Section: The Atlantic (USA)
The UN Weathers Another Trump Scandal
Greta Thunberg spent 15 days on a boat to get to the United Nations headquarters in New York. The teenage climate activist seized headlines with an impassioned speech Monday scolding the world’s adults for their failure to address climate change. Then Donald Trump stepped into the frame.By the time the U.S. president arrived at the UN on...
The Whistle-Blower Passes the ‘Fanful Test’
When I worked for the Office of Independent Counsel, which was investigating President Bill Clinton, we used something I called the “Fanful test” to assess the credibility of an allegation.Monica Lewinsky was a key witness, and her believability and credibility were critical to any assessment of the facts. There came a day when Lewinsky started...
Trump’s Undemocratic Obsession With Sovereignty
Donald Trump shows little interest in most points of political philosophy, but he’s revealed an obsession with at least one term. “If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty,” he said in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly this week. He fixated on the same term in his previous two speeches in that forum. Last year,...
The Atlantic Politics Daily: The Not-So-Deep State
Comments or questions? Send us an email anytime. Were you forwarded this email? Sign yourself up here. We appreciate your continued support for our journalism. Today in PoliticsWhat a year this past week has been. If all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players, then who are the protagonists of this summer of...
Trump’s a Liddle’ Scary
Andrew Jackson was fitfully educated at best, and yet strove to write letters of a certain fluency, as in this missive of 1824: “I have some little leisure time on my hand, when it is a pleasure to me, to hear from, & to answer my friends. It will allways afford me pleasure I assure you, to hear from you.” Dictating or not, Jackson had a...
Revenge of the Intelligence Nerds
On his first day in office, in January 2017, Donald Trump paid a visit to the CIA. He stood before its Memorial Wall, which then had 117 stars commemorating those who lost their lives in the line of duty. “I want to just let you know, I am so behind you,” Trump told the crowd of intelligence officials who’d gathered to hear him speak. “And...
The Call Was Coming From Inside the White House
The Russians are “doing it as we sit here, and they expect to do it during the next campaign,” Special Counsel Robert Mueller warned Congress in July, wrapping up his two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. “Many more countries are developing [the] capability to replicate what” the Kremlin did.Aware of these...
The Singular They Is Here to Stay
Yesterday, the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, appeared before the House Intelligence Committee to answer questions on the whistle-blower complaint about President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. There was one matter that no one seemed to be able to agree on: What pronoun should be used to refer to the...
The Cover-Up Betrays Trump’s Guilt
Everyone seems to have seen the trouble except the president himself.Even before Donald Trump’s July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, staffers were reportedly nervous that he’d derail the call with his pet conspiracy theories. Once their fears materialized, White House aides allegedly went into overdrive to...
No Excuses for Hunter Biden
How did this get to be standard practice?The whistle-blower scandal that has prompted the fourth presidential impeachment process in American history has put a spectacle from earlier this decade back on display: the jaw-smacking feast of scavengers who circled around Ukraine as Viktor Yanukovych, a Moscow-linked kleptocrat, was driven from power....
