Donald trump

Thursday

Taki

High life | 5 April 2018

New York If Albanian television had shown the programme CBS did last week — with a woman who has sex on camera for a living describing how she had unprotected Bing-Bing with the president — I think even Albanians would feel so diminished they’d move to Kosovo. But this is America, and it’s a woman’s, woman’s, woman’s world! Or perhaps a frontal lobe is missing. The degree of reverence afforded to a porn actress by Anderson (kiss me) Cooper was astonishing. His smouldering gaze of restraint was touching, as was his phony squint of chagrin that no protection was used. See what I mean about moving to Kosovo? But this

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

A US-China tit-for-tat hardly amounts to a serious trade war

‘Stocks plunge as China hits US goods with tariffs,’ said a headline after the long weekend, and the FTSE100 duly dipped below 7,000. But I wonder what a serious trade war would look like — and how markets would respond if the White House and Beijing took the gloves off. Last year, China exported $500 billion worth of goods to the US, while US exports to China amounted to $135 billion. Last month, President Trump announced import tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese steel and aluminium, 10 per cent of the total import bill. China has hit back with tariffs on US steel tubes plus an eclectic product list

Wednesday

Rory Sutherland

The long and the short of political advertising

Nine years ago, before Cambridge Analytica existed, I caught wind of a research project at Cambridge involving the online measurement of the ‘big five’ personality dimensions. These are usually listed by the acronym OCEAN or CANOE: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness and Extraversion. I made a note to go to Cambridge to learn more but, being low on conscientiousness, I never got around to it. Perhaps I dodged a bullet by not getting involved. When people say ‘It’s the early bird that catches the worm’, I always reply, ‘Yes, but what about the early worm?’ Besides, does personality alone predict behaviour? Perhaps not as much as Cambridge Analytica promised. True, had

Bruce Anderson

No place like Rhône

As often, a good glass stimulated good talk. We were drinking some promising young Rhônes and the discussion ranged wide, moving onwards from the Rhône itself, to the differences between the UK and our sweet enemy France, then to the merits of democracy and the challenges facing it. Democracy has the overwhelming merit of providing governments with legitimacy, thus ensuring that conflicts are resolved in the legislature rather than on the streets or the battlefield. Though this does not always work — see Germany in the 1930s — it does so often enough to justify the Churchillian maxim: the worst form of government apart from all the alternatives. Yet there

Thursday

Jamie Bartlett

Big data is watching you

From the outside it all looked haphazard and frenzied. A campaign that was skidding from scandal to crisis on its way to total defeat. That’s not how it felt inside the ‘Project Alamo’ offices in San Antonio, Texas where Trump’s digital division — led by Brad Parscale, who’d worked previously with Trump’s estate division setting up websites — was running one of the most sophisticated data-led election campaigns ever. Once Trump’s nomination was secured, the Republican Party heavyweights moved in, and so did seconded staff from Facebook and Google, there to help their well-paying clients best use their platforms to reach voters. Joining them were 13 employees from the UK-based

Thursday

Peter Jones

Kim’s unwise offer

President Trump’s acceptance of talks about denuclearisation must have been as big a shock to Kim Jong-un as his offer was to the USA. So Kim is probably scrambling, too. And if there is a positive outcome, he will live to regret it. In the 2nd century bc the two big Mediterranean players were Rome and the vast Hellenistic ‘empire’ to the east, left behind by Alexander the Great and ruled by assorted ‘kings’ descended from his generals. The Hellenistic king Antiochus IV had ambitions to extend his power west into Greece and Egypt. Knocked back by Rome, in 168 bc he took advantage of disunity in Judaea to establish a power base

Taki

High life | 15 March 2018

Gstaad I never made it to Zurich but met up with Steve Bannon through the miracle of technology, thanks to my hosts at the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche, who gave him my telephone number. He rang at a civilised time and we had a very cosy chat for an hour or so. I don’t know how it was done, and don’t ask me for details, but I could see him and apparently he could see me too. The first things I said were that I was 100 per cent heterosexual and what a pity it was that I had to be initiated into this technology while talking to a man

Nicholas Farrell

‘Populism, fascism – who cares?’

We are in a hotel suite at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Zurich when Stephen K. Bannon tells me he adores the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. But let’s be clear. Bannon — as far as I can tell — is not a fascist. He is, however, fascinated by fascism, which is understandable, as its founder Benito Mussolini, a revolutionary socialist, was the first populist of the modern era and the first tabloid newspaper journalist. Il Duce, realising that people are more loyal to country than class, invented fascism, which replaced International Socialism with National Socialism. He was thus able to ‘weaponise’ — to use a favourite Bannon word — what the

Thursday

Taki

High life | 8 March 2018

Gstaad The muffled sound of falling snow is ever-present. It makes the dreary beautiful and turns the bleak into magic. Happiness is waking up to a winter wonderland. From where I am, I can’t hear the shrieks of children sledding nearby but I can see the odd off-piste skier and the traces they leave. I can no longer handle deep snow, just powder. But I can still shoot down any piste once I’ve had a drink or two. For amusement I listen to the news: flights grounded, trains cancelled, cars backed up on motorways, people stocking up on food and drink as if an atom bomb had been detonated over

Toby Young Toby Young

We’re being destroyed by tribalism

Amy Chua’s latest book, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, is a difficult read for anyone who is concerned about the current state of British politics. Chua is an American law professor and her previous book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, was about the effectiveness of the Asian approach to bringing up children. In that book, she praised her own parents for giving her a sense of pride in her Chinese heritage, claiming that one of the reasons Asian-Americans are more successful than other ethnic groups is because they feel that to fail would bring shame on their community. In Political Tribes, she takes a different

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: Michael Wolff’s earpiece fail

Oh dear. It’s a common sight nowadays to see a politician down the line struggle to hear what their interviewer is saying as soon as the questions start to get difficult. Whether it’s bad weather or bad signal, there’s a long history of earpieces failing at the most convenient times. So, spare a thought for Michael Wolff. Donald Trump’s unofficial biographer appeared to experience a technical problem during an interview with the Today Show. The broadcaster, however, has now released an audio which they claim is what Wolff was hearing when he claimed he couldn’t hear the question: LISTEN – This is what Michael Wolff was HEARING in his earpiece

Thursday

Michael Moorcock

Texas Notebook

Returning to the United States a short while ago I received a stern talking to from an immigration officer. Why had I been in Paris longer than usual? I’ve lived in the US for nearly 25 years. I originally moved to be closer to my son, who was being educated nearby, and to my American wife’s relatives in Houston. We bought an old house in a small town about an hour from Austin. Built for his new bride by the only Confederate governor of Texas after he came back from the civil war, it’s rather eccentric. We fell in love with it immediately, planning to live there for at least as

Thursday

Taki

High life | 1 February 2018

Gstaad I caught a whiff of it as it rolled in from the east, the smell of hypocrisy being different from others that penetrate our olfactory nerves in everyday life. It was coming from Davos and it had a Graeco-Roman flavour to it. The prime ministers of those once upon a time great countries, Greece and Italy, asked for a Marshall Plan for Africa to solve the root cause of the migrant crisis that threatens the old continent’s existence. Just think of it, dear readers. Tsipras and Gentiloni, the former a liar, the latter unelected, both leading two basket-case countries, asking for a vast programme of wealth transfer so that

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 1 February 2018

Home The EU published its negotiating position on Britain’s period of transition, from 30 March 2019 until 31 December 2020. Britain would have to abide by the rules of the single market, customs union, free movement and decisions of the European Court of Justice, as well as new EU laws. Britain would have no representatives at the table. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the European Research Group among the Conservatives, said: ‘This will be the first time since the Norman Conquest the UK has accepted rules imposed by a foreign power without having any say over them.’ The UK economy expanded by a half per cent in the last quarter

The Spectator

Trump vs Trump

It’s easy to see why Donald Trump gets angry. He is presiding over a robust economy, growing at the fastest rate of any major economy. His recent tax cut has encouraged jobs and investment to come back to the United States. Apple alone is redirecting an extra $38 billion in tax towards the Treasury’s coffers. Other employers are using the tax cuts to pay workers a bonus: AT&T is handing 200,000 of its staff a payout averaging $1,000 each. There’s so much economic optimism that even Democrat voters say they feel better about the economy than they did under Barack Obama. But Trump isn’t taking much credit. He is still

Roger Kimball

Trump is working

In London last week I had the opportunity to talk about President Donald Trump with several politically mature friends. Most were sceptical, even slightly appalled, by him. It was my task to help them overcome this prejudice. I am delighted, dear reader, to attempt the same service for you. I was not always a fan. For most of the 2016 campaign, I supported Ted Cruz, a choice that many thought only marginally less bad than Mr Trump. But politics is the art of the possible and it turned out that the only two possibilities were Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. For me, that meant that the only possibility was Donald

Thursday

Katy Balls

Breaking: UK/US relationship upgraded from ‘special’ to ‘very special’

Brexit doom-mongers step aside. After weeks of speculation, the relationship that exists between Britain and the US has just been upgraded from ‘special’ to ‘very special’. Speaking at a joint press conference, Theresa May and Donald Trump were at pains to prove they had not fallen out –as recent reports had suggested following Trump’s decision to cancel his trip to open the new US embassy in Vauxhall. Heaping the treacle on thick, the US president dismissed such reports as ‘false rumours’ and praised the British Prime Minister: ‘We have great respect for everything you’re doing and we love your country, we think it’s truly great.’ So ‘great’ (and between them

Sunday

Freddy Gray

US government shutdown: Trump’s presidency begins to resemble Obama’s

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. President Trump has taken a hardline with the Democrats, seemingly convinced that he can pin them for

Friday

Freddy Gray

Trump, May, and the sinking of the so-called ‘Special Relationship’

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

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Shithole

In Polite Conversation, Jonathan Swift presents dialogues made up of clichés, banalities and catchphrases. When Miss Notable makes a remark seen as witty, Mr Neverout exclaims: ‘Why, Miss, you shine this Morning like a shitten Barn-Door.’ Perhaps we might not admit such an adjective, even in this archaic form, to polite company — except that among the chattering classes no word is entirely ostracised. In 2001, Barbara Amiel, Lady Black of Crossharbour, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that ‘the ambassador of a major EU country politely told a gathering at my home that the current troubles in the world were all because of “that shitty little country Israel”.’ The remark