It’s Watergate, Every Day

Plus: What’s more America First than bailing out foreign countries with MAGA-ish leaders?

Some bookkeeping: Bill will go live with Joyce Vance of Civil Discourse on Substack today at 2:00 p.m. EDT to talk about all the Department of Justice chaos we’ve seen in the past week. We’ll send you an email as they get started and post the replay on the site afterwards. Happy Thursday.

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(Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images.)

‘For My Enemies, the Law’

by William Kristol

I’m no expert on the history of Peru. But just a little reading suggests that it’s not a place where, in the 1930s, you’d have wanted to take your chances with the legal system.

The Latin American nation was governed back then by an authoritarian strongman, Óscar R. Benavides. He’s perhaps best remembered today for allegedly uttering the pithy aphorism, “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”

In other words: Ignore or circumvent or bend the law to benefit loyal allies; use the law to go after political opponents. Pardons for friends, prosecutions for enemies.

That’s the kind of legal system our own North American wannabe authoritarian, Donald Trump, admires. It’s the kind of legal system he’s working hard to bring about.

Last Friday, Erik Siebert, a respected career prosecutor and the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned ahead of being fired by Trump. Siebert and his colleagues had concluded after a lengthy review of the evidence that there were no grounds to do what Trump wished them to do, which was to criminally prosecute James Comey, the former FBI director, for allegedly making materially false statements to Congress.

On Saturday, Trump took to social media to publicize his demand for this prosecution, and that of others he considered enemies. He framed his post as a message to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

On Monday, Trump installed Lindsey Halligan to replace Siebert as acting assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The 36-year-old Halligan has never prosecuted a case in any court. Even by Trumpian standards, she is radically unqualified for the position to which she was appointed, perhaps the second-most important U.S. attorney post in the country. But she did have one key qualification, the key qualification: She is a total Trump loyalist.

And so, unsurprisingly, MSNBC reported yesterday that Halligan intends to try to get a grand jury to indict Comey. Halligan would have to move quickly; Comey’s last congressional testimony was on September 30, 2020, meaning that the five-year statute of limitations runs out next week.

ABC News then reported that career prosecutors and investigators in the Eastern District of Virginia had previously determined over a months-long investigation that such a case against Comey was too weak to pursue. Indeed, they presented the newly appointed Halligan with a written and detailed memo to that effect. The memo explained that the investigation into the former FBI director had failed to establish probable cause of a crime—meaning that not only would prosecutors be unable to secure a conviction of Comey by proving the claims beyond a reasonable doubt, but that, according to Justice Department guidelines, they ought not even seek to secure an indictment.

But those guidelines were from the pre-Trump era. Halligan reportedly plans to seek an indictment from a grand jury as early as today.

Trump has repeatedly and publicly demanded prosecutors use the criminal justice system to punish his political opponents even as they turn a blind eye on his friends (see, e.g., Homan, Tom). Now his Justice Department is carrying out his wishes.

One additional feature of 1930s Peru may be worth noting at this point. Oscar Benavides called a presidential election in 1936 and lost the vote. But he refused to accept the verdict of the people. Rather, he used his power to stay in office.

¡Qué sorpresa!

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Nation-Building, MAGA Style

by Andrew Egger

Argentina’s economy is in trouble again, with the peso in freefall—but Uncle Sam is ready to help. President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have been relentless in their support for the nation’s libertarian-right president Javier Milei, with Bessent pledging this week that the United States may help bail out Argentina with market-stabilization measures. “The plan is as long as President Milei continues with his strong economic policies to help him, to bridge him to the election,” Bessent said on Fox Business yesterday. “We are not going to let a disequilibrium in the market cause a backup in his substantial economic reforms.”

But the goodies will likely only flow, he cautioned, if Argentinian voters stick with Milei’s coalition in the country’s midterm elections next month: “I have also been in touch with numerous US companies who intend to make substantial foreign direct investments in Argentina multiple sectors,” Bessent tweeted yesterday, “in the event of a positive election outcome.”

These bailout pledges stand in stark contrast to Milei’s political brand as a hard-charging true believer in free markets.¹

But the bigger hypocrisy here may be Trump’s. When it comes to international affairs, this White House can hardly be described as America First. Instead, its top priority is often protecting the fortunes of other global leaders whom Trump sees as right-wing allies and personal friends.

These MAGA-coded world leaders need not share any particular program. There’s little to unite Milei with, say, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro except their right-wing cultural views and their stated love for Trump. But America is going to have the back of all three.

America’s support for these leaders need not dovetail with any other administration priorities, either. Trump’s MAGA domestic economic program is all about reshoring, reshoring, reshoring—until Milei needs a boost, and Bessent starts working the phones to find U.S. companies willing to start investing in Argentina instead. The U.S. taxpayer dollar is far too dear to waste on things like peanut butter to feed the starving in war zones or treatment for HIV-positive babies in Africa. Hell, we have cut back on public broadcasting, food assistance, Medicaid coverage, scientific research, natural disaster preparedness, and weather monitoring. But penny-pinching can go out the window when it comes to underwriting another country’s currency and junk bonds.

Where is the MAGA chorus deploring this deployment? Where are the voices insisting we have too many of our own problems to be trying to solve everybody else’s, demanding that this cash be reserved for a more “America First” purpose?

Maybe they get what Trump gets: If for all intents and purposes Donald Trump is America, then of course keeping pro-Trump leaders in power around the world is its own key “America First” purpose. The world must be made safe for MAGA.

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AROUND THE BULWARK

• The Secret Battle to Shape the DNC’s Autopsy Report… Veterans of the Biden-Harris operation are spooked about what might come out—and are making moves to prevent it, reports LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.

• This Tejano Music Star Could Upend Gerrymandering in South Texas… The son of a migrant farmworker, he can hit a bullseye from a mile out with a long-range rifle—and he’s getting Democrats’ hopes up. In Huddled Masses, ADRIAN CARRASQUILLO reports on Bobby Pulido’s bid for Congress in Texas.

• So Wait: Trump ❤️ Ukraine Now? From no cards to all the cards. JVL writes in The Triad on Trump’s Ukraine 180°turn.

• Don’t Be Called Weak Sauce… On the flagship pod, REP. ANGIE CRAIG joins TIM MILLER to talk about her race for the Senate and how Democrats can dig themselves out of a hole nationwide. Also GLENN THRUSH joins to discuss his reporting on Trump’s escalating pressure on the Justice Department.

• Intensely Orange Trump Rants About...Floors? Kimmel Says Hell No! Theo Von Taps Out? On The Secret Podcast, JVL, SARAH, and TIM talk about Trump’s mob-style shakedowns of ABC and Disney, Jimmy Kimmel refusing to cave, Kamala Harris admitting “it” about Pete Buttigieg, Trump’s clownish U.N. meltdown, and the government’s demented social media propaganda.

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Quick Hits

ANOTHER ROUND OF SHUTDOWN CHICKEN: With government funding set to expire next week, the White House is now threatening to use any shutdown as a pretext to fire still more federal workers. An Office of Management and Budget memo obtained by Politico instructs agencies to identify programs whose funding is expiring and to prepare to target them for aggressive “reductions in force”—federalese for layoffs—if no new spending bill is passed.

The memo is intended to increase pressure on Senate Democrats, who are demanding Republicans agree to a number of health care provisions (including the extension of lapsing Obamacare subsidies) in exchange for their votes on a funding bill. “We remain hopeful that Democrats in Congress will not trigger a shutdown,” the memo reads, “and the steps outlined above will not be necessary.”

Back in March, Schumer backed off a shutdown threat over similar fears. “For sure, the Republican bill is a terrible option,” he said then on the Senate floor. “I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power in a government shutdown is a far worse option.”

Now, however, Democrats seem to have decided Trump’s threat is empty—not because they think he’s bluffing about firing federal workers, but because he’s been firing them without regard for following proper procedures and laws all along anyway. After all, the administration has already canned 300,000 federal workers—and had to bring some of them back as well—without relying on a shutdown as an excuse. It’s also already rescinding bipartisan funding measures that it doesn’t like. So what difference would a shutdown make?

“Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one—not to govern, but to scare,” Schumer said in a statement last night. “This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government.”

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NICE WIN—NOW HOW ABOUT THE EPSTEIN FILES?: Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva’s victory in a House special election this week may prove a tipping point in the Epstein files controversy. When she is sworn in—which could be as early as next week, although Speaker Mike Johnson could choose to delay it somewhat—Grijalva has pledged to become the 218th signatory to the Epstein files discharge petition organized by Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna. That petition would bring legislation to the House floor to force the release of the Justice Department’s full repository of Epstein content.

It’s the latest development in a months-long saga that just won’t go away—much to the consternation of President Trump, who just can’t seem to understand what all the fuss is about. The Wall Street Journal, which has broken tons of news on the Epstein matter this summer, has a great new piece summarizing the controversy to date. The item illustrates the yawning gulf between many of Trump’s top lackeys—who understand the importance of treading lightly around their own base’s deep interest in the story—and Trump himself, who remains deeply petulant that people won’t let the story of his old pal the pedophile die. The Journal writes:

Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in New York and Florida and has said he fell out with him before his first arrest in 2006, told aides he couldn’t understand why people were so obsessed with the deceased financier and sex offender, according to people familiar with his comments. People don’t understand that Palm Beach in the 90s was a different time, he groused.

It was the ’90s, folks! Clinton was doing things. Trump was doing things. South Florida was bumping. What’s the big deal? Read the whole thing.

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RICK SCOTT, GET READY FOR YOUR MOMENT: At his heart, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is much more of a GOP establishment type than MAGA diehard. But he’s managed so far to avoid the sort of hostility from Trump that dogged his predecessor Mitch McConnell. Mostly, he’s done this by staying quiet and getting his conference to vote for whatever Trump wants.

Yesterday, though, Thune put a bit of daylight between himself and the White House on a couple controversial issues: Trump’s heavy-handed attempt to get Jimmy Kimmel fired and his shambolic press conference asserting a link between Tylenol and autism. Politico reports:

In an interview with CNN’s “Inside Politics,” Thune condemned the “coercive use of government” in regulating TV programming and said such decisions “ought to be made by the companies” after ABC temporarily pulled “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from the airwaves last week. Kimmel’s show went back on the airwaves Tuesday night, though major station groups Nexstar and Sinclair preempted the show.

“As a general matter, my view is that the government ought to stay out of the free speech marketplace unless there are clear violations that violate laws that are in place to protect the American people,” he said. . . .

Thune also questioned the Trump administration’s recent announcement linking Tylenol use in pregnancy to autism in children, saying he was “very concerned” about potential fallout from the announcement. He acknowledged reports from scientists who have long rejected the link between the pain-reliever and autism, saying “science ought to guide these discussions.”

We don’t expect a major rupture between Trump and Thune. But it’s worth at least considering what churlish nickname for the majority leader our dear president will come up with. Put your suggestions in the comments below.

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Cheap Shots

1. Although it’s worth noting that Argentina’s current dire financial straits have less to do with Milei’s economic project than with a personal corruption scandal involving Milei’s sister, which has hurt his domestic popularity and spooked investors who worry his political career—and thus the free-market good times—may not be long for this world.