Many progressives will abhor the following statement, but so be it: There’s a lot I admire about former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. And it’s precisely because of that admiration that I dearly hope he doesn’t accept the poisoned chalice that Donald Trump is reportedly considering offering him: Director of the FBI. …
Over the last 24 hours, journalists have hunted down Republican members of Congress in search of quotes that include words like “Watergate,” “impeachment,” and “obstruction of justice?” And they’ve elicited a few. …
The bad news is that Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in modern American history. The good news is that Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in modern American history. He was too incompetent to understand his own health care bill, or accurately describe the direction in which the “armada” designed to intimidate North Korea was heading, or restrain himself from disclosing highly ...
Why did Donald Trump last week reveal highly classified, potentially life-endangering, intelligence to Russia’s foreign minister? Because he wanted to impress him. “In his conversations with the Russian officials,” reports Reuters, “Trump appeared to be boasting about his knowledge of the looming threats, telling them he was briefed on ‘great intel every day.’” …
Thank you, Kellyanne Conway. On Thursday on Fox News, the President’s most polished defender told America the truth about why Donald Trump fired James Comey: Trump “expects people who are serving in his administration to be loyal to the country and to be loyal to the administration.” And he sees no distinction between the two. …
Everything I’m about to write is obvious. But contesting things formerly considered obvious is part of what Donald Trump and his supporters do. It’s how they undermine pre-existing liberal democratic norms. So here goes. When Trump (in three separate tweets), Fox News and National Review call Democrats hypocrites for condemning Trump’s decision to fire James Comey after having criticized his stewardship of the FBI, they’re ...
Since Donald Trump won the Republican nomination close to a year ago, conservative responses to him have fallen into three broad categories: pro-Trump, anti-Trump and anti-anti-Trump. The firing of James Comey is no exception. …
Given his administration’s bizarre rhetorical struggles when it comes to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, the bar for Donald Trump’s speech on Tuesday at the Holocaust Memorial Museum was low. All he really had to do was show he understands that anti-Semitism is bad, and that the Holocaust happened mostly to Jews. He did that, and more. At times, his speech was genuinely moving. It was ...
So far, the Trump administration’s North Korea policy consists of declaring that America’s patience has run out, refusing to negotiate, hinting at preventive war, and hoping that China bails it out. In January, Trump—who is perpetually learning things that most other people know and then congratulating himself for having discovered them—announced that China has “total control over North Korea.” This month, after meeting China’s leader, ...
A hidden assumption underlies the debate over North Korea. The assumption is that preventive war—war against a country that poses no imminent threat but could pose a threat in the future—is morally legitimate. To be sure, many politicians oppose an attack on practical grounds: They say the costs would be too high. But barely anyone in the foreign policy mainstream calls the idea itself abhorrent. ...