Niall Ferguson gets on his knees and sucks the Trumpian cock 🤢
Niall Ferguson: I was wrong to call Donald Trump a would-be tyrant
The historian was once a critic of the president-elect, but now says he is glad that Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris — and has already visited him at Mar-a-Lago
https://www.thetimes.com/article/a58072bc-9fe8-414e-9f67-6d27b6629d9b
Last month Sir Niall Ferguson entered the court of Donald Trump, attending a dinner at Mar-a-Lago where the president-elect gave a speech and had an almost “beatific air” as he basked in his election triumph. When YMCA, Trump’s campaign theme tune, blasted out, Ferguson took to his feet to join in the dancing.
The Scottish historian was just “joking around”. But while he is “ambivalent” about Trump, he was pleased he won the presidential election — a striking turnaround from his view of Trump four years ago when he charged him with whipping up a mob into an attempted coup to overturn the result of the election.
“Perhaps this is Trump at the height of his power, because he’s in his own palace, surrounded by adoring courtiers and supplicants,” he says of the Trump he saw in Palm Beach. “I was struck by the kind of glow that comes from something more than a mere comeback, that comes from surviving an assassination attempt, comes from defying the pundits and winning decisively. He’s got an air of tremendous ease about him which was not there before. The current ambience is remarkable and very different from eight years ago.”
Ferguson, 60, who divides his time between the UK and the US, where he has positions at both Harvard and Stanford, was at Mar-a-Lago to attend a fundraiser for a conservative education charity. Four years ago he was deeply critical of Trump’s role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Writing for Bloomberg, he said that Trump violated his oath to preserve the constitution and was “a demagogue and would-be tyrant”.
How can he be sure Trump won’t now try to be a tyrant? “I’m convinced that whatever impulses he has or has had in the past, the system can contain them as it was designed to,” he says. “I also think that the American electorate was collectively smarter than I was in seeing that January 6 was not quite the earth-shattering event that was presented [on television]. My assumption in January 2021 was that it was a career-ending mistake by Trump. And I was wrong about that.”
Back in 2021, he said the mob that attacked the Capitol was “whipped into revolutionary fervour” by Trump and added: “It does not matter which foreign term you wish to use: coup, putsch, autogolpe — take your pick.” Does he no longer believe that Trump violated his oath of office by trying to overturn the election?
“I look back on January 6 as this combination of a genuine belief on his part that the election was stolen and a catastrophic failure of policing that doesn’t look entirely accidental,” he says. “We were all treated to a theatrical event with an amateur cast that really one would be stretching the English language to call a coup or even an attempted coup. With the passage of time, one realises that that episode really belongs, along with the George Floyd riots, in a chapter called The Madness of the Pandemic. The lockdowns created an atmosphere of near collective madness. Things were pretty crazy on both sides.”
Ferguson was critical of the role of Donald Trump in the Capitol Riots on January 6, 2021
JOHN MINCHILLO/AP
Ferguson once advised John McCain, the late Vietnam hero, Republican senator and leading Trump foe, on his presidential campaign and I wonder if he has any qualms about the character of Trump. “Look, I remain in a kind of ambivalent state about Trump as compared with all the conceivable presidents that could ever have been in the last 25 years,” he says. “But if one compares Trump with Kamala Harris, it would have been a disaster if she had been elected. The right candidate won, and we must take Donald Trump, warts and all.
“Donald Trump, whatever professorial types like me may think, has a unique and unrivalled appeal to conservative voters and a unique ability to extend that support beyond a core constituency. This is a remarkable political comeback unlike anything I’ve witnessed in my lifetime.”
Ferguson has written 16 books, including on the British Empire and the history of money, presented TV series and founded an advisory firm. He will be contributing monthly essays to The Times this year. The character of Irwin, a contrarian history teacher in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, was partly based on Ferguson, whom Bennett regarded as one of a group of historians who came to prominence under Margaret Thatcher and shared some of her characteristics.
“Having been the inspiration for the villain in The History Boys, as Alan Bennett acknowledged, I have a special affection for the play,” he says. He once informally advised Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton.
Casting his historian’s eye over the last few extraordinary months, he regards Trump’s literal brush with a would-be assassin’s bullet as a powerful jolt to the man that may come to be seen as consequential. “What doesn’t kill him makes him stronger,” he says. “Very few people gain strength from that kind of stress. And he’s one of the very few who does.”
Ferguson has known Elon Musk for more than a decade and is a fan. “The best thing that happened in 2024 was that they joined forces: Trump’s Maga movement with the tech elite that had got sick of wokeism,” he says. “There’s a recognition that a Trump administration will be more sympathetic to aggressive, innovative, economic change than any Democratic administration.”
“What doesn’t kill Donald Trump makes him stronger”, Ferguson says
AP/
Musk has been entrusted by Trump with making drastic cuts to government spending while his companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, have huge contracts with, or are regulated by, that same federal government.
“Never underestimate or bet against Elon Musk,” he says. “My broad position is, I’m with Elon. He’s the great colossal figure of our times. I compared him to Napoleon, which he didn’t like, I presume because of how Napoleon’s career ended. Sit back and marvel at the achievements to date.
“As for conflicts of interest, I don’t know if that’s the right way of thinking about someone who buys Twitter — disregarding my advice, I told him it was a really bad investment — and he doesn’t do it for financial [gain], he does it in order to, as he would say, save free speech.
“It was a genius move, enormously expensive for him, but probably the reason that Trump won because it shattered the monopoly of the network platforms that cancelled Trump after January 6. Elon’s ability to see not just around corners, but around galaxies, is truly dumbfounding.”
However, he disagrees with Musk over his embrace of Nigel Farage and says he should not write a large cheque to Reform UK, as reports have suggested he may do. “Someone who’s not a British citizen should not be playing a disproportionate part in British politics, directly or indirectly,” he says.
“On this one he’s making an uncharacteristic mistake. When he gets to see what Kemi Badenoch is about, he’ll realise that Nigel Farage is last decade’s model. I will try and persuade Elon to rethink this.”
Ferguson believes that Elon Musk is making a mistake in backing Nigel Farage and Reform UK, and should not write the party a large cheque
STUART MITCHELL
Ferguson’s views on freedom of speech have been informed by his second wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a writer and campaigner against radical Islam. Hirsi Ali, who was born in Somalia had a Muslim upbringing in Saudi Arabia and east Africa before fleeing to the Netherlands, made a film critical of Islam with the Dutch director Theo van Gogh. He was murdered after the film’s release and she lived under government protection before moving to America. “If anyone understands the meaning of free speech it’s Ayaan,” he says. “I remember her once saying that the cost of free speech was about a million dollars a year, because at one time the security budget was around there.”
The US election was in part, he says, about “woke” issues, of which he has been critical. The tide is turning in the American public and the corporate world, but not in universities in the US or UK. “Peak woke might be in the rear-view mirror generally, but it’s digging in in the universities.”
He agrees with Trump’s assertion that if he had been president instead of Joe Biden, Putin would not have invaded Ukraine. In his first term, potential foes were wary of challenging Trump because he was presented as wild and unpredictable. “Trump had a deterrent effect that Biden wholly lacked,” he says.
Peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia and perhaps even a ceasefire may happen quite soon after Trump’s inauguration, Ferguson claims. “And then the ceasefire, if there is one, will be very fragile and there will be repeated violations of it,” he says. “It’s going to be hard to get even to a Korean-style armistice while Putin is still in power in Moscow.”
The UK has disarmed “to an extent that is almost without precedent in three centuries”, argues Ferguson. “We’re still significant players in the world of military intelligence but in naval terms and in terms of the size of our army, it’s kind of an embarrassment. The Starmer government is highly unlikely to rectify this if previous Tory governments couldn’t. So Britain is in a position of real military weakness.”
If Ukraine is not preserved as an independent democracy the credibility of the transatlantic alliance will be gone. “Nato will be confronted by a victorious and essentially fascist Russia without the strategic and military capability to deter the Russians, unless the US is prepared to do it,” he says.
We are talking via video call during a recent trip by Ferguson to the UK. Last month he saw the King at his knighthood investiture at Windsor Castle. He attended with his two oldest children, from his first marriage, his wife and his mother. “I said to him it was the greatest honour of my life.” They discussed Henry Kissinger, who died in 2023. Ferguson is writing the second volume of a biography of him.
An investiture at Windsor Castle is “a rather grand theatrical experience. You are supposed to be filled with the sense of majesty and history. But then you have a perfectly nice conversation with a really decent man.”
Ferguson received a knighthood at Windsor Castle late last year
PA
The most dangerous issue of the next four years will be what happens to Taiwan. A new cold war, with China, has already begun, Ferguson believes. I mention the story of the alleged Chinese spy with links to the Duke of York and suggest that it is extraordinary that the royal family could have been penetrated in this way.
“The extraordinary thing is if there was only one,” he says. “When I first said we were in a new Cold War, it was 2018. People thought I was engaging in hyperbole. Now it’s there in the news every day.”
Quick fire
Oxford or Stanford? I feel a deeper loyalty to Oxford
The Rest is History or The History Boys? The History Boys
Simon Schama or AJP Taylor? Two masters of historical prose. But I probably owe the greater debt to Taylor.
John McCain or Donald Trump? McCain, a true friend as well as an authentic hero.
Mar-a-Lago or Windsor Castle? Windsor.
Pint of bitter or glass of Californian Sauvignon Blanc? Pint.
Savile Row suit or kilt? Suit for business, kilt for pleasure.
Curriculum vitae
Date of birth: April 18, 1964
Education: The Glasgow Academy; Magdalen College, University of Oxford; University of Hamburg.
Career: He has held a number of academic positions in the UK and the US and is currently Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a senior faculty fellow of the Belter Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He is a co-founder of the University of Austin, Texas. He has presented several TV series. Founder of Greenmantle, an advisory firm.
Family: He has two children with his wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an author and women’s rights activist. He and his first wife, the journalist Sue Douglas, have three children.
