During the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican Donald Trump presented a unique conundrum for the public and pundits alike. Simply put, Trump lied at a rate never before seen in modern American politics. No candidate in the 21st century, from either party, even came close. Writing in The Atlantic that September, Salena Zito offered this warning […]

Here are some friendly words of advice to my Republican friends eager to regurgitate Donald Trump's talking point about the Democratic Party being "anti-Jewish." Before you hold up Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar as the poster child for anti-Semitic tropes, note that Trump himself already occupies that space. After all, he told those "good negotiator" […]

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was back in the headlines this week--not for any particular wisdom regarding authoritarian regimes and movements she shared with the House Intelligence Committee, but for this: "I personally owe an apology to now-Senator Romney, because I think that we underestimated what was going on in Russia. I was on […]

As prepared for delivery on Sunday, Feb. 17, 2019 at the annual combined meeting of the American Beverage Association and the Nuclear Energy Institute. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity today. I come to you with a simple message. I'm a billionaire and I'm running for president of the United States of America. I […]

Never one to miss an opportunity to get his hate on, Donald Trump on Tuesday demanded Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) resign over her unfortunate "all about the Benjamins" comment. Calling her well-received apology "lame," Trump complained, "Anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress. I think she should either resign from Congress or she […]

Even a broken clock, the old saying goes, is right twice a day. So it was for Donald Trump during his 2019 State of the Union address on Tuesday night. During perhaps the most backward-looking presidential message in memory, the president thundered about a mythical national crisis of undocumented immigration putting America and Americans at […]

"Both sides do it" may well be the most dangerous and deceitful phrase in U.S. politics. The lazy analyst's substitute for actual journalism doesn't merely misdiagnose what plagues the American body politic, but fails to correctly identify the source of the disease. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it in their 2012 book, It's […]

When Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King lamented that language like "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization" had "become offensive," GOP leaders like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared horrified. But if they were shocked--SHOCKED!--to find Steve King's racism going on in their Republican Party, they shouldn't have been. King, […]

As the New Year begins, imagine that this is how your 2018 ended: You work at a company where the CEO and the management team are notoriously corrupt. They began the year by taking on $150 million in new debt for the purpose of rewarding themselves and their shareholders with a massive stock buyback. But […]

As 2018 draws to a close, there is growing concern about what the next year will bring for the American economy. President Trump's twin self-inflicted wounds of an ongoing trade war with China and a needless government shutdown helped send stock markets into a December panic. The expanding global economy, too, shows signs of a […]