I WOKE up on Wednesday morning and found the world had changed overnight.

The day before, the golden hues of autumn had been shining in the sunshine, but I awoke to find the world carpeted by a soggy blanket of white snow.

The night before I had gone to bed basking in the certainty of a Clinton victory – she had a comfortable five per cent lead in the polls and, according to the Huffington Post, a 98.2 per cent chance of victory – but I awoke to find Donald Trump had triumphed.

His victory is seen as part of the march of the outsiders, a rebellion against the establishment politicians who have habitually let the voters down by failing to fulfil their promises – a march, it could be argued, that started here in the North-East when Ray Mallon was elected Middlesbrough mayor by taking on the Labour establishment.

Brexit is a more famous victory for the outsiders, but just as “Brexit means Brexit” without anyone having a clue what Brexit means, so Trump means that the US has got Trump without anyone having a clue about what Trump means.

Did he really mean all the conciliatory words of his acceptance speech, his positive talk about uniting the country and rebuilding communities, or did he mean what he said on the campaign trail about excluding and deporting people based on their religion or nationality?

Time and again during the campaign, he promised to build a wall between the US and Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants. Not any old wall, though, but an “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful” wall.

Now, Hadrian’s Wall, built to keep out the nasty Scots, is 84 miles long. The Berlin Wall, built to keep out the nasty west, is 96 miles long. But the US/Mexico border is 1,900 miles long.

George Bush introduced the Secure Fence Act in 2006 and built 650 miles of flimsy fencing along the border. It cost $2.4bn and didn’t work, so they gave up, but Mr Trump says he’s going to build his wall out of concrete, and between 30ft and 55ft high. The Washington Post says it’ll cost $25bn to build, and it’ll be worthless unless there are guards permanently stationed along its length to make sure no one’s climbing over it.

And it’d be an environmental nightmare: jaguars and black bears roam across the border wily nily, and the rare pygmy owl flies across it – at no higher than 12ft. Its encounter with Mr Trump’s 55ft high wall would make fascinating viewing on an Attenborough programme.

So in their desperation to get rid of politicians who don’t fulfil all their promises, the Americans have elected a politician who will definitely not fulfil his primary promise.

My favourite fact that I learned during the campaign about Mr Trump is also the most trivial: he is going to be the heaviest president since William Taft in 1909. Mr Trump is 6ft 2ins and weighs up to 19 stone; “Big Bill” Taft was also 6ft 2ins and weighed up to 25 stone. Stories about his size are legion – he may once have got stuck in the White House bath, and when a university offered to make him a “chair of law” he declined, saying he would only accept if they made him a “sofa of law”.

WT Stead, the great social campaigner and former editor of this paper, was lured across the Atlantic with the promise that he could address a peace conference with President Taft. Unfortunately, he sailed to meet Big Bill on the Titanic, and never made it. I just hope Big Don doesn’t take us all down with him.