By Carl M. Cannon
The 47th U.S. president has a new national security adviser. One might think the job title “Secretary of State” is a big enough job itself. But Marco Rubio works for a man who has added several positions to his own portfolio. Yes, Donald Trump is president of the United States and commander in chief of the armed forces. Yet he’s simultaneously taken on the duties of chairman of the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, chief namer of monuments and mountains (more on that below), and unofficial head scout for the Cleveland Browns professional football team. The man believes in multi-tasking.
But what does it say that Trump is consigning his previous head of the National Security Council – he of the 101-day tenure – to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations? Mike Waltz is the man who added Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a group text in which Pete Hegseth divulged all kinds of sensitive information on a social app, who was at odds with the rest of the administration on Russia policy, and whom many of his colleagues wanted gone. So this is the man sent to represent America to the world? It makes one wonder what the president has in mind for a once-venerated institution that conservatives see as the very symbol of globalization, antisemitism, and fecklessness.
I love the spirit of putting “America first” as well as the next person, notwithstanding the problematic historic provenance of that particular phrase. (I mean its isolationist and Jew-bashing roots.) But Donald Trump keeps taking old-time patriotism to new levels. This goes beyond the high-level trolling involved in renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America or restoring the name Mount McKinley to Denali mountain. Here is Trump’s latest, posted Thursday night by the president on Truth Social:
Many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II. I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I. We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything – That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so! We are going to start celebrating our victories again!
I could spend the next 10 columns explaining why this is problematic, but suffice it to say that it takes nothing from the heroism of American soldiers in World War I to point out that just 2% of the dead and missing combatants in that gruesome conflict were members of the U.S. armed forces. Some 53,000 Americans died in combat in the trenches of France and Belgium, and a like number perished of the influenza epidemic spread by that war. More than 200,000 Americans were wounded.
It was a steep price to pay for a war that was not of our making. But some 1.5 million French troops died in combat in the Great War, with 3.4 million wounded. Approximately 1 million soldiers who fought for Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries perished, along with 2 million wounded. The casualties among the Russians and Serbs (remember, we were on their side) were nearly as high as the U.S., France, and Britain combined. The carnage among the Germans and Austrians on the other side of those trenches was frightful as well. In sum, American military power did turn the tide in that war, but it’s unseemly in the extreme to gloat over it and to presume to dictate how Europeans mark the occasion.
As for World War II, it would be hard to imagine a less effective way to convince Vladimir Putin that the United States is negotiating in good faith over the Russia-Ukraine war than to minimize the valor, determination, and suffering of the Soviet Union (again, our ally). An estimated 27 million citizens of the U.S.S.R. were killed fighting Nazi Germany, 19 million of them civilians, on what we call the “Eastern front.”
During the Cold War, school textbooks in the old Soviet Union would routinely minimize the Allies’ contribution in the war. It seems that such impulses remains, this time on our side.
The Kentucky Derby is being held tomorrow and for obvious reasons I’d give a horse named “Journalist” a long look no matter his pedigree. But this colt has run the fastest time of any 3-year-old thoroughbred in the world this year, won the Santa Anita Derby convincingly, and is the early favorite. In other words, a serious bettor couldn’t overlook this horse if his name was Eric Ishmingle.
I suppose it would be too much to ask for Publisher to place second on Saturday. It would be a nice exacta for those of us in the media and it would pay well, too: The morning line odds on Publisher are nearly 30-1. That’s mainly because he’s never yet won a race (and no maiden has won the Derby since 1933). But his sire was Triple Crown winner American Pharoah and he ran a strong second to Sandman (5-1 odds in the Derby) in the Arkansas Derby.
If you’re enamored of horse names, and you follow politics, I’ll mention a few other possibilities. Canadian bettors fresh off their election rebuke of Americans in general and Trump in particular might like stretch-running Sovereignty. I don’t know if the administration plans on putting tariffs on racehorses, but Japanese connections have two quality entries – Admire Daytona and Luxor Café – at Churchill Downs this year. By contrast, MAGA gamblers might be rooting for American Promise. Senior citizens might like that horse, too: His trainer is Wayne Lukas, who will turn 90 in September.
I’m in California this week and I notice on each trip that the politics of my beloved home state seem a little crazier each visit.
On Cinco de Mayo (a holiday which really began in California, not Mexico), hearings are scheduled in Sacramento on legislation that would decriminalize welfare fraud below the threshold of $25,000. The bill is the brainchild – if the word “brain” can be invoked for a scheme this witless – of State Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, a Los Angeles Democrat.
“California’s safety net should lift families up, not trap them in poverty,” she said. “Right now, a missed deadline or paperwork mistake can lead to felony charges that tear families apart – even when there’s no intent to deceive.”
Let’s be clear: Such prosecutions literally never happen. Instead of making up far-fetched scenarios, lawmakers who truly care about poor people should be looking for harsher punishment for fraudsters: Victims of welfare fraud are typically those on food stamps or other entitlement programs. The U.S. Department of Justice stated in a court filing that in a 21-month period some $181 million was stolen from people receiving such benefits through what are known as Electronic Benefit Transfers.
“EBT fraud literally takes food out of the mouths of children,” U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath said last year. “Parents who don’t know they’ve been targeted get to the grocery checkout and discover their EBT cards have been wiped clean. We are taking proactive steps to prevent this appalling crime and punish those who take advantage of vulnerable people.”
Oh, and you don’t need to ask. The Biden-appointed McGrath was fired by the Trump administration, along with all 92 other U.S. attorneys. That’s become par for the course in politics, but it’s too bad. A former captain in the U.S. Marines, McGrath was a real crime-fighter.