Jonah Goldberg begins with Tucker Carlson, who apparently posted …

Tucker Carlson Calls Out The Mainstream Media For Smearing And Celebrating The Capture Of The Whistleblower Who Exposed The Lies About The War In Ukraine

“So this 21 year old Air National Guardsman from Massachusetts is not a whistleblower, CNN explains with the help of the… pic.twitter.com/kU3OHXJ6cd

Contra Tucker, U.S. troops are not fighting in Ukraine—at least according to reporting by the same network from which Carlson draws a paycheck. The handful of special forces personnel there are providing security and the like for diplomatic personnel. Imagine how outraged Tucker would be if diplomats were killed because the Biden “regime” refused to protect our people. And again, on [Jack] Teixeira’s own terms, he was not a “whistleblower” by any normal definition. And just so you grasp the cynical hypocrisy of it, when Reality Winner was exposed, Tucker was appalled.

Tucker Carlson on Reality Winner: “that’s a felony by the way.” https://t.co/YS1Al45PBt pic.twitter.com/rHlBHVwMwp

Apr 14, 2023

Jim LaPorta @JimLaPorta

And then there’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, now a top lieutenant to Kevin McCarthy:

Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar.

That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.

And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more.

Ask yourself who is the real enemy?

A young low level national guardsmen?

Or the…

Apr 13, 2023

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene @RepMTG

Someone needs to point out that not only is America not “waging a war in Ukraine, a non-NATO nation,” but we are supporting a country that is waging a defensive war against a country that NATO was created to deter. Oh, and by the way, America has never waged a war in a NATO country. But we have supported countries waging war against “nuclear Russia” or “nuclear Russia”-backed forces, among them in Korea, Vietnam, Israel, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan.

Facts come from books, not bongs.

I’d rather not dwell on Greene’s polished vapidity. If Twitter is a sewer, she’s an Americanized Cheuksin, the Korean toilet goddess.

It’s ironic that one of the defenses of Teixeira’s chatroom is that it had members from Russia and Ukraine. Indeed, the “room” where Teixeira, under the nom-de-cyber “OG,” posted the documents was called “Bear-vs-Pig.” In the words of the Post, this was a “snide jab at Russia and Ukraine, and an indication that OG took no sides in the conflict.” I’m not entirely sure I buy this given that “Bear” is not exactly a pejorative term for Russia, while “Pig” certainly is for Ukraine, but whatever. The larger takeaway is that these denizens of “Thug Shaker Central”—the super cool name for Teixeira’s little fiefdom—were essentially transnational residents of a realm with precious little fidelity to their own countries.

Or maybe not. But that’s sort of how I see Greene and her ilk. She says the “real enemy” isn’t Russia but the U.S. government. Calling it the “Biden regime” is some tedious marketing of a fundamentally anti-American brain burp of an idea. I’ve given up trying to explain, first to the left (“the Bush regime!” “Regime change starts at home!”) and more recently to the right, that a presidential administration isn’t a “regime.” The U.S. Constitution and our system of government is the regime. I don’t expect Greene to understand such distinctions—or care.

But what Greene is saying is that our real “enemy”—in the context of an actual shooting war—is the Biden administration and anyone who supports it. This “white, male Christian” isn’t a criminal, he’s a victim of the regime.From Steve Bannon to various MAGA remora, there’s a whole cottage industry of tough losers telling us that Vladimir Putin is a manly man standing up for Western values and that “our” real enemies are fellow Americans. One can dismiss these emanations from the “civil war is coming” crowd for only so long before it’s no longer tenable to give them the benefit of the doubt as mere grifters and poltroons. Vladimir Putin despises the West and America. He sees the people saying this stuff as modern day useful idiots.

And the idiots demonstrate their usefulness daily, choosing to argue fellow Americans are literally enemies while calling literal enemies misunderstood friends.In the decade since Mitt Romney said Russia was our No. 1 geopolitical foe, China has arguably eclipsed Russia as a threat. But it hasn’t stopped being a foe. Its enmity has only increased. What has changed is the way many Republicans—who backed Romney to the hilt at the time—think about Russia.

Last month, Donald Trump gave a little “address” in which he said the greatest threat to Western Civilization was America—specifically the woke left, etc.Steven Miller tried to goad me on Twitter to explain what was wrong about Trump’s blame-America-first tirade. I declined to join a food fight on Twitter, but I explained at length here why I thought the whole thing was more trollish than serious.

But, as I wrote (at book length), I do think America’s biggest dangers do come from home. I could reprise all that, but I think Lincoln was pithier:

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.

Of course, he didn’t have ICBMs and hypersonic missiles to consider. But I think the basic point still stands.

Look, I dislike much, perhaps most, of what these anti-American demagogues hate when it comes to things like the 1619 Project, anti-racism, “wokeness,” etc. But I don’t hate the believers of this, at least not as some abstract group; I just think of them as nothing more than fellow Americans with wrong ideas. Thinking that the “regime” is the “real enemy” is an invitation to disaster, particularly when the people saying it take no care in explaining they aren’t being literal.

If Greene, Miller, and company were serious about the real threat being domestic, they should be horrified and outraged by what Teixeira has done. Why? Because he didn’t do it for America. He did it for fun, for a desperately needed boost of self-esteem. But because he fits a moronic right-wing identity politics check list for who counts as the “real” victims of this “regime,” he’s not a villain. He’s a hero.

Not all men without chests are “Pajama Boys.” Some of them work in the IT department of the Air National Guard.

 

It’s not very “America First” to buddy up to a dictator who wants to reassemble the Soviet Union (minus the communist parts), which, you’ll recall, was the enemy of the U.S. from the end of World War II until its end.

National Review:

Diana Glebova:

Jim Geraghty:

We all knew that President Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia was going to be, at best, a deeply frustrating and humiliating exercise in kissing the ring — or in Biden’s case, bumping the fist. Biden left Riyadh with no deal on oil production beyond some vague pledges, sending the world’s oil prices rising again. Members of the Washington Post editorial board were always going to hate this trip, but when it was over, their anger over their slain colleague, Jamal Khashoggi, enabled them to declare that the emperor had no clothes, and that Biden had been taken to the cleaners:

For the most part, though, Mr. Biden gave more than he got. He made no wider critique of Saudi Arabia’s repressive policies in public; there were no releases of political prisoners or clemency for other regime opponents — including dual U.S. citizens — who have been denied freedom to travel. Instead, Mr. Biden touted an already existing truce in Yemen and modest steps toward better relations with Israel. He seemed to invite deeper U.S.-Saudi ties by announcing a new project to test U.S. 5G technology in the kingdom.

And when it was all over, MBS had made no public commitment to pump more oil. The Saudis are being counted on to influence an OPEC cartel meeting next month to get a few hundred thousand more barrels onto the market, likely with only modest impact on U.S. gas prices. . . .

This was a low moment for Mr. Biden, and one that he won’t soon live down.

Adding to the humiliation, the Saudis publicly contended that behind closed doors, Biden had not confronted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the murder of Khashoggi. We’ll just have to take Biden’s word that he was an in-your-face tough guy when no one was watching.

Unsurprisingly, Biden was in an irritable mood when he returned to the White House:

Q: Is the Saudi foreign minister lying, President Biden? The Saudi foreign minister says he didn’t hear you accuse the Crown Prince of Khashoggi’s murder. Is he telling the truth?

THE PRESIDENT: No.

Q: Do you regret the fist bump, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: Why don’t you guys talk about something that matters?  I’m happy to answer a question that matters.

Q: Will inflation go down from here, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: I’m hoping. We’ll know in the next few weeks.

While Biden was returning from his overseas trip, First Lady Jill Biden was speaking to Democratic donors, shifting to full excuse-making mode:

“[The President] had so many hopes and plans for things he wanted to do, but every time you turned around, he had to address the problems of the moment,” Biden told a crowd at a private Democratic National Committee fundraiser, according to CNN.

“He’s just had so many things thrown his way,” she said. “Who would have ever thought about what happened [with the Supreme Court overturning] Roe v. Wade? Well, maybe we saw it coming, but still we didn’t believe it. The gun violence in this country is absolutely appalling. We didn’t see the war in Ukraine coming.”

Pause briefly and contemplate what Jill Biden — excuse me, Dr. Jill Biden — contends was unforeseeable:

• A concerted, longtime effort by conservative legal scholars and Republican lawmakers to overturn Roe v. Wade.
• A continued pattern of angry, disturbed young men obtaining firearms and committing mass shootings.
• Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Eastern Europe.

Not only were all of those factors in American or global life foreseeable, all of them were problems that candidate Biden pledged he could resolve.

• On October 5, 2019, Biden pledged that, “Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, and we must fight any and all attempts to overturn it. As president, I will codify Roe into law and ensure this choice remains between a woman and her doctor.”
• As a candidate, Biden pledged to enact a national gun-buyback program, an assault-weapons ban, universal background checks, a push for the development of “smart guns,” and red-flag laws. His campaign platform declared that, “It’s within our grasp to end our gun violence epidemic and respect the Second Amendment, which is limited.” Much of that agenda remains unfulfilled.
• Also in October 2019, Biden pledged, “Putin knows, if I am President of the United States, his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over.”

Jill Biden’s insistence that all of these problems were unforeseeable is reminiscent of Biden’s snapping that he and his team would have had to be “mind-readers” to notice the baby-formula shortage before May, even though the story was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in January.

You can be a steadfast, right-of-center critic of Joe Biden and simultaneously cringe at the sight of the president of the United States getting sand kicked in his face by a murderous Saudi prince, and the president’s wife insisting that long-simmering national and international problems sprung up out of nowhere. It’s embarrassing for us as Americans to watch our president going hat in hand to a regime he previously pledged to make a “pariah,” see him give MBS a giant geopolitical public-relations win in exchange for vague promises, and then watch the Saudis call our president a liar after the visit ends. We’re not respected. No one fears crossing Joe Biden. It’s a dangerous world, and a lot of other countries think that we’re led by a geriatric pushover.

The Resolute desk appears ill-named during these years.

Besides the problems of the president’s age and longstanding flaws, the solutions to most of these problems don’t align well with the progressive agenda.

If you want gas prices to come down and to be less dependent upon Saudi goodwill, you need to increase supply through more domestic production and domestic refinery capacity. Someday, electric vehicles will reduce the demand for refined gasoline, but electric vehicles are just four percent of new cars sold in the U.S. right now. Biden loves to talk about infrastructure projects, but he rarely mentions that in the construction sector, 98 percent of all energy use comes from diesel. America can’t have the things Biden wants without cheap, or at least reasonably priced, diesel and unleaded gasoline. Everything else is just pushing a rope.

With nearly 400 million guns in Americans’ hands, it will rarely be difficult for disturbed, angry young men to obtain a firearm; stopping the bloody trend requires effective mental-health treatment for all those disturbed, angry young men. (It would also help if parents could be clear-eyed about their sons’ glaringly obvious mental-health problems and not sponsor their sons’ applications for gun-owner licenses, as in the case of the Highland Park shooter.) Red-flag laws can help, but as my friend Cam observes, in almost all cases, there’s no follow-up mental-health assessment or treatment after the seizure of the firearms. The state removes the firearms from the person who may have intent to harm themselves or others, and then wipes its hands and concludes its work is done. But the suicidal or murderous intent is still there, unaddressed and untreated.

If you want to beat Vladimir Putin, arms transfers to Ukraine help, but they’re unlikely to be enough by themselves, particularly when it’s clear that Russia wants to use energy exports as leverage against our NATO allies in Europe. As our Andrew Stuttaford warns, “If the war in Ukraine is still dragging on into the winter months — as seems reasonably likely — it would make sense for Putin to use a brutal energy squeeze to spur the EU to force Ukraine to cut some grubby deal with Moscow.”

To avoid that, the U.S. (and Canada) would have to move to replace Russia’s role as energy supplier of Europe. That would require exporting more natural gas and fossil fuels, which would antagonize Biden’s environmentalist allies.

Over in the magazine, Dan McLaughlin has an excellent piece about how the seemingly quiet mid-Obama years, and the 2012 presidential election in particular, represented a turning point in our political life. You should read the whole thing, but one of the key points is that, “In short, where prior campaigns won the center, Obama appeared to move the center in his direction by using superior base turnout as a substitute for swing voters. Before 2012, this was the progressive dream; after 2012, it became Democratic dogma.”

A lot of campaigns since then have concluded that, “We may be losing those mushy independents and milquetoast center voters, but we’ll make up for it by driving up turnout in our base.” Right now, the Democrats think they can mitigate the expected Republican wave in the midterms by pleasing their progressive base as much as possible: relentless messaging on abortion, gun control, the January 6 committee’s findings, perhaps forgiving large portions of student-loan debt, and likely a futile push for some version of Build Back Better.

Biden is trying to run the Obama playbook in dramatically different circumstances. It’s not likely to work.

The thing is, those allegedly mushy independents and milquetoast center voters usually have some common sense, and they know what they want: They want the government to just do its job and make life manageable. That means getting inflation under control, particularly gas prices and food prices. They’d like to see their 401(k) and retirement savings growing instead of shrinking. They want to see more cops on the streets and less crime, a secure border, and good public schools that prepare their kids for college and the working world.

Oh, and as of this writing, President Biden has no public events on his schedule.

On Friday James Freeman wrote:

Some issues are just too important to be left to an unscripted Joe Biden. This is not CNN and your humble correspondent is not a doctor so this column will not be offering a long-distance diagnosis of the president’s mental health or an assessment of how his cognition compares to that of other world leaders. But these are dangerous times and we would all be much safer if Mr. Biden would make greater use of prepared statements on subjects such as, for example, weapons of mass destruction.

Two months after a bumbling press conference in which Mr. Biden implied that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine might be tolerable to the U.S. and its allies, the President flew to Europe this week and somehow ended up taking questions from reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Yes, it’s important for all of us to be able to hear from our elected officials and to assess the content of their remarks as well as the skill and conviction with which they advocate for their policies. But this particular elected official does not appear to be up to the task. While we consider the implications, Mr. Biden should try to say as little as possible in public during an international crisis.

This presents a unique challenge since he happens to be the sitting president of the United States. But there is no constitutional requirement for the president to make off-the-cuff remarks, or to deliver speeches of any kind. If necessary he can email messages to Congress rather than speaking to legislators.

Before this week’s trip to Europe and the latest presidential adventure in media relations, Mr. Biden’s policy response to the Russian invasion had been fairly clear: aid the Ukrainians, sanction the Russians, and seek to avoid scenarios in which NATO forces could be drawn into the conflict. Then came the Thursday press conference. Here’s an excerpt from the White House transcript:

Q Hi. Thank you, Mr. President. So you’ve warned about the real threat of chemical weapons being used. Have you gathered specific intelligence that suggests that President Putin is deploying these weapons, moving them to position, or considering their use?
And would the U.S. or NATO respond with military action if he did use chemical weapons?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, on the first question, I can’t answer that. I’m not going to give you intelligence data, number one.

Number two, we would respond. We would respond if he uses it. The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use.So whether America enters a war is ultimately up to Vladimir Putin and which weapons he chooses to use and in which circumstances? The subject came up again a few minutes later:

Q … And to clarify, on chemical weapons: Could — if chemical weapons were used in Ukraine, would that trigger a military response from NATO?

THE PRESIDENT: It would re- — it would trigger a response in kind, whether or not — you’re asking whether NATO would cross; we’d make that decision at the time.

A response in kind? A common definition of the phrase could lead one to think Mr. Biden was contemplating a scenario in which he too went beyond the pale. Appearing this weekend on the Fox Business Network’s “WSJ at Large” program, columnist Tammy Bruce helpfully notes: “Using chemical weapons is against international law. It is certainly a moral abomination.” She adds that the president has been a politician for half a century. This is not a mistake resulting from lack of experience in foreign affairs. It’s something worse.

Thank goodness the White House was ready with a communications cleanup effort. Aboard Air Force One on Friday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan responded to a press inquiry:

Q Jake, President Biden, at the press conference yesterday, said that if Russia uses chemical weapons in Ukraine, the United States and NATO will respond in kind, which would seem to imply using chemical weapons back. Is that what he meant by “in kind”? Or what was he trying to say there?
[MR. SULLIVAN]: No. No. And you heard him in another answer say we’ll respond accordingly — meaning, you know, we will select the form and nature of our response based on the nature of the action Russia takes, and we’ll do so in coordination with our Allies. And we’ve communicated to the Russians, as the President said publicly a couple of weeks ago, that there will be a severe price if Russia uses chemical weapons.
And I won’t go beyond that other than to say the United States has no intention of using chemical weapons, period, under any circumstances.A good number of us will cling to the belief that the president was confused and didn’t understand what he was saying, which is all the more reason for him to avoid deviating from a prepared text in this perilous time.

Of course presidential silence is not a long-term strategy but right now the world doesn’t need more Biden misstatements on issues as consequential as weapons of mass destruction.

That was before Biden either reinserted his foot in his mouth or, to use the definition of “gaffe” by Washington journalist Michael Kinsley, revealed something Biden didn’t intend to admit. Freeman again:

On Friday this column advised President Joe Biden to avoid public speaking. Then over the weekend Mr. Biden made another ill-considered remark with potentially grave consequences. After he and his staff walked back the remarks, now he seems to be affirming the walk-back while also defending the original comment.

If the president still doesn’t wish to accept this column’s advice, perhaps he’d like to ask someone to sit in the front row at his public events to discourage him from making inappropriate remarks. Who might be best for this role?

Did Donald Trump ever say something that could have escalated a war?

National Review:

President Biden said Russian president Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” in a speech on the invasion of Ukraine on Saturday.

“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. For free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness,” Biden said at the end of a speech at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland. They “have a different future, a brighter future, rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light, of decency and dignity and freedom and possibilities.”

Then Biden added, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

A White House official issued a comment minutes later saying that Biden was not calling for regime change.

“The President’s point was Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” the official said.

Matt Taibbi:

The White House issued a statement Friday, after Joe Biden chatted with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:

The two leaders agreed that the actions of the individuals who are obstructing travel and commerce between our two countries are having significant direct impacts on citizens’ lives and livelihoods… The Prime Minister promised quick action in enforcing the law, and the President thanked him for the steps he and other Canadian authorities are taking to restore the open passage of bridges to the United States.

Translation: Biden told Trudeau his testicles will be crushed under a Bradley Fighting Vehicle if this trucker thing is allowed to screw up the Super Bowl, or Biden’s State of the Union address. Trudeau’s own statement that day came off like the recorded video message of a downed pilot:

I’ve been absolutely clear that using military forces against civilian populations, in Canada, or in any other democracy, is something to avoid having to do at all costs.

An anxious Trudeau promised to deploy law enforcement in a “predictable, progressive approach” that would emphasize fines and other punishments. Because demonstrators will see that the “consequences” for those continuing to engage in “illegal protests” are “going to be more and more extensive,” he said, “we are very hopeful” that “people will choose to leave these protests peacefully.”

Switching gears just a bit, he then added, “We are a long way from ever having to call in the military.”

Such a move, he said, would only be a “last resort.”

And, er: “We have to be ready for any eventuality”:

Trudeau’s speech was clearly designed to convey to protesters that he was under heavy pressure to call in the air strike, making the New York Times headline covering all this — “Trudeau Rejects Calls to Use Military to End Protests” — particularly humorous in its disingenuousness.

Now that the “Freedom Convoy” is inspiring similar protests not just in the United States but in France, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, and other places, it’s clear every Western leader from Biden to Emmanuel Macron on down wants Trudeau, rather than any of them, to take the political hit that would ensue from any use-of-force resolution to this crisis. All of these leaders seem equally to be laboring under the delusion that a decisive enough ass-kicking in the Great White North will make this all go away. Until then, there seems to be no plan in any country that doesn’t involve tear gas, truncheons, or getting Facebook to blame troll farms in Bangladesh for stirring up the “discord” …

As for talking to protesters, that’s out of the question. As Politico recently put it, the “conspiratorial mindset” of the demonstrators means “sitting down with them could legitimize their concerns.” Since we can’t under any circumstances have that, the only option left is the military “eventuality.” Or, as former Obama Deputy Homeland Security Secretary and CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem (the same person who went nanny-bonkers over the Southwest Air “Let’s Go Brandon” incident) put it, “Slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks.”

Any sane person should be able to see where any of these ideas would lead. The problem is, we’re heading into our third decade of Western leaders embracing not thinking ahead as a core national security concept. It’s like these people went to anti-governing school.

Amanda Prestigiacomo:

Canadian protesters defied a court deadline, remaining at the Ambassador Bridge Friday night and into Saturday morning in protest of COVID vaccination mandates within the nation.

“Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates remained at the Ambassador Bridge connecting Detroit to Windsor, Ottawa, Canada, early Saturday after both a 7 p.m. court and midnight deadline from Ottawa police where a state of emergency was declared,” Fox News reported. “The ‘Freedom Convoy’ has remained at the bridge for five days, causing shortages of auto parts that have forced General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Honda to close plants or cancel shifts.”

“Do you think I care? Do you think I care about a fine?” one remaining protester reportedly said. “I’m going to pay a fine? No. You think I care about their mandates? No. This needs to end.”

Authorities moved into the area to break up the blockade early Saturday morning, reports said.

“Dozens of police moved in” “to clear the demonstration,” according to Fox News. “Police, wearing yellow safety vests, moved into place around 8:45 a.m. local time, according to CBC News, directing protesters to clear the bridge. CBC reporters also noted that police brought several armored vehicles and that law enforcement had formed a blockade.”

“The Windsor Police & its policing partners have commenced enforcement at and near the Ambassador Bridge,” the department said via social media. “We urge all demonstrators to act lawfully & peacefully. Commuters are still being asked to avoid the areas affected by the demonstrations at this time.” …

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that he will do “whatever it takes” to crack down on protesters blocking passages along the U.S.-Canada border, The Daily Wire reported.

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened the Incident Response Group on the ongoing illegal blockades taking place across the country that are threatening trade, jobs, the economy, and our communities,” a statement from the PM’s office said. “He was joined by ministers and senior officials who are actively engaged and working closely with provincial and municipal governments, and who are assessing the requirements and deploying all federal resources necessary to help them get the situation under control.”

“The group committed to continue providing federal resources to support enforcement efforts in Ottawa where the occupation has significantly disrupted local residents’ lives, impacting businesses and families with harassment, threats of violence, and vandalism,” Trudeau’s office continued. “They reiterated that the federal government has and will continue to respond to all requests for appropriate support and resources.”

“The Prime Minister and ministers will continue to work closely with all orders of government and local authorities to respond with whatever it takes to help provinces and municipalities end the blockades and bring the situation under control,” the statement closed. “The government’s top priority remains keeping people and communities safe, and defending jobs, trade, and our economy.”

About Trudeau, the Daily Wire reports:

HBO host Bill Maher tore into Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday over remarks that Trudeau has made in recent days about trucker protests that have been taking place in his country.

Maher’s criticism of Trudeau comes after Trudeau has called the truckers that are protesting a “fringe minority” that holds “unacceptable views.” …

“Justin Trudeau, I mean I thought he was kind of a cool guy, then I started to read what he said,” Maher said. “This is a couple of weeks ago, he was, or maybe this is September, but he was talking about people who are not vaccinated. He said they don’t believe in science. They’re often misogynistic, often racist.”

“No, they’re not,” Maher said, “he said, but they take up space. And with that, we have to make a choice in terms of the leader as a country, do we tolerate these people?”

“It’s like, tolerate them?” Maher added. “Now you do sound like Hitler. And recently, he talked about them holding unacceptable views.”

James Freeman:

Pundits have widely interpreted former President George W. Bush’s Saturday remarks to be a condemnation of participants in last January’s Capitol Riot. But recent news brings other possibilities. Last weekend Mr. Bush said at a 9/11 memorial service for the heroes of Flight 93:

And we have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them.

Monday’s column noted that Byron York is among those interpreting the remarks as an endorsement of the idea “that an equivalence exists between the plane-hijacking, murderous terrorists of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Capitol rioters of Jan. 6, 2021 — a comparison that has no basis in fact but has done much to sour the national debate.”

Reader Paul Goldbeck responds:

It struck me that those Bush noted as destroying things in his speech could have included Antifa and others as well as the Capitol rioters. What did I miss?

This column asked Bush spokesman Freddy Ford to whom President Bush was referring when he talked about “violent extremists at home” on Saturday. Mr. Ford responds via email:

He refers to anyone who would take up violence against fellow Americans to advance a belief — inclusive of, but not exclusive to, those who would attack synagogues, nightclubs, churches, people of color, national symbols, institutions, the government, etc.

Two days before Mr. Bush delivered his Saturday address, the Associated Press reported from Seattle:

A second defendant has been convicted of sabotaging railroad tracks near the U.S.-Canada border in Washington state just before a train carrying crude oil was due to pass through — apparently part of a campaign to protest construction of a pipeline across British Columbia.

Following a two-day trial and three hours of deliberation, a federal jury in Seattle on Thursday convicted Ellen Brennan Reiche, 28, of Bellingham, of violence against a railroad carrier. Her co-defendant, Samantha Frances Brooks, 24, pleaded guilty in July.

A press release from the U.S. Department of Justice states:

According to records in the case and testimony at trial, on the night of November 28, 2020, Reiche and co-defendant Samantha Frances Brooks, 24, were observed on video surveillance walking on the tracks near a crossing in Bellingham. Whatcom County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene. The defendants were detained for trespassing, and a shunt was found on the tracks near where the deputies had first encountered them. Reiche was carrying a paper bag containing wire, a drill with a brush head, a magnetic adhesive and gloves… The shunt that was placed on the tracks could have interfered with the railroad crossing guard at Cliffside Drive in Bellingham. A train carrying crude oil, among other cargo, was scheduled to come through that area soon after this incident.

In her closing argument, Assistant United States Attorney Sok Jiang told the jury, Reiche “disrupted the signal system designed to stop trains from crashing into each other or crashing into cars…. A car driving through the intersection (near the shunt) would not have warning that a train was coming.”

There are of course different types of domestic threats. Today the Washington Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker writes about his Post colleagues’ allegation that in the final months of the Trump administration, America’s senior military officer delivered a remarkable message to China:

In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa…

“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”

In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”

Strategists can debate whether assuring Gen. Li should ever be a U.S. strategic priority, but if this story is true it’s hard to see how Gen. Milley could have been effective. Promising to provide warning of an attack right after one has just promised that such an attack won’t occur isn’t a good way to assure anybody.

Not reassuring at all to Americans who treasure our Constitution and the role of the duly-elected President as commander-in-chief is the following passage in which The Post claims:

Milley also summoned senior officers to review the procedures for launching nuclear weapons, saying the president alone could give the order — but, crucially, that he, Milley, also had to be involved. Looking each in the eye, Milley asked the officers to affirm that they had understood, the authors write, in what he considered an “oath.”

Alexander Vindman, one of the country’s foremost experts in the field of undermining presidential authority, responds on Twitter to the Post claims about communications with China:

If this is true GEN Milley must resign. He usurped civilian authority, broke Chain of Command, and violated the sacrosanct principle of civilian control over the military. It’s an extremely dangerous precedent. You can’t simply walk away from that.

When you’ve lost Alexander Vindman …

Charles C.W. Cooke:

You can tell a Democrat is president, because we’re starting to see pieces blaming “us” for his mistakes. In The Atlantic a couple of weeks ago, Tom Nichols wrote that “Afghanistan Is Your Fault.” “American citizens,” Nichols suggested, “will separate into their usual camps and identify all of the obvious causes and culprits except for one: themselves.” Today, Max Boot makes the same argument in the Post. “Who’s to blame for the deaths of 13 service members in Kabul?” he asks. Answer: “We all are.”

This is of a piece with the tendency of journalists and historians to start muttering about how the presidency is “too big for one man” when the bad president in question is a Democrat. Under these terms, Republicans just aren’t up to the job, while Democrats are the victims of design or modernity or of the public being feckless. Last year, coronavirus was Trump’s fault. Now, it’s the fault of Republican governors and the unvaccinated (well, only some of the unvaccinated).

Still, this has happened pretty quickly with Joe Biden. Usually, it takes a couple of years before the press starts to sound like a bunch of hippies sitting around a fire saying, “you know, in a sense, you’re me and I’m you, and all of us are we — and so when the president makes a mistake, it’s really, like, the universe making a mistake, isn’t it? And, y’know, we’re in the universe, so we are the presidency. That’s democracy, man.”