Trump’s toast. Don’t take my word for it, just overhear the conversations in Bobby’s, the Last of the Great Pioneer Town bars.
I’ve been drinking in there for decades, ever since my immediate family moved to the States 50 years ago with my Dad’s job in the motor industry.
(And no, I didn’t relocate with them, despite what that lying, smear-mongering, far-Left public school tosseur Jimmy O’Brien maintains every other day on LBC radio. I don’t ‘live’ in America.) But it’s no secret that I spend a bit of time in Florida.
And just as Bruce Springsteen insisted that you learn more from a three-minute record, baby, than you ever do in school, so you learn more about the state of American politics from Bobby’s than you ever do from watching the biased American TV networks – or the BBC.
If you can remember Cheers – the Eighties TV sitcom set in a Boston Common dive bar, starring Ted Danson and his elaborately elevated syrup – you’ll get some idea of the clientele in Bobby’s. The punters range from retired, self-made billionaires to the local tennis coach.
Not that anyone talks politics or religion – unless they want to be shown the door, the street and eventually, the ocean. It’s a sports bar. Go Dogs, that kind of thing. But you pick stuff up by osmosis.
There’s Dottie, a retired nun who has an impressive selection of Pearly Queen-style badged MAGA hats, and a life-size cardboard cut-out of President Donald J Trump in her living room. She’ll go down with the ship. But there’s also a gentle buzz, a nervous rumble round the bar. Even though this is ostensibly, albeit sophisticated, MAGA country, you pick up a sense of unease. Has The Donald lost it? Is he going into Crazy Joe Biden mode?
Never mind the bizarre AI video with the tiger, or that gormless Lady Godiva lookalike who lasted about five minutes as this week’s latest White House press secretary. There’s a growing body of opinion that Trump is, well, getting on a bit, entering a marbles-free zone.
Even though this is ostensibly, albeit sophisticated, MAGA country, you pick up a sense of unease. Has The Donald lost it? Is he going into Crazy Joe Biden mode? asks Richard Littlejohn
If you can remember Cheers – the Eighties TV sitcom set in a Boston Common dive bar, starring Ted Danson (centre) and his elaborately elevated syrup – you’ll get some idea of the clientele in Bobby’s
And this is Cocoon Central, where Viagra and HRT-fuelled octogenarians are still knocking their knees out on the pickleball court. (And knocking them together on golf carts behind the clubhouse.)
Lifting that narco-crook Madura out of Venezuela was a doddle. Blowing up the drug smugglers in the Gulf of Mexico was the starting-pistol for trebles all round in Bob’s Country Bunker, outside of the usual bien pensant salons.
Yet the fallout from the Iran war is backfiring, bigly. It was never going to be easy. Yes, those with long memories – Jimmy Carter’s humiliation in the desert, etc – agree that Tehran’s Mad Mullahs should be wiped off the face of the earth.
And majority US opinion – evangelical Christians, especially – are steadfast in their support for Israel. But failure to think through the knock-on effects, such as the oil and gas crisis caused by the Straits of Hormuz shutdown, and his man-crush on Russia’s crazed, dead-eyed tyrant Putin, are baffling to most Americans.
When push comes to shove, everything boils down to Bill Clinton’s political guru James Carville’s dictum: ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’
Couple of days ago, I was in a discount warehouse in Florida, admiring a well-marbled ribeye steak priced at 25 dollars a pound or thereabouts. A little old lady fingering what the Americans insist on calling a ‘filet’ turned to me and said; ‘Remember when steak cost eight dollars a pound?’
Yep. About five minutes ago, seems like. And even in low-tax Florida, petrol is around $4 (£2.99) a gallon – a bargain next to UK prices and high-tax Democratic states like California – but still historically a strain on the purse strings.
Here’s what tells me Trumpism has run its course. The Donald has always enjoyed huge support in the Sunshine State, where he has his Mar-a-Lago estate. Republican governor Ron DeSantis – who declared that Florida is where woke goes to die – is term-limited and having to stand down after eight years. His chosen successor – endorsed by Trump – is just two points ahead of his Democratic challenger.
Frankly, I never buy into the polls, but among the Bobby’s regulars like my mate Roger – who thinks I’m a dangerous liberal – there’s trepidation. Roger’s stocking up on ammo from Wal-Mart, just in case.
In swing state Michigan, my sister lives outside Detroit and works as den-mother to a 20-something bunch of Big Bangers in a finance house.
Last time out, these young thrusters were all gung-ho for Trump. Today, not so much. Trump’s stupid squabble with Canada has gone down like a Led Zeppelin in Michigan.
Slapping punitive tariffs on America’s nearest northern neighbour was the act of a madman. In 2016 and again two years ago, Michigan’s car workers defied their UAW union leaders and turned out in droves for Trump. The auto industries of Detroit and Canada are joined at the hip, mutually inter-dependent.
Windsor, Ontario, is Canada’s Motown, without the Four Tops or Bob Seger. You can see it from Joe Muer’s seafood place on the Detroit river. My mum used to go there to buy cumberland sausages from the Canadian wing of Marks & Sparks.
The trucks carrying components rattle backwards and forwards over the Ambassador’s Bridge linking the two countries every ten minutes. Why the hell would Trump want to screw up that relationship?
Michigan’s senatorial race – which could decide control of the House in a couple of weeks – is a razor-edge toss up. The Democrats’ front-runner is a far-Left headbanger called Abdul El-Sayed. If he wins, the blame will be laid at the door of Trump’s hideous new golden ballroom. Full disclosure: this column is a bit of a mea culpa. Even though I considered Trump a joke candidate when he declared in 2016, I came to quite admire him, like a lot of people, on the basis of: My enemy’s enemy is my friend. He irritated all the right people.
He humiliated his Veep, JD Vance, by refusing to back him at a press conference only this week
He’s an Anglo/Jockophile, who was all in favour of Brexit. My old mate Nigel Farage, who campaigned for Trump, assured me he wasn’t as bonkers in private as he seemed to be in public. Trump also got the measure of Mother Theresa May, who turned out to be our hopeless, tone-deaf version of Hillary Clinton.
Trump stopped biological men competing in women’s sports, was rock-solid behind Israel and read the riot act to craven European leaders – including our own – who shamefully refused to fund Nato and our domestic defence forces. Was he right, or was he right? The defiant bottle he showed after assorted assassination attempts was impressive.
That was before Iran, the Tony The Tiger meme, the attempted annexing of Greenland and renaming Lake Ontario the ‘Lake of America’.
Nurse!
Then there’s his family’s crypto thing, which I don’t pretend to understand, but people who do say will blow up in his face once he leaves office.
My great Bobby’s drinking buddy John Addison, who ran a serious US corporation and is a full-on Georgia Bulldog Republican, predicts a bloodbath for his GOP (Grand Old Party) in November. And he’s rarely wrong.
That still leaves another two years of lame-duck Donald, who will spend his last days fighting off impeachment and firing off increasingly insane executive orders.
America’s biggest problem is what comes next. The Dems are torn between virtual-communists like the headbanger who runs New York and that preening spiv Gavin Newsom, from California, who makes Councillor Burnham look like, nah, never mind.
Newsom’s so vain, he probably thinks this song’s about him. And Trump won’t nominate a successor. He humiliated his Veep, JD Vance, by refusing to back him at a press conference only this week. Mrs Vance apparently thinks the game’s up. Best get out while the getting’s good.
My pick, expressed a decade ago in this newspaper and a cover story for The Spectator magazine, would be Florida’s Marco Rubio, who has ridden the Trump tiger in style as his respected Secretary of State.
But, then again, what do I know? And I don’t have a dog in this fight. So, if you want me, I’ll be in Bobby’s, the Last of the Great Pioneer Town bars.