ONLY a person who embraces her or his historical short-sightedness could be aghast at Donald Trump’s self-serving phone call to the President of Ukraine. Actually, it is not people in the US who are shocked and appalled by Trump’s heavy-handed, supposedly “unprecedented” attempt to undermine a political rival; it is the cable TV chatterboxes, the Democratic Party hitmen, and their addicted acolytes who self-righteously recoil from Trump’s brazen, ham-fisted corruption.

How soon they forget Richard Nixon’s sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks in order to hurt his presidential rival, Hubert Humphrey. Or Reagan’s deal with the Iranians to hold the hostages and deny James Carter in the 1980 election.

Even more recently, our news media shrugged its collective shoulders at the audacious and successful effort of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to derail Bernie Sanders’s 2016 primary run. And, of course, the Fusion GPS “research” organisation contracted by the Clinton team and targeting Trump drew not only foreign operatives into the effort, but the corrupted leadership of the intelligence agencies.