If Trump fires Kirstjen Nielsen, Michelle Obama may be our only hope

So far, there is no hint about who the president has in mind to replace her. But given the calibre of options, one can only hope Michelle will U-turn on her promise and run for office after all

Nielsen is set to join the roster of collaborators ruthlessly punished by six- or seven-figure book advances and fat contracts from Fox News (Reuters)

In any official ranking of sentences that appear to have been written with the help of a hallucinogen, this one would make the top three: the problem with Michelle Obama is that she isn’t more like Michael Gove.

In her new memoir, Becoming, the former first lady floats a seductive liberal fantasy to kill it stone dead: “Because people often ask me, I’ll say it here directly,” she writes. “I have no intention of running for office, ever.”

Unlike some, she doesn’t offer to sign away any leadership ambition in her blood. She can be taken at her word. Despite her massive lead (13 per cent in the latest poll) over president Donald J Bone Spur in a hypothetical 2020 match up, she will not be her country’s salvation nor her husband’s avenging angel.

Small wonder. “I’ve never been a fan of politics, and my experience over the last 10 years has done little to change that,” she writes with poignant understatement.

Little? Eight years of the most repugnant racist and sexist abuse; almost two more of observing the systematic destruction of Obama’s legacy. You can barely imagine the agonies heaped on this magnificent woman by politics.

But her account of election night 2016 in the White House cinema gives some wispy flavour of the heart-freezing horror. “As the movie wrapped up and the lights came on, Barack’s cell phone buzzed. I saw him glance at it … his brow furrowing just slightly. ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Results in Florida are looking kind of strange.’

“There was no alarm in his voice, just a tiny seed of awareness … The phone buzzed again. My heart started to tick faster … I watched [his] face closely, not sure I was ready to hear what he was going to say … I felt something leaden take hold in my stomach, my anxiety hardening into dread.”

And so to 20 January 2017, when the dread hardened into despair as this emblem of dignity and grace had to watch the transition of power. “The vibrant diversity of the two previous inaugurations was gone, replaced by … the kind of overwhelmingly white and male tableau I’d encountered so many times in my life.”

It may soon be more overwhelming. Trump is poised to sack Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary. Assuming he replaces her with another pallid, testes-sporting imbecile-sycophant, the tableau will be just as white but even more male.

In fairness to Trump, Nielsen’s failure is of course plain. Under her, US immigration policy has been far too cuddly and indulgent for civilised tastes.

In her own memoirs, Nielsen will probably use a version of Nuremberg defence to justify her public championing of baby-caging and the other enchantments she oversaw.

But for no stronger reason than the dictates of US legislation, as she fought a valiant losing battle to explain to her boss, she couldn’t follow his orders as zealously as he wanted.

So she is set to join the roster of collaborators ruthlessly punished by six or seven-figure book advances and fat contracts from Fox News.

Her departure will represent another tragic waste of talent. Surely her foreign affairs expertise should have seen her promoted to secretary of state. At a committee exploring Trump’s desire for more immigrants from Norway, and fewer from Africa’s “s***hole countries”, a senator asked her if Norway is a “predominantly white country”.

She paused to consider this, as anyone facing a devilishly complex enquiry would, before replying: “I actually do not know that, sir.” Typical gotcha question. Being only half-Danish by gene pool, how could she be expected to know about Nordic pigmentation?

So far, there is no hint about who Trump has in mind to replace her. But since the biomedical tech isn’t advanced enough to clone the late governor George Wallace, I’d like to put in a word for one of our own.

Recognising Tommy Robinson as a beloved beacon of white victimhood among the party’s neo-Nazi base (or “alt-right” as they snowflakily prefer it), Republicans in congress invited him to address them.

Robinson has been denied a visa because he once tried to enter the US on someone’s else passport. Identifying that as the kind of innocent error that might befall anyone (I once landed at La Guardia with Leon Trotsky’s passport), these fine legislators will now avail themselves of Tommy’s insights via a video link.

If Trump gauges the raw power of Robinson’s intellect from a 20 second Fox & Friends snippet, it would be the work of a presidential moment to give him a green card and the homeland security job.

There is a risk that Tommy’s personal experience would make him too hippyish and empathetic for the post. He’s looked at the travel ban from both sides now, win and lose. But I reckon he could be trusted to keep his inner Joni Mitchell under a tight rein.

What would you not give – a leg? a kidney? both kidneys? – for Michelle to liberate her inner Gove and renege on that vow?

This assumes many things, not least Trump surviving Robert Mueller, who is rumoured to be on the verge of nicking Don Jnr, and that she would win. A 13-point lead in a distant, imaginary race means nothing. It would be a bummer to watch her concession speech from a hospital dialysis suite.

But in the absence of a credible Democratic challenger who isn’t white, male and pushing 80, it would be awfully nice if Michelle Obama were somehow persuaded, in this one narrow field and no other, to be a little more like Michael Gove.