Issue August 17-24, 2018 - The Week Magazine (2024)

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Main storiesEditor’s letterWhen the U.S. gave my parents and me refuge from the USSR in 1976, the Soviet empire was at its zenith, and so were its efforts to export its repressive system. The USSR supplied plenty of evidence that its arrangement was freer than that of the U.S. After all, in the 1974 Soviet elections the unopposed, Communist-approved candidates got 99.8 percent of the vote. In 1979, that rose to 99.9 percent. When the Soviet legislature rubber-stamped the selection of Leonid Brezhnev as president (again), the entire body stood up and applauded—five times. The Soviets insisted this was “democracy” like they had in the U.S., just the “socialist” kind. For most of post-WWII history some variation of “We have our own kind of democracy” has anchored the rhetoric of U.S. foes.…3 min

Main storiesTrump admits his son sought Russia’s helpWhat happenedPresident Trump has once again altered the narrative of his son Donald Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, with the president explicitly admitting that the purpose was to collect damaging information on Hillary Clinton. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics—and it went nowhere,” the president tweeted Sunday. The admission directly contradicted a July 2017 statement—attributed to Donald Jr. but later confirmed to have been dictated by the president—that said the meeting was primarily about adoptions of Russian children. Federal law prohibits campaigns from accepting a “thing of value” from foreign nationals. The president continued to maintain he had no prior knowledge of the meeting, and that the Russians provided…3 min

Main storiesIt wasn’t all badWhen a nail salon in a Michigan Walmart refused to give a disabled woman a manicure, a cashier at the store stepped up and painted her nails instead. Salon employees turned away Angela Peters because her hands shake as a result of cerebral palsy. Standing a few feet away, Walmart cashier Ebony Harris saw what happened and took action. She helped Peters pick out some polish, set up a DIY manicure station at a café table, and then spent her break prettying Peters’ nails. “I just wanted to make her day special,” Harris says. “Plus she’s a sweetie.”A Seattle man celebrated his 100th birthday in a truly daredevil fashion: by falling out of a plane at 14,000 feet. Having gone skydiving the previous year in near-secrecy, Stu Williamson decided to…1 min

Main storiesManafort’s right-hand man turns on himWhat happenedRick Gates, the star prosecution witness in the tax and fraud trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, testified this week that he committed numerous crimes at the direction of his former business partner, while defense attorneys sought to paint Gates as a habitual liar who swindled Manafort. Gates, who served as the veteran Republican operative’s deputy for more than a decade, described how he worked with Manafort in Ukraine to help elect a Russia-aligned president in 2010—work for which Manafort was paid tens of millions of dollars by Ukrainian oligarchs. To dodge U.S. taxes, Gates said, those payments flowed through shell companies and bank accounts in Cyprus, which were tapped to support Manafort’s luxurious lifestyle in the U.S. When the money ran out, Gates said, Manafort lied…2 min

Main storiesA warning on election interferenceWhat happenedConfirming that Russia is still targeting American elections, the Trump administration this week sought to reassure the public that it is working to defend against foreign interference. Making a rare appearance in the White House briefing room, the nation’s top intelligence officials described a “24/7, 365-days-a-year” campaign to influence the 2018 midterm elections and beyond (see Briefing). Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told reporters that, in addition to spreading misinformation on social media, the Russians have shown a “willingness and a capability” to hack into election infrastructure such as voter rolls and voting machines. “Our democracy is in the crosshairs,” Nielsen said.The briefing came several days after President Trump held his first-ever National Security Council meeting dedicated to election security. Afterward, the White House released a statement saying that…2 min

Controversy of the weekSarah Jeong: Does anti-white racism exist?Did The New York Times just hire a racist to help write its editorials? To anyone not steeped in the Left’s new “religion of social constructionism,” said Andrew Sullivan in NYMag.com, the answer is obviously yes. Last week the Times added Korean-American tech writer Sarah Jeong, 30, to its editorial board, apparently in the full knowledge that Jeong has for years been spewing racial hatred against white people on Twitter. “White men are bulls---,” reads one Jeong tweet. “F--- white women” is another. She went further with “#cancelwhitepeople,” and by sneering that pale skin makes white people “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” Replace the word “white” with “black,” or “Jewish,” needless to say, and Jeong would be fired in a heartbeat. Instead, the Times is defending her,…3 min

Issue August 17-24, 2018 - The Week Magazine (2024)

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