Donald always comes up Trumps for making news

IN the mornings with cup of coffee in hand I’ll skip from listening to RTE on to Radio Ulster and then catching up on the latest from Sky News.

What’s the latest? Who said that? I am publicly admitting it – I am a news junkie. Have been for years.

Unfortunately, last I heard there is no known cure for this condition.

But I am grown weary of the relentless Covid coverage, the shenanigans at Stormont.

Even the article last Monday – the one in the serious Dublin paper where Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and Jim Allister explained how they were going to resolve the Protocol – did nothing to get my news jump leads sparking.

Heard it all before. Will hear it all again. This being the case, I am going to digress in this week’s column to share my own particular addiction with you, and so let me introduce Donald J

Trump.

When I get bored he’s my go-to-guy, a sort of news gift that keeps on giving.

In the coming days, Stephanie Grisham, the former Trump White House press secretary – best known for never holding an actual face-to-face press briefing – is to publish a book.

In a report in last week’s New York Times it’s stated this will be a ‘tell all tale’.

And there are, most definitely, a lot of tales to tell. It’s great stuff.

Grisham claims when Trump met the Russian president, Vladimir Putin during the Group of 20 summit in Osaka in 2019 he was like a young lad meeting his secret crush for the first time.

She stated: “With all the talk of sanctions against Russia for interfering in the 2016 election and for various human rights abuses, Trump told Putin, ‘Okay, I’m going to act a little tougher with you for a few minutes.

But it’s for the cameras, and after they leave we’ll talk. You understand?’”

And as this particular meeting began Grisham said one senior adviser leaned over and asked her if she had noticed Putin’s translator “who was a very attractive brunette woman with long hair, a pretty face and a wonderful figure”.

Ms Grisham observed: “She [the adviser] proceeded to tell me that she suspected the woman had been selected by Putin specifically to distract our President.” It worked.

On another occasion she tells of Trump calling her into his office and telling her to deny allegations being made about him in the media of inappropriate sexual conduct.

She claims he told her: “You just deny it. ‘That’s what you do in every situation. Right, Stephanie? You just deny it’.” Another frequent Trump target was Pat Cipollone, who served as White House counsel.

Grisham said again: “He [Trump] didn’t like them telling him that things he wanted to do were unethical or illegal. So he’d scream at them.”

How do people as unstable and unsuitable for high office – as Donald Trump clearly was – end up there?

Why, too, did those around him put up with his obnoxious and outlandish behaviour?

And, even more amazing, is that far from condemning him for this arrogance and blatant abuse of power, a sizeable proportion of the American electorate, people who know all about his lies, his cheating, his absolutely overweening narcissism still absolutely idolise him.

Why? You wouldn’t have a liar and a cheat as a friend in a million years so why the admiration?

I know I’ll never get answers to these questions. Hence, the

fascination.