In the realm of foreign policy, Vice President JD Vance has drawn sharp criticism, with critics branding him as “extremist,” the “Malicious American,” and the “Brutal American“—labels sparked by what they describe as his “naked hostility,” his “morally wrong” and “strategically disastrous” posturing, and a demand to interchange “truth for trade.” If alienating allies is the objective, critics say, he’s well on his way to achieving it.

During the first Trump administration, the President repeatedly came under fire for promoting a brand of foreign relations that was seen as entirely transactional. Turning a blind eye to decades of presidents promoting democracy and human rights as critical components of their foreign policy, Trump forged friendships with authoritarian dictators, invited terrorists to Camp David, and delivered “extensive damage” to “the United States’ international interests and global security.”

In this new, second Trump administration, the President appears to have gone all in on that transactional approach. In what is seen as an effort to upend the world order, Trump is on the offensive, attacking friend and foe alike, distancing America from the rest of the world on the premise that the rest of the world needs America more than America needs the rest of the world.

But Vice President JD Vance appears to have taken Trump’s foreign policy to a far different place: an attempt to create a political and cultural reshaping of foreign nations into the far-right realm. Where Trump wanted trade and military deals, Vance seeks to promote the far right and encourage attacks on minorities.

His efforts, to some, were first noticed during the infamous Oval Office meeting with the President of Ukraine. When Vance took the lead in publicly berating Volodymyr Zelenskyy on live television, many saw it as the moment the United States pivoted—from supporting Ukraine to effectively siding with Russia.

The Vice President is now fully engaged in the role of President Trump’s attack dog.

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But the costs are high.

Vance’s assault on a world leader seen as a hero to Western democracies effectively killed what was billed as a wildly lucrative rare earth minerals deal with Ukraine, and with it, a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia that President Trump campaigned on—stating that he could bring peace in just one day.

The Greenland imbroglio was another embarrassing event—not only for Vance, but for the Second Lady, and for America. What was supposed to be a week-long charm offensive turned into a few offensive hours.

Now that Trump has imposed his worldwide tariffs, Vance appears to be the one attempting to negotiate country by country.

It is not going well.

Last week, Vance told Fox News that America is borrowing money from “Chinese peasants” to “buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”

“We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things that Chinese peasants manufacture.” – JD Vance

Yeah. I’m sure the Politburo is going to take that comment very well.

pic.twitter.com/D0NuLIb0df

— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) April 9, 2025

Robyn Dixon, Moscow Bureau Chief for The Washington Post, reports that the “JD Vance comment about ‘Chinese peasants’ was taken in China as deeply offensive, and it is now a hurdle to trade talks. Trump administration’s approach appears tone deaf on this.”

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Spencer Hakimian, the founder and chief investment officer of the hedge fund Tolou Capital Management, one week after the Vance “peasants” comment, posted that “Chinese purchases of American oil are down -90% Y/Y, while Chinese purchases of Canadian oil are up +700% Y/Y.

“That’s a $20B annual loss for the United States at $60/barrel.”

Chinese purchases of American oil are down -90% Y/Y, while Chinese purchases of Canadian oil are up +700% Y/Y.

That’s a $20B annual loss for the United States at $60/barrel. pic.twitter.com/Q4N1jzHWCF

— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) April 16, 2025

Bloomberg News reports that “China wants to see a number of steps from President Donald Trump’s administration before it will agree to trade talks, including showing more respect by reining in disparaging remarks by members of his cabinet, according to a person familiar with the Chinese government’s thinking.”

It’s not just China, Greenland, Ukraine, or Germany that have had to experience the American Vice President.

According to The Independent, Vance wants the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to repeal hate speech laws “in order to get a trade deal over the line.”

The UK-based news outlet adds that “a senior Washington figure, who has provided advice for the administration, claimed he is ‘obsessed by the fall of Western civilisation’ – including his view that free speech is being eroded in Britain – and that he will demand the Labour government rolls back laws against hateful comments, including abuse targeting LGBT+ groups or other minorities, as a condition of any deal.”

“’No free speech, no deal. It is as simple as that,’ the Washington source said.”

That may come as a surprise to some, but taking a walk back to just a few months ago, it shouldn’t.

In February, Vance traveled to Germany to declare support for its growing neo-Nazi party.

“After berating European allies, Vance met with the leader of the far-right AfD party, Alice Weidel,” The Washington Post’s European Affairs columnist Lee Hockstader wrote.

“That Vance took up the cause of the AfD, a party polling at around 20 percent which many Germans regard as beyond the pale, is heedless of history and contemptuous of the transatlantic alliance,” Hockstader said. “In doing so, he managed to transform Europe’s old stereotype of the Ugly American into something more grotesque: the Malicious American.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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Concerns are mounting over President Donald Trump’s ability, willingness, or even interest in engaging with the most pressing issues facing the country, as he increasingly—and casually—admits to being unaware of critical matters. His repeated declarations of ignorance, often delivered without hesitation or concern, have deepened alarm among critics who warn of a dangerous void in informed leadership in the Oval Office.

Late Wednesday afternoon, a reporter asked President Trump, “Have you been briefed about the soldiers in Lithuania? Who are missing?”

The Commander-in-Chief, appearing both uninformed and unconcerned, simply replied, “No I haven’t.” And moved on to take a question from another reporter.

The four soldiers went missing on Tuesday during a training mission in Lithuania, near the border of Belarus, a staunch ally of Russia. On Wednesday, as Axios reported, their Hercules armored vehicle was found submerged. Hours before Trump was asked, NATO and numerous media outlets had reported the soldiers were dead, only to walk that back later. They currently remain missing.

But President Trump said he was unaware of any of this.

Reporter: Have you been briefed about the soldiers in Lithuania? Who are missing?

President Trump: No, I haven’t. pic.twitter.com/IP4NKoSsUu

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 26, 2025

“Is Trump just totally out of the loop?” asked journalist Matthew Yglesias. “Why wasn’t he briefed on the soldiers in Lithuania?”

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Declaring President Trump “clueless” on “basic intel,” The New Republic on Thursday morning noted that “the armymen were known to be missing as early as Tuesday at 4:45 p.m., the Lithuanian military said, so why Trump was still unaware of the situation more than 24 hours later is unclear.”

Also Wednesday afternoon, President Trump was asked about his Secretary of Defense’s involvement in Signalgate. Pete Hegseth has been identified as the one who shared classified information in an insecure channel—seen as the greatest violation within the entire scandal. But the President appeared unaware of his Defense Secretary’s role in the massive nation security breach when asked by a reporter.

“Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do this. Hegseth? How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, it’s all a witch hunt,” Trump told the reporter. He then went on to try to blame Signal, saying he thought it could be “defective.”

Trump: “Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do this. How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, it’s all a witch hunt … I think Signal could be defective to be honest with you.” pic.twitter.com/DXuRgo4HJJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2025

Attorney and former Biden White House senior presidential speechwriter Dan Cluchey, responded to the video of Trump’s remarks on Hegseth and Signal.

“This is stronger evidence of cognitive decline than anything Joe Biden has ever said in his life, ever,” he wrote, and warned: “Something tells me the press will breeze right past it.”

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Journalist James Surowiecki observed, Trump is “so checked out of his job that he doesn’t even know Hegseth needlessly disclosed the weapons packages and times of the attack on the Houthis.”

On Monday, Trump had told reporters when asked about the Signal scandal, “I don’t know anything about it.” Appearing as if he had not been briefed, he then asked a reporter for more information about it.

“Trump initially told reporters he was not aware that the highly sensitive information had been shared, 2 1/2 hours after it was reported. He later appeared to joke about the breach,” the Associated Press reported.

The Signal texts that The Atlantic had published also reveal the President’s apparent lack of awareness, on numerous fronts.

On Wednesday, asked by a reporter if he believed the information shared in the Signal chat was not classified, the Commander-in-Chief told reporters, “That’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know. I’m not sure, you have to ask the various people involved.”

The White House has repeatedly insisted it was not classified, but countless experts, including lawmakers, say it was classified.

Vice President JD Vance in the texts says, “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this [military strike] is with his message on Europe right now.”

The Washington Post, citing a person with knowledge of Vance’s intentions, reported on Wednesday that “Vance wanted to ensure that Trump had been given all the facts about the potential attack, including that European nations stood to benefit more from it than the U.S.” That would suggest the Commander-in-Chief was not aware of “all the facts.”

Also of concern is that the 18 participants in the Signal chat appeared to be unsure of the President’s directive.

Calling him “President Bystander,” MSNBC’s Steve Benen writes, “Trump appears out of the loop in his own White House.”

Pointing to the Signal texts, Benen says one text “chain featured the White House’s Stephen Miller adding, in apparent reference to the attack plan, ‘As I heard it, the president was clear: green light.'”

“The problems should be obvious,” Benen added. “Vance was uncertain about Trump’s knowledge of the relevant details, and one of the president’s right-hand loyalists added an ‘as I heard it’ qualifier to the commander in chief’s directive about a deadly military operation abroad.”

The Commander-in-Chief appears to have been uninvolved in important portions of the planning of the military strike. Based on the Signal texts, it appears likely that he was absent from key portions of the decision making process.

Jared Ryan Sears, who writes The Pragmatic Humanist, offered this observation.

“Trump didn’t know about the Signal group chat or that a reporter was included. Trump says he didn’t sign the authorization to use the Enemy Alien Act to deport people without due process. His signature was on the document. Trump didn’t know that US service members went missing during a training exercise in Lithuania,” he noted. “What kind of leader knows nothing about what his administration is doing, what he himself is doing, and what is happening with the military he is in charge of?”

Attorney, Republican, and former U.S. Representative Barbara Comstock on Wednesday shared her concerns via social media.

“There is no adult supervision at the White House. Grandpa does not know what is going on except on the Golf Chanel or if someone takes a bad picture of him. Where’s Melania? Does he have a COS or caretaker?”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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Image via Reuters 

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in an attempt to cauterize the self-inflicted wound from his decision to help Republicans pass their “CR,” continuing resolution, last week—a move backed by President Donald Trump—may have only deepened what some rank-and-file Democrats see as a crisis of leadership.

In what some are calling a “devastating” interview Tuesday evening with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, the Democratic leader appeared unwilling to grasp the full extent of the current threat level to American democracy, that our democracy is now at a crossroads—a fact well-documented by experts on democracy, and proclaimed by a Democratic U.S. Senator—and struggled to acknowledge that the nation is facing a constitutional crisis.

Trying to defend what is being seen as a lack of strategy, an inability to grasp the gravity of this moment in American history, and a refusal to fight the battle that is actually before him, Schumer made his argument to Hayes.

President Donald Trump’s approval “numbers have started to go down, from 51 to 47. If we keep at it and keep at it and keep at it, his numbers will be much lower. He will not only be less popular, but less effective,” Schumer insisted.

Schumer additionally claimed that “we will find the moments where we shouldn’t give them votes.”

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But Schumer was sitting in Hayes’s studio exactly because he did give Republicans votes. He canceled his book tour that was supposed to start this week, reportedly due to security threats, and instead has been hitting the talk shows and cable news defending his decision — and his leadership position.

“There’s this weird asymmetry right now,” Hayes observed, noting that Republicans “are acting in this totally new way, in which they are ambitiously trying to seize all power and create a presidential dictatorship in the United States of America, and the Democratic opposition is acting like, ‘Well, if we can get their approval rate down a few points.’ Then what? Then what happens?”

“Well,” Schumer, still in defensive mode, declared, saying that “what happens is, look, first, we get it way down, he’s gonna have much like we—this worked in 2017.”

For some on social media, that appeared to be the inflection point—the moment that Schumer exposed that he is using the old playbook that the Trump administration, MAGA, The Heritage Foundation, and Project 2025 burned long ago.

“You say now it’s a different government,” Schumer acknowledged.

“It’s different, though,” Hayes pressed.

“Oh, it is different, but health care: we beat them. Taxes: we beat them, and guess what we did? Guess what we did, Chris? We took back the House and won in the Senate, and that got and then we were allowed to do all those good things.”

Hayes also honed in on Schumer’s 2017 reference.

“I don’t disagree with that, but the difference to me between 2017 and now,” he explained, is that it “is a full-fledged assault on the Constitutional order that has not been seen.”

And Hayes asked, “but then the question becomes, what is the role of the minority in resisting that, that’s distinct from ‘we’re gonna beat them on health care, we’re gonna beat them on spending with Medicaid.'”

Then Schumer said, “If our democracy is at risk—”

“It is at risk,” Hayes declared.

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“Sorry. It is certainly at risk,” Schumer acknowledged, after Hayes made that declaration, but then he ignored Hayes’s question: “Do you believe” it is at risk?

Schumer moved on, appearing to say that if the federal courts ultimately fail to hold Trump, “we’ll have the court of public opinion, and if that happens, as you pointed out, we have had rule of law since the Magna Carta, okay?”

“The people will have to rise up, not just Democrats, not just Republicans, not just, you know, people everybody. But our democracy will be at stake then,” he said, again, not appearing to grasp that, as experts say, it is right now.

“And if the people make their voices heard as strong and stand up, and we join them, I believe we can try to beat that back.”

“We can beat that back, but it’s it’s it’s up on that one, if democracy is at risk, that’s a little different than what we’re talking about now — even a shutdown as horrible as it is.”

“We’ll all have to stand up and fight back in every way,” Schumer concluded.

Critics, and rank-and-file Democrats, and some elected Democrats, say the fight should have started when Trump was elected.

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a noted political scientist, responded to a clip of Hayes’ interview with Schumer, declaring, “Chuck is delusional.”

That word has repeatedly surfaced.

“‘This worked in 2017’ is all you need to hear. I can understand Schumer’s logic on the shutdown, but he’s delusional if he thinks that’s a winning strategy,” observed Cosmopolitan editor Olivia Truffaut-Wong.

“You know, I watched Sen. Schumer on Chris Hayes and really tried to hear him defend his actions in good faith,” wrote Charlotte Clymer, a former Human Rights Campaign press secretary who has called for Schumer to resign, “but by the end of their discussion, it just felt impossible for me to avoid this very deep sense of dangerous foreboding. Big ‘tempting fate’ energy in the worse way. Honestly scary.”

One day before Schumer’s MSNBC interview, Clymer on Monday had already made the case for “Why Chuck Schumer Should Step Down.”

“We have lost our way not because of what we believe in,” she wrote, referring to rank-and-file Democratic voters, “but because of our party leadership’s reluctance to fight for what we believe in.”

Sam Seder, the progressive political commentator and host of “The Majority Report with Sam Seder,” declared Schumer’s interview with Hayes was “devastating for Schumer. ..ignoring the criticism from all corners of the party..can’t articulate a strategy. It’s bizarre. He thinks it’s 2017.”

He also wrote that Schumer was “trying to justify his lack of leadership and strategy on his failed dirty CR. He’s panicked and should be. He is not up to the era. Instead of fighting against every other Democratic leader he should resign for the sake of the country.”

Emma Vigeland, Seder’s co-host, wrote that Chris Hayes “nailed Schumer at the end of tonight’s interview by getting him to equivocate about whether or not we are currently at risk of losing our democracy. This is entirely out of step with how the base feels and saying this on MSNBC could (and should!) cost him his leadership.”

Elected Democrats are starting to break their wall of silence and call for Schumer to resign as Senate Democratic Leader.

U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) on Tuesday, as C-SPAN reported, said: “I was deeply disappointed that Senator Schumer voted with the Republicans. You know you’re on bad ground when you get a personal tweet from Donald Trump thanking you for your vote…I’m afraid it may be time for the Senate Democrats to pick new leadership…”

Christopher Webb, a social media political commentator with a strong following multi-platform following, posted edited video of the interview and also called it “devastating.”

DEVASTATING INTERVIEW

Trump must be very happy that Chuck Schumer is the minority leader right now.

This dude doesn’t get it. He doesn’t think democracy is truly at risk, and he’s doing save it—just waiting for Trump’s poll numbers to drop.

And worse— @SenSchumer is waiting… pic.twitter.com/YtIq2lsx0O

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) March 19, 2025

Watch the video above or at this link.

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Image via Reuters