Sunday was a good day for an argument. The Boss lit the fire early when the drizzle set in after lunch, and sat down to catch up with the weekend papers — plus what he missed from the online fire hose.

One of those was the latest New Yorker cover, which I caught him smiling over. It showed a TV remote, gripped by a pudgy hand with smallish fingers, emerging from double cuffs poking out of a blue suit — and a glance at the buttons swiftly brought The Donald to mind, even for a dumb old dog.

Now, when I first saw this cover, I didn’t think politics. I thought, “What a clever remote!”

My ideal remote only needs four buttons: ‘food’, ‘ball’, ‘scratch’ and ‘snooze’. But the Donald’s shows imagination, with edgy ideas like ‘muzzle’, ‘silence’, ‘torment’ and ‘deport’.

Brilliant! If I could muzzle New Boy, silence the corellas and cockatoos, torment those swooping magpies when I feel like it and deport the neighbours’ cat, I’d be living the dream!

The Boss reckoned I was missing the main point, after Disney pulled comedian Jimmy Kimmel off his late-night television show following pressure from the Trump administration — threatening Disney with a loss of its broadcasting licence.

He reminded me that when The Donald was inaugurated this year, he signed an executive order on his first day back to “restore free speech” and “end censorship”. “Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponised to persecute political opponents,” Mr Trump had said.

But that was eight months ago and, by last week, he was describing critical coverage of himself as “illegal”. His new tune was “When 97 per cent of stories are bad about a person, it’s no longer free speech.” Clearly on a roll, he added, “Maybe their licence should be taken away” for airing such overwhelmingly negative content.

The Boss was about to growl the hypocrisy word, but my thought was that the orange-tanned warrior is copping a hard time for just being true to his basic instincts.

That means: say what you want, chase what moves, bark at anything unfamiliar, destroy the ball that doesn’t bounce the way you like it. That’s the canine code. When the Boss tells me to “shush” at 3am on a full moon, he’s fighting nature itself. The Donald has just gone full blue heeler — no filter, all impulse, and a nose for whatever’s next.

The Boss shook his head. “General, those buttons stand for shutting people up, firing people you don’t like, and using the powerful levers of the state against anyone who fails to profess loyalty,” he said.

“Trump gets some cover by treating life like a game show — but it has ugly echoes of how Hitler and Putin gradually shut down criticism, starting with comedians, then independent media. They kept big business bending the knee with profitable contracts and favours. It’s a slippery slope and we’re seeing the signs.”

He gave me that look — that one reserved for when I’ve rolled in something unpleasant. “You wake up one day and the world has turned into one vast shambolic dog park with no rules and no boundaries — and every mutt for himself.” Woof!

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Saturday, 26th June 2027

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