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I have often compared John Roberts to Mitch McConnell, and with good reason; the two are the twin architects of the McConnell Project, which prohibits the left from exercising real power even when in office. With the death of Chevron, their work is essentially done. The federal bureaucracy, workers, and consumers will see their rights eroded over the coming years, with the approval of the judiciary; the big winners will be wealthy businessmen.

But the Trump immunity case suggests that Roberts has moved on. He wasn’t in the tank for Trump before; now he is. My guess is that his plan is to play the insider game with Trump; he believes he can keep the man on golf cart within the guardrails of liberal democracy by building credibility with him on other issues. Under this theory, Trump won’t openly defy the rule of law if he has reason to believe he will get most of what he wants by complying with it.

In other words, Roberts wants to be Lindsey Graham. How well has that worked in the past?

People around Trump are starting to suggest that the “secret plan” to end the Ukraine war will include an ultimatum to Putin: accept my terms or watch me send even more arms to the Ukrainians. Is that plausible?

It is conceptually possible that Trump might threaten both sides, but it won’t work, because Putin wouldn’t regard an ultimatum from him as being credible. He knows that Trump genuinely hates Ukraine, and it is doubtful, as a practical matter, that the pace of arms transfers could be accelerated very much. Threats to unleash NATO or use nukes would be even less credible. In the end, Trump will give him what he wants. He may just have to wait a bit.

I frequently made the point during Trump’s first term that the man on golf cart viewed the presidency as a prize to be enjoyed, not a job, let alone a public trust. Biden’s comments about his fitness and his candidacy during the ABC interview had a similar smell to them. Biden appears to think that he earned the nomination, so the rest of us just have to get on board. If he does his best and loses, he can live with that.

That attitude is just wrong. The objectives are to save liberal democracy from Donald Trump and to nominate a candidate who is capable of serving for the next four years, not to give Biden a reward for four positive years in office. To keep him as the nominee means forfeiting the blue team’s best argument against Trump–his manifest lack of fitness to serve. The public has already told us consistently and resoundingly that throwing that card away costs us the support of undecided voters and thus the election. It cannot stand.

The center and the left far outperformed expectations in the second round of the French election yesterday. You might think I’m celebrating today, but I’m not. Why?

For two reasons. First, even though the culture war hostility between the right and the left is very deep, hence the outcome of the election, the extremes actually have more in common on issues such as taxation, spending, and the EU than they do with the center. How is France to be governed for the next year under those conditions, particularly since Macron is in no position to negotiate with the right? Second, the right will not have any responsibility for the success or failure of the government, and it will have a plausible argument that it was deprived of power by a corrupt deal between the center and the left. That will put it in an even better position to win the presidency in 2027, without any constraints on its use of power.

Pay me now or pay me later. Short-term gain for long-term pain. Enjoy it while it lasts.

The overwhelming victory of the decidedly not populist Labour Party should alert you that right-wing extremists are not invincible. What is going on here is a revolt against incumbency, not a massive turn to the far right.

But why is that? Macron and Biden have done a good job keeping unemployment down. Inflation is falling, even in the UK. Why is everyone so pissed off?

The unfamiliar impact of inflation is part of the story. I think the rest of it is attributable to the virus. You see it on the roads and on t-shirts as well as during elections–the survivors of the virus are angry and frustrated and want someone to blame.

If the populist right wins power in France and the US and delivers nothing but incompetence, chaos, and pain, which is far more likely than not, what happens then? Will the voters treat them with the same disdain they show for Biden and Macron? TBD.

Donald Trump thinks America has interests, but no permanent friends. He doesn’t believe in anything like a community of values. He argues that our supposed allies do nothing but rip us off. As a result, he will go out of his way to offend them after he takes office. He will once again withdraw from the Paris agreement, impose universal tariffs for spurious national security reasons, and treat NATO as a protection racket.

The problem is that America needs allies in its struggle for predominance against China. How does Trump square this circle? By assuming that America has the military and economic power to force its former allies to toe the line. By behaving as a bully, in other words.

This tactic reminds me of the plan designed by Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tirpitz to bully the UK into alliance with the German Empire prior to 1914 by building the German “risk fleet.” How did that turn out?

Biden’s hole card has always been Trump’s manifest unfitness for office. Realizing that, the man on golf cart and his party have been struggling to find reasons to argue that Biden was equally unfit over the last few years. The most obvious example of this was the abortive attempt by House Republicans to get enough votes to impeach the president. None of it succeeded with anyone except the Fox News crowd until the debate.

Today, when Biden argues that Trump is a criminal and a potential dictator, the GOP can credibly respond that Biden is not physically or mentally up to the job. Expect to see commercials to that effect on regular rotation between now and November. As of today, the voters seem to agree; don’t expect that to change anytime soon. A dictator, in the eyes of swing voters, may be a safer bet in a dangerous world than a man whose lucid periods reportedly end in the late afternoon.

If Biden remains in the race, which seems inevitable at this point, his argument on fitness will fall on deaf ears, which will only leave him with differences with Trump on policy. An energetic candidate might be able to win on that alone, given the obvious weaknesses in the Trump agenda. Is Biden up to that task? Given that he plans to cut back on his schedule in order to avoid more public senior moments, the obvious answer to the question is no.

The president of Heritage was quoted yesterday, I believe, as saying that a Trump victory would result in a “Second American Revolution,” which would be bloodless if the left did not resist it. The Trump campaign, justifiably worried about the inflammatory language, tried to put distance between itself and Heritage without actually disavowing anything specific in the Project 2025 agenda.

Given Trump’s erratic behavior and thought patterns, it is reasonable to assume that Heritage will not be dictating terms to him. However, the organization is full of friends and true believers, so anything it says must be taken both literally and seriously. In light of that, you have to wonder if the fragment of the electorate that will vote for Trump purely out of concern about Biden’s health, or out of a misplaced desire to bring back the economy of 2019, knows that it is actually giving its consent to a “Second American Revolution.” And what about the “bloodless” part? Is Heritage telling us that legal dissent to its program will be met with force?

I can’t read it any other way.

On its face, the Trump economic agenda will be devastating for American agriculture. His universal tariffs will invite universal retaliation against American farm products, which will dramatically reduce exports. In addition, the mass deportation campaign will deprive American farmers of their primary labor source. There will be no one left to pick crops. Food prices will soar, and many farms will simply go out of business.

None of which will cause the farmers to vote against Trump, since he is viewed as the only man who can save them from godless liberalism. And he will hear them. He will use the proceeds of the tariffs to write them giant checks. They will survive as entitled wards of the state while the rest of us struggle to deal with the higher cost of food.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republican for which it stands.

One nation, under Trump

With no immigrants, and with misery and death for all liberals.

George Washington, in Freudian terms, was all superego. His superpowers were patriotism and self-discipline. He aspired to be a gentleman, a leader of men, and a figure similar to the heroes of the Roman Republic. By force of will, he succeeded in all of these things. The America of today would be unrecognizable without him.

Lincoln’s superpowers, on the other hand, were empathy and a form of simple eloquence that still touches the hearts of Americans today. The price he paid for his empathy was written all over his face. You’ve seen the pictures, so you know what I mean.

When Trump looks at America, on the other hand, he sees only himself. Unlike Washington, he is pure id. Unlike Lincoln, he has no feeling for anyone but himself. We will see the fruits of that if we are crazy enough to elect him.

Happy Independence Day! Enjoy it, because next year, we may be “celebrating” something completely different.

I don’t exactly feel sorry for Rishi Sunak; after all, he supported Boris and Brexit. Given his party’s dismal record in government over the last 14 years, however, selling himself to the electorate was an impossible job. No one should be surprised that he couldn’t do it.

After tomorrow’s bloodletting, what’s left of the Conservative Party will have to decide where it goes next. Recent history tells us that the party is malleable enough to accept leadership from any of the factions; after all, Boris was a Reactionary, David Cameron, Theresa May, and John Major were CDs, Mrs. Thatcher and Liz Truss were CLs, and Rishi is clearly a PBP. So what will happen this time around?

My guess is that, in the short run, you will see an alliance of CLs and Reactionaries running the party. When that doesn’t work, the Conservatives will turn back to the center.

Donald Trump just invents things out of thin air. He’s a used car salesman on a bad day. He spontaneously takes credit for “accomplishments” that clearly have nothing to do with him. But you can’t say he undersells himself.

On the other hand, the public consistently tells us it has no idea what Biden has done in 3+ years in office. It gives him no credit for expanding the welfare state, or growing the economy, or keeping unemployment low, or cutting student debt, or reducing inflation. It insists that we are in a recession, and that things are far worse than they were when both unemployment and inflation were actually much higher. How can this be?

The absence of a compelling and energetic salesman for the administration’s accomplishments has always been the hole in the middle of the campaign. After the debate, we now understand why.

Creating immunity for former presidents out of thin air creates the danger of a president completely out of control. To the Chief Justice, however, that is only a minor concern. The real problem that needed to be addressed was the potential harassment of the president after he leaves office, which could force him to govern without the requisite energy.

Roberts probably thinks he can keep Trump within the guardrails, but he doesn’t have any power–only the rapidly diminishing public respect for his office. He stands to be the American Von Papen the way things are going.

Oh, and by the way, Trump reposted some items on Lying Psycho yesterday calling for Liz Cheney and other political opponents to face military tribunals. I wasn’t kidding when I talked about Trump’s Michael Corleone moment; he’s already warning us it’s coming.

If the RN wins an absolute parliamentary majority in the second round, it will be entitled to govern, but only within the limits created by Macron. There are two possible results to this unsavory cohabitation: either the RN will make a mess of it, in which case they will be punished during the next presidential election; or they will find success in enforced moderation and have an incentive to continue with it. Either way, the Macron training wheels will keep them under control.

I suspect that was Macron’s thinking when he opted for the snap election. Let’s hope he was right.