An American fairytale: Donald J, the man who thought he could work miracles

In 1936, a year in which Hitler’s Nazi party was consolidating power in Germany, British film maker Alexander Korda produced a comedy based on a story co-written by H.G. Wells titled The Man Who Could Work Miracles.

In it, the gods, as a kind of experiment, bestowed upon an ordinary man vast and unlimited powers. At first, our hero is surprised and amused by his ability to do (nearly) anything. With just a wave of his hands, he discovers that he can levitate objects and make things appear and disappear. Much to the astonishment of his drinking mates at the pub, he makes an oil lamp burn upside down.

But as time goes on, he leaves these simple tricks behind and begins to use his extraordinary abilities to gain more and more power over the world around him. The only thing that he finds he cannot do is will the woman of his dreams to love him. Nevertheless, he can change everything else, even banishing the local police constable to hell for hassling him on the street.

By the end of the film, he has conjured up a magnificent palace in which to be made emperor of the world. However, as the ceremonies drag on before a massive gathering of all the world’s leaders, dusk begins to fall. To preserve daylight for his coronation, he commands the earth to stop turning, unwittingly causing not just the palace to instantly collapse around him, but worldwide chaos and destruction. Seeing this outcome, the gods decide to end their experiment and return our hero – and the world – to its previous peaceful state.

In the 1930s, this story was a prescient metaphor for where the world was heading, with Hitler’s growing power, arrogance and aggression. But it could equally be a metaphor for things happening now, 90 years later.

In his first term in office, Trump suddenly found himself with the vast power of the U.S. presidency, granted to him, not by the gods, but by the American electorate. He soon learned that he could use that power to indulge his every whim. With a wave of his Sharpie, he could start the construction of a massive border wall, create a deeply conservative majority on the Supreme Court and bring into being a powerful new vaccine to fight Covid-19. At the same time, he could remove regulations, abridge workers’ rights and even make international agreements disappear. With the spell he had over the Republican Party, he could roll back taxes and give free rein to domestic fossil fuel production.

In his second term, like the hero in our movie, he has created a palace for himself — in this case, a gilded White House with a ballroom under construction that may rival Versailles. He has made huge numbers of government positions, migrant workers and international pacts disappear. He has made new government agencies appear and others disappear. He has amazed his mates in the petrochemical industry by turning fuel economy standards upside-down, while relegating, like the hapless police constable, national and international law and the international rules-based order to a figurative hell. None of the president’s power, however, has enabled Donald to win the love of the public, as reflected by persistently low approval ratings.

THIS IS HILARIOUS 

"Iran  wanted to make me their Supreme leader but i refused and said no thanks"

- Donald Trump 藍

He has totally lost it pic.twitter.com/PcF2ds4LTB
— Amock_ (@Amockx2022) March 26, 2026

Now, with his innate hubris and arrogance now combined with great power and even greater ignorance, Trump has brought into being a war of choice in the Middle East, which has already spread confusion and adversity to every corner of the globe. The Earth is still turning, but it’s wracked with turmoil, anxiety and uncertainty, while Trump finds himself swept up into a raging vortex of his own making — one that he can no longer control.

Unfortunately, unlike in the movie, we can’t rely on intervention from above to put things back together again.

So, we must do what we can here in Australia to avoid being dragged into the chaos and hope American voters in this year’s mid-term elections see through the propaganda and gaslighting, recognise the plight they’re in and take the role of the gods in ‘The Man Who Could Work Miracles’ to return the country – and the world – to a saner place.

Then, perhaps, we might look forward to someday seeing a new comedy, entitled, “The Man Who Thought He Could Work Miracles”.

Jeff Peck is a former lecturer in film history at La Trobe University.