Donald Trump appears to have started his autocrat madman era early, according to analysis by Mikey Smith, US Political Editor. For a while, there were concerns that once the midterms were out of the way, with Republicans expected to be given a pummelling, his unhinged behaviour would become markedly less restrained. But this week he appears to have acknowledged the impending doom facing the party of which he is nominally the leader and started to distance himself from them publicly.
UN speech and Xi Jinping visit
After meetings at the UN, including with Andy Burnham, Trump spent most of the week getting despotic leadership tips from an expert in the field. He started the week with a dark speech to the United Nations, which had a number of moments that may prove consequential. There was the repeated admission he had got away with what probably amounts to crimes under international law, including the blockade of Cuba, which prompted the Cuban delegation to walk out of the General Assembly, the lethal targeting of "drug boats" in waters around Venezuela in the run-up to America's invasion, and the pillaging of the same country's oil, which Trump excused by bragging: "To the victor belong the spoils."
He suggested a few others he might commit in the future, like the indiscriminate destruction of Iran. The speech held a warning for Iran, he implored: "What they don't realise is that I'm not running. The Republicans are running, I'm helping." It was one of a few signals from Trump lately that increasingly indicate he has given up on November's elections already.
Burnham meeting and media ban
Andy Burnham finally got his half-hour sit-down with Donald Trump, and it was all about channelling his guitar hero Johnny Marr and "getting away with it." Burnham's body language in the on-camera spray after the meeting did not look particularly relaxed. But it could have gone a lot worse. Nobody said anything openly racist. There were a few oblique jabs at Keir Starmer from former bestie Trump, still sore over their falling out about Iran. Burnham didn't speak up when Trump defended his press ban, but he also didn't get drawn into agreeing with Trump's white nationalist-coded view of immigration in Europe.
Before he even got to the UN he had excluded three media outlets from covering him on White House grounds, revoking their passes and branding them "fake news." The move has been reversed by a court order, yet Trump is still finding every way he can to make the vital work of observing his descent into further depths of despotism even harder.
Government-funded propaganda ad
On Wednesday, he welcomed his latest autocratic hero to the White House - Chinese premier Xi Jinping. The visit itself was largely unproductive from a diplomatic perspective. Little progress was made on issues of trade or human rights. And they both agreed they would rather turn AI into an arms race than stop it destroying the human race.
A TV ad started to run on Fox News, CBS and elsewhere around the middle of the week. It is a highly produced series of images of Trump looking presidential and energetic, soundtracked first by Trump vowing to stop Communism taking hold in the United States. Manic Street Preachers-style propaganda slogans declaring "LARGEST TAX CUTS IN HISTORY", "REIGNITING AMERICAN MANUFACTURING" and "DEFEND LAW AND ORDER AND POLICE" are shown in red, intercut with the same sentence repeatedly: "AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A COMMUNIST COUNTRY". Over the top, a song by the R&B artist JMSN - whose work was used without permission - with a singer repeatedly intoning: "Love me. Love me."
At the bottom of the screen it says: "Paid for by the U.S. government." The White House insisted it was a "public service announcement", and was totally normal. Then a second ad later started airing, cribbing segments from Trump's speech at Mount Rushmore to celebrate America's 250th anniversary, ending with one of his campaign slogans declaring the "golden age of America." Again, it is paid for by American taxpayers. So yeah, buckle up, it's going to be an interesting couple of years.
