Donald trrump

Adios, Acosta! Labor secretary resigns

It wasn’t even that laborious a process. Two days after he gave a prolonged self-exculpation masquerading as a press conference to defend the sweetheart deal in Florida that he vouchsafed to billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein 12 years ago, labor secretary Alex Acosta threw in the towel. For Trump the prospect of having Acosta remain was a nonstarter with the 2020 presidential race looming large. Trump was quick to note today that he will miss Acosta, whom he deemed 'a tremendous talent, he’s a Hispanic man.' Indeed Acosta was the lone Hispanic member of his cabinet. Trump even singled out an elite school as evidence of Acosta’s bona fides: 'He went to Harvard.' According to CNN, this will make for high-level vacancy 261 for the Trump administration.

acosta

Did Trump really invite Ben Garrison to the White House?

Imagine that you’re Donald Trump for a day. You wake up, you ablute, you make the usual follicular adjustments, you shoot off a few tweets in the throne room, and then you mooch down to the West Wing. Here, you face a choice. Do you dive into the fate-of-nations stuff and open the files marked ‘Rocket Man’ and ‘Iranistan’, like John Bolton has asked? Or do you spend the day compiling a guest list for a White House event on anti-conservative bias in Big Tech, at which the talking points will be as tired and old as the curly cheese sandwiches? The answer depends on which Trump-for-a-day you prefer to be.

ben garrison

Ross Perot was the man on horseback

H. Ross Perot issued colorful and sweeping statements, including the claim that a 'giant sucking sound' of jobs whooshing abroad would occur after passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. He promised that he, and he alone, could fix what ailed America. He promised that as an outsider, he could clean out the Washington establishment and set wrong aright in both political parties. The fiery and paranoid Texan embodied American exceptionalism. Perot, who died on Tuesday, never reached the White House. But the Texan businessman and presidential candidate left a lasting mark on American politics. He paved the way for the presidency of another brash business tycoon, Donald Trump. A shrewd businessman, he evinced an interest in politics early on.

ross perot

It’s time for a positive Trump-UK relationship

If there were any doubt that the Mail on Sunday’s leaked British diplomatic cables scoop was not a dramatic story, Donald Trump has just removed it. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1148298497189392384 I can’t really believe that Trump’s skin is so thin. Plenty more have said plenty worse — however, ambassadors are not meant to cause such a fuss. But Trump, with his sharp instincts, can sense opportunity in the insult: the new prime minister will be keen to make amends. And, in his tweets, Trump is keen to hint towards the good news for the Special Relationship and the ‘wonderful’ UK. May and her government were indeed incapable of working with Trump.

trump-uk

Jeffrey Epstein is a pervert for our times

Why do dogs lick their own genitals? Because they can. And wouldn’t it be great to be able to do whatever you like? Only those at the very top and bottom of society have the license to live like that. Our culture lionizes them even after the grubby final reel. They’re the Gatsbys, the Scarfaces — but also the Jeffrey Epsteins. The rich are different, like F. Scott Fitzgerald said. The degree of difference may vary, but the ways of difference don’t change much. The degree of difference between the very rich and the merely affluent is wider now than at any time since the Gilded Age — and wider than it was in 1925 when Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, his groveling tribute to those who differ by having more money than sense. But the ways of difference remain much the same.

jeffrey epstein

Why Trump’s Fourth of July speech was a botch job

To make a great success of a speech you need timing, what the ancient Greeks called kairos, you need an electric connection with your audience, and you need a bit of luck. President Trump, in his damp squib of a Fourth of July speech, had none of those things.  Kairos-wise, the Fourth of July was a near-miss: the sort of occasion that asks for and often gets rousing oratory. But in this case the resonance of the date was undermined by the suspicion that rather than honoring the national holiday the president was seeking to hijack it. As Elizabeth Warren commented tartly, 'If he's going to do a campaign event, then it should be paid for by his campaign contributions. It should not be paid for by the American taxpayer.

july speech
biden middle

Biden and Trump converge on the middle ground

Are both Donald Trump and Joe Biden going to run to the center? Yesterday Trump delivered a fairly anodyne speech about American military valor that was totally bereft of his sizzling asides. Now fresh rumors are percolating about whether Trump really is preparing to dump Vice President Mike Pence for his former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley. Trump explained today that Pence had to cancel his trip to New Hampshire because of an 'interesting problem' but would not say what it was other than that all would be revealed in a couple of weeks. Another person who may get the heave-ho is national security adviser John Bolton.

Trump moms are the best people in America

There was a transgender coffee shop near my apartment I once frequented. I swear, everyone who worked there was a trans man, biological women presenting themselves as men to varying degrees of effort. The baristas were nice enough, but the coffee shop closed, barely lasting six months, which is a travesty considering it declared itself a safe haven for refugees. A large poster displayed on the front window proclaimed, ‘Refugees welcome here!’ with an illustration of a sad Arabic man holding an infant wrapped in a filthy shroud. Where will they go now? During its sad, brief run I spent many hours in that coffee shop seeped in mediocrity.

trump moms

Trump’s ‘Salute to America’ is the perfect fusion of capitalism and patriotism

The Washington, DC city council is having none of it. 'Tanks, but no tanks', it tweeted at Donald Trump. Trump may shy from actual warfare but he has arranged a military extravaganza masquerading as a July 4 ceremony. While there may be no 'brand new Sherman tanks,' as Trump promised — they were retired after the Korean War — the Pentagon is furiously trying to figure out if it can safely transport the 60-ton M1 Abrams tank over Memorial Bridge without collapsing it. A thunderstorm might also cause any tanks to sink into the ground of the National Mall. It would be awkward symbolism for the man who promised to drain the swamp.

salute trump tanks

Towards an American nationalism

America is unraveling into an unhappy confederation of hostile tribes. Extremists on the right are murdering Jews in synagogues and African Americans in churches. The woke left is bullying us into a neo-segregation in which we’re judged by the color of our skin. We’re too obsessed with economic growth to recognize that the rising tide has swallowed entire regions. We’re too proud of our tradition of immigration to admit the failures of assimilation.At a time of such angry division, what can bind up our wounds and bring us together as a nation?A renewed patriotism would be a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough. Patriotism asks us to love our country. But what we need now is more than love of country. We must love our fellow citizens.

american nationalism

Marianne Williamson put a spell on me

Of all the low-profile candidates vying for national attention in the Democratic debates this week, Marianne Williamson stood out. In coverage immediately before, she was derided for simply being an 'author and activist': descriptors, it's worth noting, that could be applied to everyone else standing. The 66-year-old was placed at the far edge of the Thursday debate stage and only got four minutes and 58 seconds of speaking time. But she made those seconds count. First, she struck out against her arch-nemesis: plans. 'I’ll tell you one thing, it’s really nice if we’ve got all these plans, but if you think we’re going to beat Donald Trump by just having all these plans, you’ve got another thing coming,' she said. 'Because he didn’t win by saying he had a plan.

marianne williamson

Are viewers falling out of love with the Trump presidency?

Trump: The Presidency began airing in January 2017 on CNN, MSNBC, FOX and every other television channel in the free and unfree world. Immediately drawing favorable comparisons with blockbuster sagas like Game of Thrones and The Sopranos, T:TP soon overtook them in prominence and popularity. But as the hit show’s ratings tumble in its third year, and with key contracts up for review in 2020, it’s time to ask a question that was unimaginable even two years ago. Are viewers falling out of love with the media’s favorite show? Whether you loved or hated Trump: The Presidency, whether you came to it for comedy or tragedy, one thing above all could not be denied about the show: it was unmissable television. It wasn’t simply that everyone talked about it.

viewers trump presidency

Fake estate – the truth about Trump Heights

There’s not much going on in the buzzing new village of Trump Heights. Turning off route 959, which runs from northern Israel to the Golan Heights, it wasn’t quite clear at first why our Israeli guide had taken us to an abandoned farm field. Standing in the middle of some flattened yellow grass, however, we saw it: a big (yuge) green sign with bold gold letters in Hebrew and English, the Israeli and American flags crossed in friendship - ‘TRUMP HEIGHTS’. It must have been 10 feet tall. The latest settlement in the Golan was a gift from Benjamin Netanyahu to the President, as thanks for US recognition that the disputed region is Israeli territory.

trump heights
bad wars

After 30 years of bad wars, who thinks one with Iran will be good?

Don’t believe the hawks who tell you they don’t want a war with Iran. Instead, ask them if they’d go to war to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, or if they’d prefer war to peace if peace meant the mullahs’ regime could cling to power. War is a means to an end, and the hawks believe the ends of regime change and nuclear nonproliferation justify war, if it comes to that. Peace too is only a means to an end, and war is what happens when the means of peace are deemed insufficient.President Trump has a cooler head than most of his critics when it comes to nuclear weapons, as he’s proved so far with his North Korea policy. And North Korea actually has the bomb, which Iran is some distance from possessing.

The untenability of President Bolton

The president of the United States weighed retaliatory airstrikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran before pulling back at the eleventh hour, he confirmed Friday morning. 'We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it,' Donald Trump tweeted. He said the planned response was not 'proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone,' referring to the recent malign activity from the regime. 'I am in no hurry,' he caveated. 'He just tweeted it out,' Alex Ward, defense reporter at Vox, joked. Ward refers to a swirl of chatter that engulfed Washington Thursday night.

John Bolton

Trumpworld Orlando, where dreams come true

Why did Donald Trump choose Orlando, near Disney World, for his campaign kickoff Tuesday night? Because he appears to be living in a fantasy land.Trump reached the White House by promising a border wall, a national industrial policy and a restrained foreign policy. He has delivered near none of those things, but the Mickey Mouse president is running for re-election anyway.Trump repeated some familiar cartoons on Tuesday, ridiculing Hillary Clinton a mere three years after defeating her. But it was a night for the hits. He also served up an old slapstick favorite, claiming that the media deflate his crowd sizes. The New York Times confirmed the number in attendance to be north of 20,000. Trump's goofy claim that there were 'over 100,000 requests' to get in remains unconfirmed.

donald trump orlando

Breakfast is the dullest meal of the day

‘I’m not a breakfast guy at all, fortunately,’ Donald Trump explained in a recent interview. ‘I like the lunches but the dinners is what I really like.’ The US president is right. In the English-speaking world, breakfast is a drag. Devotees explain solemnly that it’s the most important meal of the day. It’s certainly the most boring. In Britain and America, there is rarely any joy in breakfast food and that is deliberate. The puritanical believe that a clean house is godly – and the same is true for their gut. To me, however, it would have been far more unnerving if Trump had said he enjoyed a five-grain bowl every morning, washed down with a glass of wheatgrass. And hold the dairy – almond milk only, please.

donald trump breakfast
whimsical hawk

President Trump is a whimsical hawk

President Trump was elected as a dove who swore that he would extract America from expensive conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Yet more than two years later, America remains mired in those wars and the US has come closer to conflicts that could have caused tens of millions of casualties. This covert hawkishness, which has largely remained hidden from public scrutiny, has not been driven by any ideological quest to re-establish American global predominance. Instead it is war driven by whim. This has led to an almost total collapse in confidence between the US intelligence community and the Pentagon, on the one hand, and the president on the other.

Donald Trump is far from finished

Donald Trump is on the skids. It won’t take much to knock him out. So far, Democrats appear to be sticking with Joe Biden rather than casting more than flirtatious glances at other, more left wing candidates. Not so fast. As Henry Olsen reminds us in the Washington Post today, Trump is far from finished. The heck with the popular vote. The only votes that count are getting to 270 in the electoral college. Trump squeaked by in 2016. He could do it again. Trump, after all, may be most dangerous when he appears to be on the ropes. Tomorrow night Trump will kick off his re-election campaign in Orlando, Florida. He’ll be pumped. Fox News says that his supporters are already lining up to see the great man. Trump has a lot to prove.

donald trump finished

Is Matt Gaetz the future of Trump foreign policy?

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump favorite and Fox News star, may have just fired the first loud shot of a new ideological war that may be heard around the world. 'The "fog of war" is no fog to me, or any of the 700,000 people I serve,' Gaetz clarified to a surprised Washington crowd of lefties and libertarians last month. 'It is not hazy,’ said Gaetz, whose North Florida district has the highest concentration of active-duty military in America. 'We see the impact of war every day among the people we love who shape our lives. It is a stark reminder that the unmatched freedoms we enjoy are not free — they are bought with the blood of American patriots.

matt gaetz