In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump says “you can get any job done through sheer force of will”. It is an attitude that is both his strength and his weakness.

It got him elected President of the United States against all the odds; but it has also made the first few weeks of his tenure in the White House a somewhat surreal experience for those looking in.

The fact that Mr Trump is not a politician in the conventional sense and therefore unused to, and disdainful of, the accommodations that sometimes need to be made by the occupants of his office was well known to voters before last November. Indeed, it was this image of the anti-politician outsider that appealed to them.

But even though he won he continues to act as though he were the loser. He fixated for a while on the fact that Hillary Clinton obtained more votes than he did, even though the electoral college system meant he won fair and square.