There is a great article in The Washington Post about the current self-inflicted disaster overtaking America under the maniac Donald Trump. Project 2025, the blueprint for his second term, was if you remember, a description of how he intended to 'dismantle’ the administrative state. Much of this domestic dismantling is stuck in the courts with a stunning 343 cases in various stages of litigation brought by those affected. However, the WP piece is about the wider international impact of how this is all unfolding for the US, particularly with regard to its relationship with China.
Julian Gewirtz, a China scholar and former Biden official, suggests that China thinks the USA is "dismantling its alliance relationships and alienating much of the world,” a conclusion that it's hard to disagree with.
He added that America is also, "dismantling aspects of the U.S. science and technology ecosystem, cutting funding to some of our great universities, and making it very unappealing, if not outright impossible, for foreign talent to come do research in those universities. And it is eliminating arms of U.S. influence around the world, from USAID to Voice of America. China’s view is that the United States is, in a sense, unilaterally disarming.”
The article suggests that the damage to US soft power and its credibility among allies and other partners might be irreversible, and I agree, certainly in the short to medium term. It will take decades to repair the fractures that have opened up, and I'm not sure that anyone will ever see the US in the same light again.
Another expert on China, Ali Wyne, from the International Crisis Group, said China is content to watch the US destroy itself and is pursuing three main lines of strategy in the face of Trump’s threats:
- It’s working to boost trade with other countries and parts of the world, in a bid to insulate itself from the effects of US protectionist measures.
- It’s arguing in diplomatic channels and public propaganda that “America First” is not an aberration, but a feature of US politics that will have negative consequences for American allies.
- And it’s finding “more momentum, more traction,” for the emergence of a 21st century international order that’s organized more around principles that suit Beijing and its political worldview.
Wyne says in what is surely the most damning assessment: “I am not sure if any other incumbent power in history has so rapidly and systematically attacked its own principal sources of competitive advantage.”
It is just crazy.
China has about the same land mass as the USA but four times the population (1.4 billion compared to 347 million). At present, China's GDP is around $20 trillion, less than two-thirds of the USA, but growing much faster. In 1960, China represented 11% of America's wealth; now it's 64% and closing fast. By the end of the decade, some experts believe China will have the bigger economy.
In one key area, green technology, Trump has "handed China a huge advantage in scrapping Biden administration funding for renewables and doubling down on fossil fuels. China is speeding down an open lane to become the leader in steering the world’s energy transition. It is, as economic historian Adam Tooze said in a recent podcast, 'the biggest laboratory of organized modernization that has ever been or ever will be'.”
Tooze says that the Americans have “dropped the ball” here and the consequences will be vast.
“This is the material dethroning of the West as the central driver of world history,” he said. “This is really what the provincialisation of the West really looks like.” And all down to one totally deranged individual.
Trump is driving a wrecking ball through America but it's future as the leader of the free world is what is being demolished. These are dangerous moments for all of us.
Epstein
Trump is clearly worried about what is likely to emerge from the Epstein files. He knows what his involvement was, and he probably now bitterly regrets winding up his MAGA supporters to expect total transparency on an issue that could topple him. They are not convinced by his assurances that there is 'nothing to see here'.
You can see how concerned he is by the totally groundless $20 billion lawsuit he has launched against Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal, not least because the grounds for the case and the astronomical sums in damages are based, laughably, on him being 'defamed.'
He is a known fraudster, 34-count convicted felon, and an adjudicated rapist as well as everything else. He's the walking, talking embodiment of every vice known to man. How could he be defamed? He's not likely to pursue the case because he would be deposed under oath and on camera by Murdoch's legal team about what he knew of Epstein's activities, and that will never happen.
Next, his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, best known before she was appointed as a disseminator of Kremlin talking points, has released a memo detailing what she says was 'key intelligence' manipulated and withheld from the American people by President Obama about possible Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The subject line is: Intelligence Community suppression of intelligence showing “Russian and criminal actors did not impact” the 2016 presidential election via cyber-attacks on infrastructure.
The accusation is that Obama knew that Russia didn't help Trump win in 2016 but failed to tell the American people. Gabbard in a White House briefing says that they have "irrefutable evidence" that the Obama administration "created" an intelligence assessment that Russia helped Trump to victory, knowing it to be false.
The only problem is that this is simply NOT TRUE. The thousand-page Mueller report showed conclusively that Russia DID interfere to help Trump. Indeed, Trump ASKED Russia to help on live TV. What Russia DID NOT do was to hack US voting machines and infrastructure, as the Senate Intelligence Committee (SIC) concluded.
But Obama never said they did. Russian interference was all down to social media, hacking Clinton's emails, and releasing them through Julian Assange at Wikileaks. The SIC never investigated that at all.
In short, Trump's acolytes are trying to muddy the waters by suggesting Russia did NOTHING to help Trump win when we know this is not true. We know they didn't manipulate voting infrastructure via cyber attacks, but they certainly used many other methods, social media in particular. It is just semantics.
If the issue ever went to trial, a judge would throw the case out on day one.
On the 'strength' of the memo, Trump accused Obama of no less a crime than treason and released an AI-generated video of Obama being arrested in the Oval Office:
Donald Trump reposts AI-generated video depicting Barack Obama being arrested. pic.twitter.com/r7dBKjHrAB
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) July 21, 2025
This is just off-the-charts stupid and offensive. But it shows how rattled Trump is.
