Welcome to Friday’s edition of Washington Secrets. Today, we look back at a week that included a NATO summit, the resumption of war (if you think that a ceasefire ever actually existed) with Iran, and a whole lot more. Enjoy the weekend.
Monday was a busy day domestically. President Donald Trump rang the stock market’s opening bell from the Oval Office to mark the launch of Trump Accounts, but made far more news by admitting that he spoke to FIFA about overturning the red card given to star USA striker Folarin Balogun that initially ruled him out of the clash with Belgium. Cue controversy, which ended only when the U.S. team was dumped out of the World Cup. To their credit, Balogun and most of the team failed to turn up.
Trump flew to the NATO summit in Turkey later that day aboard his gleaming new Air Force One, which was a gift from Qatar. He later flew out of Ankara on one of the old modified 747s.
He claimed it was to allow service personnel in the United Kingdom to tour the new plane. No one believed him, particularly after it emerged there were new Iranian threats against him, and then aviation experts pointed out that there would not have been enough time to properly outfit the Qatari jet with the full range of missile countermeasures and communications gear usually fitted to a presidential plane.
In Turkey, he praised President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as “a great ally” to the United States during the Iran conflict and announced he was ready to lift sanctions imposed after Ankara purchased a Russian air defense system. That sets up a clash with Congress, which is reluctant to allow Turkey to buy F-35 warplanes.
Trump left after shaking up NATO by once again setting his sights on Greenland and telling Spain he would cut off trade for its failure to agree on defense spending targets and not supporting his strikes on Iran.
And he declared the ceasefire with Iran to be over amid continuing squabbles over who actually controls shipping transiting the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. Central Command announced “offensive” strikes on more than 80 targets in Iran in response to Tehran’s attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
Thursday was a quiet day. After arriving home in the early hours of the morning, the president had no public events.
Friday began with a bang. Trump announced he would not sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill. On Truth Social, he said that he was withholding his signature “in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” his controversial voting restrictions measure.
So what do our two political consultants make of it all?
Jed Babbin: Grade F
The ceasefire with Iran is over, the Canada-Mexico trade deal with the U.S. is as well, and how is Ukraine supposed to manufacture Patriot missiles under license with the U.S.? We’re selling F-35s to Turkey? “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” over?
Trump is content to let the ceasefire with Iran end, and he seems not to want to talk further with the Iranians.
“I don’t want to deal with them…They’re liars, they’re cheats, they’re sick people,” he said.
Yes, we’ve known that for decades, and is the president waking up to it only now? That’s a long way from his prior statements about Iran being desperate for a deal. And Trump seems unconcerned about it. U.S. forces are striking Iranian military targets while Iranian missiles are hitting our Jordanian, Kuwaiti, and Bahraini allies. The war will not end while the Iranian regime is still standing. Trump can’t just walk away from this one.
At Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral, demonstrators were still chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are going to try to produce Patriot missiles faster and cheaper than we can do it in the U.S. Really? That may or may not happen. The problem with the Ukraine-Russia war is that the Russians are fighting with cheap drones and missiles, and our side, Ukraine, is fighting with extremely expensive missiles that take vastly longer to manufacture. If the Ukrainians can cure that, they’re better engineers than we give them credit for.
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal is something the president wants out of. That puts the agreement in a spin cycle toward cancellation. The deal isn’t working out to U.S. advantage, so why continue it?
Then, Trump announced that he intends to sell F-35s to Turkey. But Turkey was excluded from the F-35 program in 2019 when it bought Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems, proving its untrustworthiness.
It’s an entirely awful idea to sell Turkey the F-35s because they won’t keep the program’s secrets, and because it’s an Islamist state thanks to its current president. Russian (and Chinese) engineers will be able to pore over the aircraft and determine its most closely-held secrets, including intelligence-sharing. We should absolutely not be doing this. Congress should stop it.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on X @jedbabbin.
John Zogby: Grade F
I am including two weeks in this report. Americans celebrated this nation’s 250th anniversary with only 53% feeling “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. That’s the lowest percentage Gallup has reported since 2001.
The U.S. added only 57,000 jobs in June, about half of what economists expected, and wages lagged behind inflation. The overvaluation of stocks has now surpassed pre-1929 levels.
This marking period began with the president praising Iran for agreeing to the 14 points of a ceasefire and has ended with renewed intense bombing and Trump referring to Iranians as “scum.”
Polls show that he is bleeding support among young men, mainly because of the war with Iran. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed.
A federal judge has ordered Trump to once and for all pay the more than $5 million award for sexual abuse and defamation to columnist E. Jean Carroll, and an appeals court refused to hear the case.
The Supreme Court also ruled that although Trump cannot fire a governor of the Federal Reserve, he is free to fire federal regulators.
Meanwhile, Trump has reported that he and his family have made over $1 billion on unregulated cryptocurrency. And capping off a mostly bad week, the president was prohibited from flying back from the NATO summit in Turkey aboard his new $400 million-plus Air Force One due to security concerns.
And by the way, his Great American State Fair was a disaster, although the hot and humid weather was a major factor.”
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book is Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should. His podcast with son, managing partner, and pollster Jeremy Zogby, can be heard here. Follow him on X @ZogbyStrategies.
Quote of the day
Morris Katz, one of Graham Platner’s top political advisers, had this to say about his candidate’s departure from the Maine Senate race.
“As soon as the team became aware of the rape allegations against Graham Platner we advised he suspend his candidacy, and in the following days worked to wind down the campaign,” he posted on X. “Like so many of his supporters, I’m deeply disappointed.”
He must mean a different team and a different campaign than the one who met the allegations this week with a firm denial, “saying no amount of desperate smears will stop this movement from seeing that vision through.”
Lunchtime reading
Nobel-winning U.S. chemist will move to China to lead A.I. institute: Omar Yaghi is leaving the University of California, Berkeley, to head up a Chinese research team amid fears of a brain drain.
Classicist Emily Wilson: “Odysseus is a different kind of conman”: This is paywalled but delicious, particularly if you are already branding a movie you haven’t seen yet as “woke.”
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