Dear Americans: don’t apologise for your president, do something about him. For the rest of the world, Trump is the United States and the United States is Trump. We see the two as just as interchangeable as you see Russia and Putin.

Internationally, a country’s leader serves as a proxy for the country itself. Americans who hope that the international community recognises that Donald Trump is not representative of all Americans would be shocked to understand how most of the rest of the world understands the situation:

He is representative of all Americans because that is who Americans have chosen to represent them and, in spite of two clear constitutional paths to get rid of him, opt to keep him.

When the president sends this absolutely bonkers message to the Prime Minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Støre, and asks for it to be shared with several other countries, it is necessarily taken as a message to the world from the American people. It was the president, after all, who sent it as official correspondence.

Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT

Never mind that the government of Norway neither controls the Nobel Prize nor Greenland, the American president is directly threatening taking the United States to war against its strongest allies because his ego his bruised for not winning a prize he objectively does not deserve. To the world, the message is clear: the entire planet must bow to Trump’s ego or face the horrific consequences of a hot war that has the potential to go global.

Then, this morning, he doubled down with this picture he posted on his own social media: Canada, Greenland, and Venezuela as conquered American territory being presented to 8 European leaders.

When a country presents itself in this way, the rest of the world has to take it at face value.

American armed forces take an oath. The enlisted say:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Officers have a slightly different oath. They do not swear to follow the orders of the president, only the Constitution:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. (So help me God.)

So, Americans, if your president is a compromised foreign asset, impeach him. If he is not faithfully executing the duties of his office, impeach him. If he is taking foreign bribes, impeach him. If other senior officials are doing the same, impeach them too. Repeatedly. Bring forward new articles every day until Congress can do nothing but debate impeachment motions.

If he is a senile old man, clearly incapable of performing his duties, invoke the 25th amendment’s section 4 powers on dismissal by cabinet. If cabinet won’t do it, impeach them too for their dereliction of duty.

And for the armed forces: support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Until then, we will continue to see Trump and the United States as interchangeable.