Donald trump

Thursday

John R. MacArthur

Yes, Trump is grotesque. But I would never have voted for Hillary

We’re closing 2016 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 10: John R. MacArthur on why spoiling his ballot paper was a better option than voting for Donald Trump - or Hillary Clinton  New York ‘Does this mean we have to vote for Hillary?’ asked my wife. It was early morning 16 March, and the queen consort of the Democratic party had seemingly sewn up the presidential nomination — a coronation promised years ago by her king but thus far denied by unruly subjects. As I scanned the headline in the New York Times, ‘Clinton and Trump Pile up the Delegates’, I felt sick at heart.

Stephen Bayley

What Donald Trump’s taste tells us about him

Elsie de Wolfe was the pioneer interior designer whose motto was ‘plenty of optimism and white paint’. She banished brown Victoriana from America. And her work on Henry Clay Frick’s private apartments introduced new American money to old French furniture. If only she were with us today. For his first television interview as president-elect, Donald Trump appeared, imperiously, sitting on a golden throne in the style of Louis Quinze. My vision may well have been blurred by circumstances beyond, but I think there were period-incorrect wall and ceiling paintings on classical-allegorical themes in the background. All of this on cantilevered decks behind mirrored glass about 200 metres above Fifth Avenue.

Saturday

Lionel Shriver

A rash hothead in the White House is a problem to trouble us all

Novelists can’t merely tell cracking tales. We’re supposed to save the world. At the University of Kent, a student implored me to inscribe The Mandibles with instructions for ‘how to keep this from happening’ — for the feverish young man now vowed to devote his life to preventing my new novel’s debt-fuelled near-future financial collapse. And I thought I was just doing a book signing. I wrote, ‘To keep this from happening, pay your bills. To cash in on this happening, get as deeply into debt as possible.’ The next student proffered a tiny spiral notebook, in which I was to jot ‘three things that are really important’.

Friday

Rob Crilly

Trump Grill could be the best representation of America

I have a confession to make. I go to Trump Tower in New York a lot. It's an easy jaunt for a New York-based hack: where better to chat with Trump supporters than in its golden lobby or with opponents outside its golden doors? Maybe you'll spot a celebrity like Kanye West or, if you are really lucky, Nigel Farage. And occasionally the place becomes the story itself, whether it's about the expense of the secret service renting an entire floor to provide security for the next president, or this week when a sniffy restaurant review – headlined 'Trump Grill could be the worst restaurant in America' - prompted a miffed president-elect to unload his umbrage on Twitter. 'Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead!

Thursday

Rob Crilly

Donald Trump is going back on his promise to ‘drain the swamp’

Donald Trump has a method for making his Cabinet picks. Parade the contenders in and out of Trump Tower and its waiting TV cameras. Leak and Tweet their performance ratings ('very good meeting'). And then, once the suspense has reached something approaching a reality TV show, announce the hire on social media. And as the administration of the president-elect takes shape, it is also abundantly clear that Trump has a type. Let's call them the G-men. Because they are mostly men, and mostly Goldman, generals and gazillionaires, as one arch critic put it. On Tuesday, Rex Tillerson was named as Trump's pick for Secretary of State, the latest super-wealthy businessman to join the ranks.

Brendan O’Neill

‘Putinites on the web’ are the new ‘Reds under the bed’

Wounded Remainers in Britain and the Hillary set in the US love banging on about ‘post-truth politics’. Lies are everywhere, they say, falling from Trump’s weird mouth, plastered on the side of Brexit buses. And apparently these lies invaded voters’ minds and made us do the unimaginable thing of voting against the EU and failing to vote for Hillary. We was hoodwinked by falsehoods! All of which would be a tad more convincing if it wasn't for one thing: it’s actually the Remainer and Hillary cliques that have gone full post-truth, even descending into the cesspit of conspiracy theory.

Tuesday

Anne Jolis

Donald Trump is doing more to undermine himself than any Democrat

America may need to ‘vote again,’ says former CIA operative Robert Baer - preferably in a plebiscite not orchestrated by Vladimir Putin. The spy-turned-author spoke to CNN on Saturday about the latest reports of Kremlin skulduggery to elect Donald Trump. While there is no evidence that hackers fiddled with electronic voting systems or ballot-counting machines, the CIA has concluded with ‘high confidence’ that Russian-backed hackers were actively out to sink Hillary Clinton, according to unnamed officials speaking to the Washington Post and the NewYork Times. If true, the reports add motive to mischief already known.

Saturday

Rob Crilly

Not all Muslims are despairing at a Donald Trump presidency

The immediate aftermath of Donald Trump's surprise election victory brought a slew of comparisons with 9/11. In New York, my liberal friends waking up on 11/9 said they experienced the same range of emotions. You will have seen the stories of commuters weeping on the subway, colleges offering counselling to students and a general sentiment that life would never be the same again. Therapists reported an overwhelming sense of grief among their clients as they tried to process their world turned upside down. Robert de Niro chipped in, telling the Hollywood Reporter: 'I feel like I did after 9/11.

Thursday

Mary Killen

Celebrity Dear Mary

From Rt Hon Gisela Stuart MP Q. I keep getting into arguments with people about what being a Labour MP is all about. I used to think that being in government was better than being in opposition. They now tell me I’m wrong and that the years since 2010 have been better and purer than the flawed years from 1997 to 2010. Help. Are they right and am I wrong? A. As a Roman Catholic German Brexiteer Labour MP for a Birmingham constituency, you should have grown used to being in a minority. If you would rather be in power than out of it, the obvious solution is to switch sides and join the Conservative benches.

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 8 December 2016

‘Are you Charles Moore of The Spectator?’ I answered to that description. ‘Well,’ said my questioner, ‘I am worried that you’re becoming very right-wing.’ We were sitting by the fire in a charming, smoky hut with no electric light and lots to eat and drink. It was a shooting lunch, the sort of occasion where one is seldom held to account for anything. I could have tried to laugh the question off, but my interrogator exhibited high intelligence and class confidence, so I sensed she wouldn’t let me get away with that. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to answer her. I am not offended by being called right-wing, because I don’t agree with the left-wing view that right-wingery is a mark of personal turpitude.

Lionel Shriver

Diary – 8 December 2016

Novelists can’t merely tell cracking tales. We’re supposed to save the world. At the University of Kent, a student implored me to inscribe The Mandibles with instructions for ‘how to keep this from happening’ — for the feverish young man now vowed to devote his life to preventing my new novel’s debt-fuelled near-future financial collapse. And I thought I was just doing a book signing. I wrote, ‘To keep this from happening, pay your bills. To cash in on this happening, get as deeply into debt as possible.’ The next student proffered a tiny spiral notebook, in which I was to jot ‘three things that are really important’.

The Spectator

Power and the people

When The Spectator was founded 188 years ago, it became part of what would now be described as a populist insurgency. An out-of-touch Westminster elite, we said, was speaking a different language to the rest of London, let alone the rest of the country. Too many ‘of the bons mots vented in the House of Commons appear stale and flat by the time they have travelled as far as Wellington Street’. This would be remedied, we argued, by extending the franchise and granting the vote to the emerging middle class. Our Tory critics said any step towards democracy — a word which then caused a shudder — would start a descent into chaos. On the contrary, we said, the choice was between reform or a ‘revolution of the most sweeping character’.

Simon Kuper

Knowing the score

When I come home from work and stick my key in the door, there is a pitter-patter of tiny feet as my eight-year-old twin boys run up to me and shout: ‘Paris St-Germain won 3-1! First he scored, then he missed, then…’ They are suffering from a harmless case of sports geekery. I had it myself as a child, and have gone on to hold down a job, albeit in the dying industry of journalism. The only difference is that as a child I wasn’t encouraged to bore my dad with my findings, because helicopter parenting hadn’t been invented yet. A complicating factor in our family is that we live in Paris, and when my sons recite sports statistics in strangely accented French children’s slang I often struggle to understand them, especially at breakfast.

Christopher Buckley

When the Donald met the Vlad

SpeccieLeaks presents: Transcript of private meeting between President Trump and President Putin, 14 February 2017, Andreyevsky Hall, Grand Kremlin Palace   PUTIN: So how are you liking Russia? TRUMP: Fabulous. Amazing. And this room — incredible. You have beautiful taste, my friend. Beautiful. PUTIN: You like gold? TRUMP: Very much. We used a tremendous amount of gold in the Trump Tower. PUTIN: Yes, it’s something. Truly. I have seen it on television. TRUMP: Those chandeliers there. How much were those? PUTIN: Well, I don’t know. But I will have this information provided to you. TRUMP: That would be great. We just opened a new hotel in DC, right next to the White House? It’s got these high ceilings? A couple of these babies would look amazing.

Fraser Nelson

‘I get so frustrated with Whitehall’

The Prime Minister’s office is a small, unimpressive room in 10 Downing Street with miserable views and unexceptional furniture. Since moving in, Theresa May has spruced it up — but only a little. There is now a large glass meeting table; her predecessor preferred to chat on the sofas. She has also delved into the government art collection to retrieve two pictures of Oxford, where she honed her interest in politics and met Philip, her husband. She has also picked a painting of an English country church (she is of course a vicar’s daughter), and that’s about it. It’s a place for work and — very occasionally — interviews. We meet a few weeks after Mrs May won The Spectator’s Politician of the Year award.

Hugo Rifkind

How to put a positive spin on the bizarre events of this year

This is going to be a positive, optimistic column. I promise. Because, look, let’s be honest, I’ve been a bit moany this year, haven’t I? Which may, I suspect, have been a bit misleading. Read me here, or indeed anywhere, and I suspect you could come away thinking I’ve spent the last 12 months, or at least the last six, lying awake, staring at my expensive north London Farrow & Ball ceiling, weeping sad, shuddering, self-indulgent tears at a world moving beyond my ken. I know, I know. I do go on. Whereas actually, it hasn’t really been like that.

James Delingpole

Don’t try to be liked, and buy your steak at Aldi – the lessons I’ve learned in 2016

Merry Christmas everyone. Here are some things I learned — or relearned — in 2016.   1. That which does not kill you makes you still alive. It’s weird to think that less than 12 months ago I was in hospital, dosed up with morphine, battered and bruised with a broken clavicle, numerous cracked ribs and a pulmonary embolism which can actually kill you, don’t you know. And now it’s as if the whole thing never happened. Well, apart from the hideous titanium plate, like a giant centipede, which I can still feel all stiff across my collar bone. And the bastard hunting ban my family has imposed on me…   2. Hunting is the only thing.

Piers Morgan

Notebook | 8 December 2016

It’s weird being friends with someone who suddenly becomes President of the United States, not least for the reflected glory that suddenly rains down on one’s own far less powerful cranium. I was roundly ridiculed by numerous high-profile journalists and celebrities for predicting Donald Trump’s victory throughout his 16-month campaign. Now, many of those same egg-faced mockers slither up at festive parties to whisper a variant of: ‘Any chance you could put a good word in for me with Donald?’ To which my preferred response is to place a patronising hand on their shoulder and say: ‘It’s Mr President-elect Trump to you.

Stephen Bayley

Making America crass again

Elsie de Wolfe was the pioneer interior designer whose motto was ‘plenty of optimism and white paint’. She banished brown Victoriana from America. And her work on Henry Clay Frick’s private apartments introduced new American money to old French furniture. If only she were with us today. For his first television interview as president-elect, Donald Trump appeared, imperiously, sitting on a golden throne in the style of Louis Quinze. My vision may well have been blurred by circumstances beyond, but I think there were period-incorrect wall and ceiling paintings on classical-allegorical themes in the background. All of this on cantilevered decks behind mirrored glass about 200 metres above Fifth Avenue.

Roger Alton

Ten questions of sport

1. Can anyone explain why England wore dark blue, not white, for the autumn international against Argentina, just as they did against Fiji? Is there anybody in the whole country, other than the marketing department at the Rugby Football Union, who thinks it is a good idea to change England shirts for no other reason than to fleece the public whose children might want to wear one? Why don’t England stick to their proper colours: would the Springboks change, or Australia, or would the All Blacks become the All Purples? Seven different shirts in two years! Come off it.   2. Is the ongoing spat between Ben Stokes and Virat Kohli the only really competitive element in the current Test series between England and India?