Being a writer-editor-pundit in Donald Trump’s Washington is a 24/7 job. In the last year, I’ve had countless nights of missed dinners and lost sleep, along with a few canceled concerts and ruined respites. But there was one mission from which not even a Trump tweet starting a nuclear war could…
When I heard the news of Roger Bannister’s death last week at the age of 88, I recalled the first time I ever heard of Bannister, in the spring of 1963.
To someone watching snowboarding for the first time, it might look like a mix of skiing, surfing, and skateboarding. Some competitive snowboarding events are races and feature obstacles or emphasize speed; others award higher scores for better tricks. They are fairly recent additions to the Winter…
Ivanka Trump, the White House official and daughter of President Trump, will be leading the U.S delegation to the closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. According to senior administration officials, Ivanka will leave for Seoul on Thursday on a commercial flight, arriving in…
To someone watching snowboarding for the first time, it might look like a mix of skiing, surfing, and skateboarding. Some competitive snowboarding events are races and feature obstacles or emphasize speed; others award higher scores for better tricks. They are fairly recent additions to the Winter…
Speaking in Japan a couple of days before the Pyeongchang Olympics began, Vice President Mike Pence delivered a welcome message: “We will not allow North Korean propaganda to hijack the message and imagery of the Olympic Games,” he said. Unfortunately, Pence was not doing double duty as an…
Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday expressed confidence in John Kelly and the “remarkable job” the retired Marine general is doing. The embattled White House chief of staff came under fire last week for his handling of domestic abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter.
In this latest micro episode, the Substandard takes on the Olympics. How do the hosts feel about ice dancing? Vic is mildly interested in the winter games. JVL can't get enough. Sonny hates them.
In the course of what CNN informed its viewers and readers was a gold-medal-winning diplomatic performance, Kim Yo-jong, the U.S.-sanctioned sister of Kim Jong-un, signed a guest book belonging to South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in. “I hope Pyongyang and Seoul get closer in our people's hearts and…
For a stupid but explicable reason—American culture is bored, indulgent, tribal, and unthinking—Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean dicator Kim Jong-un, was memed (flatteringly) because she gave Vice President Mike Pence “side eye.” As the Washington Post's Philip Bump tweeted (before…
It’s likely that only the most hardcore Vogue readers remember it—and presumably Anna Wintour and company are hoping that even they will one day forget it—but back in 2011, the venerable fashion magazine posted a glowing profile of Asma al-Assad. Yes, that Asma al-Assad: the wife of the Syrian…
Rob Porter, the now-former staff secretary at the White House, was given the benefit of the doubt when credible allegations he had physically abused his ex-wives emerged this week. That’s how deputy press secretary Raj Shah put it in his briefing to the press Thursday, a day after Porter tendered…
The 2018 Winter Olympic Games have opened in the mountains of northeastern South Korea. The next two weeks will showcase some of the finest athletes in the world: men and women who’ve trained relentlessly and, whether they win a medal or not, deserve our esteem and best wishes. The United States…
Day Zero approaches in Cape Town. This Guardian feature about the water crisis in South Africa is fascinating.
A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to form a select committee to investigate the U.S. Olympic Committee’s role in enabling decades of sexual misconduct involving USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, who was sentenced in January to 40-175 years in prison for sexually abusing dozens…
At this point the Pyeongchang Olympics really should be re-christened the Pyongyang Olympics. What should have been a celebration of South Korea's titanic cultural, economic, and political achievements is degenerating into an event that will instead normalize the barbarous North Korean regime that…
The trial and conviction of Larry Nassar, team doctor for USA Gymnastics and osteopathic physician at Michigan State University, has exposed something rotten at the heart of an American Olympic sport.
At first, it seemed like a joke. Because the name of the South Korean city where the Olympics will occur in February—Pyeongchang—sounds so much like the North Korean capital—Pyongyang—many joked that scores of spectators would accidentally turn up in North Korea expecting the Olympics, only to be…
A miracle on ice? The two Koreas have announced that they will field a joint women’s hockey team at next month’s Olympics in Pyeongchang. The two countries will march in together under one flag, though will only complete as a team in women’s hockey. Still, it will be the first time the Koreas have…
As we prepare for 2018—which absolutely, positively, has to be better than 2017—we’ve followed the example of the great Chris Wallace and asked the TWS staff for predictions for next year along four vectors: politics, sports, entertainment, and foreign policy.
Here’s the president’s message to Alabama voters ahead of Tuesday’s special election for the U.S. Senate: “Get out and vote for Roy Moore.” That’s what Donald Trump said Friday in Pensacola, just across the state line in Florida and well within the Mobile media market.
It's long been publicly understood that the International Olympic Committee is a den of jobbery and payoffs. Which only raises the question, just how corrupt does an Olympic team have to be to get the IOC to sit in judgment of them?
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced last week that it will be adding 3-on-3 basketball to the standard hoops presence at the Olympics in 2020. The new format will follow the rules established by FIBA, which has has been hosting international tournaments the past several years.
More than 1,000 Russian athletes competing in "summer, winter, and Paralympic sport" have been identified in a vast doping conspiracy tainting numerous international competitions in recent years, a finding that indicated a hijacking of global sport, the World Anti-Doping Agency's chief investigator…
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If you want to see basketball played brilliantly, watch a video of the second quarter of the U.S.-Serbia game. It was the gold medal game and Serbia, having come close to beating the Americans earlier in the Olympics, was anything but a pushover.
After the breakup, who gets to keep the gold medals? That's the question some sports fans are asking themselves after a European Union website included British medals in a table that boasted of the EU besting both the United States and China in the Olympics medal count.
Coming into Rio, few people expected 31-year-old Michael Phelps, swimming in his fifth Olympics, to become the most decorated swimmer in this year's games. With the swimming competition now completed, however, that's exactly what transpired. Phelps finished with five gold medals (the most of any…
Puerto Rico won its first Olympic gold medal Saturday when Monica Puig defeated Angelique Kerber to take the top prize in women's singles in tennis. Puerto Ricans on the island and off were ecstatic—like Hamilton author Lin-Manuel Miranda, who celebrated in a series of tweets—as Puig joined Puerto…
Michael Phelps does not dominate or even contest every swimming discipline in international competition. The butterfly is his most famous stroke and individual race, and he has routinely cleaned up in freestyle. But he has only medaled in backstroke once. That was 10 years ago. And in no year has…
Monday night he was seated in a waiting area, wearing a hoodie pulled over his scalp, scowling as a rival played head games in front of him.
Records are meant to be broken. They are not meant to be pulverized with the hammer of Thor.
Before this year's string of tournaments began, fans of professional golf were talking about the arrival of three "young guns." And it was excited talk—as golf talk goes. It had been some time since the game had the kind of rivalry at the top that these three promised. The prospect of Rory McIlroy,…
Mr. Vladimir Putin intends that the current Olympic games be forever stamped with his glory. Sochi is being protected by a “Ring of Steel.” Thus has spoken Russia’s current Man of Steel, who sees himself as the rightful descendant of the original, although Mr. Putin’s bared breasts on such…
Continuing his pattern of intruding upon every major event (or at least the ones he’s aware of), President Obama appeared on Friday night’s broadcast of the Winter Olympics, just before the Opening Ceremonies. When Bob Costas asked, “[D]o you have a message for the United States team?” Obama…
The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with editor William Kristol on the week that was, Obamacare, the Sochi Olympics, immigration reform and the 2014 election cycle.
Secretary of State John Kerry was asked about security at the Olympics. He said he wasn't too concerned, but then brought up the Boston Marathon.
Former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says Sochi is a "very bad choice to have the Olympics":
ABC reports:
The Sochi Olympics are busy setting some sort of record for glitches and one of them has attracted the attentions of the indefatigable Senator Charles Schumer who is perturbed by the Russian’s unwillingness to allow the importation of yogurt.
Richard Engel reported last night on NBC that all visitors to the Sochi Olympics are getting hacked as soon as their electronic devices connect to any Russian network:
The White House press secretary says in a statement that President Obama met with his national security team today in the Situation Room to discuss security at the upcoming Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
The Olympics – ancient and modern divisions – were intended to be celebrations where men laid down their arms and engaged in competitions that did not end with bodies strewn across the landscape. The intentions were noble but the games – especially those of today – were inevitably corrupted by the…
The White House released this readout of a phone call between President Obama and President Putin of Russia today:
As the winter holidays approached, the beleaguered Russian opposition had a rare occasion to celebrate: Russia’s three best-known political prisoners were unexpectedly granted their freedom. On December 20, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil tycoon whose arrest a decade ago escalated Vladimir…
If the human interest bits on how one of the athletes in the curling competition overcame a childhood trauma of one sort or another, the over-the-top heraldic music, and the supercharged commentary were not enough to get you to skip the Olympics – or at least watch it via DVR – then this ought to…
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will be skipping the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. So will Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden.
A loyal reader writes in:
Mitt Romney closed his Sunday rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, with a stirring account of patriotism from American speed skater Derek Parra at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Watch the whole speech below, but the story begins around 9:00:
Next to Mitt Romney picking Paul Ryan as his running mate, the best thing that happened over the weekend was the USA basketball team capturing the gold medal at the London Olympics.
President Obama devotes today's weekly address to the Summer Olympics. "I’ve got to admit I was a little jealous [Michelle Obama] got to go," President Obama tells the nation.
Almost two weeks ago, I speculated on Fox News Sunday that Mitt Romney would announce his vice presidential pick early next week, on August 6 or 7. It was, if I may say, a reasonably well-informed forecast at the time. But I didn't take into account the existence and importance of the redoubtable…
For the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, Saudi women are being allowed by their ultra-conservative government to compete. As the Saudi athletes marched in the opening ceremonies in London, the women’s faces and open arms showed a joyful sense of emancipation from the yoke of…
Because conservatives are scrooges, the good folks at Americans for Tax Reform have gone through the fine print to find out what our Olympians will have to cough up to the IRS should they be lucky enough to win any medals in London.
Warsaw, Poland
CNN host Piers Morgan defended Mitt Romney this morning, after the Republican presidential candidate wondered whether London is prepared for the Olympics:
First Lady Michelle Obama will hold a large event for her health intiative Let's Move in London tomorrow. The White House announced:
The latest ad from Priorities USA, the main pro-Obama super PAC, uses footage from the 2002 Olympics to hit Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Watch here:
President Obama is catching hoops in Washington tonight, watching the U.S. men's basketball team prepare for the Olympics with an exhibition game against Brazil. "President Obama arrived at the Verizon Center at 7:46 p.m., wearing jeans, sneakers, white shirt, dark blue Under Armor zip up,"…
Senate majority leader Harry Reid has taken time away from the rigors of not passing a budget and calling Mitt Romney a tax cheat to comment on the uniforms of the United States Olympic team.
While the debate continues over how to deal with an Iran that has nuclear ambitions, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has other things on his mind. "I would like to be next to our young athletes at the 2012 Olympics but the host has a problem with this," Ahmadinejad said of 2012 Olympics in…
Members of British intelligence are concerned about the possibility of Iran and al Qaeda teaming up in a plot against the West, perhaps in a joint attack against the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Their concerns were first voiced in a piece by Sky News on Wednesday and then in other follow-up…
The Iranian government thinks Olympic logo is some sort of anti-Semitic Rorschach test.
I always like it when we can notch a win for the non-cheaters, even if it is 10 years too late. Earlier this spring, the International Olympic Committee disqualified the 2000 Chinese women's Olympic team for having an underaged competitor. China placed third in the Sydney Olympics, with the…