Donald Trump has postponed his state visit to Denmark after the country’s prime minister failed to leap at his proposal to buy Greenland. Mette Frederiksen had showed no interest in the “large real estate deal”, despite Trump’s tweeted promise – complete with helpful illustrative mock-up – that he would not dump a big gold tower on the foreshore. As a result, he (again) tweeted that he would be rescheduling their meeting for another time. But was the bid a red herring? David Frum, author of Trumpocracy and a former speechwriter for George W Bush, thinks so. The president’s real reason for cancelling? Barack Obama was due to visit the country two weeks later. “Trump was terrified of the contrast between the reception that former president Obama would get, and that he would get,” Frum said on Radio 4’s Today programme. “He began looking around for an excuse as to why he couldn’t go to Denmark – Greenland became it.” Could this possibly be true? Trump’s intense pettiness is well-established, but if Frum is right – well, what a colossal waste of everyone’s time.

So how much of Trump’s presidency is governed by the spectre of his popular and charismatic predecessor? Let’s assess the evidence.

The inauguration day debacle

Trump’s first presidential display of fragility was over the crowd he drew on his inauguration day: definitely bigger than Obama’s in 2009, he and his officials stressed repeatedly, despite photographs of the National Mall sparsely dotted with people. His first act after being sworn in was to complain at length to the CIA that the media had dishonestly broadcast “a shot of an empty field”.

Play Video 2:03 'Not for sale', Donald Trump's interest in buying Greenland is shut down – video report

North Korea-US relations

In January, Trump tweeted that his old enemy, “the media”, had not given him sufficient credit for the “tremendous progress” he had made in US relations with North Korea since the end of the Obama administration. More recently, he shared wordy praise of his handling of “the Korean issue” compared with Obama’s, reportedly from analyst Harry Kazianis, who concluded his two-tweet essay: “I think this is why the President deserves a lot of credit.” The real achievement was that his (again, tweeted) remarks about Kim Jong-un’s “nuclear button” and his own, “bigger and more powerful” button did not end in outright warfare.

Trump cancels Denmark trip after PM says Greenland is not for sale Read more

The Iran nuclear agreement

In a 2018 cable published by the Mail on Sunday this year, the British ambassador in Washington, Kim Darroch, said Trump had pulled out of the nuclear deal with Iran to spite Obama. “The administration is set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and personality reasons – it was Obama’s deal,” Darroch wrote. He resigned over the leaked memos – but his opinion that “for a man who has risen to the highest office on the planet, President Trump radiates insecurity” seems to have been a fair comment.

“Presidential harassment”

Trump sees himself as the target of “presidential harassment”, as he termed it in a tweet that once again denigrated the Obama administration. On balance, this, by Charles M. Blow in the New York Times in June 2017, does not seem like hyperbole: “Trump is obsessed with Obama. Obama haunts Trump’s dreams. One of Trump’s primary motivators is the absolute erasure of Obama – were it possible – not only from the political landscape but also from the history books.”

Even now that his re-election campaign is underway, the president’s mind is still turned towards his predecessor, who himself has moved on from leading the free world to producing for Netflix. Trump tweeted bitterly (of course) in June, with characteristically erratic capitalisation: “If President Obama made the deals that I have made, both at the Border and for the Economy, the Corrupt Media would be hailing them as Incredible, & a National Holiday would be immediately declared. With me, despite our record setting Economy and all that I have done, no credit!”

Seriously, how many big gold towers will it take? Name your price, Denmark.