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It’s almost Nato as usual when Emmanuel Macron calls Nato ‘brain dead’. It’s Nato as usual, and Donald Trump as usual, when Trump, who not long ago called Nato ‘obsolete’, chastises his bromantic partner Macron for being ‘insulting’ and ‘disrespectful’. It is unusual for Nato when Trump calls off a press conference and calls blackface artist Justin Trudeau ‘two-faced’.
The big news on Monday this week was that latecomer billionaire presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg had ‘surged’ past Sen. Kamala Harris in a new poll by Hill-HarrisX. By Tuesday the big news was that Harris had departed the race. Was it Bloomberg’s stellar 6 percent showing that did it? Unlikely. The Harris campaign had had issues, as documented in a recent New York Times piece detailing the deep mismanagement of her campaign. One of the death blows in the piece was this line: ‘Today, her aides are given to gallows humor about just how many slogans and one-liners she has cycled through, with one recalling how “‘speak truth’ spring” gave way to “‘3 a.m.
The most meme-friendly and amusing explanation for Kamala Harris’s demise is that she was splattered by Tulsi Gabbard over the summer and never recovered. There’s some truth to that: Kamala had never been challenged on her record in a high-pressure national setting before, and the moment someone finally turned up the heat, she crumbled. The New York Timesarticle last week presaging the end of her campaign noted that donors were so flustered by her performance that they demanded she ‘strike back at Ms Gabbard more aggressively’, which was a tad ironic given on that same night Kamala had infamously declared herself a ‘top-tier candidate’ who need not trouble herself with the insignificant pesterings of a minor contender like Tulsi.
Update June 2, 2020: There’s something very wrong with our cities, as the devastating riots this week show. Last year, in the the Spectator's Christmas US edition, I wrote about how in a few short years the liberal city rapidly became the progressive city under an organized insurgency of far-left activists embedding themselves in municipal governments. The results have been devastating, as our once beautiful cities marinate in dirt, disease and strife. Now, they are burning. Failed progressive policies have never been more evident than they are today. With the election five months away, Trump now has an opportunity to pitch himself as the leader who will fight against the degradation of the inner cities.
Every politician who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is the height of inauthenticity. Fortunately for lovers of comedy, many politicians are too stupid and too full of themselves to notice this. Every election year, another squad marches hopelessly into the enfilade of the inauthenticity firing line. Think of Bush I visiting the National Grocers Association Convention in Florida back in 1992. Bush ambled towards an exhibit where a new type of checkout scanner was the hallowed attraction. The fancy device could read torn barcodes and weigh groceries.
The Rose Garden became a makeshift petting zoo this week as POTUS played host to several animals before heading to the Winter White House for the Thanksgiving holiday. Shockingly, I am not referring to Rudy Giuliani and his comms team, which is headed up by a 20-year-old with less work experience than a McDonald’s fry cook.Instead, the press shop wranglers had to use their skills on Conan, the special forces dog from the al-Baghdadi raid, and Butter (or was it Bread?) the turkey. Realistically, it was not that different from keeping Playboy’s Brian Karem from crossing the rope line, except for when the turkey briefly escaped from his handler in upper press. Hopefully no one tells Janet why there are feathers on her desk.
Remember 'Anonymous'? He — or, of course, she (or 'zhe' or 'they', etc.) — was the person who, back in September 2018, wrote an anonymous op-ed for our former paper of record, 'I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.' 'Anonymous' claimed to be a 'senior Trump administration official'. He took to the pages of the official fish-wrap because he didn’t approve of President Trump. He and 'like-minded colleagues...have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda'. Indeed, according to 'Anonymous', 'many of the senior officials in [Trump's] own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda.' Who knows whether 'Anonymous' is for real — I mean, just how 'senior' do you suppose he (or, again, she, etc.
President Trump was talking turkey today. At the White House, he performed a solemn task. He pardoned what he referred to as 'the beautiful feathered friend, the noble bird'. In all, it was two turkeys that received, from the Chosen One, as his former energy secretary Rick Perry referred to Trump yesterday, his dispensation. Bread and Butter, who hail from North Carolina, can gobble further.Trump was intent on appearing in a magnanimous mood, but he couldn’t help resist throwing in a dig at Adam Schiff during his remarks, claiming that he had spared Bread and Butter from the indignity of having to appear before Adam Schiff. Indeed, a few hours before the event, Trump made it clear that another species of animal other than turkeys was really on his mind. He stated on Twitter, 'The D.
There are a few scenes from the Trump presidency which belong in the pantheon of great American political imagery. There is of course Kanye West donning Trump’s trademark red MAGA hat for an Oval Office meeting. There is President Trump posing delightfully in front of a long dining table with every kind of fast food imaginable, like a presidential Willy Wonka, as he welcomes the Clemson Tigers football team with their Golden Tickets. And today, the American public and the world were (finally) introduced to Conan, the United States special forces Belgian Malinois credited with chasing down Isis mastermind Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, outside the White House.
MSNBC dropped all pretenses of neutrality at last week’s debate, not that its pretenses were ever remotely credible to begin with. Most of the time they’d at least attempt to play it straight, however perfunctorily. Of course, no one should have been under the illusion that running a debate well was within the repertoire of Rachel Maddow — one of the nation’s leading conspiracy theorists — whose very presence as lead moderator undermined the legitimacy of the entire affair from the outset. Even with the albatross of Maddow, though, it is conceivable that they could have striven for something resembling an impartial approach. Not surprisingly, that all went out the window when one particular candidate was targeted for open contempt.
Around this time of the year, the biggest stories in the ad industry typically involve Black Friday and holiday campaigns. But then former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg decided to launch his bid for the presidency.After Bloomberg formally unveiled his campaign on Sunday with a video that cited his success rebuilding NYC’s economy after the 9/11 terrorist attacks (and credit there is well deserved), The Guardian reported that the financial technology billionaire had already purchased $30 million in TV advertising. That’s not a lot of money for Bloomberg, whose net worth is estimated at over $50 billion, but it’s a hell of a lot of ads.
This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. It’s springtime for billionaires. Former New York mayor and media mogul Michael Bloomberg, who earned fame, among other things, for his abortive crusade against oversized high-calorie sugared drinks, is now joining liberal activist and billionaire Tom Steyer in running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg, who turns 78 in February, has filed to enter the primary in Alabama and plans to skip the first four primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. The unfolding deep-state effort to remove Donald Trump from office diffuses an acrid aroma of paranoia, partly because of its ever-expanding cast of enemies. After the tears and disbelief of 2016, there were rumors about ‘Russian collusion’ between the Trump campaign and Moscow. It emerged that investigations into Trump and his associates dated back to at least July 2016, when the FBI covertly launched ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ to investigate Michael Flynn, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and other Trump campaign associates. The Obama administration had been sniffing around Trump since 2015, when his campaign first began to show signs of life.
After months of nuclear-grade wokeness — from open borders, health care for illegals, and abortions for women with penises — followed by a disastrous LGBT town hall, and one debate from Ohio where they briefly transformed into moderates, we joined the Democrats live from Hotlanta Wednesday night unveiling their current form: bored, exhausted, over it, resigned to lose.The MSNBC/Washington Post debate from Georgia, moderated by three women and Rachel Maddow, should have been an opportunity for Democrats to flex their greatest, rather only, muscle: pandering to blacks. Instead the 10 candidates seemed half present, perhaps preoccupied counting dollars signs for whatever corporate board position they anticipate landing after this long media romp is finally over.
Fear not everyone — there are only seven Democratic debates left this cycle. As if the prospect of a fifth in six months wasn't exhausting enough, the Atlanta bonanza kicked off after 11 hours of impeachment hearings. No wonder the spin room was more muted than usual. Host Rachel Maddow opened proceedings with an impeachment question, making the huge assumption that most viewers had watched them (they hadn't). Of the senators running, only Bernie Sanders didn't take the bait. 'We should not be consumed by Donald Trump', he said, 'we can deal with Trump's corruption, but we also have to stand up for the working families of this country.' Much of the night appeared like business as usual.
In turning on Donald Trump, American EU ambassador Gordon M. Sondland, who was sporting a nifty $55,000 Breguet watch today, performed what amounted to a timely jailbreak from the administration. 'Was there a “quid pro quo”?’ he said before Congress. 'The answer is yes.’ Sondland, in other words, was done being a yes-man for Trump.He had to endure a pillorying from Rep. Sean Maloney, who sarcastically observed that it took three times for Sondland to get it right in his testimony, but he ended up delivering the goods. In fact, a bushelful, far more than the Democratic lawmakers might reasonably have expected. Adam Schiff made the Cheshire Cat look dour as he unraveled the Gordian knot, reciting Sondland’s key statements at the close of the hearing.
What is it about Mayor Pete Buttigieg that's going to most appeal to the people of Atlanta? Is it the years he spent in consultancy on the McKinsey payroll? Perhaps it's the large donations he's secured from a few Silicon Valley donors — because we know how much the new left loves billionaires. And in a heavily African American city, his unspeakable whiteness, Harvard degree and subtle homosexuality should go over a treat. There are several reasons why Buttigieg shouldn't be the candidate to beat tonight — he shouldn't even be a threat. Yet he heads to the Oprah Winfrey stage at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta tonight as the talking-point-in-chief. The mayor's recent rise can be attributed to a few factors.
We recently learned that House Democrats are concentrating their impeachment drive on ‘bribery’ because focus groups liked it better than other terms Democrats have floated. The term never appeared in previous testimony; no one accused President Trump of bribery or even mentioned it. That omission is only a minor obstacle, apparently.Focus-group testing is widely recognized as the best way to deal with grave constitutional matters, as well as marketing breakfast cereals and e-cigarettes. It is not surprising, then, that legal scholars are scouring focus groups throughout American history to see what light they shed on the Trump impeachment.The most important of these earlier focus groups was that of the Founding Fathers, secretly convened in Philadelphia in 1787.
'No.' 'No.' 'No.' 'No.' That pretty much sums up yesterday’s testimony. 'Did you receive any indication whatsoever, or anything that resembled a quid pro quo?' Former envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker: 'No.' Devin Nunes to Tim Morrison, former NSC official: 'Did anyone ever ask you to bribe or extort anyone at any time during your time in the White House?' 'No.' This follows the responses of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to the question of whether he was offered a quid pro quo: US aid in exchange for investigating Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings with the natural gas company Burisma: 'No.' Ditto Gordon Sondland, US ambassador to the European Union: was there a quid pro quo: 'No.
Democrats like to make out that Donald Trump is terrified of the impeachment juggernaut they are driving at his head. The president is dissembling on Twitter, they say, because he’s in deep trouble. He knows he’s cornered. He’s flailing. He’s spooked. Resistance to the resistance is futile. The problem is, Trump — and, even more so, his online persona @realDonaldTrump — seems to be relishing the impeachment saga. He does his phony melancholy routine, in which he says how sad it is because we should all be focusing on his many achievements. Don’t believe it. He is simultaneously courting the whole Ukraine brouhaha, dragging it out himself. Why else would he have live-tweeted it last week?
