Freddy Gray

‘Whatever complicates the world more — I do,’ Donald Trump once said. As President, that still seems to be his mantra. Everybody knows that he feels America has been ripped off for decades when it comes to global trade — and that he intends address imbalances that hurt his country wherever he can. But his abrupt decision to announce huge tariffs on steel and aluminium has sent shockwaves across the world. It has thrown global markets into a panic. It has caused division in his White House and put him at odds with his party establishment, which is ideologically committed to free trade and terrified of protectionism. It is vintage Trump, in other words. The great disruptor strikes again. So what is he doing?

Every week is extraordinary in the Trump administration — but this week seems stranger than most. Matters are rumbling in the belly of the beast. On Tuesday, we learned that Jared Kushner had his security clearance downgraded. Today, we learn that Hope Hicks, famously Trump’s most trusted aide, has resigned, a day after she testified to the House Intelligence Committee as part of the Russia investigation. Hicks stonewalled questions from the committee for several hours, though she did reportedly open up a little on certain aspects of Trump’s transition. She is the fourth Trump White House communications director to quit in just over a year. It can't be easy leading the war against fake news.

Not so long ago, Barack Obama called Waziristan ‘the most dangerous place in the world’. It was the losing front in the war on terror, a lawless region in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan infested with Taleban and terrorism. Today, thanks to the Pakistan army, even a risk-averse hack like me can go there with scarcely a tremor. On Wednesday, as part of a British media delegation, I flew by military helicopter to Miranshah, the administrative HQ of north Waziristan. The soldiers took us to a newly built ‘markaz (hideout) re-enactment’ centre, which we quickly renamed Jihadi Disneyland. It is a true-to-life terrorist den, constructed by Pakistani soldiers with extraordinary attention to detail.

Boris Titov is running to be president of Russia, but he’s eager to talk himself out of the job. ‘I am not a good politician,’ he says, over breakfast at the Lanesborough hotel in Knightsbridge. ‘To be a president means you need to be wise, a big politician like Thatcher, Deng Xiaoping, Lee Kuan Yew. Russia needs a tough politician in the presidential chair and I am not that man.’ Titov knows that on 18 March, Vladimir Putin, the toughest politician of our age, will be re-elected as Russia’s Supreme Commander-in-Chief. ‘Everybody understands that,’ he says. ‘We are not stupid. I have common sense.’ Which prompts the question: why run?

Donald J Trump’s State of the Union was as expected: long, boastful, cheesy — and largely right. Trump says he is creating a ‘new American moment’ — and it’s hard to deny that he is. Before he was president, and even in his inauguration speech, Trump painted only a vision of America in ruins. Now, after a year of him in charge, his message is reassuring and upbeat. It’s not the same as Reagan’s sunny optimism — it’s more post-modern and surreal than that — but it’s not far off. You could call it Trump’s electric sunbed optimism. It’s feel-good, it's a bit orange, and it seems to be rubbing off on the world. ‘Our families will thrive,’ he said in conclusion.

Wow. As far as I know, Donald Trump has only apologised twice since he emerged as a presidential candidate in 2015 — never apologise, never explain seems to be his usual rule. Once he said sorry after the famous ‘locker room’ talk Access Hollywood tape was leaked in 2016. And today, with his pal Piers Morgan, he offered an apology for retweeting Britain First's videos, saying: ‘Here’s what’s fair. If you’re telling me these (are) horrible people, horrible racist people, I would certainly apologise if you’d like me to do that.' WORLD EXCLUSIVE: In his first international interview since becoming US president, @realDonaldTrump says sorry for retweeting anti-Muslim videos. @piersmorgan https://t.

Donald Trump had hoped to mark his first anniversary as president basking in surprisingly positive media headlines and enjoying a lavish party at his Mar-a-Largo estate in Florida. Instead he must contend with a government shutdown and another major political crisis in Washington, the political swamp he promised to drain. Congress has remained in session all weekend as Republicans and Democrats seek to resolve the shutdown -- and blame each other for having caused it. But who will Americans blame? The President? The Republican Party? Or the Democrats? The answer is everybody, probably.

Another week, another blow to the so-called Special Relationship. The latest sorry news is that Number 10 has been trying to orchestrate a meeting with President Donald Trump at Davos — but President Donald Trump reportedly isn’t interested. He’d rather hang out with President Macron of France instead. Oh dear. It looks as if the President wants us to grovel, and we probably will in the end. It’s hard not to feel for May. She spent a lot of political capital in being friendly to Trump in the early weeks of his presidency. While Macron got elected essentially by posing as ;'anti-Trump, she tried to present herself as a sort of middle ground between Trump's populist nationalism and Davos's neoliberalism.

Journalists can guffaw at the silliness of President Donald’s Trump’s Fake News Awards as much as they like. The truth is he’s right: the media is biased against him to the point of insanity. And the way Trump has presented the awards on Twitter, and whoever wrote the announcements on GOP.com, has been funny, perceptive, and social-media savvy. In the war that is Trump versus the media, Trump is winning. Through Twitter, Trump has turned media bias against him into his great political asset. Voters who aren’t pathologically anti-Trump can see that he has a point about how unfair the mainstream coverage of him is, and increasingly people tend to believe him not the press.

How quickly Steve Bannon's dark star has collapsed. Not so long ago, friends and enemies talked him up as a media genius. He was a political guerrilla operative you underrated at your peril. He was ‘Trump's Rasputin’, or ‘President Bannon’, the man who really controlled the White House.  Then he lost his job in said White House, fell out with Donald J Trump, and now, a few days after the publication of his comments in Michael Wolff's book, he has stood down as head of Breitbart news.  The power that Bannon represented turned out to have been the Mercer family, who had bankrolled Bannon, Breitbart and Trump's campaign.

Forget North Korea for a moment — President Donald J Trump today launched a devastating assault on Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, and the man often credited as the architect of his success. Replying to bitchy comments Steve Bannon reportedly made in Fire and Fury, a new book about the Trump White House by arch-muckraker hack Michael Wolff, Trump exploded. His comments are worth reading in full: ‘Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.