The burning question that is on the lips of all Americans: "Where else can I find Walter Shapiro on social media?"
Answer:
(Bluesky):
@mrwaltershapiro
@bsky
.social
(Post News):
(Mastodon):
@WalterShapiro
@journa
.host
If I read this correctly, after a 17-year-old high school student was removed from a prime place at the Montana Trump rally, he had to spend 10 minutes with the Secret Service and the local police. Only in authoritarian counties is not clapping a crime.
In the wake of Rick Santorum’s firing by CNN, can I offer a small proposal? Fire all the paid politicians on cable and replace them with journalists and columnists. Go back to the old era when reporters questioned former senators and didn’t see them as cable news colleagues.
"Mr. Kelly, who served for more than 40 years in the Marines, has told associates that a retired four-star general should not come out against a sitting president in the heat of a political campaign." Urgent Memo to Gen. Kelly: These aren't ordinary times or a routine election.
Sometime soon, Kirstjen Nielsen is going to head to a DC law firm or consulting group. She should be shunned in all work and social settings. The sin of separating children from their parents is permanently unforgivable -- and she should never be allowed to forget it.
I just realized that we are as close in time from the end of World War II as Pearl Harbor was from Lee's surrender at Appomattox. For a babyboomer, it is hard to believe that WWII is the midpoint between the Civil War and 2021.
A good man was misjudged by too many Democrats in 2012. You can disagree with many of his policy views (as I do) but you should never lose sight that some people in public life have sterling character. (Of course, none of this applies to Trump enablers).
.
@SenatorRomney
marching in front of the WH: “We need a voice against racism, we need many voices against racism and against brutality. And we need to stand up and say black lives matter.” (w/
@alivitali
)
I want to praise Pete Buttigieg and
@Lis_Smith
for running the most press friendly and accessible major presidential campaign since the heyday of John McCain. I hope that someone saves the tapes of all Buttigieg's countless interviews as a lesson for all future candidates.
Me in
@newrepublic
: "Kennedy has as much chance of leading off for the Boston Red Sox as he does of being the Democratic nominee in 2024. And he should be scorned as an ego-driven, conspiracy-mongering Republican plant."
Two important points: It was the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings that caused Nixon's approval ratings to collapse. And House Democrats need to show ego-discipline by having a few designated questioners rather than a 39-member free for all at each hearing.
Democrats: Tearing each other apart over impeachment only helps
#Trump
. The path is clear: Keep impeachment on the table but first use hearings & further inquiries to make clear to the majority just how outrageous Trump's behavior is.
My column
This glorious
@Peggynoonannyc
line on Ron DeSantis should be quoted at every opportunity during the 2024 campaign. DeSantis, she wrote, "carries a vibe...that he might unplug your life support to re-charge his cellphone."
Memo to Tom Perez: Don't you feel proud that you made room on the debate stage for Tulsi Gabbard who just called the 2016 nominee, "the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption"? But your rigid, cockamamie debate rules exiled Steve Bullock and Michael Bennet. Great going.
I know this obvious, but it should be stressed that, whatever the FBI finds, there are other principled reasons to oppose the Kavanaugh nomination from his extreme views on presidential powers to his extreme partisanship in yesterday's hearing.
I realized as I am reading compulsively about the Russian protests that I have more emotional energy to care about other countries with Biden as president.
I don't normally take my marching orders from George Will. But this is a very smart column about a 2020 Democrat who could make a serious and compelling case -- Amy Klobuchar.
This article asks the right question: Why does Olivia Troye in her early 40s have so much more courage than Mattis or Kelly or Coats at the end of their careers?
The Florida rout should end the last shred of fiction that Sanders remains a serious candidate for president. If he were to drop out tomorrow, it would allow states to postpone their now meaningless primaries and substitute a safe vote-by-mail system. Please, Bernie.
@tripgabriel
Even subtracting the GOP four legislators who said that they didn't really sign, this is more than half the Republicans in the state legislature. This level of anti-democratic craziness by so many is one of the most alarming post-election developments anywhere.
There are many reasons to mourn the passing of Justice Stevens. But, sadly, he may have been the last living person who saw Babe Ruth "call his shot" in the 1932 World Series.
Why are the 10 GOP senators -- who will not be on the ballot again until 2024 -- so silent about Trump's loathsome tweets? Don't tell me that they are already quaking at the thought of a primary challenge two presidential election years from now. And, yes, Mitt Romney, you too.
We have wasted all of 2023 worrying about the debt ceiling when the resulting deal amounts to a rounding error in the deficit over the next decade. What a stupid bit of gamesmanship by House Republicans.
The gold-standard review of the Mary Trump book by Kurt Andersen (the co-creator of "Spy") who, as he admits, has "had an off-and-on sideline of exposing and ridiculing Donald Trump for most of my life."
Just a reminder that in this century, only the two Obama elections were called on Election Night. Both 2004 and 2016 were called on Wednesday. And 2000 was called in December.
Great
@JillDLawrence
column: "On Friday night after the Stone commutation, lying awake as I know many people do these days, I made a resolution: Donald Trump will not break me. And I made a wish: Donald Trump will not break America."
I don’t agree with Justin Amash on many things, but I am baffled by the attacks on him because he doesn’t vote like a left-wing Democrat. In the battle against Trumpism, I accept all allies.
It is relevant to point that Joe Biden and Bob Dole were the two most memorable profiles in Richard Ben Cramer's magisterial book on the 1988 presidential campaign, "What It Takes." They were the real-life characters who jumped off the page in the best book on politics ever.
Ben Sasse on a private call: "[Trump] mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He's flirted with white supremacists." Imagine if Sasse ever had the courage to say these things in public:
The longer the Nevada charade goes, the more that I am convinced that nobody wants to call Nevada because it would mean that AP and Fox News would put Biden over the top, while the other networks (that didn't call Arizona) would be limbo.
Watching
@RalstonReports
spend three days trying to convince the rest of the news media that the NV race is OVER OVER OVER aid the best subplot of this week.
@lrozen
@ClydeHaberman
Yes, according to the piece that I linked to in the Billings Gazette. He never said a word of protest. He just wasn't that enthusiastic.
In today's WSJ, I came upon this Neville Chamberlain quote on Adolf Hitler: "I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word." I wonder why it reminded me of Trump and Putin. Or Kim Jung Un.
Best case for waiting for all the relevant documents on Kavanaugh. If only we had seen the new documents on Gina Haspel's approval of waterboarding before she was confirmed as CIA director. But now it's too late.
I am not, by nature, a leftwing true believer. But I don't understand the case for Democratic moderation in 2020 when Trump will call everything "socialism" and say that Republicans will be sent to the Gulag for having plastic straws. My
@rollcall
column:
My
@rollcall
column: "Neera Tanden boasts the two skills most needed in an incoming OMB director — a far-reaching understanding of how the federal government works and the trust of the president-elect."
@BGrueskin
At the reading of the will, the family on Zoom was shocked when it was Harold, the scapegrace son, who inherited the 79 rolls of toilet paper.
Buttigieg has consistently run the most accessible campaign in the caucuses for print reporters. Whatever happens from here, he deserves major credit for embracing John McCain-style openness. Klobuchar is
#2
in this based on my experience.
From the Kamala Harris pool report: "The University of Utah held a ticket lottery for students, with 60 lucky winners allocated a seat." Why, oh why, are we having a live audience of lucky students during a pandemic? This is madness, no matter how much social distancing.
Memo to Paul Ryan: If 46 House Republicans resign today (giving the Democrats a temporary 193-192 majority), then the Democrats are responsible for not funding the government. Until then, it's all on you.
Quite simply
@RepKatiePorter
is the best congressional questioner I can recall. Ever. And, Lord, have I seen a lot of hearings. And there are days when, quite simply, I can imagine Porter as the future of the Democratic Party, something I say very rarely.
I was stunned when I read the report on the post-presidency Obama shrine. All Edifice Complex and no library. I wish we could go back to the post-presidential modesty of Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter.
One of the saddest elements in the Belarus story: "According to the Instagram story of one woman aboard, Protasevich begged a flight attendant not to give him away. But the Ryanair employee told him that legally they had no choice."
Steyer is the least defensible candidate in the race. Anyone but a self-funder would have quit after microscopic showings in the first three states. Why doesn’t he just climb Everest like other dilettantes?
After 2016, political reporters feel like battered children. Their failure to predict Trump's victory has led to giving insufficient weight to strong evidence that Trump's act is simply not working.
A lot of the problem with these mainstream media retrospectives on Trump's first year is a failure to recognize how profoundly unpopular he is -- especially for a president in a pretty good economy.
Kudos
@ktumulty
for eloquently catching the sadness of Beto's withdrawal as seen through the eyes of those who cared passionately for him. In the months ahead, there will be many scenes like this. So here's to the candidates and the supporters who dream.
I just watched Biden's speech on the half million lives lost to Covid. I cannot recall -- not ever -- a presidential address that was that raw, that personal, that moving, that true to life. Please watch the speech rather than just read about it.
Can we just say that in public life, officials often make tragic mistakes and then learn from them. The true danger are elected officials, like a certain president, who learn from nothing.
I keep seeing Democrats worrying that Trump is getting all this free airtime while Biden seems quiet.
But Biden is up in the polls, and in every presser, Trump just says a dozen more things the Biden team can weaponize in ads later.
I'm teaching my first class at Yale tomorrow on presidential politics and the news media. One of the questions that I will be wrestling with: Is the media currently over-hyping the Warren-Bernie failed post-debate handshake? My instinct is to say "yes."
In
@newrepublic
, I write about how the media over-hyped the "Uncommitted" vote in Michigan: "For all the talk about the youth vote, 'uncommitted' only received 21 percent in Ann Arbor. That’s akin to 'uncommitted' badly losing the Park Slope Food Co-op."
If Kirsten Nielsen is indeed resigning, her career should be taught as a textbook example of why it’s better to resign early rather than desperately cling to a Cabinet job. Especially with Trump.
Someday I will understand why no one in the White House wears masks in horribly close quarters. It is hard to see the political upside for most of Pence’s staff to be infected 10 days before the election. Are they really that afraid of Trump?
@JoshuaGreen
@Ocasio2018
Why? Seriously, do they think that the socialist revolution is at the gates? Or they can demonize her? Or she just symbolizes all that threatens them about America in 2018?
I have never ever heard of a House member wanting to move her office because she was harassed by another House member. Every day
@mtgreenee
makes history -- and not in a good way.
I wrote the speech for Carter that he delivered as he installed solar panels: "A generation from now, this solar heater can either be...an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one
of the greatest...adventures ever undertaken by the American people."
In 1979, President Carter had solar panels installed at the White House. These were later laughed at, derided and removed by officials of Reagan Administration.
I just read this piece. It is one of the most eloquent and haunting post-election stories out there. I hope you will read it and I will add that I'm a huge fan of
@ClareMalone
.
I spent a lot of the past four years talking to my dad about people and politics, about good and evil. That's kind of where I think this piece about the Trump era came from. Here it is:
My end of the year thought for those who are suddenly seriously questioning the 45th president: What in God's name ever made you think that Trump's presidency would be any different from what we're seeing today?
Deft portrait of McConnell: "Hypocrisy — coupled with an utter lack of shame — is not a character fault in his eyes. It is a management style, a means to an end." By
@ktumulty
:
There are more prominent GOP figures on this single pro-Biden Op-Ed than most Democratic nominees of the past have come up with during their entire campaigns.
What reason do we have to not do this? What reason do we have to not throw the kitchen sink at this?
What are we going to regret later knowing we could? Will it haunt us if we don’t when this time is over? /end
For sport, let's count over the next 24 hours the number of Republicans who say they are "deeply troubled" by the McCabe firing, but then drop all interest in the matter. A real Congress instead of a lapdog Congress would schedule hearings on Trump's conduct.
I realize I am not part of Columbia. I realize that campus situations are usually more nuanced that they appear in the news. That said, I am hard-pressed to think of any university president who has handled things worse than Minouche Shafik.
Can everyone who, even for a millisecond, took Avenatti seriously as a presidential candidate please use this opportunity to take a timeout to read and reflect.
My
@newrepublic
piece: "Yellen and Kerry could have easily spent the twilight of their careers giving speeches and gracing global conferences. Instead, both of them have signed on for the 16-hours-a-day rigors of government service at a time of crisis."
For those Republicans who know better, this is the time for courage and honesty as Trump appears increasingly deranged. For those Republicans who think this is normal politics, it might be a moment to change your TV viewing habits.