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He was the most powerful man in the world, the possessor of the nuclear codes. Yet he behaved like a deranged manchild who threw temper tantrums and food against the wall.

That was the tragicomic story told to America last Tuesday at a congressional hearing that had even seasoned Donald Trump watchers lifting their jaws off the floor and speculating that his political career might finally be over.

In two seismic hours in Washington, Cassidy Hutchinson, a 25-year-old former White House aide, told the panel investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol that the former president had effectively gone haywire.

She described how Trump knew a mob of his supporters had armed itself with rifles, yet he asked for metal detectors to be removed. She also recounted how his desire to lead them to the Capitol caused a physical altercation with the Secret Service, and how in a fit of rage he threw his lunch against a White House wall, staining it with tomato ketchup.

Trump, who once called himself "a very stable genius", vehemently denied the allegations but the political damage was done. Infighting and plotting engulfed a Republican party that had hoped the House of Representatives' committee hearings would pass as a non-event.

Instead they have exceeded all expectations and could prove terminal to Trump's ambition of regaining the presidency in 2024 if Republican leaders, donors and voters run out of patience and decide to move on.

"Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's Tuesday testimony ought to ring the death knell for former President Donald Trump's political career," said an editorial in the Washington Examiner, a conservative news website. "Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again."