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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Freddy Gray |Ross Clark |Ian Williams |Svitlana Morenets
And just like that, we are back in 2017. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is posting ridiculous hyperbole on his socials and mouthing off from Mar-a-Lago, as he always has. In the last twenty-four hours, however, the global political and media classes have gone back to gnashing their teeth and wailing in way they did in Trump’s first term. It’s disgraceful! It’s sub-literate! He’s Vladimir Putin’s puppet! He’s reckless and utterly out of control! And that, of course, is the point.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Roger Kimball |Ian Williams |Svitlana Morenets |Iain Macwhirter
If you have a pot that needs stirring, call Donald Trump. A couple of days ago Trump made heads explode when he claimed (among other things) that Volodymyr Zelensky was “a dictator without elections” who started the war with Russia. “Oh my God, can you believe it? Trump doesn’t know Russia was the aggressor in the war. What an idiot.”The BBC, CNN and many other news sites ran little “fact-checking” stories.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Ross Clark |Orson Fry |Ian Williams |Svitlana Morenets
The decision by Donald Trump to hold peace talks with Russia on ending the Ukraine war — without Ukraine actually being present — is starting to look even more disgraceful. It transpires that the war was not the only item on the agenda in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. A significant part of the day’s business seems to have been discussing oil deals in the Arctic.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Orson Fry |Ian Williams |Svitlana Morenets |Iain Macwhirter
Negotiating peace can be delicate business. Often it requires a steady hand, a strong sense of compassion and inexhaustible patience. As Senator George J.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Juan P. Villasmil |Svitlana Morenets |Iain Macwhirter |Owen Matthews
Forget Trumpbucks and Bidenbucks: Americans could see Muskbucks (or DoGEbucks?) hitting their mailboxes if the world’s richest man has his way. This time, it wouldn’t be via payouts from X — it would be courtesy of the billions of dollars in savings that Musk claims have already come from the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DoGE) wide-ranging cuts.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Ian Williams |Svitlana Morenets |Iain Macwhirter |Owen Matthews
They were only six words on a website, but they helped maintain Beijing’s fiction that Taiwan is part of its territory. Their disappearance has infuriated China’s communist leaders. “It gravely contravenes international law and the basic norms of international relations,” raged Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, on Monday. The website in question was that of the US State Department.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Sam Meadows |Svitlana Morenets |Derek VanBuskirk |Sean Thomas
When Javier Milei took power in Argentina there was one group whose ears pricked up with interest: the global crypto bros. After all, here was a president who seemed perfectly aligned with their values. A lover of economic freedom who harbors a deep hatred for state regulations and government spending. Surely this “anarcho-capitalist” was a fan of cryptocurrencies?
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Svitlana Morenets |Owen Matthews |Katja Hoyer |Grace Curley
Ukrainians don’t like it when foreign leaders tell them what to do — whether they are Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump. Yesterday, Trump blamed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for “starting” the war with Russia and demanded that elections take place in Ukraine if it wants to be involved in the peace negotiations. Trump also expressed his disappointment that Zelensky hadn’t struck a deal with Russia before now and said that Zelensky only had a “4 percent” approval rating in Ukraine.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Svitlana Morenets |Jacob Heilbrunn |Mark Galeotti |Julius Strauss
Sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, the tiny republic of Moldova has been easy prey for Russia in the past. Its 2.5 million people are among the poorest in Europe and the Kremlin has been able to exploit the country’s dependence on cheap Russian gas to keep it as an ally. But Moldovans, like Ukrainians, have begun to choose another path. In 2022, they applied to join the European Union to be part of the democratic world, and then elected a pro-western president last year.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Jonathan Sacerdoti |Svitlana Morenets |David Kaufman |Casey Babb
As reports swirl of an imminent ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, Israel stands at a crossroads, grappling with the profound dilemmas that such a deal entails. While the full details of the agreement remain unknown until officially announced, the fragments emerging suggest a complex and controversial arrangement that raises difficult questions: How much is Israel willing to concede for the return of hostages? And what price, in lives and security, will the nation pay in the future?
