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Trump claimed that China would "own" the United States if Biden becomes president and that Americans "would have to learn to speak Chinese." The president riffed on what he called his tough approach to China and the deterioration of his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the coronavirus pandemic during a morning interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, who is also a contributing opinion columnist for The Washington Post. Hewitt noted that Trump's national security adviser Robert C. O'Brien had recently said that China would prefer Biden to win in November. Trump agreed that Beijing would rather deal...

President Trump is questioning his administration’s aggressive strategy in Venezuela following the failure of a U.S.-backed effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro, complaining he was misled about how easy it would be to replace the socialist strongman with a young opposition figure, according to administration officials and White House advisers. The president’s dissatisfaction has crystallized around national security adviser John Bolton and what Trump has groused is an interventionist stance at odds with his view that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires. Trump has said in recent days that Bolton wants to get him “into a war”...

The legions of protesters demonstrating at a leaders summit here have unfurled a sea of standard-issue signs, ranging from “No to Imperialism” to “Yankees Go Home.” But a newer rallying cry also appeared on a smattering of homemade posters. “Mohammed bin Salman, Assassin!” For Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Group of 20 leaders summit in Buenos Aires has amounted to a key test: his first appearance at a major international event since the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi who was a frequent critic of the kingdom’s de facto leader.

Washington Post correspondent Anne Gearan must think that President Donald Trump is in possession of amazing predictive powers. Trump has been talking about renegotiating a new NAFTA deal since the time when he was a candidate for president and Gearan thinks that his real purpose of that deal was to change the subject from Senator John McCain soon after his passing in 2018. Yes, Gearan actually made this claim about the purpose of the new NAFTA deal on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports on Monday:

Western leaders warned Syria on Saturday that they could launch further missile strikes if chemical weapons are used again, while the pre-dawn attacks were denounced by Damascus and its backers as illegal actions that would carry repercussions. But one major worry appeared to ease: That the coordinated attacks by the United States, France and Britain late Friday could have set off a direct confrontation with Syria’s most powerful military partner, Russia. At the Pentagon, the director of the Joint Staff, Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, said the more than 100 missile strikes delivered a blow to the “heart” of Syria’s chemical...

Hillary Clinton's weekend interview with the FBI stands as a perfect symbol of what is probably her biggest liability heading into the fall election: A lot of people say they don't trust her. [Snip] "Trust is the glue that holds our democracy together," Clinton said last week as part of a direct effort to address the issue in this small lull between the end of primary voting and the start of full-on campaigning for the fall vote. "I take this seriously, as someone who is asking for your votes, and I personally know I have work to do on this...

Retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor plans to vote for Hillary Clinton for president this year, but not because the longtime Republican and former top aide to then-Gen. David Petraeus has had a political conversion. He just thinks Republican Donald Trump is too dangerous to be president. “It will be the first Democratic presidential candidate I’ve voted for in my adult life,” said Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University. Clinton’s campaign hopes that there are many more national-­security-minded Republicans and independents who would vote for her, even grudgingly, rather than see Trump win the White House.

There is a real chance that Hillary Clinton will have clinched a majority of delegates, and the Democratic nomination, before polls close in the California primary late in the evening of June 7. But losing one of the country's most diverse and Democratic states to Bernie Sanders would be such a damaging way to end this tumultuous primary season that Clinton is planning to spend millions there over the next two weeks. This isn't exactly what Clinton had hoped to be doing as her party's July convention in Philadelphia approaches. Clinton has deployed a massive effort to keep a once-loyal...

Hillary Clinton's declining personal image, ongoing battle to break free of the challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders and struggle to adapt to an anti-establishment mood among voters this year have become caution signs for her campaign and the focus of new efforts to fortify her position as she prepares for a bruising general election. More than a dozen Clinton ­allies identified weaknesses in her candidacy that may erode her prospects of defeating Donald Trump, including poor showings with young women, untrustworthiness, unlikability and a lackluster style on the stump. Supporters also worry that she is a conventional candidate in an...

Friday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” national politics correspondent for The Washington Post Anne Gearan said the Hillary Clinton campaign’s plan to reintroduce her through smaller personal events and gatherings in living rooms across America is “sort of ridiculous on its face.”

This had to be one of the more telling moments about the emptiness of Hillary Clinton's campaign. When Mika Brzezinski asked Morning Joe panel members today to describe Hillary's message "in ten seconds or less," they burst into laughter [see, e.g., screencap below of Cokie Roberts]. "Why is that funny?" demanded Mika, surely knowing the answer: that Hillary stands for nothing much more than "it's my turn, dammit!" But that didn't stop Anne Gearan of the Washington Post from piping up, claiming "I can answer that. It's 'I'm on your side and they're not." As Newsbuster Ken Shepherd has detailed,...

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales personally asked the German government not to release a terrorist accused of killing a Navy diver, but was rebuffed, the Bush administration said Wednesday. Mohammed Ali Hamadi was freed on parole by German authorities after serving 19 years of a life sentence for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA plane during which a U.S. Navy diver, Robert Dean Stethem, 23, was killed. The 17-day ordeal riveted the United States and brought Middle East terrorism home for many Americans. "We did, at senior levels at the U.S. government, contact the German authorities to emphasize that...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether the Pledge of Allegiance recited by generations of American schoolchildren is an unconstitutional blending of church and state. The case sets up an emotional showdown over God in the public schools and in public life. It will settle whether the phrase "one nation under God" will remain a part of the patriotic oath as it is recited in most classrooms. The court will hear the case sometime next year. The justices agreed to hear an appeal involving a California atheist whose 9-year-old daughter, like most elementary school children, hears...