“One of the great foreign policy disappointments of Donald Trump’s first term was the failure to advance his initial promising initiative to begin normalizing relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Trump had abandoned the threats and bluster toward Pyongyang that marked his early months in office. Instead, he moved to open a personal dialogue with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and facilitate productive negotiations on several important issues. … Unfortunately, Trump failed to prevent hawks from both parties in Congress and in the overall national security establishment from sabotaging such conciliatory efforts. … Despite that bruising political experience during his first term, Trump has indicated that he would be receptive to a new dialogue with the North Korean leader before the end of 2026.” (08/28/26)
Source: The Erick Erickson Show
by Erick-Woods Erickson
“The word ‘Ontario’ is Iroquoian. English settlers put ‘Ontario’ on their maps in the early 1600s, borrowing it from the Indians already here, and it meant roughly ‘great lake.’ The water named everything else. The colony took the name from the lake, the province took it from the colony, and the Dominion of Canada did not exist until 1867, two years after Appomattox. That name predates Canada, predates the United States, and predates every man who has ever held the presidency. Yesterday, the President signed an executive order renaming it Lake America. Now picture the American voter who was on the sidelines Tuesday, arms folded, undecided about the midterms, who read that headline and thought, ‘Well, now I’m voting Republican.’ Take your time. I’ll wait.” (08/28/26)
“Dolly understood that human nature includes not just sweetness, but much envy and resentment besides, aimed especially, of course, at the beautiful, the wealthy, and so on among us. But her obvious love of people and loyalty to her roots, her tireless work raising money and creating jobs, in short becoming such an astonishing benefactor — that overwhelmed any resentment and made people love her even more for it. That’s a remarkable American life.” (08/28/26)
“In the latest twist in the saga of President Trump’s efforts to get the U.S. Postal Service to restrict or condition mail-in voting, a federal judge once again has enjoined the Postal Service from moving ahead with its plan. District Court Judge Indira Talwani’s order yesterday came after the Supreme Court had admonished her on Monday, overturning her earlier injunction on the grounds that the Postal Service had not finalized any changes; thus the suit and injunction were supposedly premature. But as Judge Talwani wrote in her latest order, the Postal Service had actually gone ahead and issued a final rule providing that unless a state provides voter information to the USPS and meets other arbitrary conditions, the Postal Service will not deliver mail-in ballots.” (08/28/26)
“Between 1876 and 1896, the individualist, pro-capitalist Victorian polymath and evolutionary sociologist, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), published his massive three-volume The Principles of Sociology. Part five he titled ‘Political Institutions.’ In it he described mankind’s move from what he called the primitive ‘militant type of society’ to the modern ‘industrial type of society.’ His narrative is detailed and fascinating. Spencer’s general point was that the obsolete militant type was characterized by force, slavery, regimentation, and centralized power. In contrast, the beneficent industrial type was grounded in individuality, freedom, contract, interdependence, and decentralized power.” (08/28/26)
“The trade war between the United States and Canada—or, more exactly, between Donald Trump, who declared it, and Canadian politicians, who try to limit the damage though using the same logic as Trump’s—provides a good opportunity to reflect on how trade and freedom work. It is not a brilliant idea for the Canadian government to impose a tariff on Canadians who purchase American appliances, for example, in order to retaliate against the American ruler who has imposed a tariff on Americans importing Canadian whisky. … Instead of retaliation—imposing a border tax on Canadians because Trump has imposed one on Americans—[prime minister Mark Carney] could make a declaration of unilateral free trade along the following lines …” (08/27/26)
“For the Trump administration to complain about foreign interference in America’s war of choice is manifestly absurd. No country interferes in the affairs of other nations more often. No government is more presumptuous in its demands. No nation more frequently uses force against other states. Russian and Chinese intervention in the Iran war is unfortunate—Americans likely have died and certainly have been injured as a result. Yet the administration shares responsibility for the resulting harm. … American policymakers long have viewed themselves as virtuous vestal virgins, entitled, even required, to purify the terrible world around them. Alas, no one else views the solons of Washington in such terms, and for good reason: They have repeatedly failed, often disastrously.” (08/27/26)
“New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced this summer that he will open city-owned grocery stores in the coming years. Meanwhile, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently announced that the federal government will take a nearly $1 billion equity stake in seven semiconductor companies. There is a common name for these policies: creeping socialism. … President Trump’s criticism of Mamdani is consistent with his pledge in his 2019 State of the Union address that ‘America will never be a socialist country.’ But his own administration’s actions are even less consistent with that pledge than Mamdani’s grocery stores.” (08/27/26)
“The Gilded Age was convicted by its name before its history was ever written. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner coined that appellation in their political satire by the same name. Their point was clear—the American era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the opposite of a golden age. Instead, it was a time when a thin layer of glitter concealed corruption, useless speculation, and harmful self-interest. The name stuck, permitting Twain’s summary judgment to masquerade as neutral historical judgment. … It is a relief then to have Julian Fellowes’s series, The Gilded Age …. [it] shows that the era produced many public benefits and that the rich were substantially responsible for the dynamism that led not only to economic prosperity but also to broader social inclusion, even if they were hardly always innocent or admirable.” (08/27/26)
“After US-Canada trade talks collapsed Friday, the United States imposed a 50% tariff on a long list of Canadian goods via the never-used Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer went on TV first thing Monday in an attempt to calm financial markets with some basic tariff math. He said the new action hits a small percentage of Canadian imports into the US and an even smaller share of consumption, so there’s ‘no possible way it can really affect US well-being.’Greer is basically right on the issue of the tariffs’ direct effects. The problem for both America’s chief trade negotiator and the US economy is that the new levies raise other issues that are much more important – and troubling. … First, the spat injects significant new uncertainty into both the trillion-dollar bilateral relationship and the broader global economy.” (08/27/26)
