There was a time when the purpose of American politics was to get useful things done for the largest possible number of Americans. There was a shared understanding of the institutions of government and how it should work. President George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday, was the embodiment of that ideal, and his letter…
Saudis murdered the Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi in their Turkish embassy. Now President Trump is making the case that we must stand by Saudi Arabia. The term for this sort of strategy is “realpolitik” — but the level of such arguments is typically intellectual, not playground taunts. What is realpolitik? It is international relations…
I see many, many posts, videos, and tweets telling people to vote. Meanwhile, 10,000 Twitter bots are apparently telling you not to vote. So which should you do? This election is a referendum on the policies of Donald Trump. But if you go to the voting booth, you will find you cannot vote for him…
The New York Times posted an op-ed from an unnamed “senior official” who is managing the chaos in the Trump Administration. To truly understand what’s going on here, you need to look at the writer’s motivation. ROAM is the perfect way to do that — but in this case, it only deepens the mystery. The…
Donald Trump has accused Google of bias, saying that 96% of Trump News searches result in media with a left-wing bias. His economic advisor Larry Kudlow has said the government will look into regulating sites like Google. To determine the validity of Trump’s complaint, let’s invent a new Google search called “Truegle” that would live…
True analysts cannot afford optimism. To make an accurate prediction, you cannot let what you want to happen color what is likely to happen. But that’s exactly what I’ve seen in the wake of the conviction of Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the guilty plea from his former lawyer Michael Cohen. Trump-haters are…
The Boston Globe challenged other newspapers to write editorials in support of press freedom today. More than 350 responded. I’m a huge news fanboy. In my job as an analyst, I got to work with reporters like Jefferson Graham of USA Today, Jon Healey of the San Jose Mercury and the Los Angeles Times, Tony…
Satire is the art of exaggerating reality to make a point about its absurdity. So, this just happened: Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former game show contestant hired at the White House and fired less than a year later, claims that the reason President Trump is senile is that he drinks eight Diet Cokes a day. President…
Donald Trump has repeatedly described special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into his presidential campaign a “rigged witch hunt.” He’s right about one thing: there is clear evidence of a rigged witch hunt in Washington. But it’s not the one he thinks it is. Here’s a typical Trump tweet, one of many that cite the Rigged…