Tasos Katopodis/Getty When I was a kid, College Republicans were mostly seen as harmless nerds and the iconic “young Republican” was Alex P. Keaton, the preppy young Reaganite portrayed by Michael J. Fox on TV’s Family Ties. Sure, there were occasional kooks, but they were out of the mainstream. Somewhere along the way, Republicans decided to ditch the clean-cut image in favor of an edgier vibe. […]
Matt Lewis
46 posts
It was not a perfect call. Indeed, it was a very imperfect one. In a move eerily reminiscent of the Ukraine call that led to his impeachment in the House of Representatives just over one year ago, Donald Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a call this Saturday to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the state’s election results. “There’s nothing wrong with saying […]
As the ball dropped in Times Square a year ago, I remember thinking, “This is going to be a good year.” What is more, “this is going to be Matt Lewis’s year.” (Yeah, I think about myself in the third person. What of it?) To be fair, the bar was set pretty low. In the Twitter era, it has become commonplace to publicly trash the present […]
Amid the hellish parade of disappointments in this never-ending year of 2020, some real heroes have emerged. Obvious examples include doctors, nurses, and frontline workers, not to mention the scientists and innovators working to create and distribute vaccines. But what I’m talking about are the political profiles in courage. This year, a handful of heroes had the guts to stand up to their own parties and […]
I never thought I’d be asking this, but how much Trumpian damage can Attorney General Bill Barr prevent on his way out the door? In one fell swoop on Monday, Barr dealt a major blow to not one—but two—major Trumpian schemes. With regard to appointing a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, Barr said he “would have appointed” a special counsel, if there had been a […]
As Congress chugs along toward likely passage of a nearly $1 trillion coronavirus relief package, The Hill reports that “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is getting much of what he wants…” That McConnell eventually gets his way should come as no surprise to anyone who’s paying attention. Name one person who got more (and gave up less) in the devil’s bargain that the Republican Party […]
Is nothing sacred? Having co-opted and discredited the Republican Party and the conservative movement, Donald Trump is now attempting to discredit the Christian church. Or rather, by mixing faith with partisan politics and embracing the notion that Trump won the 2020 election, some prominent members of the Christian church are undermining the church’s witness. For evidence, look no further than this Saturday, when former National Security […]
On Saturday, Donald Trump will travel to Georgia to try and help Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler win their Jan. 5 run-off elections. The real question is which Donald Trump will show up to the rally. Will it be the one who wants to help Republicans (and boost his legacy) or the one who wants to prove that the election was stolen from him (with […]
I’ve been feeling down, lately, and I bet I’m not alone. In fact, I bet there are millions of us feeling the same way. Maybe even you. Even before the pandemic forced us to embrace social distancing out of necessity, we were already experiencing a loneliness epidemic. This virus basically took an already appalling situation and put it on steroids. Social science tells us that there […]
After his porn store adjacent presser and his appearances alongside raving conspiracist Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani made a more dressed-up attempt to call into question the election results at a hearing on Wednesday in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Even before the president of the United States decided to phone in, it was a stage run for a shadow government—an alternate government for an alternate reality that bodes ill […]
Donald Trump’s presidency might have been a chaotic mess, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. If Joe Biden wants to change the tone of American politics, he should avoid the temptation to immediately and reflexively reverse all of Trump’s policies. Newly elected presidents tend to assume they must act quickly and make changes immediately. Consider how these early decisions set the tone […]
Donald Trump is a sore loser, man. And he’s training a generation of Republicans to be sore losers, too. Just look to Saturday’s Million MAGA March, which the Washington Post describes as “Demonstrations in support of President Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the presidential election”—an event that Trump himself said Friday he may make an appearance at. The conservatives following Trump’s example have flipped […]
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty With Joe Biden apparently headed to electoral victory, Donald Trump has already signaled he will not go down quietly—will not accept reality. But will his minions continue to carry water for the one-termer? You better believe it. It’s getting harder and harder to pretend with a straight face that Trump won, but that doesn’t mean his enablers won’t try. Indeed, since Tuesday, […]
Getty The first thing we do, let’s kill all the pollsters. The smart money may still be on Joe Biden to eventually prevail as the 2020 presidential election winner, but I’ve seen enough to declare the polling industry, and its cousin, “probabilistic election forecasting,” as the biggest losers. I’m not alone in thinking this. Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Axios “the political polling profession is done” […]
I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. Donald Trump’s idea of finishing on a high note involves fantasizing about beating up Joe Biden and pandering to a mob telling him to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s closing act involved talk of closing down the oil industry, followed by a paean to socialism tweeted by his running mate. In case you missed it, […]
A spoiler alert for those mercifully hoping for an uneventful Tuesday: This could also be the race that never ends. And did I mention they are throwing bricks at the runners? According to Axios, Donald Trump is planning to declare victory if it looks like he’s ahead on election night. That is the nightmare scenario I warned about in August. And it’s just one of the […]
If the polls are to be believed, Joe Biden is about to be elected president. And if history is any indicator, Democrats will assume they have a mandate. Parties and movements that win power almost always assume the public endorses what they think have been selling. They usually don’t. Bill Clinton in 1993 and 1994 might be the poster child for this phenomenon, but it’s a […]
If Democrats sweep the elections next week, their party better brace for an inner civil war over both strategies and policies. It’s unclear which faction will prevail, but some large part of the Biden constituency will be disappointed because pleasing both suburban Lincoln Project voters and the Bernie Bros is nearly impossible. Instead of hashing their differences out now and establishing some sort of mandate, Joe […]
For most of the 2020 election cycle, Donald Trump has been desperately digging for an issue that might fracture Joe Biden’s winning coalition. As the campaign nears its conclusion, Biden just served him up one, about wanting to “transition” away from oil. This was the kind of mistake that is bound to happen when you serve two masters—the progressive base looking over your shoulder, and the […]
An honest question: If Donald Trump were trying to lose the presidency, what would he have done differently? Not much, if you ask me. No, I’m not suggesting Trump wants to lose so he can be a martyr and quit having to do any real work. This theory, which I see as the triumph of hope over optimism, continues to persist (at some points, the hope […]
It was another balancing act for Joe Biden tonight, and if Donald Trump hadn’t killed our outrage receptors, many of us would probably find the confusion truly alarming. Even if you’re convinced that Biden is, by far, the lesser of two evils, it’s still worth taking a minute to stop to consider what we might be getting ourselves into with Biden and the Democrats. It ain’t […]
In Amy Coney Barrett’s America, the Supreme Court will take health care away from millions of people during a deadly pandemic. That is inevitable, at least, if you believe what Democrats had to say on the first day of Barrett’s confirmation hearing. Democrats had plenty of visual props to reinforce this point: Photos of people with pre-existing conditions on easels, which had the effect of making […]
Donald Trump is headed toward a massive defeat—at least, if any of the polls (or our eyes) are to be believed. What is more, there’s a decent chance a massive blue wave could do the unthinkable, sweeping even “safe” Republicans like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham out to sea. If that happens, there will be a window of time, however fleeting, for sane Republicans to try […]
The news that President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump contracted COVID-19 serves as a reminder: This is why having an irresponsible man-child as president is a bad thing, irrespective of everything else. It’s not that the president tested positive; that could be any president. But just two-and-a-half days ago, at the presidential debate, this president, who went months without ever wearing a mask, said […]
Tuesday’s “debate” was a trainwreck. A national embarrassment. A disgrace. If Joe Biden were looking for a pretext to skip the next two debates, he found it. It would be hard to blame him for concluding this is simply a waste of everyone’s time. We’ll see. From the start of this debate, Donald Trump interrupted Biden. Repeatedly. For a while there, it looked like Biden was […]
Amy Coney Barrett, the smart young nominee, accompanied by her young family (including seven children—two of whom were adopted from Haiti), entered the fray today. Noting the number of justices on the Supreme Court, she joked: “I’m used to being in a group of nine—my family.” It was a beautiful scene in the Rose Garden. The flags were flying—God knows there were plenty of flags—but, more […]
When I look at the smears already being aimed at potential Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett, I’m left with one conclusion: This is how we got Donald Trump. Long before Trump took that now-famous escalator ride, conservatives were regularly attacked in pretty unfair ways. The closer to an election or confirmation vote, the more vicious the attacks. In recent years, decent, mainstream conservatives have […]
If you want to know who will win the presidency in 60 days, the real question may be this: What crazy story will dominate the news between now and then? In politics, the battle isn’t just over which candidate you prefer. Often, that determination is downstream from a more urgent question: What issue are you thinking about when you go to the ballot box? This explains […]
Donald Trump’s alleged comments that Americans who died serving our country are “losers” and “suckers” probably won’t matter—unless it is the first salvo in a larger battle. If elections are about who’s on offense on who’s on defense, then the biggest thing about this military story may be another lost cycle for Trump where he’s responding to a story not of his choosing, and as he’s […]
If you don’t think Donald Trump could still win this election, then you’re snorting better Xanax than I am. Trump is a preternaturally gifted demagogue with riots and a bully pulpit to exploit. He has three debates still on the calendar, a history of stunning everyone, and a couple of months to work his magic. Counting him out at a time when cities are on fire […]
Donald Trump’s acceptance speech Thursday night was interminable, sprawling, and littered with superfluous lines. But it also included some finely tuned themes that were repeated over and over during the four-night infomercial called the Republican National Convention, starting with the timely issue of law and order. “If the Democrat Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag-burners, that is up to them,” Trump […]
Eight years ago, Bill Clinton earned the title “explainer-in-chief” when his speech at the Democratic National Convention made a very persuasive case for reelecting Barack Obama. Mike Pence earned that title this year, after Bubba was all but sidelined by his party, in his renomination acceptance speech Wednesday night that connected all the dots and laid out the brick-by-brick argument for why Donald Trump deserves four […]
In one day, John Kasich managed to make AOC and Donald Trump mad at him. I guess we know why his is the road less traveled. Standing at a literal crossroads (or was it a fork in the road?) the former Ohio governor did the unthinkable for a man once thought of as a conservative Gingrich Republican: He spoke at the Democratic National Convention on behalf […]