Trump’s toast. You don’t have to take my word for it—just listen to the conversations inside Bobby’s, one of the last great bars in a pioneering American town.
I’ve been drinking there for decades, ever since my immediate family moved to the United States 50 years ago for my father’s work in the motor industry.
(And no, I didn’t move with them, whatever far-left broadcaster Jimmy O’Brien claims repeatedly on LBC. I do not “live” in America.) Still, it’s hardly a secret that I spend a fair amount of time in Florida.
Bruce Springsteen once sang that a three-minute record could teach you more than years in school. In much the same way, a few hours at Bobby’s can reveal more about American politics than a diet of partisan US television—or the BBC.
If you remember Cheers, the Eighties sitcom set in a Boston bar and led by Ted Danson with his famously towering hairstyle, you’ll have some sense of Bobby’s crowd. Its customers range from retired, self-made billionaires to the local tennis coach.
Politics and religion are strictly off limits unless someone wants to be shown the door, then the street and, eventually, the ocean. Bobby’s is a sports bar—Go Dogs, and all that. But even without direct debate, you absorb the mood.
Take Dottie, a retired nun with an impressive collection of Pearly Queen-style MAGA hats and a life-size cardboard cutout of President Donald J Trump in her living room. She will remain loyal to the end. Yet even here, in what is ostensibly—if rather sophisticated—MAGA territory, there is a nervous murmur around the bar. Has Trump lost his touch? Is he drifting into the same kind of confusion that marked Joe Biden’s later years?
Forget the strange AI-generated video featuring a tiger, or the latest White House press secretary—a wide-eyed lookalike who appeared and disappeared within days. A growing number of people are beginning to wonder whether Trump is simply getting older and losing his grip.
Even in this polished corner of MAGA country, there is a growing sense of unease. Has Trump lost his touch? Is he slipping into the confusion associated with Joe Biden’s later years? asks Richard Littlejohn
If you remember Cheers, the Eighties sitcom set in a Boston bar and starring Ted Danson (centre) with his famously towering hairstyle, you’ll have some idea of Bobby’s clientele
This is Cocoon Central, after all, where octogenarians fuelled by Viagra and HRT still battle it out on the pickleball court—and occasionally collide on golf carts behind the clubhouse.
The operation to remove Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro was an easy source of celebration. So was the destruction of drug smugglers in the Gulf of Mexico, which prompted a round of drinks at Bob’s Country Bunker and plenty of approval beyond the usual liberal salons.
But the consequences of the war with Iran are proving far more damaging. The challenge was never going to be straightforward. Americans with long memories—including those who recall Jimmy Carter’s humiliation in the desert—agree that Tehran’s theocratic rulers should be removed.
A majority of Americans, particularly evangelical Christians, remain firmly behind Israel. Even so, many are baffled by what they see as a failure to consider the wider consequences: the oil and gas shock triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, along with Trump’s apparent admiration for Russia’s authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin.
Ultimately, politics comes back to the line coined by Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
A couple of days ago, I was browsing a discount warehouse in Florida when I spotted a beautifully marbled ribeye selling for roughly $25 a pound. An elderly woman examining what Americans insist on calling a “filet” turned to me and said: “Remember when steak cost eight dollars a pound?”
I did. It felt like only five minutes ago. Even in low-tax Florida, petrol is now around $4—£2.99—a gallon. That remains cheap compared with Britain and heavily taxed Democratic states such as California, but it is still an uncomfortable burden by historic standards.
This is what makes me think Trumpism may have run its course. Trump has always enjoyed enormous support in the Sunshine State, where he owns Mar-a-Lago. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who once declared Florida the place “where woke goes to die”, is term-limited and must step aside after eight years. His chosen successor, backed by Trump, is only two points ahead of the Democratic candidate.
I have never placed much faith in opinion polls. But even among Bobby’s regulars—people such as my friend Roger, who regards me as a dangerous liberal—there is unmistakable anxiety. Roger is buying ammunition at Wal-Mart, just in case.
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In the swing state of Michigan, my sister lives outside Detroit, where she works as a den mother to a group of 20-something “Big Bangers” at a finance house.
Last time out, these young thrusters were all gung-ho for Trump. Today, not so much. Trump’s stupid squabble with Canada has gone down like a Led Zeppelin in Michigan.
Slapping punitive tariffs on America’s nearest northern neighbour was the act of a madman. In 2016 and again two years ago, Michigan’s car workers defied their UAW union leaders and turned out in droves for Trump. The auto industries of Detroit and Canada are joined at the hip, mutually inter-dependent.
Windsor, Ontario, is Canada’s Motown, without the Four Tops or Bob Seger. You can see it from Joe Muer’s seafood place on the Detroit river. My mum used to go there to buy cumberland sausages from the Canadian wing of Marks & Sparks.
The trucks carrying components rattle backwards and forwards over the Ambassador’s Bridge linking the two countries every ten minutes. Why the hell would Trump want to screw up that relationship?
Michigan’s senatorial race – which could decide control of the House in a couple of weeks – is a razor-edge toss up. The Democrats’ front-runner is a far-Left headbanger called Abdul El-Sayed. If he wins, the blame will be laid at the door of Trump’s hideous new golden ballroom. Full disclosure: this column is a bit of a mea culpa. Even though I considered Trump a joke candidate when he declared in 2016, I came to quite admire him, like a lot of people, on the basis of: My enemy’s enemy is my friend. He irritated all the right people.
He humiliated his Veep, JD Vance, by refusing to back him at a press conference only this week
He’s an Anglo/Jockophile, who was all in favour of Brexit. My old mate Nigel Farage, who campaigned for Trump, assured me he wasn’t as bonkers in private as he seemed to be in public. Trump also got the measure of Mother Theresa May, who turned out to be our hopeless, tone-deaf version of Hillary Clinton.
Trump stopped biological men competing in women’s sports, was rock-solid behind Israel and read the riot act to craven European leaders – including our own – who shamefully refused to fund Nato and our domestic defence forces. Was he right, or was he right? The defiant bottle he showed after assorted assassination attempts was impressive.
That was before Iran, the Tony The Tiger meme, the attempted annexing of Greenland and renaming Lake Ontario the ‘Lake of America’.
Nurse!
Then there’s his family’s crypto thing, which I don’t pretend to understand, but people who do say will blow up in his face once he leaves office.
My great Bobby’s drinking buddy John Addison, who ran a serious US corporation and is a full-on Georgia Bulldog Republican, predicts a bloodbath for his GOP (Grand Old Party) in November. And he’s rarely wrong.
That still leaves another two years of lame-duck Donald, who will spend his last days fighting off impeachment and firing off increasingly insane executive orders.
America’s biggest problem is what comes next. The Dems are torn between virtual-communists like the headbanger who runs New York and that preening spiv Gavin Newsom, from California, who makes Councillor Burnham look like, nah, never mind.
Newsom’s so vain, he probably thinks this song’s about him. And Trump won’t nominate a successor. He humiliated his Veep, JD Vance, by refusing to back him at a press conference only this week. Mrs Vance apparently thinks the game’s up. Best get out while the getting’s good.
My pick, expressed a decade ago in this newspaper and a cover story for The Spectator magazine, would be Florida’s Marco Rubio, who has ridden the Trump tiger in style as his respected Secretary of State.
But, then again, what do I know? And I don’t have a dog in this fight. So, if you want me, I’ll be in Bobby’s, the Last of the Great Pioneer Town bars.
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