Freddy Gray

The theory that Donald Trump will pick Nikki Haley as his vice president refuses to die – in spite of the growing evidence that he won’t.  Haley, for one, is adamant that it will not happen. Today, at a meet-and-greet with voters in Mary Ann’s diner in Amherst, New Hampshire, a voter floated the idea. She grimaced and said: ‘I’ve never said that. That’s my opponent saying that… I don’t want to be anyone’s vice president. That’s off the table.’  She could change her mind, of course. Politicians do, and analysts will keep saying that Haley would help Trump appeal to aspirational suburban women and so on. But Trumpworld loathes Haley and Donald Trump Jr has been reassuring fans that he will stop his father from nominating her.

‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ said Franklin D. Roosevelt, famously. The Democrats of 2024 have a rather different message for the world: Be Very Afraid! ‘I’m scared as heck,’ said vice president, Kamala Harris, yesterday, as she discussed the ‘crazies’ who might put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office. Not for the first time, Harris was echoing the sentiments of Michelle Obama, the former First Lady: ‘I am terrified,’ Michelle told a podcast last week. ‘We cannot take this democracy for granted.’ We’re a long way from 2008, when Michelle’s husband won the White House by appealing to the opposite emotion. ‘We choose hope over fear,’ said Barack Obama, back then. Today, his party opts for anxiety over optimism.

The bitterly cold conditions in Iowa today have at least given journalists something to talk about. There’s a distinct lack of political drama, given everyone expects today’s Republican caucuses to be a blowout win for Donald Trump. The main questions of interest are: will Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis finish second? And will Trump break Republican records and win more than 50 per cent of the vote? Given that polls suggest Trump voters are far more enthusiastic than the supporters of his rivals, the arctic temperatures may only give him a further advantage.

It’s fright month in Joe Biden’s America, folks. Today, 5 January, the US President will travel to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to mark the third anniversary of the riot on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on 6 January 2021. He would have done it on the day but the event had to be rescheduled due to an incoming storm. Biden also likes to rest on the weekends.  Still, near the spot where George Washington and his continental army survived the brutal Revolutionary War winter of 1777-78, the increasingly ethereal 46th president will endeavour to summon the tough ghosts of America’s founding. He will deliver yet another warning about the petrifying threat which ‘MAGA extremists’ (i.e. Donald Trump supporters) pose to the soul of the nation.

Sans Trump, the Republican presidential debates of 2023 have mostly been piddling contests in a shallow pool. We’ve seen nasty insults — most aimed at or directed by Vivek Ramaswamy — and that’s fun to watch. But you can catch those bits on social media and the rest hasn’t been worth tuning in for. Maybe the problem isn’t just the lack of the Big Orange on stage. Maybe it’s just that the TV debate format doesn’t really work in the internet age. It’s never a battle of compelling ideas. It’s a clash of off-putting egos, each looking to land the big viral moment. DeSantis is just hard to like: he lacks Trump’s sense of humour. He’s just too serious in a time when all everyone wants is online LOLs Take last night’s experiment on Fox News.