Where in the world is President Trump? (Or Carmen Sandiego, for that matter?) Late last night, Reuters ran a story headlined, “Trump strikes deals on trade, critical minerals in Southeast Asia.” The President’s unscheduled stop in Kuala Lumpur, wedged in between Vietnam and the Philippines, wasn’t surprise sightseeing— it was a strategic ambush. Trump’s team inked four unexpected trade and mining agreements that put new pieces on the rare-earth chessboard, hardening America’s claim on critical minerals while leaving Beijing staring across the table at a shrinking pile of pieces.

It seems impossible this undisclosed trip could just be a last-minute addition. On top of four trade deals, President Trump also supervised the signing of a long-term peace agreement between irritated neighbors Cambodia and Thailand— a deal the experts had gloomily predicted would surely crumble.

And he did it all over the weekend.

You’ll recall that earlier this year, a decades-old dispute along the foggy border between Cambodia and Thailand —an old argument over an ancient cliffside temple and tourist trap— burst into an enthusiastically kinetic war until last summer, when Trump brokered an unsteady cease-fire. Yesterday, with Trump sitting between them, the two still-angry leaders calmed down and agreed to begin completely disarming the border region and engage in a structured, long-term dispute-resolution process.

The President was in good spirits and ‘danced’ his trademark shuffle with some delighted Malaysian performers:

At the weekend’s start, the New York Times had groused about Trump fleeing the U.S. to avoid hard questions about, well, everything going on over here. But he did it again. Trump just landed critical minerals deals with four Southeast Asian countries —minerals badly needed to provide options during negotiations with China— without months or years of diplomatic seesawing, without swarms of State Department striped-pantsers, and without anyone knowing it was coming until just before the ink was on the paper.

The President is rewriting entire bookshelves on diplomacy— and redefining the Art of the Possible.

Not only that, but also over the weekend, with the new leverage from Trump’s new Asian deals, Scott Bessent’s negotiating team and their Chinese counterparts announced a preliminary framework for a US-China trade deal, which will push back China’s threatened rare-earth (magnets) sanctions by a year.

The ‘markets’ were pleased as punch. Headline from Discovery Alerts, this morning:

RARE EARTHS DEALS STABILIZE GLOBAL MARKETS

Again, it bears repeating that Trump did it all over the weekend. He left Washington on Friday night. While the Beltway was brunching, the pundits were pontificating, and the Times was complaining, Trump and his team were red-lining the globe, striking mineral deals, brokering peace, and resetting U.S.–China trade terms before most of Washington even noticed he’d left the Western hemisphere.

This turnabout led the New York Times to post a top-of-page article grudgingly conceding Trump is doing some things right. “Without question,” the Times allowed, after spending nine months questioning everything, “Mr. Trump has enjoyed some substantial second-term foreign policy victories.” (Don’t worry— the Times stayed true to brand. After that difficult admission, the paper immediately shifted to complaining how bad Trump’s temper is and wondering whether the President can do any more success, since Canadians now flinch in terror whenever they spot a red cap.)

JEFF CHILDERS

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HOW COME GOTLTENT TRUMPOPHOBES NEVER COMMENT WHEN HE SCORES HUGE VICTORIES LIKE THIS ?

SHEESH