Articles by Adam Lynch

Conservative bashes Trump for conducting policy based on 'personal whims and preferences'

Traditional conservative and political columnist Max Boot recently railed against President Donald Trump's degeneration of complex U.S. foreign policy into his own erratic impulses. Speaking on the “Politics War Room” podcast hosted by Democratic strategist James Carville, Boot pointed out that the U.S. spent decades building a multifaceted back-and-forth of sensitive foreign policy directives that served the nation well. That is, until Trump came along and the Republican Party handed him the sole reins as international arbiter. “This is not the foreign policy of the United States. This is the personal whims and preferences of President Trump,” said Boot, a frequent Trump critic. “He basically rewards allies and punishes critics. You see him imposing these massive 50% tariffs on Brazil to punish Brazil for putting his buddy, former president Bolsinaro on trial for carrying out Brazil’s version of Jan. 6 [attacks] while rewarding Argentina, which has a MAGA friendly president, with a bailout of $40 billion.” “It’s striking that while Trump is cutting off U.S. foreign aid — and a lot of people are going to die as a result — all of the sudden we have $40 billion just sitting around to bail out Argentina for the financial mess they’ve made of their own country,” Boot added. “When you lay it out like that, it’s hard to add it up logically from a policy standpoint.” “Really this is the whims of President Trump because there’s nobody in the administration or outside of it who can contradict him, so he gets to do what he wants, even if that doesn’t make a lot of sense.” Boot went on to hammer Trump’s unilateral tariff with U.S. trade allies, and he called out Trump for overreacting to an ad produced by the Canadian territory of Ontario, pitting Trump against the more free-trade-oriented policies of former President Ronald Reagan — a longtime Republican icon. “Donald Trump doesn’t want to hear [Canada’s argument on tariffs] because he has a big portrait of Ronald Reagan in his office. He doesn’t want to hear that his policies on trade are diametrically opposed to the Gipper’s, but that is the truth,” Boot said. “The Reagan Foundation somehow claimed this was misleading, but it wasn’t misleading, and then Trump used this as an excuse to add more tariffs on Canada.” “It doesn’t make any sense but Reagan was right on tariffs and Trump is wrong,” Boot said.

7 hours ago

Technology

Ex-USDA official warns farmers the GOP 'will do nothing' about Trump's 'colossal blunder'

A Kansas farmer recently told reporters: "Nothing … is going to make money” this year in President Donald Trump’s economy. Former USDA official and ex-U.S Trade Representative Greg Frazier warned him to get used to that. “If he wants to come out ahead this year, this eastern Kansas farmer should bet Republicans in the congressional delegation won’t help,” Frazier told the Kansas City Star. “If past performance indicates future results, it’s a sure thing.” “As markets shriveled this year, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) claimed Trump gave ‘Kansas farmers and ranchers access to critically important export markets,’” according to Frazier. This fits what Marshall said during Trump’s first trade war with China years ago when he tried to claim Trump’s “policies are working.” But they were a catastrophe, said Frazier. Kansas farmers lost $1 billion in exports. Farm bankruptcies doubled and they triggered bailouts that cost billions. “Today’s farm trade collapse results from one of the most predictable policy failures in recent memory, a step-by-step replay of arbitrary … tariffs suffocating farm exports,” said Frazier, adding that “it’s inexplicable that those lessons are not being heeded by the president and the U.S. trade representative and the U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary — both of whom personally witnessed the destruction in Trump’s first term. “The victims of this colossal blunder are relearning a painful lesson. Their lawmakers will do nothing,” Frazier said. “They support the tariffs. In March, Kansas Reps. Ron Estes, Tracey Mann and Derek Schmidt voted in favor of them, twice. It was a legislative sleight of hand, one sentence tucked into a procedural motion that stops the House from even considering legislation to repeal the tariffs. They did it again Sept. 16.” In April, and again this week, Frazier said Sens. Marshall and Jerry Moran “could have repealed the tariffs,” but, they voted to keep them. “Signals of an emerging crisis appeared almost immediately after the president’s April 2 tariff announcement. It was projected in the export outlook planned for release May 29. But USDA leaders spiked the report, then excised the expert-generated analysis,” said Frazier, who served as Chief of Staff for the USDA under Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, Sens. Marshall and Mann tout trade announcements like Trump’s so-called move into the Australian beef market — which was already open to the U.S., and with U.S. beef processors lucky to move “$1-2 million worth of beef annually into Australia, compared to the $4 billion worth of beef Australia sent to the U.S. last year.” And while Trump’s USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins “was boosting these phantom deals,” behind the scenes Frazier said Agriculture Department officials were “putting pencil to paper developing the completely predictable bailout from tariff carnage.” The USDA paid U.S. farmers $28 billion during Trump’s first term trade war with China. Congress appropriated $10 billion in December for more emergency payments and Trump’s budget bill included $60 billion in new farm subsidies. But the cost to repeal the tariffs: Zero dollars, said Frazier. Read Frazier's Kansas City Star column at this link.

8 hours ago

Why Trump is really tearing down the White House

Adam Gopnik tells the New Yorker that Trump destroying the White House is a performance display broadcasting his unbroken power over the presidency.“After months marked by corruption, violence, and the open perversion of law, to gasp in outrage at the loss of a few tons of masonry and mortar might seem oddly misjudged,” said Gopnik. “And yet it isn’t. We are creatures of symbols, and our architecture tells us who we are.”A nation writes its history in books, but its buildings is a kind of enduring book itself. The Eiffel Tower is an expression of a nation’s history, as is the...

5 days ago

Military leaders 'trying to send a signal to' Trump over 'vulnerable' defense sec: insider

Podcast host and former Jeb Bush campaign communications director Tim Miller says Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is now running the risk of getting “Brutused,” Roman style, by people inside his own Pentagon and from inside his own right-wing movement.Referring to a recent story in the conservative Washington Times claiming Hegseth has “lost trust” with “senior military commanders” and trust has “evaporated,” Miller argued that the threat to the secretary’s career is elevated now that stories are showing up in conservative outlets.“This coming out of the...

6 days ago

Local Idaho sheriff and police departments rip 'deeply misleading' DHS statement

The Idaho Statesman reports the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office and Caldwell Police Department released a joint statement Wednesday contradicting ICE claims of orchestrating a Sunday raid that was not an ICE-led operation, despite what the Department of Homeland Security indicated. “To be clear, this was not an ICE-led enforcement action,” said Sheriff Kieran Donahue and Police Chief Rex Ingram. “The statement released by DHS yesterday claiming responsibility for dismantling a criminal organization was completely false and a serious misrepresentation of the facts.”Homeland Security...

Oct 23, 2025