From the right: The Twitterizing of Gun Politics
Televised political “town hall” meetings “tend to be awkward, terrible, stilted, cringe-inducing and wildly artificial showboating affairs,” contends National Review’s Heather Wilhelm, and CNN’s “emotionally charged presentation on gun violence” was no exception. But you may have “noticed something odd” during the program: Our political dialogue “has become increasingly Twitterized,” with “public shaming, ‘dragging’ and ganging up on people” becoming the norm. When one student compared Sen. Marco Rubio to accused mass murderer Nikolas Cruz, “nobody on the stage even seemed to flinch.” We’ve reached the point where a “relatively simple concept — ‘I disagree with the idea, but I understand it’ — seems to be an increasingly endangered thought process.”
Political scribe: Voluntarily Talking to Mueller Is Foolish
President Trump says he’s willing to sit down with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but his lawyers are of a different mind. And they’re right, says Bonnie Kristian at The Week: “Trump should not voluntarily speak to Mueller — just as you or I or anyone should never, ever voluntarily talk to cops or government investigators.” That’s true even if you’re entirely innocent. Because “innocent people lie. Innocent people forget. Innocent people make errors and get confused and exaggerate and estimate in high-pressure situations.” That’s especially relevant in the case of Trump, who “is incessantly boastful and dishonest, regularly dropping demonstrable falsehoods about matters of no importance.” No matter how it might look by keeping silent, “his lawyers will only be doing their most basic duty” by preventing any such interview.
Foreign desk: Justin Trudeau’s India Disaster
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have proven himself to be “the Inspector Clouseau of world leaders” on his just-concluded week-long trip to India, suggests Rick Moran at PJ Media. First he committed a “surprising cultural faux pas” by dressing himself and his family in traditional Indian garb. As one local official tweeted: “We Indians don’t dress like this every day sir, not even in Bollywood.” Then it turned out the Canadians had invited “a man convicted of attempted murder of an Indian politician in Canada” to a state dinner at the embassy in New Delhi. Moreover, the man was tied to Sikh separatists and Trudeau had assured his hosts he would not support anyone trying to revive a separatist movement in India.
Conservative: A Russian Stooge Who’s Squeezing Russia
It remains “an article of faith” on the left that Vladimir Putin helped Donald Trump get elected in the hope he would tilt US policy toward Moscow, notes Commentary’s Sohrab Ahmari. Yet under Trump “Washington is doing far more to put pressure on Russia than it ever did under his ‘flexible’ predecessor.” Case in point: this week’s warning “that buying arms from Putin could result in US sanctions.” Critics call this unenforceable, but “if American financial pressure — or the threat of it — causes NATO member Turkey to back down from deploying Russia’s signature air-defense system, that would be a good day.” And this is just the latest step Trump is taking “to push back against Russian revanchism.” Yet critics still “sneer when the president boasts, correctly, that he has been ‘much tougher’ on the Kremlin than Obama was.”
Media critic: Doesn’t Times Screen Reader Comments?
The New York Times has a “persistent problem with anti-Semitic or virulently anti-Israel reader comments,” and it’s “flaring yet again,” complains Ira Stoll at the Algemeiner. A recent news article about rare friction between President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “drew the Times’ hordes of anti-Israel commenters out of the woodwork.” Like the one that railed against “the financial or media empires in this country that have no interest in peace.” That, notes Stoll, “is the sort of far-fetched conspiracy that has animated American anti-Semites for years.” Or another that told a pro-Israel commenter: “Anti-Semitism is a byproduct of your behavior.” Asks Stoll: “What public service, if any, does the Times think it is providing” by offering “a platform for these sort of insults and conspiracy theories?”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann