Russia

Plus: Larry Fitzgerald reminds us how great Jerry Rice was, exaggerated crime on TV, and diplomatic blunders.

Plus: Larry Fitzgerald reminds us how great Jerry Rice was, exaggerated crime on TV, and diplomatic blunders.

Plus: Larry Fitzgerald reminds us how great Jerry Rice was, exaggerated crime on TV, and diplomatic blunders.

Not by his critics but by his closest advisers.

Did you miss any of these details?

On November 25, Russian military forces opened fire on three Ukrainian ships off the coast of Crimea, rammed one of them, and seized all three. The ships were manned by 23 crew members. Ukrainian authorities say between three and six were injured.

Vladimir Putin’s deliberate provocation is important. What’s more important is the U.S. response.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

The outgoing U.N. ambassador calls attacks on ships an ‘arrogant act’ and violation of international law.

For Vladimir Putin, Interpol is just another tool.

Russian operatives may be feeding preposterous fictions to gullible Americans on Facebook, but at least our countrymen don’t believe in “statuesque superhuman blonde Baltic snipers in tight white outfits.” In his invaluable daily digest, Windows on Eurasia, the Russia scholar Paul Goble reminds…

Russia has been in violation of the Cold War-era treaty for at least four years.

Old falsehoods never die, they just (hopefully) fade away.

Bellingcat’s amateurs excel at the intelligence game.

Gary Saul Morson on the literary legacy of 19th-century Russian revolutionary terrorism.

It's not just about helping Assad; it's about disrupting American interests.

But where’s the crime?

Go with the ‘Goldilocks approach.’

To no one’s surprise, Russia is the main suspect in the mysterious attacks on U.S. diplomatic personnel in Cuba. Since 2016, 26 people at our embassy in Havana have experienced sudden and severe cognitive difficulties, and intelligence officials believe it’s due to attacks engineered by agents of…

Plus, Cleveland's greatest bar chain turns 35.

What does the kooky libertarian see in the authoritarian Putin regime?

Cathy Young remembers the late Russian dissident whose mockery of communism earned him exile.

It's Trump's economy against the rest of the world—and as of now, America is winning.

The meeting that launched a thousand controversies.

"This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics—and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!” So tweeted President Donald Trump on August 5. He was referring to members of his immediate family and his campaign team having met with Russian…

The Colorado Republican introduced a tough bill in April that's picked up steam since the Helsinki summit.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

“We want to do something that changes behavior,” says Majority whip John Cornyn.

Gary Saul Morson on the rise and fall of the first Russian populists.

Did Trump’s coddling of Putin damage his approval rating?

What we can learn about modern Russia from a century-old massacre.

The government seeks to learn from the events of 2016.

The pace has been dizzying. With all the walk backs, reversals, dropped contractions, and various obfuscations: Russia week has been Peak Trump. Herewith some quick takeaways.

Did the president’s “team” actually discuss handing over U.S. citizens to Kremlin interrogators?

A muted reaction to Helsinki from the GOP Congress.

Politics is rarely edifying, much less elegant. And the mayhem over President Trump’s comments after meeting with Vladimir Putin and the response of his adversaries is an example of just how bad politics can get.

Is there anything with a shorter shelf life than the official talking points of the Trump White House? For Donald Trump, it’s the script to go off script, and any statement he makes today will be altered, contradicted, or undone tomorrow.

Donald Trump has long been loath to concede that operatives of the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election, feeling as he does that the media like to talk about it mainly to suggest that he only defeated Hillary Clinton thanks to the aid of foreign troublemakers. It’s…

Schumer-led effort calls on Trump to refuse Putin's request to interview Americans.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Senator says 'there is real value in having a broad bipartisan statement' even if the measure has no force of law.

Trump's "I misspoke" clarification is even worse than his original answer.

What Trump actually did is bad enough.

The Senate majority leader did not mention the president by name, and in response to a question later said, “I'm not here to critique anyone else. I'm here to speak for myself.”

As if weren’t enough that Donald Trump waffled about whether Russia has been interfering with U.S. affairs as Vladimir Putin stood next to him on Monday, his dissembling came on the same day a Russian woman was charged in a U.S. district court with interfering in U.S. affairs.

A new new low.

The first president without the ability to code-switch.

The Arizona senator leads a chorus of GOP condemnations of the president’s press conference with Vladimir Putin.

The Donald Trump presidency somehow reaches a new low.

Much to lose, little to gain.

In wake of a new indictment against Russian agents, Dan Coats warns that Moscow’s 'actions are persistent, they’re pervasive, and they’re meant to undermine America’s democracy.'

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Ahead of the meeting between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are reaffirming support for sanctions levied against Russia after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Intelligence committee affirms assessment issued in January 2017 that Putin approved the influence campaign.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Chris Deaton and Ethan Epstein join host Charlie Sykes to discuss what's next for the Democratic party now that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may represent its future, as well as President Trump's relationship with three very different men: Kim Jong un, Vladimir…

In a potential Trump-Putin meeting, senators would want the president to talk about Syria, Ukraine, and election meddling.

Plus, when 'all you can eat' goes wrong.

Robert Zubrin reviews Timothy Snyder's 'The Road to Unfreedom'

The administration has been tough on the Putin regime but the president himself has been inconsistent.

The tension between peaceable nations and the Russian Federation intensifies with each passing week. It is the path Vladimir Putin has chosen. The latest development is more serious than it may sound: Russian billionaire and Putin crony Roman Abramovich has had his visa renewal application…

How Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was forced to fake his death.

The secretary of state tells a House committee that much work must be done.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Is there a constitutional confrontation in the offing?

One year ago—on May 17, 2017—deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein signed Order 3915-2017. To “ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” he appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller to be special counsel for the…

How fake news enters the mainstream.

There is no proof of a quid pro quo with a government wary of "irritating the top American officials."

The report is from last year.

UK and France join U.S.-led effort.

Tumult continues to plague the National Security Council and President Trump’s broader natsec team. On Wednesday, deputy national security adviser for strategy Nadia Schadlow tendered her resignation, just a few months after being tapped for the position to succeed Dina Powell. Schadlow had been a…

Plus, the British Virgin Islands Marlins?

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren discusses the latest with the Mueller investigation, what experts are saying about the raid of his personal attorney Michael Cohen's office and hotel room, and how new National Security Advisor John Bolton is shaking things up.

The U.N. ambassador slams Putin’s regime and Iran for abetting Bashar al-Assad.

Horrific images from the aftermath of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria are once again circulating online. The scene of this gassing is the eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus. Both the location and the timing of this apparent war crime are symbolically important. And while the immediate…

Russia, Iran, and North Korea all play a role in the Syrian regime's chemical attacks on its own people.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

"Ura!" tweeted the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta April 5.

The Trump administration on Friday announced a new set of sanctions against 38 individuals and entities in Russia in response to a "consistent pattern of malign activities" by the Russian government.

Keeping up with the news out of Russia has been like trying to drink from a firehose for at least the last month, though that would be seriously inadvisable considering what might have been added to the water.

In his final public remarks as White House national security adviser, H.R. McMaster offered a stinging rebuke of Russian violations of sovereignty and attempts to sow discord in free societies, activities for which he said the U.S. and its allies must impose higher costs.

The international effort to punish Vladimir Putin for the March 4 attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal and his daughter is an enormously encouraging sign that free nations are at last turning against the Kremlin and its dictator. Britain has expelled 23 Russian diplomats from their posts in the…

Russia is expelling 60 U.S. diplomats and closing the American consulate in St. Petersburg in what the Kremlin described as a tit-for-tat response to the Trump administration's expulsions of Russian operatives earlier this week.

Athens

The Trump administration’s decision to expel dozens of Russian intelligence officers from the United States earned bipartisan approval this week, with some of the president’s toughest congressional critics praising the move while calling for further action.

The poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with one of the deadly Novichok series of nerve agents has plunged relations between Britain and Russia to their lowest level since Soviet times, sparking tit-for-tat diplomatic moves and a war of words. The crisis has raised…

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will be swapping out national security adviser H.R. McMaster for former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, known Russia hawk, come mid-April.

Long before John Bolton was named Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, the president often trusted the Fox News contributor over his own national security team. On July 17, when President Trump reversed himself at the last minute on his plan to recertify the Iran deal, it was thanks to an…

Everyone has heard the story. Early this month, former GRU officer and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, England. Twenty-one other people, including police officers who had intervened, received medical treatment and as…

On his website, John Laurits (a self-identified communist based in Oregon) claimed that there is “no evidence” that Russia was involved in the poisoning of former Russian spy and double agent, Sergei Skripal.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren discusses President Trump's tumultuous weekend: from the firing of Andy McCabe to his resulting tweets.

The result of the Russian election was no surprise, and neither is the list of foreign leaders who lined up to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his victory.

It is highly likely that on March 4 Russia used a military-grade nerve agent in an attempt to kill one of its former spies in the United Kingdom. On March 14, British prime minister Theresa May retaliated by banishing 23 Russian diplomats “who have been identified as undeclared intelligence…

Who poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia?

United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley on Wednesday blamed Russia for using chemical weapons to poison an ex-spy in the United Kingdom.

British Prime Minister Theresa May took action against the Kremlin on Wednesday when she banished 23 Russian diplomats “who have been identified as foreign intelligence officers” from her nation’s shores. The expulsion was in direct response to the alleged—but “highly likely”—Russian use of an…

It’s a blustery day in Washington. My neighbors have had their siding blown off, and our dog has determined he is aerodynamic. The federal government shut down, schools are closed, and a large swath of flights to and from the swamp are being canceled. Therefore, I will try and make today’s links a…

Senators on both sides of the aisle shot back at Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday after he boasted in an annual state-of-the-union address that Russia possesses nuclear weapons capable of bypassing missile defense systems.

The Trump administration is revving up an effort to counter foreign state propaganda and disinformation, including from Russia, after a months-long funding lag and criticism from lawmakers.

Iran has boosted its investments in militant and terrorist groups across the Middle East since the enactment of the 2015 nuclear deal, the nation’s top general who oversees U.S. Central Command said Tuesday.

For the past three years, Russian opposition activists say, authorities have attempted to erase any trace of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in the spot where he was murdered—on a bridge just outside the Kremlin. But on Tuesday morning, Russian officials will wake up to an inescapable reality: The…

Reporting on the Mueller indictment, the New York Times headlined its article, in typical Gray Lady fashion, “Moscow’s Hand Swirled in U.S., but Whether It Tipped Election Is Unclear.” Presumably, an election victory due to the machinations of a foreign “hand” can hardly produce a legitimate…

Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians on Friday for their efforts to interfere with the U.S. political process. In the days since, President Donald Trump has taken to Twitter, pushing back hard on suggestions that his campaign colluded with the Kremlin, denying that he said Russia…

Donald Trump spent a big chunk of the Sunday before Presidents Day tweeting—about the Mueller investigation, the “fake news” media, and NASCAR. But in one tweet, Trump highlighted new poll numbers. And they weren’t even his own!

“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” That, of course, was President Barack Obama's rather lame joke, delivered during the third presidential debate of 2012. He was ridiculing Mitt Romney’s assertion that Russia is America’s…

The Russia-probe indictments announced Friday certainly sound quite ominous. The Russia-based Internet Research Agency “had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” Derogatory information was posted online against various…

In his first public indictment of 2018, special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday announced charges against 13 Russian nationals and three organizations for conspiring in secret to destabilize America’s political institutions.

A plane that took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Sunday crashed, killing all 71 people onboard.

Lawmakers and experts are hoping for the best after the Treasury Department released what was seen as an underwhelming, congressionally-required public report on Russian oligarchs and senior political figures late Monday night.

The Trump administration is expected to provide lawmakers with a report Monday that calls out Russian president Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, a document that has had Russian elites worried for months.

The Trump administration hit 30 Russian and Ukrainian entities with sanctions Friday in an effort to pressure the Kremlin over its role in the continued violence on Ukraine’s eastern border as well as its occupation of Crimea.

Special counsel Robert Mueller spent much of 2017 making quiet progress in his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, but that has changed in the new year. Mueller’s team has interviewed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, will soon meet with former White House strategist Steve…

The recent assault by Turkey’s military on Kurds in northwestern Syria has presented a conundrum for the administration: Turkey is our (strained) NATO ally while the Kurds have been one of America’s most important friends in the region, with Kurdish forces fighting valiantly alongside Americans in…

Diplomatic “talks” are often little more than that—gabfests—but Tuesday’s meeting in Vancouver signals a hard-headed determination to deal with the problem of North Korea. The talks, hosted by the U.S. and Canada, brought together 20 nations, primarily those that aided South Korea in the Korean War…

The Obama administration will be remembered for a number of disgraces in foreign affairs, prominent among them its terrible deal with Iran and its dithering over the war in Syria. Deserving of a place on that list is America’s acquiescence in Russia’s attack on Ukraine, to which the Trump…

The Trump administration has given the green-light for the commercial sale of some lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, a move that lawmakers and experts hailed as a sharp reversal from Obama-era policies. But some also hope the decision is an intermediary to a bigger step: sending defensive…

The Trump administration is sanctioning five high-profile individuals under the Magnitsky Act, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday, a move that a top Kremlin critic says is likely to rile Russia.

Ukraine is living through its bloodiest year in the conflict on its eastern border since it began in 2014, the Trump administration’s envoy for the crisis said Tuesday.

Today, after years of Vladimir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule, it is difficult to imagine that two decades ago one of Russia’s major television channels could regularly lampoon the country’s leaders in a puppet show (titled Puppets, or Kukly in Russian). In late November, that show’s head…

It's long been publicly understood that the International Olympic Committee is a den of jobbery and payoffs. Which only raises the question, just how corrupt does an Olympic team have to be to get the IOC to sit in judgment of them?

As special counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI circle ever closer to the Oval Office, Washington is convulsed by speculation that the president may take drastic action to cut short the investigation. Donald Trump has escalated his Twitter attacks on the FBI and the Justice Department, and there is a…

The White House is currently insisting that President Donald Trump did not know in January that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lied to the FBI about his contacts with Russia, a felony for which he has pleaded guilty. But the administration’s own public statements, taken together,…

When it comes to Syria, Israel has a message and the government hopes a wider audience is listening. It was delivered in the form of two strikes inside Syria over the last week. By itself, an Israeli strike inside Syria is nothing extraordinary. The Israelis have long broadcasted their red lines in…

At this very moment, I trust, a novelist somewhere is trying to weave Russia’s election-year meddling into the stuff of fiction. (I wish Keith Thomson would take it on.) Meanwhile, one of the most interesting literary stories of the last decade has gone mostly unnoticed—and this too, so it happens,…

The Russian Revolution, the centennial of which has just passed, changed the world in more ways than one can count. But one little-noticed way in which it affected American intellectual life was by giving us Ayn Rand.

Can you hear me now? Apparently, one of president Trump's top economic advisors faked a bad connection while in a meeting with Democratic senators on tax reform to get the President to stop talking. Yikes.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, associate editor Ethan Epstein talks with host Eric Felten about Google and Putin's English-language media outlets.

Special counsel Robert Mueller in mid-October issued a subpoena against the Trump campaign to obtain Russia-related documents from over a dozen campaign officials, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Every week we ask interesting people what book they think President Trump should read. In the past, we've talked with Bret Stephens and Chris Matthews. This week we ask Garry Kasparov.

“Iran has never had a better friend than Obama,” Donald Trump tweeted in December 2013, as U.S. negotiators were finalizing a deal with Iran over the country’s nuclear program. So began Trump’s long campaign of ridiculing Barack Obama for the latter’s hopelessly gullible view of the Iranian regime.…

President Donald Trump, said White House aide Kellyanne Conway on Sunday, “is not as focused on this as he is his major 13-day trip abroad.” The “this” is the question of Roy Moore and his political future after the Washington Post’s bombshell report last week that included, among other…

The notion that the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution should be an occasion for serious reflection is apt. Inasmuch as the past is never past (as Faulkner said), the catastrophic outcome of the revolution appears lost to most of our post-moderns.

This week on the Weekly Standard Confab, senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about the Trump Team's difficulties weeding out the unqualified and the inept. Associate editor Ethan Epstein comes by to ask whether social media advertising is really powerful enough to have swung…

On October 30, special prosecutor Robert Mueller indicted President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and deputy chairman Rick Gates on 12 charges, including money laundering, false statements, and conspiracy against the United States, related to their work with Ukrainian…

Henry Kissinger aptly characterized two centuries of Russian foreign policy in his 2001 book Does America Need a Foreign Policy? “Throughout its history, with all its ups and downs,” he wrote, “Russia has conducted a persistent, patient, and skillful diplomacy: with Prussia and Austria against the…

Special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s indictments of Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos turned the news cycle on its head Monday, with some trumpeting the news as the latest smoking gun for Russian collusion and others dismissing the story as the latest media nothing-burger. As the…

The news that a former campaign manager of a sitting president has been indicted would seem like a pretty big deal.

The indictment of Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, on charges of conspiracy and fraud was the big news from special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation Monday morning. But court documents also implicate a lower-level aide who could prove an even bigger headache for the…

The operations of the U.S. military depend on space assets. Reconnaissance satellites allow us to find our adversaries; communications satellites allow us to coordinate movements against them; global positioning satellites allow us to direct our weaponry with unprecedented accuracy. In any…

Special prosecutor Robert Mueller has filed the first charges of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, CNN reported Friday.

GOP lawmakers are urging the Trump administration to make good on President Barack Obama’s promise that, because of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, inspectors “will have access where necessary, when necessary.”

The Trump administration is finally providing guidance on new Russia sanctions passed by Congress in August, issuing long overdue details on which entities tied to the Russian government will be targeted.

For a moment, we were transported back to the 1990s. There was Hillary Clinton being asked about yet another highly suspect circumstance involving gross improprieties and brazen lies and sidestepping the question by blaming that ever-present confederation: her enemies. “I think the real story is…

The three technology media giants absorbing most of the spotlight for Russian influence in 2016 election on their respective platforms are poised to testify in open hearings next week before Congress.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, associate editor Ethan Epstein talks about Russian social-media efforts to promote left-wing causes in the U.S.

The House Intelligence and Oversight Committees are investigating Russia’s involvement in a controversial Obama-era uranium deal, the panel’s chairman announced Tuesday.

The Soviet Union took an intensely discriminatory attitude to its history. What the regime wanted remembered, it magnified beyond all recognition; what it wanted forgotten, it erased. The Battle of Stalingrad, for instance, was endlessly propagandized by the Soviets; whereas the First World War, a…

This week on the Confab, national correspondent Peter Boyer talks with host Eric Felten about the revival of missile defense efforts in the face of North Korean rocket advances. And associate editor Ethan Epstein comes by to discuss Russia's promotion of Black Lives Matter in social media ads.

GOP lawmakers are waiting on the White House to act on recommendations from top officials to send lethal defensive aid to Ukraine.

Watchers of Ukraine’s NewsOne television channel on September 25 were treated to what was suggested to be a congressional hearing in Washington about corruption in the National Bank of Ukraine (the NBU), which is the Ukrainian equivalent of the Federal Reserve Board.

Can we send the Boy Scouts an economics textbook? I love popcorn. It's my favorite snack. I was also a Cub Scout once, and selling Trail's End popcorn was my least-favorite fundraising activity. (Selling magazine subscriptions for my Catholic grade school was much easier.) My mom, saint that she…

Ever since John Kelly was tapped as White House chief of staff, right-wing news outlets have been publishing articles making harsh allegations about Donald Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster.

Can the bodega be killed? Probably not. But two ex-Googlers (ugh) want to try, per a write up from Fast Company:

When he won election, Donald Trump—along with his national security adviser Michael Flynn, his all-purpose counselor Stephen Bannon, and, perhaps, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner—was fond of the idea that Russia and Iran, comrades-in-arms in Syria, weren’t natural partners. Flynn was particularly…

When he won election, Donald Trump—along with his national security adviser Michael Flynn, his all-purpose counselor Stephen Bannon, and, perhaps, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner—was fond of the idea that Russia and Iran, comrades-in-arms in Syria, weren’t natural partners. Flynn was particularly…

The United States will close three Russian diplomatic facilities in retaliation for the Kremlin’s expulsion of American diplomats, the State Department announced Thursday.

The Trump administration is considering sending lethal defensive aid to Ukraine, defense secretary Jim Mattis said during a visit there Thursday.

The only thing likely protecting Steve Bannon’s job is the fact that everyone in Washington expects he’s about to lose it. Administration officials inside the West Wing are already acting as if Bannon is halfway out the door. On Meet the Press Sunday, National security adviser H.R. McMaster refused…

In July, when news broke that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met last year with a Russian lawyer and a former Russian intelligence officer who promised dirt on the Hillary Clinton campaign, there was a media feeding frenzy. After months of speculation…

In July, when news broke that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met last year with a Russian lawyer and a former Russian intelligence officer who promised dirt on the Hillary Clinton campaign, there was a media feeding frenzy. After months of speculation…

Maybe those ever-so-secretive Russian hackers aren’t nearly as clever as we, or they, thought.

Anyone who doubts the power of the bureaucracy ought to look into the quandary confronting ExxonMobil.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has turned down nearly $80 million of funding to combat propaganda and information operations from ISIS, Russia, and China, Politico reports.

Lawmakers reached an agreement Wednesday for the Senate to vote on a sweeping sanctions bill that was overwhelmingly approved by the House this week, in a push to promptly get the legislation to the president’s desk.

The U.S.’s European allies are split on how to respond to new American sanctions on Russia. Some of the sanctions the House passed on Tuesday are targeted against companies or individuals that cooperate with Russian energy companies. According to the bill, “The Government of the Russian Federation…

Over at the Justice Department, it’s “business as usual here.”

This is the third part of an interview with Vladimir Kara-Murza. Read part one here and part two here.

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, senior writer Michael Warren discusses what happens if President Trump succeeds in shaming Attorney General Jeff Sessions out of office.

This is the second part of an interview with Vladimir Kara-Murza. Read part one here.

Vladimir Kara-Murza was late to our interview because he was at the hospital, receiving treatment for being poisoned. Again. He’s not a spy, he’s not KGB—he’s just a journalist and political activist, and not really all that threatening. But twice in the past two years, Kara-Murza has experienced…

Donald Trump is angry and frustrated with the federal investigation into Russian meddling in our election. In his view, the inquiry doesn’t just call into question the legitimacy of his election. Now he feels his own family is a target and under siege. Trump blames the highest-ranking members of…

Donald Trump is angry and frustrated with the federal investigation into Russian meddling in our election. In his view, the inquiry doesn’t just call into question the legitimacy of his election. Now he feels his own family is a target and under siege. Trump blames the highest-ranking members of…

“It’s extremely unfair.”

The steady drip of Russia-related controversies surrounding the Trump administration are becoming a “nuisance” and “distraction,” a Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said Monday.

Jay Sekulow is not Donald Trump Jr.’s lawyer. The Republican attorney, who works on the private legal team for President Donald Trump, reiterated on many of the five Sunday political talk shows that he does not represent the president’s son. Nor did Sekulow represent the Trump presidential…

This week on the Kristol Clear podcast, editor at large Bill Kristol discusses how the Donald Jr. Russia meeting is throwing a wrench into the workings of his father's White House.

It took some time, but here we are. After decades of minimizing the menace posed by Russia—recall Barack Obama’s gibe, in response to Mitt Romney’s suggestion that Russia was our greatest geopolitical threat, that the 1980s had called and wanted their foreign policy back—American liberals are…

The president-elect’s narrow victory at the end of a volatile campaign quickly led to efforts at planning a meeting of the American and Russian leaders. Relations between the two countries had deteriorated badly, not to say spectacularly, in the last year of the previous administration, amidst…

There was nothing normal about the July 7 meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit in Hamburg. The mere scheduling of this friendly chat handed Putin a PR victory, which the Kremlin-controlled media exploited gleefully. Not only was the Russian dictator not isolated or…

There was nothing normal about the July 7 meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit in Hamburg. The mere scheduling of this friendly chat handed Putin a PR victory, which the Kremlin-controlled media exploited gleefully. Not only was the Russian dictator not isolated or…

The president-elect’s narrow victory at the end of a volatile campaign quickly led to efforts at planning a meeting of the American and Russian leaders. Relations between the two countries had deteriorated badly, not to say spectacularly, in the last year of the previous administration, amidst…

It took some time, but here we are. After decades of minimizing the menace posed by Russia—recall Barack Obama’s gibe, in response to Mitt Romney’s suggestion that Russia was our greatest geopolitical threat, that the 1980s had called and wanted their foreign policy back—American liberals are…

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, reporter Jenna Lifhits talks with host Eric Felten about how the Donald Trump Jr. revelations are playing among lawmakers.

In a prepared statement Tuesday, President Donald Trump called his oldest son, Don Jr., a “high-quality person” and added, “I applaud his transparency.” Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders read this statement to reporters in the White House briefing room Tuesday afternoon, a few short…

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, editor in chief Steve Hayes joins host Eric Felten to talk about the unfolding story of Team Trump's meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

In June, the Senate passed a bill codifying U.S. sanctions on Russia. The bill—based on a series of Obama-era executive orders retaliating for Russia’s de facto invasion of Ukraine and, later, its meddling in the U.S. elections—passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin: 98-2.

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, senior writer Michael Warren explains the recent revelations that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort all met at Trump Tower during the campaign with a Kremlin-associated Russian lawyer.

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton issued a stern warning to the president Monday about negotiating with Russian president Vladimir Putin, after Putin and Trump held their first official in-person meeting Friday. Bolton, who was under consideration to be Trump’s secretary of state, also criticized…

I've been reading the post-mortems on last week's G20 summit in Hamburg, and depending on the source, it was either the dawn of a new Era of Good Feelings in global affairs, or another catastrophe in the history of the 6-month-old Trump presidency. The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere in-between.…

Three prominent figures in the Trump presidential campaign appear to have sought the assistance of a Russian political operative with ties to the Putin government months before last November’s election. This comes via reporting by the New York Times, which broke a story over the weekend that Donald…

A top Russia hawk in Congress slammed President Donald Trump on Sunday for letting Russian election interference slide after a lengthy meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin Friday.

This week on the Kristol Clear podcast, editor at large Bill Kristol explains why Donald Trump's Warsaw speech was a high point for his presidency.

The Scrapbook spent a few days driving around with the station on, and if you’re looking for bizarro-world news and endless gabfests about how America is populated with imperialist running dogs, well, Sputnik Radio is for you. The station’s Moscow-mandated agenda is impossible to ignore. There’s an…

The Trump administration is not ruling out providing Ukraine with defensive weapons in its fight against Russian-backed separatists, a State Department official told THE WEEKLY STANDARD, though the administration is focused on a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

As wealth has poured into the nation’s capital and the city has largely redeveloped over the last two decades, one of the last reminders that Washington, D.C., possessed any local culture at all was the existence of Bluegrass Country 105.5. The FM station was sponsored by American University and…

With the president once again managing to divert attention from a sensible policy to a vulgar tweet, you might not have noticed that this past week has been “Energy Week.” The immediate result has been a lot of speeches, including one by Harold Hamm, the Trump-supporting oil-and-gas man who played…

There are two great weapons Vladimir Putin uses to leverage the West and push his foreign policy. One is nuclear weapons, and the other is natural gas. Thanks to the American energy revolution, Russia’s control of the European energy market is slipping, and may wind up gone altogether.

The firm that created the now-infamous "Russian dossier" on President Trump published before his inauguration is stonewalling investigators who want to know more about its connections to the Democratic Party and the FBI is refusing to confirm if it has documents showing a relationship with the firm.

Newt Gingrich defended President Trump against allegations that Trump's firing of James Comey was a crime. Gingrich's legal interpretation: "the president cannot obstruct justice." I'm not a lawyer, but neither is Newt Gingrich (he holds a Ph.D. in European history), and if I can google some legal…

Today on the Kristol Clear podcast, Democrats may want to impeach President Trump for anything or nothing, and Republicans may want to try to protect him, but Bill Kristol argues it isn't politics that will determine who wins that high-stakes contest, but the outcome of Special Counsel Robert…

Huge demonstrations once again swept through Russia on June 12, as thousands took to the streets in over 160 cities to protest the corruption and authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin's regime. This followed street protests by Russia's emerging opposition in February and March that were the biggest in…