President Trump - How Scared Should You Be? Channel 4, Monday at 8pm
100 Days, BBC 4, Tuesday at 7pm
So we all know that Donald Trump is a bit nuts and has a very odd relationship with reality.
We couldn’t believe it when all his challengers fell away and he was left holding the presidency.
When we all stopped laughing it dawned on us that The Donald was the most powerful man in the free world, with the planet’s most destructive army under his command.
He’s said some awful things, particularly when campaigning for the votes of the pissed-off and marginalised in America.
Trump’s got some very strange people around him, including a press spokesman who appears to model himself on Comical Ali. Trump also doesn’t appear to understand that nepotism makes you look like an idiot when you’re claiming meritocracy is good for American business.
He appears to have a very close relationship with Russia, he described the media as the “enemy of the American people,” he’s not all that fussed about his own intelligence services and he’s challenging North Korea to a fight.
But it’s time we got a bit of perspective about this.
Leaving his ludicrous speeches and Twitter talk aside, Trump’s actions - as opposed to statements - have amounted to very little to get excited about.
In his first 11 weeks, he’s tried a couple of times to impose travel bans on countries he claims foster terrorism and he’s failed in his plans to replace Obamacare with something a little less “socialist”.
Maybe I’ve missed something truly horrible that he’s done, but that seems to be about it so far.
Yet, Dispatches runs a programme this week with the title: President Trump - How Scared Should You Be?
Presenter Abi Austen declared, in the gravest terms, that we “should all be worried”.
“With nuclear weapons (under his control) he might decide the future of the entire world.”
A statement which could obviously be made about the leaders of the world’s nine nuclear powers.
The charge she made against Trump was that he’s too close to Putin, was not supportive enough of Nato, was too interventionist in the Middle East, not interventionist enough in Eastern Europe, was running down the US state department and leads a government of chaos and confusion.
Now the last one probably sticks, but then every government seems to spend a significant portion of its time in chaos.
As for leaving 2,000 vacant posts in government, Trump has an answer I suspect will resonate with a lot of people.
“I don’t want to hire … I look around and wonder what all of these people do.”
Surely, the BBC will be a bit more calm and measured.
I turned on for 100 Days on BBC 4, wondering how we got to 100 days already since his inauguration.
We hadn’t, it was only day 74. I hadn’t realised that BBC 4 was running a nightly news programme marking all the developments in the Trump presidency.
It started on January 23, on the Monday after Trump’s inauguration and ends on his 100th day.
Christian Fraser presents from London and Katty Kay from Washington four nights night a week.
I’m only basing this on one 30-minute programme, but it didn’t seem exactly pro-Trump.
One of the central items on Tuesday was that there are 100 judge vacancies in federal district courts and guess who’s going to get to make the appointments.
There are going to be a lot of disappointed people if Trump turns out to be a guy with a big mouth who doesn’t have the political skills to get anything done.
