“This is a movement like no one’s seen before… the greatest political movement of all time… the most incredible political thing…” Donald Trump didn’t hold back in his victory speech. And though he is known for his rhetorical exaggerations, it …
JD Vance: prince of the MAGA movement
The nomination of J.D. Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate has already proved controversial. With Trump leading in the polls, it means the 39-year-old is likely to become the next vice president of the United States. Perhaps more importantly, it …
The toxic empathy of the VP debate
“Everybody’s got a plan,” Mike Tyson once said, “until they get punched in the face.” The American media’s plan for last night’s vice-presidential debate between Senator J.D. Vance and Governor Tim Walz was that the two running mates would, all …
The revolt of the Rust Belt
On paper, Donald Trump’s decision to choose J.D. Vance as his running mate made perfect sense. The Rust Belt kid turned Yale graduate is an ideal figure to both troll America’s elites and woo its working-class whites. It is the …
Kamala Harris, triumphant cat lady
For all the firsts that Kamala Harris represents as a presidential candidate, there’s one part of her identity that seems to both inflame her opponents and energise her supporters like none other. If elected, Harris will be not just the …
Searching for Britain’s JD Vance
A recurring theme in C.P. Cavafy’s poems is of the elites in some Hellenistic city in the Near East, long subsumed into the Roman empire, anxiously awaiting news from the imperial centre of the outcome of a great …
MAGA Republicans are nothing new
Just in case you haven’t spent the last week gripped by the question of who the Republicans would choose to nominate as their candidate for President of the United States, here’s the news: it was him. But it wasn’t exactly …
Why liberals envy JD Vance
If you want to know the secret of J.D. Vance’s meteoric rise, at the age of 39, to Donald Trump’s choice for vice president should he win, just glance at some of the more overheated liberal analyses of Vance’s success. …
Democrats are hooked on Hillbilly Horror
When Hillary Clinton finally shuffles off this mortal coil, what words will she be remembered by? My money would be on her “basket of deplorables” comment delivered at a donor event in 2016. That was when she declared that half …
Peter Thiel on the dangers of progress
You can tell a bit about someone based on their preconceptions about Peter Thiel. Whether the reflexive response to the name is “malign far-Right plutocrat”, “philanthropic saviour of all that is good” or “who?” is a reasonably reliable guide to …