Donald trump

Tuesday

Daniel Jackson

Can the liberal worldview survive?

There is a latent consensus among political scientists and highbrow columnists that the liberal era is over and that, following Brexit and Trump, we are entering a period of neo-nationalism. This consensus will develop further if, as I suspect she will, Marine Le Pen wins the French presidential election next May. Two recent editorials in the Economist demonstrate how quickly this is happening. In July, it was argued that ‘the new divide in rich countries is not between left and right but between open and closed’. Last week, we were told that ‘the long, hard job of winning the argument for liberal internationalism begins anew’. The challenge to liberalism is still seen

Rob Crilly

What now for the ‘Never Trump’ Republicans?

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

Monday

Alex Massie

Donald Trump is going to be a dreadful president. Let’s not suddenly pretend otherwise

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

Rob Crilly

Trump’s immigration policies aren’t all that different from Obama’s

Bit by bit, Donald Trump’s policies and priorities are emerging into view. We know who his chief of staff is to be and in an interview last night he started to explain his plan of action after his inauguration. It begins, as you might have predicted, with immigration: ‘What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we’re getting them out of our country. They’re here illegally.’ The issue was

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Will feminists be kind to Melania Trump?

It was a race between the first dude — Bill — and the first nude — Melania. And in the end, the first nude won, appearing next to her husband in the early hours wearing a white jumpsuit straight out of Charlie’s Angels. It may seem unfair to judge Mrs Trump so early on, but judged she will be. She awaits her turn, just as Hillary Clinton once did. How will she fare? Well, liberal American voters will want targets, and she looks like one. People are already making jokes about Michelle Obama writing Melania’s first speech, to save her the trouble of plagiarising again. There is so much for

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Nigel Farage’s Trump card

Theresa May was tenth in line in the phone queue to speak to president-elect Donald Trump last week. Yet Nigel Farage managed an hour-long meeting with Trump over the weekend – and even found time to pose for pictures in Trump’s gold-plated elevator. Downing Street has so far said it doesn’t want Farage’s help to build bridges with the new US leader. But how sustainable is that approach? The Daily Telegraph says now is not the time to be fussy about the way in which Britain forges links with Trump. The paper says that the government is ‘right to consider making use of Nigel Farage’, who it points out will

Sunday

Theo Hobson

Nietzsche was right – liberal democracy is flawed

It’s time to consider Nietzsche’s view of liberal democracy. It couldn’t work, it couldn’t bind a nation together, he said. Why not? Because of its excessive moral idealism. The belief in equality and social justice, which he rightly saw as deriving from Judaism and Christianity, would lead to fragmentation. For politics would be dominated by various disadvantaged groups demanding respect. Any sort of unifying ethos would be treated as oppressive, the ideology of the ruling class. If virtue lies in weakness, and victim status, healthy politics is doomed. It is emerging that he was largely right. Progressive politics, which affirms the liberal or humanist vision, seems to be collapsing. And

Friday

Jonathan Owen

The glaring hypocrisy of the anti-Trump protests

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

Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

Donald Trump’s victory has made social media unbearable

When I woke up on Wednesday morning it was to the news that Donald Trump was the next President of the United States, and, at the top of my Instagram feed, to a photograph of a pair of shiny silver ballet pumps. ‘Wearing sparkly shoes to make today just a teeny bit better,’ was the caption. I scrolled down through other photographs in my usual mindless morning way. A greyhound, already the most doleful looking of dogs, in her basket and the caption: ‘Thank God she neither knows nor understands. I envy her peace’. A toddler, still in his pyjamas, tousled, sleepy, fawn-in-the-headlights eyes: ‘What kind of world will he

Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Where’s the proof that Donald Trump is homophobic?

Did anybody see Question Time last night? The panel largely seemed to be competing to out-outrage each other about Donald Trump. And in their great Trump-off most of the guests continued to do that sawn-off shotgun ‘phobes’ thing. Trump as a ‘misogynist, homophobic, racist, Islamophobe’ etc. You would have thought after the second election in a year where people weren’t scared off by such name-calling that people would give it a rest for a bit. But one thing was particularly striking. You may not like the recording of Donald Trump from more than a decade ago in which he boasts of the sexual opportunities available to celebrities. I thought it

Nicholas Farrell Nicholas Farrell

It’s absurd to call Trump a fascist

Many thousands of words have been written and many more will now be written by the liberal intelligentsia on trying to prove that the 45th President of the United States of America is a fascist. Among the first to leap out of the starting blocks after the triumph of Trump was the hyper-trendy historian Simon Schama who tweeted at dawn on Wednesday to say: ‘This calamity for democracy will of course hearten fascists all over the world’. The trouble is: Trump is not a fascist, let alone a nazi. Even calling him Donald Duck would be more accurate than calling him Donald Duce. The main reason that Trump is, in fact, not a

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Death by television

Forty years ago this month a film appeared, so prescient I wonder if its author, Paddy Chayefsky, saw the 2016 American presidential election campaign in a crystal ball. It was called Network and it foretold the rise of Donald Trump. The plot is King Lear appears on Newsnight: a newsman run mad. The protagonist is Howard Beale (Peter Finch), an anchorman at a failing network. The year is 1976, and America is embattled with inflation, depression and the end of the Vietnam war. It is not a time for American heroes, to paraphrase Chayefsky’s acolyte Aaron Sorkin writing in The West Wing. Beale’s ratings are low. He is fired. He

The Spectator

America’s retreat

Donald Trump predicted that his election would be ‘Brexit times ten’ — which, as far as the stockmarket reaction was concerned, had some merit. The dollar plunged, and the Dow Jones along with it. Once again, the pollsters have been confounded. Once again, political analysts have been left asking whether they know their country at all. And once again we can see the same group of voters at the forefront: the older, poorer ones who are concerned about demographic change and angry about being ignored for too long. In Britain, and now in America, they are the new revolutionary class. This is where the analogies with Brexit end. Vote Leave,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 10 November 2016

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said she still expected to start talks on leaving the EU as planned by the end of March, despite a High Court judgment that Parliament must decide on the invoking of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that would set Brexit in train. Opinion was divided over whether the High Court had required an Act of Parliament or a vote on a resolution. The government appealed to the Supreme Court, which is to hear the case from 5 December. The judgment set off a confused game of hunt the issue. One issue was whether the press is allowed to be rude about judges. The Daily

Taki

High life | 10 November 2016

 New York Americans have been to the polls. Everything is over but the shouting — by the loser, that is: honest Hil. I predicted that the best Trump could have hoped for was winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College but I got it wrong: the Donald has triumphed. An underfunded campaign — he spent barely half of what she did — with a skeletal crew and without the party’s full backing won out because not all of America agrees with the values of Jay Z, Beyoncé, Springsteen, Hollywood in general and gay marriage in particular. Trump appealed to those who have been snubbed, the great ignored. They

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 10 November 2016

At the beginning of November 1980, one week before Ronald Reagan won a landslide victory in the presidential election, Henry Fairlie, then writing regularly for The Spectator from Washington, finally slid off the fence and made a firm prediction. ‘Jimmy Carter will be the next President of the United States,’ he wrote in the first sentence of his column. Carter, he went on, was ‘personally a not very agreeable man’ but had a more persuasive ‘political character’ than Reagan, so would win the election. Although a much-admired political commentator, who had made his name as a columnist at The Spectator in London, where he first gave the name ‘the Establishment’

Matthew Schmitz

Donald Trump’s victory marks the death of liberalism

On election day, I left my apartment on the east side of Manhattan, walked one block to my polling station, and got in line. A reporter from the neighbourhood paper was asking people who they were voting for and why. The woman ahead of me said she was voting for Clinton, both to stop Trump and because she wanted to see a woman finally break the glass ceiling. The little boy strapped to her chest kept waving at me over her shoulder. I waved back.  Well, instead of breaking a glass ceiling, we’ll be building a wall. The difference is telling. In her concession speech, Clinton said her goal had been

James Forsyth James Forsyth

An opportunity for Britain

When Britain voted to leave the European Union, the government was at pains to insist this was not a vote to leave Europe. With Donald Trump in the White House, this distinction will be crucial: the UK will suddenly become a lot more important to the security of the continent. The Donald has not bothered to court foreign leaders. Downing Street, which prides itself on its ability to befriend US presidential contenders, has no relationship with him; neither does anyone else in Europe. As a result, there is no certainty that America’s new commander-in-chief will feel bound by Nato’s Article 5 obligation to defend any member that comes under attack.

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The new first lady

It was a race between the first dude — Bill — and the first nude — Melania. And in the end, the first nude won, appearing next to her husband in the early hours wearing a white jumpsuit straight out of Charlie’s Angels. It may seem unfair to judge Mrs Trump so early on, but judged she will be. She awaits her turn, just as Hillary Clinton once did. How will she fare? Well, liberal American voters will want targets, and she looks like one. People are already making jokes about Michelle Obama writing Melania’s first speech, to save her the trouble of plagiarising again. There is so much for

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Can we trust the people? I’m no longer sure

The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States may have signalled the death of the closest thing we have to a religion in politics. On both sides of the Atlantic, democracy risks being knocked from the high altar as an unmitigated and unquestioned good. The man’s obviously a fool and a nasty fool too. The contest should have been a walkover for Hillary Clinton. But it wasn’t. What happened? Can we be sure any longer that democracy works? Is it really the reliable bulwark against political madness that we always supposed? Without hesitation I plead guilty to the obvious charge: Trump supporters could level it at me,