Trump administration

Melania’s mysterious messaging

On April 9, Melania Trump held a lone press conference. She showed up in a charcoal suit, delivered a speech and turned to exit, runway style, without pausing. Melania doesn’t take questions from the press. The facts, according to Melania: Jeffrey Epstein had not introduced her to Donald Trump. She met her husband, “by chance, at a New York City party, in 1998.” She and her husband were acquainted with Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein, but this was “common in New York City and Palm Beach.” She had engaged Maxwell in polite “casual correspondence” over email. That was the extent of the relationship. “I am not Epstein’s victim,” she said somberly.

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A change has come over Trump

Geostrategists used to fret over the “Eastern Question” or the Maginot Line or the Missile Gap. Today there is no doubt that the overriding geostrategic question of our day is whether the President of the United States is playing with a full deck. With the US-Israeli war on Iran failing, and depleting much of both countries’ non-nuclear defenses, with the Strait of Hormuz closed and western economies spiraling toward depression, Donald Trump greeted the world on Easter morning with a message to Iran’s leaders to “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards,” then threatened the next day to wipe out Iranian civilization. He then denounced the Pope for having imparted

The Pentagon’s holy war with Rome

America is having its Golden Age, Iran is about to get blasted into the Stone Age… and Elbridge Colby wants to go back to the Late Middle Ages? According to a Free Press report by Mattia Ferraresi, the Under Secretary of War for Policy summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s then-ambassador to the US, to a meeting in which the Avignon Papacy was invoked. (For those of you who didn’t go to Catholic school: in the 1300s the king of France had Pope Boniface VIII captured and beaten after the pope excommunicated him; a few years later the papacy moved to Avignon amid continued threats from the French crown and instability in Rome.)  During this meeting, Pentagon officials allegedly picked apart Pope Leo XIV’s “state of the world” address. This was the

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What will the Iran ceasefire cost Trump?

Might Donald Trump travel to Tehran this spring to open an American embassy and declare that he’s fallen in love with the new Iranian leadership? His volte-face on Tuesday night – announcing a two-week ceasefire with Iran – suggests that Trump is embarking upon a new course in the Middle East. After threatening to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, Trump announced that it’s time to call the whole thing off: “We received a 10-point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate.”  What that negotiation will look like is an open question. Early reports suggest that Trump, not Iran, caved on everything from Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz to acceptance of uranium enrichment, from the lifting of sanctions to

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Why Trump is tempting 25th Amendment talk

During his remarks in Budapest, Vice President J.D. Vance, who is trying prop up Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as he runs for reelection, appeared to think the unthinkable. Vance, who has been a hero for MAGA anti-interventionists, went all-in on attacking Iran. He indicated that America might resort to “tools” in its arsenal that “we so far haven’t decided to use.” Now the White House is denying that it plans to deploy nuclear weapons against Iran, after frenzied social media speculation that it might. Negotiations with Tehran are ongoing – and Trump told Fox’s Bret Baier that “if negotiations move forward today, and there is something concrete” that tonight’s 8 p.m. deadline “could change.” As Iran’s refusal to capitulate has exerted a maddening effect upon President Trump,

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Who’s the most special envoy?

On the final weekend of her tenure as Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem was in South America meeting the President of Guyana. Photos posted by the US Embassy in Guyana show Noem’s “senior advisor” Corey Lewandowski sitting alongside her. It would, of course, be “tabloid garbage” to repeat rumors of an affair between the two, to use Noem’s phrase when questioned (both Noem and Lewandowski have vehemently denied the affair, although she didn’t explicitly deny “sexual relations” when under oath in Congress). Noem’s South American jaunt seemed to straddle the role she was leaving and the one she’s just started. She was officially in Guyana on DHS business but has

Trump falls back on ‘you’re fired!’ as midterms loom

Pam Bondi’s departure as attorney general has prompted the usual Kremlinologist speculation. One theory has it that Donald Trump was furious that she may have warned Democrat Eric Swalwell about a planned FBI release of documents detailing his past relationship with a Chinese spy. Bondi’s replacement, Todd Blanche, dismissed these claims as false. Another theory is that the President had finally had enough of her errors over the handling of the Epstein files, given Bondi was recently subpoenaed in a bipartisan effort by the House. And Trump is widely reported to be frustrated at her failure to indict his archenemies, former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General

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Donald Trump is going on a firing spree

The surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump fired his attorney general Pam Bondi and appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche her temporary successor. It’s that he waited as long as he did. After exercising what is for him unusual restraint – his cabinet was in a state of perpetual upheaval during his first term as president – Trump is going on a firing spree. “He’s very angry, and he’s going to be moving people,” one top administration official told Politico yesterday. Next on the chopping block could be a host of Trump loyalists – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-Remer, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Director of National

Bondi out: is Trump culling the beautiful women from his cabinet?

More like Pam Gone-di! President Trump this afternoon confirmed that Attorney General Pam Bondi would be moving on to pastures new. In a Truth Social post announcing her dismissal, Trump called Bondi a “Great American Patriot and a loyal friend” who “did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.” “We love Pam,” wrote Trump. Deputy AG Todd Blanche, who Trump dubbed, “a very talented and respected Legal Mind,” will serve as Acting Attorney General. Bondi was Trump’s second choice as AG after his attempt to nominate Matt Gaetz failed. She will now “be transitioning to a

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Will NATO regret snubbing Donald Trump?

On April 4, NATO will be 77 years old. The chance that America will be counted among the celebrants when the birthday celebrations roll around is somewhere between nil and zero. President Trump had long predicted that if America needed help, NATO would not come to its aid, even though, as he sees it, the United States has spent billions of dollars over decades defending Europe from Russian aggression. And when America did need help in the war against Iran – a few mine sweepers, please, sirs – the answer “no” came back in several languages. Trump, who cannot legally exit NATO without Congress, will find ways to use his power as

What do the White House’s cryptic X videos mean?

The White House X account has won notoriety as a coven of young memesters scandalizing the nation. There have been meme images of leading Democrats decked out in sombreros, and clips featuring footage of Iranian military hardware being blown up interspersed with WiiSports.  Now the antics have been taken a step further. There is currently widespread talk of the United States “unleashing hell” on Iran once markets close this weekend, after its initial 15-point peace offer was rejected. There is even some frenzied speculation that things might go nuclear.  Not the best time then, to release a set of cryptic videos that seem to hint at some approaching cataclysm. One, at four

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How Trump and FIFA’s Gianni Infantino teamed up to rebrand peace

When you attend the court of King Donald, it’s important to genuflect. Unfamiliar foreigners in need of pointers can look to the man who is currently the most assiduous non-American flatterer: FIFA president Gianni Infantino. It’s only natural that, in the lead-up to this year’s soccer World Cup, the president of the global governing body of the sport should make regular visits to the host nation. Yet Infantino has gone above and beyond. He appears to have spent more time in Donald Trump’s orbit than some of the President’s cabinet secretaries. Infantino has been a willing accomplice in Trump’s campaign to secure the Nobel Peace Prize On paper, it would

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Dinner in Tehran, anyone?

Who wants to join me for dinner in Tehran or Havana? I suspect that both will be open for business very soon. I suppose we could even go to Caracas. As I write, the American flag has been raised at the American Embassy there for the first time in seven years. Amazing, isn’t it? And in Cuba? In mid-March, protesters were setting fire to the office of the Communist party in the town of Morón in the Ciego de Ávila province. Elsewhere across the island, protesters were in the street shouting, “Down with communism!” The nervous Cuban government released dozens of political prisoners. Since Donald Trump cut off its supply

The short attention-span war

It’s day seven of “Operation Epic Fury” – and the White House is posting through it. The war in Iran that Team Trump wants to show us is tailored for the short attention spans of the vertical video era. Consider this clip posted on X by the official White House account last night, which intersperses declassified footage of US drones hitting their targets with scenes from Gladiator, Iron Man, Braveheart, Top Gun: Maverick and Yu-Gi Oh. Or the video from earlier in the week that cuts between planes and bunkers being blown up and… SpongeBob SquarePants. The Israel Defense Forces’ X account has been equally out of pocket, while UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s TikTok aping the White House style is, like Starmer,

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America’s last war in the Middle East

Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. That might sound wildly optimistic, but what it really means is that war with Iran has been decades in the making. If the mission succeeds, it will mark the end of an era. And if it fails, this war will have exhausted what’s left of America’s willingness to remake the region by force. It’s not just that Iran puts the case for regime change to the ultimate test. America’s relationship with Israel is also on trial. That relationship has been strained lately by the war in Gaza –

Trump’s reality-show State of the Union speech

Donald Trump may have celebrated Team USA for winning the gold at the Olympics in hockey, but he was not in a puckish mood during his State of the Union speech. Instead, Trump stuck to his tried-and-true script of denouncing Democrats as “sick,” mocking concerns about affordability and cooing over Melania as a great new movie star. Far from nobody ever seeing anything like it, Trump delivered what everybody has already seen. Ever the salesman, he was not shy with the superlatives, declaring that America is the “hottest” country in the world – “bigger, better, richer, stronger than ever before.” If there was one thing that was longer than ever,

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What Trump got right in his State of the Union address

Watching Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address tonight, I thought of two homely things. One was something that a friend used to say to her young daughter: “Don’t forget to have an attitude of gratitude,” she would remind her preteen when that attitude was absent. The second thing I thought about was a fact I recently learned about Ulysses S. Grant. He was a great general, yes, and he was also a great, if generally under-appreciated, president. One sign of his greatness came posthumously. At his funeral, two of Grant’s pallbearers were Confederate generals. Grant had won the civil war, defeating the Confederacy, saving the Union. But in death he underscored his

Trump’s worrying appetite for war

As The Spectator goes to press, a great fleet of American war machines is whirring through the skies toward the Middle East. More than 50 fighter jets, plus stealth bombers and support aircraft, are joining what Donald Trump called an “armada” of US naval forces in the Arabian seas. The White House continues to say that it is pursuing a diplomatic solution with Iran. It’s possible that this latest military escalation is another of President Trump’s elaborate bluffs, designed to pressure the Iranian regime into accepting American and Israeli demands. But the President has been unusually mute about the situation on Truth Social. It’s fair to assume that the movement

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Dr. Oz’s war on Armenian medical fraud

As Gangs of New York showed us, those who’ve settled in America have a tendency to bring Old World grudges over with them. Judging by a recent video put out by Dr. Mehmet Oz – now serving as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services – one of these ancient feuds may now be playing out at the highest levels. American politics has been rocked by evidence of medical fraud to the tune of billions being committed by, inter alia, Somalis in Minneapolis. Naturally, the good doctor was sent to investigate. Then he made a second stop. Oz and his staff descended on the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles to investigate a similar

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Facts, unlike opinions, are hard to come by in Minneapolis

Did a Border Patrol officer kill Alex Pretti in self-defense after being alerted that he was carrying a gun in a chaotic scramble to arrest him? Or did he execute the anti-ICE protester in cold blood after he was disarmed? The truth is that it is difficult to know. Facts, unlike opinions, are hard to come by in Minnesota. Endless replays, as in the case of Renee Good who was shot dead in the city by an ICE officer she drove towards, aren’t helping to draw a consensus Endless replays, as in the case of Renee Good who was shot dead in the city by an ICE officer she drove

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