Thank you for having me

That has to be the most annoying phrase of the 2020 US presidential election.

I'd only ever heard 'thank you for having me' on US tv till recently, but it hasn't taken long for it to spread to the monkey-see-monkey-do journalists in the UK.

Where the US presidential election is concerned, if you live in Europe, you're in one of two camps.

Either you're fed up with the whole business and have told everyone on social media that you couldn't care less who the next US president is. Or you're watching in amazement as a man who still claims to be the defender of US democracy does his best to undermine the democratic process. 

I'm in the second group. 

We honestly can't afford to ignore what's going on in the USA. The Westminster government is keeping very quiet. And we know why: Trump doesn't rate them and Biden is suspicious of them.  

I like the USA - what I've seen of it - the east coast, the west coast and the southern states. I've visited a few times. I've often been infuriated by how I've been treated. Made to stand for an couple of hours at San Francisco airport after a long flight while airport managers and employees agreed whether employees entering hour 11 of  their 8-hour shift were entitled to overtime payments. And standing for a few hours in the JFK arrival hall on a lockdown till security sorted out if there really was a security risk. There wasn't. What there certainly was was hysteria among the security staff. I have to say that doesn't inspire confidence. 

Canada is a much friendlier place to visit. I recommend it. At least Canadians don't treat tourists as  possible invaders. And in Europe, we at least pretend we like having tourists while we take their money.

That's not an issue as far as I can see in the USA: tourists figure nowhere in the great capitalist scheme of things. Most Americans don't come across tourists, and those who work in the tourist trade clearly think tourists are a pest. 

But the US scenery is fabulous. And if you have the time to drill down into the "culture" (do Americans accept they have a culture, same as everybody else?) it's really interesting. Good people. 

I decided early on that I wasn't going to watch the US presidential election on any UK outlet: the BBC, ITN and Sky can't deliver a decent impartial or investigative comment on a UK topic, so they're not going to get too worked up about what happens in the USA. They've all got journalists "embedded".  Great phrase. Mostly useless. C4 might be watchable but their journalists are hamstrung these days by the fear of having their funding removed. 

In the past fortnight, I've jumped between CNN, RT, and Euronews.  I was horrified to see Euronews consulting Nigel Farage about the state of things in the USA. It wouldn't bother me if Farage vanished off the face of the earth. Now. He is poisonous. I just have this awful feeling there are still people in England who admire the man, even though he's as close to being a Fascist as it's possible to be. I can't imagine any news outlet giving him air time. But Euronews does. 

RT: well, you know what you're getting. Lots of slogans. No analysis. 

That for me leaves CNN. Yes, the channel is left-leaning. Pro-Biden. That suits me. But CNN has some pretty clued-in journalists. It's a relief to get proper analysis of  the statistics. 

Right now, I'm watching the presidential count in its final hours (I hope). The amazing thing for me is that Trump claims dark deeds are afoot. Isn't the president the man best placed to suss out what he calls "shenanigans" and "malarkey"? Why didn't he?