Politics

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Absent the appearance of a last-minute deus (or dea) ex machina, and always keeping in mind Harold Wilson’s observation that a week is a long time in politics, the bookies are coalescing around the prediction that the Democratic nominee for president will be Big Squaw E. Warren, senator from Massachusetts, purveyor of authentically fake ‘Pow Wow Chow’ which experts reckon are 0.1024 percent Cherokee, the same as paleface Warren herself. It was only yesterday, it seems, that the Democratic field was teeming with candidates. Whither Spartacus Booker and his imaginary friend T-Bone? What price Kamala Harris? Who remembers Mayor Pete?

Rep. Katie Hill has had quite the week. RedState, a conservative blog, posted an accusatory article about her, accompanied by nude photos and screenshots of private messages. The photos reveal a formerly secret relationship between Hill and her campaign staffer Morgan Desjardins. And the story claims Hill, her former husband, and Desjardins were in a 'throuple' relationship. RedState also published allegations that Hill was sexually involved with a male congressional staff member — which Hill denies. Many are upset about the accusations and Hill’s GOP challenger is calling for her to step down from Congress, citing her behavior as inexcusable. This is absurd. Yes, Hill did make arguably inappropriate decisions as a sitting congresswoman.

Oh no! The walls are closing in again on Trump! We’ve reached a 'tipping point.' This time, finally, at last, we have the fatal 'bombshell' that will destroy him. The testimony of Bill Taylor, Deep State apparatchik and acting Ambassador to Ukraine, has given 'devastating', 'explosive' testimony to Adam Schiff. They’ve certainly got Trump this time. An establishment lifer with deep ties to Burisma, the corrupt energy company that was so generous to Hunter Biden, has said that Trump insisted on a quid in the form of probing cokehead Hunter and his dad, Joe, in exchange for the quo of $400 million in military aid. Or was pelf the quid and the investigation of the Joe and Hunter show the quo? Our experts are working on untangling that.

Who knew that House Republicans would embrace civil disobedience? About two dozen legislators led by Republican firebrand Matt Gaetz stormed the House Intelligence Committee meeting this morning to disrupt the proceedings, where Pentagon official Laura Cooper was supposed to testify about the transfer of funds to Ukraine. Against all the evidence, the congressmen keep claiming the hearings represent a kind of Star Chamber. They only left after they had the chance to gorge themselves on Domino’s pizza. At least they didn’t order chicken kiev. The stunt probably had President Trump’s blessing, who has been worrying that the Republican dominoes are about to fall as fresh revelations about his attempts to muscle over Ukraine emerge.Trump has good reason to worry.

We should be bored by now — perhaps we are. Certainly, the anger against Donald Trump’s tweets isn’t quite as vociferous as before. We are used to @realdonaldtrump now. Three years in, who cares if he sounds presidential? But the media outrage machine still limbers up, on demand, at every provocation. Today’s doozy: Trump compared the Democratic attempts to impeach him over Ukraine to a ‘lynching’. Sure enough, the media explainers did their job. Lynching, we are told by every wired copy monkey who has to file 600 words to their line editor, is a ‘racially charged/loaded term’ that refers to — here I quote the BBC — ‘historic extrajudicial executions by white mobs mainly against African Americans.

Andrew Yang claimed to be surprised that the media dubbed Tulsi Gabbard the first Asian American to run for the Democratic nomination. Of course Gabbard snagged this prize of the higher tokenism, first claimed by Patsy Mink in 1972. Yang may be doing better in the single-figure freakshow of the nomination race, but Gabbard looks better when encasing her policies in a tight wetsuit or engaging in Lycra-clad iron-pumping. https://twitter.com/tulsigabbard/status/1173605168841203712?lang=en This is not all the Gabbard candidacy has set a-pumping. No Democrat so quickens the blood of the red-meat, male-voice choir of Buchananites and Bannonites.

The new Pew report doesn’t mince words in its headline: 'In US, Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace.' In 10 years, the percentage of Americans who identify as Christians of any kind has declined by 12 percent. In 2009, just over 50 percent of Americans identified as Protestant; today only 43 percent do. Catholics have declined from 23 percent to 20 percent of the adult population. The biggest declines in Christian identification by demographic group have been among millennials (down 17 points) and Democrats (down 16 points). But dwindling Christian commitments are in evidence across all categories: 'white people, black people and Hispanics; men and women; in all regions of the country; and among college graduates and those with lower levels of educational attainment.

For a long time now, those of us who have the misfortune to have working eyes and ears have become deeply familiar with the activities of one family. This family is (still) taken very seriously by some very serious people, in spite of the fact that vast numbers of us would rather eat chlorine-flavored ice cream than ever hear from them again. Like some sort of deathless voodoo incantation, the name of this family echoes around the world. It echoes in high-altitude frosted glass conference rooms filled with international bores. It echoes in the frazzled minds of readers of the legacy press.

President Trump may be pulling out of Syria, but it’s bombs away in Washington. John Bolton’s likening Rudy Giuliani to a 'hand grenade' has now prompted America’s mayor to fire back that his old chum is an 'atomic bomb'. Both may be right.As the president complains about a lack of transparency in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, enough information is surfacing to make it clear that the testimony of former National Security Council staffer Fiona Hill administered another body blow to Trump’s claim that his July telephone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was fine and dandy. Hill apparently testified that Bolton wanted nothing to do with a Ukrainian scheme that he likened to a 'drug deal' and told her to speak with White House lawyers.

Felix Sater is mad at me. He telephones to say that after I called him a ‘mobster’ in The Spectator, his kids were unable to leave the house. ‘Paul, I am not a mobster. Do I know mobsters? Absolutely, lots of them...I was involved with all five [New York crime] families...I’ve known a lot of unsavory characters in my life...I was never a mobster.’ As one of the characters he’s known is Donald Trump — they were in business together — Sater’s life became public property as soon as Trump announced he was running for president. Since then, the labels stuck on Sater include: violent felon, stock fraudster, money-launderer, FBI informant, spy, double agent, triple agent, the Russian Mafia’s connection to the Trump Organization.