Patrick Lawrence: Speak, Claudia!
Watching that procession of hapless European supplicants passing through the Oval Office this week, my mind wandered briefly and came back with an imaginary scene I found pleasurable and instructive all at once: What if Claudia Sheinbaum went to see…
Patrick Lawrence: What Odds, as Trump Takes on the Deep State?
This is the second of two essays considering President Trump’s unfolding offensive against the institutions and agencies comprising the deep state — the permanent state or the invisible government, as it is also commonly known. The first in this series…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump 2.0 Crosses the Atlantic
Whatever the future may hold — and seldom does it present such promise and peril as now — Trump and his national-security team set a lot of wheels in motion last week. Eight years ago, at precisely this moment in…
Patrick Lawrence: Trump vs. the Deep State
This is the first of two commentaries examining what the writer reads as President Trump’s unfolding offensive against the institutions and agencies comprising the deep state — or, if you prefer, the administrative state or the permanent state or the invisible government….
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Musk & the Myth of USAID
Among the agency’s missions, the one to promote democracy has made it a very sad story. What hath the MAGA movement wrought? I doubt the archest of Donald Trump’s arch-enemies ever imagined that in his second term he would take things…
Patrick Lawrence: All the Gloves Come Off in Gaza
Donald Trump does not seem to have too much trouble shocking people. In the three weeks since he resumed his residency in the White House, he has shocked the Danes (America must have Greenland), the Canadians (Canada will become our…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Where Have All the Liberals Gone?
The new liberal consensus, born of a shared “exhaustion,” is that it is time to “tune out,” or “take a break,” or simply close one’s eyes and ears. I simply cannot figure American liberals and “progressives”—’pwogwessives,’” as the late Alexander Cockburn…
Patrick Lawrence: Trump’s Failures, America’s Failures
Well, we now have a president who says what he means, and this is an advance beyond the four years Americans spent listening to a lifelong, compulsive liar who more than occasionally said the opposite of what he meant. It…
Patrick Lawrence: Exeunt, the Man from Scranton
I honestly do not think Joe Biden ever had a chance to make sense of his four years as president. It is not merely his native stupidity, and Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s execrable record on the foreign side seems evidence…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Chihuahuas, Not Dobermans
Trump’s determination to end the Ukraine war has forced the Europeans, at last, to go their own way. And they charge in precisely the wrong direction. I have never been much for schadenfreude: It is always best to occupy one’s mind with worthier…