A few days after Donald Trump won the presidency, my father told me a story about his childhood. …

Through his public statements and presidential appointments, Donald Trump is remaking Republican foreign policy in two fundamental ways. The first concerns Russia. Previous GOP leaders like Mitt Romney and John McCain described Moscow as an adversary. Trump describes it as a partner. The second concerns Islam. Previous GOP leaders—most notably George W. Bush—insisted that the U.S. had no beef with Islam, or with the vast ...

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap. The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set ...

Last week, Donald Trump advisor Stephen Moore, who has built his career advocating tax cuts for the rich and the privatization of America’s welfare state, said something startling to congressional Republicans. He said Republicans are no longer the party of Ronald Reagan. “Just as Reagan converted the GOP into a conservative party,” Moore reportedly declared, “Trump has converted the GOP into a populist working-class party.” ...

Americans talk about democracy like it’s sacred. In public discourse, the more democratic American government is, the better. The people are supposed to rule. But that’s not the premise that underlies America’s political system. Most of the men who founded the United States feared unfettered majority rule. James Madison wrote in Federalist 10 that systems of government based upon “pure democracy … have ever been ...

“I saw quite a change,” said CBS’s Lesley Stahl after interviewing Donald Trump for 60 Minutes on Sunday. “He was much more subdued, much more serious.” Really? Consider Trump’s comments on abortion. “Are you looking to appoint a Justice who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade?” Stahl asked. Trump’s response: “I’m pro-life, the judges will be pro-life.” …

At 2 AM on Wednesday morning, once it became clear Donald Trump would be America’s next president, the conservative, anti-Trump, commentator Erick Erickson posted “An Open Letter to the Democrats.” He asked them not to rebuke Trump’s supporters. “Instead of condemning them and labeling them all bigots and racists and deplorables,” he wrote, “I hope you will try to relate to them, connect to them, ...

I don’t respect this election result. I must abide by it, of course. But I don’t respect it. I respect the people who voted for Donald Trump. As private individuals, they’re no better or worse than anyone else. But I don’t respect their decision to elect a man who blames vulnerable minorities for America’s problems. Who threatens journalists for reporting the news. Who castigates judges ...

This column isn’t directed at those Republicans who believe Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are equally bad. I think they’re insane: as insane as they’d think I was if I argued that Louis Farrakhan was no worse than Mitt Romney. But I can’t convince them because we don’t share basic ideological premises. If they really believe that abortion is murder, for instance—that Clinton’s Supreme Court ...

At times during tonight’s debate, Donald Trump seemed controlled, succinct, even prepared. It didn’t matter. In an instant, he lost the debate and blew his chance of using it to turn around his sinking campaign. That instant came when Trump refused to say he would respect the outcome of next month’s vote. …