Mallen Baker: Faultlines

In this news round-up of the week for Friday June 12th 2026. The ceasefire deal that President Trump conjured as the reason for pulling back from invading Kharg island - the one that both sides have been giving wholly contradictory reports about - is now being flagged by mediators and Iranian political leaders as being very close. But it still seems as likely it could unravel completely, because t...

President Trump had gone back into bombing Iran, because this time he was going to grab all of Iran's oil, and invade Kharg Island and force them to agree to his deal. And they hit back, and refused to cave - and then suddenly (and not for the first time), he blinked. And now the attacks are off, and a deal is very much fully agreed this time definitely certainly probably. What's really going on?...

In this Q&A video, with questions submitted by Patreon supporters, we talk about the possibility that President Donald Trump will choose to invade Cuba, or will move towards serious authoritarian moves against his political opponents. And, speaking of those opponents, why CAN'T Democrats appear to provide more robust opposition to Trump's ongoing actions? What are the options for the end of the Uk...

A major survey of global opinion, from the citizens of countries that make up 90% of the total world population - has found that Trump's America is now viewed as the biggest threat to the world. And it's not even close. Behind them is Russia, and China, and everyone else you might think deserving of extreme caution. There is more bad news for Trump, and important news for democracies in the survey...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday June 5th, 2026: In an interview with CNN, a senior adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader confirms some of the detail of the deadlocked talks with Trump that he's not been admitting. Marco Rubio sets off ripples of concern over Greenland, and NATO, even as the US ambassador to the EU is trying, somewhat feebly, to dismiss them. And Trump has found a new front...

Congress just passed a motion to restrict President Trump's Iran war powers - something that is a significant embarrassment as he struggles to get a peace deal with the other side. And the Gulf state of Oman is refusing to be cowed by his threat to bomb them if they go ahead with doing a deal with Iran on the Strait of Hormuz. And Israel continues to bomb Hezbollah in spite of Trump's instructions...

One day after another, it seems that not much is going right for the administration of President Donald Trump. The Iran war is the big quagmire, of course. But increasingly, all those other things that got pushed in - they are hitting a wall. Like Trump's massive slush fund for supporters. And the renaming of the Kennedy Centre and its reshaping around Trump's wishes. And the America 250 celebrati...

Ignore all the blather about the 'Art of the Deal' - why is Donald Trump in real life actually such a terrible dealmaker? And if that's the case, how did he establish a reputation for being good in business, to the extent where in 2016 a majority of the American public believed it to be true? In this video we look at the key aspects that the professionals say makes for a good negotiator, and obser...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday May 29th 2026 - President Trump is touting how close the US and Iran now are to the final deal. Well, let's not get too excited. A Russian drone injures two in NATO alliance member Romania and it highlights how difficult responding to grey area provocations by Putin is going to be. And the last month - and the coming year - are likely to see outlier hot...

The US needs all the allies it can get amongst the gulf states, you would think. And yet yesterday, President Donald Trump casually threatened to bomb one of the most longstanding ones - Oman - if they dared to do some sort of deal with Iran over managing traffic that traverses the Strait of Hormuz. Add to that the lack of momentum and energy that represents Trump's previous initiative, the Board...

One minute, President Donald Trump is breathlessly announcing to the world that a deal is on the verge of being signed - the next he is in full pace retreat as the details begin to leak out, and so many people conclude that it is an incredibly weak deal for the United States. So having thought he was about to escape his predicament, he is right back in the mess. As a result, the US attacked Irania...

Artificial Intelligence is, by its very nature, a transformative technology. But right now, it seems to be being driven by characters who are happy to set themselves up in messianic roles, to embrace the idea of creative destruction without regard for who and what gets destroyed. It's the sort of situation where smart, enlightened government might take a part. Not so, says President Donald Trump....

After numerous false signals where President Donald Trump would claim a deal was close, only to see Iran deny any such thing - it seems as though all parties are now suggesting that there has been movement, and maybe - just maybe - a deal could be done. According to reporting, the shape of such a deal seems remarkably based on Iranian proposals that Trump dismissed out of hand just weeks ago. So i...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday May 22nd, 2026: President Trump is ratcheting up the rhetoric and moving the pieces in place for an apparent attack of some sort on Cuba. His own party's lawmakers are in revolt about his latest scheme to hand out approaching two billion dollars of cash to anyone who supported him so much they were prepared to break the law for it. And following Trump's...

Now that the 'excitement' of his summit meeting with China's Xi Jinping has worn off, President Donald Trump is left back exactly where he was before - staring at the Iran war, and clearly somewhat clueless as to what he can do next to seek to bring it to a successful conclusion. He has tried bluffing. He has tried bombing. What's left? Well, he described today an exciting new approach that he was...

An investigation by the New York Times has revealed how Trump's United States has been pushing a maximalist agenda for control on various aspects of Greenland in the working group talks that followed the grudging disavowal of the use of force earlier in the year. Those involved in the talks say that Trump has not given up on taking over the island and absorbing it into the USA. That being the case...

While citizens of the United States fret about having to pay more at the pump for gasoline, President Donald Trump's illegal war on Iran is having massive consequences in many other parts of the world. The decision of this one man to abandon ongoing talks that were said to be making progress to use the military for an all-out attack instead - that is leading to tens of millions of people to be thr...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday May 15th 2026: President Trump is forced to explain to MAGA why what they heard with their own ears from Xi Jinping wasn't what they heard at all - even as the evidence is mounting that his summit was not a success. Britain's Keir Starmer is fighting for his political future, as the UK's political system disintegrates. And the US makes a sudden announce...

President Donald Trump is very used to deploying fiery rhetoric against his enemies to seek to cow them into submission, even though he's found his brand of bluster to be losing its effectiveness in recent months. But it seems that China's President Xi Jinping has found the more effective formula, as his warnings in relation to Taiwan, delivered during today's state visit to Beijing, had the effec...

Later this coming week, China's Xi Jinping will be hosting President Donald Trump in Beijing for their delayed summit meeting. It's hard to ignore the fact that, since the last time they met, the US seems to have been bent on destroying its own leverage at every opportunity. It is caught in Trump's illegal war in Iran. His big punitive tariff policies came crashing down. And he has been single-han...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday May 8th, 2026. It turns out that President Donald Trump's about-turn on Project Freedom had even less to do with his fake stories than we knew. Trump's replacement tariffs for the ones that were judged to be illegal have turned out to also be illegal. The UK prime minister Keir Starmer is fighting for his political survival after the UK local elections...

President Donald Trump has 'paused' so-called Project Freedom. Supposedly, it's because the Pakistanis asked him to. Nothing at all to do with the reality that almost no ships had actually gotten out of the Strait of Hormuz as a result of it i.e. it was a complete failure. The line is that a deal is SO close that it's worth pausing the project (not the blockade, mind, because that's mostly being s...

There's no doubt that the thousand ships that are stranded in the Strait of Hormuz need rescuing - and if it could be achieved, it would be a tremendous success. But by announcing that the US would be doing just that raised the stakes for President Trump because he set himself an extremely difficult, some would say impossible, task and, in so doing, likely set himself up for humiliation. In any ca...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday May the first, 2026. Iran presents its new peace proposal, and it does not make President Donald Trump happy - even while Congress ponders whether to engage with the looming war powers deadline. Meanwhile Trump adds Italy and Spain to the list of countries he wants to pull US troops out of as he looks to punish those who didn't fall in line on demand. A...

German Chancellor Merz made an entirely reasonable observation - Iran had humiliated the United States, and was being much more skilful in its negotiations strategy. This is a widespread perception across the world, but it made President Donald Trump utterly furious. He spat his rage into not one, but two posts on social media, and he let it be known he is reviewing whether to pull US troops from...