What Power Looks Like When Nobody Is Watching
Politics is complicated. Covering an American president even more so. What I know and what I do not know is sometimes simply a matter of what I decide to publicize. Publicize is the word of the century—or perhaps the word of politics itself. Last week, I was in New York for UN week. One morning, just after six, I woke at my members’ club, pulled a robe over my pajamas and took the elevator downstairs in search of coffee. The corridors were…
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George Logothetis: Humanity Cannot Survive as a Collection of Avatars on a Screen
There is no shortage of power in New York this week. Black SUVs sweep through Midtown with security details in tow. Heads of state and ministers compete for access to the secretary of state and the president. Technology companies pursue machines of ever greater capability. And the UN General Assembly brings its annual concentration of…
Rubio Turns a Bipartisan War-Powers Evasion Into Trump Doctrine
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he “loves” talking about the War Powers Act. What he seems to love more is the chance to do what Richard Nixon did first: pronounce it unconstitutional. At the close of an hourlong White House briefing on Tuesday, Rubio declared the landmark post-Vietnam law “100 percent unconstitutional.” In a rarely blunt…
Self-Sabotage in Black Tie: Why Honoring Trump Risks Further Eroding Trust in Washington Journalism
There is something faintly absurd about a Washington press corps that spends the year insisting on its adversarial role, only to gather — on cue, in evening dress — to celebrate proximity to the very power it is meant to scrutinize: the President of the United States. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner has long traded…
Alberto Simoni: Don’t Celebrate Too Soon After Orbán
Alberto Simoni, U.S. Bureau Chief for the Italian newspaper La Stampa, covers the White House and American politics at a moment of deep transatlantic uncertainty. A longtime foreign policy editor who spent a decade shaping the paper’s international coverage, Simoni has interviewed—and closely followed—the rise and now the fall of Viktor Orbán. In conversation with The Pavlovic…
We Still Do Not Know Melania Trump
We should start with a simple admission: we do not know Melania Trump. And after watching the documentary—now streaming on Amazon Prime —we still do not. The film presents access, but it delivers distance. Melania appears exactly as the world has come to expect her: composed, controlled, visually precise. She moves through scenes that feel almost staged—cars,…
Allies Are Waiting Out Trump
In London, the language has shifted. “Trump can’t be reasoned with anymore,” a diplomatic source told me as the war with Iran intensified and the rhetorical temperature between Washington and Keir Starmer rose in tandem. The remark was not offered lightly, nor by someone predisposed to defend Starmer. It was, instead, an admission of a broader European…