We present some of the best post-mortems we’ve read about the 1/6 insurrection and the Trump presidency in general. We’ll surely be adding more, and invite you to do the same by emailing us here.
The Insurrection
Tim Alberta has spent the last four years embedded in Trumpland. He explains why the insurrection was a lot more than nine weeks in the making, and everyone should have seen it coming… Read More…
Masha Gessen, the emigre from Putin’s Russia, whose “Autocracy: Rules For Survival” in early 2017 proved so prescient, urges us not to let bygones be bygones in the name of unity–in a column she penned on November 10th… Read More…
Clint Smith focuses on the one photograph among tens of thousands now available to law enforcement he believes neatly sums up the Capitol riot, and why… Read More…
Adam Serwer demolishes the apologia that the rioters acted out of economic desperation; instead, like the participants in the infamous Brooks Brothers riot of 2000, their outrage stemmed from belief in their inviolable right to rule… Read More…
Masha Gessen again, this time after the fact, this time on the secret advantage the insurrectionists had that was not so secret to anyone watching… Read More…
David Graham elucidates the ways in which the rioters and their enablers in Congress were quick to don what might be called 21st century blackface–people of privilege claiming the mantle of victimhood…. Read More…
In the beginning, there were the Panama Papers; in the end, the Parler videos. When the far-right social network was shut down, its content was archived and uploaded onto the Net, where ProPublica found it, downloaded thousands of videos proudly uploaded on 1/6, and put together a view of the entire insurrection through the eyes of those who perpetrated it… See More…
From out of the mouths of babes; the New York Times Learning Network has collected the telling, and at times heartbreaking, reactions to the storming from teens all over the country and around the world… Read More…
America has always been defined through the eyes and dreams of the rest of the world, so we ourselves have collected reactions from the world’s leaders and placed them on what we’re calling World Wall I, a wall made up of the great–and not so great–walls around the world, a wall to let people in, not keep them out… See More…
As horrific as the events of January 6th were, Conor Friedersdorf warns against making them worse by overreacting to what happened… Read More…
Trump’s Legacy & Future
The staff of Politico have gotten together to identify the 30 things that Trump did whose impact you may not have known about, and what the Biden administration is likely to do in response… Read More…
Fierce Trump critic, but conservative to the bone, David Frum points out that “even someone who watches television for five or six hours a day” accomplishes something as president, and lays out what those 13 somethings are. But he couldn’t help but have a rather different take on the night of the insurrection… Read More…
Now that it’s gone dark, Politico tech columnist Derek Thompson explores how Donald Trump’s Twitter account changed politics and America… Read More…
Think/fear Trump will be building a media empire to create a shadow presidency? Like a good VC, Jack Shafer kicks the tires on that idea, and finds them rather leaky… Read More…
Jonathan Chait goes further to paint an even more dire picture for 44.46, one in which the presidency will likely quickly be the furthest thing from his mind… Read More…
The author of a book on Obama’s legacy that was published and much ridiculed in the early Trump years (Chait again) makes the case that the Donald’s main project–to undo all things Obama–has ended in abject failure…Read More…
An extraordinary roundtable discussion featuring four individuals who know Donald Trump better than any of us ever will–his pre-political biographers. In a 2016 roundtable, they accurately foretold much of what transpired in the four years following; it seems fitting they get the last word as he’s kicked to Palm Beach, FL… Read More…