◼ Even the brain worm is mystified by RFK Jr.’s decisions that day.
◼ Kamala Harris picked Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. It was a surprise that she didn’t go with Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of must-win Pennsylvania. But there was a very public pressure campaign against Shapiro, a Jewish supporter of Israel who has criticized antisemitic protesters. Walz, though also a supporter of Israel as contemporary Democrats go, is a favorite of the MSNBC crowd and has not criticized any protesters. After escaping a swing district in the House, he has proven himself generally up to date with progressive fashions and has governed as far left as possible, but is supposed to be “folksy” and nonthreatening. In the early going, he has proved a spirited campaigner, although in order to get a cheap laugh he blighted his introductory speech with a reference to a poisonously stupid internet lie about J. D. Vance. By choosing perhaps the most left-wing governor in America, at least Harris isn’t trying to hide who she is.
◼ Walz’s military service has drawn deserved scrutiny. Walz, to his credit, served 24 years in the National Guard. But while some reporters have gotten this wrong, he knew that his battalion was set to mobilize and deploy to Iraq when he retired and left the Guard to run for Congress. His decision surprised and rankled fellow soldiers, some of whom are braving personal attacks to speak out. Walz has said that he left the National Guard to run for public office because he thought he could advocate more effectively against the war, which he had publicly opposed, in the halls of Congress than from the battlefields of Iraq. But the former soldiers who have criticized him for abandoning his unit are entitled to their opinion and deserve to be heard. Walz and his campaign staff have also been loose in their characterization of his record in a way that seems intended to suggest, falsely, that he served in a combat zone. Over the years, friendly press has reported that Walz is variously a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. In 2004, he was photographed holding a sign that read “Enduring Freedom Veterans for Kerry,” which any fair-minded observer would take to mean that Walz was saying he fought in Afghanistan. At the very least, Walz should apologize for the sign, and for allowing his service to be mischaracterized by the press for nearly two decades.
◼ Before the Walz selection, progressive activists pulled out all the stops to persuade Harris not to choose Shapiro. He was accused of maintaining a blinkered sympathy for the Jewish state, of serving covertly in the Israeli military, and of tacitly endorsing the slaughter of innocent Palestinians. “Josh’s position on Israel is almost identical to everybody else, but he’s being held to a different standard,” observed Representative Jared Moskowitz (D., Fla.). “You have to ask yourself why.” Indeed. Some media outlets offered competing explanations for Harris’s decision, ranging from the believable (Harris was intimidated by Shapiro’s talent and ambition; Shapiro was unsure about a subordinate role) to the implausible (Shapiro has no special appeal to voters in the state he won by 15 points in 2022). But these explanations, and the fear that Shapiro’s selection would rattle the pro-Hamas hornets’ nest, are not mutually exclusive. We can’t say that the campaign against “Genocide Josh” worked—or didn’t. We can say that it proved progressive commentator Van Jones correct about the antisemitism that has gotten “marbled” into the Democratic Party.
◼ The approval rating of Brian Kemp, governor of Georgia, is a robust 63 percent. “He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy, and he’s a very average governor,” said Donald Trump at a recent rally in Georgia. Just as Democrats had united behind Harris, Trump chose to relitigate his stolen-election conspiracy theories about 2020 and to trash the GOP governor of a key swing state. “I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal,” Trump added, referring to the recent exchange of prisoners between the U.S. and several Western allies. “If you look at Caracas, it was known for being a very dangerous city, and now it’s very safe,” Trump said in an interview with an online influencer. “In fact, the next interview we do, we’ll do it in Caracas, Venezuela, because it’s safer than many of our cities.” Saying later that he was joking, he made a muddled point about the Venezuelan government’s exporting its criminals to the U.S. Trump somehow makes dictator Nicolás Maduro, who has stolen multiple elections, sound like an effective crime-fighter. Reportedly, Trump is frustrated with the tied polls and the growing sense that, ever since Joe Biden withdrew as a candidate, the GOP has been fumbling away a winnable presidential race. If he wants to identify the problem, he should check the nearest mirror.
◼ The U.N. revealed that its probe into the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East confirmed that some of the agency’s staff likely participated in the October 7 massacre. It’s an important admission, though one for which the international bureaucrats deserve no credit. The U.N. was forced to look into the UNRWA’s Hamas ties only after Israel exposed the agency’s role. And the report, conducted by the U.N.’s internal audit office, comes with a few caveats. It investigated only 19 staffers whom Israel brought to its attention, finding that nine were likely or highly likely to have joined the attack. UNRWA said that it was not able to find corroborating evidence against the rest. Israel has identified at least 1,200 UNRWA employees with ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The U.N., though, said that it has closed the probe and plans to move on without further investigation. Even the generally obsequious press corps at Turtle Bay was shocked by the organization’s choice not to make public the report or details about the precise role of the nine staffers. This is a cover-up designed to give the Biden administration and Western governments permission to resume funding UNRWA. They should not just continue to freeze the funding, but burn down the agency.
◼ Since claiming victory in a fraudulent election on July 28, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has stepped up his repression and political persecution. He is targeting people affiliated with opposition candidate Edmundo González, who, vote-tally receipts show, overwhelmingly defeated Maduro. Dozens protesting the sham have been killed. At postelection rallies, the autocrat has boasted of jailing thousands of oppositionists. The United States has criticized the fraud and recognized González as the legitimate winner. But influential countries in the region—notably Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia—have been more afraid of alienating Maduro. The Biden administration, too, has taken a kid-gloves approach to Maduro’s regime. Such weakness risks helping Maduro turn his false victory into a real one.
◼ Roiled by a month of violence and civil unrest, Bangladesh awaits the restoration of law and order. Demonstrators forced prime minister Sheikh Hasina to flee to India. The president has appointed Muhammad Yunus, an economist and Nobel laureate, to lead an interim government, still in formation. Meanwhile, Hindus, a shrinking religious minority perceived to be supporters of Hasina and her party, the Awami League, are suffering retaliation. Leaders of the student protests that brought down the government have tried mostly in vain to rein in the attacks. The military, its reputation marred by its history of coups, hesitates to intervene. Hasina was elected in a 2008 landslide, replaced the military caretaker government, and oversaw a period of stability and economic growth, but then, in a bid to hold on to power, imposed crackdowns and committed increasingly flagrant human-rights abuses. Her government had lost “all moral and political legitimacy,” in the assessment of an opposition leader. Yunus, politically unaffiliated and respected as an honest broker, has his work cut out for him.
◼ According to a recent YouGov poll, some two-thirds of Britons believe that the recent wave of riots have been caused by “thugs.” Only 16 percent thought that the rioters had “legitimate” concerns. The riots were triggered by false reports that a Muslim immigrant had carried out a knife attack on a group of people, killing three little girls. (The apparent assailant is the son of Christian Rwandan immigrants.) There will be very little sympathy for rioters handed stiff sentences for violent behavior, including attacks on mosques. Though they don’t approve of the riots, most Britons, across all major-party affiliations, believe that “immigration policy over recent years” bears some responsibility for the rioting, according to the poll. The promises of preceding governments to reduce immigration have been broken. The official narrative drives people to other sources for their news, for good and ill. Calls for stiffer social-media regulation reflect a desire to shut down dissent and reinforce the imposition of an orthodoxy that alienates more than it calms.
