Freddy Gray

When Donald Trump ran for the presidency in 2016, he took on a very well-funded politician who had been a successful governor of Florida. And he destroyed him. Trump humiliated ‘low-energy’ Jeb Bush, son of one president and brother of another, and trashed his family’s legacy so comprehensively that the Bush-era Republican party is now widely regarded as a disaster. Political experts tend to forget what a canny campaigner Donald Trump is Jeb messed up again last week. Speaking to Fox News, he semi-endorsed Ron DeSantis, the current Florida governor and Trump’s strongest challenger for the 2024 Republican nomination. ‘I think we’re on the verge of a generational change, kind of hope so,’ said Jeb.

It’s by now well-established that Fox News, the American media behemoth, is no longer on the Trump Train. Trumpworld’s union with Foxworld was never altogether easy and, ever since that fateful election in November 2020, it has fallen apart. Trumpists despise Fox for, as many see it, helping Joe Biden steal the election. And the top brass at Fox News have sought to distance themselves from the Trump movement and what they regard as its increasingly toxic politics. Rupert Murdoch has had enough of the Orange One, by all accounts. What hasn’t been made entirely clear is the extent of the break-up. One senior Fox figure has let slip, however, that Donald Trump is effectively ‘banned’ from appearing on Fox News at present.

It was only a matter of time before Joe Biden made a ‘surprise’ visit to Kiev. In the year since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the choreographed walkabout with Volodymyr Zelensky has become the must-do photo-op for western global leaders. It’s the 21st century equivalent of an audience with the Pope – a symbolic news happening which shocks no one.  That’s not to say it’s not important. It signals, yet again, that America – the most powerful military and financial player on planet earth – is firmly behind Zelensky and his efforts to repel the Russian invasion.

If Britain’s great flaw is the class system, America’s might be its obsession with classifying official information. There’s a reason ‘that’s classified, sir’ is a stock phrase in so many Hollywood films. Americans tend to revere elite secrecy in the same way British snobs worship aristocracy. You can own lots of land in America and still be a hick. If you’ve gotten hold of sensitive state files, however – well, son, you’ve made it. This fetish for high-bureaucratic privilege might explain why Donald Trump took so many classified papers to his billionaire’s lair in Mar-a-Lago, much as a pirate might squirrel away treasure in a trove.

Almost all of us can recite the reasons why Donald Trump’s political career should be over. We hear them again and again. He lost the presidency in 2020 after four exhausting years. His angry fans stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a now infamous day in American history. He lost his media clout after being banned from Facebook and (until recently) Twitter. He has clung to his ‘election denial’, as Democrats like to call it, and that makes all his political antics now seem petulant and tired. In the mid-terms in November, a fair number of the candidates he backed lost crucial senate and gubernatorial races which his party should have won. Even his supporters – not to mention some rich donors – seem to be losing faith.