Us politics

Friday

Alex Massie

People who protest against Donald Trump are not the problem. They are right

You know what the world needs right now? More seriousness, that’s what. Within that, we desperately need more serious commentary. These are serious times and they demand stout-hearted, truth-telling, serious people. The kinds of people who will speak truth unto power while assaulting a series of diminutive straw men. Serious types who stroke their serious chins with their seriously perfectly-formed serious fingers. There are rituals that must of course be observed. You must, if you wish to be serious about these matters, admit that Donald J Trump is a sub-optimal, even deplorable, president. You certainly do not hold a candle for him. Nor do you hold anything else. No fawning

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill

The protests against Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley mark a new low for campus craziness

The movement for free speech on campus was born at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. Last night it died there. In the intolerant screams, smashed glass and fire — actual fire — of the Berkeley protesters who successfully prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking, the ideal of free speech on campus was dealt a fatal blow. It’s undeniable now: the modern western university, once a bastion of thought experimentation, is now one of the most hostile places on earth to freedom of speech and robust debate. It’s tempting simply to ridicule the students and anarchists who gathered in vast numbers in Berkeley last night to insist that Breitbart provocateur

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator podcast: How to stay sane in Trumpworld

On this week’s episode, we discuss how to stay sane in the age of Trump, whether Hull deserves the mantle of Britain’s City of Culture, and if Tatler were right to outlaw the word ‘ghastly’. First, we sat down with Harry Mount, who writes a guide in this week’s magazine on how to keep your head in ‘Trumpworld’, when all about you are losing theirs. The key, Harry says, is to block out the noise: “Don’t let Trump — or his usefully hysterical enemies — drive you crazy. Ignore the trolls and the virtue-Trumpeters; discard Trump’s anti-media hysteria as the cynically concocted ruse it is. Most people — including you —

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

My pick for the pious political hypocrite of the week award

I would like to propose Labour MP Tulip Siddiq as the winner of the pious political hypocrite of the week badge for her response to President Trump’s temporary immigration halt. From today’s Guardian we learn that Ms Siddiq is one of a number of Labour MPs who have warned that the UK Prime Minister’s allegedly ‘feeble’ response to President Trump’s recent immigration order risks making UK Muslim communities feel ‘disenfranchised and disillusioned.’ Apparently the consequences of this failure could be ‘played out on our streets’ and ‘turning a blind eye to the reality of this ban we run the risk of losing the trust of an entire generation of young British Muslims.’ Now

Rob Crilly

For Donald Trump, politics is a primetime TV show

Donald Trump promised to bring some pizzazz to the White House. And last night he delivered, unveiling his selection for a vacant Supreme Court seat on prime time TV after teasing the American public with a reality show style whittling down of candidates. His selection, the Oxford-educated Neil Gorsuch, is an established legal mind who will sit well with Republicans. It was the sort of night Trump needed after a torrid weekend, when the bungled roll-out of an immigration overhaul energised his opponents and exposed divisions in the White House. As the new president arrived on a red carpet before Congressional Republican leaders, he reminded them exactly why he won the election,

Tuesday

Matt Purple

Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ is nothing of the sort, but what the hell is going on?

Among Donald Trump’s many neologisms is the ‘What the hell is going on’ evidentiary standard. It was introduced by Trump during his presidential campaign as his biggest dare yet: ‘a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on’. A high hurdle to clear, no doubt, and a controversial idea. Whether it would ever be implemented was unknown—after Trump’s election the Muslim ban was scrubbed from his website, then restored, with a spokesman blaming a technical glitch. Now we have our answers. Fleshed into public policy, figuring out ‘what the hell is going on’ means the government

Tom Gross

The self-righteous backlash to Trump’s immigration ban could play into his hands

Donald Trump’s executive order which, he says, was aimed at making it harder for terrorists to enter America, targets three groups: refugees in general, who are blocked from entering the U.S. for the next 120 days; refugees from Syria, who may be barred indefinitely; and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries (countries initially selected by the Obama administration), who are barred from entering the U.S. for at least 90 days. The executive order is morally unacceptable (it amounts to collective punishment), strategically dubious (since many terrorists are home-grown or came from countries other than those seven), and was initially implemented in a confusing and clumsy way which caused distress and uncertainty

Douglas Murray

Nine questions those protesting against Donald Trump’s immigration ban must answer

I wonder whether there might be any long-term effects from shouting ‘racist’, ‘fascist’, ‘misogynist’ all the time? It is possible that it is hard to think while your fingers are in your ears and you are shouting names at everybody. I just put the thought out there. Certainly the consequences of not thinking much seem to be all around us.  Though the Trump administration has decided to put temporary travel restrictions on people from certain countries, the policy seems to have certain internal inconsistencies. For instance, as Gordon Brown said in 2008, 75 per cent of Britain’s security threats originate from Pakistan. As anybody involved in the American security apparatus in

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Anti-Trump hysteria lets others whitewash their own crimes

I don’t like Donald Trump. I think his executive order barring travel from certain countries is rash and illiberal. And yet I cannot get behind the hyperbolic, Holocaust-citing protests against him. I cannot line up with the idea that he’s a uniquely bad president, possibly the worst ever; that he’s an ‘aberration’, ‘abnormal’, someone we must never ‘normalise’. I can’t do that for the simple reason that treating Trump as abnormal implicitly normalises that which preceded him. It whitewashes history. It forgives, or dilutes, the crimes of past politicians. The idea that Trump is different — scarily, historically different — is everywhere. ‘Don’t treat Trump as a normal president’, says

Monday

Ross Clark

Trump’s 2020 campaign has kicked off – and Starbucks seem to be running it

I am no fan of Donald Trump, but I can stand far enough back from his presidency to see that many of his critics are inadvertently already doing his re-election campaign for him. Today, Starbucks has reacted to Trump’s US travel ban on citizens of seven Middle Eastern and African countries by defiantly saying that it will go out and hire 10,000 refugees. Can the coffee chain not see that this is exactly the sort of thing which attracts America’s white poor to Donald Trump: the suspicion that they are being overlooked in favour of cheap labour from abroad? In Starbucks’ case it isn’t just a suspicion – it has

Sunday

Rhys Jones

Welcome to the era of superfast politics

Donald Trump is not a patient man. Even his inaugural address lasted for only 16 minutes. Still, the message was clear enough: ‘The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action.’ The slow-burning chit-chat of the Washington elite is the stuff of the past, a hangover of the ‘American carnage’ that came to an end last Friday. In fact, to save time altogether, Trump could have simply condensed his address into a single tweet: Americans are as mad as hell and they aren’t going to wait anymore!  Brexit voters will know what he means. They, too, are tired of playing the waiting game. A few weeks back, when Sir

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Trump’s illiberal visa crackdown is not as bad as Bush’s ‘liberal’ wars

America’s new visa policies are shocking, everyone agrees on that. Even Donald Trump’s administration calls its US entry vetting ‘extreme’. But before everyone calls Trump a fascist again, before everyone reaches once more for the Hitler and the Nazis comparisons, consider this: Trump’s ‘America First’ nationalism is defensive, not aggressive. It may be clumsy, it may be offensive, and it will of course be unfair on lots of immigrants. But it is not war-mongering. In this respect, Trump is very different to the post 9-11 George W Bush. He is also different to Barack Obama, who wanted peace but whose internationalism inevitably dragged him into more disastrous conflicts. Poor Theresa

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May’s failure to stand up to Trump will undermine her whole strategy

Theresa May’s visit to Washington to meet President Trump last week was seen, before it happened, as being beneficial to both sides. The Prime Minister’s allies in government thought this was an excellent opportunity for May to show the new President how it was done – and to send a message to the world that Britain really matters. But today things look a little less advantageous for the Prime Minister. That her visit was swiftly followed by Trump signing an executive order which halts all refugee admissions and temporarily bans people from seven countries has put the Prime Minister under pressure to criticise the man whose hand she ended up

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Theresa May’s embrace of Donald Trump humiliates Britain

So now Theresa May knows what it’s like to be Tangoed. Her visit to Washington, hailed a ‘triumph’ by friendly newspapers, has become a liability. Life comes at you fast, especially when you launch a diplomatic initiative on a wing and a prayer, not in response to a clinical evaluation of its likely outcome. Because who can really be surprised that hugging Donald Trump close would so swiftly induce a form of diplomatic blowback? Who is surprised that tying yourself to an administration as vicious as it is incompetent might prove a high-risk enterprise? The Prime Minister played two roles on her trip to the United States. She was both supplicant and

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

If Trump fails to revive the American dream, then what?

President Trump’s inaugural rant prompted me to reread Let America Be America Again by the black poet Langston Hughes, who is said to have been an inspiration to Martin Luther King. Writing in 1936, Hughes spoke for the immigrant and ‘the poor white, fooled and pushed apart’ as well as his own people, ‘the Negro bearing slavery’s scars’: together, the millions of Americans ‘who never got ahead’ and have nothing for their efforts ‘except the dream that’s almost dead’. The poem is the authentic cry of the economically disappointed who feel themselves exploited by ‘that ancient chain of profit, power, gain’. It ends with a rallying call: ‘Out of …

Saturday

James Forsyth

A US / UK free trade deal is the big prize for Theresa May

Theresa May’s team will be basking this morning in the write-ups of her successful visit to Washington. As I say in The Sun this morning, the big prize for her is a US / UK free trade deal. Government ministers think that, given the political will on both sides, the deal could be negotiated in just eight months. There is also confidence in Whitehall that the US will be prepared to grant an exemption for public services which would ‘protect’ the NHS. This should do much to reduce the intensity of the opposition to the deal. Trump’s protectionist rhetoric is often cited as a reason why a US / UK

Friday

Matt Purple

Theresa May begins babysitting the world’s most powerful man

Of all the specimens in the Donald Trump menagerie—Charming Trump, Vicious Trump, Soapbox Trump—Subdued Trump may be my least favorite. It is true that the restraint my president showed during his press conference with Theresa May is in both our countries’ interests, but it is also uncomfortably artificial, like watching a space alien trying to cheer for a football game. Trump is who he is, an energetic insult comic at his most natural when he’s dissing the size of his political opponents’ hands. Watching him strain to appear statesmanlike always leaves you with the impression that he’s been pumped full of Valium. Nevertheless, he seems to have passed his first

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

May wants to be a ‘third way’ between Trump and the EU

Well, Theresa May managed to lay on the praise towards Trump without seeming too sycophantic, which made their press conference a reasonable success. May congratulated Trump on his ‘stunning’ electoral victory while describing Britain’s future as ‘open to the world’. May seems to be presenting herself as a reassuring ‘third way’ leader between the frightening wildness of Trumpism and the suffocating multilateralism of the EU. It is silly to call her Thatcher to his Reagan only a few days into the Trump presidency, but certainly today could mark the beginning of a very important ‘renewed’ Special Relationship. At times, May sounded like a schoolteacher, nodding approvingly at Trump as though

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Theresa May has learnt the art of dealing with Donald

The Trump / May press conference went as well as the Prime Minister’s team could have hoped. The new president was effusive about Brexit saying it was a ‘wonderful thing’, a ‘fantastic thing’ and declaring that it’ll be a ‘tremendous asset’ for the UK. He was also warm about May personally, predicting that their relationship was going to be ‘fantastic’ and opining that they had already hit it off.  Usefully for May, Trump also didn’t say anything outrageous, by his standards, at the press conference. In response to the BBC, he said that the US wouldn’t torture because Defence Secretary Mattis’s objections overrode his own personal belief that it worked. 

Ross Clark Ross Clark

No, Donald Trump hasn’t just brought Doomsday closer

Can there be a bunch of more self-serving individuals than the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which annually presents its assessment of global politics in the form of its ‘Doomsday Clock’? Yesterday, the organisation announced that it was moving its clock forward by 30 seconds so that it now stands at two and a half minutes to midnight – where midnight is Armageddon, the end of human civilisation as we know it. The reason, of course, is Donald Trump. As the scientists explained: ‘He has made ill-considered comments about expanding the US nuclear arsenal. He has shown a troubling propensity to discount or outright reject expert advice