Category: Politics

Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’

need, Trump, Generals, Kind, 'Hitler', ‘I, Had’0 comment

To support The Atlantic’s journalism, please consider subscribing today. In April 2020, Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered two months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search. Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond. Fort Hood had become known as a particularly perilous assignment for female soldiers,…

Read More...

Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini

like, speaking, Trump, 'Hitler', Stalin, Mussolini0 comment

To support The Atlantic’s journalism, please consider subscribing today. Rhetoric has a history. The words democracy and tyranny were debated in ancient Greece; the phrase separation of powers became important in the 17th and 18th centuries. The word vermin, as a political term, dates from the 1930s and ’40s, when both fascists and communists liked to describe their political enemies as vermin, parasites, and blood infections, as well as insects, weeds, dirt, and animals. The term has been revived and reanimated, in an American presidential campaign, with Donald Trump’s description…

Read More...

The Question Hanging Over Harris’s Campaign

Over, question, Hanging, Harris’s, Campaign0 comment

Contra Donald Trump’s claims, Vice President Kamala Harris is not a Communist. For one, no evidence suggests that she seeks the collectivization of the means of production, or even that she is especially hostile to corporate America. When outlining her vision for an “opportunity economy,” Harris speaks of “a future where every person has the opportunity to build a business, to own a home, to build intergenerational wealth.” This is rhetoric that brings to mind George W. Bush’s “ownership society,” not the liquidation of the kulaks. Granted, we’re not obliged…

Read More...

Kamala Harris’s Muted Message on Mass Deportation

Mass., Message, Kamala, deportation, Muted, Harris’s0 comment

As the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, veers into open xenophobia, Vice President Kamala Harris faces a crucial decision about how to respond when she appears today on Univision, the giant Spanish-language television network. Trump’s attacks on immigrants in the past few weeks have grown both sweeping and vitriolic: He is blaming migrants for a lengthening list of problems, even as he describes them in more dehumanizing and openly racist language. As he amplifies these attacks, Trump has also explicitly embraced the kind of eugenicist arguments that were used to…

Read More...

Elon Musk Bends the Knee to Donald Trump

Bends, Donald, Trump, Elon, Musk, knee0 comment

Have you ever watched a crowd go wild for a PowerPoint slide? After a few introductory hellos yesterday in Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump gestured to a screen showing the same graph on illegal immigration that he had been talking about when he was nearly assassinated in July and delivered his real opening line: “As I was saying …” The audience loved that. The rallygoers had waited in line for hours in the hot sun to get into the field, and this was their reward. They had made it through warm-up…

Read More...

You’re Killing Me, Walz

You're, killing, Walz0 comment

About half an hour into last night’s vice-presidential debate, the CBS anchor Margaret Brennan turned to Tim Walz and asked a question that the Minnesota governor had to have known would come. “You said you were in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989,” she said, noting that new reporting suggests Walz didn’t go to Asia until months later. “Can you explain that discrepancy?” “Look,” Walz began, “I grew up in small, rural Nebraska, a town of 400, a town that you rode your…

Read More...