Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he’d been personally insulted by Israel’s “very stupid” move to annex the West Bank.

While preparing to depart from Ben Gurion airport after a two-day trip to Israel, Vance was asked about the Israeli Knesset voting in support of a bill that would apply Israeli sovereignty to the occupied Palestinian West Bank, where the Israeli military and settler killings of Palestinians continue.

“When I asked about it, somebody told me that it was a political stunt, that it had no practical significance. It was purely symbolic,” Vance said. “I mean, look, if it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt and I personally take some insult to it.

“The West Bank is not gonna be annexed by Israel,” he added. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy, and if people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that. But we certainly weren’t happy about it.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar claimed that the opposition had staged the vote to “embarrass the government” during Vance’s visit, adding that the bill did not have the support of the government. Last month, Sa’ar himself publicly floated annexing the West Bank.

“As much as it’s our wish or aspiration, we have decided not to bring it [at] this stage to the Knesset, because now on the table, we have huge efforts to [do] everything that Trump’s plan will be successful, and we will invest in that,” Sa’ar said Wednesday.

As President Donald Trump’s supposed “ceasefire” sets in, violent raids and assaults have continued in the West Bank, where the Israeli government has approved dozens of new settlements over the last two years, sparking increased violence against Palestinian residents. There have been more than 1,000 violent settler attacks since the beginning of 2025, according to Al Jazeera, putting this year on track to be the most violent year in the West Bank on record.

Israel has violated the terms of Trump’s fragile peace deal since the start, launching a wave of airstrikes at the Gaza Strip over the weekend, killing dozens of people, including children. The Israeli military said it was responding to violence from Hamas, after individuals in the Rafah area fired guns and an anti-tank missile at IDF forces. But Hamas said it had not violated the agreement.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is still going rogue.

The infamous MAGA hard-liner was on Tucker Carlson’s show on Wednesday night explaining why she “hates” her own party.

“These people are so fake,” Greene told Carlson. “The only reason that they kiss up to Donald Trump, our president, the only reason they kiss up to him, is because they’re terrified of a Truth Social post, because they’re terrified of their own constituents that fully support MAGA, that fully support America First, and fully support everything that Donald Trump has laid out now for years and years.

“Americans got to the point where electing Donald Trump was a referendum on the Republican Party,” she said. “And I very much feel that because many times I hate my own party, and I blame Republicans for many of the problems that we have today.”

This is par for the course lately for Greene, as she becomes perhaps the most outspoken individual Republican in Congress—no Truth Social post can muzzle her. She has come out against her party’s obstruction of the Epstein files, her party’s decision to shut down the government instead of improving health insurance, and the funding and enabling by both parties of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

“You don’t HATE your government enough,” she said earlier this month in response to the shutdown. And she’s still going.

“I blame them for being so America last to the point where they are literally slaves to all the big industries in Washington, the military industrial complex, Big Pharma, health insurance industries, you name it,” Greene said later in the Carlson interview. “They are literally slaves to them, and they love foreign war so much.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called out the erosion of American soft power and international legitimacy in the age of Donald Trump, noting that the U.S. president’s actions have caused former economic strengths to become economic weaknesses.

“This decades-long process of an ever-closer economic relationship with the United States is now over. And as a consequence, many of our former strengths as a country … strengths based on close ties to America, have become our vulnerabilities,” Carney said during a Wednesday night speech to students in Ottawa. He also noted that Canadian manufacturing sectors and businesses were “under threat” due to Trump’s tariffs.

“Our relationship with the United States will never again be the same as it was … we have to take care of ourselves, because we can’t rely on one foreign partner. We have to take care of each other because we are stronger together,” he said.

Carney: But this decades-long process of an ever-closer economic relationship with the United States is now over. And as a consequence, many of our former strengths as a country—more particularly, our economic strengths based on close ties to America—have now become our… pic.twitter.com/OPMzB9X9mO

These are harsh and alarming words to hear from the leader of what has been this country’s closest geographical and political ally for decades. But Carney’s view is entirely warranted. Trump has stoked conflict and disrespect by calling for Canada to be the 51st state, imposed harsh tariffs on Canadian goods, and overall tarnished what was once a fruitful relationship—all under the guise of his “America First” ideology. Now, Carney is thinking “Canada First.”

“Now, above all, we will build Canadian,” Carney continued. “Our upcoming budget will move forward with our Buy Canadian policy—prioritizing Canadian steel, aluminum, lumber, manufactured goods, and technology for Canadian projects.”

It isn’t just Canada. Countries throughout Europe have shifted away from the United States as they can no longer expect consistency and good faith negotiation from the Trump administration. So........

© New Republic