At a chic dinner party last week, a Trump insider gossiped about an American president having had an affair with a former French president’s wife. Actually, Carla Bruni has denied the rumours concerning her and the Donald, although they did have a date once upon a time. It seems that everything about Trump is controversial and some of us are having a rough time defending him. If only he’d shut his mouth and stay away from Twitter once in a while.

Mind you, his enemies have become so desperate, and their charges so outrageous, that the 45th president of the good old US of A might even become popular — as long as they keep it up. For example, I don’t know many people — except the handpicked cheering crowd at the studio — who thought it was funny when Bill (penis-face) Maher announced that Trump is having an incestuous affair with his daughter Ivanka. No newspaper or TV programme condemned Maher. See what I mean? When the Washington Post columnist Paul Hume made fun of Margaret Truman’s singing back in 1950, her father Harry threatened to punch him in the face and the country cheered him on. Sixty-seven years later, a cesspool of a man who was once fired for denigrating American soldiers says something as disgusting as that and gets away with it. The networks and the New York Times have gone ballistic in their blind hatred for a man who has been in office for about 110 days. Their latest caper is to put out rumours and then quote them as facts from sources that have asked for their names not to be revealed because they fear Trump’s revenge.

Young Taki learned this lesson long ago. I was in a car with a girl called Liz who was having an affair with candidate Jack Kennedy. The man driving the car was a hack whose name escapes me but who had just interviewed the aristocratic Henry Cabot Lodge, running as vice-president in Richard Nixon’s 1960 campaign. I had not experienced such venom so I asked the hack — who was working for the Washington Post — if he had something personal against Lodge. ‘He was born with a silver spoon and he thinks he’s better than us, when he’s just a stuffed shirt and a phoney.’ That’s when the penny dropped. Henry Cabot Lodge was no stuffed shirt. He had wonderful manners, a great war record, was extremely good-looking and was sleeping with the mother of a friend of mine. The hack was ugly, badly laid, most likely had very ugly children and was extremely jealous. End of story. Twenty-eight years later, Gail Sheehy railed against George H.W. Bush because he had gone to Yale and had a father who was a senator. She forgot to mention that Georgie Porgie left Yale as a freshman, volunteered at 18 for the air force, was shot down by a Japanese Zero and spent a night in the drink in the middle of the Pacific before he was rescued. Again, jealousy of one’s superiors seems to have been the motive. I could write a book about jealous hacks but I don’t know how many would be interested in reading it.

Incidentally, did you know that only 7 per cent of journalists in America identify themselves as Republicans. And did you know that 90 per cent of new online jobs in journalism are in counties that Hillary Clinton carried? (Trust me, I lifted these figures from an impeccable study conducted by the Epoch Times.) Poor Hillary. Here’s the best: the draft dodger famously advised his wife to reach out to working-class whites. He knew all about them and had signed a welfare reform bill in 1996 in order to carry such states as West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee that no Democrat had carried since the war. Hillary’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, cheekily replied that ‘the data runs counter to your anecdotes’. The result: she listened to a gay computer nerd called Mook, refused to visit Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and the Donald won the presidency. Now she’s screaming bloody murder and blaming everyone but herself and Mook.

Yes, dear Spectator readers, the morally bankrupt journalism on display is enough to discourage any of you from allowing your children to take up the profession. Charles Moore once told me that hacks were considered one step above child molesters in Britain. My father went to his grave insisting that all journalists practised blackmail. I think both Charles and Dad were joking, but my recent stay in the Bagel has convinced me of the media’s preening sanctimony and their outright jealousy of and hatred for those decent, hard-working, white, Christian folks referred to as ‘deplorables’ by a woman addressing a gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual convention.

Otherwise everything is hunky-dory. The MoMC has returned to Europe, I have two weeks to go in the Bagel, and, barring accidents in the karate dojo, I plan to party to my heart’s content. If that displeases anyone, too bad. I only wish that the hack who hated Cabot Lodge were alive. I’d use him as a punchbag in practice. Ooh, that would feel so good.