Experts in the News | Miller Center

Grasping at Nuclear Straws

President for life Vladimir Putin’s latest attempt to unsettle the West and hint at nuclear escalation—announcing the intended movement of Russian tactical nuclear warheads into Belarus at the request of his Mussolini-like ally Alexander Lukashenko—is risible. It represents a continuation of Putin’s efforts to manipulate Western fears (and the well-documented concerns of the Biden administration) about the escalation risks of continued military assistance to Ukraine. It is deeply unserious but nevertheless has gained some resonance in mainstream media and on Twitter. Let’s be clear about this farce.

Eric Edelman

Trump’s possible indictment changes the script of American politics

“Since he came out of nowhere in 2016, we still fear underestimating his ability to get up from the mat, despite all the elections he has lost by big margins [two midterms and one presidential election],” warned presidential historian Russell Riley in an interview with EL PAÍS.

Russell Riley

Donald Trump, and the Sordid Tradition of Suppressing October Surprises

Ken Hughes, a researcher at the Miller Center of the University of Virginia, whose book “Chasing Shadows” chronicled the Nixon campaign’s efforts to impede peace talks, said Mr. Nixon had a strong lead in the polls over Mr. Humphrey in mid-September. By mid-October, Mr. Nixon’s lead was down to eight percentage points. Then, days before the election, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, and the news media began reporting chatter of looming talks to end the war.

Ken Hughes

Five employees of a US company in China were detained. Is China really "opening the door"?

Aynne Kokas, a scholar at the Miller School of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia who studies U.S.-China relations, told this station that U.S. schools must act in accordance with the State Department’s recommendations. “If the blockade or any type of political tension keeps our students stuck in China, we also face potential legal exposure, which is a problem."

Aynne Kokas

Building the Trump Template

"Like all things Trump, it's unprecedented," says Barbara Perry, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. "He's unprecedented and he's unpredictable. That's been the key to his success in politics and in business," Perry says, before quickly noting that Trump's businesses have also come into legal peril.

Barbara Perry

'Mourning the Presidents'

The death of a chief executive—sudden or expected, while still in office or decades later—is always a moment of national reckoning and reflection. Marc Selverstone, chair of the Miller Center's Presidential Recordings Program, moderates an expert discussion of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, a new book published by the Miller Center’s Studies on the Presidency Series with UVA Press.

Marc Selverstone