JUSTICE MALALA: All the president’s men
The sycophancy surrounding Donald Trump is of the same order as that enjoyed by Cold War-era despots
OK, I’ve finally made up my mind. When I grow up I want to be president. I don’t want to be a president of a large corporation, like the Americans have. No, those kinds of presidents like to have people in the room who actually think for themselves. Well, sometimes they do. I don’t want that. It’s political office I’m headed for. I also don’t want to be just any old president, such as Nelson Mandela or Barack Obama or John F Kennedy or anyone like that. When I grow up I want to be a president like Donald Trump. The man is just, well, unbelievable. He runs his cabinet as if he is a medieval lord or some bloodthirsty monarch. I grew up in the 1980s reading about Cold War-era despots lining up their cabinet ministers and getting them to pledge loyalty, and I never thought I would live to see such stuff in real life. I once read an extraordinary story about how then Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini called a cabinet meeting — it was on December 30 1924 — at which he demanded a sho...
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