Issue March 23, 2018 - The Week Magazine (2024)

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in this issue

Main storiesEditor’s letterAnother week, another White House exodus. As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a State Department undersecretary, and one of Trump’s key aides were all sent packing this week—with more firings said to be on the way—Washington shook its collective head in disbelief for the umpteenth time at a president who seems to revel in dysfunction. Even before this month’s many departures, Trump had a 43 percent turnover in staff in his first year, compared with 9 percent for Barack Obama and 6 percent for George W. Bush. The president’s critics are quick to point to the constant churn as proof that he’s on the verge of unraveling. But that diagnosis doesn’t consider how much Trump has always “thrived on chaos,” The New York Times reported recently, “using it as an…3 min

Main storiesAn emboldened Trump axes TillersonWhat happenedBeginning a major shake-up of his Cabinet, President Trump this week ousted Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and nominated CIA Director Mike Pompeo to succeed him. Tillerson, who feuded with the president during his 14-month tenure at Foggy Bottom and once was quoted as calling him “a f---ing moron,” learned of his dismissal when Trump tweeted that he was being replaced. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly reportedly called the former Exxon Mobil CEO last Friday to warn that the president wasn’t happy with him, but didn’t go into specifics. Explaining his decision, Trump insisted he “got along well” with Tillerson, but said they weren’t “thinking the same” on the Iran nuclear deal and other key foreign-policy issues. In his farewell speech, a somber Tillerson did not…3 min

Main storiesIt wasn’t all badIt took 131 years, but the world’s oldest message in a bottle has finally made it to shore. Tonya Illman was walking on a beach near her home in Western Australia when she stumbled upon a vintage gin bottle. Tucked inside was a damp scroll detailing the location and year the bottle was dropped: Makassar, Indonesia, 1886. Illman brought the artifact to the Western Australian Museum, where experts confirmed it was tossed overboard as part of an oceanic study by the German Naval Observatory. “I can’t wait to share our excitement with others,” says Illman, who loaned the treasure to the museum for public viewing.A heavy snowstorm that brought much of Scotland to a standstill last week couldn’t stop one surgeon from doing her job. After waking at her snow-covered…1 min

Main storiesPennsylvania special election rattles RepublicansWhat happenedRepublicans’ midterm fears intensified this week after Democrat Conor Lamb appeared to eke out a narrow victory in a Pennsylvania congressional district that President Trump carried in 2016 by 20 points. Lamb held a 627-vote lead over Republican Rick Saccone with only 500 provisional and military ballots left to be counted. Republicans said they would demand a recount. But Lamb’s apparent win is already reverberating through Washington. Pennsylvania’s 18th district, a heavily white and working-class area that includes some Pittsburgh suburbs, is so reliably Republican that Democrats didn’t even field a candidate there in the last two congressional elections.Saccone, a 60-year-old state representative, campaigned as a conservative culture warrior who was “Trump before Trump was Trump.” But he faced a surprisingly tough challenge from Lamb, a charismatic 33-year-old federal…2 min

Main storiesHouse GOP clears Trump in Russia probeWhat happenedRepublicans abruptly ended the House Intelligence Committee’s yearlong investigation into Russian election interference this week, saying they had found no evidence of collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign, and—disputing the unanimous findings of the intelligence community—no evidence that the Kremlin favored President Trump in the 2016 race. In a 150-page draft report that they refused to show the committee’s Democratic members before the announcement, Republicans wrote that while Russia had carried out “active measures” during the campaign, there was no indication those activities were intended to boost Trump. Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who headed the House investigation, said the panel did identify some “inappropriate meetings” between Trump campaign aides and Russian officials, but insisted those contacts were simply the result of “bad judgment.” Trump cheered the report, tweeting…2 min

Controversy of the weekNorth Korea: Can Trump succeed where others have failed?President Trump’s claim that he’s a master dealmaker is about to face “the ultimate test,” said Yochi Dreazen in Vox.com. Trump last week stunned the world—and his own foreign-policy advisers—by abruptly accepting an offer to meet with dictator Kim Jong Un to negotiate the future of North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program. Kim has promised a missile-test freeze as a show of good faith, and unless something goes wrong, the talks could happen in about two months. Negotiating with Kim is certainly better than exchanging threats to incinerate each other’s population, said Ryu Spaeth in NewRepublic.com. But the odds of Trump pulling off a “Nixon in China” breakthrough with North Korea are “infinitesimally small.” Trump lacks the “emotional fortitude and intellectual wiles” to wrest meaningful concessions from the canny, duplicitous Kim, who…3 min

Issue March 23, 2018 - The Week Magazine (2024)

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