I’ve always been something of a news addict, but recent events in America and Ukraine have turned me into the kind of junkie films get made about. ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ an affliction you once sniggered at in others, is now sweeping the world faster than Covid-19, and is oddly easy, at the moment, to fall into.
Speaking of the White House’s pivot to Russia and apparent abandonment of Europe, a friend said it was like ‘sitting in an articulated lorry being driven by someone who’s just downed an entire quart of bourbon.’ Another remarked: ‘There’s this complete, jaw-dropping disbelief at what’s happening. Each time I turn on the TV for the news, it feels like I’ve taken hallucinogenic drugs. How much longer can this go on?’
Macron’s speech – an ‘in time of the breaking of nations’ wake-up call – was hair-raising stuff
Some commentators seem to want it to go on and on and on. ‘Trump reigns supreme – his enemies no longer matter’ asserted the headline over Tim Stanley’s starry-eyed article in the Telegraph, in which he gushed that Trump’s Tuesday speech to Congress was ‘fantastic, shameless five-star entertainment… Folks, this wasn’t politics. It was like watching Sinatra play Vegas.’ Charles Lipson’s article in these pages the same day – ‘It’s morning in Trump’s America’ – struck a similar tone, crowing that ‘Donald Trump’s speech […] was the most powerful, rousing, and pointed of any presidential address in decades.’ Deeming it ‘a bravura performance,’ Lipson finished: ‘It was the first line President Trump uttered that framed the whole speech. “America is back…and we are just getting started.”’ One wonders whether either of these articles will age quite as their authors might hope.
But there are pundits to suit all tastes, and many of us are spending enough time sucking up the news right now to find them. On YouTube, James Carville – once Bill Clinton’s wonderfully weird campaign manager – kicks back in sweatshirt and baseball cap, declaring in that soft Cajun accent that his ‘country’s in the greatest peril it’s been in since I’ve been born. That’s 80 years… This is a profound crisis of the United States.’ To commentators who urge the Democrats to do something and ‘pass’ a resolution or two, Carville says: ‘I don’t know how to tell late-night hosts this. We can’t pass gas. We don’t have the votes.’
Times Radio is spewing out more interviews on YouTube than one could believe (they should surely be put in charge of weapons production when we finally get round to it) but there’s essential viewing there. One example is Andrew Neil systematically debunking Trump’s ‘litany of falsehoods’ – first that the US has given the Ukraine $350 billion (£271 billion) ‘with nothing to show for it.’ Wrong, says Neil – the US has given $120 billion (£93 billion) in total, ‘and the dividend has been to thwart Russia from taking all of Ukraine, then going on to threaten the rest of Eastern Europe’ who are our ‘Nato allies.’ Trump says America has given a lot more money to Ukraine than Europe. Wrong, says Neil. European combined totals are $138 billion (£107 billion), substantially more than the US. Trump says Europe has given donations mainly in loans to be repaid by Ukraine, whereas American aid is in grants.Wrong again, booms Neil: the bulk of European aid was in grants too. ‘Thus is Nato,’ Neil concludes, ‘in danger of being dismantled on a tissue of lies.’
Other people are coming to the fore in posts doing the rounds. A French Senator, Claude Malhuret, seems to channel de Gaulle and declares with splendid Gallic disdain that:
Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is slipping away… Washington has become the court of Nero. An incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service…. Never in history has a president of the United States surrendered to an enemy. Never before has one supported an aggressor against an ally…. We were at war with a dictator. We are now fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor.
Another unlikely star is Oregon’s mild-mannered Senator Merkeley, who during a televised hearing in Washington asks two bullish but stonewalling Trump nominees whether Zelensky is ‘a Russian asset’. He went on to list the numerous things the American President has recently done which suggest this. Among them are: spouting ‘Russian propaganda – that Ukraine started the war and that Zelensky is a dictator’; cutting off arms to Ukraine, ‘completely undermining their ability to defend themselves’; attacking the US’s partnership with Europe ‘which has been essential to security over the last 80 years’. And doing ‘everything to discredit and demean Zelensky on the international stage, with the just shameful press conference in which he teamed up with the Vice President to attack Zelensky.’ Merkeley finishes, witheringly:
I do hope we have an administration that worked to get the best deal for Ukraine, but what a Russian asset would do would be to work to get the very best deal for Russia. And that appears to be exactly what Donald Trump is trying to accomplish.
Trump, of course, still has his diehards, among them former strategy chief Steve Bannon, who has been interviewed on Sky News. Bannon was once called (I forget by whom) ‘the best-looking guy in the liquor store’ but even that would be overdoing it these days. Broadcasting from what resembles a converted garage with an American eagle on the wall behind him, Bannon, in his military-style shirt, looks like the kind of crazed survivalist Louis Theroux used to make programmes about. ‘Zelensky is untrustworthy,’ the old warhorse fumed:
He’s a crook and a punk, and he showed what a punk he was in the Oval Office the other day… I don’t think he should ever be allowed back into the United States….
Ghoulishly compelling too is Victoria Derbyshire’s interview with Brian Glenn, the White House chief correspondent who asked Zelensky if he owned a suit and now looks chastened by the subsequently online drubbing. ‘I didn’t mean [for it] to come off as a snarky comment,’ the reporter said, deducing that ‘by the thousands and tens of thousands of comments I’ve gotten on social media, death-threats, phone calls – I don’t know how they got my number,’ it probably had.
For those who wanted to see history on a grander scale, there was President Macron’s faintly terrifying announcement in his address to the French nation on Wednesday night that ‘historic events’ were ‘shaking up the world order’. Macron wanted ‘to believe,’ he said, ‘that the United States will remain at our side, but we must be ready if this is not the case’ – concluding that ‘the innocence of the last thirty years, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, is now over.’
Macron’s speech – an ‘in time of the breaking of nations’ wake-up call – was hair-raising stuff. Perhaps the last word, though, should go to one Paul Brislen, currently going viral on X: ‘As a German, I just want to get this straight. The entire Western world wants us to build a huge army, march through Poland and fight the Russians if necessary. Just writing it down so there are no misunderstandings in future…’
Comments