If you happen to be on Martha’s Vineyard this week, me too and I’ll be doing my first event for The Breakup — tomorrow at 4 pm at the Chilmark Free Library. Come! www.chilmarkma.gov/chilmark-lib...

I desperately wish Peter Serafinowicz hadn’t stopped making his brilliant Sassy Trump videos in 2018. youtu.be/d76gCuIct4A?... I’m almost tempted to say I’d welcome good AI versions, but no.

The Best of Peter Serafinowicz's Sassy Trump

YouTube video by Papa Woody

youtu.be

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d ago

Trump: "Now we have a big decision to make. Do we take the pavers that are red -- the red, brick pavers -- and do we change them into a granite?"

I liked Nolan’s The Odyssey. For exactly the reasons @ezraklein.bsky.social lays out in this very excellent piece, beautifully written and produced. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/o...

Opinion | Christopher Nolan’s Trojan Horse

The big trick of his “Odyssey” is smuggling the core of Judeo-Christian ethics into an ancient Greek epic.

nytimes.com

i like that even in his wildest ai created weird fever dreams he still has little sausage fingers

The ultimate malignant narcissist posting a perfectly unwitting self-parody of his malignant narcissism.

Jeanine Pirro being the first minion to stand up and tell the simple truth about one of his most preposterous lies is definitely one of this term’s Top 10 Not On My Bingo Card items. (Along with his Mamdani lovefest.)

Trump’s war on Iran is costing US taxpayers and drivers tens of billions, but it’s minting money for his oil company pals. Exxon Mobil’s latest quarterly profit is $14.5 billion, more than twice what it was a year ago, and Chevron’s shot up 5X from $2.5 billion to $12 billion.

With only 906 days left, he’s got only his shrinking cult. The 15% who still “strongly” approve of him overall. The 17% to 28% who like how he’s dealing with inflation, gas prices, Iran, and the White House ballroom, and say he’s “in touch with the problems of ordinary people.”

Surprised I’d never come across this remarkable statistic until now: “In 2024, Trump received 82% of the white evangelical/born again vote. He lost the rest of the vote by a whopping 18-point margin, 58% to 40%.”

Excellent! As it happens, earlier today I was reading about how the most post-presidentially prosecutable crimes that Trump has committed Involve this very scam.

You should read this article (and watch the videos, including this one www.nytimes.com/video/world/...) because 29-year-old David González seems like a fabulous Cuban hero. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/w...

The Cuban Throwing Parties to Fight for Political Change (Gift Article)

David González has suddenly become the host of Havana’s hottest parties amid its energy crisis. Can he turn them into a movement?

nytimes.com

My novel comes out in 3 weeks. If you’re in New York, I’ll be discussing it with wonderful Rosanne Cash at the wonderful Mcnally Jackson Books in the Seaport on 8/20. Come! RSVP: checkout.square.site/merchant/MLN... And you can preorder a signed personalized book: mcnallyjackson.com/book/9781984...

Excellent clear-eyed overview of the corner our spoiled, arrogant, insecure, ignorant, incompetent, unhappy stumblebum president seems to have finally, inescapably gotten himself into. By the superb @SangerNYT.bsky.social. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/u...

Trump Seems Trapped by Iran War, Even as He Wields the World’s Biggest Hammer (Gift Article)

A president who thought there were no limits to his power has discovered several, leaving him more frustrated and erratic.

nytimes.com

The unnecessary years-long U.S. war on Iraq with a WMD pretext that a Republican POTUS declared won and done six weeks in. And now an unnecessary U.S. war on Iran with a WMD pretext the Republican president declared won and done for the 39th time fifteen weeks in, six weeks ago.

In a new @pewresearch.org study of 12,000 Polymarket bettors, one in nine of them placed more than 1,000 bets during the six weeks of the study—25 a day. It reminded me of our cuckoo compulsive president, who averages 27 daily posts on his web site, which is losing $4.5M a day.

How interesting: conservative @nytimes.com columnist Bret Stephens says he’d “vote for any Democrat in 2028 over Vance” for president, including @AOC. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/o...

Opinion | How Can Anyone Trust This Crew With Anything? (Gift Article)

JD Vance isn’t going to save us. Neither is Pete Hegseth.

nytimes.com

Just noticed an uncanny mirror-image symmetry of Israeli atrocities in Gaza and Russian atrocities in Ukraine. The 5th of 5 acts in the 1948 Convention’s genocide definition, “forcibly transferring children,” is the one Russia’s indicted for & the one Israel’s not officially considered to have done.

Are we absolutely sure Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer aren’t the same person?

I asked Google exactly how long each quarterfinal & semifinal World Cup game had lasted. It told me those times—but also gave a precise 90something-minute figure for the Spain-Argentina game. Hallucination? Or glitch in the Matrix exposing the simulation and/or time travelers?

In his 3-hour conversation with the vice-president, Joe Rogan said of Epstein, “Most people think he was Mossad.” Vance apparently agrees with those people: “Yeah, Mossad or C.I.A., or some other deep state,” he replied, “whether in America or Israel or another country.” And then went on. 1/2

My novel The Breakup comes out in a month, and that evening of 8/18 I'll be at @politicsprose.bsky.social in D.C. talking about it with Sean @rameswaram.bsky.social. Join us, Washingtonians! Everybody else, watch online! politics-prose.com/kurt-anderse... www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/594494...

The Breakup by Kurt Andersen: 9781984801371 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

A marriage cracks apart as a near-future United States redraws its borders in this penetrating and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Fantasyland. “This remarkable book contai...

penguinrandomhouse.com

Curious, unintentionally very funny @nytimes.com caption for this photo of candidates for the Maine Democratic Senate nomination, one of whom is almost sorta kinda smiling.

Republican ThomTillis’s excellent speech on the Senate floor yesterday afternoon savaging Trump’s desperate last-minute midterm-election-rigging gambit got buried today, but it’s worth watching. A bit of it: www.instagram.com/reel/Da359_d... All 11 minutes: www.c-span.org/clip/us-sena...

Instagram

Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.

instagram.com

The Breakup is my new novel, and I am so looking forward to this conversation about it. Please join us! RSVP: mcnallyjackson.com/event/2026-0...

Kurt Andersen & Rosanne Cash

McNally Jackson is an independent bookstore with five New York locations.

mcnallyjackson.com

Watch this—Trump’s 2016 campaign finale ad. Except for a quick passing reference to “massive illegal immigration,” 2 minutes of fierce left-wing economic populism. The Big Lie that elected him. And the ultimate Every Accusation Is A Confession. www.c-span.org/program/vign... 1/2

Not @theonion.com.

So perfectly played by @ossoff.bsky.social. “Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question— to have to indulge the president’s delusions? We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. Why can you not give it?” 1/2

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w ago

OSSOFF: Who won the 2020 election? CLAYTON: Uhm, you know, I'm not going to do this with you O: This is a job interview. You have an obligation to be honest with the committee. Who won the 2020 election? C: I'm not gonna get into that with you O: You're not being honest or forthright C: ...

The third paragraph in this story in today's @nytimes.com by the great British football writer (and Italian knight) James Horncastle absolutely made my day.