During his term as US president, there was an established routine to Donald Trump’s evenings in public service. When he got into bed at 6.30pm with the big cheeseburger and the bucket of Diet Coke – boudoir TVs set to “channels talking about me” – Trump liked nothing more than yakking on the phone to this billionaire or that. He whined, he bitched, he divulged, and when they finally ended the call, whichever billionaire had been on the other end of the line promptly called one of the other billionaires to laugh about it all behind his back.
“What a fucking idiot,” Rupert Murdoch once remarked after getting off a call with Trump in which Murdoch had had to explain that actually, the Silicon Valley elite did not “need” Trump’s help, as he imagined, having just enjoyed eight years where they “practically ran” the Obama administration. Obviously, Murdoch’s a notorious bitch; almost the Regina George of it all. But – also obviously – he was one of the special guys officially given “cleared caller” status in Trump’s White House, meaning they could get through to him any time. Plastics gotta plastic.
