Politics
Opinion: Trump 1.0 made some world leaders laugh. Trump 2.0 terrifies them
Not a joke, as Joe Biden might say.
I’m talking about our country: America is no joke, no matter how many times Donald Trump claims it is.
One of his most obnoxious lies at every rally and in most interviews is his contention that, with Biden as president, a disrespectful world is laughing at us. Trump was at it again last week, at his most recent rally in Green Bay, Wis., claiming the United States is a global laughingstock.
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
“Joe Biden is not respected and Joe Biden is not feared” among the world’s nations, he told his fawning crowd. But once he, Trump, is reelected, “America will soon be respected again, very quickly respected, like never before.”
Like virtually all Trumpisms, this one is demonstrably false.
“Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, publics around the world held the United States in low regard,” the Pew Research Center reported soon after he left office. Its 2020 survey found that among 13 allied nations, the share of people who had a favorable view of America was the lowest it had been in the two decades since Pew began asking the question. Good feelings toward the United States rebounded after Biden took office and remained favorable by a 2-to-1 ratio last year.
It’s almost laughable, Trump’s projection of his own unpopularity onto Biden. Except that too many Americans believe him.
As for foreign leaders, they’re not laughing at the United States or Trump. They’re openly fretting that the pro-authoritarian neo-isolationist whose crude credo is “America First” could return to power. Their agita is pretty astounding, really.
They don’t respect Trump at all, though they do fear him — the way you’d fear a madman at the nuclear button. President Nixon sought leverage by making foreign counterparts think he was unstable; Trump actually is unstable. Foreign diplomats and some leaders don’t even mask their anxiety. They mostly speak anonymously, in case he actually regains power, but they speak nonetheless, ignoring norms against opining about another country’s election.
Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has said repeatedly that even the autocrats Trump admires — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, among others — “think he’s a laughing fool.”
The Japanese have a phrase for their Trump trepidation, the Washington Post reported ahead of this week’s state visit by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. “ ‘Moshi-tora,’ ” according to the Post reporter in Tokyo, “encapsulates the mild panic brewing here. … It’s a shorthand for: What if Donald Trump wins?”
“It makes us nervous,” former Japanese lawmaker Mieko Nakabayashi told the Post. “We have to start thinking. That is the true purpose of ‘moshi-tora’: alarming ourselves to think about the unthinkable.”
Americans know the feeling.
Meanwhile, the Japanese edition of Newsweek had a cover drawing of Trump as a bloody, frightening apparition, calling to mind either villain or vampire.
Friendly nations, including Japan, reliant for more than seven decades on a rules-based system of alliances led by the United States, justifiably worry that a reelected Trump will succeed at breaking those alliances. They fear a trade war and economic tremors from his promised tariffs. They expect he’d abandon Ukraine, demanding that it cede Crimea and the Donbas region to Russia and thereby encouraging Putin’s expansionism in Europe. They sweat his odd affinity for Xi in China and Kim in North Korea, as the two men threaten neighbors who count on the United States to be a counterweight.
On the sidelines at NATO’s 75th birthday commemoration last week in Brussels, attendees commiserated about a potential Trump 2.0, and talked about “Trump-proofing” the alliance generally and support for Ukraine specifically. How could they not after Trump crowed at a MAGA rally in February that he would encourage the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO-member countries that in his view aren’t spending enough on their own defense?
Trump’s claim that the world is laughing at us isn’t unique to Biden’s era. He’s been babbling that for years, since the administration of Republicans’ sainted Ronald Reagan. But he gets the target wrong. When the world has laughed at our expense, it was laughing, literally, at Trump.
Cue the blooper reels. In 2018, then–President Trump was the joke at the United Nations General Assembly when he began his address by boasting that he’d achieved more in two years than any president in U.S. history. The delegates burst into guffaws. In 2019, the leaders of Britain, France, Canada and the Netherlands, along with Britain’s Princess Anne, were captured on a hot mic mocking Trump over cocktails during a NATO summit. Trump packed up and flew home — in time, had he wanted, to see the “Saturday Night Live” skit lampooning him as the goofball shunned by the cool kids in the NATO cafeteria.
Such yuks at Trump’s expense were easier then — before Jan. 6, Ukraine and his many former advisors’ post-presidency alarms about the danger he poses should he get back in the White House. Experience is a teacher: Trump is no longer a laughing matter.
Politics
Warren tells Trump to ‘sign the damn bill’ as bipartisan housing package remains stalled in Washington
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., lashed out at President Donald Trump during a recent local television interview, labeling him a “man-child” throwing a “tantrum” over his refusal to sign a sweeping bipartisan housing package.
Appearing on WCVB’s “On the Record,” the left-wing senator did not hold back her frustration over the stalled legislation, delivering a blunt message to the president: “Sign the damn bill.”
“If he cared about the American people, he’d have already signed the damn thing,” Warren said during the interview, arguing that Trump “does not care about the economic survival of America’s working families.”
FILE – The Senate previously advanced the massive housing package geared toward lowering the costs of homes and supercharging the housing supply. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., pitched it as legislation to prevent America from becoming a “nation of renters.” (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Protect Borrowers ; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is an expansive bipartisan package that she said contains nearly 50 provisions designed to address the nationwide housing emergency.
Warren noted that decades of under-building have driven prices up, leaving the U.S. in need of millions of new units.
The primary focus of the bill is to lower the costs of construction and make it easier to build new homes.
FILE – President Donald Trump previously said lawmakers must first approve the SAVE America Act before he moves forward with the housing package. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg)
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The bill, which was co-sponsored by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., also includes a secondary focus aimed at blocking corporate consolidation of the housing market.
Warren explained that the legislation is designed to keep private equity firms from buying up local neighborhoods and turning America “into a nation of renters.”
According to Warren, the legislation had widespread support from both sides of the aisle before it was stalled.
TRUMP VOWS BLOCK ON SIGNING NEW LAWS UNTIL SAVE AMERICA ACT PASSES SENATE
She claimed the bill was “handed to the president on a silver platter” and that lawmakers from both parties were eagerly taking credit for the legislation.
“Republicans were all going online, saying, ‘well, I helped write that bill. This bill is terrific,’” Warren said. “So everybody’s out there saying, ‘my bill, I helped make this happen,’ right up until the man-child has a tantrum and announces he will not be signing it.”
FILE – Sen. Elizabeth Warren called President Donald Trump a “man-child” during the interview, describing his refusal to sign the bill as a “tantrum.” (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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Critics of the legislation claim it does not allocate fresh federal funding, directly address rising costs of homeownership, or go far enough to address permitting issues.
The president previously canceled a scheduled signing event, insisting lawmakers must first approve the unrelated SAVE America Act, a voting-focused measure, before he moves forward.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Alex Miller contributed to this report.
Politics
MS NOW anchor Alex Witt to exit as network reduces live weekend programming
Veteran MS NOW anchor Alex Witt is leaving the news network, which is moving away from live evening programming on weekends.
The new weekend programming strategy announced Friday is a cost-saving measure that will give parent company Versant more resources for a new direct-to-consumer streaming offering that makes MS NOW available to consumers without a pay-TV subscription. The company is also looking to expand its live event business.
According to a memo from MS NOW President Rebecca Kutler, “The Weekend: Primetime,” a live discussion program launched last year, will have its final airing Saturday.
One of the program’s co-hosts, Antonia Hylton, will take over Witt’s midday shifts later this year. Hylton’s co-hosts Ayman Mohyeldin, Catherine Rampell and Elise Jordan will remain with MS NOW and continue to appear on other programs.
Kutler said job losses from the moves are minimal and encouraged staffers who lose their current roles to apply for 40 current job openings at the company with more on the way. MS NOW has been staffing up its news operation since separating from NBC News last year.
MS NOW changed its name from MSNBC in November. The network, along with other Comcast-owned cable channels, were spun off into Versant in January.
Weekends have long been a ratings weak spot for MS NOW, which while a distant second to Fox News, has seen audience growth in 2026 and remains ahead of CNN. The network has started to rely on podcasts such as “Pod Save America,” from Crooked Media, to fill some hours. The episodes have performed strongly enough for MS NOW to try similar deals with outside podcast producers.
“Throughout the summer, we will expand our taped strategy and announce new content partnerships,” Kutler said in her memo.
With the changes, MS NOW will still have 20 hours of live programming each weekend and will be staffed to handle breaking news.
Witt joined the network formerly known as MSNBC in 1999, long before it began its strong tilt toward progressive political commentary. Over the years, Witt’s weekend newscast became one of the few programs on the network that delivered straight news without opinion.
Kutler called Witt “a beloved longtime member of our MS NOW family” and “a continued, trusted, and steady presence for our audiences.”
While Witt works through the summer, Hylton will anchor the 11 a.m. weekday time period, which will eventually be handled by former NBC News White House correspondent Peter Alexander.
Politics
McCarthy says Trump will use ‘everything he can’ to force Senate action on SAVE America Act
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As infighting over the SAVE America Act throws congressional Republicans into disarray, President Donald Trump’s bid to get the stalled election bill across the finish line gained one notable ally.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News Digital that he supports the election integrity measure and indicated that Trump should continue to use every available tool to pressure the Senate to pass it.
“He’s going to try everything he can to make sure he passes that through,” McCarthy said in a brief interview outside the U.S. Capitol.
The ex-speaker’s comments came after Trump abruptly called off a signing ceremony Wednesday for a bipartisan housing bill to pressure the Republican-controlled Senate to act on the SAVE America Act.
President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs Reading Regional Airport in Reading, Pa., on June 23, 2026. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
IRATE REPUBLICANS ACCUSE TRUMP OF HANDING DEMOCRATS A WIN AFTER BLOWING UP HOUSING PACKAGE
The move surprised Republican lawmakers, some of whom were praising the bill’s passage at a press conference when Trump’s Truth Social post broke.
But Trump has repeatedly cast the election measure — requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and voter identification requirements — as his top legislative priority.
The legislation’s momentum, however, has slowed in the upper chamber, where Republican leadership insists the votes aren’t there amid widespread Democratic opposition. Senate Republicans have also been unwilling to eliminate the legislative filibuster, which requires a 60-vote threshold to pass the legislation.
Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy speaks during a ceremony honoring President Ronald Reagan on the 115th anniversary of his birthday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., on Feb. 6, 2026. (Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group)
TRUMP CALLS MAIL IN VOTING CORRUPT AS SENATE BEGINS DEBATE ON SAVE ACT REQUIRING VOTER ID
Amid the SAVE standoff, a group of conservative lawmakers effectively shut down the House floor in an effort to force Senate action on the election bill.
But the Senate recessed Wednesday for two weeks over the July 4 holiday, leaving the measure in limbo until lawmakers return.
The conservative-led blockade sparked fierce backlash, with several members inside the GOP conference telling Fox News Digital the move risked torpedoing their own legislative agenda.
Meanwhile, the House has also yet to pass a version of the legislation incorporating several of the president’s priorities, including a mail-in voting crackdown and provisions banning men from competing in women’s sports and child sex change procedures.
Trump has not indicated whether he will sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, despite the likely existence of a veto-proof majority.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Thursday that the housing bill had been transmitted to the White House for Trump’s signature following a meeting with the president.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks with reporters in the U.S. Capitol on June 10, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Trump now has 10 days to sign the package or veto it. If he does nothing, the legislation automatically becomes law at the end of the 10-day period.
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