four more years
When I began putting my thoughts down for this missive, a quote from the writer Harper Lee came to mind: “You can choose your friends, but not your family.” Nothing could be more true, both at home and especially at work and I’m pretty certain The Don must be rueing the day he alienated both these camps. First, his long-term pal, the wild-eyed militarist John Boulton, stuck the knife in with his astonishing ‘The Room Where It Happened’ and then his niece, Mary Trump, deliciously twists it via her familial expose ‘Too much and Never Enough’.
The President’s former national security adviser set out in glorious technicolour what appeared to be almost every reckless rant, unguarded phone call, sneering put-down and mumbled aside. Most startling were the revelations about his attempts to persuade China’s Xi Jinping to assist in his re-election with the promise to “buy a lot of soybeans and wheat and make sure we win”, whilst assuring the Chinese president that building concentration camps for Uighur Muslims was “exactly the right thing to do”. Elsewhere, JB explained, that Trump offered to interfere in a federal investigation on behalf of Turkey’s notorious President Erdogan, and confirmed he lobbied Ukraine to dig-the-dirt on Joe Biden’s son.
And just when you think there wasn’t much else to learn about the arrogance, vanity and sheer incompetence of America’s current president, the second book hits the shelves and exposes the same within his family circle. Picture the worst family get-together full of petty rivalries, long-held grudges, money grievances and gaudy one-upmanship and you’re getting close to understanding the irrepressible Trump clan. And then imagine the bigoted loudmouth uncle who’s never liked your side of the family somehow becomes the most important man in the world and you begin to see where Mary Trump is coming from!
Donald is depicted as a proverbial chip-off his father’s $1bn Rachman-esque property-developing block and is, in equal parts, a racist, sexist, bullying homophobic cheat who is largely uninterested in anyone else, including his children. Her words, not mine. A trained psychologist, she alleges he has an undeniable “learning disability”, paid a friend to sit his college entrance exams and has never played with a straight bat when it comes to his commitments and tax affairs. Particularly titillating are her descriptions of the gifts that she received from Donald and his first wife, Ivana, including a “handsome leather-bound diary that was two years out of date” and a “fancy designer handbag containing detritus and a used Kleenex tissue!”
Now, I fully get that some of this is mere tittle-tattle but as a collective account of the man and his administration surely it stands to haunt him come November. Four more years? Not four more minutes thank-you.
