The biggest threat to Trump is Trump

Although Republicans and Democrats have few things in common, there’s one American universal: we don’t like when you mess with our money. After Donald Trump’s erratic tariff tantrums have sent markets lurching, who knows how much stocks will have spiked or tanked between the typing of this paragraph and it seeing print. Some 62 per cent of Americans own stock; unsurprisingly, I do, too. A believer in the joys of denial, I’ve refused to even peek at my portfolio since the President’s ‘Liberation Day’. I guess not worrying my pretty head about my finances constitutes liberation of a kind.

While never a Trumpster, I found the initial weeks of the 47th presidency exhilarating. No more racial preferences in the military, the federal government or universities that receive federal funds. Yes! Finally, aggressive prosecution of immigration law, with the flow of illegal aliens slowed to a trickle. Yay! Cutting wasteful and wokeful spending. Grand! Pushing Europe to pay more for its own defence. Fine! Men banned from women’s sport. About time! It’s official: there are only two sexes. Shouldn’t really have to announce what we all know from the age of two, but apparently we do – so good show! The end of ineffectual, self-destructive net-zero policies when 80 per cent of the world still runs on fossil fuels. Effing fabulous! I’m even keen on being able to buy higher-volume shower nozzles, which you wouldn’t think should require presidential intervention in the Land of the Free.

Yet all the above relies on flimsy executive orders, lazy and monarchical edicts that a Democratic president could instantly reverse four years from now. The economic turmoil Trump has unleashed just increased by a good measure the likelihood that Trump’s opposition wins in 2028, too. What a gift to a party I’d rather stayed far longer in the wilderness to learn its lesson (careen left, fall off edge of Earth).