George Packer's Blog, page 67

The White House Can’t Decide How to Attack James Comey

“Should I take one of the killer networks that treat me so badly as fake news—should I do that?” Donald Trump said on Friday afternoon, at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden. It didn’t matter which correspondent he called on. Every one of them wanted to ask about the same thing: the testimony that the former F.B.I. director James Comey had given on Thursday. “Go ahead, Jon,” he said, gesturing toward Jonathan Karl, of ABC News. Since he took office, the President’s personality hasn’t changed much, but his King Lear tendency is deepening. Before Karl could ask his question, Trump started musing aloud. “Be fair, Jon,” he said. “Remember how nice you used to be before I ran?”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump vs. Comey: Hope Against Hope
Daily Cartoon: Friday, June 9th
Comey’s Revenge: Measuring Obstruction

A Jolt of Humanity at the Grim Trial of Bill Cosby

With the prosecution nearly finished presenting its witnesses and the defense expected to be brief, the end of Bill Cosby’s criminal rape trial is quickly approaching. Time has felt confounding and elastic during these proceedings: the case revolves around an event that occurred thirteen years ago, which was reopened in part because of a recent eruption of allegations that span four decades. This week, phone logs and date-stamped statements have been on endless loop. And now, suddenly, the verdict looms. Andrea Constand has, in essence, become a proxy for the nearly sixty women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault; the verdict, which will likely be reached before next Friday, stands in for a kind of collective justice that may always be out of reach.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
What Bill Cosby’s Accusers Have to Endure on the Stand
Bill Cosby’s Trial Begins, With the World Barging In
The Phony Sexual Transgressions of Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle”

Reframing the 1967 War

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, presumably for what it depicts, but what is the value of what a picture doesn’t show? To some, it is nothing; for others, it is everything.

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Related:
How the Six-Day War Changed Israel’s Mind

Alex Honnold’s Perfect Climb

In the first light of dawn on June 3rd, two rock climbers approached the base of El Capitan, the towering stone heart of Yosemite National Park. They were first overwhelmed—everyone is—by the sweep of golden granite reaching twenty-seven hundred feet into the sky. Then they noticed a lone figure, not far above them, moving swiftly up the wall. Such is the lore of the valley that it could only be one person, could only be one moment. “Oh, my God,” said one to the other. “It’s happening.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Loneliness of LeBron James
An Ode to Bartolo Colón, the Oldest, Stoutest Player in Baseball, on His Birthday
Smart Things I Have Done While You Were Watching Sportsball

Trump vs. Comey: Hope Against Hope

As every scrap of James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee is pored over and picked apart, one word gleams brighter than any other. That word is “hope.” It is a common word, employable as both a noun and a verb, and it boasts an extraordinary breadth. We may say, “I hope to catch the 6:42 A.M.,” or “I hope the kids don’t catch a cold,” and, at the other end of the spectrum, Christians are exhorted to pray “for all who have died in the hope of the Resurrection.” So where do the hopes that Comey cited yesterday, in his own utterances and in his reports of others’ speech, belong?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The White House Can’t Decide How to Attack James Comey
Daily Cartoon: Friday, June 9th
Comey’s Revenge: Measuring Obstruction

The Book of Jeremy Corbyn

And it came to pass, in the land of Britain, that the High Priestess went unto the people and said, Behold, I bring ye tidings of great joy. For on the eighth day of the sixth month there shall be a general election.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Jeremy Corbyn’s Achievement
How Jeremy Corbyn Moved Past the Politics of 2016
Theresa May’s Donald Trump Problem

Iran Extends Its Reach in Syria

For the first time since the Syrian civil war began, Iranian-backed militias appear to have secured a road link from the Iranian border all the way to Syria’s Mediterranean coast. The new land route will allow the Iranian regime to resupply its allies in Syria by land instead of air, which is both easier and cheaper.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Terror Strikes Tehran
While Trump Tweets, Assad and Putin Advance in Syria
How the Six-Day War Changed Israel’s Mind

Jeremy Corbyn’s Achievement

By the time that Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, arrived at the vote count in his Islington North constituency, in the small hours of Friday morning, it was clear that something historic had taken place in British politics. Thursday’s snap general election, which Theresa May, the Conservative Prime Minister, had called to bolster her party’s slim minority in the House of Commons, had turned into something of a calamity for her party and a humiliation for her personally. The outcome was also a stunning vindication for Corbyn, who had defied the predictions—some of them offered by his own colleagues at Westminster—that he would lead the Labour Party to a crushing defeat.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Book of Jeremy Corbyn
How Jeremy Corbyn Moved Past the Politics of 2016
Theresa May’s Donald Trump Problem

Comey’s Revenge: Measuring Obstruction

At the moment, on May 9th, when President Trump abruptly fired the F.B.I. director James Comey, Trump was not under investigation. He very well may be under investigation now.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
White House on Lockdown After Television Is Hurled Out Window
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, June 8th
The Comey Testimony Live Blog: What the Former F.B.I. Director Said About Trump

How Jeremy Corbyn Moved Past the Politics of 2016

Many people were blamed, last summer, after the citizens of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, but the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who had been a squishy and tepid opponent of Brexit, was blamed more than most. “Absent from the battle,” Peter Mandelson, once a strategist for Tony Blair, complained of him. Two-thirds of Corbyn’s leadership team resigned after the Brexit vote, and of the two hundred and twelve Labour members in Parliament, a hundred and seventy-two joined a no-confidence vote against the leader. But Corbyn held on, and turned his attention to the party’s grassroots. This spring, he has so adeptly navigated an election campaign that once seemed a likely rout that he stands an outside chance of ending Thursday as the presumptive Prime Minister. On the stump, Corbyn has always been a first-rate yeller, with a nicely calibrated sense of grievance. On Tuesday, he spoke to a big crowd assembled in the Birmingham drizzle, clutching Labour’s red-bound policy manifesto in his left hand, with a late-appearing rainbow providing a background. “Well, I’ll tell you what,” Corbyn yelled. “They underestimated us, didn’t they?”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Theresa May’s Donald Trump Problem
How Different—and Dangerous—Is Terrorism Today?
Jeremy Corbyn Is Surging by Using Bernie Sanders’s Playbook