Confused, bitter, angry and old. That’s your leader, America. And he’s dragging the planet into the gutter with him
I want to stop, I really do. Every week I think something like: “This Sunday I’ll write something nice and uplifting and inconsequential.
“I’ll write about that funny thing that happened when we went to B&Q.
“Or about the really rude service I got in that cafe. Or maybe I’ll tell a wee anecdote about my mum. I haven’t done that for a while.”
And then – there he is. Trump. Being Trump. Dragging the whole planet down into the gutter with him on a weekly, daily, hourly basis.
It feels very difficult not to respond when the most powerful office on earth is filled by this atrocity, this abomination. This disgraceful excuse for a human being.
It feels like not to engage with it is a terrible dereliction of duty.
But, unlike most weeks, this week’s Trump atrocity contained the seeds of hope.
It’ll take a minute to get there, so bear with me.
Last weekend it took Trump a full two days to respond to the hellish violence caused by the far-right in Charlottesville.
(In case you missed it, a demonstrator died opposing a rag-bag collection of the alt-right, neo-Nazis and full Nazis who were marching in protest at the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.)
When Trump finally did respond, he stressed that there was equal blame “on both sides.” (There really wasn’t.)
Well, after 24 hours of every newspaper, website, TV station, radio station and commentator going absolutely bananas about his statement (apart from the papers, websites and stations run by actual Nazis), Trump was forced do something he didn’t want to do.
Not apologise of course – he will never do that – but to offer “clarification”.
He put out a further statement, finally condemning Nazis, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
You could tell he was doing this almost at gunpoint. And this is where it got interesting. Whenever Trump is forced to do something he doesn’t want to do, there is always blowback.
He gave a press conference from Trump Tower (and perhaps the location was significant, it made him feel secure, overconfident) allegedly about infrastructure.
It turned into the f irst real press conference Trump has given in months. It turned into a mess beyond human belief.
Trump went back to his first statement about there being “blame on many sides”.
He said there were some “fine people” on the Nazi side.
He cal led reporters “fake news”. Basically, he went nuts and came across like a confused, bitter, angry old man.
Later, according to insider reports, while most of the White House had their heads in their hands over this PR disaster, Trump was in a jubilant mood. He’d gotten his real message across.
Again, he was immediately condemned from all sides.
Republicans and Democrats lined up to denounce him. Former presidents Obama, Bush, Cl inton and Carter denounced himhim. HellHell, even the children of former Confederate generals denounced him.
The only people not denouncing him were, of course, actual Nazis.
Then, one by one, chief executive officers star ted resigning f rom Trump’s manufacturing council in protest at him being a Nazi sympathizer. (An odd sentence to type about a sitting US president in 2017, but there we go.)
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted: “For every CEO that drops out of the manufacturing council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not haveh gone on. JOBS!’ (He just added that crazed ‘JOBS!’ because, well, he’s bonkers.)
Just 24 hours later, he tweeted: “Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the manufacturing council & the strategy & policy forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!”
At first this looked like the worst episode of “It’s my ball and it’s my rules and if you’re going to be like that then I’m going home” in history.
Of course, as is almost always the way with Trump, it turned out to beb a lie. The head of the manufacturing councilco had already called him to tell him theyth were disbanding...
Trump could not face the humiliationh and decided to get in thereth first. A classic case of “You can’t firefi me! I quit!”
And it came as a powerful reminder to mem – Trump cannot, under any circumstances,st be seen to lose. This position is absolutelyab intolerable to him. And with thatth thought came a ray of hope.
Because there is no way he can win againsta Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigationin into his team’s collusion with Russia in the election, against Mueller’s exhaustive probing into Trump’s incredibly dodgy financial affairs.
And what will Trump do when the net finally closes on him and his repulsive family of grifters and conmen? Here I turned to a seasoned Trump watcher, Tony Schwartz.
Schwartz was the ghostwriter who actually wrote Trump’s autobiography The Art of the Deal, a job he later said was the biggest regret of his life.
Schwartz has described Trump in the past as one of the worst human beings he ever had to deal with.
This week, in the wake of Charlottesville, he tweeted: “The circle is closing at blinding speed. Trump is going to resign and declare victory before Mueller and Congress leave him no choice.”
And suddenly it became clear that this is the most likely end. Rather than be ousted, and be seen as a loser, Trump will resign the presidency.
He will blame Mueller, the media, liberals, the Democrats, the “deep state”, Hillary, everyone but himself.
He will say it was impossible to get his agenda across and that he’d rather resign.
Depending on what Mueller finds, Trump may even try to cut a deal if resigning keeps him out of prison. And that will all be fine with most of us. Except one group – those men you saw marching last week with swastikas, flaming torches and machine guns. They won’t like it one bit. And Trump will encourage them. He will enflame them.
As someone put it: “This country might just be stupid enough to have a civil war over statues left over from the last civil war.”
And America might yet see a Charlottesville erupting across the whole country...