The cardinal should go to confession. Timothy Dolan let a white-tie charity dinner in New York showcase that most uncharitable of men, Donald Trump. At the annual Al Smith dinner, Dolan suffused the impious Trump in the pious glow of Catholic charities. Dolan looked on with a doting expression as Trump made his usual degrading, scatological comments about his foils, this time cloaked as humour.

“We have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child,” Trump told the New York fat cats. “It’s a person who has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever. But enough about Kamala Harris.”

Donald Trump talks with Cardinal Timothy Dolan at last week’s white-tie charity dinner in New York.Credit: AP

Trump also offered this beauty: “I used to think the Democrats were crazy for saying that men have periods. But then I met Tim Walz.” When Trump joked about keeping Doug Emhoff away from nannies, even he admitted that it was “too tough”.

As he did in 2016 when he crudely attacked Hillary Clinton as she sat on the dais, Trump added a rancid cloud to what used to be a good-tempered bipartisan roast. Dolan could have stood up and told Trump “Enough!” We have been longing for that voice of authority who could deliver the Joseph Welch line – “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long........

© Brisbane Times