Donald Trump tweeted “If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!” Is it good politics to repeal Obamacare now and replace it later? Let’s analyze using game theory. Here are the facts: Bills in the Senate are subject to…
Brianna Wu is running for Congress. She’s using Twitter like a real person. The result is an authenticity and humanity that’s unique in the political sphere. Yesterday I explained to a Twitter idealist from a decade ago how political Twitter had succeeded, but not in the way any of us expected. Now every politician has…
Josh from 2007: I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’m talking to you ten years in the future. Josh 2017: Yup. I’m here to tell you that you were right about social media blowing up. Even politicians are using it. But it turns out that connecting a politician’s brain directly to millions of voters…
The statement from Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s lawyer, regarding former FBI director James Comey’s testimony yesterday was, basically, “see, there’s nothing there.” Meanwhile, the Washington Post had this headline: “Comey testimony threatens to deepen political crisis engulfing White House.” The difference reveals how what you think depends on which facts and statements you want to concentrate on. As…
In advance of his testimony before the Senate today, former FBI head James Comey released a written statement. In it, he describes his interactions with President Trump regarding the FBI’s investigations into Russian interference in the US election. The statement is vivid, consistent, and appears free from bias. Comey wrote memos after each interaction with Trump,…
Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey yesterday, ostensibly for incompetence. With the FBI investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the justification is suspect. A ROAM analysis reveals how Trump’s letter firing Comey does the opposite of what Trump intended. Imagine you’re Trump. (Hard to do, I know.) You’re about to fire the director of the agency…
President Trump recently bused all 100 U.S. senators to the White House for a briefing on North Korea. His position on Korea now matches the Obama administration’s, in a shift similar to his reversals on NATO, NAFTA, and chemical weapons in Syria. Has he gone sane? Let’s look at the statement. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has nukes, missiles (although…
President Trump, outraged by the use of nerve gas on civilians, launched 59 cruise missiles at the airfield that Bashar al-Assad uses in Syria. Then he made a statement justifying the action. It’s a case study in Trumpspeak — does the pileup in intensifying adjectives and adverbs make a statement more persuasive, or more suspect? In my…
Republicans attempting to repeal Obamacare and replace it with the American Health Care Act are taking a pummeling. Everyone from the American Medical Association and the AARP to the Tea Party Patriots have come down against it. House Speaker Paul Ryan took to PowerPoint to explain and defend the law, and his presentation technique was quite…