One would have to be a king-sized fool to think he’ll actually do it. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, appearing alongside former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as he mulls a primary challenge to President Donald Trump, said Wednesday that the Republican Party has “never been my master” and that “all of my options are on the […]
D.R. Tucker
D. R. Tucker is a Massachusetts-based journalist who has served as the weekend contributor for the Washington Monthly since May 2014. He has also written for the Huffington Post, the Washington Spectator, the Metrowest Daily News, investigative journalist Brad Friedman's Brad Blog and environmental journalist Peter Sinclair's Climate Crocks.
Posted inPolitical Animal
Why Make a Celebrity of the Alleged Austin Bomber?
You know, it really isn’t this complicated. There is no compelling interest and no public value in naming the suspected extremist who assaulted Austin, Texas with bombs over the past few weeks before blowing himself to smithereens on Wednesday. No rational person gives a damn what his name is. So why make him famous? Almost […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Hayes Code
When we look back on the Trump administration—and if the Kennedy administration was Camelot, what we’re suffering under now is most definitely Scamalot—we’ll give a round of applause to those journalists and media figures who disputed the disinformation and challenged the covfefe. However, some of these Fourth Estate figures deserve their props now—especially when they’ve […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
March Madness: Right-Wing Media Will Take Aim at Youth Opposed to Gun Violence
They can’t help themselves. If you’ve ever doubted the fundamental foolishness and ghoulishness of the American right, just watch—if you can bear it—the right’s reaction to today’s March for Our Lives. If you think the rhetorical assaults on anti-gun-violence American youth in the days leading up to this march were bad, as Bachman-Turner Overdrive famously […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Life During Wartime: The Blood on the Hands of Trump’s Fanbase
On November 8, 2016, 62 million Americans decided it was a good idea to play Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver—and now, they’ve just pulled the trigger. We will never know just how many citizens of the world will lose their lives as a result of the decision to make John Bolton National Security […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Generation Z Must Take the Media Back
It’s the only way to keep this moment–and this momentum–going. When the nationwide youth demonstrations against gun violence in the wake of the February 14 massacre in Parkland, Florida, began, I must admit that I actually had a cynical reaction: how many of these teenagers, I wondered, would abandon their social conscience twenty-five years from […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Journalists Who Normalized Trump Betrayed the Public Trust
You know, it’s not like they weren’t warned. CNN’s Brian Stelter was generally spot-on this morning in pointing out the dangers of the rhetoric that flowed from Donald Trump’s mouth Saturday night in Pennsylvania, but he could have gone a little further–hell, a lot further: Here’s the problem: Trump has been this way for years. […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Supreme Court Can’t Wait to Kill Youth Climate Lawsuit
Like death itself, the end can be delayed, but not escaped: A group of 21 youths who accuse the U.S. government of failing for decades to properly address climate change defeated the Trump administration’s attempt to keep the dispute out of court. The U.S. [Ninth] Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that a […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
The President Prattles in Pittsburgh
If you know someone who voted for this man, ask them how they can defend any of this: President Trump on Saturday again called for enacting the death penalty for drug dealers during a rally meant to bolster a struggling GOP candidate for a U.S. House seat here. During the campaign event in this conservative […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
PBS Plans to Give Us a Progressive Talk Show, Too, Right?
We all know the sad saga of public television bending over backwards to appease right-wing interests and dull the Republican desire to put Big Bird in a skillet, but this is beyond ridiculous: As the Donald Trump administration mulls whacking its funding for PBS, the pubcaster said today that it is launching a conservative talk […]
