Iran has again threatened Israel with a harsh response to aggression by the Jewish state. Tehran’s army and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will ensure those who cross red lines regret it, Deputy Chief of the Army for Coordination, Habibollah Sayyari has warned.
Israel, meanwhile, has refrained from speaking out against Tehran, instead focusing its political rhetoric on Hamas. In particular, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to increase military and political pressure on the Palestinian group in the near future, in order to motivate it to release hostages, the Times of Israel reports.
The good news is that there will be no Iran-Israel war. At least not at this stage.
Tehran has chosen not to react vociferously to the Israeli air force’s retaliatory strike, dismissing all reports of the destruction of the radar protecting the Natanz nuclear centre as ‘Zionist intrigue’. The bottom line is that we have two air raids attributed to Israel and one very large Iranian strike. In the latter case, everything was official and the Islamic Republic can therefore claim an entry in the Guinness Book of Records with an article on the largest number of UAVs and ballistic missiles involved in a single offensive operation.
Incidentally, we do not know what the real effect of the large-scale attack was. Iran, like Israel, is carefully hides damage data. However, the political consequences of such events are far more important. And, as usual in the Middle East, a dozen seemingly unrelated problems have become intertwined. After the Iranian strike, for example, Western countries began to advise Israel not to react, though rumour has it that the Jewish State was negotiating for the right to launch a military operation in Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza.
Then in the end, it lost patience and responded.
The Iranians had options. The Ayatollahs could have said that Israel had again crossed all the red lines. This would have led to further escalation, but might have protected Hamas. But Iran, for its own reasons, ignored the Palestinians and reported through the press that nothing serious had happened.
The reason for this peacefulness is probably that they envisaged a working alliance between Israel, Jordan and the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf. This is precisely the nightmare that the Iranians have done their utmost to prevent. They even restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in 2023. But apparently confrontation with the Shiites is more important to moderate Sunnis than dislike of the Jews.
According to military analysts, if the Israeli Air Force did attack Iranian air defences, it means that they probably flew over Jordan or the Arabian Peninsula, and it is unlikely that this was done without the consent of the Hashemite Kingdom or the Saudis. As a result, the military alliance is not only defensive, which means that virtually all of Iran’s proxies in the region, including Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, are at risk.
For now, however, this is all a hypothetical picture. A three-way alliance requires the normalisation of Israel’s relations with Riyadh and, as part of the deal, the signing of a defence agreement with the US, as well as American-Israeli goodwill for the establishment of nuclear capability in Saudi Arabia.
And all this has to happen before the end of June. Otherwise, Washington will not be able to get the relevant decisions through Congress because of the upcoming election. Obviously, the Iranians believe that further escalation will only accelerate the process described above. That is why they prefer to pretend that they are fighting for peace. The very peace for which no stone should be left unturned on this planet. But that will come later.
TELEGRAPH
As Russia continues to bombard Ukraine, with an emboldened madman at the helm; as Hezbollah continues to fire rockets at the northern border of Israel, making it uninhabitable to its tens of thousands of residents, and threatens regional war, and as Iran continues its nefarious plotting to strengthen the West’s mortal enemies, here in Britain the focus this week has been on one tragic accident: the killing by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of seven aid workers, three of whom were British, employed by the World Central Kitchen in Gaza.
This was a terrible, deeply upsetting blunder and it should not have happened. The aid workers’ loved ones are doubtless distraught and angry.
Israel agrees that its army should be held to account, and the IDF lost no time in launching an inquiry, with two soldiers already sacked. “I want to be very clear – the strike was not carried out with the intention of harming the WCK and workers,” said the IDF’s Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi. “It was a mistake that followed a misidentification – at night during a war in very complex conditions. It shouldn’t have happened.”
While the grief and anger surrounding this tragedy will understandably remain strong, the IDF inquiry, sackings and statement is where the matter’s geopolitical ramifications ought to end. It seems rare to find an armed forces responding as honestly and fully in the heat of war, and shows that the IDF has already factored in the far more exacting expectations applied to it than perhaps any other army on earth.
]]>The false accusations of Israeli malice and international-law flouting have been hysterical
TELEGRAPH
As Russia continues to bombard Ukraine, with an emboldened madman at the helm; as Hezbollah continues to fire rockets at the northern border of Israel, making it uninhabitable to its tens of thousands of residents, and threatens regional war, and as Iran continues its nefarious plotting to strengthen the West’s mortal enemies, here in Britain the focus this week has been on one tragic accident: the killing by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of seven aid workers, three of whom were British, employed by the World Central Kitchen in Gaza.
This was a terrible, deeply upsetting blunder and it should not have happened. The aid workers’ loved ones are doubtless distraught and angry.
Israel agrees that its army should be held to account, and the IDF lost no time in launching an inquiry, with two soldiers already sacked. “I want to be very clear – the strike was not carried out with the intention of harming the WCK and workers,” said the IDF’s Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi. “It was a mistake that followed a misidentification – at night during a war in very complex conditions. It shouldn’t have happened.”
While the grief and anger surrounding this tragedy will understandably remain strong, the IDF inquiry, sackings and statement is where the matter’s geopolitical ramifications ought to end. It seems rare to find an armed forces responding as honestly and fully in the heat of war, and shows that the IDF has already factored in the far more exacting expectations applied to it than perhaps any other army on earth.
]]>NEW YORK TIMES
Former President Donald J. Trump has refused to accept his loss in the 2020 election, painted as martyrs the supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, laid groundwork to deny the 2024 election results if he loses, and said he would be a dictator on his first day back in office if he wins.
But according to the independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., it is President Biden who poses the greater threat to American democracy — a view that Mr. Kennedy shares with Mr. Trump himself, and that democracy experts called “absurd” and “preposterous.”
Such a perspective is possible because Mr. Kennedy, who has founded his political career on promoting vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories about the government, sees the Biden administration’s efforts to curtail the spread of misinformation as a seminal issue of our time. Censorship, as he calls it, overpowers all other concerns about the political system.
Mr. Kennedy’s stance drew fresh scrutiny this week after he said in an interview on CNN, “President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, to censor his opponent.” He repeated himself on Fox News on Tuesday, saying that a president like Mr. Biden was “a genuine threat to our democracy.”
]]>Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who founded his political career on conspiracy theories, condemned efforts to curtail misinformation on social media and said the Biden administration’s efforts to do so are anti-democratic.
NEW YORK TIMES
Former President Donald J. Trump has refused to accept his loss in the 2020 election, painted as martyrs the supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, laid groundwork to deny the 2024 election results if he loses, and said he would be a dictator on his first day back in office if he wins.
But according to the independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., it is President Biden who poses the greater threat to American democracy — a view that Mr. Kennedy shares with Mr. Trump himself, and that democracy experts called “absurd” and “preposterous.”
Such a perspective is possible because Mr. Kennedy, who has founded his political career on promoting vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories about the government, sees the Biden administration’s efforts to curtail the spread of misinformation as a seminal issue of our time. Censorship, as he calls it, overpowers all other concerns about the political system.
Mr. Kennedy’s stance drew fresh scrutiny this week after he said in an interview on CNN, “President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, to censor his opponent.” He repeated himself on Fox News on Tuesday, saying that a president like Mr. Biden was “a genuine threat to our democracy.”
]]>CNN
“When I see the Easter story, I see Jesus being a victim of state-sanctioned violence. I see Jesus surrounded by Black and brown people who wish they could do something, but had no power in the moment,” says Cleveland, author of “God Is a Black Woman.”
“And I see people being victims of a system that can’t see their full humanity and assumes the worst of them. And yet there’s hope in the end,” she says. “The universe does bend toward justice, even though the arc is long.”
As Christians worldwide celebrate the resurrection of Jesus today, Cleveland’s story points toward an uncomfortable truth: The true face of the historical Jesus looks nothing like the one many still see in their church’s stained-glass windows, in Hollywood movies, or in the image many carry in their minds.
Many scholars and archeologists now agree that Jesus was most likely a brown-skinned, brown-eyed man — more akin to a “Middle Eastern Jewish” or an Arab man. A commentator once said that if Jesus was taking a flight today “he might be profiled for additional security screening” by the TSA.
Some may counter with a big: So what? The debate over the color of Jesus is one of the oldest running arguments in religion. As a man who was raised in a Black church with a giant portrait of a White Jesus hung behind the pulpit, I recall many heated arguments in barbershops and cookouts where armchair theologians insisted that Jesus was Black by citing scriptures like Revelation 1:14-14 (“The Bible said he had hair that was ‘white as wool” and feet like “burnished bronze’ so don’t tell me Jesus didn’t have an Afro!”).
]]>The debate over the color of Jesus’ skin is one of the oldest running arguments in religion. But this Easter, the question is a serious one — for several reasons.
CNN
“When I see the Easter story, I see Jesus being a victim of state-sanctioned violence. I see Jesus surrounded by Black and brown people who wish they could do something, but had no power in the moment,” says Cleveland, author of “God Is a Black Woman.”
“And I see people being victims of a system that can’t see their full humanity and assumes the worst of them. And yet there’s hope in the end,” she says. “The universe does bend toward justice, even though the arc is long.”
As Christians worldwide celebrate the resurrection of Jesus today, Cleveland’s story points toward an uncomfortable truth: The true face of the historical Jesus looks nothing like the one many still see in their church’s stained-glass windows, in Hollywood movies, or in the image many carry in their minds.
Many scholars and archeologists now agree that Jesus was most likely a brown-skinned, brown-eyed man — more akin to a “Middle Eastern Jewish” or an Arab man. A commentator once said that if Jesus was taking a flight today “he might be profiled for additional security screening” by the TSA.
Some may counter with a big: So what? The debate over the color of Jesus is one of the oldest running arguments in religion. As a man who was raised in a Black church with a giant portrait of a White Jesus hung behind the pulpit, I recall many heated arguments in barbershops and cookouts where armchair theologians insisted that Jesus was Black by citing scriptures like Revelation 1:14-14 (“The Bible said he had hair that was ‘white as wool” and feet like “burnished bronze’ so don’t tell me Jesus didn’t have an Afro!”).
]]>But amid a concerted campaign to target prosecutors, they have succeeded in damaging her in a way that could reverberate — with a very significant assist from Willis herself.
And to some legal experts, the judge’s decision raises significant questions about the wisdom of Willis pressing forward, even as she can.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled Friday that either Willis (D) and her office or special prosecutor Nathan Wade must depart the case. The dispute centered on a previously undisclosed romantic relationship between Willis and Wade, whom she appointed in late 2021, and whether Willis improperly benefited from it.
McAfee found that the Trump-allied defendants hadn’t proved there was a conflict of interest, but that the situation carried the “appearance of impropriety.”
The easy call, of course, is for Wade to step aside to allow Willis and her office to press forward. But that might not be the end of the matter, politically or otherwise.
While McAfee’s decision is, in its broad strokes, a win for Willis, it comes with all kinds of tough language about her conduct. It also raises questions about how the matter might linger in the months to come and color views of the prosecution:
That last bullet point is a particularly stinging review from the judge, who once counted Willis as his supervisor.
And notably, it comes after Willis was rebuked by another judge in 2022 in similar terms. Willis had held a fundraiser for a Democratic candidate who would ultimately face one of the Trump allies she was scrutinizing. “It’s a ‘What are you thinking?’ moment,” that judge said in blocking Willis from investigating the man, now-Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R). “The optics are horrific.”
The optics again loom large — as do other processes that could further damage the case both legally and in the court of public opinion.
“For the good of the case, given that ethics issues will abound now as to Willis, she should voluntarily recuse herself from the case and allow another prosecutor to oversee” it, Andrew Weissmann, the former lead prosecutor in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into ties between then-President Donald Trump and Russia, said on X.
Georgia State University law professor Clark Cunningham, who previously urged Willis to step aside, said the ruling showed why.
He said the matter raised “a risk of reversal of an eventual guilty verdict, especially if the court of appeals disagrees with McAfee.”
One potential avenue for defendants is pointing to Willis’s speech potentially prejudicing jurors. McAfee noted there wasn’t much case law upon which to base a decision, which could invite an appeals court to weigh in.
Emory University law professor Kamina A. Pinder said the ruling cast a “shadow” over Willis’s career. But Pinder noted that putting someone else on the case might harm the prosecution.
In the near term, the ruling probably means more delays, which would play into Trump’s hands with the election looming and uncertainty about whether he’ll face trial before Election Day in at least three of his four criminal cases. (The fourth is scheduled to begin later this month, but the prosecutor on Thursday opened the door to a delay.)
If Willis’s office doesn’t want to try the case itself, she would be faced with finding a new special prosecutor to take it — which could prove difficult given the level of scrutiny faced by Willis and Wade. Any new attorneys would also need to be brought up to speed. And the ruling could be appealed.
There’s also the matter of how feasible it would be for Willis to step aside. McAfee indicated that even a finding of a conflict of interest wouldn’t necessarily disqualify Willis’s entire office. Some suggest that would allow her to hand the case off to a deputy. But it’s murky whether she could do that.
Practical concerns aside, experts largely agreed that Willis had done damage to her cause — that even if her conduct didn’t rise to the level of a conflict of interest, and even if she can continue, she played into the hands of her critics.
“This is a prime example of defense attorneys exploiting an unforced error by a prosecutor,” said Emory law professor John Felipe Acevedo. “It also shows the ability of former president Trump to change the narrative, even in legal proceedings. Willis gave him an opening with this relationship, and his legal team pursued it to the distraction of the main case.”
Mr. Biden did what he had to do. He exceeded the low expectations many Americans had for his performance
]]>America’s octogenarian president delivered a 67-minute State of the Union address last week. Joe Biden did it with what the press called “high energy,” a synonym for lots of shouting. His address was punctuated by Democrats chanting “Four more years, four more years!”
Mr. Biden did what he had to do. He exceeded the low expectations many Americans had for his performance
]]>President Joe Biden appears to have lied to the American people when he rebuked special counsel Robert Hur for asking about his son’s death, according to the transcript of the Biden interviews released Tuesday.
The transcript exposes the fact Hur never asked Biden about the timing of his son’s death, contradicting the president’s indignant public objections to that supposed line of questioning.
The transcript was released just before Hur’s House Judiciary public testimony Tuesday.
Former President Donald Trump noted the Beau controversy is covering for what remains a significant “Biden documents hoax” in that the sitting president was found to have retained classified documents from when he was a senator and a vice president.
Former President Donald Trump noted the Beau controversy is covering for what remains a significant “Biden documents hoax” in that the sitting president was found to have retained classified documents from when he was a senator and a vice president.
“Big day in Congress for the Biden Documents Hoax,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “He had many times more documents, including classified documents, than I, or any other president, had. He had them all over the place, with zero supervision or security.”
Trump himself continues to maintain protection of prosecution for willful retention of classified documents comes from the President Records Act precedent.
“He does not come under the Presidential Records Act, I do,” Trump continued. “He had many docs in Chinatown, and they were moved all over the place, and heavily used.
“My boxes were moved by GSA, were secure, most carried clothing, shoes, sporting equipment, kitchen ‘stuff,’ newspapers, pictures, magazines, awards, etc. The DOJ gave Biden, and virtually every other person and president, a free pass.
“Me, I’m still fighting!!! MAGA.”
Hur himself said in his opening statement he was planning not to charge Biden and needed to provide a reason, saying that is the reason he called out Biden’s inability to remember basic facts.
“The need to show my work was especially strong here,” Hur wrote in his opening statement. “The attorney general had appointed me to investigate the actions of the attorney general’s boss, the sitting president of the United States. I knew that for my decision to be credible, I could not simply announce that I recommended no criminal charges and leave it at that. I needed to explain why.”
Hur cautioned he would not discuss investigative steps or veer from the contents of the report. He said “the evidence and the president himself put his memory squarely at issue.”
In the report, Hur said that it could be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt Biden intended to keep the documents, which is the standard for conviction in a criminal case. In part, he argued, jurors could be swayed that Biden’s age made him seem forgetful, and there was the possibility for “innocent explanations” for the mishandling of any records.
“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote in his report.
Hur defending his reasoning for making that the scape goat for his decision to not recommend prosecution.
“What I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe,” Hur added in his opening statement. “I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the president unfairly.”
While Biden fumbled some details in his interview, the full transcript could raise questions about Hur’s depiction of the 81-year-old president as having “significant limitations” on his memory.
Both the hearing and the transcript were meant to clear up lingering questions about Hur’s report on the discovery of some classified records at Biden’s home and former Washington private office. But there was no guarantee they would alter preconceived notions about the president or the Trump appointee who investigated him, particularly in a hard-fought election year.
The Associated Press reviewed a transcript of the Biden interviews, which were being turned over to Congress by the Justice Department on Tuesday just hours before Hur’s House Judiciary Committee testimony.
Hur appeared set to be the rare witness likely to be vilified all around — by Republicans angry over his decision not to charge the president, and by Democrats for his unflattering commentary about Biden.
Republicans were likely to dig further into Hur’s assessment of the president’s age and memory — a major attack line as they seek to unseat Biden come November. Democrats will try to paint Hur, whom Trump appointed a U.S. attorney, as a political partisan out to help his party win a presidential election.
Hur’s report cited evidence Biden willfully held on to highly classified information and shared it with a ghostwriter, based on audio of the conversations between the two men in which Biden said he had just come across some classified documents at his home.
In the interviews, Biden said he did not recall the exchange, or that he had actually discovered any documents. He said if he had discussed anything questionable with the ghostwriter, it was in referring to a 20-page sensitive memo he had written to then-President Barack Obama in 2009 arguing against surging troops in Afghanistan that he wanted to ensure didn’t make it into publication.
Hur devoted much of his report to explaining why he did not believe the evidence against Biden met the standard for criminal charges, partly based on the hours of interviews with the president.
In his interviews, Biden repeatedly told prosecutors he did not know how classified documents ended up at his home and former Penn Biden Center office in Washington.
“I have no idea,” he said.
Biden first sat down with Hur during a time of crisis, one day after the devastating Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
He entered the first day of the interview having just gotten off the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, part of a series of calls meant to prevent the attack from spiraling into a wider regional confrontation. At multiple points, when Hur suggested a pause, Biden encouraged prosecutors to keep going, saying, “I’ll go all night if we get this done.”
Biden said that he left it to his staff to safeguard classified information that was presented to him, often leaving papers on his desk in heaps for aides to sort through and secure.
“I never asked anybody,” Biden said. He noted that much of his staff had worked with him for years, to the point where they didn’t need direction from him. “It just – it just got done. I don’t know. I can’t remember who.”
Confusion over the timing of the death of Biden’s adult son Beau — who died May 30, 2015 — was highlighted by Hur in his report as an example of the president’s memory lapses. But the transcript showed Hur never asked Biden about his son specifically, as a visibly angry Biden had suggested in comments to reporters the day the report was released.
“How in the hell dare he raise that,” Biden said of Hur. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
Hur asked Biden about where he kept the things that he was “actively working on” while he was living in a rental home in Virginia immediately after leaving the vice presidency in January 2017. And in that context, it was Biden himself who brought up Beau’s illness and death as he talked about a book he had published later in 2017 about that painful time.
“What month did Beau die?” Biden mused, adding, “Oh God, May 30th.”
A White House lawyer then chimed in with the year, 2015.
“Was it 2015 he died?” Biden asked again.
Biden went on to recount in detail the story contained in his book, “Promise Me, Dad,” of how his late son had encouraged him to remain engaged in public life after the Obama administration ended.
The Department of Justice redacted information about other people involved in the case, and the National Security Council and the State Department blacked out some details relating to sensitive intelligence and foreign affairs matters. Before the redactions, the transcript had been classified as top secret and barred from dissemination to foreign nationals.
President Joe Biden, following his impassioned partisan State of the Unionspeech last week, said jokingly in side remarks to longtime Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), “I wish I was cognitively impaired.”
I have to admit it was reassuring to see the president comfortable with himself and full of vigor, forcefulness and even humor, even if he didn’t always have all the facts straight; especially disturbing when it came to slain Georgia nursing student Laken Riley (calling her Lincoln), or her alleged murderer (whom he called an “illegal,” offending his base).
But whether you agree with Biden’s policies or not, the real question remains: How cognitively fit is the president? Consider that he has not undergone any cognitive testing that we know of or disclosed an MRI of the brain despite suffering from chronic atrial fibrillation, a condition that predisposes to mini vascular events in the brain (mini-strokes or cognitive problems) and sleep apnea, which a new studydemonstrates is associated with a 50 percent increase in cognitive problems.
The public’s perception of Biden’s feebleness and cognitive dysfunction is not going to truly lessen without a bold intervention. The only way for Biden to partly assuage the public’s doubts is to take Trump on directly; to debate him in public, at least once.
Some in the media have questionedwhether Biden might be taking a form of stimulant intermittently, but I refuse to engage in this kind of speculation. What I can say is that at his age, 81, he needs to show a sustained focus to win over voters who have questioned both his age and his fitness.
How will he do in a head-to-head matchup with former President Trump if he agrees to a debate? How will the teleprompter president do against the shoot-from-the-hip former president? I was surprised at how well Biden did debating Trump four years ago, but Biden doesn’t appear to have the same level of cognitive ability that he had even back then when he was Trump’s current age.
When I interviewed President Trump at the White House back in July 2020, he not only didn’t prepare in advance, but he also didn’t ask to see the questions that I intended to ask him. It is hard to compare that to President Biden, who appears almost entirely dependent on the teleprompter.
Don’t get me wrong, the State of the Union speech still stands as a cognitive win for the president, if for no other reason than he presented himself cogently, coherently and through themes regarding the economy and the border, which matter a lot to Americans. But so does the high price of food, and our borders remain as porous as ever, which, since Trump’s restrictions have been lifted, have led to a huge influx of more than 8 million migrants.
I can tell you that I am concerned just from a public health point of view. I believe the current measles outbreak among unvaccinated migrants in a Chicago homeless shelter is tied directly to the fact that migrants don’t have the same level of measles vaccination as most citizens do.
It is almost mind-boggling to consider that we are talking about an 81-year-old president who, if he wins reelection, will be age 86 when his second term is complete. America is watching to see if this president can maintain the vigor he showed last week over time. Most are highly doubtful, as they should be.
Cognitive function may wax and wane, and having a good night’s sleep, exercising regularly and following a diet high in vegetables and other anti-oxidants helps. The key term is cognitive reserve, which means how agile a person’s brain is in using a range of skills to solve problems and show advanced judgment in coping with challenges.
How much cognitive reserve does our president really have? We need to know. The more cognitive reserve the better the brain’s executive function. And of course, no one needs this ability more than our chief executive.
It goes without saying that all of this matters because behind closed doors the actual job of the president is more about capacity and decisionmaking ability than appearance or public perception.
One test of this that we are all looking forward to is a debate with the outrageous and largely unpredictable candidate Donald Trump. Is President Biden up to it? We all hope to find out.
THE DAILY BEAST
President Joe Biden’s erosion of support with Black men should set off alarm bells in his campaign. Unlike other interest groups in the Democratic coalition, Black men should be among his most enthusiastic supporters in crucial states.
The Georgia primary, held this coming Tuesday, may offer a moment for Biden to reflect on the lackluster support of a key constituency.
That’s because the dilemma first came to light in the Peach State during Stacey Abrams’ ill-fated campaign for governor in 2022. Back then, her platform reflected the thinking of strategists that the compelling issue of concern to Black men was criminal justice reform.
But when Black men failed to respond positively, Democratic strategists were quick to point the finger at the perceived shortcoming of the constituency, including unfair allegations of misogyny. The campaign of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, by contrast, drew support from white (and some Black) working class men with an appeal to “pocket book” concerns. Abrams gradually adjusted her platform with a set of economic policies called the “Black Men’s Agenda.”
The adjustment drew support, but too late to make up for lost ground. Still, it should have provided insight for Biden and Democratic strategists, but evidently did not. Now Biden faces a continued shortfall as Donald Trump plays to fill the role of a champion of Black men.
Biden’s reluctance to crusade for working class men is mind-boggling. One suspects it stems from the priorities of a coterie of upper-class Black confidants, like Vice President Kamala Harris, who tend to keep the constituency at arm’s length. In Jan. 2023, Harris acted as Biden’s liaison to a gathering of Black men concerned about the disconnect. She promised to represent their concerns and work to correct things; a year later, there is no evidence of any substantial follow-through.
]]>The president has had plenty of chances to implement a “Black Men’s Agenda.” What is he waiting for?
THE DAILY BEAST
President Joe Biden’s erosion of support with Black men should set off alarm bells in his campaign. Unlike other interest groups in the Democratic coalition, Black men should be among his most enthusiastic supporters in crucial states.
The Georgia primary, held this coming Tuesday, may offer a moment for Biden to reflect on the lackluster support of a key constituency.
That’s because the dilemma first came to light in the Peach State during Stacey Abrams’ ill-fated campaign for governor in 2022. Back then, her platform reflected the thinking of strategists that the compelling issue of concern to Black men was criminal justice reform.
But when Black men failed to respond positively, Democratic strategists were quick to point the finger at the perceived shortcoming of the constituency, including unfair allegations of misogyny. The campaign of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, by contrast, drew support from white (and some Black) working class men with an appeal to “pocket book” concerns. Abrams gradually adjusted her platform with a set of economic policies called the “Black Men’s Agenda.”
The adjustment drew support, but too late to make up for lost ground. Still, it should have provided insight for Biden and Democratic strategists, but evidently did not. Now Biden faces a continued shortfall as Donald Trump plays to fill the role of a champion of Black men.
Biden’s reluctance to crusade for working class men is mind-boggling. One suspects it stems from the priorities of a coterie of upper-class Black confidants, like Vice President Kamala Harris, who tend to keep the constituency at arm’s length. In Jan. 2023, Harris acted as Biden’s liaison to a gathering of Black men concerned about the disconnect. She promised to represent their concerns and work to correct things; a year later, there is no evidence of any substantial follow-through.
]]>President Biden gave what could be his final State of the Union address Thursday.
While many presidents have used such moments to focus on the “union” of all Americans in our shared values and interests, Biden spoke to our disunion and seemed, again, to push the nation further apart.
Much of the rhetoric was familiar, if delivered as in a higher volume.
Biden raised the same demons he’s raised before, as he painted his opponents as threatening democracy itself.
As with the speech in Philadelphia and Valley Forge, Biden selected a backdrop of unity to highlight and play on our divisions. And many in the media were thrilled by the display.
The president attacked Trump and the Supreme Court, and compared political opponents to those presenting the same threat as Hitler in World War II.
After the speech, MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace gushed that it “was like a punch in the face to every Republican in the room.”
After repeating again that it “was a punch in the nose,” she added, “everybody knows this is a great speech.”
I beg to differ.
It was certainly a powerful delivery for Biden, but it was a rather poor State of the Union speech because there was little unifying in it.
Biden attacked his political opponents over a dozen times and even seemed to lash out at the Supreme Court justices sitting before him.
He returned to the themes of his infamous Philadelphia speech with the portrayal of his opponents (including millions of Americans) as representing an existential threat to the nation, like the Nazis or the Confederacy.
The hellish red backdrop was gone but in some ways it was more chilling precisely because this was a different setting.
This was supposed to be the State of the Union, where a president lays out what he views as the national interest, not just his political interests.
There is a difference.
Some Republicans showed the same lack of appreciation for this moment in heckling and shouting at the president.
I have written that such conduct should not be tolerated at the SOTU.
While a guest was removed from the chamber and arrested for yelling at the president, some members continued to treat the SOTU like a cathartic primal-scream session.
The media also showed the ecstatic response to the rage and recriminations.
They praised Biden’s speech while largely ignoring the over-the-top partisanship and dubious factual claims.
What was lost is what we once had in these moments.
I can remember as a young page standing in awe of this chamber and its occupants.
Presidents and the members were every bit as partisan and bitterly divided.
However, at the SOTU they could still transcend the politics.
It was a moment that reminded the nation that we are still capable of reaching these moments of civility and decorum.
In some ways, the SOTU may have died when former Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up the address of former President Donald Trump.
Her drop-the-mic moment will have a lasting impact on the House.
While many in the media celebrated her lack of decorum and respect, she tore up something far more important than a speech.
She shredded decades of tradition of civility and any remaining residue of restraint in our politics.
Now media figures like Wallace are praising a president for giving a speech that is “a punch in the face to every Republican in the room . . . a punch in the nose . . . Everybody knows this is the message going into the next eight months, but the polls will soon reflect that, in this will be a real fight.”
It does not matter that Wallace has spent the last three years joining figures like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) in condemning “Donald Trump’s speech inciting the crowd to go ‘fight like hell, or you won’t have a country anymore.’ ”
I condemned that speech on Jan. 6 when it was still being given.
However, for some, the rhetoric of division appears thrilling rather than threatening when delivered by the right party.
Now it is a matter of pride to see a president use the same rhetoric to “punch Republicans in the nose” and call on citizens to fight against tens of millions supporting his opponent.
I find no sense of joy or comfort in Biden’s State of the Union.
It remains the same politics of division.
It is not that Biden did not hear the call of history to unify a nation.
He just chose to ignore it.
Instead, the public was given scripted rage and choreographed demonstrations.
The question is what the public will now demand.
We can seek candidates who reach for something greater than we are at this moment . . . Or we can all just punch each other in the nose until the whole country is left bloody and broken.
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.