Who is popular today?

As a bunch of Tories distance themselves from the president, let’s look at the record
As he interviewed Donald Trump on bended knee, Michael Gove besmirched what few claims he had to be a decent politician, journalist or human being. Even at that early date, just after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, everyone with eyes to see knew Trump was prepared to tell any lie and rouse any rabble. Far from being repelled, Gove was excited. Trump was a “warm and generous” friend of Brexit Britain, he said. Readers of the Times shouldn’t see him as a dangerous fraud but concentrate their anger on liberal politicians and commentators in the “foreign policy establishment”, who treated poor Trump with undeserved “scorn and condescension”.
The exhilaration that extreme political movements bring lies in the permission they give to sin. Trump showed the British and the American right they could abandon the old morality and mainstream conservatives would go along for the ride rather than side with the hated liberal “establishment”. No punishment would follow if they lied or incited hatred. On the contrary, Trump showed they needed to lie and incite to win and the greater the lies and more inflammatory the incitements, the greater the victory. Continue reading...