Mallen Baker: Faultlines

Suddenly, President Trump and Russia's President Putin are on course to have a face-to-face meeting, possibly as soon as next week. What changed? Was it the threat of secondary tariffs against countries like India and China for buying Russian oil? Was it the three hour meeting between Putin and Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff, which apparently saw great progress, but no major breakthroughs? Whatever i...

As he campaigned for re-election, Trump made it quite clear that part of his agenda was one of vengeance against all those he felt had wronged him - especially his political opponents. He appointed slavishly loyal figures to head up all the key agencies - and now that plan is starting to kick into high gear. Pursuing Obama and members of his administration on what appear to be flimsy accusations o...

In his first time, President Trump was partly constrained by the so-called 'adults in the room' - people who could explain to him why some particularly mad idea would not work. We already knew that this time was different, but we had been lead to hope that there might be at least one or two adults in the room - keeping their heads down and choosing their moments. Marco Rubio or Scott Bessent perha...

Elon Musk just got the first piece of good news he's had for a long time - a massive $30 billion bonus from the Tesla board if he stays with Tesla as CEO and, you know, actually focuses on doing that job rather than running around playing politics and alienating all of Tesla's customers. While no announcement has been made about Musk's promised new political party, The America Party, the implicati...

President Trump claims he ordered two nuclear submarines to change their position in relation to Russia, in response to some inflated rhetoric from Dmitry Medvedev. This was portrayed as projecting strength in the face of Russian intransigence in Ukraine. But it actually conveys two things that Trump certainly didn't intend. One is weakness, as opposed to strength. And the other is the fact that T...

Having previously boasted about how good the US jobs numbers were, and taken credit for that, it was obviously an unpleasant surprise for President Trump to find they had been over-stated, and actually there is a slump in jobs growth - clearly tied to some of his policies. So he did what anyone would do - he, um, fired the head of the agency that collects the statistics. In so doing, he crossed an...

Rather a lot of people believe that once all the countries have either negotiated 'deals' with the United States, or have resigned themselves to higher tariff rates, everything will settle down. The US will have higher tariffs, and that will just become the new normal. They are completely missing the point. President Trump fully intends to remain at the centre of world events for the full length o...

In the last few days, President Macron of France, Keir Starmer of the UK, and Mark Carney of Canada have all announced that they will recognise the state of Palestine. President Trump rather shrugged at the first two, while acknowledging that they had the right to their position even if he didn't agree with it. But that wasn't remotely his reaction to Canada doing the same thing. This, he declared...

President Trump had threatened Russia's President Putin - agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine within 50 days, or I'll hit you with secondary sanctions against everyone who buys your oil. Putin shrugged, and accelerated his campaign. Now Trump has cut the deadline to ten days, without provoking any noticeable increase in urgency on the other side. But even as he did so, he was beginning to do something...

The European 'deal' is rather falling apart within a day of being announced, with various provisions being presented wildly differently by both sides. What must Mark Carney and Canada be making of the sight, as they note the looming August 1 deadline for their own trade deal with Trump? Carney said that Canada wouldn't accept a bad deal, but it seems that bad deals is all Trump has to offer. So wi...

The EU and US announced a "trade deal" that was declared by Trump to be "the biggest ever". Ursula von der Leyen was less bombastic, but still expressed satisfaction. Europe had been said to be negotiating tough in talks with Trump's trade team. It is a major trading bloc, representing a huge slice of US commerce. So it should have been able to get a reasonably equal deal - or at least somewhat be...

Nothing screams 'banana republic' more than what is going on right now with Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump's former lawyer and assistant attorney general goes for two days of secret talks with the partner of Jeffrey Epstein. No independent observers. No transcript or record. The nature of the exercise is transparent and shockingly corrupt. And yet merely saying so doesn't deflect it from being carried o...

I asked for questions, and you delivered! A far-ranging Q&A covering the future for the Democratic Party, and why the US system is particularly brutal towards the non-incumbent party. Why no Trump top officials have resigned in spite of his assault on American democracy. The future of Trump's plan for Gaza. Whether Reform UK will win the next UK election, and whether there will be election reform...

This week, President Trump continued the trend he has established so many times, he pulled the United States out of UNESCO. And as he did so, China was embedded itself more deeply in the institution he had vacated. Between America's retreat from every international body on the grounds that it's not 'America First' enough (how could it ever be?), and its pursuit of allies and enemies alike with pun...

The mainstream media are downplaying Trump and Tulsi Gabbard's rhetoric on former President Obama and 'treason' over Russian influence on the 2016 election. But in the other news bubble, the MAGA crowd are absolutely convinced that Obama was criminal, they are demanding his arrest, and we seem a step closer to the executive pursuing political opponents and jailing them on trumped-up charges. Once...

Trump still can't get rid of the Epstein files obsession. Even though he is doing his best to distract the attention of his base with empty promises that former President Obama could be prosecuted for 'treason'. So now his Department of Justice has announced that it will carry out an interview with Epstein's partner Ghislaine Maxwell. And, in considering just what they might be seeking to achieve...

Zelensky's war-torn Ukraine is being accused by many, including the European Union, of authoritarian slide. This has come to a head recently with the vote to remove independence from key anti-corruption watchdogs, and to pursue prosecutions against a number of well known anti-corruption activists. But Ukraine is in the middle of an existential war, the like of which no democracy has endured since...

It was always predicted that Trump 2.0 would include a certain amount of payback - and that was particularly the case when he brought in unqualified loyalists to take up key positions in the intelligence services, the DOJ, and the FBI. Well, now it seems that the Trump Administration is looking to go after former President Obama, with an incoherent charge that he had the intelligence services make...

We had gotten used to the idea that nothing stuck to Donald Trump. Previous politicians could be brought down by the slightest indiscretion, or fumble in the campaign. But Trump spoke offensively, had been shown to have behaved outrageously, and none of it stuck to him in the slightest. And none of it dented his confidence. But now he's on the back foot, playing serious defence. This time it's dif...

According to CBS, it was a purely financial decision. But then, that was always going to be the line because if it was actually what everybody thinks it looks like, it would hardly admit it. Just like they didn't admit that the $16 million court settlement to Trump was a bribe, and yet Trump himself tacitly acknowledged exactly that during one of his ramblings. So was it Trump that got one of his...

Remember all that stuff about how Trump was sure the only way he could lose an election would be if there was fraud? Well, it seems he's coming round to rigging the elections - so long as it's done by his side. It's not that gerrymandering is new - but the idea that a US president would be co-ordinating the practice by his side across the country, keeping count of the extra House seats that might...

When President Trump's second term started, the notable thing was just how far-reaching his actions were, just how norm-breaking and transgressive they were, and how little his supporters seemed to care. Suddenly, the story has changed. Now there have been three occasions where his MAGA base was divided because Trump did things that run counter to the emerging orthodoxy. What had seemed previously...

Trump came to power on the back of multiple disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories. While there's some satisfying karma to see his administration being bitten back by one such conspiracy that MAGA promoted, the truth is that we now have a government that disparages expertise of all types, insists on dealing with other countries in profound ignorance of their outlook and position, and con...

President Trump had trailed a 'big announcement' on Ukraine and Russia coming today - and we even had Mark Rutte, the head of NATO in the White House for the occasion. And ... well, while it wasn't nothing, there are good reasons to think that Trump's threat of secondary tariffs (unspecified, but set at 100%) with a 50 day deadline - may not get the job done. But at least it means that America won...

Arguably, the world has been going through the five stages of grief since Trump came back to the Presidency six months ago. And with the latest actions to cut right across difficult negotiations to hand out more egregious tariff rates, it seems likely we've finally achieved at the final stage - acceptance. But not acceptance of Trump's terms. Not acceptance of Trump's view of the world order. More...