Polls say US President’s chances of re-election bleak and his niece’s book may have driven the last nail

Circumstances on the Coronavirus front in the United States are calamitous. The “Black Lives Matter” movement has stirred swathes, including whites, about the continuing injustice to Afro-Americans. His once trusted national security adviser John Bolton published memoirs which portrayed him as ignorant. A conservative United States Supreme Court has ordered release of his hitherto concealed tax returns to a grand jury.

To cap it all, now a book by his niece Mary Trump Too Much and Never Enough provides an explosive expose of the man.

Such is the predicament of arguably the most powerful man in the world. He looks a man of straw; and if nothing untoward happens, is likely, as political commentators in the US are predicting, to lose on a landslide. His name is Donald John Trump.

In the latest indictment of him by a family insider, Mary Trump damagingly claimed her uncle “enlisted a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker” Joe Shapiro to take his entrance examination for admission to Wharton Business School. She added: “That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerised records.”

When he saw her in a swimsuit, he crudely commented on Mary’s breasts, the author alleged. She was in her 20s. “Holy shit, Mary. You’re stacked,” he said. She recalled her face reddened and she suddenly felt self-conscious. “I pulled my towel around my shoulders.”

She remembered Trump family Christmases were about cheap presents from Uncle Donald and fraught with tension. That Trump’s daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law Charles Kushner didn’t think she was good enough. Mary disclosed Kushner gave a speech at the wedding in which he said Ivanka had only made herself worthy of inclusion in his family by committing to convert to Judaism. She recorded: “Considering that Charles had been convicted of hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-inlaw, taping their illicit encounter, then sending the recording to his sister at his nephew’s engagement party, I found his condescension a bit out of line.”

Mary described the president’s father Fred Trump Sr as a “high-functioning sociopath”. On the son she registered: “Having been abandoned by his mother for at least a year and having his father fail not only to meet his needs but to make him feel safe or loved, valued or mirrored, Donald suffered deprivations that would scar him for life.” He thus, according to her, developed as a narcissist and bully. So far, his Democratic challenger Joe Biden has had to do very little as the incumbent has self-destructed.

Financial Times’ poll tracker projections on 13 July estimated 198 electoral college votes, including 55 from the US’s biggest state California and 29 from New York were solidly with Biden and 110, including 29 from Florida, were leaning towards him. This gave him a decisive tally of 308. The victory mark being 270 such votes. By comparison 115 votes were solidly with Trump and 17 were leaning towards him. 98 votes were still a toss-up, including 38 from Texas.

In the toss-up states, Trump was shown to be ahead in Georgia, but Biden was projected as leading in Texas, Ohio, Arizona and North Carolina. Among these the closest contest as of now is in Texas, where Biden’s margin is +0.2.

In the leaning states, Biden’s present advantage ranges from +5 in Florida to +8 in Michigan; while for Trump it’s +7 in Missouri. As for the solid states either way, if the election was held now, Trump’s best result would come from Indiana and Biden’s from California, where he is +25, followed by Minnesota +15.

Bookmakers are quite often odds on. Oddschecker was on 14 July touting Biden as the clear favourite, giving him a 57.9% chance of winning; and Trump only a 38.1% shot. If one invested $10 on the former, the return would be just $17.30; whereas if one took the same punt on outsider Trump, the winnings would be $26.30.

The Robert Mueller investigation into alleged Russian interference in favour of Trump in the contest four years ago flattered to deceive. Now, an attorney who played a leading role in the inquiry, Andrew Weissmann, is about to release a book on the examination of links between Trump and Moscow. This announcement coincided with the president commuting a prison sentence passed on his aide and ally, Roger Stone, emanating from Mueller’s efforts.

Stone, suspected of being the conduit between Russian intelligence, Wikileaks and Trump, was convicted for lying to Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating witnesses. He was condemned to 40 months in prison. Senator Mitt Romney, a former presidential nominee of Trump’s Republican party, termed the presidential pardon as “unprecedented, historic corruption”.

There can admittedly be many a slip between the cup and the lip. But with three and a half months to go to polling day, the US presidency appears to be all but in the briefcase for Biden. So, what could possibly go wrong between now and D-Day?

A recent 4-part television documentary on Hillary Clinton on Britain’s Channel Four depicted how a certain triumph slipped out of her grasp. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) decided to review emails exchanged outside a secure server by Clinton when she was secretary of state in 2008-12. The surmise is – not established beyond doubt - Edward Snowden, a US National Security Agency insider turned whistle-blower now enjoying Russian protection, hacked into Clinton’s account and handed the communications to WikiLeaks. Clinton rued: “If not for the dramatic intervention of the FBI director in the final days, we would have won the White House.”

The FBI eventually concluded Clinton hadn’t breached security. But the reopening of the case at a critical stage of the campaign decimated her. It irrefutably refuelled Trump’s “Crooked Hillary” slogan.

The animosity between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Clinton was indeed personal. Yet, it’s mind-boggling Russia could play game-changer in a US presidential election. Clinton told USA Today: “There certainly was communication and there certainly was an understanding of some sort (between Trump’s team and the Russians).”

It is incredible Trump survives in office. At the very least, his impeachment by the House of Representatives – notwithstanding the US senate saving him from eviction - ought to have made him unelectable. But he has ridden the wave; and is snooping for skeletons in Biden’s cupboard. He shockingly but unsuccessfully seemed to seek Ukraine’s cooperation to defame Biden and his son. A former staffer accused Biden of sexual assault in 1993. But three of the five people she named as knowing about it, told NBC Nwews they did not recall any such conversation. Trump’s last resort could be Putin. But even for the erstwhile KGB operative it could be a bridge too