Here’s an aspect of Donald Trump’s personality that I’ve never got past: his hatred of dogs. When Trump tweeted on 5 January that his former aide Steve Bannon had been ‘dumped like a dog’, he recycled an insult he has hurled more than a dozen times since declaring for president, according to the indispensable TrumpTwitterArchive.com. After the 2016 election, a wealthy Trump supporter offered the new First Family a gift of an especially adorable Goldendoodle. On a visit to Mar-a-Lago, the supporter showed a photo of the dog to Trump. The President-elect asked her to show the photo to his then ten-year-old son, Barron. ‘Barron will fall in love with him,’ Trump said. ‘Barron will want him.’ That’s just what happened. As the supporter told the Washington Post: ‘This big smile came over [Barron’s face], it just brought tears to his eyes.’ Trump never did permit his son to accept the promised dog. That’s something, say, US allies might want to keep in mind before relying on any of Trump’s commitments to them.
This is an extract from David Frum's diary, in this week's Spectator