‘The Most Urgent Question of Our Time’.
‘The Most Urgent Question of Our Time’.
Plus: Trump on the Take? Foreign Govts Paid His Businesses Millions When He Was in Office.
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DENNIS AFTERGUT AND AUSTIN SARAT: Creepy Messianic Pro-Trump Video May Come Back to Bite Him
JUST WHEN YOU THINK our political moment can’t get more bizarre and disturbing than former President Donald Trump telling us he wants to be a “dictator on day one,” he ups the ante by informing us he was specially created by God to be the nation’s savior. On Friday—the twelfth day of Christmas, if you’re looking for salvational symbolism—he posted a video on Truth Social praising himself in grotesquely messianic tones.
American presidents from the earliest days of the republic have invoked God as a force in our national life. George Washington frequently spoke of “Providence” and in his first inaugural address prayed for God’s aid. Lincoln’s speeches were replete with Biblical allusions.
A.B. STODDARD: ‘The Most Urgent Question of Our Time’.
EVEN AS THE COUNTRY marked the grim anniversary of January 6th this weekend—with newly released footage of rioters threatening members of Congress, new reporting on how Donald Trump relished the violence and refused to mitigate it during those fateful 187 minutes, and the looming possibility of his return to office as the GOP prepares to endorse him en masse within weeks—some Democrats think it’s time to move on from championing democracy.
President Joe Biden disagrees. In a speech Friday at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, he kicked off his re-election campaign on the third anniversary of January 6th, saying the question of whether democracy is still “America’s sacred cause” is “the most urgent question of our time.”
🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧
Bulwark Podcast with Charlie Sykes: Will Saletan: Erasing History [Ad-Free🔐]
The Focus Group: January 6: If They Had Just Told the Truth (with Rep. Adam Kinzinger)[Ad-Free 🔐]
The Next Level: What's Next for the Populists? (with Josh Green) [Ad-Free🔐]
Tim’s Take… On media coverage of Donald and Joe (Premieres at 7:00 Eastern)
The Dark Side: Elise Stefanik edition (Premieres at 8:30 Eastern)
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KIMBERLY WEHLE: Trump on the Take? Foreign Govts Paid His Businesses Millions When He Was in Office.
LAST WEEK, DEMOCRATIC STAFF for the House Oversight Committee released a report provocatively entitled “White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump.” The report details some $7.8 million that Donald Trump’s businesses received from foreign countries during his presidency. But that figure, the report explains, is likely a mere fraction of the total, since it represents just two of his four years in office, just four of his five hundred businesses, and just twenty of the world’s nearly two hundred countries.
We would know a lot more about these scandalous and arguably unconstitutional payments if Trump and congressional Republicans hadn’t fought to block the public from getting this information.
DAVID SHAYWITZ: Giamatti for President!
THE RECENT ABRUPT RESIGNATIONS of the presidents of Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard highlights the precarious nature of these roles, and leads to a question: What does—and what should—a university president do?
Although the role has become more challenging as universities have grown into sprawling corporate entities, the foundations of the job description haven’t changed in the nearly four decades since I started college. The president of a university needs to: (1) raise money; (2) herd faculty; and (3) soothe students. That’s a short list, but a tall order.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend, and that if snow was promised, snow was delivered. Another big disappointment in the mid-Atlantic.
The United States Needs to Play Hardball With Turkey… Argues Amb. Eric Edelman with Sinan Ciddi at Foreign Policy.
On Writing, Part Deux… Matt Labash on writing with "confident humility," plus, wise words from Jim Harrison, Mary Karr, and the Hillbilly Dalai Lama.
ASU center embraces Charlie Kirk, then says my history lessons are flawed? That's rich, writes Bulwark reader and ASU professor James Hrdlicka.
Right-Wing Populists Are Just as Bad for Business… as Left-Wing Ones.
There Is No “Both Sides” to Donald Trump’s Threat to Democracy… writes our friend Molly Jong-Fast.
In local news… Alexandria is set to rename 40 or so streets!
Meanwhile, in the “Free State of Florida™”… The state GOP has finally got around to ousting embattled chair Christian Ziegler.
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