The Atlantic | January 25, 2026 Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if…
The Atlantic | February 24, 2025 WHAT exactly is Donald Trump doing? Since taking office, he has reduced his administration’s effectiveness by appointing to essential agencies people who lack the skills and temperaments to do their jobs. His mass firings have emptied the civil service of many of its most capable employees. He has defied laws…
The Atlantic | August 29, 2022 EVER since the U.S. Senate failed to convict Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection and disqualify him from running for president again, a lot of people, myself included, have been warning that a second Trump term could bring about the extinction of American democracy. Essential features of the system,…
Persuasion | December 13, 2021 “To see what is in front of one’s nose,” George Orwell said, “needs a constant struggle.” Among Donald Trump’s many impressive talents is his gift for obscuring, occluding, and even inverting what is in front of America’s nose. Most notably, he has convinced tens of millions of Americans, including a majority of…
The Atlantic | February 22, 2021 WHEN I step back to look at the legacy of President Donald Trump, a surprising conclusion emerges: He has substantially altered the Constitution. His changes aren’t formal, of course. But his informal amendments are important. If left to stand, they threaten to make Congress an advisory body and give carte…
Reason.com | November 26, 2018 SOCIOPATHS have haunted fiction since fiction began, and no wonder. Sociopathy is civilization’s greatest challenge. Richard III and Iago; Raskolnikov, Kurtz, Willie Stark, and Humbert Humbert; J.R. Ewing, Frank Underwood, and even HAL 9000. How do we understand the narcissist, the demagogue, the liar, the manipulator, the person without scruples or conscience?…
New York Daily News | May 14, 2017 FOR a period of hours after firing FBI Director James Comey, the Trump administration insisted that it was only following a recommendation from the Justice Department. The claim was unconvincing, but it lent a veneer of respectability to an action that gave every appearance of impeding an…
The Atlantic | March 2017 WHATEVER his intellectual and political gifts, Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, was a cunning and dangerous criminal. For him, issuing illegal orders was literally just another day at the office. One such day, in July of 1971 (nearly a year before the Watergate break-in), found him…