July 19: Trump Speaks; Biden v. Obama

Drone attack in Tel Aviv; CrowdStrike crash; What the hostage parents don't mention

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The Big Story

There were high hopes heading into last night for Donald Trump’s speech accepting the 2024 Republican nomination for president. Trump, after all, had announced that he’d torn up his prepared remarks after surviving an assassination attempt over the weekend, and that he’d be preaching a message of unity while avoiding attacks on President Joe Biden. He delivered on that promise for about half an hour, giving a moving account of his near-death experience and pledging to serve as a leader for all, not just half, of the country. 

He then went on to talk for another hour. Topics included “the current administration” (mentioning Biden by name only once), energy policy, the Green Bay Packers, NAFTA, illegal immigration, the president of the United Auto Workers (who “should be fired immediately”), El Salvador, the Afghanistan withdrawal, building a made-in-America Iron Dome, and, well—it’s Trump, you get the picture. He did, to his credit, demand that Hamas release the hostages. But at the end of the night, it seemed clear that the high point of the evening was the brief speech by Hulk Hogan, which was at least memeable:

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, there were plenty of tantalizing scoops about “senior party leaders” predicting that Biden will step down any minute now. These included reports that Biden’s family members and senior advisers are planning for the end, and one widely shared story from Mark Halperin, which cited “senior sources” claiming that the announcement would come this weekend and the Democrats would hold an “open convention” to select their nominee in August. On Friday, ten more Congressional Democrats called on Biden to withdraw, bringing the total to 30. Also on Friday, the Democratic megadonor Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist, told The New York Times that he was putting his donations on hold until Biden withdraws. 

We feel a bit like Baghdad Bob here but … we’re still not convinced that Joe will go. Late Thursday and Friday, the Biden faction and its surrogates staged a counterattack in the media. Biden’s left-wing congressional allies, including Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), took to social media to attack the party leaders pushing for Biden’s ouster, with AOC warning her followers on an Instagram Live stream that party “elites” and the “donor class” wanted to swap out the Biden-Harris ticket entirely. Robert Costa of CBS reported Thursday that sources close to Biden were “furious” at the pressure campaign and that if party leaders “want him out, they’ll have to push.” And on Friday morning, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told Morning Joe that Biden is “absolutely” staying in the race and has “a path forward” to win the election. 

So, at the moment, it’s Biden and the left vs. Obama and the oligarchs. And with the donor class coalescing against Biden, guess who showed up outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters on Friday?

That’s right—an Astro-Turfed climate radical group. According to InfluenceWatch, Climate Defiance is funded by the Climate Emergency Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose major donors include the heiresses Aileen Getty and Abigail Disney, the Hollywood director Adam McKay, and Onward Together, a 501(c)(4) founded in 2016 by Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean.

In other words, in an incredible turn of events, the Democratic donor class is now giving Joe Biden the Israel treatment to push him off the ticket. Maybe that’s what the anti-Israel protests were about this whole time? We don’t know. But we can say that given the underhandedness of Biden’s opponents, we’re almost starting to feel bad for the guy.

Read the report here. 

IN THE BACK PAGES: Lee Smith asks: Who created the climate of political violence in America?

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The Rest

→On Friday, an Iranian drone launched by the Houthis from Yemen struck Tel Aviv, killing one and wounding at least 10, according to the Associated Press. It is unclear how the drone managed to slip through Israel’s multiple layers of sophisticated air defense. IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the drone was detected but, due to an “error,” was not intercepted, while an anonymous Israeli official quoted in the AP blamed the strike on “human error.” 

→Late Wednesday, the Israeli Knesset voted 68-9 in favor of a resolution rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, even as part of a negotiated settlement with Israel. The text of the resolution read, in part:

The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region. … Promoting the idea of ​​a Palestinian state at this time will be a reward for terrorism and will only encourage Hamas and its supporters to see this as a victory, thanks to the massacre of October 7, 2023, and a prelude to the takeover of jihadist Islam in the Middle East.

In other words, it stated what’s obvious to seemingly everyone outside the vast legions of professional peace processors, international affairs experts, U.N.- and NGO-types, and government officials in the United States and Europe. While the Biden administration is now consumed with the PR fallout of the president being exposed as a walking mummy, it wasn’t too long ago that it was running a messaging campaign to convince the American people that “Bibi” and “Likud” and their “far-right coalition partners” were the only obstacles to a Palestinian state. While the overwhelming margin in favor of the resolution was the result of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party boycotting the vote, the resolution did receive the support of lawmakers from National Unity, the party of D.C. favorite Benny Gantz. 

→On Friday morning, an update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused a massive global tech outage, delaying thousands of flights and crashing millions of Microsoft Windows devices worldwide, including those used by government agencies such as the British National Health Service and the New York City subway system. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said that the outage was due to a software issue, not a “security incident or a cyberattack.” But, as The Wall Street Journal put it, “That one update from a single provider could plunge so many companies—from airlines’ check-in desks to consultants’ conference rooms—into a digital dark age serves as a stark warning of the economy’s technological dependence, and the dangers of too much consolidation around the same tools.” 

→Quote of the Day: 

Until the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 last year, the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center had been the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. Today’s somber commemoration comes in the midst of an alarming surge in global antisemitism. Since the October 7 attacks, we have seen a dramatic increase in violent incidents and hateful discourse against Jews and Jewish communal institutions and businesses in many countries, including in the United States, just as we have seen a dramatic increase in Islamophobia and hate crimes against Muslims. We condemn all manifestations of antisemitism and other forms of hatred and urge all governments to unequivocally do so as well.

That’s from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Thursday statement on the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina in Buenos Aires. We would add that the AMIA bombing, like the Oct. 7 attacks, was an attack by Muslims against Jews, but we wouldn’t want a small detail like that to get in the way of the administration’s compulsory intersectional box-checking. We’re just grateful that German Americans aren’t a major client of the modern Democratic Party so we don’t have to sit through hand-wringing about the postwar fate of the Volksdeutsche every time there’s a mention of the Holocaust. 

→On that note, here’s our Post of the Day:

That’s a now-deleted tweet from The Washington Post that “mischaracterized the efforts of Neutra’s parents,” according to the paper’s apology tweet—even though the tweet simply lifted a paragraph from the body of the story. But, hey, maybe we’re being unfair. After all, don’t we usually expect grieving parents to prioritize the well-being of their child’s kidnappers and/or murderers? Aren’t Evan Gershkovich’s parents speaking out against NATO expansion and Russophobia? Didn’t the parents of 9/11 victims have a responsibility to denounce U.S. imperialism? No? We’re making that up, and it’s only Jews? Weird. We could have sworn there wasn’t a double standard. 

→Speaking of Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter was sentenced on Friday to 16 years in a Russian penal colony on trumped-up charges of espionage. Gershkovich, the WSJ, and the U.S. government have all strenuously denied charges that the 32-year-old, who has been imprisoned in Russia since last March, was a spy, and Russian authorities have produced absolutely no public evidence to support the charge. In a Friday report on the sentencing, the WSJ notes that Gershkovich is almost certainly being held as a de facto hostage and bargaining chip that Russian President Vladimir Putin can trade for the release of Russians held in the West. 

→Stat of the Day: 34% 

That’s how many registered Democrats said it is “credible” that the Saturday assassination attempt against Donald Trump was staged and not intended to kill him, according to a Morning Consult poll reported in The Washington Free Beacon. Conspiracy theories are a great American tradition, and we think the world would be a less interesting place if some people didn’t believe the moon landing was fake or that UFOs are time machines transporting South Americans into the past. So, Trump arranged for a school-shooter patsy to buzz his ear from 140 yards away for a photo op? Sure, you do you. But if a third of Democrats believe this, let’s please dispense with the fiction that right-wing “conspiracy theories” are a dangerous threat to public health and national security that require government censorship. 

→That said, we think we can confirm this conspiracy theory:

(The bottom text, which gets cut off in Owens’ screenshot, says “Oh yeah! I know where I’ve seen him before. At Club Fed.”)

Hats off to Ms. Owens for the detective work: She’s almost certainly correct that Trump’s Secret Service agents are “feds.” 

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TODAY IN TABLET: 

Old Spice, by Paola Gavin

Jews have been using cinnamon since biblical times. And what was precious to King Solomon is still a culinary—and medicinal—treasure today.

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SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that  you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.

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Who Normalized Political Violence in America?

It wasn't Donald Trump, or Joe Biden

By Lee Smith

Democratic Party officials and media deny that there’s any connection between their inflammatory rhetoric labeling Donald Trump a fascist, would-be dictator, and even Adolf Hitler and the attempt on the 2024 Republican candidate. But media executives must believe Trump supporters have a point or MSNBC wouldn’t have given Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski a 24-hour timeout Monday to put some distance between the shooting and the fare that Morning Joe has been dishing out for nearly a decade. Same with music industry executives who canceled Jack Black’s worldwide music tour after the funnyman’s bandmate told an Australian audience that his birthday wish was “Don’t miss Trump next time.” Politics aside, no concert promoter was going to pay the insurance premium required to host a band that celebrated attempted murder.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are angry at The New Republic after a recent issue put an image based on a Hitler campaign poster on its cover. The editors claim they weren’t entirely committed to the Trump=Hitler formula, but, as they wrote, “he’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.”

In a way, left-wing journalists who say it’s not their fault the 20-year-old man whose adolescence was saturated with murderously anti-Trump rhetoric tried to kill Trump have a point. The media is reactive, not creative. Democrat-aligned media didn’t invent the idea that the Democratic Party’s 2020 candidate was, despite massive video and audio evidence to the contrary, cognitively 100%. They just sang from the sheet they were handed.

And when Joe Biden proved incapable of finishing a sentence without devolving into gibberish during his debate with Trump last month? It wasn’t the media that left him out there to melt like a Madame Tussauds simulation of a living person. In fact, the media was embarrassed by Biden’s performance—and in front of the people they hate most, Trump supporters, who have been saying for four years that Biden is in obvious decline. So, the media reacted—Joe must go! But that’s not their call. If media personalities had real power, no one would have dared muzzle Joe and Mika, not even for 24 hours.

So, who created the climate of political violence?

Some propagandists lay the blame squarely on Trump. After pro forma denunciations of the attempted public execution of the opposition leader, a chorus of establishment stalwarts, like George Stephanopoulos, and David Rothkopf, and others argued that Trump and his aspiring assassin were cut from the same cloth: “The gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory,” wrote David Frum, “are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.”

In other words, not only is Trump responsible for inciting Jan. 6—the gravest threat to our democracy since the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11, etc.—but he has polarized the country so profoundly that he is ultimately responsible for the attempt on his life. That’s Hamas logic: The violence of our victims drove us to burn them alive. Thus, the left is laying down the predicate for future violence against Trump and the half of the country that supports him: It’s OK to target them because being “at both ends of the bullet’s trajectory,” they brought it upon themselves.

No, the violence came from the left. The question is, who from the left is responsible for cultivating it? It’s not the media, and it’s not Joe Biden, either.

With the Democratic Party’s internal upheavals about replacing the incumbent, the left has openly acknowledged that the shadow presidency isn’t a MAGA conspiracy but fact. All the party’s chatter centered on Obama, identifying him as the man holding the party’s reins and directing its messaging: Did he sign off on George Clooney’s op-ed calling for Biden to step down? What was the true meaning of Obama aide David Axelrod’s tweet that the debate over Biden's candidacy should have happened a year ago? Or when another Obama hand, David Plouffe, said it was DEFCON-ONE moment for Biden? Who did Obama prefer for 2024: his former vice president he made the 2020 candidate or the unelectable also-ran he slipped into the No. 2 slot to sneak her past the electorate when Biden’s malfunctions proved, finally, irreparable? Was the moment ripe for Operation Kamala?

As it happens, the timing backfired on Obama. The attempt on Trump’s life leaves him holding the bag. If Obama is responsible for calling the shots, then he must also be held accountable for them.

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It’s no surprise that the left’s investigation into the roots of our current round of political violence has carefully avoided mention of the riots that filled college campuses across the country and the streets of American cities with Palestinian terror advocates. Indeed, the fascist-fighting New Republic now employs a pro-Hamas reporter. “Good morning,” Talia Jane tweeted over a picture of Israel’s border being overrun on Oct. 7. This wasn’t terrorism, she explained, rather it was “state oppression vs rebellion against state repression.”

In an article for TNR, Jane defended: antisemitic protesters at a Manhattan exhibit commemorating the hundreds killed by Hamas at the Nova festival; vandals targeting the homes of Brooklyn Museum administrators for calling the police on violent protesters; attacks on pro-Israel Columbia University professor Shai Davidai; and terror supporters filling a subway car asking other riders to “raise your hand if you’re a Zionist.” It could have been dictated from a Doha hotel hosting Hamas leadership.

But Jane’s ideology is not that different from the message Obama pushed into the mainstream of the Democratic Party. “The occupation, and what is happening to Palestinians, is unbearable,” is how he framed the Oct. 7 massacre for his former staffers during a Pod Save America panel in November.

And this wasn’t just talk. How did 2024 Brooklyn come to look and sound like 1938 Berlin? In part, according to U.S. intelligence officials, it’s because Iran funded and incited the pro-Hamas demonstrations. Where would the regime that arms and pays for anti-American terror and embodies Jew hatred get the idea that it’s OK to participate in the American political system by creating the conditions for a nationwide pogrom?

In 2015 the Obama White House struck an agreement with the Islamic Republic, legalizing its nuclear weapons program and thereby legitimizing the tactics it employs to accomplish its strategic goals—political violence, i.e., terrorism. The Iran nuclear deal was the instrument with which Obama normalized political violence.

Another Obama instrument cultivated it. Shortly before leaving office in 2017, Obama instructed his CIA Director John Brennan to produce an intelligence community assessment claiming that Vladimir Putin helped put Trump in the White House. The purpose of the official assessment wasn’t just to undermine his successor’s presidency and hobble his administration with phony investigations sourced to the perverted fantasies of an FBI informant once employed by British intelligence. No, lending the U.S. government’s executive authority to an information operation contending that one half of the electorate supported a foreign agent to govern the country was designed to destabilize America. Its purpose was to drive its citizens against each other.

That’s where we are today, still. These are the signs of a destabilized polity: the widespread prosecution of political opponents that was normalized in the wake of Jan. 6; mandating vaccines and villainizing those who resisted experimental medical treatments; recasting Trump supporters as domestic terrorists; opening borders to usher foreign criminals into middle-class communities; convicting elderly women for praying in front of abortion clinics; dispatching the FBI to raid the home of the opposition leader, unlawfully deputizing an officer to prosecute him, and most recently, but likely not summarily, the attempt on his life.

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Trump said that, after what he went through, he couldn’t very well say the same words he’d planned to say Thursday night in a broadside attacking Biden. Rather, he needed to send a message of unity—which in this case is a story about redemption.

Americans know how to hear those stories because we’ve been telling them to ourselves and others from the beginning, starting with George Washington himself. The narrative thread goes through the Civil War, catching Lee as well as Grant, and up to the present. It seemed once that Obama, too, having attached himself to the mythography of Lincoln, was part of that story as America’s first Black president—and maybe he will reappear there in the future, rather than leave his mark in the book of America where it is now, in the chapter of Ahab, the maniacal completionist. The best stories we invent about ourselves all partake of the same longing, from Shane and Gatsby to Rocky and the Hunger Games. May this latest and perhaps most improbable protagonist of the great American story continue to draw on the source of redemption granted him by providence.