Trump Promises a ‘Bloody Story’

Donald Trump says something crazy or vicious almost every time he speaks. It’s his nature, but it’s also a political strategy. The flow of half-demented, half-depraved talk energizes those who enjoy it—and exhausts those who are horrified by it. The mainstream media cannot report every outrageous remark, or they would do nothing else. Even those shocking comments that do get reported tend to  make just a blip. The next day, if not the next minute, Trump is telling another lie or vilifying another public servant or issuing another threat. Yesterday’s…

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Trump’s Red-Pill Podcast Tour

One weirdness of listening to Donald Trump talk for any length of time is that, amid the syllable minestrone, he occasionally says something that is both intelligible and honest. One such moment came during his appearance on the popular podcast hosted by the computer scientist Lex Fridman this week. “To get the word out,” Trump said, is important in politics, and television was becoming “a little bit older and maybe less significant.” The online sphere—podcasts and forums such as Spaces, on X—has usurped its importance. “I just see that these…

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The Women Trump Is Winning

Updated at 5:55 p.m. ET on August 31, 2024 Donald Trump’s appearance last night at Moms for Liberty’s annual gathering was intended as a classic campaign stop—a chance for the candidate to preen in front of a friendly audience. And this audience certainly was friendly. At this week’s “Joyful Warriors” summit in Washington, D.C., members of the three-year-old conservative organization attended a seminar on the history of Marxism and a session on abolishing the Department of Education—led by a contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. They packed their tote…

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Jack Smith Isn’t Backing Down

When the Supreme Court ruled last month that presidents are immune from prosecution for anything done as an official act, many observers reacted with immediate horror. They warned that the ruling would allow future presidents to act as despots, doing whatever they like without fear of accountability. And in the immediate term, they predicted doom for the federal case against former President Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election. The effect of the ruling on future presidents will not be clear for some time. But Special Counsel Jack…

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RFK Jr. Was My Drug Dealer

T he leading third-party candidate for president—an environmental lawyer and activist, a son and nephew of legendary liberal Democratic politicians—just quit the race and announced that he is joining the campaign of the most anti-environment president and presidential nominee in recent history, the leader of a Republican Party he has turned into a right-wing, anti-democratic, protofascist personality cult.   I could go on and on and on, cataloging the contradictions and abandonment of principle, all gobsmacking. But Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy—as I’ve referred to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since we…

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Politics 

Kamala Harris accepts the Democrats’ nomination to be president

On Thursday night Kamala Harris accepted the Democrats’ nomination to be president. Just over a month after Joe Biden exited the race and passed her the baton, this was the most important speech of Kamala Harris’s career. Harris emerged on the blue carpeted stage at 9:31 pm to thunderous cheers. She is the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be a major party nominee for U.S. President. Harris told her story on the historic night. Harris was in control, shared her values, told the country where…

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