And so we reach the end of an unpresidented era. The reference is, of course, to one of Donald Trump’s many Twitter misspellings, this one found in his 2016 description of the seizure of a US. navy drone. He meant to call it “unprecedented.” But Trump’s mistake gave us a coinage ...

To the Republican Party: As the Trump administration stumbles through its final hours, it seems a proper time to offer a summation of the era just past. Ordinarily, this calls for analytical heavy lifting. One seeks to reconcile a mosaic of accomplishments, failures and compromises into a ...

Throngs of self-styled conservatives and Republicans have now reached the thunderous realization that Donald Trump is not just a harmless clown. Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged to Chuck Todd that Trump’s rhetoric was incendiary, but insisted that this kind of ...

On April 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln went to Richmond. With the Civil War all but won, the president wanted to tour the rebel capital. There, he met a Union general who asked how the conquered city should be treated. “If I were in your place, I’d let ’em up easy,’” said Lincoln. “Let ...

So what now? A few things, actually. But before we get to them, we must recognize last week’s insurrectionist rampage at the Capitol for what it was. It is being seen, and not wrongly, as the angry response of delusional right-wingers lied into believing a presidential election was stolen. ...

In the end, it wasn’t “antifa.” It wasn’t Black Lives Matter. No, it wasn’t any of the boogeymen white conservatives have imagined, exaggerated and bloviated into national threats. Rather, it was a mob of white conservatives themselves, unrestrained by law, unfettered by ...

I don’t mind admitting that I could really go for a good fistfight just now. Or a race against time to foil a terrorist plot. Or a zombie apocalypse. A zombie apocalypse would definitely hit the spot. As some of you will recall, I gave up those and other literary pleasures a year ago, ...

This is a tightrope column, the kind you’d rather not write, about an event you don’t feel you can ignore. You tread carefully, but you want people to pay attention as you do. Four days after Christmas, five days before he was to be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives, ...

The list of President Donald Trump’s pardons and clemencies so far looks a lot like a supermarket tabloid: In other words, a lot like Trump’s life itself. There’s Rod Blagojevich with his saucy smile, and there’s smug Joe Arpaio. Every president’s pardon list contains some ...

Some heads snapped when Attorney General William Barr told the truth on Dec. 1. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” This was not the Bill Barr we had come to expect. We were surprised again when we learned that Hunter ...

By way of introduction: Tommy Tuberville is the new Republican U.S. senator from Alabama. He was previously a successful college football coach at the University of Mississippi, Texas Tech, Cincinnati and Auburn — where his team six times defeated their powerful in-state rival, the ...

This is the time of year when I try to remind patrons of restaurants and coffee shops to tip generously, in the spirt of the season. I want us to tip well all year long, of course, but December can pack a special wallop of motivation for people whipping out their charge cards in celebration of ...

Off and on for 25 years, I participated in National Review cruises as a speaker. I met lots of wonderful people who were intelligent, curious and great company — but there were always cranks and conspiracy theorists, too. Once, during the Clinton administration, people at my dinner table were ...

The photo looks faked. It’s so heavy-handed. A grinning Australian soldier, his insignia clear as day on his helmet and arm, stands on the Australian flag holding a small, barefoot Afghan child in front of him. He grasps a bloody knife to the child’s throat. The caption reads “Don’t be ...

Gerald Ford was right. It was years before I understood that. I was 17 years old on the day in 1974 when the 38th president pardoned the 37th, Richard Nixon, for his crimes in the Watergate affair. Like millions of others — like Ford’s own press secretary, who resigned in protest — I ...

I am not disappointed in Donald Trump. For there to be disappointment at childish behavior presumes an expectation of adult behavior. No such expectation exists where Trump is concerned. So his weeks of sulking and floating bizarre conspiracy theories since he lost the election, while ...

Missing in any debate about whether it is wise for the United States to reduce our troop numbers in both Afghanistan and Iraq, as the Trump administration has ordered, down to 2,500 Americans in each country (a number, let it be noted, that is too few to fight and too many to die), is the ...

Greed is good. That, you may recall, was the mantra of corporate raider Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film “Wall Street.” It came to symbolize the rapacious gluttony of that era — and its rejection of the dewy-eyed idealism of the 1960s. Well, 1987 was a long time ago, but Gekko’s ...

“The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.” — Rush Limbaugh “One day, it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Donald Trump “The risk to the average person does remain quite low” — Laura Ingraham The American death toll from the novel coronavirus will soon pass ...

Joe Biden won the White House, we are reminded almost daily, on his third try, having run unsuccessfully in both 1988 and 2008. It’s funny; I can’t recall, having covered the 1980 presidential race, much ever being made of the fact that that year’s winner, Republican Ronald Reagan, also ...