Covidiocy Marches On
Covidiocy Marches On
Plus, How Bill Barr and John Durham Blazed a Trail for Jim Jordan.
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CATHY YOUNG: Covidiocy Marches On.
Three years after the COVID-19 virus first arrived in the United States and only a few months before the Biden administration plans to formally end the public health emergency, we’re still dealing with the disease—and still squabbling over its politics.
In recent months, the so-called “liberal media” have shown a willingness to concede that some aggressive interventions launched early in the pandemic, such as school closures and some lockdowns, were excessive; some commentators, such as Brown University professor Emily Oster in the Atlantic, have suggested an “amnesty” over mistakes made in the scramble to deal with an unknown and frightening illness. The response on the right has been to do an “I told you so!” victory dance over the concessions and gleefully cry that there will be no quarter for the guilty. The idea that National Institutes of Health chief immunologist Anthony Fauci must be punished for his role in inflicting upon America a supposed totalitarian nightmare seems to have particular currency; it has even been picked up by Twitter’s new “Chief Twit,” Elon Musk, although the degree of irony he intends is hard to discern…
History became more politicized in the Trump era and the conservative media ecosystem has helped amplify untruths. Princeton’s Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer join Charlie Sykes to explain the value of learning both our good and bad history. We can handle the truth.
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FREDERICK BARON and DENNIS AFTERGUT: How Bill Barr and John Durham Blazed a Trail for Jim Jordan.
A headline in yesterday’s New York Times opinion section pronounced former Attorney General William Barr’s efforts to rehabilitate his image “kaput.” Hoping to erase from public memory any recollection of how avidly he carried water for Donald Trump, Barr has engaged in a public-relations campaign he launched shortly after Trump left office and advanced in a memoir in which he criticizes the former president he served.
But a Times report last week about the effort Barr initiated to “investigate the investigators”—setting John Durham loose to hunt out Trump’s supposed deep state persecutors—is a jarring reminder of how willing Barr was as attorney general to trample legal norms, disregard national security, and even degrade his own reputation for Trump’s sake.
JOE PERTICONE: Trump is still a threat to Republican chances if he isn’t the nominee.
[W]ould Trump accept losing and putting his support behind DeSantis for the sake of the party’s electoral prospects? Even if more than a quarter of Republicans are willing to follow him no matter what? Avoiding the disaster of an independent Trump candidacy in 2024 is one of the GOP’s most urgent problems to solve as the primary season starts to take shape.
I caught up with two of the people who were onstage with Trump when he declined to commit to supporting the GOP nominee in 2015, and asked for their take on the loyalty question and the significance of the current Republican frontrunner being a proven sore loser. What I heard surprised me—not least because their responses were fairly indifferent…
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Happy Tuesday! A bald eagle flew through a window of a Virginia tax office… Something of a metaphor?
🎵 On the Jukebox… Clocks by Coldplay, live at Jimmy Kimmel Live.
“We’re in charge now…” Tom Nichols on Florida and Ron DeSantis’s destructive changes at public universities.
The spaceport… At the edge of the world? In Scotland? At least the countdowns would be entertaining.
As Twitter's Legal Woes Mount… It's Elon vs. Everyone. Max Burns about how the eccentric billionaire is increasing legal exposure for the social media service.
Has hell frozen over? With extremely lax gun laws, Missouri is considering… prohibiting minors from carrying guns in public without adult supervision? Crazy, I know! (It probably won’t happen, either.)
Meanwhile, in Cleveland… A street is fighting about the impact of an outdoor pizza oven and it’s gone to court.
Pelosi’s attacker is proud of himself… And a lot of prominent right wingers emboldened people like him. And with a handful of exceptions, they’re unrepentant.
Here at this Miami Beach diner… George Santos apparently reported meals. The diner can’t find any evidence of it. And apparently he’s going to recuse himself from committee work. And his campaign treasurer just resigned.
Missing monkeys… What is going on at this zoo?
That’s it for me. Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.
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