Matt Bai
National Political Columnist- Yahoo News
Portraying journalists onscreen in the age of Trump
In a movie where virtually all the characters live in a gray zone of morality, should the journalists be exempt? Do we have to choose between defending ourselves from a demagogue and reckoning with our role in having created him?
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Democrats got a sort-of wave. And now they have a choice.
By any historical measure, the Democrats had a pretty great night Tuesday, and the president’s party did not.
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You can oppose Trump's nationalism. But don't sneer at it.
Donald Trump calls himself a “nationalist.” You needn’t be a racist to believe that national identity and borders matter.
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Donald Trump is destroying the American brand
Trump makes no pretense of balancing moral imperatives, or even military objectives, against the economic agenda that is his only real priority.
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What matters about Kavanaugh, and what doesn't
The Supreme Court hearings are starting to feel less like the #MeToo movement and more like ruinous politics, Matt Bai says.
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Republicans can do better than Kavanaugh
The fact is that at this elite level of the American judiciary, everybody's smart. But not everybody's good, Matt Bai writes.
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What Kavanaugh deserves — and what we deserve from him
Trump’s safe choice for the high court has become the last thing he and the GOP needed so close to midterms, Matt Bai writes.
Yahoo NewsThe end of black politics, revisited
Ten years ago last month, I wrote a long cover story for the New York Times Magazine titled: “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?” The central point of the essay, which featured dozens of black leaders and provoked no shortage of debate, was that Barack Obama’s nomination in 2008 marked a turning point
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John Kelly’s vigilante White House
Trump’s aides say it’s their duty to protect the president from himself, even if that means stealing papers off his desk.
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John McCain and the death of perspective
The senator isn't mourned because he was always right (he wasn’t). It’s because he embodied the one thing we miss most in our politics now.
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This time, it really is like Watergate — and Trump is making the same mistakes
It’s easy enough to highlight the superficial similarities between Trump’s White House scandal and Watergate. But the more consequential parallel lies several levels deeper, in a dark seam of self-delusion.
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Running against Bernie in 2020: It's easier than you think
Right now, at a time when Democrats are frantically searching for the anti-Trump, Bernie is starting to look strangely like a reverse image of the president, instead.
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The sad last act of Rudy Giuliani
In politics, as in life, your greatest strength always turns out to be your greatest weakness, and Giuliani’s strength was always his relentlessness.
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Plenty of presidents lie. Only Trump doesn't care if you catch him.
Trump doesn’t lie because he thinks the truth will be politically calamitous. He lies because he’s pretty sure he can make you believe whatever he wants you to believe, and there doesn’t seem to be a penalty for trying.
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Ronald Reagan was a patriot. What would you call Trump?
It may not have been textbook treason for Trump to ally himself with a foreign despot against his own government. But that the question couldn’t be immediately dismissed made clear that he had set a new low for the presidency.
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When it comes to NATO, Trump has it half right
If you make the case that America is wasting too much money to defend foreign borders, then you also ought to have an argument for how reversing that policy can help us here at home.
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Trump's policy is inhumane. It is not the same as 1942.
Some people have compared the disgraceful caging of children on the southern border to the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1942. But the internment was qualitatively different from what we’re seeing today.
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We've heard from the first ladies. Where are their husbands?
If this isn’t a time for the five living ex-presidents to put basic American values above the tradition of not criticizing their successors, then what would such a moment look like?
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Sessions takes on microaggressions. He’s right.
The Justice Department exists to enforce constitutional protections — none more than the right to free expression. And too many college presidents seem to have forgotten that they exist to teach students the value (and sometimes the cost) of those protections.
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Not much intelligent life in Washington. Outer space is another story.
What’s the truth behind that strange aircraft spotted off the coast of San Diego in 2004? Go ahead and laugh. But in the age of entertainment, we can no longer differentiate what’s entirely superfluous from what seems superfluous but might really matter.
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'Roseanne' shows what the media got wrong about Trump voters
Judging from its jokes about black Americans and immigrants, “Roseanne” was aimed at culturally affronted white Americans who feel robbed of their heritage. So it was a good bet that its star would stumble her way into the hatred and bigotry that lurk all over social media.
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Why Mike Pence won't be president
Mike Pence is busy building his own political operation. But close as he is to the presidency, his chances of ever getting the job fall somewhere between remote and imaginary.
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Take your own advice, Mrs. Trump. Be best.
Despite what’s said about her, Melania Trump isn’t trapped. She’s the most liberated person in her husband’s entire dysfunctional orbit. Imagine what it could mean if she exercised that freedom.
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The cluelessness of the correspondents' dinner
The main problem with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner isn’t the ugly humor or the God-awful food. It’s the display of vanity, pretension and tribalism that reinforces the worst idea of what political journalism is all about.
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Can you rein in the president without weakening the presidency?
Trump’s critics would argue that this moment must be met with extraordinary measures. The danger is that with each extraordinary measure they risk defining down the presidency.
