Vice President JD Vance became the highest-ranking U.S. official to ever visit Armenia while in office on Monday, joining Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to sign a civil nuclear agreement as part of the Trump administration&#8217;s efforts to secure peace in the South Caucasus.
During Vance&#8217;s visit, Pashinyan also reaffirmed Armenia&#8217;s commitment to the peace deal between his country and Azerbaijan that was brokered by President Donald Trump last August. The agreement signed on Monday promises $9 billion in potential U.S. investment in Armenia&#8217;s nuclear sector, an $11 million shipment of U.S. drones to the South Caucasus country, and a partnership on the sale of Nvidia chips to Armenia.
Vance <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/9NXWxKZhejE?si=zEdoR-IYl-vdgbcQ">called</a> the agreement a &#8220;win-win&#8221; that will provide additional energy exports to Armenia from the United States, as well as economic opportunities for American companies and security for Armenia. The nuclear cooperation would set up &#8220;a way for American and Armenian companies to strike deals on civil nuclear projects,&#8221; according to Vance, who added, &#8220;That means up to five billion dollars in initial U.S. exports, plus an additional four billion in long-term support through fuel and maintenance contracts.&#8221;
The civil nuclear agreement marks a major shift for Armenia, which has long relied on Russia for its energy and security. After President Trump took office last January, the United States strengthened its relationship with Armenia, a country that has grown increasingly open to the West under Pashinyan. Last August, Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-week-in-armenia-hope-emerges-after-trumps-major-steps-toward-peace">struck a peace deal</a> between Armenia and its neighbor, Azerbaijan, after years of conflict that saw over 100,000 ethnic Armenians forced to flee Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inside of Azerbaijan that has been home to Armenians for thousands of years.
Pashinyan said that Vance&#8217;s visit &#8220;reflects the depth of the strong and strategic partnership&#8221; between the United States and Armenia. The prime minister also expressed gratitude for President Donald Trump&#8217;s work to negotiate a deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan and strengthen the U.S.-Armenia relationship.
&#8220;After the Washington Peace Summit, [Azerbaijani] President Aliyev and I nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize through a joint letter, and I have great hope that the president will rightfully receive this award in 2026,&#8221; Pashinyan added.
Vance commented on the &#8220;visionary&#8221; accomplishment that Trump achieved alongside Pashinyan in the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan last year.
&#8220;We&#8217;re not just making peace for Armenia, we&#8217;re also creating real prosperity for Armenia and the United States together,&#8221; Vance said. &#8220;So much of the great cooperation that we&#8217;re going to announce today would not have been possible without [Pashinyan&#8217;s] leadership, without the peace that you committed your country to and without, of course, the president of the United States&#8217; leadership.&#8221;
&#8220;I really do believe that tonight marks a new beginning for Armenia and the United States and the partnership that our countries can have together,&#8221; Vance added.
Monday&#8217;s energy and economic agreement between the United States and Armenia comes on top of plans to develop an international trade route in Armenia to better connect the country to its neighbors. The route, which would be called the Trump Road for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), would open up more opportunities for business and trade in the region that has long been unstable. The Trump administration is hopeful that TRIPP will also ensure that the peace agreement signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan &#8220;will stick.&#8221;
Stepan Sargsyan, a former Armenian governor who works closely with the prime minister, told The Daily Wire on Monday that the TRIPP project is moving along smoothly.
&#8220;Right now, the Americans and Armenians and their Azeri counterparts are working very diligently and very expeditiously to bring it into fruition,&#8221; Sargsyan said. &#8220;Actually, literally a few days ago, the American embassy in Yerevan, Armenia, announced that a team of engineers from a U.S. company had already arrived in Armenia to do the surveying [for TRIPP]. So, we too in Armenia are very hopeful that this will come into existence very, very quickly.&#8221;
Vance plans to travel to Azerbaijan on Tuesday in hopes of continuing the Trump administration&#8217;s successful negotiations in the region and moving the August agreement forward.
In his press conference with Pashinyan on Monday, Vance also highlighted Armenia&#8217;s Christian foundation. Armenia is known as the first Christian nation in the world, officially declaring itself Christian in A.D. 301. Vance called Armenia a &#8220;true bedrock of Christian civilization and culture.&#8221;
&#8220;As a devout Christian myself, I know the meaning of this country to the entire world and to the religion that the prime minister and I share,&#8221; Vance added.

U.S. Vice President Vance Travels To Armenia

‘A New Beginning’: JD Vance Signs Nuclear Deal In Historic Visit To Armenia

Armenia

Azerbaijan

Economy

Foreign Policy

JD Vance

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump has made good on many of his campaign promises since taking office for the second time a year ago.
Standing in the Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 — the inauguration having been moved indoors due to frigid temperatures in our nation&#8217;s capital — Trump took the Oath of Office, then addressed an expectant nation, outlining his goals and priorities for this second and final term in the White House.
The 45th and 47th president <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025/01/the-inaugural-address/">pledged</a> that &#8220;from this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world.&#8221; Trump planned to restore American greatness by securing the southern border &#8220;to repel the disastrous invasion of our country,&#8221;; by making &#8220;our children safe, healthy, and disease-free&#8221; and safe from radical gender ideology; and by &#8220;defeating America’s enemies&#8221; to promote peace.
It was an ambitious agenda, but one Trump and his administration say they&#8217;ve met.
&#8220;President Trump accomplished more in one year than many presidents did in eight,&#8221; Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Under President Trump’s leadership,&#8221; Leavitt said, &#8220;America is safer, stronger, and more prosperous than ever before, and the best is yet to come.&#8221;
Perhaps most notable has been Trump&#8217;s handling of the border crisis. The president completely shut down the border, which had become dangerously porous under President Joe Biden. After four years of record illegal immigration, Customs and Border Protection touted a record-low number of encounters in most months last year. November was the seventh straight month of zero releases into the United States.
In the first 10 months of Trump 2.0, CBP said, there were fewer apprehensions than one month under Biden, and nationwide apprehensions averaged under 10,000 a month.
&#8220;These numbers reflect the tireless efforts of our agents and officers who are delivering results that redefine border security,&#8221; CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott promised in December. We’re not slowing down. We’re setting the pace for the future.”
Additionally, the president&#8217;s Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have detained more than 66,800 illegal immigrants this year, with huge numbers of detentions in Texas, Arizona, California, and Louisiana, despite protesting, unrest, and even rioting over the apprehensions in some cities.
<div id="attachment_1029999" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-will-dream-boldly-how-trump-transformed-the-united-states-in-a-year/2025-trump-politics-inaguration" rel="attachment wp-att-1029999"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1029999" class="wp-image-1029999 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2194475404-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2194475404-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2194475404-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2194475404-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2194475404.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" /></a>(Photo by Aristide for The Washington Post via Getty Images)</div>
Fixing the illegal immigration problem is just one of several ways Trump has upended Biden&#8217;s legacy. By rescinding executive orders, pardons, and policies, Trump has significantly minimized his predecessor&#8217;s impact — and reduced Biden&#8217;s legacy, as <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/01/18/trump-one-year-biden-legacy">Axios reported this weekend</a>, to a mere &#8220;footnote.&#8221;
This includes purging Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs and policies from government agencies and academic institutions, one of the &#8220;radical political theories and social experiments&#8221; he lambasted in his second inaugural address. The president also targeted fraud resulting from illegal immigration and the Biden administration&#8217;s failure to properly vet refugees in the aftermath of the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
While the Biden administration revered climate change and warned that it presented a threat to the entire world, Trump has given the topic little discussion, instead focusing on things like the &#8220;Make America Healthy Again&#8221; movement. After elevating leading MAHA figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the Department of Health and Human Services, Trump made waves with announcements about infant vaccinations, dietary guidelines, and nutrition.
In his second inaugural address, Trump only spoke of health when he spoke of children. To that end, Trump signed an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-children-from-chemical-and-surgical-mutilation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">executive order</a> almost immediately protecting children from irreversible gender transition procedures, calling them a “stain on our Nation’s history.”
The president&#8217;s order states that the United States will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the attempted gender transition of a child, promising that it will “rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
Since the signing of that order, transgender programs all across the United States <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hospitals-across-u-s-stop-transitioning-children-after-trump-signs-order-protecting-kids">have shut down</a> or ceased offering dangerous hormones to children: in New York, NYU Langone Health, in Colorado, Denver Health, in Virginia, both VCU Health and the Children’s Hospital of Richmond, in Washington, D.C., Children’s National Hospital, to name just a few.
The Department of Health and Human Services has also taken further steps to penalize hospitals involved in these procedures, and the White House <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/white-house-answers-questions-on-trump-actions-protecting-children-from-trans-procedures">has told The Daily Wire</a> that it would &#8220;certainly&#8221; back legislation protecting children in this way.
Trump also pledged last year to fix an education system that &#8220;teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them.&#8221;
So far this term, as Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon work to dismantle the Education Department, the president has prioritized patriotic curricula. He also created a joint task force between the Department of Education and the Justice Department to aggressively investigate schools that have discriminated against women by allowing men in women&#8217;s sports or spaces.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
SCOOP: Tomorrow, Donald Trump will sign an executive order on keeping men out of women&#8217;s sports, <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDailyWire</a> has learned.
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) <a href="https://twitter.com/MaryMargOlohan/status/1886785828459831335?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 4, 2025</a></blockquote>
That task force is one of several ways Trump is enforcing a February <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/president-trump-to-sign-executive-to-keep-men-out-of-womens-sports">executive order</a> banning men from women&#8217;s sports, a historic moment in the fight to protect the integrity of women’s spaces from gender activists and ideologues. Trump signed that legislation surrounded by female athletes, including women like Riley Gaines, who spoke out against men competing in their sports.
The executive orders Trump signed in his first few months largely set the stage for the year to come. In his inaugural address, Trump pledged to sign a day-one executive order &#8220;designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.&#8221; His second-term war on narcoterrorists escalated in recent months, culminating with a daring midnight raid on Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro, capturing the authoritarian and bringing him back to the United States to face trial.
That raid, which is widely considered to have been carried out flawlessly, stunned the world. And as he explained the president&#8217;s actions to the press, Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized that the raid shows that Trump, unlike many world leaders, absolutely <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/after-threats-from-trump-colombian-president-rings-the-white-house?author=Mary+Margaret+Olohan&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=10&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=After+Threats+From+Trump%2C+Colombian+President+Rings+The+White+House">means what he says</a>.
Following that raid, Trump dubbed his foreign policy &#8220;The Donroe Doctrine.&#8221; Through strategic military action and negotiations, Trump aims to achieve what he said would be his &#8220;proudest legacy&#8230;that of a peacemaker and unifier.&#8221;
The president has told the press many times that he has ended almost 10 wars, referring to conflicts between Israel and Gaza, Israel and Iran, Pakistan and India, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo. He has also been heavily involved in helping Russia and Ukraine negotiate an end to their ongoing war, hosting both leaders in the United States.
With the president&#8217;s blessing, Pete Hegseth is aggressively straightening out the War Department, freshly re-named to emphasize the deadly seriousness of the administration when it comes to protecting the United States and American interests. The Pentagon is cracking down on loosened standards, woke ideology, and more.
None of which is to say that the foreign focus of Trump&#8217;s second term distracted from domestic policy. In just one year, the president secured almost $10 trillion in both private and foreign investments for the United States, including $600 billion in investments from Saudi Arabia, a $350 billion tech deal with the United Kingdom, and more.
&#8220;In recent years, our nation has suffered greatly,&#8221; Trump told the nation a year ago. &#8220;But we are going to bring it back and make it great again, greater than ever before.&#8221;
&#8220;We will stand bravely, we will live proudly, we will dream boldly, and nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans,&#8221; Trump concluded. &#8220;The future is ours, and our golden age has just begun.&#8221;

The Inauguration Of Donald J. Trump As The 47th President

‘We Will Dream Boldly’: How Trump Transformed The United States In A Year

Donald Trump

Immigration

Joe Biden

The Kremlin said on Friday that it is closely monitoring President Donald Trump&#8217;s push to acquire Greenland, calling the proposal by the United States &#8220;extraordinary from the standpoint of international law.&#8221;
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/16/greenland-russia-trump-takeover-threats-annex-denmark.html">said</a> that Trump “has said that international law is not a priority for him,&#8221; adding, &#8220;The situation is developing along a different trajectory, and we, along with the rest of the world, will be watching to see which one,&#8221; CNBC reported. Earlier this week, Russia rejected claims that it has its sights set on Greenland, calling such claims a &#8220;fictitious pretext&#8221; used by NATO to grow its military presence in the Arctic, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-nato-talk-moscow-beijing-being-threat-greenland-is-myth-create-2026-01-15/">Reuters</a>.
Russia is far from a valid judge on the rules of international law. The country is still engaged in a war that it started by invading Ukraine in February 2022. In recent months, Moscow has fired missiles and drones at civilian targets in Kyiv and surrounding cities, with an <a href="https://ukraine.ohchr.org/en/2025-deadliest-year-for-civilians-in-Ukraine-since-2022-UN-human-rights-monitors-find">estimated</a> 2,514 Ukrainian civilians being killed at the hands of Russia in 2025.
Trump has said multiple times that acquiring Greenland is a priority for U.S. national security, arguing that Russia and China have their own plans for taking over the territory. The president <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-greenland-is-non-negotiable-for-u-s-security?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump%3A+Greenland+Is+Non-Negotiable+For+U.S.+Security">said</a> earlier this week that Greenland is “vital” for his plans to build a “Golden Dome” of defense to protect the United States.
&#8220;NATO should be leading the way for us to get it. IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!” Trump said.
In an interview with The New York Times last week, Trump also suggested he prioritizes his &#8220;own morality&#8221; and his &#8220;own mind&#8221; over international law. The president said that the United States would abide by international law, but then added, “It depends [on] what your definition of international law is.”
Many NATO countries — including Denmark, which oversees Greenland&#8217;s defense — have rebuked Trump over his effort to acquire Greenland while ramping up military presence around the territory. Denmark, France, Sweden, and Norway are conducting joint military exercises in Greenland, a move that has seemingly enraged Moscow. Russia accused NATO of &#8220;using high-profile statements from Washington on the Greenland issue solely to promote an anti-Russian and anti-Chinese agenda.&#8221;
&#8220;We consider the alliance&#8217;s policy of escalating confrontation in the Arctic to be counterproductive and extremely dangerous,&#8221; Russia added.
Louisiana Republican Governor Jeff Landry, who&#8217;s also serving as Trump&#8217;s special envoy to Greenland, said that Russia and China have increased production of icebreaker ships in the past year, suggesting that both countries are seeking &#8220;to gain control of the Arctic.&#8221;
&#8220;China and Russia have built more icebreakers in one year than the United States has built in the history of our country. They aren’t just building them for fun,&#8221; Landry <a href="https://x.com/JeffLandry/status/2012200748243665336">told</a> Fox &amp; Friends Friday morning. &#8220;It is vital that America secures Greenland and reinforces the Monroe Doctrine for the future of national security.&#8221;
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenlandic Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt met with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the White House earlier this week to discuss Trump&#8217;s push to acquire Greenland. Following the meeting, Rasmussen said that both sides agreed to disagree, with Denmark sticking firm to its “red lines.”
“For us, ideas that would not respect the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark and the right of self-determination of the Greenlandic people are, of course, totally unacceptable,&#8221; Rasmussen added.

Vladimir Putin

Russia Scrutinizes Trump’s Push To Acquire Greenland, Rejects Claims That Moscow Wants Territory

Russia Closely Watches Trump's Push To Acquire Greenland, Rejects Claims That Moscow Wants Territory

Greenland

NATO

Russia

Europe’s weakness is no longer just Europe’s problem; it is the West’s crisis. For decades, the continent has drifted into complacency, retreating from free markets, hollowing out its militaries, and outsourcing its security to Washington. What began as integration hardened into dependency. The result is a Europe that is economically stagnant, strategically vulnerable, and increasingly unsure of its own identity.
President Trump’s recently released National Security Strategy and the National Defense Authorization Act are the first major American documents in a generation that speak to Europe not as a ward, but as an adult. They state, in effect, that the West cannot survive if its largest democratic bloc insists on remaining structurally weak. America will not abandon Europe, but it will no longer indulge Europe’s illusions. The ball is now in Europe’s court.
Trump’s statecraft is often misdescribed as improvisation. In reality, a Trump Doctrine of strategic sovereignty has emerged. Its core is simple: no nation is entitled to protection from the United States unless it actively contributes to collective security; coalitions are built on shared interests and values, not on inertia; and the West is worth preserving. Once the United States and Europe shared these beliefs, and their alliance was strong on this basis.
This abandons the fantasy of a self-enforcing “rules-based order.” Russia’s attack on Georgia or Ukraine, and other similar powers’ attacks on other weaker countries, have repeatedly shown that there is no universally accepted rules-based order. The simple, stubborn fact is that order is made and maintained by sovereign states that possess power, will, and clarity of purpose. Trump’s approach replaces the old habit of open-ended guarantees with a “balance of sovereigns”: the United States will remain the preeminent Western power, but its allies must become genuine pillars, not permanent dependents, to keep the balance of power in the West and keep at bay geopolitical adversaries that understand solely strength.
Trump has already done more to weaken the Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis than his predecessor. Trump’s pressure on Moscow has been more consequential than Joe Biden’s. By pushing NATO allies to raise defense spending, by imposing secondary measures that hit Russian oil revenues, and by brokering peace in the Caucasus, Trump has constrained Russia’s maneuvering space.
Iran, once emboldened by Western appeasement, is now reeling. Israeli and American strikes have gutted its nuclear and military infrastructure. Combined with the Abraham Accords and the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement, the Middle East has been reshaped in ways that keep Russia out and leave Tehran increasingly isolated. Iran’s proxies are weakened, its economy strangled, and its strategic depth reduced.
The updated Monroe Doctrine has likewise kept China out of the Western Hemisphere. Beijing’s attempts to buy strategic assets and political influence in Latin America have been blocked or rolled back, while Venezuela’s dictator is now under arrest, with his regime destabilized. Trump’s declarations about the Panama Canal and Greenland should be seen as part of this larger doctrine.
Taken together, these moves have fractured the “unholy alliance” of America’s adversaries. Europe should take note: Trump has shown that strength and clarity can weaken adversaries far more effectively than platitudes and half-measures. The United States is doing its part to reshape the global balance. The question is whether Europe will do its part to reshape itself.
Security begins with production. Europe’s retreat from free-market dynamism has hollowed out its competitiveness. While Trump has pursued reindustrialization, deregulation, near-shoring, and energy abundance in the United States, Europe has doubled down on regulatory maximalism and green utopianism — policies that have driven factories, capital, and talent elsewhere.
A continent that once powered the Industrial Revolution now tries to regulate its way into relevance. High taxes, rigid labor markets, and hostility to conventional and nuclear energy have produced dependence on Russian gas, Chinese supply chains, and American defense spending. There is no single European entity in the top 10 biggest companies, startups, or AI firms, because the European instinct has become “regulate before even creating”. 
Real recovery will not come from new Brussels programs, but from unleashing the energy and initiative of millions of individuals and families who are now trapped under layers of taxation, bureaucracy, and paternalism. Europe does not lack talent; it lacks permission to use it.
Trump’s doctrine treats Europe’s stagnation not as an internal matter, but as a strategic liability. Economic weakness means underfunded militaries, brittle societies, and a politics increasingly tempted by accommodation with authoritarian suppliers of energy and credit. A Europe that cannot sustain industry will not sustain deterrence.
If Europe wants to be something other than a museum of past greatness, it must rediscover growth: lower and simpler taxes, domestic energy, and a serious commitment to frontier technologies. Otherwise, the center of gravity of the democratic world will keep shifting from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, not by American design but by European default.
Trump’s strategy does something European elites have avoided for years: it links power to identity. It speaks of restoring the West’s “civilizational self-confidence” and calls on the nations of the free world to defend their histories, cultures, and borders.
This is not nostalgia. It is strategic clarity. A society that doubts its right to exist cannot project power. A civilization that treats its past as a moral burden will not endure the costs of defense, child-rearing, or long-term investment.
For too long, influential European institutions have treated national identity as suspect, the family as optional, borders as administrative details, and free speech as a negotiable privilege. The result is fragmentation: uncontrolled migration, parallel societies, and cultural self-censorship. In such a context, phrases like “strategic autonomy” are empty. Autonomy presupposes cohesion. 
Trump’s message is that the West is not an NGO; it is a civilization. The President does not seek American domination of Europe. He seeks equilibrium. America First does not mean America Alone; it means an America strong enough to lead, partnered with European allies strong enough to matter. For Europe, that means three things: (a) Rearmament as an act of self-respect, not of deference to Washington. A Europe that cannot field serious forces from the Baltic to the Mediterranean is not “pacifist”; it is strategically unserious. (b) Reindustrialization and energy realism. A continent that shuts down reliable power without viable alternatives, and that drives industry offshore, will find its foreign policy constrained by whoever keeps its lights on. (c) Civilizational recovery. Europe must stop apologizing for its existence. Its nations, cultures and Judeo-Christian roots are not obstacles to the future; they are the only basis on which a free future can be built.
Trump has laid out a doctrine that treats Europe not as a client but as a potential equal. The question is whether Europe will seize this moment or shrink from it.  The United States has made its choice: strength, sovereignty, and renewed Western leadership. If Europe fails to rise, the West will fall, not because America abandoned it, but because Europe abandoned itself.
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<div class="p-rich_text_section">Nikola Kedhi is the Executive Director of the Albanian Conservative Institute and a contributor to various media such as the Daily Wire, Fox News, Newsweek, the Daily Signal, Newsmax, and others. Kedhi is also a co-author of the Constitution of Conservative Values, the official Doctrine of the Democratic Party of Albania. He can be reached on Twitter: @nikedhi95 and on his Substack.</div>
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The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

European Leaders Join Ukrainian President Zelensky For White House Meeting With Trump

President Trump Is Right, The West Cannot Survive On European Weakness

China

Energy

Europe

European Union

Iran

President Trump

White House

In 1823, President James Monroe stood before Congress and warned European powers that if they intervened in the American hemisphere, the United States would send them packing.
Two centuries after the great Virginian elucidated what came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine, his successor has launched a new standard for American foreign intervention, not with a speech, but with a series of decisive actions.
Over the past few months, President Donald Trump has ratcheted up American attacks on Venezuelan drug cartels, dubbing them “narcoterrorists” and striking their boats. Things reached a fever pitch earlier this month when an elite military unit captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and brought him to New York to stand trial for his crimes.
In a press conference following the daring early-morning raid in Caracas, Trump acknowledged that his approach to foreign policy went far beyond the tenets of the Monroe Doctrine.
“They now call it the ‘Donroe Doctrine,’&#8221; the president said. &#8220;American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.&#8221;
This was more than just another clever Trump-era nickname. In the first year of his second term, Trump has shed the isolationism that mostly defined his first administration, opting instead for targeted, precise foreign operations designed to topple or contain America’s enemies. Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who has long warned about Latin America’s socialist regimes, transnational cartels, and foreign adversaries—has emerged as a central architect and enforcer of the doctrine.
What began with the use of “bunker buster” bombs on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities is now playing out in Central and South America, and Maduro may only be the tip of the iceberg.
Trump has <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/03/trump-venezela-mexico-00710063" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accused</a> Colombian President Gustavo Petro of “making cocaine” and warned that he “does need to watch his a**” following Maduro’s capture. He’s warned Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum that the United States may intervene if she can’t control the cartels running her country. And he’s pledged to cut Cuba off from its supply of Venezuelan oil, potentially setting the stage for intervention on the communist-ruled island.
The Donroe Doctrine sits between the isolationist and interventionist schools that have long vied for control of American foreign policy. Trump has long criticized American interventionism and does not view his actions as launching more long, unwinnable, resource-draining wars in faraway lands. He sees the Donroe Doctrine as asserting hemispheric hegemony through swift action.
But the Donroe Doctrine isn’t just speaking softly and carrying a big stick, as President Theodore Roosevelt once put it — it’s swinging that stick to assert American power across the Western Hemisphere.
“Operation Absolute Resolve,” the mission that led to Maduro’s capture, underscores this point. The massive joint strike launched from more than 20 bases, involving 150 aircraft, cyber operations to cripple Venezuelan defenses, and the coordinated use of special forces and helicopters to seize Maduro.
Trump did not mince words when he offered his explanation for the move: he wanted to stop the flow of drugs that are killing Americans and wanted U.S. oil companies the opportunity to rebuild in Venezuela after having their assets nationalized two decades ago.
Venezuela is ruled by a socialist regime allied with Russia, indebted to China, smuggling oil with Iran in defiance of U.S. sanctions, and working with Hezbollah to launder money. It is no wonder, then, that Trump showcased American military might to intervene in Venezuela and assert the Monroe Doctrine.
To boil the Donroe Doctrine down to one sentence: bad actors in the Western Hemisphere will no longer operate with impunity.
The Donroe Doctrine is about more than combating bad actors, however. It also involves strategic plays that will benefit American interests, often advanced through the president’s trademark dealmaking mindset.
Consider Trump’s first major foreign policy move of this term: asserting influence over the Panama Canal.
In his inaugural address, Trump said he was “taking back” the canal, citing Chinese influence and accusing the United States of being “ripped off” by fees for using the canal it helped build. After intense diplomatic pressure, American military vessels gained priority and discounted transit, while efforts to curb Chinese influence, including the planned sale of two ports owned by a Hong Kong-based company to BlackRock, are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/30/the-guardian-view-on-the-new-monroe-doctrine-trumps-forceful-approach-to-the-western-hemisphere-comes-at-a-cost#:~:text=Mr%20Trump's%20vociferous%20complaints%20about,the%20US%20investment%20firm%20BlackRock." target="_blank" rel="noopener">still underway</a>.
This month, Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino <a href="https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/security/panama-president-mulino-says-crisis-with-the-us-is-over" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declared</a> last year’s crisis with the Trump administration officially over.
“Panama moved toward a relationship of respect, restored trust, joint work, and friendship, and the canal remained Panamanian, as it will indeed continue to be,” Mulino said to Panama’s National Assembly.
Trump’s pursuit of Greenland, which he says is vital for “national security” because of growing Russian and Chinese activity, is another example of the Donroe Doctrine in action. Greenland may be peaceful, but as an autonomous territory of Denmark, it relies on Copenhagen for defense — and Denmark can’t be trusted to fully secure such a strategic island.
Whether Trump seeks to annex Greenland or simply keep rivals away, he’s sending a clear message: every strategic corner of the Western Hemisphere matters under the Donroe Doctrine.

US-POLITICS-TRUMP-GOP

What Is The ‘Donroe Doctrine,’ President Trump’s New Foreign Policy?

Marco Rubio

Nicolas Maduro

Venezuela

President Donald Trump made his intentions to acquire Greenland even more clear on Friday, arguing that the territory is important to fighting back against Russian and Chinese aggression.
Trump <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/2009735362227175513">said</a> the United States would take control of Greenland the &#8220;easy way&#8221; — by making a deal — or the &#8220;hard way,&#8221; which he didn&#8217;t elaborate on. The president made the comments on Greenland while taking questions from reporters at the White House during a roundtable with oil executives that focused on rejuvenating Venezuela&#8217;s oil industry.
&#8220;Right now, we are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not, because if we don&#8217;t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;And we&#8217;re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.&#8221;
&#8220;I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don&#8217;t do it the easy way, we&#8217;re going to do it the hard way,&#8221; he added.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier this week that the U.S. military &#8220;is always an option at the commander-in-chief&#8217;s disposal&#8221; when discussing the national security importance of Greenland. Trump has suggested at times throughout his second term that the United States should take over Greenland, but following his recent move on Venezuela, the president has made Greenland a major focus of his foreign policy plans.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/denmark-greenland-request-meeting-with-rubio-after-trump-revives-push-for-new-territory">said</a> earlier this week that the threat of Trump using military force on Greenland is important to his negotiating strategy. Rubio added that Trump prefers to purchase Greenland from Denmark, which oversees the autonomous territory and is a NATO ally.
After Trump revived his push for Greenland, the territory&#8217;s leaders, along with Denmark, pushed back and requested a meeting with Rubio.
“The strong request for a meeting is related to the U.S.’s claims about our country,” said Greenland Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeld, according to ABC News. “Unfortunately, our country’s request for a meeting for a long time has not been successful, although this has been repeatedly requested by our country.”
Denmark Foreign Minister Lars Rasmussen also requested to meet with Rubio, and the U.S. secretary of State plans to meet with Denmark officials next week, ABC News <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/denmark-greenland-seek-talks-rubio-after-white-house-128973261">reported</a>.
European nations and Canada have expressed concern after Trump revived talk about taking over Greenland. In a joint statement from France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Denmark, European leaders said that &#8220;Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.&#8221; Canada and the Netherlands also endorsed the statement, Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/only-greenland-denmark-can-decide-their-future-european-leaders-say-joint-2026-01-06/">reported</a>.
Trump told reporters on Sunday that the United States needs &#8220;Greenland from the standpoint of national security and the European Union needs us to have it and they know that.” Trump&#8217;s adviser, Stephen Miller, then said on Monday, &#8220;Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.&#8221;
Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), have also pushed back on the idea of the U.S. military being used to acquire Greenland. Johnson said, &#8220;I don’t think it’s appropriate,&#8221; while Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5678420-john-kennedy-greenland-invasion-stupid/">said</a> that &#8220;even a modestly intelligent ninth grader knows that to invade Greenland would be weapons-grade stupid.&#8221;
“Now, President Trump is not weapons-grade stupid, nor is Marco Rubio. They do not plan to invade Greenland,” Kennedy added.

US-VENEZUELA-POLITICS-CONFLICT-OIL

Trump: U.S. Will ‘Do Something On Greenland Whether They Like It Or Not’

Denmark

Global Politics

U.S.

World

A team of American diplomats arrived in Venezuela on Friday, marking the first time American officials have set foot in Caracas following the capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Acting U.S. Ambassador to Colombia John McNamara traveled to Caracas alongside security personnel from the Venezuela Affairs Unit, which is also based in Colombia, “to conduct an initial assessment for a potential phased resumption of operations,” CNN <a href="https://x.com/jmhansler/status/2009642474659254408">reported</a>. President Donald Trump said last weekend that the United States would assume control of Venezuela for the foreseeable future after the U.S. military and law enforcement raided Maduro&#8217;s compound and took the Venezuelan dictator and his wife back to the United States to stand trial.
The State Department is visiting Caracas on Friday as the Trump administration seeks to reopen its embassy in the capital. The United States evacuated its embassy in Caracas in 2019 during the first Trump administration amid political upheaval and after Maduro ordered the American diplomats to leave the country.
The State Department visit comes shortly after President Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-cancels-second-wave-of-attacks-as-venezuela-frees-political-prisoners?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=Trump+Cancels+%E2%80%98Second+Wave+Of+Attacks%E2%80%99+As+Venezuela+Frees+Political+Prisoners">said</a> on Friday morning that the Venezuelan government cooperated with his request to release political prisoners. Trump said that he &#8220;cancelled&#8221; his plan to conduct a &#8220;second wave of attacks&#8221; on the country due to Venezuela&#8217;s cooperation.
After Maduro&#8217;s capture, Venezuela remains under the leadership of government officials who remain loyal to the socialist dictator. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez has stood by Maduro since assuming the role, claiming that he remains the rightful leader of Venezuela. The socialist government continues to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-maduro-militias-crack-down-on-dissent-search-for-supporters-of-u-s-raid">crack down</a> on dissent and deployed paramilitary members to the streets of Caracas to search for Venezuelans who supported the U.S. raid.
Trump has not said exactly how long the United States will oversee Venezuela, but suggested earlier this week that American oversight of the South American country could last for years, The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/trump-interview-venezuela.html">reported</a>.
“We will rebuild it in a very profitable way. We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil. We’re getting oil prices down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need,” Trump said.
The Trump administration <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/u-s-to-control-venezuelan-oil-sales-as-leverage-for-change-energy-secretary-says?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=U.S.+To+Control+Venezuelan+Oil+Sales+As+%E2%80%98Leverage%E2%80%99+For+%E2%80%98Change%2C%E2%80%99+Energy+Secretary+Says">plans</a> to control the sales of Venezuelan oil and use it as &#8220;leverage&#8221; for reforming the country, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
“If we control the flow of oil, the sales of that oil, and the flow of the cash that comes from those sales, we have large leverage,” Wright said. “But without large leverage … you don’t get change.”
“This should be a wealthy, prosperous, peaceful energy powerhouse,” he added. “That’s the plan.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is taking a leading role in U.S. oversight of Venezuela, laid out parts of the Trump administration&#8217;s plan for the country. Rubio <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/us/politics/us-venezuela-plan-rubio.html">said</a> on Wednesday that the priority is “the stabilization of the country.” Next, Rubio said that the United States would focus on rejuvenating the Venezuelan economy by &#8220;ensuring that American, Western and other companies have access to the Venezuelan market in a way that’s fair.&#8221; Finally, the Secretary of State said that the Trump administration wants to see Venezuela rebuild its &#8220;civil society.&#8221;
Trump, Rubio, Wright, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are set to meet with executives from U.S. oil firms at the White House on Friday afternoon as American energy companies are expected to invest at least $100 billion to help rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry.

Caracas

U.S. Diplomats Arrive In Venezuela For ‘Initial Assessment’ Following Maduro’s Capture

State Department

Trump Administration

Something crucial happened with President Trump’s actions in Venezuela.
President Trump substantively killed the Iraq syndrome.
The Iraq syndrome arose in Americans&#8217; minds concerning our role in the world after the failure of the Iraq War and the subsequent occupation.
You have to go back in history to understand this. In the aftermath of the disastrous Vietnam War, America&#8217;s foreign policy establishment fell into disarray. According to a lot of experts, the Vietnam War hadn&#8217;t been lost because of a combination of terrible war strategy and domestic discontent, they argued. Instead, the new conventional wisdom said the Vietnam War never should have been fought in the first place. Not only that, but America had to fundamentally rethink its role in the world.
The new conventional wisdom suggested that the United States should stop engaging in aggressive foreign policy in its own interests. Instead, the United States ought to pursue a more dovish or isolationist foreign policy in order to avoid quagmires. This conventional wisdom came to be known as Vietnam syndrome.
Undergirding the Vietnam syndrome was a thinly veiled anti-Americanism; the belief that America was not good, but a malign force on planet Earth. Former Princeton professor Richard Falk said at the time, “I love the Vietnam syndrome because it was the proper redemptive path for American foreign policy to take after the Vietnam defeat.”
In other words, America was guilty, as we learned in Vietnam, and now we ought to withdraw from the world and acknowledge our guilt.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2340-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
But the Vietnam syndrome in the real world came with serious costs. The world without a strong America is a far worse world. An America dedicated to self-castration on the international stage ushered in the Cambodian genocide, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran, among other foreign policy tragedies.
By the mid-80s, Ronald Reagan had decided that it was time for America to move beyond the Vietnam syndrome. In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened to depose a Marxist government in Grenada, a successful intervention that cost few American lives and restored that small island nation to freedom. And just a few months later, Reagan&#8217;s defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, spelled out six standards to be met prior to a military intervention.
1) A vital interest had to be at stake. 
2) The United States had to be prepared for outright victory. 
3) America needed to have clear political and military goals. 
4) America had to be willing to adjust its strategy continuously. 
5) Public support had to be maintained. 
6) All other options had to be exhausted. 
The Reagan administration and the subsequent George H. W. Bush administration ended the Vietnam syndrome with the Weinberger Doctrine in 1989.
The United States intervened in Panama to arrest dictator Manuel Noriega, restoring democracy to that nation. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush initiated Operation Desert Storm to eject Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. That intervention was specifically designed to fulfill Caspar Weinberger’s criteria.
And so the Vietnam syndrome was basically dead.
Then came the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan, which revived it.
Both wars began with specific missions. The Afghanistan War was designed to depose the Taliban regime and prevent the installation of another regime friendly to al-Qaeda. The Iraq War was designed to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Both of those objectives were achieved in the early going, but then the aftermath in both countries turned into an exercise in large-scale nation building, a project that lasted years and cost over $1 trillion and the blood and lives of thousands of American troops.
Ever since, critics of American foreign policy have basically revived the Vietnam syndrome in the form of an “Iraq syndrome,” the idea that every single conflict in which the United States is involved must or will become Iraq — not, contra the usual definition, a justified skepticism of intelligence findings, or fear of nation building — but a full-scale restoration of the Vietnam syndrome: Every single foreign policy intervention is supposed to become Iraq or Afghanistan.
You hear this repeated ad nauseam from the horseshoe Left and the horseshoe Right.
Unsurprisingly, just as with the Vietnam syndrome, the Iraq syndrome ushered in a period of American retreat and international chaos, predominantly led by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Withdrawal from Iraq led to the rise of ISIS under Barack Obama, Iranian proxies around the region grew, and that eventually resulted in the cataclysm of October 7, 2023.
Joe Biden&#8217;s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers and prompted, at least in part, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. China looked at the United States and the world and decided that it was going to spread its tentacles throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
But now, on the tail end of Joe Biden&#8217;s catastrophic foreign policy presidency, an Iraq syndrome presidency, just as Ronald Reagan once did, President Trump has now put the Iraq syndrome to bed.
Trump has done so with what could be called the “Trump Doctrine.” That&#8217;s a term that I defined back in November 2024 with the following criteria: First, America&#8217;s interests are paramount, and they include a lot of things, from freedom of the seas to the strength of American allies in contentious regions, to U.S. oil interests. Second, America&#8217;s interests must be carefully calibrated to our investment in them. Big interest means big investment, small interest, smaller investment. Third, all measures and means necessary to achieve America&#8217;s interests are on the table, from diplomacy to military interventionism. And fourth, all of this should be made very public all the time. The threat should be on the table. The threat of the gun should always be on the table.
President Trump has done this. I said this was his doctrine in November 2024. In the last year, he has done it twice. First, he did so with the June 22, 2025, B-2 strikes on Iran&#8217;s nuclear reactor at Fordow, reestablishing America&#8217;s deterrence power in the Middle East, reshaping the geopolitics of the region in dramatic fashion.
Despite all of the caterwauling from his supposed allies declaring that World War III would break out because they had been captured by Iraq syndrome, President Trump moved ahead. President Trump has done the same with the ouster of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
In pursuing these actions, Trump has reestablished American deterrence globally. He&#8217;s made clear America&#8217;s enemies are on notice — FAFO — and he&#8217;s demonstrating that such action doesn&#8217;t need to lead to a quagmire or to a full-scale, nation-building exercise draining America&#8217;s attention and resources.
The Iraq syndrome should be dead. If it is, it died at the hands of President Trump.
America is indeed once again feared on the global stage, which is an incredible accomplishment given where we were just one year ago.
This is what many of us voted for.
At least those of us who actually would like to make America great again in the world.

President Trump Returns To The  White House After Spending Holidays In Florida

Masterstroke: Trump’s Venezuela Coup Ends The Iraq Syndrome 

Ben Shapiro

George H.W. Bush

Opinion

Ronald Reagan

South America

Vietnam

In just one year, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have transformed foreign policy with their “America First” approach.
By rescuing Americans abroad, cutting bureaucracy, fighting narco-terrorists, and promoting peace, the administration has laid the groundwork to continue strengthening American influence in Trump’s final term.
Reflecting on the first year, State Department principal deputy spokesman Tommy Pigott told The Daily Wire that Trump has delivered “historic accomplishments,” making the United States  “great, strong, prosperous, and respected again,” and adding that “the best is yet to come.”
Here are Trump and Rubio’s foreign policy accomplishments of 2025:
<h4>Returning Hostages And Wrongfully Detained Americans</h4>
Since Trump took office, nearly 50 living hostages have been freed from Gaza. Just days before his inauguration, his team, working with the outgoing Biden administration, negotiated a ceasefire and a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. That initial agreement led to the release of 38 hostages but collapsed in March.
In October, following another Trump-negotiated ceasefire, the remaining <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/final-living-israeli-hostages-freed-after-737-days-in-hamas-captivity?author=Kassy+Akiva&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=22&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Final+Living+Israeli+Hostages+Freed+After+737+Days+In+Hamas+Captivity">30 living hostages</a> were released. More than 30 bodies were also returned, leaving only one still in Gaza: Ran Gvili. Trump has promised to return Gvili’s body to his family. Americans were among those freed, including Keith Siegel, Sagui Dekel-Chen, and Edan Alexander.
Trump also secured the release of several wrongfully detained Americans. Just hours after the president’s inauguration, the Taliban <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-trump-and-rubio-put-america-first-in-100-days">freed Ryan Corbett</a>, who had spent 894 days in captivity in Afghanistan, and William McKenty. The administration also secured the freedom of George Glezmann, held by the Taliban for over two years, and Amir Amiri, who had been detained for nine months.
In February, envoy Richard Grenell brought <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-envoy-richard-grenell-gets-6-american-hostages-released-from-venezuela">six Americans</a> home from Venezuela, where some had been abused after being kidnapped as tourists. The administration also secured the release of American schoolteacher <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-trump-and-rubio-put-america-first-in-100-days">Marc Fogel</a> in February and Russian-American ballerina <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-trump-and-rubio-put-america-first-in-100-days">Ksenia Karelina</a> in April, both of whom had been imprisoned under harsh sentences in Russia. Anastasia Nuhfer was also returned home from Belarus in early 2025.
<div id="attachment_1022001" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1022001" class="wp-image-1022001 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2198419299-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2198419299-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2198419299-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2198419299-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2198419299.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />US President Donald Trump, left, greets US schoolteacher Marc Fogel. Daniel Heuer/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
Cutting Waste And Bureaucracy
Trump and Rubio have overhauled the State Department, eliminating or consolidating nearly 45% of domestic offices and cutting staff to streamline operations. The department says the reorganization empowers embassies and regional bureaus and ensures America&#8217;s interests are being served abroad.
The State Department trimmed costs by $270.8 million by reducing the scope of 659 contracts and ending or not renewing 533 others, data from the Federal Procurement Data System shows. Travel expenses were also slashed, with the Department spending $100 million less on trips than the previous year.
<div id="attachment_1022003" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1022003" class="wp-image-1022003 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2249270831-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2249270831-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2249270831-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2249270831-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2249270831.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) and Kenyan Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi (L) participate in a Health Framework of Cooperation signing ceremony at the State Department in Washington, DC on December 4, 2025. Photo by Allison ROBBERT / AFP via Getty Images</div>
The Trump administration also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-trump-administrations-new-foreign-aid-model-cuts-out-the-ngo-industrial-complex">overhauled</a> how it distributed foreign aid, choosing to send funds directly to partner governments and bypassing what Rubio called the “NGO industrial complex.” Rubio said the previous model funneled aid through NGOs that consumed large portions of funding on overhead rather than the programs they were intended to support. He added that relying on NGOs left host countries with little control and created redundancy instead of strengthening existing health systems.
In April, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/marco-rubio-tells-ben-shapiro-why-he-nuked-state-departments-censorship-agency?author=Kassy+Akiva&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Marco+Rubio+Tells+Ben+Shapiro+Why+He+Nuked+State+Department%E2%80%99s+Censorship+Agency">Rubio announced</a> the closure of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), saying the agency “was labeling American speech by Americans as foreign interference.” Created in 2011 to counter terrorist propaganda, the GEC shifted after the 2016 election to targeting domestic “misinformation.” Rubio added that the Center would also be investigated for allegedly being “used as a weapon against the American people.”
In May, Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance helped negotiate a ceasefire between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan following a terrorist attack in the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, which left 26 civilians dead. The attack <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/india-launches-airstrikes-on-pakistan-as-tensions-explode-over-terror-attack">triggered military air strikes</a> and cross-border small-arms fire. Trump said the ceasefire, which has held, was the result of a “long night of talks.”
Peace Push
The following month, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-announces-complete-and-total-ceasefire-between-israel-and-iran">Trump announced</a> a “complete and total ceasefire” between Israel and Iran, ending a 12‑day conflict. The agreement followed a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-b2-bomber">37-hour</a> B‑2 bomber mission by the United States targeting Iranian nuclear sites. While airstrikes have ceased, Iran continues hostile rhetoric, which Trump has matched, including <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-says-he-supports-israel-attacking-iran-again-as-he-welcomes-netanyahu-to-mar-a-lago?author=Kassy+Akiva&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Says+He+Supports+Israel+Attacking+Iran+Again+As+He+Welcomes+Netanyahu+To+Mar-A-Lago">stating his support</a> for Israel to strike Iran again if it continues pursuing missile or nuclear programs during a December meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
President Donald J. Trump in The Situation Room, June 21, 2025 <a href="https://t.co/SXyXiuYswI">pic.twitter.com/SXyXiuYswI</a>
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1936605837751181732?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 22, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Also in June, the Trump administration brokered a historic peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda at the White House in June. Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe and Congo Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner were present in the Oval Office. The agreement calls for the withdrawal of Rwandan troops from eastern Congo and the establishment of a joint security mechanism. The agreement between the two neighbors also aims to attract investment to Congo’s mineral-rich provinces, including from the United States.
<div id="attachment_1022007" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1022007" class="wp-image-1022007 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2221629839-865x576.jpg" alt="" width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2221629839-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2221629839-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2221629839-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/GettyImages-2221629839.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda agreed to a US-backed peace deal meant to end years of deadly conflict and promote development in Congo&#8217;s volatile eastern region. Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
In July, Trump negotiated a ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia after conflict broke out the previous month, leaving dozens dead. When violence flared again in December, he successfully pushed for a second agreement, saying the two nations will “go back to living in PEACE, as per our recently agreed to original Treaty.”
Trump rounded out the summer by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stop-all-fighting-forever-trump-secures-major-peace-deal-between-armenia-azerbaijan">facilitating the signing</a> of a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have been in conflict since the 1990s. In the Oval Office in August, Trump said Christian-majority Armenia and Muslim-majority Azerbaijan had committed to “stop all fighting forever, open up commerce, travel, and diplomatic relations and respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The deal also grants the United States the right to develop a strategic transit corridor through the South Caucasus, which will be named in honor of Trump.
Taking On Illegal Immigration and Narco Terrorists
The Trump Administration has waged a full-fledged offensive against narco-terrorists trafficking drugs by sea. The U.S. military has sunk several vessels of the terrorists and arrested others, including Sinaloa Cartel leader Efrain Sanchez Cabanillas in the Dominican Republic, MS-13 leader Alvaro Osiris Acosta Bustillo in Honduras, and local Tren de Aragua leader “Chino San Vicente” in Colombia. Trump said that his efforts have slashed drug trafficking through maritime rights by more than 90% and saved “hundreds of thousands of lives.”
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📹 ON VIDEO: This morning, President Trump ordered a strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking. The strike was conducted in international waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed. <a href="https://t.co/tKAtfQF7Tr">pic.twitter.com/tKAtfQF7Tr</a>
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1978165208225894678?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 14, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Encounters with immigrants at the southern border are down 99% since January. This sharply contrasts with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mexicos-door-daily-wires-kassy-akiva-sees-the-border-crisis-firsthand-2">The Daily Wire’s visit</a> to the Mexico‑Texas border less than a year ago, when migrants were lining the Rio Grande after swimming across. Under the Biden administration, more than 10 million illegal crossings were documented. So far under the Trump administration, there have been roughly 102,000 apprehensions at the southern border.
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In 2025, the State Department signed “Safe Third Country” agreements to expedite the deportation of migrants in the United States and revoked more than 85,000 non-immigrant visas, often targeting holders whose views were considered opposed to American values. The Trump administration announced it began <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-trump-and-rubio-put-america-first-in-100-days">screening visa seekers’</a> social media for terrorist or antisemitic content, with any such findings potentially serving as grounds for denying student visas.
Trump introduced a “Gold Card” visa aimed at attracting high-net-worth immigrants to the United States. For $5 million, recipients would receive Green Card privileges with a potential path to citizenship. Trump said the program would boost the U.S. economy by encouraging spending, tax contributions, and business creation.

US-IRAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-TRUMP

Trump And Rubio’s Best America First Wins Of 2025

2025

America First

Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid waste to the notion that the State Department existed as a failsafe that could potentially serve as a check on the White House: &#8220;That&#8217;s ridiculous. That&#8217;s stupid, really.&#8221;
Rubio gave reporters a brief civics lesson on Friday, explaining that it was his job to serve at the will of the President of the United States and to implement the foreign policy vision of the president and his administration, not undermine the president if they were ever at odds over any specific issue.
WATCH:
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🚨 JUST IN: INCREDIBLE mic drop from Sec. Marco Rubio. BOOM! 🔥
&#8220;The Constitution does not say you elect the President and then you put in place a State Department to undermine the President if the person who&#8217;s the Secretary of State doesn&#8217;t agree with him. That&#8217;s ridiculous.… <a href="https://t.co/Z1slwgvNW0">pic.twitter.com/Z1slwgvNW0</a>
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) <a href="https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2002066653719261463?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 19, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;The State Department is not its own government,&#8221; Rubio began, adding that the Secretary of State could not therefore act unilaterally to implement his own policies in place of those laid out by the president.
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&#8220;At the end of the day, the person the people of the United States elected to be the President of the United States and the Commander-in-Chief is Donald J. Trump. That&#8217;s who they elected. And my job, and the job of the people in our administration, is to implement the President&#8217;s foreign policy,&#8221; he explained, adding that his role was often to advise the president on how to best implement his policies, but it was never to supplant them with his own. &#8220;Why people think that somehow foreign policy can be divorced from our republic? That&#8217;s not the way our Constitution works.&#8221;
Rubio continued the civics tutorial, adding, &#8220;The Constitution does not say you elect the President and then you put in place a State Department to undermine the President if the person who&#8217;s the Secretary of State doesn&#8217;t agree with him. That&#8217;s ridiculous. That&#8217;s stupid, really. I don&#8217;t know why anybody would think that. So that&#8217;s the job I have, and that&#8217;s the job I&#8217;m proud to do.&#8221;

US-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY-RUBIO

Marco Rubio Destroys Argument That State Department Should Check The President

Marco Rubio Absolutely Destroys Argument That State Department Should Check The President

Media

Politics

The United States is facing down an existential threat right now.
That existential threat comes from a lack of willpower. It comes from a doubt about what America is. But in terms of foreign policy, that existential threat comes from a team-up that has been growing.
That team-up is between China — which is really the sponsor state of the anti-American bloc — and its friends like Russia and Iran.
The existential threat doesn&#8217;t mean that China is going to attack the United States.
It does mean that as the United States recedes from the world, Russia will expand its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. China will expand its sphere of influence, not just in the Far East, but also in Africa, across the rest of Asia into South America. The United States is going to be in the unenviable position of having to withdraw from the world, and we will no longer be able to guarantee freedom of the seas.
A United States with no economic allies, a United States that is a secondary partner for all the rest of these countries while China is a primary partner, is a United States that has an economy that is shrinking, a United States that is forced within its own borders.
That is a problem.
There is this bizarre notion that has arisen on the Right that if the United States were to be essentially an autarky and withdraw from the rest of the world, suddenly things would get better. The belief that the amount that we expend in foreign aid, for example, or military expenditure, is a complete waste of money, and if we just spent that money at home, then magically everything would get better.
The problem, of course, is that the world is interconnected. The reason that you can obtain better, cheaper products that make your life easier every single day is because the interconnection of world trade makes that possible. And that, of course, is only possible because of the power of the United States economy and the power of the United States military.
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Why do I bring that up? Because China seems to be posing a broader and broader threat, and yet there is a bizarre unwillingness on the Left to acknowledge the threat that is China.
And on the Right, there seems to be an unwillingness to deal with the actual realities of what it would mean to face down China in a responsible and coherent fashion.
In the West, there is the bizarre perception that what we ought to do is radically increase tariffs, not just on China — which would be retaliatory and worthwhile — but on everywhere else. 
That is a gigantic mistake. And it leads to questions about the overall policy of the United States vis-à-vis China.
What exactly are we trying to do vis-à-vis China? 
I&#8217;ve made the case that if you wish to face down China, you have to do a few things. One is that you need closer trade and security relationships, not more attenuated relationships, with other countries surrounding China, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and India.
Better relations with those countries will help box in and essentially isolate China. If China wants to cheat, if they don&#8217;t want to play by the rules, if China wishes to beggar its neighbor, let them pursue an autarkic economic policy.
Autarky tends to make the country pursuing it poorer over time. Initially, it looks like an explosion of economic activity, but over time, as countries start pouring resources into less efficient modes of manufacturing in order to do it at home, rather than to import those products from abroad, they tend to empty themselves out.
This is the common pattern in economics. Every mercantilist or fascist economic system that has worked like this shows very good early growth numbers. And then that growth curve eventually peters out, and the country ends up with economic stagnation.
This happened in Japan. It happened in South Korea. If you go back prior to World War II, this happened in Germany. One of the reasons that Germany, under the Nazis, had to become an expansionist power is because Germany tried to pursue economic autarky in the 1930s, and they saw, for a brief moment in time, a gigantic manufacturing boom, people getting off unemployment lines, moving out of the Weimar Republic era.
But as it turns out, they were doing that based on state expenditures that made them less economically viable over the long term. And so then they had to turn to actual physical territorial expansionism.
Autarky very often turns into a necessity for expanding your access to resources, which leads to invasions of other countries. It is not a coincidence that countries that tend to embrace a strong mercantilist policy, an economic policy that focuses on “Let&#8217;s build everything right here at home,” find that when they can’t, they have to expand their own territorial borders or the places under their immediate dominion.
Free trade generally means that you don&#8217;t have to invade other places because you can trade with those other places.
So, when you look at China, how would you stop China? We need to build up better security and economic relationships in the Far East, and also build up better security and economic relationships with Europe.
That means that we can use tariffs as a way to force the Europeans to get rid of their non-tariff barriers. One of the ways I would be forcing the Europeans to pay their fair share is by using things like tariffs, in order to push the Europeans to pay their fair share. When it comes to, for example, the price of pharmaceuticals, Europe pays far less than what the actual market rate should be for pharmaceuticals, and then the United States ends up paying for that via our taxpayers and via our consumers.
That’s just the way that it works. We should stop that.
There are things that we can do to fight the non-tariff barriers and also the unfairness of our systems with Europe. But in the end, we should be pursuing freer trade and better relationships. 
That’s because if you&#8217;re going to box in China, you need to offer both the carrot and the stick to China, but just carrots to our friends. 
When it comes to offering carrots for our friends, we can offer a little bit of the stick in order to achieve the carrot. That is why I&#8217;m not against using tariffs as a way to pressure other countries to lower their tariffs. This is a case that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has made.
You need to box China in. You need to treat them like the adversary they are.
You need to build out other lines of supply. You need supply chains that are diversified, so we&#8217;re not as reliant on China.
You need to cut off China&#8217;s allies at the knees. If we believe, as we should, that Russia is a geopolitical adversary of the United States, then obviously we should be pursuing an attempt to get Russia to stop invading Eastern Europe.
And that means supporting allies in the region to the extent necessary to stop the Russians, because it&#8217;s not as though Russia and China aren&#8217;t talking to each other. They&#8217;re talking very extensively to each other.
If we are attempting to form a better relationship with India, then we should be attempting to form a better relationship with them. We should be trying to make trade relations with India so beneficial to India that they don&#8217;t want to trade with the Chinese. There are natural differences in opinion between China and India, which have nearly come to blows several times over the course of the last several decades.
India and China are not working hand in glove. They have actual territorial conflicts. We could be attempting to pry India out of China&#8217;s sphere of influence. 
These are all things that a responsible foreign policy would do.
And then we certainly would not be shipping many of the most important components in the battle for the future to China.
China is already stealing our intellectual property. China is already cheating when it comes to trade relationships. China is already badgering its neighbors. Why should we be sending some of our most sophisticated microchips produced in the United States? Why should we be allowing those to flow into China? Even if we&#8217;re going to argue that it&#8217;s only a marginal increase in China&#8217;s capacity, why would we allow that increase in China&#8217;s capacity?
China is our geopolitical enemy. They are our opponent. Trying to pretend otherwise is foolish because if you allow China to continue pursuing its normal policies, China will blow itself out.
China has a serious demographic problem. It does not have enough people. China is in steep demographic decline. Even though they have a billion people, they do not have enough human beings to be able to generate the economic growth necessary to pay for their gigantic redistributionist schemes and mercantilist ideas.
They have an enormous debt problem. They&#8217;ve been burying that debt problem in local and regional debt issues, and then building gigantic empty cities rooted in debt that they&#8217;re taking out from their own citizens and against their own citizens.
We tend to look at the fact that China builds some nice things and say, “Wow, they must be doing it right.”
But the fact is that mercantilism looks systematic when you look at the areas where it succeeds, but looks like a trash heap when you look at the areas where it doesn&#8217;t succeed. The areas where you don&#8217;t succeed in a centralized economy are the areas that tend to be ignored, and there are a lot of them.
Capitalism looks really messy, but it has a much higher hit rate because capital follows the best ideas. You don&#8217;t just keep investing in bad ideas the way you do with a centralized economic system, like China.
There are ways to box in China.
The question is whether the United States will actually do it.

China trade cargo container hanging against clouds background

What Do We Do About China?

India

Tariffs

When President Trump took to Truth Social to <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115370746210555899">promote</a> Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s new book, “I Am Giorgia,” many may have viewed it as a natural alliance between two champions of national pride, family values, and strong leadership. Trump praised Meloni as an inspiration, highlighting her dedication to faith, family, and country — qualities he has always deeply valued.
However, the public display of friendship and affection stands in stark contrast to recent moves by the Italian government to harm American businesses. In fact, its recent policy decisions are quietly undermining a vital element of Trump’s economic strategy with Europe — particularly the principle against unfair, targeted fees on America’s innovators in the tech and telecom sectors.
The Italian bureaucracy, through Italy’s telecom authority AGCOM, has recently taken <a href="https://ccianet.org/news/2025/09/italys-move-towards-network-fees-sets-blueprint-for-eu-under-digital-networks-act-study-finds/">steps</a> that classify Content Delivery Networks as part of Italy’s national telecom infrastructure. This may seem like a technical regulatory shift, but it sets a dangerous precedent for forcing U.S.-based streaming giants like Netflix and YouTube to shoulder <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/news/italys-telecoms-regulator-walks-fine-line-between-meloni-trump-and-brussels-over-network-fees/">new costs</a>.
The idea that such platforms should pay what Europe calls “network fees” was repeatedly rejected by Brussels to avoid sparking a trade war with the United States. Yet Italy’s move appears to be a sneaky attempt to backdoor these fees through regulation rather than overt legislation.
That makes this latest maneuver particularly troubling in light of the U.S.–EU trade deal framework, which explicitly commits Europe to refraining from imposing network fees or equivalent measures that target American digital services. That commitment was celebrated as a breakthrough for fair and open digital trade — and a win for both sides of the Atlantic. Italy’s proposal represents a direct and duplicitous workaround of that agreement and should not be tolerated by either Meloni or President Trump.
The problem runs deeper than just economic policy. President Trump has always insisted that America should be treated fairly and that U.S. companies should not be subjected to unfair financial penalties while European companies enjoy protection. The essence of Trump’s “America First” trade approach is not just about tariffs but standing up to Europe’s habit of disguising predatory actions as “fairness” or “sovereignty.” Time and again, European bureaucrats have tried to charm American leadership with lofty rhetoric while quietly pursuing policies that simultaneously penalize U.S. tech innovators in favor of incumbent European firms and <a href="https://strandconsult.dk/is-there-a-correlation-between-european-nations-level-of-chinese-telecom-equipment-the-consumption-of-russian-energy-and-military-aid-to-ukraine/">hand over</a> their purportedly sacred sovereignty to Chinese companies.
In fact, in Italy’s case, more than a third of its 5G infrastructure is supplied by China. And the country’s largest telecom provider, Telecom Italia (TIM), has <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pietro-labriola_digitale-innovazione-sostenibilitaeq-activity-7383556923331162112-xRkN/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAACcXXMBcipZDNsVQ3AlxVNbqOAKXKgu_r0">deep ties</a> with other countries at the center of <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2025/10/13/john-czwartacki-brazil-is-waging-war-on-american-technology-with-chinas-help/">China’s scheme</a> to drive a wedge between the United States and our allies across the Atlantic and in our own backyard. 
The regulatory maneuvers of Meloni’s government are out of step with her public embrace of Trump’s values. She claims to stand for independence and patriotism, yet by empowering AGCOM to impose regulatory costs on American tech, she works within the same globalist, big government EU framework that Trump himself has warned against. This contradiction should raise alarms on both sides of the Atlantic. Supporting a populist vision in politics means little if the policies implemented to bring it to fruition end up stifling competition and reducing consumer welfare.
Italy’s approach to network fees could also spark retaliatory measures that hurt Italian and European interests in the process. Real partnership demands more than symbolic displays of loyalty. It requires shared commitment to open markets, fair competition, and the removal of hidden barriers.
Europe’s temptation to manipulate U.S. leaders through false promises while it advances onerous regulatory measures designed to impose new costs must be understood for what it is. President Trump’s success has come from hard-nosed deals and a refusal to be played. Europeans seem to believe they can deflect this approach by offering words of friendship and then quietly imposing rules that undermine longstanding agreements and harm the U.S. tech sector.
Meloni’s memoir captures the spirit many admire — strong roots, fierce pride, and clear principles — but her government’s recent actions surrounding network fees show that principles alone are not enough. The mutually beneficial alliance Trump seeks with leaders like Meloni must rest on policies that truly defend fairness and reciprocity and reject regulatory overreach that unfairly burdens U.S. businesses.
In the end, Trump recognizes that true partnership is built on shared interests and respect, not on central planning that distorts the market and seeks to extract money under the guise of fairness. Meloni’s Italy may talk the language of sovereignty, but on this issue, it echoes the very European playbook Trump has fought against: using regulation to impose hidden taxes on American innovation.
If President Trump’s affection for Meloni is to be returned in kind, it must coincide with a call for policies aligned with his economic principles. Otherwise, public displays of friendship are mere symbolic gestures that hypocritically mask Europe’s continued attempts to challenge American leadership. Such contradictions weaken transatlantic unity and threaten the very foundation of the deal Trump fought to secure.
* * *
Ashley Baker is Executive Director of The Committee for Justice, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the rule of law and constitutionally limited government.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

President Trump Meets With Visiting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni At The White House

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