The nightmare is almost over. Trump is going down! According to a widely shared New Yorker article, published on Sunday, we are “entering the last phase of the Trump presidency”. The article posits that the recent FBI raids on Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer and confidant, represent a significant turning point in the president’s political fortunes.

It’s a comforting prognosis. However, I’m afraid it is wildly optimistic. While the president is clearly rattled by the Cohen raid, I’m not sure we are anywhere near the end of Trump’s presidency. Quite the contrary. As long as he doesn’t keel over from all the stress, I believe that not only will Trump see out his term, he’s likely to win another one. Heck, he might even win a third term! He has flirted with the idea, after all. Last month, Trump praised the elimination of the two-term presidency limit in China and joked that maybe the United States will “give that a shot some day”. Indeed, a Trump dynasty, in which Ivanka eventually takes over the reins of power, isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. If you’re tempted to dismiss it as farfetched, I’d urge you to cast your mind back to 2016, when the idea of a Trump presidency seemed ludicrous. What we consider normal can change quickly.

If Trump’s improbable ascent to power has demonstrated anything, it’s that all bets are off. The New Yorker article bases its predictions of Trump’s demise on lessons from the past. But Trump defies precedent. By rights, after all, he should already have been ruined by any one of the many scandals he has weathered. It would seem that the man is made of Teflon; every new piece of breaking news slides right off him.

Part of the reason Trump has proved so scandal-resistant is that he is a reality TV veteran; he understands how to spin facts into his preferred form of fiction. If something doesn’t fit with Trump’s narrative it is dismissed as “fake news”. Continually undermining trust in the media with such charges has proved a powerful strategy and authoritarian regimes around the world have taken note. Malaysia, for example, recently proposed laws that would make propagating “fake news” a jailable offence; a move many fear is an attempt to quell dissent before the general election.

If Trump has been adept at using fake news to his advantage in the past, it’s nothing compared to what he might do in the future. Recent advances in AI-powered video manipulation technology mean tools are now available that enable you to literally put words in someone’s mouth, or make it look as if they are doing something they have never actually done. Some politicians have already warned they expect this technology to create such an abundance of “deepfakes” that it “nearly drowns out actual facts”. Bearing this in mind, it no longer seems safe to assume that the truth will out and due process will take its course, no matter how dogged special counsel Robert Mueller may be.

While fake news may be a useful weapon in Trump’s arsenal, however, the most powerful thing he has going for him are his very real accomplishments: namely, that he has slashed tax and helped make the rich richer. When Trump first took office, we heard a lot of reassuring things about the institutional safeguards that would stop him breaking the law and prevent the US from turning into an autocracy. But it seems that, as long as Trump keeps enriching the powerful, he has carte blanche to do as he likes. As has become increasingly clear, constitutional checks and balances are nothing compared to cheques and bank balances.

Philosophy from the Western world

Kanye West – rapper, designer, philosopher. Photograph: Scott Dudelson/FilmMagic

Trivia time! I’m going to give you a quote and you have to guess where it’s from. Ready? Here we go: “Often people working with the existing consciousness are jealous of those who are more in touch and they become hard-core capitalist in hopes of creating the illusion that the value of money is worth more than the value of time and friends.”

Did you guess Jeremy Corbyn? Das Kapital? A trend piece in the Guardian? Well, I’m afraid you’re wrong. The correct answer is Kanye West. The rapper-slash-designer-slash-spouse of Kim Kardashian tweeted these words of wisdom a couple of days ago. Kanye is a philosopher now, you see. And not just on Twitter; according to a recent interview in the Hollywood Reporter, Kanye is currently writing a book of philosophy called Break the Simulation. While details are thus far limited, it appears to be about society’s image obsession. “I’m on the fence … about human beings being obsessed with photographs,” Kanye states in the interview, “because [photography] takes you out of the now and transports you into the past or … the future.”

Please don’t transport yourself out of this article yet! There is more Western wisdom to impart. In the same interview, for example, Kanye announces that he doesn’t “wish to be number one any more, I wish to be water”. But before you can begin to fully explore the depths of this, he hits you with another profundity. “I feel like Stephen Hawking,” Kanye confesses. “He changed his ideas and his theories all the time. After proving something right, he proved something wrong, right? Because there is no wrong or right, it’s bipolarity.”

It has been a full 48 hours since I read this and I’m still grappling with it. As the millennial philosophers say: “I Kant even!”

Humanity’s melting point …

Beware fondue. Photograph: margouillatphotos/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Bad news: I’ve figured out how humans are going to go extinct. Forget nuclear war, it will be fondue that finishes us off. Yes, fondue. New research shows that the 1970s staple is enjoying a resurgence in the UK. Obviously, Brexit is to blame; an Oxford professor has suggested that “the nostalgic, reassuring element of fondue” may be particularly appetising at a time of global upheaval. Listen, I find melted cheese as reassuring as the next person, but I prefer it not to be tainted by the saliva of double-dippers. Fondue has always been gross and unhygienic but now, what with growing antibiotic resistance, it’s basically deadly.