Us politics

New York Notebook | 29 September 2016

The first presidential debate was a disappointment. Half an hour into the big Trump-Clinton show on Long Island, many among the audience must have asked themselves why they weren’t watching The Real Housewives of Orange County instead. The strangest exchange concerned how to defeat Isis. Donald Trump said, ‘They’re beating us at our own game with the internet’ and Hillary Clinton agreed that winning requires ‘going after them online’. Hillary won by speaking in complete sentences, albeit brimming with bromides, while Trump lapsed into incoherence, apparently advised to sound calmer and more presidential. But Trump without his insults — of Mexicans, women and Muslims — just isn’t as much fun.

Last night’s debate was Donald Trump vs Himself. And Trump lost

As a general rule, presidential debates don’t change much. The winning and the losing matters much less than you think. Besides, most of the time partisans on either side can make a semi-decent case their candidate did what he had to do. The debates tend to reinforce existing notions more than they create new impressions. Last night’s debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton might have been different. Because it wasn’t a debate in the normal, accepted, sense of the term. There were two candidates on the stage at Hofstra University but only one plausible president of the United States. It wasn’t so much Trump vs Clinton as Trump vs Himself.

Freddy Gray

Smug Hillary Clinton wins the first presidential debate. Donald Trump looks like a plonker

So, Donald Trump was being honest when he let it be known that he hadn’t swotted up for the first presidential debate. He was horribly unprepared, and it showed. The great reality TV star put in a really bad live performance in front of 100 million-odd viewers. Hillary Clinton was Hillary Clinton – smug, annoying, not half as clever as she thinks. A better debater would have demolished Trump – he gave her enough opportunities — but she did not. Still, she was well-drilled and she sounded professional. Trump sounded incoherent, even by his low standards. He made a complete mess of almost every point. Or, as one Republican insider put it to me in a text message, ‘He

Six things to expect from tonight’s Trump vs Clinton TV debate

Tonight’s first televised debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, on Long Island, New York, is expected to generate a ‘Super-Bowlesque’ audience. Analysts say that up to 112 million viewers could tune in, a figure that Donald Trump will interpret as an indication of his immense popularity. Even on this side of the Atlantic, a large number of people will stay up to the early hours (2am – 3.30am) to see the Donald versus Mrs C, such is the excitement surrounding the presidential election. So what can we expect? Here are six things to look out for: 1) Clinton will try so hard to appear healthy that she will end

Trump fans should be proud to call themselves ‘the Deplorables’

Hillary Clinton hazarded that half of Donald Trump’s supporters are a ‘basket of deplorables’. The Kaiser called the BEF a ‘contemptible little army’, Aneurin Bevan called the Tories ‘lower than vermin’ — and in both cases, those so named took up the insult as a badge of pride: the Old Contemptibles, the Vermin Club. I hope the Deplorables will organise as such, and march on Washington in their millions. This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Notes. The full article is available here. 

After Hillary Clinton’s collapse, is it time to consider the possibility of President Tim Kaine?

What if Hillary Clinton can’t run? It’s a question that must be asked, even if the New York Times and much of the American mainstream media has been unwilling to ask it. Until now, that is. Clinton’s collapse – or ‘medical episode’ – during a 9/11 memorial service has brought the issue of her health to everybody’s attention. Americans will be asking themselves how, if she can’t make it through a memorial service, she will cope with the rigours of four years as Commander-in-chief. Moreover, the conspiracy of silence surrounding her health troubles does add to the general idea that the media and the Washington elite are willing to cover

Trump’s ‘Summer Meltdown’ is over. Is Clinton’s ‘Autumn Horror’ beginning?

Donald Trump’s ‘Summer Meltdown’ appears to be over. The latest CNN poll puts him two points ahead of Hillary Clinton, which must come as a surprise to the many pundits who have been saying ‘it’s over’ after Clinton’s polling improved over July and August, and the Donald’s deteriorated. It’s never been over. Hillary’s ‘Autumn Horror’ could be just beginning. How could this be — when every headline about the US election screams that Trump has taken his extremism too far? Well, as I wrote in the magazine last week, never underestimate the power of Hillary Hate, which is a national pastime in America. It waxes and wanes like a tide.

Trump’s immigration rhetoric is more subtle than his opponents realise

To say Donald Trump ‘double-downed’ last night on his border rhetoric would be an understatement. He went full anti-illegal immigration throttle, and then some. ‘There will be no amnesty,’ he said, and he promised to deport criminal illegal aliens within one hour of his arrival in office. ‘We will build a great wall along the southern border,’ he said. ‘And Mexico will pay for the wall, 100 per cent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it.’ He also invited on to the stage a group of women whose children have been killed by illegal immigrants, the ‘Angel Moms’ — a typical, mawkish Trumpian touch. ‘If you don’t vote Trump,

Conrad Black joins The Spectator’s Trump vs Clinton debate

A subscription to The Spectator buys you more than just full access to the world’s greatest magazine. It also means a ticket to our subscriber-only events and debates, and our next one is in a few weeks: a debate about Clinton vs Trump, moderated by Andrew Neil, on Tuesday 18 October. Conrad Black, formerly publisher of The Spectator, will be making the case for voting Trump along with Bob Tyrell, founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator. The FT’s Gideon Rachman will make the case for Hillary, joined by the playwright Bonnie Greer. It’s a pretty good line up: my hunch is that this one will sell out in a couple

How Donald Trump shacked up with the alt-right

When Donald Trump hired Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of the right-wing media site Breitbart, to head his campaign last week, Breitbart’s former editor Ben Shapiro declared, ‘The Breitbart alt-right just took over the GOP.’ Yet most of Trump’s supporters probably don’t even know what the alt-right is. It’s entirely plausible that Trump himself doesn’t know what it is. So what is the alt-right, and has it really taken over the GOP? Shapiro’s worry might be overstated but it’s not unwarranted. For at least a year, a small army of online right-wing trolls – who refer to themselves as the ‘alt-right’ – has attacked anyone who dared challenge Trump. They use some of the most

How Breitbart hijacks right-wing populism

The news that Donald Trump’s new campaign manager is Steve Bannon, head of the right-wing media site Breitbart, has shocked a few commentators. It shouldn’t. For almost a year now, it’s been obvious to anybody who can be bothered to look that the Trump campaign and Breitbart fit together like hand in glove, though who is the hand and who is the glove is harder to fathom. Bitter ex-Breitbart employees now call the site ‘Trump’s Pravda’. The name seems to have been coined by Ben Shapiro, one of Breitbart’s more successful journalists, who finally had enough and resigned over what he saw as a lack of editorial integrity in the age of the Donald.

JFK airport’s terror scare felt like a metaphor for modern America

I was crammed into the narrow cupboard of the Alitalia Business Class lounge at John F. Kennedy airport, along with a young school teacher from Brighton, nervous almost to the point of tears, a middle-aged couple from the Midlands and a stoic model from Brooklyn. Outside, in the shadow of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner we were supposed to have boarded by now, hundreds of people thought that a terrorist gunman was on the loose. Police cars came and went at speed. One moment everyone was filing leftwards, shepherded by guards. Then there was a panic, and people sprinted the other way, out towards the dark runways in the distance. Others lay

Hillary Clinton is a more sinister personality than Donald Trump

Watch this clip of Donald Trump suggesting yesterday that gun-rights enthusiasts might kill Hillary Clinton, and tell me, seriously, that you think he is being serious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czvVbdmP0bk Now watch Hillary Clinton in 2011 joking about the death of Gaddafi, and tell me — honestly — who is more sinister? ‘We came, we saw, he died!’ LOL! And tell us, Hillary — what happened after that? Didn’t Libya descend into chaos? Didn’t the country become a jihadist hellpit, as well as a springboard for the refugee crisis? Yes, it did. How hilarious! Leave aside the politics for a moment: people are going to insist that Donald Trump’s awful crudeness makes him unfit to

Boring Corbyn has got it all wrong on personality politics

Brits sometimes think that ‘personality politics’ is a bad thing. Jeremy Corbyn has certainly suggested as much; just before he won the Labour leadership last September, he dismissed the concept as juvenile and egoistic. Instead, he said: ‘We are not doing celebrity, personality or abusive politics – this is about hope.’ But although Corbyn has stuck to that belief, he’s wrong – and a big part of his problem is not realising that. While some say the idea of personality politics is an American import, in reality Brits have been doing it for decades. Take Harold Wilson’s advisers planting hecklers at TV hustings so the Labour leader could deploy his best put-down lines. That was in

Letters | 4 August 2016

Remain calm Sir: I am sorry that the redoubtable Martha Lane Fox is still angry at the exaggerations made by the Leave campaign (Letters, 30 July). I expect that the 17 million people who voted to leave are also still pretty angry at the exaggerated claims of Remainers. House price crashes, everyone £4,500 a year worse off, a revenge budget and even a third world war. And of course, the threats from elite corporatists. Vested interests, perhaps? It’s interesting to see how many of the big corporations that  threatened Armageddon prior to the vote are now voting with their money to stay. The investment adviser Tim Price says he has

Barack Obama: the great unity president who divided a nation

Hillary Clinton can count herself lucky to have Barack Obama cheerleading her bid for the presidency. The outgoing President is ending his time in power with high approval ratings. People still approve of him after all these years; like Hillary’s husband Bill, Barack’s presidency is ending on a high. And last night, at the Democratic Convention in Phili, he gave an absolute belter of speech supporting her claim to the White House. It was the speech progressives have been aching to hear. Mr Obama addressed the American people directly, when he said: ‘Time and again, you’ve picked me up. I hope, sometimes, I picked you up, too. Tonight, I ask you

Who does Bernie Sanders think he is?

You have to admire Bernie Sanders’s chutzpah. For almost the entirety of his over 40-year career in politics, Sanders pointedly abstained from joining the Democratic Party. He is a ‘democratic socialist’, officially registered as an independent, and has never been elected to office as a Democrat, seeing that party as insufficiently collectivist. Sanders only affiliated himself with the Democrats last year, solely for the purpose of trying to capture the party’s presidential nomination. Now that he’s lost that battle, he will return to the Senate as an independent. Given how Sanders has shown absolutely no loyalty to the Democratic Party – indeed, he has run against, and defeated, Democrats at the

The most shocking aspect of Donald Trump fans? Their decency

You might find them abhorrent. You might think them stupid for having fallen for such a charlatan. You might be right on those counts. But you can’t pretend that Donald Trump voters are all vicious fascists, because they aren’t. Indeed, the most shocking aspect of the Trump fans I’ve met is their decency.  For all the doom peddling by people in my profession this week, there was no violence to speak of at the Cleveland Republican Convention this week — from either pro or anti Trump gangs.  Thousands of journalists roamed the city, desperate  for trouble to report. Protestors burned an American flag, and people shouted at each other. But nothing

Be afraid: Donald Trump’s speech could win him the White House

Donald Trump’s speech tonight was not exactly poetry, but it was clear and surprisingly coherent. It was also clever, sort of. And it might just help him win the election in November. People find it disturbing, but Trump’s anti-globalism, America First and law-and order-focus plays very well in America in 2016. Americans are less and less interested in hearing platitudes about ‘freedom’ these days; they want to hear banalities about law and order instead. Because they are more worried about civil breakdown and their economic security than anything else. Freddy Gray and Scott McConnell discuss the American tragedy with Isabel Hardman: After the text leaked a few hours before the

Farage hails ‘perfect storm’ of Brexit, Trump and worldwide populism

Nigel Farage is here in Cleveland at the Republican Convention. He’s enjoying himself, and why not? Britain has voted for Brexit, and he doesn’t have a party to run. He can bask. Today he had lunch and a Q&A session with some fellow-minded conservatives on the Old River Road. They were all pleased as punch about Brexit, the Donald Trump thing, and the rise of anti-elite populism everywhere. ‘It looks like the perfect storm,’ Farage said, just before he sat down to eat. He was speaking to Steven King, a Republican congressman who recently got into hot water after he questioned the contribution non-white people had made to American history. The two men discussed the beauty of