Politics

I have to admit, I found David Samuels’s defense of his now-infamous New York Times Magazine article to be delightfully amusing. From my perspective, the important paragraph of his defense is this one:

With Russian stocks among the best performing in 2016 - and up dramatically since The White House issued its "sell" rating...

Some anti-Trump Republicans are still trying to find someone crazy bold enough to launch an independent presidential bid to thwart Trump. The Republican National Committee chairman isn’t pleased:

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus did not mince words as he urged party figures laying the groundwork for a third-party bid to suspend their operation.

Since the end of the Cold War, we’re had a lot of very instructive experience in the Middle East. Back in 2010, I compiled the real-time analyses I had made of our policies and their results in a book titled America’s Misadventures in the Middle East. The book holds up well as an explanation for the origins and evolution of most of our difficulties in the region. Unfortunately, both the situation in the Middle East and our position there have continued to deteriorate.

McKay Coppins reports on Paul Ryan’s willingness to hew to the party line:

But those who expected Ryan’s ideological conviction to compel an audacious war against his own party’s presidential nominee misunderstood him. He has not gotten to where he is by making trouble. He is, at his core, a good soldier.