Section: The Atlantic (USA)
How Trump Will Use Baghdadi for the Next Year
It was the cinematic moment Donald Trump had been craving at this perilous point in his presidency—and when it arrived, he made sure it didn’t go to waste. President Trump’s vivid—perhaps too vivid?—re-creation of the U.S. Special Forces raid that killed the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Saturday night is sure to become a...
The Powerful Woman on the Phone With Kellyanne Conway
“Let me tell you something, from a powerful woman.” That’s how the presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway described herself during a phone call with a reporter for the Washington Examiner.She was calling Caitlin Yilek to complain about a news story, which reported that Conway was under consideration to serve as President Donald...
Donald Trump Has a Big Problem in the Senate
As the White House struggles to build an anti-impeachment strategy, President Donald Trump turned this week to Lindsey Graham, his staunchest ally in the Senate, to try to stiffen Republican spines in that chamber. It’s not going the way the president must have hoped.On Thursday, Graham announced that he’d put forward a resolution...
Why Republicans Are Complaining About the Impeachment Process
There’s a reason Republicans have been making a great fuss about the process of the impeachment inquiry over the past few days. Unwilling, or more likely unable, to mount any substantive defenses of President Donald Trump’s behavior with regard to Ukraine, members have instead assailed the way Democrats are conducting the inquiry.You...
How Trump Lost the Impeachment Narrative
Catchphrases have always defined Donald Trump’s presidency. In the same way that “no collusion, no obstruction” went hand in hand with the Mueller report, Democrats have managed to turn “quid pro quo” into the tagline for the current impeachment inquiry. It’s perhaps the first time since Trump entered office that Democrats have...
Trump’s Character Betrays Him
In the spring and again the summer of 2016, a large chunk of the Republican foreign-policy and national-security establishment publicly denounced then candidate Donald Trump as unfit to serve as president. In the months and years that followed, those of us who took that stand have attracted a fair amount of reproach: We were a gang of unrepentant...
The Atlantic Politics Daily: It’s Whistle-blower Season
Today in PoliticsIt’s Wednesday, October 23. Today, when the whistle-blower drip becomes a flood. Plus, the ceasefire and the fury. Finally, an argument about GOP hypocrisy.(Tom Brenner / Reuters)September may feel like an eternity ago, but murmurs of impeachment crescendoed into a yell then, when reports emerged of an anonymous...
Impeachment Just Became Inevitable
Ambassador William Taylor’s testimony to House investigators on Tuesday didn’t answer every question about the Ukraine scandal, but it answered the big one: Will President Donald Trump be impeached?Impeachment is now effectively inevitable. Taylor’s testimony fleshed out the biggest open questions, including whether there was a...
A Symphony of Whistle-Blowers
“Where’s the Whistleblower?” President Donald Trump asked in a tweet this morning. The answer that Trump just as surely doesn’t want to hear, however, is this: It’s not just one whistle-blower anymore.The president now finds himself virtually surrounded by them, as one official after another treks to Capitol Hill to accuse Trump...
When We Investigated Benghazi, We Longed for Evidence This Clear
For eight years, House Republicans searched for a “smoking gun” that could unravel the presidency of Barack Obama. They presided over hundreds of oversight hearings, issued more than 100 subpoenas, held the attorney general in contempt of Congress, and even formed a special select committee devoted exclusively to one investigation, on Benghazi....
