George Packer's Blog, page 90

Trump’s Moment of Terrible Truth in Syria

Last November, a few days before the U.S. Presidential election, I was among a group of American reporters and researchers who visited Damascus, Syria, to interview President Bashar al-Assad and his foreign minister, Walid Muallem. At a meeting with the group, Muallem was asked which candidate he favored, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

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There’s Nowhere to Hide on the Internet
Welcome to Jared Kushner’s World
Susan Rice and the Latest Bogus Attempt to Justify Trump’s Wiretapping Tweet

Welcome to Jared Kushner’s World

In a sense, there was nothing surprising about the surprise trip to Iraq that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, made this week. It can’t come as a shock, at this point, that anyone in the Trump Administration thought it was a good idea to send a neophyte to a war zone, or to bypass normal diplomatic procedures, or to turn a fight in which American troops are at risk and Iraqi civilians are being killed by errant air strikes into a venue for familial posturing. The trip wasn’t even technically a surprise, since White House officials, in a flouting of security procedures, confirmed the visit before Kushner had landed in Baghdad. The Trump team, with its acute sense of victimhood, surely ought to have realized that a member of the President’s immediate family would be a tempting target in a war zone; perhaps they figured that the American and Iraqi militaries would dispatch so many troops to guard him that there was nothing to fear, for Kushner, at least. Whether announcing his imminent arrival might have put those ordinary soldiers at even more risk does not seem to have occurred to the White House. Indeed, the only real puzzle of the Kushner trip is which particular Trumpian political vice it best illustrates: deluded self-aggrandizement or a callous indifference to other people’s lives; conflicts of interest or a lack of any interest in the consequences of the use of power.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Trump’s Moment of Terrible Truth in Syria
Jared Kushner Says He Read Up on Middle East During Minutes Waiting for Ski Lift
Susan Rice and the Latest Bogus Attempt to Justify Trump’s Wiretapping Tweet

Trump Embraces the Sunni Autocrats

On February 11, 2011, shortly after 3 P.M., President Obama stepped before a microphone in the Grand Foyer of the White House. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had just resigned after weeks of mass protests, in Tahrir Square and nationwide, and a final nudge from the White House. “There are few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place,” Obama said. “This is one of those times.” He compared the peaceful overthrow of Mubarak—who had been the centerpiece of U.S. policy in the Arab world for three decades—to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Gandhi’s civil disobedience against British colonialism.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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How Educational Children’s Books Are Explaining President Trump
Making Peace with Trump’s Revolutionaries
The Egyptian Satirist Who Inspired a Revolution

Susan Rice and the Latest Bogus Attempt to Justify Trump’s Wiretapping Tweet

Ever since President Trump tweeted, in the early morning of Saturday, March 4th, that “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory,” the White House and its defenders have labored to find a justification for the false allegation. After two false starts, the White House is trying out another claim this week: Susan Rice, President Barack Obama’s national-security adviser, did it. This third swing at justifying Trump’s tweet is as bogus as the first two.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump’s Moment of Terrible Truth in Syria
Welcome to Jared Kushner’s World
Can Trump Match Xi Jinping’s Game?

Can Trump Match Xi Jinping’s Game?

The General Secretary does not golf. When Xi Jinping, the Chinese President, assumed control of the Communist Party, in 2012, golf was a popular pastime for wealthy dealmakers. But in an effort to restore the image of public servants, which had been damaged by reports of corruption, Xi closed hundreds of courses and barred members of the Party from playing the game using public money. So, on Thursday, when the Chinese leader pays his first call on President Trump, at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s members-only club in Palm Beach, he will not be replicating the experience of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who gave Trump a putter as a gift and recently played a round with him at Trump International, his nearby course.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump’s Moment of Terrible Truth in Syria
Welcome to Jared Kushner’s World
Jared Kushner Says He Read Up on Middle East During Minutes Waiting for Ski Lift

Trump Kleptocracy Watch: An Update

A quick reminder: when trying to figure out what Donald Trump is up to, it always pays to heed Deep Throat’s advice and follow the loot. The past few days have been busy ones on the Trump money beat. Although the latest developments aren’t particularly surprising, they add to the picture of a supposedly populist Administration that is actually the richest, most conflicted, and least transparent in living memory.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
There’s Nowhere to Hide on the Internet
Trump’s Moment of Terrible Truth in Syria
Welcome to Jared Kushner’s World

What Makes Sheldon Whitehouse Angry?

Sheldon Whitehouse is a politician with a great name, a bad haircut, and a pissed-off attitude. The second-term Democratic junior senator from Rhode Island has built his career around two seemingly unrelated issues—climate change and money in politics—and he’s just written a book to demonstrate how intimately connected they turn out to be.

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Donald Trump and the Myth of the Coal Revival
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, March 28th
When Is It Time to Retreat from Climate Change?

The Keystone Kops in the White House

“My fellow-Americans,” Donald Trump said in his weekly address on Friday, “It’s an exciting time for our country. Our new Administration has so much change under way— change that is going to strengthen our Union and improve so many people’s lives.”

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Ivanka Trump Tries to Quiet the Ethics Critics
How Trump Could Make NAFTA Better but Probably Won’t
Mike Pence’s Marriage and the Beliefs That Keep Women from Power

Ivanka Trump Tries to Quiet the Ethics Critics

Ivanka Trump’s announcement this week that she would take an unpaid federal job in the White House makes official the familial coziness of President Donald Trump’s Administration. Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, with his-and-hers security clearances and offices in the West Wing (hers upstairs from his), will be on hand to advise on any subject—anything, that is, that doesn’t create a troublesome conflict of interest. Despite their official positions and efforts to address the ethical challenges of their unique roles, potential for conflicts remains.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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The Keystone Kops in the White House
How Trump Could Make NAFTA Better but Probably Won’t
Mike Pence’s Marriage and the Beliefs That Keep Women from Power

How Moderates Took Back Kansas

This week, the Kansas Senate voted by a wide margin to expand the state’s Medicaid coverage. A majority of Democrats supported the bill, as might be expected, but so did a majority of Republicans. That the vote was both bipartisan and decisive is a modest but promising sign for the future of public health insurance. But the vote had an added significance because it took place in Kansas. For the six years that Sam Brownback has been Governor, the state has been the scene of what may be the nation’s most extreme experiment in conservatism. The Medicaid vote capped an extraordinary year-long turn against Brownback, in which many of his allies in the legislature were defeated in primary and general elections, and, in the legislative session now coming to a close, his budget and priorities were rejected. The political history of the past quarter century has been one of deepening polarization. The reaction in Kansas suggests that it is still possible for a party to go too far—that there is still a center in American life which may yet hold.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Could Michael Flynn Turn on Trump?
Daily Cartoon: Friday, March 31st
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, March 30th