Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator and the editor of the US edition. He hosts Americano on YouTube.

Saturday

Freddy Gray

Is Trump scared of Crazy Bernie Sanders?

 Manchester, New Hampshire Democrats almost all agree that Donald Trump is ruining America and must be removed from the White House in November. The trouble is, nobody is sure who can or should do that. Democratic or Democrat-leaning voters talk nervously about the various candidates using their first names, as if trying to pick a love match in an episode of Blind Date. Should it be Bernie? Or Pete? Or Amy? Or Liz? Or Joe? New Hampshire isn’t meant to be like that. ‘Live free or die’ is the state’s motto. New Hampshirites are famously independent: they know their minds, at least that’s what everyone says. But in the Democratic primary this week, they all seemed indecisive.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Bernie wins New Hampshire, just — and Klobuchar replaces Warren as the race’s leading lady

From our US edition

Two big stories have emerged from New Hampshire. The first is not surprising: Bernie Sanders has won. The second is that Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar have stolen Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden’s thunder. The ‘Klobucharge’ is the surprise of the evening. She is replacing Warren as the leading woman in the race and Biden as the moderate centrist. Warren’s campaign is not disintegrating quite as fast as Biden’s, and she was expecting a bad night — but not this bad. The polls in recent days have shown Klobuchar thriving, but she seems to have surpassed even those. It is widely thought she did best in the last two TV debates.

hampshire

Monday

Freddy Gray

The age of celebrity is dead

From our US edition

Come friendly bombs and fall on Hollywood, it isn’t fit for doing good. Another year, another dreadful Oscars, another round of moral lectures from the beautiful people. It’s all so tiresome. The only reason most people pay attention to these irritating award ceremonies is precisely so that they can be irritated. So there was a vegan theme at this year’s Academy Awards. So the show had no host. So Brad Pitt is angry about impeachment. So someone said 'workers of the world unite'. So Joaquin Phoenix is mad (in all senses) about what mankind is doing to the animal kingdom. So Natalie Portman, in what she called ‘my subtle way’, had the names of the women directors who weren’t nominated for awards sewn into her dress. So what?

oscars

Saturday

Freddy Gray

After Iowa, Donald Trump looks invincible

Any future history of the decline and fall of the American Republic ought to include a page or two on the Iowa caucuses of 3 February 2020. It’s a meltdown story for the ages. The Democratic party, desperate to undo the victory of Donald Trump in 2016, somehow managed utterly to cock up its first meaningful vote in 2020. The calamity is so great that it may turn the whole Democratic primary — and therefore this presidential election year — into a farce. That suits President Trump. ‘Big WIN for us in Iowa tonight,’ he tweeted, on Tuesday night, as news of the Democratic imbroglio spread. ‘Thank you!’ He then retweeted Piers Morgan, who had responded to his tweet with a ROFL (Rolling on the Floor Laughing) emoji. Fun times.

Thursday

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Bloomberg wins the Iowa caucus – by not being in the race

It would be sad if it wasn’t quite so funny. In the race to declare success without knowing the result of the Iowa caucuses, Pete Buttigieg is the winner. But then, as campaigns prepare to release their own data, in lieu of any official results, the real victors are confusion, Donald Trump, and Michael Bloomberg. ‘Quality checks’, ‘inconsistencies’ and ‘technical difficulties’ are the theme of the night. People are already saying that ‘caucuses’ are clearly now outdated and must be abandoned, but the problem seems to be the toxic combination of old electoral practices, half-thought through reforms, and bad new technology. Trump is already crowing on Twitter.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Amber Athey joins as The Spectator’s Washington editor

From our US edition

I’m delighted to announce that Amber Athey is The Spectator’s new Washington editor, joining us from the Daily Caller next month. We’re thrilled to have her on board. Amber is a highly talented and accomplished young journalist and a very gifted writer. She’s been an excellent White House Correspondent for the Caller, where she’s broken countless great stories and regularly questioned the president, Mike Pompeo, Steve Mnuchin and other officials. She has already written some excellent stuff for us and she’ll be invaluable in giving The Spectator a presence in DC. The Spectator’s US edition goes from strength to strength. We are already on to our fifth print edition of the monthly magazine and we feel we are getting better and better.

amber athey

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Bernie devours Warren

From our US edition

Just four months ago, Elizabeth Warren seemed poised to storm the Democratic nomination. In the first days of October, she briefly eclipsed Joe Biden atop the polls. Her supposed rival on the left, Bernie Sanders, had just suffered a heart attack. His candidacy appeared to be fading. Suddenly, Warren was all the rage: she was a woman, which matters a lot to the Democratic media. She talked like a radical leftie, but she didn’t frighten the establishment horses in the way Bernie did. The bookmakers made her strong favorite to win: everybody assumed Warren would hoover up Sanders’s votes as his presidential aspirations vanished once again. Well, the opposite has happened. Bernie Sanders’s campaign has ended up devouring Warren’s.

bernie

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Nobody is woke

From our US edition

The word ‘woke’ has quickly degenerated into a meaningless term of abuse. Nobody says ‘I am woke’ these days, at least not seriously.  It‘s like claiming to be a keen nanny-statist or ‘bien-pensant’. At one level, then, wokeness exists only so that journalists like me and social media warriors on the center or right can fight it. It’s not just the word that has become hackneyed. The whole idea of being woke – suddenly alert – to racial or social injustice is not real, and never was, and therefore the movement against it is similarly fake. Right-wingers have the same concept and call it 'redpilling’; in both cases, it means a sort of lobotomized enlightenment for people who enjoy feeling aggrieved.

woke

Monday

Freddy Gray

Nobody cares who the New York Times endorses

There’s conceit, there’s pomposity, and then there’s the New York Times editorial board. Yesterday, the Grey Lady wiggled her well-connected bottom, cocked a leg authoritatively, and let her hotly anticipated Democratic primary endorsement rip through cyberspace. ‘In a break with convention,’ declared the board, breaking wind with tradition, ‘the editorial board has chosen to endorse two separate Democratic candidates'. What? Hold the front page! No wait, they already have! This is big news — at least it is in the la-la land of elite legacy media. Nobody in the real world will take much notice, of course, beyond those of us who feel disgusted by the nauseating arrogance and weak-mindedness behind the paper’s feminist grandstanding.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Is there method – or madness – behind Trump’s actions in Iraq?

Leaders are often accused of escalating a conflict abroad in order to distract from headaches at home. On Tuesday, before Iran’s missiles were fired, Donald Trump seemed to be doing the opposite. He and his media surrogates started their now all-too-familiar yabbering about impeachment and the Democrats. It felt as if they were trying to move the news cycle away from the Iran crisis. We’re in an election year after all, and the polls suggest a large majority of American voters don’t want more war. Then Tehran launched what it is calling ‘Operation Martyr Soleimani’, which at first prompted a rare nervous silence in Washington. The White House led reporters to believe the President would gravely address the nation that night, but he postponed.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

So much for de-escalation

From our US edition

‘We are not looking to start a war with Iran,’ said defense secretary Mark Esper today. ‘We are looking to finish one.’ Iran just replied by firing off at least a dozen missiles at American targets in Iraq in an effort supposedly dubbed Operation Martyr Soleimani. It doesn’t mean all out war yet — but all the Trump administration’s talk about ‘de-escalating’ the situation sounds like hot air. As I write, the details of Iran’s retaliation are unclear — we don’t know if the strikes were aimed at American troops or infrastructure. Is it a face-saving measure? A decoy? Why did Iran attack Erbil and Al-Asad, rather than more obvious US bases? Have the fortified American defenses at these bases worked?

de-escalation al asad iran

Saturday

Freddy Gray

Ten handy phrases for bluffing your way through the coming Iran crisis

That gathering drumbeat you hear could be the sound of World War III, or it could be 10,000 journalists still Googling facts about Iran following the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. The internet is a bluffer’s paradise, but it also means that everybody— not just the hacks — now feels a strong impulse to talk knowledgeably about the Middle East when news happens. You have to know your Shiite, as they say, your IRGC from your Kataib Hizbollah. Don’t muddle Khamenei with Khomeini. But more importantly don’t be afraid! The Spectator is here with some handy phrases to get you through any difficult Twitter spat or pub chat. 1) Say ‘Iran’s proxies in the region’ a lot The word ‘proxies’ is bluffer gold-dust so sprinkle liberally.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Trump’s foreign policy isn’t working

From our US edition

An end to endless wars? Get real. America’s foreign policy since the end of the Cold War is a never-ceasing tragedy. One front improves, another worsens. On Sunday, it emerged that the Taliban council had agreed a ceasefire in Afghanistan, a development that could at last end America’s longest war, its 18-year military engagement in the graveyard of empires. Maybe President Donald Trump really could make good on his promise to end America’s hopeless and destructive foreign entanglements. At the same time, however, Iraq has fallen into greater chaos again — because America can’t stop meddling. George W. Bush’s other great disaster continues. The failure cycle whirs.

baghdad iraq foreign policy

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Does the truth about Ukrainegate even matter?

If you think the election here has been a disorientating exercise in post-truthiness, try following the latest twists in Washington. In the coming days Donald Trump will become the third American president to be impeached. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker, is rushing the vote on articles of impeachment through the House of Representatives, so that the Senate trial of Trump can start before the 2020 election primary season begins. Pelosi knows that impeachment is probably a losing cause: the Republican--controlled Senate will almost certainly acquit the President. What, then, is the point? The Democrats will say impeachment is a moral necessity, since the President is evidently unworthy of high office.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Tories shouldn’t be terrified by Trump’s trip to London

Never mind the polls, Conservative insiders are more terrified about something else at the moment. The Donald is coming. CCHQ is quaking. After Black Friday comes Orange Monday, when the US president will touch down again in Great Britain ahead of another Nato summit. Trump is, we all know, a news cycle hurricane. What havoc might he wreak this time? One disastrous Trump quote, the Tories fear, could blow Boris Johnson’s chances of a majority away. Well, yes but no. What the Westminster bubbleheads don’t realise is that most British people will be relishing — even if we don’t admit it — the arrival of Trump the human-wrecking-ball just days before a general election.

Sunday

Freddy Gray

How Bloomberg helps Bernie

Who likes Mike? The billionaire Michael Bloomberg has ended years of speculation by announcing that he is running to be president in 2020. You can see his twinkling piano new campaign ad here. The video pitches him as the reluctant hero who always steps up when America needs him. Keep those inspiring chord changes coming: it’s the sound of a hundred political consultants getting very rich. https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1198620233994526722 Bloomberg, who is considerably richer than the man in the White House, long ago put aside an enormous slush fund to stop Trump winning re-election. He probably would have been willing to throw his enormous financial muscle behind a Democrat he rated.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Donald Trump 💓 impeachment

From our US edition

Democrats like to make out that Donald Trump is terrified of the impeachment juggernaut they are driving at his head. The president is dissembling on Twitter, they say, because he’s in deep trouble. He knows he’s cornered. He’s flailing. He’s spooked. Resistance to the resistance is futile. The problem is, Trump — and, even more so, his online persona @realDonaldTrump — seems to be relishing the impeachment saga. He does his phony melancholy routine, in which he says how sad it is because we should all be focusing on his many achievements. Don’t believe it. He is simultaneously courting the whole Ukraine brouhaha, dragging it out himself. Why else would he have live-tweeted it last week?

impeachment