However, the media’s negative take on him is only to be expected when the subject of their derision treats facts with disdain, lies habitually and constantly bullies those unable to stand up to him.
His administration’s disregard for the world order — even the parts of it to which the US is signed up — is particularly concerning for any small sovereign nation, including New Zealand.
Few are going to cry a river over the abduction by the US military of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, and their subsequent arraignment. The former president was a brutal dictator accused of the murders of thousands of people in Venezuela.
It’s the swaggering arrogance of Mr Trump’s inner sanctum, the needless threat to attack the country a second time, that turns this from a mission with some merit to something bespoke designed to make the instigators look formidable. And it’s clear for everyone to see that grabbing oil reserves is at the heart of the president’s plan, even when US oil companies don’t appear that keen.
It’s a long way from Venezuela to Greenland, but in Mr Trump’s agitated mind it is all part of the same issue — having mineral-rich neighbours whose countries he wants to control. Imagine being one of the 55,000 or so people who live on the Arctic island and who are now having to put up with intimidation and bullying from a country meant to be an ally?
Greenland already hosts a significant US military presence at the Pituffik Space Base, and during World War 2 and the Cold War there were dozens of bases and radar stations there with as many as 10,000 US soldiers.
Nobody could doubt Greenland’s strategic significance in the Arctic between the US and Russia. Through Denmark and its membership of Nato, it is already a bulwark against any possible aggression.
But that’s not good enough for President Trump. He’s said he wants it and that he’s prepared to take it if it doesn’t come quietly.
It is abhorrent that a Western leader would resort to threats of using the military to take a friendly, small nation. It is even more repugnant that he is willing to risk a confrontation with his Nato allies, and potentially crack apart the alliance, just to feed his desire to grab more oil and rare-earth minerals.
Mr Trump and his dodgy stooges have done some dreadful deeds. But this has the potential to be their most catastrophic.
