Mallen Baker: Faultlines

This weekend, we saw the tragic eruption once again of political violence in America. Unfortunately, this is just the extreme end of a growing wave of threats, intimidation and occasionally worse that is hitting public officials at all levels. While America has gone through waves of more and less violent periods in its recent past, this wave is distinctive, and it is very much coming as part and p...

Something happened almost, but not quite, unnoticed. Trump admitted that his administration's approach to its mass deportation project was having a major consequence - and the policy on illegal immigration has been quietly changed as a result. That in itself is quite interesting - but it actually reflects a solid reason why Trump's authoritarian experiment can only ever go so far before it hits si...

Israel has transformed the world geopolitical stage again by launching a direct and sustained assault on Iran. It wrongfooted President Trump by doing so in open defiance of his wishes, and it has presented him with a massive dilemma. Because the president who is both Israel's staunch ally AND the president who promised not to get involved in foreign wars, is now caught on the edge of events he ca...

A period of extreme stress has begun for many of the leaders of the free world. Beginning with the announcement from the US that it is throwing the Aukus partnership into the air to see if it lands 'America First' side up, and then going from there to the G7, and then the NATO summit. Everyone is asking one question - what will President Trump do? Seriously - agendas are being shaped not around th...

China and the US just wrapped up two days of trade talks in London. But the fascinating thing is what they are NOT saying about what was agreed. There's more to it than meets the eye, and there's a reason why Trump isn't admitting what he gave the Chinese - because he's not keen to confess that he made a massive miscalculation when he launched his original unprovoked attack on them. Let's discuss.

The crisis in LA has deepened since we discussed it two days ago. President Trump doubled the number of National Guard, and added 700 US marines for good measure. He speculated about the merit of arresting state governor Gavin Newsom, and his team have been spreading through social media that the Democrats are basically supporting an insurrection against the duly elected Trump administration. The...

It's a great idea in theory - an impregnable missile defence shield to protect the country from any attack from its numerous enemies around the world. But for a variety of reasons, numerous experts, agencies and countries believe President Trump's Golden Dome project will have the overall effect of making the world less safe - and that includes the United States as well. That's even before you get...

The use of the National Guard to quell violent protests / riots in LA obviously crosses a line, but it's only the start of a journey that was mapped out by the authors of Project 2025 before Trump was re-elected. The administration was given the perfect excuse they've been waiting for, and they have done exactly what they've been planning to do. But it's what comes next that matters. Because the a...

A leaked FSB briefing document has been revealed - and it is fascinating for what it shows about Russia's REAL attitude to its supposed close ally China. These are two authoritarians side by side in opposition to the hegemony of the United States, but they are also deeply suspicious of each other and know full well that the alliance is only skin deep. And even with all that being said, President T...

Yes, Elon Musk vs Donald Trump - it's very entertaining. The memes are flowing in industrial quantities. But a lot of people are missing just how important a pivot point this is. In classic authoritarian regimes, the betrayal by the insider is the moment that provokes the most powerful reaction - and the terms in which Musk has attacked are not light, they are serious and existential. However they...

We got a surprise today, when it was suddenly announced that China's President Xi Jinping and President Trump had spoken directly on the phone. And then it was the turn of Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz to play the game of 'spin the Oval Office wheel'. Would he get ambushed, or treated with respect? And what difference would it make that both men had been playing hardball in recent weeks and...

Everyone - even me - was saying that sooner or later a huge falling out between President Trump and Elon Musk would have to happen. Just when we thought that had been avoided, suddenly it's all kicking off. The fact of the falling out, then, is as expected - but the fact that it's over a point of real substance that matters - actually, that's more surprising. It may just focus an important part of...

Trump's Canada ambassador Pete Hoekstra already got noticed by scolding Canadians for boycotting American products in their stores. Now, he's back to tell the country that Trump just tariffed at 50% (steel and aluminium) to get over themselves. That should work. Meanwhile, Canada is fast-tracking projects to boost growth, build alternative trade routes and generally leave the United States behind...

Ukraine sat down for more direct talks with Russia today - and that managed not to remotely be the story. More important was Ukraine's dramatic strike on air bases deep into Russian territory, where they demonstrated their ability to take the fight to the enemy. All this throws into sharp contrast President Trump's attempts to remain relevant to the conflict, and the futility of the so-called peac...

We've heard about how tourists are either boycotting holiday travel to the US, or are just scared by stories of people being detained for days or weeks on the border. But now it seems that even business travellers, who you would expect to be resistant to such issues, are also worried about, and increasingly avoiding, travel to Trump's America. And when they do go, they are taking the sort of preca...

Poland goes to the polls to elect its next president this weekend. And Trump's MAGA movement has been actively campaigning for the candidate it sees as most aligned with the Trumpian populist wave they want to sweep across Europe. Their manifesto is hostile to the European Union and similarly so to basic democratic institutions. Hostile as well to Donald Tusk's government, which is finding much of...

Everything seems to have settled down with President Trump's America and China now that they'd climbed down from their maximalist tariff barrage. But Trump doesn't do quiet and settled, and so he exploded the peace with a range of new measures targeting China, along with an explosive tweet where he accused them of breaking the 'agreement' they had previously reached. What caused it - and does this...

President Trump has been having SO much fun, slapping tariffs on the EU, hitting China, randomly spraying charges on everybody including the penguins. But now it has been pointed out, not unreasonably, that maybe one person shouldn't have the power to single-handedly reduce global economic growth on the basis of fringe ideas about how trade and the economy work. Will this be the start of the slide...

We all know that President Trump has taken the decision to end climate action previously being taken by the United States - that is very much his prerogative, albeit that it makes sense only if you can pretend that climate change doesn't exist. But it doesn't stop there. Because the administration is taking an active, blocking campaign out to the wider world to see to punish those who remain commi...

Having told the Middle East, that America wouldn't be telling the world 'how to live their lives', the Trump Administration is launching a very active campaign against democratic guardrails in Europe. It is doing so under the name of 'free speech'. On this channel, I am a great champion of free speech, but the Trump version is not all that it seems. Let's discuss.

Fiona Hill was President Trump's Russia advisor in his first term - back when he had advisors who actually knew their subject. In an interview today with the Telegraph, she talked about the moment where she saw how Trump was literally terrified by Putin, and understood how this affected the way that he dealt with him then, and likely still does in how he deals with him today. We could consider thi...

A remarkable feature of the 2024 presidential election was just how much Gen Z voters swung towards Trump, particularly young men. There's a popular narrative as to why that happened, which right now is the one that best fits the facts - and which becomes all the more intriguing because recent polls have suggested that this is a process that is now starting to reverse itself. It's early days, perh...

Just when it seemed that things might be stabilising just a bit, Trump posted onto social media and suddenly we're right back into the throes of new trade chaos. A 50% tariff against the European Union. A 25% tariff against Apple iphones that are manufactured in India. The reasoning behind the moves is as fantastical as all the tariff stuff has been so far - so now it's the EU's turn to decide whe...

Books have been landing in recent weeks opening up windows into the behind-the-scenes action around the cognitive decline of US president Joe Biden, and how the messy events of his nomination, and then withdrawal, in the 2024 campaign played out. We're left with a disturbing outcome. We could all see that Biden was not in great shape all the way back to the start of his 2020 election campaign. And...

So we had another White House Struggle Session this week, this time with Cyril Ramaphosa, the President of South Africa. President Trump's ambush, watched silently by Elon Musk, unloaded a stream of accusations based on social media disinformation that made the United States look, once again, utterly foolish in the direct view of the world. By doing this a second time, and given which country he c...