World

When President Donald Trump is accused of having a belligerent tone with longtime allies of the United States, he often responds that he is merely standing up for a country that has been disrespected and taken advantage of. Trump views himself as a symbol of American strength, but according to British journalist and i Paper reporter James Ball, the U.S. president is looking "weak" and "humiliated" in front of other countries.

"Trump's maniacal self-confidence has endured beyond the first year of his second term in no small part thanks to the constant flattery of his subordinates and a friendly online media ecosystem," Ball explains in the UK-based i Paper. "He seems to genuinely believe that he has 'ended 10 wars,' or that he is constantly breaking record highs in his approval ratings among Republicans. Neither is true."

Trump's "overweening self-confidence," according to Ball, "seems to" be the thing that "propelled" him "into his war with Iran" — a war that, Ball emphasizes, isn't going well for the United States.

"One of the founding principles of the MAGA movement was getting the U.S. out of its endless entanglements overseas, and instead putting 'America First,'" Ball notes. "But the pull of proving himself superior to his predecessors on Iran and the Middle East — Trump has spent a decade endlessly criticizing President (Barack) Obama's deal to curb Iranian nuclear enrichment — seemed to prove irresistible. On a high after kidnapping President (Nicolás) Maduro from Venezuela, and having received a flattering briefing from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming U.S. airstrikes could lead to regime change in Iran, Trump launched his own Middle Eastern adventure."

Ball continues, "Trump never set out a clear aim for the war, not least because he never bothered making much of a case for it, either to the public or to Congress. But it is impossible to claim the current situation as a win against any kind of goal. The world's economy remains on the brink of disaster, with the Strait of Hormuz blocked. Peace negotiations are in deadlock. The Iranian regime's hold on the country is more secure now than it was before US operations began."

Trump, the British journalist laments, is in way over his head with Iran — much to the detriment of the U.S. as well as its allies in other countries.

"Trump is a petty and vindictive man," Ball warns. "He has spent much of his second term trying to bring the power of the federal government to bear against his political enemies, for real and imagined slights. He has pursued vendettas for weeks, months and years against those he feels criticized him unfairly. Now, he is being publicly humiliated on the world stage, while every world leader watches on. What might a man like Donald Trump do in such a situation? Trump has made himself look foolish, and weak. That could make him more dangerous than ever."

Economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has pinpointed a series of events that have led to the rest of the world seeing America as “inessential.”

Just weeks after President Donald Trump was sworn into his second term in office, he held a televised Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which he and his top administration officials berated the leader fending off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal war.

“You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump told Zelenskyy. But according to Krugman, Zelenskyy has “quite a few cards, while Trump has far fewer cards than he imagined.”

Krugman calls that Oval Office dressing-down “a spectacle that shamed America,” with Trump “engaging in petty bullying of the leader of a nation fighting for its life against tyranny.”

The Oval Office attack was just the start of what would make the world start to rethink its relationship to the U.S.

Trump then cut off all financial aid to Ukraine and blocked weapons sales to the battered nation — even when other nations were paying the bill.

Trump later met with Putin, where, “as the Russians see it, he offered to broker a deal that would give Russia control of a crucial fortress belt on Ukrainian soil.”

Krugman calls that “a shocking betrayal of a democracy fighting for its freedom — and, in so doing, fighting for the freedom of Europe as a whole.”

And while 18 GOP senators Thursday voted to restore aid to Ukraine, against the will of their leadership, should that bill come to Trump’s desk, it is doubtful he would sign it.

Despite Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine, Ukraine turned the war in its favor, and by doing so, taught the world a lesson.

“Before Trump, we were also a nation almost universally regarded as essential,” writes Krugman. “Nations believed that they needed access to U.S. banks to do business, access to U.S. markets to prosper, access to U.S. weapons to defend themselves.”

“But by breaking decades’ worth of international agreements — not to mention threatening allies and betraying Ukraine — Trump quickly forfeited the world’s trust.”

Trump “failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power,” has also “dispelled much of the world’s fear,” Krugman says.

The world is “managing economically” despite Trump’s tariffs and his abandonment of Ukraine — and Ukraine is “surviving despite Trump’s attempt to cut it off at the knees,” says Krugman, revealing that America is “much less essential than everyone assumed.”

Relations between the United States and its European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have deteriorated considerably during Donald Trump's second presidency, with strong disagreements over everything from the Iran war to tariffs to Greenland. Trump's push for U.S. annexation of Greenland, a Danish colony, drew vehement criticism from European NATO countries. But Andrew Puzder, Trump's ambassador to the European Union (EU), is claiming that the U.S. president's remarks were misinterpreted.

At the 2026 Brussels Economic Security Forum in Belgium, Puzder told attendees, "It got interpreted that we were somehow threatening Greenland's territorial integrity…. (but) the president never said we were going to invade."

In early March, Trump argued that acquiring Greenland was essential to the U.S. from a national security standpoint and said that the U.S. will take the Arctic island "one way or another."

Politico reporters Jonas Loesel and Koen Verhelst note, "During his second term in office, Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of annexing Greenland, without excluding the use of military force, which caused consternation in Europe. Puzder said the president's statements were useful to bring attention to Greenland's strategic importance, but should not have been taken seriously."

Loesel and Verhelst add, "The ambassador's comments came just a day after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Arctic island is part of Denmark — 'for now.' Trump eventually ruled out a military invasion of Greenland in January, setting up talks between the U.S. and Denmark on increasing the American military presence on the Arctic island."

At the 2026 Brussels Economic Security Forum, Puzder — who worked as a restaurateur in the past — made a cappuccino analogy while discussing Trump's comments on Greenland. Puzder hoped to convince Europeans that they were overreacting.

Trump's ambassador to the EU told attendees, "You get a cappuccino, you get it for the coffee — you don't get it for the froth. So, let's focus on the coffee and not on the froth. And a lot of this is the froth."

But EU and NATO officials took Trump's comments on Greenland earlier this year quite seriously.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that if the U.S. tried to take Greenland by force, it would trigger the end of NATO — a warning that European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius echoed in January, telling Reuters, "I agree with the Danish prime minister that it will be the end of NATO, but also, among people, it will be also very, very negative."

After World War 2, the term "Pax Americana" was used to describe the United States' alliance with European countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). "Pax" is Latin for "peace" (similar to "paz" in Spanish or "pace" in Italian), and the idea behind the term was that together, the United States, Canada and Europe were preventing the type of widespread carnage that occurred during two world wars. But according to Never Trump conservative Paul Rosenzweig, U.S. President Donald Trump has undermined the "American Peace" so badly that longtime allies now "distrust" and even "fear" the U.S.

Writing for the conservative website The Bulwark, Rosenzweig — an attorney who served in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under former President George W. Bush — lays out a variety of reasons why longtime allies are growing increasingly distrustful of the U.S. during Trump's second presidency.

"For more than 80 years," Rosenzweig explains in his Bulwark article, "the Pax Americana has protected the world. Imperfect and incomplete as it was, American reliability was a pillar of Cold War stability. NATO membership and the American nuclear umbrella were, to a large degree, the reason for European safety from Russian threats. American alliances — including mutual defense treaties — plus American pressure also allowed Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines to democratize. Our strategic support, albeit in a more ambiguous way, was also the basis for Taiwanese security."

Rosenzweig continues, "But the underpinning for all of that was American trustworthiness — the faith and confidence our allies had in America's promise that we would come to their aid when needed. That faith and confidence is fading."

Signs that "faith" in the U.S. is "diminishing" among longtime allies, Rosenzweig warns, "are large and obvious."

"Recently, Norway, a NATO founding member, became the ninth European country to sign up for French nuclear protection," the former DHS official observes. "Given the Russian threats and the broadly faltering trust in U.S. reliability, France has offered to extend its nuclear umbrella — with its roughly 290 nuclear warheads — to protect all of Europe as a replacement for American promises. But our allies are not only less willing to rely on and trust America. They are also coming to see America as a threat. Association with America is now a risk that needs to be taken into account and, if possible, reduced."

Rosenzweig continues, "Here's one example: Increasingly European governments are moving away from U.S. tech giants as service providers…. But the more insidious and troubling problem is that the belligerence of the Trump administration towards the continent has generated fears that bellicose language will be translated into hostile action. After Trump's sanctions against the International Criminal Court cut off six judges from their banks, credit cards, and even e-mail addresses, Europeans have a legitimate fear that that Silicon Valley giants could be compelled to cut off access to critical services for a whole government or even a whole country. It's no wonder that Europe is, increasingly, seeking to reduce its digital dependence on the United States."

President Donald Trump's war with Iran seems to be causing a seismic change in the Middle East, but according to a new break down from The i Paper, it is happening in just about the exact opposite way he intended.

Writing for the outlet on Thursday, foreign affairs reporter Kieron Monks relayed the news of the recent address given by Iran's Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei during the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. There, he claimed that the country's war with the U.S. and Israel was bringing about a change in the region that the Iranian government has long been working towards.

"The nations and lands of the region will no longer serve as shields for American bases,” Khamenei said. “America will no longer have a secure foothold for its mischief or military presence in the region.”

"For decades, Iran’s clerical regime has made the expulsion of US forces from the Middle East a central aim," Monks explained. "Tehran believes that Trump’s war is bringing that vision closer to reality."

The U.S. has so far balked at peace demands from Iran requiring it to withdraw military forces from the region. Now, however, with Iran targeting numerous U.S. military bases in the region, Monks said that Middle Eastern nations "are wondering if they have become liabilities rather than assets."

Dina Esfandiary, an Iran specialist and Middle East lead for Bloomberg Economics, told The i Paper that the nation "100 percent" sees an opening with this war to try and force the U.S. out. Andreas Krieg, a Gulf security expert at King’s College London, added that the current political dynamics in the U.S. might actually bear out in Iran's favor.

“As a lot of people in the MAGA world are saying do we actually need to be there, a lot of voices in the Gulf are saying, why are we paying for the Americans to be here?” Krieg observed.

“I think it’s obvious that the war in Iran has not gone well,” Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East scholar with a focus on the Persian Gulf at Baker University’s Rice Institute, told the outlet, concurring with Krieg's observations. “The objectives were not achieved and it has created a situation where the US cannot force a decisive breakthrough. That may give talking points to the groups in D.C. who make the argument that actually we should leave the region.”

"It is extremely unlikely that the US military would pull out entirely," Monks explained. "But the Trump administration is under increasing domestic and international pressure over its role in the region."

Federal funding for President Donald Trump's massive ballroom was on the line before Congress on Wednesday, but the chief of the project was readying for an annual Russian economic conference, which some are calling "Putin's Davos." This is the first time the U.S. has attended since Russia attacked Ukraine.

Rodney Mims Cook told the Russian press that Trump and the State Department permitted him to travel to Russia for the economic forum in St Petersburg. BBC News Moscow reporter posted on X that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was "unaware" that Cook was attending the forum.

Cook was nominated by Trump to take over the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. All of the members of the board were fired in 2025 and Trump appointed their replacements. They then voted to approve the ballroom project and Trump immediately bulldozed the East Wing of the White House during 2025's government shutdown.

According to his conversation with Russian media, Cook said that his presence at the forum had nothing to do with his position in the Trump government; rather, he was there as a Christian to help restore churches in Russia, Reuters reported.

Yet, according to Max Seddon, Moscow Bureau chief for the Financial Times, Cook brought graphics showing off the ballroom.

"Cook, it turns out, is an ardent Russophile. He has been involved [in] restoring medieval Russian churches for decades. His own house in Georgia is designed in the Russian style. He says he is friends with many senior Russian elite figures. He seems absolutely thrilled to be there," added Seddon.

He was also photographed with Russian religious leaders.

Others who attended the forum include Andrew Tate and his brother, along with far-right streamer Candace Owens. Tate is facing criminal charges in Romania for sexual assault, human trafficking and establishing an organized crime group to exploit women.

At a time when voters are ready to hand Republicans a midterm revolt over the economy, Politico reported this week that top executives warned President Donald Trump that prices are about to get much worse if he does not solve the war in Iran.

Trump remains embroiled in negotiations for a lasting ceasefire and resolution to the war, which he started, with Iran's new hardline leadership refusing his demands. As that situation continues to spiral, the Strait of Hormuz remains either closed off or dangerous, depending on the day, sending global oil prices surging as a result.

According to a Thursday report from Politico, oil executives have warned Trump and his administration that, as bad as things are now, they are about to get much worse if the Strait is not reopened in a matter of weeks, citing sources close to the discussions. Without the oil that gets shipped through the body of water, global oil reserves will start to dwindle to a dangerous degree, sending prices to new heights.

"Industry executives have flagged the issue to senior White House officials and Cabinet members in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing dialogue with the U.S. energy industry, the people said," the report detailed. "The warnings came as recently as late last month as data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources began showing that fuel makers were increasingly relying on oil and fuel from their storage tanks to replace products no longer arriving from the Middle East."

It added later: "Some of the conversations have been general warnings while others have focused on tight inventories of specific fuel types in particular locations, such as jet fuel on the West Coast, a second person involved in the conversations said."

In response to Politico's query about the supposed warnings, the White House gave only a terse response blasting the outlet for citing anonymous sources.

“We’re at dangerously low levels already,” one of those sources, an anonymous industry executive, told Politico. “We have shared those concerns at the highest levels of government about what’s coming in mid-to-late June. … I hope they are paying attention to inventories right now. You’re hitting tank bottom.”

Exxon executive Neil Chapman recently told investors that crude barrels could reach $150-160 in two or three weeks. Another anonymous executive told Politico that the White House has already been made aware of that and warned of the crunch coming for consumers during the big holiday travel rush.

“Don’t think that an open strait is going to mean your July 4 gasoline bill isn’t going to be higher than what it is today," they said. "It’s going to be.”

President Donald Trump has found himself in an unwinnable scenario with his Iran peace negotiations, according to one retired army colonel, as he is stuck dealing with hardline leadership that "refuses" to accept his own rules.

Jonathan Sweet is a retired lieutenant colonel who had three decades of service as a military intelligence officer. Alongside his frequent collaborations, national security reporter Mark Toth, published a new op-ed for The Hill on Thursday outlining the circumstances that have led Trump into the intractable quagmire he now finds himself stuck in with Iran.

"A stubbornly determined Trump insists that 'Iran really wants to make a deal' with the U.S.," the pair wrote. "At least that is what they tell his negotiating team of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner behind closed doors. Iran’s actions — especially those of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, under the leadership of Ahmad Vahidi — suggest otherwise. And this led Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to submit his resignation to the Office of the Supreme Leader last weekend."

As Sweet and Toth argued, Pezeshkian understood the situation better than Trump when he admitted that the IRGC was fully in control of Iran and preventing him from taking part in its governance. With "armed hard-liners" now in charge, "a deal that compromises their power in the Middle East is not in the cards," meaning that any eventual deal will almost certainly not be the one Trump is demanding.

"Trump is now demanding that Tehran put specific nuclear concessions down in writing as part of a preliminary agreement aimed at pushing past the drawn-out deadlock between the two countries," the pair continued. "Iran responded in part by firing missiles and drones Tuesday evening at Kuwait, the U.S. Fifth Fleet Headquarters at Bahrain, and a U.S. air base in the region."

They added later: "The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the retaliatory strikes' should serve as a lesson' for the U.S. Esmail Kowsari, a hardline member of the Iranian Parliament, called for Iran’s armed forces to confront the U.S. 'much more strongly,' saying Americans' understand nothing except the language of force and power.'”

Those attacks from Iran, they argued, should make it clear to Trump and his allies that "an emboldened Iran is not going to back down," and that their only meaningful response left would be to end the ceasefire and resume active strikes, a move that would inevitably go down poorly with voters in the U.S.

"The White House is going to have to follow through on its threats to resume Operation Epic Fury — only this time, it must finish the job and defeat the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s center of gravity," they concluded. "Unconditional surrender is now the only acceptable outcome for the White House to obtain the objectives the President laid out on March 2, which will lead to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz."

The UK has long been one of the United States' closest allies, from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchhill during World War 2 to President Ronald Reagan and Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s to President George W. Bush and Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But according to the UK-based i Paper, King Charles III was privately "jittery" about U.S. President Donald Trump's most recent trip to the UK.

Trump visited the UK in September 2025, meeting with King Charles, Queen Camila and Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer. And King Charles, visiting Washington, DC in late April 2026, gave an historic speech during a joint session of Congress.

Journalist Caroline Wheeler, Jane Merrick and Arj Singh, reporting for the i Paper, explain, "The King raised serious concerns about Donald Trump's state visit to the UK in the wake of the U.S. president's infamous bust-up with (Ukrainian President) Volodymyr Zelensky, the i Paper understands. The monarch's private reservations over the visit left officials scrambling, fearful that a royal snub of President Trump could detonate into a full-blown diplomatic crisis. Multiple senior Whitehall sources have told this newspaper that the King was reticent about hosting Trump at this time because of his treatment of Zelensky."

An i Paper source told the British publication that King Charles was "jittery" about meeting with Trump, and another source said that he "did not want to do it."

This "revelation," according to Wheeler, Merrick and Singh, "illustrates how fraught UK-U.S. diplomatic relations have been during Trump's time in office" and also underscores King Charles' "unique role as the bridge between No. 10 (Downing Street) and the White House."

"A flurry of e-mails and texts exchanged between Peter Mandelson, then U.S. ambassador, and officials in March 2025 reveal a behind-the-scenes diplomatic scramble to alleviate Charles' concerns over the visit," the i Paper reporters note. "In one message, the peer thanks the most senior civil servant in Foreign Office for his 'cool handling of the last 48 hours on the SV (state visit)' — and in another exchange five days later, Mandelson discusses how he is awaiting an update following the weekly audience between the King and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. It highlights the diplomatic tightrope being walked by the UK amid fears that the U.S. president could pull America's support for Ukraine completely following his clash with Zelensky in the Oval Office at the end of February last year."

Wheeler, Merrick and Singh continue, "The King's concerns are understood to be included in a number of heavily redacted documents released in the so-called Mandelson files, which contained hundreds of private WhatsApp messages and e-mail exchanges between the peer and current and former Cabinet ministers, senior civil servants and advisers…. The messages which have been published indicate that officials and diplomats were working intensively behind the scenes to allay the King's concerns, and suggest that Starmer was due to discuss them with Charles at their weekly audience."

In Albania, U.S. President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are involved in a major coastal development project that, if completed, will include new hotels, apartments and villas. But according to The Independent, the project is getting a major pushback from environmentalists and activists in the East European country.

"Albania's government champions the Adriatic Coast development as a transformative venture for the nation, aiming to boost its high-end tourism sector and support its bid for European Union membership," explains reporter Zana Cimili in the UK-based Independent. "However, the project, which encompasses an abandoned island and a stretch of seafront on Albania's southern coast, has sparked criticism from environmental groups and detractors of the long-serving Socialist Prime Minister, Edi Rama."

According to Cimili, an investment firm "linked to Kushner" has "been granted special investor status by Albanian authorities."

That coastal area of Albania, Cimili notes, "remained largely underdeveloped" when the country was under a communist dictatorship during the Cold War. Albania was invaded by Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist forces in 1939 and was later occupied by Nazi Germany, but communists took control of the country after World War 2 in 1946.

For many years, Albania had one of the most repressive communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe. But it transitioned to democracy after the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

In Tirana, Albania's capital city, environmentalists have been holding large protests against the coastal project associated with Ivanka Trump and Kushner.

"Since late May," Cimili reports, "excavators and other heavy machinery have entered the area, opening access routes, digging into the sand, clearing land among pine trees and installing fencing, Environmental groups from Albania and elsewhere in Europe condemned the work, with one prominent local group charging that long-protected habitats are being 'irreversibly destroyed'…. Albania's state anti-corruption agency has confirmed it opened an investigation related to the project but has not disclosed details."

The Independent reporter adds, "The government says the land earmarked for the project is privately owned. But competing claims have emerged questioning the privatization — a common type of legal dispute."

Prime Minister Rama, according to Cimili, remains committed to project — which he described as "extraordinary," telling The Independent, "There is no chance for this investment to stop as long as I am here."

Interviewed by American podcaster David Senra, Ivanka Trump said of the coastal area of Albania, "We were on a friend's boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that's how we found it. We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated."

President Donald Trump is panicking, The Atlantic's Vivian Salama, Jonathan Lemire and Nancy Youssef wrote on Wednesday.

According to the report, talks between the U.S. and Iran are on hold while Trump tries to build up to a kind of war "grand finale."

Trump decided that he wanted to combine the Iran deal with the Abraham Accords, a set of agreements between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries to normalize relations.

Trump wanted "those countries that hadn’t yet joined the Abraham Accords [to] get on board." The various leaders gave him a "less than lukewarm response."

One U.S. official told the reporters that a leader spoke up, calling the idea interesting, but then there was silence. During the 90-minute call, there were several times that Trump asked, “Hello? Hello? Anyone there?”

The story explains why there have been so many reports of an agreement with Iran, only for nothing to come to light. Trump reportedly became "irritated" about those comparing his deal to the one established under former President Barack Obama. Trump's was being mocked as "weaker." He wanted to find a way to make his agreement better than Obama's.

There was also the matter of Iran's demand for sanctions relief. Trump has spent years claiming that Obama sent "pallets of cash" to Iran. Fact-checkers have made clear that none of the money was from the U.S. It was Iran's own money that was inaccessible due to sanctions.

The deal from last month would "usher in the first 60-day negotiating period," the report said. "Iran would relinquish its highly enriched uranium stockpile. Sanctions relief would arrive gradually. Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz would reopen in phases."

Instead, all Trump could accomplish now is a ceasefire. As of Monday, Iran has walked away from the talks altogether.

"Critics of Trump’s decision to go to war contend that his impulse to go big masks the weakness of his negotiating position despite the U.S. military’s dominance," the report said. Still, Iran managed to survive. It gained further power by taking control of the Strait of Hormuz.

"None of his original war goals has been met, and the pressure to get a deal done is arguably now greater for Trump than it is for Iran, given the war’s broad unpopularity in the United States and the approaching midterm elections," said the report.

The report also noted that Israel's bombing of Lebanon, targeting Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants, has made any expansion of the Abraham Accords "unlikely."

Trump later had a private call with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who said he was open to normalizing relations with Israel but only if there were the formation of a Palestinian state.

Last week, Trump spent a lot of time in intelligence meetings. "Behind the scenes, administration officials were signaling that a breakthrough was at hand. A tentative agreement was ready and all that remained, they suggested, was Trump’s sign-off," The Atlantic reports.

Several reports revealed that Trump assumed the war would be over in a few weeks and would be an easy "win" for him.

"That explains Trump’s impatience," the report said.

The president is now complaining to CNBC that the war has "started to get very boring." When he was quoted as saying that to someone who leaked it to the press, Trump denied it, saying, "I don't get bored. There's nothing boring about this."

"Privately, Trump has grown eager to move on" because he has other issues to deal with and still wants to shift focus to Cuba.

The report closed, saying that while Trump is desperate for a deal, he's also content to "wimply wait rather than do a deal that invites unflattering comparisons to one that already existed — and which didn’t come at the cost of 13 U.S. service members and at least 1,700 Iranian civilians, tens of billions of dollars, the depletion of U.S. munitions stockpiles and a global energy crisis."

President Donald Trump's return to the White House was once hailed as a shot in the arm to the global right-wing movement, but now, a report from Politico has revealed that he is becoming a lead weight on one of his biggest European allies.

Giorgia Meloni is an Italian politician often described as far-right with past connections to neo-fascist groups, and since 2022, she has been Italy's prime minister, making her one of the most prominent right-wing leaders in the world. She is also a staunch ally of Trump and his MAGA movement, no matter how unpopular he has become all across the world, particularly in Europe.

According to a new report from Politico, however, Trump's toxicity might finally be sinking in for Meloni, as "pressure builds" on her to cut ties with the American president to save her prime ministership ahead of Italy's elections next year. Meloni's support for Trump amid the disastrous Iran war is at the heart of the issue, per the report, as she "can no longer afford" the price of loyalty to the U.S., both politically and literally.

"[The] bills from the war in Iran are now coming due, and a weakening economy poses a grave threat to her electoral prospects in 2027," Politico explained. "Many Italian voters blame Trump for their households' soaring energy costs, and there is a growing political consensus that U.S. demands for increased military spending are simply unaffordable in Rome."

The report added: "Facing up to her domestic political and economic realities, the Italian leader has already started to pivot away from Trump, publicly criticizing him and blocking U.S. jets from access to an Italian airbase."

This pivot has, predictably, drawn a venomous reaction from Trump, who said in a phone interview from April that she was "no longer the same person" he once supported, after she criticized his attacks on Pope Leo XIV.

"I thought she was brave, but I was wrong," Trump said.

"But Meloni's big strategic headache is military spending — and it threatens to be the decisive make-or-break factor looming over the U.S.-Italian relationship," Politico continued. "Italy currently spends barely 2 percent of its economic output on defense, but Trump is pressing all NATO countries to raise that to 5 percent by 2035. Meloni has signed up to the 5 percent goal, but Italy's economy is creaking, and her opponents are quick to point out that Rome has more critical spending goals than Trump's demands for NATO."

Meloni's commitment to defense spending to appease Trump while her country suffers under skyrocketing energy costs "is becoming an increasingly tough sell."

"The NATO commitment to 5 percent is completely unrealistic for Italy," Antonio Misiani, a former deputy finance minister and a senator for Italy's center-left Democratic Party, told Politico. "For a year, Giorgia Meloni told us she was the bridge to Trump, but that bridge never existed, and now the chickens are coming home to roost."

President Donald Trump has taken Canada's recent economic hardships as an opportunity for himself, according to CTV News, renewing his threats about taking over the country as the "51st state."

On May 29, Canada slipped into what is known as a "technical recession," which is a definition some use to mathematically pinpoint the start of a recession when a country posts two consecutive fiscal quarters of negative growth. It is meant to be used as a simple, more quantifiable definition, as opposed to a formal declaration. This is only when looking at Canada's growth an annual basis, not a quarterly one, making the situation slightly murky.

"Statistics Canada said real gross domestic product fell 0.1 per cent on an annualized basis in the first three months of this year," CBC News reported last week. "That comes after a downwardly revised contraction of one per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025."

The report added later: "However, on a quarterly basis, the first quarter GDP was unchanged against a decline in the fourth quarter of last year, closely escaping the definition of a technical recession on a quarter-on-quarter basis. The annualized GDP figure scales up the quarterly figure to show what the GDP would be if the economy kept the same pace for the whole year, whereas the quarterly figure looks at the sheer number."

Taking to his Truth Social account on Monday night, Trump shared a link to a Bloomberg story about the news, alongside text reading, "51st state!"

Trump and his allies first began insisting that Canada should be annexed by the U.S. almost immediately after he took office for the second time. As he ramped up his tariff agenda, he suggested that he might only consider lifting them for the close ally nation if they agreed to join the U.S., which kick-started a severe wave of negative public sentiment towards the country among Canadians, prompting widespread product boycotts and the cessation of vital tourism.

The pressure campaign, which has largely subsided aside from the occasional comment, was widely credited with helping Canada's Liberal Party reverse its fortunes and retain power in its 2025 elections.

In response to the post, Doug Ford, the conservative premier of Ontario, took to X with his own post, renewing his own fierce opposition to Trump's rhetoric.

"I can’t believe I have to say this again, but Canada will never be the 51st state," Ford posted. "Canada is not for sale.”

An expert in global political risk ripped President Donald Trump in a new interview with the New York Times, calling him the "principal driver" of chaos and instability in the world, and accusing him of handing power to China in his race to ditch allies.

Ian Bremmer is a prominent American political scientist and the founder of Eurasia Group, with a focus on global risk. On Tuesday, the Times published an extensive interview with him conducted for a podcast by reporter Ezra Klein, in which he explained why Trump has become the main source of political strife and instability in the world, while noting that, in the beginning, he was merely a symptom of those same issues.

"I would say he’s first and foremost a symptom, not a cause, of trends that have been coming in the United States for a long time," Bremmer said, when pressed about what Trump represents overall. "American people who believe that for various reasons the political system does not represent them adequately, that something about it is broken and so needs someone who is going to shake it up, who isn’t going to be an establishment figure."

Likening the situation under Trump in the U.S. to the conditions that caused the collapse of the Roman Empire, Bremmer said that the country is driving massive global uncertainty and chaos out of a disinterest in being "dependable" or involved with longtime allies.

"We don’t want to be dependable," Bremmer said about the new American government mindset under Trump. "We don’t want to be there for the Ukrainians or for the Europeans in helping Ukraine. We don’t want to be there for Taiwan. We’ll make that a negotiation with the Chinese. We don’t want to be there for the Japanese or the South Koreans. You guys should be doing that stuff yourselves. We’re not going to be the architects of free trade. Everybody else should have to come and invest in the United States, because we’re the big power and you guys have been taking advantage of us, and we don’t even want to have the best talent from all over the world because we already have the Americans and that’s what really matters. So you guys just do whatever you want."

He added: "Those things are what is driving the geopolitical risk in the world today. The United States is the principal driver of geopolitical uncertainty in the world today. Trump and the Americans are driving it. They’re driving it with tariffs and industrial policy. They’re driving it with the war in Iran. They’re driving it with the lack of predictability with the Europeans. They’re driving it with the change to the structures and the rules and the norms inside the world’s largest market."

Bremmer further argued that Trump's push to abandon key alliances and partnerships is leaving a massive power vacuum in the global system, and it is one that China is already working to fill. This, he explained, could be seen when China declined Trump's invitation to join his already-stalled "Board of Peace" initiative.

"Why would they say no? Well, because the Chinese were like: If you guys are going to pull out of the U.N., we’ll just be the most powerful country influencing the United Nations," he explained. "If you guys are pulling out of the World Health Organization, we’ll increase the amount we donate every year to the W.H.O. We’ll be the people making those decisions."

President Donald Trump's long-running obsession with annexing Greenland is not about to get any closer to reality, per Politico, as the Danish leader who consistently snubbed his demands has retained power going forward.

On Monday, Politico reported that Mette Frederiksen will remain prime minister of Denmark for the foreseeable future. This came after "drawn-out negotiations lasting more than two months" for the creation of a new government, culminating in the creation of "center-left coalition government."

"The four-party coalition is expected to bring together Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, the Moderates, Green Left and the Social Liberals, according to the DR public broadcaster," Politico detailed. "The incoming PM met King Frederik X Monday evening to inform him."

“I think everyone will be surprised by how much we want to do. It is a government platform that is good both for the people in Denmark, for the generations to come, and for animals,” Frederiksen said in a statement.

Greenland is an autonomous territory belonging to Denmark, and throughout Trump's pressure campaign to take control of the massive Arctic island, Frederiksen and her government have been staunch in their opposition. The prime minister has repeatedly asserted that Greenland is not for sale under any circumstances, with the government forming a task force to monitor mentions of the territory in the U.S. and bulking up security forces on it.

Trump renewed his efforts to try and take Greenland upon his return to the White House, asserting that his first-term musings about the idea were entirely serious. Reports from earlier this year suggested that his obsession with the territory might be largely to do with how big it tends to look on maps, an issue skewed by the Mercator Projection. As he pressed harder on the idea, he came close to setting off a major international incident when he refused to rule out using military force to seize Greenland, a nearly unthinkable idea for many experts, given that Denmark is a longtime member of NATO.

Speaking about Trump's threats, Frederiksen herself warned that an invasion of Greenland by the U.S. would effectively mark the end of NATO and the entire post-WWII global order.

"One should take the American president seriously when he says that he wants Greenland," Fredriksen said in a January interview with Danish broadcaster TV2. "If the US chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War."

President Donald Trump is low on options to sell the war that most voters already see as a "disaster," and as one former naval officer wrote for The Hill, the last option he is stuck with now is to try and "spin the narrative" in his own favor.

Beyond his naval service, Harlan Ullman has had an extensive career in the realms of policy and business, with The Hill crediting him as "UPI’s Arnaud deBorchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior adviser at the Atlantic Council, the chairman of two private companies and the principal author of the doctrine of shock and awe." On Monday, he published a new column for the outlet detailing the predicament Trump is facing as negotiations to end the Iran conflict spiral on with no end in sight.

"The possible outcome is an agreement to settle the crucial issues of opening the Strait of Hormuz and the fate of Iran’s enriched uranium over the next month to 90 days, or even longer," Ullman wrote. "That agreement must have at least two qualifications. First, there must be absolute guarantees to keep the Strait permanently open. Second, any agreement on the nuclear issues must be far better than the Obama administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Meanwhile, the prices of gas, food and other commodities remain so high that Trump’s public support is tanking. That is both in terms of the war and the economy, where 'affordability' seems to be the Democrats’ slogan for victory in the November elections."

Meanwhile, he noted, Trump cannot seem to stop himself from saying things that make the situation worse. His argument that "keeping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons transcends the public’s economic pain" was met with a disastrous reception. He also further alienated global partners by threatening to bomb Oman, a longtime ally, if they imposed tolls on passage through the Strait.

It remains likely that even if the conflict is resolved before the midterms, the economic fallout caused by it will linger, possibly for years. In that instance, Ullman argued, Trump is largely left to try and spin his way out of trouble, or ignore it.

"First, Trump believes that he can negotiate his way clear of any impasse," Ullman wrote. "Or if that fails, he will deny responsibility and blame someone else. The fiction that the 2020 election was stolen is one example of Trump denying evidence of failure. There are others. Second, and this applies to Trump’s cynicism, it does not matter if Republicans win or lose the houses of Congress. If the Republicans hold, it will be business as usual. Even if Democrats win both Houses and impeachment, not conviction, is near certain, so what? Congress will likely be deadlocked."

Trump will also be able to use "semi-facts," including the half-right claims about regime changes and the destruction of the Iranian military, to claim some sort of victory in defiance of reality.

"No matter how the uranium matter is settled, Trump will employ his standard amount of hyperbole declaring that his was the best nuclear agreement ever reached. And his MAGA faithful will believe it," Ullman concluded. "Claiming victory is a good way out, no matter the validity of the claim. But at some stage reality must set in. Soon, it will become clear that the world before the attacks of Feb. 28 that began the Iranian “excursion” was safer and more stable than the one we have now. To most Americans, this war and its consequences have been a disaster. But not to Trump. He will spin this into a great success. And that is his game plan."

Russia is now bombing NATO countries, and it appears that President Donald Trump is asleep at the wheel.

Writing on Monday, MS NOW producer Steve Benen sounded the alarm about an incoming disaster visible on the horizon.

A Wall Street Journal report last week quoted several world leaders in Europe as saying that they fear Russian President Vladimir Putin is about to go beyond Ukraine and look at the countries he can go to war with next in an effort to grow the former Soviet Union back to its original borders.

"Russian drones have repeatedly crashed without causing casualties along the Danube River border between Romania and Ukraine since 2023. But the drone crash on Friday, on the roof of a residential compound in the port city, Galati, sharply escalated tensions between NATO and Moscow," The New York Times reported.

On Friday, a Russian drone hit an apartment building. The incident was condemned by world leaders, and even Trump's ally and NATO ambassador, Matthew Whitaker, reaffirmed the U.S.'s commitment to NATO, promising that the U.S. was ready to defend Europe.

Trump, by contrast, has remained silent. It's unusual, Benen said, because he loves to beat his chest and project strength.

Hitting a building in Romania isn't merely a one-off. Benen explained that it is a pattern with Russia. Last fall, Russian drones entered Polish airspace. NATO pilots shot them down.

Then, Russian pilots violated Estonian airspace.

Benen added that none of these "tests" happened under non-Trump administrations. It makes Trump's "weakness toward Vladimir Putin ... especially humiliating," he wrote. The GOP has similarly been quiet.

"In recent weeks, the Republican president has repeatedly criticized NATO as a 'paper tiger' because its members chose not to participate in his misguided war with Iran, but he has offered no comparable criticisms of Russia for incidents inside NATO member nations," Benen closed.

During Barack Obama's presidency, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling served as commander of U.S. Army Europe. The 72-year-old Hertling is now retired from active duty, but he is keeping busy offering military analysis for MS NOW and the conservative website The Bulwark. And Hertling, in The Bulwark, argues that the Trump administration needs to do a better when it comes to "juggling" its military and "national security priorities."

Describing a recent speech by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Hertling explains, "The message was unmistakable: China is the highest priority. The Indo-Pacific is the primary theater. America's military, diplomatic, and economic resources are increasingly focused on preventing Beijing from dominating Asia. There is logic behind that assessment: China's military modernization has been extraordinary, not only because of its scale but because of its consistency."

But Hertling, in his Bulwark article, stresses that the Donald Trump-era Pentagon shouldn't prioritize one national defense concern at the expense of another.

"Strategic patience is not always an American strength," the former U.S. Army Europe commander laments. "Our political cycles often reward short-term gains, immediate results, and headline-driven policymaking. In good times and bad, China demonstrated a willingness to think in decades while we frequently think in election cycles. That history helps explain why so many defense officials today view China as the pacing challenge. The under secretary of defense, Elbridge Colby, has spent years arguing that American strategy became distracted by secondary conflicts in the Middle East and Europe while neglecting the most consequential challenge to the global balance of power."

Hertling continues, "The (Trump) administration's National Defense Strategy, published earlier this year, reflects much of that thinking, emphasizing deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, strengthening a denial defense along the First Island Chain, and ensuring that China cannot achieve regional hegemony in Asia."

According to Hertling, the Trump Administration is confusing "prioritization" with "exclusivity" where national security is concerned.

"Strategy requires prioritization," Hertling explains. "Every strategic leader, civilian and military, understands that threats are theoretically infinite but resources are finite. Every planner must determine where to place the main effort. But prioritization is not the same thing as exclusivity. While Hegseth was speaking in Singapore about China's rise, Iranian military officials were increasingly claiming authority over maritime traffic through one of the world's most important waterways, while negotiations with the United States remain stalled over sanctions relief and access to frozen assets…. At the same time, Vladimir Putin was executing another major missile and drone strike against Ukraine…. The administration appears increasingly convinced that America can afford to focus on one ball at a time. The reality of global affairs suggests otherwise."

Hertling adds, "Iran may be the highest ball in the air today, but that does not mean China stops acting or that Russia stops attacking. It does not mean regional crises politely wait their turn until Washington is ready to address them. The challenge for great powers has never been identifying the most important threat, but managing multiple threats simultaneously without dropping one while reaching for another."

President Donald Trump's war with Iran and the pending deal for a temporary ceasefire are dumber than most realize, and the D.C. insiders at Pod Save America shared the "mind-boggling" reason why.

Reports have repeatedly claimed this week that the U.S. and Iran are nearing a deal for a 60-day ceasefire, one which would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and, theoretically, allow shipments of oil and other crucial materials to resume. Trump himself said on Friday that he is weighing the "final determination" for the plan, though critics have noted how often the president appears to claim that a deal is approaching as the stock market nears the end of the week, only to resume a more combative rhetoric when the markets are closed.

Some of those critics include the hosts of Pod Save America, who, in their latest episode on Friday, broke down the news surrounding the temporary deal and why it is, in their view, "so stupid." The hosts noted that the specifics of the deal fail considerably to live up to the hype around, as it is essentially "a deal to keep talking," meaning that an actual, definitive end to the conflict still has not been reached and might not be for some time.

"Now, the problem here is there are still mines in unknown places all across the Strait of Hormuz," Dan Pfeiffer, the former White House Communications Director under Barack Obama, explained, meaning that claiming to reopen it as part of this 60-day deal might ultimately mean nothing.

While noting that it is positive progress that the two nations will not be actively conducting strikes and that a small number of ships might cross the Strait of Hormuz, Pfeiffer said that the deal was "very minor" and far from "the Treaty of f—— Versailles," as some of the hype has made it seem.

Co-host Jon Favreau, the former director of speechwriting under Obama, rattled off the myriad ways in which Trump's war has failed to achieve meaningful goals, noting that it has not done any more to inhibit their nuclear program than the airstrikes from last summer did, it has replaced the previous leader of Iran with a younger and "more radical" one and, all the while, the Iranian people overall are no closer to freedom, and might actually be "more repressed" going forward. For all that, he concluded, the U.S. has paid at least $50 billion and lost 14 servicemembers, to say nothing of skyrocketing gas prices at home.

Pfeiffer added that what made the whole situation "so stupid" was the fact that Iran was not on the cusp of creating a nuclear weapon prior to the conflict, as Trump and his allies have claimed, to which Favreau added that the nation only had the enriched uranium because they started making it again after Trump blew up Obama's nuclear deal when he started his first term.

"It's mind-boggling that we've been talking about this for so long, because it's so stupid," Pfeiffer said.

"There wouldn't even be more enriched uranium to be talking about if Trump hadn't gotten us out of the [Obama-era] Iran deal," Favreau added.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was quick to condemn the Kremlin government and President Vladimir Putin after a Russian drone struck an apartment building in Galati, Romania early Friday morning, May 29. Matthew Whitaker, U.S. President Donald Trump's ambassador to NATO, spoke out as well. But political scientist Ian Bremmer called him out for omitting a crucial detail: Russian involvement.

Romania wasn't the Russian military's intended target. Rather, the drone was meant for Ukraine, which has been at war with Russia since 2022 and experienced some of Europe's worst fighting since World War 2. But the Russian drone went to Romania by mistake, hitting an apartment building in Galati (a port city) and setting it ablaze. Two people were injured, according to NBC News reporter Alexander Smith — who described it as "exactly the type of spillover from the war in Ukraine that many in Europe have long feared."

On X, formerly Twitter, Whitaker posted, "We stand with our NATO Ally Romania and condemn this reckless incursion on its territory. Our thoughts are with the injured in Galati. We will defend every inch of NATO territory."

In response to Whitaker's tweet, Bremmer noted that he failed to mention that the drone came from Russia.

Bremmer posted, "stronger and more effective if you directly mention russia here."

Whitaker is a longtime Trump ally. After Trump, during his first presidency, fired Jeff Sessions as U.S. attorney general, he appointed Whitaker as acting AG before choosing Bill Barr as a permanent replacement.

Unlike Whitaker, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte mentioned Russia by name when condemning the drone attack.

Rutte, in an official statement, said, "Russia's reckless behavior is a danger to us all. Last night showed yet again that the implications of their illegal war of aggression don't stop at the border…. NATO stands ready to defend every inch of allied territory."

Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister Oana-Silvia Țoiu, meanwhile, described the drone attack as "a serious and irresponsible escalation by the Russian Federation" and a "serious violation of international law and of its airspace." And Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha‎ warned, in a statement, "Russian aggression poses a real threat to the Black Sea region and the entire Europe."

Massachusetts-born political scientist Bremmer is the founder and president of the Eurasia Group, a consulting group that was launched in 1998 and is known for its focus on political risk management.