Trump's Dystopian Days - Series 2

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; in another year, the 62 episodes of Breaking Bad kept us going until February. 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 evening; it was compulsive viewing 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 - Series 2 provides. A pity that Hannah Waddingham, Gary Oldman or Sean Bean weren't in the cast of White House wannabes; they would have taken out Trump and his sycophantic numpties.

2026 has given us another series of The Traitors, but it is too contrived. It only partly captures the misguided vigour, braggardly behaviour and fleeting self-beliefs of President Trump's second coming. The series 2 episodes are released 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 the most recent opinion polls finding that two-thirds of the electorate believe he has raised the cost of living and gone too far with weaponising the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in many cities.

On the world stage, his rogue interventions have caused chaos on tariffs, so-called peacekeeping initiatives and interference in foreign governments in the Middle East, South America, Europe and most recently in Greenland. Not that these interventions are either considered or likely to be sustained, they are here today, gone tomorrow threats or, at best, flimsy statements on Truth Social, his social media platform. Truth Social must be the most bigly oxymoron ever.  Empathy, like truth, was never one of Trump’s strong suits. As he 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." There was far 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, journalists, and Wall Street is how to play Trump.  His popularity is waning, his health is wobbling, and his timescale 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 has finally ended the American Dream. He currently rates as the second worst President ever. His dreams of Mount Rushmore and a Nobel Peace Prize are also a figment of a warped imagination. The entry of the word 'Trumpism' in the Urban Dictionary should be worth waiting for. Five years ago, I called him a Cockwomble , it would be a good synonym for Trumpism.

The Nobel Peace Prize Medal gifted by Mario Coriba Machado