This is a change of pace from my more topic-focused write-ups. In what may be a semi-recurring “In Case You Missed It” post, this one will instead highlight some noteworthy quotes or news that partisan media may be ignoring. Aligned with my contention that a great deal of our division is due to information silos, this is my attempt to break through them with what I think is important information.
The Presidents’ Men
This week we heard from three former Trump administration officials/advisors who had some fairly strong things to say about their former boss/running mate.
Mike Pence
“The American people deserve to know that on [January 6, 2021], President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. Now, voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the Constitution, and I always will.”
“I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States. And anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again.”
Bill Barr
“Over time, people will see that this is not a case of the Department of Justice conducting a witch hunt. In fact, they approached this very delicately and with deference to the president, and this would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half.”
Chris Christie
“We have pretenders all around us, who want to tell you ‘pick me, because I’m kind of like what you picked before, but not quite as crazy, but I don’t want to say his name.’ Because for these other pretenders, he is — for those of you who read the Harry Potter books — like Voldemort. He is he who shall not be named. […] The person I am talking about, who is obsessed with the mirror, who never admits a mistake, who never admits a fault, and who always finds someone else and something else to blame for whatever goes wrong but finds every reason to take credit for anything that goes right, is Donald Trump.”
“Let me tell you something, everybody,” he said. “The grift from this is breathtaking. It’s breathtaking. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Kushner walk out of the White House and months later get $2 billion from the Saudis? Two billion dollars from the Saudis. You think it’s ’cause some kind of investing genius? Or do you think it’s because he was sitting next to the president of the United States for four years doing favors for the Saudis?”
"Let me tell you how [Trump would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours]. He'd give Ukraine to Russia...He'd call Zelenskyy and say, 'Hey, guess what? Time to raise the Russian flag up on the pole. We're out of here.'"
Of course, it’s worth remembering that Christie was also anti-Trump the first time around, until he wasn’t and became instrumental in Trump gaining acceptance in the 2016 primary. So, we’ll see if this is just a gambit for attention or a genuine change of heart. But he’s saying what most Republican leaders have known all along, and it’s about time.
The Border
Remember how the end of Title 42 was going to lead to a completely overrun border? That hasn’t happened - in fact, border crossings have fallen by more than half. It’s hard to know exactly why, but a significant factor is likely the policies the Biden administration has put into place to enable migrants to apply for asylum before coming to the border, and new consequences for repeated illegal crossings. In other words, Biden has (belatedly) taken the border seriously, and has enacted effective and humane measures to address the problem.
How long this will last, nobody can say, but it’s worth acknowledging that lately, Biden has been governing as the effective, competent centrist that many of his voters (myself included) were looking for. That first year was rough, but he’s hit a good stride.
The Indictment
Fox’s homepage when the news broke:
The article itself is pretty typical Fox coverage - burying the most damning bits (such as the failure to voluntarily provide 20 boxes of documents, including top-secret compartmented information, which is what led to the “raid”) toward the bottom of the article, after sentences like this which suggest this whole thing is about some personal effects:
Classified material that was reportedly confiscated by the FBI during the FBI's raid in August included a letter to Trump from former President Obama, a letter from Kim Jong Un, a birthday dinner menu and a cocktail napkin.
And of course, the typical responses from GOP land about a “two-tiered system of justice” since Pence and Biden (who voluntarily provided all classified documents to the authorities once discovered) aren’t getting prosecuted, while Trump (who kept boxes of documents after claiming to have given them all back) is.
The day after the indictment was unsealed and it became clear this was a pretty serious and solid case (here’s a fair summary from formerly pro-Trump conservative radio host Erick Erickson, and here’s a deeper-dive from National Review), Fox had already buried what is one of the biggest stories of the year:
This is a good illustration of the problem with partisan media. It promotes what conforms to its editorial biases, spins negative news stories by emphasizing the least salient or damaging aspects, and when it does present information that would be uncomfortable for its readers, buries it below an article about bedbugs at an airport.