Freddy Gray

If you want to know where President Donald Trump will bomb next, follow his daughter on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/849581431806459904 It's Ivanka's rare outburst and her use of the word 'outraged' that suggested daddy might do something. If she deems something abroad unacceptable, you can be sure the full terrifying force of American power will be deployed to make her feel better.     Ok, I’m being a little facetious. But that is the sort of US government we are dealing with now. President Trump looks a lot like the man his political enemies warned us about: a hothead with command of the most powerful military machine the world has ever seen. Donald Trump will act on emotion – or what he perceives to be popular sentiment.

Perhaps Steve Bannon isn’t quite as all-powerful within the Trump administration as everybody believed. He’s just been removed from the principals committee of the National Security Council. This news has been understood as a sign that Trump’s new National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster is now calling the shots on foreign policy. The spin in Washington is that Bannon’s role on the NSC had been to act as a ‘check’ on the now disgraced former advisor Mike Flynn, who resigned in February, and with the more level-headed McMaster in charge he's no longer needed. It’s also emerged that Bannon has kept full level national security clearance. So what’s changed? Something, clearly, for all the naysaying of White House insiders.

If you believe the hype, Emmanuel Macron is l’anti-Trump. He is what the inter-national centre-left, reeling from the shocks of Brexit and the US election and fearful of a victory for Marine Le Pen in France, is crying out for: a politician who can win again. He is only 39 years old, handsome and radical sounding. He’s not a career politico; he used to work as a banker for the Rothschilds (every-body loves them). He wears sharp suits and he’s written a book called Révolution. Better still, he has a buzzing movement behind him: his ‘En Marche!’ (Let’s go!) campaign has excited trendy progressives. He is not bogged down with formal connections to the loathed establishment.

It's been said a lot that, for all the supposed closeness between Russia and the new US administration, the Trump-Putin axis could soon turn into dangerous enmity. Strange friendships make fast feuds. And if Trump is a proper nationalist, if he is the thin-skinned narcissist that everybody says he is, he will react strongly against the widely held idea that he is some orange Kremlin patsy. What then should we make of the departure of Michael Flynn, Trump's national security adviser? Flynn has resigned amid allegations that he misled Vice President Mike Pence as to the nature of some telephone calls in December with the Russian ambassador to the US. Flynn had assured Pence that these conversations had not touched on the sensitive matter of American sanctions against Russia.

Donald Trump now looks the weakest US president of recent times. His approval rating is historically low for a new Commander-in-Chief. And the 9th District Court of Appeals has now refused to reinstate his executive order on immigration -- an order which, if you stop breathing in all the media hot air surrounding it, isn't all that dramatic a presidential move. The immigration order now seems likely to go up to the Supreme Court -- Trump, typically,  tweeted 'see you in court' after learning of the decision. He could win there, especially if his administration can get their Supreme Court nominee Judge Gorsuch in place quickly. But the delay will make a mockery of the order, a 90-day freeze, because almost 90 days will pass before the Supreme Court can rule on the decision.

America's new visa policies are shocking, everyone agrees on that. Even Donald Trump’s administration calls its US entry vetting ‘extreme’. But before everyone calls Trump a fascist again, before everyone reaches once more for the Hitler and the Nazis comparisons, consider this: Trump’s 'America First' nationalism is defensive, not aggressive. It may be clumsy, it may be offensive, and it will of course be unfair on lots of immigrants. But it is not war-mongering. In this respect, Trump is very different to the post 9-11 George W Bush. He is also different to Barack Obama, who wanted peace but whose internationalism inevitably dragged him into more disastrous conflicts.

He could be the greatest disaster ever to befall America. He could go down as the man that Made America Great Again. What's certain is that Donald Trump is the most radical US president for centuries. Trump's inaugural speech was predictable -- in the sense that we have heard Trump say it all before. In terms of rhetorical brilliance, Obama outdid him dramatically at Andrews Air Base 45 minutes later.  Nonetheless Trump was mind-blowing in the sense that the new president of the United States, a billionaire eccentric, was standing in front of Capitol Hill and attacking 'the establishment' for having ripped off the American people. 'Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost,' he said.

Donald Trump will not find satisfaction as the 45th President of the United States of America. He really wants to be king. Just look at the gilded-bling madness of his penthouse on the 66th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan, or the sprawling exuberance of his holiday palace in Mar-a-Lago, Florida: Trump aspires to be an American emperor, the Big Mac Rex with triple cheese. Winning the White House is great, but it’s not enough. Trump now seems determined to treat the Oval Office as just one of his courts — the principal court, perhaps, at least for four years, but one of many. He wants to lord it over Washington DC in partnership with his daughter princess, Ivanka, and her dashing husband, Mr Jared Kushner.

Donald Trump hasn't given a press conference for 167 days, but this was some comeback appearance. The President-elect came out swinging, to put it mildly. Responding to sensational reports that Russian intelligence might have kompromat – a comprising piece of evidence, possibly a sex tape involving ‘golden showers’ – against him, Trump was angry, full of righteous indignation. He said that ‘sick people’ in the media had concocted the story. He called it ‘fake news’ and ‘garbage'. He suggested that, because he was a ‘germaphobe’ he was unlikely to have allowed prostitutes to do disgusting things to him in a Moscow hotel room.