Events

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat outlines the similarities between Trump and Mussolini. They're legion: “These people are mass marketers. They pick up what’s in the air,” Ben-Ghiat said. The film reel was to Mussolini as Twitter is to Trump. “They give the impression of talking directly to the people,” she said. They can be portentous and relentlessly self-assertive. In a way, authoritarians have to be, Ben-Ghiat explained, since they’re selling a paradox: a savior fashioned as the truest, most authentic...

They didn't even wait for the body to get cold: One day after President-elect Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka spoke to "60 Minutes" about her father's rise to power, her jewelry line alerted journalists to a surprising fact: The First Daughter-elect's bracelet could be bought for $10,800. The sales tactic marked one of the first moments since the election during which the Trump companies have sought to use Trump's presidential prominence to boost their private fortunes. There is nothing illegal about the...

In a sense, Donald Trump seems like the former President of the Galaxy ("a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who's really in charge"): narcissistic, vain, not terribly bright, and uninterested in details to an unprecedented degree for someone holding his office. That's all very funny in a Douglas Adams novel. But in real life, it's actually terrifying: President Barack Obama’s remarks about Donald Trump in his Monday press...

Throughout this past miserable campaign, I couldn't tell whether Trump was as frighteningly bigoted as his public utterances seemed, or if he were putting on a show to win the right-wingnut vote but was secretly just as establishment as his history suggested he'd be. And then two days after the election he appointed his running mate head of his transition team, yesterday appointed RNC Chair Reince Priebus his chief of staff, and in between named Steve Bannon a special advisor. Seriously, Priebus as...

I could post about Krugman's "Thoughts for the Horrified," Deeply Trivial's explanation of how the polling failure wasn't what you think it was, or how much rats like being tickled. Instead, I give you twins born on either side of the return to Standard Time: Emily and Seth Peterson of West Barnstable welcomed their sons in the early morning hours of Nov. 6 at Cape Cod Hospital. Samuel was born 5 pounds, 13 ounces at 1:39 a.m., shortly before the 2 a.m. hour when clocks were turned back an hour. Brother...

TPM's John Judis has a decent set of hypotheses: This year, Trump proved anything but hapless, and Clinton ran a campaign that sadly recalled Gore in 2000 and Dukakis in 1988. She was unable to distinguish her own approach from Obama’s – particularly on the explosive issues of Obamacare and immigration. She ran an almost entirely negative campaign focused on her opponents’ bigotry, sexism, and bilious temperament. To the extent that she made promises, her campaign consisted of appeals to particular...

While we can't say for certain what Trump's policies will actually be, or what effects they'll actually have, London-based writer Feargus O'Sullivan has an idea what the atmosphere might be like: As a British person, the experience of waking up to find that Donald Trump had been elected president of the United States seemed freakishly familiar. Being shaken awake before dawn with shock news, then finding that most people I knew were awake, punch drunk, and already posting on social media—it all feels...

I keep coming back to this: no one has any idea what the Trump administration will actually do. This, more than anything else, is literally keeping me awake at night. Brian Beutler worries about how the day-to-day business of being president will tax Trump beyond his ability to cope even on slow weeks. I've thought about that as well. You only need to watch an episode of The West Wing to get a sense of what kind of focus a president needs. Even George W. Bush, no scholar he, spent more time studying and...

Today is the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazis' rampage through Germany smashing the windows of Jewish-owned businesses and killing about 100 Jews. It's also the first day in the countdown to the 115th Congress on January 3rd and the swearing-in of the 45th President on January 20th. Having studied authoritarian, nativist takeovers in other countries, most notably Germany in the early 1930s, the U.S. in 1828, and Hungary in the last few years, I have some idea what we may be in for, and what...

North Carolina's polls are about to close. So it's now time to open my live blog. 18:30 CST: As the first polls close, we've got Indiana and Kentucky for Trump, Vermont for Clinton. No surprises there. Other states "too close to call." 18:33: First (minor) disappointment: The Times calls Ohio Senate for Portman. 18:37: Interesting. The Times is calling West Virginia for Trump, as expected; but Talking Points Memo calls it for Clinton and Ohio for Strickland. Oh, my, tonight will be a l19ong won....