It’s “amusing”—I’m pretty sure that’s a smile (of sorts) on my face rather than a rictus of despair—watching Republican senators attempt to swallow their “pride” and pretend that Donald Trump’s choice for Attorney General, Miami Matt Gaetz, aka “the Viceman”, is “appropriate”. The same may be said for Robert F. “Vaccine Man” Kennedy, and, well,…
Tag: Donald Trump
Cry sorrow, sorrow, but let the truth prevail
On November 8, 2016, in the wake of Donald Trump’s first triumph, I wrote “It is, appropriately enough, gray and wet in Washington, DC this morning. Brilliant sunshine would be almost more irony than one could bear.” Today, we are not so lucky. What I had to say in my earlier post, which bore the…
Mind at the end of its tether, more or less.
If, in January 2015, someone had asked me if I could imagine that, in November 2024, the American people would be ready to re-elect as president a man who, on losing his first attempt at re-election in 2020 had summoned a mob on January 6, 2021 with the express purpose of pressuring the U.S. Congress…
Amy Coney Barrett to her sisters: “Ladies, ladies, ladies! You shouldn’t call Chief Justice John Roberts a two-bit political whore just because he is one! That’s not polite!”
Well, indeed it isn’t, but it is quite apropos factually, which is sometimes supposed to count in legal matters. Both Mark Joseph Stern at Slate, The Supreme Court’s “Unanimous” Trump Ballot Ruling Is Actually a 5–4 Disaster, and Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy, Supreme Court rules for Trump in Section 3 disqualification case, are…
Adam Rubenstein and the Times: Yes, but …
Undeservedly ousted conservative NYT editor Adam Rubenstein is deservedly getting plenty of ink n’ pixels with his tale of undeserved trauma, I Was a Heretic at The New York Times, over at the Atlantic, recounting, among other things, how he received, well, a “woke up” call on his very first day, in the course of…
Donald Trump is probably not as utterly bad as you probably think he is, a fatuous Andrew Sullivan says, fatuously.
Notice that I said “a fatuous Andrew Sullivan” rather than “the fatuous Andrew Sullivan”, because I think that, at times, Andy can be pretty gosh darn cogent—when, it seems, the stars are properly aligned—but only then, I would say, for it appears that when the heavens are seriously out of whack, as they must have…
Did Georgia district attorney Fani Willis just elect Donald Trump president? Well, it wouldn’t surprise me.
(Editor’s Note: I was writing this, the Washington Post has more: Judge in Trump Georgia case orders hearing on Fani Willis misconduct claims.) Yeah, call me a Nervous Nelli if you will, but Georgia district attorney Fani Willis, who brought criminal charges against Donald Trump, and who has extracted guilty pleas from several Trump associates,…
Donald Trump not a nice person, Clive Crook discovers.
No, he’s not. It took Clive awhile to figure it all out, but now it’s all coming into focus. Says Clive, a British chap who hangs his hat at Bloomberg after previous stints at the Economist and the Financial Times, The country should be terrified by this looming absurdity [a second term for Trump], as…
Michael Brendan Dougherty, bending the knee. And moistening the lips. At both ends.
Sure it’s tough. Those old knees don’t bend easily. But when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Over at the National Review, old Michael Brendan Dougherty is gently but persistently massaging those knobby and obdurate joints in preparation for November 2024 in a pithy piece entitled Not Trump Again / Only Trump, describing…
There are two kinds of Republicans: True Trumpers and Cowards. Megan McArdle is not a True Trumper
I have, before—many times before—ridiculed dear Megan’s frequent efforts to find something—anything—to criticize about the Democratic Party rather than deal with the elephant-sized pile of dung in the room that is the current day Republican Party. In her latest “just trying to be helpful” effort—Democrats should have helped McCarthy hold his job — for their…