President Donald Trump during a visit to Florida International University in Miami, Florida, on February 18, 2019. (Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)
Republican Senators in swing states are falling in their approval ratings back home. In Maine, Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina, 63 percent of voters want the Senate to allow witnesses and subpoenas in the impeachment trial. Joan Walsh comments on the politics of impeachment, and on the losing arguments Trump’s attorneys have offered.
Plus: This Sunday is the Super Bowl, the biggest sports event in America—a hundred million people watch the Super Bowl these days. The Superbowl—and all of football—is sort of like Donald Trump: Both of them provide mass entertainment that promotes tribalism and toxic masculinity while keeping violence in vogue. Legendary sports writer Robert Lipsyte explains.
Also: the Border Patrol, it turns out, has a youth group—“Border Patrol Explorers,” an extension of the Boy Scouts. Morley Musick went to the Arizona border to find out who signs up and what they do once they’re in the organization.
Start Making SenseTwitterStart Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.
Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.