Donald Trump
Why I am hanging up my crystal ball
Gstaad I caught a whiff of it as it rolled in from the east, the smell of hypocrisy being different…
Where does Donald Trump’s new favourite word come from?
In Polite Conversation, Jonathan Swift presents dialogues made up of clichés, banalities and catchphrases. When Miss Notable makes a remark…
The Cabinet reshuffle that exploded in Theresa May’s face
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, tried to shuffle her cabinet, but Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, refused to become…
Trump may be stupid or crazy, but the people enabling him are neither
Like every journalist in Washington, I’m enthralled by the new Michael Wolff book, Fire and Fury, which depicts Donald Trump…
If Trump seems bad, remember Caligula
Whatever one makes of the accuracy of the journalist Michael Wolff’s depiction of President Trump, it cannot all be the…
Michael Wolff said the US needed a market-charming president: now it has one
I once commissioned Michael Wolff —currently the world’s most talked-about journalist as the author of the White House exposé Fire…
His critics can’t admit it, but Trump’s crazy tactics are succeeding
Among the many new political maladies of our age, one has been left largely undiagnosed. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome,…
The skulking assassins of the London Stock Exchange
The revenge tragedy at the London Stock Exchange whose plot I outlined last month has reached its third act, but…
If you voted Remain, you’ll never ‘get’ Trump
How do you defend Donald Trump without coming across like a rabid lunatic? This was my challenge as the only…
Between Trump and Harvey Weinstein, America is fast approaching outrage overload
It’s remarkable how fast the unthinkable becomes the expected. It felt almost routine to pick up the New York Post…
If China backs Trump on North Korea he won’t like the quid pro quo
The first election day since Donald Trump was elected president a year ago brought a funereal mood to Washington that…
Why Harvey, Dustin and Brett did it
A dinner in honour of Arki Busson hosted by Michael Mailer in his brilliant Brooklyn flat on the banks of…
Ali Smith’s Winter is calm, cool and consoling
In 1939, Barbara Hepworth gathered her children and her chisels and fled Hampstead for Cornwall. She expected war to challenge…
One man rules
Optimists speculate that Xi Jinping’s power accumulation is the prelude to a burst of liberalising reform in his second five-year…
Imran’s biggest test
It’s been a long journey for Imran Khan. He founded his political party, PTI (Pakistan Movement for Justice), in 1996,…
At this rate, we’ll have to rename New York
Growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, I took the monuments around the state capitol for granted. The first Confederate soldier…
Low life
I got off the plane at Changi still pleasantly sedated by Xanax, passed through the ‘nothing to declare’ channel, and…
Punks vs. Putin
What makes for meaningful political protest? In regimes where ideology was taken seriously (such as the Soviet Union or America…
Low life
I arrived for lunch a bit late and was led to the dining table. Our hostess disappeared back into the…
The true Trump scandal
Washington DC The National Enquirer presented Trump watchers with a mystery last week. Why did it print an attack on…
America’s identity crisis
Long before student activists started talking about pulling down statues of Cecil Rhodes, a cultural war was being waged in…
Going nuclear
Wednesday marked the 72nd anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted…
General rule
Dwight Eisenhower was right to warn Americans in 1961 of the ‘military industrial complex’, but perhaps it is now the…
Portrait of the week
Home British negotiators are prepared to pay up to £36 billion to the EU to settle the so-called divorce bill…
You’re fired!
Washington D.C. Even a reality show needs good plot twists, and Donald Trump has delivered them like the master he…
