Published in Washington Monthly ( link to article) This morning we were greeted by the news that the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Devin Nunes, finally agreed to step down from leading the committee’s investigation into evidence of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. The headline in the Washington Post…
Yes, There Is a Deep State—But Not the Right Wing’s Caricature
Published in the lobelog.com on March 16, 2017 Link to article The heated controversy over the right wing’s characterization of Donald Trump’s chronic conflict with the U.S. intelligence community as the machinations of “the Deep State” has inevitably generated political pushback from more establishmentarian figures. Paul Pillar on this site and David Remnick in The New…
“Surprisingly Presidential”
How the GOP became the party of affirmative action for chronic under-achievers. “The soft bigotry of low expectations.” In the last two decades, this has become a catch phrase among Republicans seeking to deceive the public into thinking that it is they, not the Democrats, who are the authentic foes of discrimination. Since Michael Gerson,…
The Deep State 2.0
How President Trump’s fake populism bails out the 1 percent. The prospect of four years of Donald J. Trump’s nonstop rants about imaginary conspiracies against his daughter, wholesale slander against the judicial branch and attacks on the press as enemies of the people has caused some Americans to slip into a comforting form of…
Mobbed Up?
Published Feb. 23, 2017 in the Washington Monthly. ( Link to article) Connecting the dots between Trump and the Russian mafia. For more than a year, the media have been abuzz with facts, rumors, and speculation regarding President Trump’s ties to the Russian government – his own personal ties, and those of advisers like Michael…
“Another Piña Colada, and Hold the Sanctions!”
The incredible recklessness of Michael Flynn. It is usually in year three or year seven of a presidency that the scandals hit with full fury, but Donald J. Trump is shaking up all the staid conventions of Washington. The departure of his national security adviser after only 23 days on the job amid a growing…