Take a break from playing Trump card

Here are today’s headlines: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. And finally, Trump. A year ago, after Donald Trump took up the unlikely office of President of the United States, I expressed an optimistic hope that the media frenzy surrounding his every move would die down after a few weeks in the job.

In other words, ignore him and he might go away, or at least start acting more sensibly.

No such luck on either front. Trump’s role as a walking outrage magnet seems to have increased, if anything.

Few people you see in the public eye manage to express a level-headed opinion about Trump, mainly because they are pretty much excluded.

TV and radio producers seem to believe that level-headedness rarely makes for an entertaining debate on any radio or TV programme, so we have to put up with the demented views of blinkered Trump cheerleaders and self-styled ‘commentators’ who exist purely to be offended by Donald Trump (the sort who are secretly gutted that he won’t be visiting the UK any more).

The BBC, in particular, seems more than happy to feed the beast, in the deluded belief a few people getting upset on Twitter constitutes a news story.

The broadcaster’s website alone carries at least a dozen separate Trump stories each day. These have included, in the past few days: Trump: ‘I’ll beat Oprah’ Donald Trump’s medical: What will it reveal?

Donald Trump cancels February visit to UK (actual news alert!) Did Trump forget the words to US anthem? Trump’s London tweet mocked on social media (Hold the front page, or at least the small hole in the student newspaper.)

I wait in vain for: ‘No mention of Donald Trump on the BBC for at least an hour’.