Given that his online trophy cabinet already includes accolades like “most tweets sent by a head of state from the toilet at 5am”, Donald Trump could be forgiven for declining to express a view on the Kentucky Derby result. Nevertheless, he persisted.

If you missed this one – and let’s face it, there are a lot to get through – the president was dissatisfied with the result of Saturday’s marquee race at Churchill Downs. Or, as he preferred it, the “Kentuky Derby”. Though Maximum Security crossed the line first, the horse was disqualified for veering out of line on the final turn and causing interference, with Country House eventually declared victor. Though this is the first time the rule has been brought to bear on the Kentucky Derby, regular visitors to the track will have seen it in action plenty of times.

Sorry, but Sports Illustrated’s Swimwear Issue is still showcasing sex, not beauty | Marina Hyde Read more

But are they the president, and the sort of Renaissance Man as comfortably at home ruling on a stewards’ decision as he is bitching about a TV anchor’s facelift? I’m afraid they aren’t, and this will doubtless be why they missed the real pernicious evil underpinning this well-established rule, however controversially it may or may not have been applied on Saturday. Namely, political correctness.

Confused? Allow the leader of the free world to expand. “The Kentuky Derby decision was not a good one,” tweeted the Attorney General Whisperer on Sunday. “It was a rough & tumble race on a wet and sloppy track, actually a beautiful thing to watch. Only in these days of political correctness could such an overturn occur. The best horse did NOT win the Kentucky Derby – not even close!”

Well now. You hear a lot about political correctness in some areas of sport these days, but suggesting that a generalised elite had made it so that Maximum Security couldn’t win – let alone neigh certain words in public – is a new one on me.

Furthermore, a certain inconsistency has been noted. Outside equine v equine contest, Trump has shown himself to be highly relaxed about those who don’t finish first being declared a winner. I say “highly relaxed”, and by that of course I mean that he claimed to have won the 2016 election popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”. By this metric, Country House won the Kentucky Derby, if you deduct Maximum Security, who acted illegally.

But of course, we don’t come to President Mr Ed for consistency. And though he might have appeared to have been talking about a race, as usual it is impossible to imagine he was really talking about anything other than Donald J Trump. In his hands, there is nothing and no one out there who doesn’t exist solely as a prism through which to examine earth’s most compelling subject: himself.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Saturday’s Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville. Photograph: Usa Today Uspw/USA Today Sports

Trump belongs to that wider class of modern politicians who are always and only talking about themselves, whatever they happen to be discussing. In our country, this tends to manifest itself in politicians writing books about the past that are really only a plot device in the bigger story: their own. Boris Johnson’s Winston Churchill biography was a case in point, with Johnson presenting Churchill as a sort of ideology-free chancer, who turned out to be a revelation when they finally gave him a chance to be prime minister. Meanwhile, I note Jacob Rees-Mogg is soon to publish a book about the Victorians, in which you can be sure that the real subject matter will be everyone’s favourite 21st century cosplaying Victorian. And so with Trump, who on Sunday was really talking about perceived injustices suffered by himself as opposed to a horse.

Sign up to The Recap, our weekly email of editors’ picks.

Indeed, the only previous comment on racing I could find from Trump came when he was on the presidential campaign trail in 2015. Addressing a rally in Alabama, he judged that legendary Triple Crown winner Secretariat wasn’t all that. The observation was itself a digression from a digression in which he was discussing his own gene pool. “Do we believe in the gene pool?” he demanded of an audience who looked like they’d lost the battle with theirs. “They used to say ‘Secretariat doesn’t produce great horses’,” he free-associated. “Actually Secretariat wasn’t one of the best, if you want to know the truth.”

Death by sex and television? It’s how Trump would want to go | Marina Hyde Read more

Let’s have much, much more of this insight. In fact, given Trump’s impending state visit to the UK occurs during our hosting of the cricket World Cup, we must hope he can be prevailed upon to offer regular Twitter commentary on a game he probably understands as much as he understands anything else.

With the schedule yet to be decided, I don’t want to hear any more about the possibility of him making some speech to troops at RAF Lakenheath or whatever. Much better, for the gaiety of this and other nations, that Donald Trump should be forced to attend a cricket match – ideally with that captivating conversationalist and Geoff Boycott-idoliser, Theresa May. The president is very much at the “see what stupid shit it can be made to type now” stage, and I would go so far as to hazard that it is impossible his cricket commentary could be anything other than remarkable.

If they really can’t persuade his carers to set aside the time for that, we will have to dream that he chooses to rediscover his Kentuky Derby form during his planned encounters with the Queen. The prospect of Donald Trump getting into a discussion about racing with Her Majesty feels like such a tantalising one. I imagine that particular little lady could learn a lot about the old horses, if she just took the opportunity to pipe down and listen, at length, to a master.