History lesson: No, Trump Won’t Refuse To Leave
Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe takes aim at the silly fears that President Trump will refuse to go if he loses next November: “The nonsense started” with a caustic comment from Jerry Falwell Jr. that Trump’s term should be extended two years as “payback for time stolen” by the Russia investigation. The Washington Post then quoted embittered ex-Trumpie Michael Cohen warning of a supposed threat to the “peaceful transition of power,” followed by alarms from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and such outrage-mongers as Harvard’s Laurence Tribe and MSNBC’s Joy Reid. Yet “you have to be from Kookville to seriously believe that any president, however egotistical, would try to block an election or prevent an inauguration,” writes Jacoby. In reality, defeated presidents have surrendered office since John Adams in 1801, and “so will Trump, if he loses next year. He may do it with bad manners and a torrent of tweeted insults. But when the time comes, he’ll go.”
Conservative: Uncle Joe Towers Over the Dem Field
Now that Joe Biden has entered the 2020 field, The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein asks, “What can we say about the state of the race?” The answer: The former veep is in a comfy spot, with a 39 percent RealClearPolitics polling average among the top six Democratic candidates. That’s higher than Donald Trump’s average until “the GOP field had winnowed to three candidates in 2016.” Plus, “Biden has now polled at over 40 points in several recent polls, meaning his average is poised to rise as newer polls get cycled.” Meanwhile, “Bernie Sanders is crashing,” and upstarts like Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg seem to have reached a plateau. This snapshot it makes clear that “Biden is starting from a strong position.”
Foreign desk: Trump Can’t Ignore Erdogan’s Power Grab
Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t like the outcome of a recent mayoral election in Istanbul, so he ordered a redo. Yet “a new election is untenable for much of the country,” notes Bloomberg’s Eli Lake. Protests have erupted, with even normal Erdogan supporters taking the opposition’s side. Perhaps Washington is distracted by other developments, Lake says, yet the Trump administration’s silence is “inexcusable” at a moment when there is “widespread support within Turkey to check Erdogan,” who has proved to be an unreliable US ally at best. Lake concludes: “This is one case where America’s values align with its interests.”
Libertarian: Indy Reporters Scoop Mainstream Media
New-media journalists now cover “stories the mainstream media often miss,” observes John Stossel at Reason. He points to Tim Pool, a high-school dropout who posts videos from news events, such as the face-off between a Kentucky high-school student and a Native American activist in Washington, and makes “big-name outlets” look like “irresponsible amateurs.” Pool notes that people “don’t trust the media,” and figures, “why don’t I just go there and see for myself?” Such young journalists, notes Stossel, “value open debate.” Others include Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Naomi Brockwell, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Sam Harris and Jimmy Dore — who represent widely different views. “I very much disagree with some of them,” Stossel makes clear. “But I’m glad they are out there, giving us more choice.”
Theologian: A Bizarre New Definition of ‘Family Violence’
Justices of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada, have expanded the definition of domestic abuse to include “refusing to accept a family member’s chosen gender identity,” notes Douglas Farrow at First Things. The case involves a 14-year-old girl who identifies as a boy and her father, “who insists she is no such thing.” The court believes it’s a form of abuse for any family member to use the child’s birth name or female pronouns referring to her, or to try persuading her against transgender surgery. And the court has authorized the father’s “arrest without warrant . . . should he give the least appearance of persisting in this violence.” With the bizarre ruling, he argues, Canadian law “has become an instrument of oppression rather than of justice.”
— Compiled by Sohrab Ahmari