Don’t be distracted by the circus: Trump is frighteningly smart

In a week where a judge declared that Donald Trump committed a billion dollar fraud, one golden rule shines through: don’t be distracted by the circus. While you look at the courts – or the unedifying spectacle of the second Republican debate – Trump has been busy rewriting the rules of American politics yet again in his bid for the White House.

During the 2016 election, I was covering the Republican primaries and found myself in snow-covered Iowa, where – improbably – Trump was due to speak at an evangelical mega-church.

I ran into his son Don Jr there. We got chatting and he said the thing people needed to understand about his father was that “he was just a regular blue-collar worker (pregnant pause) – but with a slightly better bank balance”. Indeed.