We three kings

Donald Trump reminds me of three kings, or one king and two tyrants, really: he combines Agamemnon’s contempt for truth (“Fake news!” Trump would have told the seer Calchas), Oedipus’s egomania (“I alone can fix it,” Trump would have said of the Sphinx’s curse), and Creon’s strutting authoritarianism (“I’m president, and you’re not,” Trump would have told Oedipus when ordering him back in the house).

But unlike Oedipus, Trump has no interest in the pursuit of truth: he would have fired Tiresias and ended the investigation of the murder of Laertes. Oedipus chose to pursue that investigation, wherever it might lead. But of course he had no idea where it would lead.

Also unlike Oedipus: Trump would never have solved the Sphinx’s riddle to begin with.

A related post
Word of the day: tyrant

[In Iliad 1, when Calchas tells Agamemnon why the Achaean forces have been hit by a plague and what to do to remove it, Agamemnon complains that Calchas never gives him any good omens. Agamemon’s the king; Oedipus and Creon, tyrants.]