Tomorrow marks the start of the brave new world of President Donald J. Trump. But today marks the end of the Obama-to-Trump transition. They, and we, survived the interregnum, more or less — and it was not guaranteed and is worth celebrating.
Hoodlums will be out in full force this Inauguration Day weekend. Count on it.
Since World War II, the two men who have most terrified this city by winning the presidency are Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.
"Fake news!" roared Donald Trump, the work of "sick people."
On Wednesday, in his first news conference as president-elect, Donald Trump came out swinging -- against some of the media (while praising others), against the policies and performance of the Obama administration, and against the intelligence community.
When President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office eight days from now, he will be completing a remarkable journey, going from private citizen to the highest elected office in the nation without any elected stop in between. But while Trump is, to put it mildly, a unique figure in presidential politics, his journey is one that is we are increasingly seeing on a smaller scale at the gubernatorial level.
Now that I no longer do a weekly TV show, I have more time to read my local paper. Sadly, that's The New York Times.
Like tired old racists clinging to their discredited past and divisive politics, Democrats wheezed exhaustively on their racial dogwhistles Tuesday in their increasingly futile bid to derail Sen. Jeff Sessions’ nomination to become the next attorney general.
It's only the second week of 2017, but it's already been a banner year for preening liberals on cable TV who are hell-bent on self-immolation in the name of proving everyone else's moral inferiority.
Though every Republican in Congress voted against the Iran nuclear deal, "Tearing it up ... is not going to happen," says Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
"There's no savior out there." That's a line from "Lord's Prayer," a song written by TV Smith for the Lords of the Church, a band that trafficked in 1980s melodic punk. Here's some more:
"As we begin 2017, the most urgent threat to liberal democracy is not autocracy," writes William Galston of The Wall Street Journal, "it is illiberal democracy."
President Barack Obama went up to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to counsel congressional Democrats on how to save Obamacare. Or at least that's how his visit was billed.
It’s already clear that the very strange political year of 2016 is bleeding over into the New Year. How could it be otherwise? President-elect Donald Trump, loved and hated by about equal numbers of Americans, continues to ignore or break with convention in a wide variety of areas. Just as the normal rules didn’t apply to him in the campaign, they may not apply to him in office either.
Have you heard of "touch DNA?"
What a guy!
And just in case anybody has failed to grasp how extraordinarily lucky we have been these past eight delightful years, Mr. Obama also announced that he has begun “penning a farewell address to the American people.”
In retaliation for the hacking of John Podesta and the DNC, Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and ordered closure of their country houses on Long Island and Maryland's Eastern shore.
Americans see themselves as people on the move. When the going gets tough or when opportunity beckons, we get up and go. We move around a lot.
