I’m not completely convinced when I hear Nigel Farage say that Americans shouldn’t believe the polls and that he is “absolutely certain that Trump is going to win”. You shouldn’t be, either.
After all, four years ago, Farage publicly laid $10,000 on Trump beating Biden – and in the end (as Trump might put it) it wasn’t even close. Some 7 million votes decided that one.
Maybe something similar will happen this year… perhaps Farage, too, can feel things slipping away from Trump. How else to explain the world’s biggest chancer warning the man he so desperately admires that if “the result is clear and decisive” in Kamala Harris’ favour, he should “go and play golf at Turnberry”?
On this, though arguably on little else, the Reform UK leader is correct. Another insurrection on 6 January 2025 would be terrible – both in America and beyond – and Farage can sense this as well as anyone.
Farage does sometimes give Trump some quite decent advice, it’s fair to say. After the 2020 defeat, a loyal but clearly concerned Farage publicly urged the man he thinks is his “friend” (Trump has no friends) to stop claiming the election had been stolen, accept the reality and move on. Trump took no notice, of course, until it became a bit ridiculous – like someone in an asylum who thinks they’re Napoleon.
Tragically, Trump doesn’t seem to reciprocate the love and fealty his English admirer shows to him. At the last rally, Farage got a shout-out rather than an invite to share the stage, like he did in 2020. And when he rushed across the Atlantic to be at Trump’s side after that assassination attempt, Trump ignored him. Perhaps it’s because, as we all know, Trump admires winners – he actually had some nice things to say about Keir Starmer (though he may be unaware of the existence of Kemi Badenoch).
Even Trump must realise that a comeback in 2028 – when he’ll be 82 – is probably out of the question for “cognitive” reasons; and his family and the medical community might help him comes to terms with an altered reality. So golf, a great therapeutic, would seem to be the best place for The Donald to expend his energies (including, according to unkind accounts, a tendency to cheat).
The other bit of advice Farage had was for Kamala Harris. Although Farage obviously has an ulterior motive (ie to get Trump off the hook and preserve the reputation of the broader global New Right), he wants her to pardon Trump if (or when) she gets to the White House. It’s not such an outlandish idea, and some of us thought Biden should have done it – at least before the events of 6 January made it unrealistic and just plain wrong.
The precedent was – and is – the presidential pardon Gerry Ford granted Richard Nixon, after former vice president Ford took over from his disgraced chief in 1974. A half century ago, Ford made the lonely and statesmanlike decision that the time had come for a line to be drawn under the great national tragedy of Watergate.
President Ford judged that it was in the national and international interest to give Nixon immunity for his crimes – and he told the American people that. Ford’s words seem apposite today: “During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.”
As ever, Trump is different – his crimes and alleged crimes more heinous and public; and, because of 6 January 2021 and his clear attempts to undermine this election, a pardon doesn’t feel quite right. But we shall see.
He may, taking the hints Farage has dropped, decide that there is no point in carrying on the fight; that his best chance to avoid prosecution and jail from the many legal cases presently on hold would be to get president Harris to use the Ford precedent and pardon him. Surely, the quest to escape his legal fate was at least part of the reason Trump is running for office again. But a presidential pardon would be a complete solution to his problems.
We may recall that, absurdly, there was some debate four years ago about whether the then-president Trump could pardon himself. For president Harris to do so would be a brave and honourable act – an especially poignant one, given her career as a prosecutor.
There are strong reasons not to do so – not least rewarding Trump, a “fascist” according to Harris, for his abhorrent behaviour. But, as Farage says, it would defuse the threat of violence and quell the anger and help bring the country together – as Harris says she wants.
President Ford showed, with a biblical sense of proportion, “to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” And this is surely a time, above none other, to heal.