As President Donald J. Trump battled public outrage in the summer of 2019 over his effort to enlist Ukraine in digging up dirt on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., he summoned a small group of top advisers to the Oval Office. Among them was Charles Kupperman, the deputy …
Read More »Opinion | America Is on the Brink of a Great Political Realignment. It’s Already Visible in Arizona.
One day each month, Charlie Kirk, one of the country’s most influential Republican activists, holds an event called Freedom Night in America at Dream City Church, a Pentecostal megachurch on the outskirts of Phoenix. “I truly believe that God has voted early in this election,” he said on a Wednesday …
Read More »Opinion | Three Weeks to Go, and That’s All Anyone Is Sure Of
Gail Collins: Bret, Kamala Harris sure seems proud of her gun ownership, doesn’t she? Bret Stephens: Think of Aretha Franklin singing, “G-L-O-C-K (E), find out what it means to me.” Gail: Hadn’t thought about it until she told Oprah Winfrey that if someone breaks into her house, “they’re getting shot.” …
Read More »Opinion | Food Is What We Have In Common. Why Don’t We Hear More From the Candidates About It?
In a surprising turn of events, the presidential candidates have been talking about food. Food can be a winning topic, but we need to hear much more. Donald Trump (seemingly influenced by his new ally, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), is talking about making “America Healthy Again.” How? “We’re going to …
Read More »Opinion | What China’s Leaders Grasp About Another Trump Term
At the beginning of the Biden presidency, many of us serving in the National Security Council gathered to read the intelligence and reached a key conclusion: The 2020s would be what we called the “decisive decade” in U.S. competition with China. Beijing seeks to displace the United States from its …
Read More »Opinion | Lawyers Should Not Assist Trump in a Potential Power Grab
As the presidential campaign begins its final sprint, Donald Trump has made crystal clear how he will respond if he loses. He will refuse to accept the results; he will make baseless claims of voter fraud; and he will turn, with even more ferocity than he did in 2020, to …
Read More »Trump Hits Coachella, Campaigning Once Again in a Blue State
Both presidential campaigns agree that seven swing states are likely to determine the outcome of this year’s election. California, which has not voted for a Republican in a presidential race since 1988, is not one of them. But that did not prevent former President Donald J. Trump from heading there …
Read More »John F. Kennedy Jr.’s 1990s-Era Magazine Is Back, With a QAnon Twist
On a Saturday morning in August, a few hundred people gathered at a convention center in Hot Springs, Ark., paying between $145 and $475 to hear from a cast of far-right speakers. They included a body builder-turned-pundit who carries a tomahawk and promotes an antisemitic conspiracy theory, and a pro-Trump …
Read More »Opinion | When Trump Rants, This Is What I Hear
I’ve never considered “immigrant” my calling card, even though it’s one I’ve always carried. I arrived here first as a 3-year-old boy in the mid-1970s, settling with my family in Northern California, in a small town with trees so thick that their branches mingled high over the roads. My mother …
Read More »Opinion | JD Vance’s Election Denialism Is Deepening
The first thing I thought of while watching Senator JD Vance of Ohio refuse to say whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election in a recent interview with this newspaper was “The Manchurian Candidate,” John Frankenheimer’s 1962 psychological thriller. The linchpin of “The Manchurian Candidate,” of course, is the …
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