Donald trump

Tuesday

Daniel DePetris

How coronavirus is changing America

From our UK edition

The coronavirus is altering American life as we have never seen before. New York City’s restaurants and bars can now only offer take-out and delivery service. Night clubs, movie theatres, and gyms in Los Angeles are closed until further notice. The same orders are being issued by the authorities in Chicago and Washington, DC. The Centers for Disease Control have recommended Americans cancel any social gatherings of more than 50 people over the next eight weeks, a measure that will hit social butterflies across the nation hard. Dr Anthony Fauci, a leading authority on infectious diseases and a member of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, would like far more self-isolation from individuals than he’s seeing to date.

Saturday

Emma Smith

America’s love-hate relationship with Shakespeare

From our UK edition

Shakespeare’s single explicit reference to America is found in The Comedy of Errors. The two Dromios are anatomising the unseen ‘kitchen wench’ Nell, who is ‘spherical, like a globe’: ‘I could find out countries in her,’ says one Syracusan brother. ‘Where America?’ asks his twin. The reply, ‘O, sir, upon her nose, all o’erembellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires’, embodies early colonial fantasies about the famed riches of El Dorado.The first record of a Shakespeare text in America comes a century later, and the first known production — an amateur run of Romeo and Juliet in the Revenge Meeting House, New York — three decades after that.

John R. Bradley

Crude tactics: Russia and Saudi Arabia are at war over oil prices

From our UK edition

It all started at what every-one thought would be a routine meeting between Opec and non-Opec nations in Vienna. There were the usual fake smiles and firm handshakes in front of the cameras from the dignitaries. Bored journalists roused themselves to prepare to write stories they expected never to be read, before they could at last head to the pub. And then, out of nowhere, came a bombshell. Downward pressure on oil prices from the coronavirus panic was posing an obvious risk to Saudi Arabia’s still heavily oil-dependent economy. And this is what a cartel like Opec is for: to agree to release less oil into the market, pushing the price back up. A Saudi-led motion proposed a cut of 1.5 million barrels per day. To everyone’s shock, Russia rejected this outright.

Saturday

Ross Clark

Donald Trump’s ‘hunch’ about coronavirus is likely correct

From our UK edition

Donald Trump is in the soup again, this time for appearing to reject the World Health Organisation’s estimate for the death rate from coronavirus (Covid-19): 3.4 per cent. 'I think the 3.4 per cent is really a false number,' he said on Thursday before adding that he had a ‘hunch’ that the real death rate is less than one per cent. Twitter, needless to say, immediately went into meltdown, the most polite response was to call him ‘irresponsible’. Trump is not quite the person I would call upon for insight into matters relating to virology. He does, of course, have a reputation for shooting from the hip, yet his reasoning on this is more sound than many of his critics would admit. Indeed, the WHO itself was at pains to stress that it’s 3.

Wednesday

Daniel McCarthy

Could Joe Biden be the Hillary Clinton of 2020?

From our UK edition

The 2020 struggle for the White House is shaping up to look a lot like the 2016 contest. Once more the Democratic field is narrowing to Bernie Sanders and an establishment Democrat who lays claim to Barack Obama’s legacy—this time Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, rather than his first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. And now, as before, the establishment looks to have the edge, though not as much of an edge as last time. Sanders is far from beaten and the prospect of a contested convention still looms. Democrats should stop to think for a minute, however, about what a rematch in the primaries might mean for a rematch in the general election. Clinton, the establishment Democrat, vanquished Bernie in 2016 only to lose to Trump that November.

Saturday

Freddy Gray

The best news for Bernie is that his rivals are so weak

From our UK edition

‘Bernie beats Trump! Bernie beats Trump!’ That’s what Bernie Sanders’s fans keep chanting, and they have the polls to prove it. Survey after survey suggests that, of all the leading candidates for the Democratic party’s nomination, Sanders is most likely to defeat Donald Trump in the election in November. Voters like Bernie. Some 46 per cent of voters say they admire him. Only 26 per cent say the same of President Trump. Still, most political experts think Sanders will be a disaster for the Democratic party. He may be popular with the base, they say, but he is far too left-wing for the general electorate: 2020 would be a repeat of 1972, when the radical leftie George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide.

Saturday

Freddy Gray

Battle of the billionaires: Trump vs Bloomberg could be the nastiest election ever

From our UK edition

‘There are two things that are important in politics,’ said Mark Hanna, the American senator, in 1895. ‘The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.’ In 2020, Hanna’s maxim could be updated: the second thing is being an old white guy from New York. The presidential election is 36 weeks away and it looks as if the winner will be one of three men. There’s the Manhattan billionaire incumbent, Donald Trump, 73, whose fortune is estimated at $3 billion (he claims eight). There’s the socialist outsider from Brooklyn, Bernie Sanders, who is 78 and worth $2.5 million. And last but not least is 78-year-old Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the richest fruit in the Big Apple, weighing in at a whopping $64 billion. Money, money, money.

Saturday

Peter Jones

Ancient Athens would have been horrified by Trump’s impeachment

From our UK edition

An impeachment trial is overseen by Congress and Senate, who both make the law and (in this case) sit in judgment on it, ignoring the modern legal principle of the separation of powers. Athenians would have been shocked, not because they believed in the separation of powers (their citizens too made the law in assembly and sat in judgment in the law courts) but because in democratic Athens it was citizens that decided verdicts, and in randomly selected and therefore unpredictable juries. By contrast, two elected oligarchic cabals decide impeachment trials, usually making acquittal a foregone conclusion. Athenians would have been appalled: what was even remotely democratic about that? Statistics make the point about Athenian citizen control over the performance of their leaders.

Saturday

Matthew Goodwin

The death of populism has been greatly exaggerated

From our UK edition

Have we reached peak populism? This is the question being asked after a recent regional election in Italy delivered a setback to Matteo Salvini, the de facto head of Europe’s populist family. In the affluent and historically left-wing region of Emilia Romagna, Salvini’s right-wing alliance finished more than seven points behind the Left. It wasn’t even close. It is not a surprise that some have breathed a sigh of relief. For much of the past three years, Salvini has seemed unstoppable. While the 46-year-old has miscalculated – like last summer when he tried but failed to bring down the government – he has transformed his 'Lega' movement from a small northern separatist party into a serious national force. He has swept south and into first place in the polls.

Thursday

Conrad Black

Of course president Trump was acquitted

From our UK edition

The impeachment of President Trump was unfounded in law and in fact and was never anything but a smear-job organised by the Democratic House intelligence chairman (Adam Schiff) with a pretend whistleblower. Trump asked the president of Ukraine for the facts about the association of former vice president Biden and his son’s activities in Ukraine, not a condemnation; that was not inappropriate. president Zelensky has said there was no pressure, the investigation seems not to have occurred, and the assistance to Ukraine was sent within legislated deadlines.

Wednesday

Daniel DePetris

Trump’s State of the Union was a perfect chance to gloat at Democrats

From our UK edition

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address began with a snub to Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she extended her hand across the dais for the customary greeting. It ended with a visibly annoyed Pelosi ripping the copy of her speech and slamming it down on the table. And those were the boring parts of the event. Trump, the reality television expert, turned the hour-and-a-half long address into, well, a reality show. He gave a young schoolgirl a scholarship, surprised conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh with the presidential medal of freedom, and shocked a wife and her two children when her military-clad husband emerged from the darkness and hugged her warmly after getting back from his last deployment.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Bloomberg wins the Iowa caucus – by not being in the race

From our UK edition

It would be sad if it wasn’t quite so funny. In the race to declare success without knowing the result of the Iowa caucuses, Pete Buttigieg is the winner. But then, as campaigns prepare to release their own data, in lieu of any official results, the real victors are confusion, Donald Trump, and Michael Bloomberg. ‘Quality checks’, ‘inconsistencies’ and ‘technical difficulties’ are the theme of the night. People are already saying that ‘caucuses’ are clearly now outdated and must be abandoned, but the problem seems to be the toxic combination of old electoral practices, half-thought through reforms, and bad new technology. Trump is already crowing on Twitter.

Daniel DePetris

The Democrats’ Iowa shambles is a delight for Donald Trump

From our UK edition

Voters in Iowa lined up in high-school gymnasiums across the state last night to prepare for a long few hours of caucusing. But nobody predicted the process would stretch late into the night without a single vote having been certified by the Iowa Democratic party. By midnight, the rival campaigns were flummoxed, unable to officially declare victory but nonetheless determined to spin the night in glowing terms. Caucuses can be chaotic. But the events last night were nothing short of bedlam. Rumour has it that national frontrunner Joe Biden had a terrible showing, but that didn’t stop the former vice president from rallying the troops and pretending everything was OK. Mayor Pete Buttigieg declared himself the winner, a pronouncement that came as news to every other candidate.

Friday

Leon Hadar

Critics are wrong to scoff at Trump’s Israel-Palestine deal

From our UK edition

‘In business, when I have a tough deal, people would say, “This is tougher than the Israelis and the Palestinians,”’ said President Donald Trump as he unveiled his long-awaited Middle East plan, the so-called Deal of the Century, during a White House ceremony on Tuesday. The comment, ad-libbed, not only demonstrated that the former real-estate tycoon does have a sense of humour. It suggested that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, President Trump is ready to do business when it comes to peace in the Holy Land. 'Actually, there’s nothing tougher than this one but we have to get it done,' he added. 'We have an obligation to humanity to get it done.

Monday

Bruce Anderson

Bloomberg is the only Democrat who can take on Trump

From our UK edition

To paraphrase Shakespeare, the whirligig of time brings in... more whirligigs. Four years ago, few people thought that Donald Trump had a real prospect of becoming President of the United States. There were suggestions that Mr Trump himself did not take his chances too seriously. He might have seen the campaign as a way of boosting his ego as well as obtaining free advertising for his hotels and other business ventures; he did not spend much of his own money. Then, stuff happened - in particular, Hillary Clinton. Mrs Clinton is able. She is experienced. There is only one problem. She is dislikeable. Moreover, she and her family give sleaze a bad name. She also creates the impression that she is not at ease in large parts of her own country.

Thursday

Taki

The Middle East for dummies

From our UK edition

Gstaad   The French have a saying: ‘Il n’y a rien de plus bête que le sourire du gagnant.’ In other words, gloating is for dummies. Hence I won’t be doing it, despite the drubbing handed to the Bercows of this world by so-called common folk. Mind you, at a lunch in a gentlemen’s club in the Bagel on the very day the drubbing was being administered, an Anglo-American friend, Bartle Bull, asked me what I thought would be the outcome: ‘Hung parliament,’ answered the great electoral expert, ruining Bartle’s lunch and driving the rest of the guests to more drink. A month down the road, everything’s hunky-dory, at least for those of us who don’t like to be told what to do by Brussels-based bureaucrooks.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Crisis in Iran, fires in Australia and Manchester rapist jailed

From our UK edition

Home Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, who had not been told in advance of America’s killing in Iraq of Qassem Soleimani, the leading Iranian military leader, said that America ‘had a right to exercise self-defence’. British troops were put on standby to be sent to the region, and the frigate Montrose and the destroyer Defender sent to the Strait of Hormuz. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, returning from holiday in Mustique, said: ‘Given the leading role he has played in actions that have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and western personnel, we will not lament his death.’ England secured a 189-run victory over South Africa on the fifth day of the second Test in Cape Town, levelling the series 1-1.

Freddy Gray

Is there method – or madness – behind Trump’s actions in Iraq?

From our UK edition

Leaders are often accused of escalating a conflict abroad in order to distract from headaches at home. On Tuesday, before Iran’s missiles were fired, Donald Trump seemed to be doing the opposite. He and his media surrogates started their now all-too-familiar yabbering about impeachment and the Democrats. It felt as if they were trying to move the news cycle away from the Iran crisis. We’re in an election year after all, and the polls suggest a large majority of American voters don’t want more war. Then Tehran launched what it is calling ‘Operation Martyr Soleimani’, which at first prompted a rare nervous silence in Washington. The White House led reporters to believe the President would gravely address the nation that night, but he postponed.

John R. Bradley

Donald Trump has just blown up his goal of isolating Iran

From our UK edition

A blood red flag was raised over the Jamkaran mosque in the Iranian holy city of Qom last week, one normally reserved to commemorate the death of martyrs. This time, it was intended as a call to arms. ‘We have unfurled this flag so that all [Shia] believers in the world gather around it to avenge Qassem Soleimani’s blood unjustly shed,’ said the mosque’s leader. In Tehran, there were calls for bloody retribution for the air strike that killed Iranian general Soleimani — and everywhere, talk of all-out war. If it was also intended to strike the fear of Allah into the hearts of Iran’s Sunni Arab enemies, it certainly succeeded. In Riyadh, there was panic.

Martin Vander Weyer

All forecasts are off if Iran shuts the Strait of Hormuz

From our UK edition

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… Late last year, a range of forecasts suggested that the likelihood of recession in the US, with knock-on effects for the rest of the developed world, had significantly diminished. Last summer, many economists were putting the chance of a substantial downturn at 50 per cent but by November, Goldman Sachs had marked it down to 24 per cent and Morgan Stanley to ‘around 20 per cent’. Underlying this shift were strong corporate earnings and consumer spending, plus rising hopes of a settlement of US-China trade tensions. Last month saw a sell-off of safety-first government bonds reflecting the mood, and the FT’s end-of-year forecasts included a confident ‘No’ to ‘Will the US go into recession?