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    Charlie Kirk shooting: new video of suspect released by FBI amid urgent appeal for help from the public

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    US officials have issued an urgent appeal for help from the public as they continue to search for the shooter of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, releasing new videos and photos from the scene of the attack in Utah.More than 24 hours after Kirk was shot while speaking in front of thousands of people at a Utah university, the state’s governor, appearing alongside FBI director Kash Patel and other officials, said “we need as much help as we can possibly get.”“We cannot do our job without the public’s help,” Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox said, adding that the FBI had received more than 7,000 leads and tips so far.The newly released video showed a person wearing a hat, sunglasses and a long sleeve black shirt running across a roof, climbing off the edge of the building and dropping to the ground. The suspect is believed to have fled into the local neighbourhood after firing the one shot and has not yet been identified.Investigators said they had obtained clues, including a palm print, a shoe impression and a high-powered hunting rifle found in a wooded area along the path the shooter fled. But they were yet to name a suspect or cite a motive in the killing.View image in fullscreenThe direct appeals for public support at the night-time news conference, appeared to signal law enforcement’s continued struggles to identify the shooter and pinpoint the person’s whereabouts. Authorities didn’t take questions, and Patel did not speak at the news conference. The FBI is offering up to $100,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the person.The death of Kirk – a close ally of President Donald Trump – has drawn renewed attention to the escalating threat of political violence in the United States which, in the last several years, has cut across the ideological spectrum. The assassination drew bipartisan condemnation from political leaders.In appealing for information, Cox said on Thursday, “there is a tremendous amount of disinformation” online.“Our adversaries want violence,” Cox said. “We have bots from Russia, China, all over the world that are trying to instil disinformation and encourage violence. I would encourage you to ignore those, to turn off those streams.”Cox also pledged to find the killer and pursue the death penalty.Kirk’s casket arrived in his home state of Arizona aboard Air Force Two, accompanied by vice-president JD Vance. Vance’s wife, Usha, stepped off the plane with Kirk’s widow, Erika.Vance helped carry Kirk’s casket with a group of uniformed service members as it was loaded on to the plane. Kirk’s conservative youth organisation, Turning Point USA, was based in Phoenix.“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” Vance wrote on social media, referencing Kirk’s role in getting Donald Trump elected last year. “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.”Kirk was a provocateur and a divisive figure who is credited with helping bring young people, especially men, into the US president’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement.In a statement on Thursday, TPUSA wrote: “All of us have lost a leader, a mentor, and a friend. Above all, our hearts are with Erika and their two children. Charlie was the ideal husband and the perfect father. Above all else, we ask you to pray for the Kirks after the incomprehensible loss they have suffered.”Kirk’s killing drew bipartisan condemnation of the rise in political violence in the US.Trump, who said he would award the Medal of Freedom posthumously to Kirk, spoke to Kirk’s wife on Thursday.He said that authorities were making “big progress” towards tracking down the suspect and that in regards to a motive, he has an “indication … but we’ll let you know about that later”.Just hours after Kirk had been declared dead after being rushed to a nearby hospital on Wednesday, Trump delivered a video message from the Oval Office, vowing to track down the suspect.View image in fullscreen“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it,” Trump said.One day after his inflammatory address, blaming “the radical left” for Kirk’s death, Trump appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone, agreeing with a suggestion from a reporter that his supporters should not respond with violence.The White House quickly posted the exchange on social media, perhaps hoping to tamp down anger that has already spilled into violence, with the beating of a critic of Kirk in Boise, Idaho, during a vigil on Wednesday night.Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska who is retiring after this term, told NBC News that he wished Trump would unite the country after the shooting, “but he’s a populist, and populists dwell on anger”.“I have to remind people, we had Democrats killed in Minnesota too, right?” Bacon added, in reference to the murder of Minnesota’s former house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in June by a gunman with a hitlist of 45 people, all Democrats.With Reuters and the Associated Press More

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      US lawmakers unite to condemn Charlie Kirk shooting: ‘Reject political violence’

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      The shooting of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah college prompted outrage among both Democrats and Republicans, with Donald Trump and top officials condemning what appeared to be the latest act of political violence in the United States.“We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!” said Trump on Truth Social. The president survived an assassination attempt while campaigning for re-election in July 2024, and was targeted by a second assassin weeks later.“Say a prayer for Charlie Kirk, a genuinely good guy and a young father,” tweeted the vice-president, JD Vance. He later posted a photo of him alongside Kirk, writing: “Dear God, protect Charlie in his darkest hour.”Kash Patel, the FBI director, said the bureau “stands in full support of the ongoing response and investigation” into the shooting, which occurred during Kirk’s appearance at Utah Valley University in Orem, south of Salt Lake City. “Our thoughts are with Charlie, his loved ones, and everyone affected,” Patel said.Kirk’s condition after the shooting was described as critical.Congress’s top Republicans and Democrats joined in the condemnation, with several ascribing political motives to the attack. “There is no place in our country for political violence. Period, full stop,” said John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, echoed the sentiment, saying: “Political violence is NEVER acceptable.”“Please join us in praying for our good friend, Charlie Kirk,” said Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House.The House oversight committee took a break from considering more than a dozen bills to change laws in Washington DC as part of Trump’s militarized crackdown on crime in the district to hold a moment of silence in Kirk’s honor, after Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congressperson, informed the panel about the attack.Democrats seen as potential presidential contenders in 2028 also denounced the violence.“The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form,” said Gavin Newsom, the California governor.Wes Moore, the Maryland governor, wrote on X: “Political violence is never acceptable. Ever. The First Lady and I are praying for him and his family at this time.” More

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      Republican condemns Vance for ‘despicable’ comments on Venezuelan boat strike

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      The Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance for “despicable” comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings.“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” the vice-president said in an X post on Saturday, in defense of Tuesday’s US military strike against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which killed 11 people the administration alleged were drug traffickers.Vance added: “Democrats: let’s send your kids to die in Russia. Republicans: actually let’s protect our people from the scum of the earth.”Donald Trump has vowed additional military action against purported traffickers, who are not military targets, after the boat strike, saying “there’s more where that came from”.The controversial attack inflamed already-high tensions between the US and Venezuela. In August Trump dispatched war ships and marines to the Caribbean, which his supporters say is in aid of efforts to oust Venezuelan’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro. On Friday, reports revealed that Trump was sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico to support US military action against drug traffickers.Some fear the developments presage full military conflict between Venezuelan and US service members. Last month, the US offered a $50m bounty for Maduro, twice what it offered for Osama bin Laden, and in July signed a secret mandate approving military action against Latin American cartels deemed terrorist organizations, such as the Venezuelan group Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), which Trump officials have claimed Maduro leads.Trump also framed the boat attack as military activity against “terrorists” in subsequent statements on his social media platform, Truth Social.“The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in international waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United ​States,” he said. “The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No US Forces were harmed in this strike … Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!”The Republican senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate committee on homeland security and government affairs, condemned Vance’s comments.“JD ‘I don’t give a shit’ Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the ‘highest and best use of the military.’ Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” Paul wrote on X, alluding to Harper Lee’s 1960 novel about a wrongly convicted Black man who is killed as he tries to escape prison.“Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.” More

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      Russia says Europe’s leaders don’t want peace in Ukraine as Vance says US will keep trying

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      Russia accused western European leaders on Sunday of not wanting peace in Ukraine, as Moscow’s most senior diplomat praised efforts by Donald Trump to end the war, while Vice-President JD Vance said the US would “keep on trying” to broker talks in the absence of a deal.Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, made the comments during a sometimes contentious interview on NBC on Sunday morning, during which he denied his country had bombed civilian targets in Ukraine.Trump, he said, had set himself above European leaders who accompanied Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks at the White House last week, immediately after the summit between the US president and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August.“We want peace in Ukraine. He wants, President Trump wants, peace in Ukraine. The reaction to [the] Anchorage meeting, the gathering in Washington of these European representatives and what they were doing after Washington, indicates that they don’t want peace,” Lavrov said.The Alaska talks produced neither a ceasefire nor an agreement for Zelenskyy and Putin to meet, and was widely considered to be a public relations triumph for the Russian leader.Lavrov brushed aside Trump’s apparent frustration at the outcome and the US warning of “massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both” against Moscow. He said “yes” when asked if Putin wanted peace and said Putin and Trump respected each other, while assailing the alliance of leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Britain’s Keir Starmer and European Union president Ursula von der Leyen who came to the White House last week to bolster Zelenskyy’s visit.European leaders in recent days have pledged to support security guarantees as part of a peace agreement, although Russia has flatly rejected the prospect of troops from countries in Europe being positioned in Ukraine.Trump has ruled out sending the US military, and on Friday it was reported that his administration had blocked Ukraine’s use of US-supplied long-range missiles to attack Russia.Meanwhile, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney told Zelenskyy on Sunday that he backed Ukraine’s calls for robust security guarantees and that Canada would not rule out sending troops.Earlier, Lavrov became defensive when NBC asked him if Putin was “stringing along” Trump by appearing conciliatory to his peace overtures but continuing to bomb Ukraine, attacks which last week included an airstrike on an American electronics manufacturing company in the west of the country.“It is not for the lawmakers or for any media outlet to decide what President Trump is motivated by. We respect President Trump because President Trump defends American national interests. And I have reason to believe that President Trump respects President Putin because he defends Russian national interests,” he said.Critics, including some conservative voices, are alarmed by what they see as Putin manipulating Trump over Ukraine and US elections.Lavrov meanwhile denied that Russia attacks civilian targets including schools, hospitals and churches, hinting at Russia’s extraordinary claims throughout the war that Ukraine is attacking its own people.“Our intelligence has very good information, and we target only military enterprises, military sites or industrial enterprises directly involved in producing military equipment for [the] Ukrainian army,” he said.Vance appeared separately in the same Sunday morning program and insisted Russia deserved credit for indicating it was ready to end a conflict that Trump has said more than 50 times he would solve “in one day”, while in contrast the vice-president warned of a longer process.“I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict,” Vance said.“They’ve recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. That was, of course, a major demand at the beginning. And importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”Vance said historically that peace negotiations go “in fits and starts” and warned that he did not think ending the war was “going to happen overnight”.Vance said of Russia, in a comment that was not further clarified: “Should they have started the war? Of course, they haven’t. But we’re making progress”. Trump in February blamed Ukraine, saying, “you never should have started it.”Any sanctions against Russia, Vance said, would be on a “case by case basis”, but he remained hopeful that US efforts could bring Zelenskyy and Putin together.“It’s complicated, but we’re going to keep on trying to convince these parties to talk to each other and continue to play the game of diplomacy, because that’s the only way to get this thing wrapped up.”Lavrov remained adamant that Russia also wanted peace, and acknowledged “Ukraine has the right to exist”. But he said it “must let people go”, referring to Putin’s demand that it give up Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula seized by Russia in 2014, as well as southern and eastern parts, such as the Donbas, captured since 2022, as part of a peace agreement.“In Crimea [they] decided that they belong to the Russian culture,” he said, citing a disputed 2014 referendum condemned by most of the world as illegal.On Friday, Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat of Connecticut, said on CNN that stronger US action was needed because “Putin is not going to stop until we stop him.”

      Reuters contributed reporting More

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      South Park has become the most important TV show of the Trump 2.0 era | Jesse Hassenger

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      I’ll admit it: I’m more of a Simpsons guy than a South Park guy. Nothing really against those South Park guys – I’ve caught plenty of episodes over its astonishing near-30-year run, and loved the 1999 big-screen movie. But while I haven’t always maintained clockwork viewership of The Simpsons, either, those characters have proved durable enough to revive my interest in episodes old and new. South Park has a thinner bench by comparison, and as the show itself astutely pointed out years ago, it’s difficult for a satirically minded animated sitcom to explore ground that The Simpsons hasn’t covered already. South Park’s political bent, too, has often seemed less varied than the warmer (but still sometimes cutting) social ribbing of Matt Groening’s signature show. It’s a fine line between omnidirectional satire and libertarian crankiness.And yet the 27th season of South Park has accomplished something vanishingly few of its peers, whether in animation or topical comedy, have been able to do: getting laughs taking shots at the second Trump administration. It’s not that the White House is beyond reproach. Quite the opposite problem, much-documented: the Donald Trump cabal is so outsized in its stupidity and cruelty that it’s hard to distend it into a “funny” caricature, even a bleak one. In Trump’s second term, it has only gotten bleaker; jokes that were worn out by the end of 2020 are getting retold with a nasty vengeance, and the bar for cathartic laughter has been raised considerably.For a comedy fan, this winds up translating to an aversion. The occasional shots taken by The Simpsons somehow don’t land as squarely as they did when aimed at presidents I liked much, much more. I watch Saturday Night Live every week, and mostly dread James Austin Johnson’s accurate but ultimately defanged impression. (Some weeks, Johnson himself seems bummed out to be doing it.) I respect the hell out of Stephen Colbert, but I have never sought out his Trump commentary; I don’t need any more clapter – the reaction encouraged by comedy that wants your approval more than your laughter – in my life. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone seemed to agree; Parker’s 2017 announcement that they’d grown bored of taking shots at Trump – then barely into his first presidential term – was one of the show’s many controversies over the years.So how is it that South Park’s revived anti-Trump blows this season have managed to land? A big part of it is precisely Stone and Parker’s allergy to clapter and the grandstanding that inspires it. They obviously resent anything they read as putting on airs and sometimes in the past, this came across as its own form of preachiness, with “everybody chill”-style speeches at an episode’s end that would secretly sound just as prescriptive as the self-righteousness they wanted to send up. With their most recent Trump parody, though, there isn’t much moralizing – just gratifyingly mean caricatures of deserving figures such as Trump, JD Vance and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem. Some (not all) of their past roastings have verged on point-and-laugh bullying; here are targets worthy of that derision.Some of this derision speaks through the language of South Park itself. Trump isn’t vocally or visually imitated; he’s depicted in a series of repurposed photos, with the same voice and animation technique that Parker and Stone used to bring Saddam Hussein to life in the South Park movie. He’s also given the same sexual partner: a muscled-up and put-upon version of Satan, who has found himself in another toxic relationship. Calling Trump a wannabe dictator doesn’t break new ground, but there’s something satisfying in Stone and Parker using their personal toolkit to draw a line between Trump and Hussein; if they thought it was a histrionic comparison, they’d be making fun of it instead of making it. Similarly, there’s real spite animating the depiction of Noem as a dog-murdering zealot whose glamorous face needs to be repeatedly lacquered and reaffixed to her head as she commands an army of Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs.Not all of the season’s satire has involved making real-life figures regulars on the show. Because South Park’s ensemble has rarely felt as vast or believably developed as Springfield of The Simpsons (or even Arlen on King of the Hill), it’s also flexible enough to turn Randy, Stan’s desperately trend-following dad, into a ketamine-microdosing, tech-bro moron addicted to the soothing, empty reassurances of ChatGPT – the focus of the most recent episode, to the point where most of the core child cast doesn’t appear. Surprisingly, this season has deployed forever favorite Cartman more sparingly so far, again getting self-referential in the season’s second episode, where the id-driven and arguably evil little kid is incensed to find out that podcasters have stolen his “shtick” – his pervasive hatefulness, repackaged as a challenge to debate where the aggressor is always the self-appointed winner. Ascribing this “master debater” title to Cartman (alongside a fellow kid serving as an obvious Charlie Kirk/Ben Shapiro stand-in) somehow manages to make this ridiculous behavior funny in its petty smallness without glorifying it.A South Park diehard would probably describe this praise as a fair-weather fan only enjoying the show when it goes after the “right” targets. Maybe that’s true, but it’s also a lot easier to take some joy in savaging Vance as a meme-faced version of a Fantasy Island sidekick than, say, accusing George Lucas and Steven Spielberg of cultural rape. It’s probably wishful thinking to wonder if Parker and Stone might actually move the needle of the perception on tech bros, debate-me podcasters and Trump-world ghouls, especially among the dude demo. But it’s also just a blessed change of pace to see say-anything, first-amendment types finding a fresher target than the wokeness bogeyman. While countless standups continue to whine about being silenced, Parker and Stone seem highly aware of their rarified position (and, as Paramount contractors, also aware of what actual political-corporate interference looks like). In a world where Trump’s actual political opponents seem terrified to actually fight him, some well-deserved, point-and-laugh meanness has become a surprising novelty. More

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      JD Vance booed during hamburger handout to national guard troops in DC

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      JD Vance was booed and heckled with chants of “Free DC!” during a photo op with national guard troops at Union Station in Washington on Wednesday afternoon.Handing out burgers to troops deployed last week by Donald Trump, at the station’s Shake Shack alongside the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, Vance told soldiers “we appreciate everything you’re doing” and asserted: “We brought some law and order back.” Meanwhile, a crowd of demonstrators protested outside.The crowd shouted slogans such as “Free DC!” and “From DC to Palestine, occupation is a crime.” Some also shouted expletives as the three men walked into Union Station and gathered at the restaurant, and continued as they tried to speak to reporters and eventually left.Asked why the troops were at the station instead of parts of the city where crime rates were statistically higher, Vance claimed it was being overrun with “vagrants, drug addicts, the chronically homeless and the mentally ill” and that visitors didn’t feel safe. “This should be a monument to American greatness,” he said, later adding: “We do not have to live like this.”Addressing the protests, Vance said: “It’s kind of bizarre that we have a bunch of old, primarily white people who are out there protesting the policies that keep people safe when they’ve never felt danger in their entire lives.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAppropriating the protesters’ chants, he added: “Let’s free Washington DC, so that young families can walk around and feel safe and secure. That’s what we’re trying to free DC from.”His sentiments were echoed by Miller, who belittled those who had gathered in protest as “crazy communists”. “We’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington DC,” he said.Last week, the president federalized the city’s Metropolitan police department and directed Hegseth to mobilize national guard troops, claiming he was cracking down on “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor” in the nation’s “lawless” capital, despite a sharply falling crime rate with violent crime at a 30-year low.An estimated 1,900 troops are being deployed in DC. More than half are coming from Republican-led states including Louisiana and South Carolina. Besides Union Station, troops have mostly been spotted in downtown areas, including the National Mall and metro stops. More

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      There is no ‘Trump Doctrine’ in foreign policy. Just chaos | Sidney Blumenthal

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      All the elaborate efforts of the European allies to prevent Donald Trump from prostrating himself before Vladimir Putin came to naught at their summit meeting in Alaska. Flattering, coddling and petting the big baby appeared to have been in vain. Before the 15 August summit, the Europeans persuaded Trump to impose new sanctions if Putin would not agree to a ceasefire, which would serve as a prerequisite for any negotiations. But Trump willfully tossed policy like a stuffed animal out of the window of “the Beast,” the presidential car as he eagerly invited Putin to join him for a triumphant chariot ride.The Europeans scrambled once again, trying to get the addled Trump back on the page he was on before the summit. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sped to Washington to confer with Trump to try to pick up the pieces. At their last encounter, Trump jibed: “You don’t have any cards.” But Trump had just handed over his cards to Putin. Zelenskyy was not about to play the appeasement card. The European leaders gathered in an extraordinary posse to accompany Zelenskyy in an attempt to restore a unified western position. Unlike the last Zelenskyy meeting with Trump, he was not hectored. With the Ukrainian leader urrounded by a protective phalanx, Trump made agreeable sounding but vague gestures about a future summit with both Zelenskyy and Putin. Trump seemed favorable, if indefinite and imprecise, about western forces stationed in Ukraine to maintain its sovereignty. But the notion of a ceasefire, pressed again by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, had evaporated. While the European recovery effort took place at the White House, Russian bombs rained down. Trump dreams of receiving the Nobel peace prize. Before the summit, he called the Norwegian finance minister to lobby him.In Alaska, Trump melted again in the presence of Putin while the whole world was watching. The self-abasing embarrassment of his previous meeting in Helsinki in 2018 did not serve as a cautionary precedent. Now, he invited the sanctioned war criminal to US soil. He ordered uniformed US soldiers to roll out the red carpet, “the beautiful red carpet” as the Russian foreign ministry called it. He applauded when Putin stood next to him. He patted Putin’s hand when he clasped it with an affectionate gesture. Then the door of “the Beast” opened for Putin.Trump’s personal negotiator for the summit, Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate operator whose knowledge of Russian culture to prepare him for his delicate role may had been a bowl of borscht at the Russian Tea Room on 57th Street, was easy prey for Putin. Bild, the German newspaper, reported on 9 August that Witkoff had committed an “explosive blunder”. According to Bild, Putin “did not deviate from his maximum demand to completely control the five Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea before the weapons remain silent … And even worse: Trump’s special envoy Witkoff is said to have completely misunderstood some of the Russians’ positions and misinterpreted them as an accommodation by Putin. He had misunderstood a “peaceful withdrawal” of the Ukrainians from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia demanded by Russia as an offer of “peaceful withdrawal” of the Russians from these regions”.“Witkoff doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” a Ukrainian government official told Bild. An assessment that, according to Bild information, is also shared by German government representatives.Bild further reported: “There was a telephone conference on Thursday evening between representatives of the US government – including the special envoy Witkoff and Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance – and the European partners. As BILD learned, the American side was perceived as chaotic and ununited. This was primarily due to Witkoff, whose remarks about his conversation with Putin on Wednesday in the Kremlin were perceived as confusing. He himself seemed overwhelmed and incompetent to the Europeans when he spoke about the territorial issues in Ukraine.”The German newspaper also reported friction between Rubio and Vance, with the vice-president seeking to shut the European allies out of the process and Witkoff taking his side against the secretary of state. “Apparently, there was also disagreement about the further course of action between Witkoff and Rubio, as the foreign minister emphasized that the Europeans should be involved in the further process, while Vance and Witkoff only wanted to inform Europe of the results of the further Trump steps.”Bild’s report on Putin’s position turned out to be completely accurate and its description of the Trump administration’s unsettled position prophetic of the fiasco that would unfold.Little noticed in the US media accounts, Trump had presented Putin with enormous economic advantages, according to the Telegraph. He offered access to valuable Alaskan natural resources, opportunities to tap into the US portion of the Bering Strait, which would boost Russia’s interests in the Arctic region. Trump promised to lift sanctions on Russia’s aircraft industry, which would permit Russian airlines (and by extension the Russian air force) to return to US suppliers for parts and maintenance. Trump would give Putin approval for access to rare earth minerals in Ukrainian territories currently under Russian occupation.In Trump’s new world order, Putin would be his partner, especially on the frontier of the Arctic, while Trump waged a trade war imposing harsh tariffs on every other nation. Ukraine stood as an obstacle to the gold rush.According to the Telegraph, Witkoff suggested to the Russians: “Israel’s occupation of the West Bank could be used as a model for ending the war. Russia would have military and economic control of occupied [parts of] Ukraine under its own governing body, similar to Israel’s de facto rule of Palestinian territory.”Then, after Trump laid on lavish treatment for the Russian dictator at the US military base, marking his indifference to international condemnation, came the joint appearance, which exceeded the Helsinki disaster. An elated Putin and dejected Trump appeared on stage together.The announced joint press conference was a theater of the absurd. Its brevity contributed to the farce. There was no agreement, no plan for an agreement, and no press conference. Trump deferred to Putin to speak first, to set the tone and terms after which he would come on as the second banana to slip on the peel.A clearly delighted Putin reiterated his belief that Ukraine was a security threat to Russia, and that “we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict,” which was his language for the elimination of an independent and democratic Ukraine. He blamed Biden for the war he had launched. He affirmed Trump’s presumptuous boast that there would have been no war had he been president. “Today, when President Trump is saying that if he was the president back then, there would be no war, and I’m quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that.”A clearly glum Trump stepped to his podium. “So there’s no deal until there’s a deal,” he said. He had pledged during the 2024 campaign that he could and would end the war on “day one”. It had taken him 210 days to reach the “No Deal”.Trump wistfully talked about doing business with Russia, his will-o’-the-wisp ambition since he attempted for decades to build a Trump Tower in Moscow even through the 2016 election. He threw Putin a bouquet. “I’ve always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir.” He blamed their inability to monetize their relationship to the inquiries that extensively documented Putin’s covert efforts in the 2016 election to help Trump. “We were interfered with by the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” Trump complained. He would not let it go, drifting incoherently into his grievances. “He knew it was a hoax, and I knew it was a hoax, but what was done was very criminal, but it made it harder for us to deal as a country, in terms of the business, and all of the things that would like to have dealt with, but we’ll have a good chance when this is over.”Then, Trump praised the Russian officials accompanying Putin. Chief among them was the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who had arrived wearing a sweatshirt embossed with the Cyrillic letters “CCCP”, standing for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, signaling Putin’s ultimate objective to restore the empire of the Soviet Union. The message was more than nostalgia; it was a mission statement. And Trump called Putin “the Boss”, not a reference to Bruce Springsteen. “Next time in Moscow,” said Putin.The press conference was over. There were no questions. There were no answers. Trump fled from the stage.Before the summit, Trump threatened new sanctions if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire, but now he forgot he had ever said that. He spoke loudly and carried a tiny stick. On Air Force One, on the return to Washington, he gave an exclusive interview to his lapdog, Sean Hannity of Fox News, along on the ride for this purpose. Trump reverted to his tacit support for Putin’s position. He put the burden on Zelenskyy to accede to Putin’s demands, which were unchanged.Then, Trump spiraled down a wormhole, obviously anxious about his growing unpopularity and the prospect of the Democrats winning the congressional midterm elections, which has prompted him to prod the Texas Republicans to gerrymander districts and California Democrats aroused to counter it in their state. “Vladimir Putin, smart guy, said you can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting,” said Trump. “Look at California with that horrible governor they have. One of the worst governors in history. He is incompetent, he doesn’t know what he is doing.”Is this a subject that Putin actually spoke about in their discussion? Has he had experience with mail-in voting or even know what it is? Was it brought up by Trump during their car ride? Or was Trump simply making it up for his gullible Fox News audience? Whatever the reality, Trump’s fear about losing control of domestic politics was at the top of his mind as he flew away from his charade in Anchorage.The shambolic scene left in Alaska represented the wreckage of Trump’s attempt at diplomacy. Setting the stage himself, Trump babbled, whined and weakly sided with Putin. Trump’s foreign policy team was exposed as incompetent, confounded and feckless. This was no best and the brightest, no rise of the Vulcans, but the circus of the Koalemosians, after Koalemos, the Greek god of stupidity.Apologists for Trump, in advance of this exemplary event, had suggested that there was such a conceit as a Trump doctrine. A former Trump official from his first term, A Wess Mitchell, has called it “The Return of Great Power Diplomacy” in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs. He described “a new kind of diplomacy” that is “diplomacy in its classical form” and “an instrument of strategy”. He cited an ancient Spartan king, Archidamus II, the Roman Emperor Domitian, Cardinal Richelieu, and in his mélange did not neglect to throw in Metternich and Bismarck. (Kissinger, in his grave, must be weeping over the parading of Metternich’s mannequin as a forerunner of Trump. Mitchell, in any case, dismisses Kissinger as a fake realist and an “idealist”, which would have been a revelation to Kissinger.) Left out of Mitchell’s pantheon of great diplomatic influences through the ages is the influencer Laura Loomer, the loony far-right troll who has an open door to Trump, feeding him lists of national security officials he must purge.In Putin’s shadow, Trump was bared as having no larger or smaller concept or strategy of Great Power politics. It would be unfair to accuse Trump of having an idea beyond his self-aggrandizement. If anything, he aspires to be like Putin, whom he called a “genius” after his invasion of Ukraine. Putin has created and controls a vast kleptocracy. In 2017, Bill Browder, an American businessperson who had invested in Russia and has been targeted for assassination by Putin for exposing his corruption, testified before the Senate judiciary committee that Putin was “the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world”. Nobody, however, knows Putin’s true personal wealth.Trump, the Putin manqué, is trying to turn the United States into a kleptocratic system. According to the calculations of David D Kirkpatrick in the New Yorker, in just six months of his second term his alleged personal profiteering, “would disappoint the haters who saw Trump as a Putin-level kleptocrat. Yet some three and a half billion dollars in Presidential profits – even though my accounting is necessarily approximate – is a dizzying sum.”Meanwhile, three days before the Trump-Putin summit, the Trump family crypto business, World Liberty Financial, raised $1.5bn to buy the Trump family token. The CEO of World Liberty Financial, Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, along with Eric Trump of WLF, will join the board of the investing company. That is the Trump doctrine.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Golf for them, grind for us: Trump, Vance and the hellish US holiday divide | Arwa Mahdawi

      by

      You know what the problem is with the US? Nobody wants to work any more. People feel entitled to cushy jobs with fat salaries and unlimited holiday time. And by “people” I mean American politicians, who seem to treat public office as an excuse for endless vacations. Because the president and vice-president are technically always on duty, there’s no official holiday policy – and it rather feels as if they are taking advantage of this.Take the vice-president, JD “OOO (out of office)” Vance. When he’s not inspiring memes or threatening to deport menswear influencers, he always seems to be off on a jolly. So far this year, the man has been skiing in Vermont, shut down bits of Disneyland for his family’s use and apparently raised the water level of a river in Ohio for a kayaking trip. Now, the Vances are summering in the Cotswolds.Vance, who unsuccessfully tried out for his high school golf team, can also occasionally be found hitting balls with his boss. Which is actually pretty hard work, since we all know Trump is a gifted sportsman; in April, the White House doctor cited the president’s “frequent victories in golf events” as evidence of Trump’s excellent health. And Trump should be good, considering he’s so far spent 25% of his second term golfing, according to the online tracker Did Trump Golf Today?. Lovely for him; expensive for the taxpayer.Trump was once very critical of Barack Obama’s numerous golf outings. “I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to go play golf,” Trump said in 2016. He managed to find the time: a 2021 Washington Post analysis found that Trump probably played 261 rounds of golf in his first term – a round every 5.6 days. This term, he’s on track to surpass that number.Trump has also complained about work-from-home policies, saying that people will take advantage and “play golf” instead. It’s different when he plays golf, though. A workhorse like Trump can be productive anywhere! On Sunday, for example, while being driven from the White House to his golf club in Virginia, Trump (or one of his minions) snapped a few photos of homeless people, which he posted on social media with his typically nuanced analysis. “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump stated. “Be prepared! There will be no ‘MR. NICE GUY.’” Not everyone is capable of crafting complex policy proposals on how to reduce homelessness while being chauffeured to a tee time. It’s a skill set such as this that separates the wheat from the chaff.Speaking of the chaff: guess how much paid time off (PTO) normies in the US are entitled to? The answer, if you’re looking at federal law, is none; it’s up to your employer. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average amount of vacation private sector workers get after one year at a company is 11 days. For government workers, it’s 13 days. (PTO often increases over time, but median job tenure in the US is less than five years.) What happens if you get sick and need more time off? You’d better hope that your colleagues are nice enough to donate their sick days to you. By contrast, in the UK, most full-time workers are entitled to 28 days of paid annual leave from the get-go.While US vacation policy may seem miserly to outsiders, Trump thinks it’s far too generous. On Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people in the US, the president complained that, despite the fact that private-sector companies don’t have to give employees the day off for federal holidays, there were too many holidays in the US and “workers don’t want it”.Like many things the president says, this is nonsense. On the contrary: Microsoft’s 2025 work index report found that, because of the always-on nature of technology, many workers are struggling with “infinite workdays” and burnout. How is Microsoft combating that? Glad you asked! They recently teamed up with Mercedes-Benz to bring “in-car productivity to a new level” by making it easier to take meetings while driving. Behold the American dream: nonstop work for the masses and endless golfing vacays for the guys at the top. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More