It's a sorry state visit of affairs

NEXT week, Britain will once again roll out the red carpet for Donald Trump the US president is being granted the kind of pomp most leaders never see once, let alone twice.

- CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN

The gilded carriages will shine, the Grenadier Guards will strike up a march, and the Palace banquet will be laid with the finest silver. And for what? To celebrate a man who has done more damage to democracy than he has to golf courses in Scotland.

Trump's domestic record reads like a demolition manual.

He slashed Medicaid, ripping away healthcare from millions of Americans who could least afford it. He gutted FEMA, America's disaster relief lifeline, even as wildfires and hurricanes tore across the country.

He fired staff like a deranged Apprentice master, treating government employees as if they were reality TV contestants waiting for the axe. And through it all, he lied about tariffs, about trade, about jobs, about the state of the nation until even fact-checkers gave up, drowning in a tidal wave of fibs.

But if his chaos at home is not enough, his record abroad seals the case.