Charles Krauthammer: FBI director didn’t want to upend the presidential election
Why did he do it? FBI Director James Comey spent 14 minutes laying out an unassailable case for prosecuting Hillary Clinton for the mishandling of classified material. Then at literally the last...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Credit NATO for not letting its guard down against an...
‘The most significant reinforcement of our collective defense any time since the Cold War,” President Obama called it. A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but it was still an achievement: Last week’s...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Ted Cruz delivers longest suicide note in American...
The main purpose of the modern political convention is to produce four days of televised propaganda. The subsidiary function, now that nominees are invariably chosen in advance, is structural: Unify...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Democratic nominee looking more and more like small change
‘The best darn change-maker I ever met in my entire life.” So said Bill Clinton in making the case for his wife at the Democratic National Convention. Considering that Bernie Sanders ran as the author...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: What’s inside Trump’s mind? An infantile craving for...
Donald Trump, the man who defied every political rule and prevailed to win his party’s nomination, last week took on perhaps the most sacred political rule of all: Never attack a Gold Star family. Not...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Just can’t wait to get the Olympics off my chess
You may be thrilled by the feats of Katie Ledecky, mesmerized by the grace of the women gymnasts, startled by Rio spectators mocking U.S. soccer star Hope Solo with chants of “Zika! Zika!” (the first...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: United States pays the price of powerlessness in the...
This week Russian bombers flew out of Iranian air bases to attack rebel positions in Syria. The State Department pretended not to be surprised. It should be. It should be alarmed. Iran’s intensely...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Our high standard for bribery is Hillary Clinton’s only...
Bernie Sanders never understood the epic quality of the Clinton scandals. In his first debate, he famously dismissed the email issue, it being beneath the dignity of a great revolutionary to deal in...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Trump’s immigration policy finally retreats to more...
The one great service of Donald Trump’s extended peregrinations on immigration policy is to have demonstrated how, in the end, there’s only one place to go. You can rail for a year about the weak-kneed...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: China snubs President Obama and gets away with it, of...
The president of the United States lands with all the majesty of Air Force One, waiting to exit the front door and stride down the rolling staircase to the red-carpeted tarmac. Except that there is no...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Hillary sharpens, Trump softens – she’s falling as he’s...
If you are the status quo candidate in a change election in which the national mood is sour and two-thirds of the electorate think the country is on the wrong track, what do you do? Attack....
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Presidential campaign sinks to somewhere between zany...
And now, less than six weeks from the election, what is the main event of the day? A fight between the Republican presidential nominee and a former Miss Universe, whom he had 20 years ago called “Miss...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: In normal election year, Obama’s legacy would be...
Only amid the most bizarre, most tawdry, most addictive election campaign in memory could the real story of 2016 be so effectively obliterated, namely, that with just four months left in the Obama...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Trump’s ‘lock her up’ campaign is an affront to...
The second presidential debate – bloody, muddy and raucous – was just enough to save Donald Trump’s campaign from extinction, but not enough to restore his chances of winning, barring an act of God or...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: WikiLeaks disclosures about Clinton a warm gun but still...
The case against Hillary Clinton could have been written before the recent WikiLeaks and FBI disclosures. But these documents do provide hard textual backup. The most sensational disclosure was the...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Is President Obama preparing a final shot at Israel?
Last week, the U.N.’s premier cultural agency, UNESCO, approved a resolution viciously condemning Israel (referred to as “the Occupying Power”) for various alleged trespasses and violations of the...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Now is the time for Republicans to show they can deliver
Donald Trump won fair and square and, as Hillary Clinton said in her concession speech, is owed an open mind and a chance to lead. It is therefore incumbent upon conservatives (like me) who have been...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: How segmented politics left Clinton’s campaign resting...
One of the more salutary outcomes of the recent election is that Democrats are finally beginning to question the wisdom of basing their fortunes on identity politics. Having counted on the allegiance...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: After a mere 25 years, the triumph of the West is...
Twenty-five years ago – December 1991 – communism died, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disappeared. It was the largest breakup of an empire in modern history and not a shot was fired. It was...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Trump is mesmerizing the media with tweets about pretty...
The most amusing part of the Trump transition has been watching its effortless confounding of the media, often in fewer than 140 characters. One morning, after a Fox News report on lefty nuttiness at...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: From Democrats, self-righteousness over Trump’s Cabinet...
Democrats spent the first two decades of the post-Cold War era rather relaxed about Russian provocations and revanchism. President Obama famously mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 for suggesting that Russia...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: The fall of Aleppo is a fitting end to Obama’s foreign...
The fall of Aleppo just weeks before Barack Obama leaves office is a fitting stamp on his Middle East policy of retreat and withdrawal. The pitiable pictures from the devastated city showed the true...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: U.N. vote on Israel is Obama’s most shameful legacy moment
“When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.” – Barack Obama, AIPAC conference, March 4, 2012 The audience – overwhelmingly Jewish, passionately pro-Israel and supremely gullible – applauded wildly....
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: U.S. faces tough strategic decision as North Korea...
You can kick the can down the road, but when Kim Jong Un announces, as he did last Sunday, that “we have reached the final stage in preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic rocket,”...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Obama reveals his true self during his final days in office
Barack Obama did not go out quietly. His unquiet final acts were, in part, overshadowed by a successor who refused to come in quietly and, in part, by Obama’s own endless, sentimental farewell tour....
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Trump’s inaugural address abdicates America’s role as...
The flurry of bold executive orders and of highly provocative Cabinet nominations (such as a secretary of education who actually believes in school choice) has been encouraging to conservative skeptics...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Harry Reid cleared the way for President Trump’s nominees
There are many people to thank for the coming accession of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump for winning the election. Hillary Clinton for losing it. Mitch McConnell for holding open the...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Even if Flynn’s talks are not a crime, the cover-up is...
It’s a Watergate-era cliche that the cover-up is always worse than the crime. In the Mike Flynn affair, we have the first recorded instance of a cover-up in the absence of a crime. Being covered up...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Trump’s grown-ups help the world deal with his bouts of...
At the heart of Donald Trump’s foreign policy team lies a glaring contradiction. On the one hand, it is composed of men of experience, judgment and traditionalism. Meaning, they are all very much...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: State attorneys general band together to lead revolution
Among the many unintended legacies of Barack Obama, one has gone largely unnoticed: the emergence of a novel form of resistance to executive overreach, a check-and-balance improvised in reaction to his...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Washington conspiracy games distract from far more...
When he was Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz was once asked about the CIA’s disavowal of involvement in a mysterious recent bombing in Lebanon. Replied Shultz: “If the CIA denies...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: For those trying to replace Obamacare, all options lead...
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but for governments it’s not that easy. Once something is given – say, health insurance coverage to 20 million Americans – you take it away at your peril. This...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: In Trumpian era, American democracy is not so decadent,...
Under the dark gray cloud, amid the general gloom, allow me to offer a ray of sunshine. The last two months have brought a pleasant surprise: Turns out the much-feared, much-predicted withering of our...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: America may be on the road to single-payer health care
Repeal-and-replace is not quite dead. It has been declared so, but what that means is that, for now, the president has (apparently) washed his hands of it and the House Republicans appear unable to...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Gorsuch case brings karma, precedent and the nuclear option
For euphemism, dissimulation and outright hypocrisy, there is nothing quite as entertaining as the periodic Senate dust-ups over Supreme Court appointments and the filibuster. The arguments for and...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: U.S. still has cards to play in North Korean crisis
The crisis with North Korea may appear trumped up. It’s not. Given that Pyongyang has had nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles for more than a decade, why the panic now? Because North Korea is headed...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: The populist wave has crested, but it’s a pause, not a...
Yesterday’s conventional wisdom: A wave of insurgent populism is sweeping the West, threatening its foundational institutions – the European Union, the Western alliance, even liberal democracy itself....
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: President Trump is somewhat normalized, but still scary
With near unanimity, my never-Trump friends confess a sense of relief. It could have been worse. They thought it would be worse. A deep apprehension still endures but the international order remains...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: With both Republicans and Democrats angry, Trump had to...
It was implausible that FBI Director James Comey was fired in May 2017 for actions committed in July 2016 – the rationale contained in the memo by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. It was...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: No guardrails of our democracy can contain the chaos of...
The pleasant surprise of the First 100 Days is over. The action was hectic, heated, often confused, but well within the bounds of normalcy. Policy (e.g., health care) was being hashed out, a Supreme...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Any peace in the Middle East must start in Saudi Arabia
The quixotic American pursuit of Middle East peace is a perennial. It invariably fails, yet every administration feels compelled to give it a try. The Trump administration is no different. It will fail...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: President Trump hands Putin a victory with his speech to...
So what if, in his speech last week to NATO, Donald Trump didn’t explicitly reaffirm the provision that an attack on one is an attack on all? What’s the big deal? Didn’t he affirm a general commitment...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: At stake in the Mideast is consolidation of the Shiite...
The U.S. shoots down a Syrian fighter-bomber. Iran launches missiles into eastern Syria. Russia threatens to attack coalition aircraft west of the Euphrates. What is going on? It might appear a...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: If you’re not always going to win, why even play the game?
In mathematics, when you’re convinced of some eternal truth but can’t quite prove it, you offer it as a hypothesis (with a portentous capital H) and invite the world, future generations if need be, to...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: We’re running out of time to stop a nuclear North Korea
Across 25 years and five administrations, we have kicked the North Korean can down the road. We are now out of road. On July 4, North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile apparently...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Trumpites should know that bungled collusion is still...
The Russia scandal has entered a new phase, and there’s no going back. For six months, the White House claimed that this scandal was nothing more than innuendo about Trump campaign collusion with...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Let the parents take little Charlie Gard where they wish
One cannot imagine a more wrenching moral dilemma than the case of little Charlie Gard. He is a beautiful 11-month-old boy with an incurable genetic disease. It depletes his cells’ energy-producing...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: As Trump taunts Sessions, first crack appears in...
Transparency, thy name is Trump, Donald Trump. No filter, no governor, no editor lies between his impulses and his public actions. He tweets, therefore he is. Ronald Reagan was so self-contained and...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: Trump’s worst week was a strong one for American democracy
A future trivia question and historical footnote, the spectacular 10-day flameout of Anthony Scaramucci qualifies as the most entertaining episode yet of the ongoing reality show that is the Trump...
View ArticleCharles Krauthammer: A note to my readers: I have only a few weeks to live
This is the final verdict. My fight against the cancer that began last year is coming to an end.
View Article
