What does the FBI director do when he suspects the president is a manipulative liar? The answer in James Comey‘s case is that he writes memos, tries to evade demands for loyalty -- and anguishes about protecting himself and the FBI.But by Comey’s own admission, perhaps he should have done more.The big news had already surfaced before Comey’s appearance Thursday at the Senate Intelligence Committee, with the release of his prepared testimony. What we got at the hearing was the raw morality play,

Today’s column veers dangerously into “I told you so” territory. I take neither pleasure nor credit for recognizing that a once-in-a-generation opportunity is slipping away.In February, I warned that President Donald Trump was repeating his predecessor’s rookie mistakes. In March, I noted that the odds of passing important economic legislation had fallen meaningfully. This missive offers the direst warning of all, with significant ramifications for equity markets.Let’s begin with the observation

We don’t know if President Trump believes in climate change. He just won’t say. And although we desperately want him to admit (while weeping for mercy, ideally) that he was wrong in 2012 to tweet that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese,” that’s not going to happen. The president will never say he was wrong. Reporters who continue to interrogate him and his spokespeople about the climate must give this catechism a rest.That said, it’s well worth confronting the broa

During the Watergate hearings, Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee asked, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” At the outset of Senate hearings and an investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III into the Trump campaign’s connection to Russian operatives and Russian interference in the 2016 president campaign, the question is: “What did the president mean when he said what he said to FBI Director James Comey?”That question was not conclusively answered by Comey in his test

As soon as Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change, eyes turned eastward. Even as the US reneges on its promises, the argument now goes, China and India will show leadership instead; they at least are committed to low-carbon growth.I wouldn’t be so sure, at least where India is concerned. It is true that the Indian government has reiterated its Paris pledges. But Trump’s decision has nevertheless opened a door for India to revise its own very stringent commitments

Kenyan and Chinese officials on Wednesday inaugurated a 470-kilometer-long railway built and largely financed by the Chinese between Kenya’s and East Africa’s busiest port, Mombasa, and Kenya’s capital and financial and commercial center, Nairobi.The Chinese also recently opened another important railway line between Djibouti, further up the East African coast, a country with America’s only military base in Africa, and another key African country, Ethiopia. Ethiopia is landlocked and, thus, the

There is only one acceptable response to Wednesday’s deadly terrorist attacks in Iran: swift and unequivocal condemnation of the perpetrators, and condolences to the victims. By joining the other world leaders who have offered their sympathy, US President Donald Trump can reaffirm both America’s standing in the community of nations and its determination to defeat terrorism, whatever and wherever its source.Yes, there is an obvious irony here: The US has rightly condemned Iran’s long history of s

The firm and defiant yet calm and reasoned response of British leaders to Saturday night’s terrorist attack on London Bridge, which involved three men who steered a rented van into pedestrians and then got out and began stabbing people, was pitch perfect. The response by Donald Trump, on the other hand, has surely set a new low in statesmanship (or perhaps anti-statesmanship) by an American president as he lashed out at London’s mayor, used the death of seven Brits to promote his travel ban and

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump signed the United States on with the Sunni Muslim states of the Persian Gulf in a meeting with their leaders in Saudi Arabia during his recent overseas tour. Monday morning, six of the states in the region broke off relations with Qatar, easily the most progressive of the Arab members of the group.Bahrain, Egypt, one of the governments in Libya, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the faction in the Yemen civil war backed by Saudi Arabia and the US br

How can the US economy keep creating jobs and still grow so slowly? One explanation can be found in the latest employment data: The sectors adding the most workers are among the less productive.The Labor Department’s monthly survey for May suggests that employers were still in a hiring mood. They added an estimated 138,000 jobs -- less than expected but still enough to push down the unemployment rate, which declined slightly to a 16-year low of 4.3 percent (albeit due to a drop in the number of