Donald trump

 Washington Day 1: The New York Times reveals that President Trump offered FBI director James Comey a 25 per cent discount on membership at Mar-a-Lago if he would end his investigation into former NSC director Michael ‘Mikhail’ Flynn. Vice President Pence secretly convenes the cabinet at Camp David. The site is chosen because Trump has visited it only once, declaring it ‘a dump’, and is therefore unlikely to show up. Pence tells the cabinet: ‘It has been a great honour to serve with the President’, whom he calls ‘a truly wonderful human being’, but says ‘it’s time we started thinking about our own reputations here’. Secretary of Housing Ben Carson

 New York As the malevolence and incoherence of the Trump administration continue to amaze, Democrats are taking heart from the popular revulsion against the Mad Hatter of Mar-a-Lago. The media class is chattering excitedly about anti-Trump momentum after special Congress elections in conservative Kansas and Georgia resulted in a narrow Republican victory in the former and a run-off in the latter. Last week, Paul Kane of the Washington Post cited this as proof ‘that Democrats have galvanised the anti-Trump activism of the past three months into votes at the ballot box’. Last Monday, the New York Times went even further by publishing a piece on the already crowded field of

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,

Is Ivanka Trump’s visit to Berlin a triumph for Angela Merkel, or a diplomatic disaster? As always, that depends on which newspapers you read. Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung called it a ‘a veritable coup for the chancellor,’ but the headlines in the British press have focused on the boos that greeted Ivanka at yesterday’s W20 Summit, when the President’s daughter described her father as a defender of women’s rights. Sat alongside Ivanka on the conference platform, Merkel looked distinctly awkward – but Ms Trump’s appearance wasn’t entirely met with groans and jeers. Her other comments were greeted with polite applause and, on one occasion, even cheers (she praised Merkel for enforcing

There were three reasons why I so badly wanted Donald Trump to win the US presidential election. One was that the alternative was Hillary; another that I knew it would annoy all the worst people in the world; but the third was a positive one: I genuinely believed that as an independently wealthy, outsider candidate with no loyalties to the DC establishment, Trump was going to be the revolutionary hero who would finally free the people from the shackles of a corrupt, sclerotic and self-serving ruling elite. Some may scoff at my naivety. But there was evidence to support my view. Brexit had just happened and what seemed clear from