Politics

OK, I had never heard of Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s latest nominee for the Supreme Court, before last week either. But it doesn’t take long to discover that he is possessed of a razor-sharp legal mind and a very traditionalist judicial philosophy. By “traditionalist,” I mean that he believes that the judiciary’s role is to interpret the laws of the United States as written, not to use the law to further his personal policy preferences. Until at least the mid-1950s, this was the dominant sentiment on the Supreme Court. It was cast aside in succeeding years as Justices found “emanations and penumbras” (William O. Douglas’s words) in the Constitution to justify social policies that they favoured.

Jim Jordan of Ohio may not be a household name in the United States, but rest assured that he has turned himself into a disruptive force in Washington, D.C.  The seven-term congressman is a Donald Trump kind of guy: he hates the status-quo and wants to take down the political establishment of both parties. He relishes making mincemeat of any government official who has even the slimmest connection to former President Barack Obama. He is a sanctimonious loudmouth. Just as Donald Trump sees the value of unpredictability and unconventionality, Jim Jordan sees political value in using the allure of congressional oversight and transparency to mask what are undeniable political vendettas against anyone who happens to reek of the swamp. But it is now Jordan who is under the microscope.

While tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected in central London to protest Donald Trump’s visit this week, the BBC too is laying out its own welcome mat. Its most important current affairs programme, Panorama, tonight broadcasts a film titled ‘Trump: Is the President a Sex Pest?’ The Panorama website says: “Donald Trump has been accused of sexually inappropriate behaviour by more than 20 women, but he has dismissed them all as liars. Now one of those women is suing him for defamation. An American court will have to decide what really happened and whether the President of the United States is a sexual predator.” Trump doesn’t care much about protesters.

The big question that hangs over Donald Trump’s trip through Europe is not whether America’s NATO allies should spend more on defence or whether Vladimir Putin poses an overriding strategic threat to the continent. The big question is this: why should Uncle Sam continue to provide the military assets and leadership across the pond as it has for the past 70 years? The answer lies in understanding that the concept of a united political West is a tenuous and unconvincing one. Indeed, it should have been moribund since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of Soviet Communism. It’s now collapsing. True, the West has an obvious and historically glorious validity.

Depending on who you believe, the departure of White House chief of staff John Kelly is either imminent or “fake news.” Under President Trump, today’s fake news often becomes tomorrow’s confirmed headline. What is beyond dispute is that Kelly’s attempt to impose order on Trump’s wild West Wing is a failure, at least by comparison to his predecessors. That of course may be an unfair standard by which to judge Kelly. Most previous presidents came into office with disciplined political operations that translate well to the workings of the White House and advisers whom they trust. Trump essentially inherited all that from the Republican National Committee, with his most trusted confidantes actually having little to no Washington experience.

Anxious to find out what food they served at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, I clicked on the relevant site and was transported immediately to a discount motorcycle website entirely in Korean, or Japanese, or maybe Chinese. I don’t know — I can’t tell the difference between those respective hieroglyphics. Maybe that was the point: the restaurant was weeding out people like me who have never bothered to distinguish between different oriental alphabets and are therefore racist and banned from the Red Hen, probably for life. More likely, though, is that the site has been hacked by clever and jubilant Trump supporters.

The former fact-checker of the New Yorker, Talia Lavin, must have been mystified to receive a cheque from Milo Yiannopoulos, the desperate self-publicist once feted by the alt-right, for the miserly sum of $14.88. We all know Yiannopoulos is short of cash these days. He was dumped by billionaire backer Robert Mercer after BuzzFeed revealed his links to neo-Nazis. Then his prospective saviour, Matthew Mellon, died on him: he succumbed to a suspected drug overdose just hours after (according to Yiannopoulos) the two were hanging out together in Miami. https://www.instagram.com/p/BkZGlzRAUx_/?taken-by=milo.

No news is still news, so long as it concerns Donald Trump. This morning’s significant no-news is that Stormy Daniels, her real-life alter ego Stephanie Clifford and her lawyer Michael Avenatti have cancelled a planned meeting with the federal prosecutors who are investigating Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen. You know, the lawyer who paid Daniels $130,000 just before the 2016 elections, in return for a confidentiality agreement about an alleged tryst with Donald Trump in 2006. Trump denies that the alleged tryst and pay-off took place. He also says that he and Michael Cohen are now just good friends.

The solid performances of many Democratic candidates in the California primaries will have reaffirmed in the minds of many Republicans what they have thought for a long time: that the Golden State is a lost cause. The recent polling numbers collected on leaders in the Grand Old Party do not help assuage Republican concerns, either. In May 2018, for instance, when national Trump approval ratings hovered in the low 40 per cent range, his ratings in California were even lower, around 30 per cent. The GOP-controlled Congress, meanwhile, registered only a 24 per cent approval rate. However, closer examination of the data reveals that California is far from the liberal fantasyland which many make it out to be. On the contrary, political views in the state are moderating.

Donald Trump on Wednesday finally caved to pressure—from both sides of the aisle—and did what just days earlier he claimed he couldn’t do: he signed an executive order that he said would end the separate detention of family members who together crossed the border illegally. Images of children being held in cage-like facilities—even minus those pictures that had actually been taken during the Barack Obama administration—had led the news cycle for a week. A dozen Republican senators urged the administration to halt the policy while lawmakers scrambled to develop a legislative fix. It wasn’t just President Trump’s own party calling on him to show compassion; his family members did, too.

An invader is in the Washington, DC area. It’s almost impossible to eradicate and large. It’s also quite noxious. “Now that there’s a confirmed sighting,” one local official told the Washington Post, “we need to be on the lookout.” The furor centers over the emergence of a giant hogweed from southwest Asia that emits toxic substances, but it also sums up the way NeverTrumpers view the Donald. Now that he’s locking ‘em up on the southern border, the internal opposition to Trump as a dangerous national security threat to America is reaching new heights. A case in point is Steve Schmidt, who helped direct the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain.