Jacked-Up Joe

Lately, I've been looking at Greg Gutfeld as one of the more insightful commentators. Here was his take on the Wall Street Journal's headline yesterday about Joe showing signs of slipping (at 0:30):

The Wall Street Journal revealed that Joe Biden may be suffering cognitive decline. Talk about breaking news. Nice work there, Wall Street Journal! I wonder what stocks your financial section will be recommending. Perhaps those little-known startups like Apple and Micsrosoft?

Tucker Carlson is even closer to the point. He brings up the backlash against former White House physician Ronny Jackson, who was publicly reprimanded by Barack Obama when he posted on Twitter during the 2020 campaign that Biden should undergo a cognitive test when he said in a speech, "My name is Joe Biden, and I'm a Democratic cndidate for the United States Senate." Tucker went on to say that Jackson was given

the uniform command of the people who run the Democratic Party throughout the 2020 campaign: Do not notice what Joe Biden is actually like. If you see him on television, turn away, because you might conclude he is fundamentally, physically, cogntively unfit for office. But you can't say that, and if you do, Barack Obama will scold you personally. . . . Well, fast forward a few years. Joe Biden is now the president, and his mental decline is now impossible to deny, and therefore it's no longer off limits. Barack Obama isn't going out and defending Joe's competence any more.

Everybody watching, everyone in the media, that would include Barack Obama's former advisors, is now in agreement that Joe Biden is senile and cannot govern the United States. . . . The problem with Joe Biden is he's cognitively unable to serve. But take three steps back, that's not Joe Biden's fault, it's not his fault he has dementia, no, the fact that Joe Biden is president is an indictment of the media and the Democratic Party.

Because they have known, contra what they're telling you now, Joe Biden's decline, his full-blown senility, has been obvious for more than three years. We noticed it, we're not doctors, by the way, we had no special animus toward Joe Biden at all, but we watched it, and we said this out loud for the first time, we checked today, on May 14, 2019.

Back in February, I posted on the UK constitutional crisis in the fall of 1936, when there were increasing rumors that Edward VIII planned to marry his lover, Wallis Simpson, although she was twice divorced, which at the time was against the doctrine of the Church of England, of which the king was titular head. The press had kept this completely under wraps until a Church of England bishop was thought to have referred to it in an address to his diocesan conference when he mentioned the king's need for divine grace. This was taken as "permission" for the press to cover the subject, and Edward abdicated a week after it reached the papers.

It's hard not to think something like this is happening here. We've had episode after episode over the past four years, they're becoming more obvious,more frequent, and harder to ignore. In France during his D-Day visit:

Joe Biden highlights in Normandy on the 80th anniversary of D-Day:

- Sits in an invisible chair
- Forgets where his seat is
- Talks about how many Russians died in Ukraine
- Gets pulled away by Docta Jill as Macron greets D-Day veterans. pic.twitter.com/sWFsYpt1o5

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 6, 2024

Dr Steven Lomazow, a New Jersey neurologist who is also a trustee of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, has written two books on the quiet constitutional crisis of Roosevelt's health, FDR's Deadly Secret and FDR Unmasked. Although he's very pro-Roosevelt, he details how the White House, abetted by the press, covered up FDR's actual medical condition, especially during his third and very brief fourth terms.

Although it was more or less recognized that FDR had had polio, which paralyzed his legs, the press by general agreement never photographed him in a wheelchair, mostly depicting him standing under carefully staged conditions. But this was just the start. Photos from the 1930s show a dark lesion over his left eyebrow, which Dr Lomazow credibily attributes to a malignant melanoma that by 1940 had metastasized into both his brain and digestive tract.

It appears that in the late 1930s, FDR was also diagnosed with prostate cancer, which by the time it was discovered in a secret Boston hospital visit was deemed inoperable. Beyond that, the president smoked two packs of unfiltered Camels a day, which led to incredibly high blood pressure, as well as congestive heart failure. His cardiopulmonary condition was so bad that when he flew, his doctors demanded that the plane fly no higher than 8,000 feet, even though the cabins were pressurized.

The result was that by the middle of his third term, Roosevelt's actual working day went from noon to about 4:00 PM, with a 90-minute afternoon nap. He was only 63 when he died in 1945, so he had these restrictions even in his late 50s. Cabinet members like Harold Ickes complained privately that Roosevelt's working day was too short to get any meaningful work accomplished, while others observed that FDR would ramble and repeat himself in discussions.

Lomazow thinks that despite all this, there were no credible substitutes for Roosevelt as a wartime leader, although by the 1944 campaign, it was generally understood that FDR would have to pick a more credible vice president than Henry Wallace, while Truman resisted selection because he was fully aware of Roosevelt's condition and was reluctant to be thrown into the role. But this was kept from the public. Nevertheleess, it was a de facto constitutional crisis that under the circumstances could only be resolved by Roosevelt's death, which insiders fully understood to be imminent in any case.

It's hard to avoid thinking we're heading for an equivalent crisis before the next election, but the additional complication is Vice President Harris. I think this is a major reason the big-donor lizard people are shifting toward Trump -- Biden is bad enough, but it's less and less likely he can last another four years, and we'd get Harris sooner than anyone expects. Trump is looking better by the day, even to the lizard people.

Yet More Kevin Morris!

It's remarkable how quickly the Trump hush money trial and conviction have faded into the rear view mirror -- by the weekend, legacy media was gloating that Trump was ahead by as low as 0.6 points in the meaningless RealClearPolitics popular vote average, but as of this morning, he's back up at 1.1, basically no change from before the verdict. So they've moved on to Hunter's gun trial, which is soap-opera clickbait with a juror getting weepy during Abbe Lowell's opening statement.

But I can't resist posting on one footnote. Kevin Morris, Hunter's "sugar bro", attended at least the first day of Hunter's trial on Monday to support him, although as I posted here, after spending at least $6.5 million to pay Hunter's lawyers and fund his lifestyle, he's said to be out of money. I've been increasingly skeptical of the conventional Morris narrative -- he's a "Hollywood lawyer" who stopped practicing law 15 years ago, and he's a "novelist" who was never able to sell a blockbuster despite his wife being one of the most powerful agents in the industry. In other words, he's basically been just a dilettante living off his wife for more than a decade.

And his wife is probably key to the most recent development in the story. In my post two weeks ago, I concluded, "It looks like Mrs Kevin has staged an intervention, and she's cut Kevin off." A story in yesterday's New York Post confirms my surmise:

“His entire family has abandoned him because they were livid when they found out he was bankrolling everything,” a source close to the Morris family told The Post.

Morris’s daughter Dulcie Lou even confronted Hunter Biden recently, telling him to “stop taking advantage of my father,” the source said.

Dulcie Lou hasn't commented since this news broke -- but I went looking for more background on her. Here's a 2021 photo:

The horse is named Big Shot. As of 2019,

In 2018 Big Shot moved up to the 3’6” green hunter division and won enough classes and championships to be named the U.S. Equestrian Federation 3’6” Green Hunter Horse of the Year. He also began competing in USHJA International Hunter Derbies in 2018, earning reserve champion at the derby at Blenheim (California) in June, quickly followed by big wins in international derbies at Franktown Meadows (Nevada) and the Giant Steps Charity Horse Show (California). The 8-year-old gelding also does double duty in the junior hunter ring with owner Dulcie Lou Morris.

This essay gives additional background:

People involved in the equestrian disciplines . . . . fly on private planes, vacation in the islands and flaunt their wealth in astounding and egregious ways.The economics speak for themselves: If you want to be competitive in the regular divisions, the average price for a horse at competition level is around $100,000 and stretches well past that. The cost for boarding at a more minimalistic barn is at least $1,000 per month. There are more extravagant barns with costs ranging into the millions that have full lounges, gyms, swimming pools, kitchens and any amenity the mind can conjure. Since the horses are treated like athletes and there’s a lot of pressure on their joints, they also get regular injections and courses of treatment. At base level, owners must factor in thousands per year in veterinary costs to maintain their joints and a minimum of $250 every eight weeks to have their hooves maintained by a farrier.

It seems to me that there are two issues here. One is that if Kevin has hired Abbe Lowell to defend Hunter, Mr Lowell, who is said to bill up to $1500 an hour, is doing typical expensive lawyer things to make sure he gets paid, which could well include liens on Morris properties, or simply outright cash payments against monthly billing. I've got to think this is starting to threaten the Morris family lifestyle, including Dulcie Lou's equestrian career.

The second problem is that people who are rich enough to do equestrian are likely the sort of rich people who pay publicists to keep them out of the news, especially the tabloids. They simply don't want their names connected with notorious crackhead con artists like Hunter Biden -- and neither do they want photos of their husbands and fathers taking bong hits in the national press, much less naked photos of their husband's and father's protégé romping with Russian hookers.

For that matter, they really don't want to be thought too close even to Joe Biden, who is looking more and more like a clownish loser. That family is getting close to cutting Kevin loose, if you ask me. I don't think that marriage has much of a future -- but is this a trend? For the ultra-wealthy, there's no question that Trump is just a little too arriviste -- but if you get right down to it, Joe, Hunter, Dr Jill, Hallie, and that whole crew aren't just trashy, they're catastrophic. Worse than the Clintons. They don't go with equestrian outfits.

As I've been saying, times are changing.

UPDATE: My wife responds, "I'm on Dulcie Lou's side. At least she wants to be a successful equestrian."

Gutfeld Agrees With My Take

As a successful comic, Gutfeld has an instinctive insight into humor, but standup is also a peculiarly American institution, part of our popular culture. For the last several days I've been talking about Trump's relation to the popular culture superhero paradigm, in which a reactive superhero consistently improvises to escape the elaborate schemes of an intellectual, deliberative supervillain. We see this when Batman fights the Joker. but we see it even more clearly as we watch the Road Runner foil the elaborate machinations of Wile E Coyote.

Gutfeld made a very similar point in last night's monologue. At 3:28:

So the saga of Donald J Trump continues. Really, what did we talk about before him? . . . But have you noticed the reaction to the Trump conviction? It's more muted than my TV during Jesse's show. Of course, there are the usual nut cases where anything related to Trump is cause for incontinence. [Switches to clip of Joy Behar on The View talking about "leaking".] So Joy Behar wets herself in Costco. . . . But, aside from Joy and some has-been actors, where's all the noise? No one's dancing in the streets, weeping, or peeing with Joy.

The truth is, even some on the left admit this prosecution wasn't justice. Some recognized they were going too far even before the verdict. It's like if you're in a fight with your spouse and you make a casual comment about her meat loaf, and you go oh, [bleep], I'm in for it. And they're right, the verdict resulted in a bump in Trump's polling and a massive $200 million bump in donations. TWO HUNDRED . . . two hundred million, that's more than I make in a year. It even crashed Trump's donation site[.]

. . . So, how does Trump do it? How does he turn a conviction into an electoral windfall? How does he turn his adversary's energy into power? I call it the eternal cliffhanger theory. With Trump, when one act finishes, it sparks an equally thrilling next one. It's like the orange Harry Potter. And what [prompts?] the cliffhangers are those who are obsessed with taking him down. It's a perpetual motion machine. Their attacks can't help but set the stage for,"what will he do next?" And what he does next then creates another cause for attack. You think you've killed him? Nah, there is he in the next chapter to raging applause.

On one hand, we might almost see this as a case of life imitating art, we have the paradigm of the Road Runner cartoon, or Harry Potter, or Batman vs the Joker, or even Sherlock Holmes vs Professor Moriarty. We might trace the paradigm at least as far back as Til Eulenspiegel, something Gutfeld echoes by working medieval scatological references into his analysis of the character's current manifestation.

He sees the cliffhanger as Trump's device. Has Biden killed him yet? Nah. What will Biden try next? On one hand, this is a standard way to hold an audience's attention -- to find out what happens, stay tuned through the commercial break. On the other hand, Trump's peculiar innovation has been to use the cliffhanger to focus not on Wile E Coyote's latest catastrophe, but on Trump. The pattern isn't simply on the reactive superhero, although insofar as Trump is the Road Runner, he's a sort of anti-intellectual Occam's Razor, defeating the coyote's overly complex plans.

But Trump is also the more complex Dark Knight Rises version of the superhero, someone who's imperfect, not just David vs Goliath but more like David vs Saul. This is also turning out to have a remarkable appeal. Clinton polster Mark Penn poses the conundrum of how this works for Trump in this interview:

Q: Let's start with President Biden's approval rating, which remains unchanged at 44%. What does that mean that it didn't move month to month?

Penn: . . . Below 45%, it's hard for a president to get reelected. Below 40, I would say it's impossible. Below 45, it's certainly not impossible, but hard. . . . Importantly, when people look back, and I ask the job approval rating for President Trump, Trump gets a 55% job approval rating. So that 11-point gap is a critical part of what's motivating voters in these polls, and Biden has either got to bring his up or bring Trump's down.

Q: Why do you think Trump's is so high at 55%? . . . What's that about?

Penn: Well, you have to say nostalgia, in the sense that people are evaluating things in the past . . . at the time, Trump never got a 55% job approval. So he is getting in retrospect, and perhaps in comparison, a 55% job approval, higher than he got when he was actually doing the job, but nevertheless, that's the fact, that's how the voters see it.

So we have to extrapolate another factor, we can explain Trump only in part as a comic book superhero, the Road Runner, or Til Eulenspiegel, whose character doesn't change, and whose escapes are predictable. There's a change in the audience's view of Trump that we don't see in the simpler paradigms. This has to do with what I think is another important factor, the growing recognition that there was something wrong in 2020, and maybe not primarily the election.

People are rethinking 2020. The current testimony of Dr Fauci in front of the House reflects this. Just yesterday:

Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's vocal criticisms of him during a congressional hearing on the COVID-19 pandemic had increased the number of death threats against him.

. . . Monday's hearing quickly deteriorated into partisan attacks, with Fauci facing the most hostility from Greene, a Georgia Republican. She refused to address him as "doctor," called for him to be prosecuted "for crimes against humanity" and said he "belongs in prison."

The national mood is changing. Biden wants to lock Trump up -- but Trump has been saying lock them up all along, and people remember it.

Trump In Jail?

The possibility of prison for Trump when Judge Merchan sentences him on July 11 quickly arose on Friday:

'The View’ co-host Sunny Hostin, who seemed quite pleased with the developments, shared on the air that she had spoken with someone from Bragg’s office.

. . . “I spent this morning speaking to someone from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. They’re called street fighters. He believes that they will recommend a one-year term in prison. And that is because when you spend a year in prison in New York or under, you serve in Rikers Island,” Austin said.

According to Hostin, this recommendation serves not just as punishment but as a stern message to society that such conduct will not be tolerated again.

Victoria Taft at PJ Media answered, Of Course They'll Put Trump in Jail, and Trump himself made it plain that he's fully aware of the contingency:

“I’m okay with it,” Trump said when asked about the potential of house arrest or even jail during a “Fox & Friends Weekend” interview that aired on Sunday. “I saw one of my lawyers the other day on television saying, ‘Oh, no, you don’t want to do that to the president.’ I said, don’t, you know, beg for anything. It’s just the way it is.”

Acknowledging it “could happen,” Trump went on to say, “I don’t know that the public would stand for it, you know.” Trump also said, “I think it’d be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

There's no question we're in uncharted territory. My view for some time has been that Biden finds himself in desperate straits much earlier in the campaign cycle, a couple months before the nominating conventions and five months before the election, than any of his predecessors, who like McGovern and Dukakis were only occasonally down in the polls early, while others like Carter and Hillary seemed to be doing well right up to the election. But given what have often now been characterized as dire omens for his reelection prospects, Joe is clearly under pressure to turn things around, and jailing Trump is starting to look like a real option.

The best news of all is that Trump's attorneys are taking this seriously and are presumably pereparing their strategies, which given the nature of such things will be kept highly confidential. On the other hand, a legal defense is only part of Trump's task, which is an overall political campaign, and the odd thing up to now is how well he's been dealing with the circumstances he's been given. As I noted the other day, the pop culture hero is always in a reactive state, it's the thoughtful, devious villain who's always coming up with new obstacles for which the hero must improvise an escape -- and of course, this he does.

This is starting to make centrist Democrats nervous. Thus Dean Phillips, who briefly ran against Joe in this year's primaries, tweeted New York Gov Hochul:

Donald Trump is a serial liar, cheater, and philanderer, a six-time declarer of corporate bankruptcy, an instigator of insurrection, and a convicted felon who thrives on portraying himself as a victim.@GovKathyHochul should pardon him for the good of the country.

— Dean Phillips (@deanbphillips) June 1, 2024

Wait a moment. He's saying Trump is somewhere between Aaron Burr, Tokyo Rose, the Rosenbergs, Jefferson Davis, and Jeffrey Epstein, and he should be pardoned for the good of the country? Why shouldn't Trump be in the supermax with El Chapo, Ted Kaczynski, Ramzi Yousef, and Robert Hanssen? As well pardon all those others. I don't understand.

He's clearly sensing a whiff of impending catastrope.

He's not the only one.

Democratic ex-New York Gov. David Paterson says he would have wanted President Biden to consider pardoning Donald Trump in his hush-money conviction if the prez had the power.

Paterson, speaking Sunday on 77 WABC radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” agreed with Trump’s gripes that the case was “rigged.

“There are a lot . . . of erroneous qualities to that trial,” Paterson said. “Some of the people who are involved: A person who worked at the White House somehow wound up in the Manhattan DA’s Office.

But the Governor of New York can pardon people for New York crimes, which is Phiiips's rationale. Another former New York governor, George Pataki, has the same worries later in the link:

Former New York Republican Gov. George Pataki joined Paterson in blasting the prosecution of Trump — and both governors warned it could boomerang on Biden and other Democrats.

. . . “They have opened a can of worms here that can go anywhere,” he said of Democrats pushing for Trump’s conviction.

Fragmentary evidence over the weekend suggests the verdict and the potential for a prison sentence are in fact having the opposite of the intended effect.

The stunning felony conviction of former President Donald Trump garnered headlines around the world and created sharp political arguments across the U.S. But did it affect the presidential race? The answer is yes. It seems to have actually helped Trump, the June I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

. . . In the head-to-head poll between President Joe Biden and Trump, it’s now a statistical toss-up, 41% to 41%. But that’s an improvement for Trump from May, when he trailed Biden by 2 percentage points in that month’s I&I/TIPP poll (42% Biden to 40% Trump). The June poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points.

The conviction and now the threat of prison time have created a fundraising windfall for Trump:

'This might be a little inside information, but as I was leaving my house about 37 seconds ago, I asked my wife, what are we up to now?' Eric Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on her show Sunday Morning Futures.

And [Lara] said, just in terms of small dollar, we're well over $70 million. This is $21 donations, $43 donations, right, small dollar donations.'

The former president's son continued: 'If you add the large dollar donations to it, you're over $200 million.'

But as Eric Trump suggested, there are lizard people getting on board. My former schoolmate and Clintonista Robert Reich sounds the alarm:

Elon Musk and the entrepreneur and investor David Sacks reportedly held a secret dinner party of billionaires and millionaires in Hollywood last month. Its purpose: to defeat Joe Biden and re-install Donald Trump in the White House.

The guest list included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary.

The Daily Mail link just above added this:

Israeli-American Miriam Adelson, the wife of the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, has reportedly pledged $100 million to the Trump campaign in the days since his criminal conviction, according to The Forward, a Jewish outlet.

. . . She is the latest of a number of billionaires that have pledged to help the former president regain his grasp on power.

Last week, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman similarly decided to make public his support of Trump.

The private equity behemoth said his decision to back the ex-president was in part motivated by the anti-semitism seen on college campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.

Given this level of support from extremely influential people, along with the likelihood of major consequences from the public if Trump is jailed, I suspect there will be some sort of intervention before this can take place. The basic problem is that Joe has never been fit for office, and as he gets more desperate, he poses a real threat of an unstable interregnum that will happen even before the election.

"Don't Underestimate Joe's Ability To . . . "

What almost nobody has mentioned about Joe's Friday Dr Evil grin is that it was made just incidentally following his announcement of a new Gaza cease-fire plan, which itself incidentally followed his comments on Trump's conviction.

Under the guise of announcing a proposed ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Gaza war, Biden took to a podium in the White House state dining room at 1:30 p.m. on Friday. He began his statement not with details of the peace plan but rather with a lecture about how the “rule of law” prevailed in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump. “Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself,” Biden said of his 2024 Republican presidential rival. “And after careful deliberation, the jury reached a unanimous verdict. They found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts.”

. . . “It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, and it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”

But that wasn't what Joe was actually there to announce. He actually had big news on Gaza:

US President Joe Biden has urged Hamas to accept a new Israeli proposal to end the conflict in Gaza, saying that "it's time for this war to end".

. . . Speaking at the White House on Friday, Mr Biden said that the first phase of the proposed plan would include a "full and complete ceasefire", the withdrawal of IDF forces from populated areas and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

"This is truly a decisive moment," he said. "Hamas says it wants a ceasefire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it."

The ceasefire, he added, would allow more humanitarian aid to reach the beleaguered territory, with "600 trucks carrying aid into Gaza every single day".

The second phase would see all remaining living hostages returned, including male soldiers. The ceasefire would then become "the cessation of hostilities, permanently."

But as of yesterday, Netanyahu turned out not to be on board:

"Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: The destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel," Netanyahu said.

"Israel will continue to insist these conditions are met before a permanent ceasefire is put in place. The notion that Israel will agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are fulfilled is a non-starter," he added.

Remarking on the significance, Times of Israel observed that "His comments, in a rare statement published on the Sabbath and only in English, came after United States President Joe Biden announced Friday that Israel had proposed a three-phase deal for a ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for Hamas releasing hostages, told the terror group to accept it and urged the Israeli government to stand behind it."

Let's consider that Joe's top priorities since last October have been, first, to regain the lead over Trump in presidential polling, and second, to appease the anti-Zionist wing of Democrats and end US support for Israel without alienating Jewish Democrats, who are major donors and influencers. He apparently has hoped to accomplish the second goal by brokering a cease-fire in Gaza before the IDF can eliminate Hamas there entirely. But his obstacles to accomplishing both goals are Trump on one hand and Prime Minister Netanyahu on the other, and since October, he's gotten nowhere with either.

According to the BBC this morning,

Two far-right Israeli ministers have threatened to quit and collapse the governing coalition if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agrees to a Gaza ceasefire proposal unveiled by US President Joe Biden on Friday.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said they were opposed to striking any deal before Hamas was destroyed.

So far, the White House is continuing to put a happy face on developments:

However, the White House said on Sunday it expected Israel would agree to the plan.

"This was an Israeli proposal. We have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal - as was transmitted to them, an Israeli proposal - then Israel would say yes," White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told ABC News.

But Joe's track record on holding back the IDF in Gaza hasn't been good. Earlier last month,

President Joe Biden on Monday [May 6] urgently warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against launching an offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah as the divide between the two leaders continues to grow along with the mounting Palestinian death toll.

The call between Biden and Netanyahu came as Israel appeared to be moving closer to a major military operation to root out Hamas militants in Rafah — something that Biden and his top aides have repeatedly told Israeli officials will only lead to more death and worsen the despair in the war-ravaged territory.

This had no effect; the IDF is apparently in the mopping-up stage in Rafah as this is written:

The Israeli military is in central Rafah, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed in a statement Friday, despite international concern and anger over its military operation in Gaza’s southernmost city.

. . . Over the [May 25-26] weekend, Israel launched an airstrike on a displacement camp in the city, killing dozens and creating global outrage. The strike also took out two Hamas leaders, Israel said.

. . . “The word tragic doesn’t even begin to describe it,” US Vice President Kamala Harris said of the incident on Tuesday. But neither she or President Joe Biden have said the strike crossed a red line for US support.

The problem is that Joe has been feckless in accomplishing the goal the anti-Zionist wing of Democrats has set for him, while he's steadily losing the confidence of centrist Jews like Alan Dershowitz. In fact, the short form of what's going on is that Netanyahu is the one who's been effective, not only in the Israeli political environmemt, but in the US as well. As I've already said, Netanyahu spent much of his early career in the US, and to survive with US politicians like Obama and Biden against him, he's had to be a US politician as well.

But this brings us to Trump. Trump has alleged that Thursday's guilty verdict “is all done by Biden and his people” and “in total conjunction with white house and the DOJ.” Whether this is strictly true remains to be seen, but I think a reasonable interpretation of the "lawfare" strategy in this case would be that it aims to split moderate Republicans from a MAGA base by making Trump seem at minimum unscrupulous and out of control, but also a criminal.

So far, this has had the opposite effect, since it's buoyed Trump in the polls since his indictments last year, and it's now driven moderates like Senators McConnell and Collins to support Trump publicly. Even Mitt Romney remarked,

“Bragg should have settled the case against Trump, as would have been the normal procedure. But he made a political decision,” Romney said, according to Coppins. “Bragg may have won the battle, for now, but he also may have lost the political war. Democrats think they can put out the Trump fire with oxygen. It’s political malpractice.”

So Romney is implicitly agreeing with Trump's position that this was a political prosecution. In effect, with the "lawfare" strategy, Joe has rearranged the political landscape from 2016 and 2020, putting the moderate Republicans, never comfortable with Trump in either of those elections, into Trump's corner for 2024. Other evidence is still anecdotal, but one clear result is that chants that sound like "Let's go, Brandon!" but are actually anti-Biden, have returned to big athletic events.

This can't be the outcome Joe thought he'd have. Don't underestimate Joe's ability to . . .

Two Mike Dukakis Moments In One Day

No sooner did I post on Joe vs Donald as a comic book superhero conflict yesterday than Joe himself came out as the deliberate, conniving, and devious supervillain himself in the notorious clip that's been all over the weh this morning.

“Can you tell us, sir — Donald Trump refers himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What’s your response to that, sir?” a reporter asked Biden after the 81-year-old concluded his remarks on Friday in which he defended the conviction of Trump.

The reporter asked the question as Biden began to walk away after concluding his address. But after the question was posed, Biden stopped in his tracks, looked over to the reporters, and grinned, flashing his teeth.

“Do you think the conviction will have an impact on the campaign?” the reporter pressed as Biden continued to smile. He then slowly walked away without replying, seemingly with his mouth still open.

The Trump campaign promptly turned it into an ad:

Trump campaign already out with an ad on Biden’s Creepy Smirk

🔥🔥🔥

pic.twitter.com/pmjK94JokJ

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 31, 2024

But if that weren't enough, RedStaste had this headline: Joe Biden Has Awkward Mike Dukakis Moment During Trainwreck of a Meeting With the Kansas City Chiefs. He tried to put the team helmet on and failed:

The #Chiefs presented Joe Biden with his own helmet, which the players wanted him to try on.

Biden initially tried to put it on while wearing his sunglasses, but then took them off and successfully got the helmet on his head.pic.twitter.com/DQ8WNAYdwn

— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) May 31, 2024

He wants to appropriate the vibe of a winner, but he can't help losing. But I think the smirking visual in the wake of the New York hush money verdict is by far the more important. In August of 2021, I'd begun to get Joe's number when I referred to "Biden's view of himself as a skilled Machiavellian manipulator, operating in a behind-the-scenes dimension of Realpolitik beyond conventional expectations."

When the reporter asks what his reaction is to Trump's allegation that he's behind it, he essentially takes a bow and says, "Yup, that was me. Deal with it!" The problem is, of course, that he's just given Trump priceless campaign fodder. But it goes farther than that -- Trump knows he's got a winning formula, and he's going to keep working it:

Donald Trump discussed two witnesses in the criminal case against him Friday while complaining about his conviction, comments that could violate the judge's gag order against him.

. . . Trump mentioned Robert Costello, a witness who testified on Trump’s behalf, by name during his remarks at Trump Tower, and also went on at length about his former attorney Michael Cohen, a key witness whose name he did not use but was clearly the person he was referring to.

“This was a highly qualified lawyer. Now I’m not allowed to use his name because of the gag order, but you know he’s a sleazebag. Everybody knows that. Took me a while to find out,” Trump said, also pushing back on Cohen's description of himself as a "fixer."

What he's angling for, of course, is another angry outburst from Judge Merchan, including more threats to put him in jail for violating the gag order -- and this after Biden with his smug grin has just implicitly acknowledged he was behind the whole thing. All this will do is continue to unify more Republicans behind Trump's candidacy, including, as of yesterday, Senators McConnell and Collins, and continue to prompt record donations to his campaign.

Brer Rabbit always got enough lip for anybody and everybody. He even told God once what He'd done wrong on the third day of Creation. This time, though Brer Rabbit talked mighty humble. "Well, Brer Fox. No doubt about it. You got me and no point in my saying that I would improve my ways if you spared me."

"No point at all," Brer Fox agreed as he started gathering kindling for the fire.

"I guess I'm going to be barbecue this day." Brer Rabbit sighed. "But getting barbecued is a whole lot better than getting thrown in the briar patch." He sighed again. "No doubt about it. Getting barbecued is almost a blessing compared to being thrown in that briar patch on the other side of the road. If you got to go, go in a barbecue sauce. That's what I always say. How much lemon juice and brown sugar you put in yours?"

Gutfeld noted in his monologue last night that Trump had told Joe to "buckle up" -- but Gutfeld said there's only thing Joe buckles up for these days, and he ran a picture of a handicapped toilet.

If the US president is the butt of handicapped toilet jokes on late-night, I get the feeling something's changed. We're maybe even out of Dukakis-on-the-tank-territory and into Jimmy-Carter-and-the-killer-rabbit, but I don't think it's going to stop there.

The Emperor Palpatine

This is the part of the 1953 sci-fi movie where the scientists realize the high voltage lines & atom bombs only make the monster bigger

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 2, 2017

I saw the post just above on Instapundit this morning, thinking it was a reaction to yesterday's verdict, but I suddenly realized it's dated July 2, 2017. You can say things about Trump one time, and they turn out to be just as applicable to other situations. Greg Gutfeld made a similar reference to pop-culture paradigms in last night's monologue:

The good news is that as this trial descended into an absurdity of corruption, Trump's numbers have been going up, while Joe Biden's keep falling, like Joe Biden himself. Turns out Americans love it when one man fights against a corrupt system with his back up against the wall, just as much as they detest a dementia-ridden dirtbag who's spent half a century padding his life with your money. . . . It ain't over til the fat lady sings, and that fat lady is America.

In other words, Joe as dementia-ridden dirtbag morphs into Star Wars's Emperor Palpatine, who Wikipedia says "has become a widely recognized symbol of evil in popular culture." Well, here's an intriguing essay on the hero in popular culture:

[I]n Pop Culture heroes, especially American ones, never seem to want to be heroes, they are forced to confront some horrendous situation. The Popular Culture hero never steps out to be heroic, he doesn’t go around looking for trouble. . . . The hero in most of these scenarios is a reactive force, a passive weapon that flips into action only when activated. . . . The hero is improvising in this reactive state, he is an action hero. The Pop Culture hero is not a thinking man, he doesn’t plan, he doesn’t contemplate the situation, he doesn’t search for alternatives only a way out. The hero is always directly contrasted to the Pop Culture villain who is portrayed as the thoughtful one, an intellect – he plans, he contemplates, he devises. The hero is portrayed as youthful talent and potential, the villain as an intellectual plotter, a seasoned decadent with an angry, vengeful axe to grind. This Popular Culture scenario plays out in American life every single day in a myriad of ways, and it is now playing out in our current political season with Pop Culture references to heroism abounding.

This was in fact written in 2008, before anyone ever thought of Trump as anything but a wealthy playboy turned reality TV star. Trump is nearly as old as Biden, but Gutfeld is correct when he contrasts Trump, the improviser who campaigns from the courtroom, with Joe the dementia-ridden dirtbag. And nobody left or right has ever characterized Trump as a thinker -- in fact, he cultivates a certain anti-intellectual persona.

Trump as a pop-culture hero reminds me perhaps most of Christian Bale's very contemporary Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, which was released in 2012, also before anyone ever thought of Trump as a politician:

[Writer-Director Christopher] Nolan has stated that, due to the eight-year gap between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, "he's an older Bruce Wayne; he's not in a great state.". . . . Bale acknowledged that Batman is "not a healthy individual, this is somebody that is doing good, but he's right on the verge of doing bad". Bale clarifies that "He doesn't want to forget [his parents' deaths]. He wants to maintain that anger he felt at that injustice".

There's also a mythic pattern to the Batman character in the Dark Knight Rises's story line. Bruce Wayne becomes a recluse and abandons his role as Batman, while the police commissioner blames "the Batman" for a current crime spree. In fact, Wayne is trapped by Bane, the supervillain, and consigned to an underground prison. Bane then releases criminals from Gotham's jail, who take over the city, and has Gotham's elite exiled and killed in kangaroo courts. Months later, Bruce escapes from the underground prison, returns to Gotham as Batman, and restores order to the city.

There's something similar in Trump's current story arc. He's improbably elected president in 2016, beset by manufactured scandals and plots by the Deep State, defeated in 2020 in a stolen election, but it looks like he'll return in 2024 -- not necessarily as a good guy, maybe even as a good guy on the verge of doing bad.

There's resonance to this story. That's my takeaway from yesterday's verdict.