The Most Consequential TV Show in History
A new book about The Apprentice reveals how the 45th president was shaped by tawdry reality-TV culture.
McKay Coppins
McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic. In 2019, he received the Aldo Beckman Award from the White House Correspondents’ Association for his coverage of the Trump presidency; in 2021, he received a Wilbur Award for religion journalism. He is the author of The Wilderness, a book about the battle over the future of the Republican Party, and Romney: A Reckoning, a biography of Mitt Romney that will be published in October 2023.
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Daniel J. Barry / Getty What Europe Fears
American allies see a second Trump term as all but inevitable. “The anxiety is massive.”
Illustration by Chantal Jahchan. Sources: NATO Archives Online; Scott Eisen / Getty. Why Attacks on Trump’s Mental Acuity Don’t Land
A decade-old interview shows he has long sounded unhinged.
Tom Brenner / Reuters Why Republican Politicians Do Whatever Trump Says
The former president’s stories of business dominance were often exaggerated. With Republican politicians, he’s found a group he can control.
Mark Wilson / Getty You Should Go to a Trump Rally
For many Americans, the former president has become an abstraction. They should see for themselves what his campaign is really about.
Mario Tama / Getty Loyalists, Lapdogs, and Cronies
In a second Trump term, there would be no adults in the room.
Matt Huynh What Mitt Romney Saw in the Senate
In an exclusive excerpt from my biography of the senator, Romney: A Reckoning, he reveals what drove him to retire.
Yael Malka Magical Thinking in Milwaukee
Donald Trump’s rivals struggled to show they were equipped to take him down. In fact, few even tried.
Scott Olson / Getty The Gross Spectacle of Murder Fandom
After four University of Idaho students were killed, TikTok and Reddit sleuths swarmed the campus. The community is still struggling with the wreckage they left behind.
Illustration by Zoë Van Dijk The Kyrsten Sinema Theory of American Politics
The Arizona senator attempts to explain herself.
Natalie Keyssar for The Atlantic
