Ezra Klein
@ezraklein
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Columnist, @NYTOpinion Author, "Why We're Polarized" Host of "The Ezra Klein Show" podcast
Joined January 2009
I’m writing a book with @DKThomp!. It’s about Abundance — how we lost it as a vision, how we can make it a reality. It will build on my work on supply-side progressivism and his on abundance — but where we’re going with it will be fun. From @AvidReaderPress in 2024. .
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It's not just that Trump is a bad president. It's that he's a bad person.
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"I worked very hard for it" is the worst possible justification for being a billionaire. You know who works very hard? Single mothers working two minimum wage jobs with just-in-time scheduling and a bus commute.
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Elizabeth Warren is simply the best policy communicator in politics now.
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Donald Trump does not want to be in charge of any of this. He wants to play president on TV. He doesn't want responsibility for governance in a time of crisis, and in every way he can, he's refusing to do that job, and lashing out at those who ask him to do it.
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It isn't an accident that Georgia might flip. And it's not just demographic change. It's also Georgia's most prominent Democrat being absolutely committed to democracy itself as her political project, and spending years organizing there.
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This is a governance failure, not an inevitability of the disease.
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The problem here isn't Donald Trump. If he were ranting alone, none of this would matter. The problem is the Republican Party that is indulging him, and trying to electorally profit off him, no matter the cost to the country.
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I'd like to hear some Republican senators articulate, as a benchmark, what presidential conduct they would consider impeachable.
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If the person who got the most votes became president, Trump would never have become president. Most Americans didn't want this. They saw that this was a bad idea, and they were overruled by a bad institution. The result has been a calamity.
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Susan Page should insist Pence actually answers her questions.
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The question isn’t whether Solemaini was a bad guy. The questions are:. 1. What are the likely consequences of his assassination?. 2. Do you trust the Trump administration to have planned for those consequences and to manage what comes next?.
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Voting "no" on impeachment because insurrectionists are threatening you is the very definition of letting the terrorists win.
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An actual hero. This is what America First looks like when it’s a lived ethos, rather than a mask for narcissism and ambition.
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That Trump felt emboldened enough to try to personally collude with a foreign government to shape the 2020 election *after* the Russia investigation is pretty good evidence that he believes there are literally no checks on him at all.
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If that's the theory he comes up with when a 75-year-old protester is shoved to the ground imagine what he'll say _ and what he'll try and get his supporters to do — if he loses the election by 3,000 votes in Wisconsin.
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Trump said he would do this if he lost in 2016. He said he would do this if he lost in 2020. There is nothing here that wasn't predictable, and predicted. The only thing we didn't know was how much of the Republican Party would fall in line. Now, sadly, we know.
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It is a horrifying absence of political imagination to prefer letting millions die to, say, trying an appropriately sized basic income and mobilizing the economy to surge health resources for 3-6 damn months. Our choices are not mass economic deprivation or mass death.
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"I don't take responsibility at all" is such a huge in-kind donation to the Joe Biden campaign that I wonder if Trump broke campaign finance laws in making it.
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Criminals are going to be very excited about this new legal principle that if you verbally deny the crime you are committing while you are committing it, you are innocent.
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Every insider account of Trump says basically the same thing. There are always a few new details, but the takeaway is always, always, that he is exactly who he appears to be in public. There are no hidden depths or strategies, no secret store of self-awareness or compassion.
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I’m a broken record on this, but the impeachment process isn’t revealing what Trump did. We already knew that. It’s revealing what the Republican Party will accept, and even defend.
The bottom line on all this is that every single Republican in that hearing today is absolutely fine with Trump using the power of his office to press a foreign leader to help him absolve Russia of sabotaging the 2016 election and help him rig the next one on his behalf as well.
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A lot of Americans thought they were electing the tough-minded, realist executive from The Apprentice when in fact they were electing a marketer and celebrity whose deepest talent was believing his own PR. We are seeing the consequences now.
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One of the weirdest and worst asymmetries in policy right now is that banks and big corporations can get fast, basically unlimited help from the Fed, while small biz and individual help is limited and slowed by congressional process and dysfunction.
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I'm happy to see people do the right thing, even when they're late. But the Republicans changing their vote on EC certification never thought the election was stolen. They thought there'd be no consequences for indulging Trump's lies. They were wrong, and a woman is now dead.
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This Parnas interview is incredibly damning. But, then, it’s *all* been incredibly damning. The problem here is not a lack of damning testimony, some of it from President Trump himself. It’s a lack of Republican senators who care about the country enough to do the right thing.
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So last night I was on @allinwithchris and I realized I don't know how to communicate how constitutionally dangerous the Senate situation is right now. We're not arguing over what Trump did. We're arguing over whether Republicans *want to know* what Trump did.
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Donald Trump is now down by more than 8 points in polling averages. Coronavirus is resurgent. Expanded UI is set to expire on July 31st. The nation has exploded in protests over police brutality. And he's doing. nothing. About any of it. He's just rage tweeting.
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According to Donald Trump's Twitter feed today, the people he hires are fools and traitors and his party's Supreme Court appointees — and possibly his own, depending on which decisions he's referencing — are disasters. Helluva reelection pitch for the GOP.
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Stopping climate change is only expensive compared to an imaginary world where climate change doesn't exist. It's *incredibly cheap* compared to the actual cost of a 3 degree warmer world.
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We're about to get a very vivid lesson in why having a long lame-duck period in politics, where a defeated president still wields full presidential power, is dangerous.
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The president isn't a comedian working out new material on the road. He knows that, we know that. He can apologize for speaking recklessly, or he can regret it quietly, but the media should not participate in a national gaslighting.
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For Page not to demand Pence actually answer her question on the peaceful transfer of power is a terrible failure of moderating. It was a good question, and it needs to be answered. The moderator needs to be, on some level, the audience's champion.
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It's terrible politics and precedent but I'm going to be honest and say that the Trump team has been brutally clear they want revenge on their enemies, they are obsessed with Hunter in particular, and that would weigh like hell on me if I were his father and could protect him.
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The key question now is whether congressional Democrats facing purple or red electorates learned the lesson of 2010: You win reelection by delivering real benefits to people fast, not by shrinking and slowing bills that would improve lives in a performance of moderation.
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Biden buried two children, and a spouse, who died because of disasters he couldn't stop. So if he gets a little sharp when politicians undermine something as simple as wearing a mask to save the lives of other people’s parents, spouses, and children, well. .
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If we saw the head of the ruling regime, and his party, react to the election results this way in any other country, we'd know exactly what we are looking at. And I'd say here, too, it's time to be honest and say we know exactly what we are looking at.
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Imagine if Trump cared about coronavirus as much as he cares about Joe Biden's son.
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This is your regular reminder that primaries should be decided using ranked-choice voting.
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It's a sign of the rot in our political system that all conversation about holding the president accountable takes the form of discussing "What Democrats should do," because Republicans have utterly abdicated their oversight role.
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It is hard to do the right thing - and even to keep sight of what the right thing is — when your system, group, and career incentives push you towards doing the wrong thing. Mitt Romney - and Justin Amash - deserve a lot of respect for doing the right thing when it was hard.
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People keep calling this an "October surprise" but nothing could possibly be less surprising than the president who keeps mocking mask-wearing and holding rallies catching COVID.
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The question at the heart of the impeachment process isn't "Did Trump do it?" . We know he did it. It's not in dispute. The question at the heart of the impeachment process is "What has gone wrong in the Republican Party that it will defend what Trump did?".
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It's not just that the police officer did this without provocation. It's that he did it, on camera, safe in the belief he would get away with it. It tells you everything you need to know. It tells you why so many are, rightly, so afraid.
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The crazy thing about this debate is for all the flubs, both of them are crisper, more coherent, and more on-topic than Trump was at a planned presser where he had notes earlier today.
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It’s always been lunacy to have a lame duck period this long and we’re really seeing why this year.
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Watching Fox News openly root for Putin is a really remarkable moment in what the American Right has become, captured for posterity.
Fox News has been talking about Putin challenging Biden to a debate for a day -- and they're rooting for Putin
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I think the important part of this video isn't the flagrantly illiberal theory the Trump administration is selling, but the fact that the Fox News anchors aren't buying.
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The intersection of a complex, unexpected health crisis causing an unusual form of recession is exactly the kind of thing Elizabeth Warren would've been unusually good at handling.
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This is just my occasional reminder that you can eliminate the filibuster with 51 votes. The parliamentarian is not the obstacle. The obstacle is Senate Democrats who support the filibuster.
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So the 2020 election is going to come down to:. - A 73-year-old conspiracy theorist who rambles incoherently and lies constantly.vs. - A 77-year-old who rambles and sometimes loses his place.or.- A 78-year-old socialist who just had a heart attack.
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After nearly eight amazing years building, editing, and working at @voxdotcom, I am leaving to join @nytopinion, writing a reported column on policy and the policymaking process, and hosting an interview podcast.
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Pete Buttigieg's answer on structural reform is far and away the most important answer of the night. If you want to get *any* of this stuff done, you have to start with structural reform so that popular majorities can make policy. Otherwise it's all going to die in the Senate.
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The pivot Trump is about to make from downplaying the coronavirus to using it to justify xenophobia and scapegoating is going to be very grim.
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The most alarming aspect of the past week is not Trump. He is doing exactly what he has always done. It’s the way Republican elites have consolidated around him. Without them, Trump is just a ranting loser. With them, he’s a threat to the country.
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Bernie’s strength is that he can win over some voters who are skeptical of Democrats - like Joe Rogan. If you think getting Trump out of office is actually important, that’s a good thing, and he should lean into it.
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The devolution of Lindsey Graham into Trump's most slavish, reflexive apologist is one of the more unnerving political stories of our time.
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Donald Trump deserves to lose this election, and to lose it by more than he will. He has governed cruelly, and he has governed poorly. Our disagreements are real, but there should be basic moral standards and professional expectations for our leaders, and he is beneath them.
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Trump is forcing an unwatchable debate, in which he plays the heel so Biden can't get in a full answer, in an election where he's down 10 points. It's an insane strategy.
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I'm old enough to remember when the President of the United States was asked to condemn white supremacists and didn't. it was like 20 minutes ago.
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The Constitution has an answer for a president who refuses to cooperate with congressional oversight: impeach, convict, remove. The constitutional crisis isn’t Donald Trump. It’s Mitch McConnell’s protection of Donald Trump.
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Donald Trump loves free speech and free enterprise so much that he'd use the powers of the presidency to shut down Twitter because it chose, as a private enterprise, to surround his speech with some more speech.
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You get the sense the Trump campaign really, really expected to run against Bernie Sanders, and when Joe Biden won, they just kept the old plan.
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It is INSANE that a national testing program is being framed as a concession to congressional Democrats. It is even more insane that it might be true: yes, Trump should WANT testing. But his repeated view is he doesn't want anything that leads to higher confirmed case numbers.
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As a result, Bolton's book is more revealing about Bolton than it is about Trump. And what it reveals is this: He had information the public needed to know during the impeachment trial. He held it secret so he could profit off it instead.
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Trump's strategy here, as everywhere, is to lie confidently, lie loudly, lie often.
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This is the chair of the Arizona GOP. One of the most dangerous trends in American politics right now is Republicans coming to explicitly see democracy as dangerous to their rule, and the answer being less democracy, not a more popular agenda.
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"Why is 'Merrick Garland' trending on Twitter?". Oh.
Today I took the first step under regular order towards ending systematic obstruction on nominees and getting the Senate back to its normal pattern for handling presidential nominations.
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Wait, Kevin McCarthy actually said, as an argument against impeachment, that it’s “not only an attempt to undo the last election, it's an attempt to influence the next one as well.”. You know what else was an attempt to influence the next election?.
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The Warren-Sanders team-up on Biden is going to be absolutely brutal.
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If we were in Mitt Romney's second term, would there be a culture war over wearing masks? I doubt it. Polarization is powerful. But the decisions of individual leaders matters too. Trump is a distinctive kind of disaster.
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Following the Clinton-Sanders race with the Biden-Sanders race is almost like a natural experiment in — to put it gently — the role gender plays in voter preferences and judgments about electability.
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I don't think it's Trump's abuses of power that will shock future generations. It's his obvious unfitness for office, displayed in letters like this one, and the way the Republican Party rationalized it as authenticity and plain-spokenness
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The deal the Republican Party has made with Donald Trump is they will let him disastrously mismanage a national crisis and corruptly protect his friends from legal consequences so long as he never dares to raise taxes. It's grotesque.
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America's only been a stable, real democracy since the 1960s, with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. The roots are shallow. The idea that its survival is assured, that the political forces that fought democracy for so long are gone, was fanciful.
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Bill Barr is the most mysterious character in the whole Trump drama. He watched Trump’s fury build towards Sessions and decided to become the loyalist AG even Sessions refused to be. Why light your legacy on fire this way? What’s the endgame?.
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Three candidates on that stage could've been hailed as heroes for helping Democrats win back the Senate, and then they could have had huge influence on the future of the country, rather than repeatedly getting dunked on on national television.
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Demanding Senate Republicans back Gaetz as attorney general and Hegseth as Defense Secretary is the 2024 version of forcing Sean Spicer to say it was the largest inauguration crowd ever. These aren't just appointments. They're loyalty tests. The absurdity is the point.
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Every few moments, when Trump gets bored and stops interrupting for a second, Biden opens a wormhole to a parallel world where a normal presidential debate is taking place, with two candidates explaining their agendas in response to the moderator's questions. It's nice.
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The relative sobriety of that suggests the only thing Trump has ever truly feared is permanently losing access to twitter and facebook.
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We could phase out of lockdown safely if the federal government had done the work on testing and tracing. We could phase out of lockdown safely if the federal government had done the work on testing and tracing. We could phase out of lockdown safely if the federal government. .
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I'd say implying a whistleblower deserves execution strengthens the case for impeachment considerably.
NEWS - Potus st closed door event said he wants to know who gave the whistleblower information, said it’s close to a spy and said US used to deal with spies differently via @NYTimes.
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In much of SF, you can’t walk 20 feet without seeing a sign declaring that Black lives matter and no human being is illegal. Those signs sit in yards zoned for single families, in communities that organize against the new housing that would bring those values closer to reality.
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Many of us have always feared how Trump would behave amidst a crisis that needed steady, sacrificial presidential leadership and factual communication. Now we’re in that crisis, and our worst fears are coming true.
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I hesitate to draw attention to this stuff, but. Mark Levin is one of the most popular radio hosts in the country. This isn't just about Trump. It's exposure to guys like Levin, day after day, that readied Republicans for Trump, and his autocratic impulses. The rot runs deep.
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These press conferences have the strangest structure: Trump opens with something totally bizarre. Then Pence and a sequence of experts quietly move on and have a totally different press conference, ignoring whatever it was the president just said.
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“This business that Democrats play by one set of rules and Republicans play by a different set of rules, those days are over when I’m president,” @ewarren told me. This is Warren’s most important plan: her plan to pass her plans.
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Taking to @ewarren right now is a strange, slightly melancholy experience: like glimpsing an alternate reality where political leadership is proportionate to the crisis we're facing:
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I am very glad to see Trump's tone changing so sharply. I'd really like to know what information he got, or who it is he knows who got sick, that changed it.
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That monopolies answer by Warren in her CNN townhall was killer. A master class is how to clearly explain a complex policy that’s without collapsing into jargon. The idea that Warren isn’t a charismatic speaker is insane. This is the stuff people gushed over Bill Clinton for.
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In 2015, Bill Gates told me a deadly flu-like pandemic spreading under globalized conditions was the most predictable disaster in the history of the human race, and so there was no excuse to not be prepared for it. I'm thinking about that a lot lately.
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This isn't just Trump's disrespect for Biden coming through. It's his disrespect for the election process entirely. This constant litany of interruptions and lies deprives voters of the opportunity to actually hear a real debate.
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The right way for this to end is in the invocation of the 25th amendment. There isn't time or process for impeachment. But Trump is unfit to serve further, and those around him know it.
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Just to be clear: The Trump administration is asking the courts to stop counting in PA and MI, Trump has declared victory and called any deviation in the coming days theft, etc. It probably won't work. But he's trying to delegitimize the election. And it's dangerous.
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Donald Trump is brazen and crude. His abuses are blatant. His henchmen are largely clowns. His underlings are turning on him. He is the easiest possible test case for can our system hold a president accountable. And we are failing, because Republicans are failing.
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This isn't the most important consequence of tonight, but the amount of time the Biden administration would've had to spend fighting over nominations that they can now just pass is hard to overestimate. Being able to focus on governing, rather than staffing, matters.
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The damage isn’t just Trump’s direct efforts to overturn the election. It’s that we’ve desperately needed federal leadership, coordination, and funding to accelerate the vaccine rollout, and instead, the President and his enablers are spending their time yelling at Georgia’s SoS.
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