Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator

Donald Trump’s mad Twitter diplomacy is starting to work

From our UK edition

Say this for Donald Trump — if he does bring on nuclear apocalypse, at least he made it funny. Every amateur Freudian with a media platform is now dissecting his latest ‘mine is bigger than yours’ exchange with Kim Jong-Un, perhaps not realising that the joke is on them. Here is what Trump tweeted: It may

President Donald Trump’s tax cut is the first big win of his presidency

From our UK edition

At last, at last, President Donald J Trump has a big win. After the humiliating failure of his attempt to re-re-reform American healthcare, he has now passed his enormous $1.5 trillion tax overhaul through Congress. It is his first significant legislative accomplishment and it is, as he would say, yuge. The Republican splits that emerged

The Democrat victory in Alabama is a huge blow for Trump

These really are wild times in American politics. A Democrat, Doug Jones, just won the Senate Race in Alabama. A Democrat hasn’t won a Senate seat in the Heart of Dixie since 1992 – and that was Richard Shelby, who was so conservative he then became a Republican, and still is the senior GOP Senator

Donald Trump gives Israel a Hanukkah present to remember

From our UK edition

It’s Hanukkah next week, and President Donald J Trump has decided to give the state of Israel a big present. He will today recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and it is understood that America will shortly move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the Holy City.  This is something that Israeli diplomats have long hoped

Donald Trump’s tax cut has united the Republicans

From our UK edition

President Donald J Trump likes nothing better than winning, and he has just had the first major legislative win of his presidency. An enormous $1.4 trillion tax cut has now been passed by the Senate. No Democrat voted for the bill, yet still it passed by 51 to 49 votes. This avoided the anticipated legislative

By sharing jihadi porn, Donald Trump plays into the Islamists’ hands

From our UK edition

Britain First hasn’t really taken off as a political movement in Britain, but it has caught the attention of the most powerful man on the planet. Today President Donald J Trump decided to brighten his and everyone else’s morning by retweeting three videos, posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, purporting to

Trump’s reach

From our UK edition

It’s been a miserable two weeks for our Foreign Secretary. Not only did Boris Johnson trip up over the British woman held in Iran; not only did he find himself accused of puppeteering Theresa May to further his and Michael Gove’s Brexit ambitions; he also committed the most grievous PR sin any politician can commit:

How will Trump react to the Las Vegas attack?

President Donald J Trump, the man who never sleeps, hasn’t woken up to the awful news from Las Vegas. Or at least he hasn’t yet gone on to Twitter to rave at the world, as he normally does after any terrorist attack or incident of mass violence. No doubt he will any moment. Until he

In defence of Jacob Rees-Mogg

From our UK edition

The art of Jacob Rees-Mogg is to be preposterous and sincere at the same time. It’s the reason why he is increasingly popular. It explains Moggmania. It’s also why people are now beginning to take him seriously as a Tory leadership contender; why he is topping the polls for that job. It helps that he is

Trump’s Arizona speech gave his fans what they wanted: Trumpism

From our UK edition

Ignore the usual bleating about Trump having ‘lost control’ and not being ‘fit’ for the presidency following his attention-grabbing speech in Arizona. Trump has never been fit for the presidency, if we accept that ‘fitness’ for high office means anything at all. His political career has never really been controlled by anything other than wild

Is Donald Trump now at war with Trumpism?

From our UK edition

Ding dong Steve Bannon is gone – and all the liberal world order is cock-a-hoop. As Democrat congressman Tim Ryan said, ‘Good. He had no business being there to begin with.’ Or as Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. put it, ‘Steve Bannon should have never been a White House official.’ Maybe it is a good thing that

Mueller’s grand jury could bring down Trump’s presidency

From our UK edition

Donald Trump has a yuge problem in special prosecutor Robert Swan Mueller III. The American president’s anger at having this legal thorn in his administration’s side explains much of his recent erratic behaviour, as Daniel McCarthy explained in the magazine this week. Now we learn that Mueller is using a grand jury – a group

Anthony Scaramucci will keep us entertained all summer

From our UK edition

Give it to the scriptwriters of the epic comedy that is The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, they know how to keep an audience going. The blockbuster farce starring Donald J Trump – ‘the greatest show on earth’, even to its harshest critics – had begun to tire a little, of late. The

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

From our UK edition

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

For all the Trump-Putin hysteria, Russia-US relations are as frosty as ever

From our UK edition

What fun the internet is having now that Vladimir Putin has finally met Donald Trump. Social media is teeming with jokes, gifs, and memes about the two big dawgs of global politics finally coming together. It’s the great bromance of the populist age.  Underneath the hilarity, however, there remains intense suspicions about the relationship between