No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get away from writing about Donald Trump.
Heaven knows, I try. I would rather write about almost anything else than the vacuous antics of this narcissistic buffoon. But the man just keeps hogging the headlines, for all the wrong reasons, and saying things that demand some kind of response or analysis.
He bestrides the world like a midget, and loves every moment.
One day he’s in Brussels excoriating European leaders over their contributions to the NATO budget and threatening to pull the United States out, the next he’s in London telling the Prime Minister she’s doing a lousy job and should have listened to his advice on Brexit, in the process praising one of her party rivals Boris Johnson as a potentially fine candidate for her post.
And then he’s off to Finland cuddling up to the distinctly uncuddly Vladimir Putin and, while standing next to him, telling the world that the American intelligence agencies have got it all wrong on Russian election hacking. “Putin says it’s not Russia,” Trump announces, beaming across at his ‘new friend’, adding, “I don’t see any reason why it should be”.
Well, if you don’t see it Mr. Trump, then perhaps you ought to open the Oval Office drapes.
Trump’s behaviour is too extraordinary for words. The stream of pejorative adjectives is fast drying up. So often have they been used and re-used that the Thesaurus is starting to fall apart from overuse.
The man is all over the place, and I don’t mean geographically. He makes no sense wherever he is on the planet, or on whatever subject is at hand. Clearly, he has no idea what he’s doing on the world stage, and doesn’t bother to find out before swaggering down the gangway of Air Force One in the manner of some kind of triumphant liberator.
This is a man – note that I refrain from writing statesman – who attacks his allies in the most insulting way possible, usually in their own country, and praises his foes in the most endearing terms. In this, as in most other things, he has got it the wrong way round. He will say that friends can talk like that to each other precisely because they are friends. Those friends, by all counts, don’t see it that way.
He commits a social faux pas every time he appears in public, from brushing dandruff off Emmanuel Macron’s shoulder to pushing his way in front of the Queen at a parade inspection. He is a man of staggering ignorance and devoid of any charm that might at least go some way to compensate for it.
He is widely despised and ridiculed by world leaders – whatever they might say wearing a rictus smile at joint press conferences – and he is an embarrassment to his country. He could also, should extreme circumstances arise, pose a real danger to it.
The so-called ‘forgotten’ Americans apparently love his uncouth belligerence. Trump’s electoral support is holding, I understand, and may even be rising. If true, that says more about them than it does about him. An idiot in the White House may be regarded as an aberration. That millions of voters put him there requires a more complex explanation.
He will, almost beyond doubt, run for a second term. He will probably, almost beyond reason, win it.
Now, I renew my pledge: no more about Trump for the rest of the month.
What are my chances of keeping it, do you think?
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