It feels wrong to call them “favourites”, but the catalogue of conduct that should have derailed the Trump train before it even left the station, let alone chuffed into the Oval Office twice, is devilishly hard to rank.<


For me, an unholy trinity of outbursts that preceded his first election victory still provoke feelings of confusion and great sadness at the apparent indifference of so many towards principles I naively believed to be baked into both British and American concepts of civilisation and decency.


In chronological order, Trump’s physical mocking in November 2015 of the disability of Serge F Kovaleski, a New York Times journalist Trump had fallaciously cited in defence of his lie that thousands of Muslim Americans had celebrated the September 11 terror attacks.


The following July, Pakistani Americans Khizr and Ghazala Khan responded to his plan to ban migration of Muslims. The couple, whose son Humayun was a captain in the US Army killed in the Iraq War, took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention where Khizr challenged the constitutionality of Trump’s plan and pointed out that he had “sacrificed nothing – and no one” for his country. Trump responded by suggesting that Ghazala, who has explained that she elected not to speak for fear of breaking down when a picture of her dead son was displayed, had stayed silent because she “wasn’t allowed” to speak.


And finally, the infamous boast about how he could “grab” women by the “p*ssy” that I, sweet summer child that I am, honestly believed would scupper his Presidential campaign. It didn’t, of course, and it is often Trump supporters on both sides of the Atlantic who have subsequently claimed most vociferously to be dedicated to protecting “our women and girls”.


I cite these three early examples of his moral turpitude not because they are necessarily the most egregious but because so many more have followed that it is now, literally, impossible to keep track. The Washington Post, for example, catalogued 30,573 false or misleading statements he made during his first term. <


https://l.smartnews.com/p-8J3eM5XO/3LNC4B