Back in 2008, I wrote that I could not offer the three traditional cheers for Barack Obama. A historic moment and all that…but the reality is that any American President will act in the interests of the United States of America. It is not as if any…ANY American Presidet is “Leader of the Free World”.

Donald Trump? What can I say. It was chaos but we had enough COVID based chaos to distract us from American chaos.

And then…Joe Biden. A breath of…normality. We would never hear of Trump again…but we did.

No way Trump could have got the nomination.

Certainly not when Joe Biden was waving at us from Dublin, Carlingford, Dundalk. Knock and Ballina.

He may have been elderly but seemed in good health.

And it went wrong. Horribly wrong. In February 2023, I told my wife that this new war on the far side of Europe would end with Ukraine ceding territory to the Russians and being fast tracked into the European Union. I will be proved right in the next few months but I claim no credit…I guess everybody thought this.

The tragedy is that it has cost so much bloodshed, deaths, refugees and NATOs and EU money. Deep down, the West never expected Ukraine to win. All the West wanted was for Ukraine to fight bravely and surrender at the point where the West would be seriously hurt. That point has passed and Trump’s election underscores the point.

A global conflict that allies Russia, China, Iran is a bigger problem than the largely regional war between Ukraine and Russia.

In old Cold War parlance Ukraine was in Russia’s sphere of interest. Indeed they were joined in the Czarist and Soviet empires. And really the former western imperialists understand that.

Israel-Gaza-Lebanon…now that is a war that will go on. It is sickening. And while it does not disappoint me that Biden could not stop Russia, I am less understanding of the support for Israel.

The next few months look scary. The cabinet Trump has formed…this is the best? Tariffs will destroy Canada and his own “joke” to Justin Trudeau that Canada could be the 51st state of the Union hints at his mindset.

Yet Biden’s decision to pardon his own son, Hunter Biden is the thing that hurts most. In his last days in office, Biden abandoned the higher moral ground.

And for the record, Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate. An elderly po;itician held on just too long…but those politicans around him…Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Barak Obama, Michelle Ob did not seem to realise that their own sell by dates had passed.ama