Trump Demands Loyalty To Him From NATO Or Lose US Troops | News Round-Up

In this news roundup of the week for Friday, August 14th, 2026.President Trump is demanding expressions of loyalty from NATO members before deciding where US troops are going to be withdrawn.Is this the moment where it's really going to get ugly?150 ,000 Canadians are demanding that the US ambassador to their country, Pete Hoekstra, should be booted out as Alberta squares up to an independence referendum.The UK's MAGA -like populist Nigel Farage wins his by -election against a man wearing a bin on his head.And astonishingly, that seems not to have solved his problems.

And various people are asking, who could ever replace Trump's press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, who is standing down?I have a suggestion.Lots to discuss, so let's jump straight in.Now, I have suggested here in the past that there are no measures that President Trump takes internally in the United States that he won't seek to export to use against other countries externally at some point.And so, this week, we learned of exactly one such instance.The internationalisation of the Trump loyalty test.

Because, yes, As he did do on all of his cabinet members, the Trump administration has demanded that NATO members declare their support for Donald Trump and his policies as part of its review of where it's going to cut military assets across Europe.Bloomberg reported today that it had seen the document sent to leaders asking a series of questions to establish their loyalty or otherwise.For example, has the country been publicly supportive of US foreign policy?Has the country placed any restrictions at all on the US militaryits bases?Are the countries spending their money on specifically US defence contractors?

You know, to buy the weapons that have then been rerouted for Pete Hegseth to chuck randomly at Iranians instead of actually delivering to its customers.In other words, All the things that NATO members have been doing to seek to survive the astonishing transformation of the former pillar of NATO security into becoming an actual adversary and exploiter of their vulnerabilities.Those things are now in the crosshairs.And you might be thinking, surely the Trump team already know the answers to these questions.And if they were minded to allow those answers to override actual strategic calculations of where their forces are actually needed, well, they could just do that without a questionnaire.Indeed.

So you can work out that's not the full extent of this process.And lo and behold, those questions are accompanied by the follow -up question.Are they willing to reduce or eliminate any such restrictions?They don't include the words or else, but they might as well do.The US is scheduled to meet with NATO members later this month to discuss its ongoing review and presumably their answers to all of those questions.The countries who have received this pretty unsubtle approach have reportedly not been overly impressed.

I mean, it is a clown cartoonish attempt to intimidate them into operating against their own best interests and to do so in the name of boosting Donald Trump's ego.not to mention protecting him from the consequences of his own behaviour, including that behaviour that involves taking actions that clearly break existing international law, which not many are overly keen to do.At the same time, by the by, as Trump has been boosting far -right parties to seek to bring their governments down.So, actually acting like an enemy, not just a troublesome ally.So, sure, profess your loyalty to that.Those misgivings from national leaders didn't stop NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the man who called Trump daddy, from arguing that all of this is logical and positive.

It is, I think, bringing NATO closer together, he told reporters, talking about the review generally, not this recent questionnaire specifically.Rutte's job depends on bailing out the sinking ship, so you should probably not be too hard on him, although Technically, he could still behave like a grown -up with dignity.But the various member countries are now bracing themselves for a fairly maximal US pullback of resources, using their refusal to bend the knee to the Golden Emperor as the excuse.They had tried to delay the crunch moment for as long as they could, because building their capacity to cope without America takes time, and any strategic ambiguity gave them cover for doing so.But as long as Trump makes what is likely to be a strategic miscalculation that he can just keep squeezing his allies and they will have no choice but to fall in line, then they're clearly not going to be given the grace of that time.So it is about to be a world where national leaders get to define themselves.

after all, by their steadfastness in the face of bullying.Speaking of which, at the time of shooting this video, 150 ,000 Canadians had signed a petition demanding the removal of Donald Trump's ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra.The petition says that Hoekstra has worked to undermine the Canada -US relationship and intervened in Canadian political discourse in a manner inconsistent with diplomatic protocol.Which is all a nice way of saying he has spent his time trolling Canadians with Trump's vision of the country of the 51st state of the USA and also reportedly encouraging separatists who want Alberta to split from Canada.Now, the latter one he denies, recently saying this, if the referendum is going to be influenced by governments, it's going to be influenced by the government of Alberta and by the federal government, but not by the United States government.He added that he had clear direction from Washington not to try to influence the referendum, which shows that they did discuss the possibility.

Given that Albert and separatists have been welcomed at the White House numerous times during Trump's second term, you have to suggest the fact of the Trump administration's sympathies are pretty clear.But maybe...Just maybe they learned from the Canadian elections that saw the MAGA -like Conservatives losing their support in the face of Trump's provocations that the best way to destroy their favoured outcome is to seek to support it and to bring it about.Now that would be remarkably astute of them compared to Trump's usual struggles with self -control at all times.The petition to declare Hoekstra persona non grata was launched by a woman from Calgary, Leanne Walker, who professed to self -astonished with how it has taken off.It will now be tabled in the House of Commons in November, with the federal government required to issue a formal response within 45 days.

Hoekstra defended himself by saying that it was his job to represent Donald Trump's views.which is not an exact description of the traditional role of diplomacy in the modern world, but since the US has replaced all the diplomats worldwide with brash Trump loyalists who seem keen to be noticed, causing offence in the president's name, it does seem to reflect the way the USA wants to do things.So sending the message to them that this is unwelcome to the host countries likewise seems fair enough.even though you'd expect the Canadian government itself to sidestep the petition's demands as written.Certainly they would be inclined to do so right now, given that trade discussions are reaching a critical point.Canada looks to have some significant leverage, given that the USA is said to be looking to get preferential access to Canadian critical minerals.

Canadian negotiators are reportedly telling them there would be zero appetite to go there so long as the US is threatening to slap a 50 % tariff on additional goods, as Trump has threatened and the deadline for which is fast approaching.

But there is also growing pressure on Mark Carney to be less pragmatic and to live up more to his earlier rhetoric of standing up to the bully.So when the Trump team push back on the Canadian proposal, as theyare guaranteed to do, looking for maximalist, one -sided agreements, it is anyone's guess how that is actually going to play out.In the meantime, the Alberta independence vote will be held on October the 19th.Now, it's not actually an independence vote.It's a referendum on whether to hold an independence vote.

That one would be the one that's binding.The word that a number of commentators have intoned in the course of the process has been Brexit, drawing the comparison with the United Kingdom's vote in 2016 to leave the European Union.Whatever the rights or wrongs of the result of that vote, What has stood out in the decades since is just how much it signalled a massive, ongoing and deeply felt fissure between people in the UK body politic.Anyone who has witnessed that, with the possible exception of Pete Huckster and Donald Trump, of course, they would wish to spare Canada the bitterness and the division between peoples, whichever way the vote actually goes.What Britain learned was that such processes gain their own momentum once they've begun.The then British Prime Minister, David Cameron, called the referendum, utterly convinced that he would win the argument, keep the UK in Europe, and in so doing, release all the pressure that had been building up on the issue.

He wasn't the first politician to be sunk by his own hubris and guaranteed not to be the last either.The polling had been 35 % for leaving the EU when he first made that commitment, and it rose to 51 .9%.by the time the votes were cast.Alberta Premier Danielle Smith called the referendum on a similar conviction, that she would win the argument to hold the country together.She, unsurprisingly, rejects the comparison with Brexit.Time will tell whether her confidence is well placed or not.

In the meantime, there is the usual flood of misinformation and attempts by rogue states such as Russia and the United States to bring about the most disruptive outcome and the most lasting mutual enmity.The result will reflect what people want, but let's hope the attempts to achieve that toxic end point will fail.And speaking of the Brexit vote, we should probably talk briefly about one of the architects of that vote.As you may recall, the United Kingdom's mag -a -lite Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, stepped down recently as a Member of Parliament in order to re -stand again in a by -election.You might think that sounds unnecessary and futile.And you would not be alone in making that observation.

It took place as Farage got excessively grumpy about the fact that his financial affairs were under investigation in Parliament, having accepted a donation of £5 million from a crypto -billionaire.As you do, and failed to declare it.Let the people of Clacton decide, he said as he stood down.As we discussed here at the time, it's not actually how allegations of financial irregularities get investigated in a mature society governed by the rule of law.Nevertheless, he so declared, and he stood down, and all the major political partiesjust refused to put up a candidate for that by -election, calling it a charade.

And the entire world, particularly the United States media for some reason, had huge amounts of fun that his most credible challenger in the by -election was the comedy character known as Count Binface.Anyway, yesterday the election was held.As expected, Farage won it easily, because yes, it's a very Reform UK -minded constituency, and he had no serious opposition.He won a slightly higher number of votes than he did in the 2024 general election, 22 ,239 votes, up by approximately 1 ,000.He was aware of the degraded visuals he'd been left with by the major parties boycotting it, so he elected not to even appear at the election night count, which is pretty unheard of.There was some nonsense about being advised not to attend because of a credible threat against him, which was quickly denied by the police.

But the reality is it would have been a political calculation.Having Farage on the platform surrounded by a vast number of comedy and fringe candidates would have provided a very powerful visual that drove home the argument it had all been a bit of a foolish endeavour.Also, all candidates can have a certain number of their supporters at the count.So, given the absurdly large number of candidates, 34 in all, the most there's ever been in any by -election, there could have been a pretty large, hostile crowd barracking him when his victory was announced.So instead, he stayed away, he spoke at a rally exclusively for his own supporters, to at least try to keepthe me vs the political establishment line.

Which is harder to do when your main opponent looks like this.Was it the own goal that Farage's opponents hoped for and insist after the event that it was?Was it instead the massive triumph that Nigel Farage rather predictably boasted?If we are dealing with the world as it is, not the way we'd like it to be, you'd probably suggest it was something of a draw.What Farage did demonstrate, for what it's worth, was that his core support in the hugely reformed UK -supporting Clacton constituency does not care that much about the allegations of financial impropriety.He has something of a mini -Trump effect in place with his base, where they Apparently, take his word for stuff and forgive him for transgressions, the sort of things that they would normally be highly scandalised by if they were committed by the other side.

So yes, probably nobody is much in doubt that should the investigations into his affairs find against him, meaning that technically there could be another by -election called following a recall petition, yes, he would win that one as well.That's what Farage is counting on.When he was asked today about the ongoing investigation, which had paused for the by -election but has immediately restarted on the news that he's won, Farage said this.Who cares?

The voters of Clapton don't care.They will not call a second by -election here.They'd be stupid to do so.In that sense, pre -empting the result of the inquiry so that he could hold a by -election, making the case to his supporters, he was being bullied unfairly by the elites.

That probably worked for him at a very base level.

But outside of his own constituency, yeah, not so much.The main party's refusal to play defanged the symbolism of the attempt.The visuals of Farage versus Binface, who got 26 % of the vote by the way, did likewise.

If you want to form the government at the next election, the fact you can get your supporters out in your own constituency obviously is not the measure.Farage now has the lowest approval rating of any of the major party leaders.And with new Prime Minister Andy Burnham in place, Labour's polling overtook that of Reform UK in a recent poll for the first time in quite a long while.Any of that can change in the coming months and years.But there's no doubt that from the point where Reform UK was riding high and projecting itself as the obvious next government, a lot of momentum has ebbed away from them.

Nothing in this by -election adventure is likely to have changed that reality.Meanwhile...

Many journalists across the world have been writing up the fact that Donald Trump's press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, is making the call that spending more time with her young children is going to be less brain -numbing than repeating the message of Donald Trump to the world.Now that's partially because the media loves talking about itself and they're sort of part of this story.So yes, they're all talking about it.Donald Trump loses his favourite press secretary as Caroline Leavitt exits, the Financial Times version.Why Caroline Leavitt might be impossible for Trump to replace.That was CNN.

And who could possibly replace White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt?the BBC?Well, I hate to be rude, but probably a small barky dog could be seen as the continuity candidate here.It is hard to see Leavitt's time as anything other than a massive degradation of the function of the office, which is to facilitate a degree of government transparency, to enable the free press to hold the executive to account.Sure, Sometimes the press is really annoying and stupid and manipulative and pursuing an agenda of their own, all of those things.And sometimes the press is incredibly important, able to ask the questions that powerful people would prefer to remain unasked but need to be asked so that you can uncover the truth so that people are informed.

But Caroline Levitt's approach has been just to channel Trump himself, to insult mainstream journalists, slap them down, refuse to answer their questions while repeating Trump's lies verbatim, to fill the room with low -grade MAGA bloggers and vloggers who will ask slowball or outright sycophantic questions, and to ensure that it's all just the most mind -numbing juvenile propaganda.She certainly fits the administration and its approach, so at least there is a degree of authenticity.If you want to call it that.But if you're going to do it that way, why even bother with the pretense of accountability?It's all part of a theme, really.US diplomats being replaced with small barky dogs like Pete Hoekstra who see their job as channeling Trump and upsetting as many people as possible in so doing.

US cabinet members such as Pete Hegseth taking up the role of being small barky dogs.dogs who do likewise, making partisan attacks in response to fair questions rather than actually answering those questions.So yes, of course, a small barky dog as press secretary.Job done.Ironically, China tried this strategy some years ago, encouraging what were called the wolf warriors, diplomats who went very aggressively on the attack.They quickly got rid of the wolf warriors, because they had the awareness and the wits to notice that the approach was immensely counterproductive.

So they went back to a more standard style of diplomacy, which after all, got developed over history for a very good reason.But I guess the Trump team thought, whoa, counterproductive and mean?What's not to like?So yes, can President Trump find someone willing to do that sort of work for him in the press office again?Since he's happy to just ramble away directly to journalists on a daily basis.Surely he must wonder why he would even need it.

And for all the good it does, he would be right on that question at least.Alright, my thanks as always to the people who support this channel on Patreon and elsewhere, without whom these videos would not be possible.That's all for now.Have a great weekend.