… Now then, in August 2016, while Hillary was hobnobbing with millionaires at fundraisers, Donald Trump was out in the hustings holding rallies in places that the experts said he had no chance of winning. Michigan, for example. The fool.
On August 19, he went to a tiny suburb of Lansing—Dimondale, population 1,134—to make an obligatory pitch to black voters. The town is 96% white and less than 1% black.
My how the press laughed at this amateur.
h/t DS
As a tool, tariffs may not be to everyone’s taste, but they are a very effective policy instrument in President Trump’s hands.
Trump knows how to use them.
Deporting the peevish princeling would only fuel the couple’s sense of victimhood.
‘The gaiety of nations’ is a lovely phrase, as nations are generally in the news when they are in a state of woe. Originally, it was Samuel Johnson’s tribute to actor and playwright David Garrick (‘I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure’), but I can’t help associating it with political leaders.
The first thing Olena Litovchenko thought, when she read the news of Donald Trump’s phone call to Vladimir Putin on Wednesday evening, was that it may finally be time for her to leave Ukraine.
“It feels like Ukraine is being screwed,” said Litovchenko, a personal trainer who was born in Kyiv and has stayed in the city throughout the three years of full-scale war. Believing the prospect of a Ukrainian defeat to be closer after Trump’s call and statements on Wednesday, she thought for the first time that she perhaps ought to leave, for the sake of her daughter. “But then, leave and go where? Europe is most certainly going to be next. Go to Australia? I don’t know. I feel angry and betrayed.”
Hegseth softens stance on Ukraine’s potential NATO membership
BRUSSELS — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday walked back a key piece of his dramatic remarks here at NATO headquarters a day prior, leaving open the possibility of Ukraine joining the military alliance after previously saying the United States does not believe membership for Kyiv is a “realistic outcome” in any peace deal with Russia.
Hegseth’s clarification appeared designed to assuage the backlash, in Washington and in Europe, ignited by his remarks hours before President Donald Trump announced his administration had jump-started negotiations to end the three-year war.
The U.S. underwrites a variety of international organizations that make up a global deep state.
President Trump has cut funding to some egregious United Nations agencies and ordered a review of all funding for the U.N. and other international organizations. Executive orders cutting taxpayer funding for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and trans ideology won’t fully ensure the U.S. taxpayer isn’t paying for such programs without taking on the global deep state. These priorities are baked in to the institutional structure of international organizations that the U.S. underwrites.
In fiscal 2022, the U.S. government provided more than $21 billion to 179 international organizations and multilateral entities. The entries fill 455 pages of a State Department report. This is on top of the direct foreign aid that went to radical progressive causes via the U.S. Agency for International Development.
h/t DS
Donald Trump has said that he and Vladimir Putin have spoken directly and agreed to begin negotiations to broker a ceasefire to the war in Ukraine.
In a social media post, Trump said that held a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Putin and that they agreed to “have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.
He also said that he and Putin had agreed to visit each other’s nations.
“As we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial. “President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’ We both believe very strongly in it. We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations.”
BREAKING: President Trump confirms that he’s just had a phone call with President Putin of Russia. The two countries will immediately begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. HUGE. pic.twitter.com/XXZLL5x6W4
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 12, 2025
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has led to a “remarkable shift” in Europeans’ view of the US, according to a survey, with even the most America-friendly no longer seeing Washington primarily as an ally.
The polling, of 11 EU member states plus Ukraine, Switzerland and the UK, found most people now regarded the US as merely a “necessary partner” – even in countries such as Poland and Denmark that barely 18 months ago had considered the US an ally.
An average of 50% of Europeans across the member states surveyed viewed the US this way, the study revealed, with an average of only 21% seeing it as an ally, leading the report’s authors to urge a more “realistic, transactional” EU approach.
It’s called paying your own freight rather trying to get a free ride as Canada does in NATO.
There is a wind of change blowing through the West. It emanates from Washington DC, where President Donald Trump continues to dash off executive orders; more than fifty by the end of last week, the highest number in a president’s first 100 days in four decades.
The liberal mainstream media is rattled. The New York Times magazine ran a piece at the weekend in which it described Trump as “the leading light of a spate of illiberal leaders and parties flourishing in democracies around the world.” The paper namechecked some of them: Poland, Holland, India, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Hungary and Russia.
Murmurs from President Trump and his allies have stirred up questions of the incumbent possibly seeking a third term in office, even as he’s currently constitutionally barred from doing so.
Trump has remarked on a few occasions since being sworn in for a second term that he wouldn’t be running again unless people insist and decide to “figure it out.” And Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has even introduced a constitutional amendment that would specifically allow Trump to run for another term but not any of his two-term predecessors.
These efforts, which aren’t entirely unheard of in recent history, would require a number of steps that make a third Trump term a considerable long shot.
It’s not unpossible!
Donald Trump has said that his plan to “take over Gaza” would not include a right of return for the more than 2 million Palestinians that he has said have “no alternative” but to leave because of the destruction left by Israel’s military campaign.
The remarks are the latest effective endorsement of ethnic cleansing by the US president, who announced his plan last week during a summit with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to the outrage of the Arab world and the surprise of even his closest aides.
In the interview with Fox’s Bret Baier, Trump said that he would “own” the Gaza Strip and declared it would be a “real estate development for the future”.
Democrat antics and media mendacity aside, a clear majority favor paring down government.
During his bid to reclaim the White House, President Trump pledged to pare down the federal government and said Elon Musk would play a role in that effort. The Democrats evidently expected this project to go the way of the ineffectual Simpson-Bowles and Grace Commissions. Consequently, they were less than pleased when Trump rebranded the United States Digital Service (USDS) as the United States DOGE Service and promptly sicced it on the bureaucratic leviathan. The public differs with the Democrats, however. According to Newsweek, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that “61 percent of U.S. adults support Trump’s plan to downsize the federal government.”
President Trump is seeing high approval ratings from the public since returning to office, with many describing him as “focused” and “effective,” according to a poll released Sunday, but many of those polled are concerned that he may not be focused enough on lowering inflation.
The new poll from CBS News and YouGov finds Mr. Trump’s rating at 53 percent — a figure that surpasses his approval numbers during his first stint in the White House. An overwhelming majority of those polled described the president as “tough” and “energetic,” and 70 percent said they believe he is doing what he promised during his campaign.
The hysteria over Trump’s tariffs ignores just how protectionist most economies have become.
US president Donald Trump has begun his second term as president threatening to impose tariffs on assorted countries, from Canada to China. While some of the tariffs have been postponed, such as those on Canada and Mexico, others remain in the offing, triggering no shortage of hyperbolic media coverage.
Iran’s threat to assassinate Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign was far more serious than publicly known — and led to extraordinary precautions by his team that included using a decoy plane to avert a feared attempt on his life.
h/t DS
President Trump insists he trusts Elon Musk to overhaul the federal government and expressed awe at the tech titan’s work ethic while reaffirming his next targets — the Education Department and Pentagon.
“I ran on this,” Trump, 78, told Fox News’ Bret Baier in a preview clip of his Super Bowl interview, referring to his administration’s efforts to root out government waste. “I’ve had a great help with Elon Musk, who’s been terrific.”
NEW: Trump visibly surprised after Fox News' Bret Baier asks him if he trusts Elon Musk, says he is going to send Musk after the Department of Education next.
Baier: "Bottom line, you say you trust [Elon]?"
Trump: "Trust Elon? He's not gaining anything. In fact, I wonder how he… pic.twitter.com/zZlxetgc7H
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 9, 2025
