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Elected leaders normally accept press criticism as part of the job. Trump could not endure even a taste of it, a vulnerability mockingly commented upon by Vladimir Putin at their first post-election face-to-face meeting. The journalist-murdering Russian leader jerked a thumb at the American press corps and slyly asked Trump, “Are these the ones who
What we are seeing is a grant of permission from millions of people to the president of the United States to diminish, discredit, corrode, and ultimately subvert what the authors of the US Bill of Rights listed among the very first freedoms necessary to their great experiment in self-government.
Among the first uses to which Republicans put their ascendancy was revising state voting procedures. Between 2010 and 2016, some twenty
Early voting encourages participation by minority voters, who tend to have less control over their working hours. By contrast, mail-in ballots—preferred by the elderly and by military personnel, and historically the most fraud-prone element of the American electoral system—went untouched. Ten states instituted new voter
interpreted international affairs as he interpreted everything: as a struggle for dominance, never cooperation among equals.
Americans accepted a new world order that constrained their own power in part because they were accustomed to such constraints at home. The US Constitution likewise overweights smaller states and rural minorities against urban
prudent allies will remember what the Trump presidency revealed about the American political system, and not just the single man who held that office.
The government of the United States seems to have made common cause with the planet’s thugs, crooks, and dictators against its own ideals—and in fact to have imported the spirit of thuggery, crookedness, and dictatorship into
leaks revealed US surveillance capabilities in a way that compromised national security.
since those walls were erected. Donald Trump says more things that should not be said than any president in American history. But also more than any president in history, he works in an office he cannot trust and knows he cannot trust.
thirty such goofs. The funniest was perhaps a July 12, 2017, release attacking the accuracy of the Congressional Budget Office that misspelled the word “inaccurately” as “innacurately.” The most serious was a July 8 reference to China’s Xi Jinping as “president of the Republic of China”—the Republic of China being the official name of Taiwan, of course. Along the way, the Trump White House misspelled not only
casual incompetence has risked authentic harm. During
Bob Harward. Harward declined because Trump would not allow him to remove Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner from the NSC principals’ committee. Trump
it’s unprecedented and troubling to concentrate so many former military people into any administration. In this administration, the concentration sounds even louder warnings. The nongenerals
Military men, like people trained to any demanding specialty, acquire certain habits of mind, certain ways of looking at the world. Within a well-functioning administration, this perspective is enriching; within an administration like Donald Trump’s, it can be supremely dangerous. High among those dangers is impatience
always be balanced in a republic of laws by the lawyer’s insistence on the supremacy of legality. The most wrenching
more than the most impatient general, a general’s instincts become even more dangerous to him, to the government, and to the nation.
they say wonderful things about him. And now all of a sudden they’re saying these horrible things about him. It’s very sad. Because he’s a very good person. I’ve always found him to
Trump blamed “political correctness” for the atrocity at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in June 2016, the
Clinton had stayed married; Trump was twice divorced. Clinton was a lifelong Methodist; Trump could not correctly name the books of the Bible. Yet no group adhered more loyally to Trump against Clinton than evangelical Christians.
Melania Trump, the potential first lady of the United States, posing stark naked in ’90s-era photos published by the New York Post—and then in the next day’s edition, canoodling lipstick-lesbian style in bed. Yet the press yawned, her husband’s latest outrage overshadowed it, and it only stayed
multiethnic society, economic redistribution inescapably implies ethnic redistribution. I wrote those words after the 2012 election,
Trump appealed to what was mean and cruel and shameful. The power of that appeal should never be underestimated. But once its power fades, even those who have succumbed will feel regret. Those who have expressed regret will need some kind of exit from Trumpocracy, some reintegration into a politics again founded
hand is the rediscovery of the preciousness of truth. “Post-truth is pre-fascism,” wrote Yale historian
Trump entered a culture prepared for him; he filled a cavity excavated by the work of thousands of toiling academics and intellectuals. An example of
But if there is no truth, there can be no lying. And suddenly Americans are appreciating that “lying” is a concept very badly needed by democratic politics.
Long before Trump and his deceitful crew appeared on the scene, a conspiracy against the ideal of truth had gained the upper hand among those entrusted with the education of the young and the sustaining of high culture. If
He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen.15
But Romney was right and Obama wrong, as many in Obama’s own party now concede.17 Left-of-center Americans have now
new disenchantment with democracy is most often expressed by the more affluent. About one-third of Americans in the top three income deciles said it would be “good” or “very good” to be governed by a “strong leader” who
We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered. What happens next is up to you. Don’t be afraid. This moment of danger can also be your finest hour as a citizen and an American.
