Beltway Insider: Trump, Putin, XI, Iran War, Hegseth Chastised, Nvidia, Microsoft, FAA, Election News

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Category: Haute This Issue

Published on Saturday, 14 November 2026 15:24

Written by Janet Walker

President Trump will be traveling to China over the next week to participate in a rare singular summit with Chinese President Xi-Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Shenzhen.

The President's job approval rating, according to The New York Times for the period ending November 14, 2026, of those polled who approve of his effectiveness as President has remained consistent at 37% and those who disapprove of his effectiveness has remained consistent at 60%. A slight 3% of the population polled have no opinion. Ratings are calculated weekly.

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Trump Plans Summit with Putin, XI

President Trump will be traveling to China over the next week to participate in a rare singular summit with Chinese President Xi-Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting of the three nations is part of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and will be held in Shenzhen, which is considered China's technology center.

"The trilateral meeting on Thursday will bring together the leaders of the world's three largest nuclear powers just nine months after the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty or New START, the last treaty limiting America's and Russia's strategic nuclear arsenals. Trump has called to replace the agreement with a broader pact that includes Beijing, which has resisted joining arms-control negotiations," The Wall Street Journal reported.

The unprecedented meeting between the three nations, reflect a growing concern for a more unilateral approach to global issues, such as the Iranian war, the ever-widening Middle East war, the Ukraine war, and Putin's place in this scenario.

As Putin remains stubbornly against any cease-fire agreements, he, like many, did not see the midterm elections resulting in an overwhelming and muscular rejection of the president's current policies, many of which directly support Putin's war chest and fuels the war in Ukraine.

As the president utilized an Executive Order to waive aspects of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran bill, including suspending sanctions against those nations who buy any Russian exports including oil, which fund Russia's war chest, this direction and apparent show of support toward Russia was solidly rejected by the American people. Putin can also expect a reversal in the president's decision to not send Patriot missiles to the Ukraine.

With Putin still very much a player on the global stage, although suspended from the Group of Nation summits, and his own determined effort to ostracize himself in the European theater has successfully resulted in stricter sanctions, his friendship with China, North Korea, and his Iranian partners continue to cast a long menacing shadow over his friendship with Trump, and as the days wane, the time to make decisions without U.S. intervention are running out.

With the recent midterm elections, the upcoming 2028 presidential elections, and the fragile relationship between the United States and its European Allies, President Trump sees this summit as an opportunity to restore some legitimacy to his legacy.

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Trump Pulls Vance from Iranian Negotiation

President Trump has pulled Vice-President Vance from participating in any further negotiations with Tehran, as he has apparently revered his direction for a negotiated end to the Hormuz Strait tension, and is now demanding Iran surrender.

"The war — and the jump in gas and food prices that has come with it — is deeply unpopular among U.S. voters, who delivered a historic defeat to Republicans in the midterm elections last week. The day after the election, Vance made an unusual public break with the president, writing that the war had been one of the causes of the election loss," The Washington Post reported.

Trump has been hyping his position of dominance, unfortunately the messaging is falling on a people who have lost faith in his efforts and believed the clarity of the midterms should have acted as a directional. Instead, the president has remained firmly embedded in his decision for a full and complete surrender under his terms.

While the president expected a contraction of republican representation, the gravity of the Midterm losses have resulted in a despondency with the administration, and a full-on victory appears to on Trump's agenda as the needed tonic to return them to a position of global authority.

Hegseth Chastised at Tomb of Unknown

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appears to be his own worst enemy, and weekly, is tripping over himself, and once again, this week, on Veterans Day, he, along with an entourage of family and friends, visited the scared tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, and was chastised by the Military Sentinels for failing to maintain respectful decorum.

"Hegseth has been a lightning rod for controversy and criticism since entering office early last year, culminating this week in lawmakers' failed attempt to impeach him. Wednesday's spectacle appears certain to elicit blowback from his political opponents and the former military leaders who have argued that he is ill-suited for the job that the president has entrusted to him," The Washington Post reported.

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Nvidia CEO Resignation Concerns Lawmakers

Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang resigned this week, after allegations surfaced of an extramarital affair with a women U.S. Intelligence determined was a Chinese spy.

The classic honeypot scam seduced the from president of the AI Chip manufacturer, who many compared to an Asian Steve Jobs. Huang, known for his black leather jackets, and greying hair and his savant-like rise in Silicon Valley, was dubbed a visionary, as he was able to shift his company from a onetime provider of graphic gaming chips to accelerator chips for AI software.

While not by accident, Huang was on the cusp of the AI boom, and when Open AI introduced the chatbot ChatGPT, in late 2022, within months, Huang's company who provided the microchips necessary to power generative AI saw exponential growth.

"The company witnessed soaring demand from data-centre customers, including Alphabet, Amazon.com and Microsoft. In mid-2024, it overtook all three by market capitalisation for the first time. In 2025, Nvidia became the first company to surpass both US$4 trillion and US$5 trillion in market value. By early October, it was closing in on the US$6 trillion mark. Since then, it's fallen behind Apple as the world's biggest company," Business Times reported.

When the story broke, this week, that Huang was resigning over revelations he had been engaged in an extramarital affair, it sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill, not so much for its salacious value, but more than the female involved was alleged to be a spy for China.

Now lawmakers are planning hearings to determine whether U.S. National Security was compromised. Moreover, the success of Nvidia chip, made its CEO a clear target for China, as China remains committed to its efforts to dominate the world.

Former National Security Advisor, John Ratcliffe, published a Wall Street Journal article detailing China's plans to gain access to technology, defense, military, and any type of intellectual property to further position itself as a global superpower.

"China is also developing world-class capabilities in emerging technologies. Its intelligence services use their access to tech firms such as Huawei to enable malicious activities, including the introduction of vulnerabilities into software and equipment. Huawei and other Chinese firms deny this, but China's efforts to dominate 5G telecommunications will only increase Beijing's opportunities to collect intelligence, disrupt communications and threaten user privacy world-wide. I have personally told U.S. allies that using such Chinese-owned technology will severely limit America's ability to share vital intelligence with them," Ratcliffe wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

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Microsoft Global Outage

Microsoft Corporation, the global software giant, suffered an unprecedented disruption in services this week, as the company explained they were upgrading the software's capacity and experienced the system wide outage.

A spokesperson for Microsoft has adamantly stated the outage was not the result of a cyberattack.

"The outage had snarled operations around the world and across the United States — for schools, businesses, courts, police departments, hospitals, government agencies, offices and other entities relying on Microsoft email," reported The Washington Post.

FAA Grounds All Flights

One day after the Microsoft outage, the Federal Aviation Administration's computer software suffered a major disruption grounding all U.S. flights leaving airplanes on the tarmac, gates closed, and thousands of flights cancelled, for approximately five hours.

"Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the outage "doesn't appear" to be related to a cyberattack. He said national security agencies had seen no evidence that there was a cyberattack and that no one had claimed any responsibility for an attack. "It appears that this was mechanically driven. However, we're still looking, so we're not going to rule that out," he said," The Washington Post reported.

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Coronavirus Total

At the order of the President of the United States, the U.S. no longer recognizes the value of The World Health Organization. The CDC has recommended every person from age six months, including senior citizens should receive at least one shot of an updated COVID-19 vaccine, annually.  The death toll from Covid-19 has dramatically decreased, as has transmission of the virus. Even as confirmed new cases continue each week, fewer are dying from each new variants.

For the 7 days ending November 14, 2026, the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases reported by the World Health Organization remained constant 779,541,435. The total worldwide death toll did not increase over the past 7 days has remained constant at 7,118,321 deaths. The United States has stopped providing Covid data to the World Health Organization. (Data updated October 18, 2026, from the World Health Organization.

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Election Round-up, Dems Begin Squabbling

The dust has settled on the 2026 Midterm elections, and over the course of the week, Mississippi Senate race has finally been called with Scott Colom, the democrat prosecutor, narrowly defeating Republican, incumbent, Cindy Hyde-Smith, to be the first African-American to win a state-wide election in 150 years. Moreover, Colom, also secured 92% of the African American vote and 25% of the Caucasian vote.

Mississippi also holds its governor's race in an off-year and will elect the next governor in November 2027. The Mississippi governor's race is critical as the governor choses who fills the seat of any outgoing senator. Should Colom, even as a junior senator be tapped to go further in national politics, the governor choses the replacement.

Currently, activist and educator Pricilla W. Till, cousin of Emmett Till, the teenager slain by Klu Klux Klan for his comments made to a white woman in 1955, is running for on the democratic ticket. Flipping the governors seat may be more challenging, but still possible, as the 2028 Presidential politics will be in full swing and the run off should be able to influence local races.

Alaska Senate Race

Democratic Senate challenger Mary Peltola has slightly increased her lead over the past week, to 49.84% percent of the votes with 96% of the votes counted, she maintains a lead of 10,412 votes over Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan, who currently holds 46.09% of the votes.

Peltola, a former congresswoman, to win the election outright needs to secure 50% of the vote or 0.16% of the remaining votes. Alaska uses ranked choice voting, and should Peltola not receive the remainder of the votes necessary to push her past the 50% mark, she is still the likely winner. This race is not called until all ballots are counted.

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Squabbling Democrats

As the Midterm elections produced an unprecedented party turnover, the jubilation in the halls of Congress have been short-lived, as the senate democrats are already squabbling over which senior senator should be elected majority leader.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer, 75, who has more than 45 years in public service, elected to the senate in 1999 is being challenged for majority leader by Maryland Senator Chris Von Hollen, and a handful of freshman senators have indicated they will not support Schumer's bid, the chances that he will Von Hollen will succeed is a long shot. However, the dissension the infighting will cause is disruptive and will detract from the very reason voters made such a globally resonating statement.

Voters expect the democrats to reverse as many policies as possible, even if it means sitting through a two years of attempts which are met repeatedly with presidential veto's. Not fighting over first chair assignments. With both houses controlled by the democrats the issues which has often separated the parties and the populous will be on the forefront.

For many this comes in the form of Student Loan Forgiveness, with the democrats in control of both houses, the citizen will finally see if the democrats will honor a long term party initiative or if they were only using this hot-button issue to enflame the population to vote against republicans. Understandably,  the first argument will be the presidential veto power, which tables the issue for two years. However, voters will expect to see effort if the blue wave is to be extended to 2028.

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For more information on President Donald Trump: Whitehouse.gov.

Sources: Various © Articles covered by Copyright protection.

Janet Walker is the publisher, founder, and sole owner of Haute-Lifestyle.com. A graduate of New York University, she has been covering international news through the Beltway Insider, a weekly review of the nation's top stories, for more than a decade.  A general beat writer/reporter and entertainment/film critic, she is also an accomplished news/investigative news/crime reporter and submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration "Cops Conspire to Deep Six Sex Assaults" in the Breaking News Category and was persuaded to withdraw the submission. Ms. Walker has completed five award-winning screenplays "The Six Sides of Truth," "The Assassins of Fifth Avenue," "The Wednesday Killer," "The Manhattan Project," and the sci-fi thriller "Project 13: The Last Day." She has also published "Unholy Alliances: A True Crime Story," a non-fiction narrative, "Days, Times, Seasons, and Events: A Collection of Poetry & Prose," and "Songs of Freedom: A Collection of Biblical Teachings," which can be purchased here. She is a member of the Authors Guild, the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Writers Union, and a member of the International Federation of Journalists.