Us politics

If all it took to become president of the United States was massive spending on television and digital advertisements, Mike Bloomberg would win the 2020 presidential election in a landslide. As the eighth wealthiest person on the planet with a net worth of over £41bn ($53bn), Bloomberg has a practically unlimited war chest at his disposal. And he is more than happy to use it; the former New York City mayor spent £85m ($110m) in the 2018 midterm election cycle on behalf of the Democratic party. Now that he’s officially a Democratic candidate for president, Bloomberg will be leveraging a good chunk of cash on his own prospects.

If you believe the headlines, President Donald Trump is in deep trouble. The great impeachment saga is gathering pace. House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff has been conducting closed-door interviews as part of his investigations into whether the President abused his executive power in his efforts to dig up dirt on his political rival, Joe Biden, the former vice president under Obama. Did Trump threaten to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless its government told him what he wanted to hear? More leaked transcripts this week suggest that he did. Gordon Sondland, a US ambassador to the European Union and a Trump ally, has now dropped his Commander--in-Chief in it by suggesting that the Trump administration did insist on a quid-pro-quo deal. Gotcha!

All of the following things are true. Naga Munchetty, co-host of BBC Breakfast, is a very good TV journalist, one of the BBC’s best assets in fact. That tweet Donald Trump sent in July telling the non-white, female members of the Democratic ‘Squad’ to ‘go back’ to the countries they came from was racist. The BBC was correct, however, to partially uphold a complaint against Ms Munchetty for her on-air suggestion that the tweet was ‘embedded in racism’. Why was the BBC correct to criticise one of its most important presenters for describing a racist tweet as racist? Because it is not a BBC reporter’s job to do that.

It’s time for Donald Trump to take a leaf from Boris Johnson, for the master to take tuition from his pupil. Instead of trying to placate his critics, Trump should prorogue the American Congress. The approval rating of Congress is somewhere in the teens, even lower than Trump’s, so most Americans would likely greet such a move with a yawn, while Trump’s base would cheer it on. The upsides seem pretty clear. With a second term looking rather iffy, Trump would be able to push through his agenda decisively over the next fifteen months. He might even be able to move ahead with nuking a hurricane to test the efficacy of his theory about the virtues of trying to blow them up. If Trump fails to move, Congress will become increasingly emboldened.

Donald Trump’s attempted purchase of Greenland may have fallen through but if he’s still in the market, there’s some prime real estate in the neighbourhood. It’s smaller, yes, but just as cold, almost as sparsely populated and even has its own independence movement agitating for a breakaway. Happily, the president already owns a chunk of the country in question, so he might be able to get the rest for a bargain.  Scotland, not Greenland, is where Trump should redirect his interest. If it’s a few more golf resorts he’s keen on, we can provide the countryside. If he needs space for a military base or two the Highlands offer all the scenic seclusion you could ask for.

From the moment Donald Trump stepped onto the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president of the United States, there have been people in the Republican party who have sought to bring him down.   During the 2016 GOP primary, Republican national security officials wrote scathing and embarrassing open letters against him. Conventional Republican strategists and commentators like Karl Rove, Bill Kristol and Spectator USA’s own Rick Wilson blasted him as an incompetent, indecent, moron who shouldn’t be ten miles from the Oval Office. Trump’s primary opponents even tried to scuttle his nomination at the convention, an attempt that fizzled out before it really began. Three years later, these Never Trumpers are at it again.

Joe Biden has led Democratic polls since day one, holding the kind of consistent lead within his party that Donald Trump held heading into the 2016 primaries. The numbers say he will be the nominee. They also say he will beat Trump. They’re wrong: you should still bet against Biden getting the nomination or getting into the White House.  Biden himself knows that his age and state of mind are a problem, and Glenn Thrush’s recent New York Times story showed that Barack Obama knows it, too. “At some point” in 2008, Thrush reports, while Biden was on his way to becoming the Democrats’ VP pick, he “told Obama aides that ‘Barack would never have to worry’ about him positioning himself for another presidential run.

Donald Trump is at it again. Only a few hours after his Twitter outburst last night, the president has taken another pop at the UK’s ambassador in Washington. This time, Trump called Sir Kim Darroch ‘wacky’, ’very stupid’ and a ‘pompous fool’. Trump didn't stop there though, picking up where he left off yesterday by slating May’s Brexit negotiations – and, of course, recounting how the Prime Minister made a mistake by turning down his Brexit advice. Here is what Trump had to say: Mr S particularly enjoyed the sign off on this latest Trump Twitter blast: It's good to see that the special relationship is alive and well...