In the Another-Country-Heard-From Department, Sweden was upset by President Donald J. Trump’s remarks at a campaign rally that implied the country had suffered an attack recently related to a refugee/immigration problem. (Gee, Australia, Mexico, Sweden – three countries down and only 193 left to go.)

"We've got to keep our country safe," he said. "You look at what's happening in Germany. You look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden.”

Despite the president’s problems with tenses, he was actually referring to a Fox News report Feb. 17 on an Ami Horowitz documentary that links refugees in Sweden to an increase in violent crimes – a correlation that has been debunked. ...

When I interviewed historian David Starkey about his new documentary and book “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” in 2001, I asked him about the downfall of the most bewitching of the wives, Anne Boleyn (No. 2) How did such a smart Rules Girl lose her head?

Starkey’s response was a shrewd one: What’s attractive in a mistress is often annoying in a wife.

I thought of that as I watched President Donald J. Trump back on the stump as if it were 2020. (God, if only it were.) Not that Trump is any Anne Boleyn. If anything, his outsize ego, multiple wives and sybaritic cruelty are much more reminiscent of Henry. But The Donald is an Anne in this regard: They have proved better at the pursuit than the prize. ...

Trump, rape and the demonization of ‘the other’

Trump as metaphor