Freddy Gray

Donald Trump has a yuge problem in special prosecutor Robert Swan Mueller III. The American president’s anger at having this legal thorn in his administration’s side explains much of his recent erratic behaviour, as Daniel McCarthy explained in the magazine this week. Now we learn that Mueller is using a grand jury – a group that meets in secret and has the legal power to compel testimony – and that can only be an aggravation for Trump. He can keep saying it’s a 'Witch Hunt'  – maybe it is – but a witch hunt could bring down his presidency, or at least make it impossible for his administration to function.

Give it to the scriptwriters of the epic comedy that is The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, they know how to keep an audience going. The blockbuster farce starring Donald J Trump – ‘the greatest show on earth’, even to its harshest critics – had begun to tire a little, of late. The Russia stuff goes on and on, but in our age of non-existent attention spans, the twists and turn are getting a bit exhausting. We all know that American health reform is important, but, let’s face it, the fate of Obamacare legislation and talk of ‘skinny bills’ doesn’t get the juices flowing. It’s not good for ratings, as Trump himself would say.

These days nobody much bothers denying that the Trump administration is chaotic, aside that is from the Donald's inner circle and a few hardcore loyalists who believe that the 45th president really is Making America Great Again. The Trumpists say that reports of strife and discord in the White House are elite media spin. But what to make of the news that Sean Spicer has stood down as White House Press Secretary? Perhaps it's not that significant – press secretaries come and go – but the briefing wars surrounding Spicer's departure suggest once again that Team Trump may be tearing itself apart. Spicer, it's said, has gone because he was unhappy at the arrival of Anthony Scaramucci, a big hedge funder who has previously hosted the Skybridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference.

Reactions to each development in the Trump-Russia scandal tend to follow the same pattern. At first, journalists express incredulity and then horror. It doesn't matter if the Team Trump member under suspicion is Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Junior, even big daddy Trump himself, everybody agrees this is big news. Dots are connected and then, click, we all conclude that Russia 'hacked' the election. Then, once the initial flush of excitement, passes, everybody says 'where is the actual evidence?' Or 'is it really that bad?' And the Trump-Russia scandal subsides for a few days. People who are inclined to accept Trump's presidency say that the media has gone mad over the Russia thing.

What fun the internet is having now that Vladimir Putin has finally met Donald Trump. Social media is teeming with jokes, gifs, and memes about the two big dawgs of global politics finally coming together. It’s the great bromance of the populist age.  Underneath the hilarity, however, there remains intense suspicions about the relationship between Trump and Putin – it is now widely accepted, even if the evidence is still hotly disputed, that Russia ‘hacked the election’ in order to ensure Hillary Clinton’s defeat. Trump’s meeting with Sergei Lavrov in May was considered highly nefarious, especially after Trump accidentally gave away a state secret, apparently just to show off.

What are we to make of Donald Trump’s intervention in the case of Charlie Gard, the desperately ill boy whose painful story has been in the news so much in recent weeks. Earlier today, the President took to Twitter – where else? – to say: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/881875263700783104 The President’s generous albeit somewhat vague message sends a clear signal to the world: Donald Trump has a heart. For that reason, it will invite cynicism.

Donald Trump either has nothing to hide about his relationship with Russia -- or he is hiding in plain sight, as all good con artists do. What you believe will depend on your political prejudices and how you feel about Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.     The Washington Post's report yesterday that Trump shared 'highly classified information' about Isis with the Russian foreign minister last week has triggered the usual consternation in Washington.

What to make of the shocking news that Donald Trump has fired the director of the FBI James Comey? Senior Democrats are calling it a 'Nixonian' cover up of the Bureau's probe into Trump's links to Russia. It is easy to see what they mean. The abrupt move has strong echoes of the famous 'Saturday Night Massacre' during the Watergate scandal. As Senator Richard Blumenthal put it, "President Trump has catastrophically compromised the FBI's ongoing investigation of his own White House's ties to Russia." It doesn't look good. As usual with Trump, though, it seems impossible to figure out quite what he is up to. If he really wanted to conceal his ties to Russia, why would he do something quite so dramatic? He can't really be that stupid can he?

Emmanuel Macron has won the French presidential election. He is projected to have won by just over 65pc, pretty much the exact majority the polls have suggested all week. So it's no populist surprises tonight, and chapeau to France pollsters. Everybody thinks the French are revolutionary, but actually the Fifth Republic is constitutionally and temperamentally conservative. Macron has won because he is the less immediately dangerous choice. He's a europhile centrist who says all the things global statesmen are meant to say. He's a neophyte but he's also a typical post Cold War politician in the Tony Blair mould. The real story of the French election is not Macron. It is the great disgruntlement in French politics.

Sebastian Gorka is a big man. He has a powerful handshake, a deep voice, and a serious goatee. He’s also deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, and known as the most influential Brit in the White House. He was born in London, the son of Hungarian immigrants, and grew up in Ealing. Yet he seems to identify more with America and Hungary than with Britain. When I ask him if he feels British, he says, ‘As a good friend said to me, and I think this is a quote from someone else, possibly Hayek, “You were always American, you were just born in the wrong country.”’ Nevertheless, the British government, desperate to form bonds with a Brexit--friendly Trump administration, has been eager to claim him as one of us.

Everybody knows that Marine Le Pen can't beat Emmanuel Macron, don't they? What does she have to lose? Nothing, it seems. She has now declared that she will run as an independent candidate, and not stand for the National Front. Marine's move is surprising and clever in a madcap way. Anything that Macron can do I can do stranger, she is saying. Macron has reinvented himself as an outsider taking on the establishment -- even though everyone knows he is a former banker and Hollande economics adviser. Well, Marine is saying, I can pretend that I am an independent too. Macron's greatest weakness is that he was tarred by association with Hollande and the elite French left. Marine's biggest problem is that the FN was still too toxic for the French mainstream.

It's still rather a cheerful vibe at the French ambassador's residence in sunny Kensington this evening. The crowd here would have preferred the exit poll to show Macron and Fillon to go through, but they'll take Macron versus Le Pen, especially with Macron in the lead. There were sharp intakes of breath when Le Pen popped up on screen in second place. But Macron being ahead is good news as far as these Londoners are concerned. A huge number of French voters abroad turned out today – a good chunk of them in London, where people queued up outside the French Lycée in Kensington for up to three hours to cast their ballots. And French Londoners tend to be socially mobile, affluent types -- not the sort of people who vote for Le Pen or Melenchon.