Us politics

On Sunday morning the White House, in an unsigned statement, came out swinging against 'nephew-nazi and all extremist groups.' Leave it to the Trump administration to bungle even the wording of neo-Nazi in its belated attempt to distance itself from the sanguinary events that took place on Saturday in the bucolic town of Charlottesville, Virginia, where the radical right gathered to chant 'blood and soil' and carry Nazi flags. Their mission was to decry the impending removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who lost the Civil War to Ulysses Grant. The odious David Duke, a leading neo-Nazi who speaks worshipfully of Donald Trump, had slithered out of the swamps of his home state Louisiana to make a cameo. All that was missing were lederhosen and a beer hall.

On this week's episode, we're discussing the war of words between President Trump and North Korea, and asking whether it could spill over into an actual war. We'll also be looking at the plight of the Yazidis, struggling to recover from genocide committed by Isis in 2014, and, finally, wondering whether it's better to stay in the UK for your summer holidays. First, North Korea's increased militarisation was met this week by a threat from President Trump to unleash 'fire and fury' against the rogue state. Conjuring up images of nuclear warfare on the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki created something of an international panic, but are we really approaching that point?

Today is the 72nd anniversary of the America atomic bombing of Nagasaki, a lovely port city that also served as a Japanese naval base during the second world war. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted Emperor Hirohito to announce in a radio address Japan’s surrender, though fanatical war hawks tried to stop him. The atomic bombings saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, but they remain the only time that a country has actually deployed these fearsome weapons. Donald Trump’s implicit threat to unleash an unprecedentedly devastating nuclear attack on North Korea that would apparently eclipse Hiroshima and Nagasaki offers a reminder that in this regard America remains unique. Nuclear weapons are the great taboo—or at least they have been.

For reasons I find hard to fathom the French did not come out in force to riot against the recent visit of President Trump to France. Normally the mildest provocation has them pouring into the streets to do battle with the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, the CRS, notorious for their brutal handling of demonstrators. My wife, half-French herself, suggested that the quiescence of the French public reflected respect for Bastille Day, which President Macron had invited Trump to celebrate. I pooh-poohed that on the grounds that the storming of the Bastille in 1789 marked the beginning of the venerable French tradition of public rioting and was if anything a spur to violent protest against Trump.

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 that meets in secret and has the legal power to compel testimony – and that can only be an aggravation for Trump. He can keep saying it’s a 'Witch Hunt'  – maybe it is – but a witch hunt could bring down his presidency, or at least make it impossible for his administration to function.

Imagine the gale-force political winds that it takes to make Donald Trump do something he doesn’t want to do. Yet that’s what happened earlier this week when the president grudgingly approved a new suite of sanctions on Russia passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress. That he signed the bill in private signalled his extreme reluctance—this is the man who threw a soiree in the Rose Garden after doomed GOP health care legislation made it through just the House. Trump, the former reality show star, only turns away the klieg lights under the most bitter circumstances, and that’s what this was.

How are things in your country? In mine, we’ve spent the last week and a half being governed by a mid-aughts buddy comedy named 'Donald and The Mooch'. That latter sobriquet belongs to Anthony Scaramucci, Donald Trump’s erstwhile PR man who went on a 10-day profanity-laden bender across Washington proper before even the President realised this probably wasn’t a good idea and headed off to Vegas without him. Scaramucci was sacked on Monday. His official start date wasn’t until mid-August, which makes him the shortest-serving White House comms director in history at negative 15 days. Yet he made quite an impression during his non-tenure. The Mooch was given his job following the resignation of White House press secretary Sean Spicer, hated by every scribbler in D.C.

Poor Reince Priebus. Or maybe not so poor. A munificent book deal surely looms in which he can chronicle his serial humiliations at the hands of Donald Trump who, as is his wont, made the announcement on Twitter that retired general John Kelly, the director of the Homeland Security, will now become White House chief of staff. Given the leaking that has been taking place in the Trump administration, Kelly may discover that it was easier to track down illegal immigrants than to catch the leakers. Trump himself waited until late Friday until he revealed the latest changes to his personnel, presumably to outwit the press corps. Anthony 'the Mooch' Scaramucci had already supplanted press secretary Sean Spicer, like Priebus an establishment figure.

I’m not sure how it is with the BBC and Sky, but here in the United States the news channels prefer to cover a few stories obsessively rather than many stories thoroughly. Things have become even worse since Donald Trump was inaugurated, as that already-myopic keyhole view has narrowed into a monomaniacal focus on Russia. MSNBC and CNN discovered they could boost their ratings by catering to liberals with a 24-hour potboiler about Trump’s alleged collusion with the Kremlin, and proceeded accordingly. An establishment conspiracy industry took hold, detecting Russian fingerprints everywhere, led by your former MP Louise Mensch.

These days nobody much bothers denying that the Trump administration is chaotic, aside that is from the Donald's inner circle and a few hardcore loyalists who believe that the 45th president really is Making America Great Again. The Trumpists say that reports of strife and discord in the White House are elite media spin. But what to make of the news that Sean Spicer has stood down as White House Press Secretary? Perhaps it's not that significant – press secretaries come and go – but the briefing wars surrounding Spicer's departure suggest once again that Team Trump may be tearing itself apart. Spicer, it's said, has gone because he was unhappy at the arrival of Anthony Scaramucci, a big hedge funder who has previously hosted the Skybridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference.