America

It’s often the rotator blades of Marine One that blare over Donald Trump’s voice as he stands near the helipad on the south lawn of the White House. In Turnberry, in Scotland, it was bagpipes. Trump, playing host to the Prime Minister, performed his now familiar ingratiation ritual as he welcomed Sir Keir and Lady Victoria Starmer to his golf course. ‘Our relationship is unparalleled,’ he said, above the din. He flattered the PM’s wife and even suggested, in his delightful nonsensical way, that she is a well-known figure all over the United States. Finally, the bagpiping stopped and the world could hear as Trump and the reporters rattled through the

For someone widely believed to have lost a presidential election just a year ago, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro is looking remarkably defiant – and still firmly in power. Maduro has just pulled off another patriotic spectacle – a choreographed homecoming of Venezuelan migrants with flags, cameras, and emotional reunions. This followed a deal with the Donald Trump administration that secured the return of 252 Venezuelans from CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison. Trump has breathed fresh political oxygen into a regime many thought was on the brink Maduro cast himself as a protector, bringing his people home from what he called ‘concentration camps,’ with the regime launching an investigation into alleged abuses. For

Things are not going so well with left-wing comedian talk show hosts over the water. Last week came the news of the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert by CBS/Paramount. And Ellen de Generes, whose daytime chat show was chopped back in 2022, revealed this weekend that she’s moved permanently to the Cotswolds, where she is currently farming chickens (she was keeping sheep too, but they kept running away from her). Both of these developments are being attributed to the reelection of one Donald J. Trump as President. Colbert’s firing by Paramount came very soon after his outburst on his show about the company settling a lawsuit by

It took Donald Trump six months, at least six useless phone calls with Vladimir Putin and more than a thousand Ukrainian civilians killed since the start of his second term for the realisation to finally hit: Russia has no intention of ending the war. Today, the American President took a U-turn from praising Putin and unveiled a new plan to arm Ukraine. Nato allies will purchase ‘billions of dollars’ worth of US military equipment to send to Ukraine, with 17 Patriot air defence systems already being prepared for delivery. Trump will also impose 100 per cent tariffs on Russia and its trade partners if Putin doesn’t make a deal to

As President Trump unveiled his latest round of tariffs last night, investors barely paid any attention. The stock markets barely moved. The currency markets remained sleepy. And most of the traders in the global financial markets went back to planning their summer holidays. Compared to ‘Liberation Day’ back in April, it was a damp squib. Have investors learned to shrug off Trump’s obsession with levies on imports? They certainly matter far less than he thinks they do.  It was a typically eccentric performance. Yesterday afternoon, the White House fired off a series of letters imposing new tariffs on some of America’s main trading partners. Japan faces 25 per cent tariffs,

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has announced that he intends to create a new third party in the US called the America party. After his own poll on X showed that two out of three favoured the venture, the outspoken billionaire has now put his money where his mouth is and taken the plunge to found and finance his new party. Although the 54-year-old owner of X, Tesla, SpaceX and other hi-tech enterprises has been a US citizen since 2002, because he was born in South Africa he cannot run for president himself. But he says he will fund the new party after spectacularly falling out with President Trump

At yesterday’s Nato summit in The Hague, all but one of the 32 leaders agreed to increase their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP as President Trump has been demanding. The exception was Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. His insistence that actually 2.1 per cent will be enough has enraged President Trump.  Trump described the Nato summit’s achievements as ‘tremendous’, celebrating its recognition of the need for other Nato members to take up the burden of the defence of Europe. He added that ‘it was 2 per cent [of GDP] and we’ve got it up to 5 per cent’. But he had harsh words for Spain, describing the