Donald trump

Thursday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Going nuclear

Wednesday marked the 72nd anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted Emperor Hirohito to announce Japan’s surrender in a radio address, though fanatical war hawks tried to stop him. After 1945, Japan developed a pacifist movement and a so-called peace constitution. No country has deployed these fearsome weapons since. Can it really be a coincidence that the day before this eerie anniversary, Donald Trump issued his implicit threat to unleash an unprecedentedly devastating nuclear attack on North Korea that would apparently eclipse Hiroshima and Nagasaki? ‘North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,’ said the President. ‘They

Andrew J.

General rule

Dwight Eisenhower was right to warn Americans in 1961 of the ‘military industrial complex’, but perhaps it is now the only thing that stands between the US and chaos. The new White House chief of staff, General John F. Kelly, is the third general Donald Trump has appointed to his cabinet. Kelly is already getting a good press for introducing military discipline and order to the Trump White House. His first move was to fire the attention-grabbing billionaire Anthony Scaramucci as head of communications, and he’s said to have told even members of Trump’s family that they must book ‘face time’ with the President through him. Is this another sign

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

England Lost/Gotta Get A Grip

Two songs in which Sir Michael informs us that he is distressed by both Brexit and Donald Trump. Released with, according to the 70-year-old singer, ‘urgency’: he can see that we are in trouble and was naturally anxious to help us out. The first, ‘England Lost’, is at least redeemed by a soupçon of wit. Jagger explains that he went to see England play football but that they lost, and he got wet in the rain. But it then turns into a sort of state of the nation thing, by the simple addition of an apostrophe and the letter ‘s’. England’s lost, he bemoans, and chucks in an incoherent allusion

Wednesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Is Trump really about to rain down ‘fire and fury’ on North Korea?

Today is the 72nd anniversary of the America atomic bombing of Nagasaki, a lovely port city that also served as a Japanese naval base during the second world war. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted Emperor Hirohito to announce in a radio address Japan’s surrender, though fanatical war hawks tried to stop him. The atomic bombings saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, but they remain the only time that a country has actually deployed these fearsome weapons. Donald Trump’s implicit threat to unleash an unprecedentedly devastating nuclear attack on North Korea that would apparently eclipse Hiroshima and Nagasaki offers a reminder that in this regard

Thursday

Michael Hann

His dark materials | 3 August 2017

Randy Newman is already struggling to keep up with himself. His dazzling new album, Dark Matter, was written before the changes of the last year, and no matter how pointed and current some of it is, there’s something missing. ‘There was a newspaper article that said Donald Trump is like a character in a Randy Newman song,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think there were any real people like the guy in “Political Science” or “My Life Is Good”. But he’s close.’ He’s had a bash at something for the Potus. ‘I just had an idea for a Trump song,’ he says, sounding rather like Yogi Bear’s rather smarter brother. ‘But

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 3 August 2017

Home Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, appeared to wrest control of plans for Brexit from cabinet rivals, while Theresa May, the Prime Minister, was in Italy and Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, was in Australia. Mr Hammond foresaw a ‘transitional deal’ ending by June 2022, when the next general election is due. He said it would be ‘some time before we are able to introduce full migration controls between the UK and the European Union’. Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, insisted that the cabinet had not agreed to a three-year transition. Mr Johnson said he was unaware that Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, had announced a year-long inquiry

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Trump is good news for Britain

Jeremy Corbyn might be ‘on a high’ but he shouldn’t be allowed to forget his party’s ‘highly inconsistent, profoundly confusing’ position on the issue of the day: Brexit. Labour’s stance became yet more tangled yesterday, says the Daily Telegraph, with Keir Starmer saying the party wanted to keep Britain in the single market – ‘only 10 days ago Jeremy Corbyn said the opposite,’ points out the paper. It’s time for the Tories to take the fight to Labour, says the Telegraph, which argues that while ‘young voters, have been motivated and energised’ by Corbyn this doesn’t mean they should be allowed to get away with such a contrary position on Brexit.

Daniel McCarthy

You’re fired!

 Washington D.C. Even a reality show needs good plot twists, and Donald Trump has delivered them like the master he is. First the misdirection: a week of publicly humiliating his attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, to the point where Sessions would surely quit or be fired. Then the sudden swerve — it was the press shop, not the justice department, that was decapitated. Sean Spicer was out as press secretary. Anthony Scaramucci, a mini Trump whose language was as blue as the lenses of his fancy sunglasses, was in as White House communications director. Reince Priebus, chief of staff, was next to go, sacked after clashing with ‘the Mooch’. And then the

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 27 July 2017

‘We are always waiting for somebody,’ observed a vexed British journalist. Usually it was me they were waiting for, but this morning I had boarded the tour bus on time and I tutted along with the righteous. While we waited I picked up the driver’s copy of that day’s edition of El Pais. On the front page was an arresting photograph of President Trump going head to head with President Macron, in Paris, their forearms joined and their hands clasped in the arm-wrestling start position. At their first public handshake in Brussels, Macron had crushed Trump’s hand until the Donald’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. Here was the

The Spectator

Playing chicken

Besides being important in themselves, the trade talks between Britain and the United States which began this week are symbolic of the opportunities that should become available as we leave the European Union. For years we have dealt with the US, our biggest single customer, under burdensome tariffs and other regulation — but we had no choice. The EU handled trade policy and it never succeeded in completing a trade deal with any of its major trade partners. Britain, by contrast, has always been more global than Europe in its outlook. The vote for Brexit was, among other things, a vote to raise our sights to more distant horizons. At

Paul Wood

Trump’s eastern front

 Kiev There is no lavatory paper to be found in government buildings in Kiev. Plan ahead, locals advise, if you visit a tax office, the council or some other arm of the bureaucracy. This state of affairs is one small sign of the corruption that pervades Ukraine. Even the trifling sums spent on toilet roll are stolen by dishonest officials. Patients bribe doctors to get treatment; students bribe professors to pass exams; citizens bribe tax inspectors… actually, many people don’t bother with tax in the first place, working instead in a vast shadow economy. Two Ukrainian journalists tell me all this as we sip drinks in a surprisingly expensive Kiev

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Why must I have a view on everything?

At a party earlier this summer, I was chatting to a man who asked me how I voted in last year’s EU referendum. I don’t see why anybody asks that question more than a year on, and I don’t see why anyone should be expected to answer. There is no faster way to sour a perfectly fine evening. Whatever you say, you risk causing offence, so why bother? I told the man I preferred not to say, and that I still don’t really know what I think about Brexit. He appeared put out by my reluctance — as if I was the one being rude. Before long he made his

Friday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump’s position is looking shakier by the day

Here we go again. NBC News is reporting that Donald Trump Jnr. somehow forgot to mention that a former Soviet counterintelligence officer was also present at his pow-wow with a Russian lawyer. The man in question, Rinat Akhmetsin, has denied ever being affiliated with Russian spy agencies. But as NBC politely put it, “the presence at the meeting of a Russian-American with suspected intelligence ties is likely to be of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller and the House and Senate panels investigating the Russian election interference campaign.” Indeed it is. As former Obama administration ethics chief Norman Eisen, among others, suggests, it looks as though Moscow was probing to see whether

Thursday

Paul Wood

A junior scandal

 Washington D.C. Political scandals sometimes throw up deliciously eccentric minor characters. Trump-Russia — a scandal or merely a crisis, according to taste — now has one: Rob Goldstone. He is described as a British former tabloid journalist, a music promoter, former Miss Universe pageant judge, and friend of the Trumps. Facebook videos reveal a short, tubby man with a northern accent and voice that seems a couple of octaves too high for his bulk. Twitter photos show him in a black shirt with a shiny gold tie; or holding velvet loafers up to his double chin, the word ‘Sex!’ embroidered on the toecaps; or wearing a gold baseball hat bearing

Wednesday

Paul Wood

There’s still no smoking gun in the Trump-Russia story

Political scandals sometimes throw up deliciously eccentric minor characters. Trump-Russia — a scandal or merely a crisis, according to taste — now has one: Rob Goldstone. He is described as a British former tabloid journalist, a music promoter, former Miss Universe pageant judge, and friend of the Trumps. Facebook videos reveal a short, tubby man with a northern accent and voice that seems a couple of octaves too high for his bulk. Twitter photos show him in a black shirt with a shiny gold tie; or holding velvet loafers up to his double chin, the word ‘Sex!’ embroidered on the toecaps; or wearing a gold baseball hat bearing the legend

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The gunsmoke from Donald Trump Junior’s email looks thin at best

Reactions to each development in the Trump-Russia scandal tend to follow the same pattern. At first, journalists express incredulity and then horror. It doesn’t matter if the Team Trump member under suspicion is Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Junior, even big daddy Trump himself, everybody agrees this is big news. Dots are connected and then, click, we all conclude that Russia ‘hacked’ the election. Then, once the initial flush of excitement, passes, everybody says ‘where is the actual evidence?’ Or ‘is it really that bad?’ And the Trump-Russia scandal subsides for a few days. People who are inclined to accept Trump’s presidency say that the media has gone mad

Thursday

Simon Kuper

Always the Superbrat

John McEnroe’s father calls. In fact, he calls McEnroe’s manager’s phone, presumably because dad doesn’t have a direct line to the great man himself. John Sr, who is tennis-mad, has a request: can he come with his son to a veterans’ tournament in Belgium? McEnroe is horrified. Having dad around is a major drag. ‘I was about to say absolutely not,’ he writes — when his old rival Björn Borg, who happens to be dining with him, interjects: ‘Let me speak to him.’ Borg, who had lost his own father three years earlier, tells McEnroe Sr: ‘Don’t worry, JP, if John doesn’t bring you to Knokke-Heist, I will.’ The story

Thursday

Taki

High life | 29 June 2017

A major Greek ship owner, whose political knowledge matches his wealth and business acumen, explained to me what the Qatar brouhaha is all about. My friend Peter had the foresight to invest in liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers, among the most expensive of ships to build but big-time money-makers. Why is it that it takes a major ship owner to tell us what’s really going on? Forget the bull put out by American hacks, whose minds no longer seem to function — at least since Trump’s triumph last November. Here goes: we sat on my terrace in Gstaad under the stars, watched the mountains turn from grey to dark blue,

Thursday

John R. Bradley

An unholy alliance

Israel’s Channel 2 news station improbably made history last week by airing a brief interview with an obscure policy wonk named Abed al-Hamid Hakim. The subject was the blockade of Qatar imposed by the Saudis and a couple of other despotic Sunni Arab rulers to punish the country for its ties to Iran, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. It obviously wasn’t what Hakim had to say — religion should not be used to justify violence and extremism; we should all try to live in peace and harmony — that aroused interest. Rather, it was where he was sitting when he said it: Jeddah, the commercial capital of Saudi Arabia. For

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Harry Potter and the millennial mind

Which Hogwarts house would you be in? There are four options, and everybody fits into one. The brave and chivalrous are put in Gryffindor. Patient and loyal types head to Hufflepuff. Ravenclaw is for the witty and intelligent. The cunning and ambitious — and potentially evil — are destined for Slytherin. In the Harry Potter books, a pugnacious talking hat, known as the ‘Sorting Hat’, carries out the selection. If you are like me and under 35, you probably didn’t need that explaining. Almost every young person who can read has read Harry Potter — 450 million copies have been sold worldwide. Not to do so was an act of