JD Vance lauded for speech slamming the ‘hatred' of the far left
Vance discussed how 'hatred' has become the animating principle of the American far left during his address at the Claremont Institute's 2025 Statesmanship Award.
'This speech encapsulates why I, along with many others, wanted JD Vance to be vice president in the first place,' Mr Hammer told Sky News host Rita Panahi.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News AU
29 minutes ago
- Sky News AU
Anti-Trump protests take place outside US consulate in Scotland
Sky News contributor Sophie Elsworth discusses anti-Trump demonstrators protesting outside the US consulate in Edinburgh, Scotland. 'I was at those protests today here in Edinburgh and spoke to many attendees at this protest,' Mr Elsworth said. 'Many of them had mixed messages from that protest. 'Some were saying that Mr Trump shouldn't be in Scotland, others were saying that he is not helping the situation in Gaza at all, others accused him of various other things.'
Sky News AU
an hour ago
- Sky News AU
Michaelia Cash urges government to launch independent review into repeal of US beef ban as Albanese and Farrell remain at odds
Shadow foreign affairs minister Michaelia Cash has called for an immediate review into the Albanese government's decision to lift the long-standing ban on US beef imports after Trade Minister Don Farrell's "extraordinary" Sky News interview. It was revealed on Thursday Australian officials had notified their US counterparts that restrictions on the importation of US beef would be lifted following a ten-year scientific review of the biosecurity risks. The Albanese government was urged by the Coalition to explain its sudden backflip after the Prime Minister previously insisted Labor would not 'compromise' on biosecurity. In a major development to the ongoing saga, Mr Farrell revealed on Sky News' Sunday Agenda that Donald Trump had raised the issue with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese following claims the decision was made to appease the President. Ms Cash said Mr Farrell's responses showed there were "even more questions to answer". 'We now urgently need an independent review into this decision, it is very clear now we did not know about this phone call that Minister Farrell has referred to," Ms Cash told Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell. Mr Farrell was later caught out after Mr Albanese told ABC Insiders the US President had not directly raised the matter of Australian biosecurity rules on US beef during their phone conversations. "Did Donald Trump raise this with you directly?' Mr Albanese was asked by host David Speers, to which he responded, 'no.' 'Donald Trump did raise it at the so-called Liberation Day, of course, he raised it publicly,' Mr Albanese said. Ms Cash said the fresh revelations reinforced the need to investigate whether the Labor government had 'traded away our strict biosecurity standards' to secure a meeting between the Prime Minister and the US President which has still not occurred. 'The question all Australians need answered from Minister Farrell when he was telling us that 'everything is going to be ok' is why hasn't the Albanese government released the strict protocols, because the protocols need to be released so that the Australian public can satisfy themselves," Ms Cash said. Meanwhile, Mr Farrell swatted away assertions the move was made to satisfy the US administration while also stating he had no hand in the call and that rather the decision was made by Department of Agriculture and Agriculture Minister Julie Collins. Ms Cash said she was 'astounded' by Mr Farrell's interview and that it was "incredibly important that we get the department in front of us very, very quickly". 'It became quite confusing; who made this decision, who was involved in the decision, was it the Agriculture Minister, the Trade Minister, the Prime Minister, who we now know held a phone call with President Trump, which Mr Albanese has since denied," she said. 'It is now incredibly urgent that if a Senate inquiry was put forward Labor should agree to that, and we bring the department and relevant ministers in front of us as quickly as possible.' Senator Cash also rejected Mr Farrell's claims that Nationals Leader David Littleproud was politicising the issue, and that he was raising concerns in relation to the lifting of the ban due to leadership tensions with Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce. 'I completely disagree and the responses you just got show that even Minister Farrell doesn't know what has happened in relation to this announcement, David Littleproud is right to pose these questions,' Ms Cash said. Responding to the reports on Thursday, Nationals Senate Leader Bridget McKenzie said the decision could pose a risk to Australia's beef industry while Mr Littleproud said he was 'gobsmacked' by the move.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Competing conspiracy theories consume Trump's Washington
'There seems to be a natural human tendency to reduce complex reality by seeing masterminds behind every bad thing,' Michael Nelson, a presidential scholar at Rhodes College in Tennessee, said. 'Trump has always played to that and now the Epstein scandal is rebounding on him.' Indeed, Trump brought much of this on himself by encouraging dark views of the government that he derides as the 'deep state,' views that prove hard to dispel now that the supposed deep state answers to him. The administration's flip-flopping on whether it would release the Epstein files has fuelled talk of a cover-up, not only by Trump's critics but by his own allies. Conspiracy theories have a long place in American history. Many Americans still believe that someone else had a hand in killing President John F. Kennedy, that the moon landings were faked, that the September 11 terrorist attacks were an inside job or that the government is hiding proof of extraterrestrial visitors in Roswell, New Mexico. Sixty-five per cent of Americans told Gallup pollsters in 2023 that they think there was a conspiracy behind Kennedy's assassination. Some conspiracy theories do turn out to be true, of course, or have some basis. But presidents generally have not been the ones spreading dubious stories. To the contrary, they traditionally have viewed their role as dispelling doubts and reinforcing faith in institutions. President Lyndon B. Johnson created the Warren Commission to investigate his predecessor's murder specifically to keep rumours and guesswork from proliferating. (Spoiler alert: It didn't.) Trump, by contrast, relishes conspiracy theories, particularly those that benefit him or smear his enemies without any evident care for whether they are true or not. 'There have been other conspiratorial political movements in the country's past,' Geoff Dancy, a University of Toronto professor who teaches about conspiracy theories, said. 'But they have never occupied the upper echelons of power until the last decade.' During the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump tied the father of one of his rivals, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, to the Kennedy killing, citing a photograph with Lee Harvey Oswald. During Trump's hush money trial in New York last year, his one-time compatriot David Pecker of The National Enquirer acknowledged under oath that the whole thing was made up to damage Cruz and elect Trump. Unrepentant, Trump stuck to his false assertions about Obama's birthplace for years, only grudgingly admitting late in the 2016 campaign that his predecessor was, in fact, born in the United States. Trump nonetheless went on to falsely accuse Obama of spying on him, among other unfounded assertions. At one point, Trump spread the claim that Osama bin Laden was not actually dead and that Obama and Biden had the Navy's SEAL Team 6 killed. He likewise casually accused a television anchor of murder. 'The president's repeated discussion of multiple conspiracy theories, most recently about the 2016 election, has no parallel in American politics,' Meena Bose, the director of the Peter S. Kalikow Centre for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University, said. 'Presidential allegations that have no factual basis undermine public confidence in the political system and present dangerous challenges to constitutional principles and the rule of law, particularly if they are not subject to checks by other institutions.' Conspiracy theories are not the exclusive preserve of Trump and the political right. Around the time of last month's anniversary of the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, some on the left once again advanced the notion that the whole shooting episode had been staged to make the Republican candidate into a political martyr. Some Democrats have now dived into the Epstein fever swamp head-first, suddenly exercised by a closed case that had hardly been on the party's priority list just weeks ago, as they pile on Trump and maximise his political troubles. After Roy Black, who was Epstein's defence lawyer, happened to die at age 80 this past week at the height of the furore over the case, some on the left saw suspicious timing. America's conspiracy craze has also drawn in foreign allies in recent days. President Emmanuel Macron of France and his wife, Brigitte, this past week filed a defamation lawsuit in Delaware against Candace Owens, a far-right YouTube commentator known for antisemitic rhetoric, for repeatedly claiming that the French first lady is actually a man. Trump, however, has stirred the plot pot more than any other major political figure. In the six months since retaking office, he has remained remarkably cavalier about suggesting nefarious schemes, even as he heads the government supposedly orchestrating some of them. He suggested the nation's gold reserves at Fort Knox might be missing, resurrecting a decades-old fringe supposition, even though he would presumably be in position to know whether that was actually true, what with being president and all. 'If the gold isn't there, we're going to be very upset,' he told reporters. It fell to Scott Bessent, the decidedly non-conspiratorial Treasury secretary, to burst the bubble and reassure Americans that, no, the nation's reserves had not been stolen. 'All the gold is present and accounted for,' he told an interviewer. Trump has played to long-standing suspicions by ordering the release of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., an act of transparency for historians and researchers that may shed important light on those episodes. But Trump has gone beyond simple theory floating to make his own alternate reality official government policy. Some applicants for jobs in the second Trump administration were asked whether Trump won the 2020 election that he actually lost; those who gave the wrong answer were not helping their job prospects, forcing those rooted in facts to decide whether to swallow the fabrication to gain employment. Trump has likewise claimed that Biden was so diminished toward the end of his term that his aides signed pardons without his knowledge using an autopen. Biden was certainly showing signs of age, but the autopen story was conjecture. Asked if he had uncovered proof, Trump said, 'I uncovered, you know, the human mind. I was in a debate with the human mind and I didn't think he knew what the hell he was doing.' The past week or so has seen a fusillade of Trumpian conspiracy theories, seemingly meant to focus attention away from the Epstein case. Tulsi Gabbard, the president's politically appointed intelligence chief, trotted out inflammatory allegations that Obama orchestrated a 'years-long coup and treasonous conspiracy' by skewing the 2016 election interference investigation – despite the conclusions of a Republican-led Senate report signed by none other than Marco Rubio, now Trump's secretary of state. She also claimed that Hillary Clinton was 'on a daily regimen of heavy tranquillisers' during the 2016 campaign. Relying on this, Trump accused Obama of 'treason,' suggesting he should be locked up and going so far as to post a fake video showing his predecessor being handcuffed in the Oval Office and put behind bars. The idea of a president posting such an image of another president would once have been seen as a shocking breach of etiquette and corruption of the justice system, but in the Trump era it has become simply business as usual. For all that, the conspiracy theorist in chief has not been able to shake the Epstein case, which reflects the rise of the QAnon movement that believes America is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles. Most of the files, the ones that his attorney-general told him include his name, remain unreleased, bringing together an unlikely alliance of MAGA conservatives and liberal Democrats. Loading It was well known that Trump was friends with Epstein, although they later fell out. So it's not clear what his name being in the files might actually mean. But Trump is not one to back down. Asked last week about whether he had been told his name was in the files, Trump again pointed the finger of conspiracy elsewhere. 'These files were made up by Comey,' he told reporters, referring to James Comey, the FBI director he had fired more than two years before Epstein died in prison in 2019. 'They were made up by Obama,' he went on. 'They were made up by the Biden administration.'
