Us politics

Another massive America news blizzard yesterday: Trump lawyer quits, tariffs tariffs tariffs, stock-market slide, former alleged mistresses of the President speaking out, McMaster out (finally), Bolton in (finally). And then, as a night cap, the Senate approves a $1.3 trillion spending plan to prevent a government shutdown. The Bolton news has, so far, been the most headline grabbing, even if people in the know — and readers of Spectator USA — have known it was about to happen for some time. Donald Trump has rather sweetly let it be known that he has hired Bolton on the condition he didn’t start any wars: ‘now, now John, don’t you go nuking.’

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 he 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

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

Has Donald Trump sparked off a trade war? His plans for a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum have shocked friend and foe alike. China is outraged; so are Canada, Japan, and South Korea—allies that in fact export more steel to the U.S. than China does. They stand to be hurt worst if they aren’t granted exemptions or cut special deals by the president. Trump accuses the Chinese of ‘dumping’ steel into the American market, while the legal grounds for his new tariffs rest in the idea that strategically critical manufacturing is endangered by a diminished U.S. metals industry. But if the tariffs inflict

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

It seems a perverse fate that Donald Trump, the bogeyman of progressive America, should turn out to be the president who ends up delivering a measure of gun reform. In the wake of the Valentine’s Day massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida, President Trump has delivered a series of remarks promising a ‘beautiful’ comprehensive gun bill that will expand background checks on gun purchases, remove guns from the hands of the mentally ill, bolster security on school campuses and restrict young people from purchasing certain weapons. Trump, clearly, sees an opportunity to triangulate between the National Rifle Association, firmly supported by much of his base, and the

It was always ridiculous that Jared Kushner, an amiable 37-year-old who had no diplomatic, political or military experience, should have had top-level ‘SCI’ security access as a senior member of the White House — just because he happened to be the President’s son-in-law. Well now, he’s been downgraded, as Politico reports. He continues to have ‘secret level’ access, which is still pretty silly when you think about it. But the downgrading signals that Kushner, who just a few weeks ago was still thought to be the supreme power in the White House, is losing influence. It also suggests that General John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, is taking further charge

As I write this, my Twitter timeline is filling up with tributes to Billy Graham, who has died at the age of 99. Donald Trump describes him as ‘the GREAT Billy Graham’. Well said, Mr President; for once, those Trumpian capital letters are perfectly judged.  What’s interesting is that so many of those tweets come from Catholics. Graham started out as your standard-issue Protestant revivalist, not just a Bible-basher but also a Catholic-basher. But when Pope John Paul II died in 2005, he described him as ‘unquestionably the most influential voice for morality and peace in the world during the last 100 years’. Today, Catholics and Evangelicals recognise that far more

One of President Donald Trump’s chief political foils in the Republican Party — a party that increasingly resembles a Trump fan club more than a group of partisan but independent thinkers — is about to storm the national scene and send a jolt of energy to the dwindling and listless #NeverTrump movement. Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, 2012 Republican presidential nominee, and wealthy businessman, is reportedly preparing to announce his formal campaign to be the next US Senator from Utah.  And with no serious Republican in the heavily-Mormon state willing to throw a hat in the ring to challenge Romney, it is a virtual assurance that he will win the election. The

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 also wanted to be seen as a meditative fellow. His adversaries may well conclude that the flowers out him as what they viewed him as all along—a not-so-closet leftist. Meanwhile, his wife Michelle looks serene in a capacious, flowing gown that drapes to the floor. The question hovering over the portraits, though, is whether they

Donald Trump had a lot to prove during his first ever State of the Union address this week. He had to demonstrate to the millions of Americans watching on television that he could deliver a semi-unifying and presidential speech and stay in one place for more than an hour without diverging into tangents. He had to show his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill that he is a take-charge kind of guy — somebody who has bold, transformational plans for America’s infrastructure and for the country’s immigration system. To Democrats and independents, he wanted to exhibit a kind of conciliatory persona, not one of his favourite character traits. And to the president himself,

Donald J Trump’s State of the Union was as expected: long, boastful, cheesy — and largely right. Trump says he is creating a ‘new American moment’ — and it’s hard to deny that he is. Before he was president, and even in his inauguration speech, Trump painted only a vision of America in ruins. Now, after a year of him in charge, his message is reassuring and upbeat. It’s not the same as Reagan’s sunny optimism — it’s more post-modern and surreal than that — but it’s not far off. You could call it Trump’s electric sunbed optimism. It’s feel-good, it’s a bit orange, and it seems to be rubbing