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Enter the orange-faced braggart, the President who won’t read a thing

So here we go again, another Trump presidency starting next Monday. We’ve already had a taste of what’s to come; threats to Greenland and Canada and, thanks to a Drone World Exclusive by my imaginative chum Dismore, a plan to make the UK the 51st state. From a purely journalistic point of view, there will be a lot to report and comment on. But for the rest of the world, God help us all.

 

Nobody can say we haven’t been warned; the threats and lies, the braggadocio, the women, the sheer bad taste like the gold and diamond encrusted-doors of his Trump Tower apartment, the swagger, orange make-up and weird hair, the rampant corruption and of course his nasty friends and even nastier supporters. But now, thanks partly to Paddy Clancy (fotp) I’ve been reminded of things I didn’t know (as we say in Ireland).

 

How’s this for starters? An 80-year-old man at Trump’s Florida country club fell off a stage onto the marble floor and was severely hurt. What did the concerned Trump do? “Oh my God, that’s disgusting. I turned away, I couldn’t – you know – he was right in front of me. I didn’t want to touch him, he was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible because it was a beautiful white marble floor and now it has changed colour. Became very red, very red.”

 

Those around him during his first term in the White House told how they could never get him to concentrate on notes, minutes and strategy briefings. It turns out it was even worse than that; the man simply doesn’t read. Nothing, not a thing. Trump told Axios magazine: “I like bullets (as in bullet points I assume, but maybe not), I don’t need big long documents.” Which is why during his first stint as  president, National Security Council documents were kept to a single page and included plenty of charts and other illustrations. Basically pictures. Rather like the Topsy and Tim children’s illustrated books I used to read to my children. Though a lot less literate.

 

The talk about him not reading became so concerning that one brave interviewer, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, asked: ”Can you read, can you actually read?”  There was no reply but, when pushed further Trump, clearly (verbally) briefed on questions beforehand, took out a Bible. “ This is my mother’s Bible. I read this all the time.” Yeah, right.

 

There can be no doubt about his judgment, or rather lack of. His current choice of Secretary of Defence is a heavily-tattooed former Fox TV host (natch) called Pete Hegseth, currently undergoing a Senate suitability hearing. They want answers to a long list of allegations, including the sexual assault of a woman in 2017, financial mismanagement, racist and sexist remarks about men and women in the Services and alcohol abuse.

 

Even Hegseth’s own mother disapproves. She once sent him this email: ’You are an abuser of women – that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man who belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man.’    Perfect, straight out of the Trump playbook (apart from the booze), sign him up!

 

Of Trump’s picks for his cabinet and other top jobs such as ambassadors there are just eight survivors from his first presidency. But there are 16 billionaires slotted in for big posts including, of course, Elon Musk, 11 deniers who say they believe their pal won the last election, 11 TV personalities but just 10 real politicians. They all have one thing in common: Perceived loyalty.

 

For now at least...

 

*****

 

Talking of which, I see the Lettuce is to be a guest at Monday’s inauguration. Her inclusion tells you everything about the sort of people Trump admires, along with that cocky spiv Farage. But spare a thought for poor (though not in the cash sense) Arron Banks, multi-millionaire donor to the Brexit party. He was due to host a party on Friday celebrating Trump’s re-election but could not get a visa in time to fly to the US.

 

It looks as if his guests, including Truss, Farage and Reform’s Mr Big, Nick Candy, will have to celebrate without their host. They will have much serious business to discuss, like the Truss cease and desist letter to No 10 threatening legal action should the government continue to allege that she crashed the economy. Lord Drone knows no fears, he has instructed columnists to continue the good work safe in the knowledge that if we are sued, all defence costs will be paid.

 

A man in the Beaverbrook tradition.

 

*****

 

His Lordship’s choice of Editor of this fine organ is inspired (will that do Bings?) Recently he has been regretting just how biased newspapers have become, citing how uncompromisingly traditional Tory-supporting papers treated Chancellor Norman Lamont’s devaluation of the pound in 1992 (critically but fairly) compared with how the current Labour government is (BEING) reported.

 

The Mail and Telegraph are the prime offenders and probably the Express. But I can’t be sure because having had 16 gloriously happy years there I simply cannot bear to read a paper so reduced by managements over the years that it is no longer a newspaper in the accepted sense of the word.

 

OK, Labour has made a Horlicks of the first six months of government but surely reporting is meant to be objective and not objectionable. Telegraph columnists, with the exception of the brilliant Charles Moore (fotp) are unremitting in the hatred of all things left of Genghis Khan (with a name like that he was probably a sex groomer) and the Mail allows nothing other than blistering criticism, some of it well argued but most of it clearly under orders to be as offensive as possible and often without logic.

 

Quentin Letts, once funny and almost balanced in his parliamentary sketches, is now bordering on the pathetic and stretches analogies so far as to be painful, rather like a useless comic being greeted with embarrassed silence. Littlejohn is a pale shadow of his once-amusing self. Thus we have: ‘Looming power cuts are now official government policy thanks to Ed Miliband’s Kamikaze-style Net Zero nosedive.’ What bollocks.

 

The Mail’s attack dog-in-chief Boris Johnson is so bloody predictable in his so-called column. Saturday’s offering on Rachel Reeves had the sub head: ’Stay in China where they’re almost as Commie as she is’.

 

This from the man whose party turned against him and was forced from No10 because he lied and lied and lied.

 

*****

 

I see that David Attenborough has his own version of the famous Express camel expenses story. In case you’ve been away too long, the Express one was about the reporter, sent to some faraway war, who claimed for the purchase of a camel. When the managing ed suggested the company now owned the wretched dromedary the fast-thinking hack replied that it had died, was cremated and that he had forgotten to claim for that on his exes.

 

Attenborough, appearing on a repeat of Parkinson, talked of buying two horses to get from one side of a desert to the other which he claimed for. When the accounts department pointed out the nags were now Corporation property he responded: ‘Ah we ended up eating them.’

 

I prefer ours.


ALAN FRAME


15 January 2025