Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: A new report this morning makes one thing abundantly clear about Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign: Trump was right that many things were “rigged” . . . in ways that benefited him or his associates. And in some cases, Trump’s campaign was the one doing the rigging. The Wall Street Journal reports: In January 2014, Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger to help Mr. Trump score well in a CNBC online poll to identify the country’s top business leaders…

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Pankaj Mishra writes: Describing Britain’s calamitous exit from its Indian empire in 1947, the novelist Paul Scott wrote that in India the British “came to the end of themselves as they were” — that is, to the end of their exalted idea about themselves. Scott was among those shocked by how hastily and ruthlessly the British, who had ruled India for more than a century, condemned it to fragmentation and anarchy; how Louis Mountbatten, accurately described by the right-wing historian…

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.@Aeromexico wins Troll of the Month award. Hands down. pic.twitter.com/e9vrpXoUNh — ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) January 17, 2019

Robert Wright writes: A few days before the 2016 election, journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote this about Donald Trump: “He has no concept of a nonzero-sum engagement, in which a deal can be beneficial for both sides. A win-win scenario is intolerable to him, because mastery of others is the only moment when he is psychically at peace.” I’m not sure dominating other people is the only occasion when Trump feels at peace. Presumably there’s a moment during what is reportedly…

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Yoni Appelbaum writes: On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood on the steps of the Capitol, raised his right hand, and solemnly swore to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He has not kept that promise. Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties…

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Politico reports: The Trump administration separated thousands more migrant kids at the border than it previously acknowledged, and the separations began months before the policy was announced, according to a federal audit released Thursday morning. “More children over a longer period of time” were separated at the border than commonly known, an investigator with the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general’s office told reporters Thursday morning. “How many more children were separated is unknown, by us and HHS”…

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Polly Toynbee writes: You could call it swing Saturday or crossover day, for this Saturday, 19 January, marks an important moment. This is the day, in theory, when the country turns remain. Even if not a single person has changed their mind since the referendum, the demographic shift alone will have done the heavy lifting. Enough old leavers will have died and enough young remainers will have come on to the electoral register to turn the dial on what the…

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The Guardian reports: Soft Brexit cabinet ministers are quietly backing a parliamentary bid to make it legally impossible for the UK to leave the EU without a deal on 29 March, the Conservative MP behind the bid has claimed. The bill tabled by the former minister Nick Boles would force the government to delay the UK departure from the EU unless a consensus could be found by early March. That would in effect make it impossible for the government to…

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Sarah Aziza writes: On the morning of August 18, 2017, Rana deboarded her Saudia Airlines flight in Munich, Germany, bleary-eyed and clutching a small leather bag. Her husband, a near-stranger whom she had married two days earlier, in Riyadh, with the stroke of her father’s pen, marched ahead of her. As the couple approached passport control, he reluctantly handed Rana her passport, which he had taken before landing. Rana stole a glance inside to insure that the note she had…

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The New York Times reports: A prominent American-born journalist working for an Iranian state-run satellite television channel has been arrested in the United States, the broadcaster said Wednesday. The reported action, which has not been confirmed by the American authorities, was condemned by Iranian officials. The journalist, Marzieh Hashemi, who has lived in Iran since 2009, is an anchor at the channel, Press TV. It said that Ms. Hashemi, 59, was arrested at the St. Louis airport on Sunday and…

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John Harris writes: Whatever the noise from Westminster, for millions of people Brexit is something that happened two and a half years ago. It has since become synonymous with an indecipherable cacophony about cabinet splits, customs unions and the kind of arcana that might convulse Twitter but leaves most people cold. Clearly, this highlights a huge political failure – not least on the part of the supposed party of opposition – and a debate so distant from the public that…

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Barbara Wesel writes: [F]or British politics, May’s persistence, which has long bordered on stubbornness, is a disaster. The prime minister deserves this defeat in Parliament because she herself is to blame. Brexit has divided and deadlocked her government and British politics in general — and that’s May’s fault, too. From the outset, as head of government, she only had her Conservatives in view. She spoke only to her own hardliners, trying to keep the party together at all costs. In…

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Garrett M Graff writes: It would be rather embarrassing for Donald Trump at this point if Robert Mueller were to declare that the president isn’t an agent of Russian intelligence. The pattern of his pro-Putin, pro-Russia, anti-FBI, anti-intelligence community actions are so one-sided, and the lies and obfuscation surrounding every single Russian meeting and conversation are so consistent, that if this president isn’t actually hiding a massive conspiracy, it means the alternative is worse: America elected a chief executive so…

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