Ryan Lizza On the Media, Trump, and Surviving The Paparazzi
Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates
Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates
Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigate
Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates
Watch the conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates
Whatever else he may be, Trump is a genius at flooding the zone. I know I am not the only person whose mind is addled right now due to the speed and volume of executive orders and pronouncements tumbling out of the White House. There’s no time to give each startling development the focus and attention it deserves, because right on its heels there’s something fresher, bolder – and more frightening.
I disagree – most respectfully – with Trump biographer Michael Wolff, Monday’s guest, who said during our interview that he believes the modus operandi behind the cacophony of sound coming out of the White House is chaotic and disorganized. I’d posit that, based on my reporting – with the exception of the flip-flop on tariffs, which was clearly unanticipated – the messaging is highly organized with the precise objective of making our heads spin. The chaos is real – but it’s us who are bumping up and down in the turbulence, not Trump.
With all that in mind, I want to refocus today’s newsletter on Russia – precisely because it’s gotten buried amid the current bombardment of directives testing our Constitution.
Today ought to be a day of global historical importance: the final day of the 30-day “ceasefire” Trump proudly told us he had brokered between Russia and Ukraine as a prelude to peace talks, and which Ukraine agreed to on March 11th. It was supposed to begin on March 18th after a phone call between Trump and Putin.
Except. Wait. There has been no ceasefire.
Read on at Vicky Ward Investigates
Watch the conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates
Watch the conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates
So, good news following the disappointing tech glitches of Wednesday.
Michael Wolff and I will now bring you the episode you should have seen on Wednesday on Monday at 5pm ET.
And then next Wednesday’s show will feature the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, as scheduled at 5pm.
Fortunately there is bigger and better news than my tech woes.
Tuesday, I had tea with Devon Archer.
For those of you who don’t know who he is: Archer, 50, is Hunter Biden’s former best friend and business partner. It was Archer who introduced Hunter Biden to the Ukraine energy company, Burisma and many other foreign businesses who loved the idea of aligning themselves with Joe Biden’s son. Archer is the one on the far left, in the now infamous 2014 photograph of the Bidens at the Sebonack golf club in Long Island.
The business relationship began in 2009. But in 2016 Archer was charged with securities fraud. After years of complex, drawn out litigation, he was due to serve a prison sentence for a year and a day when, on March 21st President Trump dramatically called him over at the NCAA Wrestling National Championships in Philadelphia and told him he was going to issue him a pardon. He officially pardoned him on March 25th. Archer is now a full-blown MAGA convert.
I have long been fascinated to know the real story of Devon Archer because in all my Epstein reporting and, also during my time at CNN, his name kept cropping up as someone in the room wheeling and dealing with all the same magnates, oligarchs, and VIPs around the world I’d be reporting about.
Read on at Vicky Ward Investigates
I was in Washington, DC on “Liberation Day” last week where the mood was distinctly different from that in New York City, where the derogatory talk about President Trump has predictably been on steroids: He’s a moron. A dictator. He’s destroying America and the World etcetera….
The summit of derogatory expression was possibly reached for me at least, on Tuesday night, even before the tariff mayhem was upon us. I sat in the audience at the New York Public Library listening to Timothy L. Snyder – the historian and author of On Tyranny – deliver the annual Bob Silvers lecture, after which he gravely answered questions about the possibility that the US would invade Canada.
“There are people not very far from here geographically who are making very practical preparations for that eventuality… There are conversations to be had now about the kind of rhetoric we’re using towards Canada, which is shockingly, shockingly similar to the rhetoric that Putin used before the invasion of Crimea in 2013, 2014,” Snyder said.
(Snyder and two other Yale professors have left the US for Canada, citing Trump fears – that’s a whole rabbit hole I won’t go down here.)
The crowd, which was noticeably absent of the billionaire capitalists who comprise the board of the New York Public Library, roared its applause.
And then the next morning, I headed to Washington, D.C.
Even the Acela train ride wasn’t without excitement.
Read on at Vicky Ward Investigates
Hey Everyone,
I have some exciting news! This coming week, on Wednesday April 9th at 5pm EST, I will kick off the first of a new weekly live video TV “show” that will be available to all my subscribers while it’s live. (Most of the recorded version will be available but behind a paywall.)
Each week on Wednesday afternoon, the TV version of Vicky Ward Investigates will last around thirty minutes and you’ll get my take on the news of the week — high, low, political, cultural, serious, trivial — and I’ll be chatting with some of the A-list sources and friends I’ve accumulated in the 35 years I’ve worked as a journalist both here and in the UK. So, Buckle Up! No topic is off limits! As many of you know, I am interested in anything and everything: In this newsletter I’ve written about domestic politics and foreign affairs, but also about Broadway, the movie Challengers, the vagaries of my reporting life; Elizabeth Holmes, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein; Alex Murdaugh; Armie Hammer and much, much more.
Read on at Vicky Ward Investigates