Max Boot on Muck Rack

Max Boot

Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations and Columnist — The Washington Post
New York
As seen in: The Washington Post, Medium, O Globo, The Guardian, The New York Times, Business Insider, The Independent, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, SFGate and more
@CFR_org fellow, @PostOpinions columnist. Author “The Road Not Taken,” “Corrosion of Conservatism." All opinions mine; feel free to adopt them. RT≠endorsement.
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Opinion | People are dying because of Republican hostility to science

Jul 28, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — If you want to know why the United States is in such big trouble, look at the findings of a new Gallup poll. The percentage of Republicans expressing a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in science has plummeted from 72 percent in 1975 to just 45 percent today. (By contrast, the number of Democrats with confidence in science has grown from 67 percent to 79 percent.)This is not some fringe movement we are discussing.
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Opinion | Why leave Afghanistan but not Iraq? Biden’s policy makes little sense.

Jul 27, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — The U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have been on roughly parallel trajectories for two decades. Both invasions began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks (even though there was no connection between the attacks and Saddam Hussein). Both operations resulted in the swift overthrow of tyrannical regimes followed by major difficulties in building successor governments.
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Opinion | In the real world, Biden is tough on Cuba. In the right-wing world, he’s pro-Communist.

Jul 26, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — In the real world, President Biden is governing from the center-left with the support of the majority of the country. His biggest legislative achievement — the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan — is so popular that some Republicans are claiming credit for it even after voting against it. In the right-wing world, however, Biden is either a dangerous left-wing radical or a senile tool of dangerous left-wing radicals — take your pick.
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Opinion | The risk of a war over Taiwan is growing. Here’s how to deter Beijing.

Jul 21, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — With the Chinese Communist Party ramping up its threats to take back Taiwan by force if necessary, alarm is growing within the U.S. military. Speaking about China exercising a “military option” against Taiwan, Rear Adm. Michael Studeman, chief intelligence officer of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in early July: “To us, it’s only a matter of time, not a matter of ‘if.’” His now-boss, Adm. John C.
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Opinion | Stop pleading with anti-vaxxers and start mandating vaccinations

Jul 19, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — It’s time to get serious about coronavirus vaccinations. Stop pleading and start mandating. For the past six months, President Biden, joined by every public health authority in the land, has been begging Americans to get vaccinated. The “pretty, please” approach isn’t working. According to The Post’s covid-19 tracker, in the past week, daily reported covid-19 cases rose 66 percent, covid-related hospitalizations rose 28 percent, and daily reported covid-19 deaths rose 20 percent.
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Book review of Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America by Scott Borchert

Jul 16, 2021  | 
By Max Boot, Scott Borchert

washingtonpost.com — When I write about America in the 1930s (as I did in my biography of the covert operative Edward Lansdale and am now doing in a biography of Ronald Reagan), I invariably turn to the guidebooks produced by the federal government in that era. They are full of vivid descriptions delivered with plenty of brio.
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Opinion | Republicans are rewriting the past so they can seize power in the future

Jul 15, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” — George OrwellAll authoritarian movements know the power of historical myths. That’s why they go to such great lengths to rewrite the past to justify their rule — and the atrocities they carry out against the minorities that they scapegoat for their country’s ills. The Republican Party, as it becomes increasingly anti-democratic, is no different.
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Opinion | Sorry, Haiti. The world’s policeman is officially off duty.

Jul 13, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — For better or worse — sometimes the former, sometimes the latter — the United States has a long history of military interventions in Haiti, particularly when one of its presidents has been assassinated or overthrown. After President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was killed in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson landed U.S. Marines. They stayed, occupying Haiti, until 1934.
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Opinion | The ‘who lost Afghanistan’ debate has already begun

Jul 12, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — After the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, there was an acrimonious debate over who lost the Vietnam War. Many in the military and the Republican Party subscribed to a “stabbed in the back” myth, blaming politicians and the media for supposedly preventing the armed forces from defeating North Vietnam. Many liberals, on the other hand, argued that it was a war the United States should not have fought and could not have won.
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Opinion | Republicans are preventing America from reaching Biden’s vaccination goal

Jul 06, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — In December, I argued that the coronavirus vaccination campaign would be a test of who had the upper hand in the United States: the geniuses (not all of them American) who invented and produced these safe and effective vaccines in record time or the conspiratorial crackpots who believe Internet rumors that vaccines are unsafe and unnecessary.
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Opinion | Republicans want to make America more like China

Jul 05, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — Two powerful countries, two important anniversaries. On Thursday, July 1, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated 100 years since its founding. On Sunday, July 4, the United States celebrated 245 years since the formal adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The differences between these two political milestones are stark — and remind me of why I’m lucky to be an American.
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Opinion | Two House votes show the GOP is an authoritarian, white-power party

Jul 01, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — You would think that the shock of being chased through the halls of the Capitol by a lynch mob of Trump supporters might have brought Republican members of Congress to their senses. But it is now nearly six months later, and the party is just as bad as ever. In fact, it may be worse than ever. Two votes this week make that clear. On Tuesday, 120 House Republicans voted against removing the busts of Confederate leaders and other white supremacists from the Capitol.
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Bill Barr and other MAGA defectors are heroes for telling the truth about Trump - The Washington Post

Jun 29, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — I spent the first 29 years of my adult life as a Republican. But the day after the 2016 election, I re-registered as an independent. A couple of years later I wrote a book that reflected on my career as a conservative and admitted errors ranging from my support for the Iraq War to my willingness to overlook the GOP’s growing nuttiness. I admitted that I too bore some responsibility for President Donald Trump’s rise.
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GOP military-bashers like Tucker Carlson are subverting, not supporting, the troops - The Washington Post

Jun 28, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — If the GOP is supposed to be the pro-military party, former president Donald Trump didn’t get the memo. He raged at his generals for supporting alliances such as NATO and resisting his demands to “crack” the “skulls” of civil rights demonstrators. While reveling in military parades and props, Trump reportedly denounced top generals as “dopes and babies” and troops who fell in battle as “suckers” and “losers.”Now Trump’s ideological heirs are carrying on his odious battle against the military.
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Opinion | Ron DeSantis is showing Trump-level skill at waging culture war

Jun 22, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — Former president Donald Trump is America’s premier culture warrior. No other modern politician has displayed as much talent at dividing Americans, peddling disinformation, demonizing minorities and exacerbating social problems. Many have tried to imitate him only to fall short because their performances were inauthentic and unconvincing. (I’m looking at you, Marco Rubio; you, too, Ted Cruz.)The winner of “The Apprentice: Culture Warfare Edition,” so far, appears to be Gov.
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Opinion | New York’s mayoral race shows progressives are out of touch with ordinary Democrats

Jun 21, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — NEW YORK CITY — Last year’s presidential primaries showed how out of touch progressive activists are with the concerns of ordinary Democrats. Then-candidate Joe Biden refused to endorse left-wing pet causes such as the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all and defunding the police — and it didn’t hurt him one iota. He decisively defeated the darlings of the left: Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
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Biden wiped the smirk off Putin’s face - The Washington Post

Jun 16, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — Seasoning and sobriety are underappreciated virtues in politics. Voters normally opt for novelty and excitement when choosing a president. The result is that we usually wind up with foreign policy neophytes in the Oval Office. When these tyros make their maiden trip abroad, they cause considerable jitters among observers and aides, who wonder: Will the president know what he is doing? Will he say something he shouldn’t? Will he be rolled by more experienced leaders?
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Opinion | Biden’s exit from Afghanistan has been very Trumpy

Jun 15, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — In Europe, President Biden is being lauded as the anti-Trump. But in his first major foreign policy decision as president — the pullout from Afghanistan — he acted in a very Trumpy fashion. Which is to say, he made an impetuous, ideological decision without adequate planning or preparation. The more we know, the worse it looks. To recap how we got here: Then-President Donald Trump signed the worst deal of the century with the Taliban in 2020.
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Opinion | Netanyahu just showed that he’s as graceless and selfish as Trump

Jun 14, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — In established democracies, the tradition is for a defeated leader to act graciously toward the victor — to make a show of national unity despite the rage and humiliation that might be burning inside. Former president Donald Trump flushed that tradition down a gold-plated toilet, along with many other democratic norms. He not only refused to show up at President Biden’s inaugural but continues to this day to accuse Biden of being an illegitimate president who was fraudulently elected.
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Opinion | The lab-leak theory will never vindicate Trump

Jun 10, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — If you had been wrong 2,521 times, would you claim vindication if, on the 2,522nd occasion, you said something that may — or may not — turn out to be right? That’s what former president Donald Trump — who, according to The Post’s Fact Checker, made 2,521 false or misleading statements about the coronavirus — has done in regard to the theory that covid-19 originated not in nature but in a Chinese research lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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Opinion | Thank you, Uncle Sam. The vaccine rollout is the biggest government success in decades.

Jun 08, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — I came of age in the 1980s as a Reagan Republican distrustful of “big government.” In 2016, I left the Republican Party, but former president Donald Trump’s unethical and incompetent conduct only further heightened my suspicion of the government. Why should I trust Washington when the previous president abused his power so badly that he was twice impeached? I am hardly alone in my skepticism.
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Opinion | Too many people are still underestimating the Trump threat

Jun 07, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — Former president Donald Trump’s secret weapon has always been that it is hard for educated people to take him seriously. He acts like a preening buffoon with pretensions of grandeur — doltish and delusional in equal measure. Everything about him, from his orange tan and bad combover to his insistence that he is a “very stable genius,” screams: Are you kidding me? How can we take seriously someone who insisted that taking hydroxychloroquine, or possibly injecting bleach, could cure covid-19?
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Opinion | Biden’s Tulsa speech offers a powerful rebuke to the GOP’s whitewash of history

Jun 02, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — Republicans are determined to whitewash U.S. history. Under the rubric of fighting critical race theory, they have been pushing legislation at the federal, state and local level to prevent schools from teaching about the pervasive role of racism in U.S. history. Presumably they would like to return to the old-fashioned narrative in which Robert E.
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Opinion | The Republican plot to steal the 2024 election

Jun 01, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — Republicans have spent nearly seven months making bogus charges of fraud in the 2020 election under the banner of “stop the steal.” Now they have segued into a “start the steal” offensive to ensure that they will win the 2022 and 2024 elections — even if most voters once again support the Democratic Party.
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John Cena shows Hollywood just can’t stop groveling to China - The Washington Post

May 31, 2021  | 
By Max Boot

washingtonpost.com — For six years after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Hollywood studios avoided making films that made the Nazis look bad, because they did not want to lose access to the German market. The first motion picture to break the taboo — “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” — did not come out until war loomed in 1939. Studios even worked with the German consul general in Los Angeles to cut scenes that might offend the Nazis.
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