I'm tipping Trump to do it again, God help us | Simon Carter

Who better to stoke the societal fires that are metaphorically burning throughout American towns and cities than a man who takes narcissistic tendencies to a spectacular new level?

When I consider all Boris Johnson’s faults – something I do on a regular basis – it strikes me how incredibly unlucky we (the UK population) have been. At a time of national crisis, we are led by a bumbling toff who has been exposed as totally out of his depth in terms of showing leadership.

However, our American friends have been even more unfortunate. At a time of national crisis, Trump has resorted to type – taking to Twitter, whipping up controversy, increasing the divisions in society.

When he’s pressured, he lashes out – last week CNN was described as ‘dumb bastards’ for devoting too much news time to the pandemic. Trump then told journalists they were ‘criminal’ and should be jailed for not reporting the truth on presidential rival Joe Biden.

This was no surprise: Trump hates journalists, once admitting they were ‘scumbugs’ who should be ‘executed’. I’m sure if I went on Twitter I would find many of his supporters happily endorsing such views. Trump hates anyone who disagrees with him. This is the leader of the free world, in case you had forgotten.

Imagine Boris Johnson calling the BBC ‘dumb bastards’ or journalists ‘scumbags’? Bearing in mind he was once one, the answer has to be ‘no’. Yet across the Atlantic, Trump happily dishes out verbal beatings.

The UK government’s handling of the pandemic has been criminally bad; Trump’s handling of it has been even more shocking. It is like he is living in a permanent Reality TV world, triumphantly ripping off his face covering as the USA death toll rises (more than 220,000 now). I don’t envy the current Spitting Image writers, you couldn’t do parody better than Trump does it.

I have spoken to a lot of people who were staggered he was elected POTUS in the first place. I wasn’t surprised. For months I watched the 24-hour news channel report of his campaign; like a snowball rolling down a mountain, it quickly gathered pace and grew. You see, his confrontational nature appealed to many Americans. It is an extraordinary country.

I love America. I’ve been lucky enough to visit San Francisco, New York, Florida, Las Vegas. It was mind-blowing at times and I loved every minute. I’ve read countless books on American politics, American culture.

It is a wonderful country, but one still drowning in racism in many towns and cities, one still tainted by a shocking record of gun crime, one with desperate poverty in so many places. It is a fractured country and one of the last people on earth you would choose to try to piece it together again is Donald Trump.

So having won it once, can he win it again? Having watched a succession of incendiary comments spill out of his mouth in the past four years, I am sure most UK citizens would say ‘Good God, no.’ And I would agree with them.

But you only have to see the patriotism that Trump whips up among supporters to quickly realise we could be condemned to four more years of him tweeting from The White House. I won’t be shocked if he defeats Biden; indeed, I would be more surprised if he didn’t.

And if he does win, that will say much about Americans, in fact it will say more about them than it will the man they voted for. It will be an endorsement for controversy, for outrage, for increasing division, for fake news, for the lack of free speech.

These are weird times, and I feel they are about to get weirder...