Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
The surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. It is that it took this long. Tillerson, a hapless manager who decapitated much of the senior ranks of the State Department, has finally suffered his own decapitation at the he hands of Trump. His replacement by CIA Director Mike Pompeo signals … Read more
Sometimes it’s almost as if Donald Trump wants the world to think he’s a Russian patsy. Yesterday, Rex Tillerson, as Secretary of State, warned Putin that Russia’s alleged assassination attempt on British soil would trigger ‘a response’. Today he’s been sacked. Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He … Read more
Robert Mueller, the former Director of the FBI and special counsel in the soap opera that is the Russia collusion investigation, has been on the case for ten months now. His team of attorneys and Washington prosecutors has interviewed dozens of witnesses, scanned hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, sent an unknown number of … Read more
For two years we’ve been hearing that Donald Trump is an ‘isolationist’, whatever that word is supposed to mean. Only now two op-ed writers in the New York Times have discovered that he isn’t — instead, Thomas Meaney and Stephen Wertheim write, ‘Let’s call Mr. Trump’s vision what it is: radical American imperialism.’ Let’s not, … Read more
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
Not many world leaders can claim to be on friendly personal terms with Donald Trump. There are fewer still who would regard a visit to this particular president’s White House as a crowning achievement, and one which would increase their popularity at home rather than being seen as a moral failing. So the lesson of … 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
‘Whatever complicates the world more — I do,’ Donald Trump once said. As President, that still seems to be his mantra. Everybody knows that he feels America has been ripped off for decades when it comes to global trade — and that he intends address imbalances that hurt his country wherever he can. But his … 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
When I mentioned on social media recently that I’d lost friends because of Brexit, I was quite surprised by the vehemence of the response. Lots of fellow Leavers had stories to tell about friends who now cut them dead or former clients who would no longer work with them. Many said they prefer to keep … 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
It seems a perverse fate that Donald Trump, the bogeyman of progressive America, should turn out to be the president who ends up delivering a measure of gun reform. In the wake of the Valentine’s Day massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida, President Trump has delivered a series of remarks promising a … Read more
Every week is extraordinary in the Trump administration — but this week seems stranger than most. Matters are rumbling in the belly of the beast. On Tuesday, we learned that Jared Kushner had his security clearance downgraded. Today, we learn that Hope Hicks, famously Trump’s most trusted aide, has resigned, a day after she testified … Read more
