A Tabloid Legend on Jeffrey Epstein’s Death This is the story with everything. Wealth, power, darkness. Princes and presidents with secrets.

This week we turn the column over to the late Mike McAlary (1957-98), tabloid star and journalistic tough guy. Here’s Mike: So I’m talking to this political guy, holds a significant office which I won’t tell you because it’s none of your business. We’re having breakfast in a high-end midtown hotel. Gleaming silver buffet, steam […]

More Gabbard, Delaney and Williamson, Please And it’s past time for Beto O’Rourke, Bill de Blasio and Kirsten Gillibrand to get off the stage.

A few points on round two of the Democratic debates in Detroit. The first night was good, full of fight and clarifying. The second was sour, with candidates jumping around with their small strategies. Parties forget that in such debates an aggregate impression emerges. Here is the less important and perhaps temporary one: The Democrats […]

What Were Robespierre’s Pronouns? The French Revolution was led by sociopaths who politicized language, much like today’s Jacobins.

We often make historical parallels here. History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme, as clever people say. And sometimes it hiccups. Here is a hiccup. We start with the moral and political catastrophe that was the French Revolution. It was more a nationwide psychotic break than a revolt—a great nation at its own throat, […]

The 2020 Democrats Lack Hindsight They ignore reality and march in lockstep with their base. Did they learn anything from 2016?

I’ve received tens of thousands of letters and other communications from Trump supporters the past few years, some of which have sparked extended dialogues. Two I got after last week’s column struck me as pertinent to this moment, and they make insufficiently appreciated points. A gentleman of early middle age in Kansas City wrote to […]

My Sister, My Uncle and Trump They loved him and were sure he’d win. I couldn’t share their jolliness, but I respected their rebellion.

It was four years ago this week, June 16, 2015, and a great professional gift was given me. I had just watched Donald Trump’s announcement speech and was pondering its impact. This guy isn’t going to be president; we’ve been reading about his tabloid antics for 30 years. But he’ll have some impact, some support. […]

England Needs a Slap, and So Does China Getting on with Brexit is the right thing to do. So is pushing back against the crackdown in Hong Kong.

Now and then a country needs to get slapped. England does, or rather the United Kingdom, but I say England because I really mean London. Its entire leadership class has been undone since Brexit passed, three years ago this month. They’ve been overwhelmed, not equal to the moment. They are like the hysterical blonde in […]