RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald Trump’s main opponent in the first presidential debate wasn’t Hillary Clinton. It was NBC anchor Lester Holt. Hillary, with forced smiles as brittle as china and an eerie fake laugh, continued her primary debate strategy of repeating canned talking points while waiting for the moderator to knock off her opponent. Hillary wasn’t there to debate, but to once again seem like the only possible option.

Holt’s job was to make her seem like the only possible option by targeting Trump.

There were fears that Lester Holt would be another Candy Crowley. That was unfair to Crowley. The entire debate was structurally biased. Its general topics were framed in narrow left-wing terms, instead of discussing the economy and moving the country forward, Holt defined the topics as class warfare and racial divisiveness. Even national security was narrowed down to Obama’s favorite battlespace, cyberspace, rather than the actual battlefield.

Trump was hit with repeated personal attacks and gotcha questions by Holt, who then took to arguing with him over the facts. Hillary, despite having been under investigation by the FBI, received only a perfunctory offer from Lester Holt to comment on her emails after Trump had raised the issue.

But Holt’s overt bias also proved to be his undoing. Candy Crowley had been effective because her interjection into the debate between Obama and Romney had come as something of a surprise. Holt made his agenda clear at the outset. And it also made him easy to ignore, as Trump frequently did.

Like small boys jumping into a mud pile, media personalities had been urging each other on for weeks to abandon even the pretense of objectivity and just go after Trump. That’s what Holt did in his awkward and impotent way. And it proved to be ineffective as he quickly lost control of the debate. Holt, like the rest of his media cohort, had failed to understand that overt bias makes them less effective.

Hillary’s role in the debate was to grit her teeth and smile awkwardly, then deliver a few scripted attacks and lines that would allow her media allies to hail her as the winner. It was an easy job that she botched.

Forget everything you read or heard about Lester Holt being a Republican. After Matt Lauer dared to ask Hillary Clinton a couple of very fair questions at the Commander-in-Chief Forum and was savaged by the likes of WaPo, The New York Times and MSNBC, Lester Holt made sure that he didn’t end up being the story in the MSM tomorrow.

The first part of the debate was actually all right for Holt, but the wheels flew off when they got to how each candidate would handle healing the racial divide in the U.S. Holt went for the birther issue with Trump, which isn’t off the table but has very little relevance to what faces our next president. Had Hillary brought it up it would have been fine. For Holt to interject it during what was supposed to be a substantive discussion on race relations made it seem as if he were being fed questions directly from Clinton HQ.

Holt then hit Trump with a question about him saying that Hillary didn’t have a presidential “look,” which obviously just served as a platform for Hillary to call Trump a sexist. It was George- Stephanopoulos-are-you-going-to-ban-contraception bad.

His final question asked the candidates if they would both accept the will of the voters in November, which is the kind of thing one might find precocious and adorable if asked by a third grader but was groan-worthy coming from a grown man.

The number of vulnerable areas he pressed Hillary about was zero so I can’t give you any examples of those.

Having said all that, Trump still could have done much better. He seemed like he was trying to cover ALL the ground with every answer. That meandering took away a lot of his bite. He would have been better off picking three or four really vulnerable areas (emails, Benghazi, etc.) and hammering away at those until she became irritated and imperious, as she always does. I know the press loves to talk about him being easily provoked, but she may still have the thinnest skin in this election. He wouldn’t have to push her buttons too many times to get her into the “We are not amused…” zone. CONTINUE AT SITE

Why did Cheryl Mills require criminal immunity?

This is the irksome question hanging over the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s home-brew server in the wake of news that Ms. Mills was granted immunity for her laptop’s contents.

Ms. Mills was a top Clinton aide at the State Department who became Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer when she left. She was also a witness, as well as a potential target, in the same FBI investigation into her boss’s emails. The laptop the bureau wanted was one Ms. Mills used in 2014 to sort Clinton emails before deciding which would be turned over to State.

Here’s the problem. There are two ways a witness can get immunity: Either she invokes the Fifth Amendment on the grounds she might incriminate herself, or, worried something on the laptop might expose her to criminal liability, her lawyers reveal what this might be before prosecutors agree to an immunity deal.

As with so much else in this investigation, the way the laptop was handled was out of the ordinary. Normally, immunity is granted for testimony and interviews. The laptop was evidence. Standard practice would have been for the FBI to get a grand-jury subpoena to compel Ms. Mills to produce it.

Andrew McCarthy, a former U.S. attorney, puts it this way: “It’s like telling a bank robbery suspect, ‘If you turn over that bag, I’ll give you immunity as to the contents’—which means if the money you robbed is in there, I can’t use it against you.”

The Mills immunity, which we learned of on Friday, has unfortunately been overwhelmed by the first Trump-Clinton debate. But the week is still young. On Wednesday, Congress will have an opportunity to put the Mills questions to FBI director James Comey when he appears before the House Judiciary Committee.

Back in July, Mr. Comey must have thought he’d settled the issue of Mrs. Clinton’s emails with a grandstanding press conference in which he asserted “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against her based on what the FBI had found. In so doing, he effectively wrested the indictment decision (and any hope for political accountability) from the Justice Department. Plainly even his own agents weren’t buying, given that Mr. Comey later felt the need to issue an internal memo whining that he wasn’t being political. CONTINUE AT SITE

It’s amusing to listen to flacks for Hillary Clinton, a pathological liar, plead with Lester Holt that he must play activist debate moderator, ready to pounce on Donald Trump’s misstatements. The Clinton campaign, when not reviewing immunity agreements, has put out a “Seven Deadly Lies” script in hopes of enticing Mr. Holt to go all Candy Crowley this evening.

Personally, I’d far prefer no moderator to an activist one. Correcting the adversary’s misstatements and turning them to one’s advantage is the debater’s skill – you’re not supposed to need the moderator’s help, you’re supposed to show us you can handle it on your own.

When I was a prosecutor, it was par for the course for defense lawyers to misstate the record in closing arguments to the jury. To leap out of one’s chair and scream, “objection” when this happened was both unsatisfying and risky. Usually, the most you’d get would be a tepid admonition from the judge that “the jury’s recollection of the evidence” – not the lawyers’ – is what matters. But if the judge did try to correct the record, there was always the danger that the judge would either get it wrong (in which case the prosecutor is in the awkward position of having to correct the judge and thus make the defense lawyer look good), or appear to be bullying the defense lawyer – which could engender the jury’s sympathy.

I always preferred to let the lawyers say what they wanted to say. I knew I’d get my turn to rebut. In so doing, I’d not only be able to show the jury that the defense lawyers had made misleading arguments; it would also be the perfect opportunity to argue that people only try to spin you when they know the truth destroys them – which became the launch point for repeating my three or four best facts. That is, the adversary’s falsehoods didn’t hurt me; they were a chance for me to make them look bad while reinforcing my own case.

In any event, I don’t know how interested people are in Mrs. Clinton’s favorite “deadly lie,” the fact that Trump has been disingenuous in claiming he opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A number of us pointed this out during the GOP primary campaign (see, e.g., here), to no effect. Moreover, Clinton voted for the Iraq war and then became part of the withering Democratic campaign to undermine it. To me, that seems a lot more consequential than Trump’s comparatively uninformed and irrelevant meanderings on the subject. (By “comparatively uninformed and irrelevant,” I mean that Clinton, by comparison, (a) was a member of the Senate serving on the Armed Services Committee, who was thus keenly aware of the alarming intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein; and (b) famously accused General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker of lying about progress in Iraq after the surge.) It seems to me that Clinton’s harping about Trump’s stance on Iraq only calls attention to her own wavering – which even many Democrats have rebuked.

One lie I would like to see fact-checked, though, is Clinton’s repeated one – which she’s certain to rehash this evening, namely: The FBI’s year-long investigation “exonerated” her of wrongdoing in the email scandal.

In point of fact, the FBI merely drew the conclusion that Clinton should not be charged with a crime. Even if we assume for argument’s sake that this was a valid conclusion (in fact, it is hugely suspect), finding that someone should not be indicted is far from exoneration. CONTINUE AT SITE

Mr. Cotton is a Republican senator from Arkansas. Mr. Pompeo is a Republican congressman from Kansas.

We recently visited Norway and Sweden to understand more about the European migrant crisis. What we saw provides important lessons for the American immigration debate.

More than 1.5 million people have relocated to Europe over the last two years. Many are refugees from Syria, Iraq and other war-torn lands. Many are simply economic migrants leaving poorer nations. This mass migration has strained European societies and upended European politics with populist insurgencies.

Though economically and demographically similar, Norway and Sweden have adopted sharply different approaches to the policy and politics of immigration, and have reaped sharply differing outcomes.

Starting in 2015, Norway adopted an immigration policy it has termed “strict but fair.” The Norwegians agreed to accept 8,000 migrants from other European nations, though they weren’t obligated to do so.

Norway also established measures to stop uncontrolled migration. It imposed new border controls featuring a border fence, increased waiting periods for residency and deportation of ineligible migrants. It also reduced migrant benefits to match those offered by its neighbors. Norway even advertised in foreign nations, warning that migrants who do not face war or persecution will be deported.

The result? Asylum applications in Norway fell 95% between the last quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016.

Norway is far from hardhearted. It has welcomed refugees for decades and its foreign policy prioritizes conflict resolution and humanitarian relief. But Norwegians understand that an open-border policy would strain their resources, disrupt the integration of other recently arrived immigrants, and undercut the legitimate desire of Norwegians to preserve their nation’s culture and character.

Also significant: Norway’s political system has effectively accommodated a broad spectrum of views on immigration. The Progress Party, the traditional home for immigration skeptics, has won the second- or third-largest share of seats in the Norwegian Parliament since the 1990s. Rather than shun Progress, as has happened to similar parties in many European countries, mainstream leaders welcomed it into the political debate and, eventually, into the governing coalition. As one government leader explained to us, “In Norway, we discuss every issue and concern. Nothing is out of bounds.”

Contrast this with Sweden’s approach. Sweden threw open its doors in 2013, offering Syrian refugees permanent residency. Asylum applications from across the world—not just Syria—spiked. Sweden has since received more than 280,000 migrants, and counting. That is by far the most migrants per capita of any EU nation and akin to the U.S. adding the population of Michigan. These migrants are disproportionately poor, young, male, undereducated, conservatively Muslim and possess virtually no Swedish-language skills.

This radical policy occurred with little debate because political correctness pervades Sweden. They even have a term for the phenomenon: åsiktskorridor, or “the opinion corridor.” Any questions about the economic, fiscal and cultural impact of an immediate influx of migrants clearly lay outside the corridor; asking them could result in accusations of xenophobia or racism.

But these questions are real and they reflect legitimate concerns for the Swedish people. Because conventional political parties didn’t respond to public concern, a controversial immigration-restrictionist party, the Sweden Democrats, more than doubled its vote share in the 2014 elections and became the third-largest party in parliament. The left and the right refused to work with the Sweden Democrats, creating a hamstrung minority government.

Faced with growing public dissatisfaction, the Swedish government finally relented and imposed border controls and other restrictions this summer. But not before committing more than 7% of its 2016 budget to migrant services, with costs set to steadily increase. No one knows where the new money will come from, where many of the recent migrants will live or work, or what the ultimate social impact will be.

Sweden’s failures have been repeated in Germany, France, Austria and elsewhere. Immigration was the key issue driving British votes to leave the European Union

The parallels to the U.S. immigration debate are clear. For years, a bipartisan elite consensus has favored the mass immigration of unskilled and low-skilled workers into America coupled with the legalization of millions of illegal immigrants already here. Only one thing has stopped these elites from their desired immigration policy: Two-thirds to three-quarters of Americans consistently oppose any increase in immigration. CONTINUE AT SITE

One of the strangest transformations in the era of Obama has been the overt and often gratuitous stereotyping of so-called white people — most often the white working classes who have become constructed into veritable unthinking and unrecognizable zombies. For progressives especially these were not the sympathetic old foundation of the Democratic party, who were once romanticized as the “people” pitted against the industrialists and the bluestockings, but rather have become monstrous caricatures of all sorts of incorrect race/class/and gender behavior and speech.

Stranger still, this disparagement was concurrent to the release of a variety of recent studies that have shown that the white working class has been “losing ground” in far more dramatic terms than have other ethnic groups, especially in key areas such as health and life expectancy. Such news might once have earned liberal sympathies rather than derision. Odder still, the so-called one percenters — that includes high percentages of whites, who have benefited from globalization and changes in the U.S. economy — are often precisely those who damn the less fortunate for supposedly enjoying racially based privileges that are largely confined to themselves.

From ‘tricks’ to ‘clingers’
Obama himself had long ago made popular the idea that there are not individual white people, good and bad, lazy and industrious, but more generally a collective Borg of racist and culpable “white people.” Or, as he characterized his own “effective” tricks over clueless whites in his admittedly fictional memoir Dreams from My Father, “it was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: [White] People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves.”

The president himself repeatedly amplified this emphasis on clueless retrograde whites during his two presidential campaigns, which in toto can be fairly characterized as a refutation of his earlier admirable 2004 speech at the Democratic convention (‘There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America”).

‘How is this not classified?”

So exclaimed Hillary Clinton’s close aide and confidante, Huma Abedin. The FBI had just shown her an old e-mail exchange, over Clinton’s private account, between the then-secretary of state and a second person, whose name Abedin did not recognize. The FBI then did what the FBI is never supposed to do: The agents informed their interviewee (Abedin) of the identity of the second person. It was the president of the United States, Barack Obama, using a pseudonym to conduct communications over a non-secure e-mail system — something anyone with a high-level security clearance, such as Huma Abedin, would instantly realize was a major breach.

Abedin was sufficiently stunned that, for just a moment, the bottomless capacity of Clinton insiders to keep cool in a scandal was overcome. “How is this not classified?”

She recovered quickly enough, though. The FBI records that the next thing Abedin did, after “express[ing] her amazement at the president’s use of a pseudonym,” was to “ask if she could have a copy of the email.”

Abedin knew an insurance policy when she saw one. If Obama himself had been e-mailing over a non-government, non-secure system, then everyone else who had been doing it had a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Thanks to Friday’s FBI document dump — 189 more pages of reports from the Bureau’s year-long foray (“investigation” would not be the right word) into the Clinton e-mail scandal — we now know for certain what I predicted some eight months ago here at NRO: Any possibility of prosecuting Hillary Clinton was tanked by President Obama’s conflict of interest.

As I explained in February, when it emerged that the White House was refusing to disclose at least 22 communications Obama had exchanged with then-secretary Clinton over the latter’s private e-mail account, we knew that Obama had knowingly engaged in the same misconduct that was the focus of the Clinton probe: the reckless mishandling of classified information.

To be sure, he did so on a smaller scale. Clinton’s recklessness was systematic: She intentionally set up a non-secure, non-government communications framework, making it inevitable that classified information would be mishandled, and that federal record-keeping laws would be flouted. Obama’s recklessness, at least as far as we know, was confined to communications with Clinton — although the revelation that the man presiding over the “most transparent administration in history” set up a pseudonym to conceal his communications obviously suggests that his recklessness may have been more widespread.

Still, the difference in scale is not a difference in kind. In terms of the federal laws that criminalize mishandling of classified information, Obama not only engaged in the same type of misconduct Clinton did; he engaged in it with Clinton. It would not have been possible for the Justice Department to prosecute Clinton for her offense without its becoming painfully apparent that 1) Obama, too, had done everything necessary to commit a violation of federal law, and 2) the communications between Obama and Clinton were highly relevant evidence.