With his rhetorical outbursts becoming more unruly and unstable, the resemblance between President Donald Trump and Jay Robinson‘s Caligula in The Robe and Demetrius and the Gladiator becomes more and more striking. Make that a mixture of Robinson and John Hurt‘s Caligula in I, Claudius, only fatter. 

The NFL players locking arms and dropping to bended knee today reminded me of gladiators defying the ranting Roman emperor in that final arena scene in Demetrius.  In this case the spear-thrower is Robert Mueller, but not for a while yet.

On top of which the bombastic taunting of North Korea’s “rocket man” has arguably brought the U.S. closer to the possibility of nuclear Armageddon than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis, certainly in terms of silly adolescent bluster on both sides. 

We all knew Trump was intemperate. The applicable term right now is “clear and present danger.”