On November 7, several hours after the main broadcast networks, Fox and CNN on cable, and the Associated Press had all called the 2020 US P...
On November 7, several hours after the main broadcast networks, Fox and CNN on cable, and the Associated Press had all called the 2020 US Presidential Elections for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and huge crowds of happy Americans were still celebrating in the streets, Donald Trump tweeted, “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT.”
Three days later, despite an array of world leaders having congratulated his replacements, amid senior voices from his own party acknowledging their victory, Trump tweeted, “WE ARE MAKING BIG PROGRESS. RESULTS START TO COME IN NEXT WEEK. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” Then again, “WE WILL WIN.”
By that point, like everyone else, I was bored of Trump’s irrational antics, but his social media barrage kept giving me acute déjà vu. The lame-duck’s monumental obduracy – that extraordinary degree of refusal to accept the facts – resonated uncannily with what I was reading: Tom Gallagher’s new, highly adept Salazar: The Dictator Who Refused to Die (Hurst Publishers). It’s the story of another larger-than-life political figure who stands out in world history for his epic denial of the obvious.
To be sure, there are significant differences between the two. António de Oliveira Salazar was cautious and conservative with genuinely historic achievements to his credit. Sheer...
