Attention to the Unseen

Michael D’Antonio writes: Trump campaigned using taunts and suggestions that all the Cesar Sayocs could have heard as calls to violent action. When a protester interrupted a rally, Trump announced that he would “like to punch him in the face” and waxed sentimental about the days when protesters would be “carried out on stretchers.” He referenced a “Second Amendment” response to Hillary Clinton’s possible election and offered to pay the legal bills for those who assault his protesters. Trump allies…

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Rick Wilson writes: No one in American political life has even a fraction of his power to inspire behavior and action. No one. It’s time we recognize that Trump’s unique social media presence is a weapon of radicalization. No one else in the American political landscape stokes the resentments, fears, and prejudices of his base with equal power. Trump never misses a chance to miss a chance to be bigger and better. He never fails to close the door on…

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Politico reports: The would-be terrorist who failed to harm CNN and George Soros did succeed at one thing: ruining President Donald Trump’s week. Trump had hoped to capitalize on growing Republican enthusiasm in the final weeks of the midterm campaign — stoking fears of a Central American migrant caravan and hoping his Thursday unveiling of a plan to lower prescription drug prices would hold the news media’s attention heading into the weekend. But even Trump can’t shape the media narrative…

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Ben Freeman writes: Before the horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, Saudi Arabia had amassed one of the largest and well-funded influence operations in the United States. It had more than two dozen lobbying and public relations firms on its payroll. Its lobbyists lined congressional campaign coffers on the very same day they met with senators and representatives to discuss Saudi interests, and the Saudis were pumping cash into think tanks and elite American universities…

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Joanne Freeman writes: Anger has a peculiar power in democracies. Skillfully deployed before the right audience, it cuts straight to the heart of popular politics. It is attention-getting, drowning out the buzz of news cycles. It is inherently personal and thereby hard to refute with arguments of principle; it makes the political personal and the personal political. It feeds on raw emotions with a primal power: fear, pride, hate, humiliation. And it is contagious, investing the like-minded with a sense…

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Michelle Goldberg writes: This week, a friend texted me, “I feel a panic that won’t stop.” I didn’t have to ask what she meant; we are, after all, less than three weeks from the midterms. “#MeToo,” I replied. Many women I know — though, of course, not only women — are walking around with a churning knot of terror in their stomachs. The confirmation of the cruel former frat boy Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court brought back the anguish…

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The New York Times reports: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey laid out on Tuesday the Saudi planning of what he called the “premeditated murder” of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the country’s consulate in Istanbul, and demanded that the Saudi suspects face justice in Turkey. After saying he would reveal “the naked truth” about Mr. Khashoggi’s death, Mr. Erdogan, in his first extended remarks on the case, sketched out the chronology of a broad operation and offered some new…

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The New York Times reports: President Trump on Monday sharply intensified a Republican campaign to frame the midterm elections as a battle over immigration and race, issuing a dark and factually baseless warning that “unknown Middle Easterners” were marching toward the American border with Mexico. The unsubstantiated charge marked an escalation of Mr. Trump’s efforts to stoke fears about foreigners and crime ahead of the Nov. 6 vote, as he did to great effect in the presidential race. Mr. Trump…

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The New York Times reports: An explosive device was found on Monday in a mailbox at a home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who is a favorite target of right-wing groups, in a suburb north of New York City, the authorities said. Mr. Soros, who was born in Hungary, made his fortune running a hedge fund and is now a full-time philanthropist and political activist. He donates frequently to Democratic candidates and progressive causes and has given at least…

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The New York Times reports: An argument last February between the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and Corey Lewandowski, an informal adviser to President Trump, turned into a physical altercation that required Secret Service intervention just outside the Oval Office, according to a half-dozen people familiar with the events. The episode, details of which have not been previously reported, is the latest illustration of the often chaotic atmosphere Mr. Trump is willing to tolerate in the White…

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Robert Kaplan writes: Many Americans have an odd fascination with the idea of the reforming autocrat, the strongman who can “modernize” and lead his nation out of its backward and benighted past. This was the hope for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, a hope now somewhat diminished by the hit he appears to have ordered against Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey. Sympathetic Americans saw Mohammed, or MBS, as he is known, as a transformational figure…

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The Guardian reports: At about noon on Tuesday two regional leaders are due to make landmark addresses. In Riyadh, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, will open an investment showpiece declaring the kingdom open for business. In Ankara, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is expected to make a speech that may well shut down the beleaguered kingdom. Such are the stakes when Erdoğan takes to a podium to discuss the death of the Saudi dissident…

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Reuters reports: He ran social media for Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. He masterminded the arrest of hundreds of his country’s elite. He detained a Lebanese prime minister. And, according to two intelligence sources, he ran journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by giving orders over Skype. Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is one of the fall guys as Riyadh tries to stem international outrage at Khashoggi’s death. On…

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The New York Times reports: A Saudi operative donned Jamal Khashoggi’s clothes after he was killed in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul and left the building to create a misleading trail of evidence, surveillance images leaked by Turkey on Monday show. The ruse — acknowledged by a Saudi official and another Saudi briefed on the investigation into Mr. Khashoggi’s killing — added to the numerous doubts about the kingdom’s explanation of how the 59-year-old Saudi writer died. The use of…

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