Americans are divided as to whether this has been a good, bad or pretty much the same as always week for Donald Trump.

The ex-president is now legally stigmatised as a sex abuser. Journalist E. Jean Carroll also managed to legally out him as a serial liar. Of course, most people have for years regarded Trump as a lying sex pest, but it is another matter having it unanimously confirmed by a courtroom jury of your peers.

The Trump sex abuse trial was quickly followed by a CNN-organised town hall meeting in New Hampshire where the former president continued to defame Ms Carroll (which may end up costing him even more money). He also refused to back Ukraine and said he would end the war in 24 hours; plunge the world into economic chaos rather than raise the US debt ceiling; would pardon most of the January 6 Capitol Hill rioters and, of course, claimed that he won the 2020 presidential election race.

Anyone who disagrees with him continues to be a nasty, lying peddler of fake news.

So what impact will all the above have on Trump’s bid for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination and a possible Trump-Biden re-run in 2024. I put that and several other questions to my podcast co-host Lockwood Phillips. You can listen to his replies on TransAtlantic Riff at Spotify.com.

Lockwood, I should add is a Trump-supporting conservative Republican. He reckoned that this week’s events will have no impact on Trump’s election chances. His base and position within the Republican Party is secure and Biden’s unpopularity will sweep the ex-president back into the White House.

Lockwood is representative of a Trump supp0rter. But not all conservative Americans. Others whom I canvassed were adamant that they voted for him in the past but would never cast their ballot for him again.

One senior Trump-appointed official told me: “Trump will be toast by the time the primaries actually take place… still more legal shoes will drop…. He is a dead man walking.”

After I quizzed Lockwood on the attitude of Americans he turned the tables on me and asked me how people around the world were reacting to the possibility of a President Trump re-run. Fortunately I had canvassed my contact list of senior diplomats and journalists.

My French source was adamant that if Trump returns to the White House “the relationship between Europe and America will be seriously severed and that it might reinforce the position of those who favour, as does France, a real and autonomous defense policy for Europe.”

The report from Scandinavia was “we need to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.” The worst being Trump back in power.

British officials don’t like Trump. But the political facts of life are that ever since the day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbour, Britain has been militarily, politically and economically tied to the US. This means it has to work with whomever is in the White House.

But not everyone was anti-Trump. A senior Indian journalist reported that “despite his peccadilloes” the former president is popular in the sub-continent. He quoted a senior Indian official as saying: “We are not here to judge Trump’s personal life.

“We look at whether or not he was good for India and the answer to that is a resounding yes. His ego and vanity made him relatively easy to manipulate, and if he fancied himself as a tough negotiator, we could make him believe he was winning while ensuring that we didn’t lose.”

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”