The Carpentariat

Hilariously different worlds

In the National Review's "Stone Indictment Underscores That There Was No Trump-Russia Conspiracy," contributing editor Andrew McCarthy is simply aghast at Robert Muller's disingenuity.

The indictment is just the latest blatant demonstration that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, the Department of Justice, and the FBI have known for many months that there was no such conspiracy. And yet, fully aware that the Obama administration, the Justice Department, and the FBI had assiduously crafted a public narrative that Trump may have been in cahoots with the Russian regime, they have allowed that cloud of suspicion to hover over the presidency — over the Trump administration’s efforts to govern — heedless of the damage to the country.

The rationale for the Trump-Russia investigation … has been nothing more than a suspicion harbored by political, law-enforcement, and intelligence officials who loathed Donald Trump….

Not only was the suggestion of a Trump-Russia conspiracy not founded on fact. The officials calling the shots had reason to know that the premise was factually false.

McCarthy goes on at length about the Stone indictment, portraying a clueless gang — with Stone perhaps the most clueless — that couldn't shoot straight. But Mueller has never suggested that the Trump campaign's Russia collusion was smooth, slick or sophisticated. Stumblebums and poseurs are often at the center of political campaigns. Trump's was the finest example of that truism yet — and McCarthy's account merely re-confirms it. In concentrating on Stone's relationship — or non-relationship — with Wikileaks, McCarthy is able to overlook … well, see what follows.

In "Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration," the NY Times has tracked down "more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter," all made by "at least 17 campaign officials and advisers [who] had contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries." If any politico ever wanted to give the appearance of crimes, this was it.

The list of contacts and contacters includes, for instance, Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov and his son, Emin, both of whom helped set up the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting "with a Kremlin-linked attorney" who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. In that month as well Trump was still working on plans for a Trump Tower-Moscow, in league with that model of integrity, Michael Cohen, who himself partnered with the Russian-American mobster Felix Sater, who had "deep contacts in Russia." (Sater's longest entry in Wikipedia is the section titled "Criminal convictions and federal cooperation.") All perfectly innocent, I'm sure.

The list goes on, and on, from Don Jr. to Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos, among others — a nest of con men, grifters and incompetents, breathtaking in its conspiratorial sleaze.

All this, McCarthy ignores. But that's not the weakest of his argument. No, his weakest link is when he aggressively argues that All-American Boy Scout Bob Mueller has "known for many months that there was no such conspiracy," and would "[allow a] cloud of suspicion to hover over the presidency — over the Trump administration’s efforts to govern — heedless of the damage to the country." That's just not believable. 

The fractured right. Thanks, Donald.

Politico reports that a former White House official "said that Trump’s core supporters and former aides are 'furious' and 'melting down'" over his belated decision to do what always had to be done: Reopen the government. It's more complicated than that, though we'll have to wait for more polling to appreciate the statistics of complication. Until then, all we can do is survey trends among the right's opinion vendors. Having done so, all I can say for now is that it looks rather bleak for Donald Trump.

The Washington Post reports that the Daily Caller bothered not with subtlety, announcing in a headline, "TRUMP CAVES." The Gateway Pundit was just as identically blunt, but with emphasis: "TRUMP CAVES!" Another of its headlines proclaimed "Pelosi’s SECOND BIG WIN This Week." Steve Bannon's former digs, Breitbart, wrote that "The White House finally caved to Democrats demands, despite Trump’s repeated assertions this week that he would not do so." "Trump blinks," said the Washington Examiner.

Fox News hosts were, as always, mostly congenial about Trump's blunder. For instance after blaming Democrats and "weak-kneed Republicans" for the president's stupidity, Sean Hannity blared that the latter soon would have his national emergency, by God, and "Anyone out there thinking President Trump caved today, you don’t know the Donald Trump I know. He right now holds all the cards — he will secure the border one way or another." (That he could say that Trump "holds all the cards" provides a clue as to the truly surreal world of Sean Hannity.)

Still, Fox's Tucker Carlson asked during a panel session: "You know what erodes your popularity with the public?" Tucker knows: "Weakness." And Lou Dobbs, of Fox Business, said that Speaker Pelosi "has just whipped the president of the United States. It will be perceived as such on every television monitor and screen in the country and to deny it is to escape from reality." I guess Mr. Hannity wasn't listening.

The website Hot Air put it in question form. "Shutdown Fallout: Did Trump Cave?" Its answer was that Trump shouldn't be "[beaten up] for doing the sensible thing, however belatedly, before something terrible happened." The site went on to puzzle what I have often puzzled: Why didn't Trump simply declare a national emergency? Which is probably the next step, anyway. Strictly for humor, I suppose (?), Hot Air concluded: "Don’t worry. We’ll get the wall someday when Republicans have total control of government." Most of Hot Air's commenters were not amused. "Caved," wrote one. "Full blown cave," wrote another. "Epic capitulation," said a third. A fourth tried to see the upside: "It's a cave but it won't hurt him in November 2020."

Power Line also asked, "Did trump Cave?" Answer: "Certainly looks like it." Here, commenters were more dispersed in opinion. One conceded outright, "Yeah.... It’s a cave," while another joked that "Trump got his impenetrable wall. Unfortunately for him, it was named Pelosi." But there was plenty of this, too: "I would call it a strategic retreat. The globalists won this battle but it remains to be seen whether they'll win the war."

Ann Coulter's boiling opinion we already know. Erick Erickson, formerly of RedState, tweeted: "Donald Trump caved to Nancy Pelosi on shutdown, now the wall will never be built."

NeverTrump Republicans were ecstatic, of course. Such as Peter Wehner, who has worked for Reagan and both Bushes: "Pelosi rolled him in every way. Egged on by right wingers, the whole thing was buffoonish from start to finish," and "One of Trump's main attractions to his GOP base was their belief that he was 'strong,' 'tough' a 'fighter' who wouldn't back down. The showdown with Pelosi showed he was none of these things. Whether they voice it or not, this will damage Trump with the right."

I finish with Wehner because his conclusion is also mine. On the right, Trump is now damaged goods. That he not only caved but caved to a woman — a San Francisco liberal, no less — is a humiliation no "tough fighter" among right-wing goons would abide. Trump is not one of them, after all. He is, instead, as Ann Coulter said, a wimp … "Whether they voice it or not."

Trump's Rosy Garden address (updated)

Trump whisperer and presidential guide dog Sean Hannity wrote this morning that "if the stalemate continues — it is obvious, as Democrats refuse to come to the table — President Trump will take matters into his own hands. The president is clear — he will declare a national emergency and solve the problem himself."

Does Hannity possess some pre-knowledge of Trump's 1:30 p.m. address from the Rose Garden? Was declaring a national emergency part of their pillow talk last night? We'll know in minutes.

***

Update, post-Rose Garden extravaganza, which was anything but rosy:

Ann Coulter is going to be some kind of pissed. Trump caved — as he had to (in lieu of declaring an emergency), given Nancy Pelosi's superior strategy, strength, and determination. By agreeing to reopen government in exchange for mere "talks" — in other words, no imminent wall funding — his base will be as irate as Coulter.

And without his hardest-core supporters — the only Americans to whom Trump has ever reached out — what is he left with? Nothing, not a damn thing, in terms of a populist power structure beneath him.

Last November, Trump was crippled. Today, Speaker Pelosi finished him off — paradoxically, by his own, incompetent hand. Fascinating.

Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) January 25, 2019

The lure of "Game of Thorns" hackery

A great new book just out, “Game of Thorns,” by Doug Wead, Presidential Historian and best selling author. The book covers the campaign of 2016, and what could be more exciting than that?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2019

Mr. Wead may be a lot of things — Bill Press once called him "scum," and no less than Bill O'Reilly said he was "the lowest form of debris in the country" — but a qualified presidential historian he most decidedly is not. The son of an Assemblies of God preacher, Wead is a high school graduate of Canyonville Christian Academy and a nongraduate of Central Bible College of Scripture-thumping southwest Missouri. He holds honorary doctorates from Southwest Baptist and Oral Roberts "universities." If Wead acquired any knowledge but that Earth is 6,000 years old from any of these institutions of lower learning, well, that would be the miracle of accreditation. (To be clear, it's not that one cannot autodidactically become a consummate historian — Gore Vidal, for instance, although ultimately mad, was a keen observer of things past — but as for one who is so narrowly, biblically grounded? Come on.)

Another miracle would be that Trump has actually read the book. The man can't even abide the briefest of written briefings, let alone a 416-page monograph sandwiched between two hard covers.

One friendly, lay reviewer unwittingly writes that though Game of Thorns is a book presumably about the 2016 election, Wead focuses on the "scandals involving the Clintons including Tyson Foods, Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Vince Foster, Chinagate, Pardongate, and all the sexual assault charges plus Monica Lewinsky." Another reviewer similarly observes that "its power is its summary of the Clinton family history of corruption that has characterized their entire public life. It is shocking. It covers decades and lays bare the ruthlessness and greed of two power mad politicians who figured out early that politics is the pipeline to Fort Knox." Yet another writes that Game of Thorns — again, a volume purportedly about the 2016 election — "confirmed my suspicions" about the wicked "Clinton Machine," which is its singular purpose.

Nevertheless, my hat goes off to Mr. Wead, who had the good sense to grasp that writing ahistorical trash for Manichean rubes is an immensely profitable pastime. Hacks are almost always better off than trained professionals.

Tolerating the intolerable

"The Trump administration is the end result of [a] 40-year [conservative] con job" about the splendiferousness of the excessively wealthy, writes WaPo's Helaine Olen.

From President Reagan sitting agog at self-made millionaires — as though every American of average intelligence and substandard opportunity can acquire similar fortunes — to Trump's extemporaneous comforting of multimillionaire-buffoon Wilbur Ross, who has failed to "really quite understand why" unpaid government workers are seeking food-bank relief — something the excessively wealthy wouldn't abide, believes Wilbur, given their instructive culture of self-reliance — the American myth of the superior monied class has been preached by same for a sickening, devastating four decades.

The myth has now reached its apotheosis; unimaginable is that the cultish praise of the superrich could ever get more sickening. Which leads Ms. Olen to further write: We are all but out of words to describe the offensiveness of the Trump administration.

Such is the burden of political commentary these days — from the Times editorial page to the humble Carpentariat: Describing the Trump administration's ineffable offensiveness is an endless sine qua non of political writing, even though fresh variations on the theme are increasingly grueling to pull off. Although each day of Trumpism brings a new horror, each day is also but a horrifying continuation of the day, the week, the wretched year before.

Is it newsworthy — that is, commentary-worthy — that presidential daughter-in-law Lara Trump has asked federal employees to financially "sacrifice" for "a mythical wall designed to combat a mythical problem"? asks Olen. Not really, she answers. "In fact, the Trump administration has asked many Americans for financial sacrifices time and time again." Medicaid work requirements, for example — albeit most Medicaid recipients already work. Is it really news, or newsworthy, that more and more Americans are going without health insurance, since Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have been slashing away at Obamacare for two years?

What of consumer protection? In the way of current political events, hardly sensational is that Republicans are, once again, decimating the much-needed regulation of vulturous lenders. Hardly sensational as well is that Trump & Republican Allies have permanently eviscerated anything close to reasonable tax rates on the superrich and their multibillion-dollar corporations, "while reserving," notes Olen, "a few sun-setting crumbs for the vast majority of the population." And as certain that Trump is an ignorant rabble-rouser and fearmonger is that Republicans, because of their outrageous deficit creations on behalf of the supremely comfortable, are again calling for the urgent knifing of entitlements for the needy.

These are the musings of Ms. Olen, a thousand other commentators, and myself. "We are all but out of words to describe the offensiveness of the Trump administration" — we work on an infinitely looping treadmill of ghastly familiarities — yet somehow we conjure a few new words of appalled consternation each day.

My final words today are something of an aside. I ask for your sympathy for this not-too-devilish commentator. I chose this poisonous profession freely, so perhaps my request is presumptuous. But have some heart. I wake each morning knowing that whatever happened just hours ago, pretty much the same bloody thing has happened repeatedly for either two years or 40. And yet I must think of a way to remark on it with some freshness. It ain't always easy. Indeed, it can be downright oppressive.

Roger Stone gets hammered

What happened this morning was what everyone knew would happen some morning. So, within minutes of Roger Stone's arrest by the FBI, the NY Times published the "news" at some length, which it most assuredly had written weeks ago.

Aside from committing obstruction, making false statements to Congress and witness tampering, Stone made The Hart Mistake: "He sometimes seemed to taunt American law enforcement agencies," writes the Times, "daring them to find hard evidence to link him to the Russian meddling campaign."

The special counsel's office has obliged him.

5. During the summer of 2016, STONE spoke to senior Trump Campaign officials about Organization 1 [Wikileaks] and information it might have had that would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign. STONE was contacted by senior Trump Campaign officials to inquire about future releases by Organization 1.

6. By in or around early August 2016, STONE was claiming both publicly and privately to have communicated with Organization 1. By in or around mid-August 2016, Organization 1 made a public statement denying direct communication with STONE. Thereafter, STONE said that his communication with Organization 1 had occurred through a person STONE described as a "mutual friend," "go-between," and "intermediary." STONE also continued to communicate with members of the Trump Campaign about Organization 1 and its intended future releases.

Robert Mueller has obtained corroborating testimony from three senior Trump campaign officials; Stone had bragged to them about his connection to Wikileaks. "One of them told investigators that Mr. Stone not only seemed to predict WikiLeaks’ actions, but also that he took credit afterward for the timing of its disclosures that damaged Hillary Clinton’s candidacy." Astonishingly, he did the same on social media and in various interviews — until, that is, he saw the righteous hammer of Bob Mueller coming down.

Like other Trumpian scoundrels, Stone has charged the special counsel's office with conducting fishing expeditions — inquiries into activities unrelated to the Trump campaign's collusion with Russia. What will nail Stone as well as the campaign, however, is the collusion pertinence of that which was learned in 2018: that, during the 2016 campaign, Stone had communicated on Twitter with the Russian intelligence operative, Guccifer 2.0, which had stolen Democratic emails and then forwarded them to WikiLeaks.

Stone fancies himself a James Bond type, a doer of clandestine deeds, a master of clever intrigue who always escapes fatal danger, just in the nick of time. His self-image may be somewhat damaged, though, when his Nixon tattoo is replaced by a prison number.

Say what? Trump is closer to what?

As you know, Trump has decided to give the State of the Union address whenever the government reopens, as Speaker Pelosi demanded. From this, NBC News' First Read concludes: "It is a very rare move for Trump to back down on anything, and it suggests we COULD be closer to solving the shutdown than we were a day ago."

Now there's a non sequitur to make your head spin. How does Trump's egomaniacal desire for better television ratings — guaranteed by a SOTU address from the House — in any way suggest that he's "closer to solving the shutdown"?

First Read also quotes a Washington Post story, which, says First Read, is yet another "sign we could be closer to resolving the shutdown":

"Sources in the room told us that Trump pointed out that shutting down the government costs more than building the wall, 'so this is kind of stupid and every day this goes on the cost gets higher,' [the Heritage Foundation’s Stephen] Moore added, paraphrasing Trump."

Did First Read read the entire story? For there was also this quote in the WaPo story, titled "Here's why Trump isn't budging on his border wall":

"The president has no intention of caving on this," said the Center for Immigration Studies' Mark Krikorian.

The obvious Lindsey Graham

You gotta love George Will's biographical take on the Rudy Giuliani of politics, Sen. Lindsey Graham:

When in 1994, Graham, a South Carolina Republican, first ran for Congress, he promised to be "one less vote for an agenda that makes you want to throw up." A quarter-century later, Graham himself is a gastrointestinal challenge….

In 2015, he said Donald Trump was a "jackass." In February 2016, he said "[Trump was] a kook, I think he’s crazy, I think he’s unfit for office"…. Today, Graham … says building the border wall is an existential matter for the GOP: "If we undercut the president, that’s the end of his presidency and the end of our party."

On a recent day, in 90 minutes he went from "I don’t know" whether the president has the power to declare an emergency and [thus build the wall] to "Time for President … to use emergency powers to build Wall."

Why do they come to Congress, these people such as Graham?

I don't know if he's bucking for a cabinet job, or for Trump's presidential endorsement in 2024, or if he's groveling before the enact terrible merely as part of his upcoming reelection effort in reddest South Carolina. But there is no doubt that today Sen. Graham is just one more vote for an agenda that makes you want to throw up.

He first came to celebrity as a House Judiciary Committee member during the tortured slapstick of Bill Clinton's impeachment. I'll never forget the televised scene in which Rep. Graham dug deep into "the method" of the Actors Studio and theatrically, dramatically lamented the personal bile being flung about in the hearings. It just broke Lindsay's heart — pol against pol, brother against brother, American against American. There was some question if he could go on; his dismay was that great. But somehow, he pulled himself together.

I knew then that this Southern charlatan had a brilliant future in the party of counterfeit emotionalism. Graham puffed himself up as one of the little people, your average Joe just trying to make sense of it all, a Mr. Smith done gone to Warshinton who discovers that others are not what they seem. Yes, it broke Lindsey's heart. But somehow, he gathered himself and stayed. And stayed. And stayed.

"This shutdown … should achieve lasting disruption"

"Do they realize what damage they’re causing?" asked Gustavo Costa, an engineering contractor at NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center — or at least he was, until Trump shut down the government and marooned Dr. Costa at home, where he now ponders alternative employment. The U.S. government has become a precarious, high-risk workplace, and its reputation among the highly skilled is one of dog food.

"The longest shutdown in the country’s history is eroding [their] good will," reports the Times, "already wearing thin after years of pay freezes, unpredictable budgets, and disdain from even the White House for government workers as swamp creatures or worse." And before the White House it was the disdain of congressional Republicans, the Freedom Caucus, the whole lunatic tribe of Louie Gohmerts — government workers themselves.

As I wrote on 15 January, the shutdown is about far more than Trump's steel slats: "It's about the right-wing thrill of watching the federal government get gutted." Stories of soup lines, personal-survival GoFundMe.com accounts, public services going undone, workers suffering and workers leaving the government only make the right's day. A brutalized, starved, imploding federal government has been pseudoconservatives' wettest of dreams since Barry Goldwater, and these days they are positively orgasmic.

To Trump's closest advisers, government workers are but a bloated federal bureaucracy. "As a result," reported the Washington Post, "they have shown a high tolerance for keeping large swaths of the government dark [and] services offline." To Trump, most government workers are the "deep state," whose permanent riddance he would gladly embrace.

In a Daily Caller op-ed, retweeted by Trump and Don Jr. and titled "I'm a Senior Trump Official and I Hope a Long Shutdown Smokes out the Resistance," the dyspeptic author wrote that "To be a victory, this shutdown … should achieve lasting disruption"; "for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form"; "Furloughed employees should find other work, never return and not be paid."

I repeat, the president the United States retweeted that splenetic op-ed. Not only did he take delight in doing what he always did as a businessman — abusing those who worked for him — essentially, he declared war on the very government he oversees. And he could not have made Vladimir Putin happier.

At last, it genuinely seems there is nothing, absolutely nothing that Donald J. Trump won't do in disservice to the United States.

Trump's numbers, still headed south

From a CBS News-SSRS poll:

"Trump's overall approval rating has dipped three points from November to 36 percent today. Fifty- nine percent of Americans now disapprove of the job he is doing — a high for his presidency."

From an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll:

"Overall, 34 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance.... That’s down from 42 percent a month earlier and nears the lowest mark of his two-year presidency."

The AP notes that only five presidents have watched their approval ratings drop into the 20s: Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. It won't be long before the number is six.

Zero growth?

An exchange between CNN's Poppy Harlow and Trump's Council of Economic Advisers chairman, Kevin Hassett (who recently and rather cheerfully told the PBS Newshour that furloughed government workers are, "in a sense, better off" with the shutdown, because "they have the vacation, but they don’t have to use their vacation days"):

Harlow: Could we get zero growth? I want to nail this down.

Hassett: Yes. We could, yes. If [the shutdown] extended for a whole quarter and given the fact that the first quarter tends to be low because of residual seasonality [how do like that for impressive economese?), then you could end up with a number close to zero in the first quarter.

But not to worry, added Hassett. "The second quarter would be humongous if the government reopens," he said.

If? replied Harlow.

Trump's "beautiful" healthcare

Here's a graph that could have been produced on 9 November, 2016:

The vertical axis is in millions.

The Obama administration calculated in 2016 that about 20 million once-uninsured Americans had acquired healthcare coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Now, reports HuffPost, "about 7 million fewer Americans had health insurance at the end of last year compared with two years prior, and the share of people who are uninsured is the highest it’s been since 2014" — that, according to the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index.

As expected, short of dynamiting the ACA altogether — although it tried — the Trump administration has done all it could to deprive lower- and middle-income Americans of healthcare coverage. It has gutted advertising for the ACA, which would have brought new customers into the market, thus reducing premiums. It has eliminated the fine for non-coverage, "causing insurers to increase prices on the assumption that healthier people are less likely to buy coverage in the absence of fines."

And "perhaps most consequentially," writes HuffPost, "Trump ended payments to health insurance companies serving the lowest-income customers, which led insurers to increase prices to make up for the lost revenue."

During the presidential campaign and into his administration, Trump said that "Congress will need the courage to step away from the special interests and do what is right for America" and "We must make sure no one slips through the cracks simply because they cannot afford insurance." He said "We’re going to have insurance for everybody … I am going to take care of everybody … Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now" — and he said his alternative healthcare will be "a beautiful picture."

Does the above look like a beautiful picture?

Which will better handle self-destruction? The U.S. or Britain?

In "Watching Brexit Fall Apart," Le Monde's editorial director, Sylvie Kauffmann, pens a sympathetic elegy to Britain, as well as to Europe, as well as to America.

"We made the mistake of thinking that Brexit was a purely British problem," said an adviser to President Emmanuel Macron of France. "It was not. It is a European problem, and the Yellow Vests are part of it."

From west to east and east to west, the revolt against elites and inequalities has spread. The associated lies, the demagogy, the divisions that are familiar to American voters are now common in Europe…. 

Glued to the BBC over the past few days, some of us, awed by such riveting political theater, could not help envying at least the style with which the British have handled their own bout of madness.

I can speak for neither France nor Europe at large, but as an American studied in The American Character, my educated guess is that our "own bout of madness" will appreciably cure itself with the passing of Mad King Donald's reign. With the return of a Democratic president and Congress (the odds are looking rather good for 2020), Trump's more destructive policies of trade wars and the alienation of allies will come to a swift, merciful end. The U.S. will doubtless remain a global economic power and revert to a global diplomatic power — a voice of cooperation among nations, not of America — and everyone else — First. The right's Trumpian fringe will persist in its hysteria, paranoia and general foulness, but America as a whole — including many former Trump voters — will wash its hands of the ignorance, malice and racism of Trumpism.

Britain, however, appears to be hellbent on devastating its economy for decades to come. If other nations, for whatever insane reason, should wish to set out to economically incapacitate themselves, Brexit is the perfect 50-Year Plan to use as a model. Britain's Conservative Party is in shambles, Labour is led by the eccentric Jeremy Corbyn, and God knows there are no Churchills on the horizon. The goofy Boris Johnson and sadly solemn Theresa May seem to be the exemplars of the nation's political future. In global diplomacy, Britain has proved itself, thanks to Brexit, an un-credible player. And from what I've read, The British Character today is one of exhaustion, disgust or total indifference.

Perhaps Ms. Kauffmann cannot "help envying at least the style with which the British have handled their own bout of madness," but I don't see it — not any sort of enviable style, anyway. Britain is screwing itself but good, whereas for America, there is hope.

The WSJ identifies the problem (again)

Reading the Wall Street Journal's editorial page is like sitting in a Pol Pot-ian reeducation camp and being subjected not to the splendors of communist rectitude, but to the atrocities of reigning capitalist ideology. In the WSJ's camp, however, the capitalists are the "leftists," the Democrats, the "Resistance." They are bad. Very bad. And the Journal just can't stop saying it.

This morning alone, its editorial board, in "The High School Deplorables," ponders "the boys of Covington Catholic High School," whom leftists hate because they are "white, male, Christian, attendees at the annual March for Life in Washington, and wearers of MAGA hats." Concludes the Journal: "This is an ugly moment in America, all right, but there are few things uglier than a righteous leftist mob."

In "The Shaming of Karen Pence," William McGurn, a member of the Journal's editorial board, takes on "Today’s militant secularists [who] ironically resemble the worst caricatures of religious intolerance of early America." Mrs. Pence has taken heat for taking a job at a bigoted Christian school, but "It would be a shame if [she] were to allow the mob to keep her from teaching art to those children." That would be the righteous leftist mob. Get with it, McGurn.

And Journal op-eder Fred Barnes, who was once a ubiquitous staple of cable-news commentary, insists in "The Downside of Anti-Trump Rage" that "The strategy of 'resistance' to President Trump has been a disaster for Democrats." How so? Because, observes Barnes, "young progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have taken on the task of making the party more left-wing."

Barnes also laments that "Democrats are like those Trump-loathing columnists who can’t write about anyone but the president. They’re obsessed with Mr. Trump." Damn right they are. Damn right I am. Because whatever harm ideological leftists, Democrats and Resisters might cause America — harm that is only potential — it is nothing compared to the real, catastrophic damage that Trump and his congressional Republican enablers are causing.

However in reading the Wall Street Journal's editorial page this morning, one might think that political potency lies only in the mostly out-of-power left — increasingly tagged by the Journal and other right-wing outlets as a righteous mob, a lawless congregation of violent extremists, an incorrigible gang of irrational Trump-haters, "radical" tax-hikers and obsessive anti-Christians.

All of whom, suggests the Journal, are coming to get you. While Trump & Friends go about assaulting American institutions and arrogating unconstitutional power, cranking up racism and ripping apart the government, it is the bogeymen and bugaboos of the left who are the nation's imposing threats.

I'll give the Journal this much: Its comedy is worth the price of admission.

The remarkable mind of Rudy Giuliani

Rarely has pettifogging gibberish been so misleading, and, in the end, so honest.

To the NY Times, Giuliani said on Sunday that Trump said conversations with Moscow were "going on from the day I announced to the day I won."

To the New Yorker, Giuliani said on Monday that "the President had no conversations. I shouldn’t say he had no conversations. [Trump] had a few conversations about this early-stage proposal that he ended somewhere in early 2016, and doesn’t have a recollection of anything else, and there is nothing to support anything else. This is a story that is completely exaggerated and made up."

Giuliani's own story, that is.

He added, "Even if there were such conversations, which there weren’t, they would be completely innocent…. If he had a project in Moscow, there would be nothing wrong with it, but he didn’t."

The New Yorker reminded Giuliani of what he had said to the Times. Replied Giuliani: "He’s wrong! They’re wrong! I didn’t say that. Go find out where I said that on Sunday…. [He said it to the NYT — 'Mr. Giuliani quoted Mr. Trump as saying (it).'] I don’t know if they made it up. What I was talking about was, if he had those conversations, they would not be criminal."

Continued Giuliani: "I am not saying that he did it. I just told you he didn’t do it. I am telling you that their investigation is so ridiculous that, even if he did do it, it wouldn’t be a crime."

Finally, the pièce de résistance: I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. "Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump." Somehow, I don’t think that will be it. But, if it is, so what do I care? I’ll be dead.