The Social World

Category: Politics

  • Laura Loomer is in the crosshairs

    Laura Loomer is in the crosshairs

    “I get death threats every day,” Laura Loomer says matter-of-factly, as if discussing her junk mail. “I get death threats from Muslims, radical leftists, trannies, you name it.”

    ‘After what happened to Charlie Kirk, you have to wonder if people are hiding on a roof planning to kill you’

    An alligator skull, a bullhorn, a red MAGA hat and a grinning pumpkin sit on a shelf behind Loomer in her pink-lit Florida studio – otherwise known as the spare bedroom of her Gulf Coast rental. This is the headquarters of Loomer Unleashed, the notorious podcast from which she has single-handedly ended the careers of dozens of members of the Trump administration by revealing their alleged treachery. Yet it is very much her future under discussion right now.

    “Just this morning I had to have a conversation with state law enforcement because they’re monitoring an individual who they believe had a plot to take my life for being Jewish and conservative,” she says.

    Since we spoke, the man Loomer referred to has been arrested by police in Texas for making death threats against her and other Jewish conservative members of the media. Nicholas Ray is in custody awaiting extradition to Florida to face charges.

    Death is increasingly an occupational hazard in the polarized world that Loomer inhabits. What makes her even more of a target than other online provocateurs is the sheer number of enemies she has made – numerous groups from across the political spectrum could feasibly have her in their crosshairs. “After what happened to Charlie Kirk, you have to wonder if people are hiding in a tree or hiding on a roof planning to kill you. It’s at the back of my mind every day. There are Nazis out there, there are jihadis, there are radical leftists. There are all types of crazy people who believe crazy conspiracy theories or hold radical views on the left, and unfortunately on the right as well.”

    Living anything approaching a normal life under such conditions is impossible, Loomer says. This is why she has few friends and rarely leaves her home. And when she does, she makes sure her boyfriend, or whoever she is with, has a gun.  “When you go out, one of you has to be armed. I keep an eye out when people are staring at me in restaurants. Do they recognize me? Are they friendly? Are they hostile? It’s a lot of stress, which is why I don’t really like going out. It’s dangerous.”

    There are few things in life more certain than death, taxes and Loomer’s steadfast support for Donald J. Trump. They spoke just a week ago. She won’t reveal what about, but says with a flash of menace: “I like to serve as an extra set of eyes and ears on the outside to tell the President the truth about who’s being loyal, who’s being disloyal, who’s undermining him and his administration.”

    It is in this role that she has been his most effective servant. Her stock in trade is “Loomering” – professionally kneecapping – apparent fifth columnists in his administration. She first identifies them – often via a digital deep-dive that uncovers an old Democratic alliance – and then blasts their treachery to her 1.8 million followers on X and 130,000 podcast subscribers.

    In reality, however, the public demonstration is for an audience of just one: the President. Her scalps are racking up quickly. The biggest – and bloodiest – came when she dropped a dossier on the Resolute Desk during a meeting with Trump in April that led to six National Security Council staffers being fired. The President is appreciative and calls her “a patriot” and a “fantastic woman.” The love is mutual. Loomer says with palpable enthusiasm, “I’m very passionate about supporting President Trump and his agenda so that we can truly make America great again instead of just having it be some pipe dream and a slogan on a red hat.”

    But a glimmer of daylight is now emerging between them over the issue that Loomer believes is the biggest threat to America at the moment: Islam. She goes so far as to admit that she is “disappointed” with the man she clearly otherwise reveres.

    “I don’t know why his administration is playing footsy with Muslims right now. If you look at the Trump that ran for president in 2015 and 2016, he literally said Islam hates us and we have a Muslim problem in our country. There should be a complete Islamic travel ban. I have a lot of questions about this. I’m a bit disappointed. I don’t know what the reason is. Maybe he’s trying to normalize relations with Qatar. But normalizing relations does nothing for us if our country is conquered from within.”

    Her advice for the President is typically radical. “Deport all non-citizen Muslims. We need to have an immigration moratorium on all Islamic immigration from every single Muslim country. We need to make it illegal to serve in Congress if you are a Muslim. It needs to be illegal to take your oath of office on the Qur’an as well. There is more Jew hatred and incitement to violence against Jews in the Qur’an than there is in Hitler’s Mein Kampf.”

    The implications of not acting, to Loomer’s mind, are terrifying and impossible for America to recover from. “We’re going to become a Muslim country. We’re going to wake up one day and Muhammad is going to replace John as the most popular male baby name here in the United States, the same way that it has in the UK and France and Germany. Every single Muslim who’s ever been elected to office in the United States of America is a hostile force. Every single one of them has anti-Semitic and anti-Christian views, anti-American views and pro-Islamic terror views. I haven’t met a single Muslim candidate for office in this country that passes the bar, not a single one.”

    If there is bleakness creeping into her worldview under Trump, how much worse will it be when he leaves office in 2028? Is there anyone she trusts to carry the MAGA torch forward? “J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio are definitely frontrunners,” is all she would say on the matter. “I need the GOP to actually pull their weight if I’m going to even cast a ballot. I have no love for or loyalty to the Republican party. In fact, I think that we live in a country where we have a uniparty that serves the interests of the political elites.”

    What of her own future after Trump leaves office? Loomer has stood twice for Congress – but when asked about standing again, she says: “I can’t think of anything I’d like to do more aside from gouging my eyes out than running for office. Perhaps I’ll just pivot full-time into doing political consulting or political research. Maybe I’ll continue doing my show. Maybe I’ll be asked to come work on a presidential campaign in 2028. I’m very passionate about animals as well. Maybe I would get into animal rescue. I have no idea.”

    Unusually for a 32-year-old, she is determined that when she dies, the world will remember her name. “Everybody dies someday and your friends are sad and your family’s sad and maybe your co-workers are sad, but then everybody forgets. You have to build a legacy while you’re alive.

    Is Laura Loomer a sociopath? She’s variously called a conspiracy theorist, Islamophobe and a white nationalist

    “It’s kind of like a taboo thing to talk about because it’s not really one of those socially acceptable things to have a conversation about, but everybody can get married and everybody can have kids, but not everybody can have a lasting impact. And maybe it sounds sociopathic. Maybe it is a little sociopathic. Some people will say, ‘Oh my God, she’s a sociopath.’ I don’t really care. I’ve had some people say, ‘Well, that’s a really terrible way to look at life.’

    “But everybody has their own unique talent and it’s up to us, while we’re alive on this planet, to find out what our talents are and how we can utilize our talents. Not just to have a personal life but also how we can help our communities and help our country.”

    Is Laura Loomer a sociopath? She’s variously branded a conspiracy theorist, an Islamophobe, a white nationalist and, horror of horrors, a body-shamer after tweeting: “Yikes AOC has gained at least 50 pounds since getting into Congress.”

    Or is her dark secret that she’s content – and optimistic about the future? “I don’t know if I would ever run for president, but who knows?” she smirks. “William Shakespeare once said that expectation is the root of all unhappiness. They used to play that Rolling Stones song ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ at every single Trump rally – but if you try, you might just get what you need. So maybe in the end I’ll just end up with what I need, but not with what I want.”

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.

  • Good riddance (or not) to George Abaraonye

    Good riddance (or not) to George Abaraonye

    It was rather sly of George Abaraonye to move the motion of no confidence in himself as president-elect of the Oxford Union. He said it was an act of “true accountability”, but it seemed to me more a sense of false virtue.

    The ballot question was: “Should George Abaraonye, President-Elect, be removed as an Officer of the Society?” The franchise wasn’t limited to current students or those in the environs of Oxford who could conveniently vote in person, but was extended extraordinarily to potentially thousands of life members all over the world who could vote by proxy. This was at the request of the standing committee – at quite short notice – and has been the cause of considerable confusion and chronic delay.

    The problem was that life members do not all have membership cards (these do get lost over the decades) and so were permitted either to vote in person with photo ID, or email proof of ID with matriculation details to the single extraordinary returning officer (to whom I shall return). Still, many alumni who live in or around Oxford and who went along to the Goodman Library to vote in person were turned away because their past memberships couldn’t be corroborated manually from central ledgers. Those who were turned away included Baroness Deech (a former head of house), Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, and former presidents of the Union Viscount Hailsham and Melanie Johnson (despite photographic evidence adorning the walls). Scores of others were similarly prevented from voting on account of lost records. Shambolic.

    Abaraonye’s supporters have been challenging every proxy vote cast by email to ascertain whether the senders were ever members. It is of course perfectly reasonable to seek to prevent electoral fraud, but cross-checking a thousand votes can take some time given that dusty ledgers from the 1960s and 1970s seem to have disappeared altogether. The standing committee knew this and should have foreseen the chaos it might cause. The validity of the vote has been further undermined by unconfirmed reports that the extraordinary returning officer gave other students – some distinctly partisan in the proceedings – access to his email inbox. There was no way of knowing if proxy votes were tampered with, deleted or even received.

    Unsurprisingly, amid allegations and counter-allegations of procedural irregularity, it is hard to see how the returning officer and extraordinary returning officer were able to confirm a safe and fair result at all. Proceedings were also informally suspended at noon yesterday because of “an impossible working atmosphere”; the extraordinary returning officer having been “subjected to obstruction, intimidation and unwarranted hostility by a number of Representatives”. 

    And then came the first dramatic twist worthy of Conclave. In a meeting of the standing committee, which Abaraonye was permitted to attend as president-elect, he and his supporters moved a revenge motion of no confidence in the current president, Moosa Harraj, for allowing alumni to vote on Saturday. And they came prepared (very) with the requisite 150 signatures, so that vote will take place on Thursday. All this was decided before even starting to count Saturday’s no confidence vote.

    Another twist came this morning, after white smoke had seemingly finally emerged. Abaraonye had been voted out (or “resigned”, as it is deemed) according to Donovan Lock, the extraordinary returning officer, with the motion which needed a two-thirds majority being accepted, 1,228 to 501. But Abaraonye has now said he will contest the decision. In a statement this morning, his camp said that his opponents had access to Lock’s email account to which the proxy votes were sent: “We do not know if or how many proxy votes have been tampered with… George Abaraonye remains the President-Elect per the Oxford Union rules. According to Rule 47(h)(v), the result of a confidence ballot cannot accepted until disciplinary appeals have been resolved”.

    This whole sorry saga is such an Oxford farrago. Perhaps we could have read the runes when email signatories to the motion of no confidence discovered they had to copy in Abaraonye as the mover of the motion, conveniently providing him with a database of a couple of hundred names and contact details of those who wanted to oust him. His supporters have also been able to see the names of those who voted by proxy, including influential public figures, thus breaching the secret ballot. 

    Since news circulated of his moment of ecstasy at the shooting of Charlie Kirk last month, Abaraonye has been trying to redeem himself with exculpatory excuses. His celebratory comments on Instagram and WhatsApp were “poor judgment”, he “reacted impulsively”, his words have been widely “misrepresented”. He also said that his remarks (“Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s f***ing go”; “Charlie Kirk got shot loool”) “did not reflect my values” – which is strange because the impulsive reaction is usually a rather accurate reflection of a person’s values. He even claims to have become a victim of “cancel culture”, which is also odd given that he was the mover of the motion and so canceled himself. 

    Toby Young was of the view that Abaraonye “should not be penalized by the Oxford Union or the university for saying something offensive but perfectly lawful. That’s free speech”. I agree that he shouldn’t be disciplined by his college or the university, but the Oxford Union has every right to expect elected officers to uphold its institutional ethos. It is indeed a bastion of free speech, and Abaraonye is perfectly free to express his views. But he does not then have the right to hold the office of president if he believes, as it appears to me, that political assassination and violent revolution are justified when the ballot box and free speech are deemed to have failed.

    It may be “perfectly lawful” to express such a view, but it would rightly disqualify him from holding a number of positions in public life, including, I believe, one that seeks to advance education through free speech and expression. He has damaged the interests of the Oxford Union and brought it into disrepute. Free speech can have perfectly justifiable consequences, and 1,227 members evidently agree with me. 

    Some of Abaraonye’s allies have been framing the attempt to remove him as “racist”. According to the Oxford branch of Stand Up To Racism: “If this racist campaign to depose George is successful it will further embolden fascists and the far right.” I’d say that’s a good example of what I call “censory smearing”: tarnishing Abaraonye’s critics with unpleasant character smears to shut them down. But I’m not going to be shamed into doubting motives or thinking that the desire for Abaraonye to be removed as president-elect was based on anything but a concern for the reputation and standing of the society. As for “racism”, it is worth noting in passing that another screenshot from one of Abaraonye’s WhatsApp exchanges shows him boasting: “I don’t frequent white establishments.” But perhaps those words don’t reflect his values either.

    The problem was not only his celebratory outburst at Kirk’s death, but the fact that other messages have emerged suggesting he holds the Oxford Union itself in contempt. When one friend wrote to him before his election in June “if u hate it then you should run for presidency!!!!”, Abaraonye responded: “real lol that’s what I did.”

    It seems it was all one big gas to him. His presidency wasn’t to be one that dignified a hallowed chamber, but subversive of and corrosive to its traditions. He clearly despises the establishment (too white, perhaps?), and inclines to a necessary destruction. Why else would you seek to lead an institution you apparently hate?  

    The fact that high-profile speakers have withdrawn over his comments, and major donors are withholding funds, ought to have made him reflect a little deeper on the damage he was doing. The conduct of his supporters since the close of poll has also been deeply damaging. But self-reflection seems to be beyond him, as is the moral-intellectual process of weighing whether his endorsement of political violence could coexist with his aspiration to lead a debating society that eschews it. If he cared at all, he’d have resigned weeks ago. 

    The Oxford Union is in a state. It is facing bankruptcy, with a projected loss of £400,000 this coming year, and looking at a maintenance bill for their Grade 2 listed building of between £4-5 million. Membership has collapsed, lawsuits abound, staff are leaving and trustees are resigning. The Augean stables need clearing out, and the society is in desperate need of fundamental reform if its reputation is to be restored. But children like George Abaraonye are not the ones to lead that. He doesn’t even seem to appreciate that when you are an elected officer of a world-renowned debating society that prizes freedom of speech, your own free speech is necessarily constrained by institutional obligations and reputational demands. If you don’t like that, at least try to learn why you shouldn’t stand for a public-facing office.

  • Should we fear the feminization of society?

    Should we fear the feminization of society?

    I am a proud father. Both my daughters got good degrees. But better still, they smoke, go to pubs and drink Guinness. I suspect they may sometimes drink rosé or prosecco behind my back, but I soldier on. You see, if you are the lone man in an otherwise all-female family, it’s important to make sure overall testosterone levels don’t decline too far. Kanye West found much the same thing when he lived with the Kardashians.

    And at least neither of my daughters likes Taylor Swift. So that’s another small win for the Y chromosome. Is it just me, or is there something odd with the culture when the world’s most successful musician has absolutely no appeal to men whatsoever? It’s not as though my own musical tastes are aggressively heterosexual: I love a good Bonnie Tyler power ballad, and I consider Abba’s “The Day Before You Came” one of the greatest songs ever written (even though the timeline in the lyrics doesn’t quite stack up).

    A conservative take on this topic is to be found on YouTube, where at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC last month Helen Andrews gave a talk entitled “Overcoming the Feminization of Culture.” Watch it and it’s hard to deny that she has a point. As women continue their long sashay through the institutions, and given the curse of the double-income trap which means it is impossible in many places to own or even rent a home on a single salary, we should be alert to unintended consequences of overly feminized domains. For instance, Andrews points out that men no longer read fiction – which may be connected to the fact that 80 percent of people working in publishing are women. HR as a discipline is a complete matriarchy.

    Nonetheless, I think Andrews might have branded this wrongly. The thing to fear may not be feminization, but emasculation: the loss of traditionally male qualities which cannot survive below a certain threshold. You might expect me here to cite honor or bravery or parallel parking or something. No. In evolutionary terms, two of the most essential male qualities are stupidity and the ability to behave with a complete lack of empathy, even to the point of taking delight in the misfortunes of your own friends.

    In reproductive terms, men are disposable. It is their “job”, in a wider evolutionary sense, to be stupid – to take rapid, risky decisions with high variance outcomes in the hope that they pay off.

    In certain settings, it is also vital to achieve a complete suspension of empathy. The solicitor for Lucy Letby, a British neonatal nurse convicted of murder and attempted murder of infants, recently said of the nurse’s trial that it was upsetting to the victims’ families to question the verdict. What?

    If you want to know what it once meant to be a man, consider someone who worked for my grandfather in Tredegar in the 1930s. He had spent several years in the trenches on the Western Front in World War One. As a hardened group of fighting men, they were put under the command of an overzealous young officer. Eager to prove himself, this lieutenant climbed to the top of a trench ladder and ordered them to advance, gesturing forwards with his right arm. At this precise moment, his shoulder was hit by shrapnel, causing his arm to detach completely from his body. With the forward momentum of his gesture, it continued flying forward still clad in its sleeve, landing in the mud six feet away, its hand still clutching the service revolver.

    They all fell about laughing.

    Just to be clear, I don’t want to live in a world where dismemberment is a regular source of amusement. But compared with spending your life treading on eggshells in case something you say makes someone sad, it has its advantages.

  • America’s king is Burger King

    America’s king is Burger King

    The nationwide No Kings protest attracted, according to varying estimates, between 600,000 and 600 million Americans. Republicans either denigrated the protests as a kind of retirement-home activity for permanently terrified MSNBC boomers or as cover for bloodthirsty Antifa terrorists who want to destroy America and, in the words of House Speaker Mike Johnson, bring about “a rise of Marxism in the Democratic Party.” Or, you know, why not both? 

    Coverage of the protests reflected this schizo vibe. There were a lot of sad Boomer ladies in tie-dye T-shirts carrying Orange Man Bad posters, and some footage of grotesque, twisted far leftists mocking the murder of Charlie Kirk. In the case of my social-media feed, largely populated by people I knew in an era where I actually took political sides, marchers weren’t murderous Commie bastards, but mostly well-meaning liberals who simply can’t comprehend that the America they once knew has changed, and that the political ground and political loyalties, have shifted. 

    Breaking news to the marchers: Donald Trump is President, and he doesn’t care at all what you think of him. And breaking news to Republicans: Millions of people worldwide don’t like the President, and nothing he does will ever change their minds. Legions of people, including some who I know quite well, are completely convinced that they’re living in the rise of the Fourth Reich, just like millions of Republicans were convinced that Barack Obama was Josef Stalin II, from Hawaii. Then as now, when protests like this erupt non-spontaneously, legitimate critique becomes melodramatic, self-serving theater, while the Republic churns along. 

    But what, specifically, were people protesting on Saturday? Many think that ICE is overreaching its authority. They don’t like Trump’s threats against federal judges, or his attempts to use the FCC to silence his critics. He’s gauche, obnoxious, crude and corrupt. But he’s not a king. The people elected him, twice, and very nearly elected him a third time. As critics of the protests pointed out, people marched against kings, and then on Sunday, they woke up in a free country. Mission accomplished. 

    A few brave and self-promoting souls counter-protested on this weekend, but mostly people went about their usual weekend business of hanging out with family, watching college football, grilling, or, in my case, whiling away a half-dozen hours at the local card house. As the strange but amusing social-media pundit @mr_politics97 said in a video yesterday, filmed in a hoodie while walking by the side of a highway, “Apparently to the Liberals yesterday was a success… we trying to figure out how it was a success. Trump still the President. And you still gonna be getting deported if your ass not a U.S. citizen. So I’m truly trying to understand, what the fuck did y’all think you was doin’ yesterday? Ain’t nothing changed. Ain’t nothing changing.”

    Good question, Mr. Politics. A new week has arrived, it’s still a free country, and the only kings we have are Burger King, Smoothie King, Mattress King, Draft Kings, and, in some grocery-store regions, King Sooper’s. Meanwhile, how did the KING respond? 

    Trump said, yesterday, that the protesters were “WHACKED OUT” and George Soros paid for them. “By the way, I’m not a KING. I work my ASS OFF to make our country great. That’s all it is.” 

    Trump also posted an AI-generated video where he, flying a fighter jet, drops a payload of feces on Harry Sisson and a group of No Kings protesters below. “He’s using satire to make a point,” Mike Johnson said yesterday. “He is not calling for the MURDER of his political opponents. And that’s what these people ARE doing. In one of these photos… there is a picture of the president hanging in effigy by a noose. It’s unconscionable.” 

    Maybe, but it’s also a free country. People also used to hang Barack Obama in effigy, and now he’s a billionaire who lives on Martha’s Vineyard. God bless America, where our leaders cash in, and where kings are purely optional. 

  • Is Kemi Badenoch plotting an American move?

    Brits who make a pivot to America tend to fall into two categories. There are those who seek a bigger stage – like Alfred Hitchcock or Christopher Hitchens. Then there are those who were in some sense “run out of town” back in Britain and now seek solace and refuge in the New World. Under this heading we can put the Pilgrim Fathers, Thomas Paine, Mark Thatcher (wayward son of Margaret Thatcher), and now, Kemi Badenoch – beleaguered leader of Britain’s Conservative Party.

    Badenoch has penned an odd op-ed for the New York Post celebrating the policies of the second Trump administration. The article begins with a strangely wry hat tip to the 47th President on the “Not bad, kid” pattern:

    “But often these days I look across the pond at the United States and think you guys might be on to something.”

    Which is rather a lot like me informing Michael Phelps that he may be “on to something” with his butterfly stroke. The rest of the article carries on in a similar vein, praising action on the border, energy and defense. 

    Yet why did she write it? It is safe to say that the voters Mrs. Badenoch so desperately needs (her Tories have now fallen to third place in the polls, displaced as the party of the right by Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK) are unlikely to be regular readers of the Post. 

    Cockburn can think of some slightly lower motives. Could the article be an attempt to set the seemingly doomed party leader up for a career on the American lecture circuit? Bolshy conservative British firebrands are always in demand stateside, as the post-premiership of Liz Truss shows. In that case, we would refer Mrs. Badenoch to the words of the English poet W.H. Auden, himself a plyer of this trade:

    “Another morning comes: I see,
    Dwindling below me on the plane,
    The roofs of one more audience
    I shall not see again.

    God bless the lot of them, although
    I don’t remember which was which:
    God bless the USA, so large,
    So friendly, and so rich.”

  • Why does the left hate J.D. Vance so much?

    Why does the left hate J.D. Vance so much?

    Freddy Gray’s latest Spectator cover piece on J.D. Vance’s status as the heir apparent for Donald Trump, well-above the scrum of potential alternatives despite his relative youth and the fact he has been an elected politician for not even three years, brings to mind an underrated aspect of his appeal. I am often asked by conservatives across the country some version of the question: Why does the left hate J.D. Vance so much? Why does he prompt so much vociferous loathing? The answer is somewhat disguised by his uniqueness in background and resume, but the truth is: They hate him because they view him as a traitor to their class, after they welcomed him with open arms.

    You can hear the feelings of betrayal in this recent appearance by leftist podcaster Jennifer Welch on MSNBC: “Here’s two things about J.D. Vance. Number one, he used to say Trump is America’s Hitler. So he has regressed,” said Welch during an appearance on All In with Chris Hayes. “And then number two, he is married to a woman of Indian descent. He has mixed race children. So to all of the MAGA voters out there, if this man will not defend his wife and will not defend his kids, do you think he gives a crap about you or anything to do with you?”

    When Vance penned his Hillbilly Elegy memoir, he had a story to tell that arrived with perfect timing for a political landscape dominated by people on the center left trying to make some sense of (or offer some dismissive explanation for) the Trump phenomenon. Obviously written without anticipating the degree to which it would take over the conversation, the success of Vance’s book and its fortuitous timing elevated him immediately into the echelon of the world of media profiles, Aspen Ideas, and powerful circles extending from the pages of The New York Times to big names in Hollywood. Here was someone from Appalachia who offered an explanation for why Trump was happening while also criticizing the man himself, even to the point of sharing in some of the extreme rhetoric deployed against the man beyond 2016. He went on Charlie Rose to call himself as a “a Never Trump guy,” wrote a piece for the The New York Times calling Trump “unfit” for the presidency, and joined Terry Gross on NPR to call Trump “noxious” and warn that he “is leading the white working class to a very dark place.” He even did the most humiliating thing you could do at that time in that position, which was cast a vote in 2016 for Evan McMullin. He’d proven which side he was on.

    This was a perfect critic for the American leftist elite to elevate – a walking, talking human avatar of What’s The Matter With Kansas, with a lovely mixed race family and a Hindu wife, the Ivy League credentials, the venture capital resume, The New York Times bestselling memoir, and a life story perfect for a Netflix movie which Hollywood didn’t just make, they got it nominated for Academy Awards. Forget writing from the lowly ranks of anonymous posts at FrumForum; Vance had set himself up for a lifetime fellowship at Brookings and a permanent seat at the table of the media elite, telling endless stories about how the right went wrong. 

    For someone without a sense of principle or political reality, all this would go to your head. You have the opportunity to be at the top echelon of elite voices, rake in the money on the speaking tours, and be a voice of constant Christian moralizing against the racist bigots from whence you came who just don’t know what’s good for them. Who would turn it down? 

    Well, Vance did. As it turned out, like more intellectual conservatives than would readily admit it today, he saw what Trump did in his first term and he didn’t just change his tune – he switched sides. The left hates this. They think insults matter more than policy, and that if you couldn’t stomach Trump’s tweets, it definitely makes you a hypocrite to say he’s doing good things, too. And deep down, they know Vance is really quite good at it. The vice president has an even better understanding of the elite world he had briefly navigated. Seeing its weak points fueled an even greater talent at making the case for the Trumpian policies he now supports. Today you’ll oftentimes find him arguing the case with those same media entities and figures who once welcomed him into the fold. His talent makes the shift all the more frustrating. So does his beard.

    So when the left rails against Vance, understand that they do so from a position of deeply felt personal betrayal. Imagine, as bizarre as it might seem today, a J.D. Vance who on an alternate earth chose all the treasure the establishment had to offer and became a Democratic Senator from Ohio in 2018 instead. Is there any realistic scenario where he would not be a leading candidate for their 2028 presidential nomination today? But no – instead, Vance chose the other path, to walk away from the world they offered him and the media elites were left to drown their sorrows with the latest headlines from David French. You can understand why that feels infuriating.


  • Will Japan’s first female prime minister succeed?

    A former heavy metal drummer and biker is not someone the world would expect to become a prime minister of Japan. Particularly if that someone is a woman. But that is what is likely to happy tomorrow. Last month 64-year-old Sanae Takaichi became the first female head of the Liberal Democrat Party – the party that has ruled Japan for all but 4 of the last 70 years. She is now Japan’s first female prime minister.

    On Monday Takaichi signed off on a coalition pact with the right leaning libertarian Japan Innovation Party (Ishin). They have replaced the Komeito, the socially conservative party that is affiliated with Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist organization founded in 1930 which is dedicated to the teachings of the 13th century priest Nichiren. Komeito were the junior partners to the LDP for 26 years.

    Nevertheless, the LDP, which suffered their second worst ever electoral result after prime minister Shigeru Ishiba called a snap election just one month after taking office in September 2024, will remain two votes short of a majority. That will not prevent Takaichi from forming a minority government. Given that President Donald Trump arrives in Tokyo on October 27, there is a pressing need for a Japanese prime minister to be in place to help negotiate trade and tariff talks. No doubt she will seek some relief from the 15 percent levies introduced by Trump on Japanese exports to the US combined with his demand for $550m of investment.

    As the New York Post trumpeted last week, “Trump ready to rock with heavy metal drummer.” Ever the flatterer, Trump has already described Takaichi’s leadership as “tremendous news.” He is likely to be encouraged by her worship of Margaret Thatcher who Takaichi met shortly before her death.

    Takaichi rise to power was enabled by former prime minister Taro Aso, the LDP’s current kingmaker; he is the grandson of Japan’s Shigeru Yoshida who ranks with Germany’s chancellor Conrad Adenauer as one of the great post war political figures who reintegrated the defeated powers into the world order. Aso saw in Takaichi the politician who could keep out the more left leaning of the LDP’s factional leaders.

    Japanese prime ministers do not tend to last long

    She is also the protégé of Shinzo Abe, the most consequential Japanese prime minister of the last fifty years. His economic policies, known as “Abenomics” revived the Japanese economy from its 20-year slump, known as the “Lost Decades” that followed the great financial crash that began in January 1990. Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, combated Japan’s persistent deflation by pursuing easy money policies, fiscal stimulus and structural economic and social reform to increase competitiveness. We can expect more of the same from Takaichi.

    The beginning of her campaign was somewhat flatfooted. Takaichi started electioneering in her home city of Nara, Japan’s ancient capital famous for its temples and roaming deer. She played the race card by complaining in a labored anecdote about foreign tourists harassing deer. As a right-wing Japanese friend said to me over the weekend, her views on immigration did little to play down her reputation as an ultra-nationalist. Her fundamentalist approach on immigration has even led former Japanese leader Fumio Kusada to give her the nickname, “Taliban.”

    Rising immigration of young Asian workers, much needed by Japan’s ageing population, has coincided with a perceived rise in crime rates. While the admittedly thin statistics are played down by the left, who point out that foreigners account for just 3 percent of Japan’s population, the right has been less forgiving. JAPAN Forward, an English-language online newspaper financed by the right-wing Sankei Shimbun newspaper recently posted, “Foreigners are just 3 percent of Japan’s population, yet arrests for serious crimes by foreigners have risen. Why does the media emphasize only benefits?”

    Racism and the fixed belief in Japanese racial superiority has long been a feature of Japanese society. The seven years I lived in Japan can attest to that. Memorably one Japanese restaurant owner very politely informed me, “We don’t serve white people.”

    However, a younger, better travelled generation of Japanese, are increasingly liberal. Noticeably, Takaichi has sought to move her image to more central ground. “I realized last year for the first time that people might have thought of me as a very extreme, right-wing conservative,” she recently opined, “I think I’m an extremely ordinary person.”

    On the global stage she will clearly be perceived as a right winger. She is supportive of Taiwan and is an outspoken critic of China. No Japanese prime minister has visited China since 2013 and she unlikely to break that mould. She is also a member of the 70,000 strong Nippon Kaigi, an organization supported by many LDP right wingers, which denies the atrocities committed in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).

    Nevertheless, Takaichi has sought to tone down the rhetoric. She has simply said that the Japanese army’s war crimes are very exaggerated – they are not. But this year she did refrain from visiting the Yasakuni Shrine to honor Japan’s war dead, including its war criminals.

    Japanese prime ministers do not tend to last long. Since World War II a third of Japanese prime minister have lasted for less than a year. Leading a weak minority government and facing formidable economic problems, particularly in the face of Trump’s tariff policies, Takaichi is unlikely to last a four-year term.

    Her policies of lower taxes combined with more government spending bear an uncanny resemblance to those of Liz Truss – Britain’s shortest-lived prime minister. The Japan Times has already pointed out the similarities. Therefore, she could probably have done without the enthusiastic support of Truss, who, in a post on X, claimed that Takaichi’s victory was a “pushback against economic stagnation, excessive migration and the diminution of national sovereignty.”

    But at least she has broken the glass ceiling. Japanese women, formidable in a domestic context where they describe their hen-pecked husbands as Gokiburi (cockroaches), may now become a greater force in Japanese politics. Much will depend on how Takaichi now performs.

  • Is the Virginia election a referendum on Trump?

    Is the Virginia election a referendum on Trump?

    The Virginia state elections had looked predictable. Nearly every poll showed the Democrats poised to win all three executive offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. Then, a series of violent texts from the Democratic candidate for attorney general surfaced.

    In 2022, then-delegate Jay Jones had texted his Republican colleague Carrie Coyner saying that if he had a gun and two bullets, in a room with Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert, he’d shoot Gilbert twice. Then he called Coyner to say he wanted Gilbert’s wife to watch their children die in her arms. 

    Coyner expressed her horror over text. But Jones kept going: “Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy”. Coyner replied, “It really bothers me when you talk about hurting people or wishing death on them.”

    The texts are two years old but correspond to a present fear that extremism is on the rise, and that it’s becoming mainstream to believe violence can and should be used to effect change. 

    The scandal has clearly given the Republicans a chance to claw back a victory. The three GOP candidates struggled to display unity after months of internal disputes, following allegations that their candidate for lieutenant governor John Reid had been posting gay porn on Tumblr, which he denies. In April, the Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin was calling for Reid to stand down. On top of this, having a Republican President and Governor makes the race a tricky defensive battle, particularly when it comes to addressing voters’ economic pain. Nor does it help that campaign spending by the Democrat candidate for governor, Abigail Spanberger, is more than double that of her Republican counterpart, Winsome Earle-Sears.

    Up until now, the tactic on both sides has been to bring back the 2021 playbook. Virginia Democrats presented the election that year as a vote against Trump by tying the state’s Republicans to him. The Republicans campaigned on small-scale, mainly school-level iterations of culture war issues. Youngkin wanted single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms, parental approval for pronoun changes and boys out of girls’ sports. He won.

    Covid was still a fresh wound then. Lockdowns, school closures and the threat of an overreaching state were firmly in the minds of voters. Remote learning had exposed many parents to the bizarre propaganda which students were actually being taught in schools. Critical race theory and transgender ideology weren’t just knotty issues to be debated at the federal level, but ideas being taught to Virginia’s children.

    But four years later, it’s not clear that Virginia’s Republicans can win on these issues anymore. Winsome Earle-Sears knows how to rally a pro-MAGA crowd already inclined to listen, but she doesn’t know how to convince suburban moms that she’s not as unhinged as social media clips make her out to be. The former Marine and self-made immigrant from Jamaica (and author of a book called Stop Being a Christian Wimp!) has fighting spirit, but sometimes to her disadvantage.

    During the gubernatorial debate, Earle-Sears went on the offensive. She talked over the ex-CIA, three-term congresswoman Abigail Spanberger dozens of times, as she attempted to wrench answers out of an opponent unwilling to give them. Spanberger refused to answer Earle-Sears and received her barrage of questions with only a smug, blank smile. 

    Why was Spanberger allowing nude, biological males in girls’ changing rooms? Nothing. Why couldn’t she call for Jay Jones to be disqualified as a candidate? Nothing. “Would it take him pulling the trigger,” Earle-Sears asked, “is that what would do it? And then you would say he needs to get out of the race, Abigail? You have nothing to say? Abigail!” Abigail stared off into the distance, mute and apparently deaf.

    It was illustrative of the way the Democrats are approaching the Virginia election: stand back and hope your opponent makes a fool of himself or herself first. Perhaps it’s a lesson learned from the previous Democrat candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, who lost his lead after a debate gaffe, saying “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”. 

    Spanberger and her running mates are for the most part letting the President do the talking, and as in 2021 are portraying the state election a mini-referendum on Trump’s leadership in the run-up to next year’s midterms. As northern Virginia is home to a large number of federal workers, the government shutdown could boost votes in the Democrats’ favor if they can pin the missed paychecks and federal layoffs on the President.

    Like most of her party, Spanberger struggles to distinguish herself without using Trump as a foil. After the debate, she wrote in a statement that Winsome Earle-Sears’ “loyalty to Donald Trump will always come first, no matter the cost to Virginians and their families” because she refused to call on Trump to end the shutdown. (Of course, neither did Spanberger call on her party to budge.) Jay Jones, still somehow in the race, wrote on X after the debate that this election is a decision between a governor “who defends our freedoms, protects our democracy, and prioritizes the needs of Virginians – or one who takes directives from Donald Trump.” He has promised he would use his power as AG to go after the President, saying that he “can’t wait to see Trump in court”. Trump responded, calling Jones “a third-rate intellect” who “should not be allowed to be running for that office”.

    Spanberger’s number two, Ghazala Hashmi, cites Trump – Trump’s hate, specifically – as the impetus to a career in politics. “I know the fear of being attacked. Trump’s hate pushed me to run and flip the State Senate”, she says in a campaign ad. “I’ve taken on Trump before, and I’ll do it again as our lieutenant governor.” It’s a wonder that words like “fear”, “attack” and “hate” still hold water when used so casually, but the hope is that they’ll resonate with enough voters in this unusually fraught political climate.

    Jones’s texts might have woken some voters up to the hypocrisy of cheap campaign statements like Hashmi’s. Still more, Spanberger’s refusal to say anything more than that Jones’s texts were “absolutely abhorrent” and that “we should always be focused and forceful in our denouncement of violence and violent rhetoric” – despite being asked three times by debate moderators whether she still endorsed him – might turn some voters off her. 

    By comparison, when the Democratic party of Virginia released a press statement calling on Earle-Sears to tell the Young Republicans implicated in the group chat scandal to stand down, there was no word salad. She wrote on X: “Easy, they absolutely must step down. Now it’s your turn, Abigail.” Despite Spanberger’s refusal to call for Jones to stand down, he announced during the AG debate that he was “held accountable” for his texts (as well as for a reckless driving conviction in 2022). Rather, as his Republican opponent Jason Miyares pointed out, he was caught. “You had three years to say you’re sorry, Jay, and you didn’t.”

    Miyares, the incumbent AG, has overtaken Jones in some polls since the texting scandal. But even if Miyares ends up winning, the surge will look like something of a fluke, a stroke of luck that his opponent happened to be outed as a psychopath. Spanberger and Hashmi are still the favorites to win. The “us or Trump” strategy might have worked this time after all. If that’s the lesson for midterms, the rhetoric of animosity doesn’t look like it will be toned down anytime soon. Let’s just hope it stays rhetorical.

  • Will a Republican be the next New Jersey governor?

    Will a Republican be the next New Jersey governor?

    The national spotlight is on New Jersey as the long-blue state’s gubernatorial race narrows, but it wouldn’t be Juh-zey without a little last minute drama. Lying, suing and a last minute showing from Donald Trump – this race has just about everything. 

    And the Republican may actually win. 

    Democrat Mikie Sherrill has been the conventional favorite throughout the race. She’s a relatively fresh face, despite being a four-term U.S. Congresswoman, and she checks all the boxes: Navy veteran, Georgetown Law, and a respectable patina of moderation to go with the Girl Boss pantsuit. Still, the VoteView database shows her holding the party lines 95 percent of the time in Congress. 

    Republican Jack Ciattarelli, meanwhile, might be more of a household name after his bombastic burnout in the Jersey’s 2021 gubernatorial race. With slick-backed hair, a goombah accent, and a questionable business history, say what you want about the guy, but he’s very Jersey. He might not have the made-in-a-lab appeal of Sherrill, but there’s no reason he can’t pull off the W in his home turf. 

    In 2021, Ciattarelli lost by only three points to incumbent Governor Phil Murphy, a time when Democrats had an iron grip on the narrative and cancel culture reigned. But vibes, as we’ve seen, have shifted. 

    There’s limited polling on governors’ races – just five in Jersey over the past month – but the race is narrowing. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows just a six-point spread, with Sherrill failing to break a majority.

    Ciattarelli has a greater edge in enthusiasm, however, which in the age of populism is really all that counts. In the same poll, 55 percent of Ciattarelli voters said they are “very enthusiastic” compared to just 42 percent for Sherrill. On things as mundane as the issues affecting New Jerseyans, the two aren’t far off. But if the enthusiasm gap holds, and Jersey Democrats simply shrug their shoulders on election day, it’s quite clear which way this race is going. 

    So it’s no surprise that things have gotten increasingly ugly. In what The New York Times wishfully called an “explosive” shake up, Sherrill accused her opponent of “kill[ing] tens of thousands of people in New Jersey, including children.” A medical company Ciattarelli once owned spread “misinformation” and “propaganda” about opiate addiction, she claimed, adding he was “paid to develop an app so that people could more easily get the opioids once they were addicted.” But even The Times couldn’t dig up proof. 

    “It’s a lie,” Ciattarelli responded, threatening defamation charges. This is the third time he has threatened to sue over unrelated issues, but has yet to follow through – likely because the implications for campaign spending would create a legal minefield. 

    But a political minefield has never stopped Trump. Trump and Ciattarrelli notoriously kept their distance in the 2021 race; Trump was at the nadir of his political prestige, and Ciattarreli cautiously refused to seek an endorsement. While it’s uncommon for Trump to forget such “disloyalty,” the bromance is apparently back on. 

    Ciattarrelli has leaned into the Trump aesthetic in a last minute blitz through the state, holding a rally in Wildwood with a slew of MAGA influencers. There are several more stops to come. And he’s even ready to admit that Trump has “been right about everything.”

    That’s enough for Trump, who gave a full-throated endorsement: ”Jack has gone ALL IN, and is now 100 percent (PLUS!)”

    We’ll soon get an updated sense of the vibe shift we all can’t seem to stop talking about. 

    Jersey’s last Republican governor was Chris Christie, now most famous for hating Trump, and the state hasn’t gone red in a presidential race since 1988. But the once bright blue state now seems open to whichever party can find the right message. 

    Are the state’s affluent suburbanites, who often commute to New York or Philadelphia, and its own urban centers lost forever to the grips of the Democratic machine? Will a faceless suit always play well as long as they say Republicans are scary and mean?

    Or will the Trump effect finally see mass appeal? Perhaps Trump will finally help turnout voters even when he’s not on the ballot, a claim he’s often made but has proven questionable at best. 

    Only time will tell, and it will implicate both parties’ strategies in the midterms and beyond. Clearly, both parties know there’s more at stake here than just New Jersey. 

  • We need Sabrina Carpenter

    We need Sabrina Carpenter

    Sabrina Carpenter, who will for the first time this week be hosting NBC’s Saturday Night Live, continues to be a cause of controversy. Over the summer, the five-foot, honey-voiced singer revealed the cover for her newly released album, Man’s Best Friend. It shows her wearing a black minidress on her hands and knees, while a faceless man holds a handful of her hair. The image immediately stirred outrage online. Those who usually find themselves on the side of unfettered female sexual liberation called the cover regressive, degrading, and submissive toward the male gaze. Some fans defended the image, arguing that Carpenter was clearly satirizing incompetent and controlling men as well as her portrayal by the media as a “sex obsessed” pop star.

    Both of these perspectives fail to give enough credit to Carpenter, who has done what few contemporary pop artists have managed to do. She has identified the true culprit behind the relationship miasma of the 21st century: she knows that the guilty party is, at least in part, herself.

    The world’s biggest female pop stars – such as Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo – certainly don’t lack “honesty” in their lyrics. Any self-restraint that might have kept female singers from revealing their reasons for anger, fear and anxiety went out the door a long time ago. These performers regularly and loudly use their music to lament the dating scene in contemporary America and its effect on their lives. Honesty, however, is of little use without self-awareness.

    Carpenter seems to – at least on a personal level – deride her own role in her admittedly dismal love life. This process of admission is anything but sad. Like a good comedian, she chooses to be insightful by purposefully becoming the butt of the joke for the sake of others’ amusement. Carpenter openly admits to the appetite for misery and self-destruction that has infected her generation and has chosen to serve as a self-deprecating mirror to the culture that surrounds her.

    Produced with Jack Antonoff and John Ryan, Man’s Best Friend continues the musical journey of self-effacement that started with her previous album, Short n’ Sweet, which shot her to stardom. That album included tracks such as “Please Please Please” and “Slim Pickins,” in which she admits to her terrible taste in romantic partners. In Best Friend’s track “Manchild” she picks up this thread. She sings about incompetent and emotionally unstable manchildren not “let[ing] an innocent woman be,” before admitting sarcastically that she is anything but innocent herself: I swear they choose me, I’m not choosing them.” In “My Man on Willpower,” she resents her boyfriend for embarking on a journey of self-improvement and discipline, which has resulted in her playing second fiddle as the object of his attentions. Who wants an accomplished man if his accomplishments impede his obsession with her?

    Throughout the album, Carpenter recognizes her tendency to delude herself. In “Tears,” she portrays her arousal at a man’s efforts to assemble a chair from IKEA – the bare minimum of male competency – and attempts to use this to justify her attraction to him. In the album’s bonus track, “Such a Funny Way,” Carpenter whitewashes her man’s indifference and neglect as signs of affection: “Keep me far from friends and family, baby, that’s just one of your quirks / And if distance makes you fonder, I’m flattered by the distance you seek.”

    Carpenter is, admittedly, not only a victim, but a victimizer. Recently, the term “Affective Responsibility” has gained traction in modern dating discourse. In lieu of reliable social institutions that used to discourage men and women from playing fast and loose with their affections, the term addresses a need for people to acknowledge their ability to cause emotional pain to others. Unfortunately, it’s mostly used as a cudgel against men, who have almost exclusively been accused of affective irresponsibility. In seeming contradiction to the norm, Carpenter recognizes her ability to inflict damage on the men she dates. As she warns her man in “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry”: “Damn sure I’ll never let you know where you stand / . . . I’ll make you feel like a shell of a man.”

    Good court jesters and comedians play an essential role. They serve as a pressure valve for society. Unspeakable and uncomfortable truths come to the fore through their good humor. They also function as a consolation in hard times. How should we deal with dismal and dispiriting dating landscape of the 21st century? We can start with a smile and some self-awareness. As Carpenter states in “Go Go Juice,” “Some good old-fashioned fun sure numbs the pain.”