Donald trump

Wednesday

James Forsyth

If Trump’s listening to his generals, that’s great news for Britain

‘Great Britain has lost an Empire and not yet found a role’. Fifty-five years on, Dean Acheson’s remark has not lost its sting. British statecraft is, even now, an attempt to lay claim to a place in the post-imperial world. The events of the past few months — Brexit, the election of the most unlikely US president in history and the debate over the Union — all raise the issue of what kind of country Britain hopes to be. The chemical weapons attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria last week has prompted the first foreign policy crisis of this new era. Britain’s role in the response

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

What message do Trump’s missiles really send?

Let me take this opportunity to join with our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary in commending President Trump’s swift and decisive military action against the Syrian government as being ‘appropriate’ — one of my favourite words and one which I like to use every day, regardless of whether it is appropriate to do so. The important thing was not of course the destruction of a few Syrian planes and, collaterally, a few Syrian children. The crucial point is that this moderate and judicious use of expensive missiles ‘sends out a message’ to President Assad. And the message is very simple. We will no longer tolerate Syrian children being killed by

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Trump, the emptiest mind

Howard Jacobson awoke to the news of Trump’s victory in November. He had no newspaper column so, what could he do? Write a novel, said his wife, and he did, in six weeks. It is called Pussy, and it is a short and horrifying hypothetical biography of Donald Trump, now an infant prince called Fracassus, born into a noble family of property developers. Fracassus hates words. He hates women. He tweets. Jacobson throws every weapon — every word — he has into Pussy. He is the voice of the metropolitan liberal elite emitting a death rattle, and that is a grave calling. I have loved Jacobson since he wrote this,

Sunday

Melanie McDonagh

America’s foreign policy on Syria is more sensible than the UK’s

Well, Islamists certainly have a useful working knowledge of the Christian calendar — probably more than most secular Brits — which accounts for the timing of today’s bloody attacks on Coptic churches in Tanta and Alexandria — the death toll is 45, and counting. The unfortunate Copts starting their Holy Week services today were intending to commemorate the Passion of Christ, not to join it themselves. As the British Coptic Bishop Angaelos observed, ‘As we celebrate Palm Sunday today and Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, we now also mark the entry of those who have passed today into the heavenly Jerusalem.’ Well quite so, and the toll in Alexandria might have

Saturday

Andrew J. Bacevich

Donald Trump isn’t Hitler. Actually, he’s the new Kaiser Wilhelm II

 Massachusetts All politicians wear masks. Donald Trump’s favourite is that of Maximum Leader. It was on display during this past week. ‘If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will,’ he said at the weekend, ahead of his meeting with Xi Jinping — a throwaway comment that could end up causing mayhem in the Far East. Next, his reaction to news of a chemical bombing in Syria. Trump blamed the atrocity on his predecessor’s ‘weakness and irresolution’, suggesting that he is keen to show the world what strength and resolve look like. The President, it seems, is not too dissimilar to the nightmare his political enemies warned us

Paul Wood

One missile strike alone will not change Syria. So what’s the American plan?

President Trump’s missile strike on Syria seemed as determined to stick it to President Obama as to the Assad regime. The initial statement from the White House on the Sarin gas attack that prompted the strike had more words of condemnation for Obama than for the Syrian ruler. In the matter of airstrikes, as in other things, it is important to Trump to be the un-Obama. But one night of missiles is not a decisive blow. Beyond the ruined aircraft hangars, the Syrian battlefield is little changed. What is the American plan? What’s next? Perhaps President Trump has not thought about this. His decision to bomb seemed emotional, justifiably so

Friday

James Forsyth

Donald Trump enforces Obama’s ‘red line’ in Syria

On Donald Trump’s orders, US forces have struck the airfield from which the Syrian military launched Tuesday’s chemical weapons attack. The strikes were limited, only 59 Tomahawk missiles were involved, and the US says that ‘every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield’. So, what was Trump up to? Well, it was clear that he wanted to send a message that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable and will have consequences. He was, ironically, enforcing the red line that the Obama administration drew and then refused to enforce. But he was trying to do so in a way that does not

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 6 April 2017

Nice littler earners Cressida Dick, the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, will take a voluntary pay cut from £270,000 to £230,000 compared with her predecessor. Some others voluntarily taking less: — Richard Pennycook, CEO of the Co-op Group, last year took a cut in his base salary from £1.25 million to £750,000. His incentive plan also became less generous. — Keith Skeoch, CEO of Standard Life, last year took a cut in his bonus, which will now pay a maximum 400 per cent of his £700,000 base pay instead of 500 per cent. — In 2015, the board of Credit Suisse took a 25 per cent cut after America

David Frum

Diary – 6 April 2017

Donald Trump’s Washington is a city of many secrets, but no mysteries. So much about the Trump-Putin story remains unknown, and possibly will never be known. But the fundamentals have never been concealed. In order to help elect Trump as US president, Russian operatives engaged in a huge and risky espionage and dirty tricks operation. Trump and his team publicly welcomed and gratefully accepted help from WikiLeaks, widely regarded as a front for Russian intelligence. Trump surrounded himself with associates and aides, including a campaign chairman and a national security adviser, who had in the past received pay from Russian state TV and pro-Putin oligarchs. In the wake of the

Ahmed Rashid

War-war, not jaw-jaw

It’s often said that the Trump administration is ‘isolationist’. This is not true. In fact, we are now witnessing a dramatic escalation in the militarisation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan. This has not been announced but it is happening, and much of it without consultation with Nato or other key allies, or any debate in Congress or the media. A few weeks ago, US aircraft carried out over 30 air strikes against Islamic militants in Yemen — almost the same as the number carried out there all last year. In Iraq and Syria there have been many reports of civilian casualties in US raids.

Andrew J.

Kaiser Donald

 Massachusetts All politicians wear masks. Donald Trump’s favourite is that of Maximum Leader. It was on display during this past week. ‘If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will,’ he said at the weekend, ahead of his meeting with Xi Jinping — a throwaway comment that could end up causing mayhem in the Far East. Next, his reaction to news of a chemical bombing in Syria. Trump blamed the atrocity on his predecessor’s ‘weakness and irresolution’, suggesting that he is keen to show the world what strength and resolve look like. The President, it seems, is not too dissimilar to the nightmare his political enemies warned us

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Trump’s plan for Pyongyang

On several foreign policy issues, Donald Trump has toned down the campaign rhetoric now that he is in office. His administration still has concerns about the Iran nuclear deal, but it is backing away from the idea of simply ripping it up or unilaterally rewriting it. On the European Union, he is calming down too; his White House no longer says Brexit marks the beginning of the end of the European project. But on North Korea his positioning is hardening. Hence his warning that ‘if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will’. Not only does Trump want this problem fixed, but his National Security Council is already

Monday

Tom Goodenough

Trump talks tough on North Korea. Does he mean it?

Donald Trump once said that he wanted to share a hamburger with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. Now that he’s President, fast food diplomacy looks to be off the menu. Instead, the tough talk has started and Trump has used an interview with the FT today to warn that America will act against North Korea unless China clamps down on the regime in Pyongyang. He said: ‘Well, if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you’ That Trump has singled out North Korea is no accident, nor is it much of a surprise. In the weeks after the election, the outgoing Obama administration

Sunday

Max Hastings

Is Trump leading America to war?

Michael Howard (the good one, OM, CH, MC) is 94 and still razor-sharp, but depressed by echoes of the 1930s on both sides of the Atlantic — ‘and I am one of the few people still alive who watched it all happen’. At Wellington he learned, and recites to me from memory, lines from Auden’s 1937 ‘Danse Macabre’: It’s farewell to the drawing-room’s civilised cry, The professor’s sensible whereto and why For the Devil has broken parole and arisen, He has dynamited his way out of prison. Michael believes that President Trump will get his country into a war, and I hear that some of America’s top soldiers share this

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

How good a businessman is Donald Trump?

How good a businessman is Donald Trump? Maybe the answer doesn’t matter, since barring death or impeachment he’ll be the most powerful man in the world until January 2021, or even 2025, come what may. Or maybe it does matter, in the sense that the only positive spin to be put on his otherwise ridiculous presidency is that the irrepressible cunning of the real-estate tycoon will eventually win through for the good of America — and thereby, we must hope, the good of the free world — against opponents who have smaller cojones and less dealmaking prowess than the Donald does. ‘He’s the closer,’ declared White House spokesman Sean Spicer,

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Hollywood goes East

It’s kind of surreal being here.’ The general sentiment, no doubt, of most people on planet Earth right now, but the specific words of Matt Damon at the world première of his latest film earlier this year. The reason for his befuddlement? The film was The Great Wall, for which he had moved to China for half a year with his family. But the première was taking place beneath the extravagant pagoda of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. From actual China to Los Angeles’ idea of China — no wonder Damon found it weird. Yet, as so often happens in Hollywood, the weird could well become the way of

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 30 March 2017

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, wrote a letter to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, with formal notification of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. If no agreement is made sooner, Britain would cease to be a member in two years. The other 27 member states had celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Asked by the BBC if Mrs May would be the ‘elephant in the room’ at the shindig, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said: ‘She’s not an elephant.’ Douglas Carswell, the MP for Clacton, announced that he was leaving the UK Independence

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Does the truth about Trump’s art of the deal really matter?

How good a businessman is Donald Trump? Maybe the answer doesn’t matter, since barring death or impeachment he’ll be the most powerful man in the world until January 2021, or even 2025, come what may. Or maybe it does matter, in the sense that the only positive spin to be put on his otherwise ridiculous presidency is that the irrepressible cunning of the real-estate tycoon will eventually win through for the good of America — and thereby, we must hope, the good of the free world — against opponents who have smaller cojones and less dealmaking prowess than the Donald does. ‘He’s the closer,’ declared White House spokesman Sean Spicer,

Sunday

Matthew Walther

Why I’m falling in love with Sean Spicer

Washington, DC I hate to admit it, but I think I’m falling in love with Sean Spicer. No doubt Donald Trump’s stocky, gum-chewing, sartorially challenged press secretary will strike many readers as an unlikely object of passion. But it’s hard not to get red-hot for a man capable of inspiring so much outrage among the most boring, self-important people in America. As press secretary, Spicer’s only real job is to run the President’s daily press briefing, one of those bizarre, quasi-official American institutions — like the State of the Union address or the Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn — whose utility no one ever seems to question.

Thursday

Toby Young

The liberals and the deplorables

In America, an argument has broken out among journalists, writers and intellectuals in the aftermath of the presidential election about whether Trump’s white working-class voters were decent, upright citizens let down by the supercilious liberal establishment or whether they were, in Hilary Clinton’s words, a racist, sexist, homophobic basket of deplorables. The curious thing about this debate is that the defenders of Trump’s supporters are, for the most part, left–wingers, like the Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who spent five years chronicling a depressed blue-collar community in Louisiana, while those who disparage them as ‘in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles’