Trump warns he will lock 'em up

Donald Trump, potential jailbird, potentially the next president of the United States, has bizarrely united his two possible futures by warning he will lock up his political opponents if he gets back into the White House. I don't know whether Trump likes a joke or indeed has a sense of humour but I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he must have been having a laugh when he made the comment during an interview on Glenn Beck's BlazeTV show. But you never know with Trump. He still seems to hold a grudge against Hillary Clinton who wasn't prosecuted after being found to have used her personal mobile phone for sending sensitive government-business emails. He said at the time, in 2016, that she should be locked up, and all his supporters used to cry "Lock her up". But he told Beck if he was reelected in November 2024 he'd lock up his political opponents. What he really meant I'm sure was that he would take revenge against politicians who are now trying lock HIM up and that he would be in the right to lock THEM up. A joke? Well, sort of. But it certainly doesn't sound too good for a presidential candidate to reveal he has the instincts of a dictator. If he doesn't like 'em, lock 'em up. Hillary Clinton better beware. He might get her retrospectively after all!

The Pentagon is going mad about drones for a war with China

The Pentagon has a new idea. They are going to buy thousands and thousands of land, sea and aerial drones over the next two years with the aim of frightening Beijing into behaving non-aggressively in the Indo-China region. With so many available unmanned systems, the Pentagon is telling Beijing it could fill the air and sea and, if necessary, land with robotic systems to damage the massive navy and army if they so much as dare to head off towards Taiwan. The new drone programme was announced with huge enthusiasm a few days ago but no one as far as I'm aware asked the obvious question: "I thought it was supposed to be all about America's superiority in aircraft carriers that was deterring Beijing from trying to seize Taiwan, and the mass of anti-ship missiles which are being bought for the US Marines. How can swarms of drones really put off the mighty Chinese fleet from scurrying across the South China Sea to Taiwan? Well, the Pentagon thinks it's the best way forward and they are planning to push ahead as fast as possible. Officials also point out the drones will be cheap. They also point to the lessons learnt from the war in Ukraine where drones fill the skies every day. But the other lesson learnt from Ukraine is that masses of aerial drones get shot down, although the sea drones used by Ukraine have been very effective. Who knows, in two years time when the Pentagon has bought all the drones it wants for the China theatre, the PLA (People's Liberation Army) will have come up with a super anti-drone system that will undermine drones' effectiveness. The carriers, of course, will stay play a huge part in deterring China but the great thing about drones is that they are unmanned and cheap, so if you lose a few thousand no American lives are lost, whereas if a carrier is sunk, you're talking mass casualties and the loss of a ship costing up to $13 billion.

A deluge of trials for Donald "Mugshot" Trump next year

Now for the first time we know the dates for the four trials so far fixed for the multiple criminal charges laid against Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States. All of them will take him out of the campaign trail while he sits in the dock. The first one will be on March 4. That's the big one relating to accusations he incited and inspired the mass revolt and attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. A few weeks later he will be on trial for business fraud linked to the hush money paid to a porn star with whom Trump allegedly had an affair. Then on May 20, it will be the case involving Trump's retention of classified files at his residence in Florida, and finally on September 6 the trial linked to the alleged interference in the Georgia election. If these dates go ahead, Trump will be hugely in the news every day but not while making campaign speeches or appearing at rallies before adoring supporters. I have no doubt his absence from the campaign trail will make little or no difference to his popularity. But four trials, all in the key months when rival Republican candidates will be fighting hardest to win the nomination, could at least make Republican voters sit up and take notice. Do they really want Donald "Mugshot" Trump as president? While the performance of his rivals remains so poor, Trump will power ahead to the nomination. But even the Wall Street Journal, once a firm supporter of Trump, is now calling for an alternative candidate, and I don't think they have Ron DeSantis in mind, despite earlier enthusiasm. That enthusiasm has seriously waned. Even if all four trials don't go ahead as currently planned, at least one and may be two WILL begin before the election. So Trump in the dock will become a familiar image. The scowl-look he has rehearsed will be there for all to see every day. It won't be a pretty sight.

Guantanamo trials up in the air over judge's ruling

The US government's prosecution of high-ranking al-Qaeda terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has suffered a dramatic setback, after a ruling by a military judge. A "voluntary" confession made to federal agents by Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of masterminding the suicide bomb attack on the USS Cole which killed 17 American sailors in 2000 has been thrown out as inadmissable. The judge, Colonel Lanny Acosta, had heard that the federal agents had interrogated the accused in a courteous and friendly manner when they questioned him at the Guantanamo detention centre in 2007. However, after his arrest in 2002 for the bombing of the US warship outside the port of Aden, al-Nashiri spent four years in secret CIA "black" prisons where he was tortured in a programme officially called "enhanced interrogation. The judge ruled that the years of violent treatment which included the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding would have been in his mind when he volunteered to be questioned again at Guantanamo. "Any resistance the accused might have been inclined to put up when asked to incriminate himself was intentionally and literally beaten out of him years before," Acosta wrote in his ruling posted on the US Military Commission's website. The ruling could have profound implications for all future trials at Guantanamo where detainees charged with capital offences have suffered similar harsh treatment at the hands of CIA interrogators. The biggest case, long delayed by pre-trial legal arguments about the CIA's use of torture, involves five accused co-conspirators behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the hijacked planes plot. Mr Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. US military prosecutors at Guantanamo have based their cases on the pledge that none of the evidence brought to trial would include confessions made under duress by CIA interrogators. Court evidence would be based mainly on FBI and New York police investigations. However, the judge's 50-page ruling means that "it is actually not possible to sanitise cases against people who were in the [CIA's] extraordinary rendition programme [when terrorist suspects were flown from one country to another without any judicial process]", Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas told the New York Times. It's not as if this decision conclusively settles this question for every case. But both in its reasoning and in its symbolism I think it's going to be a de facto precedent," he said. The US government is expected to appeal against the judge's ruling.

Trump piles in the money post mugshot

The state of politics in the US today: Donald Trump appears at a county jail on serious election-interference charges and is the first president ever to have a police mugshot taken of him and since then has raised more than $7 million in donations from adoring fans. He raised more than $4 million on Friday alone, the day after he was booked at Fulton county jail in Atlanta, Georgia. So the adoration of Donald Trump continues whatever he does or says. Maureen Dowd, the scathing anti-Trump columnist for The New York Times has written probably her most damning piece ever on the former president in her column today. But will it make a difference? I'm afraid not. The extraordinary donation statistics are evidence alone that this man remains armour-proofed against anything thrown at him. Politics in America is all about money money money and Trump is never going to be short of cash. Everyone decent in the US, from President Joe Biden to all Democrat voters and every non-Trump-loving Republican has every reason to be fearful of the future.

Has Trump peaked too early?

Is there a tiny chance that Trump is attracting so much publicity with all his criminal indictments hanging around his neck that some of the undecided voters and even some of his less passionate supporters will at some point have had enough of his face in their faces and opt for someone with softer features, a quieter voice and pronounced views but without shouting them from the rooftops every day? Right now I would say there is no chance of that happening. But how about in, say, six months time when everyone will have had a deluge of Trump and will be waiting for him to make his first appearance in a trial? Might some voters, Republicans I mean, begin to say to themselves, do we really want four more years of this? It's what some newspapers in the US are already calling Trump fatigue. It sounds like wishful thinking by Democrat supporters but it could be argued that Trump has peaked too early. He started his campaign before anyone else and has built up an unrivalled head of steam at the top of the rankings. If I was a betting man I would say the following rivals have absolutely no chance at all of unseating him: Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie and pretty much all the rest, with two exceptions - Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. They are still outsiders by a long way. But if Trump has peaked, could either of them surge forward? Vivek RamaswamyI doubt has the staying power, but Nikki Haley is the outsider worth a few dollars for a bet in my view. She may well rise up the rankings because she has a lot going for her. If Trump fatigue really does set in, then Haley for president might become a more interesting prospect, and she could be capable of beating Joe Biden.

The Trump cavalcade after his jail appearance says it all

Donald Trump may be facing four separate indictments and could potentially end up in prison before the presidential election next year but my God does he still have all the razzmatazz that goes with being a former president. When he left Fulton county jail in Georgia his cavalcade was massive. So many hefty-looking vehicles to protect the 45th president you would have thought he was some sort of Big Cheese. Well he is a Big Cheese still despite all the criminal charges against him. Wherever he goes he is a huge presence. This is what his so-called Republican rivals have to put up with, and Joe Biden too. As for the police mugshot it will now become the must-have image for every T-shirt-selling shop. Someone will make a fortune. It is the most phenominal contradiction. Normally when people are charged with serious criminal offences they try and hide from photographers and scurry out the back door, often with a coat over their heads. Not Trump. He loves the publicity, never mind that he might end up in prison. He will sweep from state to state in his convoy of armoured vehicles and Secret Service escorts and will hammer all his rivals into the ground. He is truly a phenomenon and it's really really scary that he could become president again.