Dear Reader,

Have you read what Mary L. Trump had to say about the January 6 insurrection? And why the GOP still marches in lockstep behind her uncle, and whether she thinks he’s going to try to run for president again in 2024?
Actually, I know that you haven’t. And you haven’t because she hasn’t written about those things anywhere. Until now.

“Donald’s Plot Against America,” Mary’s exclusive cover story for The New Republic’s September issue, goes into all these topics and more. It’s her first scathing account of everything her uncle and his enablers have done since the publication of her celebrated, bestselling book from 2020, Too Much and Never Enough. 

 

Mary’s TNR essay is built around what she calls the “Second Big Lie.” That is, the Big Lie, as we know, is that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. But now, in the aftermath of the insurrection, the American right is trying to sell voters on lie number two: that January 6 was nothing out of the ordinary, a normal protest in the finest American tradition.

 

Why are they peddling the Second Big Lie? Because, Mary writes, “they know that if midterm voters remember the truth about January 6, they’re in trouble. The insurrection of January 6 should have been a wake-up call. It looks, instead, to have been a dress rehearsal.”

 

She blames this chiefly on her uncle, but of the Republicans, she writes that they “haven’t lost their way. They have, instead, found it. And it has led them straight toward unabashed white supremacy and fascism.”

 

It’s a trenchant and important piece that you won’t want to miss. And be sure to have a gander at the other features in the September issue, starting with Jordan Michael Smith’s excellent 9/11 twentieth-anniversary piece. Smith asks whether our foreign policy establishment has learned anything in the last 20 years of wars with no end—and he presses a number of members of that establishment on the point.

 

Veteran political analyst and TNR staffer Walter Shapiro takes an early and counterintuitive look at the midterms. Where most liberals and analysts see doom, Walter makes a hopeful—and plausible—case that 2022 just might be different from most years. And staff writer Melissa Gira Grant traveled down to Texas for us, to report on that state legislature’s attempt to pass restrictive anti-trans legislation. The bill ultimately failed, but the mere effort imposed a high cost on trans teens and their families.

 

It’s a great mix of articles, all on urgent matters. Enjoy.

 

—Michael Tomasky, editor