What if Hillary Clinton were a man? What if she were a 68-year-old man rather than a 68-year-old woman? Would we think differently of her?
— Richard Cohen
You have to admit that Trump is endlessly creative. He has insulted the disabled, the dead, the parents of the dead, women, Mexicans, Muslims, Asians, African Americans, former POWs, the media and, to get just a bit more specific, 'The Post.'
What's the justification for a semiautomatic weapon with a magazine of 30 rounds?
In order to take a nation to war, you have to believe mightily in the threat you are facing and the virtue of your cause.
George W. Bush, a charming and utterly gracious man, was a catastrophic twofer. He took the United States to war in Iraq, a wrenching debacle: more than 4,000 Americans dead, nearly 32,000 wounded, and the Middle East destabilized with Iranian influence enhanced.
The grieving are surely owed our empathy, but capital punishment can neither right a wrong nor prevent another from happening.
There was a time when an ordinary American could close the door and keep the world at bay. Now the world comes elbowing in every time you go online.
Trump is a dust storm of lies and diversions with the bellows of a bully and the greasy ethics of a street-corner hustler.
We are a segmented society, living in our individual bubbles.
There is only so much chaos a nation can stand.
To anyone other than an adamant social conservative, Pence is shockingly unreasonable. But he is also shockingly hypocritical.
Pence is the very personification of the career politician. With the exception of a few years doing talk radio and television shows, he has done nothing but run for office, winning all but the first two times.
I am not a German bitter-ender. I am, though, a German never-forgetter.
How is it possible to defame Trump? When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president a 'moron,' was that defamatory or merely the prosaic truth?
Trump was always a poster boy of the selfish, egomaniacal, ignorant, bragging, cruel rich kid, whose mirror was the sleazy pages of Rupert Murdoch's 'New York Post.' Trump's oxygen was the leaked item, without which he would die the suffocating death of being shown to a bad table.
I don't like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize.
Polanski is a great film director - although the much-acclaimed 'Chinatown' has a muddled script - but his true talent is to make fools of his friends.
It has become commonplace to call Trump a reality TV star. That is said as an aspersion, the way Ronald Reagan was called an actor. But Reagan's acting experience, his ability to talk to the camera and not yell to the hall, is what helped make him such a good politician. It is the same with Trump.
With a sinking feeling, I have come to a horrible conclusion: I am addicted to Donald Trump.
The NRA has led the way in the mainstreaming of a demented gun ideology.
As we see with Sunni and Shiite Muslims, interreligious fights are the most ugly.
If every senator looks into the mirror and sees a future president, then every president looks into that same mirror and sees himself on Mount Rushmore.
It has become increasingly difficult for states or the federal government to apply the death penalty. But why even try? Nothing is accomplished, and while the chances of making a mistake are now diminished - DNA can prove guilt as well as innocence - life in prison is a worthy substitute.
Evil comes in through the cable and through the Internet. We look forward to the advent of driverless cars. But they can be hacked. You could be riding along, and some 14-year-old in Romania takes over your car, so you end up running the lights and losing your brakes or, worse, listening to Eminem. What's the purpose?
We need a national service that throws us all together, the urban with the rural, the Fox News types with the MSNBC crowd. That way, Americans can get to know Americans and learn - as previous generations did - that we are all Americans.
Trump's presidency will fail. Just don't ask me how and when. It will collapse because at its center is a hollow man, lacking ballast, whose chaos cannot be contained.
Trump is in the White House, fulminating on Twitter, messing up foreign policy, mistaking critics for enemies, refusing to immediately and unequivocally condemn neo-Nazis, racists, and other assorted goons - and, in general, failing to provide the nation with a scintilla of moral leadership. This will last until it can't any longer.
Trump is a menace, both ignorant and chaotic. His saving grace is his incompetence.
Germany's crimes were recent and of such a scale and depravity that, unless constantly faced, they will come to seem fictitious.
Trump's overriding accomplishment is plain: The Republican Party can no longer be shamed.
It is not true that Trump is nobody's fool. He is the GOP's.
Maybe the best example of the unmuscled hero is Humphrey Bogart in 'Casablanca.' Bogart was 15 years older than Ingrid Bergman, and it did not matter at all. He had the experience, the confidence, the internal strength that can only come with age.
Harvey Weinstein does not personify American liberalism any more than Bill O'Reilly personifies American conservatism.
I long ago tired of politicians who never say anything, adhere to their talking points, and avoid all controversy.
Leaving aside handguns and hunting weapons, what's the justification for possessing an AR-15-style weapon?
If you told me back in my Army days that I could have bought the same weapon that I had been using in training, I would not have believed it.
When I was a kid, I went door to door in my neighborhood asking for donations to the Jewish National Fund, best known then for its Israel forestation program. At the age of 11 or so, I imagined myself a regular Johnny Appleseed, responsible for vast forests.
Fox News has been a force in converting the party of Lincoln into the party of Trump. The network's allegiance to Trump approaches mindless adoration.
We fear hackers lifting our digital wallet, a public accounting of our private lives, and we wonder if the shoes that follow us around the Internet will someday, with the click of a distant mouse, look like the jackboots of old.
Let me tell you, seven days without Wolf Blitzer is heaven. A week outside 'The Situation Room' is downright calming. No 'breaking news!' No hype. Blitzer is a first-class journalist, and I mention him only by way of acknowledging his fame.
Conservatives watch Fox News and read 'Breitbart.' Liberals watch MSNBC and read 'HuffPost.' When we agree, it's the truth; when we differ, it's fake news.
Trump critics such as myself have been accused of living in a bubble. On the contrary, it is Trump's supporters in the 1 percent who breathed their own fumes.
The ultimate question is whether the name Donald Trump will be attached to an era - whether he will so change America that it will never be the same afterward.
Pence is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He's got his eye on 2020.
In my several visits to Germany, I have written in admiration of that country's strenuous efforts to face its past and make amends.
Trump is unloved in his own house. A figure of ridicule, a theatrical creation, he is almost sympathetic. He was told by the greedy and the outright stupid that he would make a swell president. The Liar's Paradox has spun out of control, with liars lying to a liar who believed the lie. What would that be called? Fox News, I think.
Republicans remain silent because Trump is doing what they want - lowering taxes on the rich, eviscerating regulations, bulldozing the environment, and insisting that a woman's body is not her own.
Every rippling muscle is a book not read, a movie not seen, or a conversation not held.
It's all right with me if Roman Polanski is freed by the Swiss authorities who have detained him at the request of the United States - if first I get a chance to bust him one in the mouth.
