ChrisWeigant.com

Archive of Articles in the "Foreign Policy" Category

Biden Pardons Son

[ Posted Monday, December 2nd, 2024 – 16:59 UTC ]

President Joe Biden, at the end of the Thanksgiving break, decided to pardon his son Hunter. This has led to some very mixed feelings among Democrats and a whole lot of gleeful "I told you so!" responses from Republicans. Both the decision and the ramifications of it are complex, obviously.

Read Complete Article »

Friday Talking Points -- Closing The Gaetz

[ Posted Friday, November 22nd, 2024 – 18:46 UTC ]

Well, that was quick. As many have amusingly pointed out, the nomination of Matt Gaetz to be Donald Trump's attorney general didn't even last a full Scaramucci. Eight days, from beginning to end, was all it took. It's more than he deserved, really.

Read Complete Article »

Friday Talking Points -- The Clown Parade Continues

[ Posted Friday, November 15th, 2024 – 17:58 UTC ]

The circus has come to town, and performing in the center ring this week was the teeny-tiny clown car which disgorged a continuing parade of clowns, each more outlandish than the last.

Or, to put things another way: get ready for lots more circus/clown metaphors in the very near future. It's really the only possible way to describe Donald Trump selecting his cabinet. But we'll get to the individual clowns in a moment, because first we've got to take a broader view of what Trump's up to here.

Read Complete Article »

Democrats Looking Forward To 2028 (Part 2)

[ Posted Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 – 17:15 UTC ]

Senators

I will begin by saying that this section is probably going to be somewhat incomplete. Almost all senators entertain thoughts of becoming president at one point or another, so I'm sure there will be some surprises when 2028 rolls around. Most of these, however, fail to gain much traction on a national stage and wind up pulling out of the race pretty early, though. To give but one example, does anyone today remember Michael Bennet's 2020 presidential campaign? I certainly hadn't, and I follow politics pretty closely. So there will likely be at least a couple Democratic candidates next time around that few outside of their home state even recognize.

Read Complete Article »

Scattered Veterans Day Thoughts

[ Posted Monday, November 11th, 2024 – 17:18 UTC ]

Few have commented on it since the Democratic National Convention last year, but to me there were some striking parallels between the election of 2024 and that of 1968. The biggest of these? A sitting Democratic president declined to finish his effort to win re-election, so the party had to rally around an alternative candidate late in the cycle -- who went on to lose. But that's not the only parallel. In 1968, America was mired down in a proxy war in Vietnam. Young people faced being drafted and sent off to fight and possibly die halfway around the world, and neither political party seemed to have any answer to the situation that didn't include a whole lot more of the same. This is where the parallel is not exact, because nothing like that is happening today.

Read Complete Article »

Friday Talking Points -- No Guardrails

[ Posted Friday, November 8th, 2024 – 17:07 UTC ]

We've all already seen this movie once, so we should kind of know what to expect. And sequels are usually much worse than the original.

Which is why today we're going to devote this column to pondering how bad things could really get in Donald Trump's second term in office (rather than sticking to our normal Friday format). Some things will probably not be as horrifically bad as Democrats now think, some things will indeed be precisely that bad, and some things will be even more horrific than anyone's imagining right now. And my apologies, because this is not an attempt at making a comprehensive list of predictions but rather just free association, what might be called initial thoughts.

Read Complete Article »

Afterthoughts

[ Posted Wednesday, November 6th, 2024 – 16:41 UTC ]

As we all contemplate another four years of Donald Trump, the second-guessing and finger-pointing has already begun. Maybe things would have been different if Joe Biden had decided, on his own, to live up to his pledge of being a transitional president by announcing he would not run for a second term. Maybe things would have been different if he had finished his campaign -- he beat Trump once, right? Maybe there should have been a real contest to see which Democrat should run instead of Biden. Maybe Kamala Harris wasn't the best candidate. Maybe Democrats should have gone with a more traditional (White male, in other words) candidate. Maybe she should have picked someone else to be on the ticket with her. There will be plenty of time to anguish over all of these and more (anguish is what Democrats do best, after all).

Read Complete Article »

Friday Talking Points -- Harris Makes Her Closing Argument

[ Posted Friday, November 1st, 2024 – 15:34 UTC ]

The final week of the 2024 presidential campaign was reduced -- quite literally -- to "trash talk." This is perhaps a fitting end for this contest, one might think.

But among all the frenzy surrounding who called whom "garbage" this week, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her closing pitch to voters from the same spot Donald Trump incited a mob to go attack the United States Capitol four years ago. From the Ellipse, with the White House in the background, Harris spoke of the differences between her and Trump, and made her closing argument for why Americans should vote for her rather than him.

Read Complete Article »

A Very Unusual Campaign Season

[ Posted Monday, October 28th, 2024 – 16:48 UTC ]

The 2024 presidential campaign has been an unusual one in a number of respects. The candidates from both major political parties got their nominations in rather odd ways, and while the outcome is going to be close, the winner will set some sort of political precedent in modern American politics for the way this campaign has unfolded.

Read Complete Article »

Friday Talking Points -- Darkness From The Washington Post

[ Posted Friday, October 25th, 2024 – 17:47 UTC ]

The Washington Post secured its entry into the annals of American political history by taking down a United States president. Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein famously uncovered the entire Watergate scandal, which caused Richard Nixon to resign in disgrace. Award-winning books and movies about the brave reporters followed, portraying them as giants in the world of journalism.

Ah... those were the days, eh?

Read Complete Article »