Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
I can understand some people not liking the current president of the United States. As Conrad Black put it recently, ‘Donald Trump is a strange cat and an acquired taste.’ What I don’t understand is people who should know better being afraid of Donald Trump. For example, how can it be that among all the … Read more
In my reporting on John Bolton, the hardline former US Ambassador to the UN, I have noticed a trend. Bolton very clearly wants in. And he has a very specific way of going about it. Some context: despite being a George W. Bush alum, Bolton has largely vociferously backed President Donald Trump. Bolton has been … Read more
The AIPAC conference, that annual celebration of the triangular romance between America, Israel and American Jews, concluded last night with the traditional protestations of undying love, democratic compatibility and common values. Meanwhile, AIPAC’s identity crisis deepens, and a redefinition of the goals of the American-Israeli relationship looms. AIPAC is studiously bipartisan, but the maladroit policies … Read more
The weeping and wailing that is greeting Trump’s imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum products entering the US is evidence that no one in America knows anything about the history of the Grand Old Party. Paul Ryan and the libertarian right are acting as if the President is betraying some long and distinguished tradition. … Read more
We should by now be used to Trump’s modus operandi. But we aren’t. We should all know the art of his deals. But we don’t. He is the counterpuncher who quite often smacks first and then retreats. Look at the tariffs story now unfolding. It goes like this: Trump makes fierce opening gambit. This shocks … Read more
Is Texas, the Lone Star State, about to get a little lonesome for the GOP? There’s been lots of talk in recent months that Senator Ted Cruz may face a stiffer challenge for reelection than he had anticipated. But now a wave of Democratic voter enthusiasm today in primary elections is adding further credibility to … Read more
Should taking rights away from innocent people be a first resort or a last resort—or no resort at all—in response to a spate of heinous crimes? If we were talking about the First Amendment rights of religious minorities or of free speech, most liberals would insist that people who had committed no crime shouldn’t forfeit … Read more
If accounts in the press are to be believed, President Trump has reached a fresh nadir. “These are the darkest days in at least half a year,” reports The Washington Post. “Sources close to President Trump say he is in a bad place,” chimes in the impressively-sourced Axios. Buried in the Post story is a … Read more
U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is blocking former Ambassador John Bolton from taking over as National Security Advisor, Cockburn has learned. John Bolton was first reported as heir apparent to McMaster by The National Interest in January. McMaster was nearly ousted from the White House summer of last year, ostensibly by a faction lead by … Read more
A friend who works for a prominent, hardline conservative think tank writes: ‘So, can we all admit that Trump is basically a Democrat now on guns?’ On Wednesday, I wrote that American gun reform is close to happening. In the intervening hours, that view has been buttressed by a series of comments from the president … Read more
Only very rarely in today’s Washington, D.C. is a cause so strong that it brings together America’s most famous progressive with one of the country’s most ideological conservatives. But the nasty, bloody, and intractable proxy war in Yemen – and the U.S. military’s involvement in it – is one of those causes. Yesterday afternoon, Vermont … Read more
He did not address how he might respond to the inevitable debate that will now consume America over the legality of assault weapons. Again, here he differs from Obama, who for instance used his speech in the wake of the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon to make an appeal for what he called ‘common-sense … Read more
With the drop in his poll ratings to around 35 percent, Donald Trump faces a fresh peril. A further erosion in his numbers would threaten his ability to maintain his hold on a Republican Congress that he desperately needs to ward off the threat of impeachment. His old fighters from the primary campaign such as … Read more
Three years ago at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) just outside Washington, I convened in a large room with a small group of mostly British expatriates to watch Nigel Farage rail against the European Union. That was then; this is now, and today Farage is one of the event’s most iconic superstars. His speeches have been upgraded to the main ballroom where he’s received adoringly (the woman sitting next to me last year cheered louder for him than she did for Trump). Afterwards throngs corner him in hallways brimming with grins and hoisting cell phones high. Yes, welcome to CPAC, the volatile, star-studded Lollapalooza of American conservatism, held
Once in a while some Socialist Worker people set up a stall outside my local Tesco to shout slogans at the progressive middle-class folk who make up much of the local demographic. One of the phrases I’ve heard them use is ‘Refugees welcome! Tories out!’ which is great and everything, except – what if the refugees are Tories? But then there are Sacred Groups and Out Groups, and each has their role to play in the modern morality play that is leftist politics. Ideological tribalism is the subject of a new book by Yale’s Amy Chua, who argues that politics has replaced national or religious identity as a source of division. Chua
The news that Marion Maréchal-Le Pen will share a stage this week with US conservatives, addressing the annual Conservative Political Action Conference event shortly after vice-president Mike Pence, has caused much excitement within the French right. The 28-year-old Maréchal-Le Pen, niece of Marine, the leader of the National Front, withdrew from political life in June after her party’s disastrous result in the second round of the presidential election. Allegedly disillusioned with the direction the party had taken in the previous months, focusing more on the economy and the EU, than on social conservative issues that are close to her heart, the departure of the golden girl of the National Front
Wednesday marked the 72nd anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted Emperor Hirohito to announce Japan’s surrender in a radio address, though fanatical war hawks tried to stop him. After 1945, Japan developed a pacifist movement and a so-called peace constitution. No country has deployed these … Read more
Peregrine Worsthorne, the hugely distinguished British journalist, has died aged 96. He was a wonderful man and a brilliant columnist, who once described his job as ‘the articulation of an intelligent, well thought out, coherent set of prejudices’. He also worked as Washington correspondent for The Times of London and the Daily Telegraph. In 2014, … Read more
