Politics

For the last few months, James Brien Comey, the FBI director fired by Donald Trump in the midst of the Russia investigation, has presented himself as the Last Honest Man as he toured the country selling books and taking potshots at the president. How self-righteous is Comey? In the midst of the Russia maelstrom, he posted to his Instagram account a photo of the Potomac River falls outside Washington, adding a biblical quote: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” https://www.instagram.com/p/BcKtEUUg4Qa/?taken-by=comey Now, justice is rolling in Comey’s direction, with the revelation that he is under investigation for possibly mishandling classified and confidential information in his apparently all-consuming desire to get Trump.

The stories are filed, the pictures are posted, and the media verdict is almost unanimous: separating children from their parents is wrong, it is unAmerican, and President Donald Trump is going to suffer for it. His administration is baby-snatching. The ‘optics’ are terrible, say the hyperventilating PR men and Washington know-alls.But if everyone stopped to breathe for a moment, they might recognise that, on this issue, as on so much else, Donald Trump is winning the politics.Call it vice-signalling. The President and Kirstjen Nielsen are making clear that, even if it means being seen to be inhuman, they are taking voter concerns about massive immigration seriously. There is a clear political upside to this, despite – or because of – the negative headlines.

While the Anti-Trump Mandarins of the Commentariat (ATMC, for short) are busy untwisting their knickers after the President’s historic summit meeting with the Tubby Tyrant of North Korea, I have an important real-estate tip to pass along: beach-front property in North Korea. Keep your eye on it. As Trump said yesterday in his wide-ranging press conference following his meeting with Kim Jong-un, that stretch of land between China and South Korea would be an ideal spot for luxury hotels and condos, if only Kim would stop shooting off cannons there. “If only.” Bear that in mind, as Donald Trump assuredly will, as you chuckle over the incongruity of “beach-front property” in close proximity to the words “North Korea.

The reviews are coming in for Donald Trump’s performance in Singapore and they aren’t pretty. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times says Trump was 'hoodwinked'. Ari Fleischer, the former press spokesman for George W. Bush, says 'This feels like the Agreed Framework of the 90s all over again. NK gave its word to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons. They never intended to keep their word. And then they broke it.' And Bruce Klingner, a former CIA analyst now at the Heritage Foundation, says 'This is very disappointing. Each of the four main points was in previous documents with NK, some in a stronger, more encompassing way. The denuke bullet is weaker than the Six Party Talks language. And no mention of CVID, verification, human rights.

Donald Trump means different things to different people. To his core supporters, he’s the man who will make America great again.  To his diehard opponents, he is a dangerous juvenile with authoritarian tendencies. Ultimately, these descriptions are secondary to how Trump sees himself: a tough, dealmaking Svengali who has the experience and power of persuasion to get a deal that is advantageous to himself and to the people he represents. Democrats laugh and dismissively wave off that mindset as self-delusion. Even some Republicans would likely roll their eyes in private. Trump, of course, knows this too well - which is why his dalliance with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un this week is such a pivotal moment for his own sense of confidence as a leader.

Once upon a time California was a Republican redoubt, sending the likes of Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan to the White House. In recent decades, however, the popularity of the GOP has cratered. In 2016 Donald Trump lost the state by over four million votes to Hillary Clinton. CNBC reports that the number of registered Republicans has sunk from 36 per cent in 1997 to around 25 per cent. Democrats constitute about 45 per cent of the state’s total registered voters. Yesterday’s primary election offered another reminder of how far the mighty have fallen. The Golden State’s Republicans are celebrating the fact that they even managed to get a candidate, the San Diego businessman John H. Cox, on the November ballot.

The California Democratic Party would have you believe that the coming “blue wave” of progressive politicos will first crash down on the Golden State tomorrow as residents head to the polls for the primaries. And why wouldn’t it? The state is the bluest in the union, at least by the statistics. The governor’s race is little more than a de facto coronation of current Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom. What the straight, white progressive prince of the San Francisco Bay lacks in intersectionality points, he makes up for with vociferous virtue signalling. However, voters are realising a tad too late that his endless screeching of ‘More housing! More mobility! More feminism! More progressivism!’ rings hollow.

Does Richard Grenell, the American ambassador to Germany, want to carry out another round of regime change in Deutschland? This is the construction that is being placed upon his temerarious remarks to Breitbart by many German politicians about his desire to support the populist right across Europe: “I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders. I think there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left.” In his view, the avatars of a new Europe are figures such as the young prime minister of Austria Sebastian Kurz, who ran on a strongly anti-immigrant platform.

America is a free country in which the law criminalises almost everyone. The web of nanny-state regulations and bureaucratic technicalities is so dense that anyone can be snared. The law criminalises far more people and far more activities than prosecutors can possibly tackle. So they act on their discretion, and that discretion is often informed by political considerations. Prosecute a high-profile figure, and you can present yourself as David slaying Goliath.Donald Trump’s frankly political pardon of Dinesh D’Souza—admirably frank, even—should be less cause for outrage than the use of prosecutorial power to score partisan points. Not that D’Souza was a hapless innocent caught in the complexities of U.S. campaign law.

Donald Trump is following through on his threat—or promise, as his voters see it—to impose steep tariffs on foreign goods in the name of supporting American industry, starting with levies of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium imports. Allies and neighbors that had been granted temporary exemptions are now set to feel the brunt of the tariffs: Canada is America’s leading source of foreign steel, and Mexico and the European Union will also feel the pain. They’re all threatening to retaliate, and the press is calling this a trade war.If this is a war, it’s one the United States will win.

There was a time not long ago when Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions were best of buds. Well, not friends in the normal meaning of the word, but about as close as two such public figures can be. Trump and Sessions shared views on immigration, criminal justice, taxes, and military spending. Sessions even loaned one of his’ senior aides (a guy named Stephen Miller) to the Trump campaign at a time when his freewheeling operation was in desperate need of staffing. When the four-term U.S. Senator from Alabama announced to a crowd of Trump supporters on February 28, 2016 that he would be endorsing the uncensored billionaire for president, you got the sense that it wasn’t a hard decision for Sessions to make.

Donald Trump got bad reviews in the press — no surprise — when he announced that Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and federal prosecutor, would join his legal team in the Trump-Russia special counsel investigation. The 74-year-old Giuliani is not as sharp as he was, some said, and isn’t really a practising lawyer any more. How can you effectively defend the President by slipping out of fatcat dinners at New York steakhouses for quick hits on Fox News?That was then. Now, it appears hiring Giuliani was a key part of a new and effective Trump strategy. Just a few months ago, Trump was cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, mostly refraining from attacking him directly, and hoping the investigation would somehow go away.

If the BBC really is, as Steve Bannon says, a communications department of the global elite, they messed up badly last night. Emily Maitlis’s 20-minute long interview with Bannon on Newsnight was mesmerising television — even, or especially, if you can’t bear the subject. It was also the longest advertisement for economic nationalism yet delivered to British viewers. No doubt Raheem Kassam, the close Bannon associate who’s just left Breitbart and has been on Newsnight a few times himself, had something to do with it.By airing the discussion, the Beeb disproves the Bannonite idea that it is part of an elite conspiracy to silence populist points of view on immigration.