Us politics

When Donald Trump announced he was pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, he fulfilled what is presumably the dream of George F. Will, one of America’s pre-eminent climate change deniers. Yet Will is not fond of Trump. In fact Will, America’s Tory manqué, is manifestly unhappy about the ascension of Donald Trump to the White House, where he is rapidly rubbishing everything that the modern conservative movement has stood for in recent decades. At least this is what Will would have you believe in his latest column in the Washington Post, entitled 'Conservatism needs another Buckley'. Will means William F. Buckley, Jr.

Donald Trump’s verdict on his audience with Pope Francis – ‘fantastic meeting’, ‘honor of a lifetime’ – may disappoint those who were expecting a showdown. The Pope is supposed to be Trump’s ‘antithesis’, ‘the anti-Trump’, his ‘polar opposite’ and so on and so on. But in the end the meeting was merely awkward, to judge by the photos, and the discussion was mostly confined to safe issues (life, peace and liberty good, persecution of Christians bad). People are making much of the grumpiest Pope photo, but Francis often looks bored and uneasy when he meets important dignitaries. He tends to cheer up around the poor and the sick.

In 1981, when President Reagan lifted the grain embargo on the Soviet Union, Washington Post columnist George F. Will went on to complain that the Reagan administration 'loved commerce more than it loathed communism'. Well, yes. American conservatives have, more often than not, put commercial interests before ideological ones. Sometimes the two even coincide. For all his bluster about the dangers of Islam, Donald Trump seemed to have a dandy time in Saudi Arabia these past few days before he jetted on to Israel. The $110 billion arms deal that he signed with the Saudis, coupled with their promise to invest in Blackstone Group to boost American infrastructure projects, offers the Saudis a way to buy influence in Washington directly.

Istanbul The most dramatic part of President Erdogan’s visit to Washington this week was the punch-up between his security guards and Kurdish demonstrators on the lawn outside the Turkish embassy.  The protest was nothing unusual for a president who seems to provoke adoration and disgust in equal measure wherever he goes. Neither was the violent scuffle a surprise; Erdogan's bodyguards did the same last time he was in the States. The news barely touched the Turkish press, and not only because there are few titles left on the news stands which offer opposition to Erdogan. When similar fights break out in the Turkish parliament, as they have done regularly over the past year, such scenes are barely worth writing about.

This is an extract from Lionel Shriver's diary, available in the new issue of the magazine, which is out tomorrow. Over dinner, my fellow Professional American Sarah Churchwell and I shared our dismay over what on earth to say about Trump in public. (Sarah Churchwell ever being at a loss for words will astonish her fans.) Days earlier, a punter had closed my festival event in Swindon with an ostensibly ‘simple’ question: ‘How do you explain Trump?’ Sarah posited a theory gaining mainstream currency.

Donald Trump either has nothing to hide about his relationship with Russia -- or he is hiding in plain sight, as all good con artists do. What you believe will depend on your political prejudices and how you feel about Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.     The Washington Post's report yesterday that Trump shared 'highly classified information' about Isis with the Russian foreign minister last week has triggered the usual consternation in Washington.

What to make of the shocking news that Donald Trump has fired the director of the FBI James Comey? Senior Democrats are calling it a 'Nixonian' cover up of the Bureau's probe into Trump's links to Russia. It is easy to see what they mean. The abrupt move has strong echoes of the famous 'Saturday Night Massacre' during the Watergate scandal. As Senator Richard Blumenthal put it, "President Trump has catastrophically compromised the FBI's ongoing investigation of his own White House's ties to Russia." It doesn't look good. As usual with Trump, though, it seems impossible to figure out quite what he is up to. If he really wanted to conceal his ties to Russia, why would he do something quite so dramatic? He can't really be that stupid can he?

One hundred days is way too short a time to assess a presidency. On this, if little else, there was unanimity among our stellar panel, facing a 1,000-strong audience in the dramatic arena of Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre. In summary, The Donald’s performance has been erratic and high-risk, but he isn’t all bad: panellist and self-proclaimed friend-of-Trump Piers Morgan recalled a New York barman saying, ‘He’ll either turn out a great president, or we’re all gonna die.’ So why try to judge him so soon? Because it is presidents themselves, starting with FDR, who have chosen to highlight this artificial milestone — and Donald Trump went larger than most by setting himself a crazily overblown list of objectives.

Is Ivanka Trump’s visit to Berlin a triumph for Angela Merkel, or a diplomatic disaster? As always, that depends on which newspapers you read. Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung called it a ‘a veritable coup for the chancellor,’ but the headlines in the British press have focused on the boos that greeted Ivanka at yesterday’s W20 Summit, when the President’s daughter described her father as a defender of women’s rights. Sat alongside Ivanka on the conference platform, Merkel looked distinctly awkward - but Ms Trump’s appearance wasn’t entirely met with groans and jeers.

Man, the brass neck of Trump's media critics. They've spent the past 24 hours tearing into Trump's media man Sean Spicer after he made a stupid, crude Hitler analogy. Which is a bit like Shane MacGowan telling people off for drinking too much. These people have been yelling 'Hitler!' for months. From the minute Trump was elected they've been having Hitler histrionics, drawing daft comparisons between Trump's oafish politics and the Nazis' murderous tyranny, and shouting 'fascism!' and '1930s!' like Tourette's sufferers who've watched too much History Channel. It takes a lot of front, all of the front, for them now to finger-wag at others for their inappropriate Hitler talk. Spicer's remarks were certainly awful.

Steve Bannon fast became the most powerful person in the world you’ve never heard of. The man behind the Breitbart website became Donald Trump's chief strategist and was credited with both Trump’s presidential victory and his wholehearted embrace of an America First, nationalist position in his first month in office. But Bannon’s influence has been on the wane in recent weeks. He’s got into a power struggle with the President’s beloved son-in-law Jared Kushner; despite one of the rules of Trump world being that family always wins. The ‘establishment’ have also gained at his expense.

Donald Trump’s Washington is a city of many secrets, but no mysteries. So much about the Trump-Putin story remains unknown, and possibly will never be known. But the fundamentals have never been concealed. In order to help elect Trump as US president, Russian operatives engaged in a huge and risky espionage and dirty tricks operation. Trump and his team publicly welcomed and gratefully accepted help from WikiLeaks, widely regarded as a front for Russian intelligence. Trump surrounded himself with associates and aides, including a campaign chairman and a national security adviser, who had in the past received pay from Russian state TV and pro-Putin oligarchs.

The US missile attack on a Syrian government air base risks escalating the war in Syria still further. Tuesday’s horrific chemical attack was a war crime which requires urgent independent UN investigation and those responsible must be held to account. But unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification risks intensifying a multi-sided conflict that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. What is needed instead is to urgently reconvene the Geneva peace talks and unrelenting international pressure for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. The terrible suffering of the Syrian people must be brought to an end as soon as possible and every intervention must be judged on what contribution it makes to that outcome.