by Mark Austin
His cynicism and rage may fuel the anger of his supporters and satisfy his core support, but it leaves much of the country depressed and anxious about the political direction their country is taking. The language of politics has become coarsened and hate-filled and intolerant, and any sense of common purpose and bipartisanship appears to have been sidelined.
But Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ mantra also hints at optimism. The official theme of his first State of the Union address, in January 2018, was our ‘new American moment’, as he called it. And what made the speech work was the way he brought into it the heart-lifting stories of the carefully chosen American heroes who attended the set-piece event and who seemed genuinely moved by the applause and the standing ovations they received.
These were the ‘forgotten men and women’ who Trump promised to help during the election campaign – the army sergeant who rescued a wounded comrade in Syria; the North Korean defector who limped to freedom on his crutches; and the parents of two teenage girls murdered by the notorious MS-13 street gang.
It proved to be one of Trump’s triumphs. He delivered it well and it struck a chord. In the days after the State of the Union, his approval ratings shot up and the Republicans reduced the Democrats’ lead in generic polling for the midterm elections.
The speech also reinforced Trump’s strategy of an economic nationalism that promises higher minimum wages, increased government spending and restrictions on trade and immigration. If it works, and President Trump can improve the lives of the people putting their faith in him to do so, it will be the making of his presidency. It will certainly be among the most important measures of it.
One of the world’s leading economists, Kenneth Rogoff, certainly thinks Trump’s economic policies have some merit. ‘The policies are not as crazy as the person,’ he said.
When I travelled across Alabama, in December 2017, I found young people in desperate need of work and who trusted Trump to deliver. Most said they were prepared to give him a chance, but if he didn’t produce jobs, higher wages and cuts in immigration they would look elsewhere.
And that is quite possibly what is happening across America. The country has entered a new political era of voter discontent and unlikely election victories. Nothing is normal anymore. The American dream is over for many of this country’s citizens, and more and more of them are angry about it. It is partly what won the election for Trump.
But the big question is whether the president can deliver on his promises to the disaffected who voted for him. The tax cuts may not do it. He needs to deliver jobs and hope, too. Re-establishing the coal and steel industries to their former glory is unrealistic; and there is a question whether his tariffs and protectionism will help, and whether that infrastructure plan will materialize.
It is too early to say and as with all presidents, delivery will be the key. But here’s the point: if Donald Trump fails to make life better for those who voted for him it will be a similarly discontented electorate in future elections. They will be seeking an alternative, maybe even the polar opposite. It seems un-American and unlikely, but it could be a left-of-centre Democrat as the next president. Stranger things have happened.
I am writing this at the end of a few weeks that have been truly breathtaking, even by the standards of the Trump administration. And it sums up the helter-skelter world of this White House.
In just over a month, Trump has yanked the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal that almost everyone, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, said was working; he’s slapped swingeing tariffs on steel imports from key allies; he’s held a historic summit in Singapore with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, a brutal dictator whom he described as ‘funny, smart, and talented’; and he’s ordered children to be separated from illegal immigrant parents and then rescinded the order after pictures appeared of children sleeping in cages in makeshift detention centres.
There you have it. A few weeks in Trumptown, in all its mercurial, aggressive, audacious, bold, shameless, heartless and offensive glory.
There is pervading Washington a constant sense that something is coming, relating to the investigations and court cases. Ask Washington insiders what it is and they can’t answer, other than to say that it could be Russia or just as likely a very persistent porn star.
Whatever you say, Donald J. Trump has shaken things up in a country with a complacent and virtually moribund system of politics, where money, lobbyists and establishment long-servers dominate, and presidents of both political persuasions find it increasingly difficult to get anything done. He’s seized on issues ignored by politicians for years: poverty, the costs of industrial decline and immigration, drug addiction and the struggles of working-class whites.
He has also played to the dark side of populism – indulging racists and bigots, insulting opponents, summarily discarding senior advisers who don’t agree with him – and he has done so in a bullying and mean-spirited style. He has vulgarized the public dialogue.
But in so doing he’s also woken up America. His actions have re-energized the Democrats, galvanized the #metoo movement, more women than ever are standing for political office, and America’s students are organizing and agitating over guns like never before. The conservative author David Frum traces a ‘new spirit of citizen responsibility’ to Trump’s election in 2016. Trump, in fact, may well have been exactly what America needed.
The other day, I found myself at a big Washington social event attended by some notable Democrats. The conversation was all about how terrible ‘it’ is. How unprecedented. How disastrous. How shameful. How difficult it would be for America to recover. How ‘it’ was doing lasting damage to American institutions, the courts, the criminal justice system and the environment. It was almost as if they couldn’t bring themselves to say the words President and Trump consecutively.
I understood what they were saying. But, heading home, I began to wonder whether their sense of crisis was a little exaggerated, whether, rather than representing an existential threat to America, Trump is, at worse, just another of the periodically recurring maladies of American public life. After all, this country, with all its optimism and hope, always manages to move forwards and not back.
America has survived mad presidents and bad presidents. It has survived slavery, civil war, segregation, the Great Depression, the Second World War, McCarthyism and Nixon’s Watergate. It has survived much worse than Donald J. Trump, for goodness’ sake.
It’s possible, I suppose, that, ultimately, the current sense of foreboding will pass and America will reset its politics to normal. Or even, having had this shock to the system, normal-plus. Whether it’s four years or eight years of Trump, the country may one day look back and think the magnitude 8 political earthquake, the upending of everything, the challenge to orthodoxy, the chaos and enduring sense for many of national embarrassment, may actually have been worth it.
Or maybe not…
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THANKS FOR THIS book go to many people but not least Derek Wyatt, who, in a chance conversation near Sloane Square, suggested Will Atkinson as a publisher. Thanks, of course, to Will and to everyone at Atlantic Books, in particular, their thoughtful and persistent editor James Nightingale. The book was vastly improved by him and by Gemma Wain, who cast her eye for style and accuracy over a manuscript badly in need of both. Thanks to my endlessly patient and talented cameramen, Andy Rex, Mick Deane (God rest his soul), Jon Steele, Eugene Campbell, Mike Inglis, Mark Nelson, Tony Hemmings, Mickey Lawrence, Ben England and Dave Harman, among many others, who have searched memories and memory sticks for badly needed detail. Their power of recall was on the whole far more valuable than mine. I am grateful, too, to my agent, Anita Land, for gently encouraging me to do it and to my father, Mike, for bullying me into doing it.
Thanks to John Ryley at Sky News for paying me to go to Washington DC to watch Trump close-up for a year, and for providing the Georgetown apartment in which most of this book was
written. In DC, Elizabeth Drew was generous with her time and her opinions, which have been formed over a long and distinguished journalistic career. Our fizz-fuelled chats were indispensable. Others in DC were gracious with their off-the-record briefings. They know who they are.
I also must thank the team at Sky News in Washington, Emily Purser and Cordelia Lynch for their thoughts and patience and Duncan Sharp and Dickon Mager for retrieving my manuscript when lost or misplaced on my laptop. Thanks, too, to Laura Brander, Steve Gore-Smith, David Stanley and Ken Cedeno for providing or taking photographs. Laura Holgate and Roohi Hassan were crucial when it came to raiding the ITN archive for me when they should have been producing programmes.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Jeremy Thompson whose jobs I seem to have filled all around the globe; where he went I followed… Asia, Africa, DC.
And thanks finally to my Editors at ITN over the years, the legendary Sir David Nicholas, Stewart Purvis, Nigel Dacre, David Mannion and Deborah Turness, for allowing me to cover the stories and events that helped shape this book. I am eternally grateful to all of them for their confidence in me, and for their guidance and support.
PICTURE CREDITS
Section one
Publicity photo, c.1988 (ITN/REX/Shutterstock); Covering the Open Golf for ITN, 1990 (John Curtis/REX/Shutterstock); Reporting the Mandela inauguration, May 1994 (ITV News); Rwanda, 1994 (ITV News); Post-interview team picture with President Nelson Mandela, 1994 (ITV News); Mark Austin and Nelson Mandela (ITV News); Mozambique floods, March 2000 (ITV News); Winning an Emmy (Matt Campbell/AFP/Getty Images); Freetown, Sierra Leone, May 2000 (Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo); Presenting the ITV Evening News from Kuwait, 17 March 2003 (Courtesy of Steve Gore-Smith); Writing scripts in the Iraqi desert, 25 March 2003 (Courtesy of Steve Gore-Smith); Studio in the desert, 26 March 2003 (Courtesy of Steve Gore-Smith); Convoy en route to Basra, 6 April 2003 (Courtesy of Steve Gore-Smith); Inside Iraq, 8 April 2003 (Courtesy of Steve Gore-Smith); Terry Lloyd (ITN/Getty Images); Team photo, Basra, Iraq, 10 April 2003 (Courtesy of Steve Gore-Smith)
Section two
Presenting the Evening News from Antarctica, January 2007 (Courtesy of Steve Gore-Smith); Crevasse training (Courtesy of Steve Gore-Smith); With cameraman Eugene Campbell (Courtesy of Steve Gore-Smith); With ITN Editor Deborah Turness, 2007 (David Sandison/The Independent/REX/Shutterstock); With Mary Nightingale in the Evening News studio, 2009 (ITV News); Hurricane Sandy in America, 2012 (ITV News); In the News at Ten studio with Julie Etchingham, 2016 (ITV News); In the crowds on The Mall for the Diamond Jubilee, 2012 (© Ben Williams); Meeting the Queen at a journalists’ charity reception, 2014 (Mark Large/Associated Newspapers/REX/ Shutterstock); In Rwanda with Immaculate Mukanyaraya (ITV News); Reconciliation Village, Rwanda (ITV News); Cricket match (WENN Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo); Playing drums at the O2 in London (Danny Martindale/ITN/Contributor/Getty Images); Royal Television Society Presenter of the Year, 2015 (ITV News); ‘Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway’, 2015 (REX/Shutterstock); With Maddy (Dave J. Hogan/ Getty Images); Reporting live for Sky News from the roof of the Washington bureau, 2018 (Courtesy of the author)
INDEX
Abkey, Nur Mohamed ref1
Acosta, Jim ref1
Adie, Kate ref1
Afghanistan ref1, ref2; British involvement ref3, ref4; casualties ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8; futility of involvement ref9; Helmand Province ref10, ref11; improvised explosive devices (IEDs) ref12, ref13, ref14; relief and reconstruction ref15
African National Congress ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging ref1
Albright, Madeleine ref1, ref2
Amanpour, Christiane ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Anderson, Steve ref1
Annan, Kofi ref1
Anne, Princess ref1
anorexia ref1, ref2
Antarctica ref1
Armstrong, Sir Robert ref1
al-Assad, Bashar ref1
audience figures ref1
Austin, Beatrice ref1, ref2
Austin, Catherine ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
Austin, Jack ref1, ref2
Austin, Jane ref1
Austin, Madeleine: anorexia ref1, ref2; on anorexia ref3; birth ref4, ref5; cause of anorexia ref6; recovery ref7
Austin, Mike ref1
Australia ref1, ref2, ref3
Baghdad ref1, ref2, ref3
Bahamas, the ref1
Bannon, Steve ref1, ref2
Barayagwiza, Jean-Bosco ref1
Baril, Major General Maurice ref1
Barnes, Simon ref1
Barron, Brian ref1
Basra ref1, ref2
BBC ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15
Becky (anorexia sufferer) ref1
Beijing, Tiananmen Square ref1
Beirut ref1
bin Laden, Osama ref1, ref2
Blair, Tony ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8
blank-canvas journalism ref1
Blow, Charles M. ref1
Bombay ref1
Bond, Jennie ref1
Bophuthatswana ref1, ref2
Bosnia ref1
Botham, Ian ref1, ref2
Bournemouth ref1, ref2
Bournemouth Evening Echo ref1, ref2
Bowen, Jeremy ref1, ref2
Brexit ref1, ref2
Brittain, James ref1
Brooks, Austin ref1
Brown, Ben ref1
Brown, Sally ref1
Bruce, Fiona ref1
Bryson. Bill ref1
Bugby, Alan ref1
Burley, Kay ref1
Burnet, Sir Alastair ref1, ref2
Bush, George W. ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Buthelezi, Mangosuthu ref1, ref2
Cameron, David ref1
Campbell, Alastair ref1
Campbell, Eugene ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
Cantona, Eric ref1
Cartwright, Lieutenant Colonel Stephen ref1
Carville, James ref1
Catchpole, Charlie ref1
censorship ref1, ref2
Central African Republic ref1
Chalker, Lynda ref1
Chandler, Alex ref1
Charles, Jonathan ref1
Chilcot Inquiry and Report ref1
China ref1, ref2
Chirindza, Carolina and Rosita ref1
Chokwe, flood rescue operations ref1, ref2
citizen journalism ref1, ref2
climate change ref1
Clinton, Bill ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Clinton, Hillary ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Cole, Michael ref1
Collett, Mike ref1
Collins, Phil ref1
Colvin, Marie ref1
Comey, James ref1
compartmentalizing ref1
Conway, Kellyanne ref1
cormorants ref1
Cramer, Chris ref1
Crawford, Alex ref1, ref2
cricket ref1, ref2, ref3
Croxton, Ryan and Travis ref1
Cruz, Carmen Yulín ref1
Dacre, Nigel ref1, ref2
Daily Express ref1
Daily Mail ref1
Daily Star ref1
Dallaire, Roméo ref1
Deane, Daniela ref1, ref2
Deane, Mick ref1, ref2; murder of ref3
Debbie (anorexia counsellor) ref1
de Klerk, F.W. ref1, ref2, ref3
Demoustier, Daniel ref1, ref2, ref3
Denton, Ted ref1, ref2, ref3
Dexter, Ted ref1
Doucet, Lyse ref1, ref2
Dowden, Richard ref1
Drew, Elizabeth ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
drugs and drug abuse, in sport ref1
East Timor ref1
Eddington, Rod ref1
Egypt ref1, ref2
Eisenhower, Dwight ref1
Elizabeth II, Queen ref1
Ellison, John
ref1
Endurance, HMS ref1
Etchingham, Julie ref1, ref2, ref3
European Union ref1
Exelby, John ref1, ref2
fake news ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Falkland Islands ref1
Farage, Nigel ref1
Farah, Nasteh Dahir ref1
Flake, Jeff ref1
Florence, Alan ref1
Foley, Diane ref1
Foley, James ref1
football ref1
Ford, Sally ref1
Fox News ref1
France ref1
Frank (Rwandan driver) ref1, ref2, ref3
freedom of speech ref1
freelance journalists ref1
Freeman, Cathy ref1
Frei, Matt ref1
Friedman, Thomas ref1
Frost, Bill ref1
Frum, David ref1
Gaitz, Glenda ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Gall, Sandy ref1
Garrett, Major ref1
Garvey, Jane ref1
Gatting, Mike ref1
Gilinsky, Jaron ref1
Gilligan, Andrew ref1
Giovanni, Janine di ref1
Gopal, Anand ref1
Gore-Smith, Steve ref1, ref2, ref3
Gower, David ref1
Gracie, Carrie ref1
Graham, Carol ref1
Great Britain ref1
Guerin, Orla ref1
Gugu (sound man) ref1
Gulf War, 1990 ref1
Habyarimana, Juvénal ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Hammond, Philip ref1
Hani, Chris, murder of ref1
Hanson, Jim ref1
Harman, Dave ref1
Harrison, John ref1
Have I Got News for You ref1
Hemming, Sue ref1
Hezbollah ref1
Hillsborough Stadium disaster ref1
Hill, William ref1
Hilsum, Lindsey ref1, ref2
Hogan, Pat ref1
Hogan, Vince ref1
Hong Kong ref1
Howes, Colonel Buster ref1, ref2
Hume, Mick ref1
Humphrys, John ref1
Hunt, Jeremy ref1
Hurricane Irma ref1
Hurricane Maria ref1