The Jan. 6 hearings: Was the finale just the beginning?
The hearings of the Jan. 6 committee have been methodical yet visceral, like a PowerPoint presentation of a national near-death experience. Our scary past, precarious present and uncertain future, all glimpsed through the fish-eye footage of battered body cams and the texting thumbs of powerful people who were up to no good. (Oct. 13, 2022)
Cassidy Hutchinson and the all-knowing presence of Washington’s aides
Washington is run by aides, or at least it runs on the work of aides: the gofers, the schedulers, the advisers, the consiglieres, the speechwriters, the deputy assistant whatevers, the advance teams, the surrogates and spokespeople, the bag men and body men and boss whisperers, the young women who arrange everything and get credit for nothing. (July 1, 2022)
What were the Capitol rioters thinking on Jan. 6?
Were these people acting on their most deeply held convictions, or were they somehow not themselves on Jan. 6? Six months of evidence, court filings and motion hearings have created a composite sketch of the people arrested — in all their treachery or boneheadedness — and of the country many said they were fighting for. (July 20, 2021)
“In my 28 years of doing elections I have never seen a private takeover of any kind of public process related to an election,” says Kim Wyman, Washington state’s Republican secretary of state. “It’s the wild, wild West.” (May 21, 2021)
On this first day of the second trial of Palm Beach’s most famous retiree, there were ludicrous ramblings and sudden feelings, red herrings and beige slide shows, invocations of both William Faulkner and the “bill of attainder” clause in section nine of Article I of the Constitution. Both impeachment legal teams, despite a comical gap in tone and strategy, concluded their remarks by shedding tears. (Feb. 9, 2021)
On the final day, anchors on cable news talked about the quiet. Trump was quiet. Washington itself was 9/11-quiet, its avenues void of humanity except for an army of law enforcement. The president had entered office four years earlier with a huge clamor, and he seemed to be leaving it with a stifled scream. (Jan. 20, 2021)
On Wednesday, during its season finale, the Donald Trump Show finally leaped off the screen and into the laps of the people in power. The finale started with Republicans in Congress debasing themselves to soothe the wounded ego of the main character, the man who is vandalizing their party and their legacies, the man whose family is prolonging a grift disguised as a chintzy brand of fascism that many people are taking very, very seriously — so seriously, in fact, that an army of delusional insurrectionists sacked the U.S. Capitol as legislators were engaging peacefully, if disagreeably, in the transfer of presidential power. (Jan. 7, 2021)
America was founded on certain myths and beliefs relating to freedom, individualism and righteous rebellion. Now these myths and beliefs are encircling our necks. Over the past month, as we’ve moved into a third wave of coronavirus and toward a Joe Biden presidency, some Americans have lived in an alternate reality, a Kraken reality. (Dec. 10, 2020)
Rudy Giuliani’s post-election meltdown starts to become literal
It’s very simple, according to Rudolph W. Giuliani and the rest of President Trump’s legal posse, but also very vast. China is in on it. Cuba is in on it. Antifa and George Soros are in on it. At least two presidents of Venezuela, one dead and one living, are in on it. Big Tech is in on it; a Web server from Germany is involved. (There’s always a server involved.) Multiple major U.S. cities are in on it, as are decent American citizens who volunteer at polling precincts. Argentina is in on it, too, sort of. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was in on it back in 1960, when, according to an unproved conspiracy theory, he stole the presidency for John F. Kennedy, thereby launching an ongoing pattern of corrupt cities stuffing or scrapping ballots. (Nov. 19, 2020)
Four Seasons Total Landscaping
When news broke Saturday that Donald Trump’s reign was ending, the president was on a golf course that he owns in Virginia, playing his last round as a non-loser. In Washington, about 125 of his worshipful supporters gathered on the stoop of the Supreme Court to “stop the steal,” then circumnavigated the U.S. Capitol seven times, because that’s how the Israelites conquered Jericho, according to the Book of Joshua. And a pair of Trump’s most loyal surrogates made a defiant stand on the gravelly backside of a landscaping business in an industrial stretch of Northeast Philadelphia, near a crematorium and an adult-video store called Fantasy Island, along State Road, which leads — as being associated with Trump sometimes does — to a prison. (Nov. 8, 2020)
The day that never ended (Election Day 2020)
Plywood capital of a screw-loose nation. Boarded up, braced for impact, zombie-eyed and pulse-crazy, bluer than blue but governed by a red menace with enduring appeal out there in the several states. There was supposed to be catharsis Tuesday night, or at least a preview of catharsis, but all Washington got was another round in the torture chamber of the U.S. electoral system, with the media as scourge, unable to escape or exclaim because of a pandemic (worsening once again) that’s put much of the nation under volunteer house arrest. (Nov. 4, 2020)
The president is sick but his followers feel great
Legions of Americans are dead and the White House itself is a hot spot. The intersection here in Bethesda is the predicament in miniature: two sides living different realities, separated by six lanes of rubbernecking and honking motorists, underlined by a grass knoll of journalists training their cameras on the spectacle. (Oct. 4, 2020)
Americans have been familiar with his personal aesthetic for decades: the gold, the braggadocio, the huckster superlatives, the reality-TV staging, the all-encompassing obsession with his surname. But for nearly four years, the Trump Aesthetic has clashed (or fused?) with the U.S. presidency, each marking the other with a stamp that won’t soon fade. (Sept. 16, 2020)
Politicians are crying “conspiracy.” Democrats allege that Republicans are trying to privatize the Postal Service or thrashing services to stem years of financial woes. Trump’s recent threat to obstruct the Postal Service’s ability to process ballots — and his false claims of fraud in mail-in voting — has raised suspicions about DeJoy’s moves since taking office. DeJoy is also a major GOP fundraiser who, before he became postmaster, wrangled $360,000 for Trump’s reelection in 2020 alone. (Aug. 31, 2020)
American exceptionalism was our preexisting condition
America is sick. Still sick. The fever spikes, abates, returns. The shortness of breath lingers. America is waiting in virtual bread lines, listening to bad jazz, on hold with the unemployment office. America is strewn with the glass shards of Starbucks windows, busted by protesters, and bullied by unidentifiable agents of the government. America, barefoot and in Brooks Brothers, is defending its marble palazzo with an AR-15 rifle. (July 23, 2020)
An oral history of the clearing of Lafayette Square
Eventually there will be a detailed accounting of what actually happened, and how, and why. For now, in the midst of the confusion, here is a first draft of history in miniature, in minutes — an oral history of 6:30 to 7:18 p.m. on June 1, 2020. (June 2, 2020)
It’s 5 o’clock. Do you know where your president is?
America has better places to be but nowhere else to go. Theaters are closed, sports are iced, the news has tunnel vision, and Donald Trump has a captive audience. TV viewership for these briefings has sometimes exceeded 10 million. C-SPAN carries it from start to finish. Cable-news channels serve up large chunks of it, then chew on the leftovers into the night. Twitter froths with disbelief. People have always tuned in to the Trump show for the spectacle, but now, at a time of profound crisis and fear, they show up for their families and their own lives, hungry for information. (April 20, 2020)
It was crisp and cloudless in Washington after days of gloomy rain. On one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Congress began performing its constitutional role with thick solemnity. On the other end, the president was ensconced in the White House, windows decked with red-ribboned wreaths. White Christmas lights twinkled. The televisions were on. Hysterical punctuation and capital letters were the logs on the fire of his persecution. (Dec. 19, 2019)
And now, here come the academics: Four of them, trailing their curricula vitae like billowing robes, ready to act as counsel for the Founding Fathers, who remain very dead but continue to haunt us. What would the founders think of us? What would they think of President Donald J. Trump, and the effort to impeach him?
To find out, the House Committee on the Judiciary held a sort of seance Wednesday. (Dec. 4, 2019)
‘Impeachapalooza’: an irregular week for an outlandish presidency
That terrible, beautiful sound is the gears of government grinding against a human wrench named Donald Trump. That flinty smell is the legislative branch striking against the executive branch in a series of marathon hearings, in which Democrats bloodhounded for evidence of bribery and Republicans raved about strange cults, basement bunkers and nude photos of the president. The Constitution is made of words and ideals but, in practice, it is quorums and points of order. It is stacks of paper, Diet Cokes, stifled bladders, metaphorical drug deals, actual antitank missiles, and bureaucrats who tolerate partisans who disdain bureaucrats. The hurricane commotion of the Trump era was, for one week, fed through the machinery of procedure. The presidential impeachment inquiry was held this past week in a pedimented mausoleum on Independence Avenue, but it took place everywhere — on screens, via tweets, in hearts and minds and memes. (Nov. 22, 2019)
Don Jr.’s book tour arrives at a safe space
Donald Trump Jr. — born into privilege, son to a sitting president, top executive of a global conglomerate — has lately been on a woe-is-me book tour whose greatest hits include upsetting anyone who has “leftist” beliefs, dismissing a plurality of American voters, and casting his powerful, wealthy family as victims. (Nov. 13, 2019)
Whistleblowers walk among us. Now one has gotten in Trump’s head
The process can be long, painful and sometimes futile. A whistleblower can be mistaken, or the government can be hostile. But when the system works, the country improves. Over the past two years, for example, we’ve learned from whistleblowers that insects have repeatedly infested an operating room at a VA medical center in New Hampshire. That horses used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection were exposed to toxic chemicals in West Texas. That the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to conduct proper inspections of lead-based paint. (Oct. 27, 2019)
Day 1,000 of the Trump presidency
Wednesday was the 1,000th day of Donald Trump’s presidency. He spent it the usual way, by saying unusual things.
“It’s a lot of sand,” Trump said.
He was sitting in the Oval Office next to the president of Italy, and referring to the battleground between the Turkish military and Syrian Kurds.
“They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So there’s a lot of sand they can play with.”
A thousand days. (Oct. 16, 2019)
An oral history of Sharpiegate
While he cannot control the weather, Trump can create pressure systems in his natural habitat: Twitter. Over the course of one Scaramucci (about 10 days), as Hurricane Dorian churned through the Atlantic, a metaphysical storm gathered force, with the president at the center. It swept up all sorts of people who weren’t in Dorian’s path: meteorologists in Alabama, politicians from Texas and Tennessee, even a Baptist pastor in Kentucky. (Sept. 13, 2019)
Fear and gloating in Cincinnati
Oh, people had fun here! They were gleeful. They chanted “LOCK HER UP,” and turned to each other and smiled, moving and clapping as if they were at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. (“Free Bird” had played multiple times outside the arena to entertain the epic queue in the hot sun.) Pubescent boys wearing the Infowars logo, soccer moms in pink tops emblazoned with “Women for Trump,” a couple of rows of black supporters with T-shirts that said “TRUMP & Republicans ARE NOT RACIST,” a group of friends from Middletown (setting of the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy”) who’d chartered a limousine to make a night of it — they were so happy to spend hours here, in this hot hockey venue across the river from Kentucky, as the leader of the free world gave a sermon of digressive demagoguery and tell-it-like-it-isms. The president wasn’t racist, his people believed; he was an equal-opportunity counterpuncher. Some said they weren’t even here for the counterpunching. They were here for the sheer camaraderie, the energy, the excitement. It was validating for people. It was inspiring. (Aug. 2, 2019)
A weary old man with a warning
As with many Washington sagas, it came down to this: an old man in a charcoal suit who didn’t want to talk. A former Marine just shy of his 75th birthday, dragged into serving his country one last time, though there’s little honor in it now. A hangdog Mona Lisa before a gallery of bobbleheads, subjected in the winter of a dignified career to the indignities of Congress. He had taken a bullet to the thigh in Vietnam, steered the FBI through the wreckage of the 9/11 attacks, and yet on Wednesday — during congressional hearings on his last act of public service — Robert Swan Mueller III seemed wary of the microphone itself. (July 25, 2019)
Evening in America: Trump’s 4th of July
The United States has turned 243 years old, which is adolescent for an empire (at least when compared with Rome). This might explain the national mood swings and infatuations, the cliques and the clumsiness, the tendency to bully or be bullied. It might explain why the 45th president wanted to fly a series of loud machines over the Mall, and why his haters wanted to fly a blimp of him as an infant, diapered and cranky. The blimp was inflated but never flew. (July 5, 2019)
Does Donald Trump believe in God? Should that matter? He certainly believes in himself. He believes in the economy. Golf is like a religion, though it accommodates cheats. Twitter seems like a kind of prayer, for Donald Trump. Repeat “WITCH HUNT” like a decade of the rosary, and eventually it starts to echo around your brain like a belief. You start to believe. Everyone starts to believe. America prays more than any other wealthy country, according to the Pew Research Center. We are a nation of believers. (May 2, 2019)
For a man who likes to define life on his terms — he’s an existentialist, in practice — he talks like a fatalist, resigned to the chaotic but predetermined mechanics of the universe. (Oct. 19, 2018)
Stormy Daniels, live and in person
"I'm trying to think of what I can say," said the woman of the hour, sighing and shuddering simultaneously, as if to convey she's been through an ordeal. She was in between performances, signing autographs and taking topless photos with oglers in a corner of the smoky club. She paused, sat back on a leather couch, pursed her lips. (Jan. 21, 2018)
Oprah could run. Oprah could win. Is America going insane, or coming to its senses?
Since everyone's frothing over her undeclared candidacy, let's game it out. Winfrey emerges from her Montecito, Calif., mansion, declares she's in the game — and what happens then? (Jan. 8, 2018)
The secretary of commerce is 10th in line for the presidency,
which is close enough to be important and far away enough to be complacent.
Wilbur Ross, the current secretary, is nearly 82, which is old enough to get away with a nap during business hours and young enough to throw on beach khakis, grab a glass of white wine and observe naked people cocooned in plastic wrap at an arts benefit in the Hamptons. He is a quiet man, smart and generous, but he seems detached from reality: too rich to remember how the real world works, too uninterested in his role as commerce secretary to enact much beyond stasis, mortification or bafflement, according to his critics.
“With Donald Trump, we can do so much more.”
There is no official policy or protocol preventing Ginni Thomas from going full MAGA. It's her First Amendment right to fulminate that America is becoming a godless, socialist nightmare and to practice the dark art of political messaging on social media…
The start of a mad hot American summer in the nation’s capital.
A president violating norm after norm. Immigrant children wailing for their mothers. A Supreme Court seat, open like a wound. A midterm election hurtling toward us like an avenging angel, or a killer asteroid. The resistance girding for war…
Diamond & Silk: How two small-town ex-Democrats became ‘warriors’ for Trump
Diamond and Silk did not return our voice mails, emails or messages sent through intermediaries. When reached via phone, Silk hung up. In their small town in the Sandhills of North Carolina, we found ourselves peering through the dusty window of their family’s church and herbal store, where a statue of the Virgin Mary was displayed alongside a shelf of diet books self-published by their mother. (April 26, 2018)
It is a Tomorrowland state, and Donald Trump is a Coney Island president. This is the California problem in 2017.
The 20th century had the Joads, who saw California as a last resort in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” The 21st has the Pfeffermans, who on the TV show “Transparent” inherited California as a trust fund. Now, the only frontier is the next psychosis. A half-century ago Californians clashed with Hell’s Angels at Altamont; now they shout “emoluments!” at congressmen in school gymnasiums.
‘I have been completely demonized’
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team are somewhere underneath Washington, with their flashlights and pickaxes, while the rest of us remain aboveground, peering at the ominous cumulonimbus around Carter Page, scanning every inopportune grin, every halt in his speech, every bounce of an eyebrow. He's capable of both oversharing and evasion, sometimes in the same breath, and our collective paranoia flares: Is he just a goofball, or is this some kind of act?