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Sunday, September 27, 2020
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Click on the headline above to read Mac Deford columns by Thomas McAdams Deford published 2017-18.
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I wrote my first column for The Free Press exactly 16 years ago, a few weeks after 9/11, in response to a request from Alice McFadden, the publisher — then and now — for some insights into the Arab World, where I had spent the majority . . .
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I joined the Foreign Service in late summer of ’65, a year out of college; within six months I was headed to Saigon. It turned out that what Washington thought it needed — once LBJ had made his commitment to win the Vietnam War . . .
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For whatever reason Donald Trump’s supporters voted for him — because he’s anti-establishment, because they liked his unpolitical tell-it-as-I-see-it approach, or because they simply didn’t like Hillary — one of the reasons was . . .
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We’ve been told repeatedly in recent days that President Trump’s new chief of staff, John Kelly, appreciates that one of the key aspects of his job is controlling the president: making sure Trump doesn’t undermine his administration’s . . .
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“An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king” — Percy Bysshe Shelley’s opening line in his poem “England in 1819,” the last year of the reign of King George III. Our democratically elected king is certainly old — at 71, even older than . . .
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Manhattan real estate transactions are not the best preparation for nuclear gamesmanship. You don’t want to be on the wrong end of the nuclear equivalent of bankruptcy — with no one around to bail you out.
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There’s a little bit of irony in the fact that at the ASEAN meeting (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) which kicked off earlier this week in Manila, coincidentally on the 72nd anniversary of the US dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima . . .
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If there’s any cliche that offers an overview of President Trump’s first half year in office, that’s it: “You can’t make this stuff up.” Just when you thought you had seen it all, Anthony Scaramucci — Trump’s youthful alter-ego, his loudmouth . . .
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So Winston Churchill once said. But not all democracies are equal. How bad does it have to get before we realize our particular form of democracy is broken? But it’s half a year into his presidency and pollsters are already asking . . .
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The G-20 quickly turned into the G-19, with President Trump, the famous self-proclaimed dealmaker, isolated on the sidelines as the rest of them made their deals without him. Remember Trump’s slogan: “Make America Great Again”? . . .
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Hard on the heels of our celebration of the 241st anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is a slightly less patriotic milestone: the conclusion of Donald Trump’s first six months in office. Only 42 more to go! Six months . . .
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It’s a mad, mad world out there — so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the Mad Tweeter is running our world here. The Middle East has long been an anarchist’s dream, but in recent weeks it’s been even more chaotic than Trump’s . . .
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With ex-FBI Director Comey scheduled to appear before Congress this morning to discuss information that will surely prove embarrassing to our Tweeter-in-chief — that is, if he weren’t embarrassment-proof — one would have thought . . .
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Every day, another bombshell drops: President Trump fires FBI head Comey because he knew too much about Trump’s Russian connection. And just two days ago, the news that Trump had asked the director . . .
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Writing something coherent about the future of Donald Trump’s presidency, as it enters its fifth month, is like guessing the ending of a newly discovered Shakespeare comedy after reading the first act. . . .
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Trump’s Tuesday Afternoon Liquidation of FBI Director Comey was hardly the same as Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre. But Trump’s disastrous presidency, highlighted this week by the Senate’s . . .
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The media focus these last 10 days has been all about President Trump’s reaching his first 100 days in office — and what, if anything, he’s accomplished during them. Not much, seems a fair conclusion . . .
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Who’s bluffing? The dumpy little North Korean dictator with the weird hair? Or the dumpy big American president with the weird hair? With luck, we’ll never have to find out. . . .
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Syrian President Assad’s sarin gas bombing of a rebel-held town helped President Trump accomplish a virtual first in his presidency: bipartisan praise for his subsequent missile attack against a Syrian air base. . . .
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