donald trrump Archives

Tuesday

February 25, 2025

The economic blackout movement trying to stop capitalism in its tracks

For weeks, I’ve been seeing calls for a February 28 “economic blackout” spread across my social-media feed like dandelion tufts in the wind. From midnight on February 27 to the following midnight, anyone participating in the blackout should avoid spending money at Amazon, Walmart or Best Buy. Do not buy fast food or gas, says “the People’s Union,” which is organizing the blackout. Don’t shop at major retailers. If you have to shop, make it only for essentials, like food to feed your kids, and emergency supplies, and only do it at small, local businesses. It’s possible I could participate in the blackout by accident, but I wouldn’t ever do something like this willingly. Obviously, I’m not the target audience.

Monday

February 24, 2025

Doug Bandow

Europe learns the facts of MAGA life

Panic, even hysteria, has swept Europe. Its leaders realize that in their case Trump should be taken literally as well as seriously, and he seems prepared to trade the transatlantic alliance for détente with Russia. Eight decades of good times for the continent might be coming to a dramatic end. Trump demonstrated contempt for Europe during his first term; however, his top aides moderated his antagonism, carrying on policy as normal. While out of office he evidently decided never again. Today he is firmly driving American foreign policy. As ever, Trump’s tactics are often dubious, even counterproductive. However, only shock treatment is likely to cause Europe to take its own defense seriously.

Sunday

February 23, 2025

Meghan Murphy

Against Canada’s anti-Americanism

You couldn’t have written a better comedy script than the one playing out in the apparently real war that has erupted between America and its usually irrelevant northern cousin. The hockey rink is particularly sacred ground for Canadians, which makes the ego hit doled out by President Donald Trump this week all the more painful. “I’ll be calling our GREAT American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished and very important, Fifty First State,” he posted on Truth Social Thursday morning. “I will be speaking before the Governors tonight in D.C. and will sadly, therefore, be unable to attend.

Saturday

February 22, 2025

Derek VanBuskirk

Trump plays the hits at CPAC keynote

National Harbor, Maryland President Donald Trump capstoned a three-day CPAC pep rally with a message of… well, Trump. To be fair, that’s what virtually everybody else at the conference was speaking about too. The ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort was packed. In the build-up members of the Trump administration and world leaders had taken the stage, but make no mistake: the attendees were here to see the president himself. Trump entered to rapturous applause. After his signature move of standing before the podium for the entirety of “God Bless the USA,” he addressed the audience. “We fought through hell together, but in the end, we achieved the great liberation of America,” he said. “Kamala?” Trump asked himself, as if searching for a forgotten memory.

Friday

February 21, 2025

The Spectator

The tale of two budget bills continues

The Senate may be filled with octogenarians, but it defied the odds this week with a marathon “vote-a-rama” that lasted almost ten hours — just in time to set it up on a collision course with the Republican-led House across the Capitol.Despite the stated preference of President Donald Trump for “one big, beautiful bill” for reconciliation, the Senate pushed through a giant reconciliation bill, which will be smaller than whatever the House seems poised to pass. The Senate’s version tackles one of Trump’s top priorities, border security, while punting votes on other Trump measures, like extending his namesake 2017 tax cuts, to later.

Joshua S. Treviño and Joseph Humire

The case for moving SOUTHCOM back to Panama

The recent American interest in the Panama Canal is grounded and rational — contrary to media characterizations of the renewed focus as a byproduct of the president’s impulsive fixations. The Canal, as President Trump has correctly noted, was an American development in a nation that existed mostly as a consequence of American intervention. Panama provided the setting for the Canal — and America provided the Canal itself, having taken on, in 1903, the project France failed to complete in 1890. In the 1960s, when the United States began preparing its handover — not its return — to the Panamanian state, the concession was understood as the price of peace with an ascendant Third World.

Thursday

February 20, 2025

Matt McDonald

Elon Musk wields chainsaw at impromptu CPAC appearance

National Harbor, Maryland Elon Musk made a surprise appearance at CPAC Thursday afternoon, where Argentinian president Javier Milei presented him with a chainsaw. “This is a chainsaw for bureaucracy!” Musk said, brandishing it before a whooping crowd. The Department of Government Efficiency chief took to the stage with Newsmax host Rob Schmitt. Musk wore his MAGA hat — “dark gothic MAGA!” as he said — a black jacket and mirror shades, which he kept on for the duration of his appearance. The X CEO called for America to “legalize comedy” and agreed with Schmitt that legacy media companies receiving USAID money from the federal government were becoming “mouthpieces for the state.

Derek VanBuskirk

Liz Truss calls for a ‘Trump revolution in Britain’

National Harbor, Maryland Former British prime minister Liz Truss began her speech at CPAC today by declaring that America has just entered its golden age with the election of President Trump. Britain, however, is in its dark age, she said: “Let’s be honest, Britain isn't working.” Truss’s concerns for the current state of the UK and Europe mirrored those expressed in Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich last week. She touched on attacks on free speech in the UK, the rise of Pakistani grooming gangs and the inability of the British government to do anything about the rise in illegal immigration.

Teresa Mull

VP Vance touts border security, energy and humor at CPAC

Vice President J.D. Vance took to the Conservative Political Action Committee stage moments ago for a sit-down interview with Mercedes Schlapp. In his signature earnest-yet-easy style, Vance reiterated his boss’s main, shared goals one month into the new administration: secure the southern border and grow the economy by unleashing American energy. While casting plenty of blame on the Biden administration throughout his talk, Vance touted the Trump administration’s early accomplishments; border crossings are already down 90 percent, he said, and “we’re just getting started.” In response to a question about fixing the economy, Vance said the key is, “Drill, baby, drill.

Roger Kimball

Were Trump’s comments about Ukraine a gambit to bring about peace?

If you have a pot that needs stirring, call Donald Trump. A couple of days ago Trump made heads explode when he claimed (among other things) that Volodymyr Zelensky was “a dictator without elections” who started the war with Russia. “Oh my God, can you believe it? Trump doesn’t know Russia was the aggressor in the war. What an idiot.” The BBC, CNN and many other news sites ran little “fact-checking” stories. Politicians dusted off their most serious faces to deplore Trump’s lies/exaggerations (the US hasn’t given $350 billion to Ukraine, it was “only” $180 billion or whatever)/historical ignorance. “Ukraine did not start the war,” CNN intoned. “Russia started the war by invading Ukraine in 2022.

Wednesday

February 19, 2025

Cockburn

Donald Trump speaks his ‘Truth’ about Ukraine in attack on Zelensky

Negotiating peace can be delicate business. Often it requires a steady hand, a strong sense of compassion and inexhaustible patience. As Senator George J. Mitchell, a leading architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, once wrote, "In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume it is true and try to imagine what it might be true of." Cockburn was reminded of Mitchell's sage words when he read the president's Truth Social post about Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday afternoon, which he republishes in full below: Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S.

The Spectator

Bidenbucks out, DoGEbucks in?

Forget Trumpbucks and Bidenbucks: Americans could see Muskbucks (or DoGEbucks?) hitting their mailboxes if the world’s richest man has his way.This time, it wouldn’t be via payouts from X — it would be courtesy of the billions of dollars in savings that Musk claims have already come from the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DoGE) wide-ranging cuts. According to Musk, DoGE has already saved taxpayers $55 billion — and he would like to see payments sent back to taxpayers when his agency winds down ahead of America’s 250th birthday. The idea started — where else?

Grace Curley

A Trump and Musk love-in on Hannity

When your fiercest loyalists are accusing your government of being taken over by Elon Musk, who they brand a “parasitic illegal immigrant,” what’s the best way to respond? Donald Trump opted for a side-by-side interview with the X CEO on Fox News, speaking to Sean Hannity, the anchor with whom he remains friendliest. And for all the attempts — both from inside and outside the conservative tent — to drive a wedge between Trump and tech billionaire Musk, the two seemed chummier than ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMbcMO5JgEo&ab_channel=FoxNews Responding to Hannity’s claim that the mainstream media wants to see the pair get a divorce, Trump was nonplussed.

Tuesday

February 18, 2025

Derek VanBuskirk

Transportation secs duel over who’s to blame for plane crashes

The current and former US secretaries of transportation are playing the blame game following a rise in aviation crashes since the beginning of the Trump administration. Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden's transportation secretary, peppered X with questions Monday, asking, “The flying public needs answers. How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?” Buttigieg's enquiries followed a string of plane crashes throughout the nation, beginning on January 29 when an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk military helicopter collided above the Potomac River in Washington, DC, resulting in the death of sixty-seven people.

Monday

February 17, 2025

Spectator Editorial

Art of the DoGE

No one can accuse Donald Trump of inaction. For once, the US has a government with the urgency of a private corporation. The speed at which the new administration has acted in all kinds of areas has pleasantly surprised Trump’s supporters and flummoxed his opponents. It is hard to grab on to anything and oppose it when the announcements are coming out of the White House at such a speed. As a leader, the Donald Trump of 2025 has already shown himself to be a very different figure to the political ingénu who entered office in 2017. Eight years ago, he came into government knowing little of how it operated, how its machinery can often thwart those who are notionally in power.

Roger Kimball

Masters of corruption

I am reliably informed that the flow of water in the Potomac River is approximately 11,500 cubic feet per second. At Little Falls, near Washington, DC, that works out to about 7 billion gallons per day. Is it enough? I ask because all the chatter we hear about “draining the swamp” is completely pointless. The swamp that is the Washington establishment cannot be effectively drained. There is no valve huge enough to handle the requisite discharge. The institutional sewers would be overwhelmed by the effluvium. No, the fetid, corrupt, woke and self-serving bureaucracy that is the seat of government can be disburdened of its accumulated muck only by more vigorous means. Repristination requires that it be aggressively flushed, not passively drained.

Daniel McCarthy

How Trump is revolutionizing Washington

Weeks into his second term, it’s clear President Trump intends to be the most transformative force our politics has seen in a century. He seems equally determined to change the course of the world — and perhaps its map, too. Trump’s enemies can blame themselves for making this possible. They showed him that impeachment is nothing to fear: securing conviction in the Senate is nigh impossible and whatever damage impeachment might do to a president’s reputation has already been inflicted on Trump. Two impeachments and a welter of post-presidential criminal prosecutions and even convictions failed to stain Trump in voters’ eyes. On the contrary, they left him more popular than ever and discredited the institutions his opponents employed as weapons of their “lawfare.

Aidan McLaughlin

How the fashion industry is adapting to Trump 2.0

On the night of the inauguration, as revelers filed into the Commander-in-Chief Ball to await the arrival of the new president of the United States, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro was buzzing. Donning a ballgown and speaking on air with Sean Hannity, she marveled at the elegance of Melania Trump. “She is an icon. And it’s about time America — you know the magazines, the designers — recognize she is one of the most magnificent first ladies,” Pirro said. “She’s so far past Jackie O at this point. We’ve got four years of spectacular elegance, class and a real love for fashion.

Ani Wilcenski

The Mar-a-Lago face-off

In all the post election danger-to-democracy commentary, one unexpected new peril has emerged: the “nationwide surge of Mar-a-Lago face." Best exemplified by demented far-right activist Laura Loomer and former Fox News host-slash-former Donald Trump Jr. squeeze Kimberly Guilfoyle, Mar-a-Lago face is a cosmetic look characterized by immense volumes of cheek filler, heavy eye shadow and enough Botox to petrify the face. The male version could be seen when Florida congressman and attorney general-nominee-for-ten-seconds Matt Gaetz stepped out at the RNC with so much Botox and foundation that he instantly became a bipartisan meme. I’d argue that Mar-a-Lago face is not taking over America anytime soon. It’s barely taking over the Republican Party.

Ross Clark

The Europe of American imaginations no longer exists

Since the United Kingdom left the European Union five years ago, the pair have been in battle to prove who has performed better. But the real story of the past five years is not a stagnant UK falling behind a buoyant EU, but of Britain and Europe being trapped in the same cycle of relative decline. It’s America that has quietly raced ahead of Europe this century. Following the pandemic it has become impossible to ignore the gulf in economic vitality between the US and Europe, the former growing by 16.3 percent per capita since 2008. There are very good reasons for America’s success, or rather, Europe’s decline. The EU and the UK increasingly treat their industries as pieces of heritage which must be preserved against disruptors and foreign competition.