Experts in the News

Topic
headline

The economic data isn’t fake. But it is measuring the wrong things.

"For Trump, the risk is clear: If he continues to insist the economy is strong simply because headline numbers look good, he will repeat Biden’s mistake of governing through aggregates, rather than lived experience. And if Trump ignores looming affordability pressures, including expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, he hands Democrats a ready-made argument heading into the 2026 midterms."
Chris Lu
headline

Trump’s National Security Strategy: Atlas Shrugs

Filled with chest-thumping pomposity, shrill rhetoric (and more than a whiff of white nationalist/supremacist idiom), President Trump's new national security strategy marks a sharp break not only with the post–Cold War trajectory of American strategy, but more broadly with the direction of U.S. national security strategy since 1941. With 27 instances of Trump’s name in a mere 29 pages of text, it is a strategy document worthy of North Korea.
Eric Edelman
headline

When Power Stops Caring About the Law

Eric and Eliot dissect the revelations from the Washington Post about the double-tap strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat in September. They discuss whether the strike was a war crime, the resignation of SOUTHCOM Commander Admiral Alvin Holsey, and the administration's larger objectives in Venezuela. They also address the Department of Defense IG report on Signalgate, and explain why it does not constitute a 'complete exoneration'. They conclude with a discussion of the Witkoff-Kushner "mission to Moscow", the corruption crisis in Ukraine that ousted Presidential Chief of Staff Yermak, and the Wall Street Journal's coverage of the Trump cronies lining up to do business deals in Russia once the Ukrainians can be forced into submission.
Eric Edelman