Man in the Mirror: Why Trump Sees Himself in Kavanaugh | Can $5B Bring Olympic Glory to a Dictatorship?

There are echoes of 2016 here, and the president learned then that fighting pays off.

On October 7, 2016, after The Washington Post made public a tape in which Donald Trump bragged about grabbing women by the genitals, he gathered top advisers in Trump Tower and went around the room asking for advice. Republicans, already wary of him, were jumping ship in droves. Then-Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus gave a grim account: “You have two choices. You either drop out right now, or you lose by the biggest landslide in American political history.” A ticket of Mike Pence and Condoleezza Rice was floated. Trump issued a rare apology, but plowed forward saying it was mere “locker room talk.” When several women came forward to say that he had acted out those words and sexually assaulted them, Trump denounced the “false smears” and suggested that one of them was not attractive enough to earn his interest anyway.

It worked. He won. And from then on, those who didn’t abandon Trump at his Access Hollywood low point earned a special credibility in Trumpland. That’s why when Christine Blasey Ford went public — again in the Post — with her accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school, Trump didn’t back down.

Despite its big-spending government, Turkmenistan hasn’t had much luck at reaching the podium.

Few would deny the Soviet Union was a sporting powerhouse in its time. Take the multiple gold medal–winning Soviet hockey team, for instance, or the country’s national basketball squad, which bested the U.S. during the Summer Olympics in both 1972 and 1988.

After the empire’s collapse in 1991, the Soviet legacy of strong institutional support for athletics — a key part of the Kremlin’s Cold War policy — trickled down to the 15 former republics. It’s partly why Russia remains a world leader in hockey, while Ukraine has recently cultivated some of the best boxers in the world. Even tiny Tajikistan, the poorest of the former republics, has managed to clinch two bronze medals, a silver and a gold.

Turkmenistan, however, hasn’t been so lucky.

Christine Sanders’ relatable tale of young women of color navigating the recession could be her breakout work.

Sitting in a salon with her mother, Paige vents about her frustrating post-college job search in the TV business. “Baby, you know life is hard sometimes,” her mother says. Paige replies: “When does it get better?"

For Christine Sanders, the real woman and writer/producer/director behind this on-screen character, that time is now. Her web series, Barely Adults, which focuses on a Black woman and her Latina best friend navigating post-financial-crash New York City, launched in the spring. Sanders, 33, is promoting the show on the festival circuit, building buzz in the hopes of getting picked up by a major network — much as Issa Rae’s Insecure and Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson’s Broad City migrated from web series to TV. But when we speak as she’s leaving the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival, Sanders has broader goals. “I want to continue telling stories about people who have been traditionally shut out, and to tell these stories in authentic ways,” she says.