Most of them got where they are within their own lifetimes. What passes for a ruling elite in the US is an educated professional cohort who run the media and academic life. It has little to do with hereditary cultural assumptions, because American social prestige is almost entirely to do with money that has been made within one or two generations. Yes, this is class war – but not as we know it in Britain or anywhere in the old European nations. What we are seeing is the evolution of something that has not been an acknowledged aspect of American life since the 1930s. So what is going on here? There is clearly a significant proportion of the American population that not only rejects the Liberal consensus but is so enraged by it that it will enthusiastically support views that are brazenly offensive.

But Trump’s prospects seem to have been not just undamaged but actually enhanced by this display of what should – in what is assumed to be the current political climate in the United States – have been fatal. Can you imagine any American politician (let alone a presidential candidate) or public figure – any celebrity in any sphere – saying that without his career being instantly vaporised? Quite a few men have famously expended enormous amounts of blood and treasure trying to disprove the notion that they would even think such a thing. Have you got that? It might be “fortunate” that famous men could sexually assault women.

He explained that this was simply a historical truth: for millions of years (which would be longer than Homo sapiens have existed) it had been the case that male “stars” could do whatever they wanted to women – and then he added “unfortunately or fortunately”. In his deposition for the civil case in which he was found guilty of sexually assaulting E Jean Carroll, he was asked to comment on the notorious Access Hollywood tape in which he is heard to say that powerful men were able to “grab women” in their genitals (he used another word) with impunity. Among all the absurd delusional things that Donald Trump has said in his second incarnation as a prospective president, there is one statement which should – by all the standards of conventional wisdom – have put an end to his campaign.

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