Trump administration

Wednesday

Charles Lipson

What comes after Trump’s decisive victory?

The candidate who said Americans should be “unburdened by what has been” is now a has-been. The irony will be lost on her.  Also lost was the traditional graciousness — and normative necessity — of conceding defeat clearly and publicly as soon as the loss is certain. When Donald Trump failed to take that step in 2020, after exhausting his court challenges, he violated that norm and deepened our national divisions. He deepened that chasm on January 6 and later by continuing to challenge the rightful winner. Those challenges threaten the peaceful transfer of power and undermine the public consensus that the winner holds office legitimately.  Kamala Harris learned from Trump’s mistake and repeated it.

donald trump victory

Monday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump says he will let NATO down. How will Kamala Harris respond?

When Donald Trump declared that Russia could do “whatever the hell it wants” to NATO countries, he was espousing his own lifelong credo. Trump has done whatever he pleases for most of his life. It was generous of him to extend the same carte blanche to the Kremlin, which is presumably pleased with his offer but has yet to comment on it publicly.  Once upon a time, conservatives used to raise an eyebrow over the notion over doing whatever the hell you want. They were in a more censorious mode, arguing that this amounted to moral relativism. Now it seems that anything goes.  The old certitudes are gone.

donald trump nato

Wednesday

Charles Lipson

Biden must rethink US policy in the Middle East

Responsibility for the catastrophe now unfolding in the Middle East belongs to Hamas and its sponsor, Iran. The atrocities we are now discovering — the deliberate killing of innocents, the capture of hostages — were an integral part of Hamas’s military strategy and grew directly out of its vicious hatred of all Jews — and of Western civilization. These are acts of true evil and, in committing them, Hamas has the full backing of Iran. President Biden spoke for America when he said, bluntly, “The brutality of Hamas’s blood thirstiness brings to mind the worst rampages of ISIS. This is terrorism.” It is important to begin with these basic points before discussing mistakes made by Israeli and American leaders.

joe biden middle east foreign policy

Friday

Amber Duke

Exclusive: Pentagon chief details January 6 riot response

Christopher C. Miller, acting secretary of defense during the last few months of the Trump presidency, will reveal the entirety of his role in protecting the Capitol on January 6, 2021 riots in his new book, Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield & the Pentagon about America’s Most Dangerous Enemies. Miller previously testified about how the Pentagon sought to quell the riots to the January 6 Committee; pieces of his testimony have been released to the press to raise questions about President Donald Trump's claims that he personally ordered 10,000 troops to be on standby during his speech on the Ellipse. Miller does not expound on this debate in the introduction to his book, which has been provided exclusively to The Spectator World.

National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller testifies at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing (Photo by Joshua Roberts-Pool/Getty Images)