Category: Politics

  • Trump’s Shakespearean Moment?

    An exchange between Senator Elizabeth Warren and Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on the January 5th episode caught my ear. Warren implied that President Trump ordered  the assassination of Iranian general Soleimani to move the world’s focus from his coming impeachment trial rather than for reasons of U.S. national security: SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: Donald Trump was doing what Donald Trump…

  • Will Twitter decide the 2020 presidential election?

    Is Mayor Pete Buttigieg really surging? Is Senator Elizabeth Warren really the new frontrunner? Can any of the Democratic candidates match Trump’s social media presence?  Most Americans, regardless of party, will agree that Donald Trump has been an unusual President of the United States, including his use of Twitter. Between his personal Twitter account (@realDonaldTrump)…

  • Brief Review: “The Fifth Risk” by Michael Lewis

    Lewis is such a remarkable writer that I sometimes find myself envious of his ability to forge a compelling story where there doesn’t seem to be anything. It’s useful to contrast The Fifth Risk with Bob Woodward’s Fear, which I inhaled last month. Woodward’s book ferrets out things that happened — crescendos of malevolence and arias…

  • New Media Math & the President’s NYT Obsession

    Earlier this month, I argued that the president has a fundamentally different way of measuring media. Instead of balancing positive against negative coverage in order to suss out average sentiment, the president views all media coverage as a tool to advance his agenda. The media is both incapable of understanding this different sort of math and…

  • AQ: The President’s No-Lose Media Equation

    Here’s a thought experiment: what if the White House held a press conference and nobody came? What if the president tweeted and nobody saw it? What if late-night talk show hosts didn’t mention the president once during their monologues? These things would disturb the president more than the sharpest satirical barb because the president understands…

  • 8 Thoughts on Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House”

    I picked up my copy of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House last night at 5:45pm; finished it today at 5:45pm. Here’s what I think. 1. It’s fascinating in an I-can’t-look-away-at-the-17-car-pileup-with-lots-of-ambulances way, but I didn’t learn anything reading it. The book is the signature aria in a media opera of confirmation…

  • Why is “me too” happening now?

    It’s challenging to go onto Facebook and Twitter right now and face the ever-swelling river of “me too” posts from women sharing their horrible stories of sexual harassment. It’s good that these posts are happening, good that it’s challenging. Part of what I find challenging is that I don’t know how to respond other than…

  • Open Letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: Please Cancel the President’s Accounts

    Dear Jack Dorsey, Please cancel U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s Twitter accounts– both the official @POTUS one and @RealDonaldTrump. Twitter does not have to persist in giving the president a platform where he lies in verifiable ways that responsible media outlets — real news — have detailed time and again. Twitter does not have to…

  • WTF: How Quickly Will Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus’ New Political Platform Get Hacked?

    I had mixed emotions as I read yesterday’s Recode story by Tony Romm about how LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga founder Marc Pincus are creating a new political platform called “Win the Future” (shortened amusingly to “WTF”). On one hand, I agree with so much of what they want to achieve: the two WTF…

  • David Brooks Calls for a Third Party

    I thought I was as done with the election as a boy can be, but despite a Coyote-plummeting-off-the-cliff decline of interest in the news I noticed David Brooks remarkable column from election day, “Let’s Not Do This Again” in which he resignedly calls for a third party to break the D.C. deadlock. Here’s a relevant excerpt:…