Section: New Republic (USA)
National Review’s Strained Defense of Trump
Last Monday, I wrote that President Donald Trump’s supporters haven’t mounted a plausible enough defense of his involvement in the Ukraine scandal to avoid impeachment. His surrogates tripped and stumbled throughout their appearances on the previous weekend’s Sunday talk shows, and their performances haven’t been much...
The Coveted, Overpriced Missile at the Heart of Trump’s Ukraine Scandal
However narrow the managers may try to make it, the impeachment inquiry that has finally engulfed the presidency of Donald Trump after nearly three years of malfeasance is a scandalous goulash: a bald attempt to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election, to strongarm a foreign leader into cooperation, to retain power at all...
Donald Trump’s New Lost Cause
In 1992, a 24-year-old man in Lockport, New York, wrote a letter to the editor of his small local newspaper. The Gulf War veteran looked at the country’s future and saw little reason for optimism. “What is it going to take to open the eyes of our elected officials?” he wrote. “America is in serious decline!”The letter’s author...
How the NRA Sold Out America
Last Friday, the Senate Finance Committee dropped what would have been—in any other timeline—a bombshell that might have dominated headlines and talking heads for days: A 77-page report, issued by Senator Ron Wyden, detailing the means and machinations with which a number of Russian figures cozied up to the National Rifle Association (NRA) since...
The Republican Party’s Deafening Silence
The Republican Party is speechless. A week after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the beginning of an impeachment investigation, Trump’s usual allies in the administration, in Congress, in the media—have no defense for his actions. Instead, as Politico reported on Wednesday morning, “GOP lawmakers and operatives are concerned at...
Can We Stop Pretending Prosecutors Are Impartial Now?
The Attorney General, it is presumed, represents the people of the United States, not the President of the United States. Yet the latter is how Attorney General William Barr will be remembered. As the House of Representatives investigates a whistleblower complaint alleging that President Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate his...
Trump’s Defense Is Not Ready for Prime Time
How do you defend the indefensible? The task proved difficult even for President Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters over the weekend, as the media pressed them to explain why Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in July to investigate Joe Biden and his son. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to claim on...
How to Do Impeachment Right
Let’s start with the good. The Democratic Party’s response to a whistleblower’s report that President Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to interfere in next year’s presidential election has been swift and strong. In endorsing an impeachment inquiry, Democratic leaders have united the party behind a true...
How to Do Impeachment
Let’s start with the good. The Democratic Party’s response to a whistleblower’s report that President Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to interfere in next year’s presidential election has been swift and strong. In endorsing an impeachment inquiry, Democratic leaders have united the party behind a true...
The Rot on The Hill
There are many things about life inside the Beltway (physical and metaphorical) that people in the rest of America might find strange. The subway system has ads from defense contractors boasting about their new warplane in between ads for a new salad at Panera; there’s often an important person’s motorcade blocking your route home;...
