bluffer

Separately, it emerged at an ongoing inquiry that Mr Williams had described a campaigner who tried to draw attention to faults in Horizon software in 2015 as a "bluffer".

Separately on Thursday, the inquiry heard how Mr Williams had referred to a former sub-postmaster and campaigner, Tim McCormack, as a "bluffer" in a 2015 email.

He said he thought Mr McCormack was a bluffer because he was saying: "You have options, or else" which Mr Williams saw as "a threat".

“Mitch McConnell is the most scrutable leader; he’s not a bluffer,” said Scott Jennings, a former McConnell aide and political strategist in Kentucky.

An unskilled bluffer, Trump is instinctively wary of real confrontation, knowing as he does that he is president of a country that has been baffled by protracted wars and is not keen to engage in more.