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The 'America First' Nominee Who Loves America's Enemies

The 'America First' Nominee Who Loves America's Enemies

Glance through any post-election voter interview and you will inevitably find someone who mentions "America first" when explaining his or her vote. They understand the term in varying ways, but the throughline is the belief that Trump is a strong leader who will steadfastly pursue America's national interests.

Sorry, but that is deluded. Even by the strongman standard, Trump is not securing America. His nominees are not just unqualified; they are anti-qualified. If he were attempting to sabotage America's interests, it's hard to see how he would do things differently.

Someone who cared about America's security would never dream of nominating a weekend TV host with no relevant experience in running large organizations to serve as secretary of defense, far less someone who has an alcohol problem, white nationalist sympathies and a history of sexual misconduct. Many Republican senators are minimizing the credible accusations against Peter Hegseth, so perhaps a primer is in order about why character matters.

It matters for all officials if you care about honest, responsible government (an antique taste perhaps). For those in sensitive national security posts though, good character is more than desirable; it's essential. If a defense secretary is drunk during a crisis, lives can be lost. And if he has a history of sexual assault, it's possible, even likely, that there may be more unreported episodes out there that could be exploited by an enemy to blackmail him.

The choice of Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence is even less explicable. Her appalling judgment comes into sharp focus this week with the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

Before she was red-pilled, Gabbard's outstanding trait was warmth toward dictators. In 2017, she traveled to Syria and met with Assad not once but twice. Like so many political pilgrims, Gabbard saw what she wanted to see, not the reality staring her in the face. In 2017, she had every reason to know that Assad had not only used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, but had welcomed Russian assistance in his civil war, and that Iranian-allied troops and Russian fighters had conducted operations against American interests in the region.

No one knows what Assad and Gabbard discussed in their two hours together, but soon after she emerged, Gabbard was expressing skepticism that Assad had really used poison gas, and by the time of her 2020 presidential run, she was citing full-on conspiracy sites that claimed the chemical attacks were false flag operations designed to bring the United States into the war.

Her credulousness — if that's what it is — looks particularly obscene this week, as stories are coming out about the grotesque human rights abuses committed by Assad in Sednaya prison and at other places around Syria. Within hours of Assad's departure, people swarmed the prisons in hopes of finding loved ones alive. At Sednaya, they forced open the doors of the prison morgue and found bodies in conditions reminiscent of the Holocaust or the Cambodian genocide. The New York Times reported some of the grisly details:

"One woman shrieked at what she found. Most of the bodies were emaciated, the skin hanging off their bones. The shoulders of one man was covered in the scars of puncture wounds. Another had a thick red scar around his neck — a rope burn, the examiners believed. Yet another man was missing his eyes."

Some of the women prisoners were found with toddlers in their cells, doubtless the result of prison guards raping them. Rape and torture were routine in the prison Amnesty International labeled a "human slaughterhouse." Human rights groups vary in their estimates of the number of Syrians murdered by their designer-clothes-clad, Bentley-driving dictator, but the range is between 13,000 and 30,000 dead at Sednaya alone since the uprising against Assad began in 2011. The total of all Syrians killed since 2011 in the civil war is estimated to be 620,000, with 12 million refugees.

Gabbard demonstrated similar credulousness about Russia and Putin, mouthing so many Kremlin talking points that Russian TV hosts referred to her as "Russia's girlfriend." She repeated the propaganda that the United States and NATO were responsible for Putin's invasion of Ukraine, tweeting in 2022 that "This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia's legitimate security concerns." She has denounced Volodymyr Zelenskyy as corrupt, and repeated the baseless smear (originated in the Kremlin) that the United States was operating biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine and was responsible for sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

There is something wrong with Gabbard. The pull of conspiracism — particularly anti-American conspiracism — seems to be her overriding mental frame. In this, she and Trump (and RFK Jr. and so many others) are united. If she were merely a member of Congress, her tropism toward murderous dictators would be disturbing, but as head of America's intelligence community, it's utterly insane. This is the furthest thing from America First.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

RFK Jr. Should Be Treated Like The Plague He Is

RFK Jr. Should Be Treated Like The Plague He Is

At a New York rally in October, Donald Trump promised the crowd that if elected, he would let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "go wild" on health, food and medicines. It delighted the crowd, who imagined they were cheering for better health and better medicine. They're in for a bitter surprise.

Some who should know better are offering cautious approval.

Well, he has a point about fluoride in the water, a Washington Post columnist conceded. American health care has "become too reliant on treating every matter of discomfort with a pill instead of tackling questions about environment, culture and behavior," mused a New York Times contributor.

They seem to think we can take what we like from the Kennedy buffet and leave the rest. Not so. If he is confirmed, we won't get only the three percent of Kennedy ideas that are sane; we will be saddled with the 97 percent that are deranged. It isn't that Kennedy is merely misinformed — though he is. It's that he's an active agent of misinformation. That's a character problem. Hiring him to run health policy for this country is like hiring an arsonist to head the fire department.

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases to which human beings are susceptible. It used to kill about 500 in the U.S. every year. In 2019, Samoa was experiencing a spike in measles cases due to a mistake and a lie. The mistake was made in 2018 by two nurses who mixed ingredients for a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine incorrectly, causing the deaths of two infants. (They pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.)

The lies came soon after, encouraged by RFK Jr., who has consistently propagated the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism, peanut allergies, and other ailments. Though he now denies that he was ever "anti-vaccine," Kennedy declared as recently as July that "there's no vaccine that is safe and effective," and, in another interview: "I do believe that autism does come from vaccines."

Many Samoans had seen the film Vaxxed, produced by two of Kennedy's anti-vaccine allies, which alleged that the MMR vaccine was dangerous, which led to an uptick in parents refusing to get their kids vaccinated. After the deaths of the two infants, RFK Jr. threw gasoline on the fire with a visit to the island in 2019, meeting with local vaccine opponents and voicing suspicions that the MMR vaccine had contained a mutant strain and had caused the then-burgeoning epidemic. Eventually, more than three percdnt of the whole population of the island was infected. For babies aged 6 to 11 months, that figure was closer to 20 percent. More than 150 of them died.

When you think of RFK Jr., think of rows of tiny coffins.

Anti-vaccine activism has been the hallmark of Kennedy's career, but it by no means exhausts his appetite for crackpottery. He has sworn to end the FDA's "war" on raw milk. Listen, if Kennedy wants to drink the stuff himself, it's a free country and he can afford as many cows as he wants. But how did we reach a point in our history when it became necessary to argue that pasteurizing milk is a sound health measure? Unpasteurized milk and cheese has been implicated in many recent outbreaks of salmonella, E. coli, and other foodborne illnesses. It can also transmit bird flu.

RFK Jr. has speculated that Wi-Fi causes cancer and "leaky brain," that antidepressants are responsible for school shootings.

Nor is it just Kennedy's attraction to doltish ideas that should set off alarms. It's his tendency to imagine sinister forces controlling things. He believes the CIA killed his uncle, John F. Kennedy, as well as his father, Robert F. Kennedy.

It wasn't enough for him to claim that the COVID-19 vaccine was the "deadliest vaccine ever made"; he also suggested that the virus itself was somehow "targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese." He is on record supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin instead of vaccines.

As secretary of health and human services, RFK Jr. would have supervisory authority over the FDA, CDC, NIH, the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and the Indian Health Service, among other agencies. He has suggested that 600 employees of the NIH, which oversees vaccine development, should be fired immediately and replaced by his own choices.

Some Pollyannas imagine that Kennedy's leadership might mean healthier eating habits. That would be desirable (if unlikely), but it substitutes hope for analysis. Kennedy goes on jags about healthy eating at times. He has inveighed against ultraprocessed foods (which isn't crazy) but then lurches into jeremiads about seed oils "poisoning" our bodies. For the record, canola, sunflower and soybean oils are safe (though fat, like anything else, is best in moderation). If Kennedy wants to fry his potatoes in beef tallow and wash it down with raw milk, more power to him, but under no circumstances should any sane person take his health advice. Nor should any senator consent to give him authority over government agencies that regulate our food and medicines.

He sees himself as a knight errant, but unfortunately, his "cures" involve reversing some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history: pasteurization, vaccines, and the scientific method of determining truth.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Hunter Biden

Why The President Should Not Pardon Hunter Biden

While all eyes are on Mar-a-Lago and the goons Trump is nominating to besmirch high government offices, there is another potential threat looming to the rule of law, and it comes not from MAGAworld but from the sitting president. I'm referring to the possibility that President Joe Biden might pardon his son Hunter Biden.

Ana Navarro, a panelist on The View, urged the president to do it, saying, "Joe, since they're talking smack about you anyways, you know what? Maybe pardon Hunter. Pardon Hunter because we, basically America, just pardoned a criminal who was convicted of felonies."

The temptation is understandable. Navarro went on to note that Trump has promised to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and that Hunter "probably wouldn't have been prosecuted if his last name wasn't Biden. Baby, you got two and a half months. I'm good with you pardoning Hunter."

Though his spokesperson has denied it, the president might well be considering it. The devil on Biden's shoulder might be whispering:

Do it. Why not? For the sake of propriety? Hell, propriety is over! You did everything by the book all along the way. If you were like the other guys, you would have fired David Weiss, the special counsel appointed during Trump's term to investigate Hunter. But you didn't. You let the process play out, just like a damn Boy Scout. And whatever your feelings on the matter, you never pressured Merrick Garland to prosecute Trump for Jan. 6 or anything else. You upheld the norm that presidents should not interfere with the Justice Department's prosecutorial decisions. Another Boy Scout move. Unlike your predecessor and successor, you didn't berate the DOJ for bringing charges against people in your party. When the DOJ under your administration indicted Andrew Gillum, Rep. Henry Cuellar, Rep. "TJ" Cox, Sen. Bob Menendez, Mayor Eric Adams and Hunter himself, you didn't breathe a word.

And did the people thank you for it? Did they even notice? No! They just elected a convicted felon who thinks criminal behavior is a prerequisite rather than a bar to high office. They elected someone who will pervert justice to persecute his political opponents - exactly the un-American outcome you warned about. Yet here you are, still clinging to standards that are smashed. Don't be a sucker. You know what Trump would do in your shoes.

Here's something else to think about: You owe this to Hunter. He's always had troubles — ever since his mom and baby sister were killed in that car crash. And then Beau was struck down, too. Yes, he made poor decisions, but let's face it, he wouldn't be facing jail time if his name weren't Biden, and you're the only one who can save him.

People with influence should implore the president to listen to his better angels. Pardoning Hunter would be a serious blow to the rule of law.

Forget the notion that Hunter wouldn't be in this fix if his name were Smith instead of Biden. It's a two-way street. He cashed in on being a Biden for most of his adult life. In 2017, he sent a WhatsApp message to a Chinese businessman referring to his powerful dad "sitting next to me" and threatening that his interlocutor would "regret not following my direction."

That's not a crime (Biden was out of office at the time), but it's unseemly at best and indicative of an entitled influence peddler, which isn't really in question, is it? What else did Hunter Biden bring to Burisma? As for the criminal charges, no one forced him to cheat on his taxes or lie about his drug use on a gun purchase background check.

The president's unconditional love for his son is admirable and relatable. But the good of the nation requires that Biden put aside his feelings.

Pardoning Hunter, who has pleaded guilty, would persuade those who still believe in impartial justice that it's all a pretense — that Democrats mouth the words about nobody being above the law but when it comes down to it, they don't believe it and they don't act on it.

If Biden pardons his son, no one will remember the many ways he upheld important norms during his term. Objections that "this is different" or "pardons are designed for extraordinary circumstances like this" will be blown down with hurricane force by the "see, everyone does it" narrative.

At this moment, when Trump threatens to transform the Department of Justice into a sinister joke, it is crucial that Biden not lend credence to the idea that justice is a sham and that everything depends upon whose ox is being gored. Trump's plan is to obliterate decency, honor, responsibility and every other lofty thing that makes him feel small. Joe Biden must not help him.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


Trump and Biden

In A Democracy, There Are No Permanent Defeats

In 1994, Republicans won a sweeping victory that cost Democrats control of the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years. Republicans took an eye-popping 54 seats, leading many to conclude that this was a permanent political realignment.

Two years later, Bill Clinton won reelection with 379 electoral college votes to Bob Dole's 159.

A loss, however painful, is not the end of the world. Every election result is provisional. There are multiple examples in recent memory of the American electorate delivering victories to a party and then swiftly reversing course. Following George W. Bush's 2004 success (in which opposition to same-sex marriage was thought to have played a big part in GOP turnout), Democrats fretted that they might need to change their approach to social issues if they ever hoped to return to power. Two years later, Republicans lost control of the House. Two years after that, in 2008, the country turned to Barack Obama, handing Democrats control of the Senate as well. In 2010, the GOP triumphed, gaining 63 seats in the House, yet in 2012, Obama won reelection comfortably.

This is not to minimize the seriousness of the mistake voters have made this year, just to keep some perspective. There are many turns of the wheel.

The Democrats will do themselves some good if this loss causes them to reconsider their boutique views on immigration, public safety, trans athletes and other matters, but the thumping rightward shift in the electorate between 2020 and 2024 suggests to me that this election really came down (mostly) to inflation, with a side of immigration, rather than an embrace of Trump or Trumpism.

Most voters decide based upon their own financial condition. This year, 68 percent of voters rated the economy as "not so good" or "poor." Yes, the other economic indicators were great, but 75 percent said inflation had inflicted moderate or severe hardship on them. Compared with Biden in 2020, Harris lost ground with nearly every demographic — urban, suburban, rural, you name it.

It's impossible to gauge how big a part racism and sexism played in Harris' performance; few will admit such motivations. Harris performed a bit worse with Hispanic women than Biden did. Was that closet sexism? Doubtful. Nor does it seem plausible that so many young women who voted for Biden switched to Trump out of misogyny. Only 26 percent of voters were satisfied (19 percent) or enthusiastic (seven percent) about how things are going in the country, whereas 43 percent were dissatisfied and 29 percent were angry. This underscores the importance of people's personal financial condition. They will hire a creep if they think he'll improve their personal prospects. Most voters neither understand nor particularly care about the rule of law or foreign policy (beyond war and peace).

Much will change before the next election — and yes, there will be more elections. The winning party nearly always overreads its mandate and goes too far, prompting a backlash at the polls. The president's party typically loses seats in off-year elections, so expect a rebuke in 2026.

But Democrats cannot just wait for the election cycle to solve their problems. There are a number of lessons they should take to heart from this year's results: 1) the abortion issue has run its course as a motivator in national elections; 2) Hispanic voters cannot be taken for granted as part of the Democratic coalition; 3) woke postures like taxpayer-funded sex change operations for incarcerated immigrants are toxic; and 4) big federal spending programs don't deliver immediate political dividends.

Of all people, Joe Biden should have understood that passing big bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act would not be noticed by voters in time for 2024. He was vice president when the Affordable Care Act passed and witnessed that not only was Obama not rewarded for it, but Democrats lost the House in 2010. Only much later, after it had been fully implemented and people began to enjoy the benefits (and Republicans failed to come up with an alternative), did the program become popular.

Both the IRA and the infrastructure bill, ironically, contain lavish spending for rural and Trump-friendly parts of the country that will begin to come online just in time for Trump to take credit for them. The legislation may or may not have been good policy, but it's important for Democrats to recognize that passing big bills doesn't translate into votes — at least not right away.

The Democratic Party has suffered a setback, not a wipeout. The country remains closely divided. Democrats still hold nearly half the seats in the Senate and (depending on the races still outstanding) nearly half of the House. Twenty-three states have Democratic governors. Democratic officeholders need to gird their loins for the avalanche of lies, scandals, outrages and betrayals that a second Trump term is sure to deliver. They must prepare to educate voters about the consequences of Trump's tariffs (which are taxes), deportations, tax cuts, vaccine misinformation and whatever other insane policies emanate from MAGA Washington.

There's a place for autopsies and wound licking, but it's soon time to move forward.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Voters Wanted Change, And Now That's What They Will Get

Voters Wanted Change, And Now That's What They Will Get

"It isn't a hard choice," we said. On one side was a candidate who would abide by the Constitution and laws of the United States and accept the outcome of elections. On the other was a candidate refusing to accept a 2024 defeat even as memories of his attempted coup in 2020 remain fresh; vowing to punish the "enemy within"; and promising that mass deportations will be "bloody." That was what we meant by democracy being on the line.

Some are coping by pointing out that when an incumbent president is as unpopular as Joe Biden, it's a near impossibility for his party to retain the White House. Perhaps no Democrat could have escaped the Biden undertow, but it was particularly challenging for his vice president.

As to why Biden was so unpopular, some of us (myself included) wrongly attributed it mostly to his age. But exit polls suggest that the economy and the border were also anvils shackled to his — and then Kamala Harris' — ankles. As David Dayen of The American Prospect noted, 2024 saw half the world's population head to the polls, and "with a few notable exceptions ... virtually every party that was the incumbent at the time that inflation started to heat up around the world has lost."

Could Harris have done a better job of blunting the inflation issue? In 2012, the economy had not yet fully recovered from the great recession of 2008-2009. In his reelection bid, Barack Obama shifted blame for the lackluster performance backward toward George W. Bush. Perhaps Harris would have been well-advised to tell a similar story about inflation. Then again, recessions are not as politically lethal as inflation.

As for the border, how could Harris separate herself from Biden? Should she have declared that Biden's approach was a mistake that she would correct once in office? That's a dicey proposition politically. Why would voters upset about the border choose a reformed dove over an aggressive hawk? She might have had a rule-of-law argument — that the Congress must reform asylum law, and until they do, the president lacks the power to address the issue. But when Biden imposed executive orders in June, dramatically reducing border crossings, he vitiated that case.

According to this coping mechanism, the voters were in a sour mood (just consult the right track/wrong track polls) and did what voters always do: punish the incumbent by voting for the change candidate. Nothing more to see here.

But those of us who see a second Trump presidency as a hinge moment of history — a fateful departure from what made us a great nation — think there is a great deal more to see here. To follow Trump's behavior closely is to feel that this election is not like any other. This lying cretin was seen a few days ago pantomiming fellatio on a microphone (which is perhaps preferable to his usual vomit of lies). It's not as if his policy chops somehow counterbalance his vulgarity, cruelty, and self-absorption. His campaign promises consist of ludicrous proposals to magically balance the budget and eliminate the income tax through tariffs, to round up and deport 11 million or more people, and to solve foreign conflicts through his supposed power of intimidation (even as he contradicts this by constantly abjuring war).

The voters have chosen to elevate a cartoon character to the highest office in the land. From that perch, he will close down the federal cases against himself; pardon the January 6 "hostages" or "political prisoners" or whatever he's calling them these days; appoint a series of toadies, fantasists, and low-lives to lead other agencies; and then set about firing most of the capable, responsible civil servants in the government to replace them with the likes of Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Boris Epshteyn, and other loyal goblins.

Trump often derides the United States as a Third World country. Now he will start to transform us into one.

To be sure, many of the people who voted for Trump were not voting for what they will get. And still, it's their fault for not doing their duty to shun him.

Perhaps the voters have never prioritized democracy, the rule of law or fair play. What, then, has changed? This is an elite failure of the first order. The opinion shapers have signally failed to perform their function. In a healthy polity, it falls to entities like political parties, churches, newspaper editorial boards, radio hosts, business executives and news analysts to shape public opinion, not follow it. If not for the excusers and explainers; if not for the whataboutism at places like The Wall Street Journal and National Review; if not for the craven capitulation of Wall Street wizards and Silicon Valley prima donnas, if not for the cowardice of 95% of elected Republicans, ordinary voters would not have felt comfortable voting for a clown with a flamethrower.

If he succeeds in imposing tariffs that spark inflation and a trade war; if his deportations, firings, abuse of the justice system, corruption of law enforcement and degradation of the health care system cause America's quality of life to decline, what then? Will the voters do what voters always do and vote for the change candidate next time? Perhaps. Or will the elites who greased the skids for Trump's second election also excuse and explain away every failure as the work of the "deep state" or "saboteurs"? We are about to find out.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


Elon Musk

Corruption Unlimited: Donald Trump's New American Oligarchy

When he bounded onstage at the Trump vulgarfest in Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, Elon Musk declared himself to be not just MAGA, but "dark, gothic MAGA."

Believe him.

The sorry spectacle of leading industrialists, newspaper owners, tech executives, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and others seeking to ensure their good standing with Trump reflects a blend of cowardice and cupidity. Mark Zuckerberg, whom Trump labeled a "true enemy of the people" as recently as March, and called "Zuckerschmuck," demonstrated that there are no hard feelings where money and power are concerned. He let it be known that he was moved by Trump's survival of an assassination attempt, claiming that it stirred his patriotic heart to see a "badass" pump his fist.

Jeff Bezos, whose businesses span the globe and make him about as bulletproof as a figure can be in the face of a would-be autocrat, decided that his interest in government contracts for Blue Origin outweighs his dedication to American democracy.

This is what a second Trump term would bring: fat cats getting theirs. Trump is the most corrupt figure ever to disgrace the White House and has made no secret of his intention to reward friends and punish enemies if he regains power. The would-be oligarchs recognize the new game and are preparing to operate in a world where government impartiality and above-board decision making are relegated to the dustbin of history.

The Supreme Court has greased the already slippery skids of Trumpian favor-granting by bestowing unreviewable immunity on presidents for official acts and presumed immunity for all but purely private acts. Put those things together and you have a perfect recipe for massive official corruption.

Consider tariffs. Trump claims to believe that they are the magic elixir for every ill (including subsidizing the costs of child care and obviating the necessity for income taxes) and denies that they will raise prices for American consumers. That's all ludicrous, of course. What he doesn't say is that they are also an engraved invitation to favor-seeking from large companies and other interests.

Trump asserts that he has vast discretion to impose tariffs unilaterally, without the consent of Congress, and for once, he's correct. Under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the Trade Act of 1974 and other laws, the president can impose sweeping tariffs in the name of national security. This was the rationale Trump relied upon in 2018 to slap tariffs on steel coming from that major national security threat called Canada.

And tariffs are only one of the scores of paths for official corruption. There are government licenses, approval of mergers and acquisitions, leases for oil and gas development, and much more. Trump has already made his family and himself a huge pile through access to power and stands ready to open the floodgates in January.

Earlier this year, Musk said he would not contribute to or support anyone for president. A few months later, he was leaping into the air at Trump rallies. It's a safe bet that he has seen an opportunity. Trump may think he has co-opted Musk, but it's far more likely that Trump is the one being used.

Musk is younger, smarter, and far richer than Trump. He controls a business empire that dwarfs not just Trump's holdings, but those of every other capitalist. Starlink now owns nearly two-thirds of all commercial satellites in orbit around Earth and provides Musk the power to grant or withhold internet access to crisis areas of the globe on a whim. The U.S. government begged him not to withdraw access from Ukraine, which uses Starlink as its chief provider of battlefield communication, and for now, Musk has agreed, but as a Pentagon official told the Week, "We are living off his good graces. That sucks."

Boeing can't compete with him. Nor can NASA, which was recently obliged to go hat in hand to Musk to launch a rescue operation for two stranded astronauts on the International Space Station.

Then there's Tesla, which controls 57 percent of the EV market (and has a huge manufacturing presence in China). And Musk owns X (Twitter), whose global influence persists despite Musk's decision to open it to fascists, antisemites and assorted disinformation peddlers.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Musk has been in frequent contact with Vladimir Putin since 2022. The Journal further reports that Putin has asked Musk to deactivate Starlink over Taiwan as a favor to China, one of Putin's chief allies in the war on Ukraine.

Whom does Musk support — the United States, Russia, China or whoever is best for business at the moment? It's a measure of how dangerous this moment is that we need to ask. Even if Kamala Harris wins the election, the unprecedented global power of private oligarchs like Musk will be difficult to rein in. If Trump wins, we're entering uncharted territory where private actors with vast wealth and power join with a corrupt president to pursue their own ends and not those of the people of the United States. Welcome to oligarchy, American style.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

America Is Still Great -- But Trump Threatens Our Prosperity And Freedom

America Is Still Great -- But Trump Threatens Our Prosperity And Freedom

After I voted yesterday, I made it a point to thank every poll worker and citizen volunteering at our polling place. In Maricopa County, Arizona, the tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance.

In Colorado, some polling places have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests for election workers. In Gwinnett County, Georgia, public schools will be closed so that resource officers can be redeployed to cover voting. Those are just a sample of the measures being taken nationwide.

The GOP wailed about immigrants supposedly turning America into a Third World nation, but its deliberate, unrelenting lies and threats of violence actually pushed us in that direction.Still, at my polling place and across the nation, the poll workers show up. God bless them all.

The neo-fascist Trump/Vance ticket relies on a doom message. I suppose they have to. In order to convince non-MAGA voters to put aside their dislike of Trump's coup attempt, authoritarian intentions, alarming ignorance and insane hangers on, to say nothing of Trump's clear mental decline, they have to portray Biden's (or now) Harris's America as a hellscape. "They've destroyed the economy," Trump claims. "I've never seen a worse period of time."

Look around you, my friends. We live in the wealthiest country in the world — in the history of the world, for that matter. The reason so many people from supposedly thriving places like China are making the trek across the globe to attempt to cross our southern border and request asylum is because, for all our faults, this country remains a beacon of freedom and a remarkable engine of prosperity.

The Economist lays out some of the details. "America has grown faster than other big rich countries, and it has rebounded more strongly from bumps along the way." In 1990, the United States accounted for two-fifths of the overall GDP of the G7 nations. Today, it's about half.

American productivity leaves others in the dust. "On a per person basis, American economic output is now about 40 percent higher than in western Europe and Canada, and 60 percent higher than in Japan — roughly twice as large as the gaps between them in 1990." And here's a statistic that may make you rub your eyes: "Average wages in America's poorest state, Mississippi, are higher than the averages in Britain, Canada, and Germany." In the past three years, China's GDP has slipped from about three-quarters of America's to two-thirds today.

Nor is it the case — sorry, Bernie Sanders — that all gains have gone to the top one percent. Earners in the bottom quintile of households saw their after-tax and after-transfer income rise by 25% between 2007 and 2019 (some of that attributable to the Affordable Care Act). Sure, the super rich are super rich (and some are dangerous) but if you exclude the top one percent from the calculations, the Economist reckons that the bottom 20 percent of earners made faster gains in the past couple of decades than the top 20 percent.

The middle class saw median real income increase by 57 percent between 1990 and 2019.Inflation (caused by COVID, COVID relief and Russia's invasion of Ukraine) hurt U.S. consumers, and voters may yet punish Kamala Harris for it. There's some irony here because Trump's proposed tariffs would boost inflation right back up. Sadly, or perhaps tragically, many voters don't understand that tariffs are taxes.

Aside from inflation (which has come way down), the U.S. economy is doing remarkably well. Unemployment fell to its lowest rate in 55 years. Growth is strong. Our universities remain magnets for worldwide talent. The United States leads the world in research and development, and thanks to fracking (an American innovation) is the largest producer of oil and gas on the globe. (Fracking has also been a net gain on fighting climate change since the gas it produces is less polluting than the coal it replaces.) Again, inflation has been effectively defeated by the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes and is now sufficiently tamed to permit rates to decline.

This is no hellscape. Crime rates are declining. Our air and water are clean. Our supermarket shelves are groaning with foods I had never even heard of when I was a child.Politicians are keen not to be seen as representatives of the status quo. The conventional wisdom is that it's poison and that's probably right. But what if the status quo is actually something for which we should say a daily prayer of gratitude and the real danger is that we'll screw it up because we've been misled into thinking things are terrible?

The country has its share of troubles — unsustainable national debt, excessive gun violence, schools that fail to teach civics, fracturing families, and corruption of our information media — but none of those true problems is being addressed by Trump. Instead, he and his minions fill people's heads with fantasies about rampaging criminal immigrants, a failing economy, spiking crime, and some amalgam of "communism" and "fascism."

The truth is that America is already great and the most pernicious threat to that greatness is Trump himself.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


Not All Lies Are Created Equal

Not All Lies Are Created Equal

It never ends. The press still does not know how to handle the avalanche of lies that is MAGA's chief contribution to our national life. I understand, sort of. It's dull and time-consuming to bird-dog every false accusation, wild assertion or factual misstatement that comes out of Trumpland. "They're controlling the weather" is just the latest crackpottery from a sitting member of Congress who is also one of the GOP caucus's top fundraisers. But when there's a forest fire, the firefighters don't get to say, "Oh, this again? We put out a fire here last year."

One particular tack some journalists have taken is particularly galling. In order to show fairness to both sides, they've picked up on a trivial lie by Tim Walz and hammered it. At the vice presidential debate, the moderators grilled Walz about a discrepancy unearthed by CNN in his account of a trip to Hong Kong in 1989. Yes, 1989. Apparently Walz told an interviewer that he had been in Hong Kong when the Tiananmen Square massacre happened in May. It turns out — hold onto your hats! — Walz didn't arrive in Hong Kong until three months later.

This was considered important enough to raise at the debate 10 years after the remarks in question. Walz's answer was nearly as bad as the question. He should have known it might be coming (the CNN report was recent), and yet he dodged and weaved and then called himself a "knucklehead." Jeez, too much over too little. All he needed to say was, "I must have misremembered because when I was there, Tiananmen was all anyone was talking about. Next question." (It was a good jibe when he said he wished Trump had gone on such trips, as it might have curbed his gushing about Xi Jinping.)

Not content with that, Bill Whitaker of 60 Minutes raised it again in the interview that aired last Monday, asking whether voters can trust him to tell the truth. This led to another "Aw, shucks, I can be a knucklehead, I should really watch what words I use mea culpa." Please. This is utterly trivial. He should stop groveling.

It seems that Walz may have shaded the truth a few other times as well. He once slipped when speaking of the gun he carried as a member of the National Guard, saying he carried it "in war" when he never saw combat. Maybe I'm missing something, but this too seems a small matter to me. He was decrying the fact that pretty much anyone can get their hands on the kind of assault rifle that he was issued as a member of the military. He's apologized for using the words "in war," as he should. But let's get a grip. This is hardly a case of stolen valor.

Walz also apparently tried to bury a DUI, and he said he and his wife used IVF to conceive their children when it turns out that they used a different form of assisted reproduction. This was enough to cause a prominent columnist to declare him a "habitual liar."

Walz's lies fall into the category of misspeaking, padding one's resume a bit or shading the truth. He doesn't deserve a pass. CNN was right to report it. But it's being elevated out of all proportion, especially when you consider that the team of Trump and Vance daily and hourly tell the kind of vicious, inciting lies that are tearing our country apart.

Trump's lies about COVID 19 — that it was milder than the flu, that it would go away when the weather warmed up, that it could be magically cured with hydroxychloroquine, that everyone who wanted a test would get one (and we now learn that Vladimir Putin did get some), that abiding by social distancing and mask guidelines was fascism — those lies arguably led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.

Trump's and Vance's lies about "illegal" (read: legal) Haitian immigrants eating Springfield's dogs and cats plunged a city into uproar, led to bomb threats and death threats to business owners, and terrorized schoolchildren.

Trump's and Vance's lies about the 2020 election have undermined the confidence of millions of Americans in the most sacred of democratic institutions, our election system, and caused the deaths of five people on Jan. 6.

Trump's and Vance's lies about FEMA — that funds had been diverted from disaster assistance in order to support illegal immigrants "who will vote Democrat" — aroused vicious hatred toward immigrants, Democrats and the federal government.

Not all lies are created equal. MAGA's lies are designed to instill suspicion, to corrode tolerance, and to shred our unity as a nation. The job of the press is not to give the same treatment to both sides; it is to present the truth, or as close an approximation of it as can be ascertained. When one side stretches the truth and the other side seeks to obliterate it, they should not be treated equally.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Jewish Voters

Why Jewish Voters Should Reject Donald Trump

Dear Fellow Jewish American,

I beg you to consider the consequences of a Trump victory.

In the aftermath of October 7, we've seen an ugly new chapter in left-wing antisemitism. Left-wing activists on campuses and elsewhere adorned their posters with images of hang gliders, delighting, one must assume, in the acts committed when those gliders touched down. Some ripped down posters of hostages and refused for months to acknowledge the brutal rapes of Israeli women and girls (so much for "believe all women").

While the plight of the Palestinians has been a progressive cause for decades, leftists had never before gleefully embraced Hamas slogans and even Hamas flags.

It horrified some Democrats right into Trump's arms. And yet, even if your principal concern this election year is the welfare of the Jewish people, Trump is the wrong choice.

Trump recently warned that if he loses in November, "the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss." As a sheer matter of math, it's absurd. Jews represent about one percent of the population. In a close contest, as this promises to be, any group could be said to "have a lot to do" with a win or loss. He said it about the group that has more than 2,000 years of scapegoating behind it. Was he preparing the ground for a "stabbed-in-the-back" narrative post-election? Perhaps, but it was probably simpler. He was attempting to frighten Jewish voters — to instill fear that if they failed to support him, he might encourage his disappointed and enraged followers to direct their fury at the nearest Jew. It's an old story, and even a historical ignoramus like Trump knows that it retains the power to intimidate.

Because Trump himself is so indecent, his primacy made it impossible for the Republican party to enforce standards. To insist upon honesty, integrity, or even basic competence in any Republican would no longer be tolerated. Hadn't Trump's example proved that all ethical objections were merely disguised partisanship? And if the party reproved Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, how could it justify its resolute defense of Trump? Thus, all standards were obliterated. An institution that cannot enforce standards is helpless in the face of bigots.

Also, Trump trafficked in conspiracy theories — about vaccines, immigrants, Obama's birthplace, the death of Antonin Scalia, the "deep state," etc. He normalized disordered, paranoid thinking. Here's an iron law: Conspiracy thinking everywhere and always devolves into antisemitism. It's the oldest and most durable of conspiracies.

Trump winked at fascists. While he didn't campaign on antisemitism, he didn't stiff-arm it either. Asked whether he condemned the KKK, he declined. When his opponents and critics were flooded with antisemitic hate online, Melania justified it. When the tiki-toting neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, he equivocated. That's all they needed. A signal. A nod.

When it comes to hatred, particularly hatred of vulnerable minorities, the appetite of a portion of the electorate is so strong that it can only be suppressed by continuous, conscientious effort across years and generations. Trump failed that most crucial of leadership tasks. He knew what he was unleashing, and he thought he could use it.

With Trump leading the party, the right blossomed with corpse flowers like Candace Owens, who spouts antisemitic tropes including Holocaust denial; Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi who dined at Mar-a-Lago and dreams of a "total Aryan victory"; Elon Musk, who has opened X to the fever swamps and retweets "Great Replacement" posts; and Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, who said that "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them."

But the most ominous voice is that of Tucker Carlson, the fascist with the knitted brow and millions of followers. He's just asking questions, like why he shouldn't be mad at a group whom he accuses of teaching "white genocide" at Harvard. He then played host to Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper, whom he introduced as "the most important popular historian working in the United States today." Cooper explained that the real villain of World War II wasn't Hitler but Churchill, and that the Holocaust didn't happen the way you've been taught; it's just that Germany couldn't handle so many prisoners of war, you see.

Carlson is not a fringe figure. He was a main speaker at the Republican convention and a prime mover in getting JD Vance on the GOP ticket. He's a close confidante of the man who could be vice president and a possible future contender for president himself.

As for Israel, the GOP's support is robust ... for now. But it's foolish to imagine that it will last. With hostility to alliances and America First as the dominant mode of thinking on foreign policy, Israel cannot remain the asterisk for long.

The descent into open antisemitism among progessives since October 7 is grievously disturbing. But most Democrats are not progressives, and even most progressives don't endorse the kind of extremism on display at American campuses. They remain the left-most fringe. They are not allies of Vice President Kamala Harris or Tim Walz. They don't bid fair to become leaders of the Democratic Party in the foreseeable future.

On the right, by contrast, the haters have been mainstreamed. As our grandparents would have warned, "That's not good for the Jews."

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Donald Trump

Trump's Return To Presidency Would Bring Economic Ruin

Following the Eating Pets imbroglio, one would think that undecided voters would have their doubts quelled about how to vote in November. What more is there to say?

This sociopath stood by while his violent mob smashed their way into the Capitol searching for the vice president in order to lynch him for disloyalty. When asked about this later, Trump didn't deny encouraging the attempted murder. He justified the mob.

This would-be autocrat has called for military tribunals to try his critics, promised pardons for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and cannot focus sufficiently to remember at the end of a sentence what he started to say at the beginning.

Though his supporters perceive him to be strong, he is in fact a weakling looking for approval from the thugs of the world. He will abandon Ukraine to suck up to Vladimir Putin, which will end the war all right, but by a method no American should countenance — surrender.

Kamala Harris, by contrast, is a sane, somewhat-left-of-center Democrat who is making a bid for centrist voters by deep-sixing her Medicare for All dalliance and other 2019 bids for progressive credibility. On the matters over which presidents have the most sway, foreign policy, she is more "conservative" than Trump in that she promises unflinching support of NATO, Ukraine and vigorous U.S. world leadership.

On matters over which she has the least scope of action, domestic policy, she is likely to be thwarted by Republicans in Congress. And this is key: She will not attempt to overrule domestic opposition by unconstitutional means.

A June Washington Post survey found that 61 percent of undecided voters rate the economy as the most important issue in the election, and 50 percent of Americans rated inflation as the top concern for the nation. It's worth bearing in mind that inflation has cooled dramatically since its post-pandemic spike to 9.1 percent in June of 2022. In August, the Consumer Price Index dropped to 2.5 percent, low enough for a Federal Reserve rate cut announced on Wednesday. This soft landing is an accomplishment.

It's also true — though the number of voters who believe this can meet in a closet — that presidents have little ability to bring down inflation. Together with Congress, presidents can contribute to inflation, and both Biden and Trump arguably did that. The massive COVID relief bills passed under Trump and Biden flooded the country with cash.

But the relief packages were thoroughly bipartisan efforts, and who's to say they were even wrong? While some of us thought the American Rescue Plan was too much stimulus considering all that had already been passed, one cannot reasonably argue that providing a backstop to the economy in the face of a 100-year health emergency was an example of wasteful spending.

By 52 to 48, voters think Trump is better positioned to handle the economy as president.

Well, that's bonkers. This is where Trump's gross misbehavior may serve him well. His opponents spend so much time responding to his flagrant lies, unprecedented threats, invitations to violence and crude sexual innuendos that we have little bandwidth to deal with his completely fantastical and absurd policy proposals.

Asked about child care costs, he proposes huge new tariffs (anywhere from 20 to 100 percent tariffs), claiming that they would generate so much free money that it would obliterate the federal deficit and have enough left over to pay for everyone's child care. If a high school debater said something like that, he'd be laughed off the stage.

While presidents can do little to bring down inflation, one thing that pretty much all economists agree upon is that presidents can goose inflation by imposing tariffs. The kind of import taxes Trump envisions, according to the Peterson Institute, would cost the average American household an additional $2,600 a year. Tariffs are taxes (repeat three times).

Harris would be better positioned to make this case if Biden had not maintained so many of the Trump-era tariffs, but at least she isn't proposing a blanket 10 percent tax on imports as Trump is (though sometimes he says 20 percent, or 60% percent for China's goods, and 100 percent on countries that abandon the dollar).

Another Trump idea is to deport millions of illegal immigrants. How would this work? At present, ICE has 20,000 employees, and it is believed that this number is inadequate even to cope with border crossers. How many more ICE agents would be required to hunt down, arrest and deport millions of illegal immigrants? Leaving aside the cruelty of this proposal — the American-citizen children whose parents would be deported, the hardship for people who've grown up here and know no other nation/language, the fear and insecurity legal immigrants would suffer — the costs would be astronomical. Prices of food, hotel stays, restaurant meals and new homes would rise. Plus, the taxes illegal immigrants now pay (including to Social Security and Medicare) would be lost.

Trump's most dangerous tendencies concern flouting the law and using the power of the state against his opponents. But those who think his autocratic appetites are acceptable because he knows how to manage the economy are not paying attention to what he's actually saying.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Donald Trump Kamala Harris Debate

The Single Most Revealing Moment Of That Sensational Debate

In "The Wizard of Oz," the stentorian power of the great Oz is revealed as a fraud when Toto the dog (how apt) pulls back the curtain to reveal a squat, middle-aged man speaking into a microphone. Oz's power was all artifice.

On Sept. 10, Kamala Harris pulled the curtain to reveal a shallow, insecure, addled bully so easily baited that he lapsed into raging and sputtering rather than prosecuting a case against his opponent.

One exchange in particular exposed a fiction at the heart of Donald Trump's appeal: his supposed strength on the world stage. Moderator David Muir asked the former president if he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Russia. Trump refused to say yes. Instead, he offered this:

"I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being uselessly — people being killed by the millions. It's the millions. It's so much worse than the numbers that you're getting, which are fake numbers. Look, we're in for $250 billion or more because they don't ask Europe, which is a much bigger beneficiary to getting this thing done than we are. They're in for $150 billion less because Biden and you (Harris) don't have the courage to ask Europe like I did with NATO."

Recall that when Russia rolled its tanks into a peaceful neighbor — murdering, raping and pillaging — Trump's initial reaction was that Putin's action was "genius." He went on to praise Putin's lying propaganda (that he was defending Ukraine's "independence") as "wonderful," telling a podcaster that "He used the word 'independent' and 'we're gonna go out and we're gonna go in and we're gonna help keep peace.' You gotta say that's pretty savvy."

It's clear that in the two and a half years since, Trump's moral compass has not righted itself. It was a simple question for a would-be president: Does he want our ally, which has been brutalized, to win its war of self-defense? He could not say yes, and what's more, he instantly turned to where his heart truly lies — with money. Even if it were true that the United States had paid the lion's share of Ukraine's defense, that would be a point of pride. But it isn't true; Europe has contributed much more when financial and humanitarian contributions are included. Trump misstated the relative contributions of NATO members to Ukraine's defense. As a percentage of GDP, the United States' contributions rank behind 16 other countries.

More ominously, Trump showed again that he has a cash register where his soul should be.

Harris, by contrast, invoked the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity. She also used a word that is not in Trump's vocabulary. She said the actions of NATO, "the greatest military alliance the world has ever known," were "righteous."

"I met with President Zelenskyy. I shared with him American intelligence about how he could defend himself. Days later I went to NATO's eastern flank, to Poland and Romania. And through the work that I and others did we brought 50 countries together to support Ukraine in its righteous defense. And because of our support, because of the air defense, the ammunition, the artillery, the Javelins, the Abrams tanks that we have provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country."

This is the language of human rights, dignity, honor, loyalty — all alien concepts to Trump.

What followed also provided a glimpse into Trump's essential smallness. After Harris' bold declaration of solidarity with Ukraine and NATO and her contempt for Trump's truckling to dictators, Trump responded with timid bleats about Putin's nuclear arsenal.

"But eventually, you know, he's got a thing that other people don't have. He's got nuclear weapons. They don't ever talk about that. He's got nuclear weapons. Nobody ever thinks about that. And eventually maybe he'll use them. Maybe he hasn't been that threatening. But he does have that. Something we don't even like to talk about. Nobody likes to talk about it."

You know who does talk about that all the time? Putin. He has threatened to use his nuclear arsenal on countless occasions. When he invaded Ukraine in 2022, he warned that "Whoever tries to hinder us, or threaten our country or our people, should know that Russia's response will be immediate and will lead you to consequences that you have never faced in your history." Later that year, he thundered that "If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people — this is not a bluff." He referenced the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, saying that the United States had established a "precedent."

Cooler heads than Trump's see Putin's threats for what they are: bluster. Obviously one cannot dismiss his arsenal out of hand, but neither should the world cower in the face of one empty threat after another. Ukraine is at this moment holding territory it seized from Russia and flying drones into Moscow and beyond. Putin found Volodymyr Zelenskyy impossible to intimidate — not so Donald Trump.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

What Do These 'Conservatives' Aim To Conserve By Backing Trump?

What Do These 'Conservatives' Aim To Conserve By Backing Trump?

When my friend David French — New York Times columnist, pro-life evangelical, and lifelong conservative — announced that he would be voting for Kamala Harris, it was like dropping a Porterhouse steak amid a pride of lions. The Dispatch's Jonah Goldberg wrote a rebuttal, asserting, among other things, that "endorsements trigger an instinctual desire to defend them after the fact."

Nick Catoggio, also of the Dispatch, noted with his usual percipience that "neutrality between Trump and Harris implies that conserving the constitutional order isn't an important priority of conservatism. Or at least no more important than, say, fiscal responsibility or restricting abortion is." There was, of course, much sparring on social media.

This debate illuminated an interesting question: What is conservatism conserving? As someone who spent decades as a conservative advocate, I am no longer as certain as I once was that conservatives have all the right answers.

None of us has the time or ability to become an expert in everything, so we use shortcuts. If person X agrees with me about anti-communism or phonics, I will be more likely to trust their views on Federal Reserve policy or some other topic that I know less about. We all outsource our judgment to some degree. But in the past nine years, too many people I formerly believed were honest and reliable have proven themselves capable of staggering dishonesty and bad faith. Someone said it's like finding out that your spouse has been unfaithful or a friend has betrayed you. Suddenly you look back at the entire relationship with a jaundiced eye, interpreting everything differently.

It's been wrenching in some ways, but in the end, I'm grateful for the jolt. It has forced me to reconsider ideas that may have become calcified and opened me to people and perspectives I would previously have dismissed.

I remain opposed to affirmative action, for example, because it mandates the very unfairness it was designed to overcome. But I've also come to believe that the conservatism of my youth underestimated how much active racism remains out there.

I supported the Reagan and Bush tax cuts, but thought the Trump tax cut was a bridge too far at a time of steep deficits and without corresponding spending cuts.

I remain concerned about widespread abortion, but resent the bullying of pro-life zealots who have abandoned every other moral precept in the name of saving babies and presume to tell me that I'm a hypocrite if I don't support a moronic demagogue. Is voting for a person who mouths the right words about abortion really the most effective way to live out your beliefs? (Especially if he then throws you overboard?) I helped found and continue to support a crisis pregnancy group that has stepped in to help women and their unborn children hundreds of times. Trump supporters who preen about their righteousness because of Dobbs should reflect that the number of abortions in America rose under Trump after declining for three decades. Having the right political opinions doesn't equate with doing good in the world. Besides, the argument against abortion is moral. As such, it can't be severed from other moral issues. Supporting protections for the unborn doesn't absolve you of supporting cruelty against the born.

The past few years have not only called into question some conservative dogmas; they have also caused me to reflect on what conservatives should be conserving. It's not tax policy or small government or a vigorous defense posture. Those are important matters, but they pale in comparison to the overriding task of conserving the Founding.

That goal, which conservatives should share with all Americans, is simply incompatible with voting for Trump.

Four years ago, I contemplated the truly terrible prospect of having to choose between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. I might have had to squeeze my eyes closed as I voted, but I would have chosen Sanders, because as misguided and destructive as I find his policies, I would have had confidence that he would abide by the law and not attempt to rule as a dictator.

In 1800, Alexander Hamilton faced a similar dilemma. The Electoral College had tied between Thomas Jefferson (Hamilton's political opposite) and Aaron Burr, a man of no principles. The House of Representatives had to choose. Hamilton lobbied his Federalist friends to vote for Jefferson, explaining that:

"Mr. Jefferson, though too revolutionary in his notions, is yet a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly Government — Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself — thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement — and will be content with nothing short of permanent power ... in his own hands."

Compared with pulling the lever for Sanders, a vote for Kamala Harris is easy.

Carved into the mantel in the East Room of the White House is this benediction from John Adams, the first to reside there: "I Pray Heaven To Bestow The Best Of Blessings On This House And All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof."

I think he would have had little difficulty making the choice between Trump and Harris.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

America Has Only One Healthy Political Party

America Has Only One Healthy Political Party

Within minutes of President Joe Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 race, Sen. Tom Cotton leaped onto X to declare that "Joe Biden succumbed to a coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors, ignoring millions of Democratic primary votes. Donald Trump took a bullet for democracy."

Radio host Erick Erickson was even more creative, tweeting that "Y'all can argue over the word coup, but Biden stepping aside is the American equivalent of all those people accidentally falling out of windows in Russia."

David Sacks, the Putin lickspittle, Elon Musk appendage, and featured speaker at the Republican National Convention, offered that "One candidate survived assassination. The other staged a coup. Your choice, America."

And Speaker Mike Johnson told a TV audience on Sunday that "it would be wrong and I think unlawful in accordance to some of these state rules for a handful of people to go in the backroom and switch it out because they're — they don't like the candidate any longer."

This is rich. There is indeed a candidate in this race who attempted to stage a coup, and we know who that is. Trump submitted his false electoral votes, pressured his vice president and sent his goons to Capitol Hill because he would not accept the verdict of the voters. And the party that openly admires Vladimir Putin (see Carlson, Tucker) has no business making snarky comments about people falling out of windows. So please sit down and shut up with your coup talk.

The response of the GOP to a real attempted coup? After some initial condemnations, nearly the entire party fell into line denying that January 6 had been anything to get excited about and endorsing the coup-plotter for reelection. There were no calls for him to drop out of the race.

As for the speaker's suggestion that it's somehow illegal for the candidate to decline to run, perhaps he might want to consult the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids involuntary servitude.

What we witnessed over the past several weeks was the Democratic Party acting like a healthy institution. Democrats ushered Joe Biden into the nomination in 2020, and they ushered him out in 2024 for good and sufficient reasons. Yes, it was painful for Biden, but with the stakes being so high, Democrats found that sentimentality was something neither they nor the country could afford.

In early 2020, Bernie Sanders won Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. A self-proclaimed socialist who had honeymooned in the USSR, Sanders was popular with a dedicated share of primary voters but widely perceived to be a general election loser. Yet the dynamics of nominating races being cumulative, he seemed to be rolling down the tracks toward victory. Only South Carolina stood as a speed bump between the first three contests and the Super Tuesday races that would decide the contest.

And so the party moved. Parties are more than primary voters. They are elected leaders and candidates and donors and influencers. They are community leaders and church voices and former presidents. In 2020, many of those figures took a hard look at the Sanders candidacy and recognized that if the party failed to take collective action — if half a dozen competitors remained in the race (as Republicans had done in the face of the Trump threat in 2016) — then the party would nominate a sure loser.

At that stage, Joe Biden had come in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. He finished second in Nevada, but with less than half the share of votes that Sanders received. Still, the Democrats proved themselves a mighty machine. First Rep. Jim Clyburn, with enormous influence among Black South Carolinians, threw his support behind Biden, and in short order, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O'Rourke dropped out of the race, also endorsing Biden. Those candidates represented the Democratic center, and when they were no longer dividing it up, it coalesced around Biden. He didn't so much win in 2020 as he was carried on the shoulders of a party that made a wise calculation about its main chance.

That's not to discount the whole campaign. Biden did a good job in the general election campaign (though COVID made it an unprecedentedly undemanding race), performed well enough in the debates and town halls, and delivered a great convention speech.

In 2024, the party that hoisted Biden to the nomination had the dreary task of persuading him to hang it up. He was stubborn, and it required a full court press, but the former speaker and former presidents and donors and elected officials and editorial writers and more did the sad duty that the moment required.

The Democratic Party demonstrated for the second straight election cycle that it remains a healthy organ of democracy. And it's a damn lucky thing it is, because it is arrayed against a party that celebrates violence, marinates in lies, and worships an insurrectionist.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her latest book is Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Joe Biden

It's Time For Biden To Put Country First

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." — Proverbs 16:18

President Joe Biden, who earned our respect and affection over the past four years, is now trying our souls. In an interview on a Philadelphia radio show, he mumbled that he was proud to be "the first Black woman to serve with a Black president." Later, word leaked that campaign aides had submitted proposed questions to the radio hosts in advance. Was that a vote of no confidence from the staff?

In his interview with George Stephanopoulos, which was intended to calm worries about his debate performance — which itself was intended to calm worries about his deteriorating mental condition — the president was asked how he would feel if Donald Trump were sworn in for a second term in January 2025. "I'll feel," he said, "as long as I gave it my all, and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that's what this is about."

Biden's word jumble is disturbing in two ways. In the first place, it's yet further evidence that the president's verbal fluency (and very possibly his mental functioning) is declining. But that was not the worst part. This election isn't about Biden giving it one more college try. It's about ensuring that Trump cannot return to the Oval Office. Biden refused to think of the stakes for the country and made it all about himself.

Biden's interview answers are consistent with everything else we've seen from him since the catastrophic debate — denial, selfishness and appalling judgment. He's elevated his son, Hunter, to a key adviser role. Hunter is apparently attending White House meetings and strongly advocating that his father stick it out. The younger Biden (like Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump) has no qualifications to serve in the White House. How diminished must Joe Biden be not to see that Hunter may have ulterior motives?

When Stephanopoulos noted that no president with a 36 percent approval rating has ever been reelected, Biden snapped, "That's not what our polls show ... all the pollsters I talk to tell me it's a toss-up." Later, he seemed to discount polling altogether, asking, "Do you think polling is as accurate as it used to be?"

Dismissing polls is easier than accounting for the loss of support Biden has clocked since the debate, and the huge percentage of Democrats who say, even in our ultra-polarized time, that Biden should step aside.

Apparently, Biden is willing to risk the future of the country on the bet that the polls are wrong.

Some protest that it's unfair to be focusing on Biden's limitations when his opponent is a criminal would-be autocrat. But the threat Trump poses cuts the other way: When the alternative is so dire, the Democrats should be fielding a candidate who is unassailably electable. No candidate is without flaws, of course, and Biden has many advantages, but voters have consistently reported for years that they think he's too old. Before the debate, it was possible to imagine that the 2020 Biden would show up for key moments and that voters' misgivings would be overcome. But that hope was shattered on June 27, and there is no returning to the status quo ante. Voters' worst fears have been confirmed and then some.

When it comes to a president's mental and physical health, voters are unforgiving. At a primitive level, they are choosing someone to be able to respond to a natural disaster or military attack. A potential president must clear this bar. It's the primate part of our brains. No doubt millions of Americans would vote for a comatose Biden over Trump, but there aren't enough voters like us to be certain of victory. As Bill Clinton is reported to have said, "Strong and wrong beats weak and right every time."

Some Biden stalwarts object that Kamala Harris is just as unpopular as the president. That is true, but it's also the case that she hasn't had many opportunities to improve her standing with voters. If she were suddenly thrust into the spotlight, she might enjoy a surge of support.

Similarly, many worry that an open convention would devolve into chaos. It might. But it seems equally likely that it would be the first political convention in decades to generate a true contest and accordingly intense public interest.

There was one answer Biden offered to Stephanopoulos that may signal the way things must go in the coming days. Stephanopoulos asked whether, "If Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi come down and say, 'We're worried that if you stay in the race, we're gonna lose the House and the Senate,' how will you respond?" Biden said he'd already spoken to many of them, and they hadn't asked him to step down. Stephanopoulos asked again, "But if they do?" Biden smiled and asserted, "They're not going to do that."

Those words could be interpreted as marching orders.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

President Joe Biden

How Much Would You Gamble On A Biden Comeback?

One of the saddest fables people comforted themselves with over the past eight years was the one about the strength of American institutions: The voters could elevate an unfit, malevolent demagogue, but our checks and balances were robust; our institutions would prevent any serious damage.

Over the course of these years, one institution after another has demonstrated the opposite — that they are not bulwarks, merely facades.

An entire political party, the party of Lincoln no less, abandoned its devotion to law and tradition as well as principles like free trade, concern about government debt, welcoming immigrants, cordiality to free enterprise and devotion to American world leadership.

Huge swaths of the press, an indispensable institution in a free society, have turned themselves into propaganda outlets that rival North Korea's.

Leaders of the business community have rallied to Trump's side, showering him with contributions and soft-pedaling his threat to the freedoms that are foundational to free enterprise.

Conservative organizations and think tanks have become MAGA mouthpieces.

Some churches have swapped God for Trump, and even among those who haven't gone that far, criticism of Trump is treated as a kind of blasphemy.

Until this week, one institution that mostly resisted the prevailing winds was the judiciary — Aileen Cannon, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito notwithstanding. With Trump v. United States, that is gone. Another domino falls — a massive one. The decision, which may rank among the most egregious in American history, places the president above the law and creates a glidepath for massive abuse of power if not outright dictatorship.

It is against this backdrop that we must consider the Biden candidacy. The past week has demonstrated that the only check left against autocracy in our own country is the vote on Nov. 5. The stakes were massive before Trump v. United States. They have become astronomical since.

The question all of us must answer is: Are we willing to gamble our democracy on Biden's capacity to win?

Before the debate, I was. Now, I conclude that the risks are too great. Before the debate I was disappointed in Biden's decision to run again (though I thought he did a good job as president) but reconciled to it. Now I am enraged at him and those around him who put ego, pride and stubbornness ahead of country when making that decision. I believed the Biden team when they said that State of the Union Biden was the real thing and that the manifold stories of decline and dementia were extremely exaggerated partisan hits. Now I can see that the reports of deterioration were more right than wrong and that the Biden team was hiding him and deceiving us.

He skipped the Super Bowl interview. He's been taking the back entrance to Air Force One to avoid the longer staircase. Even in the press conference he called to deny Robert Hur's allegations that he was losing his grip, he got the presidents of Mexico and Egypt confused. That followed hard on the heels of referring to Emmanuel Macron as Francois Mitterrand (who died in 1996).

Further, Biden asked for this debate. Presumably, he and his team recognized that he needed to reassure Americans, even large numbers of Democrats, that he was mentally and physically up to the demands of another term. A March AP/NORC poll found that only 40% of Democrats were extremely or very confident that Biden had the mental capacity to serve another term. That's bad enough, but among non-Democrats the picture was grim. A June 5-7 CBS poll found that 72% of independents did not think Biden had the mental and cognitive health to serve as president.

Biden's debate performance confirmed the very worst rumors of his senescence. The early post-debate polls are confirming the scale of the failure.

In a normal year, it would be irresponsible to ask voters to choose an ailing 81-year-old. This year, it is a catastrophe. The Biden who was revealed last Thursday night cannot defeat Trump. Remember: The 2020 version of Biden barely did.

If Biden were to withdraw from the race, he would be hailed immediately as a statesman. Meanwhile, the prospect of a decades-younger candidate who can articulate an argument would thrill voters who've been approaching November with all the enthusiasm of French Revolution victims riding in tumbrils to the guillotine. Independents in particular would rejoice at having another option.

In 2020, the normally fractious and identity-mad Democrats put all of that aside to unite behind the old white guy in the name of defeating a true menace. I pray that the party can find its way to doing that again this year — thinking not of who is Black or female or Asian or Hispanic but who is best situated to win. It may be Kamala Harris. But it may be someone else.

The Democratic Party is the oldest continuously functioning political party in the world. Everything is riding on whether it remains a strong institution capable of fulfilling its purpose. Right now, its overriding purpose is to keep Trump from power.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Former President Donald Trump

Donald Trump Versus The Ten Commandments

The governor of Louisiana just signed a law that will require all public classrooms in the state — from kindergarten to universities — to post the Ten Commandments "on a poster or framed document at least 11 inches by 14 inches ... in easily readable font."

For the first time since Reconstruction, Louisiana has a Republican governor and Republican supermajorities in both houses of the legislature. Every major elected office in the state government is held by a Republican. In 2020, the state went for Trump over Biden by more than 18 points. This is MAGA land. The Ten Commandments law follows a series of other Trump-inspired measures in Baton Rouge like permitting state law enforcement officers to arrest and jail suspected migrants, allowing permitless carry for guns and classifying abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances.

This Ten Commandments law is a chin-scratcher though. Don't get me wrong — I'm a big fan of the Decalogue. But I thought the MAGA view was that, at a time like this, with liberals and progressives about to destroy the USA, we can't afford the luxury of morality. Isn't that what Evangelicals who've embraced Trump and all his works tell themselves?

And yet, here is the Louisiana legislature explaining the importance of morality to the proper functioning of government. The law's text quotes James Madison: "History records that James Madison, the fourth President of the United States of America, stated that '(w)e have staked the whole future of our new nation ... upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.'"

Except, whoops, James Madison never wrote those words. The MAGA legislators were duped by a debunked book called The Myth of Separation.

Never mind. The important thing is that Louisiana Republicans are keen to associate themselves with Biblical morality.

OK, then. How does Donald Trump measure up?

Let's start with the first commandment, which, if I may paraphrase, amounts to "One, and only one, God." So if you glorify and sacralize a person, as many in the GOP do, you are not obeying the first commandment. The offense is worse if the person you worship is yourself. Oh-for-one.

The second commandment forbids idol worship. See commandment one above. Oh-for-two.

In the third commandment, the Lord forbids taking his Name in vain. Trump uses the term "goddam" regularly, including in front of Christian audiences. But they forgive him. Oh-for-three.

Let's see, the fourth commandment requires that we remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Trump and the MAGAites fail this test, but this one is complicated by a couple thousand years of differing interpretations among Christians and Jews, so let's call this an incomplete.

Likewise, I see no evidence that Trump has violated the fifth commandment. He passed one.

The sixth gets into tougher territory. Trump has never actually shot anyone on Fifth Avenue, but he has displayed a depraved indifference to murderous violence. Campaigning in 2016, he suggested that the United States government should kill the wives and children of terrorists. He asked the Department Homeland Security to shoot migrants in the legs as they crossed the border and suggested the same about protesters after George Floyd's death. He knowingly misled millions of Americans about the danger of the coronavirus because he thought it might tank the economy and hurt his reelection chances. And he failed to call off his goons when they were chanting "Hang Mike Pence." It's not murder, but it's awfully close.

"Thou shalt not commit adultery." Nuff said.

The eighth commandment says "Thou shalt not steal." Where to begin? With all of the small businessmen and contractors Trump stiffed on his casino projects? With the plaintiffs in the Trump University scam? With the misappropriation of charitable funds? With the $355 million in civil fraud? Or with the boxes of classified documents he secreted away in Mar-a-Lago?

Number nine: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." There has never been a more prodigious nor a more pernicious liar in American public life.

The tenth commandment forbids coveting that which belongs to others. Trump has raised avarice to an art form, convincing millions that his covetousness is actually a virtue, and scorning those who weren't born to millionaire parents as "losers." He covets all the baubles of this world (and treats wives as such). But worse, from our perspective as citizens of a free country, is a consistent theme in his life: He truly covets the power of dictators. Trump longs for the coerced sycophancy enjoyed by Putin and Kim. He envies Xi Jinping's capacity to become president for life. Trump doesn't just covet things. He covets raw power.

Trump flouts seven and a half of the ten commandments.

The governor and members of the Louisiana legislature should make up their minds. Do they want kids to become moral citizens, or do they want them to be like the man to whom MAGA genuflects?

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Trump's COVID Response Was Far Worse Than We Remember

Trump's COVID Response Was Far Worse Than We Remember

Here are Trump's words from that infamous April 2020 press conference about Covid:

"So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light. ... And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. ... I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. ... And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning."

Yet here we are, a little more than four years later, and the narrative about how COVID was handled has shifted. It now seems to be conventional wisdom that the worst errors we committed concerned massive shutdowns and school closings. We hear comparatively little about the large discrepancies between Republicans and Democrats in death rates because of the former's resistance to public health measures and vaccination.

A serious country would look back at Trump's greatest challenge during his presidency and remember what an embarrassing failure it was.

It began with denial of the problem. Trump told Bob Woodward in a February 2020 phone call that "You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. ... This is deadly stuff."

But in his public statements, Trump repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the virus. On Jan. 22, 2020, he said, "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine." On Feb. 7, he tweeted:

"Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation."

On February 10, he again reported on a chat with Xi, reassuring Americans that "I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control."

On February 26, he urged people to wash their hands (fair enough) but then suggested that the new virus was "the same as the flu" — exactly the opposite of what he told Woodward.

On February 27, he predicted that COVID would "disappear ... it's like a miracle."

On February 28, Trump said the Democrats were politicizing the coronavirus, calling it their "new hoax."

Trump's principal actions as chief executive in the early days of the pandemic were to enact travel bans from China and later Europe. He did nothing to initiate a testing program, though he did assert falsely that anyone who wanted a test could get one.

In March, Trump urged that the Grand Princess cruise ship, with sick passengers aboard, not be permitted to dock in San Francisco because he didn't want to increase the number of cases counted in the United States. "I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."

Also in March 2020, citing a small French study, Trump declared that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, taken together with an antibiotic, could be "one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine" and should "be put in use immediately."

On April 3, Trump mentioned that the CDC was now recommending that people wear masks but said that he would not wear one.

By July, with the number of cases rising sharply, Trump suggested that the tests were picking up trivial cases: " They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test." By that point, 3.7 million Americans had been infected and more than 140,000 had died.

Also in July, Trump elevated Dr. Stella Immanuel on Twitter. Dr. Immanuel touted hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID and denied that masks were effective. She also believed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches.

In a September 2020 campaign stop, Trump said that COVID affects "virtually nobody," mainly just "elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems, that's what it really affects, that's it."

Trump modeled contempt for masking, mocking reporters and others for wearing them. He held huge rallies and White House indoor parties that became superspreader events. When he himself became infected with COVID, he failed to disclose it to associates like Chris Christie (who wound up in intensive care) and arguably attempted to infect Joe Biden at the first presidential debate.

Trump denied the problem, failed to coordinate a federal response other than banning travel, embraced quack cures and modeled antisocial behavior. After first praising Xi Jinping to the skies for his "strong" control of the virus, he switched to name calling — the "Kung Flu," the "China virus" — to incite xenophobic responses. He really did only one big thing right — backing Operation Warp Speed, which hastened the development of the vaccine.

Now his party has gone full nutcase, demonizing Anthony Fauci. These are unserious people in thrall to a sociopathic clown. The U.S. death rate from COVID far exceeded that of peer nations. That was not due to excessive lockdowns or masking. It was due to incompetence in the White House. Time for a great remembering.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.