Hillary clinton

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

If you think Theresa May has made life difficult for ‘right-wing libertarians’ in the UK, spare a thought for the poor schmucks across the pond. I was in Washington DC for a few days either side of the presidential election and the overwhelming impression I got from various think tank wonks I spoke to was one of utter despair. When ‘liberty’ is branded on your currency and is supposed to be the whole reason your country exists, you expect to be thrown a bone every now and then – even the odd square meal under Reagan. But a contest between a warmongering progressive and protectionist nationalist was always going to

At least two former Spectator figures understood things about the recent American contest which eluded most commentators. The first is our former proprietor, Conrad Black. Disagreeing with the anti-Trump conservative National Review, for which he writes, Conrad filed a powerful piece at the time of Trump’s nomination: ‘What the world has witnessed, but has not recognised it yet, has been a campaign of genius.’ He enumerated virtually every issue where Trump was nearer to the voters than Democrats, the media, and other Republicans. The second is Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, nowadays the Telegraph’s international business editor. In the 1980s, Ambrose wrote wonderful pieces from central America for The Spectator, the only British

There are plenty of theories about how Donald Trump pulled off his shock victory. But however he did manage to achieve one of the unlikeliest political upsets in history, one thing seems clear: social media won the day for the Donald. The starting gun was fired when Hillary Clinton called Trump’s supporters a ‘basket of deplorables’. Clinton wasn’t talking about the egg-faced trolls of Twitter when she made this remark, but it was a moniker they happily took up. It also gave this loose outfit the confidence of mainstream recognition – enabling Trump supporters to kick-start their most important election mission: starting arguments with Democrats. They never won these rows

Plenty of Republicans were not in the mood to celebrate on election night. About 200 gathered at the Lincoln Restaurant in Washington DC, where they had hoped they could watch a heavy defeat for Donald Trump and begin the process of returning their party to its centre-Right origins. Instead, people began drifting home before midnight. Since then, Republicans of the Never Trump variety have had to wrestle with what comes next, questioning whether the party of Lincoln can ever recover and what their place in it might be. People like Meghan Milloy, who has been a Republican since her school years but who campaigned against her own party by helping set up

Life, like they say, comes at you fast. Just a week ago the reality-based world worried that the American people might send a con-man to the White House. Now serious people intoning serious thoughts implore us to think it’s a good thing that Donald Trump is a con-man. This is the peg from which hope hangs, at any rate: Trump is a liar and a fraud and a man who doesn’t have any core convictions, so, you know, perhaps everything will be fine. Or not as bad as you thought. We can put away all that stuff we heard on the campaign trail because, like, he doesn’t – or can’t

In the wake of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, many embittered Democrats are crying foul. It’s a case of sour grapes. For a second day, thousands of protesters chant ‘not my president’ and repudiate the legitimacy of our centuries-old electoral process. They are vehement in their disapproval of a man who they believe represents ignorance and bigotry. There are calls to banish the Electoral College, insisting we elect a Commander-in-Chief solely on the basis of the popular vote. Protesters marched in Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Oakland. During this time of upheaval, Hillary Clinton and many of her supporters are, nevertheless, calling for collaboration in the