The Wild 2024 Race It may prove to be the most volatile race in recent memory. by Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-wild-2024-race/

Current polls, pundits, and politicos insist that the 2024 race is a sure rematch between former President Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden.

It may well turn out that way.

But in past election cycles, summer polls 15 months before the general election usually did not mean much.

In December 2003, the CBS poll headline blared, “Dean pulls away in Dem race.” Howard Dean would eventually be clobbered by nominee John Kerry.

In the Gallup Poll of late June 2007, Hillary Clinton still continued to enjoy her wide lead in the Democratic primary over eventual nominee and elected president Barack Obama.

On the Republican side, Gallup noted of its summer 2007 polls that, “There has been little serious threat to the frontrunner, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani” — who bombed out early in the race.

About this time in 2015, Jeb Bush was leading Trump in the Republican primary. Or as CNN characterized their summer poll, “He (Bush) holds a significant lead over the second-place candidate Trump.”

By January 2016, the favorite, can-do Wisconsin governor Scott Walker was leading all candidates by a substantial margin as they headed for the Iowa caucuses.

There are lots of reasons to believe that 2024 may prove to be the most volatile race in recent memory.

Not since 1912 — when third-party ex-president Theodore Roosevelt challenged incumbent President William Howard Taft in a three-way race with Woodrow Wilson — have two presidents run against each other.

Both, remember, lost that year to the far less experienced Wilson.

Second, Trump is currently the target of at least four state and federal prosecutors.

Why Is Saudi Arabia Spending Billions on Western Sports? LIV Golf. Formula 1. And now a $332 million bid for Kylian Mbappé. What we call ‘sportswashing,’ the Saudis call savvy. Josh Glancy

https://www.thefp.com/p/saudi-arabia-sportswashing-football-liv-golf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

I’ll never forget the moment Saudi Arabia arrived in global soccer. It happened at the World Cup last November, when the team faced Argentina—the overwhelming favorite to win. 

At halftime they were losing 1–0 and nobody was paying attention. I was finishing my halftime snack in the Pearl Lounge at Doha’s Lusail Stadium: a bowl of caviar in one hand and a glass of Taittinger champagne in the other. Then, suddenly, the Saudis scored a goal in the second half—and plutocrats clad in keffiyehs and thobes tipped over their plates of wagyu steak as they stampeded back to their seats. Saudi Arabia went on to beat the soccer legends 2–1, causing the biggest upset in World Cup history.

That game was just the beginning. In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has embarked on an extraordinary and record-breaking shopping spree, spending billions to acquire marquee-name players. The most recent foray is an attempt by Saudi soccer club Al-Hilal to sign French striker Kylian Mbappé, by most measures the best player in the world, for a quite staggering world record $332 million, plus a one-year contract worth $776 million. Money like this has never been seen in soccer before. Unsurprisingly, the bid was accepted by Mbappé’s club, Paris Saint-Germain, but the soccer star, so far, has refused the deal. 

Either Saudi Arabia really wants to be the global epicenter of soccer, or they really want to distract the world with their attempts to do so. 

Most Westerners believe it’s the latter, accusing the kingdom of “sportswashing.” Saudi Arabia is well aware of their reputation: they’re a country that oppresses women, executes dissidents, and disembowels Washington Post columnists. But—and this is a big but—if they buy enough soccer stars and sponsor enough sports tournaments, then maybe “human rights atrocities” won’t be the first thing mentioned when people discuss Saudi Arabia.

At least that’s the theory. But is it working? Can you buy enough star athletes to make the world forget (or at least ignore) all of your tyrannical excesses? And is that even what they’re doing at all? 

What’s crystal clear is that the Saudis have been building up to this investment spree for some time, dipping into their Public Investment Fund (PIF) of more than $700 billion to pay for it. In 2019, the country hosted British heavyweight boxing champion Anthony Joshua’s fight against the Mexican American fighter Andy Ruiz Jr. Then in 2021, it hosted its first Formula 1 race, at the newly minted track in Jeddah. That same year, it made its biggest move so far by buying Newcastle United, a storied Premier League soccer team from the northeast of England. 

U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY —STAFFED UP, LAWYERED UP & ARMED UP!

Following the launch of our U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report earlier in the week, last night I was featured on Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street show.

When Biden claims climate change is the #1 national security threat, politicians and unelected bureaucrats think they have license to run amok — fleecing the American people and curtailing of freedom and liberty…

WATCH THE INTERVIEW: THE EPA IS STAFFING UP, LAWYERING UP, AND ARMING UP WITH AN EXTRA $100 BILLION FROM CONGRESS
 

DOJ can’t sink any lower after attempted jailing of Hunter Biden’s ex-partner Devon Archer before his testimony Miranda Devine –

https://nypost.com/2023/07/30/doj-cant-sink-any-lower-after-attempted-arrest-of-hunter-bidens-ex-partner-devon-archer/

The Department of Justice attempted to have Devon Archer report to prison ahead of his expected testimony about his former business partner Hunter Biden before the House Oversight Committee. Alec TabakWhat a coincidence!

On the eve of Devon Archer’s bombshell testimony to the House Oversight Committee, the Department of Justice tried to put him in jail. 

If you don’t suspect that’s an attempt to intimidate Hunter Biden’s former best friend before he reveals damaging secrets about the president, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

It’s another example of a DOJ gone astray.

Coming hot on the heels of the first son’s dubious plea deal in Delaware collapsing last week, and amid allegations from senior IRS whistleblowers of political favoritism by prosecutors to protect Joe Biden, you have to wonder how far a weaponized, all-powerful, unaccountable justice system can go.

Two more examples from the past week tell you the sky’s the limit — and they’re not even bothering to hide it anymore.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors dropped campaign-finance violation charges against cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, who just so happens to have been Biden’s second-biggest donor.

On Thursday, new charges against Biden’s chief political rival, Donald Trump, were filed by special counsel Jack Smith over the former president’s handling of classified files.

‘Obstruction of justice’

Robert Taft: A Senator for All Seasons Paul F. Petrick

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/31/robert-taft-a-senator-for-all-seasons/

Contrary to popular belief, the biggest fraud in American politics is not Rep. George Santos.  Nor is it the not-so-Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren.  Nor is it the “Stolen Valor” Sen. Richard Blumenthal.  It is not even Joe Biden, whose fabulism stretches so far back that Johnny Carson joked about it. 

The biggest frauds in American politics are the 27 “Republican” members of Congress who voted for the obscene $1.66 trillion Omnibus Spending Bill last December, 16 of whom still “serve.”

In stark contrast to their example is the memory of Ohio Republican Sen. Robert A. Taft, who died 70 years ago today — July 31, 1953. 

Among the few outstanding American statesmen and the fewer whose greatness was contemporaneously acknowledged, Taft’s destiny seemed preordained.  First in his class in high school, college (Yale), and law school (Harvard), Taft was the scion of a great American political dynasty and the son of the only man to hold the offices of U.S. president and Supreme Court chief justice. Leaving no branch of government unmastered by his family, Taft scaled the legislative ladder. In the Ohio legislature, he led efforts to reform the state’s antiquated tax code, opposed prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan, and rose to become speaker of the lower house before graduating to the State Senate.  But it was as a U.S. senator that Taft became one for the ages.

Elected in 1938, Taft immediately became renowned for his intelligence, parliamentary skill, and principled opposition to government intervention at home and abroad. Impervious to interest groups, Taft never broke an agreement, especially with his constituents. He was always the man they voted for. Taft eschewed political deception and courageously adhered to his principles, garnering universal respect. 

Hunter Biden, FARA and Unequal Justice A bad law used against Trump associates now haunts President Biden’s son.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-biden-foreign-agents-registration-act-robert-mueller-donald-trump-26596b5a?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Unequal justice has emerged as a theme in the Hunter Biden plea deal, and one example came last week when Judge Maryellen Noreika asked the prosecution and defense in court if their agreement meant the President’s son could still be prosecuted for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Hunter’s lawyers said no, but the prosecutor said yes, and Hunter can thank Robert Mueller if he is prosecuted under that statute.

FARA is a long-ignored law dating to 1938 that special counsel Mueller brought out of mothballs in an attempt to pry information out of Donald Trump’s associates. It requires Americans acting as an “agent of a foreign principal” under most circumstances to register with the U.S. government. As we noted at the time, in the nearly half-century up to 2016 the Justice Department brought only seven criminal FARA cases and won three convictions. The rarity of prosecutions created much confusion about how and when the law applies.

That didn’t stop Mr. Mueller. As special counsel investigating nonexistent Russia collusion, he used FARA to prosecute Trump associates who were mostly accused of lying about their work on behalf of foreign governments.

This is how he nailed Paul Manafort, who took money from the Ukrainians. Michael Flynn admitted to making false statements in documents filed pursuant to FARA regarding his work on behalf of the Turkish government. FARA also ensnared Greg Craig—a high-powered Democratic lawyer and former White House counsel to President Obama—who was prosecuted as an offshoot of the Mueller investigation into Mr. Manafort’s deals with Ukraine.

Operation Get Trump For the FBI and other agencies, going too far has been worth it in the past Roger Kimball

https://thespectator.com/topic/operation-get-trump/

Humankind, said T.S. Eliot, cannot bear very much reality. A case in point was the chyron that Fox News posted briefly on June 13. That was the day that Donald Trump was arraigned in Miami. The news story featured a split screen. On the left was Joe Biden speaking at an event in Washington for the secretary-general of NATO. On the right was Donald Trump addressing supporters in New Jersey. Underneath ran the unspeakable truth: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”

That fresh-breeze-of-truth window was open for a total of twenty-seven seconds. Then it was slammed shut. But that was long enough. Our Guardians on the internet erupted in fury. Fox issued a public apology and canned the veteran producer responsible on the spot. The Washington Post wailed that Fox had “crossed a line” with the unseemly graphic.

Yes, that is amusing coming from a house organ of the leftoid Democracy-Dies-In-Darkness megaphone. But the irony is that such eruptions of unchaperoned truth-telling are more and more rare at Fox, which has molted into a standard-issue mushy media mouthpiece.

Sure, there are still a few conservative-sounding pundits on Fox. But the corporate culture there is 100 percent grade-A woke. There’s also the dwindling audience, of course. As Chadwick Moore reported for The Spectator last edition, “total Fox viewership is down nearly 40 percent from the same time last year, and has tanked a whopping 62 percent in the key demographic.”

Shakespeare in black and white Race is not where we find it — it is where we put it Peter Wood

https://thespectator.com/topic/william-shakespeare-black-white-race/

Sarah Karim-Cooper first came to public attention at the cosmetics counter. Her book on makeup in Renaissance theater, Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama, was published in 2006. Its enduring popularity is not so much a testament to her scholarly insights on powdered hogs’ bones mixed with poppy oil — the old stage recipe for pale skin — or Shakespeare’s sardonic references to the kind of beauty “purchased by the weight” in The Merchant of Venice, as to Karim-Cooper’s celebrity: for more than a decade she’s been one of the leading racializers of Shakespeare’s work.

Perhaps the key moment in her rise to fame was her 2018 curation of the Globe Theatre’s first “Shakespeare and Race Festival,” now held annually. Those who are scratching their heads trying to think where, besides Othello, or perhaps Shylock, you can find “race” in Shakespeare, should hie them to the postmodern cosmetic counter. Race is not where we find it — it is where we put it. And Karim-Cooper puts it everywhere.

In 2018 the hype explained: “This festival will highlight the importance of race to the consideration of Shakespeare not only in his time, but more urgently, in our own.” The festival included a lecture by Kimberlé Crenshaw, better known on this side of the Atlantic as an inventor of “Critical Race Theory” and the concept of “intersectionality” — the notion that people who fall into more than one stigmatized category suffer more than the sum of their grievances.

You may be sure that Karim-Cooper is on top of this. She has been effacing Shakespeare professionally for some seventeen years at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, where she is currently co-director of education and research. She is also professor of Shakespeare studies at King’s College, London, and has written prolifically on the bard and Jacobean theater. This month, Penguin Random House will release her newest book, The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race.

The Republican House Needs to Cancel John Kerry For 50 years, he has been a malign force in American politics and foreign policy. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-republican-house-needs-to-cancel-john-kerry/

Last week 24 House Republicans introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for Climate Zealots Advancing Radical Schemes Act which if passed will defund our “climate czar” John Kerry’s office. This federal feed-bag is beyond political accountability to the voters or Congress, but at least the taxpayers will not be footing the bill for his emissions-spewing, global gallivanting to promote suicidal climate policies.

A Congressional rebuke would be a fitting end to Kerry’s public career––one marked by thoughtless adherence to leftish Democrat shibboleths, new-world-order received wisdom, and bad policies dangerous to our national security and interests.

Kerry’s latest junket was to China last week to coax the communist regime to remain on board with the West’s suicidal “green” energy demonization of cheap, abundant fossil fuels as codified in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.  That’s a big reason for the House’s bill to defund the energy czar’s $14 million budget and his staff of 45.

As Rep. Chip Roy (R. Texas) put it, Kerry is the “poster child for the Biden administration’s anti-energy policies that are destroying both our economy and national security.” The trip to China, Roy adds, which is “the top threat to our national security and the world’s number one polluter,” will do nothing but “further hamstring our energy policy.”

Moreover, approaching China as a suppliant and de facto junior partner––Xi didn’t deign to meet with Kerry personally–– in our relationship only emboldens our global rival to continue with its duplicitous diplomacy. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out the obvious, China’s agreement to stick with the Paris deal is “another way of saying Beijing intends to keep increasing its carbon emissions for another seven years. From 2015 to 2022 China’s greenhouse gas emissions grew nearly 12%, while the U.S. cut them by some 5%, according to the Climate Action Tracker.”

And it’s not just China’s duplicity about mitigating “global warming.” China understands that the West is in thrall to the climate-change cult and its “green energy” psalter, and takes such meetings as a way to leverage influence over our foreign policy by dangling the promise of cooperation on greenhouse gas emissions, of which China is by far the biggest emitter––almost as big as the next four emitters combined.

How To Create Conspiracy Theories Victor Davis Hanson

https://victorhanson.com/how-to-create-conspiracy-theories/

It is easy to birth conspiracy theories.

All that is required is chronic government stonewalling of reasonable requests for transparency. Then add in high officials serially lying under oath, along with the blatantly unequal application of the law. Institutionalize arguments from authority of politicians and bureaucrats who refuse to adjudicate arguments empirically.

Include the weaponization of investigatory and intelligence bureaucracies. Finish with the transformation of an obsequious media into a mouthpiece of the state. And presto, you end up with a skeptical, cynical public that learns to believe the very opposite from what it is told by elites.

January 6th

Curiously. some conservative politicians, media and politicos often remark of their surprise that so many of the Trump base insists that the January 6 riot at the Capitol was in part a federally driven conspiracy, or perhaps just a mere “demonstration” gone awry.

But whether true or not, why would some not believe that—given the efforts of the state to hide and warp facts?

Consider what drives rational people to embrace supposed “conspiracy” theories around the so-called “insurrection?”

One reason, of course, is that there was evidence of FBI informants present on January 6. Do not take the word of conservatives for such suppositions.

Instead, remember what award-winning New York Times’s reporter and keen follower of right-wing political activity, Matthew Rosenberg said of January 6, albeit in an ambush interview conducted by Project Veritas:

The left’s overreaction — the left’s reaction to it in some places was so over the top. They were making it too big a deal … that gave the opening for lunatics in the right to be like, ‘Oh, well, nothing happened here. It was just a peaceful bunch of tourists,’ you know, and it’s like, but nobody wants to hear that.”

Rosenberg then remarked that he spotted numerous FBI informants among the crowd milling around the Capitol. Or as he put it, “There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol.” Cannot the FBI refute such allegations?

Apparently not. Given such speculation, one would expect that FBI Director Christopher Wray might at least categorically deny such inflammatory accusations.

Yet in congressional testimony when asked whether the FBI had inserted informants among the protestors, sphinxlike Wray merely shrugged, “So I really need to be careful here talking about where we have or have not used confidential human sources.”

Then there is the mysterious case of Ray Epps, initially sought by FBI “as a person of interest” for allegedly inciting demonstrators to break the law and enter the Capitol.

But then oddly Epps was de facto exempted for some 30 months from arrest—even as hundreds who urged no such action were indicted and convicted of “illegal parading” or unlawfully “demonstrating in front of the Capitol”—misdemeanors that ended up resulting in felony-type sentencing.

In one video clip, as Epps attempts to gin up the stationary crowd to move illegally into the Capitol, he is met with “conspiratorial” accusations from skeptical bystanders calling out: “Fed! Fed! Fed!”