RUTHFULLY YOURS

Earlier this week, Senator Ben Sasse launched a barrage of questioning tweets at Donald Trump. Most dealt with policy. Unsurprisingly, the tweet that got personal is getting most of the attention: Low blow? Only if you think voters shouldn’t consider character and personal integrity when evaluating a president. Here’s what Sasse is talking about: Trump engaged in a highly publicized affair with actress Marla Maples while he was married to his first wife, Ivana Trump, and has written about having relationships with married women. “If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller,” Trump wrote in his book “The Art of the Comeback.”

Trump also wrote in “Think Big and Kick Ass” that he’s been with married women: “Beautiful, famous, successful, married — I’ve had them all, secretly, the world’s biggest names.” I don’t think affairs — by themselves — disqualify a person from the presidency, but the combination of infidelity and boastfulness is particularly damaging.

Indeed this kind of braggadocio is more reminiscent of professional wrestlers or third-world strongmen than an American president. I’m reminded (with apologies to Jonah for borrowing one of his favorite references) of the Congolese dictator Joseph Desiré-Mobutu, who changed his name to Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga, meaning “the all-powerful warrior who because of his endurance and inflexible will to win will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake.” Perhaps for Trump we could find the equivalent translation for “the all-dealmaking mogul who because of his wealth and will to win goes from conquest to conquest leaving divorce in his wake.” I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

Is Donald Trump the sharia of American politics? I’m having trouble finding much daylight between Islamic law’s repressive blasphemy standards and the mogul’s thin-skinned sense of privilege.

None of us wants to be insulted or smeared. But sharia forbids not only ridicule or slander against Islam; it bans any examination that casts Islam in an unflattering light. Worse, truth is not a defense: Even if one’s questions are based on undeniable past actions or verbatim quotes from scripture, tough questioning is considered blasphemous. Retribution, moreover, is often completely out of proportion to the scale of the perceived “offense.”

How is Trump different?

They say politics ain’t beanbag: People in and around it eventually get slammed by opponents and other critics. But to Trump, the mildest criticisms are “vicious” attacks.

Let’s take the exchange last summer with Megyn Kelly that prompted Trump to whine that he was unfairly treated and to heap abuse on Ms. Kelly in the aftermath. (Before I go on, note that I support Mr. Trump’s rival Ted Cruz, and that I am on friendly terms with Megyn Kelly, on whose program I periodically appear.)

Given the limited time, the slew of candidates to engage, and the grave problems faced by the country, could Kelly have made a better choice than to grill Trump on his derogatory remarks about women? As they say in the debate biz, that’s debatable. But the questions she asked were hardly irrelevant.

Presidential temperament is often a decisive electoral consideration. Furthermore, the “war on women” meme is a bread-and-butter Democratic attack: regrettably effective against Republicans in the last presidential election and certain to be reprised if Hillary Clinton is the Dems’ nominee. How do we gauge Trump as a prospective nominee if we don’t get a sense of what ammo can be fired at him and how he is apt to handle it?

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the same candidate. They’re both leftist radicals with degrees in political science who held back some of their more radical ideas to pursue political office. In the two years that they served together in the Senate, they voted the same way 93 percent of the time.

They’re also political opportunists. Bernie Sanders, no less than Hillary, reinvented his political views, including his allegiance to Socialism, numerous times over the years. Sanders moderated his positions on everything from gun control to Israel when it helped his political career. He’s now modifying plenty of positions all over again in order to appeal to new and different voters.

Bernie Sanders is no more authentic than Hillary Clinton and she is no less radical than he is. Both her attempts to appear mainstream and his efforts to seem radical are political poses that they deploy to bring in money and support from major blocs within the Democratic Party. Underneath the theater, Hillary Clinton is a longtime Alinsky fan while Bernie Sanders stumbles trying to update his views with the current obsessions of the radical left on everything from immigration to gun control to race.

The real struggle isn’t over beliefs, but over tactics.

While Hillary Clinton and her allies are attacking Bernie Sanders over his radical backing for Single Payer, in 1993, she told her husband that “managed competition“ was a “crock” and that “single-payer” was necessary. Hillary had proposed her own version of “Medicare for All” and when asked if it would be a backdoor for single payer, said, “What are we afraid of? Let’s see where the competition leads us.”

Here’s How He Would Defend America Against Threats from the Middle East, Russia and China, According to His Chief National Security Advisor Dr. Victoria Coates

You might not think that the national security and foreign policy advisor for one of the leading 2016 presidential candidates would have the pedigree of a University of Pennsylvania art history Ph.D. specializing in Italian renaissance studies, and a former consulting curator title at the Cleveland Museum of Art. But then you haven’t met Dr. Victoria Coates, the self-described Renaissance woman and the chief articulator and defender of Cruz’s Jeane Kirkpatrick-inspired philosophy that has vexed many across the Republican political spectrum to date.
During an in-depth interview with Dr. Coates on her new book, David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art, we had the chance to pick the brain of Cruz’s national security consigliere on topics including:

The principles that underlie the “Cruz Doctrine”
Dr. Coates’ challenge to Cruz’s critics in the GOP foreign policy Establishment
What “winning” in the Middle East would look like for America under a President Cruz
The single greatest underestimated or ignored threat to America’s national interest

Ben Weingarten: Who are some of the individuals, or what are some of the works that have had the greatest influence on your worldview as it relates to foreign policy and national security, and by extension the worldview of Senator Cruz?

Reagan and Kirkpatrick (Wikipedia)
Dr. Victoria Coates: Well certainly in terms of David’s Sling, it’s in many ways a cautionary tale about how one chooses to understand the development of democracy, and how it can be spread. I mean because certainly this tells us it is a trial-and-error process, it takes a long time and it can’t be taken for granted. So certainly that’s how it has informed my worldview. For Senator Cruz, I know he looks very much for models of success, which sounds very simple, but it’s amazing to me how many people will look at failed models and sort of “try, try again,” using tactics that have not been particularly successful. So he looks at a President like Ronald Reagan, which is very popular to do, but it’s very hard to actually imitate the Reagan model because you have to make a number of very difficult choices, you have to set your priorities clearly, and you have to just stay focused on them like a laser. And so as he looks at our challenges today, he would see Reagans’ and [Jeane] Kirkpatricks’ and Fred Iklés’ interactions with the Soviet Union as a great model: That you don’t pretend that you can domesticate them; you don’t pretend that they are suddenly going to become your friend; but rather that they are a terrible threat that has to be fought every time they poke their heads up. And that does not mean necessarily invading, but it does mean being extremely mindful of America’s interests.
“[Senator Cruz] would see Reagans’ and [Jeane] Kirkpatricks’ and Fred Iklés’ interactions with the Soviet Union as a great model”
Ben Weingarten: Do you view Islamic supremacism as the analogue — although obviously differing in some ways — to the ideology and forces of the Soviet Union?
Dr. Victoria Coates: Certainly in terms of being an existential threat, it was interesting over Christmas the [Iranian] Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini came out with a little-noticed statement about how he felt Iran was locked in a “civilizational struggle” with the West. Now, I’m not in the business of destroying anybody else’s civilization, but I am in the business of protecting my own. And when somebody says they’re out to destroy it, I think we should probably pay some attention. And so, it’s not as you said, directly analogous to Soviet totalitarianism, but it could only be a matter of time. And so I think we need to organize the way we think about this in terms of protecting and celebrating both our culture, our allies because I think we are a tremendously powerful force for good around the world, and so that’s something I’d like to perpetuate.