A while ago I imposed a Trump veto on myself. Trouble is, that man is hard to ignore.

He’s in the room with me now, doing that weird dance like a puppet with poor joints. That’s the juncture between two bones in the body, not the sort you set light to with a match. That man doesn’t need to smoke anything. He’s high on vengeance and empty self-validation. Plus diet drinks and burgers – a contradiction of comestibles, if ever there was.

Anyway, apologies for the lapse back into Trump-world.

He is stepping closer now, a leer curling his mean lip.

“Write about me, you know you want to. Everybody in the world is talking about me. They just can’t help themselves. Write about how I am going to make American showers great again. You know, I do like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair. The water comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous. That’s why I signed an executive order about showers.”

The above is true, by the way, although the words have been rearranged. A bit like Trump’s beautiful hair.

How weird the world is now that we should pay attention as an old man boasts about his hair. Has anyone fact-checked that hair? If you ask me, his coiffure seems have been spun from candyfloss, like something he won at the fair.

Does Trump really think his hair is beautiful? Who knows, but he just loves having the world hang on his every word.

Lately he’s been chuntering about tariffs. I do not understand enough about tariffs to issue a retaliatory chunter. But then Trump doesn’t seem to understand tariffs either.

As far as I can see, a tariff is just another tax, but one levied on imports. Trump imposed tariffs on all countries, some inhabited only by penguins, and then took the tariffs off, before swearing they’ll be back.

Trump’s on-off tariffs are, according to the BBC’s economics editor, Faisal Islam, taking the US “back a century in terms of protectionism”.

They’re also scaring the shit out of the financial markets (me, not Faisal).

He’s mainly concerned with hitting China. At the time of bashing this out, Trump says Chinese-made smartphones and other electronics will be exempt from levies on general goods of up to 145%. Until they’re not, as the next day he says they are not exempt but have been moved into a different levy “bucket”, whatever that might be.

Is a levy bucket what he drinks his Diet Coke from? Who knows.

All this wild inconsistency is terrible for the stock markets and the world’s economy. But Trump doesn’t care, being surrounded by bum-kissing officials who praise his every unstable word. When he backs down after saying he wouldn’t back down, there is always a lackey on hand to say that was the plan all along.

Then hand-picked correspondents, having been washed clean of all traces of journalism, ask ridiculous question of his press secretary, saying things such as: “How does President Trump manage to be such a fine figure of a man? He looks so much fitter than he was in his first presidency.”

Oh, yes – the finest pear-shaped old dodderer ever to cheat on a golf course.

The grotesque showmanship, the reality TV sheen, is, sadly, just a distraction so we forget that Trump is reshaping the US in his image, that he is destroying the state to make life even richer for his billionaire pals, that he viciously turns on anyone who doesn’t join the bum-kissing queue and threatens to sue broadcasters he considers lacking in respect.

As the former US news anchor broadcaster Dan Rather points out in his excellent blog, behind the rancour and the racket from Trump, the Republicans have been busy passing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. This will require showing a passport or birth certificate matching one’s legal name to register to vote.

Rather says this Act is “nothing but codified voter suppression. Sponsors and supporters of the bill will tell you it’s about safeguarding our election process. Once again, for those in the back: Our elections are safe.”

Rather adds: “For years, Trump and MAGA have repeated false claims of massive voter fraud. It is a myth used to enrage the base and reduce the number of people who can vote. No one has produced evidence to support these spurious allegations. Note that there was nary a mention of voter fraud when Trump won in 2024.”

How graceless in victory Trump has been. And, for all his mock tough boy swagger, he is really just a bully. Like all bullies, he is a weak man pretending to strength.

What a mess. Next time I promise to find something else to write about.