Security desk: Bolton’s Case for Hunting Witches
Hearkening back to the Red Scare of the 1950s is usually meant as “a cautionary device,” observes Bloomberg’s Eli Lake, but National Security Adviser John Bolton is citing it to describe the “need to be vigilant” against Russian infiltration, which he likens to the kind of foreign influence the Soviet Union once attempted. Yet President Trump, Lake notes ironically, “often sounds like the reds the FBI hunted” back then: He calls Robert Mueller’s probe a “witch hunt” and “expresses his desire to reach an accommodation with Moscow.” Moreover, “there is also the danger that demagogues can exploit a national obsession with foreign influence to harm innocent people and ultimately discredit the cause of countering Moscow’s predations. That’s what happened during the Red Scare.”
Media critic: Columnist’s Double Standard on Old Tweets
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens “effusively praised ABC when it fired Roseanne Barr for a single tweet,” notes The Federalist’s Sean Davis. But he says new colleague Sarah Jeong “deserves a whole lot of grace and a second chance,” despite her “mountain of racist tweets.” Stephens declared that Barr’s racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett “wasn’t the odd needle in the haystack. It was the last straw” and “a slur.” Yet Jeong was hired after several years’ worth of “blatant racism and misandry.” So since Stephens argues that “the totality of one’s work over years” should decide whether that person deserves a public platform, he must favor her immediate firing, right? Wrong, says Davis: He simply “created a brand new standard for his new co-worker,” counseling “caution and circumspection” — and denouncing the same “social-media furies” he’d joined when it came to Barr.
Foreign desk: Pompeo Succeeds Where Tillerson Failed
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius reports that morale at the State Department under Secretary Mike Pompeo “has improved from the rock-bottom level it reached with his predecessor, Rex Tillerson.” Pompeo has made quiet diplomacy “an operating principle,” acting most often as “a secret presidential envoy.” And, unlike Tillerson, “he’s able to speak authoritatively (mostly in private) for the president.” Moreover, he’s championed “career officers who were initially skeptical of him.” And he’s used his political clout to move ahead with appointments to key positions left unfilled by Tillerson. Maybe because he shares Trump’s “big-guy” persona, “Pompeo has been the rare subordinate who stays close to the president, but not so close he gets burned.”
Liberal take: Don’t Be Misled By Left’s Primary Losses
The defeat Tuesday of several Democratic primary candidates backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez prompted some pundits to immediately proclaim socialism dead and buried. But The Week’s Ryan Cooper declares those postmortems “beyond premature” and “obviously wishful thinking.” In fact, he adds, “this is only the beginning”: The left “remains well-positioned to continue gradually chipping away at centrist Democrats, as well as turning centrists to the left.” Because “practically all the policy debates happening in the Democratic Party are over leftist ideas.” And many establishment Dems are busy “repositioning themselves” — endorsing, for example, Sanders’ Medicare-for-All bill. He notes that pundits similarly declared the end of conservatism after Barry Goldwater’s 1964 defeat. Sixteen years later, conservative hero Ronald Reagan was elected president.
From the right: Why the Media Silence Over Di-Fi’s Spy?
Politico and the San Francisco Examiner have led the way in reporting that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) — who’s long lobbied for China’s interests — was compromised for over a decade by a staffer with connections to Beijing’s spying. But that has Becket Adams at the Washington Examiner asking “why this story hasn’t gotten wall-to-wall coverage.” At the time the staffer’s ties were uncovered five years ago, Feinstein chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee. No charges were filed (though he was forced to retire), because the FBI concluded he never divulged “anything of substance” to Chinese officials to whom he reported. Yet you’d think that “with the media’s intense concern about foreign influence in US politics,” the Feinstein story “would get a bit more traction in newsrooms.” But “some infiltration is more serious than others, apparently.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann