Newsweek 11/09/2018

2007 A year before the 2008 election, Michael Bloomberg, New York City’s mayor, was a man with enough money to ”make one of the most significant third-party bids for the White House in American history.” In the end, Bloomberg sat 2008 out, instead winning a controversial third term as mayor. Now 76, he is actively teasing another bid—this time as a Democrat. As Bloomberg told The New York Times in October, “I’m way away from where the Republican Party is today”—and particularly from that other New York billionaire now running the country. 1958 “The attention of the world’s half-billion Roman Catholics turned to the Vatican” for the crowning of Pope John XXIII. Then 76, he died five years later. Nicknamed the “Good Pope,” he was canonized in 2014 alongside Pope John Paul II,…

Honduran migrants travel north through Mexico as part of a caravan heading to the U.S. on October 27. While they were still close to 1,000 miles away from the U.S. border, and it was unclear when or whether they would reach it, President Donald Trump deemed the caravan a “national emergency” and called for the military to deploy to the border. Many of the migrants are believed to be women and children seeking refuge from violence, and critics accused Trump of using them to stoke fears ahead of the midterms.…

WHEN PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP TOOK the stage at the New York Hilton Midtown on election night in 2016, he had just wiped the floor with Hillary Clinton, who had expected to be the first female president of the United States. American women were left not with a second-wave role model headed for the White House but with a man leading a clan of female camp followers engaged in the sort of transactional relationship feminists hoped had gone the way of the corset. The Trump woman was as branded as the New York buildings bearing his name. Looking at his third wife, Melania, and his eldest daughter, Ivanka—gleaming, towering replicas of each other—many were asking themselves the same question: Could their support for Trump, a man caught on tape belittling and objectifying…

IT WAS A GREAT DAY.” Received like royalty in the spring of 2017, Donald Trump was gushing on the first foreign destination of his presidency: Saudi Arabia. He had pledged new, warmer relations with the kingdom after the relative coolness of the Obama era, and, surrounded by opulence, he heralded a new “strategic vision,” one that would mean “tremendous investments in the United States” and a key partner in Middle East peace. Beaming and giving high fives was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who had spent months cultivating a close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the then-31-year-old who billed himself as a reformer ready to usher in a new era for the conservative kingdom he was entrusted to run. For the U.S., the alliance was a big bet:…

SAUDI JOURNALIST JAMAL KHASHOGGI’S DEATH at the hands of agents from his home country has much wider implications beyond questions of press freedom. It casts a shadow over a complex, multisided competition for influence in the Middle East. The U.S. has long fostered friendly ties with a number of powers in the region, especially Israel—a partnership that has left Arab and Muslim nations hesitant to fully embrace Washington. With tackling an increasingly powerful Iran becoming a top priority for Sunni Muslim leaders and overlapping political crises dividing the Middle East, however, allegiances have again begun to shift. How the U.S. navigates this tense geopolitical climate will determine the level of clout it holds in the region as President Donald Trump struggles to maintain and advance his agenda there. SAUDI ARABIA Officially established…

THE SAUDI JOURNALIST JAMAL Khashoggi told me he feared for his life. I was reporting Newsweek’s July 9 cover story on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and we were speaking off the record: That’s one reason I haven’t allowed this transcript to be published until now. The other reason is I hoped Khashoggi was still alive. Despite ample signs of the extreme brutality of the crown prince’s regime, I never imagined we would soon be reflecting on the journalist’s horrifying death at the hands of a group of Saudi agents in their country’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Khashoggi was calm and deliberate as we spoke about Saudi Arabia’s future and its recent past. “I don’t see myself as an opposition,” he said. He wanted only reform; he wanted “a…