Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest. He lives in Washington DC
Washington, DC. With Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, American foreign policy is getting radioactive. “We cannot prevent a nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the agreement,” Trump declared with his habitual understatement. The only thing missing was another shot at Barack Obama for bothering to negotiate with
It’s shrinking. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll indicates that the Democrats’ edge over the Republicans in the forthcoming midterm election has dwindled among registered voters, from a 12-percent lead to 4-points. Trump’s own approval ratings have edged up slightly to 40 percent, but his disapproval rating remains at a daunting 56 percent. So is it
So Britain is responsible for staging the Syrian gas attack? According to Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov: “We have evidence that proves Britain was directly involved in organizing this provocation.” Evidence, shmevidence. Next thing you know Moscow will be offering to assist Yulia Skripal. Oh, wait. It already did. Vladimir Putin cannot conceal
In his inimitable fashion, President Trump has put Russia on notice that the era of playing kissy-face with the Kremlin has come to an abrupt halt. “Get ready Russia,” he announced. It’s bombs away for the Trump administration. The Bolton doctrine has now become the Trump doctrine. Trump’s tweet is being decried as taunting Vladimir
It seems like only yesterday Donald Trump was buttering up Vladimir Putin. His congratulations on Putin’s victory and failure to mention the nerve agent attack in Salisbury sent the foreign policy establishment in Washington into high dudgeon. Now the administration has expelled 60 Russian diplomats and shuttered the Russian consulate in Seattle. This is only,
Bimbo eruptions is the term that Betsey Wright, Bill Clinton’s longtime gubernatorial aide, coined to describe the multifarious women who popped up in 1992 to accuse her boss of a variety of sexual transgressions. In Clinton’s case they never really stopped erupting during his presidency, especially as he turned his attentions to Monica Lewinsky. Now
Donald Trump today called it a ‘very sad situation.’ The ‘it’ in question is of course the chemical weapons attack in Salisbury, a fresh indicator, if one were needed, of malign Russian intentions toward the West. Even as Theresa May plays, or tries to play, Margaret Thatcher, Trump has been no Ronald Reagan. He doesn’t
The surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. It is that it took this long. Tillerson, a hapless manager who decapitated much of the senior ranks of the State Department, has finally suffered his own decapitation at the hands of Trump. His replacement by CIA Director Mike Pompeo signals a
Donald Trump’s acceptance of Kim Jong-un’s invitation to meet is a master stroke. It’s exactly the kind of thing Ronald Reagan liked to do. Reagan, you may recall, announced his pursuit of a missile defense system in March 1983 on national television without alerting his advisers beforehand. Liberals went crazy. Then he decided to end
Crikey! Did the Kremlin put the kibosh on Mitt Romney’s hopes to become Secretary of State in the Trump administration? This is one of the revelations contained in Jane Mayer’s report in the New Yorker today about Christopher Steele. It seems that Steele wrote in a November, 2016 memo that a senior Russian official had
The stories about Donald Trump’s sex life keep coming. First, it was Stormy Daniels who stated that she had an assignation with Trump in Lake Tahoe in 2006. Now it appears that Trump also met another woman in 2006, this time at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion. In an expose published today, the New Yorker’s Ronan
Has Barack Obama become a flower child? His new presidential portrait, which is over seven feet high, depicts him on a chair staring ahead somewhat pensively as he’s framed by various flowers that reference Kenya, Hawaii and Chicago. It’s a fitting backdrop to a president who not only embodied the multi-cultural aspirations of America, but
‘I can’t in all good honesty, in all good faith, just look the other way because my party is now complicit in the deficits,’ Senator Rand Paul announced last night. Never were truer words spoken. The Republican party, once the standard-bearer of fiscal probity, has now become signed onto massive deficit spending. It first began
What was the fuss all about? The capital of the free world has been consumed with frenzied speculation about a memo compiled by the staff of Congressman Devin Nunes, who serves as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, about the Russia probe. This, we were told by Republicans, would be “worse than Watergate.” Democrats
It was a sound move by Donald Trump to single out the North Korean defector Ji Seong-ho in his first State of the Union address last night. In 2006, Seong-ho had hobbled his way out of what Trump rightly called a ‘depraved country’ to find freedom abroad. ‘Seong-ho, I understand you still keep those crutches
The real story about Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech today may not be what he says, but that Melania is showing up to attend it. Melania, left livid at reports claiming Trump paid porn star Stormy Daniels £90,000 ($130,000) in hush money on the eve of the 2016 election, skipped Davos and has stayed out
Donald Trump is in love again. Theresa May can’t guarantee Trump an effusive welcome if he visits Great Britain and they don’t appear to have held hands. But Trump seemed to indicate that the rough patch in their relationship is over. Meeting with May today at Davos, Trump declared, `We love your country.’ He thereby
After a prolonged dry spell, the Donald, to borrow from Billy Bush’s memorable taped remark, has finally scored again. For the past week, Trump has been buffeted by revelations in the appropriately named In Touch magazine about his alleged dalliance with the porn star Stormy Daniels. Melania is reportedly so incensed that she will no
After one year in office, Donald Trump is winning bigly. The stock market is up. North Korea and South Korea are talking. Regulations are being swept away. Apple is bringing back hundreds of billions, thanks to corporate tax reform, and promising the creation of 20,000 new jobs. Conservative judges are being appointed to federal courts
Donald Trump is playing hard to get. Asked yesterday at the White House whether he would meet with Special Counsel Robert Mueller for an interview, Trump began back-pedalling on his previous and emphatic ‘100 per cent’. Now, Trump said, ‘we’ll see what happens’. For good measure, he threw in a few of his favourite terms
