Politics

“John Bolton Surrenders To Federal Authorities” is a headline I could have only dreamed of seeing 20 years ago, but this morning it came true. Following yesterday’s grand-jury indictment of Bolton, the former Trump National Security Advisor and W. Bush Iraq War architect/manipulator gave himself up and pled not guilty in federal court on charges of mishandling classified information. But if Bolton isn’t guilty, I’m a high-stakes poker professional. The charges claimed that Bolton was “unlawfully hoarding” documents, that he sent classified information over grandpa communication medium AOL instant Messenger in 2018 and that he shared more than 1,000 pages of notes, while working on a memoir, with his wife and daughter, neither of whom had security clearances.

While much of the pushback from the right wing to Donald Trump’s international hawkishness has come from voices focused on the Middle East, and feared potential for wider wars prompted by support for Israel, the actual test of a break within the Republican coalition on foreign policy disputes could come over the president’s stepped up focus on Venezuela.The most recent development, with Trump issuing a rare public acknowledgement that he has authorized covert CIA actions on land. “I authorized for two reasons, really,” he explained this week. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. And the other thing are drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.

A year ago Donald J Trump was still roundly disliked by the French commentariat. Even the conservative Le Figaro newspaper held its Gallic nose in disdain, running a haughty article headlined "Trump, vulgarity runs rampant." The left still loathe the president of the United States but for the right in France he has become a role model. The same Le Figaro now writes approvingly of Trump and admits it got him wrong. "We expected an isolationist Trump, focused solely on American interests," it declared on Friday. "But in nine months, the president has established himself as a peacemaker in multiple international crises." The French perhaps more than any European nation have never got The Donald.

An unsavory chat thread containing leaders of Young Republican groups nationwide has gone viral. These young (meaning under 40) fellas refer to blacks as “watermelon people," use the slur “faggot,” say “I love Hitler” and make jokes about rape and sending people to gas chambers. “If we ever had a leak of this chat we could be cooked fr,” someone said in a moment of self-awareness. Well, the chat is leaked, and they are cooked. Fr.   Cockburn takes this particular chatgate with a grain of sea salt. It sounds like young men shit-talking after a few beers to him. Yet every boomer lib on Facebook is shocked, shocked at this scandal, taking it as a sure sign that MechaHitler is about to institute The Handmaid’s Reich or some such thing.

Justin Trudeau has finally found something he can’t bankrupt – a washed-up pop star. The former prime minister, now liberated from the burden of office, was recently spotted aboard Katy Perry’s yacht in California, sharing a kiss so theatrical it would have been cut by a good director.   But Trudeau was always drawn to drama. The kind with lighting, makeup and someone else footing the bill. His life has become a soap opera, though not the kind with decent writing or respectable ratings. There was the recurring racist phase, the peace-and-love phase, the power-and-profit phase and now the Malibu make-out phase. Once hailed as the fresh-faced heir to liberal idealism, Trudeau swiftly dissolved into a puddle of melodrama and moisturizer.

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has spent the last week gnawing on the hand that feeds her, showing that no one in American politics is worse at reading the tea leaves.   Taylor Greene entered Congress in 2021 wearing a face mask that read “Trump Won.” She was so fervently a supporter of January 6 pardons that Georgians invoked an "insurrectionist disqualification clause" to try to remove her from Congress. But now that MAGA is riding high on a wave of world peace and prosperity, Taylor Greene has changed her tune and, though she says she’s still conservative, is sounding more like an unholy fusion of Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi.   Over the weekend, MTG appeared on comedian Tim Dillon’s podcast, claiming that she is still “MAGA through and through.