Less than two weeks before Donald J. Trump is set to go on trial on criminal charges in Manhattan, the prosecutors who brought the case asked a judge on Thursday to delay it up to 30 days, a startling development in the first prosecution of a former American president. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which […]
Read MoreTag: Presidential Election of 2016
Why Trump Is the Republican Establishment
It was almost 15 months ago that The New York Post published a full-page cover photo of Ron DeSantis with the headline “DeFUTURE.” His 19-point victory in the Florida governor’s race was one of the few bright spots of the 2022 elections for a weary Republican elite, which was desperately looking to move on from […]
Read MoreEven if Nikki Haley Shocks Trump in New Hampshire, It Won’t Matter
Nikki Haley did well enough in the Iowa caucuses Monday night to keep her supporters’ hopes alive. But her third-place showing, on the heels of Ron DeSantis and a mile behind Donald Trump, was also just disappointing enough to raise doubts about her candidacy. Her plan coming out of Iowa is a classic underdog strategy: […]
Read MoreProud Boys Member Who Threatened Police With Ax Handle on Jan. 6 Is Sentenced
A member of the Proud Boys extremist group who threatened police officers with an ax handle and breached the U.S. Capitol during the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced on Friday to nearly five years in prison, federal prosecutors said. Judge Timothy J. Kelly of U.S. District Court in Washington sentenced the man, William […]
Read MoreChristie’s Exit Should Give Haley a Chance in New Hampshire. Will It Be Enough?
Eight years ago, Chris Christie gave Donald J. Trump the biggest political assist of the 2016 campaign. He eviscerated a surging Marco Rubio on the debate stage just days before the New Hampshire primary. In doing so, he ensured that the Republican mainstream would be divided and allowed Mr. Trump to regain his footing with […]
Read MoreResistance to Trump Is Not Futile
The outcome of the 2016 presidential election was such a shocking event that for people of a certain cast of mind, Donald Trump is less a politician than a force of history. To this class of observer, Trump is something like the world spirit made flesh, where the “world spirit” is a global tide of […]
Read MoreTrump Cacophony Hits Different This Time
When was the last time you listened to Donald Trump speak at length? There’s a qualitative way to think about this question, about the substance of what he’s saying: He is still talking — perhaps more than people realize — about how the last election was stolen from him, and he treats the 2020 election […]
Read MoreA Midwestern Republican Stands Up for Trans Rights
As 2023 slouches to an ignominious end, some news came Friday that gave me an unexpected jolt of hope. I have spent much of the year watching with horror and trying to document an unrelenting legal assault on queer and trans people. Around 20 states have passed laws restricting access to gender-affirming care for trans […]
Read MoreThe Anti-Democratic Quest to Save Democracy from Trump
Let’s consider a counterfactual. In the autumn of 2016, with American liberalism reeling from the election of Donald Trump, a shattered Hillary Clinton embraces the effort to pin all the blame on Vladimir Putin. She barnstorms the country arguing that the election was fundamentally illegitimate because of foreign interference. She endorses every attempt to prove […]
Read MoreDon’t Give In to Political Despair. Trump Is Too Great a Threat.
Shortly after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, I spoke to a friend in Istanbul about my boundless horror, and while I can’t remember the exact words she said in response, they amounted to “Welcome to my world.” I told her about all the protests breaking out, and she gently warned me not to get […]
Read MoreThe Electoral College Is ‘the Exploding Cigar of American Politics’
Hey, it’s election season! Think about it: A year from now, we should know who the next president is going to be and … Stop beating your head against the wall. Before we start obsessing over the candidates, let’s spend just a few minutes mulling the big picture. Really big. Today, we’re going to moan […]
Read MoreJohnson Has Endorsed Trump. He Said in 2015 Trump May Be ‘Dangerous.’
Years before he played a lead role in trying to help President Donald J. Trump stay in office after the 2020 election or defended him in two separate Senate impeachment trials, Speaker Mike Johnson bluntly asserted that Mr. Trump was unfit to serve and could be a danger as president. “The thing about Donald Trump […]
Read MoreChecks and Balances Are for Losers
Over the last few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of proposals meant to give the former president the power and […]
Read MoreJill Stein Announces Third-Party Bid for President
Jill Stein, who ran unsuccessfully for president on the Green Party ticket in 2012 and 2016, will run again in 2024, she announced on Thursday — adding yet another name to the field even as the two major parties appear almost certain to nominate the same two candidates who ran in 2020. “Democrats have betrayed […]
Read MoreMan Who Spread Misinformation on Trump’s Behalf Sentenced to 7 Months
A digital-age dirty-trickster who used Twitter posts that looked like Hillary Clinton ads to spread false information before the 2016 presidential election was sentenced on Tuesday to seven months in prison. During a trial last spring, prosecutors presented evidence that the man, Douglass Mackey, had joined private Twitter groups where participants reveled in using lies […]
Read MoreThe Debate Over How Dangerous Trump Rages On
These questions were gaining salience even before the 2020 election. As Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, explains in her 2018 book, “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity”: The election of Trump is the culmination of a process by which the American electorate has become deeply socially divided along partisan lines. As […]
Read MoreHere’s How Joe Biden Can Win Again
President Biden’s age is on the minds of American voters as they think about the 2024 election. It’s no wonder: In a poll I did last year, there was broad support (63 percent of Democrats, 55 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of independents) for establishing an upper age limit of 70 for any person […]
Read MoreQuinn Mitchell, Known for His Pointed Questions of Candidates, Ejected From GOP Event
It was the type of tough question a Republican presidential candidate might get on a Sunday morning talk show, only the person asking it was 15: Quinn Mitchell wanted to know if Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida believed that former President Donald J. Trump had violated the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021. […]
Read MoreTrump Sues Over Steele Dossier on Russia in London Court
Donald J. Trump has claimed in a lawsuit in a London court that Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, inflicted “personal and reputational damage and distress” on him by leaking a dossier detailing unsavory, unproven accounts of links between him and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. Lawyers for Mr. Trump argue that Mr. […]
Read MoreBiden Has to Look Beyond Trump and His MAGA Millions
Last week, President Biden gave a wide-ranging interview to John Harwood of ProPublica that touched on his presidency, the Republican Party and the present state and future status of American democracy. Early in the interview, Harwood asks Biden whether he thinks the threat to democracy is broader than the refusal of Donald Trump and his […]
Read More‘This Is Going to Be the Most Important Election Since 1860’
And that, Begala continued, does not “even take into account a potential centrist candidacy under the No Labels banner. Biden won moderates by a 30-point margin (64-34), and 38 percent of all voters described themselves as moderate in 2020. If No Labels were to field a viable, centrist candidate, that, too, would doom Biden.” Norman […]
Read MoreDonald Trump’s Abortion Shell Game
As recently as last week, in remarks to the Concerned Women of America Summit, Trump bragged about the anti-abortion record of his administration. “I’m also proud to be the most pro-life president in American history,” he said. “I was the first sitting president ever to attend the March for Life rally right here in Washington, […]
Read MoreHe Was a Hillary Clinton Cheerleader. Now He Calls Democrats a Threat.
In 2017, Mr. Daou started a short-lived online platform, endorsed by Mrs. Clinton, that aimed to fight “a proliferation of confusing, chaotic misinformation” with verified, Clinton-affirming facts. He denounced “Russia’s successful hacking of our election using cyberespionage, online intimidation, and disinformation.” He now mocks the “liberal speak” of Democrats: “January 6, January 6, January 6, […]
Read MoreWhich Crisis Should We Talk About First?
Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Democratic mayors and governors are warning the Biden administration that the migrants crossing our southern border are straining their cities and states to the breaking point. New York City alone is sheltering and feeding an average of 59,000 migrants a day. What’s your advice to the White House? Gail Collins: Easy […]
Read MoreTrump Is Nothing Without Republican Accomplices
The semi-loyalty of leading conservative politicians fatally weakened the immune system of French democracy. The Nazis, of course, finished it off. A half-century later, Spanish politicians responded very differently to a violent assault on Parliament. After four decades of dictatorship, Spain’s democracy was finally restored in the late 1970s, but its early years were marked […]
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