So Donald J. Trump has been President of the US for two months now. How’s it going?
I admit I’m most definitely not a Trump fan. He is an amoral, narcissistic man-child, with simplistic views that put the US and the world at risk. But even given that is my starting point I believe his leadership of the US and the free world is even worse than I feared and worse than his first term where he was restrained by relative “grownups” in his administration.
A huge majority of the British people agree. Two-thirds hold an unfavourable view of Trump, and even now a majority of Reform supporters do so.
As a regular panellist on GB News, I’m struck by how when presenters read out viewer emails and tweets, they are overwhelmingly hostile to Trump. Particularly when it comes to Russia’s war with Ukraine.
The litany of Trump excesses in his first two months is overwhelming.
Appointing golfing buddies like Steve Witkoff as naïve, out of their depth international negotiators, who are then played by people like Putin.
Parroting Putin’s propaganda lines, then being surprised when Putin doubles down on them. On Ukraine Trump is demonstrating that far from being the great negotiator, he really doesn’t have a clue.
Monstrously bullying President Zelensky in the White House man and a country that has bravely withstood the invasion and bloody, bullying aggression of Russia for so long.
Daniel Hannan, the ardent Brexiter recently wrote that if Trump was actually an agent of Russia, what would he be doing differently? Answer, nothing.
Trump is creating a monstrous, authoritarian state in real-time before our very eyes - Bill Rammell
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Putting the collective Western security architecture which has held the Soviet Union and then Russia at bay for 76 years at risk would make Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagon turn in their graves.
Allowing his Vice President Vance to pour vitriolic scorn on European allies of the US. And when Vance accuses Europe of not doing its fair share of resistance to tyranny, he needs a sense of history. Let’s never forget the US sat out the first two years of WW2, whilst Europe held the line against the twentieth century's greatest evil tyranny. Nazi Germany.
In the US Trump has unleashed the crude assault on public services through Elon Musk. Employing inexperienced twenty-year-olds to take the axe to spending.
Laying off key public-sector workers like those engaged in nuclear safety and disease prevention.Or how about taking enormous risks with security as Vance and other key administration members did by crassly using a social media platform to discuss the timing and tactics of attacking the Houthi rebels in Yemen, putting US armed forces at risk, mistakenly involving a US journalist in this, then lying about what they had done? Then there's attacking free speech and freedom of the press.
This is a US administration which has banned Associated Press from White House press briefings, and talks of “criminalising” outlets like CNN, because they don’t peddle the Trump line.
If that wasn't enough, the US President has also launched irresponsible and unjustified trade wars through tariffs on allies and enemies alike, when any cursory reading of the history of tariffs and trade wars tells you they lead to increased costs for consumers and depressed economic activity.
He's driven by child-like whining about unfairness when the reality is - to take one sector - the US customer has a preference for foreign cars over US ones.
Committing to a $4.5trillion set of tax cuts in the US (the benefits disproportionately going to the very wealthy) to be paid for by massive spending cuts, which it seems will fall on Medicaid for the white working classes who sadly in my view voted for Trump. Two months in and it is horrifying.
As a panellist on GB News, I’ve encountered fellow panellists on the populist right, even presenters relishing and cheering Trump’s actions. As time has gone on their support is increasingly hollow and unconvincing. Trump is creating a monstrous, authoritarian state. And it is happening in real-time before our eyes.
