Trump

The Intelligence Community Just Got a Proper Pantomime, Hasn’t It? Right, so let me get this straight. We’ve got Bill Pulte—a bloke who made his fortune in real estate and became famous on social media for giving away money—now sitting in the director’s chair at the Director of National Intelligence. The DNI. The absolute top of the intelligence pyramid. The person who’s supposed to coordinate America’s entire spy apparatus, from the CIA to the NSA to all those mysterious three-letter agencies that probably know what I had for breakfast. ...

When Politicians Remember They Actually Need to Eat Crow (And Other Delicacies) Right, so here’s the thing about watching politicians do the old U-turn shimmy — it’s like watching your mate insist he’s “definitely not drunk” right before he tries to order chips from the bin. You know what’s about to happen, everyone in the pub knows what’s about to happen, and yet somehow it still manages to be both tragic and hilarious in equal measure. ...

“50/50 on Iran? That’s Not a Foreign Policy, That’s a Coin Flip at the Bookies” Right, let me get this straight. The President of the United States just announced he’s genuinely undecided about whether to negotiate with Iran or bomb them into the stone age, and we’re all supposed to just… what? Nod along? Act like this is normal diplomacy instead of the geopolitical equivalent of “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”? ...

Trump’s China Trip: The Art of the Spectacular Stalemate Right, let’s have a proper chat about this whole Trump-in-China business, shall we? Because what we’ve got here is genuinely fascinating—not in the “thrilling blockbuster” way, but in the “watching two chess players agree to call it a draw while pretending they’ve won” way. And mate, that’s actually more interesting than most people realize. So Trump’s back from Beijing with what the papers are calling “stability.” Now, I’ll be honest—when I first read that headline, I thought someone had accidentally left their thesaurus on the keyboard. “Stability” is what you get when you’re stuck on the M25 at rush hour: nobody’s going anywhere, but at least nobody’s crashing into anyone else. Is that really what we’re celebrating? Apparently, yes. And here’s the thing—it might actually be the most sensible outcome anyone could’ve hoped for. ...