The Biden Enterprise Is Broke

Hunter Biden is now being sued for unpaid legal fees by Winston & Strawn. https://t.co/FCb4qAnZB3 With his father out of power and influence peddling no longer an option, bills are coming due for Hunter ...

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 27, 2025

The most recent news from the Bidens is that the white-shoe firm Winston & Strawn is suing Hunter to recover $50,000 in unpaid bills. For a firm like that, $50,000 is de minimis, so I'm a little puzzled, except that it probably shows the firm no longer sees any benefit at all to writing the money off as a lagniappe for the Bidens.

This comes on the heels of Kevin Morris's family cutting him off after he "loaned" Hunter $6.5 million to cover legal fees.

I think this is also directly related to Joe's last-minute pardons for his brothers and sister, their spouses, and not least, Hunter, saying "he wanted to prevent them from being targeted by 'baseless and politically motivated investigations'". The real meaning is there's no longer any money in the kitty to finance their lifestyles, much less pay their lawyers.

The Biden boodle has never been anything more than smoke and mirrors. Hunter and Joe's siblings prospered based on the idea that any money people lost in blue-sky deals with them could be made up in favors from Joe, which never quite materialized. Meanwhile, Joe himself seems to have been giving them money in addition to what they could snatch from their marks, all of it on the basis that it would one day pay off big, whixch it never quite did. Kevin Morris is not unique.

There's also a difference between the Bidens and the Clintons, who were able to enrich themselves after leaving the White House broke, that due to the legal bills they faced after Bill's impeachment. They were able to get book deals and speaker fees, as well as Hillary's ability to attract money and favors, first from being in the Senate, then from being Secretary of State, and then from being about to be probably president.

There's no such continuing potential with the Bidens. Joe's memory is so badly shot that any book he could get ghostwritten would have no insight, no anecdotes, no insider revelations worth reading. Any attempt to put him on the speaker circuit has already proven laughable. Dr Jill's star appeal has faded, such as it ever may have been, and any new book would just be ghostwritten bromides. Hunter has already written his tell-all.

The question is why anyone ever thought the Bidens were worth the investment. This piece suggests that even the putative "coverup" if Biden's mental decline was actually delusional trust in Biden's abilities by his staff:

A cover-up, as we’ve understood the term to mean since Watergate, involves deliberately hiding something you know to be true. Biden’s closest advisers, however, were operating in a fog of delusion and denial; they refused to believe what they could see with their own eyes. Despite the president’s obvious cognitive decline, they had convinced themselves that he was fine. Their failure to recognize, up close, what everyone else could see from afar—that Biden was too feeble to run for reelection at the age of 82—led to a political disaster.

. . . Mike Donilon, Biden’s senior adviser and confidant, who was with him more than almost anyone, swears he never saw the president mentally diminished. So unless someone produces a failed neurological exam--or a deep-sixed Parkinson’s diagnosis--this was not a classic cover-up but a case of collective denial among Biden, first lady Jill Biden, and the president’s closest aides. Out of a desire to cling to power or just wishful thinking, they believed what they wanted to believe.

I'm wondering if the whole Biden enterprise was anything other than a confidence game. It sure took a long time for the bubble to burst.

The Wall Street Journal Changes Its Tune, Sort Of

Via Real Clear Politics, a highly reliable organ of the conventional wisdom, I found a link to this piece at the WSJ by Tunku Varadarajan plugging Walter Russell Mead's weekly column there, Global View. Oddly, the Varadarajan piece isn't behind the WDJ paywall, but Global View is. In fact, Real Clear Politics often links to WSJ pieces that you must subscribe to read, an annoying practice that most aggregators don't follow.

What that says to me is that the WSJ is worried that Walter Russell Mead by himself isn't pulling enough paying readers in, and actually, considering his career arc, I think I can see why.

According to the piece, Mr Mead has come to the conclusion that Trump is a Jacksonian:

Jacksonians believe the most important priority of the U.S. government in both foreign and domestic policy is the security and well-being of the American people. A Jacksonian holds that the U.S. “should not seek out foreign quarrels, but when the U.S. or its allies are attacked or threatened or even insulted, they can become very energized, like a hive of bees. If the hive is attacked, they will sting with everything they’ve got.” That describes Mr. Trump, whose airstrikes on Iran Mr. Mead calls “a very Jacksonian action.”

Mead has been interpreting presidents as Jacksonian for almost 30 years, but as far as I can tell, all he means by the term "Jacksonian" is "good". On one hand, I will certainly agree that a review of Andrew Jackson's character and career shows similarities with Trump. His marital irregularities made him politically vulnerable. He was notorious for his quick temper. He had a record of failures in real estate. Like Trump with Canada and Greenland, Jackson advocated annexing Florida:

In December 1817, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun initiated the First Seminole War by ordering Jackson to lead a campaign "with full power to conduct the war as he may think best". Jackson believed the best way to do this was to seize Florida from Spain once and for all. Before departing, Jackson wrote to President James Monroe, "Let it be signified to me through any channel ... that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished."

So yes, I'll definitely agree that for these and many other reasons, Trump is a Jacksonian. The problem is that Mead made his reputation a generaton ago by announcing that Dubya was Jacksonian, too:

In 1999, American foreign policy academic Walter Russell Mead wrote an influential essay, The Jacksonian Tradition. In it, he identified a strand of US political thought associated with its conservative and anti-intellectual middle and working classes.

The article was highly prescient in anticipating the appeal of George W Bush as president. Now, as the US teeters on the brink of electing an unimaginably worse candidate [Trump 45], it’s worth reading again. Mead’s analysis turns out to be just as perceptive an insight into Donald Trump’s supporters and their political attitudes.

. . . The more idiotic his proposals – like the childish idea that a massive wall is the answer to illegal immigration – the more Jacksonians love him.

. . . Mead’s analysis of Jacksonian foreign policy gives a stark warning of the dangers of a Trump presidency, especially when Trump himself is so notoriously thin-skinned.

But while Andrew Jackson was a real person, "Jacksonianism" is a hypostatization, a fallacy I discussed here. It's a castle in the clouds that you can use to beat or praise whomever you choose without the need to excuse inconvenient contradictions. But let's look at why Dubya, despite Mead's view, was hardly Jacksonian.

Jackson was a product of the frontier and orphaned at 14. He seems to have secured legal training on the basis of his personal qualities alone, as he had no influential relatives. Dubya's family was aristocratic high society; he attended Phillips Exeter and was a legacy bonesman at Yale. According to the Wikipedia link,

[Dubya's] administration increased federal government spending from $1.789 trillion to $2.983 trillion (66 percent), while revenues increased from $2.025 trillion to $2.524 trillion (from 2000 to 2008). . . . Discretionary defense spending was increased by 107 percent, discretionary domestic spending by 62 percent, Medicare spending by 131 percent, social security by 51 percent, and income security spending by 130 percent. Cyclically adjusted, revenues rose by 35 percent and spending by 65 percent. The increase in spending was more than under any predecessor since Lyndon B. Johnson. The number of economic regulation governmental workers increased by 91,196.

. . . Nearly eight million immigrants came to the U.S. from 2000 to 2005, more than in any other five-year period in the nation's history.[177] Almost half entered illegally.[178][unreliable source?] In 2006, Bush urged Congress to allow more than twelve million illegal immigrants to work in the United States with the creation of a "temporary guest-worker program".

In both the elections of 1824 (which he lost to John Quincy Adams when the election went to the House) and 1828 (when he defeated Adams), Jackson ran against Adams as an out-of-touch elitist, something Adams's performance in the White House reinforced. Like John Quincy Adams, who was a Harvard legacy, Dubya was a Yale legacy. Seen from this perspective, that Dubya would wear cowboy boots with black tie is as incongruous as Kamala Harris's upper-class wardrobe and accoutrements as she addressed the urban poor in street argot. Why would Mead and so many orhers who've cited him approvingly ever think of Dubya as a Jacksonian?

I wonder if the wardrobe choices of both Dubya and Harris, especially Dubya in hindsight, aren't a sign that the Americn electorate has gotten smarter over the past decades. At least it's gotten better at telling the difference between a phony Jacksonian and a real one. The Wall Strert Journal and Walter Russell Mead seem to be grudgingly edging over to get on the right side of history.

Asking The Right Question

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse raises an obvious question that nobody else has brought up:

How can a group within America openly threaten police, use violence against police, throw Molotov cocktails, bricks and explosive fireworks at police. Use batons, shields, bats and physical violence against police and federal law enforcement; destroy vehicles, set cars on fire, destroy property, trash and block the streets and create chaos…. Completely without being stopped?

. . . How does any individual or group get to do this without being arrested?

Although he's speaking in the context of Antifa and the BLM riots, I think the approach has changed under Trump 47. Beyond that, the argument has been made that federal arrests were in fact made after the 2020 riots:

The Justice Department targeted more than 300 protesters by charging them with federal crimes for their roles during the civil unrest last summer after the murder of George Floyd, according to a new report from The Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of Black advocacy groups.

The report found that more than 90% of federal cases against Black Lives Matter protesters could have been charged in state court – and that in 88% of those cases, the federal charges carried more severe penalties than similar state charges.

In fact, at least accordinmg to the CNN link, BLM protesters were unfairly singled out and treated too harshly:

“This persecution resulted in hundreds of organizers and activists facing years in federal prison with no chance of parole,” the report read. It was co-authored by CUNY School of Law’s Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility Clinic.

But Sundance has a point. Why have we seen a renewed attempt to incite summertime violence in the cities this year if the perpetrators had been effectively prosecuted after 2020?

If the FBI did not support Antifa, quite simply Antifa would not exist. They are right there, highly visible, doing illegal things on camera, repeatedly, all over the country, and the FBI doesn’t lift a finger to stop them. Why?

The only thing that makes sense is that the FBI wants this activity to take place.

By "Antifa", I think he means a group or groups with equivalent tactics and objectives, although so far this year, they aren't specificslly calling themselves Antifa or carrying the back-and-red Antifa flags as they did in 2020. I also think despite the mistrust of Attorney General Bondi and FBI Director Patel in some MAGA quarters, the FBI strategy has changed. The Justice Department has been making well-publicized arrests:

The U.S. Department of Justice charged 48-year-old Grzegorz Vandenberg with “transporting explosives in interstate commerce with the knowledge and intent that that [sic] they would be used to kill, injure, or intimidate individuals,” per CBS News.

Vandenberg visited a travel center in Lordsburg, New Mexico, on June 12, where he allegedly purchased various fireworks and explosive devices. During the purchase, he reportedly asked for help in choosing fireworks that could be “thrown directly at people to cause harm.”

“He told store employees that he was prior special forces military and claimed he could make pipe bombs,” the DOJ said in its press release. “Vandenberg further stated that he was traveling to Los Angeles, California, for the riots, with the intent to kill law enforcement officers or government officials.”

In Portland, OR:

Rioters in Portland on Wednesday night were seen assaulting law enforcement with fireworks and explosives.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shared video of the assault from rioters opposed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.

“Last night, Portland rioters violently targeted federal law enforcement— 250 rioters launched fireworks, shined lasers in officers’ eyes to temporarily blind them, and stormed an ICE field office,” said the DHS. “Ultimately, five individuals were arrested on various charges including assault on federal law enforcement.”

As we saw in Los Angeles, there's also increasing pressure on local law enforcement to respond to such incidents:

A 38-year-old Portland man was arrested Thursday days after police said he threw debris at passing cars and left an explosive device on Interstate 5 in Northeast Portland.

Alexander Wick is accused of felony charges of attempted arson, criminal mischief, possession of a destructive device and manufacturing a destructive device. He remains in Multnomah County custody and is scheduled to appear in court Friday afternoon.

One difference since 2020 is that the response from federal departments is across-the-board:

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said that states that don’t cooperate with the federal government’s deportation efforts may not receive any funding to rebuild their infrastructure.

“The @USDOT will NOT fund rogue state actors who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement,” Duffy wrote on X on Monday. “And to cities that stand by while rioters destroy transportation infrastructure — don’t expect a red cent from DOT, either. Follow the law, or forfeit the funding.”

Another approach is either to embarrass or prosecute outright politicians who storm the barricades themselves. This happened recently with the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka during a confrontation outside an ICE facility, about which a judge subsequently complained, “An arrest, particularly of a public figure, is not a preliminary investigative tool. It is a severe action, carrying significant reputational and personal consequences. . . " But wasn't that the point?

This was the same effect intended in the Homeland Security and FBI takedown of Senator Alex Padilla, when he rushed Secretary Noem at a press event and was briefly handcuffed. On one hand, it was stressed that this folowed protocol in any such instance, but on the other, it sent the message that politicians wouldn't be exempted from ordinary consequences if they chose to act out. The message is apparently getting through:

Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) on Wednesday addressed fears stemming from federal charges tied to her visit to a New Jersey detention facility operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The lawmaker is facing 17 years for forcibly impeding and interfering with federal officers on three counts after she tussled with law enforcement while exiting the facility.

“I never thought I would be facing charges as a sitting congresswoman. . .” McIver said during a Wednesday interview on MSNBC.

What's changed is that the Trump 45 cabinet was loaded with figures who for whatever reason didn't feel beholden to Trump, in particular Attorney General Barr and FBI Director Wray, but also including a succession of defense secretaries, a succession of national security advisers, and Vice President Pence. Trump 47 has nothing like these problems. I suspect it's an indication of how thoroughly he's gained control of the Republican Party in the intervening years.

I think that with the new approach of recognizing the full nature of the problem and creating credible disincentives, there will be far less unrest this summer than in 2020.

CNN's Problem

Full disclosure: the image above is a satirical manipulatiion, not an actual photo of CNN's Dana Bash. But this just makes my point stronger: every time I see her, I get the inescapable impression that she's everyman's ex-wife. Other headline figures are just as bad: Kaitlan Collins has such a permanent self-satisfied smirk that I keep wondering if her mother used to tell her, "If you keep making that face, one day it's going to stick that way", and that finally happened. No problem, CNN put her in front of the camera anyhow.

So I think Axios is being really, really polite in this story:

Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company to cable channels such as CNN, TBS and TNT and the streaming service HBO Max, announced Monday that it plans split into two publicly traded companies, parting its television networks from its streaming business.

. . . WBD Streaming & Studios will include HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Studios, while WBD Global Networks will include CNN, TNT Sports U.S. and Discovery.

. . . Global Networks will take on most of the company's debt, but will retain an up to 20% stake in WBD's stand-alone streaming and studios business, helping to "enhance the deleveraging path for global networks," Wiedenfels said on an investor call.

. . . WBD was formed in 2022 when [David] Zaslav's Discovery, which was made up mostly of cable networks and some smaller streaming services, merged with WarnerMedia, which housed the Warner Bros. Pictures movie studio, a general entertainment streaming service and several cable networks.

The merger created more than $50 billion in debt, of which nearly $20 billion has already been paid off.

So basically, Warner Bros Discovery decided it had two kinds of business, winners and losers. The losers included CNN and Discovery, which it plans to spin off, along with most of the debt, leaving basically Warner as the winner company, freed to expand into other fields. The Washington Free Beacon is less circumspect:

Liberal television networks are increasingly viewed as declining assets nobody wants to own. Their audiences are getting smaller, older, and deader. Viewership rates among Americans who don't currently reside in an assisted living facility are plummeting to zero. Nobody wants to invest. Media companies are desperate to get these failing networks, and the exorbitant paychecks of their vainglorious anchors, off their books as soon as possible.

. . . Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, made a similar announcement earlier this month. CNN and other declining television assets will be split off into a new company called "Global Networks," while the conglomerate's more promising assets, such as the Warner Bros. film studio and the HBO Max streaming service, will form another company investors might find attractive. . . . CNN and its celebrity anchors are in for a rude awakening courtesy of new CEO Gunnar Wiedenfels, a notorious figure in media circles known for his ruthless cost-cutting.

. . . Morale is "really grim," one CNN employee told Fox News, a much more successful network.

So what seems to be happening in the latest controversy over the "fake news" CNN report of ineffective results of the bunker buster attack on Fordow is an attempt by fading CNN headliners to double down on same old-same old.

BREAKING: CNN discloses "top secret" information on live TV, claiming the strikes on Iran left their nuclear sites "largely intact."

The claim has since been refuted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

"Based on everything we have seen, and I've seen it all, our bombing campaign… pic.twitter.com/rqTcDzT8Eh

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 24, 2025

The difference with Trump 47 is that he and his people see problems and create a situation where, as Wittgenstein would put it, the solution to the problem occurs with the disappearance of the problem.

KAROLINE LEAVITT: Whoever leaked to CNN "should go to jail."

"The FBI is investigating." pic.twitter.com/CXlSANPMWI

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 25, 2025

The administration right new has a deep bench of spokespeople who can take advantage of legacy media's business disadvantage. A big part of this strategy is that the administration figures are simply more attractive than people like Dana Bash or Kaitlan Collins, which legacy media noted with discomfort after the election:

There’s a common trait that President-elect Donald Trump is clearly prizing as he selects those to serve in his new administration: experience on television.

Trump loves that “central casting” look, as he likes to call it.

. . . It’s also true that those seeking positions in Trump’s orbit often take to the airwaves to audition for an audience of one. Tom Homan, Trump’s choice for “border czar,” is a frequent Fox contributor. Ohio Sen. JD Vance was chosen as Trump’s running mate in part because of how well he comes across on air.

So it's no surprise that attractive figures are leading the counterattack against CNN, and they're doing it effectively. Look at the performances of Vice President Vance and Secretary Hegseth below:

To recap, an out of context, “low confidence” and incomplete intelligence report was selectively leaked to the media. The media reported on the findings without any real effort to figure out whether they represent any part of (much less the full) truth. The way the media has presented the report is contradicted by the IAEA, the Iranians themselves, and the administration’s political and defense leadership. More importantly, the media’s reports are contradicted by common sense.

. . . There is actually an interesting story here, if the media was interested in telling it. Why are members of the intelligence community leaking incomplete reports against the elected leadership of the country? Why have the same reporters who have gotten so much wrong learned so little? What is the purpose of these leaks–who is behind them, and what are they trying to achieve?

The media won’t investigate that story, though it would be in the public interest to do so. So pay attention to the reporters who are laundering talking points from junior careerists in the intelligence community.

President Trump has obliterated the Iranian nuclear program. The American media seems destined to obliterate their own credibility on this fake story.

These are young, attractive people making powerful arguments. Dana Bash, Kaitlan Collins, Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, and Wolf Blitzer aren't in that league. The great Rush Limbaugh frequently observed that politics is Hollywood for ugly people. At some point, CNN seems to have decided it needed to have ugly people on screen to get credibility with politicians, when Trump recognized he needed Hollywood types -- not the pretty-boys, though, the solid male leads like John Wayne or James Stewart -- to talk over the heads of the politicians.

This is just one part of Trump's innovation.

Just War Theory And The 12-Day War

I've looked at two commentators who've tried to apply just war theory to the 12-day war just finished, Bp Joseph Strickland (here) and the neo-Thomist philosopher Edward Feser (here and here). Both have since responded to the US bombing of Iran's nuclear sites and the cease fire. I think both have the same problem, Trump's strategy was simply not what they anticipated, and he achieved his ends before anyone could say much of anything.

In this YouTube, Bp Strickland acknowledges the bombing, but while he says it's a consequence of sin (isn't the Catholic Church as well?), he has little else to say beyond noting that Pope Leo XIV hasn't yet reversed any of Francis's policies or appointments. This strikes me as wanting just to change the subject and move on.

Edwared Feser goes on at greater length in a post, Preventive war and the U.S. attack on Iran. His original argument, like Strickland's, anticipated things that Trump didn't do. Last week, referring to a social media post from Trump, Feser said,

Taken at face value, this indicates that the U.S. will participate in an attack that will threaten the entire city of Tehran. And he has called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” Meanwhile, Israel is indicating that regime change is among the aims of its war with Iran.

There are two criteria of just war theory that the president is violating, at least if we take his words at face value. First, for a war to be just, it must be fought using only morally legitimate means. This includes a prohibition on intentionally targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. To be sure, just war theory allows that there can be cases where harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure can be permissible, but only if (a) this is the foreseen but unintended byproduct of an attack on military targets, and (b) the harm caused to civilians and civilian infrastructure is not out of proportion to the good achieved by destroying those military targets.

But even last week, his complaint was that Israel was urging the evacuation of Tehran, not bombing it. He correctly noted that this would cause much trouble and confusion, which it did, as the highwwys out of the city were clogged for several days, but this was hardly a war crime, and there were not the mass deaths he anticipated. The US dropped something like 14 bunker-buster bombs on two isolated nuclear facilities that had previously been evacuated and fired submarine-launched missiles at a third; as far as anyone can tell, no humans died in any of those attacks.

At that point, Trump determined that he had achieved his goal, and he imposed a cease-fire, which after brief uncertainty has held. Every indication is that both the US and Israel did everything possible to keep civilian casualties to a bare minimum, and I challenge Prof Feser to show that either of the conditions he lists was violated. I might grant that Trump was impolite in calling for regime change and unconditional surrender, but he clearly did not impose either on Iran, and his representatives made clear that neither was an actual war aim.

By most measures, Trump basically left Feser without an argument, but here's the problem with this thing called "just war theory": it's a hypostatization.

Hypostatization, (reification in one of its many senses) or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness refers to an abstraction being “treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity.” Hypostatization has occurred when concepts, frameworks, and theories freeze into pictures of reality that cannot be shaken by reality.

"Just war theory" is an abstract concept that has developed over thousands of years, with many different expressions. What's fascinating is that just war theorists never seem to be able to codify a single expression of the theory -- might they not be satisfied with CCC 2309, for instance, which even says of itself, "These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the 'just war' doctrine"? It lists four main consideratons:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

But as we've already seen, these aren't enough for either Bp Strickland or Prof Feser. Strickland mentions CCC 2309 only in passing before going on to cite Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope St John Paul, while Prof Feser repeatedly asserts that there are seven elements to just war theory, not just the four in CCC 2309 -- but so far, I haven't found anywhere he lists all seven. Here's the problem.

Going only by the four listed above, Trump and Bibi pass the test. The potential damage from Iran's nuclear program, not just against Israel, but against other Middle Eastern countries and even the US, is lasting, grave, and certain. Negotiations, either in the 2025 round or others over a 40-year period, have been fruitless. There are serious prospects of success. And the use of arms by the US and Israel in the 12-day war scrupulously avoided civilian casualties, to the point that in the US attack, there were no casualties, either civilian or military.

But the text itself mentions the need to consider "the power of modem means of destruction" in evaluating conditions -- which would in fact add weight to the need to stop Iran's nuclear program.

If I refer to "the US Constitution", I mean a particular document with particular words. If I refer to "just war doctrine" or "just war theory", I don't mean the same thing. I mean a vague set of notions that can mean whatever I want it to mean. I can cite CCC 2309, which is a particular document with particular words, but it's never enough, because I'm always trying to prove War X is unjust. So besides CCC 2309, Feser pulls a new rabbit out of his hat:

This brings us to an issue which I only touched on in my earlier essay but which is obviously no less important (indeed, even more important) than the two criteria I focused on: the justice of the cause for which the war is being fought, which is the first criterion of just war doctrine. The reason I did not say more about it is that the issue is more complex than meets the eye.

The justice of the cause is the first criterion of just war doctrine! And those dunderheads who wrote CCC 2309 completely left it out! But does Feser cite the particular statement of just war doctrine equivalent to the US Constitution's Article 1 that defines just cause in specific words? Of course not, there is no single authoritative document that unequivocally spells out what the criteria are, in order, using specific words. "Just war doctine" is actually an abstraction with certain imprecise elements on which there has never been complete agreement, yet Feser treats it as something authoritative and final. The CCC is in fact more authoritative than Feser's unspecified abstraction.

Prof Feser is a professor, and professors will be professors, something I learned doing hard time in graduate school, and I eventually recognized I wasn't called to be a professor. But it's worth considering that Prof Feser's PhD is in philosophy, a field that through much of the 20th century was dominated by Wittgenstein and supporters like O K Bouwsma, figures who stressed the need for carerful linguistic analysis and rigorous expression. I would not rate Prof Feser high on either of those traits, although I'm sure he wouldn't give me a very high grade in his classes at Pasadena City College, either. But I quit taking philosophy classes long ago.

Damn With Faint Praise

In a peculiar op-ed at The Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker decides Trump is no big deal, he just did what any president would have done:

No country, let alone a superpower, can approach national security with a rigid dogma about the use of force, and for all the binary nature of the contentions we have had on the subject in the past few decades, I suspect no American president ever has.

. . . Seen in this light President Trump’s decision to order a U.S. military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities isn’t a “win” for the interventionists against the noninterventionists in the president’s coalition, a decisive departure in Trumpian foreign policy. It looks instead like a classic and—as far as we can tell—effective piece of operational expediency born of tactical opportunism to advance legitimate strategic objectives.

As far as I can see, the sort of any-president Mr Baker has in mind must be Josiah Bartlet, the one played by Martin Sheen in The West Wing. The problem Trump appears to have solved as a real president is the one created by Jimmy Carter and tolerated in one way or another by all of his real successors. Rick Moran at PJ Media has a much clearer assessment:

While the CIA was telling presidents that the Iranians had stopped trying to build a bomb in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, work continued on a bomb until the window to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon closed.

Trump's decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities was more than 40 years in the making and represents a generational failure of leadership of historic proportions. Each president in turn—beginning with George H. W. Bush, through Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, the first Trump administration, and Joe Biden—acknowledged the Iranian threat of a nuclear weapon but refused to act on it.

He mentions "generational failure", and the only equivalent failure I can think of is the inability of Presidents Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan to resolve or even effectively compromise on the slavery question until it degenerated into a shooting war with Lincoln's election.

The solution seems to have required a new approach from a new political party, which led to the rise of the Republicans, who held their first national convention only in 1856, when they nominated John C Fremont. Fremont came in second in a three-way contest among James Buchanan, the Democrat, and Millard Fillmore, a former Whig who had succeeded to the presidency as vice president in 1850 but lost to the Democrat Pierce in 1852 and had since become a Know-Nothing.

The upshot of this political stalemate was that by the time of Lincoln's election in 1860, the Democrats entered a political wilderness, and the Whigs and Know-Nothings faded from the picture, with the anti-slavery factions of both absorbed into the Republicans. Lincoln became a highly controversial figure who was nevertheless able to to take advantage of a new anti-slavery political alignment.

Lincoln had the old problem forced on him in a new way, but it's worth noting that unlike his predecessors, he was able to recognize the new alignment and act on it. Yes, an idealized President Bartlet would do the same -- in fact, let's face it, Bartlet would be far less narcissistic, obnoxious, crass, and generally in-your-face, which is why The Wall Street Journal seems to think it necessary to point out that of course, the Iran move had nothing to do with Trump, Bartlet would do what any American president would do, except that given the opportunities, none actually did.

I think Iran's Military Central Command was much more insightful when it addressed him as "Gambler Trump". As things appear to be turning out, first, unlike 2003, Iran actually appears to have had a nuclear program that was close to building a bomb. Then, second, unlike Jimmy Carter's 1980 Operation Eagle Claw, there was no ignominious desert disaster:

Eight helicopters were sent to the first staging area called Desert One, but only five arrived in operational condition. One had encountered hydraulic problems, another was caught in a sand storm, and the third showed signs of a cracked rotor blade. During the operational planning, it was decided that the mission would be aborted if fewer than six helicopters remained operational upon arrival at the Desert One site, despite only four being absolutely necessary. In a move that is still discussed in military circles, the field commanders advised President Carter to abort the mission, which he did.

As the US forces prepared to withdraw from Desert One, one of the remaining helicopters crashed into a transport aircraft that contained both servicemen and jet fuel. The resulting fire destroyed both aircraft and killed eight servicemen.

Considering the complexity of the B-2 raid, it's remarkable that nothing like that occurred -- recognizing in addition that Trump appears to have purged and replaced much of the Pentagon leadership that was tasked with its planning and exrecution. President Bartlet would certainly have done a better job overall without creating such unnecessary turmoil, but doggone it, Trump was lucky.

And it's better to be lucky than good. But I have an increasing feeling that Trump is also good -- like Lincoln good, not Bartlet good.

Why Did Trump Go To Bedminster Friday Night?

I've been intriged by Trump's Bedminster, NJ golf facility ever since it surfaced in the "wiretap" kerfuffle during the 2016 transition, which I discussed here in a 2024 post (the full links are at that post).

The original story, which appears to have been assiduously scrubbed, was that National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers met with Trump after the election to inform him that Trump Tower wasn't secure, and as a consequence, Trump moved his transition headquarters to his Bedminster, NJ golf club. The record does reflect that a meeting between Trump and Rogers did take place in mid November, 2016. . . . And Trump did in fact move his transition headquarters from Trump Tower to Bedminster on November 16. . . . There was no mention in any of the reports about what Rogers discussed with Trump in the meeting, nor why the move to Bedminster took place. Exactly what kind of surveillance was involved, on whom, and who ordered it has never been clear[.]

Not much, in fact, is ever said about Bedminster. A few weeks ago, Sean Spicer, who was part of the first Trump administration, remarked on Mark Halperin's Morning Meeting 2WAY program that even in his position, he was never high enough in the administration to rate his own room at Bedminster when Trump chose to move there; he presumably lodged off site. And that's about it. All I can surmise is that Trump, who must have highly capable corporate security staff at his disposal as well as the Secret Service, feels more confident in the electronic measures in place at Bedminster than in any other facility, including the White House.

Which brings us to the runup to the B-2 bombing raid on Fordow this past weekend:

On Friday afternoon, a day after suggesting the attack could be delayed, Trump gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the green-light to launch the B-2 bombers.

The public, of course, knew nothing about this. Apparently after giving Hegseth the approval, Trump flew to Morristown, NJ, en route to Bedminster, where he gave an impromptu press conference:

President Trump is again questioned about Gabbard’s statements from March where she repeated an Intelligence Community assessment that Iran was not currently building a nuclear weapon. President Trump accepts the misleading question and responds by saying, “she’s wrong.”

President Trump’s admonishment of the manufactured statement is then amplified by the Israel-First group, which includes Laura Loomer and Mark Levin, both ‘influencers’ hoping to see Tulsi Gabbard removed, and replaced with a more pro-Israel, pro-war intelligence head. Watching this unfold is quite remarkable.

In hindsight, this was yet another diversion designed to further the impression that there was ongoing debate within the administration over bombing Fordow, when Trump had already approved the mission.

On Saturday afternoon, while still at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump was told the bombers were about to reach the point of no return — the moment they would go into full radio silence.

Shortly after, Trump boarded Air Force One and flew back to Washington to be in the Situation Room as the first bombs hit their targets.

Sitting in the Situation Room, the president saw that the media was still reporting he was undecided, a U.S. official said. That's when Trump grew confident the operation would be successful.

When I heard that Trump was going to Bedminster Friday afternoon, I immediately thought something was up, just based on the little I'd heard about why he goes there. In addition,

The Pentagon Pizza Report, a social media account that claimed to have accurately predicted Israel’s initial June 12 military strikes on Iran, posted that local pizza traffic near the Pentagon was "HIGH" within an hour of the U.S. launching attacks against Iranian nuclear sites Saturday night.

Less than an hour before the announcement, the account said "HIGH activity is being reported at the closest Papa Johns to the Pentagon."

Account administrators added Freddie's Beach Bar, a restaurant and bar near the Pentagon that has also been previously used as an indicator of impending military action, was reporting abnormally low activity levels for a Saturday night.

"Classic indicator for potential overtime at the Pentagon," the account wrote.

But food service at Bedminster would have been in-house, and even the internal phone lines would have been highly secure. I believe the Saturday Situation Room meeting at the White House was scheduled Friday, but that would take place after operational security was no longer important. It appears that Trump wanted his approvals leading up to the actual strike to come from Bedminster:

Rubio signaled on Sunday that Trump didn’t give his final go-ahead for the bombing campaign until the very last minutes before it was carried out.

“There are multiple points along the way in which the President has decisions to make about ‘go’ or ‘no-go,’” he said in a Fox News interview Sunday morning. “And it really comes right up to 10 minutes before the bombs are actually dropped.”

What this suggests to me is that at least for the time being, Trump's purge of the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies has been successful, at least insofar as operational security was maintained, with absolutely no leaks. But it sounds to me that Trump trusts the security at the White House only as far as it goes, and he still prefers Bedminster if he wants absolute secrecy.

I've never bought the conventional wisdom that Trump is bombastic, ego-driven, always playing to the grandstands. But he's willing to let that impression work for him if it serves his purpose. Trump may be lucky, but he's also good, and the better he gets, the better luck he seems to have.