Daniel DePetris

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune and a foreign affairs writer for Newsweek.

Joe Biden should prepare for gridlock

The Democratic Party was anticipating a blue wave this fall, a victory of such magnitude that Republicans would be spending the next two years fighting amongst themselves rather than controlling the purse strings. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, was so confident of this blue wave scenario that she sent

America gets the divided election result it deserves

The 2020 US presidential race was an ugly, ferocious dogfight. So it only makes sense for the contest to end the same way it started. Americans went to bed unsure who their next president was going to be. At the time of writing, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are neck-and-neck (223-212 in favour of Biden

Lame-duck Trump has plenty of time to cause trouble

Making political predictions can be about as foolhardy as walking into a Las Vegas casino and predicting success at the blackjack table – better to pipe down, be humble, and watch how the action develops. But if there is one thing we can bet our money on, it’s that a defeated Donald Trump (assuming, of course,

Don’t bank on a Biden landslide

It’s easy to turn on CNN or take a quick glimpse at the polls and just assume that Donald Trump is destined to become the first one-term president in nearly three decades. Some of my proud Democrat friends keep insisting to me that the former vice president Joe Biden will humiliate Trump with a margin of

Obama’s bid to make Trump a one-term president

With less than a week to go before Americans cast their ballots at polling places across the country, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are leaving it all on the field. Biden spent Tuesday in Georgia, a traditionally Republican state the former vice president nevertheless has a chance of swiping on election day. Vice President Mike

Joe Biden’s one job in the presidential debate

Former Vice President Joe Biden had one job in tonight’s final presidential debate: tread water. Don’t get rattled. If President Trump talks about your son, Hunter, as if he were an influence peddler or a Chinese Communist Party crony, take a breath and don’t take the bait. And definitely don’t get so angry that you

Can Trump the peacemaker convince US voters?

President Donald Trump has been running from rally to rally like a headless chicken ready to cluck about his accomplishments. The only issue is there aren’t many accomplishments for him to run on. His campaign advisers are begging him to focus all his energy on the prospects of an economic comeback in the last two

Even Trump’s friends are turning against him

If there is one word that best describes Senate Republicans in the age of Donald Trump, it’s “docile.” With the exception of a few independent-minded lawmakers who have been able to make a name for themselves or who have spent decades cultivating their own brand, the Senate GOP conference has played the roll of cannon

Trump won’t admit it, but he’s in trouble

President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden were supposed to debate in front of the American public last night. The debate, however, was called off after Trump refused to do it via video link. So instead, Americans were treated to two different town-halls on two different U.S. television networks. While Trump was talking

Donald Trump is running out of time

Donald Trump was bewildered, frustrated, and downright exasperated. Addressing a crowd of red-hatted, hard-core MAGA supporters last night in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the president wondered aloud how it was even possible he could be defeated by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. ‘I’m running against the single worst candidate in the history of presidential politics, and you

What was missing from the vice presidential debate

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris is a former prosecutor. Vice President Mike Pence is a career politician. The debate between them was always going to be less lively and dramatic than the name-calling last week between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. But it wouldn’t be a snooze-fest – nothing in this election cycle is. Harris began

The US election is Joe Biden’s to lose

Donald Trump is back at the White House after a scary three-day stay at the Walter Reed medical complex. For the President, that’s the good news. The bad news: his bout with the coronavirus hasn’t won him any sympathy points from the electorate. In fact, his numbers have only gotten worse. CNN’s latest national survey

Biden can smell victory in his battle against Trump

‘How is the president feeling?’ shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer. And yet over the last 24 hours, nobody could say with any clarity that Donald Trump was ill, on the mend, or perfectly fine. Even reporters with impeccable sources in the White House bubble were left flabbergasted as completely contradictory accounts emerged from

Covid-19 is Trump’s hardest fight yet

Donald Trump has confronted a long list of adversaries and weathered an even longer list of scandals in his nearly four years as President of the United States.  In 2017, there was FBI director James Comey, special counsel Robert Mueller, and the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville. In 2018, there was the felony convictions of

Trump’s debate clash with Biden was a national embarrassment

Last night’s presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden started amicably enough. Both men strolled on stage, Trump wearing a red and blue striped tie, ready to battle. Joseph ‘Average Joe’ Biden greeted the president with a ‘How are you, man?’ From that point on, the debate quickly degenerated into one of the most

Trump’s tax leak won’t turn the election

Donald Trump has a lot to worry about these days. The man who is deathly afraid of being ‘a loser’ could be weeks away from losing in the most visible way to Joe Biden, a competitor Trump has blatantly suggested may be taking performance-enhancing drugs to stay awake on the campaign trail.  He is facing

Has the EU finally found its spine when it comes to China?

There is no point putting lipstick on a pig: the relationship between the United States and China, two powers holding a combined 40 per cent of the world’s GDP, is at its most depressing and alarming since the establishment of their diplomatic relations in 1979. As soon as you think bilateral ties couldn’t get any

Trump’s suburban nightmare

Public opinion polls haven’t been particularly positive for President Trump or his Republican allies on Capitol Hill. This past weekend was no better. CNN’s most recent poll has presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leading Trump in Florida by 5 percentage points, Arizona by 4, and Michigan by 12. The Associated Press piled on the

Is Trump toning himself down for re-election?

The last time a U.S. President lost re-election, the year was 1992 and the victim was George H.W. Bush. President Donald Trump is currently doing everything in his power to make sure he isn’t the first incumbent in 28 years to vacate the White House after a single, four-year term; if that means ditching the

Kanye for president? Ye, he can

Kanye West is a great artist. But would he make a great president? Kanye and Trump are certainly similar. They both love publicity and are master self-promoters. So for Kanye, what better way to market oneself than running for the Oval Office? This isn’t the first time the hip-hop mogul thought about throwing his hat