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| Telling Journalists on Air Force One that he doesn't care about their safety |
At this time of the year, the dark, damp days prompt a search for a TV series to binge-watch. You can relax in an armchair and sneak past Blue Monday. It started with The West Wing, then the 62 episodes of Breaking Bad kept us going until February, one year. Then, we had Trump's first presidency - Series 1, the episodic ramblings of a real estate vendor, which culminated in the attack on the Capitol. We watched that episode live on a Saturday, and it was compulsive watching and far more violent and worrying than the pared-down Panorama version.
In recent years, Ted Lasso. Slow Horses and This City is Ours have been the go-to series for January binge-watching. They are well-scripted and entertaining, but lack the random uncertainty and threat to global security that Trump's Dystopian Days provides. Although both Gary Oldman and Sean Bean would have taken out Trump had they been given the chance.
2026 has given us another series of The Traitors, but it is too contrived. It lacks all the misguided vigour and fleeting self-beliefs of President Trump's second coming. The series 2 episodes are almost daily aimed at creating as much chaos and conflict in the world as possible. Deflecting the media from issues he wants banished, like his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, his failure to secure a peace deal for Ukraine, the genocides in Gaza, the cost of living crisis in America, the stagnant economy and the cuts in government programs. It has resulted in a growing disenchantment with his second term in office, with two-thirds of the electorate believing he was failing on the cost of living and his tariff obsession.
On the world stage, his rogue interventions have caused chaos on tariffs, so-called peacekeeping initiatives and interventions in democracies in the Middle East, South America, Europe and most recently in Greenland. Not that the interventions are considered or likely to be sustained, they are here today, gone tomorrow slogans or, at best, flimsy statements on Truth Social, his social media platform. Truth Social must be the most bigly oxymoron ever. As Trump said to the journalists on Air Force One on his return from his UK state visit in September, "Fly safely, you know why I say that? Because I'm on the flight, otherwise I wouldn't care." Empathy was never Trump's strong suit. There was more moral integrity in Breaking Bad than Dystopian Days - Series 2 has ever given us, and at least Skyler tried to keep Walter White respectable, something Melania knows is impossible with the Donald.
Hopefully, his second reign of dystopian democracy will fizzle out as the mid-term elections approach. His popularity is waning, his ever more crazed interventions are the musings of an adult mutant kleptomaniac. The problem for world leaders and institutions, American cities, the Federal Reserve, universities, and Wall Street is how to play Trump. His popularity is waning, his health is wobbling, and his time for action will be finished after the mid-term elections. Is it better to ignore his threats or face him off? Either way, it is more than probable that his utterings may come to nothing.
By next year, he may be gone, and there will be a multitude of TV and Streaming Platforms commissioning new series on the idiosyncrasies of President Trump. The real question will be how much damage he has done to world peace, international aid and institutions like the United Nations and NATO and whether his America First policy finally ended the American Dream. The entry of the word Trumpism in the Urban Dictionary should be worth waiting for. Five years ago, I suggested Cockwomble , and it still resonates.
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| The Nobel Peace Prize Medal gifted by Mario Coriba Machado |
