Welcome to Trump’s America, The i Paper’s World Insight series presenting the sharpest, deepest thinking on an era-defining shift in history and politics, investigating how Donald Trump and his administration have changed the US and the world – and where we go from here.
• The heavy price America has paid for Jeff Bezos’s ambition• The US is becoming impossible to live in• I told Trump over dinner he didn’t have my loyalty – it sealed my fate• This is how the world will look after Trump• I’ve seen what ICE has done to Minnesota. Farage wants to import that to the UK• The men who want to stop women voting• Trump isn’t damaging America. He’s reinventing it’
The sun was out, the skies were bright and there were smiles all around as Barack Obama gathered the clan to celebrate the opening of his new £650m presidential centre earlier this month. Long-time friends, allies and campaign stalwarts sat in folding chairs on Chicago’s South Side, cooling themselves with paper fans that said, “A Home for Hope”. Angela Merkel was there, as was Justin Trudeau. So were three former Democratic presidents. Donald Trump was not invited.
The musicians who performed on a stage barricaded by bulletproof glass could have drawn a crowd at Wembley. Obama believers all, they included Bono and The Edge, Jennifer Hudson and Christina Aguilera, Marc Anthony and John Legend and Common. Bruce Springsteen, who has become close friends with Obama, brought an acoustic guitar and sang his ode to better times, “Land of Hope and Dreams”.
