Just 29 percent of Americans say they approve of President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, while 38 percent disapprove, according to results from a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Another 32 percent of respondents don’t have enough to say on the matter. … And asked […] Read more »
Initial thoughts on the ‘Pence Commission’
President Trump has just issued the executive order announcing the creation of his “voting fraud” commission to be chaired by Vice President Pence. Here are my own initial thoughts. 1. Title. This will be the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Election integrity is the principal dimension over which Democrats […] Read more »
A 2016 Review: There’s Reason to Be Skeptical of a Comey Effect
On Friday, Oct. 28, James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, sent a letter to Congress about new evidence in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Politicians, analysts and journalists are still debating whether the letter cost Mrs. Clinton the presidency. It’s certainly possible. But I am not at all sure, […] Read more »
How conspiracy theories helped power Trump’s disruptive politics
We watched over the past year as a wave of conspiracy theories infected our national discourse. … Trump’s use of conspiracy theory politics proved to be a particularly ingenious form of populism. By focusing his populist appeals on conspiracy rhetoric — rather than substantive policy — Trump galvanized the broad […] Read more »
Who’s Fueling Conspiracy Whisperers’ Falsehoods?
37% of Americans see North Korea as ‘immediate threat’
About four in 10 Americans say North Korea is an immediate threat to the US in the wake of the nation’s recently stepped-up attempts to posture itself as a military threat to the US and others, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. … Most Americans say they see Russia as […] Read more »