Section: The Atlantic (USA)
Trump’s Revenge Campaign
When it comes to the National Security Council, even a deeply divided Washington has generally agreed on two things. The first is that the staff serves at the president’s pleasure. The second is that the NSC has grown far too large over the past 20 years, bloated by the demands of presidents and forever war. Despite this agreement, however,...
Trump’s Intelligence War Is Also an Election Story
“I believe him.”It was November 2017, after a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Vietnam, and Donald Trump was telling reporters he was convinced by the Russian president’s denials about interfering in the 2016 election. “He said he didn’t meddle,” Trump said. “And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it.”U.S....
The Trump-Modi Playbook
During his inaugural presidential visit to India, Donald Trump was greeted with a rally at the world’s largest cricket stadium. In an atmosphere reminiscent of a typical Trump event back home in the United States, he waxed lyrical about an electoral win. Only this time, he wasn’t referring to his own.“Last year, more than 600 million...
Trump’s Most Dangerous Destruction Yet
During the 2016 presidential campaign, many observers worried about what Donald Trump might do with the U.S. intelligence apparatus. These organizations kill people, after all, with scary flying robots. They have the ability to spy on huge numbers of people all over the world. And they have a history of scandal. So it was reasonable to wonder:...
Bernie Sanders Is George McGovern
Let me begin with a confession. When I started to report out and write this article, I had a simple thesis: Bernie Sanders is not George McGovern. The catastrophic loser of the 1972 presidential election, McGovern has become a convenient bogeyman for any moderate or conservative arguing that leftism is a fatal disease in a general election....
The First Days of the Trump Regime
There are two kinds of Republican senators who voted to acquit Donald Trump in his impeachment trial two weeks ago: Those who acknowledged he was guilty and voted to acquit anyway, and those who pretended the president did nothing wrong.“It was wrong for President Trump to mention former Vice President Biden on that phone call, and it was wrong...
Trump’s Going to Cheat
Democratic primary voters care deeply about electability. What most want is simple: a candidate who can beat President Donald Trump in November. So they worry about whether former Vice President Joe Biden will inspire young people, and about whether Senator Bernie Sanders will scare away old people. They debate whether a political revolution is...
John Bolton Hints at How Much More He Still Has to Tell
DURHAM, N.C.—John Bolton has been called many things over his long career, plenty of them unflattering, but he has seldom been accused of being bashful about stating his opinions.Yet in an interview at Duke University on Monday, his first public remarks since the impeachment inquiry into President Trump began, the former national-security adviser...
Bill Barr Must Resign
When Donald Trump chose Bill Barr to serve as attorney general in December 2018, even some moderates and liberals greeted the choice with optimism. One exuberant Democrat described him as “an excellent choice,” who could be counted on to “stand up for the department’s institutional prerogatives and … push back on any improper attempt to...
The Critical Legal Theory of Bill Barr
Thursday afternoon, Attorney General William Barr appeared on ABC to demand that President Trump quit making him look bad. Trump’s tweets, said the attorney general, “made it impossible to do my job.” Barr has been intervening in cases in ways that work to protect the president. Those interventions become much more...
