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‘Strategically Disastrous’: How JD Vance Is Harming America’s Foreign Relations

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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.

READ MORE: ‘Willful Disregard’: Judge Finds ‘Probable Cause’ to Hold Trump Admin in Criminal Contempt

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.”

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.”

READ MORE: Secret Musk Pentagon Briefing Nixed by Trump Led to Ouster of Longtime Hegseth Associates

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.”

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.

READ MORE: ‘This Is a Big Deal’: Top Hegseth Advisor ‘Escorted’ Out of the Pentagon Amid Leak Probe

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OPINION

‘Maoist’ ‘Soviet’ ‘Communist’: As Trumpism 2.0 Takes Shape, Experts Endeavor to Define It

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2 weeks ago

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May 5, 2025

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In the 105 days since Donald Trump began his second term as President, political observers and experts have been working to define and explain what Trumpism 2.0 is—and what it is not.

For some, the “not” is obvious. Critics suggest the United States is no longer a fully functioning democracy, but a nation sliding toward authoritarianism. Under Trump, they say, this is not a country growing stronger—or moving toward a brighter future.

That may explain the increasingly stark language used by his critics. One likened his recent televised Cabinet meeting to “something that frankly I would’ve expected out of North Korea.” Another said, “I didn’t sign up to live in the f—— Soviet Union,” in response to Trump’s claim that “a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old” doesn’t need 30 dolls or 250 pencils. “They can have three dolls or four dolls… they can have five” pencils. Others argue that Trumpism is now “primarily about the acquisition of power—power for its own sake.”

Political observers, experts, scholars, and critics are increasingly focused on signs of Trumpism’s extremism, authoritarianism, fascistic demagoguery, and even its apparent support for movements some say verge on fascism itself.

The current Trump administration “is supportive of a German political party that is the direct successor to National Socialism”—Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party—national security attorney Mark Zaid warned on Sunday. He appeared to be referring to Alternative for Germany (AfD), which German authorities have officially designated a “right-wing extremist endeavor.” Germany’s state media outlet, DW, recently published a video titled: “How much of a neo-Nazi party is the German AfD?”

READ MORE: ‘What Drunk on Power Looks Like’: Trump Goes on Attack in Wild Rants

The Atlantic’s James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds,” on Monday pointed to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Surowiecki remarked: “Trump says he will set the prices for all imported goods. He tells us we’ll have 5 pencils and like it. Now we have the Treasury Secretary talking about preventing the ‘spiritual degradation of the working class.’ Trumpism is becoming perversely, farcically Maoist.”

Noah Smith, the former Bloomberg opinion columnist, made that “Soviet Union” remark, above, in response to Trump’s comments to NBC News “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in an interview that aired on Sunday—the same comments that Surowiecki cited.

Those remarks—Trump defending his tariff war and the expected results, namely, higher prices and fewer available goods—appear to have hit a nerve.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, now a Professor of Political Science at Stanford, added: “This is just incredible — a billionaire telling working people they need to reduce their consumption. This is the opposite of the free market. Sounds a lot like communism to me. Soviet leaders also dictated to consumers their limited choices.”

He also noted: “Soviet communist leaders also dictated the consumption patterns of their citizens.”

“Enjoy MAGA Maoism,” remarked political writer and former congressional speechwriter Rotimi Adeoye, also commenting on Trump’s “dolls and pencils” utterance. And Adeoye pointed to his recent Washington Post piece:

“What we’re seeing is a kind of MAGA Maoism, remixed for the algorithm age. Like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it glorifies physical labor as moral purification, only now the purification is from the supposed “wokeness” of desk work, filtered through TikTok, X and Twitch. It’s not about creating jobs. It’s about creating vibes: strong men doing hard things, reshared until they become ideology.”

Professor of Political Science Robert E. Kelly noted that “MAGA loves to call its opponents ‘communists,’ but this is literally a neo-Marxist critique of consumerism.”

“The Department of Central Planning and Child Rearing has figured out the optimal number of dolls and pencils each child should have to make beautiful Republic,” snarked Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Justin Wolfers.

And The Atlantic’s David Frum, quipped: “One serving per person, no second helpings, until we have won the great patriotic war against Chinese pencil exporters.”

Frum added: “Second-term Trump messages: ‘America’s over-indulged 11 year old girls own too many pencils.’ And also: ‘I’m not sure whether president needs to obey the Constitution.'”

READ MORE: ‘Absolutely No Clue’: Trump Roasted Over Unique Declaration of Independence Interpretation

CNN senior reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere on Sunday noted: “In the space of 48 hours, the President of the United States has tweeted an image of himself as the new pope, said he doesn’t know if he has to abide by the Constitution, cited multiple completely false statistics, and announced that he wants to reopen a prison closed in 1963.”

Trump’s comment about his duty to uphold the Constitution—”I don’t know“—drew tremendous anger.

“The thing is that he’s being honest here,” Surowiecki observed. “He doesn’t know, because he’s totally incurious, doesn’t care about policy other than tariffs, and doesn’t have any interest in or knowledge of American constitutional law.”

Then there is the latest theater of Trump’s tariff war: the film industry.

The President of the United States has decided that any film “produced” outside of the U.S. will also be subjected to his tariffs.

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” Trump claimed. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

Professor Wolfers sounded the alarm.

“Given that this White House leaks about everything,” Wolfers, who is frequently seen on cable news, wrote, “and there was no chatter about movie tariffs, it seems likely that policy reshaping the lives of millions of Americans was made by an old man sitting alone in a room with a remote in his left hand, aided by no expert advice.”

“The party of small government would like you to watch fewer foreign films,” he also snarked.

And calling it “a very dangerous escalation,” Wolfers noted: “Tariffs have not traditionally been applied to services, and the United States is a massive net exporter of services. We would be extremely vulnerable to any service-based retaliation.”

Self-described “Tech policy wonk” Michael Nelson, formerly of Georgetown University, labeled Trump’s film tariffs “Deranged. #EconomicSuicide.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), who made the “North Korea” comparison above, has repeatedly warned about what he sees as corruption in the Trump administration.

“It seems like ages ago that Donald Trump turned the South Lawn into a car showroom to boost the profits of Elon Musk’s sputtering Tesla business. But it was just over a month ago. That’s the kind of daily, open corruption that’s just another day in this administration,” Senator Warner wrote on Friday.

Earlier last week, he summed up his thoughts on the Trump administration: “Corruption in plain sight and tanking the economy. This is what the Trump administration has been all about.”

Some, like The New York Times’ conservative opinion writer David Brooks, say simply that Trumpism is all about power.

Trumpism, Brooks wrote, “is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: He Wanted Hulk Hogan to Run for Senate — Now Scott Jennings Thinks He May Meet That Bar

 

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He Wanted Hulk Hogan to Run for Senate — Now Scott Jennings Thinks He May Meet That Bar

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2 weeks ago

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May 2, 2025

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CNN opinion contributor Scott Jennings, who this week appeared onstage at a Trump rally, says he would be all in if President Donald Trump asked him to run for U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky seat. Jennings, a vocal Trump supporter, previously floated professional wrestler Hulk Hogan as a replacement for outgoing Senator Marco Rubio.

“If Marco Rubio does in fact become Secretary of State,” Jennings said on CNN last November, “we’re gonna need a new senator from the state of Florida. And we need someone with Rubio’s national security credentials. Now, there’s one Floridian who can do it. He stood up to the Russians and the Iranians in the 1980s when he defeated the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkov, two of America’s most lethal foes. He is a real American. He fights for the rights of every man. He knows that courage is the thing that keeps us free. Ladies and gentlemen, I announce—Ron DeSantis, get on it—Hulk Hogan for U.S. Senate.”

Jennings has been called a “supervillain” and “cable TV’s ubiquitous MAGA Man of the Moment,” by The Daily Beast. His job on the cable TV network appears to be to start fights—and finish them—in defense of President Trump.

READ MORE: ‘What Drunk on Power Looks Like’: Trump Goes on Attack in Wild Rants

That favor may now be returned.

“If the president wants me, I’ll run,” Jennings reportedly has said, according to The Daily Beast. “If he wants somebody else, I’ll support that candidate.”

Jennings may be Trump’s latest choice to fill a congressional seat — or perhaps a job in the White House, as he and the President teased out on Friday:

Kentucky Republican political insiders say Jennings is a definite possibility to run for McConnell’s seat. The former Republican Leader is retiring and not running for re-election. Some note that Jennings’ website certainly looks like a political candidate’s. “Conservative Ideas. Middle America values. Fearless strategy,” it reads.

Critics are not amused.

“CNN is still standing by Scott Jennings,” wrote The Washington Post’s media reporter Jeremy Barr. “On the one hand, it’s great to have on-air contributors who are ‘close to the action.’ On the other hand, networks generally want them to maintain even an iota of distance to give their commentary more credibility.”

“Scott’s relationship with Trump has always been interesting,” Barr added. “He was once harshly critical of him and as recently as 2022 he said on CNN ‘We need a new nominee.’ But he tends to come back to Trump’s camp when he’s in power or about to be.”

READ MORE: Democrats Call for Hegseth’s Ouster After Trump Demotes National Security Advisor

Barr pointed to a piece he wrote last October: “How Scott Jennings became CNN’s go-to GOP pundit — and pugilist.”

“So his being a belligerent a-h— on CNN was all about angling for a job in the Trump administration,” wrote advocacy journalist Lauren Windsor. “Do better, @CNN.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Absolutely No Clue’: Trump Roasted Over Unique Declaration of Independence Interpretation

 

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OPINION

As US Economy Shrinks Trump Appears Unaware of Crisis: ‘This Is Biden’s Stock Market’

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2 weeks ago

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April 30, 2025

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To mark his first 100 days in office — “100 Days of Greatness,” he called it — President Donald Trump threw himself a celebration rally in the swing state of Michigan on Tuesday, declaring he has returned America to a “golden age.”

“The arena was surrounded by banners that read, ‘Investing in America,’ ‘Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!,’ ‘The Golden Age,’ ‘Buy American, Hire American’ and ‘The American Dream is Back,'” The Guardian reported. “Trump’s supporters held signs with slogans such as: ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘Golden Age of America.'”

On Wednesday, the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the American economy shrank in the first three months of 2025, the first time it has done so in nearly three years.

READ MORE: ‘Prices Go Up’: Economist Mocks Treasury Secretary’s ‘Empty Shelves’ Position

“Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025 (January, February, and March), according to the advance estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter of 2024, real GDP increased 2.4 percent.”

Economic experts had predicted 3% GDP growth for the first quarter, (some more, some less, but in that neighborhood) before Trump’s tariffs.

Economists and financial experts are pointing to President Donald Trump’s policies, including his tariff war, as the reason for the contraction.

“Real GDP down. Consumption down. Prices up. It’s very easy to criticize what is happening right in front of your eyes when you’re not in a woke cult,” observed Spencer Hakimian, founder and chief investment officer of the hedge fund Tolou Capital Management.

Hakimian pinned the blame for the economy contracting directly on Trump’s policies.

And pointing to the BEA’s numbers, Hakimian added, “Welcome to the recession.”

While the official “we are in a recession” declaration has not yet been made, some are doing so already, given the multiple forecasts predicting a recession, and some saying a recession is the current best possible outcome America (and possibly the global economy) will see this year.

Conservative commentator David Frum of The Atlantic responded to the economic news.

“Trump pushed the US economy into decline by his ignorance and malice, enabled and abetted by advisers who were variously obnoxious, stupid, cowardly, and/or crazy,” said Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter.

Despite the declarations of experts, President Trump quickly denied responsibility for any economic pain, and, appeared to not understand the issue.

Forty-three  minutes after the economic news — a contraction of gross domestic product — had been announced, Trump declared the “stock market” problem was not his but his predecessor’s.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” the President claimed on Truth Social. “I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

The issue is not the stock market—although the markets tanked upon news of an economic contraction—but the actual economy.

READ MORE: ‘Great Jobs of the Future’ Are Generations of Family Factory Work Says Commerce Secretary

“CEOs of major retail giants warned last week that prices would rise and shelves would soon fall empty if the president didn’t reverse course,” The Daily Beast reported Thursday. “The S&P 500 is down 8 percent since Trump’s inauguration—its worst run during a president’s first 100 days in office in more than 50 years. Some financial analysts worry the U.S. is heading toward recession.”

The President appears to be in denial.

During his first 100 days interview with ABC News, which aired Tuesday evening, senior national correspondent Terry Moran told Trump tourism is down.

Trump refused to believe him, despite the facts that prove this have been freely available for weeks.

Economist Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics and public policy, posted charts showing tourism “cratering,” along with video of Trump insisting tourism is up.

Despite all the economic data and expert predictions, despite what we now see as an economic contraction, and some say a looming recession, President Trump is steadfast in his position.

ABC’s Moran told the President, “with the economy, the number one issue for so many people, for just about everybody. It — it’s one of the main reasons that you’re back in this office. And now we have this trade war with China that — that Moody’s and other analysts say is gonna cost American families thousands of more dollars per year. And there is a lot of concern out there. People are worried, even some people who voted for you, sayin’, ‘I didn’t sign up for this.’ So how do you answer those concerns?”

“Well,” Trump replied, “they did sign up for it, actually.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Lying Again’: Hegseth Ripped for Ending ‘Woke Biden Initiative’ Trump Signed Into Law

 

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