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"And there’s one more thing we might mention in this load of old Trumpery: that when Hitler marched into Poland and Denmark and Norway and Holland and Belgium and Luxembourg and then France and threatened to invade Britain, the United States enjoyed a very profitable period of neutrality – as it had done for most of the First World War – until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941, more than two years after the start of the Second World War. It was, we might remember, Hitler who then declared war on the United States, not the other way round. And French “patriotism” and “free France”, which Trump also mentioned, took something of a back seat during the four-year disgrace of the Vichy collaboration.
As for the Brits, strong we were, though it would have been good to have US troops fighting for us on the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940 as well as on the beaches of Normandy four years later. Pity they couldn’t make it.
And – hem, hem – I do recall another man who used the “Free French” resistance parallel from World War Two. He was trying to prove that Muslims had the right to resist the United States. He said it to me. In Afghanistan. His name was Osama bin Laden. But there you go. I guess Trump’s World War Two efforts get about two out of ten. Not bad for a guy who’s crackers."