Hailing a Cab With Your Phone

The Lasting Damage of Trump's 'Tapes' Bluff

David Frum

The president’s attempt to intimidate James Comey didn’t merely backfire—it may also embolden hostile regimes to conclude his other threats are equally empty.

This is a first for the Trump presidency: the first formal presidential retraction of a presidential untruth.

President Trump tweeted a warning to James Comey: The fired FBI director had better hope that no “tapes” existed that could contradict his account of what happened between the two men. Trump has now confessed that he had no basis for this warning. There were no such tapes, and the president knew it all along.

The tweet was intended to intimidate. It failed, spectacularly: Instead of silencing Comey, it set in motion the special counsel investigation that now haunts Donald Trump’s waking imagination.

But the failed intimidation does have important real world consequences.

First, it confirms America’s adversaries in their intensifying suspicion that the president’s tough words are hollow talk. The rulers of North Korea will remember the menacing April 4 statement from the Department of State that the United States had spoken enough about missile tests, implying that decisive actions lay ahead—and the lack of actions and deluge of further statements that actually followed.

The Cheapest Generation

Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissmann

Why Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy

In 2009, Ford brought its new supermini, the Fiesta, over from Europe in a brave attempt to attract the attention of young Americans. It passed out 100 of the cars to influential bloggers for a free six-month test-drive, with just one condition: document your experience online, whether you love the Fiesta or hate it.

Young bloggers loved the car. Young drivers? Not so much. After a brief burst of excitement, in which Ford sold more than 90,000 units over 18 months, Fiesta sales plummeted. As of April 2012, they were down 30 percent from 2011.

Don’t blame Ford. The company is trying to solve a puzzle that’s bewildering every automaker in America: How do you sell cars to Millennials (a k a Generation Y)? The fact is, today’s young people simply don’t drive like their predecessors did. In 2010, adults between the ages of 21 and 34 bought just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, down from the peak of 38 percent in 1985. Miles driven are down, too. Even the proportion of teenagers with a license fell, by 28 percent, between 1998 and 2008.

Power Causes Brain Damage

Jerry Useem

Over time, leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people—that were essential to their rise.

If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects. It can intoxicate. It can corrupt. It can even make Henry Kissinger believe that he’s sexually magnetic. But can it cause brain damage?

When various lawmakers lit into John Stumpf at a congressional hearing last fall, each seemed to find a fresh way to flay the now-former CEO of Wells Fargo for failing to stop some 5,000 employees from setting up phony accounts for customers. But it was Stumpf’s performance that stood out. Here was a man who had risen to the top of the world’s most valuable bank, yet he seemed utterly unable to read a room. Although he apologized, he didn’t appear chastened or remorseful. Nor did he seem defiant or smug or even insincere. He looked disoriented, like a jet-lagged space traveler just arrived from Planet Stumpf, where deference to him is a natural law and 5,000 a commendably small number. Even the most direct barbs—“You have got to be kidding me” (Sean Duffy of Wisconsin); “I can’t believe some of what I’m hearing here” (Gregory Meeks of New York)—failed to shake him awake.

朝核困局：当今最棘手的问题

Mark Bowden

对付朝鲜无上策可言，只有下策与下下策之分

Read this story in English.

三十分钟。这是一颗携带核弹头的洲际弹道导弹（ICBM）从朝鲜打到洛杉矶大致需要的时间。平壤政权一直在朝着一个目标不懈地努力：建造洲际弹道导弹，并且制造出足够小可以装入导弹里的核弹头。最近分析家预测金正恩将在唐纳德·特朗普四年任满前达到这个目标。

就此特朗普总统简单地发推说：“这事完全没戏！”

尽管特郎普惯于大放厥词，但他对此事的态度并未过度偏离半个世纪以来美国的种种无效的对朝政策。阻止金氏王朝拥有核武器是长期以来美国对朝政策中的重点。然而在2006年小布什当政时，平壤成功引爆第一颗核弹。随后，在奥巴马入主白宫后，金氏王朝又引爆了四颗核弹。自理查德·尼克松总统以来的四十多年，美国试图用各种方式来控制朝鲜：口头威胁，军事演习，外交制裁，敦促中国，乃至最近很有可能在诉诸网络攻击。

特朗普也在发推特，说朝鲜正在“挑事儿”，而他是打算要“解决这个问题”。从特朗普政府内部流传出针对金氏的“斩首打击”计划，但这种事情是一个国家最不应该事先泄露的消息。

让我们一起祈祷这种种事端都不会造成后果。特朗普对朝鲜半岛问题的前因后果一无所知，但至少他可以换个视角来看这个问题。但是他还是会一头撞上让他前任们束手无措的严酷现实：对付朝鲜没有灵丹妙药。与此同时，他却兴冲冲而不自知地扮演着在朝鲜民主主义人民共和国那立国神话中给他安排好的漫画般夸张角色。

在这个神话里，朝鲜和金氏王朝乃是二者一体的。它的存在几乎完全建立在抵抗穷凶极恶的外敌这个承诺的基础上。外来的威胁越是“黑云压城”，这种说辞对于金正恩来说就越有效；而特朗普恰恰是极擅长于放烟雾弹的。对付这个外来威胁，核弹是必须的。核弹是朝鲜防御策略的关键一环，是唯一可以挡住成群的蛮夷，维护朝鲜民族(此处包括南北）的伟大前景的武器。金氏乃伟大领袖，传承了出自白头山的神启的祖先那神秘的魔力；他是卓越的领导，具有不凡的视野，精通外交手腕，还是军事天才。和他父亲金正日，祖父金日成一样，金正恩是朝鲜民族的诰封捍卫者，而朝鲜人是所有种族中最纯洁的那个。即使是韩国，即大韩民国，也应该感谢金正恩，因为如果不是他，美国早就会入侵了。

How to Deal With North Korea

Mark Bowden

There are no good options. But some are worse than others.

点击这里阅读中文版本 | Read this article in Chinese.

Thirty minutes. That’s about how long it would take a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launched from North Korea to reach Los Angeles. With the powers in Pyongyang working doggedly toward making this possible—building an ICBM and shrinking a nuke to fit on it—analysts now predict that Kim Jong Un will have the capability before Donald Trump completes one four-year term.

About which the president has tweeted, simply, “It won’t happen!”

Though given to reckless oaths, Trump is not in this case saying anything that departs significantly from the past half century of futile American policy toward North Korea. Preventing the Kim dynasty from having a nuclear device was an American priority long before Pyongyang exploded its first nuke, in 2006, during the administration of George W. Bush. The Kim regime detonated four more while Barack Obama was in the White House. In the more than four decades since Richard Nixon held office, the U.S. has tried to control North Korea by issuing threats, conducting military exercises, ratcheting up diplomatic sanctions, leaning on China, and most recently, it seems likely, committing cybersabotage.

Participants hold German national flags during a demonstration called by anti-immigration group Pegida, a German abbreviation for "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West", in Dresden on December 15, 2014. — Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters

A New, New Right Rises in Germany

Sumi Somaskanda

At a farm in the east of the country, one couple tries to forge a nationalism for the intellectual set.

SCHNELLRODA, Germany—In the waning weeks of 2014, an astonishing right-wing fervor swept Germany. Tens of thousands of demonstrators, stirred by anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment, staged protests under the banner of the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, or Pegida. People streamed through the streets, waving German flags and chanting: “We are the people!” and “Resistance.”

That Pegida erupted in former East Germany, where a stubborn far-right scene persists to this day, was little surprise. But the make-up of these seething masses was far broader than the region had ever seen. Beyond the hardened core of right-wing extremists, there were thousands of “concerned citizens” and disillusioned Germans, fueled by frustration with the government’s immigration and economic policies.

All photos courtesy of Alex Tizon and his family

My Family’s Slave

Alex Tizon

She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.

The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

What’s Wrong With the Democrats?

Franklin Foer

If the party cares about winning, it needs to learn how to appeal to the white working class.

The strategy was simple. A demographic wave—long-building, still-building—would carry the party to victory, and liberalism to generational advantage. The wave was inevitable, unstoppable. It would not crest for many years, and in the meantime, there would be losses—losses in the midterms and in special elections; in statehouses and in districts and counties and municipalities outside major cities. Losses in places and elections where the white vote was especially strong.

But the presidency could offset these losses. Every four years the wave would swell, receding again thereafter but coming back in the next presidential cycle, higher, higher. The strategy was simple. The presidency was everything.

Scenes From Hong Kong, 'Pearl of the Orient'

Alan Taylor

Images of the vertical cityscape, street scenes, monuments, people, and natural landscapes of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong—a former British colony, now an autonomous territory within China—is a vibrant city of nearly 7.5 million residents, all packed into an area smaller than 425 square miles (1,100 sq km.) About 40% of the land in Hong Kong is set aside as country parks and nature reserves. As architects and developers continue to maximize the use of buildable land, apartment blocks and office towers reach for the sky, leaving Hong Kong with more skyscrapers than any other city in the world. Gathered here are recent images of the vertical cityscape, street scenes, monuments, people, and natural landscapes of Hong Kong.

Obama: 'This Bill Will Do You Harm'

Vann R. Newkirk II

The former president issued a warning about the Republican plan to replace his signature health-care law. The Senate is planning to vote on it as early as next week.

On Thursday, Senate Republicans released a draft version of their Obamacare replacement, the American Health Care Act. The bill looks similar to the version passed by the House in May, and would accomplish much of the same: a large increase in the number of uninsured people and drastic cuts to the Medicaid program that is critical for poor people, pregnant women, children, and people with chronic health conditions.

In the aftermath of the release of that bill, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hopes will pass the Senate in the next two weeks, former President Barack Obama issued a rare full-throated post-presidential statement criticizing the AHCA and the political process by which it came to be. The statement, posted to Facebook, comes on the heels of another statement in March defending Obamacare, and is also one of the most thorough defenses of his signature policy, even dating back to his time in office.

Little White Lie

Nadine Ajaka

Lacey Schwartz grew up in an upper-middle-class Jewish household, and never once questioned her whiteness—despite not looking like anyone in her family.

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