Attention to the Unseen

Charles Leerhsen writes: The banks seemed to accept the version of him depicted in his first book, “The Art of the Deal,” which we now know from his previous ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, was entirely invented. They believed it over what they saw on his balance sheets or heard coming out of his mouth, and they never said no to his requests for more money. Often they came up with things he could say yes to before he could think of…

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Franklin Foer writes: On a relentlessly gray Budapest morning, Michael Ignatieff took me to the rooftop of Central European University’s main building. The newly erected edifice is all glass, sharp angles, exposed steel, and polished wood. Its roof had been landscaped with billowing grasses and fitted with iron benches, as if a section of New York City’s High Line had been transported to Hungary. “This is probably my favorite place on the campus,” Ignatieff told me. He wore a newsboy…

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Reuters reports: Months before evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.’s game-changing presidential endorsement of Donald Trump in 2016, Falwell asked Trump fixer Michael Cohen for a personal favor, Cohen said in a recorded conversation reviewed by Reuters. Falwell, president of Liberty University, one of the world’s largest Christian universities, said someone had come into possession of what Cohen described as racy “personal” photographs — the sort that would typically be kept “between husband and wife,” Cohen said in the taped conversation….

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The New York Times reports: By the time his master-of-the-universe memoir “Trump: The Art of the Deal” hit bookstores in 1987, Donald J. Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns. Mr. Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome. He has attributed his first run of reversals…

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The Guardian reports: The CIA has warned Norway that a prominent Arab activist who is living in the country under asylum protection is facing a potential threat from Saudi Arabia, the Guardian has learned. The pro-democracy activist, İyad el-Baghdadi, is a vocal critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. El-Baghdadi was alerted to the threat on 25 April, when Norwegian authorities arrived at his doorstep, took him to a secure location, and warned him he was in possible danger from…

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Jason Rezaian writes: Is John Bolton about to get the Iran war he’s always wanted, or is he on the verge of losing his job? Over the past several days, President Trump’s national security adviser has made comments and issued statements about Iran and Venezuela that are usually reserved for the run-up to military campaigns. Yet Bolton’s boss doesn’t seem to be playing along. [Continue reading…]