Americana columns

As we count down to a presidential election in which the rest of the world will feel it has even more of a stake and less of a say than usual, we wonder: what exactly is Trump?

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one and, if you repeat it frequently enough, people will sooner or later believe it.

For the sake of argument let’s assume Donald Trump is, in American parlance, an asshole. So the question is: why is an asshole – and not just any old asshole but someone widely regarded as a gigantic asshole, one of the world’s biggest – holding a commanding poll lead…

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz called it “the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history.” What was he referring to?

Another week, another racism row.

The leaders of America and Iran are talking to each other for the first time since 1979, but US domestic politics remain mired in communication breakdown.

You’d think that if you googled “santorum”, you’d be inundated with stuff about Rick Santorum, the US religious right’s flavour of the month now being touted as a serious contender to be the Republican Party’s candidate in this year’s presidential election. Well, yes and no.

The line between politics and entertainment just got even more blurred with the news that the search for a Republican candidate to take on President Barack Obama next year will double as a reality TV show.