All the Ex-President’s Cowering Men
The Bulwark in Philly, the death of Yahya Sinwar, and an idiotic media ‘scandal’ Trump just can't let go.
Donald Trump went on Fox & Friends this morning. A few bits from his sitdown:
On RFK Jr. being in his cabinet: “He’s gonna be a part of it.”
On female voters: “Without abortion, the women love me.”
On his speech last night at the Al Smith dinner: “I had a lot of people helping, a lot of people, a couple people from Fox—actually, I shouldn’t say that, but they wrote some jokes. For the most part, I didn’t like any of them.”
On his anger toward Fox News: “In the old days, you never had [Harris comms aide] Ian Sams” on air.
Happy Friday!
From the Streets of Philadelphia
by Bill Kristol
PHILADELPHIA, PA—One of the highlights of the Bulwark event here last night was Tim Miller’s conversation with Sarah Matthews. Sarah, who served as deputy press secretary in the Trump White House, spoke eloquently about why she resigned on January 6th—or, as Donald Trump would call it, the “day of love.”
She didn’t discuss the threats and harassment she’s received since deciding to tell the truth about Trump when she testified under oath before the January 6th committee. And she didn’t emphasize how much she’d given up by turning her back on a fast track to fame and fortune in MAGA world. Instead, she took the opportunity, just weeks before the election, to explain just how dangerous it would be to have Trump as president again, and why she’d decided to campaign for Kamala Harris.
Earlier in the day, Tim had conducted a very different interview. This one was for his podcast, with the journalist Bob Woodward. In it, Woodward made news, telling Tim that Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis had gotten in touch with him after Woodward’s new book, War, had been released. Mattis’s message: that he agreed with the assessment of Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, that Trump was “dangerous,” and that if he were returned to office “the threat was high.” Tim reached out to Mattis to elaborate directly and on the record, but the request for comment was ignored.
Sarah Matthews is 29 years old. She, along with her former colleagues in the Trump White House—Cassidy Hutchinson, age 27, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, age 35—have stepped up to try to help avert this dangerous threat.
Jim Mattis has had an extraordinary career in service to our country. So has his fellow retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff and secretary of Homeland Security. So has retiring senator and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. So has former President George W. Bush.
They’ve served our country, and our country has rewarded them with fame and honor. And yet, at this most precarious hour, with so much on the line, they’ve retreated from public view, unwilling to share candidly and openly with their fellow Americans their considered judgment about the choice we have to make.
They would risk nothing by speaking up directly and publicly about the threat of a Trump second term. But still they don’t.
They would risk nothing by emphatically urging a vote for Harris. But still they don’t.
Sarah and Cassidy and Alyssa do run those risks. Yet they are doing what they can. Mattis and Kelly and Romney and Bush are not.
A Remarkable Streak
by Will Selber
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has shown again why it’s the envy of the region.
On Thursday, the IDF announced it had killed Hamas leader and October 7th mastermind Yahya Sinwar. In the span of three months, the IDF has killed Sinwar, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, Hamas military chief Mohammad Deif, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. But unlike the previous daring strikes, it wasn’t an elite commando unit that killed Sinwar; instead, if the early reports are reliable, an ordinary IDF unit killed him.
On Wednesday, the 828th Bislamach Brigade, a training unit, was conducting a routine patrol in the vicinity of Rafah in southern Israel when they encountered Hamas terrorists in a nearby building. During the firefight, the IDF called in airstrikes on the building. Upon inspection of the damage, IDF soldiers quickly recognized Sinwar, causing a chain reaction leading to his identification utilizing dental records and DNA.
Sinwar, who had taken over the reins from Haniyeh in early August, was an early member of Hamas. Known as “The Butcher of Khan Younis” because of his penchant for killing collaborators, he was arrested in the early 1980s but was subsequently released by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a 2011 prisoner exchange for the abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit.
Sinwar’s killing is a victory for both Netanyahu and President Joe Biden. Netanyahu killed the man responsible for the most significant attack against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. President Biden, who has received blistering criticism for his “betrayal” of Israel, provided nearly limitless logistical support to the IDF, which allowed them to fight multiple fronts simultaneously.
But the real victory goes to the United States military and especially the IDF. While Bibi and Biden bickered, CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurrilla’s command, especially the combined air operations center at Al Udeid Airbase, provided critical real-time support to IDF operations. The IDF, which had lost some prestige following the October 7th massacre, has conducted a brilliant campaign that will be studied in American war colleges for years—whatever one thinks of the political echelon’s failures of diplomacy and imagination.
While Hamas searches for a way forward, the war will almost certainly continue in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Hamas has been decimated, but they still have thousands of fighters who will look to foil any post-Sinwar plans for Gaza. Hezbollah has been shaken, but the root of both evils—the regime in Iran—remains dangerous, and inches ever closer to a nuclear weapon.
The Smoking Gun That Wasn’t
by Cathy Young
You know who’s still thinking a lot about Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview? Donald Trump. Here he was on Truth Social yesterday:
Leaving aside the deranged idea of forcing Harris out of the race and dragging Biden back in, this is the third time Trump has called for stripping CBS of its broadcast license over its supposed falsification of Harris’s 60 Minutes interview.
As president, Trump wouldn’t be able to take CBS off the air (unless this is one of those things that is unthinkable right up to the moment Trump tries to do it!) Instead, the real point of these rants is to concoct an “election interference” conspiracy as an excuse not to accept a Harris victory (and, as a bonus, energize the base with anti-media hate and boost the narrative that Harris is “dumb”).
This would be incredibly dangerous even if CBS really had, as MAGA media (and anti-anti-Trump sites like the Free Press) suggest, deliberately tried to hide a “word salad” answer by Harris. But we should probably note: It didn’t! The “word salad”—a 20-second comment with some repetitive wording—was shown on Face the Nation; it’s also in a teaser posted on the CBS X account. A different cut of the interview—which was never billed as being presented in full—was presented on 60 Minutes. If, like the Free Press, you think that’s a bigger problem than Trump’s threats to the media, perhaps a priority check is in order.
Quick Hits
OCTOBER SURPRISE: While Democrats fight tooth and nail across the country to preserve their slim Senate majority, one of their safer-looking seats to defend has been in Arizona, where Democrat Ruben Gallego has seemed poised to fend off Republican Kari Lake. Yesterday, the conservative Washington Free Beacon prevailed in its lawsuit to unseal Gallego’s 2016 divorce records, which show that he sprung divorce proceedings on his pregnant wife shortly before she was to give birth in 2016. Gallego had fought for months to keep the records sealed.
Will the revelations shake up the race? Probably not—lots of Arizonans really don’t like Lake, a Trump-copycat figure who spent much of the last few years trying to run a hapless low-calorie stop-the-steal operation on her own loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the 2022 Arizona governor’s race. Still, though: Not a great look, Ruben!
THE GREATEST . . . EVA: Last night was the Al Smith dinner, the annual white-tie Catholic charity gathering where, every four years, presidential candidates yuk it up. This year, Kamala Harris skipped the event, sending in a video instead. Trump, meanwhile, did his usual thing: going a bit too far in roasting everyone but himself. We won’t bore you with the recap. What stood out to us, instead, was the reaction from one of Trump’s aides, Stephen Miller.
“That was the single best comedy performance of ANY president or candidate for president in history,” Miller tweeted.
In history??? You might be thinking to yourself: Hmmm, that seems a bit strong. But, hear us out. Steve isn’t one for overstatement. Just look.
Trump’s recent appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago: “the greatest live interview any political leader or politician has done on the economy in our lifetimes. Period.”
Trump’s recent speech in Detroit: “the most pro-Detroit pro-Michigan pro-America economic plan in history.”
Trump’s 2017 speech in Warsaw: “one of the greatest speeches in the history of the presidency.”
The formal nomination of Harris as the Democratic nominee: “Has there ever been a bigger political scandal in US history?”
John Fetterman: “the most pro-criminal politician ever to run for Senate.”
The federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene: a betrayal of the country “as no American leaders ever have before.”
The show Magnum, P.I.: “One of the greatest TV shows of all-time. Tom Selleck is a national treasure.”
Donald Trump’s debate against Biden: “The single greatest, biggest and most spectacular debate victory in American history.”
On that last one . . . he has a point.
Cheap Shots
Kamala Harris had some pro-Trump hecklers out in Wisconsin yesterday:
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Bill, thank you for AGAIN pointing out what gutless cowards and I believe literal traitors all those “great men” like Mattis, Kelly, and especially Romney and Bush are. I have nothing but contempt for all of them. History will judge them harshly, and rightly so, no matter what happens next month.
I admire these young women SO much. I am 71 years old and to see these “great men” of my generation cower and equivocate is repulsive and disgusting to me, especially in contrast to these young women, who have been willing to ruin their careers and risk their personal safety to do what is RIGHT. What a novel and shocking ideal in the age of Trump!!! Right or wrong, truth or lies, good or evil. We once believed there actually was a difference.
If our country survives, which I still truly doubt, it will be our women, from VP Harris, to Liz Cheney, to Hutchinson, Matthews, and many, many more just like them who do it. I thank them all, from voters to leaders.
As Liz said, when this “time of testing” came, these young women stood up fearlessly and “met the moment.” Not so for all these “great men” of your party, from McConnell, Graham and all the sycophants to Bush, Pence, et al., who when push came to shove-NOW— valued their own ease over “truth, justice, and the American way.” Being silent in 2024 is acquiescence and complicity is my view.
This is personal with me, and it has shaken my faith in this country and its alleged leaders. So, so many have been morally bankrupt when we needed “their finest hour.”
Shame on them. I have no respect for them today, and never will again.
"Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally. I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street."
To borrow from Stephen Miller's hyperbole: "The greatest zinger handed to any disruptive vermin by a presidential candidate in the HISTORY of our country!"