We wouldn’t usually use the term "normal" to evaluate economic platforms, but – as with much of what the top of the Republican ticket have offered – Trump’s own policy prescriptions can only be described with the word that Democrats have used effectively against his party: weird.
Tag: Donald Trump
Does the GOP know that Tsai Ing-wen loves cats?
The only foreign policy insight we can draw so far is that a Trump-Vance White House would balk at defending Taiwan if it were to be attacked by mainland China owing to the fact that a childless woman known for her love of cats – former Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen – remains a politically influential figure on the island after governing it for eight years.
The bloodshed that showed us Trump’s limits
We are seeing some limits to extremism in Trump’s world, where the January 6 insurrectionists are “patriots”, the FBI is part of a pernicious deep state and autocratic leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban are valorised.
Kudos to Pottinger and Gallagher, on at least one point, sort of
There’s one valid criticism of Biden’s China policy that Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher skimmed over in a way that shows how, despite keeping a distance from the Republican Party’s authoritarian extremes, they are unable to completely break free. The US must get into CPTPP.
Beware of Republicans who blame Biden for not appeasing Putin
The Republicans' suggestion that we shouldn’t have made any moves that might disturb Putin is exactly what Stoltenberg was trying to bury during his many appearances in the US, where Republicans are pushing the narrative that President Joe Biden is responsible for the terror that the Russian leader is unleashing.
Remember CVID? Nikki Haley does; Trump thinks it’s a virus
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un got what he wanted, because he understood Trump’s psyche – all that was required to go around Haley was a few “love letters” to Trump, who has never met an authoritarian leader he didn’t like.
The irony of the moment that established Stefanik as the Republican Party’s new leader
Within the cesspool of conspiracy theories, bigotry and misogyny that animates the far-right, there are some legitimate grievances.
With GOP lawmaker’s ‘great mistake’ comment, we see the party isn’t entirely unmoored
Trump’s characterisation of his withdrawal from the TPP as “a great thing for the American worker” was as fallacious as his assertion that the trade war he started with Beijing in 2018 would bring jobs back to the US and cut the country’s trade deficit with China.
The GOP’s Putin lovers can’t cheer him publicly, so watch out Beijing
(Originally published here on May 24, 2022 in the South China Morning Post.) The oil might be flowing from Russia to China, but Vladimir Putin should take note that the lifelines he was counting on from the US, arguably as valuable, are disintegrating. And the implications for Beijing are more serious than they might first [...]
Grassley’s leap, Bannon’s irony, and why traditional Republicans are like BLM at the NRA
(Originally published here on October 12, 2021 in the South China Morning Post.) The dominoes are falling fast in the American Republican Party. The latest one to tumble under former US president Donald Trump’s influence is Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the formerly traditional conservative who now appears to have joined the most dangerous of the [...]
The Wounded Muse 