In 2016, the New York Times published a comprehensive list of Donald Trump’s most disparaging remarks. The article, updated in 2019, was entitled “The 598 People, Places and Things Donald Trump has Insulted on Twitter”, and there is a complete, A to Z list of those who have been on the receiving end of both the casual disdain and studied hostility of America’s two-time President.
That was years ago, so surely, the list must run to more than 1,000 by now, and, in the past 24 hours or so, it has been expanded to include Andy Burnham, the City of Manchester, liberals everywhere, the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan. There is nothing new in his contempt for the outgoing British Prime Minister – “no Winston Churchill” – or the Mayor of London – “an incompetent guy” – but Burnham provides him with a fresh target.
There is a particular and dispiriting register to Trump’s scorn for those he deems unworthy, and Burnham got the full treatment during a press conference in the Oval Office yesterday. When asked by a British journalist what the “new incoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham” should do to improve UK-US relations, Trump goes into his best this-is-so-far-beneath-me mode. “I don’t know anything,” he said. “I see he was, I guess, the mayor of a [slight pause for effect]…town. I hear he is extremely liberal… Extremely. So that means he probably won’t open up the North Sea.”
