It's that man again - Donald Trump

 It's that man again - Donald Trump

You may have thought he'd disappeared from view permanently. Perhaps he'd retired to a private and inaccessible island where nobody could find him. But he's still in our rear wing mirror, still stirring the pot, scheming, conniving, conspiring, and then telling packs of lies which we'd all believed would be the only way he would remain in the public eye. Still, we must have recognised by now that you can't keep a serial fibber down for long. The man has falsehood and fabrication running through his veins.

The man in question here is Donald Trump, surely the most ludicrous and preposterous  American president of all time. Plenty of news print and online literature has been wasted and exhausted on the life and times of Trump since the man is still at large and according to the vast majority of his critics, still polluting and terrorising your global neighbourhood. The very mention of his name still send shivers down your spine and he won't be going anywhere quickly. Trump never did modesty and of course he's no shrinking violet since most of the USA knows all about his dishonourable intentions and they don't make for pleasant reading.

But the truth is that ever since the last Presidential election when Trump was toppled from his lofty perch, the American public knew what would happen next. Joe Biden would be promptly elected as the next President of the United States and Trump would throw a strop, constantly threatening to take legal action, grumbling at the injustices that had been perpetrated and blaming everybody else but himself. The Trump ego is still the size of a continent and it's their fault and certainly not his.

For the last couple of days America has been preparing for its elections next year and they're biting apprehensive fingers, hoping that the voting public will just get off his back, stop criticising his every move and just resigning themselves to the fate that awaits them. Trump wants his old job back and another opportunity to create as much mayhem and controversy as he can possibly muster. The Trump mindset has always been a dangerous grenade just waiting to explode.  This is going to be one unsavoury bloodbath and we know what Trump is capable of doing because he's been doing the same thing over and over again. He's been gambling with the Americans future ever since somebody gave him a business venture to make as much money as possible and then lose most of it in the same breath.

Now though the focus has moved onto Trump's retrospective dealings. You must remember the international incidents, the physical violence that followed Trump's fall from grace. At the beginning of last year Washington turned into the most horrendous battle ground stopping just short of civil war. Trump's most fervent supporters all gathered together near the Senate and the White House and promptly raided the building, destroying furniture and ransacking everything they could lay their hands on. They were annoyed, seething with anger, fuming with grievances and determined to make their presence felt and voice heard.

You'd have thought the message had got through to him by now, the penny dropped. Trump is a fraud, a charlatan, a joker of the worst possible kind and somebody none of us could tolerate for a single second more. Then things got confrontational, judgmental, uncontrollable. There was a sense here that Trump had now completely divided the whole of America and this represented the ultimate crime. So the great American public took to the streets with garish placards and animated Stars and Stripes American flags. It would become etched on the global consciousness for all time.

Suddenly the nation that gave us baseball, American football, burgers, fries, doughnuts and gallons of coffee drunk at any time of the day, was in riot mode. The nation that effectively gave us TV chat shows and innumerable displays of ostentatious wealth was not happy, incensed at its very own political system, one we could hardly make head or tail of anyway. Now Trump is back again on the campaign trail, revving himself up like a Cadillac engine and putting his head above the traditional parapet. He's still there world, still blustering, still barking, faking, foaming at the mouth and promising yet another barrage of propaganda, more damaging turmoil. You couldn't possibly make this one up.

In the other corner Joe Biden, the current American president, continues to give the impression of a laid back cowboy who would happily remain in his rocking chair with a stetson on his head and some charming tales about the Wild West. Biden would love nothing better than handing out a good, old fashioned battering of Trump in the next US elections. Give that man a bourbon and try to remember that America is still a beacon of democracy regardless of all those murderous guns and rifles that are very much enshrined in its constitution.

And so Trump puts on a brave face. He now faces the severest criminal charges for attempting to rig the outcome of the last election. Here is one fraudulent, sneaky, covert and corrupt showman, a conman in the eyes of some and just a shameless poseur who still thinks women were there to be humiliated, abused and exploited. But after a short period in the wilderness Trump is undaunted, still fighting, competing, arguing, making his case to his beloved nation. He will stand up in court in due course and vigorously protest his innocence but we are now at a point when America is still facing a future with that orange hair and loud Tannoy of a voice still in our midst, a voice that booms across the length and breadth of  America with deafening clarity.

The next couple of months could get very nasty or tasty depending on your point of view. Poor Joe Biden is still in charge but there are people who still think he's weak and ineffectual, bordering on the totally incompetent. Unlike Trump, Biden is soft spoken, restrained, tactful and diplomatic, everything that Trump quite clearly isn't. He is a safe pair of hands and capable of course but there is nothing to commend him for. Biden lacks any semblance of personality or some believe and what else needs to be said?

 He has none of Kennedy's charisma, some of Nixon's deviousness but then you find yourself comparing Biden to nobody in particular. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were hugely admired, Reagan was just a horse loving cowboy masquerading as President while Clinton blundered his way through scandal after scandal. Both son and father Bush were creditable figures but even they were condemned for losing the plot. Still, as we approach the autumnal mists of the year it is time to gaze across the Atlantic and wonder whether America is still rowing together in the same direction. You hope they will.