Here’s just some of what people with a window into the 45th president’s temperament of late have told Peter:

“He’d rather be tearing the head off a rooster than putting caviar on a cracker.”

—A former senior White House official

“He’s not nature’s best diplomat. He doesn’t use a scalpel; he uses a meat ax.”

—A Republican senator

“These heavy issues are weighing on him. He has nobody around him. There’s nobody.”

—A person close to Trump

“What he’s done is conflated himself with America. He’s physically hugged the flag, but he’s also done that in his mind. If you attack him, you’re attacking America. You’re unpatriotic. ‘It’s very bad for our country!’”

— Seth Norrholm, a neuroscientist who studies stress, anxiety, and trauma

—Saahil Desai

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« IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS »

Reactions to the impeachment hearings stuck to an expected pattern. How did Fox News, still by all accounts the president’s favorite TV network, cover them?

MSNBC, too, had a bias in its coverage…. But Fox had much more than a slant; in Trump, effectively, it had an author.

Read Megan Garber’s full essay.

Speaking of Fox News: Ron Brownstein explores the factors that have so solidified Trump’s GOP support.

1. “Many Republicans now say they trust information only from deeply conservative media sources.” 2. It’s a feedback loop: “GOP voters have also remained unified behind Trump because so few elected Republicans have publicly condemned him.” 3. Enough ardent Trump supporters fear the “demographic, cultural, and economic changes remaking America” to cling to the president.

Read Ron’s full analysis.

Meanwhile, Democrats could clear some of the GOP’s smokescreen by simply calling Hunter Biden in to testify, David Graham argues.

House Democrats are in a hurry to complete their inquiry, and calling minority witnesses would slow the process down. But calling them might offer crucial clarity to the public on some disputed issues, and neuter Republican charges of unfairness.

Read David’s full argument.

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« EVENING READ »

(DELIL SOULEIMAN / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)

October was a devastating month for America’s Kurdish partners in Syria, and an alarming one for other American allies, who got a real-time glimpse into what America-first foreign policy looks like in practice:

Given all the fallout among Trump’s allies, both foreign and domestic, not to mention his detractors, and the impact of the U.S. government’s policy zigzagging in Syria these past weeks, Trump’s green-light moment will haunt him and the U.S. for a long time to come, like Obama’s red-line moment still looms large over his presidency.

Read Uri Friedman’s full story.

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« WHAT OUR WRITERS ARE READING »

The United States has traditionally styled itself as a force for stability in the world, but this New York Times dispatch from Kyiv shows the extent to which a politically dysfunctional America now looks like a source of instability overseas. French President Emmanuel Macron made a similar point in a recent interview with The Economist, arguing that Europe needs to provide for its own defense.

—Uri Friedman, a staff writer on our national-security team