Donald Trump’s success is also a revelation of the weaknesses of the American left, which is plagued by self-righteousness and the belief that painting your opponent as a threat to democracy is a political agenda. But blackmail is not a strategy.
Category: Trump And The World
This year’s U.S. presidential candidates cannot ignore foreign policy issues, which are usually absent from the campaign; Ukraine and the Middle East are on the agenda. But while American voters will likely choose their next commander-in-chief based on domestic issues, the rest of the world will suffer the consequences.
The third indictment against Donald Trump raises the legal dispute between the United States and its former president to a new level. While Trump cries foul play, drawing shameful comparisons with Nazi persecution 1930s Germany, the consequences of the trial can’t be predicted.
At 6 p.m. local time Wednesday in Rome, while much of the world was transfixed on Washington, D.C., Italian reporters were huddled in a vast room of the nation’s Parliament to witness another political crisis unfolding. Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced that his minor party would pull out of the government, plunging Italian […]
By closing Donald Trump’s social media accounts, the Big Tech platforms have recognized for the first time their fundamental responsibility for the content they broadcast. But for this and other reasons that now also means the regulators must step up.
The assault on the Capitol wasn’t an attempted coup, per se. But the ramifications of how to hold Trump responsible are fundamental for the future of the American democracy.
For all his experience in government, Biden is entering unfamiliar territory. Trump, barking at the president-elect’s heels and challenging his legitimacy, will try to make the transition harder still.
With Joe Biden in the role of Brutus…?
It’s Joe! After the world watched for four days as the United States counted its votes, Joe Biden has clinched victory over Donald Trump in one of the most consequential presidential elections in American history. Trump’s four tumultuous years in the White House are now bound to end, even if the outgoing president has vowed […]
By prematurely declaring victory, while the counting of votes is still ongoing, Donald Trump is taking a leaf out of an autocrat’s playbook.
Italian populist party leader Matteo Salvini’s disappointing results in regional elections is being blamed on his erratic handling of the health crisis in one of the worst-hit countries.
The bombastic president seems to have little regard for precedence or decorum. But is he just an anomaly? And if not, what happens if he loses?
In loudly rejecting President’s Trump threat to label Mexican drug gangs terrorists, Mexico’s government is covering its failure, if not reluctance, to tackle systemic corruption and its offspring, crime.
President Trump’s erratic strikes against the world’s trading regime require a collective response, as unilateral state reprisals cannot check an ‘arrogant’ U.S. administration.
The U.S. president’s abrupt decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria was short-lived. But backpedal as he might, the damage is already done.
President Donald Trump’s threat to raise tariffs against Mexico over immigration is political blackmail, and potentially makes nonsense of any trading deal with the U.S.
WASHINGTON — Next, more of the same, but with more entrenched division, a bitter crossfire of allegations and then, finally, a reckoning in the form of the 2020 presidential election. The long-awaited conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is likely to harden congressional Republicans’ wall of support for President Trump, strengthen Democratic demands to hold Trump to account — and result in little change in public opinion, according to historians and politicians who have studied past national scandals. Mueller’s conclusion — he found no evidence of collusion with Russia but […]
The aggressive Republican stance on Venezuela reflects an attempt to seduce Latino voters in Florida.
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — Two newly released reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee about Russian interference in the 2016 election have been nothing short of revelatory. Both studies — one produced by researchers at Oxford University, the other by the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge — describe in granular detail how the Russian government tried to sow discord and confusion among American voters. And both conclude that Russia’s campaign included a massive effort to deceive and co-opt African Americans. We now have unassailable confirmation that a foreign power sought to exploit racial tensions in the United States for its own gain. Ever […]
-Analysis- WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pledged in his campaign that he would not be predictable. He’s more than lived up to that promise this week, and along the way, he has made a hash out of the way business is being done in Washington. Three times this week, Trump abruptly and unexpectedly changed course, lending credence to perceptions of a presidency in chaos. The biggest bombshell came Thursday afternoon, when Trump announced that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis would leave the administration at the end of February, and Mattis’s resignation letter explicitly stated that he and the president were not […]
-OpEd- BERLIN — Thousands of students marched through Tehran last weekend, and state television broadcast the protest march live. The crowd burned U.S. flags and pictures of President Donald Trump in front of the building of the former U.S. embassy. And, yes, they chanted: “Death to America.” After the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear treaty […]
America’s midterm elections saw Democrats recapture the House, but lose ground in the Senate. A nation as divided as ever, though with new checks on Trump.
-Analysis- BERLIN — Democracies are made of constant ups and downs. Sometimes one party is on top, the next it’s another. And what may look like a dramatic election result often is, in reality, nothing more than the natural ebb and flow that characterizes healthy democracies. Every now and then, however, comes a moment when […]
With more sanctions for China and curbs on NAFTA, Donald Trump is fulfilling his campaign pledges to curtail globalization — free trade and vast business interests be damned.
Proposed changes to the trilateral trade accord could scare off investors, hurt Mexican automakers, and sour relations with Canada, analyst Luis Rubio argues.
The Argentine pontiff, used to navigating politics in Buenos Aires, is battling at a whole different level now. And his papacy may hang in the balance.
The President’s former lawyer pleads guilty on the same day his former campaign chairman is convicted of financial crimes. The hand of special counsel Robert S. Mueller is significantly strengthened. What happens now?
The U.S. president wants to impose his will and whims on all partners. The EU, for the sake of its own security, needs to resist.
It’s not just Donald Trump’s wall. Around the world, people are erecting new and increasingly strict lines of division.
-OpEd- This must have been the moment he was waiting for: an energetic handshake with Donald Trump, with a smile and a deep look into his eyes to top it off. The two men seemed to be sealing a fresh pact. Cameras flashed, capturing the important moment for newspapers and history books — the five […]
The U.S. trade deficits that have prompted the Trump administration to raise tariffs have a result of the universal use of dollars and are unrelated to ‘unjust’ trading practices.
For decades, economists scorned protectionism as a losing proposition. Now some have begun to admit that not everyone benefits from open markets.
Like the the UK and U.S. election surprises before, Italy’s recent populist triumphs marked a revolt by voters outside the major urban centers.
WASHINGTON — How many times have we heard that this is the year of the woman? Let’s just say, several. Each decade for the past century or so seems to have presented a fresh feature to justify yet another proclamation of historic import. From suffrage (1920) to the pill (1960) and legalized abortion(1973) to Gloria Steinem and Ms magazine (1972) to “Reviving Ophelia” (1994) — fast-forwarding to the recent pink-capped Women’s March (2017) and the #MeToo movement (2017) — women have been pushing their way forward to reach parity with men. Many of the original goals have been reached. Women […]
WASHINGTON — For the moment, at least, it appears to be a clear-cut victory — the biggest foreign policy win of his young administration. President Donald Trump has brought his arch-nemesis, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a.k.a. “Little Rocket Man,” to the table to negotiate away his nuclear arsenal. Optimists declared a major breakthrough. Even pessimists acknowledged that Trump’s hard line against Pyongyang, after decades of less forceful U.S. effort, played a significant role in moving one of the world’s most vexing and threatening problems in a potentially positive direction. But in the afterglow of the surprise announcement — […]
WASHINGTON — As he heads to Florida this weekend, President Donald Trump is following in the footsteps of former President Barack Obama, a man he loathes and a leader whose time in office in many ways came to be defined by mass shootings. Obama bequeathed on his successor an almost ritualistic response to gun tragedies, beginning with the 2011 attack on then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and ending with the 2016 Dallas attack that left five officers dead. There were 15 speeches from the White House, countless prayers for the fallen and more than a dozen visits to the crime scenes. […]
-Analysis- It’s now more than a year since Donald Trump“s inauguration as the 45th President of the United States, and the media’s animosity towards him continues unabated. After his surprise victory against the wishes of the establishment, Trump remains the target of a never-ending campaign against his legitimacy, his very presence at the White House […]
FORT POLK — In training exercises in a mock Afghan village constructed here on a base amid swampland, the U.S. Army is applying the military lesson of the war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq: Help your partners beat the enemy, but don’t try to do the fighting yourself. Letting others fight the battle hasn’t been the American way in modern times, to our immense national frustration. The U.S. military became bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, much as it had a generation earlier in Vietnam, by trying to reshape societies with U.S. firepower. For the military, the […]
-Analysis- WASHINGTON — So Michael Wolff wrote a book about Donald Trump. Perhaps you’ve heard about it? The internet spent a few days pointing and laughing at the more extraordinary claims about Trump’s behavior (including some the book didn’t actually make), and then settled down to the serious business of figuring out which of them were true. The consensus here in Washington is that Wolff has perhaps been a little too credulous with his sources, particularly with Steve Bannon, who has since recanted. But beneath that is the feeling that while many of the specifics are in question, the underlying […]
-Analysis- By the end of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, people will wonder: Was there anything he did not say? Any line he did not cross? As a lifelong businessman, he has declared war early and often on diplomatic niceties, proud to speak “like the people.” The problem is that he is a person who speaks […]