S.E. Cupp Columns

“He totally (expletive)ed us.” It’s rare to hear a political party operative speak this way about one of his own. It’s almost unheard of to hear a well-known campaign adviser like David Plouffe speak this way on the record about the former president of the United States, Joe Biden. Especially...

This week, President Trump’s second term turned 100 … days, that is. And to mark the occasion, he held a rally in Michigan where he touted what he thinks of as his biggest accomplishments — tariffs, deporting alleged gang members to El Salvador and his creation of the Department of...

Pete Hegseth came in hot. The tatted-up warhawk who’d spent the past seven years as a “Fox & Friends” weekend host was on nobody’s short list for Defense secretary when incoming President Trump made him his pick to lead the largest organization in the world. His lack of experience running...

Our long national nightmare is over. Or is it? After the longest week of economic uncertainty and peril Americans have endured in a long time, President Donald Trump finally caved and announced a 90-day pause on his ham-fisted, hairbrained, ill-advised and ill-conceived trade war with the world. The 10% baseline...

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.” This was the president of the United States’ defense of his national security adviser who’s embroiled in a humiliating, alarming and downright unfathomable breach of security — and confidence. In case you missed it, “Signalgate” is the latest controversy...

Back in 2020, while Donald Trump and Joe Biden were locked in a close race for the White House, some of us who’d covered Trump for years were ringing alarm bells that, if he lost, he would not go quietly. To us, this was more than obvious. In 2016, he’d...

It was January 2016, with just two weeks before the Iowa caucus. Then candidate Donald Trump delivered to a Christian college audience what would become the line of his political career: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters, OK?” Since...

When the computers arrived at City Hall in January 2002, they were the talk of the town. Known as “The Bloomberg,” the system of flat-screen terminals used to crunch real-time market data made famous by their namesake mogul Mike Bloomberg, were sent to populate the new mayor of New York...

It’s a favorite saying of the American right when advocating for stricter immigration laws: “A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.” It’s usually attributed to Ronald Reagan, the Republican hero who was nearly unimpeachable in his patriotism and his commitment to conservatism. The same Reagan whose...

It’s been only two weeks, but with every passing day of President Trump’s second term, Mike Judge’s 2006 masterpiece, “Idiocracy,” becomes a more and more prescient and embarrassingly accurate prediction of what the American government might one day look like. In Judge’s scathing prophecy, the near-collapse of Western civilization and...

“(H)ead-banging, football helmet on, non-toilet trained, nonverbal.” This is how President Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has described the millions of Americans who are on the autism spectrum. He was talking to fellow conspiracy trafficker and mega-podcaster Joe Rogan in...

With all the attention deservedly on President Trump and what he intends to do with his defiant return to the White House, there’s a more than good chance we’ll spend the next four years consumed once again by all things Trump. There’s already been a dizzying amount: a giant raft...

Oh, how far we’ve fallen. On Tuesday, the Senate began its confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet, starting with one of his more controversial picks, “Fox & Friends Weekend” host Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary. The roughly four-hour performance was an utter waste of time, having accomplished nearly nothing...

“He wants to be a builder like the hero of Ayn Rand’s novel, so large that the skyline is his profile.” That was a New York Times editorial from 1985. Then, President-elect Donald Trump was merely a real estate developer, looking to make his mark on a city that was...

In his first week as a federal judge, Murray Gurfein was assigned the biggest case of his life. He’d just been nominated to the Southern District of New York by President Richard Nixon in April 1971, and confirmed by the Senate in May when the Pentagon Papers case landed on...

This was a long day coming, and frankly one I never thought I’d see. Thirteen years ago, Syria’s Bashar Assad unleashed a reign of unmitigated terror on his own people, in response to protests of his inhumane Ba’athist government. Over the course of the civil war, he unabashedly committed the...

It’s been a rough go of it for those of us still clinging to antiquated notions that with leadership and power should come things like honesty, integrity, morality and expertise. But these long-gone vestiges of a forgotten America, one in which criminals don’t get to be president and sex offenders...

While Democrats continue to wring their hands over what went so seriously wrong in 2024 — and there are many complicating factors — there’s one simple truth about it all: Donald Trump listened to voters better than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did. On the economy, immigration and crime, Trump...

It’s tough sledding for Democrats, as they try to wrap their heads around Donald Trump’s improbable-but-also-foreseeable sweep of all seven swing states and winning the popular vote. This wasn’t supposed to happen, after all. Democrats genuinely believed — as they did in 2016 — that Trump’s many odious qualities would...

For millions of Americans, Wednesday was a very dark day. An incomprehensible day. A day many thought would never come. I’m deeply disappointed, too. After everything we know about Donald Trump, and everything he’s already put this country through, how is it possible we’re choosing to do this to ourselves...

It’s been 41 years since President Ronald Reagan gave his famous “Evil Empire” speech. It was 1983, the height of the Cold War, and Reagan spoke passionately about the “focus of evil in the modern world” that was the Soviet Union. He rejected arguments of false equivalence between the U.S....

“You just ban it. The president bans it. You just don’t let it happen. Not a big deal.” That line from former President Donald Trump at a Fox News town hall this week was met with an eruption of applause and cheers from the all-female audience. They were clearly thrilled...

With less than four weeks until Nov. 5, the inundation of election news — and, more importantly, non-news — is at a fever pitch. From a bombardment of election ads — especially in swing states — to a dramatic parsing of every word out of former President Donald Trump and...

The reviews are in, and America overwhelmingly approves. Voters and viewers had very positive things to say about the vice presidential debate in New York City on Tuesday night. What was expected to be a contentious sparring match between former President Donald Trump’s running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance and...

It’s the go-to play nowadays. If you’re a politician collared for alleged crimes, feign indignation, call it a “conspiracy,” blame the “corrupt” Department of Justice and refuse to resign. New York Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on five federal charges related to 2021 campaign contributions, wire fraud and bribery....