Us politics

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 much bolder and more activist Trump foreign policy. At the most basic level Pompeo will work to restore the depleted ranks of the foreign service. His close ties to Trump—he has visited him daily at the White House—means that he will not be at the receiving end of Trump’s barbs as was Tillerson. He will

A certain conventional wisdom in Washington has it that a sober triad is alone keeping the White House—and hence the country—from falling into complete chaos. (Notice I said complete.) Some wags identify the trio as “the generals”—Defense Secretary James Mattis, Chief of Staff John Kelly, and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster—while some substitute Eagle Scout Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, for General McMaster. It might turn out, however, that it’s a man nobody thinks of as a dutiful public servant who’s actually been staving off disaster—and he’s just left the building. Gary Cohn announced on Tuesday he would be stepping down from the directorate of the National Economic Council.

Not many world leaders can claim to be on friendly personal terms with Donald Trump. There are fewer still who would regard a visit to this particular president’s White House as a crowning achievement, and one which would increase their popularity at home rather than being seen as a moral failing. So the lesson of Benjamin Netanyahu’s triumphant meeting with the US president deserves particular scrutiny for having jumped all these hurdles. Admittedly, it helps to be a right wing Israeli Prime Minister at a time of Republican ascendancy. Netanyahu’s relationship with Barack Obama was famously abrasive. Any successor was bound to be an improvement, even if the strong US-Israel

It speaks volumes about protectionism that while the share prices of steel and aluminium makers rose on the news that President Trump is to place tariffs on imports (from exactly which countries he didn’t say), shares in companies which use large amounts of steel immediately plunged: General Motors by 3.7 per cent, Ford by 3 per cent.   It is always the same with protectionism. Either Donald Trump hasn’t studied the effects of George W Bush’s experiment with steel tariffs in 2002 or he doesn’t care.  On that occasion, while creaking steel companies enjoyed a temporary reprieve, the overall effect on the economy was hugely negative. According to CITAC – a US

Every week is extraordinary in the Trump administration — but this week seems stranger than most. Matters are rumbling in the belly of the beast. On Tuesday, we learned that Jared Kushner had his security clearance downgraded. Today, we learn that Hope Hicks, famously Trump’s most trusted aide, has resigned, a day after she testified to the House Intelligence Committee as part of the Russia investigation. Hicks stonewalled questions from the committee for several hours, though she did reportedly open up a little on certain aspects of Trump’s transition. She is the fourth Trump White House communications director to quit in just over a year. It can’t be easy leading

Washington, DC The Valentine’s Day massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida has been an unprecedented, touchstone moment in American life. It is a naked tragedy – but also one killing only a third as many (seventeen) as died in Las Vegas last year (fifty nine) or in North Florida the year before that (forty nine). Nevertheless, the shooting has rankled Republican demurral on gun control like never before. This is not early 2013 under President Obama after the Newtown elementary school massacre. Do nothing and the GOP, dominant in federal politics and firmly in control of most of the states, risks a typhoon of cultural scorn. The

Oh dear. It’s a common sight nowadays to see a politician down the line struggle to hear what their interviewer is saying as soon as the questions start to get difficult. Whether it’s bad weather or bad signal, there’s a long history of earpieces failing at the most convenient times. So, spare a thought for Michael Wolff. Donald Trump’s unofficial biographer appeared to experience a technical problem during an interview with the Today Show. The broadcaster, however, has now released an audio which they claim is what Wolff was hearing when he claimed he couldn’t hear the question: LISTEN – This is what Michael Wolff was HEARING in his earpiece

Billy Graham, the American evangelist, has died at the age of 99. Here John Betjeman recounts his experience of attending one of Graham’s Greater London Crusade events, in an article first published in the Spectator in March 1954: Every night the Harringay arena is packed; every night throngs of converts—mostly young people—crowd up at the end of the service to the bare space below the rostrum, thence to be conducted by ‘counsellors’ to a room where they are interviewed and given tracts. This is the Greater London Crusade of Billy Graham and I think he must be cynical indeed who affects to despise the crusade or doubt the sincerity of

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 Farrow reports that Trump conducted a nine month long affair with 1998 Playboy ‘Playmate of the year’ Karen McDougal who was quite smitten by Trump’s charms, at least initially. Darrow has unearthed an eight page letter in which she describes in vivid detail her repeated encounters with Trump, including viewing Melania Trump’s bedroom at Trump