Ben Lowry: More wildly erratic behaviour from the US president, Donald Trump

(Click here to read Ben Lowry’s column on the arrival of spring)

This was crystal clear again last evening, as it was emerging that the US president accused his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky of “gambling with World War Three” as the pair met in the Oval Office.

​Anybody who follows politics closely should be able to pinpoint the moment at which Mr Trump’s extraordinary conduct became obvious for them, and for me it was the 2015 debate among Republican Party contenders for the White House.

This was more than a year before the US presidential election which Mr Trump won. Not having followed US version of The Apprentice, in which Mr Trump was an American Alan Sugar, judging the business skills of young would-be entrepreneurs, I was stunned by his unprecedented casual verbal abuse of his rival contestants.

Those traits to his character have been exhibited daily since then. It was only relatively recently, on my American trip during last year’s presidential election, that I heard an explanation as to why Mr Trump has been able to get away with such personal nastiness, which no other major presidential contender, let alone actual president, has exhibited in public. The reason is that his dedicated supporters, who make up about a quarter of American voters, liken his political approach to a wrestling match. He says outrageous things but his fans just consider it all part of the sport of his combative approach to politics – he doesn’t really mean it.

I know that Trump supporters will read this and dismiss my squeamishness, but these traits are shocking in US president, who not just leads but represents the United States, one of the greatest civilisations in history. I was in America for the 2016 election and thought that Mr Trump would be damaged by adverts that showed kids watching some of Mr Trump’s most abominable statements, and had the slogan: ‘Our children are watching’.

In fact Mr Trump has been badly damaged by his conduct, which is why he has massive levels of public disapproval. Also, a large minority of people who vote for him don’t like him. He lost the popular (overall) vote decisively in 2016 to Hillary Clinton (by three million votes), he lost it by a huge margin in 2020 (seven million votes) and he only scraped it this time (the web version of this article will link to an essay I wrote in November about how his victory margin was the third narrowest in terms of vote margin out of the 14 presidential elections of my lifetime).

The reason I write all this at such length is that some readers of this column, and indeed some friends of mine, who often agree with me politically, feel dismay at my criticisms of Donald Trump. I, in return, feel dismay that they cannot see how he can’t be relied on in almost any respect as a friend of the west, of the English speaking world (the countries of which should be natural allies, with the exception of Ireland if it prefers to chum around with mainland Europe), of the west, of the UK and certainly of unionism (I not aware of Mr Trump having given unionism any thought in his now quite long life).

Recently I was writing about how unpardonable it was for Mr Trump to remove bodyguards from two former close colleagues, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, of bodyguards, who supported President Trump’s assassination of the General Qasem Soleimani of Iran in 2020, but who later fell out with Mr Trump.

That was before the terrifying nonsense he has been speaking about Russia, which got even worse yesterday.

Mr Zelensky had warned the US would “feel it in the future” if it did not continue to support Ukraine.

“Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem,” Mr Trump hit back.

The exchange began with Vice President JD Vance telling Mr Zelensky: “Mr President, with respect. I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.”

Mr Zelensky tried to object, prompting Mr Trump to raise his voice and say: “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people.”

“You’re gambling with World War Three, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have.”

It is true to say that Mr Trump alone has caused Europe to think about spending far more on defence. Vice President Vance has been right to cite the vast amount Europe spends on welfare (I have been writing for years about NI’s massive expenditure on that) while neglecting its defence (Ireland, which has the nerve to sue the UK on its handling of Troubles legacy, is arguably the worst offender, freeloading off that same UK).

And I hope that the defeat of the Kamala Harris wing of the Democratic Party last year will usher in a retreat from the insanity of woke extremism on matters such as trans and a belated western regaining of control of our borders from disastrous levels of immigration.

But this erratic nonsense about Russia from the US president, who suddenly now seems to support the Chagos surrender, which was set in motion by the sort of meddling international courts that Mr Trump is right to despise, is unsettling, to say the least.

• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor