Will the US survive four years of the most self-centred monster ever to enter the White House?
Sorry for the radio silence of late. It wasn't a Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell absence but a case of the nasty respiratory virus that's doing the rounds. It's not the only disease making headlines, the other is the far worse outbreak of Little America, also known as the Cult (sic) of Trump Syndrome.
We now have to resign ourselves to the stark fact that the US President is no longer Leader of Free World; he is an isolationist devoted in equal measure to Power, Himself and Money. Nothing else matters. Not democracy, freedom, free speech, defence of allies, decency or ethics.
It is now clear that the 47th President is allied to Putin, the murderous and unstable Russian dictator who silences all critics by a combination of assassination and Siberian gulags and who is as rouble rich as he is bereft of moral values. Last week the US voted No with Russia, North Korea and Belarus when it came to condemning Putin's invasion of Ukraine. No further proof is needed about who Trump really admires.
The question is why. His less-than-admiring biographer Michael Wolff is certain that Putin has something major over Trump though he admits he doesn't know what. But we can guess that it centres on the long-rumoured help given by the Kremlin during his first election victory in 2016 and graphic reports of parties in Moscow with Russian hookers. The problem is we cannot bet against anything when it comes to Trump. This a man who speaks in headlines to gain attention, then makes policy on the hoof depending on the reaction.
Now he has rubbed President Zelensky's nose in the dirt, suspended military aid to Ukraine and rails against the weekend efforts of his new best buddy Keir Starmer to galvanise Europe into ramping up the defence of the increasingly heroic Zelensky. At the end of it all Trump will probably get what he wants, the right to mine rare earth minerals in Eastern Ukraine but for little or no US military support and a deal with Putin in which he will keep all or most of the territory he has gained in the invasion. And then Putin will come back for more with his eyes firmly set on the Baltic states lost under the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Can you imagine any other US leader siding with the great enemy, the Evil Empire as Reagan memorably put it? Of course not. But this is a man like no other president. In the six weeks since moving into the Oval Office Trump has appointed a Cabinet of 22 fellow travellers, 13 of whom of are billionaires, several of them uniquely unqualified for the key posts they fill; his favourite Fox News presenter Pete Hegseth at Defence and the lunatic Robert Kennedy jnr at Health. He insists on purity of the brand, everyone must think like him and parrot their master.
On Newsnight last Friday, the day of Zelensky's ambush in the White House, some dyed-blonde bimbo purporting to be a former Trump ambassador during his first administration claimed that the Ukrainian leader was syphoning off aid money, had bought another yacht and was corrupt. And the clearly-planted question about Zelensky's dress code which kicked off the savaging on Friday was from Brian Glenn, hard-right hack boyfriend of Congresswoman and Trump acolyte Marjorie Taylor Greene. Interesting that Glenn was silent on the garb of the vile ketamine-addicted Elon Musk, emblazoned t-shirts and back-to-front baseball caps. All set off with one his 14 kids on his shoulders.
It is sickening and is sure to get far worse. He has the hillbilly JD Vance as VP who has just casually referred to the UK and France as "random nations who have never fought a war for 40 years". He is systematically trying to bring the US mainstream media into line and the great Washington Post, now owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has capitulated. He's also trying to silence student protest in the States. This is what dictators do.
Will the UN survive if the US leaves? Maybe a better question is will the US survive four years of the most self-centred monster (Michael Wolff's words) ever to enter the White House? Certainly not as we have known it all these years, a beacon of democracy and freedom who stood against tyranny. Make America Great Again? What a fool he is.
*****
Tonight ITV begins A Cruel Love, its drama series on Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK. We probably all know the story of how she shot her abusive boyfriend David Blakely and the campaign which followed to have her pardoned, not least by Sir Cecil Havers, the judge who sentenced her to death and who then wrote to the Home Secretary urging him to commute the sentence.
A similar case is that of poor Derek Bentley, a 19-year-old epileptic with a mental age of 11. He was persuaded by 16-year-old Christopher Craig to join him in the burglary of a warehouse in Croydon in 1952. When neighbours spotted the pair on the warehouse roof police were called and they were cornered. Craig was carrying a Webley revolver with Bentley armed only with Craig's knuckle-duster.
When Constable Frederick Fairfax ordered Craig to hand over the gun Bentley shouted: "Let him have it Chris". But Craig then shot and killed PC Sidney Miles and it was those five words which convicted Bentley the following year on the charge of joint enterprise. He was sentenced to death and Craig, as a juvenile, was locked up until 1963.
But was Derek really urging his accomplice to hand over the weapon as he claimed? That was certainly the prevailing argument and the one on which his sister Iris campaigned from that moment on until her death in 1997.
I met Iris in 1991 when she stepped up her campaign for a reprieve with the release of the film Let Him Have It starring Christpoher Ecclestone as Derek and Clare Holman as Iris. She was a remarkable and determined woman whose campaign on behalf of her brother began from the moment of his sentence. She kept a clock in her home stopped at precisely the time of the execution at 9.05am.
She came in to the Express to see me and we took up her cause. Of course it was never going to bring back her brother but we called for an Appeal Court review of the case and that led to the conviction being overturned and an eventual pardon came years after brave Iris' death in 1997.
The next time you feel that death would be too good for child killers and terrorists (as I often do) remember the era when we had the death penalty on our statute books and terrible, irreversible mistakes were and can be made.
*****
The trial of former DUP leader and First Minister of Northern Ireland Jeffrey Donaldson begins in three weeks. He is charged with one count of rape, nine of indecent assault and one of gross indecency. His defence barrister is an interesting — not to say expensive — choice. Kieran Vaughan KC is regarded as one of the most successful criminal defence silks currently on the circuit.
One of his more celebrated successes was the acquittal of Sean Hoey who was charged with being part of the Real IRA gang who carried out the 1998 Omagh Bombing, the worst incident of the so-called Troubles.
An accused Real IRA bomber and the former DUP firebrand, contrasting clients to say the very least.
*****
Not many people know that. When the Paddington Bear films were dubbed to be shown in Ukraine the voice of the lovable bear, played in English by Ben Wishaw, was one Volodymyr Zelensky. What became of him?
ALAN FRAME
5 March 2025
