Politics

If you want something done, do it yourself — that includes getting a report on your fake résumé written up before your political adversaries can. It's advice that the George Santos campaign took to heart when he was running for Congress in 2022.   Months before the media began to pounce upon Santos’s seemingly endless stream of lies, he already had them well documented. In 2021, his campaign paid $16,600 to Capital Research Group in Washington, DC, to deliver a secret internal report on Santos’s storied past.

First lady Jill Biden, who received the Covid-19 vaccine and boosters, has tested positive for the virus again. President Joe Biden, while presently unafflicted, is instead battling dismal approval ratings. A Wall Street Journal poll this week found that “voters overwhelmingly think President Biden is too old to run for re-election and give him low marks for handling the economy and other issues important to their vote…”Similarly, an Associated Press-NORC poll released last month found “fully 77 percent said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years. Not only do 89 percent of Republicans say that, so do 69 percent of Democrats.

The signals coming from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are that his Republican majority will soon launch a formal impeachment investigation. The final decision hasn’t been announced — and an investigation is still a far cry from a full House vote. But setting up an impeachment committee is an essential first step. Most of his caucus wants to take it.  Most, but not all. The reservations of some Republicans and the calculations behind them are why McCarthy has moved slowly. The speaker’s problem is more than rounding up votes. The other problem is the investigation carries real risks as well as benefits.  The biggest benefit is a technical, legal one.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where you should never let a crisis go to waste, and Donald Trump isn’t wasting any time bashing Ron DeSantis even in the midst of hurricane recovery efforts, hoping to stomp on what could be an opportunity to show off his good governance chops. The White House, meanwhile, is struggling not just with frustration over their delayed response to the Maui disaster and the president’s insistence on repeatedly telling his exaggerated anecdotes about a house fire, but also the anniversary of another, different kind of disaster: the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which brought Gold Star families to bear against the administration this week. The guys discuss all this and more on the latest Thunderdome podcast — listen and subscribe here today!

Before we get to the main item, a quick bit of housekeeping. Today’s DC Diary will be my last. I’m leaving The Spectator, but am happy to report that the Diary will live on after my departure. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to try and make sense of the often confusing, sometimes maddening news out of Washington over the last few years. I leave you in the more than capable hands of my talented Spectator colleagues.  For a brief time on Wednesday night, America was offered a glimpse of a Republican Party not dominated by Donald Trump. Candidates on the debate stage swapped views on important issues. From Ukraine to abortion, the conversation was substantive, occasionally fiery and, I imagine, illuminating for an undecided primary voter who tuned in.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where at long last, the 2024 debate is joined by our would-be champions. And also Asa Hutchinson was there. The night held surprises for several candidates, including going against much of what prognosticators thought would happen. But how much does it mean without the presence of Donald Trump, who ditched the debate, did a pre-taped interview with Tucker Carlson that produced no news, and had his squad of surrogates rejected at the doors of the spin room? We discussed all of this, winners and losers, and more on the latest podcast — listen and subscribe today!

What, if anything, is at stake in tonight’s Republican primary debate?  The front-runner is skipping the event, instead providing voters with a pre-taped interview he did with Tucker Carlson, before heading to Fulton County, Georgia, tomorrow to turn himself in. As for the eight candidates who will be on the stage — and I don’t want to sound uncharitable here — none has shown any hint of being capable of making a dent in the former president’s commanding poll lead. Underscoring the extent to which this primary is proving to be a rerun of the Trump show, Fox News will reportedly be playing clips of the former president as part of the debate.

Democrats constantly downplay Hunter Biden’s troubles and any felonies he might have committed. The legacy media avoid them entirely. What do they say when they can’t bury the story? Their most common defense is also their most important: Hunter Biden’s troubles matter only if they can be linked directly to his father and specifically to Joe’s official position. So far, they say, those links are weak and unproven. What other defenses do they put forward? First, they say that whatever money Hunter made from his foreign business dealings, he did not benefit from any official action taken by the vice president. Neither did Joe himself. Those points are crucial. Second, it’s not a crime to benefit from your family name.

In the basement of a Washington, DC restaurant, 200 ticket-purchasing fans have gathered to witness the live recording of a multifaceted conversation about the villainy and corruption of the Supreme Court, and one justice in particular. It only seems appropriate to order the shrimp and grits: it costs $19.99 and comes with a white-wine tomato sauce. This may seem rather hifalutin, but it also comes in a glass mason jar that references tired hipster kitsch — perfectly suitable for a live podcast hosted by Slate.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is considering taking Donald Trump’s advice that she run for the Senate (he said he’d “fight like hell” for her), but she’s also thinking about whether she’d be asked to join Trump’s cabinet — and maybe even be his vice president — should he win the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. When the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked her if she’d be running for Senate, MTG said she has “a lot of things to think about,” including a potential cabinet position. If Trump asked her to be his running mate, MTG said she’d consider it “very, very heavily.