Tag Donald Trump

Election fraud? Seriously?

Up until recently, Putin’s regime committed fraud at every important election. It wasn’t that easy, even though the perpetrators were told they would never face prosecution. In fact, having independent or opposition party observers at polling stations all but closed…

I was wrong about Trump

Once I had great – inflated – hopes for Trump. I was disappointed by Obama’s reluctance to actively resist the Kremlin’s aggression. Obama’s 2014 sanctions, I thought, were inadequate, even counterproductive. It would have been natural for Trump – it…

Learning to screw up like Russians

Trump Make America Great Again Committee. Sounds beautiful! Politico carried this story on Monday: Trump ad asks people to support the troops. But it uses a picture of Russian jets. In what role, though? As adversaries? Allies? Background shapes? Apparently,…

DJT & QAnon: a QTie

BTW, why QAnon and not, say, XAnon? Because it looks mysterious enough – and cute enough – even when mirrored or reversed? Nona Q, Susie Q‘s lost sibling – or grandma. Karen Bennhold reports from Berlin for The New York…

Putin’s useless playbook

Jonathan Chait writes in New York Magazine: Most American politicians, Republican or Democrat, would take Putin’s perspective on handling hostile demonstrations as a cautionary tale. This is how Putin would respond to protests used to be, self-evidently, an indictment. Trump…

Whatever slows it down

OK, if you insist that COVID-19 is just like the flu, I could agree if you dropped “just.” It’s like the flu, sort of – but much deadlier and, in all likelihood, more contagious. I’ve seen the COVID-19 mortality rate…

News from Baghdad

I’ve been deeply disappointed by President Trump’s reluctance to take on certain dictators. Unfortunately, the senior Iranian murderer killed in Baghdad by the US air force was not personally a dictator. However, he soldiered for the turbaned junta so his…