Us politics

Crikey! Did the Kremlin put the kibosh on Mitt Romney’s hopes to become Secretary of State in the Trump administration? This is one of the revelations contained in Jane Mayer’s report in the New Yorker today about Christopher Steele. It seems that Steele wrote in a November, 2016 memo that a senior Russian official had explained to him that the scuttlebutt in the Russian Foreign Ministry was that the Kremlin had intervened with Donald Trump to block Romney’s appointment. If so, it adds a new layer to Romney’s humiliating encounter with Trump, who took him to the three-star Jean-Georges restaurant in Trump Tower for dinner, where he sampled, among other

It speaks volumes about protectionism that while the share prices of steel and aluminium makers rose on the news that President Trump is to place tariffs on imports (from exactly which countries he didn’t say), shares in companies which use large amounts of steel immediately plunged: General Motors by 3.7 per cent, Ford by 3 per cent.   It is always the same with protectionism. Either Donald Trump hasn’t studied the effects of George W Bush’s experiment with steel tariffs in 2002 or he doesn’t care.  On that occasion, while creaking steel companies enjoyed a temporary reprieve, the overall effect on the economy was hugely negative. According to CITAC – a US

Every week is extraordinary in the Trump administration — but this week seems stranger than most. Matters are rumbling in the belly of the beast. On Tuesday, we learned that Jared Kushner had his security clearance downgraded. Today, we learn that Hope Hicks, famously Trump’s most trusted aide, has resigned, a day after she testified to the House Intelligence Committee as part of the Russia investigation. Hicks stonewalled questions from the committee for several hours, though she did reportedly open up a little on certain aspects of Trump’s transition. She is the fourth Trump White House communications director to quit in just over a year. It can’t be easy leading

Washington, DC The Valentine’s Day massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida has been an unprecedented, touchstone moment in American life. It is a naked tragedy – but also one killing only a third as many (seventeen) as died in Las Vegas last year (fifty nine) or in North Florida the year before that (forty nine). Nevertheless, the shooting has rankled Republican demurral on gun control like never before. This is not early 2013 under President Obama after the Newtown elementary school massacre. Do nothing and the GOP, dominant in federal politics and firmly in control of most of the states, risks a typhoon of cultural scorn. The

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

Billy Graham, the American evangelist, has died at the age of 99. Here John Betjeman recounts his experience of attending one of Graham’s Greater London Crusade events, in an article first published in the Spectator in March 1954: Every night the Harringay arena is packed; every night throngs of converts—mostly young people—crowd up at the end of the service to the bare space below the rostrum, thence to be conducted by ‘counsellors’ to a room where they are interviewed and given tracts. This is the Greater London Crusade of Billy Graham and I think he must be cynical indeed who affects to despise the crusade or doubt the sincerity of

The stories about Donald Trump’s sex life keep coming. First, it was Stormy Daniels who stated that she had an assignation with Trump in Lake Tahoe in 2006. Now it appears that Trump also met another woman in 2006, this time at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion. In an expose published today, the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow reports that Trump conducted a nine month long affair with 1998 Playboy ‘Playmate of the year’ Karen McDougal who was quite smitten by Trump’s charms, at least initially. Darrow has unearthed an eight page letter in which she describes in vivid detail her repeated encounters with Trump, including viewing Melania Trump’s bedroom at Trump

One of President Donald Trump’s chief political foils in the Republican Party — a party that increasingly resembles a Trump fan club more than a group of partisan but independent thinkers — is about to storm the national scene and send a jolt of energy to the dwindling and listless #NeverTrump movement. Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, 2012 Republican presidential nominee, and wealthy businessman, is reportedly preparing to announce his formal campaign to be the next US Senator from Utah.  And with no serious Republican in the heavily-Mormon state willing to throw a hat in the ring to challenge Romney, it is a virtual assurance that he will win the election. The

Has Barack Obama become a flower child? His new presidential portrait, which is over seven feet high, depicts him on a chair staring ahead somewhat pensively as he’s framed by various flowers that reference Kenya, Hawaii and Chicago. It’s a fitting backdrop to a president who not only embodied the multi-cultural aspirations of America, but also wanted to be seen as a meditative fellow. His adversaries may well conclude that the flowers out him as what they viewed him as all along—a not-so-closet leftist. Meanwhile, his wife Michelle looks serene in a capacious, flowing gown that drapes to the floor. The question hovering over the portraits, though, is whether they