What Trump and His Mob Taught the World About America
We have promoted democracy in our movies and books. We speak of democracy in our speeches and lectures. We even sing about democracy, from sea to shining sea, in our national songs. We have entire government bureaus devoted to thinking about how we can help other countries become and remain democratic. We fund institutions that …
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Trump’s Fantasies Are the GOP’s Future
If you can spare an hour, do listen to the full tape of the conversation between the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. Whichever adjective you use to describe Trump—delusional, demented, narcissistic—this recording shows that he is unwell. His grip on reality is loose. He is by …
Why Won’t Emily Murphy Just Do Her Job?
I don’t know for certain that Emily Murphy gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror and says to herself, “You are a good person.” But I am willing to bet that she does. Most people in her position—most people who are undermining the rules of their group, destroying their institution, harming their society—are …
The World Is Never Going Back to Normal
In the hours and days after American news networks declared him the victor on November 7, President-elect Joe Biden received congratulatory tweets and statements from American allies around the world. Even Fox News sounded excited by the list of well-wishers, who, the channel noted, included “British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian …
Trump’s Forever Campaign Is Just Getting Started
While you watch Donald Trump’s presidency stagger to what appears to be its ugly end, always keep in mind how it began: Trump entered the political world on the back of the birther conspiracy theory, a movement whose importance was massively underestimated at the time. Aside from its racist undertones, think about what a belief …
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The Radicalization Is Mutual
As one of the ugliest and most divisive American presidential campaigns in our history coasts to its finish, President Donald Trump’s defenders are making their closing arguments. Some of them assert that they like Trump’s policies; his ethical violations or his abuses of his office for personal gain don’t bother them. These views come from …
The Smears Against Biden Don’t Need to Make Any Sense
On Tuesday, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham broke some news: An “investigative journalist” named Matthew Tyrmand had uncovered a cache of 26,000 emails belonging to Hunter Biden’s disgraced business partner Bevan Cooney, who is now in jail. Tyrmand claimed that he had gotten hold of the emails via a person in the same facility as Cooney …
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The U.S. Shouldn’t Be a ‘Sleazy Offshore Principality’
Instead of asking questions of Amy Coney Barrett at the first meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse gave a brief lecture—with charts—on dark money, political-influence campaigns, and the unknown millionaires who have long sought to shape America’s courts. Anyone surprised by this performance shouldn’t have been. Whitehouse, a Democrat, previously served as …
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The U.S. Used to Write the Rules—Now China Does
Back in May, when President Donald Trump called for America to stop funding the World Health Organization, he presented a list of the WHO’s recent failures: the organization’s initial failure to flag the spread of the novel coronavirus; its initial failure to follow up when Taiwan—a country excluded from the WHO because of Chinese objections—inquired …
Il Donald
For reasons that need no elucidation, I spent a few hours this morning watching Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945, performing in the old newsreel clips that now float around the internet. It wasn’t the verbal content I was after, just the imagery. The staged entrances. The gesticulation, the posturing, the …
A Citizen’s Guide to Defending the Election
In normal times, Americans don’t think much about democracy. Our Constitution, with its guarantees of free press, speech, and assembly, was written more than two centuries ago. Our electoral system has never failed, not during two world wars, not even during the Civil War. Citizenship requires very little of us, only that we show up …
Trump Is a Super-Spreader of Disinformation
A super-spreader—a term we didn’t much use nine months ago—is a person with a contagious disease who gives it to a lot of other people. In the coronavirus pandemic, super-spreaders have played an outsize role. Scientists have identified super-spreaders who have infected dozens of people with the virus, while others with the illness haven’t infected …