Ned Price

Trump’s yearning for a Nobel Peace Prize.
A Pentagon crackdown on free press.
An unsure peace deal for Gaza & more.

Ned Price @nedprice.bsky.social does a deep dive on it all during his interview
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-pentagon-handcuffs-free-press

Opinion | The Pentagon Should Retract Its Secrecy Pledge

I wrote in the @nytimes.com about DoD's restrictions on what its press can report. Amid the many headlines from the Pentagon, this kind of overreach can quietly, but steadily, corrode our democratic norms, potentially compounding over time if left in place. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/o...

How Putin Tricked Trump The Alaska summit has been designed to play to the U.S. president’s pro-Russian impulses.

I argue in @foreignpolicy.com that Putin concocted this week's summit to bring Trump back into his orbit once and for all. I hope to be proven wrong, but history and everything we've seen from this President suggest otherwise. foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/13/t...

Americans should beware of Gabbard's 'dangerous distraction' with revisionist history of 2016 election DNI Tulsi Gabbard's claims about the 2016 election conflate Russian 'hacking' with 'influence' operations, rewriting history while diverting attention from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

I wrote about Tulsi Gabbard's dangerous deception for
Fox News. I thought it was important to take facts straight to the lion’s den, and I appreciate that they let me have my say.

www.foxnews.com/opinion/amer...

go.bsky.app/L4WJxz1

New #SpyTalk podcast with hosts @spytalker.bsky.social & @misikoff.bsky.social #MSWMedia 🕵🏼‍♀️

Guest: @nedprice.bsky.social

Listen: spytalk.simplecast.com/episodes/on-...

Israel Should Have Let Diplomacy Run its Course We’ll never know if more negotiations and sanctions could have prevented war with Iran.

Anyone who champions diplomacy and considers the use of force to be the last resort should be troubled by Israel's decision to launch its operation against Iran last week. I explain why in @foreignpolicy.com: foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/16/i...

Ned Price, former senior State Department official and former CIA official, explains the real agenda behind Trump's tariffs and why they should be red flags.

Trump is seeking to do to our economy w/ tariffs what he has attempted w/ academia, law, the arts, & beyond. He's given himself a new lever to bring companies & countries to heel to his benefit at the expense of everyday Americans, who'll be left holding the more expensive bag.

Think that's far-fetched? He sought to leverage military aid for Ukraine in return for "dirt" on Joe Biden in his first call with Zelenskyy in 2019. He now has a much broader source of leverage against dozens of countries the world over.

If past is prologue, Trump will attempt to monetize or extract political concessions from this enormous lever of power. And he could soon take it global, as he's hinted that his "reciprocal" tariffs may end up having exemptions for certain countries. thehill.com/homenews/adm...

Elon Musk’s SpaceX pleads with Trump for tariff exemptions Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking to avoid tariffs on equipment imported from China as Donald Trump prepares to escalate his trade war.

It's no longer the free market; it's the person who sits in the Oval Office. Even his closest associates have reportedly gotten the message. finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-mu...

Trump's on-again-off-again approach to sectoral tariffs carries the usual whiff of chaos, but it's also reminded corporate leaders that he controls their future. The lesson: "If you want a reprieve, only I can offer it." It affords Trump enormous power to pick-and-choose winners.

It's right to focus on the economic headwinds of Trump's tariffs & how they'll make life more expensive--from eggs to cars. But we should also look closely at the flip-side: his exemptions, a source of pay-for-play corruption & another control lever for an aspiring authoritarian.

@nedprice.bsky.social: "When you talk about pending military operations - tactics, techniques and procedures, TTP as they're called - that is by definition classified information. So it is hard to imagine that the substance that they were communicating was not classified at the time."

YouTube video by Brian Tyler Cohen 🚨 National security expert drops NIGHTMARE news on Trump over group chat scandal

Watch the full interview with @nedprice.bsky.social and subscribe to support independent media:

@nedprice.bsky.social: "The irony of this is that Jeffrey Goldberg probably did more than all of these supposed custodians of our national security combined to protect our national security by reporting on this. If this gets them to stop this practice, that is to our collective national benefit."

YouTube video by Brian Tyler Cohen 🚨 National security expert drops NIGHTMARE news on Trump over group chat scandal

Watch the full interview with @nedprice.bsky.social and subscribe to support independent media:

@nedprice.bsky.social: 'When you think about this collection of people, the VP, CIA Director, Sec of State, there is no higher set of intel targets than the individuals who were in this Signal chat room. So you can imagine if an intel service stumbled upon this, they would consider it a gold mine.'

YouTube video by Brian Tyler Cohen 🚨 National security expert drops NIGHTMARE news on Trump over group chat scandal

Watch the full interview with @nedprice.bsky.social and subscribe to support independent media:

The U.S. joined forces with Russia, Belarus, North Korea, and Nicaragua to oppose a UN resolution marking three years of Russian aggression against Ukraine. In virtually every other vote, the U.S. has been on the opposing side of this rogue's gallery. We're now leading it.

Trump says he expects Ukraine to sign critical minerals deal soon President Donald Trump said on Friday he expects Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to sign a minerals agreement with the United States soon as part of efforts to end the Ukraine war.

Let’s see the details, but a decree that forces Kyiv to choose between ceding political sovereignty to Putin or economic sovereignty to Trump isn’t the basis for a just peace. American companies deserve opps in Ukraine, but this isn’t the way to do it.

www.reuters.com/world/us/whi...

The most damning indictment of the WH's Ukraine strategy comes from none other than Putin himself. There MUST be condemnation and bias -- that's the very nature of a "just" peace in this case. In other words, a peace that distinguishes aggressor from victim and treats each accordingly.

Vance berates European leaders as tensions with close allies burst into the open The vice president used the podium at the high-level security gathering in Munich that had been focusing on the Russian invasion of Ukraine to raise social issues animating many on the American right.

A dynamic we saw during Trump's first term is super-charged in the second: the Administration's "foreign policy" is nothing more than MAGA red meat domestic policy masquerading as strategy on the world stage. It was dangerous then, and it's more so now. www.nbcnews.com/news/world/v...

Dictators and their aspirants the world over know that it’s not enough to control state media; they seek to create an “official” art and culture scene to asphyxiate a potential source of opposition. Trump’s seizure of the Kennedy Center may be about pure vanity. But it has eery echoes.

Russian money launderer to be freed in exchange for Marc Fogel Alexander Vinnik will leave behind $100 million worth of digital assets in the United States as part of the deal to free him, a U.S. official told NBC News.

Trading convicts for innocent Americans is always unpleasant, but it's almost always necessary and right. But Americans have a right to know if the deal also involved Ukraine's sovereignty and security, which Trump's comments and today's Putin call may suggest. www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...

C.I.A. Sends White House an Unclassified Email With Names of Some Employees The list of partial names was provided in an effort to comply with an executive order to trim the federal work force.

Here’s what’s especially bonkers: OPM is likely to be able to do very little with a long list of first names and last initials, but our adversaries — including those who’ve previously hacked OPM — will have the tools to glean potentially much more. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/u...

A deferred trade war with close allies isn't a "win." The WH has mortgaged our credibility, cast doubt on America as a trading partner, engendered widespread anti-Americanism in the Americas, and risked meaningful cooperation on drugs/migration in return for cosmetic concessions.

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz puts a hold on Trump's State Department nominees The move comes after Elon Musk said he and Trump would shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.

A blanket hold is rarely the answer, but it is here. This isn't a mere policy disagreement; it gets to the heart of the separation of powers and unique role of Congress. What's shocking is that GOP colleagues aren't also howling at this naked power-grab. www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...

Apropos of nothing, I was proud as State Department Spokesperson to receive a letter from Prime Minister Orban objecting to my criticism of his xenophobic and anti-Semitic remarks. The world should be able to look to U.S. officials to call out intolerance and division rather than sow it.