Thursday Thread And AMA
Speaker now or forever hold your peace
Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about over the course of the week.
I was struck by President Biden’s wise and friendly admonition to the people of Israel not to be guided by their justified rage: "After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes."
This was significant for several reasons, but one was simply the watershed aspect—a U.S. president treating the U.S. response to 9/11 as generally misguided, a cautionary tale for other aggrieved powers, and doing so publicly, in the Middle East. And in a country whose government has at least initially given in to the rage temptation, and may see rallying the population behind war as its only means of keeping power.
Of course, many people believe Biden should do more than just urge restraint.
But because this is a diplomatic endeavor, we don’t actually know what Biden is doing or saying or how he’s wielding power behind the scenes, and it’s hard to contemplate a firm admonishment that would have also been persuasive to Israelis or their political leaders.
I’ve also been thinking about the hospital explosion in Gaza, and how the fog of war is both a hazard and a breeding medium for people (many on social media) with ulterior motives. The whole story, so far as we know it, is horrific and maddening, and, to make a U.S.-centric observation, I worry it augurs poorly for a democracy entering an election in which propagandists brag openly about misleading political journalists, and many political journalists are primed to fan propaganda, even if they know the people behind it are liars.
On to another, I’ve been unusually heartened by the humiliation of Jim Jordan and am hopeful (if not exactly optimistic) that it’ll whet frontline Republicans’ appetite for staring down MAGA.
But naturally, now the Republicans Jordan and MAGA hold responsible for denying him the speakership (that is, for essentially thinking Jim Jordan is an asshole) are receiving death threats.
Republicans and some Democrats are flirting with the idea of not hastily electing a speaker and instead expanding the powers of the speaker pro tem, Patrick McHenry.
The devil will be in the details, but Hakeem Jeffries more or less vouched for McHenry (calling him someone who commands respect) even though McHenry (who’s bad in many ways) was the guy who evicted Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer from the Capitol hideaways out of spite after the House ousted Kevin McCarthy. Not the biggest deal in the world, but I just can’t grasp rallying to the cause of someone like that, and the perverse incentives it creates.
Donald Trump is under another gag order, this one, from Judge Tanya Chutkan, prohibits him from attacking Special Counsel Jack Smith, witnesses, and court staff, but he’s still free to assert (falsely!) that the legal proceedings themselves are a plot against him. On the one hand, it’s not nothing, but it’s also long since past time to stop giving Trump special treatment.
I might draw some of these thoughts and observations out at length in a subsequent newsletter, but I’ll expand on any and all of them and more in response to comments below. What’s on your mind? Sound off, keep it kind, and I’ll poke my head in at 2 p.m. ET to answer questions. After this week, AMAs and comments will be limited to paid subscribers, and then I think I’ll experiment with Substack’s chat function, so we can have more lively, real-time discussion, less me answering a pileup of questions. If you have any thoughts on how I can make these more enjoyable/engaging/inviting to you, drop them in the comments, too!
Just want to say how gratifying it is to wade into these comments and questions from such thoughtful readers every week. This is the last one that's open to the whole internet, so I'll probably do more bragging about it after tomorrow (make the trolls pay to troll!). But before that, I want to thank all of you for participating, and let you know that I look forward to it every week, hopefully with more friends and more subscribers in the months and years ahead.
You convinced me. I subscribed.
The misinfo & disinfo surrounding the Gaza hospital explosion and how it was handled - and mishandled - by the world's media is a HUGELY important story.
The absolute BEST brief tackling of that was by Jeremy Bash with Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House yesterday. The key clip of that is here:
https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1714738706991481301
Have to get back to prep work for today's show.