Donald trump

If you want to know why Trump won, just look at the response to his winning. The lofty contempt for ‘low information’ Americans. The barely concealed disgust for the rednecks and cretins of ‘flyover’ America who are apparently racist and misogynistic and homophobic. The haughty sneering at the vulgar, moneyed American political system and how it has allowed a wealthy candidate to poison the little people’s mushy, malleable minds. The suggestion that American women, more than 40 per cent of whom are thought to have voted for Trump, suffer from internalised misogyny: that is, they don’t know their own minds, the poor dears. The hysterical, borderline apocalyptic claims that the

Spare a thought for Donald Trump. For weeks now, the Republican candidate has been suggesting the US voting system is rigged. Now it seems his trust issues have spread to those closest to him. In a photo from Trump’s visit to the polling station today, the presidential hopeful appears to be taking a peek at his wife Melania’s ballot slip. Given that Melania has been accused of plagiarising Michelle Obama’s speeches in the course of the campaign, could Trump be worried she is a secret Democrat? Mr S welcomes your caption suggestions — the winner will be revealed on Thursday. Update: The winner is ‘DaHitman’ with the caption ‘Who’s “X”?’

Polite, well-heeled New Hampshire is the last place you’d expect to see a voodoo doll. But there it was, pointed out by my producer, clutched by a woman called Mavis. This being a Trump rally, it was of course a Clinton likeness, complete with pins. Residents of the granite state pride themselves on being a sophisticated lot, but the doll sent a certain shiver up the spine.  Come to think of it, I was already shivering. It was the end of a long week traipsing through four states following the Trump campaign. The Secret Service kept us waiting outside for three quarters of an hour in the pelting New England

The ‘pursuit of happiness’—an infinitely debatable formulation to describe a distinctively American activity. As Jefferson wrote the phrase as the climax to his triad of inalienable rights, ‘life’ would presumably have been a fairly non-controversial no-brainer, while the peoples of other nations had begun by 1776 to aspire to forms of quasi-democratic ‘liberty’. And then there it is in black and white quill ink: the ‘pursuit of happiness’—and a uniquely American idea is enshrined. For a large number of people, Donald J. Trump represents perhaps the ultimate incarnation of this idea. And it’s hard to argue that ‘the Donald’ is not, in his way, happy. Supremely content with himself and

If, on the night of Monday September 26, a US presidential election had been held instead of a televised debate, Donald Trump would likely now be America’s president-elect. That morning the reliable on-line poll analyst Nate Silver, sympathetic to Clinton, had tweeted, ‘It’s a dead heat,’ and then, a few minutes later, ‘State firewall breaking up. Trend lines awful.’ In retrospect, one simple task stood between Trump and the presidency: he had to look like some version of a rational human being. He failed. As Conrad Black has put it, the office of the presidency has been seeking Donald Trump. That night, Trump essentially picked up the phone and told

I have never met Donald Trump, but I knew his parents. A fact that makes me feel about 100 years old. Which was actually nearer the age Fred and Mary Anne Trump were when, as a teenager, I made my first trip to New York. I remember riding backwards in their limousine on the way to lunch with the extended Trump clan and the lovely Mary Anne apologising that her son Donald would not be joining us. ‘You know about Donald?’ she inquired. I nodded, and recall her adding rather wistfully, ‘He’s always been the outgoing one.’ One of the great pleasures of life, I now realise — and a