Anthony Scaramucci’s Empty Feud With Reince Priebus
White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci has been called President Trump’s “mini-me.” In his phone call Wednesday night to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza, he proved it. …
Why Trump Might Fire Robert Mueller
Why do Donald Trump and his advisors keep floating the possibility of firing Robert Mueller, an act that would spark the greatest constitutional crisis since Watergate, perhaps the greatest in modern American history? …
Donald Trump’s Defenders on the Left
When it comes to possible collusion with Russia, Donald Trump’s most interesting defenders don’t reside on the political right. They reside on the political left. Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich aren’t defending a principle. They’re defending a patron. Until recently they were ultra-hawks. Now, to downplay Russia’s meddling in the 2016 elections, they sound like ultra-doves. All that matters is supporting their ally in the ...
Anything They Can Do, Trump Can Do Better
The transcript of Donald Trump’s interview yesterday with the New York Times runs over 7,000 words. But you can boil down its essence to two words: I’m better. No matter what the subject, Trump finds someone to compare himself to. And in every comparison, he comes out the winner. …
The Projection President
In Paris on Thursday, Donald Trump said, “A lot of people don’t know” that “France is America’s first and oldest ally.” That may be true. But commentators noted that when Trump uses the “a lot of people don’t know” formulation, it’s usually a sign that he didn’t know himself. …
Tucker Carlson Is Doing Something Extraordinary
Over the last two nights, something fascinating has broken out on the Tucker Carlson show: A genuine, and exceedingly bitter, debate between conservatives on foreign policy. On Tuesday, Carlson told retired Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters he thought the U.S. should team up with Russia to defeat ISIS. Peters responded that, “You sound like Charles Lindbergh in 1938.” Carlson called that comment “grotesque” and “insane.” ...
How to Know Who Will Let Trump Get Away With Anything
We now know, in part, how the Trump-Russia scandal ends. As McKay Coppins and Rosie Gray pointed out on Tuesday, the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. enthusiastically requested dirt on Hillary Clinton despite knowing it was coming from the Russian government has radically changed the argument being deployed by Trump’s defenders. Until this week, it was: “There is no collusion with the Russian government.” Now ...
Will Trump Start a Trade War?
On Monday, The New York Times uncovered the first clear evidence that top Trump campaign officials knowingly colluded with an agent of the Russian government to defeat Hillary Clinton. The Times reported that Donald Trump Jr., aware of the Russian effort to aid his father’s campaign, arranged a meeting in which Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya promised to dish dirt on Clinton. Donald Trump’s presidency ...
Defending Liberal Democracy Is Not the Same as Defending ‘the West’
The most telling feature of Daniel Foster’s response to my article on Donald Trump’s Warsaw speech is that, while he dislikes my definition of “the West,” he never offers one of his own. I argued that, in the United States today, the best predictor of whether a country is considered “Western” is whether it is primarily white and primarily Christian. (With Protestant and Catholic countries ...
The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump’s Warsaw Speech
In his speech in Poland on Thursday, Donald Trump referred 10 times to “the West” and five times to “our civilization.” His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means. It’s important that other Americans do, too. …