Sir James Goldsmith’s short-lived Referendum Party spent lavishly but won few votes. Three decades later, his neo-populist politics—and enthusiasm for tariffs—are roiling the Western world

By George Pendle

The serially married billionaire warned his supporters of an “uncontrolled invasion” of immigrants, unscrupulous countries taking advantage of them, and an unseen global elite infringing on their rights. He lambasted the media and lamented his country’s lost greatness, and the adoring crowd lapped it up. He was one of them, even if he did have a customized Boeing 757 idling on a nearby runway waiting to whisk him away to his palatial southern refuge.

However, this wasn’t Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee earlier this year, but rather Sir James Goldsmith at the conference for his READ ON

Far-right parties across Europe rode anxiety over mass migration to big victories. America should take heed

By James Kirchick

Last weekend, in European Parliament elections, the body’s far-right bloc made strong gains across the Continent.

Nowhere was the revolt against the political establishment more alarming than in France, where Marine Le Pen’s National Rally so thoroughly trounced President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance—winning more than twice as many seats—that Macron announced a snap election for the National Assembly just weeks before the summer Olympics come to Paris.

Next door in Germany, a country whose postwar culture of Holocaust memory and political stability managed to prevent the far right from entering the Bundestag for more than 70 years, the nationalist and xenophobic Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) came in second. READ ON

Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara knew the war in Vietnam could not be won—and waged it anyway

By Peter Osnos

O

f all those considered responsible for the outcome of America’s Vietnam debacle, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara usually get the most blame.

It was they who turned a commitment of roughly 15,000 U.S. military advisers into a force of more than 500,000 combatants that proved unable to hold off the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, leaving behind a unified nation aligned with the global Communist bloc.

As a correspondent in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos for The Washington Post between 1970 and 1973, and as the editor and publisher of major memoirs and histories on the subject, I have been immersed in the events of that era for a half-century. READ ON

After surviving just 10 days as Trump’s communications director, Anthony Scaramucci is now backing Biden, co-hosting a podcast, and taking wild swings at his former boss

By Louise Callaghan

Anthony Scaramucci is asleep on a sofa when I arrive at his colonial-style villa on Long Island. In an election news cycle that would break just about anyone, the man who was fired by Donald Trump from his position as presidential communications director after just 10 days (a period of time now known in Washington as “a Scaramucci”) is exhausted.

As well he might be. In between loudly plotting revenge on his former boss and doing everything he can to prevent the “big baby” from winning the White House again, “the Mooch” is running his asset-management company (which courted ruin after entering into business with the disgraced entrepreneur READ ON

The upside-down views and resentful personalities of the Supreme Court justice and his wife, Martha-Ann, exploded into public view 18 years ago

By Michael Isikoff

When Samuel Alito appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his 2006 confirmation hearings, one dramatic moment stood out above all others: the time his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, burst into tears and stormed out of the room over what she perceived as unfair attacks on her husband.

While barely remembered today, the incident proved pivotal, instantly generating sympathy for the nominee and his aggrieved spouse. Fearful of looking like bullies, Democrats by and large lost their ardor to block his confirmation. When after a short break, Alito walked back into the hearing room, holding his wife’s hand and kissing READ ON

Bryant Johnson, the go-to personal trainer for most of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, looks back at his run at the nation’s most exclusive gym

By Andrew Zucker

For nearly 50 years, conservatives waged war against Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 ruling that enshrined a constitutional right to an abortion. By the time Donald Trump was in the White House, one person more than anyone else stood between Roe and its demise: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But perhaps the second-most important person was Bryant Johnson, the personal trainer who helped keep Ginsburg alive.

“Gotta make it through to the next election,” Ginsburg told Johnson during the Trump administration. She died just 46 days before the 2020 presidential election. The constitutional right to an abortion died shortly after. READ ON