E.J. Dionne Jr. The Washington Post WASHINGTON — Thanksgiving is a splendid holiday, but also a useful one. It reminds us that gratitude is a virtue. We owe the most satisfying parts of our lives to others and fool ourselves if we imagine otherwise. We usually begin, rightly, by thanking our families since they are […]
E.J. Dionne Jr.
Posted inOp-Eds
Trump’s foray against Syria for real, or a distraction?
WASHINGTON — On Aug. 20, 1998, American Tomahawk cruise missiles hit sites in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The targets of the assault, ordered by President Bill Clinton, were Osama bin Laden and his band of terrorists. In light of what would happen three years later, […]
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Trump and the bear in the woods
WASHINGTON — It is jarring to see pro-Trump conservatives indifferent or even hostile to investigations of Russian intervention in the 2016 campaign. Just a few years ago (it feels like an eternity), conservatives were jumping all over President Obama for his Russian “reset” and his first-term eagerness to negotiate with Moscow. Even further back, conservatives […]
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Working class forgotten unless it can be used as a front
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Whatever happened to the interests of the working class? Weren’t they supposed to be front and center in the Trump administration? Here’s one clue: When a policy that helps some corporate sector can be repackaged to make it look like a pro-worker move, President Trump will always hide his real purpose behind […]
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Trump and Ryan failed to learn from history
WASHINGTON — If President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisconsin, had paid attention to Mitt Romney, they could have avoided the fiasco of their now dead and unmourned health-care bill. They would not now face a situation in which both of them are being blamed because they both deserve to be. And the […]
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Neil Gorsuch's convenient untruth
WASHINGTON — With a shrewdly calculated innocence, Judge Neil Gorsuch told a big fat lie at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Because it was a lie everyone expected, nobody called it that. “There’s no such thing as a Republican judge or a Democratic judge,” Gorsuch said. Gorsuch, the amiable veteran of many Republican campaigns, is […]
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Europe doesn't like what it sees in U.S.
WASHINGTON — President Trump might do the world a perverse favor. Voters in Western Europe appear to be looking at what America has brought upon itself and deciding: “We sure as heck don’t want to go there.” Thus did the Netherlands slap back the ethno-nationalist far right in its elections last week. The forces of […]
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Can Trump get away with it?
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s astonishing and reckless accusation that he was wiretapped on orders from President Obama should finally be the tipping point in how the country views him and his presidency. Obama, through a spokesman, said the charges were “simply false.” It appears that Trump issued his wild tweet storm Saturday morning largely on […]
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Trump: Old words, new wrapping
SANTA BARBARA, California — The obsession with Donald Trump’s ability to spend one hour in a disciplined relationship with a teleprompter obscured one of his central goals on Tuesday night: He continued to try to scare the country to death. Yes, he lived up to media expectations that he would finally attempt to look “presidential” […]
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Bannon promises ominous-sounding "new political order"
WASHINGTON — Just when you despair that only chaos animates the Trump administration, along comes Steve Bannon, the White House ideologue, to offer the Rosetta Stone illuminating what this circus is all about. And when you realize what Trump & Co. might really be up to, your despair turns to alarm. There is no way […]