For many Americans - many humans - Trump's presidency can often feel unbearable.
— Joy Reid
Trump is as hollow a vessel as there has ever been in the White House. His rule lacks even a shred of moral authority.
Donald Trump is many things - a tantrum-throwing man-child and a wannabe strongman pining for his very own banana republic among them - but perhaps most of all he is a giant, melon-colored distraction from what is happening to our country under his watch.
Trump has humbled our country under the shadow of China's autocrat Xi Jinping.
America after Trump may be more like the European Union; a rambling alliance of interstate compacts, rather than the forced marriage of a country that emerged after the Civil War.
Whatever its cause, the media's general Hillary Clinton loathing is a foundational truth that would define her as president.
Trump is, in every way, the anti-Obama.
Votes for president have long been a kind of social signifier. People will proudly boast that they voted for JFK; while it's harder to find those eager to claim having supported Richard Nixon.
A major loss by a Democratic prosecutor at the hands of the BLM movement could alter the political landscape in a way that might actually change the way prosecutors, and ultimately police departments, operate.
The Trump phenomenon might feel both interminable and unprecedented to Republican elites, but of course it isn't.
The criminal justice system in the United States is designed to do two things really well: to railroad black and brown bodies into prison, and to keep police officers out of it.
Trump is an erratic figure - seemingly fragile, consumed by his own unpopularity and desperate to somehow exceed Barack Obama in public acclaim.
Freedom is neither guaranteed nor automatic; not even in the United States. Left unguarded, it can slip away like a thief in the night.
Our love of Hollywood-style glamour helped elect two presidents: JFK and Reagan, who fulfilled the prophecy that a country so enamored of actors would eventually make one their president.
America is, in many ways, as much an idea as it is a country. And Americans have long marketed that idea around the world through our popular culture.
Trump built Trump Tower using mob concrete, not Bethlehem steel.
We Americans think quite highly of ourselves, and nothing makes us think more of ourselves than our romantic view of our presidents.
For decades, the GOP has faithfully served the rich, corporations, polluters and purveyors of pure, unadulterated greed, and brought blue-collar white voters along for the ride with promises of cultural revival.
In many ways, Trump is both a boon and a bane to Republicans. His insanity and moral decrepitude keep the country focused on things other than the horrible public policies the GOP is attempting to ram through. But because he has no loyalty to anything other than himself, he's much more useful to them as a shiny object than as an ally.
Popularity has always been the key currency in choosing a president.
Trump is reviled around the world, as is the U.S. under his leadership.
Bill Clinton had a hell of a first 24 months, even though he, like Trump, enjoyed a congressional majority. Scandal after scandal befell the White House, including the failure of Hillary Clinton-led healthcare reform. But Clinton's scandals, from 'filegate' to 'travelgate' to a brouhaha over a haircut, were petty, personal and domestic.
The fact that many journalists approach the Clintons - especially Hillary Clinton - with a presumption that she has done something that if it's not outright corrupt is at least worthy of looking into, inevitably colors the way the public views the former secretary of state, and the way they respond to her in the polls.
Dwight Eisenhower presented a face of America that was heroic and resolute; Ronald Reagan represented a return to confidence and glamour after the weary Carter years.
Obama has presided over sweeping cultural advances, particularly in the rights of gay and lesbian Americans.
Protest is, at its core, designed to move policy.
It sounds terribly cynical, but the real surprise in the Philando Castile case is not that the officer was acquitted but that he was charged at all. The prosecutors in the case deserve great credit for even trying. But no one should be shocked about how it turned out.
Republicans don't vote Republican because of Nancy Pelosi. They vote Republican because they are Republicans.
There are few instances when American history offers us two clear sides of a moral line.
It is uncomfortable in the extreme for people, and particularly for members of the press, to confront the notion that a president could be so far outside the bounds of tradition that he must be treated differently from his predecessors.
The Hollywood of Frank Capra's era, when Reagan became a minor star, sold the world an image of American pith and patriotism in many ways as defining as the moon landing or the A-bomb.
The Trumps have spent exactly zero percent of their lives caring about anyone other than themselves.
Trump's cabinet picks seem designed to unwind government itself, leaving the average citizen completely exposed and vulnerable to full exploitation by corporate interests.
Too great a love for the presidency has caused Democrats to neglect state and local politics and to overly prize compromise and a futile quest for bipartisanship. It has made liberals too allergic to federalism and too shy about grassroots politics.
Trump's affinity for Russia dates back at least to the late 1980s, during the time of the Soviet Union, and it intensified after his financial empire collapsed.
To be sure, the Trump administration is shot through with corruption.
The American presidency combines elements of the efficient and the dignified. The president presides over governance - not making legislation but proposing it, cajoling the co-equal federal legislature and then signing and executing the laws.
After Trump, how can we credibly say that our process for choosing a national leader yields the best possible result, or even someone capable of uniting the country, let alone running it?
Hillary Clinton's time in the Senate indicates she is happier being a policy workhorse than a show horse.
If Obama was fundamentally different from prior presidents, Trump seems to violate every tenet of what Americans have long sought as our national image.
The presidency is, in many ways, America's comment on itself; our collective national costume. In the occupant of our sole nationwide elected office, we see who we think we are, or who we want to be.
Even at its most outrageous early moments, the Tea Party movement was treated to sober and at times breathless media coverage, to the point of being invited to co-host a presidential debate.
American populist politics has a long tradition, from Andrew Jackson to Huey Long to Joseph McCarthy. But the politician Trump is most like could be George Wallace.
Being on a grand jury felt like attending a series of hangings in a legal Wild West. Hands up for a true bill. Hands up for a dismissal. A show of hands to save a life, or to end it.
If politics were a high school movie, Republicans would be the jocks and mean girls locking hapless freshmen inside their lockers and threatening to call in their rich parents if the teachers complain - plus the broke kids who are always willing to strong-arm homework for them from the nerds.
Authoritarianism doesn't fall on a nation like a book falling from a shelf and striking you in the head. It rolls in like a slow tide.
Americans are locked into our traditions.
From jazz, the blues, country and rock to Hollywood movies, culture has in many ways been our greatest export (or our most obnoxious one, depending on your point of view).
Trump is a big businessman. He's your boss or CEO, not one of your brothers on the line.
I've written before that the president is our national avatar - a stand-in for what we believe we are, or want to be.
