Trump’s Second Coming has stunned his critics

But not everyone is ready yet to make nice

Donald Trump has come in from the cold, and not just because his inauguration on Monday will take place indoors because of a bitterly cold snap gripping Washington. The US and world media seem fascinated by his peacemaking efforts in Gaza and Ukraine and have reined back their hostility to the president elect.

Billionaires are desperate to be onside with the orange man. And not just the hyperactive Elon Musk. A raft of tech titans, like the Netscape founder, Marc Andreessen, who used (like Musk) to back the Democrats are now backing MAGA man. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta has cancelled his fact checkers so that they don’t insult the POTUS by being too clever by half.

There will be no feminist marches against Trump on Monday as there was when Trump the “pussy grabber” was first elected in 2016. Indeed, the left has been distinctly muted on Trump’s second coming. This is partly because progressive voices don’t dominate Twitter as they used to do, many having sought intellectual asylum on Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, Telegram or wherever. Nicola Sturgeon, who used to love Twitter back in the day, and seemed to spend most of her waking time on it, is now posting pix on Instagram. Everyone talks of a “vibe shift” away from the “woke” obsessions and values of the past decade. Would Black Lives Matter happen today?

This has allowed Donald Trump to parade his prejudices with relatively little challenge. His outrageous threats to take over sovereign nations, deport millions of illegal immigrants and erect punitive tariff barriers against America’s allies, have just not been taken seriously. It’s just Trump being Trump, people say. He is being humoured a little like an angry teenager is humoured. Oh never mind - he’ll forget all about it tomorrow.

But there is one country where Trump is still widely and openly reviled and that is Scotland. At least among the “educated” and political classes, Donald Trump is still a misogynistic fascist and the fount of all evil. Scots aren’t ready to make nice. Which is going to be awkward because Scotland has a unique place in Donald Trump’s affections, and he is unlikely to take kindly to continued sniping from the Caledonian sidelines…