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☆ Opinion | Will the Rotters Keep Hounding Kate?
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-22 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

With her mop of red Renaissance curls and steely ambition, Brooks became the favorite lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch. But the moral is about amorality; the story underscores the viciousness and lack of decency of the British tabloids in the hacking scandal. I thought of that when I watched the video of Princess Kate sitting on a bench amid daffodils, telling her heartbreaking story of a cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy. Cancer is a very personal thing, and how you tell your children is the most personal of all. Princess Diana’s sons blame that ravenous behemoth for hounding their mother.

Persons: J.T, Rogers, Bartlett Sher, Rebekah Brooks, Brooks, Rupert Murdoch, Murdoch, Don Van Natta Jr, Jo Becker, Graham Bowley, Saffron Burrows, Princess Kate, Princess Diana’s, Harry Organizations: Lincoln Center, British, New York Times, Cancer, Mirror Group Newspapers Locations: Britain, British

☆ Opinion | My Joe Biden Fantasy
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-02 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I slipped away from this nightmarish election campaign into a delicious dream the other evening. I dreamed that, when Joe Biden gets up to reset his beleaguered presidency at the State of the Union address, he gives this astonishing speech:Mr. Speaker. Man, Mike Johnson was a nobody just weeks ago — now he’s Neville Chamberlain. I remember how to lift people up, not tear them down and pit them against one another. Donald Trump wants to yank us back on women’s rights, the environment, mail-in voting — actually, all voting.

Persons: Joe Biden, Mike Johnson, Neville Chamberlain, Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, yank, — Organizations: State, NATO Locations: United States, Vegas, L.A

☆ Opinion | Sex and the Capital City
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-24 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

“The Golden Bachelor” showed that sex is not just for spring chickens. Hearing aids and making out in a hot tub can go blissfully together. Now comes the Golden President. Even though fretful questions about his age have engulfed Joe Biden’s campaign, one thing is clear: His romance with Jill is still crackling. At a party at his house at the Naval Observatory when he was vice president, he told me about the frisson of watching his wife come down the stairs, dressed up for a special occasion.

Persons: ”, Joe Biden’s, Jill Organizations: Naval Observatory

☆ Opinion | The Florida Fraudster and the Russian ‘Killer’
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-17 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988, he was so eager to wrap himself in the American flag that he took us to a New Jersey flag factory. At the time, it seemed like a cynical move by Republicans, trying to bogart patriotism. That vanishing breed of Republican pledged allegiance to the American flag. “Bush wrapped himself in the American flag,” David Axelrod said. “Trump wants to wrap himself in the Mar-a-Lago flag.”

Persons: George H.W, bogart, Donald Trump’s, Bush, ” David Axelrod, “ Trump Organizations: Republicans Locations: New Jersey, America

☆ Opinion | Mr. President, Ditch the Stealth About Health
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-10 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Once, when my father was in West Virginia on police business, a man approached him and demanded to know about “rumors” that President Franklin Roosevelt was “crippled.” The man threatened to beat up my father or anyone who said F.D.R. (I have a picture of my father, in a fedora, guarding Roosevelt at a Senators baseball game, with the president standing up with the help of his braces to throw out the first pitch.) Like others around Roosevelt, my dad kept a tight lip about the paralysis of the president, who did not want to seem weak. With the help of a complicit press corps, a censoring Secret Service and a variety of ruses, F.D.R. was even able to campaign giving the impression that he was mobile.

Persons: Franklin Roosevelt, Roosevelt, West Virginia ruffian Organizations: D.C, Senators, West Virginia Locations: West Virginia

☆ Opinion | Inside Trump’s Not-So-Swift Brain
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-03 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It’s easy to imagine what’s going through Donald Trump’s head right now. The thoughts pinballing through Trump’s cortex might be something like this:“I like Taylor Swift. She’s beautiful, just my type, unlike that wack job E. Jean Carroll and her sick lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. “I’ll tell you what: The idea that Taylor Swift is more popular than me is a joke. Oh, what a beautiful day that was.

Persons: Donald Trump’s, He’s fulminating, Nikki Haley, Taylor Swift, She’s, Jean Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, “ Rachel Maddow, Jean, Rachel, “, Swifties Organizations: New, Capitol Locations: Mar, New Hampshire

☆ Opinion | The Ogre Gorging on America
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-27 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

If you can imagine the lobby bar of the Manchester Marriott as an Anglo-Saxon mead hall, I can explain how it felt to cover the New Hampshire primary. I will need the help of the late Seamus Heaney, who described what it was like to be quaffing in Heorot Hall while Grendel lurked and swooped through the frost-stiffened north. In his lyrical translation of “Beowulf,” Heaney described Grendel as “the terror-monger,” the “captain of evil” and “the dread of the land.”He wrote that the fiend “ruled in defiance of right” and was “malignant by nature, he never showed remorse.”

Persons: Seamus Heaney, Grendel lurked, ” Heaney, Grendel, ” Organizations: Manchester Marriott Locations: Hampshire, Heorot

☆ Calista Flockhart Is Back, With a Flock of Venomous Swans
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-26 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

On a chilly January weekend in Los Angeles, I turned into a truffle pig. I foraged relentlessly all over town, looking for truffle fries. “My sister gave me this for Christmas,” I explained sheepishly to the famously lissome Calista Flockhart as I slid into a booth on the terrace of the Georgian Hotel. “In fact, I just ordered — no kidding — a pair of Spanx jeans. They’re very wide.”

Persons: foraged, ”, sheepishly, Calista Flockhart, “ Organizations: Georgian Locations: Los Angeles

☆ Opinion | Can the MAGA Shrew Be Tamed?
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-20 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Maureen Dowd has a cold. Not quite the same ring as “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” Gay Talese’s legendary 1966 Esquire profile of the crooner. So on caucus night, I stayed in my hotel room watching TV and munching on Cheez-Its, flipping between wins and losses in Hollywood and Iowa. There wasn’t any custom Louis Vuitton on display in the frozen tundra of Iowa, but there were some parallels — beyond the abysmal turnout for both shows. The Emmys did a tribute to “The Sopranos” and James Gandolfini.

Persons: Maureen Dowd, Frank Sinatra, Gay, Louis Vuitton, James Gandolfini, Donald Trump, Gravano, John Gotti Locations: Des Moines, Hollywood and Iowa, Iowa

☆ Opinion | Here Comes Trump, the Abominable Snowman
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-13 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

It’s the latest hot TV genre: a woman in a frigid outpost, bundled in puffy outerwear, trying to uncover truths buried in ice. And now I find myself in puffy outerwear, trudging through snow in glacial Iowa, trying to uncover truths buried in the ice. I don’t have as much of a mystery to unravel as the TV detectives. The only thing the horde of reporters here is trying to figure out is if Donald Trump will win the caucuses on Monday with a plurality or if he can pull off a majority. No one is expecting a Jimmy Carter/Barack Obama-style upset.

Persons: puffy outerwear, ” Jodie Foster, ” Emma Corrin, Donald Trump, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama Organizations: puffy Locations: Alaska, Iceland, Iowa

☆ Opinion | Sam Altman, Sugarcoating the Apocalypse
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-02 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

My favorite “Twilight Zone” episode is the one where aliens land and, in a sign of their peaceful intentions, give world leaders a book. Government cryptographers work to translate the alien language. They decipher the title — “To Serve Man” — and that’s reassuring, so interplanetary shuttles are set up. But as the cryptographers proceed, they realize — too late — that it’s a cookbook. It was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit to serve man, to keep an eye on galloping A.I.

Persons: —, — Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman —, A.I, Mary Shelley Organizations: San Locations: San Francisco

☆ Opinion | Should Biden Bow Out, as David Axelrod Urged?
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-26 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

To the Editor:Re “The Axe Is Sharp,” by Maureen Dowd (column, Nov. 19):While reading Ms. Dowd’s column on whether President Biden should run for a second term, I was struck by a historical parallel. Like Mr. Biden, President Lyndon B. Johnson had served a deeply charismatic president and used his extensive senatorial experience to seal that president’s vision with legislation. But facing health concerns and declining popularity because of the Vietnam War, as well as surprisingly strong opposition by Robert F. Kennedy, Johnson decided that his moment had passed. As David Axelrod has noted, it is time to consider allowing other Democratic leaders to step forward. Mr. Biden has served the nation honorably for longer than most Americans have been alive, guiding the country through dark times and leaving a clear legislative mark.

Persons: Maureen Dowd, Biden, Lyndon B, Johnson, Robert F, Kennedy, David Axelrod Organizations: Democratic Locations: Vietnam

☆ Opinion | My Brother’s Thanksgiving Lament
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-21 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

We could use some prayers right now, in a country inflamed with hate and prejudice and generational mistrust. Americans are at each other’s throats, living in different realities, fraught by two brutal, calamitous wars. ****Less than a year before the country chooses a president, President Biden’s poll numbers are almost catastrophic. While majorities of the country find both Trump and Biden unacceptable, Trump remains the Republican front-runner, bolstered by what his supporters see as overeager Democratic prosecutions. This scenario holds great peril for Republicans because Trump is the weakest candidate against Biden.

Persons: Kevin, Biden’s, Donald Trump, Biden, Trump Organizations: Trump, Republican, Democratic, Republicans, Biden

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president's age should not be a primary focus. “What we say is we have to judge him by what he’s done, not by his numbers,” Jean-Pierre said. “I would put the president’s stamina, the president’s wisdom, ability to get this done on behalf of the American people, against anyone. Political Cartoons View All 1260 Images“By the way, it’s my birthday today,” Biden told a crowd on the White House South Lawn as he pardoned Thanksgiving turkeys Liberty and Bell. Jean-Pierre said Monday that the Bidens would spend the president's birthday as they traditionally have, with a family gathering for Thanksgiving on Nantucket, and that they planned to have coconut cake, another tradition.

Persons: Joe Biden, Karine Jean, Pierre, it’s, ”, Biden, he’s, ” Jean, Pierre said, “, ” Biden, Donald Trump, Trump, —, Bruce A, Aronwald, David Axelrod, Barack Obama, ” Axelrod, Maureen Dowd, They’ve, Hillary, Hillary Clinton, Jean, ” “ I'm, “ It's, “ We’re, Jill Colvin Organizations: WASHINGTON, White, U.S, Bell, Associated Press, NORC, for Public Affairs Research, New York Times, Trump Locations: Ukraine, Israel, U.S, New Jersey, Nantucket, New York

☆ Opinion | The Axe Is Sharp
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-18 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It’s what he has fought all his life for, even battling his way through “friendly fire,” as Hunter Biden told me, in the Obama White House, when some Obama aides undermined him. It must have been awful when Obama took his vice president to lunch and nudged him aside for Hillary to run in 2016. He needs to gather the sharpest minds in his party and hear what they have to say, not engage in petty feuds. Of course, if he’s convicted, that could turbocharge his campaign even more. It’s a perfect playing field for the maleficent Trump: He learned in the 2016 race that physical and rhetorical violence could rev up his base.

Persons: Hunter Biden, Obama, Hillary, Biden, Trump, Jack Smith’s, that’s, maleficent Trump, Paul Pelosi’s, Jonathan Karl, ” Organizations: Biden, House Locations: Jack Smith’s Washington

☆ Opinion | Ivanka Trump, Witness for the Prosecution
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-11 | by ( Nina Burleigh | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The woman Republicans once talked of as a candidate for president — after her dad’s eight years, of course — is both known and a cipher. They seemed to have in their possession way too many Trump Organization documents with her arabesque signature and too many of her emails in which nine-figure loans were being discussed. Before her stint in Washington with her father, Ms. Trump was pals with the children of the American aristocracy — even if their parents scorned him as a parvenu and a golf cheat. A granddaughter of a woman who worked as a maid in the Carnegie mansion and a great-granddaughter of the widowed German immigrant who gave the Trump Organization its start, Ms. Trump was the first Trump woman to the manner born. For that, even more than the beauty her father frequently and creepily extolled, she played a special role in the Trump Organization.

Persons: —, ” Barry Diller, Maureen Dowd, Trump, ” Alexandra Wrage, ”, Letitia James Organizations: Republicans, New, Prosecutors, Trump Organization, Carnegie, Trump Locations: New York, Washington

☆ Billionaire FBI informant Peter Thiel dished about two Kremlin invites to private Putin meetings
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-10 | by ( Mattathias Schwartz | Hans-Martin Tillack | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +18 min

It was Angermayer who introduced Bisslinger to Thiel at the party, Thiel would later tell the FBI. After some small talk, Bisslinger made a pitch to Thiel: Thiel should travel to Russia to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. If Thiel chose to attend, Bisslinger said, Bisslinger would arrange for him to meet privately with Putin. "Even if Mr. Angermayer did introduce Mr. Thiel and Mr. Bisslinger," the lawyers wrote in another letter, "Mr. Angermayer is not—and cannot be—responsible for whatever Mr. Bisslinger and Mr. Thiel may or may not have discussed." At his 40th birthday, he connected Peter Thiel with a Russian diplomat, Thiel later told the FBI.

Persons: Peter Thiel, Christian Angermayer, Thiel, Daniil Bisslinger, Bisslinger, Vladimir Putin's, Angermayer, Putin, Maksim Konstantinov, —, Frank Figliuzzi, Vladimir Putin, — Charles Johnson —, Johnathan Buma, Johnson, Welt, Dmitry Peskov, John Lamparski, Donald Trump, — Thiel, Der Spiegel, he'd, Elon Musk, Musk, Thiel —, he's, Palantir, He's, Uma Thurman, Robbie Williams, Queen Latifah, Paul Kagame, Dan McCrum, John Kerry, Richard Grenell, Kerry, Sensei Biotherapeutics, Trump, Dmitry Medvedev, Medvedev, Maureen Dowd, Alexander Schütz, Eva Schütz, Schütz, — Heinz, Christian Strache, Markus Braun, Jan Marsalek, Marsalek, Caroline Haskins, Katherine Long, Jack Newsham, Mattathias Schwartz, Hans, Martin Tillack Organizations: Kremlin, Tech, Pentagon, CIA, Facebook, SpaceX, Kremlin's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russian Embassy, Thiel, St ., Economic, Getty, FBI, Atlantic, Bisslinger, Germany, Elon, Russia, NSA, US Special Operations Command, National Health Service, Apeiron Investment, Munich Security, intel, Trump, State Department, Angermayer's, PayPal, Nasdaq, Sciences, The New York Times, Deutsche Bank, Welt Locations: Silicon Valley, Schloss Neuwaldegg, Vienna, Silicon, Moscow, Russian, Berlin, Russia, St, St . Petersburg, Petersburg, Ukraine, Europe, Germany, NATO, Crimea, Ukrainian, Sevastopol, Palantir, Washington, Rwanda, Baltic, Belarus, Iran, Angermayer's Malta, Munich, China, China's, Austrian, Austria, Exxpress, Wirecard, schwartz79@protonmail.com

☆ Biden’s Staff May Be Giving Ammunition to Trumpsters - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-16 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Since he became president, Biden has sharply curbed how much he talks to the press, rarely giving interviews. He limits his press conferences mostly to duets with foreign leaders, where he can put his foreign policy relationships and experience on display. There’s something poignant about watching a guy who used to delight in his Irish gift of gab be muzzled. He knows his staff thinks he has a problem of popping off, and I think that has made him more timid and more cloistered. And when he’s more isolated, he seems sadder maybe because he’s not drawing energy from crowds and journalists the way he used to; perhaps his overprotective staff has gotten into his head.

Persons: Biden, preselect questioners, nix, “, ”, he’s Organizations: White Locations: Covid

☆ Opinion | Living and Dying in ¾ Time
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-09 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Think of them as elusive, shimmering creatures from another planet. I don’t think I ever met anyone as warm. Maybe he liked reporters because he started as a journalist, writing for Billboard magazine. I went with him to Walter Reed medical center when he sang for wounded Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. During the Covid years, he did “cabin fever Zooms” with health care workers from across the country who were Parrotheads.

Persons: WASHINGTON, Jimmy Buffett, Carl Hulse, —, “ You’re, Jimmy, Walter Reed Organizations: Billboard, The Locations: Washington, Iraq, Afghanistan

☆ Opinion | Anxiety in the Age of Barbie
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-02 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

It was “the summer of girl power,” a tour de force by a glittering troika. With pink dream houses, songs and sequins, Barbie, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé buoyed the economy and sent women’s confidence soaring. It is a major topic among moms: daughters struggling with anxiety or the effects of anti-anxiety medications, which can include weight gain and loss of libido. Many young college women are ping-ponging between anxiety, without pills, and numbness and body insecurity, with them. These young women seem to have everything, yet they are unable to fully enjoy a stretch in their life that should be sizzling with adventure and promise.

Persons: Barbie, Taylor Swift

☆ Opinion | Catch the Smug Mug on That Thug!
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-26 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

WASHINGTON — If there were any justice in the world, Donald Trump would have taken the Mug Shot of Dorian Gray. As with Oscar Wilde’s charismatic and amoral narcissist, the Picture of Donald Trump should have been a “foul parody,” a reflection of what the chancer has done with his life. It should have revealed a man so cynical and depraved that he is willing to smash our nation’s soul — our democracy — and destroy faith in our institutions. “Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away,” Wilde wrote of Dorian’s portrait. “The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.”

Persons: WASHINGTON, Donald Trump, Dorian Gray ., Oscar Wilde’s, narcissist, ” Wilde, ”

☆ Opinion | Live by RICO, Die by RICO
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-19 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

WASHINGTON — I first met Rudy Giuliani in 1986 when I was a Times reporter writing about corruption cases in New York. Gotham was awash in so much municipal sleeze, a detective joked that city employees were streaming into the F.B.I. Giuliani, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, got in a kerfuffle with Robert Morgenthau, the storied Manhattan district attorney who was a model for the D.A. in “Law & Order,” because Rudy considered the local prosecutor to be superfluous, so he wasn’t sharing information. Giuliani, 41, was already renowned as a scourge of organized crime.

Persons: WASHINGTON —, Rudy Giuliani, Giuliani, Robert Morgenthau, Rudy, Morgenthau Organizations: Southern, of Locations: New York, Gotham, U.S, of New York, Manhattan

☆ Opinion | Where’s the Vicuña Outrage?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-12 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

There was a single word that encapsulated such an outrage: vicuña. President Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Sherman Adams, accepted a vicuña coat from a Boston textile manufacturer doing business with the federal government. Now Thomas sneers at the law by failing to disclose gifts from billionaires eager to gain influence. (The gifts also benefited his wife, Ginni Thomas, who tried to help Trump overthrow the government.) ProPublica told the ka-ching: “At least 38 destination vacations … 26 private jet flights … a dozen V.I.P.

Persons: Dwight Eisenhower’s, Sherman Adams, Thomas sneers, Ginni Thomas, ProPublica, ” Thomas, Anita Hill, Joe Biden, Prevost Le, Thomas, Anthony Welters Organizations: Trump, Times Locations: Boston, ”, Washington

☆ Opinion | Coup-Coup-Ca-Choo, Trump-Style
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-05 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Donald Trump is in the dock for trying to cheat America out of a fair election and body-snatch the true electors. But the arrest of Trump does not arrest the coup. The fact is, we’re mid-coup, not post-coup. The former president is still in the midst of his diabolical “Who will rid me of this meddlesome democracy?” plot, hoping his dark knights will gallop off to get the job done. His father disdained losers and Trump would rather ruin the country than admit he lost.

Persons: WASHINGTON, Donald Trump, Trump, Biden, disdained Organizations: New York Times, Siena College

Initially Hunter Biden denied paternity, and later said he had no memory of fathering her at a low point in his life. Last week, the Bidens publicly acknowledged their grandchild, Navy Joan Roberts, for the first time ever. And I’m crazy about them,” Biden told a group of kids on the White House South Lawn in the spring. In public, the White House routinely described the issue as a private matter in which they had no role. “I just think being there is important, and it makes such a difference,” Biden told Shetty on his podcast.

Persons: Joe Biden, Hunter, Hunter Biden, Biden’s, “, ”, Joan Roberts, Biden, ” Biden, Jill Biden’s, Joey ”, ” —, –, Hunter “, Navy’s, Lunden Roberts, Hunter Biden “, Roberts, “ Biden, Maureen Dowd, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, he’s, Jay Shetty, Shetty, ” “ Jill Organizations: CNN, White, New York Times, House, Republicans, ”, ” Florida Gov, South, United Nations, People Magazine, Navy Locations: Arkansas, ” Florida, South Carolina, Hunter

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