On the heels of President Joe Biden’s historic departure from his reelection campaign, New York’s July 29–August 11 issue captures a giddy Democratic Party swiftly coalescing around Kamala Harris, as well as the previously unimaginable avenue for corruption available to a victorious Donald Trump.
“Since we sent our last issue to the printer, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt, J.D. Vance joined his ticket, the Republicans crowed all week in Milwaukee about their impending victory, Joe Biden got COVID, his closest Democratic peers forced him out of the race, and Kamala Harris — with astonishing speed — wrapped up the race to succeed him,” says editor-in-chief David Haskell. “We made an issue that grapples with all of it, plus peeks at what could be the biggest financial-political scandal of Trump’s second term, plus sends the Look Book to the nude beach at Sandy Hook, plus a lot more (including an exceedingly long, relatively low-stakes, literary-world beach read for the ages).”
Rebecca Traister reflects on the thrill of taking a risk on Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, and Simon van Zuylen-Wood warns against Democrats underestimating the potential appeal of J.D. Vance and his populist message. Gabriel Debenedetti takes readers inside the Harris takeover of a losing campaign full of Biden loyalists and reports on her plan to turn it around, and Kerry Howley writes on the experience of watching Joe Biden say good-bye to a second term via his televised address to the nation. David Freedlander investigates Donald Trump’s media company: its questionable founding, the criminal fraud of its investors, and the way an enormously unprofitable and fundamentally unserious company has also become a $6 billion meme stock tracking his campaign. There’s never been anything in politics or finance like it — and we’re totally unprepared for how Trump might abuse the dynamic if reelected.
The cover is a photo illustration by Joe Darrow.
Elsewhere in the issue, Lila Shapiro profiles Phil Stutz, therapist to the stars who has made a career in Hollywood doing what most psychologists advise against: telling his patients exactly what to do, and Chris Heath writes a tale of literary score-settling as two couples whose marriages ended in infidelity keep putting out books about it.