big stick

"This was ultimately a negotiation in which President Trump was threatening other countries with a big stick and that stick just got considerably more ephemeral."

One is that Trump has turned Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim to “speak softly and carry a big stick” on its head: He speaks loudly and carries barely any stick at all.

This feeling of certainty and Scotland sit as well together as a hornets' nest and a big stick.

That is a big stick to beat his players with.

“Speak softly, and carry a big stick,” Theodore Roosevelt advised, though he never envisioned a successor would prove capable of obliterating cities half a world away in under half an hour.