Devin Nunes

What’s worse than chaos? How about a power vacuum? All the beautiful people are bewailing the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House yesterday because it is supposedly “thrusting the House into chaos.”  Right on cue we have the New York Times skirling that “Far-Right GOP Faction Throws House Into Chaos.” Cant watchers: notice the deployment of the term “far-right” as an intensifier. Not only chaos but chaos from a source the Times can get away with castigating as far right. (Extra credit: would the Times describe a dramatic action by the Squad as “far left”? If not, why not?) On November 2, 1963, a CIA-instigated coup sparked the assassination of Vietnam president Ngô Đình Diệm. The trouble was, they had no one with whom to replace Diem.

Taco Bell Patron in the year 2032: "What would you say if I called you a brutish fossil, symbolic of a decayed era gratefully forgotten?" John Spartan: "I don’t know…thanks?" — Demolition Man “Right wing builds its own echo chamber,” warns the headline from a short piece in Axios about conservatives creating their own media outlets and other institutions like publishers and cryptocurrencies and social networks. The headline is a play on a trope of the Big Tech age (provided you believe Axios is capable of such self-awareness).

There was nothing original about Amy Coney Barrett’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee other than her incessant professions of her fidelity to an originalist approach to the American Constitution. Originalism is a convenient smokescreen for conservatives to act as what they claim not to be — judicial activists, ascribing their own views to the founders. But to acknowledge this would be to land Barrett in a host of difficulties. For the likes of Barrett, originalist theory is the judicial equivalent of an SDI shield. She wielded it well. Throughout, she dutifully supplied answers that were none at all. She has no ‘agenda’. She has no view on whether a president can delay an election. Voter intimidation at the polls? Once again, she punted. After Sen.

This article is in The Spectator’s January 2020 US edition. Subscribe here.Crime in Progress is, inadvertently, the cruelest book ever written about the American media. Its authors, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, are the two former Wall Street Journal reporters who founded the DC-based consultancy Fusion GPS. In 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign paid them to use their former media colleagues to push a conspiracy theory smearing her Republican opponent, Donald Trump. The crime is still in progress. To help top-notch journalists market the fantasy that one of the world’s most familiar faces was a secret Russian spy, Fusion GPS co-ordinated with the FBI to forge a series of ‘intelligence reports’.

'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.

Today marks the official beginning of the Schiff Show Impeachment Follies. It is therefore fitting that I take as my text for today’s meditation Matthew 7:5: 'Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.' What do I mean? I’ll tell you. The ostensible predicate of this spectacle is President Trump’s alleged effort to influence the 2020 election. Specifically, the allegation is that Trump made aid to Ukraine (the quid) conditional on Ukraine’s investigation of Joe Biden’s demand (the quo) that the prosecutor investigating a company on which his son, Hunter, sat be fired. Biden’s demand is not controverted.

Oh no! The walls are closing in again on Trump! We’ve reached a 'tipping point.' This time, finally, at last, we have the fatal 'bombshell' that will destroy him. The testimony of Bill Taylor, Deep State apparatchik and acting Ambassador to Ukraine, has given 'devastating', 'explosive' testimony to Adam Schiff. They’ve certainly got Trump this time. An establishment lifer with deep ties to Burisma, the corrupt energy company that was so generous to Hunter Biden, has said that Trump insisted on a quid in the form of probing cokehead Hunter and his dad, Joe, in exchange for the quo of $400 million in military aid. Or was pelf the quid and the investigation of the Joe and Hunter show the quo? Our experts are working on untangling that.

If only his legs could reach that far, Rep. Jerry Nadler would be kicking himself now. Whose idea was it to indulge in this pathetic geriatric festival featuring antique G-Man Robert S. Mueller III? The chap who suggested subjecting us all to the five-plus hours of this Howdy-Doody show should be furloughed immediately. For one thing, the escapade probably violated the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which explicitly prohibits, inter alia, cruel and unusual punishment. Cruel the punishment certainly was, and not just to viewers. I almost felt sorry for Robert Mueller, who at 74 is clearly not the incisive interlocutor that he, by reputation, once was. 'Dazed and confused' read one Drudge Report headline. Exactly.

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller concluded his investigation by exonerating President Trump of collusion with Russian forces during the 2016 election. Investigating that supposed collusion is the reason he was appointed and his final report declared that he and his team could find no evidence to support the allegation. But for more than two years, the nation has been torn apart by the claims made Democrats and their operatives in the media. They were sure – sure! – that President Trump would be forced from office in disgrace. The conspiracy theorists seethed with fundamentalist conviction, confident that Robert Mueller would lead them to the promised land. Nonetheless, many are sticking to their story. There may be no evidence, but they just know it in their bones!

On Tuesday, American voters will give the president his first official performance review. There will be no opportunity to tell Donald J. Trump ‘You’re fired!’ in the reality TV verbiage he relishes – that will have to wait two more years – setbacks for the Republicans in Congress will inevitably be interpreted negatively for The Donald, who has pulled out the stops exhorting his loyal fanbase to the polls on November 6. But will it happen? American political history is filled with stern midterm rebukes for presidents, especially Democrats who get ahead of their skis like Bill Clinton in 1994 or Barack Obama in 2010, when their party lost 54 and 63 seats in the House of Representatives, respectively.