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Daily Bafflements

• Over at New York Review of Books, Masha Gessen weighs in on the hysteria surrounding Russia’s possible (plausible?) role in hacking the Democratic National Committee. She writes

Imagine that your teenage child has built a bomb and has just set it off in your house. The house is falling down all around you—and you are blaming the neighbor’s kid, who threw a pebble at your window. That’s what the recent Putin fixation is like—a way to evade the fact that Trump is a thoroughly American creation that poses an existential threat to American democracy.

Meanwhile, Trump has used this as an opportunity to troll pundits. “Russia,” he said during a news conference on Wednesday, “if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

• Weiner may be coming back, and here we’re left wondering: Are we dreaming? (Lots of folks are dreaming about the election!) American politics’ most famous sexter has threatened to “come out of retirement” (Editor’s note: So, that’s what we’re calling it now?) to beat Donald Trump Jr. “like a rented mule” if the latter decides to run for mayor of New York. 

• Protests continue to “roil” the DNC, notes the Philadelphia Inquirer. Keep up with the happenings outside the convention center with Emmett Rensin’s coverage on our blog—including of the arrests of more than fifty Democracy Spring activists on Monday.