Trump on Culture: Brave New World?

America.

Land of the free, home of the brave.

For much more than fourscore and seven years now,

this country has been a leading light of the world,

the source of some of the greatest achievements

in arts and science for generations.

But something has changed in recent months.

Something rather...tangible.

Oh, yes.

That.

Over the past 18 months,

Donald Trump has erupted

onto America's political and cultural landscape

with unprecedented force.

His braggadocious personality was already familiar to Americans

from his years as a reality TV star.

For a long time, though, few seriously thought

that he'd succeed in his bid for the White House.

But as he gathered momentum in the closing months of the election,

reactions to Trump were about as subtle as the man himself.

Much of the creative community across the worlds of cinema,

television, music and art seem united in their opposition to him.

But what's his real impact upon culture going to be?

Mr Trump.

Quiet, quiet.

Brash.

No, not you.

Got a fast mouth, unpredictable.

Don't be rude.

I like his cut.

I've travelled across America

meeting those who love

and loathe the man in equal measure...

We need a strong...a father figure.

A masculine figure, finally, in the White House.

-CHEERING

-Thank you.

I don't think that Trump really cares about anybody.

God bless America.

I feel a storm brewing.

..to find out what his own tastes can tell us about the man,

how the arts and entertainment industries have responded

to his first hundred days,

and what the broader implications might be in the age of Trump.

So hold on, because I think we may be in for a bumpy ride.

So how on earth did we get here?

The ascent of Trump to the White House was an event

that next to nobody in the world of culture saw coming.

Artists were blindsided when he took pole position

in the electoral college last November.

The pure divide between one half of the country and the other half,

the inability for the two sides to talk,

it feels very much like the pro- and anti-Vietnam War camps

in the '60s in the United States -

that we are so diametrically opposed in our thinking

that there's no common ground on which to have any kind of discourse.

I don't believe he has any real convictions.

And therefore, he's capable of anything.

I think that's what makes people so nervous.

When someone has an ideology, then you can more or less predict

what they're going to do in any given situation.

With Trump, all bets are off.

I think it is very much a pop culture sensibility.

He watches television, he watches shows that he likes,

he's concerned about ratings,

so we have a pop culture president,

in a way I think we've never had before.

So far, a lot of the outrage about Trump

has stemmed from this one big idea -

that he's this gauche and brash vulgarian, a buffoon,

this philistine who has zero feeling for and understanding of the arts.

But I'm not sure it's quite so simple,

and to understand a little more about the man,

I've been reading this, his 1987 bestseller,

The Art Of The Deal.

Admittedly, not a word of it was written by the Donald himself -

the entire thing was ghosted by the journalist Tony Schwartz,

but nevertheless, it still contains plenty of insights

into Trump's feelings for and attitude towards the arts.

For one thing, he has a fanatical obsession with architecture,

taking enormous pride in the skyscrapers

he has scattered around Manhattan.

Then there's the early desire to be an actor,

an ambition that arguably came to fruition

in his many, many film and television cameos.

Look, without Derek Zoolander,

male modelling wouldn't be what it is today.

Or the bit where he gives his second grade teacher a black eye,

because the young Donald didn't think the teacher

knew enough about...music.

Now, this may not be enormously popular, but actually,

it is a little misleading to say that Trump

is wholly uninterested in the world of culture.

Take his towers.

For the young property tycoon,

his greatest achievement was the construction

of his eponymous stronghold on Fifth Avenue.

To make way for Trump Tower,

another building that was on the same site,

occupied by this department store called Bonwit Teller,

had to be demolished, not without controversy.

After agreeing to donate two historic Art Deco friezes

to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Trump baulked at the cost of saving them,

and reneged completely on his promise,

and he wrote in The Art Of The Deal

that he ordered his guys to rip them down.

The Bonwit Teller building had further significance in art history.

In 1961, it was the site of an important display

of Andy Warhol's breakthrough pop paintings.

Two decades later, Andy was to come into the orbit of Trump,

who was then midway through construction

of his Fifth Avenue skyscraper.

Encouraged by Trump,

Warhol worked on this series of portraits of Trump Tower

that he hoped one day would hang in the skyscraper's lobby,

but unfortunately for him,

the viewing of the eight finished paintings

didn't really go very well.

He recorded in his diary that,

"Mr Trump was very upset,

"because he didn't feel

"that they were sufficiently colour-coordinated."

So, much to Warhol's irritation,

his paintings, sadly, remained unsold.

# Ain't there one damn song that can make me

# Break down and cry? #

His own aesthetic is recognisable the world over

for its gaudy, glittering bling.

This house is an incredible piece of fantasy architecture

in tropical South Florida.

In 1999, Loyd Grossman visited Trump's palatial country club

of Mar-a-Lago in Through The Keyhole.

Now, the theme of this room is fairy tales,

and particularly the tale of Sleeping Beauty,

and it's a real tour de force.

Just look at some of the details.

With its full-length portrait

of Trump in cricket gear, detractors see the building

as a monument to his own ego.

There's a fantasy about Mar-a-Lago.

You walk into it, and...

You feel as though you are in another place.

It's, er...

It's architecturally fascinating.

Celebrated interior designer Carleton Varney

not only maintains a residence minutes from Mar-a-Lago,

but also has lived two floors below Donald Trump

in New York's Trump Tower for the past three decades.

All right, so, this is me with Rosalynn Carter.

This is the Obama invite to the party.

That's Jean Kennedy.

Having redecorated the White House in the past,

does he think that Trump's style tells us anything about the man?

There's something in him that radiates to...

..things that are...

..not of the manner...

..classically born.

I think he is a person of fantasy in every way.

Not only because of his personality,

but because of his...de rigueur, his look.

There's nothing mundane about Donald Trump.

So Trump has always been the formidable presence

we see on our screens today.

But now that he occupies the highest office in the land,

arguably even in the world,

what does the art world make of him today?

It might seem that the art world is in open revolt

against America's new president.

Some of New York's galleries have held exhibitions

denouncing Trump in the immediate aftermath of his election...

..while artists like Ai Weiwei and Shepard Fairey

haven't held back, either.

And away from the big cities,

artists across the country are also responding.

The bus I've been travelling on was once a campaign vehicle

in the weeks after Donald Trump first announced his candidacy.

But its purpose seems to have evolved a bit since then.

Now it is owned and operated by artists

who've been engaged in political activism for a decade.

This, I have to say, is exceptionally surreal.

You were, what, following him as he went around the country, or...?

Well, the bus only goes 50mph and he has a jet!

-THEY LAUGH

-So ...

We would look at the primary schedule for what states that day

was the primary, and we'd go to all the Trump rallies we could get to.

And so, basically, it was kind of a protest artwork

that had followed the Trump schedule around the country.

I mean, it's fascinating,

because I know you call it an artwork,

but it also is clearly a piece of political protest, really.

So, which is it primarily for you? Is it art, or is it protest?

Oh, no, for me, it's mostly a piece of art.

I mean, my work tends to focus on politics and economics,

and so I think that art needs to be more present in those fields.

We never say we're protesters, we always say we're artists,

and this is an artwork about Donald Trump,

so just by eliminating that word from the conversation,

we were able to engage with people much more.

What about the reactions that you got when you were driving

around in the campaigns?

Did it ever turn violent or aggressive?

I'd say the last month, six weeks before the election,

people would yell at us, "Kill them, bomb them,"

things like that, it got very violent.

'Prolific authors Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt

'also aren't fans of Donald Trump.'

Why is it that, you know, many, many, the majority of artists,

writers, cultural people, just instinctively dislike the man?

SHE CHUCKLES

-Uh...

-You mean, aside from the fact that he's a vulgar brute?

SHE CHUCKLES

I mean, his political positions are obnoxious, he's obnoxious,

and he seems to have, as you say,

nothing but a philistine's taste in art,

so, why would artists think that he was someone interesting?

He's not.

Um, he's an appalling creature,

and he's so unqualified to be president,

he knows almost nothing.

You are both writers, you are both artists in that broad sense -

what should artists do?

Is there a responsibility, a sort of moral obligation upon artists,

do you believe, to react, to respond?

Yes, I think that artists have,

and will continue to ally themselves,

with the resistance movement as a whole.

And I think that agitprop can be valuable, overtly political art,

but it's often, er, schematic, er, shallow...

You can't dictate what kind of art artists should make,

because, you know, a novel about a tea party on Fifth Avenue

might be the most heartbreaking, important work of the decade.

-It's impossible to know.

-Is there a...?

In a funny way, is there a sort of...?

This will sound perhaps perverse, paradoxical,

-but might Trump be a force for good in the culture?

-I think so.

I think the enlivening, not just of resistance,

but of the kind of humour

and creativity that is...made under pressure

will be part of the Trump era.

While writers see some reasons to be cheerful under Trump,

readers are turning to dystopian fiction in their droves.

Naturally, Nineteen-Eighty-Four is suddenly

on the bestseller list.

I think most readers who are resorting

to dystopian fiction right now are from the left.

It's just a way of comforting yourself with discomfort.

It's saying there is a good reason that you are upset about this,

you are on the side of right because you are trying to prevent

this from happening to your country.

The other thing that I think is a positive response to Trump

is this new birth of activism across the country.

I think, for the first time,

women are leading the Resist movement,

that there are more active women than ever before,

and they are not followers, but actually leaders.

-CHANTING:

-Hey-hey! Ho-ho! Donald Trump has got to go!

Hey-hey! Ho-ho...

Donald Trump's election has mobilised women across the world,

incensed by the misogynistic comments he's made over decades.

Even before last January's women's march,

Trump had been inspiring feminist work,

like this video from Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova,

who was imprisoned in Russia for her political protest art.

# Listen to your women

# Stop killing black children

# Make America great again... #

So, the video is about how, um,

how America could look like

under the Trump administration,

and obviously, it will be pretty violent towards women.

And under Trump, that suddenly...?

Under Trump, it became a really big topic,

but it's not just about America,

it's about the whole world,

and I honestly live without borders, so that's why I'm helping

my American friends to bring up this issue,

which is really important.

And I was disappointed with Trump, too, and we just wanted to slap him.

He just said that we don't need, actually,

to fund programmes for women who are victims of domestic violence,

we just don't need it.

He said that it's a waste.

I was watching the video, and, you know, because it is satire,

in some ways, it is quite broad-brush,

you know, women get branded.

Now, clearly, that's not happening in America, so, is there a sense...?

Oh, it is, it's happening.

When you're a girl and you're 13 years old,

and your President calls a woman "fat pig",

she is branded.

It is what is called stigmatisation.

And the President is a big figure -

every time when you watch the news, you see his face,

and he is saying terrible things about women.

What do you think artists should do in America, in a time like this,

if they oppose Trump, personally, politically?

Should they feel they have a responsibility

to make protest art?

I'm just trying to think, not just about what will happen tomorrow,

or in one year,

but what will happen after 50 years.

I think you just have to take your hands and do something.

Ah, I can see this Astroturf plinth, Brian...

Brooklyn artist Brian Whitely found himself under

the full scrutiny of the law when he provocatively erected

a gravestone bearing Trump's name

in Central Park last year.

-With the Police Department sticker!

-Yeah. Evidence.

-Oh, in fact, an evidence tag! Right, fantastic.

-Evidence tags.

As I understand it, the Secret Service,

they saw this thing as a death threat to Trump.

Yeah. I get the knock on the door,

and two Secret Service guys and two...

Intimidating people?

Yeah! Two NYPD officers in suits.

I was fingerprinted, photographed,

I'm on a Secret Service watchlist.

Suddenly, it starts to sound kind of Kafkaesque, very dark.

Yeah, it does, it becomes, um, a bit troubling.

But at the same time, I was within my rights.

At the end of the day, after the interrogation,

the piece was, um...it was brought down to a littering fine,

because that's all that they could actually get me on in New York.

But do you not think - I mean, slightly to play devil's advocate -

if a tombstone had appeared overnight during Obama's presidency

saying, "Barack Obama, born...", you know, the same thing

would have happened, surely?

Or you feel that something has changed?

I think something has changed.

Everything, for me, ties back to what Trump's been campaigning upon -

alternative media and alt-right people are now

becoming more into the mainstream, so you see more hate crimes

going on in this country and less denouncement of that.

He was condemning the First Amendment, saying,

well, maybe this First Amendment is a little too liberal for his taste.

The First Amendment being, we can say...

people in America are allowed to say whatever they wish.

Freedom of speech.

What about, more specifically,

the issue of Trump's impact on the arts?

Well, I think it's changed the dynamic, for sure.

I mean, for me, being, like, one of the first artists

to do a piece, like, I knew immediately

when he was campaigning that I had to respond,

and you're seeing it more so now than ever.

I don't see a lot of artist peers of mine

who are sitting in their studios, doing, you know,

abstract expressionism or something like that.

They are focused on politics now.

Trump's first 100 days in office were a blizzard of activity...

..with North Korea,

travel bans,

meetings with foreign leaders

and the Syrian crisis dominating the news agenda.

Apart from picking fights with Hollywood stars on Twitter,

Trump's only real engagement with the world of culture

has been a series of quarrels over federal funding

for the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.

These agencies, roughly equivalent to the Arts Council in Britain,

were once located in this Washington building -

now, ironically, a Trump Hotel.

In his draft budget last March,

the President proposed eradicating them entirely.

But, after much brinkmanship with Congress,

they have now been awarded almost 4 million extra,

though the threat of elimination still looms on the horizon.

How would you characterise Trump's attitude

towards the arts in general?

Americans For The Arts, among the things that we do,

we survey all the presidential candidates.

Donald Trump's answer was that he loved the arts,

but when asked about funding of the arts, public money,

what he said was, "I would leave that to Congress."

So, that's pro-arts in attitude, unclear about public policy.

But how much money are we talking here?

Well, it's symbolic.

We're talking about 46 cents a person in America, that's tiny...

-In a year?

-Yeah, in a year, 46 cents per person.

Why should the government be funding the arts?

I think that the case for the advancement and the support

of the arts starts off with the fact that the American public wants it.

89% of the American public in polling says they want art

in the lives of their children.

They want art in schools as part of their curriculum.

It's a small percentage of people

that actually are against public funding for the arts

but they're very vocal.

It's also very true that the arts are an economic impact benefit,

they're a jobs benefit, all the data shows that as well.

So this must feel like a very strange time

to be forced to continue to make that case

with Donald Trump as president.

It comes up in the entire history of our country again and again.

There are forces that want things

like the arts and culture in their lives,

with the help of government,

and there are forces that want everybody to be on their own.

32 years ago, the Reagan administration

put forward elimination of the arts.

That was turned around and the funding of the arts was kept.

There have been many attempts to eliminate

the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities,

and there have been attacks on the corporate broadcasting system

all along - this is nothing new. These things go to Congress.

Congress ultimately decides what the budget is going to be.

A lot of people felt somewhat complacent that Trump

wouldn't actually propose these cuts to begin with.

But anybody who's predicting anything about American politics

at this point is likely to be chastened by reality.

Throughout this political gridlock, many have rushed

to ridicule Donald Trump.

100 days in office, so many accomplishments -

lowered my golf handicap,

my Twitter following increased by 700,

and finally, we can shoot hibernating bears.

My boys will love that.

Sir, here's a new bill that you must read immediately.

It lowers taxes for only Republicans.

-Can't Fox News read it and I'll watch what they say?

-No.

You have to read it.

Oh, God, this is horrible.

This was supposed to last me the whole four years.

And he's caused more than a few family feuds.

I'm the one who's got all the heavy hitters supporting me.

I mean, I have got the cream of the crop.

I've got Sarah Palin.

I've got Chachi. And get this,

I've even got the best Baldwin brother -

Stephen Baldwin.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

What do I think of my big brother's impersonation?

Erm... Brilliant.

Very funny...

Technically, when it comes to the comedy stuff.

I got in trouble when I said that

I didn't think his impersonation was funny.

What I really said in the context of it was I didn't think

some of the stuff they were doing was fair to other family members.

It started to get pretty creepy and personal.

Think of it this way. If a person you did not know came

from a foreign country

and just started flattering you, what would you do?

Marry them.

Stephen Baldwin first got to know Donald Trump

when he was a memorable contestant on Celebrity Apprentice.

I would hope that Hollywood

would soften its tone towards President Trump

cos the more they break him down,

the more difficult they make his job.

And again - this is going to sound pretty sketchy, what I'm saying -

I think Hollywood hates President Trump.

Not everybody. There are some organisations

in Hollywood that are conservative.

But I think we're going to see a big movement,

the pendulum is swinging back the other way now, so, sure,

Hollywood is going to be kicking and screaming for quite some time.

And I even cast a foreshadowing here of Hollywood better be careful

about how much it makes fun of Donald Trump

cos I think it's going to lose a lot of its audience

if it doesn't, kind of, swing back

to the middle a little bit and lighten up.

When Baldwin undertook some artwork

as part of a surprising Apprentice task,

he was joined in the gallery by his agent Matt Rich

who'd also run the publicity for Trump's Miss America pageant

for two decades.

What I'm finding, and I think it's fair to say,

is a lot of people who work in the arts,

they feel a natural resistance, for whatever reason...

Why do you say natural of all things?

Well, they resist. There seems to be a lot of opposition

to Trump and the Republicans.

-I would certainly not call it natural.

-No.

-Not in any sense.

So the thing I'd love to get a sense from...from you

is whether or not you believe that that resistance is as widespread

as perhaps it's painted to be?

No, I don't believe so.

My sense, though, is that

someone who has something to lose

might feel threatened by a boycott

or by, "Gee, Meryl Streep, sort of the queen of our industry,

"is saying this, we must also believe it."

I don't think people believe it in their heart.

And I think there is, what's that great term from Spiro,

Vice President Spiro Agnew under Nixon?

"The great silent majority" of performers

probably feel differently, but keep their mouth shut.

There is no advantage in backing Mr Trump vocally

and there are perceived disadvantages.

What seems to outrage the cultural elite the most

is when one of their own goes rogue

and publicly declares support for the new president.

January's inauguration was a stunning case in point

because every four years, the tradition is you have

luminaries from the world of entertainment

who ring in the newly elected or re-elected president.

So Bill Clinton had Michael Jackson, Elton John.

George W Bush had Ricky Martin.

Barack Obama had Beyonce.

But Donald Trump...?

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

One star who did heed the call was Sam Moore,

of legendary Stax Records duo Sam And Dave,

who enlisted once he heard that Trump was in need.

Despite braving the cold January air

the backlash against Sam was immediate.

Rapper Snoop Dogg branded him an "Uncle Tom".

I'm not an uncle...

I'm a father, I'm a great-grandfather

and I'm a grandfather.

I'm none of the uncles, OK?

So...

But it was ridiculous.

'It was doing what I felt was right and I knew it was right.

'I just sang and then I turned and I walked off.'

# I'm talking about America... #

'I felt wonderful. I did. I felt wonderful.

'I felt like I was part of America.'

I am an American.

I was not an African-American,

I wasn't a coloured boy, I wasn't negro,

I was a man that loves his country

and I was doing something in honour of my country

'at a special time on a special day.

'And that's how I took it.'

# Oh...

# Yeah... #

Mr Trump...

Brash, says things, unpredictable.

He's accomplished something, whether you like it or not,

whether you want to give him the credit or not.

So why don't you stop, guys, ladies and gentlemen,

and let's just give it a chance?

You know what? If we get behind him to do well, to succeed...

..he'll do better.

I like his cut.

Trump's fan base also extends to younger enthusiasts,

some of whom signalled their support for the president through artwork.

-This is the new apartment.

-This is the new apartment.

-I am still just moving in.

-Yeah, OK.

Since the election Lucian Wintrich has become

a poster boy for the alt-right, following the exhibition

Daddy Will Save Us,

which he organised in support of Trump in New York.

His photography series, Twinks For Trump,

loomed large over the gallery.

And the name of the show was what? It was Daddy...

-Daddy Will Save Us.

-Daddy?

A joke that we,

a lot of gay Trump supporters were playing off of,

is we need a strong father figure, a masculine figure,

finally in the White House.

It feels like there's a satirical component there.

I'm still struggling to quite get what it is.

Before this... Before this project came along,

people would say, "Trump supporters, they are ignorant,

"they're old white men who work in the coal industry in the Midwest."

That is the declared premise of who supports Trump.

I personally thought it was very, very funny to take that imagery,

take this classic trucker hat and throw it into a new context.

Is there an irony that perhaps, well...I don't know.

You said many of the models wouldn't vote Trump.

Most of them rejected both of the candidates.

Almost everybody, I don't know anybody around my age

who is gay who really applauded Hillary.

What seems to have happened subsequent to the election

is a transformation for you

from artist to White House correspondent, right?

-Right.

-For The Gateway Pundit.

Just describe what The Gateway Pundit is.

The Gateway Pundit is a right-leaning website.

It's still fast news

so we're functioning in a fast news era.

How did you get into it? Because one of the things that...

My understanding - and you tell me if I'm wrong -

is that you sort of pitched up in Washington and,

what do you call it, the traditional media correspondents,

they do things in a different way,

and it seems like you're trying to goad, provoke them,

for reasons that maybe you'll explain.

I don't know. Is that fair?

I mean, it's relatively fair.

I thought I'd actually have to provoke them

and then I realised me just being in the same room as them

really bothers them, cos they know I got this position

after a series of erotic Trump photographs,

which is, in and of itself, I think, hilarious.

Vote The Deplorables - what is this?

So that was actually done by Sabo,

who he is a Los Angeles street artist

and he was wildly pro-Trump

so, yeah, we got the toupee here, which is wonderful.

Just explain how it's a positive image.

Um...because, again, we are the new punk rock.

Part of the fun of being a Trump supporter

is it is counterculture, it is like New Wave or, yeah,

the skinheads, before skinheads became Nazis.

Are you...? Do you share any of the concerns,

the fears that other people have about Trump?

We need to disrupt the federal government right now

and Trump is doing that.

He is doing it in such a wonderfully pop culture way.

'As Lucien demonstrates,

'arguably the biggest culture shock with the advent of Trump

'has been the administration's relationship with the media.'

These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration

are shameful and wrong.

Sean Spicer's beleaguered press conferences

have made headlines around the world.

This was the largest audience

to ever witness an inauguration - period.

One of the biggest changes has been the upending

of the usual pecking order.

In the past, outlets like CNN, the Associated Press,

they were given first dibs on questions,

but now, a new breed of correspondent

is making its way into the bear pit.

Some of them are known as Skyper fans,

because they ask these innocuous questions

that are sycophantic to the Trump administration

and get beamed into the White House press room

via online video messaging,

leaving those big beasts from the traditional media

groaning in frustration.

The whole media landscape is being reshaped,

with the administration even threatening earlier this year

to abolish funding for public service broadcasting.

There has been some speculation

that perhaps this gambit's motivated by a certain character

who pops up from time to time on PBS's beloved Sesame Street.

Grump!

# Who has more trash than anyone does?

-# Grump!

-Grump!

-Grump!

# Who has the best rubbish and scuzz?

-# Grump!

-Grump!

-Grump!

He's coming! Here he comes.

-# I'm the trashiest

-Grump!

-# I'm the grouchiest

-Gru-u-u-ump!

I am Donald Grump

and I have more trash than all of you

so nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah!

Of course, this was far from a real attack on Trump.

But the new POTUS's trash talk has seen a surge in hostilities

between the president and the mainstream media,

causing some to draw parallels with other regimes.

Trump himself said, in very chilling terms,

the press is the enemy of the public,

which is frightening.

I mean, this sounds like something we would have heard

under Hitler and Goebbels back in the day.

It was also the title of the play by Ibsen, for goodness sakes.

Enemy Of The People.

And so if he feels that he can start attacking the press in this way,

in other words, calling it fake, lies,

anything he doesn't like,

then I could see a moment, if things go in a certain way,

in which they can start taking away freedom of speech

and make it legal.

No, not you. Not you. Your organisation is terrible.

Today, it seems Trump's modus operandi

is to label all those who oppose him as liars or weaklings.

In no sector is this more pronounced than the world of news.

Some in Trump's administration say that the mainstream media

were too cosy with the old order.

Do you remember how, last year, "post-truth"

was the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year?

Maybe you've already forgotten

because it's now been superseded by another, related phrase -

fake news.

Don't be... I am not going to give you a question.

You are fake news.

"Fake news" first gained some currency

when Buzzfeed began investigating websites sprouting up online.

I think we saw

fake news start to bleed into the campaign

in the spring and summer of 2016

and really, what you saw were these sites

you had never heard of - Trump 365, trueconservative.com -

things you'd never heard of publishing stories that,

when we really dug into it, were the most widely shared stories

on Facebook that day.

They appear to be teenage entrepreneurs,

there have been questions about

whether there were any Russian... if there was anybody from Russia

anywhere near that operation but that hasn't been shown.

As soon as a lot of...what I would say the legitimate media

started reporting on this phenomenon of fake news,

the answer from people who are making up stories and spreading lies

was "No, you are fake news."

So he seized on fake news

and turned it around

so anything that is basically

negative about him is now fake news,

which was clever.

It's the same sort of...

That is the 1984 aspect.

During the election, when he first started saying "Crooked Hillary",

everybody said, "That's over the top, it won't have any impact."

It turned out to have enormous impact -

very simple phrases, just repeat them, repeat them.

Hillary is an unstable person.

There is no better place for short, catchy messages

than Twitter's 140 characters.

It is interesting, the tweeting. People think that it's a sign

he's crazy, but he's sort of crazy like a fox.

He sees it, I think, as his own TV network. He has got...

Between Twitter and Facebook and various other online mediums,

he claims to have between 50 and 100 million followers.

Now if you compare that to the number of people

watching broadcast news every evening, it is much bigger.

So whenever there is a big, unfavourable story about him,

usually the Russian story,

inevitably, he comes out with some sensational tweet.

Like a lot of people,

I think he's addicted to the online world and tweeting,

but also sees it as an invaluable tool,

so that is why he doesn't give it up.

I have met so people who support...

I hope President Trump succeeds at making America great again.

..or oppose America's new president.

The only person he believes in is himself.

I'm not sure I can see these two sides ever reconciling.

But I wonder what his ultimate impact on the arts will be.

Perversely, having become this hate figure

for many people on the left associated with the arts,

Trump, paradoxically, seems to be stimulating creativity

because he represents something, he's a symbol of something

that artists can oppose and rail against.

But at the same time, Trump, time and again

has proven wrong those people who've dismissed him -

at one stage, he was supposedly this vile clown,

with zero chance of making it to the White House,

and look what happened there.

So I really believe this is no time for complacency.

Any civilised society must cherish artistic expression

and surely nowhere more so than in a country that prides itself

on being the land of the free.

Donald Trump is a very nice person. I am a nice person.