Yoni Appelbaum Profile picture
Jul 30, 2019 3 tweets 2 min read Read on X
1. In 1971, Richard Nixon got a call from Ronald Reagan, complaining about African delegates at the UN. "To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
2. The racist remarks were excised from the recording’s initial release in 2000. The historian @TimNaftali requested that these tapes be rereviewed, and the Nixon Library has now released them. We publish them for the first time here: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
3. Nixon laughed, and then began repeating Reagan’s complaint to aides. “He saw these, these, uh, these cannibals on television last night, and he says, ‘Christ, they weren’t even wearing shoes, and here the United States is going to submit its fate to that.'"

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More from @YAppelbaum

Oct 22
“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”

Read this whole story, from @JeffreyGoldberg:
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Trump volunteered to pay for the funeral of a murdered U.S. soldier. When the bill came, Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!”

theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
When Trump told his chief of staff he admired "German generals," Kelly asked him: “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals? Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Read 6 tweets
Oct 1
1. Large numbers of students are arriving at highly selective universities unprepared to read a book cover-to-cover—because no teacher has ever asked them to before, reports @rosehorowitch theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
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2. Professors report their students are less able to absorb details while keeping track of the plot, have narrower vocabularies, shut down in the face of challenging ideas, and struggle to persist through challenging texts: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
3. The great Melville scholar Andrew Delbanco has switched his American literature survey to a seminar on short texts, and dropped Moby Dick from his syllabus in favor of Billy Budd and Bartleby. “One has to adjust to the times,” he said. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Read 4 tweets
Aug 28
1. I’ve spent the past several years trying to solve a riddle: Why has America ceased to be a land of opportunity for so many of its people? The answer, I’ve come to believe, is that we’re STUCK: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700580/s…
2. For centuries, Americans were always starting over, always looking to their next beginning, always seeking to move up by moving on. Mobility has been the great engine of American prosperity, the essential mechanism of social equality, and the ballast of our diverse democracy.
3. At the peak of our mobility, perhaps one in three Americans moved each year. But over the last half-century, we’ve been slowly grinding to a halt. Today, it’s more like one in twelve.
Read 7 tweets
Aug 12
1. We've had 32 presidents who've seen military service, and 31 of them were commissioned officers. Most Americans in uniform are enlisted personnel, but that experience is rare among powerful politicians.
2. James Buchanan served briefly as a private in 1812 in the defense of Baltimore. Among vice presidents, Walter Mondale made it to corporal; Al Gore was a Spec4.
3. The most interesting case is Hannibal Hamlin, who enlisted as a private in the Maine Coast Guard when the war began in 1861. When his unit was activated in 1864 to staff a fort in Kittery, he insisted on doing his part.
Read 6 tweets
May 9, 2022
You can read @JenSeniorNY’s masterful story—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award—here:
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
My colleague @sophieGG is a treasure—and today, in naming her a finalist for criticism, the Pulitzer board made that official. pulitzer.org/finalists/soph…
Also a Pulitzer finalist? This @julian_aguon story, edited by the incredibly gifted Lenika Cruz, that the jury called "both heartbreaking and hopeful.” theatlantic.com/culture/archiv…
Read 4 tweets
May 3, 2022
1. Some recent stories that might be helpful in contextualizing tonight’s news 🧵
In December, Mary Zeigler listened to the oral arguments, and wrote that "the Court is poised to reverse Roe outright.” theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
3. Last week, Zeigler and Rachel Rebouché took a detailed look at the legal landscape that Roe will leave behind—where pressures might induce some states to reverse their current course: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Read 10 tweets

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