Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories

Thursday

Daniel DePetris

Jeff Sessions is the loneliest man in Washington

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.

Damian Thompson

Social conservatism is dead

Just before Ireland voted overwhelmingly to end the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, Catholics in the fishing village of Clogherhead could be seen storming out of Sunday mass halfway through the service. Why? Their parish priest had come on too strong. He had not only ordered them how to vote but also supplied grisly details of an abortion procedure. Presumably some of them voted to repeal the eighth amendment. The ‘Yes’ campaign couldn’t have won its two-thirds majority without the support of practising Catholics. Very few of these, we can assume, were militantly pro-choice. Instead, they were reassured by promises that any future law would be limited in its impact — and determined to ignore a Catholic hierarchy contaminated by child abuse.

Dominic Green

Forgive Dinesh D’Souza — he knows exactly what he’s done

When I heard that President Trump had pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, I sought the opinion of an alumnus of the Dartmouth Review who has yet to do a stretch in the big house.‘His nickname at Dartmouth was ‘Distort D’Newsa’,’ my source whispered, and then hung up before National Review could trace the call.In 2014, D’Souza pleaded guilty to federal charges that in 2012, he had routed $20,000 through two associates, as funds for his friend Wendy Long’s run for the New York Senate. Long lost the race to the incumbent Democrat, Kirsten Gillibrand. D’Souza denied the charges at first, but then pleaded guilty. The prosecutors added a second charge, making false statements to the government.

Dominic Green

Forgive Dinesh D’Souza — he knows exactly what he’s done

When I heard that President Trump had pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, I sought the opinion of an alumnus of the Dartmouth Review who has yet to do a stretch in the big house.‘His nickname at Dartmouth was ‘Distort D’Newsa’,’ my source whispered, and then hung up before National Review could trace the call.In 2014, D’Souza pleaded guilty to federal charges that in 2012, he had routed $20,000 through two associates, as funds for his friend Wendy Long’s run for the New York Senate. Long lost the race to the incumbent Democrat, Kirsten Gillibrand. D’Souza denied the charges at first, but then pleaded guilty. The prosecutors added a second charge, making false statements to the government.

Cockburn

Who is the mysterious sociologist following Richard Spencer around?

There’s no question that America’s most famous white nationalist, Richard Spencer  — the man who coined the term “alt-right” — is a subject worthy of academic study, be that by a sociologist or anyone else. But should an academic sign a non-disclosure agreement with Spencer’s organisation as a condition of access? Sources tell Cockburn that Serena Tarr, a sociology professor at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa, has been seen with him at a number of events in the past year, including a 2017 National Policy Institute Conference, CPAC in Maryland in February, and Spencer’s speech at Michigan State about a week or so after that. She can be seen in this video posted to Twitter during his visit to Michigan: https://twitter.

Kelly Jane Torrance

Why are we rolling out the red carpet for one of North Korea’s most brutal men?

Kim Yong-chol arrived in New York from Pyongyang via a flight from Beijing on Wednesday afternoon. He then made his way to a hotel in midtown Manhattan and, later that evening, to an apartment near the United Nations headquarters, where the North Korean pol had dinner with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The two are apparently laying the groundwork for the off-again, on-again summit between their bosses, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, that may or may not take place in Singapore on June 12. https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1002012928407728128 The ease with which Kim—no relation to his boss—made his way to and through New York City stands in stark contrast to his last big diplomatic photo-op.

Wednesday

Byron York

Rudy Giuliani is turning the Mueller probe on its head

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.

Friday

Roger Kimball

For your eyes only: A short history of Democrat-spy collusion

Who what where when why? The desiderata school teachers drill into their charges trying to master effective writing skills apply also in the effort to understand that byzantine drama known to the world as the Trump-Russia-collusion investigation. Let’s start with “when.” When did it start? We know that the FBI opened its official investigation on 31 July 2016. An obscure, low-level volunteer to the Trump campaign called Carter Page was front and centre then. He’d been the FBI’s radar for a long time. Years before, it was known, the Russians had made some overtures to him but 1) they concluded that he was an “idiot” not worth recruiting and 2) he had actually aided the FBI in prosecuting at least two Russian spies.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

What happens when you give Steve Bannon a platform? Fascinating television, apparently

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.

Rick Wilson

Trump is having a very loud public meltdown – all thanks to Michael Cohen

If you’re wondering why President Trump’s mad-dog frenzy in the last 48 hours has surpassed even his typically manic tone, look no further than Michael Cohen’s mounting legal troubles. Two new fronts were opened this week, pushing Cohen closer to the edge of a painful, existential choice: cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, or an extended, unpleasant stay in federal prison. Trump can sense his friend edging closer to capitulation and his own legal peril mounting as Cohen begins to crack. As usual, he’s having a very public, very loud meltdown.First came the news that Gene Freidman, Cohen's associate in his taxi-medallion enterprise, has flipped.

Melanie McDonagh

Ireland’s abortion referendum has been horrifically one-sided

It will, as one pro-life campaigner told me, take an act of God to swing the Irish referendum for the No side tomorrow. I’m all for referendums but this one has been so wildly unbalanced as to make the Brexit campaign look almost effete in its regard for impartiality and fair play. The polls suggest a win for the Yes side, on repealing the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution which protects the right to life of the unborn – something around the 44-32 per cent margin according to the last Irish Times poll. It’s a big deal, abortion. But there is not one political party that represents the No side other than a tiny outfit called Renua which doesn’t have a single MP. There is no newspaper that represents this quite hefty minority.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump goes on the warpath with North Korea

So much for the “World Peace” that Donald Trump bragged he would create at the June 12 Singapore summit. In a wildly inappropriate letter that veered between a bullying and lachrymose tone, Trump bowed to the inevitable in canceling the summit with Kim Jong-un. He had to do it before Kim did.Already Kim had the upper hand. Trump’s impetuous decision gave the Supreme Leader, as the administration had taken to calling him, the validation the regime was seeking for decades. Now it will not be back to the future. South Korea isn’t going to readopt a tough posture of “maximum pressure” toward the North. Score one for Kim.But another winner is national security adviser John Bolton who never wanted a summit in the first place.

Wednesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Did Ukraine bribe its way into the White House?

An actual sinkhole has developed on the north lawn of the White House. It might serve as a good metaphor for the state of the Trump presidency, which is being engulfed by the very Washington swamp that it once vowed to eradicate. The latest revelation comes courtesy of the BBC’s indefatigable Paul Wood, who reports today on a corrupt bargain that apparently took place between the White House and Ukraine. It seems that Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who bet on the wrong horse during the 2016 campaign by releasing some information about the sordid financial machinations of Donald Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort to the New York Times in August 2016, was desperate to make amends.  He wanted to butter up Trump.

Monday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump is getting ‘schlonged’ by America’s enemies

So much for the Nobel Peace Prize that Donald Trump said “everyone thinks” he should receive. The New York Times reports that Trump is starting to get second thoughts about visiting Singapore on June 12 to hold a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Trump boasted earlier that if they cut a deal, Kim would be “very, very happy.” Now it’s starting to dawn on the Trump administration that it’s getting played by the portly pariah of Pyongyang.Even as Trump abrogated the Iran nuclear deal, he was confident that he, and he alone, had the magic touch that would persuade North Korea to hand over its nuclear stockpile to America. He would, in turn, play the role of the benignant emperor, showering economic largesse upon Pyongyang.

Daniel McCarthy

Why America First beats the party of Bernie Sanders

The 2018 midterm elections, like the 2016 presidential contest, are proving to be far more interesting than conventional wisdom ever suspected. Two years ago, pundits were sure that Trump would lose, right up to the early evening of election day. This year, the conventional wisdom has it that Democrats will take back control of at least the House of Representatives, probably by a landslide, if not the Senate as well. But two critical polling indicators suggest the GOP’s hand is getting stronger. President Trump’s approval ratings are solidly into the 40s in recent polls, and even hit 50 percent in the most in the Rasmussen survey last week (which, to be sure, has consistently shown better numbers for Trump).

Sunday

Melanie McDonagh

This is monarchy for the Netflix generation

Well, a star is born. I refer to the Rt Rev Michael Curry, bishop of that vanishingly rare breed, the American Episcopal Church, who was stole the show at yesterday’s royal wedding in Britain. Anyone who can make Elton John look like that  – sort of nonplussed toad  – and generate barely suppressed mirth in the congregation to the extent it wasn’t whether the Prince of Wales was laughing or crying or trying not to do either, is quite some preacher. He may be Anglican but there was an awful lot of Pentecostalist in there. The other star turn was the young cellist, Shekuh Kannah Mason, the Jacqueline du Pres of Britain’s Got Talent; again, big on feeling.

Friday

Kelly Jane Torrance

Trump’s ZTE talks have Congress wondering if he’s putting America first

It doesn’t happen often, but it happened this week: Republicans in Congress made it officially known that they disagree with their party leader, President Donald Trump, on an important issue of policy.On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee voted unanimously to accept an amendment to the 2019 Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Bill. That amendment, introduced by Democratic Maryland congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, forbids the Commerce Department from renegotiating the sanctions it enacted last month on Chinese telecom company ZTE.It’s a real reprimand of the president, who started sending tweets in support of the company on Sunday.

AI
nasty meghan markle
Josh Glancy

How the British royal family became a very American obsession

America has been on quite the journey since the Boston Tea Party, when a group of young, ambitious colonials threw off the yoke of British royal dominion. A superpower was built from those discarded tea leaves to rival the Roman empire, while their former British masters have been reduced to playing the role of docile satraps. Much has changed since that December day in Boston Harbour. But a different kind of tea party, one being held across the nation on Saturday, will demonstrate that one thing has stayed the same: America is still in thrall to the British monarchy, at least in an emotional sense. Britannia may not rule the waves anymore, but it still rules many hearts.

Wednesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Could John Bolton cost Trump his Nobel Peace Prize?

My, my, my. North Korea is in a snit over National Security Adviser John Bolton who urged it to follow the Libya model of total denuclearization. Everyone knows how that ended. The North declared yesterday that it finds Bolton “repugnant,” a sentiment that is actually widely shared around the world, and that it wants an end to the “ruckus” surrounding the talks. Indeed Pyongyang is threatening to blowup the summit talks altogether. Will President Trump, who has been childishly eager to meet Kim Jong-un and land a prized photo op, realize that there is something wrong with this picture? Trump is being outmanoeuvred both by the North – and by his own adviser. By invoking Libya, Bolton pretty much ensured that Pyongyang would retaliate. And so it has.

Tuesday

Tom Ball

Why Christopher Steele should spill the beans

Lawyers representing the ex-spook-turned-private-investigator Christopher Steele were in action yesterday at London’s High Court. In a rather convoluted turn of events, BuzzFeed, who published Steele’s leaked dossier on links relating to Trump and Moscow, is now seeking to question the author “on the dossier as a whole” because of the document’s importance in the “public’s understanding of the ongoing federal investigations”. In other words, BuzzFeed wants Steele to spill the beans on some of his claims. And they’re right. Steele’s dossier is one of the keystones of the Mueller investigation.

Curt Mills

John Bolton really is in charge

The opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem was nothing short of a dark Mass. A ceremony that should have marked the monumental achievement of the Jewish people was instead consecrated in blood. Seated courtside was the man who perhaps more than any other made the embassy happen: Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate. Back in Washington, his man in the White House, John Bolton, continued at work, as the administration exclusively faulted Hamas for the carnage in Gaza.I was the first to report, in January, that Bolton was on his way to becoming national security advisor.

Daniel DePetris

Will Trump end the Mueller inquiry or will the Mueller inquiry end Trump?

May 17, 2017 started out as any other day in Donald Trump’s Washington. Men and women in suits with briefcases walked into work, ready to meet clients or do business. The day, however, proved to be the very beginning of Trump’s troubles, with the appointment of a special counsel to look into allegations of collusion between the president’s campaign and Russian operatives in the Kremlin. The White House, like everybody else in the country, was caught off guard; Trump found out about the Justice Department’s decision when he was meeting with candidates for FBI Director (Trump threw James Comey out of the building a week earlier). As one administration official told CNN at the time: "It's still sinking in. We were told about it. Not asked about it.

Monday

Kelly Jane Torrance

Does Mike Pompeo really think he can cut a good deal with North Korea?

It’s a busy time for America’s top diplomat, and perhaps the stress is getting to him. That’s one explanation, anyway, for some of the things uttered by Mike Pompeo over the last week.His most glaring goof came last Tuesday, as he spoke to reporters on board a flight to Japan. The secretary of state was briefing them on the upcoming meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and said that the administration had started “to put some outlines around the substance of the agenda for the summit between the president and Chairman Un.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Is Trump preparing to sell out South Korea?

Maybe President Trump has finally given up on his cherished dream of Vladimir Putin as his new best friend. It seems that Kim Jong-un is supplanting him in his affections. Even as Trump tries to up the ante with Iran, his top officials are playing kissy-face with North Korea. Fears are swirling in Washington that in his desperation for a grand bargain, Trump may end up following a policy of appeasement toward the North with Singapore as the new Munich. It may not be long before Trump returns from Singapore brandishing a piece of paper, or at least issues a tweet, declaring “peace for our time.

Saturday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump is on a roll. But is it all artifice?

On June 12 Donald Trump will meet Kim Jong-un in Singapore. Trump is ebullient. “World Peace” is what he will seek, according his Twitter account. Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is sounding a more cautious note: “We hope this meeting will advance prospects for peace in the Korean Peninsula." Trump’s euphoric tone is more reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson than the America First rodomontade that he was peddling to his followers during the 2016 campaign. It’s prompting a volte-face in Washington, not the first Trump has created. Hawks are becoming doves and doves hawks. Conservatives are talking peace, love and understanding. Liberals are fretting that Trump will give away the store to the North.

Friday

Daniel McCarthy

John McCain is right about Gina Haspel

John McCain is a victim of hypocrisy. His allies in Washington and admirers in the national media praise him as the conscience of the nation, even as they betray him in his last desperate battle against the normalisation of torture. After a White House communications staffer, Kelly Sadler, joked that McCain’s views don’t matter because “he’s dying anyway,” the senator’s pretend friends called for her firing. Her tasteless joke, badly received even among colleagues, provoked a degree of outrage from wonks and commentators unmatched by any such umbrage at the nomination of a woman implicated in torture and the destruction of evidence to head the CIA. For elite Washington, disrespectful words are worse than waterboarding.

Thursday

Rick Wilson

America is in the middle of a Russian influence campaign – not at the end

Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen is playing a starring role in a riveting drama featuring the President, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Putin-connected oligarchs, shady vory v zakone-adjacent moneymen, and American and Russian corporations seeking influence with the Trump Administration. For Americans, this is a new lurid political drama, but it’s one London has seen up close for two decades. It’s the story of the inevitable consequences that result when Russian money, influence and corruption slither up on Western shores.

Dominic Green

Europe’s leaders need Trump more than they wish to admit

America, meet your European allies in the effort to contain Iran: Emmanuel Macron of France, Theresa May of Britain, and Angela Merkel of Germany. Think of them as the Three M’s. Or perhaps the Three Wise Monkeys. Or even, as the Wise Monkeys are sometimes known, and would probably prefer to be called, the Three Mystic Apes. For each of these three European leaders is affecting a posture of simian ignorance about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and presenting this unwillingness to accept reality as philosophical wisdom.Emmanuel Macron sees no evil in the Iranian regime’s anti-Western, terrorist-sponsoring Islamist millenarianism, because global security must come second to getting the French economy into gear.

Christopher De Bellaigue

Thanks to Donald Trump, night is falling in Iran again

In the White House on Tuesday, with the world just where he wanted it — eyes on the TV, transfixed by his boldness — President Trump uprooted the Iran nuclear deal. Under this agreement, which was signed in July 2015 by Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, the Iranians mothballed significant parts of their rapidly advancing nuclear industry in return for sanctions relief. The country is now considerably further away from a bomb than it was before, and its nuclear facilities are subject to inspections of unusual intrusiveness. In March Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s chief of the general staff, affirmed that the agreement ‘is working and is putting off realisation of the Iranian nuclear vision by ten to 15 years’.

Daniel DePetris

Blankenship’s loss is an important victory for the Republican establishment

The midterm elections this November are bound to be a rough slog for a Republican Party desperately trying to keep its congressional majority. As former President Barack Obama would say, the Democratic base is “fired up, ready to go.” Democrats are giddy about their prospects; Republicans are for the most part gloomy.The GOP will need all the help from the heavens to pull this one off. A primary win by coal baron and provocateur Don Blankenship in West Virginia, however, wouldn’t be one of those gifts. There is a reason why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican political establishment threw $1.

Tom Ball

Putin shows off his ‘dagger’ on Victory Day

Then there’s the bravado that goes with it too. International Women’s Day is widely and actively observed in Russia, and though there is an official male equivalent in November, Victory Day is far closer to any actual celebration of masculinity. In the same year that I was wandering the streets of Petersburg trying to steer clear of drunken sailors, a friend of mine was invited to a dacha in the countryside by some of his male colleagues. What he had envisaged as a quiet weekend spent reading Tolstoy by the lakeside, turned out to be a testosteronic blaze of bare-chested rifle shooting and competitive drinking.

Wednesday

Roger Kimball

Iran’s malevolent mullahs have been well and truly Trumped

The only time I met Donald Trump was at a small event for politically mature journalists at the White House last April. After milling about with my fellow scribes in the press room—it’s a lot smaller and shabbier than it looks on TV, like Jim Acosta—we were ushered into the Roosevelt Room near the Oval Office. The President, secretary of commerce Wilbur Ross, and a few aides (Steve Bannon, Michael Anton, Reince Priebus: wot larks!) soon joined us. After a brief presentation, the President took questions. Mine was about Iran.   During the campaign, I noted, the President had regularly decried the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, i.e, the 2015 Obama Iran deal in which the U.S.

Ned Donovan

Is Piers Morgan the only Catholic offended by the Met Gala?

It will come as no surprise that something in the news has Piers Morgan deeply troubled. For the past two days, Morgan has been incandescent over the Met Gala and its dress code. In a column for MailOnline he claims that, as a Catholic, he has become a victim of cultural appropriation due to fancy dress outfits worn to a party by celebrities.The Gala, a fixture of the New York social season at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is well known for the theme it sets, and this year it was ‘Heavenly Bodies’ - inspired by the Roman Catholic Church. The Gala was held to launch an exhibition of the same name. Dozens of items of religious clothing have been allowed out of the Vatican Archives to be seen by the public for the first time.Guests at the party took the dress code to heart.

Tuesday

Lucy Steigerwald

Why the Democrats will lose their battle to stop Gina Haspel

Donald Trump is not known as a champion of women, but he thinks he should be.  The President wants the deputy director of CIA, Gina Haspel, to succeed Mike Pompeo in the top job, and the Democrats are raging against her appointment. Predictably enough, Trump is enjoying the irony, tweeting on Monday morning:  “My highly respected nominee for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, has come under fire because she was too tough on Terrorists. Think of that, in these very dangerous times, we have the most qualified person, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough on terror. Win Gina!” Needless to say, it isn’t quite the fact that Haspel is a woman which is bothering the Democrats about her appointment.