22 January 2024 , 13:07
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The worst national leader in history, it is widely agreed, was King John.
He lost wars, lost France, lost the Crown Jewels and frequently lost his mind in boiling rages. He starved the wives and children of his enemies to death, strangled his own nephew, and started a civil war. But out of his abominations rose Magna Carta, Parliamentary democracy, and a general presumption that such a king would never be tolerated again.
There is a reason Britain has never had a King John II. We didn't need telling twice. And, as with so many other things, like tea and socialised healthcare, it is a lesson from history which America would benefit from as it seriously considers whether to allow Donald Trump a second crack at the White House.
A fragile, narcissistic, rapist fraudster, who has diddled the US taxpayer out of more than he's ever given them is on track to be the Republican nominee. But is America really stupid enough to choose Donald Trump again?
Hell yeah - a nation that will eat cheese from a can will do anything (AFP via Getty Images)He won in Iowa, the first state to pick a candidate, thanks largely to the weather. It had the lowest-ever turnout and by some dark magic, the win was called for Trump while the polls were still open, which meant many who'd have voted the other way just stayed home rather than venture out in -30 C temperatures.
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His team have already rewritten Republican Party rules in Nevada and other places to make it easier for him to win. The sheer size of him - immense, doughnut-related personal girth aside, he acts like a media gravity well, sucking in all the available attention - means that he is polarising money and attention away from the other candidates.
Thanks to his first term, the Republican Party became a loose affiliation of the rustiest wingnuts to be found at the bottom of the toolbox, who'd happily ban books, hand out guns, build walls and other crazy-ass things the Founding Fathers would all be horrified by. It's not hard to get ahead, when the machinery's being operated by a committee of village idiots.
Now most of his challengers - a series of under-boiled eggs all about as unbearable as an Austrian holiday camp kommandant - have dropped out, leaving the only woman, Nikki Haley, still in the running. But America, one of the most blatantly-racist countries on the planet, picked a black man to be president over a female. Trump may be too cowardly to debate her, too grabby to be trusted to stand next to her, but America will still pick a sex pest pal of Jeffrey Epstein over a girl.
That attitude is, after all, how Jeffrey Epstein got away with it (Getty Images)Unless Haley manages a West Wing-style surge to steal it away, Trump is on course - through some fairly foul and by no means fair means - to become the Republican nominee. And the fact he had to lie and lawyer his way to it won't bother him or his Trumpkins in the least. They've all forgotten that, in elections, freedom means following the rules.
Then it'll be this giant racist tangerine against Joe Biden, the incumbent president whose approval ratings are worse than Trump's were at the same stage in his first, internationally-catastrophic presidency. Although Biden's ahead in the polls, it's too narrow to guarantee victory for either of them.
In the absence of his long-awaited cardiac arrest, and with a fair wind which keeps any still-sane Republicans at bay, Trump could actually win a second term, and with it, a stay on all the prosecutions for his various crimes in and out of office. And that is why he's doing it - failure to win back the White House would not only damage that fragile ego, but it would mean that, at 77 and facing up to 20 years for stealing classified documents, he could spend the rest of his life in federal jail.
Get thee to the Oval Office, said the lawyer. And what Donald wants, Donald has always got, which is perhaps why he's still a fat racist baby.
OOH she dit'n't! (Getty Images)And all this, despite the fact that Donald Trump is widely considered, at home and abroad, as the worst leader in American history. He made pals with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, destabilised NATO, admired the start of Russia's war against Ukraine, hid state secrets in his loo and frequently lost his mind in boiling rages.
He personally told people to stop counting votes that went against him, and all but demanded the nuttiest nut-nuts in America storm the Capitol and get shot for their trouble. Of course America is dumb enough to do it all again - a nation that eats cheese from a can and can watch under-10s be slaughtered at school without batting an eye about gun ownership can always be trusted to make the worst decision.
America has two fundamental problems. First, it drinks too much coffee and not enough tea. Second, nothing has changed in the American mindset since 1776. It's never reconsidered its founding principles, never asked whether a well-organised militia means the same thing as "Wal-Mart customers", never wondered if Benjamin Franklin, if he knew, would say "f*** this" and move back across the pond.
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Nothing big changes without a revolution. Just as Trump's ass dimensions would alter only in the event of bariatric surgery, so the United States of Assholes will be cured only if it gets upended. And that's what the Disruptor-In-Chief is good at.
Just like King John, he has shown the flaws in the constitution, proved the system can be rigged, and that the only thing which kept the nation from worse anarchy was the fact his lieutenants kept him away from the spoons. Unlike John, his period in power is limited, and if he wins the White House again he'll only get four years before he's evicted permanently.
He sparked a riot last time he had to leave the White House - in 2028, it'll be civil war. It took one of those to form America, and a second to end slavery. Perhaps it'll need a third for the US to write its own Magna Carta, and have the rebirth it has long been in need of.