In the spring of 2023, not long after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched his chaotic presidential campaign, I asked him a straightforward question. What do you see as more harmful to America: another term of Joe Biden, or Donald Trump returning to power? “I can’t answer that,” Kennedy replied.
This morning, Kennedy finally stopped being cagey: He announced that he was suspending his campaign and throwing his support to Trump.

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The Democrats have met, they’ve nominated a candidate, and now they’re all going home. Their meeting was not a replay of the 1968 disaster; it did not devolve into a divisive confrontation among factions; it did not feature tense ballot fights stretching into the wee hours.

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The era of generative-AI propaganda is upon us. In the past week, Donald Trump has published fabricated images on his social-media accounts showing Kamala Harris speaking to a crowd of uniformed communists under the hammer and sickle, Taylor Swift in an Uncle Sam outfit, and young women in “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts.

T
he leading third-party candidate for president—an environmental lawyer and activist, a son and nephew of legendary liberal Democratic politicians—just quit the race and announced that he is joining the campaign of the most anti-environment president and presidential nominee in recent history, the leader of a Republican Party he has turned into a right-wing, anti-democratic, protofascist personality cult.

Palestinians have, since the start of Israeli retaliation for Hamas’s massacre on October 7 last year, been living through one of the worst calamities in an already tragic history. Attacks by the Israeli military have killed tens of thousands Palestinians in Gaza, and much of the region’s population of 2 million has been displaced—repeatedly—and remains at risk of starvation and illness.

For three nights, a joy approaching euphoria has coursed through the Democratic National Convention. I think the word I’ve heard most this week—more than “Harris,” “Trump,” or “Democrats”—is “vibes.” People say how good the vibes are, ask how the vibes seem, ruminate on how the vibes have shifted since Harris became the de facto nominee one month ago. And though the repetition might be cringe, it’s true: Everyone is feeling great.
But no one seems to be having as much fun as the nominee.