Exhausted by media obsession over Donald Trump’s divisive presidency, Russian collusion, threat to liberty and destruction of democracy, I recently went to the one place on earth where I could easily avoid hearing anything at all about Donald Trump.

I went to the United States.

Anyone who has not visited the US since Trump’s hilarious 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton might be surprised by the utter absence there of Trump in daily life. Everyday Americans are mostly just getting on with things, as normal, non-obsessive people tend to do. The apparent civil war we keep hearing about just isn’t happening.

Of course, certain precautions must be taken to avoid being drawn into a vortex of anti-Trump mania. During my visit I carefully avoided tiny outposts of Trump fixation, including Hollywood celebrity households, the offices of any former Clinton staffers and newsrooms at the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post and MSNBC.

media_camera Chatting in Memphis with the owner of the Arcade Restaurant, an old Elvis haunt

I also dodged most college campuses, although a day or two at the excellent University of Iowa proved happily Trump-free.

It helps, too, if your point of arrival in the US isn’t California, where a ragtag pro-Hillary resistance movement remains active. Instead, I flew direct to Dallas before commencing a forensic multistate listening tour through Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma.

As it happens, all of those states voted for Trump. But their larger cities tended to side with Clinton, so a certain balance was available. If people from either side of the alleged Trump divide wished to speak out, I was there to hear them.

Except that nobody wanted to talk about Trump, Clinton or politics in general. This wasn’t due to apathy or lack of engagement. It was because there are more interesting topics of conversation, such as, well, just about everything. Work. Family. Sport. Music. Weather. Cars. Food. The semi-trailer carrying a few tons of bourbon that crashed and caught fire on the interstate. You know, topics people care about outside of election years.

media_camera Learning about the complexities of Ford’s 427 SOHC engine in Bowling Green, Kentucky

Support for Trump was evident mostly via bumper stickers and t-shirts. One fellow contentedly mingled among a Kentucky crowd wearing a shirt with the slogan “Make America Straight Again”, which would likely result in a public shaming or worse if he wore it in LA or New York. Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” aren’t shy in the Bluegrass State.

As for Trump’s enemies, their media-driven campaigns seem to be consolidating rather than diminishing the president’s numbers. Several US friends were “Never Trumpers” – conservatives against Trump – in 2016. Now, partly out of sheer revulsion at media bias, they’re committing to a Trump vote in 2020.

Even the New York Times, relentlessly negative in its Trump coverage, has noticed what it describes as a “backlash to the backlash”. Trump’s approval rating among Republicans, the paper reported last month, is now about 90 per cent.

“Mr. Trump has also retained support across a range of demographics other than the working-class voters who are most identified with him. This includes portions of the wealthy college-educated people in swing counties, like Virginia’s Loudoun, in the country’s most politically competitive states,” the NYT continued.

“Many of these voters say their lives and the country are improving under his presidency, and the endless stream of tough cable news coverage and bad headlines about Mr. Trump only galvanizes them further.”

Perhaps those London protesters should have considered the potential for backlash before launching their comically-undersized baby Trump balloon last week. If there’s one thing guaranteed to boost support in the US for a sitting president, it’s British commies attempting to mock him.

media_camera Low mileage, slight exterior damage, only driven on Sundays. But enough about me, let’s talk about the car

There were large British protests against Ronald Reagan, too, following his win by 44 states to six over Jimmy Carter in 1980. The result? Four years later Reagan won by 49 states to just one. Deploy your anger with caution, leftist limeys.

It didn’t help that London’s furious thousands appeared not to know precisely why they were so upset. Asked by a Sky UK interviewer to explain his Trump opposition, one of the protesters said exactly this:

“Well, you know, I don’t think you can sort of live in a world where it’s sort of a bullying sort of person, that is a sort of kind of person who is going to win.

“And I think that’s sort of like for all this other things are going on, that sort of like culture where basically you know you can sort of like kind of put people down and sort of be the sort of you know the big person who is essentially you know uses negative sort of methods to put people down.

“I can’t agree with that.”

Can’t agree with what? That clip made it to YouTube, where it’s been viewed by at least five times as many people who were at the London demonstration. You might say it sort of undermined the entire sort of exercise.

media_camera It’s always nice to catch up with old friend Buc-ee beneath sunny Texas skies

Other protesters appeared to have no clue about two-term presidential limits or how the electoral college works. To say the least, these capers don’t play well at all in the states Democrats need to win if they are to unseat their nemesis.

Forget Russian collusion. All Trump needs to secure re-election in 2020 is more baby balloons and British baby babble in Trafalgar Square. If investigators look into the $60,000 raised to fund that balloon, they might even find a few donations from Donald Trump himself.

(Photographs courtesy of US adventure amigo Iowahawk. Please enjoy further images here.)