The Donald takes the biscuit

His antics leave sane people speechless and one day his political life will make for a great Hollywood film. It will make the story behind the movie ‘All the President's Men’ on Washington's Watergate scandal in the 1970s look anaemic by comparison.

Donald Trump has already re-defined post truth and fake news. Indeed, his utterings have been weaved into lectures on how ‘not to do it’ to public relations students at Leeds Business School on the subject of 'What is News?'.

I have worked once or twice with megalomaniacs - clients who redefine decency and leadership. One of them was the late Robert Maxwell owner of the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers and book publishers Macmillan who was a complete basket case as a client. These brutes didn’t last. They either burn themselves out or so challenge, demean and exasperate their immediate colleagues that they eventually come to a climatic end. People can only take so much.

In the case of Maxwell it was falling overboard from on his yacht and drowning in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

I don’t think the Donald will last his term of office. The American people are not stupid. This is the greatest democracy on earth and they will see it to deal with him in their own way. So let’s hope that our friends with whom we have had a special bond since World War II do the decent thing and throw this reckless leader out of office.

What follows is an op-ed piece from the Financial Times. This great international newspaper under the guiding hand of its editor Lionel Barber is equally at home in the United States as it is in the UK.

Written in a style that even your grandmother or grandfather would understand, the paper has been a paper of record in the corporate and financial world for decades. Its well-crafted stories and features are a joy. The paper appears not to have any overt political leanings. To be honest I have no idea what the politics of the Financial Times are and that in the business world is a great attribute. Its content well sourced, it is transparent. Indeed, you can trust its content implicitly.

Its leader yesterday (07 Marcy 2017) on the Donald and his administration is a beautifully crafted piece in true FT style – without bias, without favour. I commend it to you.

Trump is straining the system of government

President Donald Trump has thrown the US government into crisis by accusing his predecessor, Barack Obama, of wiretapping his phones during the election campaign. That the accusation was made in an early-morning tweet does not make the situation any less serious. Nor does the fact that Mr Trump has tweeted nonsense in the past. His false claim that millions of people voted illegally in November's election was not a direct and specific allegation against a sitting president.

The sources of and evidence for this accusation against Mr Obama must now be established. If they are not, the claims can only have a corrosive effect on trust in the institutions of government, without which the country cannot function.

The response of the president's spokespeople has made the situation more opaque and therefore more urgent. They argue that the president's statements are based on stories that have been widely reported. The problem is that the stories in question do not support Mr Trump's assertions.

The articles say that US law enforcement and intelligence agencies were investigating connections between Russia and the Trump campaign. The New York Times reported, citing an anonymous official source, that the White House was provided with intelligence from that investigation, drawn from wiretaps. The websites Heatstreet and Breitbart said that the FBI or more broadly "the Obama administration" had requested and received warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to investigate members of the Trump campaign.

Even if such a warrant was requested, that fact would remain a universe away, practically, politically and morally, from what Mr Trump has alleged. If the warrant was issued properly, Mr Trump's statements are a reckless slander. If Mr Trump does have evidence that Mr Obama interfered in the justice department investigation or has illegally ordered a wiretap on a US citizen, he must say so at once. If the alleged information is classified, he has the authority to declassify it.

The fact that he has said nothing of the sort as of yet suggests that such a statement will not be volunteered. It is up to other officials to clarify this dangerously opaque situation. Two have led the way. James Comey, the head of the FBI, has requested that the justice department deny the president's statements. James Clapper, the head of national intelligence during the presidential campaign, has gone on record to deny that there was a wiretap of anyone in the Trump campaign on his watch. Now the justice department must come forward. True, this could upset a legitimate investigation. But letting the matter hang in the air would be immensely damaging. The question of the warrants must be closed quickly even if the costs are high.

The Trump administration argues that this matter should be resolved by a congressional intelligence committee. If the president provides the grounds for his statements, then a committee that also investigates alleged links between the Trump campaign and Russian agents will be the right venue for sorting out this tangled affair.

Mr Trump's statements are the most extreme evidence yet that he is in more or less open conflict with all of the institutions of the US government save the military - from the intelligence services, to the state department and much of the rest of the civil service. Whether a system designed to require co-operation can work under these conditions remains to be seen. If the currency of this conflict is groundless accusations from the Oval Office, the strains may be too much to bear.