◼ Before now, he had only dodged metaphorical bullets.
◼ Donald Trump’s speech to the Republican convention started strong. He said he wanted to be president of all Americans, a rhetorical note that politicians often sound but he has generally not. He then moved to an extended reflection—the right words, and not ones that are commonly used about his speeches—about the recent attempt on his life, which left him convinced that Providence had spared him. Then, unfortunately, he began to ramble, just with lower energy than usual. At presstime, he was still talking. A missed opportunity, unless he is baiting President Biden to stay in.
◼ Donald Trump tapped Ohio senator J. D. Vance as his running mate. The choice wasn’t a surprise and completed a shockingly rapid political ascent for the 39-year-old Vance, who has gone from an outspoken Never Trump author to joining Trump on a national ticket in eight short years. A former Marine, the author of the best seller Hillbilly Elegy, and a success in the world of venture capital, Vance is smart and sure-footed. More fundamentally, he is a MAGA pick for an increasingly MAGA party. In 2016, Trump believed it necessary to reach out and reassure the Reagan GOP by choosing Mike Pence. Now he appears to feel that no such gesture is necessary. His team believes that Vance can help in the blue-wall states, but it’s doubtful that he’s going to win voters whom Trump wasn’t already going to win himself. Vance’s skepticism of markets and trade and U.S. engagement abroad would make America less wealthy and secure. Vance has now climbed the greasy pole of Republican politics in the Trump era. This is quite the political achievement, although as Pence found out, it can be treacherous up there.
◼ The 20-year-old would-be assassin had an easy 150-yard shot—he regularly fired at a 200-yard rifle range—and he managed to injure two spectators and kill Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old volunteer fire chief who dove to protect his family, and to clip the right ear of his intended target, former president Donald Trump. A turn of the head spared Trump his life, and the country an abyss of rage and recrimination. That’s not to say conspiracy theorists were idle, from leftists saying that Trump staged it all to get that fist-pump photo to MAGA fans declaring that it was a hit ordered by President Biden himself. They ignore the first rule of disaster, which is not to look for malice until one has exhausted that most fruitful of all causes, incompetence. The Secret Service, which dispatched the killer, has blamed his near-success on everything from the pitch of the roof on which he stood (too dangerous to stake out) to failures on the part of the local police with whom they worked. The House has promised to investigate; in the meantime, Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle must pay for the debacle with her job. Trump’s defiant gesture joins the reactions of Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan to their own with presidential and post-presidential death. They are not the same: Jackson showed wrath (he caned his assailant and blamed a senator for putting him up to it). TR showed magnanimity and courage (he asked the crowd not to lynch his shooter and gave a planned speech). Reagan tried to lighten the mood (“I hope you are all Republicans”). What lesson will Trump draw? The shooting reminds us that we are a bellicose people. We should reflect on our tongues, and our hearts. We won’t.
◼ “Better than the debate” is an exceptionally low bar to clear, but the president cleared it in his big interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt, just barely. When Holt said to Biden that, in the debate, he “appeared to be confused,” the president snapped, “Lester, look, why don’t you guys ever talk about the 18—the 28 lies he told? Where—where are you on this? Why doesn’t the press ever talk about that?” as if NBC had been a staunch defender of Donald Trump. Biden also referred to U.S. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle as “him”; insisted that his recent comment that “it’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye” wasn’t so bad because he didn’t say “crosshairs”; said “I don’t think—I may have. I don’t think so,” when asked whether he had talked to Barack Obama since the debate; insisted, “My mental acuity’s been pretty damn good”; said he wasn’t interested in having another debate before the one scheduled for September; and closed the interview by grumbling at Holt, “Sometimes come and talk to me about what we should be talking about, the issues!” Perhaps Biden is lucky that in a busy news cycle featuring Trump’s near-assassination and the start of the Republican National Convention, his cranky, mumbling performance didn’t get much attention.
◼ Court-packing is a menace, no matter how it comes dressed. The Washington Post reported that Biden previewed for the Congressional Progressive Caucus a coming “major initiative on limiting the [Supreme] Court.” “Limiting” is the key word. The plan, which the Post dubs “judicial reform,” is said to include “legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code.” The constitutionality of either is dubious. Everyone knows that this is all about breaking the Court’s conservative majority and changing its rulings, possibly by forcing Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts off the Court. As Alexander Hamilton wrote, “the complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution,” and “nothing will contribute so much” to this as “the permanent tenure of judicial offices.” Biden once knew better, railing that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 Court-packing plan showed that he was “corrupted by power.” Roosevelt wasn’t the only one so afflicted.
◼ It is an article of faith in some quarters that the United States provoked Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Donald Trump himself has expressed this view, most baldly in an October 2022 interview with Real America’s Voice. At the Republican convention, David Sacks expressed it, telling the crowd that Biden “provoked, yes, provoked the Russians to invade Ukraine.” Sacks is a South African tech investor, part of Trump’s inner circle. A U.S. senator, Mike Lee, contributed a tweet, saying, “Biden provoked Russia to invade Ukraine.” At another Republican convention, in 1984, Jeane Kirkpatrick decried Democrats who blamed the United States for problems in the world—problems of other people’s making, chiefly the Kremlin. She would have a lot to say today, about the GOP.
◼ Asked about Taiwan, Donald Trump usually talks of microchips. He did again when interviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek. “Taiwan took our chip business from us,” he said. “I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy.” He wants Taiwan to pay the United States for protection. “I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy,” he said. His words are in line with his attitude toward NATO. In the interview, Trump added, “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away” (from American shores). “It’s 68 miles away from China.” The Taiwanese, like the Ukrainians, ought to prepare for a future without American support. Such a future would be immensely challenging for the Taiwanese and Ukrainians and, eventually, for Americans as well.
◼ Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien was the closing speaker on the first day of the Republican National Convention. His speech could have been delivered by Bernie Sanders with few alterations, which makes sense given that Sanders invites O’Brien to testify before his Senate committee and headlines rallies with him. The speech at times left the GOP audience cold, unsure whether to clap for intended applause lines vilifying business and free markets. The Teamsters have a long and rich history of stealing from their members, fomenting violence, partnering with organized crime, and making the trucking industry inflexible and expensive. Since 1990, 94 percent of their campaign contributions have gone to Democrats, and the union spends millions more on other forms of left-wing activism. When in power, Democrats reward them with pension-fund bailouts, unconditionally giving them billions of dollars to avoid consequences for their criminal mismanagement. Workers, aided by Republican legislators, have been fleeing the Teamsters for decades and demanding transparency on union operations. That’s the pro-worker legacy that Republicans should be proud of.
◼ This week, a jury of his peers found Senator Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) guilty on all counts in his federal corruption trial. The charges ranged from bribery and extortion to wire fraud and obstruction of justice to acting as a foreign agent. As of this writing, 43 of 51 Senate Democrats have called on Menendez to resign from the body immediately, belatedly joining their colleague, Senator John Fetterman (Pa.), who did not need a jury to conclude that Menendez was unfit to serve. Presumably, any exit from the Senate would be followed quickly by the suspension of his long-shot independent bid for the Senate in New Jersey, clearing the way for the Democratic nominee, Representative Andy Kim, to cruise to victory. When he gets out, Menendez will take the GOP nominee’s slim hope for a possible pickup in the Garden State with him.
◼ Judge Aileen Cannon threw out the federal documents-retention indictment against Trump because Jack Smith’s special-counsel appointment violated the Constitution’s appointments clause. She was right about the violation. Attorney General Merrick Garland vested Smith with the power of a district U.S. attorney; such an officer must be either nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, or appointed “by law”—i.e., by congressional statute. Smith satisfies neither criterion. He was appointed under a regulation decreed by the Clinton Justice Department in the late Nineties (after the Independent Counsel Act, a statute, lapsed). Smith argued that his appointment was valid under some loose language in the Supreme Court’s 1974 Nixon case, noting that the D.C. Circuit later relied on Nixon in rejecting a challenge to special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment. But as Justice Clarence Thomas explained in his recent immunity-case concurrence in Trump v. United States, and as Cannon found, the Nixon passage was a stray aside rather than a ruling. Garland and Smith will appeal, a foolish alternative to simply reassigning Smith to work under the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney in South Florida. But that would destroy the illusion Smith was appointed to promote—namely, that the prosecutions of Biden’s election opponent are unconnected to Biden.
◼ Microsoft quietly fired its internal diversity, equity, and inclusion team on July 1, according to an email obtained by Business Insider. The company wrote that the terminations were due to “changing business needs.” We hope that the company changes to focus on one business need: making a profit by selling products people want to buy.
◼ “If I had been a tall blonde in a miniskirt and décolleté, it wouldn’t have worked,” noted Dr. Ruth, the diminutive matron who for four decades dispensed sex advice on radio and TV and in lectures and scores of books as well as in her private counseling practice. Calling her vocation the promotion of “sexual literacy,” she charmed audiences with her plainspoken discussion of delicate topics, alternating seriousness with crisp humor delivered in her signature high-pitched voice and Mitteleuropean accent, often affectionately parodied. Sent as a child from Germany to Switzerland to escape the Nazis, she emigrated to Palestine after the war, joining the Haganah and serving as a sniper during the Israeli War of Independence. She studied psychology at the Sorbonne before moving to the United States and earning degrees in sociology and education. She spoke of tikkun olam (repairing the world) and saw her work in its light. Fame and fortune never persuaded her to leave the modest Washington Heights apartment she had made her home since the 1970s. She had a tin ear but wrote a book about music anyway, because she was Ruth Westheimer, a special blend of moxie and warmth. Dead at 96. R.I.P.
