Us politics

Washington, DC Donald Trump, the unity president — doesn’t sound right, does it? Trump is, we know, divisive. Under his administration, America is polarised to the point of madness. Democrats and Republicans despise each other, culture wars rage, sane people speculate about another civil war.  In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, however, Trump spoke about bringing his country together. He will never be an elegant orator, but ‘SOTU 19’ was objectively a good speech: its authors cleverly wove American themes of optimism and success into a political challenge to the Democrats. ‘Millions of our fellow citizens are watching us,’ he said, ‘hoping we will govern not as

 Washington, DC It’s no secret that President Donald Trump has women problems. His relationship with his wife seems strained. Feminists loathe him. His popularity among the opposite sex is lower than ever, according to the polls. And, to rub salt into his wounded machismo, he appears to have just lost a fierce political battle over the government shutdown to Nancy Pelosi, the newly reinstalled Democratic speaker. All week, the commentariat has gushed over the way Pelosi ‘schooled’ Trump in the art of politics by forcing him to reopen the government without giving him the funds he wants to build a wall on the Mexican border. She ‘spanked him’, they say.

When the media falls in love, it falls hard. Its latest crush is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat congressgirl from New York. With Obama gone, she’s their new idol and how they gasp every time she flutters her Bambi eyes from behind those Deirdre Barlow-grade glasses. Brits find the deference US journalists show their president unseemly — all that standing to attention, Hail to the Chief stuff — but their slobbery swooning over every Great Progressive Hope that comes along is just creepy. There was the White House correspondent who offered to fellate Bill Clinton and the New York Times writer who blogged her shower dream about Barack Obama and claimed ‘many

Jon Sopel, the BBC’s North America editor, has given us a pithy and perceptive account of today’s USA in his book If Only They Didn’t Speak English. He described the mood there in 2016 as ‘fearful, angry and impatient for change’. It was the year when Donald Trump was going to be elected to the world’s most powerful position. Could something similar also explain the unpredicted swings in European elections and across the world? If so, does it mean that people are so fed up with the status quo that they will opt for anything contrary? The oft-quoted aphorism from G.K. Chesterton comes to mind: ‘When men choose not to

We’re closing 2018 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 8: Lionel Shriver on the Brett Kavanaugh hearings: Following Christine Blasey Ford’s Senate testimony about being sexually assaulted by the US Supreme Court nominee when he was 17, numerous women on American news reported that listening to her terrible story made them cry. I didn’t cry. Indeed, my reaction to Ford’s statement was at such odds with the garment–rending anguish of my fellow Democrats that I had to wonder whether either I’d missed something or maybe there was something wrong with me. So I just read the entire transcript. I hadn’t missed anything. As for whether

One of the most important duties of being an ambassador is serving as a counsellor of sorts. When relations between two countries are on the rocks – or a president or prime minister says or does something another nation regards as hostile – the ambassador is often called on to ensure that any diplomatic fallout can be contained and the relationship itself can be repaired. Apparently Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, didn’t get the memo.   In an extraordinarily frank interview with Politico Europe this week, ambassador Sondland blasted the EU as an archaic, obstructionist, elitist European superstructure whose primary objective is to keep itself in business. The European Commission,

Emmanuel Macron’s hosting of sixty world leaders in Paris last weekend to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice has turned into a public relations disaster. The president of the Republic not only infuriated Donald Trump, but he also put the Serbian president’s nose out of joint. According to reports, Aleksandar Vucic was not amused with the seating arrangements at Sunday’s service of remembrance. While Kosovo’s president Hashim Thaçi was behind the leaders of France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, Vucic was shunted off to the side. “You can imagine how I felt,” Thaci is quoted as telling the Serbian media. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing before me, knowing

As soon as Donald Trump says ‘I’ll be honest,’ which he did at his press conference today, you know he’s about to tell a lie. The media, he proclaimed, ‘really does bring disunity.’ No, it doesn’t. What it brings is coverage of his administration rather than the beatification that he craves. Trump’s performance was more than ordinarily intemperate. He was clearly nettled by CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s questions about the Russia investigation, deeming him ‘a rude, terrible person’ who behaves in an ungentlemanly fashion toward his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. After NBC reporter Peter Alexander tried to defend Acosta, Trump barked, ‘Well, I’m not a big fan of yours either.’ I see this