Trump is the Tiger Woods of presidents

My old mucker Donald Trump’s return to the White House has predictably sent the woke brigade into hysteria. From posting demented videos and shaving their heads to banning Trump supporters from having sex with them, it’s been a masterclass in the sore loser mentality they profess to despise so much in him. The Guardian is suffering a particularly embarrassing outbreak of PTSD (post-Trump-success distress). The editor’s email offer of support therapy to traumatized staff made me laugh out loud, as did the paper joining the liberal exodus from Elon Musk’s X in an equally comical fit of pique. But to be fair to the kale-munching wastrels, it can’t be easy when the guy you’ve been calling a racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Nazi-inspired Islamophobic bigot gets so many new votes from black, Latino, female, Jewish and Muslim voters, and celebrates by dancing on stage to Village People’s gay anthem “YMCA.”

I spoke to Trump on the phone four times in the final stretch of the race, including a week after he got shot, when he called after seeing me on Fox praising his courage under fire. He told me how his miraculous escape reinforced his faith — “God must have saved me for a reason, right?” — and why he thought Joe Biden was a “dumb son of a bitch” but hoped he wouldn’t quit (he did, the next day). I felt that the heroic way Trump reacted to “taking a bullet for democracy,” as he put it, was a game-changing moment. “I already thought you’d win the election,” I told him then. “But now I’m sure.” And he duly did, because Americans didn’t just admire his balls — they also trusted him more to fix the cost-of-living crisis and illegal immigration, had grown sick of what his mate Elon calls the woke mind virus, and, unlike so-called political experts like Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell, who guzzled the Kamala Kool-Aid, saw right through his vacuous word-salad-spewing opponent.

I rang to congratulate the president-elect the morning after his win, and he answered sounding exhausted, hoarse, but elated and a bit stunned by the scale of victory. “Piers, this is quite something, isn’t it?” Knowing his love of hyperbole and golf, I knew what to say. “It’s the greatest political comeback of all time — you’re now officially the Tiger Woods of presidents!”

Musk’s ascendancy to become not just the world’s richest man but now the world’s most powerful First Buddy is also quite something. I had a private, fascinating hour with him on a yacht in Cannes this summer. The guy’s razor-sharp, a charming, funny, combative, non-fool-suffering genius who is laser-focused on saving us from ourselves and our planet from destruction, via his electric cars, space satellites, brain chips, defense of free speech, plan to colonize Mars, personal mission to reverse global population decline (he has twelve kids), and now, tackling wasteful US government bureaucracy. It’s his Optimus humanoid robots that excite me most. “Everyone will want one,” Elon told me, predicting that by 2040 there will be more $20,000-a-pop humanoids than people, and they’ll be able to perform all domestic chores. “Can they have sex yet?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “but it would be like making love to a slow-moving washing machine.”

This was the YouTube election, with more Americans (45 million) watching the platform for live-streamed analysis on the night than broadcast or cable TV. My own Uncensored election special had more than four million views, and my channel just passed 3.5 million subscribers. If any media dinosaurs still don’t understand why I’m now a full-time YouTuber, there’s your answer.

Unusually, given my normal self-righteous certainty, I’ve felt unsure about the assisted dying debate. I just don’t feel comfortable with the idea of effectively legalizing suicide, and fear it would get abused. One of my closest friends recently died from incurable glioblastoma brain cancer which kills most sufferers within a year. Miles, fifty-seven, bravely hung on for fifteen long and increasingly difficult months, and admitted to me: “I understand why people might opt for Dignitas.” So do I, especially if they’re in constant agony. But most terminally ill patients are not, and I would rather see more investment into our wonderful but chronically underfunded hospices to make end-of-life care as painless for as many people as possible. What kept Miles going was the hope, especially as AI grows ever more effective at solving medical puzzles, that he might wake up to news of a new wonder treatment for glioblastoma. He didn’t get lucky, but others surely will. That’s why, on balance, I’ve concluded that we shouldn’t encourage people to abandon hope and throw in the towel.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.