Politics

Don't call it a comeback! Whether it’s by popular acclamation or by a coup, as former national security adviser Michael Flynn suggested at a recent QAnon meeting, Donald Trump is apparently reckoning that he’ll be back in the White House by August. At least that’s the theory percolating among the Trump diehards ensconced at Mar-a-Lago. But then, nolens volens, came a contrary verdict from Lara Trump on Fox and Friends this morning: 'There are no plans for Donald Trump to be in the White House in August.' What a pity. It would be splendid to have Trump back in Washington even if only for the month of August. But keen-eyed observers will note that Lara confined her restriction to August. July remains open. So does September.

Kevin McCarthy's mouth does two things: it kisses Donald Trump's hand and it emits denouncements of his constituents. After Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene recently likened what she considers COVID-19-based discrimination to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, the House minority leader swooped down bearing talons of condemnation. 'Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,' he wrote. 'Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.' Whatever you might think of Greene's comments, it's hard to imagine a Democrat as eager as McCarthy to smite one of his own.

A nonbinding, off-season ballot initiative in rural Oregon isn’t normally the most viscerally exciting of events, couched as they generally are in terms agonizing over whether to ‘note’ or ‘reaffirm’ a past proposal, or to ‘endorse’ or ‘refer’ a more recent one for further consideration. But just the other day, out of the tepid depths of yet more interminable debate on local timber-harvest regulations, or supplemental sport-fishing laws, something of genuine significance happened. The voters of five Oregon counties let it be known that they would like to secede from their state and join Idaho instead. ‘This election proves that rural Oregon wants out of Oregon,’ Mike McCarter, spokesman for the Greater Idaho movement, said in a statement.

President Joe Biden just proposed the largest budget (as a percentage of America’s economy) since the country was fighting Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy. He’s doing it when there is no emergency, only an overweening desire to pass progressive programs quickly, before they lose their legislative majority. The best historical analogue to his proposed budget increase is Lyndon Johnson’s cradle-to-grave Great Society Program. It has the same flaws. In fact, Biden’s program is best understood as the next step in a long political arc, extending from Franklin Roosevelt to LBJ to Obamacare. All of them proposed centralized government solutions to almost every social problem, particularly endemic problems among the poor.

Give some credit to Lori Lightfoot. She’s really good at wrecking things. When America’s most Innsmouth-ian politician took over Chicago in spring 2019 (presumably for lack of any other volunteers), it was hard to imagine screwing up the city worse than it already was. The city was already losing population. It already had the most murders of any US city and a top-30 violent crime rate overall. But Lightfoot rose to the challenge and then some. She inherited a city with 563 murders the year before she took office. In the 365 days between George Floyd’s death and the one-year anniversary of his demise, the city clocked more than 800, including 105 in a single month and 18 in a single day.

After whispering a prayer to St Ronald Reagan, Paul Ryan rose to his feet, solemnly kissed his bible, Atlas Shrugged, and gave a speech at the Gipper's presidential library in Simi Valley about the perils of personality cults. Though the former Republican House speaker did not attack Donald Trump directly on Thursday, it was obvious who was on his mind. 'If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or on second-rate imitations, then we're not going anywhere,' Ryan said. And if the conservative movement fails, he warned, 'it will be because we gave too much allegiance to one passing political figure, and weren't loyal enough to our principles'. Ryan also called the audience away from the culture war.

Patrisse Cullors co-founded Black Lives Matter on faux victimhood. In her Thursday announcement that she would be resigning from the organization, she once again demonstrated what she does best. For those unfamiliar, Cullors has been the subject of negative headlines for the past few months. Her Marxist street cred first came under fire when reports surfaced in April that she had gone on a luxury home-buying spree totaling $3.2 million. Further investigations into Cullors's finances revealed stunning extravagance and corruption. In 2019, Cullors was earning close to $20,000 a month as the chairwoman of a Los Angeles jail reform group, while dropping the organization's money on $26,000 on 'meetings' at a Malibu beach resort.

Journalists gleefully declared on Wednesday that the Biden administration was 'making history' by sending White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to the podium to lead a press briefing. They were only half right. Jean-Pierre was indeed the first openly gay woman to lead a White House press briefing. The press corps, however, seemed much more interested in her skin color than her sexual orientation. '.@KJP46 making history as the second Black woman to ever lead a White House press briefing,' CBS News's Weijia Jiang tweeted. 'White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will make history when she steps behind the podium in the James S.

Did you hear the news? Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer broke the virus rules! No, it’s not about that time her husband tried to use her position to get their boat in the water earlier over Memorial Day. Or that time Whitmer flew to Florida right before warning the public that traveling to Florida was dangerous because of all the virus variants it could spread. Or that time Whitmer ignored all her own social distancing decrees to join the 'racial reckoning' over George Floyd. Nope, this time Whitmer is in trouble because she met a dozen friends for dinner at a bar in East Lansing. That violated Whitmer’s order to cap dinner groups at a maximum of six people, and her other order that tables be spaced out. Whitmer has trotted out to do the usual fake penance.

Miami  Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation on Monday to penalize Big Tech for de-platforming private citizens and political candidates. The bill, which was passed last month by the Florida legislature, would allow Floridians who are banned from platforms to sue for damages and imposes hefty fines — up to $250,000 each day — on tech companies that boot political candidates. DeSantis signed the bill during an event at Florida International University that featured remarks from local citizens, political activists and elected officials, most of whom were of Latin American descent. Cubans and Venezuelans warned that Big Tech's crackdown on free speech was reminiscent of their home countries' slide into socialism and thanked DeSantis for pushing back on online censorship.

Will January 6 go down as another 'day of infamy,' an assault against America akin in its seriousness to December 7, which commemorates Pearl Harbor? Maybe, but not for the reasons that comparison suggests. Sure, many irresponsible commentators — but here I repeat myself — and Democratic politicians compared the January 6 protest at the Capitol to December 7, to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, even (thank you Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer) to the Civil War. Back in February, I noted here that there were a few differences between these two sets of events.

Who is the head of state? As president, Joe Biden has the sole and unlimited authority to determine US foreign policy. He's flexed this power in pulling troops from Afghanistan and negotiating behind-the-scenes for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Interestingly, though, Vice President Kamala Harris has taken an outsized role in handling much of the administration's diplomacy. Take Friday morning, for example. Harris was the first administration official to greet South Korean president Moon Jae-in on his official working visit to the White House. The pair sat down for a bilateral meeting. The South Korean entourage included the foreign minister and director of national security — but the US side featured no similarly ranked diplomats.

President Joe Biden insulted a class of Coast Guard Academy graduates during his commencement address on Wednesday, declaring to the group of cadets that they are 'a really dull class'. The President seemed to get increasingly frustrated throughout his speech as the cadets rarely clapped at his applause lines or laughed at his jokes. He urged them on several occasions to 'stand up' and 'clap', insisting that it was 'okay' to do so, bringing to mind former Florida governor Jeb Bush's infamous plea to his audience to 'please clap.' The lack of enthusiasm came to a head less than 10 minutes into Biden's address.

President Joe Biden hit the golf course for the second time since taking office on Sunday, continuing something of an American presidential tradition. Unlike his predecessors, however, Biden appears to be a duffer. It's possible that at one point in time Biden was a decent golfer. He's been a member of Wilmington Country Club in Delaware since 2014 and reportedly had as low as a 6 handicap. That's a bit hard to believe as former president Barack Obama said he had an 'honest 13' handicap after playing 300 rounds of golf. A video of Biden on the links this past weekend further confirms that his golf game has gone the same direction as his mental acuity. The clip shows Biden well to the left of the green behind a short stone wall.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s June 2021 World edition. Click here to subscribe. Somewhere along the way, Jon Stewart discovered he could make stupid people laugh by smirking at Fox News clips — and the world has never been the same since. Stewart, who anchored The Daily Show until 2015, is often remembered as the progenitor of a long line of left-wing topical comedians, from Stephen Colbert to John Oliver to Samantha Bee. Yet before that he was something else: the most gloriously subversive personality on television. The Daily Show’s heyday came at the turn of the century, just after Stewart had taken it over from Craig Kilborn.