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Has the 'Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy' Actually Won?
Robert Bittman (right), deputy to Kenneth Starr as independent counsel, hands a report to then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, getting the impeachment of Bill Clinton underway in 1998. Bill Clinton survived;...
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Trump Time Capsule #39: Choosing a Veep
Donald Trump and Mike Pence in Indiana this past week (John Sommers / Reuters)Until this week, three episodes of choosing a vice presidential nominee stood out in post-World War II history as the...
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Trump Time Capsule #40: 'Back to Mike Pence'
Tweet from @realDonaldTrump after the ticket’s debut today.I am again impressed by and grateful to the crew at C-Span, which has promptly put up a full, high-rez version of the Trump-Pence announcement...
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Trump Time Capsule #41: 'We Remember the Nuremberg Trials'
What Patrick Healy and Helene Cooper of the NYTreport today is highly unusual and deserves attention. The unusual aspect is active-duty general officers (a) speaking about party politics this directly,...
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Trump Time Capsule #42 (and Holding): Damage to the National Brand
An American who has lived and worked in Asia for several decades writes:You might cast a future net in a future note to capture commentary from overseas business people (like me) who despise U.S. tax...
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Trump Time Capsule #43: The Sociopath
We haven’t yet heard from the co-author of Trump’s latest book. But the man behind The Art of the Deal has just weighed in, to memorable effect. (Jonathan Bachman / Reuters)I said that these Time...
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Before Year Zero: Trump and Trumpism, in the Archives
Greetings from Cleveland! Where to start?Well, here’s one possible starting point. Everything about Donald Trump’s rise suggests a Year Zero, history-begins-this-instant approach to norms, traditions,...
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The Stakes Before Trump's Big Speech
Two of the people whose memorable convention speeches are discussed in the item below. A third speech that is likely to be memorable in one way or another will happen this week in Cleveland. (Sage Ross...
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Convention Tenseness: Cleveland Not That Tense, on Day 1
Seven pm Monday evening in Cleveland (James Fallows / The Atlantic)This is not a systematic or conclusive assessment of conditions in Cleveland. But on the basis of walking around downtown inside and...
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Trump Time Capsule #44: Melania Channels Michelle
Donald Trump welcoming Melania onto the stage this evening. (Aaron Bernstein / Reuters)The, umm, overlaps between Melania Trump’s speech about her husband this evening, and Michelle Obama’s speech...
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Trump Time Capsule #45: Why Melania's Speech Matters
The candidate and his wife last night in Cleveland. (Carolyn Kaster / AP)This is a further spelled-out version of what I was trying to say Tweet-storm style a little while ago.Political process stories...
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Trump Time Capsule #46: Maybe Recycling Is a Family Tradition?
Donald J. Trump Jr. after a successful speech this evening in Cleveland (Jim Young / Reuters)Even as I type, Donald J. Trump Jr’s speech on his father’s behalf at the Republican convention is receiving...
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Trump Before Trumpism: The Way He First Came Into View
Donald Trump’s successful campaign is genuinely something new. But Trump himself, plus many of the distinctive Trump moves with which people worldwide are now so familiar, come with a surprisingly long...
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Trump Time Capsule #47: Clown Car
Tonight’s entry in the cavalcade of Trump family speakers: Eric Trump, doing a run-through at the podium this afternoon. There has never before been a convention in which so many relatives spoke about...
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Trump Time Capsule #48: Third Night of the Convention, Plus "NATO? What NATO!"
From Jon Passantino on Twitter.The first convention I remember watching, on television at home as a kid, was the 1964 Republican convention, featuring Barry Goldwater’s fiery “extremism in defense of...
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Trump and Knowledge: Maybe He Does Know How Little He Actually Knows?
Mary Altaffer / APFor any normal candidate in any normal year, an interview like the one Donald Trump has just given to David Sanger and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times would cause the kind of...
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Trump Time Capsule #49: The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Real
The running mates, last night on stage. (Mike Segar / Reuters)Months ago I published a note from a reader whose work, in the TV industry, involved exposure to virtually all of Donald Trump’s recorded...
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The Trump Era Dawns
Ted Cruz addresses the Republican convention. (Jorge Bueno / Wikimedia commons)Readers respond to this stage in our national pageant.Is it all just kayfabe? From a reader in the Northwest:Maybe it’s...
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'It's a Trap': What If the Convention Chaos Is All Planned?
In a series of posts, I’ve been arguing that the well-publicized chaos of the Republican National Convention provides cautionary evidence on how the Trump organization might handle the scaled-up...
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Trump Time Capsule #50: 'I Alone'
“Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” (Shanghai Poster Art Centre)No one will ever be able to say, looking back, that Donald Trump was concealing the kind of leader...
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