Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: Donald Trump was facing financial disaster in 1990 when he came up with an audacious plan to exert control of his father’s estate. His creditors threatened to force him into personal bankruptcy, and his first wife, Ivana, wanted “a billion dollars” in a divorce settlement, Donald Trump said in a deposition. So he sent an accountant and a lawyer to see his father, Fred Trump Sr., who was told he needed to immediately sign a document…

Read More Read More

Donald Ayer writes: Over the past 19 months, we have all heard a lot about Bill Barr’s misuse of the office of attorney general and the resources of the Justice Department to do the personal bidding of President Donald Trump, to undermine the evenhanded rule of law, and to work in countless other ways to put the president in a position of nearly autocratic power. What first came to our attention as surprising accounts of specific actions out of sync…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: A year before President Donald Trump alarmed Americans with talk of disputing elections last week, his team started building a massive legal network to do just that. Dozens of lawyers from three major law firms have been hired. Thousands of volunteer attorneys and poll watchers across the country have been recruited. Republicans are preparing pre-written legal pleadings that can be hurried to the courthouse the day after the election, as wrangling begins over close results and a crush…

Read More Read More

Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker write: Over lunch a few blocks from the White House on a bright, sunny day in the summer of 2019, one of the architects of the modern Republican Party admitted he was thinking the unthinkable. If Joseph R. Biden, Jr., won the his party’s nomination, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III confided that he might vote for the Democrat over President Trump. For Baker, that would be a profound break with the…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: The health department is moving quickly on a highly unusual advertising campaign to “defeat despair” about the coronavirus, a $300 million-plus effort that was shaped by a political appointee close to President Donald Trump and executed in part by close allies of the official, using taxpayer funds. The ad blitz, described in some budget documents as the “Covid-19 immediate surge public advertising and awareness campaign,” is expected to lean heavily on video interviews between administration officials and celebrities,…

Read More Read More

  NBC Boston reports: Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker launched into a passionate defense of mail-in voting Thursday that included fiery criticism of President Donald Trump’s recent refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses this fall to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. “A huge part of this nation’s allure, to the extent it exists, is the peaceful transmission of power based on the vote of people in this country,” Baker said. “Mail-in balloting has been with…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: Following his defeat in the 2016 Iowa caucus, Donald Trump accused Ted Cruz of cheating and said the results should be nullified. After winning the presidency that fall, Trump insisted, without evidence, that there was “serious voter fraud” in three states he lost to Hillary Clinton. Now, running behind Joe Biden in the polls, the president complains the outcome will be “rigged.” After more than four years of nonstop voter fraud claims, insinuations that he might not accept…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Senior Pentagon leaders have a lot to worry about — Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Iran, China, Somalia, the Korean Peninsula. But chief among those concerns is whether their commander in chief might order American troops into any chaos around the coming elections. President Trump gave officials no solace on Wednesday when he again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power no matter who wins the election. On Thursday he doubled down by saying…

Read More Read More

Timothy L. O’Brien writes: [A]mid all the hand-wringing over what he may or may not do, don’t let Trump snatch away your own agency and attention. David Axelrod, as canny and experienced a political observer as there is, reminded everyone not to get overly distracted by Trump’s performance art. “You do wonder if the POTUS would sooner have us talking about his outrageous comments on the election than the 202,000 dead of COVID-19 or the 870,000 additional Americans who filed…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Myanmar is a poor country struggling with open ethnic warfare and a coronavirus outbreak that could overload its broken hospitals. That hasn’t stopped its politicians from commiserating with a country they think has lost its way. “I feel sorry for Americans,” said U Myint Oo, a member of parliament in Myanmar. “But we can’t help the U.S. because we are a very small country.” The same sentiment prevails in Canada, one of the most developed…

Read More Read More