Politics

Joe Biden finally went on the record Friday denying he sexually assaulted Tara Reade. It took 39 days and multiple media appearances before he finally addressed the allegation in an official statement and during a live interview with MSNBC's Morning Joe. Biden had over a month to get his story straight, but his response still left a lot to be desired. Biden's decision to address the allegations on Morning Joe was likely strategic, as the hosts of the program have been vocal about defending Democrats accused of sexual harassment and assault. Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough reportedly helped Mark Halperin rehabilitate his image after he was accused of groping multiple women. Mika also publicly supported Tom Brokaw, Sen.

Justin Amash has announced that he's running for president as a Libertarian. The sitting five-term congressman from Michigan quit the Republican party on July 4 last year and was the sole non-Democratic vote to impeach Donald Trump in December. Amash won't win in the fall, but like Gov. Gary Johnson, the LP’s 2016 candidate who earned 4.5 million votes, his presence could easily throw the election to either Donald Trump or Joe Biden.Far more important, especially to the plurality of Americans who consider themselves politically independent, the 40-year-old son of Middle Eastern immigrants from Palestine and Syria has the potential to radically change what Americans expect — or demand — from their national politicians.

Everyone in Kentucky knows what five o’clock means. It means it’s time for Andy.Andy, of course, is Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a mild mannered Democrat who defeated incumbent Matt Bevin in November by only 5,000 votes in a heavily red state. At the time, I wrote in The Spectator why that happened, but it certainly didn’t hurt that his father was the two-term governor before Bevin.Likely no governor in the nation has thrived the way Andy Beshear has during this time of pandemic lockdowns. Every day, seven days a week, Beshear speaks to Kentuckians from the state Capitol at 5 o’clock. His presentations have been compared to fireside chats and he to Mister Rogers.

Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer for Joe Biden, claimed in an interview last month that the former vice president had put his hand up her skirt and digitally penetrated her in 1993. Since the March 25 interview, new evidence has emerged that seems to corroborate Reade's story: her mother called into Larry King's radio show about the incident in 1993, and her brother, a friend, and a neighbor all recall being told the story by Reade. Nonetheless, despite making multiple media appearances in the month since the allegation, Biden has not addressed Reade's claim directly, though his spokespeople have denied it on his behalf. The former VP is nonetheless holding a 'Virtual Women’s Town Hall' on Tuesday.

Do you know what the real ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ is? No, not the fauxtraged shrieks of liberals at everything the president does. It’s the tendency Trump has to turn normally sensible conservative journalists into a sort of Praetorian Guard, drawing their swords to defend his every utterance, and endowing comments that would shame a blithering idiot with non-existent purpose and meaning. The esteemed US editor of The Spectator, Mr Gray, has his gladius out. He argues the president spitballing at a press conference that perhaps one could inject disinfectant to the lungs to kill coronavirus, or irradiate the body with (carcinogenic) UV light, was actually 16-dimensional chess and ‘a Trumpian masterpiece’.

Public opinion is rapidly turning against China as intelligence agencies have exposed the full extent of the communist state’s coverup of the novel coronavirus outbreak. US intelligence has determined that China has underreported total cases and deaths, and dragged its feet in telling the rest of the world about the seriousness of the virus. A Trump administration official told The Spectator earlier this month that the US response was delayed by at least a month due to China’s lack of transparency. Americans are angry at China’s deception: a majority of them polled at the end of March and in early April said they agree with President Trump referring to COVID-19 as the ‘Chinese virus’.

It’s been over three years since the FBI first launched its investigation into an alleged conspiracy between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government, and yet we’re still learning just how badly our intelligence agencies bungled Crossfire Hurricane. The president and his allies have been arguing since the probe went public that it was all a ‘witch hunt’ designed to put a stop to or delegitimize his electoral victory. Subsequently released details about the investigation seemed to track with that theory: Inspector General Michael Horowitz, for example, chided the FBI in a December report for failing to fulfill its full obligations when seeking FISA warrants against former Trump campaign official Carter Page. Sens.

Forgive the analogy that follows. Is Bernie Sanders the Barry Goldwater of the left? Has Sanders, to echo the words of George Will on Goldwater, lost two primary campaigns but won the future? What reminds us of Goldwater is the clarity of Sanders’s proposals and the force with which he expressed them. Medicare-for-All, canceling student debt, free college tuition; paid for by soaking the wealthy with new taxes. Sanders made all of this thinkable, because most of his ideas are popular. The Sanders moment arrived at a time of political reorientation that would have been unthinkable during the Cold War years. Polling showed that half of millennials have unfavorable views of capitalism. Seventy percent say they are likely to vote for a socialist candidate.