The presidency of Donald Trump has already provoked a series of angry skirmishes between himself and his staff on the one hand, and with the mainstream media on the other. The Press feels – with good reason – that Mr Trump’s attachment to the truth is fluid. He makes contentious statements which he apparently wants people to believe, yet they are often inconsistent with his earlier assertions on the same matter. Or, as with his boast about the crowd size at his inauguration, they are disproved by the available evidence.

It is his indifference to truth which leaves many serious journalists and television commentators somewhat dumbfounded. How do they report what is happening when, for instance, a White House spokesperson talks of “alternative facts”, as if there was another universe where things are different? Facts are no longer sacred in this Orwellian world, it seems, but are whatever the President wants them to be.