Us politics

Friday

James Forsyth

Theresa May has learnt the art of dealing with Donald

The Trump / May press conference went as well as the Prime Minister’s team could have hoped. The new president was effusive about Brexit saying it was a ‘wonderful thing’, a ‘fantastic thing’ and declaring that it’ll be a ‘tremendous asset’ for the UK. He was also warm about May personally, predicting that their relationship was going to be ‘fantastic’ and opining that they had already hit it off.  Usefully for May, Trump also didn’t say anything outrageous, by his standards, at the press conference. In response to the BBC, he said that the US wouldn’t torture because Defence Secretary Mattis’s objections overrode his own personal belief that it worked. 

Ross Clark

No, Donald Trump hasn’t just brought Doomsday closer

Can there be a bunch of more self-serving individuals than the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which annually presents its assessment of global politics in the form of its ‘Doomsday Clock’? Yesterday, the organisation announced that it was moving its clock forward by 30 seconds so that it now stands at two and a half minutes to midnight – where midnight is Armageddon, the end of human civilisation as we know it. The reason, of course, is Donald Trump. As the scientists explained: ‘He has made ill-considered comments about expanding the US nuclear arsenal. He has shown a troubling propensity to discount or outright reject expert advice

Steerpike

Trump's diplomat: I helped bring down the Soviet Union, it's the EU next

Just in case European Union leaders were in any doubt over President Trump’s feelings towards them, his rumoured pick for ambassador to the EU has been giving some pretty strong hints. Appearing on This Week, Malloch — who visited  Trump Towers earlier this month to discuss the potential role — was open about his Euroscepticism. This led Andrew Neil to ask: why would he even want a job to be US ambassador to the EU? AN: I mean you’re clearly not a great fan of Brussels or these bureaucrats like Juncker. TM: Well, I had in a previous year a diplomatic post where I helped to bring down the Soviet Union, so maybe

Ed West

A female culture war has begun

I didn’t go on the women’s march last weekend, and it’s not the kind of thing I’d go to. However, Trump’s previous form with regards the female sex is a reasonable cause for at least registering a protest. This is not to deny there are things I wish would be protested more, such as Rotherham, but I accept that’s basically whataboutery and no reason to ignore Trump’s behaviour. But you’d think, looking at an event like this, that there was a sort of culture war in which women were set in conflict with the patriarchy, represented by the three-times married president. Lots of women were marching for the right to have

Steerpike

Lily Allen's Trump protest backfires

Last week, Lily Allen became the subject of much mockery online after she claimed to have discovered the flaw in Theresa May’s plan for a global Britain. The pop singer said Brexit was unlikely to be a success as the ‘world still hates us’ because of… slavery. While Allen has refrained from offering any further Brexit analysis this week, she has managed to upset those she claims to be on the side of. The singer has recorded an anti-Trump song — which the website Gay Times shared online. Pleased by the publicity, Allen declared that this must mean ‘f–s hate Trump’. https://twitter.com/lilyallen/status/824258139751149568 Alas her choice of word to describe gay men has gone

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Tony Blair's Chicago doctrine is buried in Philadelphia

Theresa May mentioned Donald Trump only once in her speech to the Republicans gathered in Philadelphia tonight, but its centrepiece was a gift to him. In his inauguration speech, he said that the US was now out of the business of liberal interventionism. She told Republicans that the same applies to Britain. Here’s the key quote:- It is in our interests – those of Britain and America together – to stand strong together to defend our values, our interests and the very ideas in which we believe.  This cannot mean a return to the failed policies of the past. The days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an

Freddy Gray

Washington Notebook | 26 January 2017

On Wednesday afternoon I went to the British embassy in Washington for ‘a tea and champagne reception’ to mark the inauguration of President Trump. Like most institutions, the embassy has struggled to come to terms with the Donald. We all know (thanks to Twitter) that Trump wants Nigel Farage to be the UK representative in DC, which must leave the current ambassador, Sir Kim Darroch, feeling a bit tense. Still, Sir Kim managed to draw some big Republican beasts to his party: Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Rand Paul and Newt Gingrich to name but four. Everybody said the special relationship was very special — they would, wouldn’t they? — and

Wednesday

Melanie McDonagh

Trump is right to reinstate the 'global gag rule' on abortion

It has, to be honest, been rather hard to keep up with the flow of executive orders, policy pronouncements and big name appointments from the new US president: they’ve been coming thick and fast. So it’s been tricky drawing up any sort of running audit of debits v credits, though some changes, like the appointment of Jared Kushner to preside over the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, are sufficiently surreal to make you wonder why the Women Against Trump brigade didn’t put it on their placards. But there are pluses, depending on your point of view. And from where I’m at, Trump’s executive order reintroducing the ‘global gag rule’ – which sounds unhelpfully

Tuesday

Edmund Glover

The New York tabloid which turned for Trump

It has been claimed that Jared Kushner masterminded the success of a seemingly impossible campaign. He was the rational voice behind an irrational man and sanitised Donald Trump so effectively, it has become almost fashionable to support him. His reward is a seat at the President’s right hand: senior White House adviser in the Trump administration. His first job included welcoming Boris Johnson and Shinzo Abe on recent visits to the US. Back in 2003, Jared Kushner was still at Harvard.  His billionaire father Charles Kushner had oiled the wheels, gifting the university $2.5 million, before being convicted on multiple counts of tax fraud, election violations and witness tampering.  And this was all re-reported when

Rob Crilly

Donald Trump's inner dictator starts to stir

It is of course nonsense to describe Donald Trump as a fascist or a dictator, as his opponents like to do. And yet… well, he does sometimes rather invite it.  There was his inaugural address in which he dusted off the ‘America first doctrine’ – as used by the isolationist, anti-Semitic group that urged the US to appease Nazi Germany. Then there is his interventionist strong-arming of companies to keep jobs in America. And on Saturday he stood at the CIA headquarters, in front of a wall commemorating the organisation’s fallen heroes, and boasted of the number of times he has appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Now comes a proclamation declaring the

Brendan O’Neill

Who are 'the people' in these new political times?

During the massive, impressive Women’s March in London on Saturday, in which thousands of noisy women, men and children stuck it to Trump, the organisers tweeted the following: ‘We are the people.’ Wait — it’s okay to say ‘the people’ again? Since Trump’s victory in November, and even more so after the Brexit Revolt in June, anyone who used the phrase ‘the people’ risked being branded a useful idiot of hard-right demagoguery. ‘Do you know who else spoke of “the people”?’, left-liberals would inquire, accusingly. ‘THE NAZIS.’ Brexiteers and Trumpeters ‘roar that they represent “the people”,’ said Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer, as part of ‘their endeavour to silence any

Monday

Ross Clark

Forget 'peace and love'. Protest language has turned violent

So Madonna says she doesn’t really want to blow up the White House. Her remarks at Saturday’s women’s march — ‘Yes, I’m angry, yes, I am outraged, Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House’ – have, she says, been ‘taken wildly out of context’. She has missed the point. No-one remotely thought that she would personally mix the Semtex, or offer any help to someone else to do so. But she was using inflammatory language which she ought to know somebody, somewhere will take seriously. If an unhinged loner in the backwoods of Virginia heads to Washington with a pick-up full of explosives she

Julie Burchill

The hypocrisy of the 'Free Melania' feminists

I like to prance around showing off in hats and shouting at men as much as the next broad but – apart from the fact that I can get it at home – there were several reasons why I chose not to join a whole batch of my bitches on the Women’s March this weekend. Firstly, I was sure it would be full of ‘Strong Women‘, a phrase I hate at the best of times – and feel should only be used if the lady in question can tear a telephone directory in half with her bare hands – and which seemed especially inappropriate to describe a bunch of overgrown Violet

Rob Crilly

Welcome to the era of 'alternative facts'

Now we have confirmation. The official language of Donald Trump’s White House really is doublespeak. This is how absurd the row over crowd numbers at the inauguration has become. It started with an extraordinary speech delivered by Trump at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he appeared to speak off the cuff for about 15 minutes during his first national security speech. He railed against the media – ‘among the most dishonest human beings on earth’ – boasted about his appearances on the cover of Time magazine, and displayed his thin skin by exaggerating the size of his inauguration audience – ‘it looked like a million, million and a half people’. Nonsense,

Saturday

Violet Hudson

In defence of Melania Trump

We all love Michelle Obama. Of course we do. For the last eight years she has been ‘mom in chief’ of America – and the world. She has personified grace, courtesy, warmth, humour and, not incidentally, shown us what a good marriage looks like. Tirelessly supportive of her husband, but successful in her own right, she has become a symbol of what a modern woman can be. She rose from a working-class background to attend Princeton and Harvard. She overcame racism and sexism to become a hugely successful lawyer. As First Lady, she was endlessly elegant and engaged, working to promote healthy eating, educational opportunity and women’s rights. It has

Rob Crilly

Only the right kind of women are invited to march against Donald Trump

The Women’s March on Washington is going to be big. Officials say 1,800 buses have been registered to park in the city today. The subway will open at 5 a.m. (it usually starts running at 7 a.m. at weekends) to accommodate the numbers. In all, 250,000 people are expected to join the rally to show their disapproval of Donald Trump, dwarfing the numbers that attended his inauguration and parade a day earlier. It is fitting that women are taking the lead. Trump’s misogynist language and disregard for half the population has been one of the most shocking parts of his aggressive campaign. So it is a shame that the march

James Forsyth

What does President Trump do to Brexit?

With Theresa May expected to head to Washington next week to see President Trump, I have a look at what the Trump presidency might mean for Brexit in my Sun column this morning. Despite his protectionist rhetoric, on full show again yesterday, Donald Trump is keen on a US / UK trade agreement. He has told people that he would like to get personally involved in negotiating the deal. I understand that his transition team has done more work on it than they have for any other agreement. Squaring the circle between Trump’s protectionist rhetoric and his enthusiasm for a US / UK deal isn’t as hard as it first looks.

Friday

Matt Purple

Could Trump be the progressive leader Obama never managed to be?

Washington, D.C. is a police state even in good times. Unique in the land of the free, only there do you find officers casually toting assault rifles outside of Union Station as though Amtrak has just staged a coup within, or vast swaths of road abruptly shut down because the secretary of agriculture has decided he wants a deep tissue massage on the other side of town. And during presidential inaugurations, the tight security becomes Orwellian. Even without the deluge of visitors that Barack Obama attracted in 2009 (only to discover that being witnesses to history meant watching it on a Jumbotron two miles away), there will still be enough

James Forsyth

Trump's trade war could cause global economic carnage

The most striking thing about Donald Trump’s inaugural address was how little it tried to reach out to those who had not voted for him. On election night, Trump made a deliberate effort to strike a graceful note. He said that America owed Hillary Clinton a ‘major debt of gratitude for her service to our country’.  To those who hadn’t voted for him, he said, ‘I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help’. But today, after thanking the Obamas for their help in the transition, his message was aimed squarely at his base. He talked about an ‘American carnage’ that he was going to stop and repeatedly pledged to

Freddy Gray

Donald Trump: the most radical US president for centuries

He could be the greatest disaster ever to befall America. He could go down as the man that Made America Great Again. What’s certain is that Donald Trump is the most radical US president for centuries. Trump’s inaugural speech was predictable — in the sense that we have heard Trump say it all before. In terms of rhetorical brilliance, Obama outdid him dramatically at Andrews Air Base 45 minutes later.  Nonetheless Trump was mind-blowing in the sense that the new president of the United States, a billionaire eccentric, was standing in front of Capitol Hill and attacking ‘the establishment’ for having ripped off the American people. ‘Capital has reaped the rewards