Section: The Atlantic (USA)
The Atlantic Politics Daily: She’s No Longer Running
It’s Tuesday, December 3. Four constitutional scholars—three called by Democrats and one by Republicans—will testify on impeachment before the House Judiciary Committee starting tomorrow morning.In today’s newsletter: Kamala Harris 2020. Plus, the surreal story of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.*” TODAY IN POLITICS »(The...
The Phrase Trump Can’t Escape: Cover-Up
Part of what has distinguished the House’s impeachment drive against President Donald Trump is that its inquiry was not principally about a cover-up.Unlike the scandals that prompted the previous two impeachments, the Ukraine affair was no “third-rate burglary,” nor was it an extramarital assignation in the Oval Office. The underlying...
The Betrayal of Volodymyr Zelensky
Last May, in the weeks leading up to his presidential inauguration, Volodymyr Zelensky learned that a man named Rudy Giuliani wanted to meet with him. The name was only distantly familiar. But the former mayor of New York City was the personal attorney of the president of the United States, and he apparently wanted to make the case that certain...
Britain’s Secret War With Russia
Tucked away in a drab industrial estate on the outskirts of the Swiss town of Spiez lies a multistory concrete office block flanked by a parking lot and a soccer field. A modest gate with a small plaque is all that greets visitors. A river rolls behind the building, fed from the peaks of the Blüemlisalp massif above. This is the Bernese Oberland,...
The House Can’t Keep Ignoring Russia
Remember a man named Robert S. Mueller III?For almost two years, the news revolved around him. There were Mueller T-shirts and a cultish kind of Muellermania on cable television. There were even Mueller votive candles.More recently, though, the House of Representatives has proceeded with the president’s impeachment as though the man who...
House Democrats Need a Better Subpoena Strategy
Last week marked a low point in Donald Trump’s quest for presidential superpowers. On Monday, a federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled that former White House counsel Don McGahn does not have absolute immunity from having to testify before the House Judiciary Committee regarding misconduct by Trump and associates in the lead-up to...
Will John Roberts Constrain Trump?
The final weeks of November may be remembered as the moment when Donald Trump crushed the last vestiges of resistance to him in the Republican Party. The sole remaining question is whether that conquest extends to the Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court—especially the chief justice, John Roberts.A stark confluence of events these...
Trump Needs Conspiracy Theories
Out tumbled the groundless suspicions of Donald Trump. The hacked Democratic National Committee server was somehow in Ukraine. Barack Obama himself might have ordered spies to infiltrate Trump’s campaign. Thousands of Never Trumpers have been plotting against him since he took office.For an hour last week, the folks at Fox & Friends...
Putin and Trump Walk Into a Bar
Even before Donald Trump was facing impeachment over his dealings with Ukraine, his indifference toward that country’s fate was a punchline in neighboring Russia.Vladimir Putin is calling the White House, begins one joke that’s been making the rounds. “Hello, Donald? I would like to discuss Ukraine with you.”Trump: “What’s...
The War-Crimes President
Donald Trump is a war-crimes enthusiast.This is not an exaggeration, a mischaracterization, or a misrepresentation. As a candidate, the president regaled his audiences with vivid tales of brutality, some apocryphal, and vowed to imitate them.On the campaign trail, Trump frequently invoked a false story of General John Pershing crushing a Muslim...
