Donald trump

Wednesday

Mary Wakefield

How to process your Trump trauma (with orange soup)

It’s amazing how many people have responded to what they think of as the shattering catastrophe of Donald Trump’s victory by crafting: making rag rugs, ceramic pots, knitting scarves. A woman I know from long ago is so traumatised that she has started quilting. I’m not sure what sort of quilt she’s making – a patchwork of Harris/Walz ballot papers, maybe – but I know better than to make a light-hearted enquiry because this is not an ordinary quilt. It is a recovery quilt and part of the healing process. The most popular flavour of post-Trump soup seems to be spiced pumpkin Many unhappy Democrat women have announced that they

The Spectator

Letters: How to argue with Trump voters

Unhealthy debate Sir: Matthew Parris is absolutely right to say that the time has come for facing populists with honest argument (‘In defence of the liberal elite’, 9 November). This call would be all the more persuasive if it were not embedded within the rotten foundations of current lamentable public discourse. Honest argument presupposes the ability to engage with one’s opponents in terms that they would own and recognise: ‘steel-manning’ rather than erecting a flimsy straw man. What Mr Parris, and many others, fail to own is that the concerns of Trump voters, though unpalatably incarnated in Donald Trump himself, are in their essence not only legitimate but good. A

Saturday

Oscar Edmondson

Can Labour work with Trump?

16 min listen

It’s happened. The scenario Labour politicians hoped would not come to pass is now a reality: Donald Trump is heading back to the White House. The official line from Labour is that everything is fine – they will work with whoever holds the office of president. However, privately there have long been nerves and concerns as to what a Trump comeback would mean for the Starmer government. Where are the fault lines likely to appear? And what does a second Trump term mean for foreign secretary David Lammy, considering his previous comments about the Donald? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and John McTernan. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Sean Thomas, Imogen Yates, Books of the Year II, and Alan Steadman

30 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Paul Wood analyses what a Trump victory could mean for the Middle East (1:16); Sean Thomas gets a glimpse of a childless future while travelling in South Korea (8:39); in search of herself, Imogen Yates takes part in ‘ecstatic dance’ (15:11); a second selection of our books of the year from Peter Parker, Daniel Swift, Andrea Wulf, Claire Lowdon, and Sara Wheeler (20:30); and notes on the speaking clock from the voice himself, Alan Steadman (25:26).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Kate Andrews

Are we about to see Trump unleashed?

32 min listen

Kamala Harris has delivered her concession speech, signalling the start of the Democrat post-mortem. Donald Trump has secured a total victory, the kind which gives him a mandate to make some pretty radical reforms. Americano guest host Kate Andrews is joined by Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, to discuss what a second Trump term will look like: from domestic to foreign policy. And what about the Democrats? Where do they go from here? 

Yascha Mounk

Reality check: why the Democrats lost

For the past decade, Donald Trump has been the most famous and influential man on the planet. But he had too many failures and electoral defeats to his name to be able to claim he dominated a whole political era. That changed on Tuesday night. Trump will be remembered as both the 45th and the 47th President of the United States. At the time of going to press, he is very likely to win full control of Congress. He is even likely to win the popular vote – making him the first Republican to do so in 20 years. All of this will allow him to impose his will on

The Spectator

What Britain can learn from Donald Trump’s victory

This has been the year of ejection elections. Across the democratic world, incumbents have been thrown out and insurgents have triumphed. And nowhere has the establishment been so humbled, the insurgency so resurgent, as in the US – still the world’s greatest democracy. For Democrats, it is mourning again in America. Just as in 2016, it is not just their candidate who has been defeated but their beliefs about their country. There are lessons for them, and for all political actors across the West, in Donald Trump’s victory. The failure of the Democrat campaign shows the folly of telling voters what they should think The Democrat campaign was premised on

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Trump’s victory, Kemi’s shadow cabinet and footballer killed by lightning

Home Kemi Badenoch, the new leader of the Conservative party, appointed a shadow cabinet. She made Robert Jenrick, whom she beat for the leadership, shadow justice secretary; Dame Priti Patel, shadow foreign secretary; Chris Philp, shadow home secretary; Mel Stride, shadow chancellor. Alex Burghart was given Northern Ireland and the Cabinet Office, with Laura Trott at education, Edward Argar at health and James Cartlidge at defence. Badenoch had been elected leader by 56.5 per cent of the 95,194 members’ votes (compared with the 57.4 per cent for Liz Truss in 2022), in a turnout of 72.8 per cent (compared with the 82.2 per cent in 2022). The Pitt Rivers museum

Niall Ferguson

Not even close: how Trump confounded the pundits

It was supposed to be close. On the eve of election day, Donald Trump was up just 0.1 per cent in the RealClearPolitics polling average. FiveThirtyEight projected a tiny Trump advantage. PredictIt had Kamala Harris ahead. A celebrated pollster ran 80,000 simulations, and Harris won 50.015 per cent of them, versus 49.985 per cent for Trump. And it made some sense to expect a close result. With the exception of Barack Obama’s victories, every US election since 2000 has been close. In two cases, 2000 and 2016, the winner didn’t win the popular vote, which before then hadn’t happened since 1888, when Benjamin Harrison beat Grover Cleveland. What makes American

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

American titan: inside Donald Trump’s remarkable political comeback

Palm Beach, Florida Donald Trump’s bid to take back the White House has been triumphant. It is a decisive victory and even Trump’s bitterest enemies should recognise him for what he is: an American titan, the most extraordinary politician of our time. He has just pulled off arguably the biggest comeback in US history – a feat greater even than Richard Nixon’s Lazarus-like return in 1968. To understand the scale of his victory, recall how weakly he began. On 15 November 2022, when Trump launched his now-triumphant bid to regain the presidency, he did not seem himself. His formal campaign announcement, delivered in the ballroom of his club in Mar-a-Lago,

Joan Collins

The night I was turned away from the Ivy

How the mighty can fall. I was overwhelmed by the approbation I had received for my one-woman show, Behind the Shoulder Pads at the Adelphi Theatre. Standing ovations would erupt several times during our performance. The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd were heady as my co-star (my hubby Percy) and I took our bows to wild applause and cheering. At the after-party at Rules, the oldest and most revered restaurant in London, we were inundated with admiration and support from everybody there. Two nights later, still glowing from all the attention, Percy, my daughter Katy and I went to the Curzon Cinema in Victoria, our

Wednesday

Kate Andrews

Lionel Shriver on the election that smashed identity politics

29 min listen

News that Kamala Harris has called Donald Trump to concede defeat means that the US election is all but over. Of the seven crucial swing states, Trump has so far won North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Republicans have taken the Senate back from the Democrats. How did things go so badly for Kamala Harris? Is this the end of identity politics? Lionel Shriver, author and columnist, joins The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews to reflect on what happened, and how she’s feeling now considering she disliked both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as candidates.

Michael Gove

Badenoch’s Trump card

16 min listen

It’s happened. The scenario Labour politicians hoped would not come to pass is now a reality: Donald Trump is heading back to the White House. The official line from Labour is that everything is fine – they will work with whoever hold the office of president. That was the message from Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions as he congratulated president-elect Trump, and made a point of mentioning they had recently had dinner together. However – Kemi Badenoch focused on David Lammy’s past criticisms of Trump at PMQs. Is this a unique tension for the Labour government? James Heale discusses with Michael Gove and Katy Balls.

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

In defence of the liberal elite

You can hear it already. Rising from the tents of the dejected Democrat camp comes the whimper of self-reproach. It’s all our fault. Liberalism created this monster. There’s a distinct whiff of mea culpa in the air. Nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa for the alienation of half the American people.  Donald Trump and his mob? It’s the fault of liberals for not feeling Trump-America’s pain. We fed their despair. Nigel Farage and his Reform party? Liberal Britain’s fault for being too stuck up to take Red Wall voters’ concerns seriously. Noses in the air (apparently), deaf to the woes of all those deplorables, and babbling about trans rights, preferred pronouns

William T. Vollmann

My friends who vote Trump

On 13 October 2024, I jaunted 20 minutes south down Interstate-5 to the Cosumnes Nature Preserve, whose toy swamp I used to visit with my parents and my daughter Lisa; they are all dead now, and so was my pleasure on that Sunday, thanks to a haze that looked merely dirty until I opened the car door and realised it was smoke again, more smoke, my eyes beginning to burn and my chest to ache: poor sad California! In recent years I sometimes wake up choking; is the house on fire? Oh, no, merely the planet. One of my homeless Republican friends (who stopped speaking to me once he realised

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Election night: early signs suggest it’s Trump’s to lose

21 min listen

Results are coming in across the United States, and the early signs (though it is still very early) look good for Donald Trump. At the time of recording, the betting markets are with him and the famous New York Times ‘Needle’ has swung to a ‘likely’ Trump victory. It is still much too early to call in an election that could drag on for days to come. No media outlet has called it for either candidate yet. To give you the latest updates from the States, Kate Andrews is joined by The Spectator’s team on the ground: Amber Duke is in battleground state Michigan; Matt McDonald joins from Washington DC,

Friday

Lionel Shriver

America’s impossible election choice

31 min listen

With just days to go until the American election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s respective campaigns continue to ramp up, with rallies and gimmicks, and even advertising on the Las Vegas Sphere. Despite this, Spectator contributor Lionel Shriver declares she is America’s ‘last undecided voter’. Why? Is it the candidates’ characters that put her off voting for them, or the policies they represent? Lionel joins guest host, and fellow American, Kate Andrews to discuss further.  Produced by Megan McElroy and Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Team Trump, astrologers versus pollsters & debating history

43 min listen

This week: Team Trump – who’s in, and who’s out? To understand Trumpworld you need to appreciate it’s a family affair, writes Freddy Gray in the magazine this week. For instance, it was 18-year-old Barron Trump who persuaded his father to do a series of long ‘bro-casts’ with online male influencers such as Joe Rogan. In 2016, Donald’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was the reigning prince; this year, he has been largely out of the picture. Which family figures are helping Trump run things this time around, and which groups hold the most influence? Freddy joins the podcast alongside economics editor Kate Andrews. What are the most important personnel decisions facing

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Team Trump: who’s in – and who’s out?

If Donald Trump wins back the White House next week, adopt the brace position. His opponents will go beserk, inevitably, and try once again to put him in prison. Yet Trump allies might go even more crazy as they scramble for influence. Trump claims to have learned from the mistakes of his first term. But what counts as a mistake depends on who you talk to. And it’s impossible to even guess at what a Trump Redux might mean without some sense of who he talks to these days – and who might shape and influence his agenda if he is elected. The awkward truth – for insiders anyway –

Christopher Caldwell

How quickly would Trump wash his hands of Ukraine?

For American politicians, all wars are two-front wars. There is a hot battlefield somewhere in the Middle East or the South China Sea, and there’s a political battlefield in Washington, D.C. The domestic contest is decisive. The same goes for Europe. With Joe Biden riding into the sunset and the presidential campaign drawing to a close, American interest in Ukraine is winding down, too. Europeans talking tough about ‘standing up’ to Russia had better be prepared to do so on their own. The next president will find the domestic pressure to scale back involvement in Ukraine irresistible Donald Trump’s campaign message, muddled though it is, bodes ill for the Ukrainian