U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro on Tuesday announced an indictment in Washington, D.C., accusing Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Chérizier and Bazile Richardson, a naturalized U.S. citizen, of conspiring to send U.S. funds to finance Chérizier’s Haitian gang.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Chérizier is a fugitive and is believed to be in Haiti.

His co-defendant, Richardson, who also goes by ‘Fredo,’ ‘Fred Lion,’ ‘Leo Danger,’ and ‘Lepe Blode,’ was arrested in Pasadena, Texas on July 23. 

Pirro said Tuesday that Chérizier is a gang leader who orchestrated and committed various acts of violence against Haitians.

In 2020, the U.S. sanctioned Chérizier under the Magnitsky Act for his alleged human rights violations. His indictment makes it the first of its kind for an individual sanctioned under the international Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, Pirro added.

Richardson and Chérizier grew up together in Haiti, though the former later became a naturalized U.S. citizen and was living in North Carolina.

Richardson was indicted for allegedly sending money to Chérizier, knowing that he had been sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act.

‘I want to let the public know that anyone who was giving money to Chérizier, also known as Barbecue, because of his violent acts in his home country, cannot say ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know that he was sanctioned by the U.S government,’’ Pirro said. ‘They will be prosecuted, and we will find them because they are supporting an individual who was committing human rights abuses. And we will not look the other way.’

The State Department’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program announced Tuesday that it is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Chérizier. Anyone with information about his whereabouts is encouraged to contact the State Department.

‘There’s a good reason that there’s a $5 million reward for information leading to Chérizier’s arrest. He’s a gang leader responsible for heinous human rights abuses, including violence against American citizens in Haiti,’ Pirro said. ‘The U.S. government sanctioned Chérizier in 2020 because he was responsible for an ongoing campaign of violence, including the 2018 La Saline massacre, in which 71 people were killed, more than 400 houses were destroyed, and at least seven women raped by armed gangs.’

Court documents show that Chérizier is a former officer in the Haitian National Police and leader of a gang known as the Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies, which helped create a gang alliance called Viv Ansanm. The alliance united many of Haiti’s criminal gangs in opposition to the legitimate government of Haiti.

The indictment alleges Chérizier and Richardson, after Chérizier was sanctioned, led a wide-ranging conspiracy with people in the U.S., Haiti and other places to raise money for Chérizier’s gang activities, in violation of the sanctions.

Specifically, the two men solicited money from members of the Haitian diaspora in the U.S.

‘After sending funds to intermediaries in Haiti for Chérizier’s benefit, the U.S. and Haitian co-conspirators would send Chérizier images of receipts from money transfers,’ the DOJ said. ‘Chérizier used these funds principally to pay salaries to the members of his gang and to acquire firearms from illicit firearms dealers in Haiti.’

The Trump administration, in May, designated Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif – two of Haiti’s most powerful gang networks – as foreign terrorist organizations and specifically designated terrorists.

The move was aimed at disrupting the gangs’ operations and supporting efforts to restore order in the troubled Caribbean nation.

The designations brought serious legal consequences. Individuals or entities that provide material support to Viv Ansanm or Gran Grif could face criminal charges, loss of immigration benefits or removal from the U.S.

Former first daughter Ashley Biden this week filed for divorce from her husband of 13 years, according to reports. 

The 44-year-old also posted an Instagram story on the same day with the song ‘Freedom’ by Beyonce. 

In her post, Biden walks through a park giving a thumbs up while the song plays, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported the filing first. 

She also posted the quote: ‘New life, new beginnings means new boundaries. New ways of being that won’t look or sound like they did before’ over ‘Freedom Time’ by Lauryn Hill. 

Biden has been married to plastic surgeon Howard Krein since 2012. 

The estranged couple were wed in Greenville, Delaware, in a ceremony that combined her Catholic faith and his Jewish roots, according to People magazine.

A reception was held at the Biden family’s Wilmington lake house.

‘I kept telling Ash, we’ve got to open up the church and practice walking up and down the aisle so I can handle it,’ former President Joe Biden, who was vice president at the time, told People, saying he expected to be emotional at the ceremony. 

‘This is the right guy. And he’s getting a helluva woman,’ the former president said at the time. Biden met her husband through her late brother Beau Biden and started dating him in 2010. 

She mentioned her wedding when she introduced the former president at the Democratic National Convention last year. 

‘At the time, my dad was vice president, but he was also that dad who literally set up the entire reception,’ she said. ‘He was riding around in his John Deere 4-wheeler, fixing the place settings, arranging the plants, and by the way, he was very emotional.’

She added, ‘Before he walked me down the aisle, he turned to me and said he would always be my best friend. All these years later, Dad, you are still my best friend.’

Fox News Digital has reached out to a rep for the former president for comment. 

More than 20 Republican attorneys general are demanding that the Trump administration reinstate safety protocols for the abortion drug mifepristone, saying it poses ‘serious risks to women.’

In a letter obtained by Fox News Digital, 22 attorneys general called on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drugs Administration head Martin Makary to bring back safeguards for the pills that were scrapped by the Obama and Biden administrations.

‘Recent comprehensive studies of the real-world effects of the chemical abortion drug mifepristone report that serious adverse events occur 22 times more often than stated on the drug’s label, while the drug is less than half as effective as claimed. These facts directly contradict the drug’s primary marketing message of ‘safe’ and ‘effective,” the letter reads, citing studies published earlier this year by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPA), a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

The EPPA report claims the pill presents harm to women, causing 1 in 10 patients to experience a ‘serious adverse event,’ including hemorrhage, emergency room visits and ectopic pregnancy.

The letter, led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, comes after Kennedy Jr. asked Makary to review the latest data on mifepristone and its safety.

‘Based on that review, the FDA should consider reinstating safety protocols that it identified as necessary as recently as 2011 in its issuance of a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for mifepristone, but which were removed by the Obama and Biden administrations,’ the letter reads, adding that the drug should be taken off the market if safeguards cannot be put in place.

‘Alternatively, in light of the serious risks to women who are presently being prescribed this drug without crucial safeguards, and in the event the FDA is unable to reinstate the 2011 safety protocols for mifepristone, the FDA should consider withdrawing mifepristone from the market until it completes its review and can decide on a course of action based on objective safety and efficacy criteria,’ the attorneys general wrote.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., also sent a letter to Kennedy Jr. last month urging him to take immediate action to reinstate safety guardrails on mifepristone following the secretary’s commitment to conducting a safety review of the drug.

Makary had previously said that he had no plans to modify policies surrounding mifepristone but that the FDA would act if the data suggested there was a safety issue.

Mifepristone, which is taken with another drug called misoprostol to end an early pregnancy, was first approved by the FDA in 2000 after ‘a thorough and comprehensive review’ found it was safe and effective, according to the agency’s website, which noted that periodic reviews since its approval have not identified new safety concerns.

Last year, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge targeting the drug’s availability. The plaintiffs had sought to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in Democrat-led states where abortion remains legal. The court did not rule on whether the FDA acted lawfully when it moved during the Obama and Biden administrations to ease the rules for mifepristone’s use that had been established during the Clinton administration.

Medication abortions made up more than half of all abortions in the U.S. health care system in 2023, according to a study by the Guttmacher Institute.

‘Currently, a woman can obtain a mifepristone abortion by participating in only one telehealth visit with any approved healthcare provider (not necessarily a physician), ordering the drugs through a mail-order pharmacy, and self-administering them,’ the attorneys general wrote. ‘And the prescriber is only required to report an adverse event if he or she becomes aware that the patient has died.’

‘The FDA’s removal of these crucial safety protocols in 2016 (and in 2023) that only five years before the FDA considered necessary begs the question of whether the removal was motivated by considerations other than the safety of patients … The current FDA’s dedication to the health and wellbeing of all Americans is encouraging, as is the much-needed review of mifepristone that Secretary Kennedy has promised,’ the letter concludes.

Former Navy SEAL and current GOP House lawmaker Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona delivered a pointed message to former President Barack Obama.

‘You’ve done enough damage. Probably best to sit this one out,’ the congressman told Obama in a post on X.

Crane made the comments in response to a post in which Obama declared, ‘Since we passed the Affordable Care Act, Republicans have tried over and over to repeal it. And over and over, they’ve failed — in part because millions of people now depend on the ACA for quality, affordable health care. Now Republicans are trying something different: quietly weakening the law and hoping you won’t notice. We can’t let them.’

GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah wrote in response to the Democrat’s post, ‘Obamacare was a great deal—for huge healthcare companies But it’s made healthcare less affordable for hardworking American families, who have seen their healthcare costs skyrocket—while a small handful of healthcare giants have reaped a windfall of billions of dollars a year.’

‘The worst part of Obamacare was putting able-bodied, working-age adults on government assistance instead of helping them find employment. I’ve been vocally against this since day one. Medicaid should be for needy children, families, and seniors. Not for those who can work!’ former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is now the president of the Young America’s Foundation, wrote.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on Obama’s post.

Obama served two consecutive terms as president, with his White House tenure spanning from early 2009 through early 2017, when he was succeeded by President Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump is weighing whether to deploy up to 1,000 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., as early as this week, Fox News has learned, in an effort to help deal with what he characterized as a surge in violent crime. 

The plans come just one day after Trump vowed on Truth Social to evict homeless persons from that nation’s capital. ‘The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,’ Trump said on social media. ‘We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong.’

Trump’s plans, which are expected to be detailed further at a 10 a.m. press conference Monday, would likely involve members of the D.C. National Guard, or the 2,700-member National Guard force that acts at the express authority of the commander in chief.

Unlike other branches, Trump would not have to get the sign off of local authorities to act — likely making their activation a tempting option.

When speaking to reporters in the Oval Office last week, Trump railed against what he described as a ‘ridiculous’ level of crime in the nation’s capital, buffeted most recently by the assault on a former DOGE staffer earlier this month.

‘We want to have a great, safe capital,’ Trump said last week. ‘And we’re going to have it.’

Trump also told reporters that his White House lawyers are looking into ending the Home Rule Act, a law passed by Congress in 1973 that gave Washington, D.C., residents the right to elect their own mayor and local representatives. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also told reporters last week that Trump had ordered law enforcement personnel to increase their presence in the capital, though the additional details on the scope and timeframe of that presence remain unclear. 

Trump is expected to address those plans in a press conference Monday morning. 

However, for Trump, delivering on this promise could be fraught with long-term legal complications — in part, because crime in the city is actually down to its lowest point in nearly 30 years.

Violent crime in the first seven months of 2025 has dropped by roughly 26% compared to 2024, according to data compiled by the D.C. Police Department and released earlier this month. Overall, crime in the nation’s capital has dropped by roughly 7%.

On Sunday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said in an interview with NewsNation that Washington, D.C., ‘is more violent than Baghdad.’ 

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, for her part, told MSNBC in an interview Sunday that ‘Any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false.’

However, it’s not the first time Trump has sought to crack down on crime in the nation’s capital — an effort he has returned to frequently, including during his first term in office.

Trump in March signed an executive order, ‘Making DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force,’ designed to address issues with a city he has long derided as ‘filthy,’ ‘horribly run’ and ‘crime-ridden,’ among other things. ‘We want to have a great, safe capital,’ he told reporters. ‘And we’re going to have it. And that includes cleanliness and it includes other things.’

However, those powers aren’t indefinite, experts explained to Fox News Digital.

Trump does have the authority to activate the 2,700-member D.C. National Guard without the approval of local officials. Guard troops provide ‘mission-ready personnel and units for active duty in the armed services’ in Washington, D.C., according to their website.

Beyond that, Trump’s ability to exercise authority in the nation’s capital is bound by the Home Rule Act. 

In the more than 50 years since that law was passed, ‘there really hasn’t been a serious conversation about ending home rule governance,’ George Derek Musgrove, a history professor at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County, told Fox News in an interview.

‘And the problem with our federal system is that there are places where Trump really doesn’t have any supporters, and therefore, with the limits of executive power, really doesn’t have that much sway,’ Musgrove said. ‘And he’s constantly probing for ways around that.’

Other options available to Trump aren’t without their own limits. In order to call up the local police force for any meaningful length of time, as Trump has suggested, a president must be able to assert ‘special conditions of an emergency nature,’ according to the 1970s law.

‘If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take federal control,’ Trump said last week. 

However, that’s easier said than done, individuals familiar with the law told Fox News Digital.

‘DC is just a tempting target because there’s not even a lot of legal gymnastics you have to do in order to exert tremendous power [in a city with ]a 90% Democratic jurisdiction. He has it already,’ Musgrove said.

‘But it is morally questionable, I think, and violates democratic principles,’ he added.

President Donald Trump has renewed his call for Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, to undergo a cognitive test. 

”Congresswoman’ Jasmine Crockett is a Low (Very!!!) I.Q. Individual, much in the mold of the AOC Plus Three Gang of Country Destroying Morons – Only slightly dumber,’ Trump wrote on TRUTH Social on Monday. 

‘Each of these political hacks should be forced to take a Cognitive Exam, much like the one I recently took while getting my ‘physical’ at our GREAT Washington, D.C., Military Hospital (WR!),’ Trump said. ‘As the doctors said, ‘President Trump ACED it, something that is rarely seen!’ These Radical Left Lunatics would all fail this test in a spectacular show of stupidity and incompetence. TAKE THE TEST!!!

Trump previously said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., should take a cognitive test in June when the progressive ‘Squad’ leader demanded his impeachment over the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. 

Meanwhile, as the White House pushes Republican states to redistrict mid-cycle ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Crockett has accused Trump of pushing a ‘white supremacy agenda’ and ‘diluting the voices of people of color.’ The Trump administration asserts that Democratic states have engaged in ‘gerrymandering’ for years and encouraged illegal immigration to boost their congressional influence. 

In Texas, Democratic state lawmakers fled the state in an effort to stop the vote on a GOP redistricting plan that likely would have resulted in Republicans picking up five House seats. 

Crockett has accused Trump of hurling the low IQ insult as a racially-coded tactic to insult ‘people of color,’ including ‘The Breakfast Club’ host Charlamagne tha God. 

‘Newsflash, Wannabe Dictator: I don’t care how many times you shake the Etch A Sketch trying to redraw these lines,’ Crockett wrote on X last week. ‘I’m not disappearing. I’ll be back, still on your behind every step of the way. We’ve already been over this. I’ve got the degrees, the credentials, and the receipts. If you’re looking for ‘low IQ,’ try looking in the mirror – or at your own Cabinet.’ 

Despite the president describing her as having a low IQ, Crockett said Trump has the ‘most incompetent Cabinet in the history of this country,’ referring to the Signal-gate scandal earlier this year. 

Crockett has also dubbed Trump a ‘Temu dictator.’ At a progressive rally in Phoenix, Arizona, earlier this month, the congresswoman said on stage, ‘Donald Trump is a piece of sh–.’ 

‘This is a person who has a problem with people of color. Period,’ she told CNN. ‘I don’t care how many Black MAGA [are] out there with [their] hats, I want to be clear, when we look at who it is that he’s kicking out of this country, it’s people of color.’ 

President Donald Trump took aim at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a press event on Monday over his frustration with the Ukrainian leader’s objection to ‘land swapping.’

‘I get along with Zelenskyy, but, you know, I disagree with what he’s done, very, very severely, disagree. This is a war that should have never happened,’ Trump said, reiterating his belief that the Ukrainian president is in part at fault for Russia’s illegal 2022 invasion.

‘I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelensky was saying, ‘Well, I have to get constitutional approval’,’ Trump said. ‘I mean, he’s got approval to go into war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap, because there’ll be some land swapping going on.’

‘I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody,’ Trump added, noting it was ‘for the good of Ukraine.’

Zelenskyy – who did not declare war on Russia, as Moscow had already invaded, did declare Martial Law on Feb. 24, 2022 with the approval of Ukraine’s parliament, which gave him presidential powers to mobilize a military response — made clear over the weekend that he objected to Trump’s ‘land swapping’ proposal and has repeatedly said it would require a national referendum under the nation’s constitution, not a unilateral decision by him. 

Trump wouldn’t detail what exactly he hopes to get out of the meeting with Putin and described it as a ‘feel-out meeting,’ saying within ‘the first two minutes [he’ll] know exactly whether or not a deal can be made.’

‘I’m going in to speak to Vladimir Putin, and I’m going to be telling him, you got to end this war, you got to end it,’ Trump said, reiterating his belief that if he had won the 2020 election, Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine, saying ‘he wasn’t going to mess with me.’

‘I go into that thing fully loaded right up there, and we’re going to see what happens,’ he continued. ‘It could be a good meeting, and we’ll go a step further. We’ll get it done. 

‘I’d like to see a ceasefire very, very quickly, very quick,’ he continued. ‘And, we’re going to be dealing with the European leaders and, we’re going to be dealing with President Zelensky and hopefully we’re going to have a great success.’

A Democratic whistleblower told the FBI that Adam Schiff approved leaking classified information in order to discredit President Donald Trump, according to newly-released documents.

The documents, which were obtained by Just The News, were recently handed over to Congress by FBI Director Kash Patel. 

The whistleblower reportedly worked for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee for over ten years, and reported Schiff’s alleged behavior to the FBI in 2017.

According to the report, the intelligence staffer called the leaking ‘treasonous’ and ‘illegal,’ in addition to being unethical. He was most recently interviewed by the FBI in 2023.

The staffer also said that he personally attended a meeting where Schiff greenlit the leak.

‘When working in this capacity, [redacted staffer’s name] was called to an all-staff meeting by SCHIFF,’ the documents state, per Just The News. 

‘In this meeting, SCHIFF stated the group would leak classified information which was derogatory to President of the United States DONALD J. TRUMP. SCHIFF stated the information would be used to indict President TRUMP.’

‘[The whistleblower] stated this would be illegal and, upon hearing his concerns, unnamed members of the meeting reassured that they would not be caught leaking classified information,’ the report added.

John Solomon, who co-authored the piece with Just The News’ Jerry Dunleavy, appeared on Fox News Channel’s ‘Hannity’ to discuss the report.

‘This is the first of several major leak investigations we’re going to see over the next several days,’ Solomon said. ‘You’re going to see other major people that were clearly identified by the FBI, having leaked classified secrets.’

‘Their own staff turned them in when interviewed by the FBI. Nothing, again, happened,’ he added. ‘It’s a common pattern. The question now is, in Donald Trump’s Justice Department, does that dynamic change?’

Soon after the report was published, Patel shared it on X, saying that the FBI ‘found it [and] declassified it.’

‘Now Congress can see how classified info was leaked to shape political narratives – and decide if our institutions were weaponized against the American people,’ Patel’s post read.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Curto contributed to this report.

In a lengthy and beautifully crafted address on Independence Day, July 4, 1821, then-President John Quincy Adams delivered an extraordinarily detailed and learned lesson on the founding of America. It’s one that still deserves repeated and close reading — though much of it will simply not be understood by most Americans today, for it is dense in references to history no longer taught widely in the United States. 

Adams’ most memorable sentences are often quoted:

‘[America] has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence, has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.’

The declamation that America ‘goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy’ is a favorite text of both the pre-World Wars One and Two isolationists in America, but of course both global conflicts reached out and drew the United States into them. 

Now, far, far more than in 1917 and 1941, the assumptions of our sixth president simply no longer apply. 

There is no longer any ‘abroad.’ 

The idea of an ‘abroad’ about which Americans could be either indifferent or at most the subject of a distant approval or remote scorn, is dead.

To repeat: There is no such thing as ‘abroad.’ 

Not even remotely. 

What remained of the concept after Pearl Harbor was shattered by Sputnik in 1957, and then by successive generations of missile technology.  With the rise of hypersonic missiles only fools would believe that there is an ‘abroad’ anywhere on the globe that the United States can disregard. 

Beijing’s hypersonic arsenal can reach Washington, D.C. in two hours or less, and that margin is going to shrink rapidly. Russia’s hypersonic missiles can reach the lower 48 even sooner and Alaska in a blink. 

Other nations will inevitably add to the number of potential adversaries that can change the world via hypersonic missilery and wreck enormous, perhaps Republic-ending damage on the country. 

Of course, America possesses a ‘second strike’ capability deep under the seas in our Ohio-class submarines, and even an enormous fusillade of thousands of hypersonic missiles would be unlikely to cripple all of our B-2s and B-21s or ever missile silo. The United States would take down with it all of the evil powers that combined to strike it first, just as it did from 1941 to 1945. 

But there would be no ‘Marshall Plan’ waiting for anyone or any country on the other side of such an unimaginable catastrophe. Thus it must be deterred. Deterrence is only accomplished by the reality of American military power and the military power of the allies on which it can rely.

To repeat a third time: There is no ‘abroad.’ 

This very dangerous word will only grow more so with the years. President Trump’s decision to destroy the Iranian nuclear weapons program alongside Israel’s blows against that fanatical theocracy’s ballistic missile capability shielded the entire world from the most unstable and terror-addicted regime in the world obtaining the ability to threaten all of the West and beyond with Armageddon. 

For a time, at least, the precise and purposeful application of American military force to the missile and nuclear arsenal of an enemy on the brink of ‘breakout’ kept the number of nuclear powers stable. 

Bravo, President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Whatever criticisms come their way on whatever other subject, the most important mission of their careers is complete. (Though both men may be obliged by the fanatics in Tehran to do it again.)

The West still has enemies, of course, and the most formidable one is the Chinese Communist Party that dominates the People’s Republic of China, and its ruthless leader, Xi Jinping. Xi and the CCP are followed in second place by Xi’s equally ruthless if not quite as powerful ally in Putin’s Russia, not to mention the unstable nuclear powers of North Korea and Pakistan. 

The West’s nuclear arsenal —distributed among our allies Great Britain and France and especially alongside that of Israel and our sometimes friend India— combines with our own prodigious, yet in-need-of-modernization nuclear arsenal to hold the most dangerous enemies at bay. 

There are only four actual superpowers in the world —the quartet of nations that can project nuclear power far beyond their borders and which possess intelligence and espionage capabilities that are unmatched except by each other’s capabilities: The United States and Israel on the side of the West and the PRC and Russia on the side of despotism. All others in the ‘nuclear club’ have limitations imposed by their own chaotic domestic politics or lack of deliverable firepower and the will to use it. 

That’s national security realism in a nutshell. 

When two of the leaders of any of these four nations meet, it is a significant occasion. It is a very good thing that President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have met three times in 2025 and have spoken far more frequently than that. 

Xi and Putin have only met in person twice in this year, but their ‘partnership’ is very close even though Xi is to Putin as Trump is to Netanyahu: the senior partners to their powerful but not nearly as powerful junior partners. 

This is the basic geopolitical structure of the world and only with that understanding of reality can analysts judge what President Trump gets out of his meeting with the Russian tyrant this week —if anything is even made public afterward. It will take months, if not years, to assess what happens this week. 

Putin has attempted to play every American president since Bill Clinton, sometimes successfully, sometimes fooling them only for a time. The temptation to ‘strike a deal’ with Putin is the same as the apple on the forbidden tree in Genesis. That way lies ruin. But sizing up the tree and the apple at close range can have benefits. 

President Trump has met with Putin six times prior to this week and has spoken with him often. The real estate developer-turned-television force-turned president has as much of the skills set anyone could have to deal with such a stone-cold killer as Putin. Trump survived not just two assassination attempts in 2024 but years of lawfare preceded by the plots of the permanent left embedded in our vast administrative state during his first term. 

Trump is as tough and as resilient as any president since Richard Nixon. There will be no hot mic whisperings of weakness, nor will there be blunt assessments spoken like that of former Vice President Dick Cheney: ‘[W]hat I see [in Putin is] a KGB colonel.’

Trump is a realist, just like his friend of old from New York in the 1980s and early 1990s, RN. Trump is as tough as W standing in the ruins of the Twin Towers, as tough as the genuine war hero H.W., as tough as Reagan, Ford and Ike. 

If Trump can bring an end to the savagery underway in Ukraine on terms acceptable to President Zelensky, it will be an achievement greater than his interventions to stop the hostilities between India and Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, Thailand and Cambodia and last week’s peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.   

Trump’s destruction of the Iranian nuclear program is the biggest building block of his legacy, rivaled only by the Abraham Accords.  If he can bring a ceasefire to Central Europe that is acceptable to our allies and the Ukrainian people, it will be the third pillar of his legacy, with the fourth —the rebuilding of the American military into so potent a force that no one, not even China’s Xi, dares to risk a confrontation with us— as his fourth. On top of those four pillars can rest an era of prosperity and renewed American growth and innovation. 

If anyone is hoping for the president to fail in this endeavor as described, they are not patriots but partisans blind to the realities of the world. There are a lot of those sorts of partisans in the U.S., and increasingly our NATO allies are showing themselves to be unreliable. 

Like it or not, the near-term security prospects of the West rest on Trump, and serious people must prefer that to the infirmities of President Biden or the illusions of President Obama. 

Trump has confidence in his own abilities and serious analysts of realpolitik should too. At this point, after ‘Midnight Hammer’ and the other ceasefires, after all of the decade since he came down the escalator, there is very good reason to believe he can achieve as much as any other American at the table with Putin. Anyone hoping for his failure should assess their own mental health. It is in the interests of everyone on the planet that knows no ‘abroads’ that stability break out everywhere, beginning in Alaska this week.