Donald Trump

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• SOURCE: CNN
  3/24/2023
  

  How Will Trump Try to Spin an Indictment to His Advantage?

  by Julian Zelizer

  Trump's familiarity with commanding attention—even, or particularly, negative attention—and penchant for grievances mean that being indicted in any of the cases against him would put him in a comfortable role on the campaign stage. 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  3/24/2023
  

  Trump's Choice of Waco is Waving the Bloody Shirt to the Far Right

  by Nicole Hemmer

  By rallying in Waco at the 30th anniversary of the Branch Davidian siege and killings, Trump has signaled to the far right and the militia movement that he's their candidate. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/7/2023
  

  Fox's Handling of the "Big Lie" was Cowardly, but Not Unusual

  by Kathryn J. McGarr

  News organizations' standards of objectivity have long allowed public figures and politicians to proclaim lies without pushback, leaving the public to be arbiters of truth and falsity. 

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• SOURCE: Religion Dispatches
  3/8/2023
  

  Trump's Apocalyptic CPAC Speech Aimed Squarely at Southern Evangelicals

  by Thomas Lecaque

  In the past, Evangelicals and other apocalypse-minded constituencies have projected their views onto Donald Trump. Now, Trump seems to be fully embracing the bit, suggesting that violence above and beyond politics will usher in the Kingdom. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/8/2023
  

  Fox News Texts Show Long History of Ideological Media

  The revelation that Fox hosts promoted what they knew were lies about the 2020 election reflects what Nicole Hemmer calls a 70-year effort by the right to sow distrust in mainstream media. 

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• SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
  3/7/2023
  

  Face It: CPAC Was a Mussolini Moment

  by Will Bunch

  After Trump's CPAC speech promised that he'd be an instrument of retribution against his followers' enemies, it's time to stop tiptoeing around the historic parallels, writes columnist Will Bunch. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/1/2023
  

  Edsall: Is Trump Trapping the GOP in Conspiratorial Madness?

  Ron DeSantis can bolster his standing with the right by governing. Donald Trump, still the leader of the party, must invoke conspiracies and cartoonishly evil enemies. Historian Jeffrey Herf helps Thomas Edsall understand if there's an off-ramp. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/27/2023
  

  Can Republicans Rally Around DeSantis as an "Electable" Choice?

  by Robert Fleegler

  In the wake of disastrous overreach by House Republicans in impeaching Bill Clinton, the party cohered around George W. Bush as a candidate without Beltway baggage. If the party can't do the same thing in 2024, they risk being dragged down by Donald Trump. 

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• 2/22/2023
  

  Can Rebellion Be Too Big To Fail? Reflections on Jefferson Davis and Trump

  by Wallace Hettle

  If Jefferson Davis's release on bail in 1867 and pardon before trial in 1868 seemed to signal his diminishment as a national figure, the rise of the Lost Cause mythology with Davis as its martyr showed it was a serious mistake to excuse insurrection. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/21/2023
  

  Georgia Grand Jury to Recommend Indictments in Trump Effort to Overturn Vote

  The grand jury forewoman suggested that the identities of the parties recommended for indictment were "not rocket science" and that no one will be surprised when the names are revealed.

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• 2/12/2023
  

  Between Perpetrating a Hoax and Charging One: American Politics in the Waste Land

  by Jed Rasula

  The centenary of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land reminds readers of the rumors that the poem was published as a hoax. While pulling off a hoax takes cleverness, invoking the word to dismiss inconvenient facts is an abdication of responsibility that plagues political culture today.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/14/2023
  

  Why Do "Secret" Documents Keep Showing Up in the Wrong Places?

  by Matthew Connelly

  The near-unilateral authority of presidents to declare material secret in the name of national security is intoxicating and it's nearly impossible for the chief executive to resist abusing it, creating not a "deep state" but a "dark state" of secrecy and impunity. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/5/2023
  

  Lizabeth Cohen Reviews "Myth America"

  Although it was inspired by the battles over history encouraged by the Trump administration and the MAGA movement, a new book of essays on historical mythmaking actually shows that spinning the past to serve a present agenda is nothing new. For historians, the task isn't just fact-finding, but offering compelling interpretations. 

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• SOURCE: Vanity Fair
  1/10/2023
  

  Kruse and Zelizer: History is a Battleground

  Is it reasonable for historians to "stick to the facts" and hope the truth will win out when political partisans are cherry-picking the past for justification of radical agendas in the present?

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• SOURCE: Slate
  1/9/2023
  

  New Anthology Mistakes the Roots of the Problem as "Misinformation" Rather than Power

  by Paul M. Renfro and Matthew E. Stanley

  The new "Myth America" offers insight into some recurrent myths about history from some excellent scholars, but it hews too closely to the idea that historical lies are a Trumpian phenomenon, rather than a broader aspect of the pursuit and consolidation of power for MAGA and New Democrats alike. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  12/21/2022
  

  Will MAGA Be the Last Straw for Conservative Jews' Partnership with the Christian Right?

  by Eric Alterman

  Since the 1970s, an alliance between Christian and Jewish conservatives has been brokered over mutual support for Israel's occupation and settlement of the West Bank. Are changing attitudes toward the occupation among American Jews and the naked antisemitism of the MAGA right breaking the alliance? 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  12/20/2022
  

  Law Profs: First Amendment Hurdles to Trump Prosecution Real, Not Insurmountable

  by Alan Z. Rozenshtein and Jed Shugerman

  The defense that Trump's speech about a stolen election, even if deliberately untruthful, constitutes protected political speech is plausible, but prosecutors can situate the remarks in the context of other actions to overturn the election. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/15/2022
  

  Why It's No Contradiction for Trump to Demand Illegal Actions to Defend "Law and Order"

  by Lawrence B. Glickman

  Since Reconstruction's overthrow, calls for "law and order" have imagined the former as a tool for enforcing a particular vision of the latter, usually in the form of white-dominated racial hierarchy.

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• SOURCE: Vox
  12/1/2022
  

  Pamela Nadell: US May be at High Tide of Antisemitism

  Antisemitism is less socially acceptable than in Henry Ford's day, but it's become much more acceptable since the rise of Donald Trump. Has America reached a tipping point where conspiracy theories and collective slanders of Jews are mainstreamed? Also feat. Kathleen Belew and Deborah Lipstadt.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/28/2022
  

  Trump Keeps Boosting White Supremacists

  Post Columnist Greg Sargent discusses Trump's meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes as a PR coup for the far right and an affirmation that they are part of Trump's base.