Donald trump

Wednesday

Ruaridh Nicoll

Cuba is next on Trump’s hit list

It’s hot in Havana. The summer’s electrical storms have arrived, lighting up the sky, while down on the ground we’ve been without power for 16 hours, meaning no sleep. The four-month-old US oil blockade is biting, but Cuba’s government still refuses to bend the knee to Washington, so surveillance aircraft are circling. An aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, has arrived in the neighbourhood. We expect an attack at any moment. Donald Trump has made it clear that after Venezuela and Iran, Cuba is next on his list for decapitation. His administration wants a change of government and the economy opened up. Cuba’s 95-year-old ex-president Raul Castro has been indicted for murder, opening the way for an abduction like the one in Caracas in January.

Peter Pomerantsev

How Iran turned Trump’s propaganda against him

From our UK edition

On 19 November 1941, King George and Queen Elizabeth paid a visit to Woburn Abbey, home of Britain’s covert propaganda war against the Nazis. Surrounded by a park full of rare monkeys, and among corridors bearing Old Masters, the King and Queen were presented with ‘Britain’s Secret Army’, a fleet of radio stations that broadcast subversive content deep into enemy territory. Sefton Delmer, who before the war had been a foreign correspondent for the Daily Express, presented his new German station. While the officious BBC German Service was lecturing Germans about the virtues of democracy and the evils of fascism, Delmer was trying something different.

Friday

Rod Liddle

The secret shame of being ‘Reform-curious’

As a sucker for any melody which relies heavily upon fourth and eighth notes hammered out on a piano, I was always going to fall for Billy Joel’s 1978 hit single "My Life." The lyrics were, as ever with Joel, awful, mixing his cringeworthy ordinary guy New York vernacular shtick with what I dare say he thought were original and profound psychological insights. He is such a hack singer-songwriter. He makes Neil Diamond resemble Wittgenstein. But the tune made me swoon, even its two predictable cod-Beatles middle eights. What to do? Obviously, I couldn’t buy it. There were four record shops in Middlesbrough back then and I was known in all of them.

Alex Diggins

Where did all the funny Republicans go?

When did Republican writers stop being funny? Look around at the landscape of contemporary American literature – and, for that matter, TV and film – and you’d be hard pressed to find a genuinely funny literary voice who doesn’t lean liberal, or at least purport to. This isn’t to say that individual right-wing writers aren’t amusing. Often found in these pages, Rod Liddle, for one, is very funny, though I suggest he’d balk at being called a conservative. And Donald Trump is hilarious on Truth Social – his posts may have the subtlety of a bullhorn, but they usually land with a satisfying thunk. During his 2016 campaign and well into his first term, Trump succeeded in part because he understood that politics and entertainment run in parallel.

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Daniel McCarthy

Don’t bet on a blue wave

There are several reasons to think we won’t see a blue wave in this year’s midterm elections. A basic one is that the Democratic party simply isn’t very popular. In late May, Donald Trump’s approval ratings in the RealClear polling aggregate stood around 40 percent, which sounds bad. Yet Trump is more popular than his party – approval of the Republican brand was in the vicinity of 38 percent. And the Democrats’ ratings were even worse – standing, or one might say wilting, at about 36 percent. Those figures are not to be confused with “generic ballot” polling, which asks voters which party they would prefer in the forthcoming election. Democrats have lately enjoyed a lead of some seven points over the GOP in that category.

Spectator Editorial

Woke isn’t dead. It’s just getting started

“Woke is officially DEAD,” Donald Trump announced last summer. That has been a common refrain since the 2024 election: the anti-western, anti-white, pro-transgender ideology is over. The excesses of left-wing radicalism have been rejected. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. We’re all still living under the yoke of woke. Just look at Chicago. Over the Memorial Day weekend, 38 people were injured by gunfire and two were shot dead. Five police officers were hurt when a car drove into a crowd amid widespread disorder. This happened in a city where the Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson, promised to defund the police.

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Daniel DePetris

Are Trump and Netanyahu heading for a showdown?

Depending on which day it is, the ongoing peace talks between the United States and Iran are either a few days away from being finalized or close to hitting another roadblock. The status of the negotiations fluctuates about as much as Donald Trump’s mood swings. For those on the outside looking in, the whole storyline can be discombobulating. It doesn’t help that US and Iran are still taking pop-shots at each other. Early on Thursday morning, Tehran attacked a US base in response to a fresh round of US strikes on an Iranian base in Bandar Abbas.  Fortunately, the shooting is not killing the diplomacy – at least not yet. There does appear to be a general framework on the table.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week:  Tony Blair intervenes, Peter Murrell pleads guilty and temperatures hit a May high

From our UK edition

Home Sir Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, said in a 5,700-word essay: ‘The Labour party is playing with fire; or, more accurately, with its future, and that of the country.’ He said the party shouldn’t choose a new leader before deciding policy. In the first part of his government-commissioned report into economic inactivity by young people, Alan Milburn highlighted the 957,000 people aged between 16 and 24 who were not in work, training or education. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, suspended import tariffs on chocolate and biscuits and gave away children’s tickets on buses during the month of August. She reduced VAT from 20 per cent to 5 per cent on children’s meals and zoo tickets from 25 June to 1 September.

Sunday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Is Trump giving peace a chance?

Washington’s war hawks are molting down over President Trump’s outreach to Iran. Senator Ted Cruz says that he is “concerned.” Senator Roger Wicker fears a “disaster.” Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo deemed a preliminary agreement with Iran “not remotely America First.” Trump and his advisors are having none of it. Responding to Pompeo, White House communications director Steve Cheung observed that “he should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals.” Trump, who angered Senate Republicans earlier this week by proposing a $1.8 billion slush fund for January 6 victims and by endorsing Ken Paxton for the Senate, appears to be largely indifferent to demands for a new assault.

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Friday

Freddy Gray

Trump’s lawfare against lawfare

It is of course hacky and hysterical to suggest America is turning into a banana republic. How else, though, can a reasonable person interpret Donald Trump’s settlement this week with the Internal Revenue Service?In January, the President and his two oldest sons sued the IRS for $10 billion over the leaking of their personal business tax filings to the press. Because Trump runs the Justice Department, the case was somewhat farcical: "I’m suing myself," Trump wryly admitted last week. "I’ll say, 'Give me X dollars,' and I don’t know what to do with the lawsuit." This week we found out. IRS lawyers felt their case was defensible on various counts: chiefly because the man who leaked the Trump family files wasn’t working for the service when he gave them to the New York Times.

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Wednesday

Eliot Wilson

Trump’s NATO troop reduction isn’t Europe’s biggest problem

Before Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, there were many commentators who sought to sanitize the President. Take him seriously but not literally, they said. Some hinted that his cruder and wilder hyperbole was not the ignorant, boorish reflex it seemed but a shrewd and daring negotiating tactic in Trump’s beloved "art of the deal." It has been reported that the United States is planning to announce a reduction in the number of troops it will make available to NATO in Europe. America is planning to shrink its commitment to the NATO Force model, under which troops "carry out the alliance’s operations, missions and other activities during peacetime.

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The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Streeting resigns, HS2 stalls and ebola spreads to Uganda

From our UK edition

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, found his position challenged after Wes Streeting resigned as Health Secretary. At the same time Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, announced that her tax troubles had been resolved after a payment of £40,000 in stamp duty that she owed. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, was given permission by the National Executive Committee of the Labour party to stand for parliament in the Makerfield by-election, brought about by the resignation of its MP Josh Simons. Reform chose as its candidate Robert Kenyon, a self-employed plumber, who had stood in 2024. Mr Streeting caused trouble for Mr Burnham by saying that ‘leaving the European Union was a catastrophic mistake’.

Tuesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump needs peace in Iran

Donald Trump was for the Iran war before he was against it. His latest post on social media about the conflict indicated that he is once more calling off a sweeping military action, this time at the behest of his Gulf allies who are apparently quaking at the thought of a renewed conflict.

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 12: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press as he departs the White House on May 12, 2026 in Washington, DC. Trump is traveling to China where he is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping for expected talks on the Iran conflict, trade imbalances, regional security, and economic cooperation between the two countries. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Friday

Freddy Gray

Did the Trump/Xi summit achieve anything?

Air Force One is in the air as I write, whizzing from Beijing back to Washington – and Donald Trump leaves China with many questions unanswered. There were warm words on both sides and plenty of friendly symbolism in the President’s big summit with Xi Jinping. But the fundamental great power tensions remain – over trade, technology, and war and peace in the Middle East and Taiwan. Washington and Beijing agree that Iran should never have a nuclear weapon – though it remains unclear the extent to which China will help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Its closure hurts the Chinese economy, of course, but China has significant energy reserves and Xi knows that the pain spreads around the world to his advantage.

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republicans
Daniel McCarthy

Why the Republicans are still more focused than the Democrats

The pundits and political professionals of Washington, DC have never had a very good understanding of the Republican party. They hate its conservative and populist elements, and they only know how to evaluate the prospects of those elements using irrelevant criteria, like a chess club judging a basketball team – only it’s the political right that’s more cerebral than the dead center. It doesn’t matter how many times the conventional opinion is dead wrong. The Republican right was supposed to be humiliated, broken and vanquished for good after Barry Goldwater’s landslide loss to Lyndon Johnson in 1964. And then again after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace a decade later. Donald Trump, of course, was totally unelected in 2016.

Thursday

Paul Wood

The incredible case of Dr. Gorka

One of P.G. Wodehouse’s best-known characters, after Jeeves and Wooster, is Roderick Spode: fascist leader and secret purveyor of fine ladies’ undergarments. Spode is the head of the “Black Shorts” – all the black shirts having been taken – a bombastic, merciless bully and quivering tower of self-regard, magnificent in his absurdity. Spode was introduced to us in 1938, yet he lives still. Today, he is none other than President Trump’s Senior Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council, Dr. Sebastian Gorka.  The British accent, the booming voice…Spode/Gorka was speaking to journalists the other day when he called critics of the Iran war “testicularly challenged.

Wednesday

Geoffrey Cain

Will Trump and Xi get what they want?

Donald Trump flew to Beijing this week and wants three things when he sits down with China’s President Xi Jinping: a tariff truce that survives his own courts, Chinese pressure on Iran to end the war that never seems to end and a photograph that makes him look victorious. Xi has problems of his own. But he has watched four American presidencies from Zhongnanhai, the walled compound beside the Forbidden City where the Communist party leadership rules, and he knows the value of silence when his counterpart is talking himself into trouble. Trump’s approval rating is the lowest of his second term. What Xi wants from this meeting with Trump is recognition: two great powers, two systems, meeting as equals Trump has obliged Xi noisily.

Paul Wood

How the Saudis wriggled out of the Iran conflict

From our UK edition

Some of the highest-paid sportsmen in history, the golfers of the LIV league, had bad news recently. Saudi Arabia said it was pulling out of LIV Golf after sinking $5-6 billion into it. The highest-paid golfer was reported to have been on a $600 million contract over four years; others were getting more than $100 million. The men in plaid are, in a sense, victims of Donald Trump’s war with Iran. The LIV announcement is not just sports news. The Saudis were, by their standards, already in financial trouble, and then they had to spend tens of billions on defence and propping up their economy during the 38 days of the war. Crude oil prices have gone up but not enough to compensate, given the difficulties in exporting it.

Tuesday

Michael Sobolik

America’s Trump card in China

The Trump administration has released a list of CEOs who will be accompanying the president to his meeting in China with Xi Jinping. Foremost among the delegation is Elon Musk, traveling in his capacity as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Another notable inclusion is Tim Cook, in what may be his swan song international trip as Apple CEO. All told, 17 executives will accompany President Trump to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Their companies represent sectors ranging from banking and investment to automobiles and AI. Their asks of Xi will likely range from market access (Coherent) and advertising (Meta) to component orders (Boeing) and soybean purchases (Cargill). On paper, President Trump should take business leaders with him to China.

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Thursday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump is clinging to a mirage in the Middle East

Well, well, well. For all the head-scratching that it initially occasioned, President Trump’s hasty abandonment of "Project Freedom" – his grandly titled plan to open the Strait of Hormuz – turns out not to be so mysterious after all. Trump’s reversal, NBC News revealed late yesterday, came at the behest of America’s Gulf allies, foremost among them Riyadh which told Washington that it would suspend the US military’s right to use its airspace. Now Trump, who has described his current exchanges with Iran as "very good," is breathing optimism about a one-page peace memorandum that he claims will be completed by the end of the week. Iran, by contrast, merely says that Trump’s proposal is “under review.