Jacob Heilbrunn

Last night was Liz Cheney’s breakout moment. As Cheney read the various text messages from various Fox News luminaries and Donald Trump Jr. to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, she milked the moment, lingering over memorable phrases such as "he’s got to condemn this shit ASAP." And yet Sonny boy's plea was ignored. The old man reveled in the feculent mayhem. Once seen as a neoconservative ogress, Cheney has now achieved full redemption, morphing into the darling of the mainstream media for her refusal to dismiss the mob on January 6 as a bunch of tourists who had accidentally strayed into the Capitol. This is Cheney’s High Noon.

Congressman Adam Schiff is crowing. “It’s very positive,” he said on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press about the indictment of sometime Trump adviser Steve Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress. He has a point. The indictment was never really about Bannon but about trying to create some shock and awe when it comes to eliciting testimony from other Trump janissaries such as his former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Bannon’s predicament, which he can try and spin to his personal advantage by portraying himself as a victim of the deep state, indicates that the January 6 commission is impeachment by other means.

As usual, P.G. Wodehouse put it best. “What is it Shakespeare calls sleep, Jeeves?,” Bertie Wooster inquires of his faithful manservant. “Tired Nature’s sweet restorer sir.” "Exactly. Well there you are, then,” Bertie complacently concurs. Perhaps it was this exchange that President Biden was pondering during the opening speeches at the COP26 when he apparently dozed off. A variety of interpretations of Biden’s behavior are possible. A charitable one is that he was behaving like any rational human being listening to a bunch of self-important gasbags would and simply tuned out. Another one, assiduously touted by his detractors, is that the old duffer simply can’t hack it any longer. Take him out in public for a few hours and it isn’t sleepy but somnolent Joe.

Heavens to Betsy! It seems that Tucker Carlson has gone full truther. Or, if you prefer, disinformer about the tawdry events of January 6, when a motley crew of Trump supporters and Oath Keepers, who often appear to be one and the same, somehow took it into their heads not simply to protest the outcome of the presidential election but to storm the Winter Palace. The trials of the perpetrators are ongoing. A House committee, which includes Liz Cheney as well as Adam Kinzinger, is investigating. And most Republican politicians, at least the ones with their eyes on regaining a congressional majority, are trying to put the episode firmly in the rear-view mirror. Not Tucker.

There used to be an old joke that there were more members of the FBI who were members of the American Communist party than there were actual believers in rule from Moscow. Something like that seems to have occurred with the much ballyhooed 'Justice for J6' rally in Washington DC. Justice, schmustice. Much as I had expected, almost no one rallied to the rally. A grand total of two people were arrested. Seldom has Washington seemed more peaceful. The notion that DC was about to be stormed may have given a lascivious pleasure to those liberals convinced that the enemy is not just at the gates but within them already. But that was never in the cards. Having been caught napping on January 6, there was no way a repetition of those sanguinary events would recur.

It’s starting to look as though President Joe Biden really does want to leave Afghanistan. In his speech today, Biden didn’t concede that he has blundered in ordering a pullout. On the contrary, he doubled down. The result was the most forceful, impassioned and persuasive speech of his young presidency. In essence Biden embraced the original Rumsfeld doctrine — conduct limited counter-terrorism strikes but don’t get stuck nation-building. Adopting a different course was the original sin of the George W. Bush administration, which became bogged down in Afghanistan as it prepared for war in Iraq. Now Biden is finally issuing a course correction. Any notion that Biden is senescent, a puppet of his advisers, or just plain loopy should be dispelled by his steely performance.

Don't call it a comeback! Whether it’s by popular acclamation or by a coup, as former national security adviser Michael Flynn suggested at a recent QAnon meeting, Donald Trump is apparently reckoning that he’ll be back in the White House by August. At least that’s the theory percolating among the Trump diehards ensconced at Mar-a-Lago. But then, nolens volens, came a contrary verdict from Lara Trump on Fox and Friends this morning: 'There are no plans for Donald Trump to be in the White House in August.' What a pity. It would be splendid to have Trump back in Washington even if only for the month of August. But keen-eyed observers will note that Lara confined her restriction to August. July remains open. So does September.

Talk about mojo! It was a calm, genial and persuasive Joe Biden that appeared before the press yesterday afternoon, easily batting away the queries that were lobbed at him. The big takeaway was that, yes, as Sarah Baxter of the Sunday Times of London alone among the media has intuited, Biden is in for bigger game than one term. He made it clear yesterday that he’s going for the full monty, two terms or bust. Otherwise, Biden didn’t really make any news — which is itself newsworthy. No gaffes. No miscues. No fumbles. It was smooth sailing for him. Yet Biden’s opponents refuse to concede that he’s on a roll. They’re almost making it too easy for him. My chum Dominic Green, for example, deemed Biden’s performance worse than lackluster.

The last thing anyone would accuse Joe Biden of is being overstimulated. But the Senate’s rapid approval of his pandemic aid plan, or American Rescue Plan, as it’s officially called, should be more than enough to put a spring in his step. It’s a victory that may even power the Democrats to victory in the midterms. Captious progressive Democrats will complain that the bill isn’t generous enough. They already are. But House Democrats will dutifully line up next week to pass it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t going to blow this. After four years of the Trump era, sensible Democrats know that this is their chance to spend big even if it isn’t as bigly as the Squad would prefer.

So one disaster wasn’t enough for you, Ted? You had to create a new, very personal one by hightailing it to Cancun together with your wife Heidi and the girls to stay at the oceanfront Ritz-Carlton. Texans may shiver but Ted didn’t quiver. Instead, he made a run for the sun. The irony isn’t rich; it’s gluttonous. For Cruz has made a career out of mocking the establishment in a role as an avatar of the Tea Party. He may have attended Princeton and Harvard Law together with the young swells, but he always made sure to let everyone know that he was made of better stock than them. He was a man of the people, just plain folks Ted, not hifalutin Rafael, who liked nothing better than to spend his weekend nailing an eight-point buck.

Tomorrow, attorneys Bruce Castor, David Schoen, Michael van der Veen and William Brennan plan to speak on behalf of Donald Trump to defend him from the charge of having spurred on Duck Dynasty to take over the nation’s Capitol. They are likely to point to Trump’s First Amendment rights and claim that he was merely an accidental tourist as the mob trashed the Capitol. But so desultory has the performance of Trump’s lawyers been that their efforts could turn out to be even more devastating for him than anything the Democratic House managers have presented to the Senate. How do you defend someone whose own conduct impeached him each day of his sordid presidency?