All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
For the Democrats, the mounting furor over forcibly separating children from their parents at the border offers a golden opportunity before the midterm elections to tar Donald Trump as a heartless autocrat, a modern-day Baron Bomburst ruling over Vulgaria with his very own Child Catcher. Do a Caratacus Potts and Truly Scrumptious lurk in the
Writing in his space last week, Jacob Heilbrunn quipped that President Donald Trump’s summit in Singapore with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un went so well for the North Korean fat man that Vladimir Putin must now be itching to meet the Donald as soon as he can. Given how little Kim gave up in Singapore and … Read more
While the Anti-Trump Mandarins of the Commentariat (ATMC, for short) are busy untwisting their knickers after the President’s historic summit meeting with the Tubby Tyrant of North Korea, I have an important real-estate tip to pass along: beach-front property in North Korea. Keep your eye on it. As Trump said yesterday in his wide-ranging press … Read more
Let’s move past the false dichotomy of nationalism vs globalism
The reviews are coming in for Donald Trump’s performance in Singapore and they aren’t pretty. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times says Trump was ‘hoodwinked’. Ari Fleischer, the former press spokesman for George W. Bush, says ‘This feels like the Agreed Framework of the 90s all over again. NK gave its word to abandon
You can tell when Donald Trump has just achieved something: he starts being strangely amiable, and his critics start frothing at the mouth. He’s just met supposedly one of the most dangerous, evil men in the world — and made him look like a sweet overgrown child. He and Kim Jong-un signed an agreement and
Donald Trump means different things to different people. To his core supporters, he’s the man who will make America great again. To his diehard opponents, he is a dangerous juvenile with authoritarian tendencies. Ultimately, these descriptions are secondary to how Trump sees himself: a tough, dealmaking Svengali who has the experience and power of persuasion
This is Putin’s time. Next week, the Fifa World Cup kicks off in Moscow, and the Kremlin has spared no expense to showcase Vladimir Putin’s new Russia as a vibrant, safe and strong nation. Half a million visitors will be welcomed — with the Russian press reporting that the notorious ‘Ultra’ hooligans have been officially
New York This week 50 years ago saw the assassination of Robert Kennedy, a man I met a couple of times in the presence of Aristotle Onassis, whom some Brit clown-writer once dubbed Bobby’s murderer. (Bad books need to sell, and what better hook than a conspiracy theory implicating a totally innocent man?) I once
I’d been suffering under the misguided illusion that the purpose of mainstream publishers like Penguin Random House was to sell and promote fine writing. A colleague’s forwarded email has set me straight. Sent to a literary agent, presumably this letter was also fired off to the agents of the entire Penguin Random House stable. The
Moderates held off challenges from the far-left and right through their state’s unorthodox electoral system.
Yevgeny Prigozhin has been charged by Robert Mueller for interfering in the 2016 election.
Yevgeny Prigozhin has been charged by Robert Mueller for interfering in the 2016 election.
Tomorrow Californian Democrats will anoint the straight, white progressive prince of the San Francisco Bay as their chosen one.
If your pet conspiracy turns out to be real, as sometimes does happen, then you are no longer a ‘conspiracy theorist.’
The diplomat’s comments to Breitbart have caused German politicians to question his suitability.
The president is showing loyalty to conservatives who believe he was wrongfully prosecuted and punished.
Donald Trump is following through on his threat—or promise, as his voters see it—to impose steep tariffs on foreign goods in the name of supporting American industry, starting with levies of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium imports. Allies and neighbors that had been granted temporary exemptions are now set
The Attorney General was supposed to catch the snakes slithering into the White House.
Three theories on why the conservative author received a presidential pardon.
Three theories on why the conservative author received a presidential pardon.
And why has she signed an NDA with his think-tank?
Kim Yong-chol is believed to have ordered the sinking of a South Korean ship, killing 46.
By 74 it is easy to feel that you have seen it all, done it all, that nothing much surprises you any more. Striving gives way to coping. Drop a pencil and it rolls under the sofa. What you have to do is think about the best way to find it and pick it up.
Donald Trump got bad reviews in the press — no surprise — when he announced that Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and federal prosecutor, would join his legal team in the Trump-Russia special counsel investigation. The 74-year-old Giuliani is not as sharp as he was, some said, and isn’t really a practising
Just before Ireland voted overwhelmingly to end the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, Catholics in the fishing village of Clogherhead could be seen storming out of Sunday mass halfway through the service. Why? Their parish priest had come on too strong. He had not only ordered them how to vote but also supplied grisly details
The film awards season is over and Cannes has been handed back to wealthy holiday-makers, yet the #MeToo movement shows no signs of slowing down. Morgan Freeman is the most recent addition to the ignominious list of film producers, directors and actors who have had accusations of sexual harassment made against them since #MeToo took off in
How highly placed members of one administration mobilised the intelligence services to undermine their successors.
Between Ukraine and his associate Evgeny Freidman, it ’ s heating up for the president’s former lawyer.
Is the “American Dream”, as Donald Trump claims, dead? Is “America First” a policy of national pride or a dogwhistle to white supremacists? In this week’s books podcast we take the long view. My guest, Sarah Churchwell, excavates the long histories and surprisingly variable meanings of these two phrases in her new book Behold, America:
So much for the “World Peace” that Donald Trump bragged he would create at the June 12 Singapore summit. In a wildly inappropriate letter that veered between a bullying and lachrymose tone, Trump bowed to the inevitable in canceling the summit with Kim Jong-un. He had to do it before Kim did. Already Kim had
It will, as one pro-life campaigner told me, take an act of God to swing the Irish referendum for the No side tomorrow. I’m all for referendums but this one has been so wildly unbalanced as to make the Brexit campaign look almost effete in its regard for impartiality and fair play. The polls suggest a
During a dozen years in Belfast I collected a number of political coffee mugs, hailing from both sides of the divide. Unionist designs including the heartbreakingly punctuated ‘Ulster Say’s No’ (not merely to the Anglo-Irish Agreement; no to everything) and the impressively witty ‘Reservoir Prods’: four toughs in shades identified as ‘Mr Orange’ and ‘Mr
If the BBC really is, as Steve Bannon says, a communications department of the global elite, they messed up badly last night. Emily Maitlis’s 20-minute long interview with Bannon on Newsnight was mesmerising television — even, or especially, if you can’t bear the subject. It was also the longest advertisement for economic nationalism yet delivered