I’VE been trying hard to compose a suitable letter of condolence and the words just won’t come.

The magnitude of her personal disaster is so daunting – and the forward prospects so dire – that it’s just not easy to flag up any comfort.

Just what do you say to a lifelong Democrat in New York when her new President is a fellow resident of that fine city, but a man for whom the word “crass” seems wholly inadequate?

Were The Donald merely a stranger to normal civil courtesies, it would be bad enough, not least after the effortless charm of his predecessor.

But a man whose skin makes tissue paper seem robust, a man who spends the twilight hours tweeting his latest insults, is not a man you want within several million miles of the nuclear codes.

Incredibly his press secretary, a woman who has spent the last year mopping up after each indiscretion, uttered the immortal defence this week after he chose to call Meryl Streep “overrated” following her Golden Globe award. (She had had the temerity to criticise his lampooning of a disabled reporter.)

What Kelly Anne Conway suggested was that everyone should just ignore what comes out of her boss’s mouth and concentrate on “what’s in his heart”.

Frankly that’s not an organ which would appear to feature much in his deliberations, but that’s not the point.

When President Trump is sitting round a table with other world leaders, or in a war room in time of crisis, or going off-piste – as he does when making a speech – I doubt his audience will readily dismiss the verbiage, once they manage to untangle it. (You do sometimes wonder if English is his first language.)

You can’t have someone sitting in the Oval Office with the temperament of a two-year-old and the attention span of a restless gnat. Except that shortly we will have.

You can see why that sympathy letter has been so very difficult to write.