Donald trump

Friday

Katy Balls

Donald Trump becomes No 10’s nightmare guest

Oh dear. After some incendiary comments earlier in the week, Donald Trump has delivered a sucker punch towards Theresa May and her Brexit plan. As the Prime Minister pulled out all the stops for the US President with a black tie dinner at Blenheim Palace, the Sun published its front page – in which Trump declares that May has 'ruined' Brexit and the US/UK deal is off. https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1017522456523956224 The US president goes on to add insult to injury by saying May's rival Boris Johnson would make a great Prime Minister. As for that deal, he says: 'If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal.' Trump's bad manners have made Theresa May's bad week even worse.

Thursday

The Spectator

Disruptor-in-chief

It is appropriate that the 45th President of the United States has come to Britain this week on a working visit rather than the state visit that was originally intended by Theresa May. Donald Trump’s habit of expressing his frank and impolite thoughts through early morning tweets is undiplomatic and demeaning to his office. It is hard to imagine another leader of a western democracy taking the opportunity to undermine a Prime Minister shortly before arriving in Britain, as Trump did this week by describing the country as being ‘in turmoil’. He then appeared to take sides with Boris Johnson just after the former foreign secretary had resigned in protest at Mrs May’s attempt to unite the cabinet on a shared vision of Brexit.

Helena Morrissey

Diary – 12 July 2018

Well, we did it. No, not Brexit, the World Cup or my (somewhat less) ambitious scheme at Legal & General to interest the nation in investing. Not yet at least. But we did reach the end of term — and the end of the school year. With three out of our nine children leaving their respective schools, my husband, Richard, and I have been staggering towards the finish line, with the usual sports days and summer concerts interspersed with leavers’ picnics, drinks, dinners and cricket days, all of course held in uncharacteristically glorious sunshine. On occasion we had to draft in the cavalry: one daughter took my place at the mothers-and-sons tennis tournament (a welcome substitute for the son in question, since she can actually play).

Steerpike

Trump protests: Ash Sarkar vs Piers Morgan – ‘I’m a communist, you idiot!’

As the protesters gather for President Trump's impending visit to the UK, a debate is going on over whether it's all got a bit too much. Given that the US president managed to visit Emmanuel Macron in France with little hoo-ha, are some Brits overreacting over this instance of international diplomacy? That was the topic of conversation at least on the Good Morning Britain this morning. In an interview, Piers Morgan accused Ash Sarkar – the left-wing blogger – of hypocrisy for protesting Trump's visit over his policy of splitting families on the Mexican border when she hadn't done the same for her 'hero' Obama's previous visit over his own border policy. Only there was one problem – Sarkar isn't an Obama fan, she 's a 'communist – you idiot!': https://twitter.

Paul Levy

Trump Notebook | 12 July 2018

For more than 40 years we’ve lived in a beautiful, listed, Cotswold stone, Stonesfield slate-roofed farmhouse in Oxfordshire. The trouble is it’s an ex-Blenheim house, within earshot of the palace, and the current duke is having Potus — that unlovely acronym for ‘President of the United States’ — to dinner. Locals are muttering about this World Heritage Site being used to fete a pantomime villain. On Thursday we’re invited to a friend’s 70th birthday party at the Athenaeum, and there’s also a press night at the National Theatre. I wonder whether we’ll be able to manage either of these, as our village is almost certain to be in lockdown then.

Tuesday

Katy Balls

President Trump: UK is in turmoil, Boris is my friend

Theresa May's bad week just got worse. After two Cabinet Brexiteers – David Davis and Boris Johnson – resigned on Monday, the Prime Minister attempted today to suggest it was business as usual tweeting of a 'productive Cabinet meeting this morning - looking ahead to a busy week'. However, right on cue, President Trump has arrived on the scene to enter some drama. Ahead of the US president's working visit on Friday, Trump has been commenting on the UK political situation which, by the way, is in 'turmoil'. The part that will particularly concern No 10 is not Trump suggesting his trip to Helsinki to see Putin will be easier than the UK one. Instead, it's Trump's comments on the former Foreign Secretary.

Thursday

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: 190th birthday

Happy birthday to the Spectator. This week, we’re celebrating our 190th birthday. Lara Prendergast takes a walk down memory lane with three editors of the Spectator, past and present. But before that, it’s the podcast as usual. This week, we’re asking - do anti-Trump protests achieve anything other than virtue signalling? And are driverless cars on a road to nowhere? Donald Trump is soon to visit the UK, and after two false alarms, this time, it will actually happen. Next Friday, Trump will be welcomed by May in London and greeted with major protests. There is a carnival of resistance organised, with special guests such as Lily Allen and a giant inflatable blimp of Trump in a nappy.

James Delingpole

The great escape

Even though I don’t watch much football I love the World Cup because it’s my passport to total freedom. I can nip off to the pub, slob indoors on a sunny Sunday afternoon, leave supper before we’ve finished eating, let alone before the dishes are done. And where normally that kind of behaviour would at the very least get me a dirty look, during World Cup season it actually gets me brownie points. Why? Because it’s a sign that I’m being a Good Dad. It worked in the old days with the Rat. And now it works with Boy. Mothers are absolutely potty for their sons and will look fondly on any activity that makes them content.

Thursday

Tim Marshall

The return of walls

What kind of a president would build a wall to keep out families dreaming of a better life? It’s a question that has been asked world over, especially after the outrage last week over migrant children at the American border. Donald Trump’s argument, one which his supporters agree with, is that the need to split parents from children at the border strengthens his case for a hardline immigration policy. Failure to patrol the border, he says, encourages tens of thousands to cross it illegally — with heartbreaking results. His opponents think he is guilty, and that his wall is a symbol of America closing in on itself. In fact, building a wall would make Trump the norm, not the exception.

James Walton

Coming up Trumps

Back when his country was controlled by the USSR, the Czech writer Milan Kundera pointed out that ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ was ‘four words, four lies’. It’s a strike rate that even the current US president has yet to match. Nonetheless, at one stage in Reporting Trump’s First Year: The Fourth Estate (BBC2, Sunday) we did see him pull off an impressive three-sentences, three-lies sequence in a speech about — inevitably — the mainstream media, including the New York Times. ‘They have no “sources”,’ said Trump baldly. ‘They just make ’em up. They are the enemy of the people.

Thursday

Taki

High life | 21 June 2018

New York I write this on my last day in the Bagel, and it sure is a scorcher, heat and humidity so high that the professional beggars on Fifth Avenue have moved closer to the lakes in Central Park. Heat usually calms the passions, but nowadays groupthink pundits are so busy presenting fake news as journalism you’d think this was election week in November. Here’s one jerk in the New York Times: ‘The court’s decision was narrow…’ The decision in question is the Supreme Court ruling that a baker could refuse a gay couple’s request for a cake on religious grounds. The writer who described the result as narrow, one Adam Liptak (Lipgloss would be more appropriate), did not mention that the vote was seven to two. Talk about fake news.

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: the Diversity Trap

In recent days, Lionel Shriver has been in trouble. Her criticism of the publishing industry’s diversity drive has led to her marked as a racist and even dropped from a literary judging panel. She argued that ethnic quotas harm rather than help diversity - is she wrong? As Robert Mueller’s investigation continues, several dodgy links to Britain have surfaced that could bring down Trump. And last, in the age of MeToo, is sex becoming sexier? Find out at this week's Spectator Podcast. Do quotas help or hinder racial equality? That’s the big question we’ve been asking at the Spectator recently. Since we published Lionel Shriver’s critique of Penguin Random House’s diversity drive, she has been labelled a racist and even dropped from a literary panels.

Freddy Gray

Trump is ‘vice-signalling’ over immigration – and it’s going to work

The stories are filed, the pictures are posted, and the media verdict is almost unanimous: separating children from their parents is wrong, it is unAmerican, and President Donald Trump is going to suffer for it. His administration is baby-snatching. The ‘optics’ are terrible, say the hyperventilating PR men and Washington know-alls. But if everybody stops to breathe for a moment, they should stop to recognise that, on this issue, as on so much else, Donald Trump is winning the politics. Call it vice-signalling. The President and Kirstjen Nielsen are making clear that, even if it means being seen to be inhuman, they are taking voter concerns about massive immigration seriously.

Katrina Gulliver

When voters lose faith

If social media manipulation has influenced elections, and dark money has influenced our elected representatives, then we are already on the road to unfreedom, as Timothy Snyder, the well-known historian of Russia, argues in his new book. He sees threats to democracy in Europe and America as following the Russian model of oligarchic takeover: ‘The stabilisation of massive inequality, the displacement of policy by propaganda, the shift from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity.’ Snyder focuses on the Ukrainian crisis, noting how this conflict became a theatre of cultural memory: during the Russian invasion it was once again 1941, the enemies were Nazis, and tanks were even painted with slogans such as ‘For Stalin’.

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 14 June 2018

‘Trudeau or Trump?’ was a choice which Theresa May, with unusually ready wit, evaded in Parliament on Monday. No doubt I am in a minority, but I feel that, of the two, Mr Trudeau — the G7 host at La Malbaie — is the more absurd figure on the world stage, being just as vain as the President and far more pointless (if you doubt me, compare the two men’s tweets). In the same parliamentary statement, Sir Vince Cable asked ‘What is the point of the G7?’ It is part of President Trump’s subversive skill that his actions prompt people to ask such questions.

John Redwood

Since Trump became President, US share markets have performed well. We need to understand why

Some say that Mr Trump’s behaviour at the G7 meeting last week-end showed contempt for the international rules-based system that many people in financial markets and the media admire. It is true that Mr Trump complained Russia was not present, inserted special prose about his energy and tariff policies and decided he did not agree with the communique after it had been issued. He showed he thought going off to his bilateral meeting with the North Korean dictator was more important than the very general conclusions of the G7 summit. The G7 official statement ranged widely over world economies and affairs but lacks clout if the USA does not agree with it.

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: Next up, Nato

In the last few days, world order seems to have been turned on its head as Trump antagonised his western allies at the G7 Summit, and then shook the hand of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. We ask, how will Trump treat his allies in the July Nato summit? We also talk to Peter Hitchens and Paul Mason about Marxism in the modern day – are there any left in Britain? And last, what is it like to be homeless in London? Over the weekend, the G7 Summit ended in a worse way than anyone could have predicted. As soon as he left, Trump tweeted harsh criticism of Justin Trudeau, and bashed Germany’s commitment to Nato.

Freddy Gray

Donald Trump’s real-estate politik is working

Barack Obama tried to be the first Pacific President. He attempted to pivot America's grand strategy eastwards in order to adapt to a changing world. He failed, by and large. After his meeting with Kim Jong-un today, Donald Trump has shown that he is moving further east. In fact, Trump could be turning into the first truly Global President. No doubt that sentence sounds ridiculous. Trump is an ‘American First’ nationalist who believes in tariffs and borders; he stands for everything we’ve been told globalisation isn’t. But there is a difference between globalisation as a supranational faith in the free-market; and globalisation as a process that is actually happening.

Sunday

Steerpike

Caption contest: Trump vs G6

Happily for Theresa May, the main news from the G7 conference wasn't that President Trump failed to mention her in his G7 'friends' list. Instead, the fireworks arrived after the president left and he struck out alone. Some choice comments from Justin Trudeau on trade saw Trump see red and pull out of a previously agreed summit communique – leaving only a G6 in unison on trade. But it's this photo that sums up the event best: https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1005499444614369280 Captions in the comments.

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 June 2018

Home A third runway at Heathrow Airport was approved by the cabinet; £2.6 billion was earmarked for compensation and soundproofing. Northern Rail brought in a temporary timetable that removed 165 train services a day until 29 July, but scores more trains were still cancelled; all trains to the Lake District were cancelled for a fortnight. Thameslink and Southern also wallowed in incapacity. Petrol prices rose by a record monthly sum of 6p in May to an average of 132.3p a litre. The government reduced its holding in the Royal Bank of Scotland from 70.1 to 62.4 per cent, losing £2.1 billion on selling the shares which it bought to save the bank in 2008. The Visa payment system failed for several hours and four days later Tesco Bank’s online services failed for hours.