Donald trump

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 March 2017

Home Sir John Major, the former prime minister, made a speech at Chatham House in which he called the referendum vote for Brexit ‘an historic mistake’. The Lords got its teeth into the European Union (notification of withdrawal) bill. A merger between the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse foundered after the LSE refused a demand by the European Commission for it to sell its Italian bond-trading platform, MTS. Royal Bank of Scotland, in which taxpayers hold a 73 per cent stake, announced losses of £7 billion. Theresa May gave up crisps for Lent. Asked if he would still be Labour leader in 2020, Jeremy Corbyn said: ‘I’ve given you a

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The Lords’ ‘insidious plot to thwart democracy’

When the House of Lords voted against the Government’s Brexit bill last night, peers won’t have been expecting much in the way of thanks in today’s newspapers. But the ferocity of the attacks on the Lords could still come as something of a surprise: it’s time for the Lords to go, says the Sun in its editorial this morning in which it accuses peers of trying to ‘hobble the PM’ in Brexit talks. The paper describes the Government’s defeat last night as ‘contemptible’ and ‘short-sighted grandstanding’, and says the session showed that Lords wanted to make it clear ‘how much they care about EU citizens’  -with no regard for British citizens

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Trump’s show of strength to Moscow

Donald Trump has not lost his capacity to surprise: few would have bet on him starting his address to Congress with praise for Black History Month. Tuesday night’s speech was the nearest Trump has come to acting like a traditional president. But one thing conspicuous by its absence was any mention of Russia. To Europeans, his Russia policy remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Four things make Trump’s approach to Moscow particularly hard to fathom. First is the fact that no one is sure who really speaks for him on foreign policy. What should Europe make of vice-president Mike Pence’s soothing words at the recent Munich

Jenny McCartney Jenny McCartney

Star power

The ongoing war between Donald Trump and the Hollywood A-list has entered a new and unpredictable phase. Celebrity criticism of Trump — keenly anticipated as the chewy takeaway from last week’s Academy Awards ceremony — was instead overshadowed by a celebrity cock-up. Thanks to a mix-up of the sacred envelopes, presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway temporarily awarded Best Picture to La La Land, rather than the real winner, Moonlight. The result was an unforgettable tableau of confusion at the ceremony’s crowning moment. Trump had earlier let it be known that he wasn’t watching. Like a kid talking too loudly about his maths project while the others are getting ready

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A field guide to our doomed liberal elite

The latest and perhaps most damaging accusation to be levelled at Donald Trump is that he likes his steaks well-done and accompanied with tomato ketchup. He was seen ordering exactly this dish last week. It would not surprise me if he also had a side order of battered onion rings. I do not know if the person who cooked the steak was an immigrant and, this being the case, added a gobbet of alien phlegm to the griddle. If so, Trump didn’t seem to mind. He chomped away, dipping bits of incinerated meat in his ketchup, quite unconcerned that over here in Blighty a new sneerfest was rapidly getting underway.

Wednesday

Matt Purple

Trump’s charming and disciplined Congress speech defies his critics

Am I the only one who was hoping Donald Trump would skip the State of the Union address? The annual harangue to Congress, vernal solstice on America’s civic calendar, is provided for in Article II of our Constitution, which requires the president ‘from time to time’ to ‘give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union’. That briefly meant a presidential speech, until the gloriously terse Thomas Jefferson dismissed it as too monarchical and began submitting a written update instead. This tradition, admirably low-key, persisted for more than a century until Woodrow Wilson revived the verbal address in 1913, one of the many reasons to curse his presidency.

The Spectator

Donald Trump’s Congress address, full transcript

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, the First Lady of the United States, and Citizens of America: Tonight, as we mark the conclusion of our celebration of Black History Month, we are reminded of our Nation’s path toward civil rights and the work that still remains. Recent threats targeting Jewish Community Centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a Nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms. Each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty and justice – in an

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Donald Trump finally delivers the ‘unity speech’ America has been waiting for

Donald Trump’s first address to Congress last night was the best speech he has given since he won the election last year. A low bar, you might say, and the new Commander-in-Chief will never match the rhetorical skill of his predecessor. Yet before the joint session of Congress a few hours ago, President Trump at last delivered the ‘unity speech’ that so many Americans have been pining for. It was all the more successful for having been so long waited for: a CNN snap poll (hardly a friendly source) found a huge majority of his audience responded ‘very positively’ to the speech. The words were, in some ways, the words

Sunday

Stephen Daisley

Trump has done what journalists should have done: boycotted the White House Correspondents’ dinner

The most dangerous place in Washington DC, the old joke goes, is between a politician and a television camera. It’s a wonder there are any such places left, so intimate have the third and fourth estates become. Periodically, American journalism gets itself into a funk over its proximity to power and the consequences for integrity and neutrality. The lamentations are sincere but short-lived and before long the quarrelling lovers are reconciled and slip into old habits. ‘I hate myself for loving you,’ sang Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, lashing at the morbid affections of co-dependency. Iraq was supposed to be The Line. The press corps concluded in retrospect that it

Susan Hill Susan Hill

Why I’ve cancelled my signing at an anti-Trump bookshop

To my mind, a bookshop is like a library — the only difference is that you buy the books, you don’t borrow them. But both have a duty to provide books (space and budgets allowing) reflecting a wide range — as wide as possible — of interests, reading tastes, subjects and points of view. Walk into one of either and there are the thoughts and feelings, beliefs and dreams and creations and discoveries of many men and women, and that is part of their never-ending excitement. If you are, say, a Christian bookshop, and advertise yourself as such, or a Middle Eastern bookshop, or a communist or a feminist bookshop,

Thursday

Peter Jones

All the President’s yes-men

Donald Trump takes it as read that any criticism of his words or actions is an assault on the truth. The historian Tacitus, who had served Roman emperors in high office (including as consul), recognised the frame of mind and reflected on how one could maintain one’s honour working for such a monster. Tacitus saw that absolutism lay at the heart of the imperial system. To maintain it, the emperor surrounded himself with men who owed loyalty to no one but himself, and over whom he could therefore exert total control. The result was a culture of acquiescence in whatever the emperor wanted, well exemplified by the Roman senator Sallustius

Martin Gayford

American psyche

The latest exhibition at the Royal Academy is entitled America after the Fall. It deals with painting in the United States during the 1930s: that is, the decade before the tidal surge of abstract expressionism. So this show is a sort of prequel to the RA’s great ab ex blockbuster of last autumn. It might have been called, ‘Before Jackson Began Dripping’. Not much in this selection, though, can compare to the power of the abstract expressionists at their peak in the Forties and Fifties — not even an early work by Pollock himself. But it does include a couple of masterpieces by Edward Hopper, plus several pictures so brashly

The Spectator

Letters | 23 February 2017

Seeing off the Speaker Sir: If senior Tories in Buckingham had had their way, John Bercow’s career as Speaker could have been over long before he had a chance to make any ‘spectacularly ill-judged’ remarks (Politics, 18 February). At the 2010 election, an impressive local Tory was keen to prevent the new Labour-supported Speaker retaining the seat where the party had had an 18,000 majority in 2005. Conservative headquarters insisted that Buckingham must abide by the long-standing convention that the Speaker is returned unopposed. The local Tories should have gone ahead; there is no such convention. All ten Speakers since the war have faced opposition. Six, including Bercow, have faced

Taki

High life | 23 February 2017

From my chalet high up above the village, I look up at the immense, glistening mountain range of the Alps, and my spirit soars. Even youthful memories receding into sepia cannot bring me down from the high. Mountains, more than seas, can be exhilarating for the soul. Then I open the newspapers and the downer is as swift as the onset of an Alpine blizzard. Television is even more of a bummer. Last week I saw Piers Morgan tell an American TV personality — a big-time Trump hater — whose face looks exactly like a penis how strange he found it that two people like Bush and Blair, who lied

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 23 February 2017

Last month, at Policy Exchange, I met a charming, quiet American general called H.R. McMaster. In conversation, I was struck by his zeal for Nato and his concern wherever the alliance is now weakest, as in Turkey. In his speech to the thinktank, he said clearly that Russia and China are attempting to ‘collapse’ the post-1945 and post-Cold War ‘political, economic and security order’, with unconventional forces hiding behind conventional ones, subversion, disinformation, propaganda, economic actions and ‘proxies’ such as organised crime networks. The situation had echoes of 1914, and the risk of a great-power war was the highest for 70 years. He emphasised that, ‘despite public comments by our

Andrew J.

The McMaster plan

When Lt Gen H.R. McMaster was appointed by Donald Trump to the post of national security adviser, newspaper reports hailed him as a military strategist. It’s not fully clear what the phrase means: not, presumably, that he originated a big idea akin to Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theory of seapower or Billy Mitchell’s conception of strategic bombing. More likely it is supposed to mean ‘a soldier who thinks’. Or more crudely, ‘not a knuckle-dragger’. Or ‘preferable to the cretin who Trump just fired’. Of course, the responsibilities of the position to which McMaster now ascends extend well beyond mere military matters. The national security adviser operates (or should operate) in the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The new third Way

Forget left and right — the new divide in politics is between nationalists and globalists. Donald Trump’s team believe that he won because he was the America First candidate, defying the old rules of politics. His nationalist rhetoric on everything from trade to global security enabled him to flip traditionally Democratic, blue-collar states and so to defeat that personification of the post-war global order, Hillary Clinton. The presidential election in France is being fought on these lines, too. Marine Le Pen is the nationalist candidate, a hybrid of the hard right and the far left. She talks of quitting the European single currency and of bringing immigration down to 10,000

Susan Hill Susan Hill

A bookseller’s duty

To my mind, a bookshop is like a library — the only difference is that you buy the books, you don’t borrow them. But both have a duty to provide books (space and budgets allowing) reflecting a wide range — as wide as possible — of interests, reading tastes, subjects and points of view. Walk into one of either and there are the thoughts and feelings, beliefs and dreams and creations and discoveries of many men and women, and that is part of their never-ending excitement. If you are, say, a Christian bookshop, and advertise yourself as such, or a Middle Eastern bookshop, or a communist or a feminist bookshop,

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

The Stop Trump protesters have got their priorities all wrong

There’s almost as much talk about ‘virtue-signalling’ these days as there is about ‘fake news’. But one thing that doesn’t get said often enough is why virtue-signalling isn’t just irritating, but destructive. Like Brendan, Will and others here, I also take a slightly dim view of the anti-Trump protests that took place in Britain last night. I walked around the one in Westminster to come to a view, and found myself feeling unsympathetic to people carrying placards that said, for instance, ‘Fuck Fascism’. It’s a sentiment with which most of us can wholeheartedly agree, but I cannot see its applicability to the question of whether or not the US President

Will Heaven

This fake story made me feel sympathy for Donald Trump

There was a great commotion in central London last night. A police helicopter hovered over The Spectator‘s office making a din, police sirens sounded and thudding music rattled the windows. I found out why when I left the office and walked via Parliament Square to Whitehall. There was an anti-Trump protest outside Parliament – #stoptrump was the theme – coinciding with the (non-binding and pointless) debate inside Westminster Hall, about President Trump’s state visit to the UK later this year. The protest was a very slick affair. There was a massive TV screen broadcasting anti-Trump videos, and speeches blared out over a speaker system. But there was just one thing missing: a