I had the great privilege of spending US election night with Emily Maitlis as she began her gradual descent into madness.
Unfortunately, I had to leave the Channel Four studio early – to catch a plane back from Washington to London. So I missed the bit where those swing states began turning Republican red, and when Emily apparently started swearing in frustration. But I could already see that she was getting pretty revved up.
At one point she turned to me and glared tragically through kohl-rimmed eyes: ‘Would YOU leave your children alone in the company of Donald Trump?’ she asked, as if that were some clinching political argument.
Having thought about it I should say that I would certainly be a bit worried about leaving the President-elect alone with some of my progeny – but only out of concern for the personal safety of Donald Trump.
Look, I told her, I have always found him very kindly and friendly and polite – and I stand by it. Indeed, I stand by everything vaguely pro-Trump that I have said in these pages over the last year or so: viz, that his victory could be just the tonic that the world needs.
This overwhelming result is, first, a victory for the democratic system. This is no fascist, or dictator in the making. This is a 78-year-old man who had the sheer guts and resilience to get out there, day in, day out, and plug for the votes of the people until he was sometimes exhausted.
His Left-wing establishment opponents threw everything at him, including umpteen mainly spurious legal cases, in a shameful and counter-productive attempt to keep him off the ballot. He survived two assassination attempts, one of them very serious.
He competed for every vote in the country, in what was believed – right up until the votes started to come in from Pennsylvania – to be a total toss-up of an election. He won those 72million votes by prodigious energy and effort, and he won them fair and square.
And what has happened since? The rest of the liberal intelligentsia has joined Meltdown Maitlis in having conniptions (the Guardian newspaper is apparently offering its journalists professional counselling). But the US stock market is surging – of course it is.
Investors can see that by deregulation, by cutting waste and taxes, Trump is offering economic hope. What about the threat of tariffs on China and others, you say. Well, he said that last time – and ended up doing a free trade deal with Beijing. Donald Trump would certainly do a free trade deal with the UK too – though I expect the Starmer Government is too pathetic to try.
On all the great issues of our time, Trump has the energy and the decisiveness to find solutions. Take climate change, where his opinions are said to be beyond the pale. Which approach will really deliver results?
We can keep going with the hair-shirted miserablism of the eco-warriors, who want to restrict human activity (while taking their private jets to COP summits).
Or we can listen to Elon Musk, who is now a key part of the Trump administration, and whose electric vehicles have done more to cut transport emissions that a million speeches by Greta Thunberg.
We can fix climate change; we can cut CO2 emissions, but we will do it all the faster with the techno-capitalist approach now being promoted by Elon Musk and Donald Trump. As for the general state of the world – look around you, folks. Admit it.
Things have got more dangerous since Trump was last in the White House. We have destabilising wars in Europe and the Middle East, in which far too many are losing their lives. The response of the West has been feeble.
Israel faces an existential threat both from Hamas and from Hizbollah, and yet the UK Government – bizarrely – has torn up our historic alliance and support, and placed an arms embargo on Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. The Biden administration has been a bit better, but hardly full-throated in its support for Israel.
Remember that Trump secured the Abraham Accords, which offered the immense prize of reconciliation between Israel and its Arab neighbours. And remember how Trump responded to Iranian meddling by vaporising Qasem Suleimanyi of the Revolutionary Guard.
Things were more stable, and more peaceful, under Trump – because he was willing to be strong, and to exercise American strength abroad. To all those who say that he will now be an America-firster, an isolationist – I say, don’t listen to what he says, or the parodies of what he says. Look at what he does.
That is why I am confident that, ultimately, he cannot and will not betray the long-suffering and blameless people of Ukraine. The truth is that for the last two years we in the West have been pursuing a policy that is both inadequate and cruel.
We have been doing enough to stop Ukraine from losing the war, and from being overwhelmed by Putin. But out of what I can only call sheer pusillanimity we refuse to do what it takes to help the Ukrainians actually win and bring this thing to a close.
We have given them weapons such as Storm Shadow and the ATACMs systems – but in an ecstasy of wetness, we, the UK and US, won’t let the Ukrainians fire them where they are needed. We say they can’t deploy them against Putin’s bases in Russia itself – while of course Putin can bomb the hell out of every inch of Ukraine. The Russian leader is now using Iranian drones and North Korean stormtroopers, in a Tolkien-like confederation of evil. How will Trump respond to the challenge?
Yes, he listens to some very questionable opinions, and yes, there is now a chunk of the Republican Party that has a peculiar penchant for Putin. And yes, it is true that whatever the solution in Ukraine, the Europeans will have to do more, and to pay more – not just for the peace of Ukraine, but for the security of the whole continent.
That includes the UK. Trump has repeatedly pointed to the European tendency to free-ride, for our defence, on the American taxpayer – and he is quite right.
But this is also the Trump who gave the Ukrainians the very Javelin anti-tank weapons that proved so crucial in kicking the Russians out of Kyiv.
Will he want to go down as the first American President to allow Nato to be defeated, in the European theatre, with all the knock-on effects that disaster would have around the world, from the Baltic states to Taiwan? Not to mention the extra US spending on defence that would be entailed, for decades to come.
I just can’t see it. The astonishing events of the last week have proved one thing. This man is a supreme competitor.
This is the man whose instinct on being shot was to get up, wave to the crowd, and tell them to ‘Fight, fight, fight’.
He won’t allow the West, or Donald Trump, to be bested by Vladimir Putin.
That is because I believe that where others have failed he has the courage and tenacity to succeed.
And for Trump and for America there is only one way now to succeed – and that is to be strong.