Politics

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The ballad of Bill de Blasio

This is a story about some kittens and a groundhog, and a politician who should not be allowed to go near kittens and groundhogs. Or anywhere near politics, for that matter. We begin in a very liberal enclave of very liberal Brooklyn, whereupon this Thursday evening, I hosted a group discussion in my backyard to talk about climate change. Because there are still a bunch of Democrats running for president, including several that I am very sick of hearing about, I instituted a ground rule: anyone who derailed the discussion by hyping up a presidential candidate had to put a dollar in the ‘Bill de Blasio Jar’ and it would be donated to his presidential campaign. I took this very seriously.

bill de blasio
bernie sanders elizabeth warren

The eve of the Bernie-Warren online battle

The great ‘Bernie vs. Warren’ online wars have yet to fully commence, and the current state of affairs resembles something like an uneasy pre-conflict standoff. No tentative pact between the candidates themselves can last forever and early shots have already been fired from their respective squadrons: small skirmishes or drills that precede the outright warfare. Political prognosticators tend to lump Bernie and Warren into the same generic ‘progressive’ category, but for their most committed backers — the ones who will be in the online trenches — the differences are vast and unbridgeable. For the devout socialists, Bernie represents a once-in-a-generation (or even lifetime) opportunity.

kiev donald trump

Kiev won’t chicken out over Trump’s desired Biden probe

For several years Donald Trump has depicted himself as a kind of Roger Thornhill, the advertising executive in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest played by Cary Grant. Thornhill tells his secretary at the outset of the film that in his line of work there is no such thing as a lie only 'expedient exaggeration' and soon gets swept up in the machinations of the Cold War deep state as a gang of thugs mistakes him for someone named George Kaplan. An indignant Thornhill eventually manages to rescue himself, but Trump seems to get further enmeshed in his ongoing deep state saga by the week, and, in contrast to Thornhill, much of it is his own fault.

robert mueller inquiry

The Mueller inquiry was an attempted coup

This article is in The Spectator’s inaugural US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. More official reports, reprimands and (probably) indictments are to come in the Great Get Trump imbroglio of 2016 to 2019. But it is not too early to begin an autopsy of the greatest political scandal in American history. The patient is dead, dead, dead, and the last doctors in the room are the pathologists. The lawyers crowding the corridor outside the operating theater are interested not in resuscitating the corpse but in distributing and gorging upon its assets.

bill de blasio

Farewell to Bill de Blasio, 2020’s least consequential candidate

Friday news drops are often saved for surprising or important stories. What NYC mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Morning Joe on Friday morning was neither of those things. His campaign’s demise was clear to anyone except the bumbling mayor who had taken time out of his busy schedule of commuting to his gym in Brooklyn, from the mayoral home in Manhattan, to visit Iowa and give speeches to tens of people. New Yorkers immediately had jokes. ‘That's too bad. I was hoping he'd stay in Iowa,’ tweeted writer Steven Volynets. Of course, President Donald Trump had the best one ‘Oh no, really big political news, perhaps the biggest story in years!

Andrew Yang, Asian stereotypes and the discomforts of reality

Andrew Yang has garnered criticism over the course of his presidential campaign for making self-deprecating jokes that reinforce Asian stereotypes. He has alluded to Asians’ hard work-ethic and love for math, even selling merchandise inscribed with the word ‘MATH’ on it — an acronym for ‘Make America Think Harder.’ It reached an apogee after the Democratic debate last week when Yang memorably quipped, ‘now, I am Asian, so I know a lot of doctors,’ before launching into his answer about how to fix healthcare. Many prominent Asian Americans, such as the former Planned Parenthood president Dr Leana Wen and the former governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal, found it amusing.

andrew yang asian
Robert C. O’Brien

The negotiator or Bolton Lite? Reading Robert C. O’Brien

President Trump proudly unveiled a new national security adviser on Wednesday who looks the part: Robert C. O’Brien, the State Department’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. A tanned Californian, with a successful law career based in Los Angeles, O’Brien has spent time in mid-level State Department roles when not making his living in international arbitration. He is a comparatively unknown figure and so the question hangs in the air: is Trump’s new NSA a sober diplomat, 'Bolton Lite', or something else? O’Brien was not an immediate public contender for the job. But DC insider speculation proved fruitless. Purported favorites like belligerent ambassador Ric Grenell, realist Ret. Col.

Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s good soldier

With the appointment of Robert C. O’Brien to serve as national security adviser, Donald Trump will once more disappoint his America First backers. They were hoping that Ret. Col. Douglas Macgregor would get the nod. Instead, Trump has gone with a Republican establishment figure who views China as the biggest threat to American national security. As always, Trump was bullish on his new hire: 'I have worked long & hard with Robert. He will do a great job!' As Trump national security adviser number 4, O’Brien is expected to bring some calm to the roiling waters of the NSC, where its heads have repeatedly capsized, whether it's Michael Flynn, H.R. McMaster, or John Bolton.

robert c. o’brien

Tulsi Gabbard, conservative crush

Conservative sadbois like two things: hot moms and Middle Eastern despots. Enter Tulsi Gabbard, the comely representative for Hawaii’s second congressional district. The single lock of gray hair tucked behind her ear and her array of red pants-suits give her an almost Palinesque allure. Her secret friendship with Bashar al-Assad and visceral hatred for the House of Saud brings us all back to our political puberty: hiding copies of The American Conservative under our beds, taking them out only when our parents weren’t home and fantasizing madly about the end of American Empire. Knowing only that, we can hardly blame an aging fogey who finds himself crushing on Rep. Gabbard.

tulsi gabbard
green party

Inside the eco-socialist paradise of the Green party primary

The Green party’s 2016 presidential ticket, headed by Jill Stein, captured just about 1 percent of the national popular vote, a far cry from the 2.74 percent infamously won by Green nominee Ralph Nader in 2000. Now with its presidential primaries underway, party leaders are betting that voters will look to the left of the Democratic party. ‘The Green party’s just taking all the people who are too crazy for the Democratic Socialists of America,’ an insider in the Democratic party’s left wing told me. But the Greens have reasons to be optimistic about their future in American politics.

Biden and Corn Pop, Kavanaugh and Porn Cop

The symptoms of age-related cognitive decline include being unable to remember whether you’re in Vermont or New Hampshire, and what the talking points of your own presidential campaign are, but recalling exactly what you said nearly 60 years ago when you had a summer job as a lifeguard at a pool in Wilmington, Del. and a ‘bad dude’ called Corn Pop took umbrage when you ordered him to put on a shower cap so he looked like an old lady and then, to further emasculate him in front of his ‘boys’, called him ‘Esther’.

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bozell

L. Brent Bozell Jr, conservative insurrectionist

I suspect at least 10 times more Americans will have heard of William F. Buckley Jr than L. Brent Bozell Jr but things could have been very different. For years, Bozell was Buckley's closest collaborator and perhaps the second most influential ideologue in the nascent conservative movement. He helped with the founding of National Review, co-wrote McCarthy and His Enemies with his college friend Buckley and ghostwrote The Conscience of a Conservative for Barry Goldwater.Bozell was a fierce Cold Warrior. Even the hawkish Buckley might have blanched when his tall, red-headed, impetuous friend announced that the United States should be ‘disposed to use [nuclear weapons] in good conscience’ against the Soviet Union.

A fresh assassination of Brett Kavanaugh’s character

I guess that The New York Times didn’t get the memo. Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court last fall. He is sitting there (officially, I mean) right now, as I write. Despite the most disgusting, ad hominem, evidence-free effort at character assassination of a Supreme Court nominee in history, the combined forces of The New York Times and other cesspool media organs like The New Yorker, bottom-feeding Senate Democrats, feminazis of various stripes, and other woke constituencies on the left, Kavanaugh made it.

brett kavanaugh

The Cheneys have always put war first and America last

Donald Trump has called the Iraq war the ‘worst single mistake’ in US history. Most Americans, including our military, agree with the president. That grand mistake should be an example to all of the tragic unintended consequences inherent in regime change. It should be an enduring reminder of the misery that can be unleashed when our leaders don’t think soberly about what happens after they start a war. The Iraq war was started by Dick Cheney along with President George W. Bush in 2003. In the 16 years he’s had to reflect, the former vice president has been clear for many years that he would not hesitate to do it all over again. His daughter, Rep.

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marianne williamson

Marianne Williamson is Trump’s perfect female counterpart

If the Democratic presidential debates reflected the sort of person who votes for the party, Marianne Williamson and Tulsi Gabbard would be center stage. As would Ed Buck, Harvey Weinstein, and the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein. But with Williamson systematically sidelined by the Democratic machine and Gabbard abruptly deployed to the front lines at the behest of a vengeful Kamala Harris (I mean, maybe?), we were left with the chum.

houston

In Houston, Biden got his teeth into Sanders

To the extent Joe Biden is capable of actually formulating coherent sentences – a questionable proposition – he delivered an attack last night that Bernie Sanders has never really been forced to contend with during either of his presidential campaigns. Hillary Clinton was not in a position in 2016 where she had to aggressively attack Bernie. Had she been, she would have almost certainly brought up the fact that he is a self-described 'socialist'. Of course, that’s common knowledge by now. But it's a salient point for Bernie's rivals to press him on, especially considering the overriding concern for Democratic voters at present is 'electability'.

What if Elizabeth Warren blows it in Houston?

Get your skates on! The Democrats on Ice roadshow rolls into Houston this evening, and the media are poised for a slip-up. Tonight is the night Brooklyn-based content creators have been yearning for: when Joe Biden finally lines up alongside the Anointed One, Elizabeth Warren. Surely it's here, they speculate, that Uncle Joe will commit one blunder too many and the era of Elizabeth will be ushered in. How's he gonna mess it up? Will he call Cory Booker 'Barack'? Maybe both eyeballs will explode this time? Gosh I can't wait! Liberals online are so fixated on the narrative of 'Biden gaffe-Warren competent', that they're not considering a series of other possibilities.

warren houston

John Bolton and the nationalist moment

John Bolton has left the White House and those of us who desire some modicum of peace in this world can breathe a sigh of relief. Bolton was appointed to serve as Donald Trump’s third national security adviser barely a year and a half ago, succeeding H.R. McMaster. It was always a strange choice: Trump’s foreign policy is premised largely on hard-nosed (and often hard-of-luck) deal brokering, while Bolton’s preferred method is to bomb other countries. This is the man who has no regrets about the calamitous occupation of Iraq, who wanted to assassinate Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who seemed to advocate for the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, and who lamented that we didn’t destroy the Syrian regime all the way back in 2003.

john bolton

John Bolton is Trump’s latest distraction

Donald Trump is declaring that he has fired John Bolton as national security adviser. Bolton is saying he offered to resign. It’s par for the course for the Trump administration where no one really gets to leave on their own terms. How long before Bolton writes his own tell-all? Or did he sign an NDA?Trump, who views staffing his administration as a kind of casting call, was never comfortable with Bolton’s 'I am the Walrus' mustache but after tiring of H.R. McMaster, he tapped him for the job of national security adviser. Now, Trump is declaring that he 'strongly disagreed with many of his suggestions.' This is probably the precursor to a future tweet declaring how Bolton was a loser and bum whom Trump never wanted on the premises in the first place but begged for a post.

john bolton