Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Winston Churchill’s description of Soviet Russia in 1939 could also apply to the independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr in the presidential election of 2024. What we can say with certainty about RFK Jr is that, in a year when the American electorate is deeply
The Democrats dare to hope that this week will be a study in contrasts. On their side stands President Joe Biden, the veteran statesman, using all his diplomatic experience to stop a third world war breaking out in the Middle East. On the other, in the dock in Manhattan, sits Donald Trump, facing 34 criminal
Is it Dozy Don now? Social media is already pulsating over reports that Donald Trump appears to have fallen asleep on the first day of his criminal trial. ‘His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack’, says the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman. Oh boy. ‘72 hours until all hell breaks loose!’ declared
The Trump 2024 campaign’s fundraising email operations went into overdrive last weekend. ‘Dems threaten to seize Trump Tower,’ screamed one call to donate on Saturday. ‘Maniacs want to seize Trump Tower,’ read another. ‘If they seize Trump Tower…’ said a third. ‘Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower,’ added yet another. The tone flitted from alarm to
In his under-recognised 2007 book Think Big and Kick Ass: In Business and Life, Donald Trump dedicated a chapter to ‘Revenge’. He wrote: ‘My motto is: always get even. When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.’ Vengeance is a lifelong theme in the Donald J. Trump story, narrated as it is by Donald
Commentators find it tedious to keep pointing out that Donald Trump has won yet another primary by yet another huge margin. He just defeated Nikki Haley by more than 40 points in Michigan, for instance, and many journalists seem to be focusing on his struggle to win over key ‘voter blocs’. She will inevitably cave
‘I’m a woman of my word,’ said Nikki Haley after another humiliating defeat last night. ‘I’m not giving up this fight when a majority of Americans disapprove of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.’ But what, really, is the point? South Carolina is Haley’s home state and she lost by more than 20 percentage points. She lost
Will Nikki Haley defy expectations and only lose by 20 points today? That seems to be closest thing to a point of contention as South Carolina heads to the polls for today’s dodo of a Republican primary. The polls have shown Trump’s enormous lead shrinking in recent days from well over 30 points to around
‘Donald Trump may have authored the Art of the Deal,’ said the New York Attorney General Letitia James, doing her best resolute voice. ‘But he perfected the art of the steal.’ There speaks the voice of American justice: biased, politicised, odiously trite. ‘Today, we proved that no one is above the law,’ said James, which
Joe Biden isn’t working. That much has been clear to anyone who has followed American politics for the past four years. The 81-year-old often has no idea what he is saying or where he is. Yet it’s only now, months away from his possible re-election, that the Department of Justice, apparently in an attempt to
The trouble with ageing authoritarians is not necessarily that nobody dares tell them they are wrong. It’s that nobody ever tells them they are being tiresome. A less polite man might have aggressively interrupted his interviewee, but would that have stopped Vlad, the intellectual impaler? Yes, as Tucker Carlson’s big interview in Moscow finally dropped
Two years ago, Éric Zemmour was the most talked-about man in France and a serious contender to be the ninth president of the Fifth Republic. A controversial journalist turned incendiary politician, he vied with Marine Le Pen for second place behind Emmanuel Macron in the polls. Crucially, he seemed to have something she lacked –
In September, 1934, William Randolph Hearst, the most famous journalist and publisher in the world, visited Berlin and interviewed Adolf Hitler. At the time, Hearst admired Hitler, and was rather taken aback when the Fuhrer asked why he was so ‘misunderstood’ in the English-language press. Hearst replied that Americans love democracy and distrusted dictatorships, to
‘Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy,’ said Sun Tzu. The Biden administration takes the opposite approach. America’s Commander-in-Chief spent much of the last week warning America’s antagonists in the Middle East that the US would respond to the killing of three of its troops in Jordan last weekend. And last night the retaliation finally began. US forces
It’s not yet February, and already we have a clear idea of what Joe Biden’s re-election will be all about: Donald Trump, abortion and, er, Taylor Swift. The New York Times reported yesterday that Team Biden-Harris 2024 has made recruiting Taylor Swift as one of its endorsers a top priority. This, inevitably, has triggered a
Donald Trump said yesterday that we’re ‘on the brink of world war three’ after a suicide drone killed three US soldiers and injured a further 34 in Jordan. ‘This attack would never have happened if I was president, not even a chance – just like the Iranian-backed Hamas attack on Israel would never have happened,
New Hampshire Joe Biden likes to say that ‘democracy is on the ballot’ in 2024. Yet Joe Biden was not on the ballot on Tuesday in New Hampshire. In his absence, a 55-year-old former congressman called Dean Phillips, who started his campaign just ten weeks ago, won 20 per cent of the vote. Biden still
Donald Trump has, like a boa constrictor, squeezed the life out of the Republican primary cycle. Last night, he swallowed New Hampshire and possibly Nikki Haley too. Haley did better than many of the late polls suggested. But that’s not saying much. She won 44 per cent of the vote, finishing 12 points behind Trump. She now has the
New Hampshire votes tomorrow and today Nikki Haley has just two planned events. She has a morning meet-and-greet in the city of Franklin and a ‘get out the vote rally’ in Salem this evening. Nobody could accuse Haley of not working hard. She’s famously an industrious woman. But given the make-or-break nature of tomorrow’s vote,
The Florida governor has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race
