The Atlantic Daily: Welcome to the Trump Cinematic Universe
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.
Hi! I’m Rachel, and I’ll be your Daily host for (most of) the next two weeks. I write and edit for our Science, Technology, and Health section, and edit the column “How to Build a Life.” I’ve been on the pandemic beat for the past two years, but also enjoy exploring surprising facts about animals, language, and food. Say hello at rgutman@theatlantic.com.
Sixty-eight percent of Republicans do not believe that the 2020 election was free and fair, but few can explain exactly why. “I can’t really put my finger on it, but something just doesn’t feel right,” one Donald Trump voter told Sarah Longwell. “It didn’t smell right,” another said.
The leading conspiracy theories about the election are exactly that—conspiracy theories. But for people who are immersed in what my colleague David Frum calls the Trump Cinematic Universe, they make perfect sense.
- Boycotting presidential debates is only logical for Trumpists. “What the RNC is saying with its vote is, Unless we know in advance that a debate moderator believes in the same version of reality as we do, we will not participate at all,” David writes.
- The GOP says it’s the party of parents, but that’s a myth. If Republicans cared about children, even just white children, “then they would not be ignoring or downplaying or defending or bolstering the principal racial threat”—white-supremacist ideology—“facing white youth today,” Ibram X. Kendi argues in a new essay.
- Republicans say sex education is grooming. In fact, it’s the opposite. Teaching kids about sex, even in elementary school, can help keep them safe from abusers, my colleague Olga Khazan reports.
The rest of the news in three sentences:
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Russia has launched a full-scale invasion of the Donbas region.
- Shanghai reported its first deaths from China’s current COVID-19 wave yesterday, even as the city remains under a punishingly strict lockdown.
- Peres Jepchirchir won the women’s division in the 2022 Boston Marathon; Evans Chebet won the men’s.
Latest dispatches: Watching Tony Hawk’s slow-motion self-destruction in a new HBO documentary is painful—and inspiring, Jordan Calhoun writes in Humans Being. In Up for Debate, Conor Friedersdorf compiles 12 reader views on where America is going wrong. And The Good Word’s Caleb Madison explains why we’re calling everything a “hellscape.”
Tonight’s Atlantic-approved activity: Watch the final season premiere of AMC’s Better Call Saul, which airs tonight. The show is “an energetic embrace of TV’s promise,” our critic Spencer Kornhaber writes.
A break from the news: Can women buy empowerment through NFTs?
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.
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