Can We Walk And Chew Gum At The Same Time?

Two things can be true: Trump is an existential threat. Biden was too old.

Catching up:

• An appalling act of anti-Jewish violence in the heart of DC: Couple shot dead outside Jewish museum in Washington DC

• The Pentagon has taken possession of the Qatari “palace in the sky” for Trump, who gets to keep the plane after he leaves office.

• In an “astonishing confrontation” Donald Trump ambushed the president of South Africa to vent his bogus conspiracy theories about “white genocide.”¹

  At one point, President Ramaphosa said:

  "I'm sorry I don't have a plane to give you."

  "I wish you did," Trump responded…. "I would take it. If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it."

  "Okay," the South African president replied.

• And the House passes the Big Beautiful Bill by one vote — 215-214 — and sends it to the Senate. The CBO estimates that it will add $2.4 trillion over 10 years to the national debt, which already exceeds $36 trillion. Jamie Dupree offers a small taste of what’s in this bill:

  The 'MAGA' savings accounts proposed in this bill will instead be named 'Trump' accounts. (I'm not kidding.) Five full pages of the bill were nothing but replacing the word 'MAGA' with 'Trump.'

**

Happy Thursday.

If you think the fight for sanity, democracy, and the rule of law is worth it, please consider supporting us. Because we can’t do this without you.

To the Contrary is a reader-supported publication. There are no investors. No sugar daddies. We’re not affiliated with any PACS. Or parties. Just me. And the dogs.

Walk. Chew gum.

The night it all ended.

Last week, Chris Cillizza published an email from one of his readers who asked: “Why do so many people have such a hard time saying that these two things can both be true:

“(1) Donald Trump is doing things as president that are deeply radical and, at times, dangerous and

“(2) Joe Biden was clearly too old to be president or run for a 2nd term and his inner circle worked to cover that fact up — with disastrous consequences.”

In today’s podcast, Cillizza and I vent about this (and other things). You can watch or listen right here or on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.

Some of the points I tried to make here:

If there was, indeed, a “cover-up” of Biden’s deteriorating condition, it was:

• Dumb: because it was ultimately self-defeating, handing the White House to Donald Trump.

• An abject failure: because the vast majority of voters saw what they saw and were already concerned about his condition, even before the disastrous debate.²

• Credibility destroying: because it put Democrats (and much of the media) in the position of telling voters to ignore the evidence of their own eyes.

The Tapper/Thompson book — “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” —makes a convincing case that Biden’s inner staff —the Politburo — did, in fact, try to shield the public from Biden’s decline.

In itself, that’s a scandal.

But the larger story was denial, delusion, groupthink, and tribalism that led so many Democrats and their allies to turn a blind eye. The “cover-up” only worked because the Democratic bubble desperately wanted it to work. Warnings were vigorously shouted down and (the very few critics) defenestrated.³

This is not ancient history; it’s central to the 2024 election and to the situation we now face. It is only irrelevant if it could never happen again.

But given the chorus of voices —including from some folks in the “media” — that we should just move on and shut up about this, it’s not clear that the lessons have been learned. (Check out the comments to any post on this story.)

Some highlights of our conversation:

A reminder that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it….

Nota Bene

The Decline and Fall of Elon Musk - The Atlantic {GIFT LINK.]

“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was shouting at Elon Musk in the halls of the West Wing last month, loud enough for Donald Trump to hear and in a language that he could certainly understand. Bessent and Musk were fighting over which of them should choose the next IRS leader—and, implicitly, over Musk’s bureaucracy-be-damned crusade. Without securing the Treasury chief’s sign-off, Musk had pushed through his own pick for the job. Bessent was, quite obviously, not having it.

**

Why Do We Do This?

**

Matt Lewis: Nobody Likes a 'Moderate' — Until the House Is Burning

I was once considered very conservative. My views haven’t shifted much. I still believe in limited government, personal responsibility, and the general idea that screaming should not be a substitute for policy. I’m still generally in favor of low taxes, the right to life, and the right to be left the hell alone.

But the context changed — and with it, everyone’s sense of direction.

Speaking of direction, here’s a weird, but apt, analogy: if you live in New Jersey and the “promised land” is Iowa, then going west is obviously the path to salvation.

But if you keep going too far west and end up in, say, California, continuing in that direction doesn’t make you principled — it makes you suicidal.

Sometimes changing course isn't betrayal; it's basic cartography.

Or consider this second weird analogy: For centuries, Great Britain pursued a policy of “balance of power” on the European continent. The goal wasn’t loyalty, it was leverage. They'd side with France if Germany got too strong. They’d back Prussia if France looked twitchy.

It wasn’t about values — it was about preventing any one power from getting too powerful.

That’s what modern politics increasingly feels like to me.

Growing up in the 1980s, the culture — the media, the universities, Hollywood — all leaned left. Sure, Republicans won some elections. But the cultural deck was stacked. There were only three TV networks, all of them humming the same liberal lullaby.

In that environment, the right felt like the natural counterbalance.

So that’s where I parked myself. Not because I was a rebel or a contrarian, but because I was interested in conserving America and preserving my own personal liberty against a very powerful, radical, and increasingly weird, juggernaut called the American left.

That paradigm lasted for decades — so long that I grew up, worked on Republican campaigns, and joined the conservative movement.

And then along came Trump, detonating every principle in a fifty-mile radius. Suddenly, the balance of power had shifted. The right — once the bastion of moral order, “norms,” and stern lectures — started sounding like a rage-fueled Reddit thread.

Liberals, for all their flaws, at least still pretended to believe in rules.

**

The GOP Is About To Drop The Debt Bomb

Thursday dogs

Via my daughter’s Substack: Our French dog, Zokami, contemplates his kingdom.

1. To no one’s surprise. much of the “evidence” presented by Trump was fake: “Trump Claimed a Social Media Video Showed ‘Burial Sites’ of White Farmers. It Didn’t.” [Gift link to NYT.]

2. Via Stephen Hayes:

In the spring of 2023, only 32 percent of voters surveyed in a Washington Post/ABC News poll said they believed Biden had the “mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president.” An NBC News poll taken in June of that same year found that 55 percent of voters had “major” concerns about Biden having the physical and mental health to serve as president.

3. Hayes again:

The media failure went beyond sins of omission to sins of commission, too. Perceptions of Biden’s struggles were explained away in reported pieces as the result of misleading “cheap fakes” or downplayed as problems anyone might have. Biden partisans denigrated anyone who raised concerns. The attack on Robert Hur from Jennifer Rubin, then a Washington Post columnist, was typical. “But it was Hur’s gratuitous smear about Biden’s age and memory—most egregiously, his far-fetched allegation that Biden could not recall the date of his son Beau’s death—that transformed a snide report into a political screed,” Rubin wrote. (In fact, Hur’s claim about Biden’s memory was not at all gratuitous, his allegation that Biden didn’t recall the dates of Beau’s death was accurate, and his report was neither snide nor a political screed.) MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough did the same and later lashed out at anyone who might question Biden’s abilities. “Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth,” he said. “And ‘F’ you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever.”