Trump's two contrasts and China's rare earths
At the NATO meeting in the Netherlands, June 24-25, 2025, President Trump was lavishly praised for having succeeded to make almost all NATO European members spend up to 5% on defense. That was fully deserved, it is a major success! But then, when questioned about possible less than good results of his bombing of Iranian nuclear sites three days earlier, he idiotically praised the pilots who flew the planes, adding theses courageous men had been hurt by the press, the NYT and Washington Post's publishing doubts about these results. That he should feel to come up with this totally irrelevant idiocy, while basking in his 5% success, is a strange contrast. He made himself ridiculous, on the same day he was receiving gigantic and deserved praise. The second contrast is in his attitude rowards Chna's growing threat. On the one hand, he has the correct intuition that there is something wrong there, and that this must be put right. But then, in taking correcting measures, he went ab...