Rob Crilly

After three weeks as the president-elect, we are starting to get a sense of what a Trump presidency will look like. Or at least a clear idea of how he is running the transition from Trump Tower to the White House. It looks much the same as his unconventional campaign, combining Twitter rants with Rust Belt rallies. On Monday evening, you might have thought he would be huddled with aides discussing his pick for Secretary of State or catching up on security briefings (reportedly he took only two of the daily briefings offered during his first fortnight as president-elect). But no. Despite having won the election by 306 electoral college votes to 232, he decided to launch a classic Twitter rant reheating dodgy claims that fraud cost him a chunk of the popular vote.

Donald Trump loves a great deal. You know that by now, right? A great, fantastic, beautiful deal. Big-league or bigly, whichever you prefer. Huge. It was his campaign's USP. President Trump promised to strike bigger, better deals for America. And already his supporters are seeing the fruits. This morning, the President-elect, the man who is soon to become leader of the free world, the 45th man to lead America, emailed me with his Black Friday deal. 'Rob, President-elect Trump loves a great deal,' began the missive from his campaign store. 'And in honor of Black Friday, Mr. Trump is extending a 30%-OFF DEAL at the Official Store for Trump Gear.

'Mister Softie', screams the headline on the New York Daily News, with Donald Trump's luxurious comb-over transformed into an ice-cream twist. The president elect is back-pedalling, flip-flopping and cozying up to his enemies. Going soft. Before he has even taken up residence in the White House, America's liberal media has declared Trump a traitor to the millions of people who delivered a shock election win. The reason is Tuesday's lunchtime chat with the New York Times, in which he said he wasn't that fussed about locking up Hillary Clinton, suggested he had an open mind on climate change and rather toned down his support of torture in the fight against terrorism.

Plenty of Republicans were not in the mood to celebrate on election night. About 200 gathered at the Lincoln Restaurant in Washington DC, where they had hoped they could watch a heavy defeat for Donald Trump and begin the process of returning their party to its centre-Right origins. Instead, people began drifting home before midnight. Since then, Republicans of the Never Trump variety have had to wrestle with what comes next, questioning whether the party of Lincoln can ever recover and what their place in it might be. People like Meghan Milloy, who has been a Republican since her school years but who campaigned against her own party by helping set up 'Republican Women for Hillary'. 'A lot of folks were in shock,' she said.

Bit by bit, Donald Trump's policies and priorities are emerging into view. We know who his chief of staff is to be and in an interview last night he started to explain his plan of action after his inauguration. It begins, as you might have predicted, with immigration: 'What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we’re getting them out of our country. They’re here illegally.

The most divisive American election in living memory is almost over. By the end of the day an estimated 130 million people will have cast their ballots and we will be well on the way to knowing which candidate has done enough to win the necessary 270 electoral college votes. Here are the key things to watch today and through the night: Polling conduct – the first test will be whether or not voting is trouble free. It might be tempting to assume American democracy is the sort of well-developed exercise that has banished fraud. Not so. Democrats have complained of intimidation during early polling, both sides have filed complaints accusing the other of illegal practices and Trump has repeatedly warned his supporters that the election is rigged against him.

The finger pointers began coming to Trump Tower in 2004. Donald Trump was making the transition from property mogul to TV celebrity in The Apprentice, and fans would head to his iconic skyscraper on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. There they would point an index finger at the 58-storey tower (where the top floor is labelled 68) and shout his catchphrase, 'You're fired.' Fast forward twelve years to America's most polarising and bitter election and the pointers are still coming. It's just that the proffered finger is no longer the index and the sentiment is rather less good-natured.

Being Vice President of the US ranks as one of the worst jobs in the world. It comes with practically no power yet carries enough responsibility that it can kill your future career prospects. Cactus Jack Garner, the 32nd man to hold the post, famously described the position as 'not worth a bucket of warm piss'. And they still have to work for it. Tonight we get to watch Tim Kaine, for the Democrats, and Mike Pence, for the Republicans, go head-to-head in the one - and only - vice presidential debate of the campaign. For 90 minutes, they'll have to slug it out on live TV for the right to that bucket. Their task is simple: avoid making any gaffes; defend the number-one name on the ticket; and land a few blows on the opposing presidential candidate.

American political conventions are supposed to be coronations. They are meant to be choreographed and scripted arrangements to ensure that aspiring presidents can be exhibited on prime time TV to their full advantage. Dull. Nothing about this election season has been routine. And this week in Cleveland has been the craziest of the year so far. Not in the streets around the Quicken Loans Arena, where the doom mongers warned of violent clashes between protesters and supporters of Donald Trump. Instead the drama is playing out day after day inside the convention, which has been remade in the image of its divisive candidate. Last night was supposed to be Mike Pence’s night as he officially accepted the nomination for vice-president.

It’s easy to understand why Donald Trump opted to deploy four of his children and one of his wives on the Republican convention stage in Cleveland this week. For many sceptical voters, his immigrant wife, professional daughters and all American sons reflect the best of the Trump family. And then there was the small matter of so many senior Republicans refusing to share a stage with such a divisive candidate. At least you can rely on family. Just one problem. If something goes wrong, there’s nowhere to hide. It is difficult to disown your wife if she makes a blunder in her speech (even for a man who knows a thing or two about divorce laws). So what do you do when your wife’s speech appears to mimic the lines of another prospective first lady?

After weeks of speculation and teasers, hints of A-list stars and promises of razzle dazzle, the programme for the Republican National Convention finally arrives on the eve of proceedings. At the last possible moment. And if you were expecting Donald Trump to remake the GOP election-year gathering in his own image, well, you won’t be disappointed. In fact the week’s convention is looking a lot like an episode of a new reality TV show: At Home with the Trumps. Six are among the 20 headline speakers. On Monday we have his wife and possible future first Lady Melania discussing how to 'make America safe again'. Until now she has preferred cosy TV chats to stump speeches, managing only a 90-second effort in Milwaukee.

In the end Donald Trump's vice-presidential pick emerged in typical style, blurted out on Twitter. On Thursday night, as the horrors from Nice played out on TV screens, the bombastic billionaire said he was cancelling Friday's event to unveil his running mate. A rare moment of sensitivity. It didn't last. Hours later he ended speculation with a Twitter announcement. 'I am pleased to announce that I have chosen Governor Mike Pence as my Vice Presidential running mate. News conference tomorrow at 11:00am,' he wrote. It marked the end of what CNN had clumsily dubbed the VPprentice, with Trump publicly announcing his three final candidates almost as if it were a reality TV show.

Hillary Clinton can be a hard woman to love. Even in the greatest moment of her political career last night, as she finally claimed the Democratic nomination on behalf of American women, her delivery didn't quite match the occasion. The crowd was amped up. Electrified. But where a Donald Trump or a Bernie Sanders or a Bill Clinton would have used every rhetorical flourish and ounce of charisma to take the volume up another level, Clinton could only keep things ticking over, drawing energy from the audience rather than the other way around. But her message was a powerful one, putting her achievement in the context of centuries of struggle for women. 'Thanks to you, we've reached a milestone,' she told the ecstatic crowd in Brooklyn, New York.

Do you remember when they said it wasn't possible? When the pointy-headed wonks in Washington DC and the New York journalists with their masters degrees said Donald Trump's campaign would be hit by scandal, or come undone without the support of experienced Republican party officials who knew how to work complicated caucus states, or that the candidate would simply lose interest and go back to making money? At a little before quarter past 10 on Thursday morning, an Associated Press reporter ran the numbers through his calculator and found that Trump had proved the sceptics wrong, he had clinched the 1237 delegates he needed for the Republican Party nomination. A small number of unbound delegates had made the jump to Trump, allowing him to clinch the magic number.