Hillary clinton

Did Donald Trump urge gun owners to use their weapons to stop Hillary?

Just when it looks as though Donald Trump couldn’t go any further with causing outrage, he opens his mouth. This time, the Republican candidate appeared to suggest that gun owners could do something about Hillary Clinton if she picked Supreme Court judges in favour of gun control. Here’s what he said: ‘If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is. But I tell you what, that will be a horrible day.’ The backlash was immediate: Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said that what Trump was saying is ‘dangerous’; even the Secret Service popped up (on Twitter of all places)

Was Britain banking on a Chris Christie presidency?

A fun game for football fans involves trying to recall players who were earmarked as future Premier League stars and fell hilariously short. There was a balletic Manchester City midfielder – I can’t remember his name – who was slated as a future England captain, only to be photographed by fans eating a takeaway a few years later, bloated and out of work. You can play the same game with this year’s presidential election. Diplomats posted to the US make it their business to work out which big beasts of American politics are most likely to become president years in the future, like football pundits predicting England teams but with slightly more riding

Donald Trump wins the war of words against Barack Obama

Donald Trump doesn’t seem the forgiving type, so it’s no surprise he hasn’t let Barack Obama’s comments yesterday stand. Obama said Trump was ‘unfit’ to be President – so what did the Republican candidate have to say in response? He answered in the only way he knows how, by flinging mud back at the person who called him out. Here’s what he said: ‘Well he’s a terrible President, he’ll probably go down as the worst President in the history of our country. He’s been a total disaster, you look at what’s happened to the Middle East, what’s happened to Syria and his ‘line in the sand’.’ It’s unlikely Obama will

Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton is the devil

Those who follow Donald Trump on Twitter will be well accustomed to him prefixing every mention of Hillary with the word ‘crooked’. But whilst Trump has frequently tried to discredit Clinton by painting her as a liar he has never gone so far as to call her the devil. Until now that it. During a speech last night he suggested that in backing Hillary, Bernie Sanders had made a Faustian pact. Trump said of Hillary: ‘She’s the devil. He’s made a deal with the devil. It’s true’ It’s tempting to say that Trump really has crossed the line this time around. But then the wild applause which greeted his remark at the Republican

There’s nothing ‘anti-establishment’ about this US election

This year’s US presidential election campaign has broken the mould, apparently. Never before have two ‘anti-establishment’ candidates in the shape of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders put up such a challenge, one securing his party’s nomination and the other coming close to doing so. It is all a symptom of the ‘anti-politics’ mood that has swept Western democracies. There is just one thing wrong with this analysis. If Americans are so fed up with the established parties, why is there no credible third party candidate who is going to come within an ace of challenging the two main candidates? It ought to be a golden opportunity for outsiders. Not only

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator Podcast: Summer of terror | 30 July 2016

After a week where both Germany and France suffered terror attacks, the question of the relationship between Islamic terrorism and Europe’s refugee crisis is once again rearing its head. In his Spectator cover piece, Douglas Murray argues that whilst the public knows that ‘Islamism comes from Islam’, Europe’s political classes are still refusing to tackle the problem at its core. So how can we bridge this gap between what politicians are saying and what the public are thinking? And does Europe have to come to terms with a new reality of domestic terrorism? On this week’s podcast, Douglas Murray speaks to Lara Prendergast. Joining them both to discuss Europe’s summer of

The anti-Clinton protest dwarfed the anti-Trump one. What does that tell us?

There are certain things about political conventions you only notice when you are watching on TV – like Bill Clinton seeming to fall asleep momentarily during his wife’s speech last night. And there are things you only notice when you go along to conventions and spend your afternoons out on the street, under the hot sun, waiting for something to happen. Any of the journalists working in Cleveland and Philadelphia in the past fortnight had a curious thing to relate: lots of things happened on the streets of Philly, and almost nothing happened in Ohio. Before we leave behind the conventions and head into three months of stage-managed swing state rallies, it’s worth asking

Tom Goodenough

Hillary Clinton says ‘Love trumps hate’. But will that message win her the White House?

One of Hillary Clinton’s biggest problems when she took to the stage last night was who had come before her: Barack Obama gave a belting speech at the Democrat convention, which Freddy Gray said was like a band playing back some of their old hits. The audience lapped it up. And her husband Bill’s number also went down well as he showed off some of his famous charm with his potted biography of Hillary & Bill: The love story. So Hillary was in danger of being upstaged before she even took to the stage. But whilst the Democrat nominee’s speech might not have the fiery rhetoric of the man she

Barack Obama: the great unity president who divided a nation

Hillary Clinton can count herself lucky to have Barack Obama cheerleading her bid for the presidency. The outgoing President is ending his time in power with high approval ratings. People still approve of him after all these years; like Hillary’s husband Bill, Barack’s presidency is ending on a high. And last night, at the Democratic Convention in Phili, he gave an absolute belter of speech supporting her claim to the White House. It was the speech progressives have been aching to hear. Mr Obama addressed the American people directly, when he said: ‘Time and again, you’ve picked me up. I hope, sometimes, I picked you up, too. Tonight, I ask you

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator Podcast: Summer of terror

In a week in which both Germany and France have suffered terror attacks, the question of the relationship between Islamic terrorism and Europe’s refugee crisis is once again rearing its head. In his Spectator cover piece, Douglas Murray argues that whilst the public knows that ‘Islamism comes from Islam’, Europe’s political classes are still refusing to tackle the problem at its core. So how can we bridge this gap between what politicians are saying and what the public are thinking? And does Europe have to come to terms with a new reality of domestic terrorism? On this week’s podcast, Douglas Murray speaks to Lara Prendergast. Joining them both to discuss

Nick Cohen

Enemies of history

At the start of the 21st century, no one felt the need to reach for studies of ‘third-period’ communism to understand British and American politics. By 2016, I would say that they have become essential. Admittedly, connoisseurs of the communist movement’s crimes have always thought that 1928 was a vintage year. The Soviet Union had decided that the first period after the glorious Russian revolution of 1917 had been succeeded by a second period, when the West fought back. But now, comrades, yes, now in the historic year of 1928, Stalin had ruled that we were entering a ‘third period’ when capitalism would die in its final crisis. As the

Who does Bernie Sanders think he is?

You have to admire Bernie Sanders’s chutzpah. For almost the entirety of his over 40-year career in politics, Sanders pointedly abstained from joining the Democratic Party. He is a ‘democratic socialist’, officially registered as an independent, and has never been elected to office as a Democrat, seeing that party as insufficiently collectivist. Sanders only affiliated himself with the Democrats last year, solely for the purpose of trying to capture the party’s presidential nomination. Now that he’s lost that battle, he will return to the Senate as an independent. Given how Sanders has shown absolutely no loyalty to the Democratic Party – indeed, he has run against, and defeated, Democrats at the

Tom Goodenough

Bill Clinton tries to solve Hillary’s inauthenticity problem. Did it work?

So there we have it: Bill has backed his ‘best friend’ and wife Hillary Clinton for President. That he would do so was never in doubt, of course, but the words he used are what matters. He started his yarn with a tale of courtship: ‘In the year of 1971, I met a girl’. Bill went on to talk of how he first wooed his wife by following her around and started ‘something I couldn’t stop’. But this wasn’t a speech about the former President’s dating techniques. Instead, Bill was trying to reveal the answer to a somewhat less exciting if not frequently discussed question: who is the real Hillary?

Why Hillary Clinton’s mix of celebrities and politics could backfire

Politicians, it seems, aren’t so dissimilar from the rest of us in their obsession with celebrities. Indeed, not even Hillary Clinton can resist the allure of Snoop Dogg, who’s set to perform at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this week. Forget the Oscars, this event has become the hot ticket for the A listers. Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry will be just some of the stars gracing the blue carpet; trying to convince others that Clinton is both cool and credible. Clinton has even welcomed Sanders supporters into her club, with comedian Sarah Silverman taking to the stage on Tuesday to tell others: Bernie’s the past, Hillary’s

Bernie Sanders backs Hillary but not all Democrats are happy about it

So after the glorious disunity of the Republican convention, now is the chance for the Democrats to pull together and show their rivals what unity is all about. If only. As with so much of politics at the moment, the script is there to be broken and that much was clear when Bernie Sanders was booed as he endorsed his one-time rival Hillary Clinton. To be fair to Sanders, he did try his best to throw his weight behind Hillary. ‘Hillary, Hillary, Hillary,’ was the chorus of his speech which was intended to draw a line under a fractious primary campaign – and unlike Ted Cruz he could at least

Donald Trump sets out his dark vision of America and explains why he is the saviour

Well, no-one could accuse Donald Trump of pinching his speech from an Obama. Over an hour-and-a-quarter on Thursday night he set out a dark vision of a crime-ridden America crumbling from neglect, and where decent people live in fear of immigrants and corrupt politicians. And he accepted the Republican nomination in much the same way that he won it, with anger and contempt for his opponents. Above all it was a speech based on fear. It offered Trump as the saviour, the one man who could save the country. These were the main takeaways: 1. Trump is angry. He dialled it all up to ten in the first few minutes

Freddy Gray

Be afraid: Donald Trump’s speech could win him the White House

Donald Trump’s speech tonight was not exactly poetry, but it was clear and surprisingly coherent. It was also clever, sort of. And it might just help him win the election in November. People find it disturbing, but Trump’s anti-globalism, America First and law-and order-focus plays very well in America in 2016. Americans are less and less interested in hearing platitudes about ‘freedom’ these days; they want to hear banalities about law and order instead. Because they are more worried about civil breakdown and their economic security than anything else. Freddy Gray and Scott McConnell discuss the American tragedy with Isabel Hardman: After the text leaked a few hours before the

How ‘Hillary for prison’ went mainstream

If there’s one slogan that encapsulates what is happening at the Republican convention in Cleveland it is not any of the official ones. Not Donald Trump’s ‘Make America great again’ or his ‘America First’ line with its awkward echoes of American fascists through the ages. Instead it is the one emblazoned on thousands of T-shirts worn inside the convention centre or flogged on every street corner. ‘Hillary for prison 2016’ has become the theme of the Grand Old Party’s summer gathering in Cleveland, the one unifying force as party officials try to bring Republicans together around their most divisive candidate in generations. Freddy Gray and Scott McConnell discuss the American tragedy

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: The American tragedy

When Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign just over a year ago, few expected him to make it so far. Yet this week’s Republican Convention in Ohio sees Trump’s coronation as the party’s presidential nominee. Freddy Gray, deputy editor of the Spectator, is there this week, and he writes in the magazine about how ‘The Donald’ is making America crazy again. Freddy says that though Trump promises to Make America Great Again, the reality is that he’s Making America Madder Than Ever. On this week’s Spectator Podcast, Freddy is joined by Scott McConnell, the founding editor of the American Conservative, and Isabel Hardman to discuss this dramatic time in American

Ted Cruz fails to follow the script as he crashes Trump’s coronation

American political conventions are supposed to be coronations. They are meant to be choreographed and scripted arrangements to ensure that aspiring presidents can be exhibited on prime time TV to their full advantage. Dull. Nothing about this election season has been routine. And this week in Cleveland has been the craziest of the year so far. Not in the streets around the Quicken Loans Arena, where the doom mongers warned of violent clashes between protesters and supporters of Donald Trump. Instead the drama is playing out day after day inside the convention, which has been remade in the image of its divisive candidate. Last night was supposed to be Mike