The Social World

Category: Politics

  • ‘Trump isn’t easy’: Piers Morgan on his friends – and foes

    ‘Trump isn’t easy’: Piers Morgan on his friends – and foes

    When I meet Piers Morgan, he warns me he’s glued to the “moment in history” happening on his TV screens that morning. He is watching Hamas release the remaining Israeli hostages as part of the peace deal negotiated by his old friend Donald Trump.

    The two have known each other for 17 years, first meeting when Morgan appeared in – and won – Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice in 2008. He tells me that Trump’s final words to him on the show were: “Piers, you’re a vicious guy. I’ve seen it. You’re tough. You’re smart. You’re probably brilliant. I’m not sure. You’re almost certainly not diplomatic. But you did an amazing job. And you beat the hell out of everybody… You’re the Celebrity Apprentice.”

    Eight years later, when Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Morgan sent him a card saying: “Well, Donald, you’re a vicious guy. I’ve seen it. You’re tough. You’re smart. You’re probably brilliant. I’m not sure. You’re certainly not diplomatic. But you did an amazing job. And you beat the hell out of everybody… You’re the President of the United States.”

    It hasn’t always been such plain sailing between the two. Morgan recalls a time when Nigel Farage attempted to sabotage a planned interview by furnishing Trump with a dossier of every negative column Morgan had written about him, including the statement that he should be “barred from ever running for president again.” The interview was salvaged only when Morgan mentioned that he wanted to ask about Trump’s recent hole-in-one on the golf course.

    “Trump as a friend isn’t easy,” Morgan muses. “He can be incendiary, his rhetoric pisses people off, he can be very shoot-from-the-hip.” But in spite of all this, he’s not surprised that Trump may be the man to secure peace in the Middle East. “[Is there] anyone else who could get an agreement from Middle Eastern countries to end this war now?” he asks. “I don’t think there is.”

    Morgan says the two talk constantly. The morning after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer handed Trump the invitation for his second state visit, for example, the President phoned the former Daily Mirror editor, unable to decide between Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle for the state dinner. “You’ve got to go for the castle – looks better,” Morgan advised. When Trump rang the morning after the banquet, he reported that he loved it. “He’s a sucker for pomp and pageantry,” Morgan says. And just the other day, Morgan tells me, Trump called him to let him know: “Piers, you’re looking good on the TV.”

    The self-confessed “rampant egomaniac” who used to party with the stars as the Sun’s showbiz reporter isn’t one to shy away from criticizing those he considers to be friends. Despite regularly texting Starmer to discuss Arsenal Football Club, he doesn’t think the Prime Minister is doing a good job. “Domestically,” he says, Starmer has “been a failure so far.” Perhaps this is why Starmer won’t sit down with him for an interview. He had said he would do so after Morgan gave him “an unwanted lecture on how to run the country” at a party, but so far he’s not made good on his promise to appear on the YouTube show Piers Morgan Uncensored.

    “If you’re going to run the country you better be able to deal with an interview with me,” Morgan says. “He’s a bit like Boris Johnson when he ran into that fridge on Good Morning Britain.” Scared, in other words.

    On the subject of former prime minister Boris Johnson, he’s pretty damning: “Beneath the buffoon exterior may lie an actual buffoon.” And he doesn’t stop there: “Until he learns to comb his hair, I’m not interested.” What does he reckon about the current Tory leader? “Reports of her political death may have been exaggerated.”

    He’s less kind about Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform party, predicting that with “his current economic policies” Reform won’t win the next general election. “He has momentum but how you pay for things matters.”

    It’s the Green party leader Zack Polanski who bothers him most, however. The two got into a spat on his program earlier this month and Morgan tells me now: “He’s just not impressive at all. You cannot be prime minister of Great Britain if you think women have penises. It’s a red line.”

    Polanski embodies the “woke” culture Morgan loathes. His latest book, Woke Is Dead: How Common Sense Triumphed in an Age of Total Madness, was published this month. He’s returned to the theme in print five years after writing Wake Up about the war on free speech. “They [the left] ignored me and got more insane – and then suffered electorally.”

    So is he pleased that the Democrats were punished at the ballot box for adopting “woke” causes? No, Morgan says: “I’m a centrist… Socially, I’m pretty liberal.” But for now, “they’ve demeaned the American justice system” in their attempts to block Trump. “They got him for shuffling a bit of paper over and alleging a one-night stand with a porn star… [It’s] trivial and ridiculous.”

    And while he might be right that the Democrats got a beating for hitching themselves “to an ideology most Americans rejected… Trump’s re-election was a repudiation of it,” has woke been abandoned in quite the same way this side of the pond? After all, Green party membership in the UK has now surged past that of the Conservative party. “It still pops up like weeds, and we need to root it out when it does,” he says. “This is an important moment to draw a line and lay groundwork so it doesn’t come back.” That’s what the book’s about. We need, he tells me, an “industrial woke weedkiller” ready for when it next rears its head.

    For Morgan, it seems personal: he appears to genuinely care about the victims of cancel culture. The plight of “teachers, nurses, professors” who have lost their jobs plagues him. “They should get medals,” he says. He reserves deep sympathy for J.K. Rowling because of the abuse targeted at her for her views on single-sex spaces, despite conceding that they “don’t get on personally.” (She once described him as a “fact-free, amoral, bigotry-apologizing celebrity toady.” In return he called her “superior, dismissive and arrogant.”)

    Perhaps his sympathy for her comes about because of the abuse he has received himself. After the “Meghan Markle saga,” which saw him storm off Good Morning Britain after criticizing the duchess, “they came for me and targeted my kids,” he says. His son received a death threat on Instagram, but after months of investigation the police said they couldn’t find the identity behind the anonymous accounts.

    Has this experience shaped how he views Elon Musk and his running of X? Musk, Morgan says, has joined Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer in dodging him for an interview – so far, the tech mogul has canceled twice. Could this be owing to the famous feud between Musk and Morgan’s pal Trump? He’s dismissive of that idea and thinks Musk and Trump could make up at some stage. They met at Charlie Kirk’s memorial recently and may do business together again – though Morgan doesn’t think “that relationship will ever be quite the same again.”

    Were he to sit down with Musk, the subject of anonymous accounts might form part of the interview. While he praises the fact-checking of X’s AI chatbot Grok, Morgan is damning about the types of accounts that threatened his son: “Death threats aren’t free speech.” He’s also unhappy about the accounts that go too far: “Kanye West should be banned for anti-Semitic hate; Alex Jones, too, for the Sandy Hook lies [that the massacre was faked].”

    How would the man who played a not insignificant role in killing woke culture like to be remembered? “That I didn’t die wondering.” For him, his most important legacy is his children: “They still want to hang out with me in adulthood – that’s a success.” And he still wants to hang out with them. On two conditions, though: that they stay loyal to Arsenal, and never, ever go on the reality television show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

  • Will the Gaza ceasefire hold?

    Will the Gaza ceasefire hold?

    In the latest blow to the beleaguered Gaza ceasefire, Israeli aircraft this week struck targets in Gaza City after Hamas carried out an attack using rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire on IDF soldiers in the Rafah area. One Israeli reserve soldier was killed in the Hamas attack. The exchanges of fire took place amid continued Hamas stalling on the issue of the return of the bodies of slain Israeli hostages. 

    There was widespread Israeli outrage this week after filmed evidence emerged showing Hamas fighters re-burying body parts of a murdered hostage whose corpse they claimed to have already returned. After burying the body parts of Ofer Tzarfati, 27, of Kibbutz Nir Oz, who was kidnapped and murdered at the kibbutz on October 7, 2023, Hamas invited Red Cross officials to the scene and tried to present the body parts as those of another of the murdered hostages. 

    The Gaza Islamists’ intention, presumably, was to reveal this deception later on, and by so doing retain an additional murdered hostage as “collateral” in the grisly trade in which it seeks to deter Israeli action against it by holding on to the bodies of those it has murdered. 

    These two incidents reflect the current troubled state of the ceasefire concluded in early October between the sides. They probably do not presage its imminent collapse, because neither side has an interest at the present time in a full return to hostilities. Hamas entered the ceasefire under the guidance of its allies in Turkey and Qatar, in order to prevent an IDF push into the Gaza City area which threatened the organization’s continued existence as a governing structure. It needs the continued support of these powerful states, who in turn want to stay on the right side of the Trump administration. 

    Israel, meanwhile, wants a period of rest and recuperation for its exhausted soldiers and similarly has an interest in staying on the right side of the Trump administration. The President, apparently, continues to believe strongly in his 20-point plan for what he called a “grand concord and lasting harmony” in the Middle East. Jerusalem has no desire to, and cannot afford to, appear to be the party responsible for consigning the plan to the memory hole. 

    So for now at least, the framework brokered by the US looks set to remain formally in place, despite the incidents of the last days. But the path to its implementation remains strewn with obstacles. Indeed, it is possible to discern an emergent reality quite at odds with the provisions of the plan, which looks set to constitute the true “post war” state between Israel and the Gaza Islamists. This emergent reality appears set to uneasily co-exist with the 20-point plan’s continued existence as an increasingly theoretical road map. 

    The problem with the 20-point plan is that while both sides had a clear interest in implementing its first phase, from there it gets complicated. The part that has been implemented involved Israeli forces withdrawing to an agreed upon line and the release of the then 20 remaining living hostages. Following this initial withdrawal, Israel now remains in control of 53 percent of the Gaza area, with Hamas holding the remaining 47 percent, along with the majority of Gaza’s population. Hamas, as seen in recent days, appears in no hurry to release the bodies of the remaining hostages. But this is not the main obstacle to the plan’s continued implementation. Article 13 of the 20-point plan contains the provision that: “Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use.”

    This describes a situation in which Hamas agrees to its own dissolution as an armed factor in Gaza. Part of its wording suggests the influence of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. But this is in defiance of reality. Hamas has been massively damaged as a military force over the last two years of fighting. It no longer exists as the hybrid army of 24 battalions that entered the war after the massacres of October 7, 2023. But as may be discerned from the rapidity and brutality with which it reimposed its authority on the 47 percent of Gaza which it retains, it is far from destroyed.

    Armed struggle as part of a long war intended to end in the dissolution of Israel is in the core DNA of this movement. Its officials, indeed, have made perfectly clear that they have no intention of carrying out those provisions of the plan which call on it to disarm. On October 11, a Hamas official told Agence France-Presse plainly that “the proposed weapons handover is out of the question and not negotiable.”

    With Hamas making its intention not to disarm clear, those countries which had considered signing up for the “international stabilization force” envisaged by the plan are now having second thoughts. No external third party wants to put its manpower in harm’s way challenging a jihadi armed force determined to prevent its own dissolution. And for as long as Hamas remains in control of part of Gaza, there is an additional reluctance on the part of outside actors to commit resources to the reconstruction of the Strip, given the possibility that any such investment might be destroyed once again when Hamas chooses to reignite the war that forms its raison d’etre.  

    From the Israeli point of view, the current situation in which an Islamist-ruled pile of rubble is surrounded by an area of Israeli control is by no means unmanageable. Israel succeeded in recent months in establishing a number of clan-based allied militias within Gaza. These appear set to remain in existence in the Israeli-controlled zone. Article 17 of the 20-point plan, meanwhile, allows for the possibility that “in the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal… the scaled-up aid operation, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the IDF to the ISF.”

    Such a situation is unlikely to hold in the longer term, of course. Israel remains determined to secure the complete dissolution of the Hamas entity in Gaza, if not by agreement, then by force. But given the current US commitment to the 20-point plan, for the period ahead it looks likely that two de facto entities of governance will exist in Gaza and that intermittent hostilities between them will continue. This is a far cry from “grand concord and lasting harmony,” of course. But then in the Middle East, reality’s victory over illusion, at least, tends to be swift and decisive. 

  • Why is mocking Brigitte Macron a crime?

    Why is mocking Brigitte Macron a crime?

    Ten people have gone on trial in Paris accused of harassing France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron, online. The defendants, eight men and two women aged between 41 and 60, are charged with “moral harassment by electronic means” and making a false claim that she was born a man by the name of Jean-Michel Trogneux. Prosecutors say their posts, many of which mocked her marriage to the President and repeated the rumor about her gender, amounted to targeted abuse. In closing, prosecutors requested suspended sentences. The defendants deny wrongdoing.

    The case stems from a complaint filed by Brigitte Macron in 2024, after a theory claiming she was transgender spread widely across French social media. Some of those now on trial shared or commented on videos repeating the rumor. Others posted memes or insults targeting her appearance and marriage. Under France’s criminal code, “moral harassment by electronic means” can lead to up to two years in prison and fines of €30,000. The court is expected to deliver its verdict later this year.

    The defendants include a small business owner, an elected local official, a computer technician and a teacher. Their alleged crime was to repost memes or post comments mocking the First Lady to modest online audiences, although some gathered considerable views. None have the resources of the presidential couple. Yet they face criminal conviction and possible prison sentences. In another country, such behavior might earn a temporary suspension from social media, or, more likely, the behavior would simply be ignored. In France, it’s a matter for the tribunal correctionnel.

    The rumor about Brigitte Macron first appeared in 2021 in Faits et Documents, a niche newsletter with a tiny circulation edited at the time by Xavier Poussard, a researcher. Its “investigation” claimed, in meticulous detail, that Brigitte Macron was born a man and was in fact the biological father, not the mother, of her three children. The theory goes that Jean-Michel transitioned prior to becoming Macron’s drama teacher when he was 15 and Brigitte was 40. The claim is false as birth records show Brigitte Macron was born female in 1953. Criminalization of the allegations is the real story.

    Whatever one thinks of the law, the scale of the vitriol directed at Brigitte Macron has been ugly. Mocking her age and appearance has long been a national sport. Adding fabricated claims about her identity turned it into something darker. Online pile-ons can become a form of mob harassment. Prosecutors portrayed the posts as part of a sustained campaign of humiliation. Brigitte Macron did not attend, but her daughter Tiphaine Auzière told the court that the conspiracy had “devastated” her mother’s health, describing anxiety, insomnia and withdrawal from public life. The judge noted evidence of a “deterioration” in her well-being.

    The theory circulated on fringe French websites before migrating into mainstream social media. Poussard later expanded his claims into a book, Becoming Brigitte, which Candace Owens then promoted to a global audience. Owens said she would “stake [her] entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron… is in fact a man.” When the Macrons filed their defamation suit in Delaware in July 2025, they accused Owens of “disregard[ing] all credible evidence” that Mrs Macron was born female, and of using the claim to monetize outrage. Owens replied that the lawsuit itself was proof that the allegations are true: “If you need any more evidence that Brigitte Macron is definitely a man, it is just what is happening right now.”

    It’s an unpleasant episode, but hardly an exceptional one in the age of social media. Public figures are mocked, insulted and caricatured daily, often far worse than this. Yet in France, ridicule of public figures has a curious way of turning into a matter for the courts. From injure publique to outrage à fonctionnaire, the French state has long confused personal dignity with public order. The Macron presidency, with its high-profile lawsuits, has continued that confusion.

    France has always been conflicted about free speech. It celebrates Charlie Hebdo as a national symbol of defiance, yet prosecutes ordinary citizens for lesser acts of mockery. Even in Britain, with its infamous policing of speech, a case like this about a politician would never reach a courtroom. Britain has its own pitfalls, strict libel laws and “defamation tourism” among them. But the British expect their public figures to endure ridicule, whereas the French state tends to police it. Insulting those in power has long been treated as a kind of lèse-majesté, even in the Republic that prides itself on having guillotined its kings. 

    There’s also a deeper absurdity here. The very premise of the online attacks is that Brigitte Macron was born a man, and is therefore “trans.” The prosecution’s case rests on factual falsehood, not hostility to trans people, yet the optics are hard to ignore. The state insists on tolerance in principle but reacts with outrage when that same vocabulary brushes too close to power. Either France believes gender identity deserves respect, or it believes that being called trans is defamatory. It cannot have it both ways.

    That irony is even sharper given the couple’s record. In 2018, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron turned the Élysée courtyard into a public dance floor for the Fête de la Musique, inviting queer and transgender performers, including DJ and activist Kiddy Smile, whose troupe vogued on the palace steps in front of the presidential couple. The event, widely promoted by the Élysée itself, was hailed as a symbol of inclusivity. The event has been attacked by the right as a sign of moral decay. Yet seven years later, the same presidency would now appear to treat being called transgender as an insult. The President and First Lady who once posed for photographs with queer dancers are effectively asking the courts to criminalize anyone who implies the First Lady is trans.

    For a couple who insist the facts are on their side, the Macrons’ response has been strangely theatrical. Each new lawsuit amplifies the story they want buried. A calm, factual rebuttal would have ended the matter long ago, as would perhaps simply ignoring the rumor entirely, or even a DNA swab test. Instead, the Macrons have turned the allegations into a global courtroom saga that guarantees the rumor endless life.

    What makes this case remarkable is not the vulgarity of the posts, the internet is full of that, but the reaction from the Élysée. Brigitte Macron has launched a defamation lawsuit against Candace Owens, while prosecutors pursue these ten individuals in France. For a presidential couple that prides itself on intellect and poise, it’s a surprisingly brittle response.

    Does it not occur to the President that the more he and his wife fight the rumor, the more oxygen they give it? Each legal action guarantees another round of headlines and another surge of online curiosity about the very claim they want buried. It’s a textbook case of the Streisand effect, when the attempt to suppress a rumor amplifies it.

    None of this is intended to defend the trolls. Their posts are crude, and few deserve sympathy. But public life comes with a price, and the price is mockery. Sometimes politicians are better advised simply to put up with it. The Macrons may win in court. They will not win in silence.

  • Is America at war?

    Is America at war?

    President Trump’s undeclared war on Latin America’s drug smugglers escalated dramatically on Tuesday when US air strikes destroyed four more boats allegedly carrying narcotics – this time in the eastern Pacific Ocean 400 miles south of the Mexican coastal city of Acapulco.

    At least fourteen crew members died in the attacks, and one was rescued alive by the Mexican navy, bringing the total number killed by the US campaign in the last two months to 57.

    Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the attacks as a violation of international law, and said Mexico’s ambassador in Washington would lodge a protest and demand an explanation from US officials.

    The latest strikes were personally authorized by Trump and announced by War Secretary Pete Hegseth. Videos were released showing the boats hit and bursting into flames. One of them appeared to be laden with large parcels which Hegseth claimed were drugs bound for America’s cities.

    Although the nationality of the vessels was not disclosed, the location of the strikes in the Pacific suggests that they were Colombian. The left-wing Colombian President, Gustavo Petro, has been engaged in a war of words with the Trump administration who accuse him of ties to the drugs cartels. During a recent visit to the UN in New York, Petro called the strikes a war crime, and Washington responded by sanctioning him and his family members.

    The previous US air strikes hit Venezuelan vessels in the Caribbean, and were aimed at another leftist regime – Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro. Eight Venezuelan vessels have been sunk by the strikes since August , and dozens of their crew members killed.

    Maduro responded to the attacks by accusing Trump of planning to overthrow his regime, and mobilized his defense militia to resist. Trump has made little secret of his desire to be rid of the socialist President, whose rule has plunged the oil rich nation into economic chaos and has led to one in three Venezuelans fleeing their country, with many heading towards the America. Trump has openly ordered the CIA to carry out covert operations inside Venezuela aimed at deposing Maduro, whose reelection last year is widely thought to have been rigged.

    The Trump administration is shaking a very big stick against its Latin American neighbours. The Gerald Ford carrier group, whose eponymous flagship is the world’s biggest warship, is currently sailing from the Mediterranean to join the Naval task force already patrolling the Venezuelan coast.

    Although the aggressive US air war against drug smugglers has been denounced by several Latin American states, Trump is gambling that it proves popular in the US where cities have been ravaged by drugs like cocaine and fentanyl that have their origins south of the Rio Grande.

    Mexico, which has historically fought several shooting wars with America, is in the front line of this latest conflict. However, President Sheinbaum is constrained in her protests because she is currently engaged in delicate trade talks with Trump to try and moderate the tariffs that he is imposing on this, the most populous and powerful Latin American nation.

  • Karine Jean-Pierre’s ‘tell-some-but-not-all’ memoir

    The Karine humiliation routine

    The media is piling on former Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s “tell-some-but-not-all” memoir Independent. Matt Taibbi called the book “incoherent,” which is to be expected, but check out this from the Washington Post’s reviewer Becca Rothfeld: “It is incredible – and emblematic of the Democrats’ total aesthetic and intellectual driftlessness – that someone who writes in such feel-good, thought-repelling clichés was hired to communicate with the nation from its highest podium.”

    KJP then took a call from the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, who’s savaged many intellects far greater than hers. Speaking as a “black woman who’s part of the LGBTQ community,” she literally says, “I did not see anything that would’ve given me concern” about Joe Biden running for president in 2024. “But you watched TV like the rest of us, right?” Chotiner asks, like a normal person.

    KJP also writes that “the truth was, I never believed [Kamala] Harris could win,” but then tells Chotiner “the reality of it is that being a Black woman, being Black and being a woman, it’s just tough. It’s hard.” You can almost hear the disbelief in Chotiner’s bold-type responses to her questions.

    The fact that the mainstream media – not the right, not the left, but utter normies – are rolling their collective eyes at KJP and Harris on their media tours is a sure sign that we’re done with the identitarian politics of the Obama/Biden era. Aesthetically and intellectually adrift is right. An actual “independent’ would have changed the channel years ago.

    On our radar

    KPOP TRADE DEAL HUNTERS President Trump continues his Asia trip, heading from Japan to South Korea for a meeting with APEC CEOs.

    OH SNAP Food banks are preparing for a rush as federal food aid (SNAP) may run out on Saturday due to the government shutdown.

    WHERE THERE’S A BILL Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and longtime environmentalist, said that climate change “would not lead to humanity’s demise” in a memo released today.

    Paul Ingrassia lawyers up

    You didn’t think we were done with Paul Ingrassia quite yet, did you? After withdrawing his nomination to head the Office of Special Counsel over questionable text messages (apparently a requirement for a young Trumpian striver), Ingrassia has moved on to the “anger” stage on the Kubler-Ross scale. Yesterday in Virginia, Ingrassia and his attorneys filed a $150 million lawsuit against Politico and its reporter Daniel Lippman who, prior to the texting scandal, wrote an article claiming that a former employee had accused him of sexual harassment.

    “Paul has never sexually harassed anyone – full stop,” wrote attorney Edward Andrew Paltzik. The attorney also said that Ingrassia has displayed “incredible composure under fire” during the weeks he was nominated and unnominated. Ingrassia was certainly composed enough, Cockburn can see, to pull together a lawsuit attempting to turn Politico into the Gawker Media of 2025. But unless Politico also published a lost Paul Ingrassia sex tape, the same outcome seems unlikely. Note that the lawsuit filing doesn’t include the words, “my client never texted to colleagues that he had a ‘Nazi streak’ – full stop.” Watch this space.

    Tucker ‘sorry’ for calling Nick Fuentes ‘gay’

    Elsewhere on the further recesses of the right: Nick Fuentes, the 25-year-old founder of the groypers and unlikely leftist heartthrobcontinued his algorithm friendly tour of racy podcasts. After guesting on Patrick Bet-David’s PBD podcast and Red Scare, next up it was Tucker Carlson, a godfather of the New Right with whom Fuentes had recently feuded. Cockburn says “feuded” – earlier in the summer, Tucker branded Fuentes a “weird little gay kid living in his basement in Chicago.” 

    Amazing how much can change in a month. “I’m sorry I called you gay, by the way,” Carlson says in this week’s two-hour interview. The pair also apologize for accusing each other of being FBI assets. Isn’t it nice when everyone gets along?

    Subscribe to Cockburn’s Diary on Substack to get it in your inbox on Tuesdays and Fridays.

  • Autopen report: Biden was a puppet president

    Autopen report: Biden was a puppet president

    Yesterday the House Oversight Committee released an extraordinary 91-page document called “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion and Deception in The White House.” Based on interviews with a dozen Biden aides, the committee concluded, essentially, that Biden was a puppet President incapable of self-functioning. Biden’s advisers took “steps” to make him appear marginally Presidential. The report states:

    “These steps ranged from addressing President Biden’s makeup, clothing, schedule, the number of steps President Biden could walk or climb, the amount of time President Biden needed to read and to spend with his family,” the report states, “keeping cabinet meetings to a minimum, eliciting ‘direction’ from Hollywood on the State of the Union and other events, and using teleprompters even at small, intimate events.”

    All this is part and parcel of the Trump administration and Republican congressional majority’s efforts to erase all traces of the Biden presidency from existence. The Biden camp, as usual, claims there was nothing wrong and that Joe was sharp as a tack during his time in office. “This investigation into baseless claims has confirmed what has been clear from the start: President Biden made the decisions of his presidency,” a spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal. “There was no conspiracy, no cover-up, and no wrongdoing. Congressional Republicans should stop focusing on political retribution and instead work to end the government shutdown.”

    The most interesting and potentially damning elements of the Autopen Report involve Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s personal physician, who took the Fifth Amendment while testifying to the Oversight Committee earlier this year. The report calls O’Connor “a key figure in the coverup.”

    The report states, about O’Connor, “His refusal to answer questions about the execution of his duties as physician to the president – combined with testimony indicating that Dr. O’Connor may have succumbed to political pressure from the inner circle, influencing his medical decisions and aiding in the cover-up – legitimizes the public’s concerns that Dr. O’Connor was not forthright in carrying out his ultimate duties to the country.”

    Former Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, currently having her head examined by the entire mainstream media over her ridiculous new memoir, refused to answer any questions about Biden’s mental faculties and said in February 2024 that Biden “passes a cognitive test every day.” This had me wondering what a “cognitive test” for a senior president might look like. Fortunately, we have Donald Trump to tell us.

    While on the plane to Asia, Trump told reporters that he’d had an MRI during his recent checkup at Walter Reed Medical Center, and that it was “perfect.” “Nobody has ever given you reports like I gave you, and if I didn’t think it was going to be good, either, I would let you know negatively,” Trump added. “I wouldn’t run, I’d do something. But the doctors said some of the best reports for the age, some of the best reports they’ve ever seen.”

    Trump also underwent an IQ test, which he said he passed with the highest possible score. That’s something that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett would never be able to do, he said.

    “Those are very hard – they’re really aptitude tests, I guess, in a certain way,” he said. “The first couple of questions are easy. A tiger, an elephant, a giraffe, you know. When you get up to about five or six, and then when you get up to 10 and 20 and 25, they couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions.”

    Crockett is 44 and AOC is in her thirties, so we have to assume they’d be able to pass the same mental aptitude test as Donald Trump and that Trump was just trolling them. Joe Biden is another story. When asked if the former president could identify a “tiger, an elephant, a giraffe,” his former staffers took the Fifth.

  • Ontario’s Reagan ad was a moronic mistake

    Ontario’s Reagan ad was a moronic mistake

    The on-again, off-again relationship between Canada and the US is off-again, again.

    In the latest chapter of this perpetual saga, US President Donald Trump announced on October 23 that trade negotiations between the White House and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had been “terminated.” Two days later, he went back to his Truth Social account and stated, “I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10 percent over and above what they are paying now.” To top it all off, Trump told reporters on Monday that he won’t be meeting with Carney “for a while.”

    What caused the President’s reaction? An old Ronald Reagan radio address, of all things. The Ontario government spent around $75 million creating a one-minute television ad for American networks. Parts of Reagan’s April 25, 1987 radio address on free and fair trade with Japan can be heard in the background of the advert. The reason that Ontario premier Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservative government used these audio clips was to make a point about tariffs and trade.

    It’s no secret that Reagan was largely opposed to the use of tariffs and spoke out strongly against them. “High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars,” the late president said, in part. “The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition. So, soon, because of the prices made artificially high by tariffs that subsidize inefficiency and poor management, people stop buying. Then the worst happens: markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs.”

    Reagan also addressed the reality of short-term tariffs to help create a level economic playing field. “When someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes, for a short while, it works – but only for a short time,” he said. “What eventually occurs is: first, homegrown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs. They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need to succeed in world markets.”

    The Ontario government used Reagan’s exact lines from his radio address, and didn’t artificially reconstruct them. That’s fine, of course. The lingering question is why they did something so foolish in the first place.

    To begin with, the placement of Reagan’s lines in his radio address were shuffled around a bit. Here’s one example. The opening of the Ontario television ad contained Reagan’s point about tariffs being used for a short time in a perceived patriotic fashion. That particular paragraph occurred in the middle of his radio address. As someone who has written columns and political speeches, I can tell you the placement of certain ideas and theories is both intentional and critical to understanding the meaning behind it. Other professional writers would tell you the same thing, if they were being honest.  

    More than 600 of Reagan’s radio addresses were compiled in the 2001 book Reagan in His Own Hand. They were written in pen, contained few edits and followed a particular pattern, theme and cadence. It didn’t matter if he was discussing domestic policy, foreign policy, communism, capitalism, or even Halloween and Christmas. You can see it in every line, clause, paragraph and train of thought. 

    Why didn’t Reagan didn’t put those ideas about tariffs up front? It was likely because he thought they weren’t as critical as other concepts. Ontario’s decision to open the ad with them changed the meaning of his radio address. That’s unacceptable in my view. It’s also part of the reason why the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute is so irritated with the ad and feel it “misrepresents” Reagan’s remarks, along with the fact that they weren’t contacted for permission to use the clips. 

    Meanwhile, the Ontario government decided to poke the bear and irritate Trump in the middle of important trade negotiations. That was pretty moronic, too.

    While it’s true that the President wasn’t initially bothered by the ad, this changed over the course of a few days. It’s not the first time this has happened to Trump in his presidency, by any means. There could be several reasons the President changed his mind about the ad. Perhaps he had second thoughts after letting it stew for a few days or his advisers turned him against it. Regardless, Trump doesn’t take kindly to what he perceives as criticism or ridicule of his ideas and policies. One has to always be aware of this during a negotiation with him.  

    Ford heavily contributed to this situation. The Ontario premier originally employed a tough but reasonable approach in dealing with the Trump White House when the tariff battle started, but he’s gone off the rails as of late. Why? He knows that many Ontarians (and Canadians) are frustrated with Trump’s tariffs and leadership, so he thinks that it’s to his political benefit. This is in spite of his PC government being well ahead in the polls and not needing to poke the bear. Diplomacy, thy name definitely isn’t Doug Ford.

    Guess what? It backfired. The Ontario ad was quickly pulled after Trump pushed back. While some political experts and Ontario ministers were quite pleased with the response and publicity, the PM was seemingly not among them. “There were a series of very detailed, very specific, very comprehensive discussions… up until the point of those ads running,” Carney told reporters at the ASEAN summit in Malaysia. What a mess that the Ontario government has made.

  • Trump’s Ballroom will make America great

    Trump’s Ballroom will make America great

    There is nothing like the thrill of getting a White House invitation. Even though I worked there at the time, I vividly recall the sparkly feeling when I read that “The President and First Lady” requested the pleasure of my company at a reception for the US Embassy hostages who had just come home from captivity in Iran.

    It was a great stroke for my ego, simultaneously a sensation of importance and reward for work well done. My origins are plebeian and it ranked among the most exciting things that happened to me since being unexpectedly invited to tea with Princess Margaret at Oxford.

    A White House social invitation is an informal tool of presidential power. From George and Martha Washington onward White House invitations have been used to achieve policy aims. They have literally shaped America.

    In the Republic’s early days Dolley Madison set the bar for White House entertaining. She threw the first-ever Inaugural Ball, presided over weekly receptions featuring prodigious quantities of alcohol and introduced ice cream to America. To sound out political leanings on Capitol Hill, she held “dove parties” with congressional spouses.

    Space was a problem even then. Her events were so popular guests literally jammed the White House’s tight quarters, giving them the name “crushes.”

    As the Napoleonic Wars raged in Europe, France and Britain vied for influence in America. While Dolley entertained, James Madison huddled in a corner with key players, sounding out allies and plotting his next moves during the tense period leading up to the War of 1812.

    Her efforts to promote mediation through social events ultimately failed. War with Great Britain ensued. The White House was burnt, but Dolley won acclaim for rescuing precious documents. At a 1985 presidential dinner, I and other guests saw the scorch marks around windows undergoing renovation.

    After the Battle of New Orleans she threw a grand party for General Andrew Jackson. It was so packed she used slaves as human candleholders to keep the overcrowded White House rooms illuminated.

    Jackson, a backwoodsman and war hero, was the first populist president. Twenty thousand frontier denizens that one reporter described as “a rabble, a mob of boys, negroes, women, children, scrabbling, fighting, romping” trooped through the White House on Inauguration Day, leaving a mess in their wake. Afterwards Jackson spent heavily to redecorate. It was a period of fierce partisan passions, but as many as a thousand guests attended his lavish receptions. Even in polarized times, it’s hard to decline a White House invite.

    The Polk presidency stands out for impressive deal making. James and Sarah Polk were political partners throughout their marriage. She edited and sometimes wrote his speeches, campaigned with him, attended sessions of Congress and used White House entertaining to cultivate political relationships that would advance the country’s territorial ambitions during the era of “Manifest Destiny.”

    To facilitate in-depth conversation and deal-making, Sarah eliminated dancing at White House receptions. She restricted dinner drinks to a mere six glasses, keeping guests sober and focused. They nicknamed her “Sahara Sarah,” but her friend Dolley Madison threw what today we would call “after parties,” coordinated so that Sarah’s parched guests could imbibe freely and go home contented.

    These social events were instrumental in furthering deals that opened Oregon to settlement and led to the annexation of Texas and purchase of California, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah. An 1847 agreement with Columbia gave America the right to build the Panama Canal. Polk’s 1848 State of the Union announced the discovery of gold at Sutter’s mill, and Virginia City’s Comstock lode financed the coming Civil War.

    Jackie Kennedy’s entertaining brought celebrities from the arts and culture together with politicians to create an aura of glamour for the Kennedy White House. She helped catalyze the image of Camelot that still characterizes his presidency.

    She revamped the White House, saying the furnishings looked like they came from “a wholesale furniture store during a January clearance.” She created a Fine Arts Committee to collect period furniture from around the country and raise private funds to buy the pieces and redecorate the building. Her televised White House tour of the results was watched by 46 million viewers.

    JFK had only five Inaugural Balls. Their number has grown steadily under each president. The Obamas had ten. The need for more entertaining space within the secure perimeters of the White House is clear.

    In the past 125 years we’ve grown from 76 million inhabitants to 342 million. The White House’s cramped quarters are simply too small for gatherings of the growing number of movers and shakers, influencers and influentials in contemporary American society.

    A large ballroom will give future presidents far more maneuvering room, literally and figuratively, to use the magic of White House invitations to achieve their aims. They can thank Trump for it.

  • Kamala 2028 by default?

    Kamala D. Harris, the career mediocrity who fell backward into a major party presidential nomination before ceding every swing state in the Electoral College to Donald Trump last fall, isn’t ruling out yet another bid for the big chair.

    Harris has been making the rounds to promote her newish campaign memoir, 107 Days, and, during a recent sit-down with the BBC, indicated that she’s considering an encore. 

    “I am not done,” declared the former vice president. “I have lived my entire career a life of service and it’s in my bones.” Whether collecting taxpayer-funded paychecks while opening the country’s borders, advocating on behalf of the fanciful Green New Deal and lying to the American people about the mental acuity of their commander-in-chief qualifies as a “life of service” in the same way that, say, a veteran, police officer, or firefighter’s might is dubious, but it’s true enough as far as the expression goes.

    Still, even the most loyal, masochistic of Democratic partisans must be flabbergasted by Harris’s presumption. This is a woman who nearly lost her first statewide race in California to a Republican, flamed out in her first White House campaign, was handed the vice presidency in large part because she checked the correct demographic boxes, played the role of right hand in a widely-reviled administration, was named her party’s presidential nominee without earning a single vote four years later because her boss was no longer compos mentis, and then was soundly defeated by an eminently beatable candidate. 

    Why anyone, least of all herself, would hold that she has something more to give in politics, is a mystery if you look only to virtues intrinsic to Harris herself. 

    She isn’t a smooth or savvy operator. Quite the opposite, she’s a walking word-salad station who has staked out positions far to the left of the median American. She doesn’t have a core electoral constituency to whom she appeals and can fall back on when the going gets rough. Indeed, Trump made significant gains among black and hispanic voters – and more modest ones among women – in 2024. And worst of all, she’s a proven loser. There is absolutely nothing in her electoral track record to suggest that she’s anything but a below average political talent who produces below average outcomes for her party.

    And yet, despite her plentiful deficiencies and the decided lack of enthusiasm for a Harris redux among her fellow Democrats, there is some reason for Harris to believe that come 2028, she could actually win the nomination she was bequeathed in 2024. 

    The Democrats’ failure to build a palatable, center-left bench could lead them, by default, back to Harris

    At the moment, the wind is at the back of the radical left in the fight for the soul of the Democratic party. Zohran Mamdani’s rise in New York City, as well as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders’s Beatlemania-like tour across the country, demonstrates that its activist wing has all of the energy and momentum it could ever want behind it. Moreover, while the Biden administration failed in large part due to its embrace of unpopular progressive policies, many continue to labor under the misimpression that the Joe Biden who ran his approval rating into the ground was the tough-talking, Blue Dog-adjacent Democrat that he was back in the 20th century, rather than the legacy-chasing, left-wing airhead that he turned into in the White House.

    It is also only this faction that has a clear favorite to be its champion in the primary fight to come. Ocasio-Cortez is the best pure political talent in the entire party. As a young, true-blue believer in the cause with a knack for communicating and connecting who will have spent nearly a decade in the national spotlight by the time she’s launching her campaign, Ocasio-Cortez will quickly consolidate Sanders’s coalition around her – and is well-equipped to build upon it.

    All that renders her a favorite to land the nomination, but some Democrats rightly fear that the general electorate would resoundingly reject her.

    She has no equal in the party’s establishment, the cohort of empty suits who would implement a diluted version of her agenda, though. This group seeks to saddle Americans with much of what they’ve already rejected – gender ideology, anti-growth climate policies, and a laissez-faire approach to border security – but without explicitly embracing the socialist label, or the language of the average Middlebury campus activist.

    Those who might run in this lane all face significant headwinds. Former mayor and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg is the most gifted, but black voters are allergic to his smug, McKinsey shtick. Governor Gavin Newsom of California can bob, weave, dip and dodge with the best of them, but his ambition and inauthenticity shines through in every syllable. Senator Cory Booker’s Spartacus act is a running gag. Senator Chris Murphy is Wonder Bread with Iranian flag packaging. Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois is a big nepo-baby whose case for a promotion collapses at the first mention of his state’s largest city. 

    Should no one else emerge, the Democrats’ failure to build a palatable, center-left bench could lead them, by default, back to Harris. Her existing name recognition – and the months-long astroturf campaign to build her up last year – arguably sets her apart from the field; and there is precedent for coalescing around imperfect establishment candidates. Look no further than 2020, when the entire party got behind Biden to stop Sanders. 

    Ultimately, though, Harris is more a symptom of Democrats’ maladies than a cure for them. The only question is whether that matters, given her competition.

  • AOC and Hochul are crazy for Mamdani

    AOC and Hochul are crazy for Mamdani

    New York’s Kathy Hochul isn’t a good governor. But, like a particularly empathetic house pet, she’s finely attuned to any change in the weather. A huge crowd in a Queens stadium rallied last night for Zohran Mamdani and chanted “Tax the rich! Tax the rich!” over and over again. So when Hochul said, “I hear you, I hear you,” you can be sure that she actually heard them, though today she said she thought they were saying “let’s go Bills.” Sure. Either way, she got to where she is by knowing how to back a winner. 

    The rich, meanwhile, are in the process of moving their family photos to the Palm Beach town home or shopping for McMansions in suburban Dallas. It’s obvious to all but the extremely deluded that New York is going to elect Mamdani mayor, and that he’s going to win big. “Elect Zohran,” Hochul said emphatically last night, “and we take back America!” Fat chance of that, but the Democratic Socialists are about to take control of America’s largest city.

    Any objective observer understands that the Mamdani administration will be a disaster, though the scope and contours of that disaster remain unclear. As for the tone of the vibe shift, let’s turn to Queens-representing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who bobbed back and forth onstage like a boxer. She excitedly sounded the clarion call of the people’s revolution.

    New York, she said, is “a city built by the sweat of immigrants, unionists and suffragists. From the Irish who fled famine, to the Italians who built our subways, the Jewish families who survived pogroms, the black communities who fought for every inch of freedom, the Latinos who harvest our food and care for our elders, the Asians who innovate in our labs and shops, and the indigenous peoples whose land this truly is – we are all here because New York has always been a beacon for the weary, the bold, and the unbreakable.”

    True, Italians did do a lot of labor on the subways, and I’m sure the Lenape, wherever they may now be, appreciate the land acknowledgment. The Jews who survived pogroms may soon find themselves surviving another; hopefully there’s nice housing for them in Orlando and Las Vegas. But one could also argue, as Republicans do, that New York as we know it was truly built by the likes of Robert Moses and Donald Trump. That might be AOC’s point, though. Capitalist development is exactly what she, and Mamdani and Bernie Sanders, are against.

    “We must remember,” AOC told the crowd last night, ”We are not the crazy ones, New York City. We are not the outlandish ones, New York City. They want us to think we are crazy. They gaslight us, they mock us, they call us socialists or worse. But we are sane. We are the ones seeing clearly.”

    I may be alone among my cohort but I don’t think AOC is crazy at all. If she is crazy, then she’s loco como un zorro. In fact, she’s quite clever, and knows exactly what she’s doing. For all the agitas that Mamdani (and AOC’s) New York is going to cause the building and finance class, it’s doing a service in some ways.

    As the likes of Kathy Hochul genuflect to the DSA, it’s clear that the old neoliberal Democratic party is on its final breaths. Last night’s rally was no Chuck Schumer chanting “we will win” and pounding his fists on the lectern like he’s demanding an extra pudding at the senior center. It was young, alive and done with the weak, sclerotic politics of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. At some point, progressives might find themselves turning to Mamdani and screaming, like Obi-Wan to Anakin, “you were the chosen one!!!”