"Never ever ever give up," thundered Donald Trump, as he gave a commencement address to graduates of the US coastguard.

"You have to put your head down and fight fight fight!"

He was of course talking about himself rather than his audience, and it was no accident that small portions of the speech echoed Churchill, whose bust sits in the White House.

Mr Trump believes he is also a wartime president.

But his war is playing out on a different battlefield.


He believes he is engaged in a fight to the death with the media and with anyone who sits left of centre on the political spectrum - the dreaded "liberals".

'Fight, fight, fight!' Donald Trump's pep talk

Mr Trump, members of his administration and his diehard supporters genuinely believe there is a vast conspiracy afoot to remove him from office.

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It prompted the President to allegedly ask the then FBI director James Comey about why reporters couldn't be thrown in jail for doing their jobs.

It is why he is unable to refrain from whining about how poorly he is treated by the journalists whose attention he has always craved.

It is why he openly counts loyalties and favours and perceived slights on a mental check list.

And it is why he thought it was okay to employ Steve Bannon, who before helping to run the country ran a website that specialised in peddling conspiracy theories.

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Mr Trump is so focused on personal injustice that he appears not to understand that he has brought his own presidency to the verge of collapse.

Perhaps this paranoia suits him, or is even a clever affectation.

It is certainly a useful way of avoiding responsibility, or obscuring the truth.

His surrogates use it as an excuse all the time.

Perhaps, broadly, there is some truth in the assertion that he has been taken less seriously and treated less charitably than his predecessors.

But the affliction of paranoia means Mr Trump really cannot see that the snowballing Russia scandal is almost entirely self-inflicted.

It seems to be preventing him from doing anything other than send out defiant tweets and complain about the unfairness of it all.

It is why desperate politicians are starting to call for his impeachment.

It is why Vladimir Putin, of all people, finds himself in a position to offer clarity to the citizens of a nation whose election he tried to influence.

Image: Donald Trump arrives at the US Coast Guard Academy Commencement Ceremony

Unfortunately for Mr Trump, we are way past the "everyone is out to get me" stage.

Politicians from both sides of the aisle know that, even if they don't have the courage to say it out loud yet.

As a result, he now faces a real rather than an imagined battle for survival.

His opponent will be fired FBI director James Comey, whose memos will find their way in to the light, and who may well testify under oath about his meetings with the President.

No amount of spin or obfuscation will save Mr Trump from having to locate his spine and actually face up to this mess of his own making.

Then it will be down to who Congress, and the public, believes most.