Jonah Goldberg: Trump never actually had a plan
When President Trump spoke at the Saudi Future Investment Initiative on Friday, he offered a pristine example of what he calls “the weave.” What detractors take for incontinent verbal rambling is, in his own telling, genius-level embroidery of a rhetorical mosaic. While spinning his tapestry of soundbites, the wartime president...
Jonah Goldberg: Team Trump had to start a war to learn how the global economy works
Early Monday , financial markets surged when President Donald Trump claimed there had been productive talks with Iran about ending the war. Therefore, he backed off a vow to bomb Iranian power plants if the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t reopened by Monday evening. Iran denies any such talks actually took...
Jonah Goldberg: Paul Ehrlich was wrong about everything
Biologist and author Paul Ehrlich, the most influential Chicken Little of the past century, died at the age of 93 this week. His 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” launched decades of institutional panic in government, entertainment and journalism. Ehrlich’s core neo-Malthusian argument was that overpopulation would exhaust the supply of...
Jonah Goldberg: Republicans aren’t willing to call the war in Iran what it is
Let’s state the obvious: We’re at war with Iran. My evidence? Turn on your TV. U.S. forces, working with Israel, killed the supreme leader of Iran and many of his top aides. We sunk Iran’s navy and destroyed most of their air force. We bombed thousands of military sites across...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump needs to get ready for the blowback
It is a special kind of folly to make long-term predictions amid the fog of war. Nobody knows how Operation Epic Fury will end. But there are already a few things we can celebrate and condemn. On the celebration side: The professionalism and courage of the American military stand out....
Jonah Goldberg: The world may be done bending to Trump’s will
I might as well say it clearly: I’m for regime change in Iran. The Islamic fanatics who have been running Iran since 1979 are murderers, torturers and exporters of terrorism. They are despised, or at least unwanted, by most Iranians, and the Iranians who get caught expressing their opinions in...
Jonah Goldberg: Marco Rubio is the only adult left in the room
Finally free from the demands of being chief archivist of the United States, secretary of state, national security adviser and unofficial viceroy of Venezuela, Marco Rubio made his way to the Munich Security Conference last weekend to deliver a major address. I shouldn’t make fun. Rubio, unlike so many major...
Jonah Goldberg: Voter ID shouldn’t be this controversial
President Trump says “Republicans” should “nationalize the election” or at least take over voting in up to 15 places where he says voting is corrupt. His evidence of fraudulent voting is that he lost in such places in 2020, and since it is axiomatic that he won everywhere, the reported...
Jonah Goldberg: Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job....
Jonah Goldberg: White House denying facts about Alex Pretti’s death
The killing of Alex Pretti was unjust and unjustified. While protesting — aka “observing” or “interfering with” — deportation operations, the VA hospital ICU nurse came to the aid of two protesters, one of whom had been slammed to the ground by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent. With...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump’s globalist era is going to make everyone poorer
I’m not sure what to call the new era we seem to be entering. But I am sure it will make people poorer. Let’s start with some basics. Imagine you inherit a thriving department store chain. Rather than listen to experts on consumer trends, supply-chain logistics, human resources, etc., you...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump isn’t interested in being honorable — he’d rather be feared
A decade ago, a famous and successful investor told me “integrity lowers the cost of capital.” We were talking about Donald Trump at the time, and this Wall Street wizard was explaining why then-candidate Trump had so much trouble borrowing money from domestic capital markets. His point was that the...
Jonah Goldberg: Zohran Mamdani’s call for warm ‘collectivism’ is dead on arrival
The day before the Trump administration captured and extradited Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, many on the right (including yours truly) had a field day mocking something the newly minted mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, said during his inaugural address. The proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America...
Jonah Goldberg: Republicans face some big questions entering 2026
“Are the Republicans going the way of the Whigs?” During President Trump’s first term, this question was asked a lot. The answer then: No. But one year into his second term it’s worth revisiting the question, not so much because the answer is different this time, but because the question...
Jonah Goldberg: How do you solve a problem like Candace Owens?
Candace Owens has a very popular internet show in which she trots out deranged conspiracies about, among other things, the demonic nature of Jews, the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (probably by Jews and their pawns, in her estimation) and the allegation that French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife is...
Jonah Goldberg: Does either party actually want to win the Senate race in Texas?
One of the worst features of the election primary system in our polarized “Red vs. Blue” time is the tendency of primary voters to flock to the candidate they most want to “destroy” the other party, not the candidate best positioned to do so. Let’s say a zombie is scratching...
Jonah Goldberg: Things are about to get worse for Mike Johnson
Here’s a conundrum for Republican politicians going into 2026, and even 2028. What do you do when you’ve turned the GOP into a Trump-branded, populist, anti-establishment party but your party controls the government and it’s not going very well? One time-tested answer: ritual human sacrifice. Which is why the next...
Jonah Goldberg: You can’t hide from war crimes by calling them ‘fake news’
Since September of this year, the United States military has been blowing up boats allegedly trafficking drugs in the Caribbean. Whether these attacks are legal is hotly debated. Congress hasn’t declared war or even authorized the use of force against “narco-terrorists” or against Venezuela, the apparent real target of a...
Jonah Goldberg: Leaked ‘wish list’ for peace in Russia-Ukraine war is hardly America First
Last week, a 28-point “peace plan” for the Russia-Ukraine war surfaced. It was apparently fleshed out in Miami over cocktails by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Witkoff’s Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev. Many critics immediately derided it as a “Russian wish-list.” That was before we...
Jonah Goldberg: Presidents can no longer be trusted with pardons
Ours is a system of “checks and balances.” The president can do this or that, but the courts and Congress can put a stop to it. When the courts rule that the executive branch can’t do something, Congress can write a new law saying the president can do it. When...
Jonah Goldberg: Has Trump already lost the Latino vote?
For generations, foreign policy eggheads debated the question, “Who lost China?” I’m wondering if election analysts might soon ask, “Who lost the Latinos?” Almost exactly one year ago, President Trump won an impressive election victory. It wasn’t the landslide his boosters claim, but it was decisive. And Trump’s record-breaking success...
Jonah Goldberg: Can socialism ever be more than just a fad in America?
Here we go again. Socialism is making a comeback, according to friend and foe alike. A new NBC poll now suggests that a majority of registered voters don’t like capitalism. A Gallup poll in September also found that support for capitalism was slipping. A Data for Progress poll around the...
Jonah Goldberg: Donald Trump isn’t a dictator, but his goal may actually be worse
Julius Caesar still casts a long shadow. We have a 12-month calendar — and leap year — thanks to Julius. July is named after him (though the salad isn’t). The words czar and kaiser, now mostly out of use, simply meant “Caesar.” We also can thank Julius Caesar for the...
Jonah Goldberg: Despite infighting, Democrats can still unite around 1 common goal — Trump
The only thing the parties can agree on is that Donald Trump is the central issue of our time. Let’s start with a recent headline: “It’s 2025, and Democrats Are Still Running Against Trump.” “After a year of soul-searching and introspection by Democrats about what they should stand for after...
Jonah Goldberg: Lasting peace requires accepting Israel’s right to exist
President Trump took a rhetorical victory lap in front of the Israeli parliament Monday. Ignoring his patented departures from the teleprompter, which violated all sorts of valuable norms, it was a speech Trump deserved to give. The ending of the war — even if it’s just a ceasefire — and...
