Trump marks one-year assassination attempt anniversary at Club World Cup final
'It was an upset today I guess,' Mr Trump told reporters after flying back to Washington following Chelsea's victory. 'But it was a great match.'
THE TROPHY IS OURS!!! 🔵 pic.twitter.com/FhvHlgNO3c
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) July 13, 2025
Mr Trump and first lady Melania Trump were greeted with cheers as they arrived at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey just ahead of the pre-match performance by musical artists Robbie Williams and Laura Pausini. But the president got a smattering of boos when he was briefly shown on the stadium's mega-screen.
Chelsea spoiled PSG's bid to win its fourth major title of the season, dominating throughout the match and racing to a 3-0 lead in the first half.
Sunday's match fell on the first anniversary of the assassination attempt Mr Trump survived in Butler, Pennsylvania, while campaigning for president.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino, left, and US president Donald Trump carried the championship trophy on the pitch (Frank Franklin II/AP)
'It remains my firm conviction that God alone saved me that day for a righteous purpose: to restore our beloved republic to greatness and to rescue our nation from those who seek its ruin,' Mr Trump said in a statement released on Sunday night after he returned to Washington.
He also hailed doctors, emergency services personnel and rallygoers who helped guide other attendees to safety, saying: 'These men and women arrived at the rally grounds as ordinary Americans, but left as heroes.'
The international sporting match also offered an opportunity for Mr Trump and aides to huddle with Qatari government officials.
Mr Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff, in a brief exchange with reporters ahead of the match, said he remained 'hopeful' about Gaza ceasefire and hostage negotiations.
Mr Trump, right, presented the Golden Ball award for the competition's best player to Chelsea's Cole Palmer (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Mr Witkoff, who joined Mr Trump for the tournament finale, appeared to nod affirmatively when asked by reporters if he planned on meeting with senior officials from the Gulf nation of Qatar, which is serving as an intermediary with Hamas in the talks, during the match.
'I'll be meeting them,' Mr Witkoff said.
Sporting events have made up the bulk of Mr Trump's trips in the US since taking office this year.
In addition to his visit to the football this weekend, he has attended the Super Bowl in New Orleans, the Daytona 500 in Florida, UFC fights in Miami and Newark, New Jersey, and the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Herald Scotland
24 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
At long last, John Swinney has seen what grown-up politics is about
Mr Swinney and his fellow SNP ministers routinely like to churn out anti-Trump rhetoric seemingly because they think that'll garner them a few votes. But the reality of grown-up politics in which Mr Swinney has been obliged to indulge for just a few hours is that dialogue, pragmatism and diplomacy are key weapons in the armoury of a successful politician, not the kind of puerile sidelines sniping that's characteristic of the [[SNP]]. [[Donald Trump]] isn't my cup of tea either, but let's not forget that he leads the world's largest economy. I'm certain Keir Starmer has multiple reservations about Mr Trump, yet he, unlike Mr Swinney, heads up a sovereign state and has both a domestic and international remit – he can't wallow in Swinney-style futile populist virtue-signalling. Martin Redfern, Melrose. Knocking Labour off course Labour is on the way to running out of road for its long-term ambitions. All the MPs were elected on the same ticket with a destination in view and a driver to steer them in the right direction. They all want to reach the same destination but many of them differ with the driver on how fast they should proceed and what is the best route to reach their goal. It all boils down to how much they trust the driver and whether they can accept his gradualist approach. In today's world it would appear that everyone knows better than the people in charge and would like to impose their opinions on the ones whose skill got them on to the bus of government. In every walk of life you have to tailor your ambitions to fit in with the means at your disposal to hit those heights. Furthermore no one wishes to be compared to reckless teenagers who scream from the back of the bus for the driver to go faster, to take chances or to take a more direct route. Paying attention to excited MPs could lead to totalling the whole project the Government is trying to put in place. Do those MPs really want to jeopardise their chances of a second term in government with their short-sighted perspectives by showing that they cannot see the woods for the trees? Failure to take the global picture into consideration will run their bus off the road with regard to the Government's ambitions to improve the running of the UK for every level of the electorate. There is an old Roman tale about how the different organs and functions of the human body need to work together in harmony to achieve its desired results. It would be well worth the time of Labour MPs to reflect upon that. Denis Bruce, Bishopbriggs. Read more letters Why not protest something important? So activists have been dangling themselves off the Forth Road Bridge over another issue which is of marginal, if any, concern to the rest of us ("Police arrest 10 Greenpeace activists after bridge protest", July 27). When have we seen such activists glueing themselves to the highway, roosting on motorway gantries, or dangling from bridges and buildings over anything that matters to the Many? Over out of control immigration? The housing shortage? The cost of living crisis? Lack of opportunities for our young people? The epidemic of stabbings and other lawlessness? The answer, of course, is that the narcissistic Few are completely indifferent to the plight of ordinary people. Whether they perform as Just Stop Oil, Climate Rebellion, Stand Up To Racism, or under whatever name, the extreme demands and their callous disregard for the interests of the Many are always the same. Otto Inglis, Crossgates, Fife. Such a sad life story Richard Holloway's life story ("The Bishop who abandoned God", July 27) is one of the saddest I have read. He is caught up in an orthodox version of the Christian world, and seemingly missing the most basic and fundamental uniqueness of this faith; put off by tradition and hypocrisy that he encountered in the various stages of his religious career. It strikes me that his experience of religious life is strikingly similar to the religious pomposity of the Pharisees of the 1st century, when Jesus was alive. Their religion was one of rules and regulations, burdensome traditions and rituals that were impossible to follow. They made life so difficult for the layperson, and were 100% convinced they were right. Their superiority and controlling natures led them eventually to crucify Jesus Christ, whom they hated with a vengeance, because he did not fit in with their version of religion. Richard Holloway appears to be very knowledgeable about various religions, yet he clearly has missed the whole theme of the Bible, that God, the Creator, loves his creatures with an unending love, yet seeks truth and justice from his people. A God whose love is so immense that, to deal with the root problem of the human race, "sin", he allowed his one and only Son, Jesus, to die on that cross... taking all the pain and sorrow and evil of the world upon himself. This is, I admit, a profound mystery; yet it is the foundational truth that resonates throughout the whole Bible. This same God does not ask us to "obey rules" or to "follow religious traditions"... He asks us to trust him, and to commit our lives to him... he longs for a relationship with us humans; longs that we speak with him, listen to him, and experience the love, the joy, and the peace that comes with him. Trying, as so many do, like Richard Holloway, to follow Christ's teaching without following Christ, is actually impossible, for his teaching demands impossible standards that only he can help us meet, in the strength he provides. I could go on and on, for Richard Holloway's story is so incredibly sad. He says "religion left me"; but Jesus Christ says, "I came to seek out and to rescue those who are lost in this world" – and that is all of us. He has not yet given up on Richard Holloway, and my earnest prayer is that he will truly find the Lord, who died for him, and who was raised from the dead. Now, that truth makes Jesus unique, and worth following. May God bless Richard Holloway, and all who are yearning for truth, and true fulfilment; these are found in God himself. Alasdair HB Fyfe, Carmunnock. Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh (Image: Newsquest) Reasons behind Russia's actions Ronald Cameron (Letters, July 27) says that "Ukraine has come close to destroying the Russian war machine". Mr Cameron has got it the wrong way round. Russia has come close to destroying Ukraine' s army. Ukraine is in the position Germany was in in 1944, fighting losing battles, the war effectively lost, but continuing to lash out with deadly but strategically pointless missile strikes. The writing is on the wall for President Zelenskyy and his gang. Mr Cameron repeats the false claim that Russia is going to invade Nato's eastern border, but the fact is that Russian fears invasion from the West more than we fear them. In 1812 Napoleon burned Moscow. In 1854 Britain and France invaded Crimea. In 1918 Germany invaded Russia and Russia lost one million square miles of territory at the subsequent Treaty of Brest Litovsk. Britain, Canada and the United States invaded Russia between 1918 and 1925. In 1941 German forces were at the gates of Moscow and on their retreat destroyed virtually everything. President Eisenhower, then Supreme Commander Allied Forces in Europe, wrote: "When we flew into Russia, in 1945, I did not see a house standing between the western borders of the country and the area around Moscow." Declassified official documents record that in February 1997 the then Prime Minister John Major said: "If I were Russian I too would be concerned that Nato might move up to Russia's borders." Since then Nato has expanded to 32 countries. Russia warned repeatedly from 2008 that Ukraine's admission to Nato was a red line. The coup of 2014 which brought a nationalist government hostile to Russia to power resulted in a civil war between the eastern Russian-speaking provinces and the Kiev regime, which bombed and shelled them for eight years. Russia invaded in their support and to prevent Nato forces on a border which geographically is difficult to defend. Flying the Ukraine flag is risible. William Loneskie, Lauder. • Ronald Cameron contradicts himself. First he writes that "we" (presumably the UK) must do "everything possible" to support Ukraine, but then "there are plenty of better things to spend the money on". Come on, money can't be spent twice, so which is it to be ? George Morton, Rosyth. Off pat Rab McNeil's excellent article on Dougie MacLean ('Singer made every ex-pat yearn for home … and a pint', July 27) was interesting but its headline ignored the fact that an ex-soldier is someone who used to be a soldier, an ex-teacher is someone who used to be teacher and an ex-pat is someone who used to be a pat. If text space is so scarce that an abbreviation for expatriate is needed, it is expat, no hyphen being involved. Peter Dryburgh, Edinburgh.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Nobel Peace Prize winner? Trump faces serious challenges on conflicts
Serving both Republican and Democratic administrations, including under the presidencies of George W Bush and Bill Clinton, Ross for decades was one of those tasked with navigating the most dangerous of diplomatic waters. It was interesting then to hear him opine last week on current US President Donald Trump's diplomatic negotiating style. 'There is a difference between producing cease-fires and pauses and ending wars,' noted Ross, speaking to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). 'The former stops fighting, the latter deals with the causes of the conflict and forges agreements that resolve the differences - or at least gets both sides to adjust their thinking and produces a modus vivendi.' Ross's comments came in a week that saw Trump issue a deadline of '10 or 12 days' to Russian president Vladimir Putin to agree to a cease fire over Ukraine. This weekend that agreement seems further away than ever after Trump said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to 'be positioned in the appropriate regions' in response to 'highly provocative' comments by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. (Image: Jehad Alshrafi) Ross's remarks also came in a week when Washington's allies, France, the UK and Canada, broke with Trump to force a diplomatic shift on Gaza. For despite the US leader's boastful promises on bringing calm to the region as with his claim to be able to bring peace to Russia's war with Ukraine within 24 hours of returning to office, all of Trump's peace-making promises to date have been colliding with a more complicated reality on the ground. In short, Trump's supposed prowess on the peace-making front is not all it's cracked up to be, a point wryly made by Susan B. Glasser of the New Yorker magazine a few days ago. 'Wars, it turns out, do not end magically because Trump clicks his heels and demands that they do so,' wrote Glasser in a recent column. 'Wars we end' AS even the most cursory of glances across the global geo-political landscape will quickly confirm, the prevailing reality is a far cry from when Trump in his January 20, 2025, inaugural address proclaimed that 'we will measure our success…by the wars we end.' And 'my proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker.' Despite the obvious shortcomings to date in this regard though, America's peacemaker-in-chief - in characteristic mode - has continued to claim great success, a point he was keen to emphasise during his recent trip to Scotland. 'We have many ceasefires going on. If I weren't around, you would have six major wars going on. India would be fighting with Pakistan,' Trump insisted in one of his speeches. As Trump sees it, should that much coveted Nobel Peace Prize come his way then he is only too deserving of it. 'If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds,' Trump said in October. Trump's ever loyal mouthpiece, White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, never misses an opportunity to remind the world that it's 'well past time' that the president received the prize. Just these past days Leavitt at a press briefing listed the peace deals the Trump administration has supposedly brokered since taking office. Thailand and Cambodia were the most recent of Trump's peacemaker bona fides. Read more Tears and trauma: David Pratt in Ukraine DAVID PRATT ON THE WORLD: Whatever happens in Brazil's resentful and rancorous election, the result will have major repercussions for us all David Pratt in Ukraine: It's hard to comprehend this level of destruction David Pratt: Kremlin's protestations have a hollow ring as atrocities mount up 'The two countries were engaged in a deadly conflict that had displaced more than 300,000 people until President Trump stepped in to put an end to it,' Leavitt insisted. Other conflicts cited by Leavitt included, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) India and Pakistan and Serbia and Kosovo, that were all claimed to have been 'resolved' on Trump's watch. One curious outcome in at least two instances, however, was that in the cases of both Pakistan and Cambodia no sooner were hostilities ceased than their leaders announced that they would nominate Trump for the Peace Prize. Interestingly too in Thailand and Cambodia's case, Trump set a 19% levy on imports from both countries, lower than the 36% they originally faced, after earlier this month he threatened to block trade deals with them unless they ended their deadly border clash. Which brings us to another significant factor that many say undermines Trump's claims to be a peacemaker and mediator and instead casts him as global agitator – trade wars and tariffs. Economy plunge LAST week Trump plunged the global economy into a new round of mercantile competition after hitting dozens of US trading partners with tariffs while formalising recent deals with others, including the UK and EU. While such competition is nothing new in itself, as a Financial Times (FT) editorial on Friday pointed out, in Trump's case they are often flagrantly politically motivated. On the one hand Trump portrays the tariffs he has ordered on US trading partners as a simple rebalancing of global trading that is skewed against America. But as the FT points out, 'what is striking, however, is how some of the harshest new measures reflect blatantly political aims - shaped by presidential whim.' The newspaper cites the example of Canada, which has angered Trump with its own plans to recognise a Palestinian state making it 'very hard' says Trump to reach a trade deal. The FT also highlights India, already hit by a high tariff rate but which Washington has threatened with an additional penalty while rebuking Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government for 'buying Russian oil and weapons'. Trump's stance says the FT also appears to reflect his dislike of India's membership of the Brics' bloc of emerging heavyweight markets and developing nations. During a summit of the 11 emerging economies last month, he threatened an additional 10 % tariff on any countries aligning themselves with the Brics' 'anti-American policies'. More than 100 days on from Trump's 'Liberation Day' set of initial tariffs, many say a new global trading order is taking shape, one that The Economist magazine recently referred to as 'a system of imperial preference.' This, argue some analysts, only adds incendiary economic fuel to an already destabilised world raising the risk that such trade wars might become shooting wars. Allison Carnegie is Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and specialises in global governance and international institutions. Writing recently in the widely respected Foreign Affairs magazine, she said that Trump's trade wars are hardly without precedent and that while 'Trump may think his tariff regime will make the United States richer, safer, and stronger… history suggests it will do just the opposite.' 'In the near term, countries can benefit from wielding trade as a cudgel. But in the long term, trade wars leave almost everyone worse off,' Carnegie notes. 'When countries frequently use economic leverage to secure concessions from vulnerable partners, investment and economic growth go down. Political instability, meanwhile, goes up. States that chafe at economic coercion sometimes turn to their militaries in order to fight back. Countries that once cooperated because of commercial ties turn into competitors. Even close allies drift apart,' Carnegie noted. Few doubt the inherent difficulty in ending protracted conflicts like those in the Middle East and now in Ukraine. Both broke out during the previous administration enabling Trump to dub them 'Biden's wars'. 'Biden will drive us into World War III, and we're closer to World War III than anybody can imagine,' said the same Trump that on Friday moved US nuclear submarines in response to a social media post by Medvedev. On his presidential campaign trail, Trump often railed against Biden and such 'endless wars' and 'forever wars' and mused that he could resolve them. 'He has made comments on all of them that this could be done quickly or easily and that there are solutions to these problems," says Aaron David Miller, a State Department diplomat in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations - now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'And yet, he has not been successful in even identifying what I would consider to be a potentially effective strategy for managing or let alone resolving them. And therein lies the challenge,' Miller told broadcaster ABC News in recent interview. (Image: AP) 'Biden's wars' SIX months after Trump's inaugural address proclaiming that his presidency would bring 'a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent and totally unpredictable,' and denouncing 'Biden's wars', the data tells a very different story. For in that six months, Trump has already launched nearly as many airstrikes on foreign nations as Biden did within four years. A huge part of this of course was 'Operation Midnight Hammer' when Trump decided that he would order use of 30,000-pound weapons against Iran's nuclear sites. According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), an independent international data collection monitoring group, since Trump returned to the White House, the US has carried out at least 529 bombings in more than 240 locations in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. His predecessor's administration launched 555 over its entire four years. 'Trump's preference for engagement begs the question: Does this contradict his promise to end America's wars - or are the foreign strikes how he wishes to keep that promise?' ACLED president Clionadh Raleigh said in a statement cited by the Independent last month. 'The recent airstrikes on Iran's nuclear sites have been framed as a major turning point in US foreign policy. But if you take a step back, they don't stand out - they fit,' Raleigh added. Right now when not riling other nations through his own tariffs and trade wars, ending the fighting in Ukraine and Gaza by far poses Trump's biggest diplomatic challenge. In both cases he has his work cut out, not least say some in that he has appointed the same man, his friend Steve Witkoff, as the US envoy for all three sets of peace talks, involving Ukraine-Russia, Israel-Hamas and Israel-Iran. As the New York Times columnist Max Boot, recently observed this 'would test the powers of even a veteran diplomat' … and 'the task is all the more onerous given that Witkoff is a real estate developer with no background in diplomacy.' Meanwhile as Gaza bleeds and starves, Trump diplomatically muddles through as was poignantly described recently by another American columnist, Susan B. Glasser of the New Yorker. 'In a summer of horror for Gaza, it's hard to recall the unfulfilled promises of last winter, when Trump bragged, in near world-historical terms, of the 'EPIC' ceasefire that he and his team had helped broker,' wrote Glasser recently. 'Now, as Trump stands by and does close to nothing at all, what can we do but wish that he had, for once, been right?' Negotiating style MANY critics maintain that a huge part of the problem with Trump's negotiating style is that it fluctuates depending on the current state of his personal relationships with other world leaders. As his second term progresses Trump's priorities would seem to become more apparent by the day startling observers and US allies alike. Already there have been calls for US intervention in Panama, Canada and as recently as May, Trump announced that he didn't rule out employing military force to seize Greenland. He has also proposed a $1 trillion US military budget for 2026 - a 13.4 % increase - and again took action to withdraw US support from the UN. Critics continue to accuse him of shaping American foreign policy determined primarily by a desire to pursue his own vendettas toward those that rebuff him and in doing so use whatever means, economic or otherwise at his disposal. As Dennis Ross, rightly pointed out recently, there is indeed 'a difference between producing ceasefires and pauses and ending wars,'. To achieve the latter, patience and lengthy negotiations are a prerequisite, and that, as we all know by now, has never been part of the Trump playbook.
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
Donald Trump – peacemaker-in-chief or a global agitator?
Serving both Republican and Democratic administrations, including under the presidencies of George W Bush and Bill Clinton, Ross for decades was one of those tasked with navigating the most dangerous of diplomatic waters. It was interesting then to hear him opine last week on current US president Donald Trump's diplomatic negotiating style. 'There is a difference between producing ceasefires and pauses and ending wars,' noted Ross, speaking to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). 'The former stops fighting, the latter deals with the causes of the conflict and forges agreements that resolve the differences – or at least gets both sides to adjust their thinking and produces a modus vivendi.' READ MORE: John Swinney brands Gaza as 'genocide' for first time as Fringe show disrupted Ross's comments came in a week that saw Trump issue a deadline of '10 or 12 days' to Russian president Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire over Ukraine. This weekend, that agreement seems further away than ever after Trump said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to 'be positioned in the appropriate regions' in response to 'highly provocative' comments by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. Ross's remarks also came in a week when Washington's allies, France, the UK and Canada, broke with Trump to force a diplomatic shift on Gaza. For despite the US leader's boastful promises on bringing calm to the region – as with his claim to be able to bring peace to Russia's war with Ukraine within 24 hours of returning to office – all of Trump's peace-making promises to date have been colliding with a more complicated reality on the ground. Ukraine In short, Trump's supposed prowess on the peace-making front is not all it's cracked up to be, a point wryly made by Susan B Glasser of the New Yorker magazine a few days ago. 'Wars, it turns out, do not end magically because Trump clicks his heels and demands that they do so,' wrote Glasser in a recent column. As even the most cursory of glances across the global geo-political landscape will quickly confirm, the prevailing reality is a far cry from when Trump, in his January 20, 2025 inaugural address, proclaimed that 'we will measure our success … by the wars we end'. And 'my proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker.' Despite the obvious shortcomings to date in this regard, though, America's peacemaker-in-chief – in characteristic mode – has continued to claim great success, a point he was keen to emphasise during his recent trip to Scotland. 'We have many ceasefires going on. If I weren't around, you would have six major wars going on. India would be fighting with Pakistan,' Trump insisted in one of his speeches. As Trump sees it, should that much-coveted Nobel Peace Prize come his way, then he is only too deserving of it. 'If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds,' Trump said in October. Trump's ever-loyal mouthpiece, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, never misses an opportunity to remind the world that it's 'well past time' that the president received the prize. Just these past days, Leavitt, at a press briefing, listed the peace deals that the Trump administration has supposedly brokered since taking office. Thailand and Cambodia were the most recent of Trump's peacemaker bona fides. 'The two countries were engaged in a deadly conflict that had displaced more than 300,000 people until President Trump stepped in to put an end to it,' Leavitt insisted. Other conflicts cited by Leavitt included Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), India and Pakistan, and Serbia and Kosovo – all claimed to have been 'resolved' on Trump's watch. One curious outcome in at least two instances, however, was that in the cases of both Pakistan and Cambodia, no sooner were hostilities ceased than their leaders announced that they would nominate Trump for the Peace Prize. Interestingly, too, in Thailand and Cambodia's case, Trump set a 19% levy on imports from both countries, lower than the 36% they originally faced, after earlier this month he threatened to block trade deals with them unless they ended their deadly border clash. Which brings us to another significant factor that many say undermines Trump's claims to be a peacemaker and mediator and instead casts him as a global agitator – trade wars and tariffs. Last week, Trump plunged the global economy into a new round of mercantile competition after hitting dozens of US trading partners with tariffs while formalising recent deals with others, including the UK and EU. While such competition is nothing new in itself, as a Financial Times (FT) editorial on Friday pointed out, in Trump's case, they are often flagrantly politically motivated. On the one hand, Trump portrays the tariffs he has ordered on US trading partners as a simple rebalancing of global trading that is skewed against America. But as the FT points out, 'what is striking, however, is how some of the harshest new measures reflect blatantly political aims – shaped by presidential whim'. The newspaper cites the example of Canada, which has angered Trump with its own plans to recognise a Palestinian state, making it 'very hard', says Trump, to reach a trade deal. The FT also highlights India, already hit by a high tariff rate but which Washington has threatened with an additional penalty while rebuking prime minister Narendra Modi's government for 'buying Russian oil and weapons'. Trump's stance, says the FT, also appears to reflect his dislike of India's membership of the Brics bloc of emerging heavyweight markets and developing nations. During a summit of the 11 emerging economies last month, he threatened an additional 10% tariff on any countries aligning themselves with the Brics's 'anti-American policies'. More than 100 days on from Trump's 'Liberation Day' set of initial tariffs, many say a new global trading order is taking shape, one that The Economist magazine recently referred to as 'a system of imperial preference'. This, argue some analysts, only adds incendiary economic fuel to an already destabilised world, raising the risk that such trade wars might become shooting wars. Allison Carnegie is professor of political science at Columbia University and specialises in global governance and international institutions. Writing recently in the widely respected Foreign Affairs magazine, she said that Trump's trade wars are hardly without precedent and that while 'Trump may think his tariff regime will make the United States richer, safer, and stronger … history suggests it will do just the opposite'. 'In the near term, countries can benefit from wielding trade as a cudgel. But in the long term, trade wars leave almost everyone worse off,' Carnegie notes. 'When countries frequently use economic leverage to secure concessions from vulnerable partners, investment and economic growth go down. Political instability, meanwhile, goes up. States that chafe at economic coercion sometimes turn to their militaries in order to fight back. Countries that once co-operated because of commercial ties turn into competitors. Even close allies drift apart,' Carnegie noted. Few doubt the inherent difficulty in ending protracted conflicts like those in the Middle East and now in Ukraine. Both broke out during the previous administration, enabling Trump to dub them 'Biden's wars'. 'Biden will drive us into World War III, and we're closer to World War III than anybody can imagine,' said the same Trump who on Friday moved US nuclear submarines in response to a social media post by Medvedev. On his presidential campaign trail, Trump often railed against Biden and such 'endless wars' and 'forever wars' and mused that he could resolve them. 'He has made comments on all of them that this could be done quickly or easily and that there are solutions to these problems,' says Aaron David Miller, a State Department diplomat in the Clinton and George W Bush administrations – now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'And yet, he has not been successful in even identifying what I would consider to be a potentially effective strategy for managing, let alone resolving them. And therein lies the challenge,' Miller told broadcaster ABC News in a recent interview. Six months after Trump's inaugural address proclaiming that his presidency would bring 'a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent and totally unpredictable', and denouncing 'Biden's wars', the data tells a very different story. For in those six months, Trump has already launched nearly as many airstrikes on foreign nations as Biden did within four years. A huge part of this, of course, was 'Operation Midnight Hammer', when Trump decided that he would order the use of 30,000-pound weapons against Iran's nuclear sites. According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), an independent international data collection monitoring group, since Trump returned to the White House, the US has carried out at least 529 bombings in more than 240 locations in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. His predecessor's administration launched 555 over its entire four years. 'Trump's preference for engagement begs the question: Does this contradict his promise to end America's wars – or are the foreign strikes how he wishes to keep that promise?' ACLED president Clionadh Raleigh said in a statement cited by The Independent last month. 'The recent airstrikes on Iran's nuclear sites have been framed as a major turning point in US foreign policy. But if you take a step back, they don't stand out – they fit,' Raleigh added. Right now, when not riling other nations through his own tariffs and trade wars, ending the fighting in Ukraine and Gaza by far poses Trump's biggest diplomatic challenge. In both cases, he has his work cut out, not least, say some, in that he has appointed the same man, his friend Steve Witkoff, as the US envoy for all three sets of peace talks, involving Ukraine-Russia, Israel-Hamas and Israel-Iran. As Max Boot recently observed in The Washington Post, this 'would test the powers of even a veteran diplomat' … and 'the task is all the more onerous given that Witkoff is a real-estate developer with no background in diplomacy'. Meanwhile, as Gaza bleeds and starves, Trump diplomatically muddles through, as was poignantly described recently by Glasser of The New Yorker. 'In a summer of horror for Gaza, it's hard to recall the unfulfilled promises of last winter, when Trump bragged, in near world-historical terms, of the 'EPIC' ceasefire that he and his team had helped broker,' wrote Glasser recently. 'Now, as Trump stands by and does close to nothing at all, what can we do but wish that he had, for once, been right?' Many critics maintain that a huge part of the problem with Trump's negotiating style is that it fluctuates depending on the current state of his personal relationships with other world leaders. As his second term progresses, Trump's priorities would seem to become more apparent by the day, startling observers and US allies alike. Already there have been calls for US intervention in Panama, Canada and as recently as May, Trump announced that he didn't rule out employing military force to seize Greenland. He has also proposed a $1 trillion US military budget for 2026 – a 13.4 % increase – and again took action to withdraw US support from the UN. Critics continue to accuse him of shaping American foreign policy determined primarily by a desire to pursue his own vendettas toward those that rebuff him and in doing so use whatever means – economic or otherwise – at his disposal. As Ross rightly pointed out, there is indeed 'a difference between producing ceasefires and pauses and ending wars'. To achieve the latter, patience and lengthy negotiations are a prerequisite, and that, as we all know by now, has never been part of the Trump playbook.
