Former Under Secretary of State in Obama admin & Editor @TIME. Political analyst @MSNOW. Book: "Information Wars." + @rickstengel.bsky.social
New York, NY
- Tweets 14,359
- Following 1,168
- Followers 85,082
- Likes 24,556
Pinned Tweet
I always told my journalists, there aren’t two sides to a lie. Yes, you should be non-partisan, but not neutral. Journalists must be biased in favor of the truth and facts. Biased in favor of democracy itself. We protect the press so the press can protect democracy. Let’s do that
2,084
14,044
52,039
Mr. President, just to clarify things, I wanted to offer a few statistics. Number of times you were Person of the Year during the 7 years I was editor of Time: 0. Number of times you were on the cover: 0. Number of times you made the Time 100 influentials list: 0. Thanks anyway!
3,117
65,022
225,407
We've had presidents who were competent but corrupt (Nixon) and presidents who were incompetent but not corrupt (Hoover), but we've never had a president who was utterly incompetent and utterly corrupt.
1,144
11,649
49,846
The most pathetic line ever delivered by a candidate in a presidential debate was when he said, “I saw it on television!”
2,064
6,212
48,799
858,234
Mr. President, when you've been in office for more than three years, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to blame the previous administration for not being prepared for something that happened on your watch.
1,153
10,434
47,282
And, by the way, if you worry that food prices are too high, wait till you have a president who deports half the farmworkers and puts a 20% tax on food from abroad.
3,596
10,019
42,290
1,154,005
The great Jim Clyburn on Manchin's insistence that a voting rights bill be bipartisan.“I am a Black person, descended of people who were given the vote by the 15th Amendment. The 15th amendment was not a bipartisan vote, it was a single party vote that gave us the right to vote”
486
8,113
37,217
Trump paid his daughter, who was a full-time employee of his company, $747,622 in consulting fees on three hotel deals, and then wrote off the consulting fees as a business expense. He's a fraud in every conceivable way possible.
689
9,731
37,549
If we stopped reporting job losses, we’d have very little unemployment.
Trump on coronavirus: "If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any" hill.cm/g4vKJ4u
1,280
8,117
34,542
A debate where one candidate flagrantly lies again and again without a mechanism for correction is not a debate.
5,492
7,201
32,999
1,532,853
Why doesn't Chief Justice Roberts hold Trump in contempt for his disrespect of the Senate trial and his threatening of his chief prosecutor?
Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!
1,568
8,310
30,419
PLEASE STOP TELEVISING THESE CORONA CAMPAIGN RALLIES LIVE. THEY ARE BAD FOR THE PUBLIC HEALTH.
360
4,670
29,157
The celebrations look a lot like those in countries that have just toppled a dictator.
819
3,586
29,018
By the way, Trump now has the search warrant and the inventory of what was taken in his possession. If this raid was so egregious and unjustified, why not release them?
674
4,974
27,860
Hate to tell you but that PROBABLY means you’re NOT Person of the Year. They just wanted a photo shoot. But I’m sure you still have that fake TIME cover somewhere in storage.
Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named “Man (Person) of the Year,” like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!
937
6,745
28,395
Blaming Biden for Afghanistan is like saying the last batter in a 9-inning 10-to-nothing rout was responsible for the loss.
828
4,457
26,025
Let’s be clear, the Russians did not meddle in our election. They committed an act of cyber warfare against the very foundation of our democracy.
585
6,816
23,221
In today's WSJ, former General William McRaven, one of America's greatest modern warriors, writes that Trump fails every single test of character that the military reveres and that he betrays George Washington's model of civility and discipline that is the model of the American military. "Mr. Trump has no self-control. He lashes out at immigrants, religious groups, and military heroes. He lies with reckless abandon." He compares Trump to a "disturbed 15-year-old boy." He says he won't be voting for Trump, adding "I think George Washington would agree."
1,477
8,638
24,137
1,311,234
The president of the United States reads Nielsen's weekly TV ratings more closely than he does his daily intelligence brief.
257
4,352
22,862
Trump has fallen below 50% in the popular vote. His margin of victory (pop vote + electoral college) is the third smallest since 1888. (Only JFK in '60 and Nixon in '68 were smaller.) If 238k votes in the blue wall states had been different, he would have lost. Not a mandate.
16,163
5,879
25,561
5,734,731
Let's see, it's safe to mail Social Security checks, prescription drugs, and your driver's license, but not to vote? Undermining the USPS is the backdoor of undermining the election. Support USPS. nytimes.com/2020/07/31/us/po…
406
7,509
20,621
"Obamagate" has zero substance and is simply a grotesque signal to Trump's own base that our culture will always be "Us against Them" and that somehow Trump supporters will always be conspired against by "Them." Sad and dangerous.
610
3,921
20,161
Memo to the moderators: The quest for balance is a trap. Treating both sides of a debate as equal when one side is demonstrably false is not fairness but malpractice. Truth is more important than balance. There aren't two sides to a lie.
2,518
5,194
19,481
779,251
If you preserve the filibuster and lose our democracy by not being able to pass voting rights legislation, what exactly is the point of preserving the filibuster?
438
4,723
19,021
Republicans are complaining that states and officials who are trying to make it easier and more convenient for people to vote are "stealing our election." I think that's called democracy.
199
4,568
19,595
It's appalling and, frankly, disqualifying that the sitting vice president of the US and the person designated with leading America's response to the coronavirus cannot bring himself to say that, No, Democrats do not want millions of Americans to die from the coronavirus.
On CNN, Mike Pence not only refused to disagree with Donald Trump Jr's assertion that Democrats are rooting for coronavirus to kill millions of people to hurt Trump -- but Pence even characterized Don Jr's sentiment as "understandable"
1,253
5,483
18,962
If you ever needed an object lesson in why the stock market is not the economy, on the morning of historic levels of people filing for unemployment insurance, the market opens by going up hundreds of points.
217
4,990
19,523
Trump is the first president-elect ever to not sign an agreement that makes transition donations public. That means no one knows who is contributing to his transition, and how much, and it also allows foreign donations. I don't believe even Trump supporters think this is a good idea. nytimes.com/2024/11/24/us/po…
3,556
5,786
21,768
2,202,143
A head of state firing a prosecutor investigating him is something that we always criticize in authoritarian countries. Now it is happening here.
190
4,963
17,739
What's clear is that from the moment the genome sequencing of the coronavirus was published in January, we should have started mass producing tests right away. South Korea did as well as other nations. Why didn't we? Without tests, we were driving at night with no headlights.
779
5,125
17,509
The most important—and beautiful—sentence in Judge Chutkan's 5-page order rejecting Trump's request to keep materials secret until after the election: "If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute — or appear to be — election interference."
807
4,186
17,775
1,017,768
Why aren't the reporters at these pseudo news-conferences prepared with questions with actual facts and dates and knowledge so they can push back on rampant misinformation from the president?
980
3,316
16,968
Harris is not playing-it-safe with her media strategy but playing-it-smart. There are no undecided or stay-at-home voters watching the cable news networks or the Sunday shows. How do you reach voters who don’t follow the news? Well, not on news shows, that’s for sure.
515
2,692
16,448
595,467
Once unimaginable, a US president visits the CDC during an epidemic, calls the governor of our hardest hit state a "snake," underplays the threat, contradicts the scientists. The threat is real, his incompetence and narcissism is making it worse. #Unfit a.msn.com/01/en-us/BB10PV98?…
595
5,159
16,407
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says that Rupert Murdoch's media empire is a "cancer on democracy" in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. cnn.com/videos/business/2020…
416
4,807
15,897
How comforting—and inspiring—it is to see a president of the United States we don't have to be embarrassed about, who has class and brains and empathy, who understands that a president needs to speak to every American, and not just some of us. Thank you, Obama. #GraduateTogether
113
2,900
16,209
Can’t think of anything better than this FDR quote to describe Lt Col Vindman today: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”
68
3,405
15,623
Well, if we bail out the post office, at least we know they won’t spend it on stock buybacks.
99
2,650
15,600
No separation of powers. No Congressional oversight. No checks and balances. This is how democracy dies.
Mitch McConnell: Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with White House Counsel. There will be no difference between the President’s position and our position as to how to handle this
694
5,064
14,823
I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to live in a country where no person—not a president-elect, not a president—is above the law.
5,356
2,832
17,953
435,436
I've always wondered why Trump, a supposed billionaire, doesn't seem to have a stand-alone house of his own, that he stays at his golf courses or lives above the stores at Trump Tower. Now we know: he writes off every single dollar of his living expenses as a business expense.
257
3,658
14,065
Trump falsehood: "NY got off to a very late start." NY was far ahead of Trump and federal government, with quarantining and staying at home. Trump was still saying it would go away when Cuomo was ringing alarm bells.
263
4,017
14,175
Why is CNN televising a Trump campaign rally? This is a multi-million dollar contribution to his re-election campaign.
1,100
2,649
13,255
Under the Constitution, a sitting president has certain protections that an ordinary citizen does not, but an ex-president has none of those. An ex-president, under the constitution, is to be treated no differently than an ordinary citizen.
910
3,775
13,488
Nothing quite says banana republic like a presidential candidate saying he will "go after" his predecessor if elected. forbes.com/sites/saradorn/20…
6,735
3,330
13,671
743,571
Trump thought being president meant you could order the states around. He didn't understand that in a federal system, the governors have the power. Now he's pitting the states & governors against each other in a kind of reality TV contest that will be lethal for Americans.
379
4,207
13,475
With all the revelations in Bolton's book, always remember that Jared, Ivanka, Pompeo, Mnuchin, Pence etc have all seen much much worse.
213
2,365
13,297
Trump giving his convention speech on the South Lawn is the clearest conceivable violation of the Hatch Act. 100s of White House staffers would be violating it, not to mention charges of criminal appropriation of Congressional funds for political purposes. washingtonpost.com/politics/…
844
5,718
13,000
Lack of testing is the signature failure of the Trump administration. It is the key to everything—which the president never understood. They should have launched a Manhattan project for testing. That's what a federal govt does in wartime.
316
3,712
13,026
This is the most chilling part of the interview. We need to be ready.
TRUMP: "I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election."
WALLACE: "Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results?"
TRUMP: "I have to see."
WALLACE: "Can you give a direct answer that you will accept the election?
TRUMP: "I have to see."
949
3,840
12,989
Justice Kagan today: “The framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution. They knew how to; there were immunity clauses in some state constitutions. They didn’t provide immunity to the president. And, you know — not so surprising — they were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law. Wasn’t the whole point that the president was not a monarch and the president was not supposed to be above the law?”
325
2,999
12,391
599,069
Trump's twitter feed is a window into his mind and what a deeply unserious place it is, filled with grievance and insecurity and conspiracy theories and lack of any kind of rigorous thinking. That's the mind of the President of the United States.
446
4,496
12,680
NATO is not a Queens NY apartment complex. There are no "dues," you can't be in "arears," they don't "owe" us anything. It's a military alliance where countries agree to spend 2% of their GDP for defense & to support each other against aggression. msn.com/en-us/news/politics/…
3,667
3,808
12,064
633,530
When Putin illegally annexed Crimea he used unmarked soldiers and unmarked vehicles. opb.org/news/article/federal…
483
5,882
12,132
Just a stunningly corrupt conflict of interest: the president of the United States promoting the re-opening of his own golf club. Is it possible that he is just so extraordinarily ignorant that this is a wildly ethically inappropriate thing to do?
1,065
3,109
11,993
Crime in DC is at a 30-year low. It's not even in top 10 dangerous cities in US. Throughout history, autocrats use a false pretext to impose government control over local law enforcement as a prelude to a more national takeover. That's far more dangerous than the situation he says he is fixing.
3,696
4,798
15,123
1,877,820
Remember, Biden's job was to fire the prosecutor who REFUSED to prosecute the firm that employed his son. A prosecutor that the EU, the IMF & others wanted fired because he refused to prosecute corruption. Biden was doing what was in the nation's interest, not his son's interest.
191
3,967
11,164
It's still hard for me to fathom that a former president of the US, a former Secretary of State, and other members of the same party can take the side of the dictator who is attacking the foundations of the very system of int'l democracy that we shed blood and tears to create.
603
2,238
11,235
What I don't understand about one-on-one interviews with the president is this: his answers are always predictable/the same, why doesn't the interviewer have actual FACTS to challenge Trump's disinformation? There's no actual information in what @potus says; it is self-promotion.
453
2,140
10,909
A big thank you to everyone who has sent condolences for my mother whom I mentioned last night on @Lawrence. I hadn't talked about it but was so disgusted by Trump's testing hypocrisy + the fact that many more than 120k have died, she probably among them, that I blurted it out.
935
1,087
10,809
1. His "absolute authority" is bogus. No "absolute" authority under constitution.
2. No such thing as "re-opening" economy. It's his dumb phraseology which no one should repeat.
3. He's turning the "decision" into a game show moment which we shouldn't buy into.
4. We decide.
NEW: Trump spoke of his “absolute authority” to re-open the economy, calling it “the biggest decision I’ve ever had to make.”
Governors, mayors and economists are rolling their eyes:
“The government can’t force you to take risks you don’t want to take.” latimes.com/politics/story/2…
334
3,495
10,660
A lot of ink has already been spilled about how Harris must define herself compared to Trump in the debate. Let me help. Sane vs insane. Coherent vs incoherent. Young vs hold. Future vs past. Law-abiding vs law-breaking. See, that wasn't so hard.
1,007
3,006
10,209
239,281
Here's a tip for the House Oversight Committee: A former US president is receiving unspecified millions from a foreign power which the US intelligence community says assassinated a journalist who wrote for a US newspaper. Surely worth investigating. washingtonpost.com/politics/…
644
3,404
10,087
656,901
Trump said that "80 million" mail-in ballots will overwhelm the system. In fact, the USPS delivers twice that amount of First Class mail a day, and they deliver 2.5 billion pieces of mail during Christmas week.
162
3,666
10,239
For the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, the commander of the 82nd Airborne, the 10th Mountain Division, the head of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, to call his former commander-in-chief a fascist, well, that's just extraordinary. Be warned.
386
4,133
10,322
495,207
Memo to the moderators on Tuesday: The quest for balance is a trap. Treating rival assertions in a debate as equal when one is demonstrably false is not fairness but malpractice. There aren't two sides to a lie. Lies are never acceptable and must always be corrected.
854
3,117
9,917
319,536
OPEC is not our friend. The US now produces more crude oil than Saudi Arabia. We don't need them, or want them.
580
1,992
9,861
I just don't think it's useful—or good journalism—to endlessly repeat Trump lies, accusations & conspiracy theories. He's exploiting the Liar's Dividend, which is that repeating the lie legitimizes the idea of debate around it, and leaves a lingering question in the reader's mind
282
2,481
10,159
Regarding the "poisoning of the blood"—the whole point of America is that we do not have and never have had a common blood. We do not have and never have had a common religion, or a common ethnicity, or a common heritage. What we do have is an uncommon set of ideas, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That, and not our blood, is what makes us Americans.
487
2,646
9,648
630,089
Our president likes to say, "never before in history." And here he can actually say it honestly, Never before in history has a president of the United States taken a trip to three countries where he has active business deals that benefit him. washingtonpost.com/politics/…
1,650
4,885
12,811
279,002
1. The press often confuses it's circumstance with the voters. They are not the same.
2. "Press conferences" are for the press. It's not clear how much the public cares or values them.
3. At the same time, if a presidential candidate has a "press conference," it has little public value if the public cannot hear your questions, as was the case the other day.
4. It also has less public value if you are simply stenographers, and do not question or challenge repeated false claims.
461
2,894
9,197
836,566
The unchanging reality of the Trump candidacy is that he is mentally and morally unfit to be president.
1,016
2,149
9,505
236,274
I personally don't care whether Trump is tired, demoralized, or cognitively impaired. He long ago disqualified himself for the presidency thru innumerable actions that undermined the country & the Constitution. Let's move past this sad era in our history & elect President Harris
666
2,623
9,641
155,625
Zero sentiments expressed for the people who were killed.
Zero criticism of the murderer.
Zero condemnation of anti-Semitism.
Zero recognition of need to change gun laws -- instead, he blames the victims.
Presidential rating: Zero.
President Trump says if Tree of Life Synagogue had "some kind of a protection inside the temple," the perpetrator of today's shooting could have been stopped: "They didn't, and he was able to do things that unfortunately he shouldn’t have been able to do.”
419
4,241
10,050
You are Individual-1, an unindicted co-conspirator, in a felony case in the southern district of NY.
.....are there no “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” there are no Crimes by me at all. All of the Crimes were committed by Crooked Hillary, the Dems, the DNC and Dirty Cops - and we caught them in the act! We waited for Mueller and WON, so now the Dems look to Congress as last hope!
123
2,272
9,201
The foundation of Trump's campaign, that the economy is down and crime is up, is 100% false. The opposite is true. And add to that "drill, baby, drill"—only under Biden has the US become a net exporter of oil and gas. Under Trump we were still a net importer. Facts matter.
2,543
4,086
9,247
512,308
Ha, blaming the messenger, as usual. On Jan 31, WHO declared COVID-19 a global health emergency. On Feb. 26, 27 days later, you said, "The 15 cases within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero." You blew it.
The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?
261
3,318
9,329
There's no graceful departure from a war—especially a war that was never winnable. And there's no good explanation for how some people are using the tragedy of a terrorist attack against our troops for partisan purposes.
172
1,671
9,140
You wouldn’t visit the cemetery for American soldiers in France because it was drizzling.
Well, it happened again. Amy Klobuchar announced that she is running for President, talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Bad timing. By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowman(woman)!
94
1,525
8,866
This letter reads like it was written by a high school sophomore to his girlfriend whom he fears is about to break up with him.
721
2,281
8,821
The key to understanding Trump on any issue is that his reaction is based entirely on how the issue effects him personally: his wealth, his status, his popularity. Concerns about country are virtually non-existent. America Last.
258
2,305
8,783
I’m kind of dumbfounded by the journalistic pivot away from the Mueller report. If someone gave you a brief synopsis of War and Peace written by a hostile critic, do you then think that you have read the book?
282
1,870
8,690
The Trump candidacy is not so much a political campaign as what intelligence services call an influence operation, a coordinated effort to use mis-and-disinformation to undermine democratic institutions and processes.
311
3,352
8,524
576,458
Jared Kushner: "He's running on his track record of creating the greatest economy in our country." Trump will be first president since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs during his first term. 40 million people unemployed. 50 million people food insecure. The economy is a disaster.
441
3,720
8,504
If Trump has a philosophy, I believe this is it. George Orwell, 1984: “I hate purity, I hate goodness. I don’t want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.”
246
2,336
8,461
I'm not making any inferences, but from distancing the US from NATO, promising that Ukraine won't join, ending the FBI's foreign influence taskforce, eliminating Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and foreign aid, Trump is fulfilling all of Putin's dreams.
630
3,477
10,967
369,812
The journalistic trope of saying we are “deeply divided” is a normalizing frame and a moral dodge. Yes, we were “deeply divided” during the Civil War, but the two sides were not equal: one was in favor of enslaving human beings. One candidate already has tried to overturn an election and is giving every indication of doing it again. Overturning democracy is not a “side”. The First Amendment protects the press so the press can protect democracy.
306
2,545
8,059
595,284
“Money is pouring in like no one has ever seen before,” he said today. Just for the record, the tariffs haven’t started yet.
564
1,565
10,794
382,033
The payments went to a shell company called Trump Las Vegas Sales & Marketing. No employees, no payroll, very little revenue. Then Trump (illegally) wrote off at least $21 million of it and then (illegally) donated it to his own campaign. #VOTE—then prosecute.
If these payments were not for actual business expenses (and they don't appear to be), deducting them would be illegal. If they were also used to fund his presidential campaign, they would be illegal campaign contributions. #Vote —then prosecute. nytimes.com/interactive/2020…
103
3,573
8,318
So, the government of the world's greatest dealmaker bends over backwards to make a deal with our enemy (the Taliban) without making a deal with our ally (the Afghan government) and then it blows up in our face. Who would have thought? Trump is dangerously incompetent.
321
3,702
7,924
The two guys happiest with the Iowa results are Donald Trump and his pal Vladimir Putin. Please don't subscribe to conspiracy theories launched by either one of them. Simple human incompetence is almost always the right explanation.
1,224
1,700
7,600
We used to have an expression in our culture, "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response." That was the Vice President's response.
173
930
7,643
144,625
Journalists need to figure out different language to describe what's happening in Ukraine. When Putin razes Mariupol to the ground, that's not a "victory"—it's an obscenity. Let's not normalize it by saying he's "winning." These are criminal acts on a vast scale.#StandWithUkraine
137
2,285
7,825
Welcome to the Trump Economy. Dow is a 1000 points lower than when White House got its tax bill passed last year. Individual-1 likes unpredictability; Wall Street doesn't. cnb.cx/2PLQ5fg
363
3,661
7,521
The National Enquirer is to journalism what Donald Trump is to the presidency: a noxious, sleazy, corrupt imitation of the real thing.
113
1,815
7,548
Modern democracies die by voting themselves out of power. They elect autocrats who unravel that democracy. Why would you ever vote to make your vote not matter? #VoteBlueIn2022
411
2,511
7,078