Dick Polman

MAGA thinks we’re only entitled to their opinion
Bear with me as I flash back, albeit briefly, to 2009. Ted Kennedy died that summer, an event that triggered a tsunami of online hatred. I wrote about the Kennedy fallout, lamenting how the internet had afforded idiots the opportunity to exhibit the..
Charlie Kirk and the test of empathy
There’s an unwritten law in our doomscrolling dystopia that when something bad happens, everyone shall speedily post a clickable opinion, something that’s often little more than eye candy with empty calories. So imagine how remiss yours truly ha..
Crackpot RFK Jr. is a clear and present danger
Years from now, assuming this sick country somehow manages to rediscover respect for science and truth, historians will marvel that a serial-lying convicted criminal and a serial-lying bargain basement Kennedy forged a moronic marriage that endanger..
Katrina, 20 years later: MAGA has learned nothing
It’s axiomatic by this point that the Grand Old Party has morphed into a pro-death cult ruled by the cruelest overlords in American history - as evidenced by their worshipful gun fetish, their determination to sabotage life-saving vaccines, and th..
Gavin Newsom’s fight isn’t pretty, but it’s the war we must win
I’ll spare you the line about how Democrats always bring knives to a gunfight.  It’s just sweet that - finally! - there’s a prominent Democrat who has the cojones and social media smarts to kick Trump’s sorry bum 24/7. I grant you Gavin New..
Trump genuflected to his Russian master and shamed America, yet again
It comes as no surprise America’s mutation of Neville Chamberlain raped our national honor during his meetup in Alaska with his Russian master, sucking up so shamelessly that any second I expected him to drop to the carpet and lick the mass murder..
Trump’s war on truth is designed to make us stupid and clueless
When I heard the news the authoritarian imbecile had fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics director for the crime of factual math, I dimly recalled something that George Orwell had written in a magazine essay 86 years ago. I had to look it up to conf..
Why is Trump so obsessed with Obama?
Raise your hand if you’re shocked that Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein’s flop-sweating wingman, has been trying to blame his metastasizing scandal on Barack Obama. No? Me neither. When Trump opened his pie hole the other day and babbled that Obama..
Tyrants don’t like to be laughed at
See if this rings a bell: In 1994 the voters in Italy elected, as their leader, a flamboyant demagogic mogul with no governing experience. Silvio Berlusconi vowed to lurch Italy rightward, and the nation’s neo-fascists rejoiced. He was not a fan o..
Trump stoked his nutcase base. Now comes the reckoning.
I’ve long been loath to dip a toe into the stinking MAGA sewer, lest I suffer a foot infection impervious to even the strongest antibiotics. But there are times when attention must be paid, and if I can lighten the narrative with dollops of levity..
If the death of kids in Texas won’t wake MAGA up, nothing ever will
When Trump was first inaugurated back in 2017, I wrote with full confidence that he would “get a lot of people killed.” Anyone with a functioning brain knew what would happen. And so it did. The Lancet, a prominent medical journal, concluded in ..
The Bloated Billionaire Bill is class warfare
What’s most important to remember about the monstrous “big beautiful” bill ginned up by Trump’s Reichstag is that Republicans are just being themselves. They’ve always pined to fatten the fat cats and screw the average citizen - to take fr..

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About Dick Polman
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review website as one of the nation's top political scribes, and by ABC News' online political tip sheet as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation, " Dick Polman is the national political columnist at Philadlephia NPR affiliate WHYY, and has covered or chronicled every presidential campaign since 1988. A Philadelphia resident, Dick roamed the country for most of his 22 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has been blogging daily since 2006. He's currently on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "Writer in Residence." He has been a frequent guest on C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, and various NPR shows - most notably Philadelphia's "Radio Times" on WHYY-FM.
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