Theresa May begins babysitting the world’s most powerful man

Of all the specimens in the Donald Trump menagerie—Charming Trump, Vicious Trump, Soapbox Trump—Subdued Trump may be my least favorite. It is true that the restraint my president showed during his press conference with Theresa May is in both our countries’ interests, but it is also uncomfortably artificial, like watching a space alien trying to cheer for a football game. Trump is who he is, an energetic insult comic at his most natural when he’s dissing the size of his political opponents’ hands. Watching him strain to appear statesmanlike always leaves you with the impression that he’s been pumped full of Valium.

Nevertheless, he seems to have passed his first test, that ‘Odd Couple’ meeting with May, by which we mean he managed to get through the press conference without starting a thermonuclear war. Such are our downwardly defined presidential standards in the age of Trump. There was a brief moment of tension.