Brinkley

Spode throws his weight around Brinkley Court, the country estate where the story takes place, harrying Bertie endlessly for reasons we don’t need to go into, until Jeeves provides Bertie with a magic word guaranteed to turn dictator Spode into a shrinking mouse.

"It's supposed to be a grace day in which you heal the country from a partisan divide or a bitter election," said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.

Mr Brinkley compared Trump's quest to rename the Gulf of Mexico to a move by Franklin D Roosevelt almost 90 years ago: after he defeated Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt christened the newly constructed dam over the Colorado River as the Boulder Dam - not the Hoover Dam as it had previously been known, in an effort to deny his rival the honour.

Part of Trump's confidence stems from having outmanoeuvred his political foes, evaded any punitive measures in his myriad legal battles and even escaping an assassin's bullet, Mr Brinkley said.

Mr Brinkley said Trump wants his name to "radiate for the ages" - "and he's achieved that," the historian continued.