It seems unlikely that America will make it to this November without being forced into a very public reckoning with a decade of disastrous foreign policy failures. Taken separately, any one of America’s impending losses in the Middle East, Eastern …
Andrew Sullivan: What I got wrong about Trump
Andrew Sullivan is one of America’s best known political observers and writers. He is an independent-minded conservative who supported Obama, was a leader of the gay marriage movement, and has since argued forcefully against Donald Trump. His Substack is one …
Why the Right fears Taylor Swift
In pop music, one of the most time-honoured devices for upping the emotional ante is known colloquially as the “Truck Driver’s Gear Change”. In it, the melody stays the same, but is modulated up a whole note, with the effect …
After MAGA, a new Trump rises
As America inches ever closer to its next election, the rest of the world is now forced to face the fact that Donald Trump is almost guaranteed to be the Republican nominee, and the favourite to return to the White …
New Hampshire revealed America’s true divide
New Hampshire, then, was far from Donald Trump’s difficult second album. If anything, it was another performance of his Greatest Hits. His path to the White House is firmly in sight; Nikki Haley’s primary challenge, by contrast, has been rendered …
Ron DeSantis and the failure of pseudo-Trumpism
Now that Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican primary race and endorsed Donald Trump, the race for the party’s presidential nomination has become more than just a battle of personalities — finally, it is a battle of ideas. …
David Mamet on Hollywood, Hamas and Donald Trump
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and director David Mamet has, in his own words, gone from a Hollywood veteran to “the hermit of Santa Monica”. Celebrated for his plays American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Speed-the-Plow, Mamet has dedicated his formidable energy …
Lenin’s lesson for Western liberals
Before launching his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin placed the blame for the war on a surprising figure: Vladimir Lenin. Allegedly, the founding father of the Soviet Union gave away the western territories of Russia as part of the establishment …
The media can’t live without Trump
Here we go again. About 30 minutes into counting the first votes of the Iowa caucus, the Associated Press, CNN, NBC and various other news networks called it for Donald Trump.
There was little doubt that the former president wasn’t …
Is Iowa the next step to civil war?
In the silence of the Civil War’s Antietam battlefield on a winter day, bucolic hills give way to rows of small, white gravestones in the nearby cemetery. Wandering over the deadliest ground in American history, a melancholy visitor may be …
Trump could be good for Europe
Europe should not be insouciant about the prospect of a second Trump term. As many have pointed out, he would be more radical than the first time round. Everything that has happened since 2020 will have confirmed Trump’s instinct that …
The narcissism of the Never Trumpers
The “fascist coup” narrative, a self-regarding genre of literature popular with the “Never Trump” wing of the centre-right, has enjoyed a bumper crop in 2023. Earlier this year, as the legal challenges against Trump mounted and his popularity paradoxically surged, …
Why all this Trump hysteria?
A giant landfill of words has been dumped out on the subject of Donald Trump. I hate to add to the pile, but I feel I must. Unlike most participants in this industrial disaster, though, I have no wish either …
Joe Biden is the grinch of Iowa
In 1988, Dick Gephardt’s mother moved to Iowa. He was running for the Democratic nomination for president and Loreen Gephardt, at the age of 79, wanted to make sure he ate properly in the run up to the Iowa caucuses. …
Populism has become a gimmick
When populist candidates started to win national elections in the 2010s, panicked establishmentarians on both sides of the Atlantic warned that they could consolidate their power and destroy democracy. On both counts, these misgivings were misplaced. From Donald Trump to …