Donald trump

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

Positively Trumpian

This being the time of year for it, you’re probably thinking what form your New Year New You will take. You know — the reinvention that we’re all encouraged to go in for from 1 January. Well, I have a corker. It’s huge. It is nothing less than the programme created by Donald Trump’s spiritual mentor, and look where that got him. Before reading this formula for success, I did wonder how it was that Mr Trump got as far as the presidency; now the only wonder is that it took him this long. The self-help book I have in mind is written by Mr Trump’s favourite pastor, Norman Vincent

Bill Kauffman

Looking homeward

 Batavia, New York The presidential campaign just ended was mercifully lacking in the ghostwritten platitudes with which Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan lull readers of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations to sleep. Hillary Clinton’s only memorable utterance was her defamation of one quarter of the electorate as a ‘basket of deplorables’ — a curiously clumsy locution that effectively conveyed her contempt for American prole-dom and sunk her candidacy. Donald Trump’s best line was his dismissal of the foamingly bellicose Republican senator John McCain, who has built a career on his stint as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. ‘He’s not a war hero,’ said Trump. ‘I like people

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Will disgruntlement prevail again in 2017? Who knows, but at least 2016 was quite fun

Most of my predictions for 2016 were wrong; so let’s not revisit them. But I was right, in January, to identify as a theme of the coming year an evident gulf between ‘the reinvigorated and the demoralised’. In small business sectors and provincial towns, as well as in the attitudes of millions of citizen voters here and abroad, the divergence between optimism and disgruntlement grew as the year went on. And when it came to elections and referendums, it was the downbeat that prevailed. So here we are, fearful of the craziness of Trump, the disintegration of Italy, the triumph of Marine Le Pen and the non-resolution of the Brexit

James Delingpole James Delingpole

2017 will be one long vampire scream from the liberal elite

I’ve been looking at my predictions for 2016 made this time last year. It’s extraordinary — don’t check, just trust me — all 12 of them came true. If you had placed a £1 accumulator bet on my forecasts that Britain would vote Brexit, Trump would be elected US President, and that Scarlett Moffatt off Gogglebox would win I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, you wouldn’t need to read The Spectator any more — just the Forbes Rich List, where you’d come just between Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim. 1. 2017 will be one long vampire scream from the liberal elite. That moment when Christopher Lee finally gets

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Deplorable entertainment

Buried Child is a typical Sam Shepard play. The main character, Dodge, is a brain-damaged alcoholic cripple stuck in a Midwest shack with a half-witted xenophobic wife shrieking at him from the coal cellar. The wife makes an early speech about her son who ‘married a Catholic whore’ and got stabbed to death by her on his honeymoon. This sets the tone for the play. Every character is a shrill, chippy barbarian and every speech is an exercise in tragicomic one-upmanship. The audience for Shepard’s work consists of social voyeurs who want to gawp at the underclass from a safe distance. The play purports to be a mystery but the

Wednesday

Piers Morgan

What price a First Lady?

What price a First Lady? ‘If I offered you $10 billion,’ I once asked Donald Trump, ‘but you can’t have sex for the next ten years, would you take the deal?’ ‘Not even with your wife?’ Trump replied. ‘Definitely not with my wife.’ ‘I meant my wife!’ ‘No, not even with your wife.’ ‘No, I’d absolutely take my wife.’ So there you have it: Melania Trump is worth at least $10 billion. This is an extract from Piers Morgan’s diary. The full article can be found here. 

Thursday

John R. MacArthur

Yes, Trump is grotesque. But I would never have voted for Hillary

We’re closing 2016 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 10: John R. MacArthur on why spoiling his ballot paper was a better option than voting for Donald Trump – or Hillary Clinton  New York ‘Does this mean we have to vote for Hillary?’ asked my wife. It was early morning 16 March, and the queen consort of the Democratic party had seemingly sewn up the presidential nomination — a coronation promised years ago by her king but thus far denied by unruly subjects. As I scanned the headline in the New York Times, ‘Clinton and Trump Pile up the Delegates’, I felt sick at heart.

Stephen Bayley

What Donald Trump’s taste tells us about him

Elsie de Wolfe was the pioneer interior designer whose motto was ‘plenty of optimism and white paint’. She banished brown Victoriana from America. And her work on Henry Clay Frick’s private apartments introduced new American money to old French furniture. If only she were with us today. For his first television interview as president-elect, Donald Trump appeared, imperiously, sitting on a golden throne in the style of Louis Quinze. My vision may well have been blurred by circumstances beyond, but I think there were period-incorrect wall and ceiling paintings on classical-allegorical themes in the background. All of this on cantilevered decks behind mirrored glass about 200 metres above Fifth Avenue.

Saturday

Lionel Shriver

A rash hothead in the White House is a problem to trouble us all

Novelists can’t merely tell cracking tales. We’re supposed to save the world. At the University of Kent, a student implored me to inscribe The Mandibles with instructions for ‘how to keep this from happening’ — for the feverish young man now vowed to devote his life to preventing my new novel’s debt-fuelled near-future financial collapse. And I thought I was just doing a book signing. I wrote, ‘To keep this from happening, pay your bills. To cash in on this happening, get as deeply into debt as possible.’ The next student proffered a tiny spiral notebook, in which I was to jot ‘three things that are really important’. In desperation, I

Friday

Rob Crilly

Trump Grill could be the best representation of America

I have a confession to make. I go to Trump Tower in New York a lot. It’s an easy jaunt for a New York-based hack: where better to chat with Trump supporters than in its golden lobby or with opponents outside its golden doors? Maybe you’ll spot a celebrity like Kanye West or, if you are really lucky, Nigel Farage. And occasionally the place becomes the story itself, whether it’s about the expense of the secret service renting an entire floor to provide security for the next president, or this week when a sniffy restaurant review – headlined ‘Trump Grill could be the worst restaurant in America’ – prompted a miffed

Thursday

Rob Crilly

Donald Trump is going back on his promise to ‘drain the swamp’

Donald Trump has a method for making his Cabinet picks. Parade the contenders in and out of Trump Tower and its waiting TV cameras. Leak and Tweet their performance ratings (‘very good meeting’). And then, once the suspense has reached something approaching a reality TV show, announce the hire on social media. And as the administration of the president-elect takes shape, it is also abundantly clear that Trump has a type. Let’s call them the G-men. Because they are mostly men, and mostly Goldman, generals and gazillionaires, as one arch critic put it. On Tuesday, Rex Tillerson was named as Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, the latest super-wealthy businessman to join

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

‘Putinites on the web’ are the new ‘Reds under the bed’

Wounded Remainers in Britain and the Hillary set in the US love banging on about ‘post-truth politics’. Lies are everywhere, they say, falling from Trump’s weird mouth, plastered on the side of Brexit buses. And apparently these lies invaded voters’ minds and made us do the unimaginable thing of voting against the EU and failing to vote for Hillary. We was hoodwinked by falsehoods! All of which would be a tad more convincing if it wasn’t for one thing: it’s actually the Remainer and Hillary cliques that have gone full post-truth, even descending into the cesspit of conspiracy theory. Yesterday in the House of Commons, Labour MP Ben Bradshaw did

Tuesday

Anne Jolis

Donald Trump is doing more to undermine himself than any Democrat

America may need to ‘vote again,’ says former CIA operative Robert Baer – preferably in a plebiscite not orchestrated by Vladimir Putin. The spy-turned-author spoke to CNN on Saturday about the latest reports of Kremlin skulduggery to elect Donald Trump. While there is no evidence that hackers fiddled with electronic voting systems or ballot-counting machines, the CIA has concluded with ‘high confidence’ that Russian-backed hackers were actively out to sink Hillary Clinton, according to unnamed officials speaking to the Washington Post and the NewYork Times. If true, the reports add motive to mischief already known. In October the Department of Homeland Security said all 17 US intelligence agencies (yes, 17) are ‘confident that the Russian Government directed the recent

Saturday

Rob Crilly

Not all Muslims are despairing at a Donald Trump presidency

The immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s surprise election victory brought a slew of comparisons with 9/11. In New York, my liberal friends waking up on 11/9 said they experienced the same range of emotions. You will have seen the stories of commuters weeping on the subway, colleges offering counselling to students and a general sentiment that life would never be the same again. Therapists reported an overwhelming sense of grief among their clients as they tried to process their world turned upside down. Robert de Niro chipped in, telling the Hollywood Reporter: ‘I feel like I did after 9/11.’ Whether or not the comparison was fair or even in good taste, the fact was

Thursday

Mary Killen

Celebrity Dear Mary

From Rt Hon Gisela Stuart MP Q. I keep getting into arguments with people about what being a Labour MP is all about. I used to think that being in government was better than being in opposition. They now tell me I’m wrong and that the years since 2010 have been better and purer than the flawed years from 1997 to 2010. Help. Are they right and am I wrong? A. As a Roman Catholic German Brexiteer Labour MP for a Birmingham constituency, you should have grown used to being in a minority. If you would rather be in power than out of it, the obvious solution is to switch

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 8 December 2016

‘Are you Charles Moore of The Spectator?’ I answered to that description. ‘Well,’ said my questioner, ‘I am worried that you’re becoming very right-wing.’ We were sitting by the fire in a charming, smoky hut with no electric light and lots to eat and drink. It was a shooting lunch, the sort of occasion where one is seldom held to account for anything. I could have tried to laugh the question off, but my interrogator exhibited high intelligence and class confidence, so I sensed she wouldn’t let me get away with that. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to answer her. I am not offended by being called right-wing, because I don’t agree

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Diary – 8 December 2016

Novelists can’t merely tell cracking tales. We’re supposed to save the world. At the University of Kent, a student implored me to inscribe The Mandibles with instructions for ‘how to keep this from happening’ — for the feverish young man now vowed to devote his life to preventing my new novel’s debt-fuelled near-future financial collapse. And I thought I was just doing a book signing. I wrote, ‘To keep this from happening, pay your bills. To cash in on this happening, get as deeply into debt as possible.’ The next student proffered a tiny spiral notebook, in which I was to jot ‘three things that are really important’. In desperation, I

The Spectator

Power and the people

When The Spectator was founded 188 years ago, it became part of what would now be described as a populist insurgency. An out-of-touch Westminster elite, we said, was speaking a different language to the rest of London, let alone the rest of the country. Too many ‘of the bons mots vented in the House of Commons appear stale and flat by the time they have travelled as far as Wellington Street’. This would be remedied, we argued, by extending the franchise and granting the vote to the emerging middle class. Our Tory critics said any step towards democracy — a word which then caused a shudder — would start a

Simon Kuper Simon Kuper

Knowing the score

When I come home from work and stick my key in the door, there is a pitter-patter of tiny feet as my eight-year-old twin boys run up to me and shout: ‘Paris St-Germain won 3-1! First he scored, then he missed, then…’ They are suffering from a harmless case of sports geekery. I had it myself as a child, and have gone on to hold down a job, albeit in the dying industry of journalism. The only difference is that as a child I wasn’t encouraged to bore my dad with my findings, because helicopter parenting hadn’t been invented yet. A complicating factor in our family is that we live

Christopher Buckley

When the Donald met the Vlad

SpeccieLeaks presents: Transcript of private meeting between President Trump and President Putin, 14 February 2017, Andreyevsky Hall, Grand Kremlin Palace   PUTIN: So how are you liking Russia? TRUMP: Fabulous. Amazing. And this room — incredible. You have beautiful taste, my friend. Beautiful. PUTIN: You like gold? TRUMP: Very much. We used a tremendous amount of gold in the Trump Tower. PUTIN: Yes, it’s something. Truly. I have seen it on television. TRUMP: Those chandeliers there. How much were those? PUTIN: Well, I don’t know. But I will have this information provided to you. TRUMP: That would be great. We just opened a new hotel in DC, right next to