Well, at least we’ll have these highly readable diary entries from Tina to keep us entertained during the new authoritarian age in America. And with our pontificating VP’s rock solid commitment to free speech, she should be able to keep going - as long as she doesn’t go to work for the AP. (I often ask myself after I bump into Vance’s latest pronouncement precisely where he gets off. On the basis of what lived experience did he arrive at these rules to live by? Yale Law School? Appalachian home boy? Bromance with Don Jr.? Newfound Catholicism? Silicon Valley investment manager?) It is, however, a rather striking indictment of the American electorate that our authoritarian, our own fuhrer, is so obviously the weakest of them all. There’s the KGB graduate Putin, the lawyer and supple politician Orban, the master of in-fighting and CCP bureaucracy Xi, and then there’s King Cheeto - a failure at each and every one of his adult undertakings outside of demagoguery. Sure, irony died a few years back. But still … we have the weakest, tiniest man in the world being led around by a crazy, unelected tech billionaire in the dismantlement of a supposed “deep state.” They said that when fascism came to America it would come wrapped in a flag and thumping a bible. But they didn’t say the flag-draped thumper would be - to employ Tina’s phrase - the biggest “nothingburger” of them all.
what a stunning observation, Robert Are you a writer yourself? I may quote you on all this ere long. I feel the same way. Who is this punk Vance to lecture the leaders of Europe? the arrogance is breathtaking. But when will America start to really care and take offence and want to get rid of them? Trump demanding danegeld in minerals from Ukraine is so obscene even the NYPost today was appalled Thanks for writing T
As to the important question you ask - when will Americans rise up and say enough? - I think this will end the only way it could have ended, with a disaster or a crisis that lays bare all the incompetence, corruption and pretense. MAGA world has to hit rock bottom before disavowing the cult leader. I take solace in noting that the fascination with a so-called strong man is a global phenomenon. And, of course, The Chumpster, is a symptom not a cause. I’m keeping a list of possible antidotes: real campaign finance reform and the scrapping of Citizens United; the return of required civics education and critical thinking classes in public schools; comprehensive immigration reforms based on humane, realistic proposals that acknowledge America’s responsibilities to itself and to global realities; tax reform that helps address the ever-widening wealth chasm; legislation to prevent public officials from deliberately misrepresenting the facts with an independent government agency acting as an arbiter; more rigid rules for the submission of tax and health records for presidential aspirants (the Dear Leader is obviously a dysfunctional and deeply disturbed individual); and regulation of communication platforms that hold people accountable for their online behavior - your right to free speech ends where my endangerment begins. I’m sure others can come up with better and more effective ideas. The revival of the Democratic Party at the state and municipal levels with a demonstration of good governance and serious policy analysis would provide a working alternative to the MAGA cowardice and incompetence.
These are all very good. Maybe we need a new dem charter on a scroll and horsemen can gallop around the country rolling it out. You must keep up the list, then refine!
Maybe Vance is a carnival mirror image of many members of Trump's base, as he, by his own admittance, is the waif child of a missing father and a mother who struggled to keep her job as a nurse while sucking down percosets like Life Savers. Boys with backgrounds like this are rudderless, hurting, angry and easily drawn in by any 'alpha male' who, in their estimation, can help steer the ship. Trump is in fact hollow and weak. Others Robert mentions are hollow and less weak. All strongmen are weak at the core, however, as history shows us. I hope someone with more chops than me comes up with a convincing way to pop their balloons ASAP. Crusading journalists just might fit the bill. The Emporer, after all, has no clothes.
That’s very generous of you, Tina. Thank you. I’m a true fanboy; I devour everything you publish. I read the Palace Papers in two days of nearly uninterrupted immersion. Vance in Munich was a truly shameful display. Take a look at Bret Stephens - not a fan generally - in today’s NYT. He correctly excoriates JD on the subject of hypocrisy. (I can’t admit the 2020 election was legitimate, but I’m going to lecture my betters on the subject of free speech.) I wrote in a prior life. Now I’m just a sad, befuddled observer who hangs on for your next diary entry.
Yes, a show - someone else’s idea - on which he read cue cards, written by someone else, while pretending to be a successful businessman. Now he’s starring on The President Show, pretending to be a successful executive of a different kind. OTOH, when you eliminate a free press and replace it with a propaganda machine, you’re on TV all day, every day.
Will you be joining Bluesky? It’s bizarre for good people to be on X anymore— a site full of pornography and the most hateful content that the most deranged people of our society can conjure. That’s not a political opinion, it’s the business plan.
What happened to the White Dudes For Kamala?We’ve got 86-year old Maxine Waters out on the sidewalk doing our fighting! So yes, run Rahm run! We need more tough guys. Even the obnoxious Michael Cohen? Bring it. And hey Michael Fanone @michaelfanone — Congress needs you!
As usual, love your wit and wordsmithing and as usual find some points on which we agree. Encourage you and your followers to listen to the CNBC interview of Abe Karp, CEO of Palantir, the leading company in the world in the application of AI. It is widely available on the internet and I think that it will go viral. Touches on many adjectives of our culture and politics ( particularly the rot that has infected the universities) but I bring it up because he is a German Jew who spent over half his life there and dis commentary concerning the decline of Germany given the insanity of its leaders regarding many issues including immigration explain why the AfD continues to gain ground daily.
I like how you end the sentence "the leading company in the world in the application of AI." Application in AI... DOING WHAT, exactly? You probably don't know, Tucker, because their most important work as a government contractor is kept secret. What we do know is that they develop software for the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies. Spy tech. They create software to help with law enforcement and the nation's defense. It could be perfectly reasonable and ethical stuff, but we really have no idea.
But here's the thing-- Palantir requires massive datasets in order to perform its tasks. It strikes me that journalists should find out whether Palantir (co-founded by Peter Thiel) is assisting DOGE in any way. Because if there is one company that would benefit most from having its hands on American's Social Security records, IRS records, health records, criminal records, and everything else that DOGE is accessing (and possibly copying -- we don't know), it's Palantir. It is Palantir, not Tesla, that will be able to make sense of all the data.
enough with the politics. you've lost your voice, your perspecive, your vivid invective and sound just like all dem dols who don't get it. your job is to provide wit from the Titanic foredeck as the water rises. Don't turn into Elizabetg Drew, for god's sake.
In with Emmanuel . I do not share your devotion for Warren . I agree with all of her efforts . Her screaming messages are lost on my ears. Someone needs to turn down her volume.
Tina. I never profess to be right unless debating with my husband ! Warren is much toooo much. I just turned on msnbc . I’ll wait for your roundup of Trump , Musk & Putin. Menace a trois. Nicole Wallace . Second to none. The Zelensky news. I believed Trump would stop all support for democracy in Ukraine. I’m not shockable. Today I reeled. Ukraine started the war ?!!! Zelensky a dictator.?! Where do we go from here ?
Ditto on flailing around! What to do?! Writing or calling my representatives is a joke since I live, God forbid, in Texas and can't move just this moment. If Rahm is going to grab the reins, he better do so quick and hard. Who else might join him? Can we encourage via letters a group of assertive and "with it" leaders to start responding as a pack? One lone wolf isn't enough. Who might be on an A-team of leaders younger than 80 (I can say this because I'm almost 80 myself) who could become an effective wolf pack for our voices. Tina and Rahm, of course. I'd also suggest Gretchen Whitmer and Andy Beshear. Who else?
Great article. I like the insight that it would have been better if Trump had won in 2020. He’s completely bought into the stolen election. His cabinet picks are all toadies, picked for loyalty alone.
And yes the Dems need to tame their far left faction that probably cost them the election.
Very interesting about the AfD too. I learned a lot even though I read around quite a bit.
I agreed with that on week one. But no more. I think the constantly-maligned "far left" (whatever that is-- critics can define it no better than they can define "woke") will be taking a new pride in Democratic values. The answer is not to become a "moderate." Kamala and Joe were moderates and what good did that do us? Forget that! If we're going to be Democrats, then BE DEMOCRATS. Stand up for what we believe in!
I hear you but some of the extreme progressivism just turns more people off than it wins. Doesnt mean have to abandon the positions but dial down that rhetoric.
I totally agree that Rahm Emanuel is needed right now to fill the new role of being the 'quarterback' of resistance efforts. Leaders Schumer and Jeffries and DNC Chair Martin have important roles but they may be limited (by their main duties) in thwarting Trump anti-democratic actions. Rahm has the experience and political heft to enforce cohesiveness -- especially message cohesiveness.
I just can’t take Rahm Emanuel seriously after that Chicago press conference when he asked “How dare him [Jussie Smollett]?” Say what you will about Biden, his grammar was always immaculate.
Cogent, extremely well written and well thought out. Also alarming as hell. Anyone who is not alarmed by all this is either brain dead or not paying attention. Oh, or a hateful a**hat.
Learning excites me. The words pugilist and interregnum are now in my vocabulary. Vance’s trip to Germany sounds mythic. These are crazy times. I am happy to read your musings. Terrific as always!
Rahm was the wanker naif who led with health care reform which is a legacy program at best once u've done the incremental legislaiting to build the kind of winning record and coalition it takes to pass health care legislation Rahm should have learned from Clinton's failure he ignored and yr cluelessly praising him for. The Dems need a new generation of leaders not old has been retreads who had their shot and fucking blew it.
Well, at least we’ll have these highly readable diary entries from Tina to keep us entertained during the new authoritarian age in America. And with our pontificating VP’s rock solid commitment to free speech, she should be able to keep going - as long as she doesn’t go to work for the AP. (I often ask myself after I bump into Vance’s latest pronouncement precisely where he gets off. On the basis of what lived experience did he arrive at these rules to live by? Yale Law School? Appalachian home boy? Bromance with Don Jr.? Newfound Catholicism? Silicon Valley investment manager?) It is, however, a rather striking indictment of the American electorate that our authoritarian, our own fuhrer, is so obviously the weakest of them all. There’s the KGB graduate Putin, the lawyer and supple politician Orban, the master of in-fighting and CCP bureaucracy Xi, and then there’s King Cheeto - a failure at each and every one of his adult undertakings outside of demagoguery. Sure, irony died a few years back. But still … we have the weakest, tiniest man in the world being led around by a crazy, unelected tech billionaire in the dismantlement of a supposed “deep state.” They said that when fascism came to America it would come wrapped in a flag and thumping a bible. But they didn’t say the flag-draped thumper would be - to employ Tina’s phrase - the biggest “nothingburger” of them all.
what a stunning observation, Robert Are you a writer yourself? I may quote you on all this ere long. I feel the same way. Who is this punk Vance to lecture the leaders of Europe? the arrogance is breathtaking. But when will America start to really care and take offence and want to get rid of them? Trump demanding danegeld in minerals from Ukraine is so obscene even the NYPost today was appalled Thanks for writing T
As to the important question you ask - when will Americans rise up and say enough? - I think this will end the only way it could have ended, with a disaster or a crisis that lays bare all the incompetence, corruption and pretense. MAGA world has to hit rock bottom before disavowing the cult leader. I take solace in noting that the fascination with a so-called strong man is a global phenomenon. And, of course, The Chumpster, is a symptom not a cause. I’m keeping a list of possible antidotes: real campaign finance reform and the scrapping of Citizens United; the return of required civics education and critical thinking classes in public schools; comprehensive immigration reforms based on humane, realistic proposals that acknowledge America’s responsibilities to itself and to global realities; tax reform that helps address the ever-widening wealth chasm; legislation to prevent public officials from deliberately misrepresenting the facts with an independent government agency acting as an arbiter; more rigid rules for the submission of tax and health records for presidential aspirants (the Dear Leader is obviously a dysfunctional and deeply disturbed individual); and regulation of communication platforms that hold people accountable for their online behavior - your right to free speech ends where my endangerment begins. I’m sure others can come up with better and more effective ideas. The revival of the Democratic Party at the state and municipal levels with a demonstration of good governance and serious policy analysis would provide a working alternative to the MAGA cowardice and incompetence.
These are all very good. Maybe we need a new dem charter on a scroll and horsemen can gallop around the country rolling it out. You must keep up the list, then refine!
Maybe Vance is a carnival mirror image of many members of Trump's base, as he, by his own admittance, is the waif child of a missing father and a mother who struggled to keep her job as a nurse while sucking down percosets like Life Savers. Boys with backgrounds like this are rudderless, hurting, angry and easily drawn in by any 'alpha male' who, in their estimation, can help steer the ship. Trump is in fact hollow and weak. Others Robert mentions are hollow and less weak. All strongmen are weak at the core, however, as history shows us. I hope someone with more chops than me comes up with a convincing way to pop their balloons ASAP. Crusading journalists just might fit the bill. The Emporer, after all, has no clothes.
Journalists and lawyers are our biggest defense. But pounding home that he's a weak strong man is a very good approach T
That’s very generous of you, Tina. Thank you. I’m a true fanboy; I devour everything you publish. I read the Palace Papers in two days of nearly uninterrupted immersion. Vance in Munich was a truly shameful display. Take a look at Bret Stephens - not a fan generally - in today’s NYT. He correctly excoriates JD on the subject of hypocrisy. (I can’t admit the 2020 election was legitimate, but I’m going to lecture my betters on the subject of free speech.) I wrote in a prior life. Now I’m just a sad, befuddled observer who hangs on for your next diary entry.
Befuddled not.
Hardly befuddled.
None of Orban, Putin or Xi had a hit TV show for years and years.
This is a terrible truth and of course the core of it
Yes, a show - someone else’s idea - on which he read cue cards, written by someone else, while pretending to be a successful businessman. Now he’s starring on The President Show, pretending to be a successful executive of a different kind. OTOH, when you eliminate a free press and replace it with a propaganda machine, you’re on TV all day, every day.
Will you be joining Bluesky? It’s bizarre for good people to be on X anymore— a site full of pornography and the most hateful content that the most deranged people of our society can conjure. That’s not a political opinion, it’s the business plan.
U are right. No more X .Laziness on m part
What happened to the White Dudes For Kamala?We’ve got 86-year old Maxine Waters out on the sidewalk doing our fighting! So yes, run Rahm run! We need more tough guys. Even the obnoxious Michael Cohen? Bring it. And hey Michael Fanone @michaelfanone — Congress needs you!
Yeah what did happen to them. Given that white dudes are wreaking so much havoc we need the good ones to be louder
Thank you, I’m for all Rahm directives plus your wrap up last paragraph with ending comment - takes the cake. 😊
Thanks. I am really just flailing around. Trump calling Zelensky a dictator was last straw.
As usual, love your wit and wordsmithing and as usual find some points on which we agree. Encourage you and your followers to listen to the CNBC interview of Abe Karp, CEO of Palantir, the leading company in the world in the application of AI. It is widely available on the internet and I think that it will go viral. Touches on many adjectives of our culture and politics ( particularly the rot that has infected the universities) but I bring it up because he is a German Jew who spent over half his life there and dis commentary concerning the decline of Germany given the insanity of its leaders regarding many issues including immigration explain why the AfD continues to gain ground daily.
will listen. Had felt skeptical of Karp but maybe he has smart things to say
I like how you end the sentence "the leading company in the world in the application of AI." Application in AI... DOING WHAT, exactly? You probably don't know, Tucker, because their most important work as a government contractor is kept secret. What we do know is that they develop software for the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies. Spy tech. They create software to help with law enforcement and the nation's defense. It could be perfectly reasonable and ethical stuff, but we really have no idea.
But here's the thing-- Palantir requires massive datasets in order to perform its tasks. It strikes me that journalists should find out whether Palantir (co-founded by Peter Thiel) is assisting DOGE in any way. Because if there is one company that would benefit most from having its hands on American's Social Security records, IRS records, health records, criminal records, and everything else that DOGE is accessing (and possibly copying -- we don't know), it's Palantir. It is Palantir, not Tesla, that will be able to make sense of all the data.
There is def something iffy about Palantir. Needs a deep dive by investigative journalism.
Tucker are you our guy from the old Amazon DB?
enough with the politics. you've lost your voice, your perspecive, your vivid invective and sound just like all dem dols who don't get it. your job is to provide wit from the Titanic foredeck as the water rises. Don't turn into Elizabetg Drew, for god's sake.
what a knife in the heart! My first action on taking over the New Yorker was to fire Elizabeth Drew! T
excellent response. that's the Tina I love!
How did Tina Brown get by all these years without you telling her what her job is? A miracle!
I wish someone could tell me what my job is exactly!
Rahm? Tough. I’m
In with Emmanuel . I do not share your devotion for Warren . I agree with all of her efforts . Her screaming messages are lost on my ears. Someone needs to turn down her volume.
i was trying to be gracious but u are right
Tina. I never profess to be right unless debating with my husband ! Warren is much toooo much. I just turned on msnbc . I’ll wait for your roundup of Trump , Musk & Putin. Menace a trois. Nicole Wallace . Second to none. The Zelensky news. I believed Trump would stop all support for democracy in Ukraine. I’m not shockable. Today I reeled. Ukraine started the war ?!!! Zelensky a dictator.?! Where do we go from here ?
Ditto on flailing around! What to do?! Writing or calling my representatives is a joke since I live, God forbid, in Texas and can't move just this moment. If Rahm is going to grab the reins, he better do so quick and hard. Who else might join him? Can we encourage via letters a group of assertive and "with it" leaders to start responding as a pack? One lone wolf isn't enough. Who might be on an A-team of leaders younger than 80 (I can say this because I'm almost 80 myself) who could become an effective wolf pack for our voices. Tina and Rahm, of course. I'd also suggest Gretchen Whitmer and Andy Beshear. Who else?
Great article. I like the insight that it would have been better if Trump had won in 2020. He’s completely bought into the stolen election. His cabinet picks are all toadies, picked for loyalty alone.
And yes the Dems need to tame their far left faction that probably cost them the election.
Very interesting about the AfD too. I learned a lot even though I read around quite a bit.
Thanks. I have become fascinated by the AFD and very interested in how German election turns out.
I agreed with that on week one. But no more. I think the constantly-maligned "far left" (whatever that is-- critics can define it no better than they can define "woke") will be taking a new pride in Democratic values. The answer is not to become a "moderate." Kamala and Joe were moderates and what good did that do us? Forget that! If we're going to be Democrats, then BE DEMOCRATS. Stand up for what we believe in!
I hear you but some of the extreme progressivism just turns more people off than it wins. Doesnt mean have to abandon the positions but dial down that rhetoric.
I totally agree that Rahm Emanuel is needed right now to fill the new role of being the 'quarterback' of resistance efforts. Leaders Schumer and Jeffries and DNC Chair Martin have important roles but they may be limited (by their main duties) in thwarting Trump anti-democratic actions. Rahm has the experience and political heft to enforce cohesiveness -- especially message cohesiveness.
I just can’t take Rahm Emanuel seriously after that Chicago press conference when he asked “How dare him [Jussie Smollett]?” Say what you will about Biden, his grammar was always immaculate.
You certainly attract a different caliber of readers, and they are welcome for their insight.
Cogent, extremely well written and well thought out. Also alarming as hell. Anyone who is not alarmed by all this is either brain dead or not paying attention. Oh, or a hateful a**hat.
Thx. I find every news alert more terrifying than the next frankly.
Decades ago I heard a Tibetan monk say “negative emotions enjoy us”.
Who is the payer and who’s the piper?
We are.
yeah and a very challenging problem to fix
Learning excites me. The words pugilist and interregnum are now in my vocabulary. Vance’s trip to Germany sounds mythic. These are crazy times. I am happy to read your musings. Terrific as always!
This makes me happy!
Rahm was the wanker naif who led with health care reform which is a legacy program at best once u've done the incremental legislaiting to build the kind of winning record and coalition it takes to pass health care legislation Rahm should have learned from Clinton's failure he ignored and yr cluelessly praising him for. The Dems need a new generation of leaders not old has been retreads who had their shot and fucking blew it.
Well imho hes the best visible thing we got right now but very happy to switch allegiance when the new talent breaks through in any meaningful way.