The rest, as they say, is history.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in due course I received a call from a very aggrieved Tony. You told me there was nothing to worry about, he complained. I did indeed, I responded, but for a very good reason. I embroidered my theme.
Owing to my superior political analytical skills, I had been certain from the outset that Trump was going to do a late surge through the frontrunners on the back of the Middle America blue-collar hordes disenfranchised by economic events of recent times.
The ones who -- back in the USA's Golden Years -- had secure jobs with generous terms and conditions, not to mention medical and pension schemes.
Maybe not quite in the realm of the rising executive class who now had seriously elongated automobiles parked in the driveways of their suburban Shangri-La, with the two kids and Spot the dog romping on a vast manicured lawn, such as often graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. But not far off.
Jobs where an honest eight hours a day brought you reasonable security, comfort and a future for your kids, as long as you didn't have too many.
But something happened on the way to the forum.
The manufacturers that once employed these once proud artisans now found it more profitable to take the capital accumulated on the backs of their employees and parlay it in the global financial services bazaar instead. And all those places around the planet with cheaper labour could now take care of the messy business of making actual things.
Tony, I averred, it was simply inevitable that this disillusioned "silent majority" was finally going to give the big middle finger to the business-as-usual pollies only offering more of the same, and come out rooting for a blue-collar champion.
Even if he is a white-collar, rapacious, conniving, non-tax-paying, exploitative, dodgy-as-a-two-bob-watch loose cannon like The Donald.
Whose enterprises, even when they do make money, usually do it by screwing down their employees to serf-like wages and conditions.
So Tony, in conclusion, while it was simply inevitable that Trump was going to do another Kiwi and take out the big one, I wouldn't have been acting as a caring and compassionate friend if I had of subjected you to several months' worth of -- albeit well-founded -- worry.
Much better that for that period you had blissfully ignorant respite from fretting and moiling about yet another calamity that could overtake the world -- time which could be dedicated to the really important things in life like losing money on under-performing nags and then having to quaff huge quantities of vino to assuage the loss.
The cunning strategy now explained, naturally Tony thanked me profusely for my consideration as a true friend, and while he was at it genuflected to my astounding ability to pick a rank -- a really rank -- outsider.
