Opinion

While many have long wondered whether President Donald Trump might have blackmail material that explains Sen. Lindsey Graham abrupt change from being a fierce critic to devoted defender of the man he once called a “race-baiting xenophobic bigot,” another explanation has always been simpler and more plausible: The South Carolina Republican believes it’s in his best interest to align with the White House.

When Democratic leaders left a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday, they told reporters that he had gone on an insulting “diatribe,” lashing out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in what she described as a “meltdown.” She later added that she was concerned with his “health” and said that Trump had been set off by her arguing that his actions embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The last question of Tuesday night's Democratic debate appears to have really teed people off.  After three hours of a debate that had, as former HUD Secretary Julián Castro noted on Twitter, "no questions tonight about climate, housing or immigration," Anderson Cooper decided to cap things off with a truly saccharine dose of pablum.

Former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday, and when asked if he thought foreign companies and investment banks would have hired him if his name wasn't Biden he said, "Probably not." He is correct. The younger Biden had little to no experience in the businesses for which he was paid big salaries. He was hired because he is the son of a powerful person, clearly in hopes that they would have some influence with the father and impress their customers with the fact that they were so close to someone with influence.

In recent years the legitimacy of the Supreme Court has come under question as Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Senate Republicans have bent the nomination process for their own political gain.

Twelve Democrats took to the stage Tuesday night for yet another debate in the party's 2020 president primary hosted by CNN and the New York Times.

One is normal people have something better to do—kids, school, jobs, good health, etc.—than pay attention to politics. Another is that you can’t know what you don’t know until you know it. Then there’s this from the ever-pragmatic Dr. Samuel Johnson: “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”

The most xenophobic and isolationist American president in modern history has been selling America to foreign powers for his personal benefit. That’s an impeachable offense.

During the 2016 campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump had a few stock lines about the wars in the Middle East he repeated on the stump and during debates. For instance, when asked what he would do if the U.S. were attacked by al-Qaida or ISIS, he famously said: "I'd bomb the shit out of 'em and take the oil!" (He would explain that  he believed in the old-fashioned credo, "To the victors go the spoils.") He often pretended that he had been against the Iraq war from the beginning, although there's little evidence of that, and also made it clear that he had no use for Muslims, no matter where they came from.

A day before 12 candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates take the stage for the fourth debate of the primary, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg criticized several of his opponents for their reliance on grassroots, small-dollar fundraising and bold policy proposals—despite the broad popularity and success of both.

Some Republicans who have been unwavering Trump supporters — from Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina  to evangelist Pat Robertson — are making an exception when it comes to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria, asserting that President Donald Trump has done the United States’ Kurdish allies a huge disservice. But Never Trump conservative and Washington Post opinion writer Max Boot, in his October 14 column, asserts those backers helped pave the way for the Syria debacle by constantly giving Trump a pass.

I’ve been hearing lots of talk about the president losing support among evangelical Christians, his most loyal supporters. The occasion was his order to pull the US military out of Syria, thus giving way to Turkey, which aims to wipe out the Kurds.