Social media benefit from creating continuous belligerence in politics. For them, Donald Trump is the perfect politician. As I wrote last week, I think he is doing exciting things and I feel relieved that Kamala Harris lost. But it is impossible to support everything Mr Trump says or does. He never regards himself as bound by what he has previously said, so why should his followers seek to justify each piece of Trumpery? Since his victory in November, I have noticed several otherwise intelligent friends, all of them men, going crazy-culty about the dawning era – defending, for example, the removal of the security detail of Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Brian Hook, or his pardon for all those convicted in the 6 January riots. It is nasty score-settling. Dear Trumpists, please look through these heady days to the pitfalls ahead. I would not like to predict either ultimate triumph or ultimate disaster over the next four years, but you can be certain that both will stalk this administration. I know one is supposed to ‘treat those two impostors just the same’, but one must also be able to identify the difference between them.
One of the well-known problems with doing business in Third World countries is that one must sign up an ‘in-country partner’ to do so. This is usually a patronage mechanism for rulers of such places, guaranteeing great wealth for their family or associates. Will the United States now go that way? No sooner did the Supreme Court order TikTok to sell up at once than President Trump was there with a better offer – three months’ grace and possibly a 50-50 sale to Elon Musk.
Brian and Maggie, a two-part drama by James Graham about Brian Walden’s final, sensational interview with Margaret Thatcher in 1989, aired this week on Channel 4.
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