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Former President Donald Trump

These Are The Ways Trump Will Destroy Liberty In A Second Term

Apparently interpreting the Supreme Court's decision on the 14th Amendment as a personal vote of confidence, Donald Trump pushed his luck, urging the justices to rule swiftly that he has absolute immunity as well.

That is not likely. Most observers thought the court would reject Colorado's action because permitting it would have invited chaos in the middle of an ongoing election and because the court husbands its legitimacy. Had it upheld Colorado's disqualification, the court would instantly have become a hate object for 70% of Republicans, who would have perceived its ruling as baldly political, denying to voters their free choice of candidate.

The presidential immunity claim is another matter. A ruling that completely adopted Trump's position in that case would essentially gut the Constitution, permitting a president to accept bribes, use taxpayer money to build a series of palaces for himself all over the world, or arrest and torture his critics. As the D.C. Circuit Court put it: "At bottom, former President Trump's stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the president beyond the reach of all three branches."

Here's the rub: If Trump is reelected in November, he will essentially have total immunity, regardless of what the court says.

A reelected Trump would have the voters' imprimatur for lawlessness. If he wins in November, the message from voters will be: Yes, we know he mishandled the most sensitive classified documents and obstructed justice rather than return them. And we know he caused the deaths of millions of COVID patients by lying about the threat of the virus and discouraging precautions. And we know he invited his followers to threaten and harass innocent election workers, secretaries of state and governors. And we know that he called for shoplifters to be shot on sight and said the Constitution should be terminated. We know he said he'd be a dictator for a day. Above all, we know that he attempted to subvert the peaceful transfer of power and remain in office despite the will of the people. And we chose him anyway. Reelection would grant absolution for all of it.

The supposed guardrails of democracy are already creaking and groaning at the prospect of another Trump term. Just look at the state of the GOP. As a "might be" president, he is already able to dictate the composition of the Republican National Committee, rig a primary in Nevada, kill a border bill that would have given Republicans 90% of what they've been demanding for years and undermine Republican support for Ukraine.

Now imagine that Trump is president again and instructs the Justice Department to bring treason charges against Jack Smith. Who will stop him? The carefully vetted MAGA lawyers he has hired precisely for their loyalty?

What if he instructs the IRS to audit and fine Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, George Conway, and hundreds of other prominent critics? This violates IRS rules. But will IRS employees, again hired for loyalty to Trump, demur? After all, he did run on the promise, "I am your retribution," and his voters agreed.

What if he directs the SEC to investigate banks that refuse to loan the Trump Organization money? Would any whistleblower risk his job or worse?

What if, in response to street demonstrations, Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and federalizes the national guard, allowing the military to shut down protests and arrest (or worse) demonstrators without cause?

In Trump's first term, he was partially thwarted by strong institutions, yes — but above all by a deep commitment to the rule of law among the citizens of this country. A mid-level NSC staffer found the courage to defy the president's illegal and immoral acts because of his deep faith in the people's values. As Alexander Vindman said to his father, who, having grown up in the totalitarian USSR, worried about what might happen to his son for opposing the president, "Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth."

Except he wasn't. Not quite. He and (for spite) his twin brother were fired from the NSC. His military promotion was put on hold. He was harassed. It would be far, far worse in a second Trump term. Would there even be Alexander Vindmans in a second Trump presidency?

Doubtful. The mob justice that Trump has practiced and been rewarded for would intimidate nearly all. And they would not be enough to preserve constitutional democracy.

As Judge Learned Hand said in his 1944 "Spirit of Liberty" speech:

"I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it."

On April 22, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on presidential immunity and will perhaps issue a ruling full of pious talk about the rule of law. But the words will be empty if Trump is elected.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Pregnant woman

Don't Trust Sudden Republican Support For IVF -- It Isn't Sincere

The Alabama Supreme Court set off political tremors last week with its decision that frozen embryos have the status of "extrauterine children" and thus are covered by a state law that permits parents to seek damages for the wrongful death of a "minor child." The implication that in vitro fertilization (IVF) cannot be practiced if embryos have legal standing led some commentators immediately to describe the ruling as a "ban." Alabama's attorney general issued a statement reassuring people that IVF providers and patients would not face prosecution, even as clinics around the state were phoning their patients to cancel procedures. There is, IVF industry representatives told lawmakers and the press, too much risk of legal liability if a clinic accidentally causes the death of an embryo by piercing it with a pipette; or if, in consultation with parents, it discards a genetically damaged embryo; or if a power failure causes freezers to malfunction. The possible lawsuits are limitless.

Democrats seized on the decision as evidence that Republican extremists were gunning for IVF, and Republicans, burned once too often by abortion at the ballot box, rushed to assure voters that they reject the ruling and urged the Alabama legislature to amend the law forthwith. Former President Donald Trump led the way by proclaiming that "We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!"

Jason Thielman, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, circulated a letter to candidates urging, "When responding to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, it is imperative that our candidates align with the public's overwhelming support for IVF and fertility treatments." Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, a Freedom Caucus member, said, "I totally support the procedure" and offered that he would support federal legislation to protect IVF. Sen. Tommy Tuberville was confused about the nature of the Supreme Court ruling, telling a group at CPAC "I was all for it. ... We need to have more kids," but he seems to have gotten the memo about the GOP's message. Speaker Mike Johnson affirmed his support, saying IVF "has been a blessing for many moms and dads who have struggled with fertility."

The problem with the GOP's newfound enthusiasm for IVF is that it contradicts other positions the party has taken to please pro-life voters. In the last Congress, more than 160 House Republicans, including Johnson, cosponsored H.R. 1011, the "Life at Conception Act," which extends 14th Amendment protections to include "preborn human person(s)."

Republicans have also marched in lockstep to oppose the Right to Contraception Act introduced by Democrats because it would have included methods, such as IUDs and the morning-after pill, that some consider abortifacients. It's hard to square support for IVF, which, as practiced in the United States, nearly always entails the loss of fertilized eggs, with opposition to Plan B because it may result in the loss of a fertilized egg.

Maybe the lesson here is that doctrinaire approaches to these matters are not right. Life is full of trade-offs. Johnson is right that IVF has been a blessing for millions, and that includes many people who think of themselves as pro-life. For every 100 Americans born today, between one and two will have been conceived through IVF. By 2015, more than 1 million Americans were born as a result of IVF or similar technologies. For people diagnosed with cancer, IVF can preserve their fertility until after they have completed chemotherapy. For couples who are carriers of genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs and more than 400 other disorders, IVF can allow embryos to be tested before transfer to ensure that the disease is not present. Is that a pro-life gift to the world? Millions of Americans think it is — even though the procedure involves the loss of embryonic human life. It isn't a failing to recognize that these matters are murky and sometimes we do act on moral instinct more than on bright lines.

It is possible to approach the process ethically and even reverently. Some couples make decisions in advance about how to handle the question of "excess" embryos that have not been transferred after IVF treatment (only a fraction of transfers result in implantation and pregnancy). Some place frozen embryos for adoption. Others have larger families than they might have originally intended because they regard the frozen embryos as their children.

It's difficult for a political party to escape its brand. Just as Democrats will have difficulty convincing voters they aren't soft on illegal immigration, Republicans won't easily escape the association with hard-line abortion positions, including opposition to certain kinds of contraception. The personhood bills that four states have enacted and a dozen others are considering draw a harsh line on matters like IVF, which does entail making life-and-death decisions about frozen embryos. The voters may force Republicans to reconsider their blanket support for personhood bills. Perhaps pro-natalism is the pro-life position the GOP needs.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

US Mexico border fence

Republicans Only Exist To 'Fight,' Not To Make Policy

The border bill circus is the latest demonstration of a bedrock reality of today's Republican Party: It does not exist to achieve political outcomes. Its chief function is fan service.

The overriding concern of GOP voters, according to polls and to elected Republicans, is immigration. In the ranty precincts of the right, they believe that the southern border is open; that criminals, terrorists and drug dealers are crossing en masse. Among less febrile Republicans, the argument is that while legal immigration is good for the nation, we are swamped by illegal border crossers and must get control of a border that is out of hand.

Whichever version of the immigration argument they favor, every Republican who truly cared about solving the "crisis at the border" would presumably favor a bill that would have tackled — or at least ameliorated — the problem right now. In October, a group of senators including Shelley Moore Capito and Todd Young sent a letter to the president warning that 169 people on the terrorism watch list had been apprehended in the preceding 10 months. In early January, a 60-member delegation of House Republicans traveled to Eagle Pass, Texas. They were enraged, they said, by the fentanyl coming across the border.

In reality, fentanyl is mostly smuggled by American citizens, not would-be asylum seekers. Ninety percent of seizures occur at legal border crossings and interior vehicle checkpoints. In recent years, just 0.02 percent of people arrested for crossing the border illegally had any fentanyl in their possession.

Speaker Mike Johnson thundered that "One thing is absolutely clear: America is at a breaking point with record levels of illegal immigration." Rep. Mark Green, who yesterday announced his retirement from Congress, claimed that the FBI director had testified that members of Hamas can "just walk right in." But as The New York Times clarifies, Christopher Wray said no such thing. Rather, he explained in response to a tendentious question, that he could not 100 percent guarantee that none of those who evaded the border patrol ("get-aways") were members of Hamas.

While the risk of terrorists crossing the southern border is not zero, the Cato Institute's Alex Nowrasteh has shown that the southern border is not a common vector for terrorists attempting to enter the United States.

But let's assume for the sake of argument that most Republicans are unfamiliar with Nowrasteh's research and fully believe the Mark Greens and Mike Johnsons of their party who claim that we are being overrun by terrorists and foreign drug smugglers, to say nothing of immigrants "poisoning the blood" of real Americans.

Would they not be outraged by their elected officials' decision to tank a border bill that would achieve many of their objectives? The base has not been shy about accusing Republican leaders of cowardice and betrayal over much less. Yet on this issue, supposedly the one they feel most passionate about, they are tamely accepting that GOP congressmen and senators passed up a unique opportunity to get much tougher enforcement just in order to give Trump a campaign issue?

Well, some might explain, the average Republican voter thinks that if Trump is reelected, they will get even better (i.e., harsher) measures to keep immigrants out. But that is false.

The only reason the Democrats are willing to agree to a lopsided border deal that gives Republicans 80 percent of what they demanded and get nothing in return (like a path to citizenship for Dreamers) is because Democrats are worried that the issue hurts them with voters — and since Republicans linked support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan to border security, Democrats would have to bend.

But that political calculation goes out the window if Trump is reelected. Democrats would not have any incentive to compromise.

So if GOP voters believe that illegals are flooding into the country to our sorrow and that we are in danger daily from infiltration by terrorists, how can they accept that Republicans would choose to continue this "unconscionable" status quo a day longer than necessary — much less the years it will likely take before another deal is possible? And if the Republican Party is a political entity, don't voters have a duty to understand political realities, including that this was a unique moment to achieve their cherished objective?

But if the party doesn't exist to solve political problems, if instead it exists only to "fight," then the voters' passivity makes sense. The GOP doesn't need to get control of the border, merely to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas. Lauren Boebert released a triumphant video after the (second) impeachment vote boasting that "Just now we impeached Secretary Mayorkas who has endangered our country by deliberately handing over control of our southern border to the cartel. Now that's delivering for the American people!"

No, that was a gross misuse of government power against an official that even the GOP's favorite legal advisers had said did nothing to merit impeachment. Besides, it was a pointless, empty gesture since the Democrats control the Senate and will certainly acquit him (as he deserves).

The show is everything. Results don't count, only the fight.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Tucker Carlson's 'Fatal Attraction' To The Kremlin Dictator

Tucker Carlson's 'Fatal Attraction' To The Kremlin Dictator

The title of my 2003 book, Useful Idiots, was a reference to a perhaps apocryphal quote sometimes attributed to Lenin to the effect that gullible liberals in the West would prove useful idiots for the Soviet Union. I wrote about Democrats. Twenty-one years later, the epithet belongs wholeheartedly to the GOP. Their choice to support Trump — Putin's biddable spaniel — for the party's nomination; their decision to sabotage aid to Ukraine; and Tucker Carlson's ring-kissing visit to the dictator's lair cements the status of Republicans as the useful idiots of the 21st century.

The party has turned its back on America's world role and very identity as a tent pole of global stability. Republicans are well down the path of handing Putin an historic victory in his war of conquest against Ukraine, and so dies the consensus in place since 1945 that aggression must never be rewarded. Think of what this will do to NATO, whose membership has expanded in response to Russian belligerence. Think of what it conveys to China about American resolve on Taiwan. Think of what it says to Iran, whose proxies have been firing at American forces and international shipping for three months. And consider what it conveys to friends who may rethink their relationships with a country so clearly unreliable. The Republicans, who imagine themselves "tough," are signaling the very opposite — cringing capitulation to a despot.

Tucker Carlson is not a useful idiot. The term implies naivete, but he seems to know exactly what he's doing. He claims to be in Moscow to interview Putin because the rest of the press refuses to do so. In fact, Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, was just one of many who have pointed out that major press organizations have repeatedly requested interviews and been rebuffed. Peskov explained that Carlson had been approved because "he has a position that differs from the rest of (Western media)." Yes, supine.

For the past several years, Carlson's project has been consonant with Putin's. Both seek to sow division in the United States. Both seek to flood the zone with shit so that people won't know what to believe or whom to trust.

Carlson played a leading role in spreading the big lie about the 2020 election and distorting the events of January 6. He's the one to whom Kevin McCarthy released thousands of hours of surveillance tape so that Carlson could then cherry pick a few anodyne frames and say to his millions of viewers (I'm paraphrasing) "See, a normal tourist visit."

Months later, in a display of his dominance over Republicans, Carlson forced Ted Cruz to grovel on the air for having called the Jan. 6 rioters "terrorists." Carlson has been one of the chief conduits for Russian disinformation in the United States, peddling lies such as the story that the U.S. government was involved in chemical and biological research labs in Ukraine. The truth is easy enough to find: The American bioweapons program was shut down in the 1960s, while Russia's bioweapons program probably still exists in secret. Not that Carlson investigates things.

His Fox News show was appointment viewing in Russia, where reruns were featured on state-controlled TV. After Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed Congress dressed in army fatigues, Carlson was unmoved by the mien of the brave leader of a nation under unprovoked attack: "As far as we know, no one's ever addressed the United States Congress in a sweatshirt before." In another monologue, Carlson spouted the vilest Russian propaganda: "Zelenskyy himself is a very dark force. ... It is unmistakable. ... This man is a destroyer."

Just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he famously accused Democrats of trying to gin up hatred of Putin, asking "(W)hat is this really about? 'Why do I hate Putin so much?' Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?"

Putin has, as Carlson knows full well, arrested more than 20,000 people for protesting the war. As for his cruel attack on Ukraine — for no reason other than Putin's appetite — it has claimed the lives of half a million soldiers (two-thirds of them Russian) and at least 10,000 Ukrainian civilians. Russian forces have deliberately targeted power plants, hospitals, and civilian apartments. Putin is a war criminal. The world knows this. Carlson knows it, too.

Carlson says he went to Moscow because he's a journalist. He isn't. He's a tool. Putin has kidnapped and jailed two real Americans journalists: the Wall Street Journal's Evan Gershkovich, who has been rotting in a Russian prison for 11 months, and Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who committed the crime of visiting her sick mother while being an American.

As of this writing, it seems Carlson got the interview he craved with Putin. Doubtless Trump will find it very interesting and urge his people to "take a look," which will be the signal for the rest of the GOP to agree that we've really been getting only half of the story, haven't we? And it's really Biden, not Putin, and not certainly not Trump, who's a threat to world peace.

What a catastrophic turn for a once great political party.

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.

Behind That Iowa Primary 'Landslide' Lurked Very Bad News For Trump

Behind That Iowa Primary 'Landslide' Lurked Very Bad News For Trump

No question that a 30-point victory for Trump was not the ideal outcome of the Iowa caucuses. Voters have only two opportunities to prevent the return to power of a Putin-besotted, antisemite-praising, Constitution-terminating, multiple felony indictee — the primaries and the general.

It would have been better if Trump had been rebuked early and hard by Republican voters. But that was not to be. Once the first indictment was handed down in New York in the hush money for porn star case, the die was cast. The party faithful — partly because the Bragg indictment was legally shaky and pretty easily dismissed as politically motivated — rallied round their prosecuted, persecuted hero. I said partly because it wasn't just that the indictment was a stretch; it was also that MAGA Republicans so dearly want the accusations to be false. To admit otherwise opens the door to considering that he may really have obstructed justice and blithely endangered national security in the classified documents case, lied about and attempted to steal an election, and looked on with depraved satisfaction as his minions searched for Mike Pence — to commit murder. (Even now, despite everything we've witnessed, I still cannot believe I must write those words.)

We'll never know if things would have been different absent the Bragg indictment. Would the rally-round-the-mob-boss effect have been as pronounced if the classified documents in the bathroom case had gone first? Or if Ron DeSantis hadn't proved such a doofus candidate? Or if all of the GOP candidates in the race had run as Chris Christie did? We cannot know.

And while one can always hope for a miracle like Nikki Haley defeating Trump in New Hampshire, prompting South Carolina voters to rediscover their affection for their former governor, which would in turn upend the entire race — the chances of that are about as good as winning the lottery, which in South Carolina are about one in 293 million.

So one cannot bank on most Republicans to save us from a second Trump term. Still, lurking in the pre-caucus polling is some reassuring news. We cannot count on most Republicans, but what about the skeptics? What about a few Republicans like Kenan Judge, a lifelong Republican who left the party over Trump? Or Loring Miller, who voted for Trump twice but explained that "January 6 did it for me. A true leader would've put an end to that." Though 48 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers in the final Des Moines Register/NBC poll listed Trump as their first choice, 11 percent said that if Trump were the nominee, they would vote for Biden. Among the 20 percent who said Haley was their first choice, fully 43 percent said they would vote for Biden in the general if Trump is nominated.

According to The Washington Post ,"94 of Iowa's 99 counties moved toward Republicans between 2012 and 2020." Most voters don't show up for primaries and even fewer for caucuses. In 2016, 187,000 turned out, just 15.7 percent of voters. Last night, only about 110,000 made it. We are evaluating results from one of the whitest, most Evangelical, most rural states in the nation.

The Des Moines Register pre-caucus poll also found that among these gung-ho Republicans, six percent would support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rather than Trump, and eight percent would seek another third party choice. Bottom line: At least 25 percent of Iowa Republican caucus-goers say they will not vote for Trump in the general.

That's significant. Our elections are decided by a few thousand votes in five swing states. Admittedly, Iowa is not one of those swing states, but if large numbers of Republicans in ruby-red Iowa are saying they will not vote for Trump in the general election, what does that suggest about Republicans in places like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia?

Eleven percent of Republicans in Iowa tell a pollster that they will vote for Biden. Biden, the guy everyone says even Democrats are having trouble working up enthusiasm for. Whatever those misgivings may be, I very much doubt that 25% of Democratic primary voters would say they're thinking of voting for Trump or a third party.

The interest in third parties remains a serious challenge, but if we're indulging in hope, we can see the work ahead. Independents are even more determined to prevent Trump from gaining another term than the minority of Republicans who have drawn a line against him. Some, perhaps many, independents have not yet processed that we really will be facing another Trump/Biden choice in November. Once Trump is in front of their faces again, they will remember why he's unacceptable — just as the January 6 hearings in the summer of 2022 drove down Trump's approval.

The undimmed Trump support among the most ensorcelled bloc of Republicans shouldn't blind us to the other news from Iowa — there's a saving remnant out there, and we need to buttress them before November.

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.

Don't Let Trump Distract Us From His Disqualifying Criminal Indictment

Don't Let Trump Distract Us From His Disqualifying Criminal Indictment

Within the few days, Trump has made at least five moronic, dangerous or incendiary comments. And if the past is any guide, the press and social media will be all over each of them. Some will decry his vicious allusion to John McCain's disabilities, earned in a war Trump evaded. Others will be outraged by his description of the January 6 defendants as "hostages."

He manipulates our attention and our conversation like a skilled puppeteer. Consider that with only days to go before the first nominating contests, we are not even talking about Trump's greatest legal peril — the sweeping 37-count indictment regarding willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, corruptly concealing a document or record, and making false statements.

Admittedly, the Mar-a-Lago classified documents indictment is only the second-most disqualifying crime in Trump's roster — the first being attempting a coup — but it is the most open-and-shut and therefore the most ruinous.

Unlike the Washington indictment for attempting to overturn an election, the Florida indictment does not rely on untested applications of criminal statutes (e.g., was the riot an attempt to obstruct an official preceding?) or inquiries into Trump's state of mind. The questions of law and fact are straightforward.

Trump apologists will point to Biden, Pence and others who were found to have classified documents in offices or homes. But the indictment does not charge Trump for any documents he voluntarily returned after they were requested by the National Archives and Records Administration. No, he is charged only for the documents he hid, moved around, lied about, shared with a number of people lacking security clearances, kept in bathrooms, ballrooms, and bedrooms, and stubbornly withheld — even in defiance of a subpoena — from an increasingly alarmed federal government.

After the search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, Trump claimed to have declassified all of these documents before absconding with them. A sitting president does have authority to declassify, though not to take documents home as trophies. There are two problems with this justification: 1) There is zero evidence that Trump ever did declassify the relevant documents, and 2) even if he had, "willful retention of national defense information" remains a federal crime under the Espionage Act, which was passed in 1917, long before the current classification system was adopted. Others who've been charged and convicted under this statute include Chelsea Manning, Reality Winner and Edward Snowden. Less famous was Kendra Kingsbury, a former FBI analyst who pleaded guilty to taking classified documents home and was sentenced in June to three years and 10 months in federal prison.

Oh, and there's one other problem with the "Trump declassified everything" argument: His own words. The indictment includes a recording of Trump flaunting one of the documents to a writer (who had no security clearance, far less top-secret) at his Bedminster club. These were "highly confidential" and "secret," he confided, adding ''as president I could have declassified it. ... Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret."

That would be quite enough, but there is so much more. The indictment lays out the manifold maneuvers Trump undertook to obstruct justice. After being asked to return the documents, he instructed Walt Nauta to hide 64 of the boxes in other parts of Mar-a-Lago before letting his lawyer go through the remaining 30 — letting the lawyer believe that he was seeing the complete set. After the lawyer examined the contents and found some classified material, Trump suggested that he make them disappear. He "made a plucking motion."

The superseding indictment details Trump's instructions to several Mar-a-Lago employees to destroy security camera footage — textbook obstruction of justice.

The law is clear and easy to understand. Jack Smith has the receipts. Even Trump's allies have acknowledged that the indictment is devastating. Jonathan Turley admitted that "It's really breathtaking. ... The Trump team should not fool itself. These are hits below the water line. ... It's overwhelming in its details." Bill Barr added, "I do think that ... if even half of it is true, then he's toast. I mean, it's a pretty — it's a very detailed indictment, and it's very, very damming."

This, all by itself, is utterly disqualifying for a presidential candidate. The indictment cites two instances — that Smith can prove — of Trump revealing classified information to people not authorized to have it. God only knows how many times he did it that we have no record of.

Trump got lucky in the selection of Judge Aileen Cannon, who may be a MAGA sympathizer. But let's not lose sight of his flagrant, brazen, criminal contempt for his duty. Let's keep our focus on the people whose lives he put at risk. Let's have enough self-respect to recoil at his reckless endangerment of this country. If convicted, he deserves to do prison time. Cannon notwithstanding, he may well do prison time for this. And that, not his latest stink bomb, should be front of mind as we head into the campaign.

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.

Sorry Kevin, 'Checks And Balances' Won't Save Us From A Dictatorial Trump

Sorry Kevin, 'Checks And Balances' Won't Save Us From A Dictatorial Trump

The already-forgotten-but-not-yet-gone Kevin McCarthy shared some thoughts on threats to our democracy with Bob Costa on "Face the Nation." McCarthy is unworried about Trump's authoritarian ambitions. "Yeah, but remember, you have a check-and-balance system."

McCarthy isn't the only one to place exaggerated confidence in institutions to save us from Trump's lawlessness. Even the supposedly serious conservatives on The Wall Street Journal editorial board assure readers that "We think American institutions are strong enough to contain whatever designs Mr. Trump has to abuse presidential power." The real danger, as the Journal editorialists see it, is that "his chaos theory of governance would result in a second term that failed to deliver on his promises and set up the left for huge gains in 2026 and 2028." So the Journal isn't at all concerned that Trump would follow through on plans to instruct the Justice Department to prosecute his opponents; pardon all of the Jan. 6 rioters, fake electors and others who helped him attempt to steal the 2020 election; withdraw from NATO; impose a ten percent tariff on all imports; investigate NBC for treason; and shoot shoplifters on sight.

This complacency is dangerous. The truth is that institutions don't uphold themselves.

Consider the GOP. Though partisan feelings run hot these days, the actual political parties have very little power. They don't even have influence over what the party stands for. In 2020, the Republican Party — which had produced a platform every four years despite civil war, depression and two world wars — produced no platform, merely a one-sentence declaration that the party supported "the President's America First agenda."

The Democratic Party, also a shadow of its former self, could not assemble a delegation of elders — say, in 2022 — to approach Joe Biden and suggest that he step aside and groom a younger successor.

If the Republican Party were not such a shell, it would have shut down Trump's dangerous lies about the stolen election on Nov. 3, 2020. Instead, leading officeholders "humored" him or, worse, reinforced his lies. They knew that to mislead voters about the integrity of the election process was playing with fire — that it could result in instability or violence. But the party failed miserably. Even after the deadly assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 147 Republican representatives and senators voted not to certify Biden's election.

It was only the conscience and courage of a few individuals that kept the United States from plunging into a constitutional crisis. Mike Pence, Rusty Bowers, Brad Raffensperger, Jeff Rosen, Richard Donoghue and a few others found it within themselves to put country before party.

A few people with the backbone to do the right thing do not make an institution. They don't comprise a reliable "check and balance" — especially when the institution has chosen not to reward but to punish them. Not only have most of those who did the right thing lost their seats; many have had to expend small fortunes for personal security.

What would elected Republicans do if he instructed his officials to violate people's constitutional rights and promised in advance to pardon them? Let's be realistic. Most Republicans would justify it. The Wall Street Journal would probably tsk tsk and say the real danger was that Democrats might get the same idea. And if they didn't, what could they do to stop him? Impeachment is a dead letter.

What about the institution of the press? There are probably more excellent journalists working today than any time in history, but the press as an institution is in crisis. Reliable outlets compete for clicks with disinformation sites and malicious liars.

What about the churches? You would think that if any institution were loyal to something higher than partisanship, it would be the churches. But as Peter Wehner, Tim Alberta, David French, and Russell Moore have shown in painful detail, white Evangelicals have shown themselves to be among the most susceptible to the lure of a would-be authoritarian. The churches are not a check on Trump.

What about the military? For the most part, the military has held steady, affirming that it has no role in domestic politics. It should disturb the sleep of any patriot that all of the living former secretaries of Defense felt the need to sign a letter in 2020 affirming that the military has no proper role in determining the outcome of America's elections.

What about the courts? The judiciary has been a stalwart check on Trump. Will that hold? Trump will spend the next 11 months discrediting the entire judicial system in order to vitiate the impact of any guilty verdict. And what is to stop him from pardoning himself for any and all depredations of the Constitution, which he has already declared should be "terminated"? What can the courts do against the plenary pardon power?

Our institutions are weak. The checks and balances, like the impeachment power, have proved toothless. There is only one check on autocracy that remains — the electorate — and with every poll, doubts about that one accumulate.

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.

Israel

Far Left And Far Right Come Together In Their Antisemitic Rage

They came waving Palestinian flags and clad in the keffiyehs that have become a symbol of the Palestinian cause. Dozens of chanting protesters crowded the street outside Goldie, a vegan restaurant serving Israeli-inspired dishes in central Philadelphia, blocking traffic and chanting, "Goldie, Goldie, you can't hide. We charge you with genocide."

What does this restaurant have to do with the war in Gaza? Nothing. It serves falafel to Philadelphians. It is owned by a Jew, who was born near Tel Aviv. And that's enough.

Around the world, synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, Jewish-owned businesses, and individual Jews are facing harassment, vandalism and even murder. Just two days after the Hamas terror attack, a Jewish student who tried to paint the Israeli flag on a "free speech rock" at Wayne State University was shoved and called a "f—-ing Zionist." A week later, a woman was punched in the face at Grand Central Terminal. When she asked her attacker why, he said "You are Jewish."

At the University of Minnesota, the Jewish student center erected a display showing the faces of children kidnapped by Hamas. It's been kicked over and damaged twice.

In Pittsburgh, just a few blocks from the Tree of Life synagogue, scene of the deadliest attack on Jews in American history, homes were defaced with graffiti proclaiming, "Free Palestine," "Death 2 America" and "I stand with Gaza."

In Thousand Oaks, California, a pro-Palestine demonstrator struck a 69-year-old Jewish man in the head. He later died of his wounds.

These are snapshots of a broad phenomenon. The Anti-Defamation League reports that anti-Jewish acts have increased more than 300% since the 10/7 attacks.

The Israel/Hamas war has also inflamed anti-Palestinian rage. A six-year-old child whose parents were from the West Bank was stabbed to death and his mother seriously wounded by a knife-wielding landlord in Illinois. And in Burlington, Vermont, three Palestinian college students were shot on the street simply for being identifiably Palestinian.

There are also reports of an increase in threats against American Muslims, though aside from the two terrible attacks in Illinois and Vermont, there doesn't seem to be a great wave of anti-Muslim sentiment surging in the nation or the world.

What would the response have been if we had seen one? If, in the wake of 10/7, we had seen mosques defaced, Muslim students harassed, Muslim homes vandalized, posters of kidnapped Palestinian children ripped down (work with me here), death threats posted online against Muslim Students Associations, individual Muslims shoved, slapped and punched "because you're a Muslim" and hordes of protesters carrying Israeli flags and chanting "From the river to the sea, Israel will be Arab-free!" we'd have no trouble labeling what was going on, would we?

We don't hold Muslims in Dearborn responsible for the acts of Muslims in Jakarta. We don't call in threats to their mosques or harass random Muslim engineers because Muslim regimes elsewhere are persecuting Christians.

Nor, of course, did we harass or persecute Buddhists due to the actions of the Burmese regime, which viciously persecuted its Rohingya Muslim minority, or individual Chinese Americans for China's oppression of the Uyghurs, or individual Catholics for the actions of the IRA, or individual Protestants for the acts of the Ulster Defense Association. We don't harass individual Russians for Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

In America, we believe in treating everyone as an individual, not as the mere representative of the group he or she may belong to.

So why is it so hard to see what is happening to Jews in the United States and around the world for what it is? Individual American (or European or Australian) Jews are not responsible for Israel's actions. They may support them, though surprisingly often they do not. But that's irrelevant. Isn't it odd that the very people decrying what they call "collective punishment" of Palestinians in Gaza can't see a contradiction in holding a Jew in Los Angeles responsible for what happens in Khan Younis?

Many of the antisemitic protests and harassments began before Israel retaliated for the 10/7 terror attack. They were, in effect, celebrations of Israeli victimization. They didn't chant, "Not in our name" after Hamas gang-raped women to the point of breaking their pelvises and filled their vaginas with nails and rocks before shooting them in the face. Protesters carried placards proclaiming, "By any means necessary" — as blatant an endorsement of terrorizing civilians as you can find.

There are no rallies in London or Paris demanding that Hamas release the hostages or permit the Red Cross to visit them. And the United Nations organization responsible for speaking up for women? Silence about the brutal attacks on Israeli women and girls. Israeli first responders forwarded the evidence to UN Women. Nothing for eight long weeks until Sheryl Sandberg and protesters in the UN lobby shamed them into a belated statement.

No, the upsurge in antisemitism wasn't a response to the IDF's campaign to wipe out Hamas. The initial wave was approval for killing and torturing Jews.

Some on the far left couldn't see that, but guess who could? The far right. Remember Charlottesville? Some of the same lowlifes, like the National Justice Party, are now showing up at anti-Israel rallies. Another neo-Nazi group, NSC-131, hung banners from an overpass near Boston that read "Free Palestine" and "End Jewish terror."

Those groups are fringe, but they have friends in very influential places. Tucker Carlson, for example, has used his X-supported platform to denounce those who warn of rising antisemitism on college campuses as "hypocrites" because they have not condemned the supposed support for "white genocide" at American universities. Carlson has brought the "great replacement" conspiracy theory into the mainstream. That was the very idea that motivated the Tree of Life killer.

Similarly, Carlson's patron, Elon Musk, has opened the sluice gates for bigotry and antisemitism on X.

The fever swamps are on our phones and in our social media feeds now. When conspiracies are loosed upon the world, it always comes back to the Jews. Whatever side you're on, if you think it's only the other side that has this problem, think again.

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.

Family

Why Progressives Should Care About The 'Family Gap'

Economist Melissa Kearney has studied poverty, inequality and family structure for more than 20 years and come to the conclusion that America's drift away from the two-parent norm has "contributed to the economic insecurity of American families, has widened the gap in opportunities and outcomes for children from different backgrounds, and today poses economic and social challenges that we cannot afford to ignore."

She is hardly alone among her social science peers in reaching this conclusion. As she relates in her new book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, these insights are more or less commonplace among those who study the matter. The facts aren't in serious dispute — the wisdom of saying it out loud is another matter. Wary of seeming preachy — or worse, conservative — most social scientists recoil from talking about family structure when considering the matter of poverty and child outcomes.

Unsurprisingly, her book has been greeted skeptically by progressives and enthusiastically by conservatives. Progressives were quick to label Kearney a "scold" and to object that they were being "lectured" to get married.

As I documented in my own book, Sex Matters, marriage has been in decline at least in part because it was sabotaged. Feminists argued that marriage was essentially a male conspiracy to keep women unfulfilled, submissive, and servile. Radical feminists scorned married women for "sleeping with the enemy."

Their arguments carried the day, or at least contributed to what came next. Marriage rates, especially for the poor and working class, cratered.

The consequences for children were stark. In 1980, 77 percent of American children lived with their married parents. By 2019, only 63 percent did. Among the college-educated, 84 percent of children still live with married parents, which is a solid majority, if down a bit from 90 percent in 1980. But among those with a high school degree or some college, only 60 percent of children are living with married parents (down from 83 percent). So today when you enter a hospital nursery, 4 out of 10 babies will be children of single moms. As significant as the class divide is, the racial divide is wider. In 1960, 67% of Black children lived with their married parents. In 2019, only 38 percent did.

As Kearney carefully documents, children in mother-only homes are five times more likely to live in poverty than children with two parents. Poverty is not conducive to thriving, but even for kids who are not poor, those who grow up with only one parent fare worse than others on everything from school to work to trouble with the law. Boys raised without fathers and/or without good adult male influences in their lives are less likely to attend college, be employed as adults or remain drug-free.

It's unfair to suggest, as many of Kearney's critics have, that she is a scold. She's not chastising single mothers. Her book overflows with sympathy for the difficulties of raising kids alone. If she's scolding anyone it's the educated class that has imposed omerta on the subject of family structure. Nor is she unaware that some marriages cannot be saved and that many kids raised by single parents turn out fine.

Progressives tend to respond to the family gap with calls for more government support for single-parent families. Kearney is fine with that, and advocates it herself. But her book is realistic about the limits of financial resources to address this problem. Two parents provide more to kids than money. She notes that a "child born in a two-parent household with a family income of $50,000 has, on average, better outcomes than a child born in a single-parent household with the same income."

One reason is that two parents share the stress of parenting — the sleep deprivation, the appointments, the scheduling conflicts, the missed work, the terrible twos — the lot. When there are two parents to share the load, both have more "emotional bandwidth" to meet their children's needs and more opportunity to take care of themselves. In true economist style, Kearney notes that having two adults permits for "task specialization."

Frankly, the case that two are better than one when it comes to raising children is open and shut.

But the critics do raise a point that Kearney cannot answer — and neither can I. It's the problem posed by The Washington Post's Christine Emba, among others, who agrees that two-parent families are best and that marriage is the gold standard, but "plausible marriage partners for heterosexual women are thin on the ground."

There may not be a solution for all of today's single women who are hoping for marriage. Pew estimates that one in four unmarried adults (as of 2012) would likely never marry. But for the kids who are growing up now, Kearney does have ideas. These include increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit and other programs that will enhance the economic position of low-income men, scaling up the efforts of groups like Big Brothers/Big Sisters and Becoming a Man, promoting and supporting co-parenting among non-married couples, and above all, reviving the norm that marriage is best for kids.

As a bonus, it's also good for grown-ups.

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.

Israel

The World's Oldest Hatred Roars Back Into Fashion

In one day of savagery, Hamas brought the world's oldest hatred into the mainstream. The upwelling of antisemitism around the globe, and especially in the United States, mocks the naivety of those who imagined that the oldest hatred was mostly in the past, that Israel could be a normal nation, or that a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue could be realized in the near future. American Jews, stunned by the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, are reeling from the lack of basic decency shown by many progressives. If your ideology blinds you to the crimes of rape, arson, kidnapping and mass murder, what is there to discuss?

No more hiding behind "anti-Zionism is not antisemitism." This moment, for all its horror, is at least clarifying. Jewish schools and synagogues are closing around the globe. Vandals stenciled Stars of David on the doors of Jewish homes in Paris. What has Zionism to do with that?

Criticizing the Israeli government, or even generally taking the side of Palestinians over Israelis, is not anti-Zionism. No, anti-Zionism is dehumanizing hatred of Israelis and Jews. It's the denial of Israel's right to exist and the hunger to punish, harm or kill Jews wherever they may live. It is indistinguishable from antisemitism.

Raw, Jew-hating anti-Zionism can be found in statements like that of Columbia professor Joseph Massad praising the "resistance's remarkable takeover" of Israeli bases and checkpoints and calling the 10/7 attack "awesome" and "striking." We see it in the mob in Sydney, Australia, that gathered to celebrate — yes, celebrate — the mass murder with cries of "Gas the Jews." We see it in the mob at Cooper Union college shouting antisemitic slogans at a group of Jewish students who were barricaded in the library for their safety.

The depravity of Hamas's useful idiots is matched only by their ignorance. In Philadelphia last weekend, I passed a pro-Hamas demonstration. One protestor's sign read "Free Palestine" and was decorated with a hammer and sickle. The cross-cutting inconsistencies here are legion. Hamas is an Islamist movement that believes in strict adherence to sharia law, persecutes homosexuals and represses women. But they are the oppressed, according to the moral hierarchies in vogue on the left. The protesters also decry Israel as a "settler colonial" state. Sorry, that's rubbish.

There have been Jews in Israel since Biblical times of course (and Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority for hundreds of years), but the modern settlement of the land began in the 1880s when Jews from Europe arrived, inspired by the Zionist idea. They were not colonists for any European power. They were fleeing European persecution. Several more waves of migrants came in the following decades, especially after the severe pogroms of the early 1900s. They did not push anyone out of their homes or land. They purchased land legally and openly.

Israel is also routinely accused of genocide, which is satisfying for the kind of person who thinks, "Why can't they shut up about the Holocaust?" But it's a lie. Israel has for 16 years absorbed thousands of missiles fired over the border into southern Israel with only limited responses. They built the Iron Dome system and safe rooms instead of attempting to destroy Gaza. But the rule cannot be that Hamas can target Israeli grandmothers, families and babies for kidnapping, rape, death and dismemberment but Israel cannot pursue them because they hide among their own civilians. That would amount to surrender to terrorism.

The Hamas apologists who point to the suffering of Palestinian civilians are not wrong about the suffering — though they cannot see the obvious responsibility of Hamas for starting this war. A pre-10/7 poll of Palestinians in Gaza found that 62 percent wanted to preserve the ceasefire. In any case, Gazans haven't been given a vote since 2006, so Hamas's claim to legitimacy is essentially nonexistent.

There is also a strange selectivity among Hamas apologists in their concern for civilians. They overlook the glaringly obvious moral distinction between intentionally targeting civilians and inadvertently harming civilians. Hamas makes war on Israeli and Palestinian civilians, in the first case through the most vicious violence imaginable and in the second through using them as human shields for missiles and terror headquarters. Yet their apologists give them a pass for both. They also display notable indifference to what is happening to the civilians in other parts of the world: in Yemen (15,000 killed), or Nagorno-Karabakh (100,000 Armenians ethnically cleansed and forced to flee their homes), or Burma (25,000 Rohingya killed, 18,000 raped), or Syria (306,000 civilians killed including 30,000 children, 12 million forced to flee their homes). It's almost as if it doesn't matter how many people suffer and die — that doesn't disturb the sleep of Hamas's defenders. What matters is whom you most hate. Israel and Jews top the list.

There was a time when respectable observers who sympathized with the Palestinians would emphasize their desire for "two states for two peoples." No longer. The protesters and Ivy League professors who proclaim their support for a "free" Palestine "from the river to the sea" are not asking for a tame, two-state solution. The river is the Jordan. The sea is the Mediterranean. What lies between is Israel. Hamas has never made a secret of its rejection of the two-state idea. The slogan envisions at least massive ethnic cleansing, and after 10/7 only a fool would imagine that genocide is unthinkable. There would doubtless be cheers in Paris and Sydney and Dagestan if it came to pass. And that only underscores the original Zionist raison d'etre. There must be an Israel because the world's oldest hatred will never die.

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.

Joe Biden

Yes, Biden Is Old -- But His Stamina And Mental Condition Are Good

Our octogenarian president traveled 8,000 miles to meet with India's premier, Narendra Modi, and to attend the G20 summit in New Delhi. He then flew another 2,000 miles to visit America's new pal, Vietnam — all over the course of just five days. That's a demanding trip, even for a younger person. After meeting for several hours with the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, Biden held a formal press conference. And he did fine.

Yes, his voice is weaker than it used to be, and his gait is stiff, but on the matter that currently has 62% of the public seriously worried — namely, whether he has the mental acuity to serve as president — his performance should be reassuring.

The public's perception of Biden's mental decline is out of all proportion to reality. A May NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 69% of registered independent voters believe Biden's mental fitness is a real concern. A more recent CNN poll found that 73% are seriously concerned that his physical and mental health might not be adequate for another term. Even among Democrats, only 49% say he has the stamina and mental sharpness to serve another term. At dinner parties, people say the president has dementia.

To be clear, it would be better to have a younger president seeking reelection — and I would like to be four inches taller and gifted at the cello. But we got what we got, and part of being a grown-up is accepting reality.

There is no way to watch Biden's Hanoi press conference and not recognize that his brain is working fine. He responds to questions in appropriate fashion. His words are diplomatically chosen, and his thoughts follow in logical order.

Anyone who has ever had a friend or relative with dementia knows that this is nothing like what they sound like. They repeat themselves constantly without self-awareness. They don't distinguish between things that happened that morning and things that happened years ago. They get angry and tearful for no apparent reason. Dementia is a devastating disease and quite different from normal aging. In fact, while the percentage of people with dementia rises with age, only about 10% of those aged 70 and older suffer from it.

Now, have a look at Biden's press conference. He was asked about a Chinese official's accusation that Biden was "insincere" about the relationship with China, and also whether he thought Chinese President Xi Jinping was sincere in light of his recent move to "ban" Apple in China. Biden had trouble hearing the first part of the question (OK, that is his age showing), but then gave a careful answer.

He declined the implied invitation to get into a spitting match with Xi and emphasized that "we're not looking to hurt China ... We're all better off if China does well," adding that "if China does well by the international rules, it grows the (world's) economy." To underline that point, he noted that "It's not about isolating China. It's about making sure the rules of the road — everything from airspace and — and space and in the ocean is — the international rules of the road are ... abided by."

Without overt threats or intemperate words, Biden then noted that he is building and/or bolstering alliances with other Asian nations. "That's what this trip was all about: having India cooperate much more with the United States, be closer with the United States, Vietnam being closer with the United States. It's not about containing China; it's about having a stable base — a stable base in the Indo-Pacific."

I could have done without the too-clever-by-half tactic of calling only upon female journalists (a reprise of an Obama gimmick from 2014). And Biden's acknowledgement at the start that the five questioners had been chosen in advance was a mistake. He introduced the Q and A by saying, "And now, I will take your questions. Let me see. They told me — they gave me five people here," which made him seem directed by others instead of in charge. And he stumbled over their names all the same.

But in the course of his basically direct, non-meandering answers, he touted the new rail and shipping corridor just announced at the G20 that will link India to Europe; noted that the United States has the world's strongest economy; praised a past Republican senator for working with poorer nations to maintain forest land; and mentioned the amount of carbon the Amazon rainforest absorbs.

At one point he did sound like a geezer, quoting from a John Wayne movie, but that was one deviation from an otherwise workmanlike performance.

Biden's physical presentation — the slow and careful walk, the slightly pitched posture — suggests age more than his words. But, bottom line: He is perfectly capable of thinking on his feet. Too many Americans have come to believe that he is in sharp mental decline. When you see him in a Q and A, it's clear that he isn't, and people need to know that.

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.

Joe Biden

Why Biden's Age Might Not Be A Problem After All

Confession: For the past couple of years, I fell into the "Biden shouldn't run again" camp. Too old. Better not to ask Americans to reelect a man who will be 82 in November of 2024 and ... you know the rest. Nikki Haley summed it up tactlessly in April: "The idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely."

But I've thought better of it. Yes, Biden is the oldest man ever elected president and bids fair to break his own record, but that's not entirely a bad thing.

We're all familiar with the usual narrative. Americans are awfully dubious about Biden's fitness. Only 32 percent in a recent poll said he has the "mental sharpness to serve effectively as president," and a mere 33 percent said he had the physical health to serve out another term. By contrast, 54 percent believe Trump, 77, has the mental fitness to serve, and 64 percent believe he has the physical fitness to serve. (I know. I know.)

So Biden has some work to do to prove that he's not senile or decrepit. This has been a favorite GOP talking point since 2020, yet Biden has not been able to debunk it despite owning the bully pulpit, so something has to change there. On the other hand, to the degree that people are simply concerned about age per se, there are many reasons to rest easy.

Nikki Haley is wrong. If you go to the Social Security longevity calculator and punch in Biden's sex and date of birth, you find that he can expect to live until age 89.1. That would carry him through a second term and then some, but the reality is even better than that. The Social Security number is just an average for all 80-year-old American men and doesn't take account of other reasons to expect Biden to age very well. He has advanced levels of education and wealth and lives in a safe neighborhood. He is white (alas, race does matter in longevity), married, and has a circle of good friends. He attends church. He doesn't drink or smoke and exercises five days a week. Other than a weakness for ice cream (which he clearly eats only in moderation), his diet seems good and his weight is in the healthy range. His father lived until 86 and his mother until 92.

There's one more thing: Biden is president of the United States, and it seems that people who achieve this office have a tendency to outlive others in their cohorts.

So worries that Biden is going to die before 2028 are overblown. Obviously, you can't rule it out — age is still the greatest risk factor for death — but it's far more likely that he will serve out his term. And his age carries some benefits.

As The Economist notes, older people are happier than younger people. Though it may seem counterintuitive to our youth-obsessed culture, it seems to be the case that happiness is U-shaped. People start out their adult lives pretty happy, then experience a drop in middle age and get progressively happier in their later years. This pattern holds true across nations and cultures.

Though many Republican primary voters probably hate the idea of a happy president, the rest of us can see the benefits. Happy people are less likely than others to be spiteful, petty, distracted, self-absorbed, or erratic. If you're thinking of a certain mango-hued counterexample, look, he has never been a normal human and defies all categories. For most people, research confirms, anger declines throughout life.

Biden, by contrast, does seem to have mellowed with age. I can recall a younger Biden who got himself into multiple embarrassing gaffes because he was prickly, sensitive about his dignity, and quick to anger. The older Biden is more comfortable in his skin.

It's no good sighing over the fact that a 70-year-old Biden would be so much better than this Biden. Take it from someone who is 66: Accept life as it is. If Biden had bowed out of the 2024 race, we can all fantasize about the ideal candidates who could have taken his place — Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro or Amy Klobuchar — but what are the chances the Democratic Party would deny the nomination to the sitting vice president? And who thinks Kamala Harris would be a stronger general election candidate than Biden?

Aging is a challenge. I constantly buy broccoli forgetting that I had some in the back of the refrigerator. I can't make out what people are saying when there's a lot of background noise. But I don't fret about small slights, rage at drivers who cut me off in traffic, or nurse grudges. I take more joy in nature and the simple pleasures.

Joe Biden is better at 80 than he was at 50. He is very likely to serve another term just fine. And there is not a particle of doubt that in a Biden/Trump rematch, the fate of the republic rests on the old(er) guy winning.

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 Criminal Trials Will Be A Step Toward Truth

It's a little hard to recall now, but last year, Donald Trump was in eclipse. In July 2022, half of GOP primary voters expressed a desire to move on from Trump. His anointed candidates fared poorly in November, and even some of his most ardent backers, including the Murdochs, were eyeing other options. If he could be relegated to the rearview window, I reasoned, even if it meant that he escaped liability for his crimes, it would be the best available outcome. An indictment, I feared, would spark a rally-round-Trump effect that would revive his fortunes among Republicans and thrust this viper back into our national life.

I was also concerned that, considering Trump's modus operandi, his response to indictment would be a thoroughgoing assault on the rule of law.

Perhaps Merrick Garland had similar worries. He certainly seemed to drag his feet — until Trump's florid criminality forced the DOJ's hand. In the matter of the stolen classified documents, Trump defied a subpoena, attempted to conceal evidence (textbook obstruction), and displayed such contempt for national security and law that, in the words of former Trump Attorney General William Barr, "What is unjust is not prosecuting Trump at this stage." Once Jack Smith was appointed to investigate the Mar-a-Lago documents case, it was untenable not to give him authority to look into the January 6 offenses as well.

As feared, the rally-round-Trump effect has happened. The GOP base is once again glassy-eyed with zeal for their martyr/hero. This emphatically does not reflect poorly on the prosecutors (though the Alvin Bragg prosecution was ill-considered), but only on the Republicans whose instinct is to adore the most despicable human to hold high office in our lifetime, or maybe ever.

Also, as predicted, the discrediting of our legal system has shifted into overdrive. The cowardly and cynical among Republican presidential candidates have cast aspersions on the Department of Justice. Ron DeSantis, though claiming not to have read the document, calls the latest indictment a "weaponization of federal law enforcement" that "represents a mortal threat to a free society." Tim Scott leaped to whataboutism, citing the Hunter Biden case, and suggesting that "We're watching Biden's D.O.J. continue to hunt Republicans while protecting Democrats." And from what used to be the fever swamps but are now the MAGA influencer ranks comes this from The Federalist's Sean Davis: "The Department of Justice is a domestic terror organization."

The party of law and order is now the party of nihilism and chaos.

So in some ways, this is a sum-of-all-fears moment. But there are reasons to believe that the coming months, which will be ugly, debased and charged with anxiety about the future of this republic, will not necessarily end badly.

There are four and a half Republican presidential contenders who are telling the truth about Trump. Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson, Chris Christie and Will Hurd are solid. Nikki Haley, characteristically, is hedging, but she also sometimes stumbles into honesty. That is a departure from the norm during the 2016 primaries and during the Trump presidency. And it matters that these Republicans are making the case now, during the primaries, that Trump is unfit for office because some in the party will automatically tune out any critique of Trump if it seems that the beneficiary will be a Democrat in the general election.

Now, some will object, reasonably enough, that all of the Trump-critical candidates account for only about 11% of the primary vote according to recent polling. But in our time, politics is a game of inches. If just a small fraction of Republicans, to say nothing of independent voters, are dissuaded from supporting Trump because of the pending trials, it would make all the difference. A recent New York Times poll showed that 25 percent of the GOP electorate is not open to supporting Trump. Among that 25 percent, 49 percent think Trump is a criminal, and 29 percent (or about seven percent of all Republican respondents) would vote for Biden over Trump in 2024.

Is that enough to keep the disaster of a second Trump term at bay? Probably not, because the structure of the Electoral College requires that the Democrat score at least a four-point victory to prevail.

In our polarized information world, with millions getting only news that is politically palatable, it's excruciatingly difficult to convey basic facts. But trials, especially trials that will dominate every single news outlet, are probably the one way to penetrate those hermetically sealed bubbles. Through the trials, some who are currently in ignorance will learn facts that will disturb them. There will be testimony from Republicans and cross-examination and sworn oaths. Our justice system is by no means perfect at revealing truth, but it's far superior to social media or cable TV. If just a few tens of thousands of Americans in key states have their minds opened to new information, it could be enough to avoid an unthinkable outcome in 2024.

So we must strap in and prepare to play our part, mindful of the stakes, and welcoming a new ally in the battle for truth — the courts.

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 at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2018

Trump On The World Stage Was Cringeworthy

One of the most absurd claims the leading candidate for the GOP nomination makes about himself and his term in office is that he restored global respect to the United States. He said it frequently when he was in office, and stressed to Bret Baier three weeks ago that he's running again "because I want to make America great again. We had great — we were respected all over the world. Very simple."

Did you spit out your coffee?

This is one of those claims that, alas, enjoys some currency even among noncultists. Ask your average Republican whether Trump restored America's image around the world and they are quite likely to say yes.

This isn't a case of both sides having a fair point. This is bonkers. Trump was perceived as a boob and a fool the world over. (And by the way, it caused many of our friends to doubt Americans' sanity, too.) He was a global laughingstock. Literally.

Remember when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly and launched into his typical bombastic BS about his administration accomplishing more than almost any in history? The assembled delegates, who are VERY accustomed to political exaggeration and even inanity, burst out laughing.

Then, there was the time when European leaders were caught on a hot mic mocking him at a NATO summit in London. Princess Anne, Emmanuel Macron, Mark Rutte, Jens Stoltenberg and Boris Johnson smiled knowingly as Justin Trudeau regaled them with accounts of Trump's antics. Trump was so personally wounded that he cut short his participation in the summit.

International summits were often stages for Trump's cringe-inducing conduct — behavior that many Americans as well as nearly all non-Americans found stunningly gross. Here, he shoved the prime minister of Montenegro aside in order to pose at the center of the group.

Worse than the shove was his credulity. If a dictator or a thug whispered something in his ear, he believed it. The examples are legion, but since the Montenegro leader was manhandled, let's recall what Trump said about that recent entrant to the alliance. Just days after meeting with Vladimir Putin, Trump told Tucker Carlson that Montenegrins are "very aggressive people ... They may get aggressive and, congratulations, you're in World War III."

Let's be real, before that meeting with Putin, what are the chances that Trump had ever heard of Montenegro, far less had views about their national character? Naturally, it was in Putin's interest for Trump to think that enlarging NATO threatened World War III. And Trump believed it, not necessarily out of stupidity (though we can't rule that out) but because his sick attraction to naked power made him unusually susceptible to Putin's propaganda.

Trump routinely insulted allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May. At one summit, he reportedly reached into his pocket for some candy, threw them across the table to Merkel and smirked, "Don't say I never gave you anything." Americans elected a mental seven-year-old.

Not just a child, but a ridiculous child. He attempted to buy Greenland from the Danes, and when he was rebuffed, he canceled a planned diplomatic visit to Copenhagen.

His initial fiery bluster against North Korea was unnerving and his later obsequious fawning was vile. Neither accomplished anything except to remind the world what a moron America had elevated.

Trump wasn't just a joke, though. His obvious instability and tenuous hold on reality were unnerving to the world. His "America First" slogan alienated allies. And his softness toward dictators and strongmen emboldened adversaries.

International opinion polls leave no doubt about how America's reputation fared under Trump. In September 2020, Pew found:

"America's reputation has declined further over the past year among many key allies and partners. In several countries, the share of the public with a favorable view of the U.S. is as low as it has been at any point since the [Pew Research] Center began polling on this topic nearly two decades ago."

Some of this was in response to the U.S. handling of COVID-19. Among 13 European nations, only an average of 31 percent held a positive view of the United States, while only 16 percent expressed confidence in Trump. In fact, Trump was less trusted than the leaders of Germany, France, the U.K., China, or Russia.

President Joe Biden has gone some way toward restoring America's global image. Pew reports that a new survey of public opinion in 23 countries finds an average of 59 percent holding favorable views of the United States and 54 percent having confidence in Biden.

Though views of the United States have improved during the Biden years, doubts must persist. Hell, they persist among Americans. Though other presidents have been unpopular (George W. Bush in particular), our foreign friends and foes never before had to wonder about America's political stability. Confidence about that will take years to rebuild, or just another election to wreck utterly.

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

How To Read Election Polls Without Feeling Terror

Experts will advise you never to eat meat with cream sauce at a buffet; always to lock your car even when just dashing into the 7-Eleven for two minutes; and never to read national polls in the year before an election.

But there are coping mechanisms if you, like me, fail on the third.

Two recent polls illustrate the dangers of consuming too much public opinion at this stage. NBC's poll shows that Trump has widened his lead over the field in the Republican primary contest since his latest indictment, with 51 percent now saying he's their preferred candidate for the nomination, up from 46 percent in April. That puts him 29 points ahead of Ron DeSantis, his nearest challenger, whose support dropped from 31 percent in April to 22 percent in June.

Asked about Trump's federal indictment, 63 percent say the charges give them "no real concerns at all" along with 14 percent who report only "minor concerns." But that isn't even the most disturbing result. That honor belongs to the question about what disturbs voters most. The question: "Does this issue give you major concerns, moderate concerns, minor concerns, or no real concerns?" Option 1: "Joe Biden being re-elected and serving another four years as president" or Option 2: "Donald Trump being elected again and serving another four years as president." OK, inhale. Fifty-eight percent had major or moderate concerns about Trump, but once again, Biden had him beat with 60 percent registering concerns.

Good God, what is wrong with people? Donald Trump attempted a coup, endangered national security, exacerbated internal divisions, mishandled a health emergency causing thousands of needless deaths, dined with Nazis, and is running on "terminating the Constitution." So, sure, kind of a toss-up between that and a normal president who has some policies we don't like but who follows the law (with one exception that is being challenged in the courts) and appoints responsible adults to important posts.

Another poll from Morning Consult showed, for the first time since tracking began in December 2022, that in a head-to-head contest between Trump and Biden, Trump would win by three points.

So, aside from vodka or hemlock, what is the secret to assimilating this information?

One thing I keep in mind is that polls this far ahead don't mean much. In June 2015, Jeb Bush had 19 percent to Trump's 12. In June of 2007, Clinton led Obama 33 percent to 21 percent. Lesson: Voters are not that focused on presidential races this far out.

Another thing to bear in mind is that nominating contests are not conducted on a nationwide basis, as these polls are. They are state-by-state contests wherein the results from one contest influence the outcomes of later races. Momentum is real. Bandwagon effects are strong. If Trump wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, the race for the nomination will probably be over. But if someone else wins one or both, or one non-Trump candidate wins Iowa and another takes New Hampshire, then it's a jump ball.

Though Trump remains strong among Republican primary voters, there are definite cracks. The same NBC poll reports that 29 percent of Republican registered voters say the GOP needs a new leader "with better personal behavior and a new approach," and an additional 21 percent say "Donald Trump was a good president but it's time to consider other leaders." The party is thus divided roughly 50/50 on whether he ought to be the nominee. Of course, with the winner-take-most system the GOP employs, Trump could have more than enough support to ensure his nomination.

Which brings us to the question of the indictments. Polls reflect what voters hear and most GOP voters have heard whataboutism. But this time, there are voices from within the GOP information bubble who are telling the truth. Chris Christie is firing daily broadsides. Asa Hutchinson and Will Hurd, too. And even on Fox News, viewers have been exposed to former Trump stalwarts Bill Barr, Trey Gowdy, Karl Rove, and Jonathan Turley saying the indictment is strong and Trump's behavior is inexcusable. Elected Republicans like Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) and even Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) have said they won't support a convicted felon for president. I know, I know, it's such a low bar, but considering where we've been, it marks a significant change.

And even if Trump is nominated, a critical portion of Republican voters will either stay home or vote for the Democrat. We've seen this pattern in recent races. In 2022, Republican voters in key races gave less support to MAGA candidates than to traditional Republicans. In Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Georgia and Arizona, Republicans split their votes, denying victories to Doug Mastriano, Don Bolduc, Herschel Walker, and Kari Lake. In each of those crucial swing states, if Republican voters had delivered the percentage of votes to those candidates that they did to other Republicans on the ballot, the election-denying MAGA candidates would have won.

It's going to be a stressful 18 months, but there are good reasons not to despair for the future of the country over today's polls.

Mona Charen is Policy Editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Donald Trump

Republicans Who Know That The Trump Indictment Is Devastating

What will Republican voters make of Trump's federal indictment? There have already been polls, but they are too early to mean much. Voters' reactions will be influenced by Republican leaders and media personalities. For the past eight years, "influencers" have rallied around Trump. The base has accordingly dismissed every allegation as politically motivated and the politicians, in turn, have pointed to the opinions of "the people" as justification for sticking with Trump themselves. Rinse and repeat. That minuet continued after the indictment was announced, but this time there were some interesting dissenters.

Yes, the usual lemmings, Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik and more, leapt from their chairs to offer bad-faith excuses for Trump. McCarthy found himself defending the placement of highly classified documents in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom because "bathroom doors have a lock." Most of the talking heads on Fox and other right-wing outlets decried the "weaponization" of the justice system and many, including some members of Congress, went even further and urged violent resistance.

But there were some Republicans — even some stalwart Trump defenders — who swallowed hard this time and told the truth. Even on Fox News Sunday.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, appearing on Fox, was unsparing. "I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly. ... And I think (the search) was a right thing to do, and ... the counts under Espionage Act that he willfully retained those documents are solid counts."

"Solid counts," not a "boxes hoax," as Trump calls it. Barr continued, "I do think that ... if even half of it is true, then he's toast. I mean, it's a pretty — it's a very detailed indictment, and it's very, very damming."

Law professor Jonathan Turley has been a reliable Trump shill for some time, and even as recently as the night the indictment was announced, he was predicting confidently that "Trump could run on pardoning himself." But on Friday, after reading the indictment, Turley was sounding chastened. Allowing that "we haven't heard from the other side," Turley acknowledged that "It is an extremely damning indictment ... Some of the evidence is coming from his former counsel." Referring to the photos of boxes stacked in various locations, he said, "It's really breathtaking. Obviously, this is mishandling. Putting classified documents into ballrooms and bathrooms ... borders on the bizarre." And he cautioned the Trump attorneys (yet to be named), "The Trump team should not fool itself. These are hits below the water line ... It's overwhelming in its details."

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy wasn't pulling any punches either. Asked by Fox's Shannon Bream whether some of the evidence in the indictment might never be seen by a jury, Gowdy said, "Well, the most damning piece of evidence to me is the audiotape. I mean, you want to talk about consciousness of guilt?"

Alan Dershowitz has embarrassed himself by his past Trump advocacy, including during an impeachment trial, and yet he, too, was awed by the strength of the indictment, which he said was "stronger than many people anticipated."

The "most important" and "most difficult for Trump" he argued, were the audiotapes. "It may not be a smoking gun, but it's a gun, and it's a very important piece of evidence, and it's enough to convict ... (Trump) of knowingly possessing unauthorized classified material ... Donald Trump has a lot to worry about."

National Review would not, it's safe to say, be mistaken for an anti-Trump publication. They fall more into the anti-anti-Trump camp much of the time. But in the wake of this indictment, they've run a number of scorching essays. Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, had no patience for the Trump as victim narrative:

"These are not the people who want to take him out. This is not Joe Biden, Liz Cheney, congressional Democrats, or the 'fake news' media. ... No, the evidence comes from Trump's lawyers. The people who were trying to minimize his criminal exposure and push back against his destructive tendencies. The people who were trying to help him. ... If you tell me I need to look the other way on that because Hillary Clinton got a pass, I respectfully suggest that you've lost your way."

Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center was not a Trump apologist, but he's an influential conservative legal analyst, and he was at pains to debunk the argument some were floating that the Presidential Records Act somehow permitted Trump to do what he did. He tweeted, "I marvel at various leaps people (including, I'm sorry to see, people I like) are making in claiming this case means that (the) Presidential Records Act gives Trump protection against criminal prosecution for allegedly retaining (and lying about retaining) classified materials."

Finally, three of Trump's rivals for the Republican presidential nomination declined to bend the knee this time. Asa Hutchinson called on Trump to withdraw from the race and scorned Vivek Ramaswamy for promising to pardon Trump. Chris Christie declared that the facts in the indictment are "devastating." And Nikki Haley suggested that "Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security."

Would it have been better for the entire GOP to have taken an off-ramp many years ago? Without doubt. But that cannot blind us to the fact that right now, some former Trump allies are telling the truth, and that may just influence a few Republicans who've rarely heard this kind of thing from their own side before.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Tim Scott

The Racial Cynicism Driving Tim Scott's Presidential Campaign

Watching Tim Scott's announcement speech, I was struck by how differently I would have responded to his message 10 years ago. In 2013 I wrote: "It's to their credit that Republicans are obsessed with getting the government to address its unconscionable and unmanageable debt, freeing up the productive private sector to create economic growth and maintaining the nation's military preeminence."

Ten years on, I'm sadder and (hopefully) wiser. As the intervening years have shown, the GOP has abandoned good faith altogether. Kevin McCarthy and his band of nihilists wouldn't recognize good faith if it hit them on the fanny. The Republicans who are beating their chests for "fiscal discipline" were obedient lapdogs when Trump increased deficits by 50% — and that was before COVID. In total, they grinned along to an additional $7.8 trillion in national indebtedness. Did I mention that they quietly raised the debt ceiling three times during Trump's term?

Sen. Tim Scott was along for the ride on all of this, so when he objected on Monday in his presidential campaign announcement that we have "spent decades getting deeper and deeper into debt to the Chinese Communist Party," it rings a little hollow.

It's not that there is nothing to like or admire about Scott. He did rise from poverty. His grandfather picked cotton. When he says, "My family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime," he has every right to be proud. And while he wasn't exactly a profile in courage in calling Trump out, he wasn't a total sniveling coward either. After the Charlottesville "fine people on both sides" disaster, he said: "What we want to see from our president is clarity and moral authority. And that moral authority is compromised. ... There's no question about that."

When asked about raging inequality, Scott talks about education, praising the work of entrepreneurs like Eva Moskowitz, whose Success Academy schools have made such a dramatic difference in the lives of poor kids. "The quality of your education shouldn't depend upon the accident of your ZIP code," he declares. Even after years of bitter disillusionment with conservatives and (especially) Republicans, I still believe that our schools are a disgrace and reforming education is the best route to reducing poverty and hopelessness. Maybe I wouldn't use the expression "less CRT and more ABCs," but OK, it's politics. Let that pass. One cheer on policy.

I would also offer one cheer on message. During his announcement speech, Scott insisted that "We must show compassion for those who disagree with us," arguably not the most congenial sentiment for the perpetually roiled GOP base that has moved from laughing at cruelty to cheering on brutality.

Scott's boosters hope that his message of patriotic optimism (he even used Reagan's "city on a hill" cliche) will be an implicit rebuke to the dark turn the party has taken with Trump, to which one can only say, lots of luck. A party that makes Kyle Rittenhouse a pin up, dangles pardons for convicted murderers of Black Lives Matter protesters, and describes the January 6 rioters as citizens engaging in "legitimate political discourse" doesn't seem to be pining for a return to sunny optimism.

Does Scott have one unique advantage here? Sure. Republicans do love Black conservatives. I used to think Republicans lavished so much love on Black candidates and others (like Condoleezza Rice) because they were keen to prove that they harbored no racism in their souls. But since 2015, it looks different. The mask has slipped so often: Trump's Charlottesville outrage. The "s—-hole countries." The smearing of immigrants. A senator said Democrats favor reparations for "the people who do the crime." Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson mainstreamed the "great replacement" theory.

So Scott's pitch that his life is proof of America's virtue and lack of racism seems discordant. It seems less an affirmation of patriotism than a cynical play for Republican votes: "I'm the candidate the left fears the most." Translation: I'm the Black candidate who affirms your racial innocence. "We can choose victimhood or victory," Scott intones. "Grievance or greatness." Sure, there are people on the left who wallow in grievance, but what fair-minded person can fail to notice the victimhood and grievance that billows from every GOP outlet? "I will be the president," Scott promises, "who destroys the liberal lie that America is an evil country." Seriously? It's more like he will be the candidate who erects the biggest straw man to attack.

Is this unjust to Scott? Perhaps, though someone once said, "No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up." Here is Scott, the breath of fresh air, the neo-Reaganite, on the events of January 6: "The one person I don't blame is President Trump." And here is his 2022 response to Maria Bartiromo on whether he'd be open to the VP spot with Trump: "I think everybody wants to be on President Trump's bandwagon, without any question."

If you're keen to prove that America is not an evil country, maybe start by ruling out running with or even voting for a truly evil figure.

Mona Charen is Policy Editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.