SINCERETALK

President Donald Trump's conduct when engaging in summits, such as his ongoing one with Chinese President Xi Jinping, is "pathetic," at least according to one conservative commentator and retired professor from the US Naval War College . "Once at the White House, Trump took Xi for a quick tour," wrote The Atlantic's Tom Nichols on Thursday. "Trump had long ago replaced Joe Biden’s portrait in the hall of presidents with a picture of an autopen, a petty jab from a small and petty man, and on their walk, he made sure that Xi saw it. He even gave the Chinese leader a bit of a pat on the arm while yukking it up." Nichols continued, "This was too much even for the conservative writer Charles Cooke of National Review, who posted on X about Trump’s 'grotesque behavior.' Xi, Cooke said, 'is a communist dictator, and the head of a foreign state. Our internal divisions are not fair game in this context.'" Nichols then summed up t...

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has historically disagreed with President Donald Trump — and now Trump is trying to do an end-run around her in a key case over whether immigrants can be deported to countries other than their nation of origin. "The Justice Department’s emergency filing at the Supreme Court on Thursday also contains an unusual request," reported Politico's Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney on Thursday . "Under the court’s announced assignments, emergency appeals from the 1st Circuit are directed to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson." The Politico journalists added, "Sauer’s submission says that if Jackson doesn’t immediately grant the stay the administration is seeking, it wants that matter referred to the full court for action. The language suggests that DOJ lawyers think Jackson may simply give immigrant rights advocates a few days to respond and leave the lower-court rulings in effect in the meantime, but the full court could be more...

President Donald Trump hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House this week for a multi-day event in which critics complained the president "fawned" over Xi. But one national security expert and former CIA officer is shaming Secretary of State Marco Rubio for refusing to stand up for America in the moment. MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace on Thursday, ahead of the state dinner, asked Sue Gordon for her response to seeing Trump roll out the red carpet for Xi while he has "nothing but disdain and smears for our close friends to the north in Canada." "I mean, you just talk about split-screens," Wallace said. "It is disrespect and fighting words for our one-time allies and sucking up in a grotesque and embarrassing manner for all Americans, for our sort of strategic adversaries. What does it say about Marco Rubio that he didn't lay his body down before Trump got to Andrews [Air Force Base] and greet Xi?" Gordon said that she's known Ru...

President Donald Trump's agricultural policies are leaving one of his staunchest groups of supporters, farmers, in the lurch. As they increasingly turn against him because the Iran war, tariffs and mass deportations, a conservative newspaper — The Wall Street Journal — warns that he is leaving Republicans overall "in danger." "While Mr. Trump can claim all he wants that foreigners pay his tariffs, Deere & Co. said on an earnings call last month that it expects 'direct tariff expense of approximately $1.1 billion for the fiscal year,'" the editorial board wrote on Wednesday . "That figure doesn’t include the refunds the company is getting for the tariffs that the Supreme Court held illegal, but it’s a show of the burden. Mr. Trump’s border taxes filter through supply chains to all kinds of parts and equipment, making it harder for farmers when they buy tractors, combines, harvesters and planters." They added, "Likewise, Mr. Trump can ...

Even as President Donald Trump rages about a judge ruling on his media ban , despite the decision not yet coming in, a journalist who Trump previously banned from covering him appeared on a podcast described him as unstable — and hinted that this has ominous implications for the American people. "There's something deeply disturbing about this moment," Jim Acosta, who Trump targeted when he worked at CNN, told podcaster Molly Jong-Fast on Wednesday. "We can laugh and whistle past the graveyard and everything, but it's not normal to want to put your name on Ford's Theatre. It's not normal to want to put your name on the Kennedy Center. It's not normal to want snipers on top of a massive arch near Arlington National Cemetery that apparently is going to be packed with ammunition." "That's definitely going to get built, in case you're wondering," Jong-Fast interjected. "This is very Muammar Gaddafi," Acosta continued. ...

President Donald Trump's foreign policy is such a disaster, it is returning the international community back to the conditions that existed before World War II — at least, according to one foreign policy expert. As Trump meets with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping , threatens Iran with annihilation and fails to counter both China and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, he is upending a world order that created stability for more than eighty years, argued Thomas Wright, Brookings Institution senior fellow and former senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council for President Joe Biden, for The Atlantic on Wednesday . "In his first book, 'A World Restored,' Henry Kissinger argued that a stable and legitimate order rests on a limited consensus: an understanding among the major powers about what he called the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy," Wright wrote. "Governments can compete intensely and violate rules without seeking to ov...