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2 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Freddy Gray |Ed West |Ross Clark |Daniel McCarthy
A “black swan event”, as defined by the risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb in 2007, is a surprise occurrence that has a major impact on the global financial system and is rationalized after the fact as something that ought to have been expected all along. The 9/11 terror attacks are one example, the Covid pandemic another – shocks that rocked the world and made us wonder if freedom works.
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2 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Ed West |Daniel McCarthy |Curtis Yarvin |Aidan McLaughlin
Itry to avoid expressing strong opinions on foreign party politics, because I enjoy the luxury of not having to. From an outside perspective, American politics seems dominated by two quite extreme fringes, the only difference being that the mad things believed by Democrats tend to be aped by British elites, and therefore have an impact on our everyday lives here.
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2 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Curtis Yarvin |Aidan McLaughlin |Ryan Girdusky |Daniel McCarthy
The Democratic war machine What’s significant for the American left today is not what keeps communism going, but what gets it startedErdoğan’s position is starting to look shaky The death of the biggest Muslim democracy in the region should be ringing serious alarm bells across the free worldI’m hobbled by my own hypocrisy about cats George is a large gray kitten with disproportionately big ears and I didn’t plan for him or want himWhy I stick up for marriage I like being married.
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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Freddy Gray |Daniel McCarthy |Sam Olsen |Philip Patrick
What with all the Rose Garden theatrics of “Liberation Day” and Donald Trump’s wild decision to tariff most of Planet Earth at once, Politico’s big “Musk will leave” scoop quickly sank down the news agenda. That’s partly because it wasn’t really a scoop at all. Elon Musk has said repeatedly that his role in the White House is only temporary.
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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Daniel McCarthy |Kate Andrews |Ross Clark |John Carney
The first thing revealed by the high and wide-ranging new tariffs President Trump announced on “Liberation Day” is just how limited other recent American presidents have been in their thinking. Their ambition was to get elected and re-elected, then retire comfortably into a tranquil post-presidency. They would finish their days lending their names to charities and writing their memoirs (or rather, commissioning ghostwriters to fulfill their publishing contracts).
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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Sam Olsen |Daniel McCarthy |Philip Patrick |Matthew Lynn
Donald Trump is, at least, a man of his word. Before he won the election, Trump said that China had “really taken advantage of our country” and vowed to slap punitive tariffs on imports from the People’s Republic. As we have repeatedly seen, Trump carries through on his threats. “Liberation Day” saw China hit with 54 percent tariffs as payback for what the President deemed unfair policies, the highest rate on any country.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Daniel McCarthy |John MacArthur |Christopher Caldwell |Ben Domenech
Donald Trump is the world’s largest landlord — not in his own capacity, perhaps, but in his role as leader of the most powerful nation on earth. He’s the CEO of America, and his development corporation owns the Western hemisphere. It also owns property in Europe, where the tenants are troublesome and are always behind on their rent. There are just a few other landlords on the planet, notably Vladimir Putin, who isn’t a rival, and Xi Jinping, who is.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Mark Galeotti |Freddy Gray |Roger Kimball |Daniel McCarthy
That Donald Trump’s vision of the presidency is less statesman and more CEO of USA Inc. is evident in the terms of the deal he tried to foist on Ukraine last week. As talks begin between the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia, a leak reveals that Trump wanted Kyiv to sign away much of its mineral resources to Washington. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected this piece of blatant economic colonialism, but the Ukrainians expect further such demands to come.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Bill Kauffman |Freddy Gray |Roger Kimball |Daniel McCarthy
Batavia, New YorkI bear no ill will against golfers — I triple-bogey easy holes and miss gimme putts with the worst of them — but President Trump’s demand that we eliminate Daylight Saving Time (DST) is a double eagle out of the blue, especially as Trump had earlier advocated a move to year-round DST.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Teresa Mull |Freddy Gray |Roger Kimball |Daniel McCarthy
We mustn’t let the policy whiplash of the new administration’s first few months distract from what could be the best Trump spectacle yet: the Great American State Fair which will descend on the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Memorial Day 2025 and conclude on July 4, 2026, when the United States of America turns 250 years old.
