America

Butler, Pennsylvania The crowd had waited for hours in the heat for Trump to show up. When he did arrive, they cheered when he asked if they minded if he went off the teleprompter. He had just been turning his head to point to a graph showing how many fewer illegal deportations there were when he was in office. Many of them stood up, apparently fearlessly, and cheered as the president was ushered off stage Then there were some popping sounds that, from where I was far in the back, close to the exit, sounded like fireworks. A pause followed and Trump disappeared from view. The people around me were

Whether it’s Harvard, Pennsylvania, Oxford or Cambridge, if there are large endowments and manicured lawns then, it seems, anti-Semitism is virulent. As the academic year comes to an end, we need to discuss the bigotry that has been unleashed at elite universities across Britain and America. The latest example to hit the headlines occurred at Columbia University this week. Three deans have been ‘removed’ for sending text messages containing anti-Semitic tropes in an incident that reveals much about the way elite anti-Semitism plays out in universities today. Anti-Semitism has been a growing issue at Columbia for some months. In December, Columbia’s president was invited but, citing scheduling conflicts, declined to appear

As the Democrats go into a very public meltdown about Joe Biden’s fitness to be their presidential candidate in November, there is an unusual sound emanating from Donald Trump: silence. In the 2016 campaign and across four years in the White House, Trump proved himself incapable of message discipline, venting against fellow Republicans on social media and turned press conferences into rambling denunciations of the latest character to displease him. This behaviour regularly handed Democrats and journalists the chance to shift the news cycle from issues difficult for them (e.g. immigration) and onto issues difficult for the GOP (e.g. Trump’s intemperance and Republican infighting). Few presidents have so routinely undermined

Since Joe Biden’s now infamous debate performance, the Democratic party has been having palpitations about his candidacy. But all brouhaha about Biden’s decline has distracted the public from critically examining his administration’s more significant failures. Democrats now talk as if the only problem with Biden is his ability to convince the public that he’s fit to serve. But a fish rots from the head and, thanks to his inept leadership, Biden’s government has weakened America’s security, its economic stability, and its international standing. These shortcomings should not be ignored. The failing policies of the Democratic left have made America less safe and less prosperous. One of the most contentious issues of

In Westminster, Sir Keir Starmer is still in the honeymoon period as Prime Minister. In Washington, where Starmer heads for the start of the Nato summit today, the welcome is likely to be somewhat less warm. The new British team, made up of Starmer, foreign secretary David Lammy, defence secretary John Healey, and Nick Thomas-Symonds, now Cabinet Office minister in charge of ‘European relations’, will be greeted with courtesy and encouragement. But the red carpet won’t be rolled out: Nato leaders liked, rather than loathed, Rishi Sunak’s government. They felt him to be a man with whom they can do business. They will be eager to know if the same

Stick or twist? The gambler’s choice is the Democrats’ awful dilemma as the US presidential election draws ever closer. Do they stick with Joe Biden, their painfully decrepit Commander-in-Chief, who is losing in the polls? Or twist and gamble on replacing him, which could tear the party apart and make Donald Trump’s victory even more likely? The President may already be on borrowed time The news over the weekend showed that the Democrats are already at war with themselves. Biden’s ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos did little to reassure the President’s anxious supporters and Sunday brought more news of House Democrats, and other senior Democratic figures, calling for him to make way. A newly hatched plan for

Like a father confessor, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos tried everything to jolt President Joe Biden out of his complacency. He pleaded with him. He queried him. He exhorted him. Nothing worked. Throughout the interview, if that’s what it was, Biden rebuffed his entreaties as though they couldn’t be more outlandish.   Down in the polls? Not a bit of it. Democratic lawmakers preparing to ask him to step down? Never happening. And so on. He clearly couldn’t grasp that his presidency isn’t in trouble; it’s cratering.  Even the Almighty that Biden regularly invoked wouldn’t be able to resurrect his shambles of a presidency Whether Biden is suffering from cognitive issues may

The dullest assertion you can make about Donald Trump is that he’s a narcissist who has no interest in the American people and only cares about himself. Competent pundits don’t waste wordage on such an over-obvious observation. Less obvious, though more so since last week’s dog’s dinner presidential debate – in the aftermath of which dubbing the encounter ‘elder abuse’ went from droll witticism to exhausted cliché in a few hours – is that Joe Biden’s narcissism rivals Trump’s and may even exceed it. The Bidens’ decision to contest this race was arrogant and criminally oblivious to the country’s future Early in his 2020 run, Biden indicated to apparatchiks in

Foreign policy rarely plays a significant role in a US presidential election. Domestic issues, the economy, money in the pocket, jobs, immigration, these are what voters are most concerned about. But this time, it could be different. The first TV debate between President Biden and Donald Trump seemed focused on one thing: is Biden the man to trust to lead the western alliance for another four-year term? Or, as Trump insinuated, is he so weakened and fragile that none of the adversarial leaders in the world have any respect for him, let alone fear him? For America’s allies, Biden’s lacklustre performance will have caused considerable anxiety Fear, it seems, is

Latin America has long been the traditional home of the military coup – or ‘golpe’ in Spanish – so the sight yesterday of soldiers rushing the presidential palace in La Paz, capital of Bolivia, and ramming its doors open with an armoured vehicle, may not have seemed surprising. The abortive coup attempt was aimed at toppling Bolivia’s left-wing president, Luis Arce After hours of confusion, the leader of the coup, General Juan Jose Zuniga, was led away under arrest, with his attempt to ‘restructure democracy’ having clearly failed. Earlier, crowds had taken to the streets in response to presidential appeals to defend democracy and oppose the coup. The abortive coup