How Mike Lee Ditched Constitutional Conservatism for the Cult of Trump
Mona Charen on how the Utah Senator is ignoring the constitutional crisis right in front of his nose.
Leading The Bulwark…
How Mike Lee Ditched Constitutional Conservatism for the Cult of Trump
MONA CHAREN: The senator, lawyer, and author of books on the Founding is ignoring the constitutional crisis right in front of his nose.
🎧 On the Pods… 🎧
Adam Kinzinger on Censure Frenzy and Strange New Respect
On today’s Bulwark podcast, Rep. Adam Kinzinger joins Charlie Sykes to discuss the GOP’s censure obsession, why he’s working to find conservatives who want to put country first and not Trump first and the future of legislating and compromise in what is increasingly a binary political culture.
For Bulwark+ Members… 🔐
MORNING SHOTS: The Sideshow Becomes the Main Event 🔐
CHARLIE SYKES on the GOP's obsession with Dr. Seuss.
THE TRIAD: Joe Biden: Deal Maker 🔐
JONATHAN V. LAST: The best deals are the simple, boring ones.
From The Bulwark Aggregator…
MAGA Fans Rage at Trumpy Channel for Censoring Conspiracies – Will Sommer, The Daily Beast
5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating – Zeynep Tufekci, The Atlantic
Disloyalty Is Trump’s Secret Weapon – Johnathan Bernstein, Bloomberg Businessweek
Email and Slack Have Locked Us in a Productivity Paradox – Cal Newport, Wired
Why Did Republicans Outperform The Polls Again? Two Theories. – Emily Ekins, FiveThirtyEight
The road to Joe Biden’s foreign policy runs through Bob Menendez – Andrew Desiderio and Nahal Toosi, Politico
House ethics office says there’s ‘substantial reason to believe’ Rep. Steven Palazzo misused campaign, congressional funds – Felicia Sonmez, The Washington Post
In Today’s Bulwark….
Why Biden’s State Department Demoted Saudi Arabia
SHAY KHATIRI: The new administration is trying to find the right balance between values and narrow interest.
1619, 1776, and Us
CATHY YOUNG: What the conflict over the NYT extravaganza and the much-mocked Trump commission report is really about.
On Voting Rights, GOP Lawyers Say the Quiet Part Out Loud
KIMBERLY WEHLE: Arguing before the Supreme Court, they admit their case isn’t about principle or election integrity—it’s just about winning.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Glenn Beck is not sorry about all that.
For any of my fellow conservatives concerned about Hasbro’s decision to change the branding of Mr. Potato Head, I will gladly sell you my twins’ slightly used ones at $50k a piece. Consider it an investment in Freedom.
Congressman Buck is like a windsock.
And just remember:
Weird how that happens. Conservatives used to understand that. Ken Buck doesn’t. Or is pretending not to.
Even if you defeat me, Russertron, others will rise to defeat your tyranny…
The House adjourns… You were wondering why the fencing and National Guard are still (regrettably) around the Capitol. You have your answer.
The Qwazies think Donald Trump is going to come back as President tomorrow. Let’s hope nobody gets hurt and nothing happens.
Wait Just One American Moment… At National Review, which recently, and silently, took Dinesh D’Souza off their masthead (good for them!) Jack Butler has a must-read on this new organization, American Moment. To Butler, their “complaints about conservatism seem somewhat disingenuous — and self-serving.” I agree.
A study in contrasts… Texas is reopening fully and repealing a government mask mandate, and grocer H-E-B is allowing patrons to choose not to wear a mask. And Texans I know who love H-E-B, which is a great megagrocer, are not happy.
But Lidl, my favorite grocer, is strengthening their mask policy:
Good for them.
“I wish I never met Trump” You and me both, buddy. OH SNAP. It’s conspiracy peddler and Trump superfan Alex Jones saying this?
What happened to Jordan Peterson? Admittedly, I’ve not ever been a fan of the man, but for years, he captivated a lot of people in conservatism. (Unlike Marjorie Taylor Greene, I don’t believe in “gurus” of any kind.) In The Atlantic, a good look at what happened when he disappeared from our radar screens. Here’s a taste:
“We compete for attention, personally, socially, and economically,” he writes in Beyond Order. “No currency has a value that exceeds it.” But attention is a perilous drug: The more we receive, the more we desire. It is the culture war’s greatest reward, yet it started Jordan Peterson on a journey that turned a respected but unknown professor into the man strapped into the Russian hospital bed, ripping the tubes from his arms, desperate for another fix.
Is this bad?
The Times reports that “Inspector General’s Report Cites Elaine Chao for Misuse of Office.”
The report said the Justice Department declined to investigate her promotion of her family’s shipbuilding business while serving as transportation secretary in the Trump administration.
Read the whole thing. It’s brash and brazen. Her nickname at DOL among staff during Bush 2.2, I’m told, was the “ice queen”… sort of an homage to Anna Wintour as fictionally depicted in The Devil Wears Prada. Because she was often hard on and unreasonable with staff. Seems like that continued in her job with Trump at DOT:
The investigators also found that she repeatedly asked agency staff members to help do chores for her father, including editing her father’s Wikipedia page, promoting his Chinese-language biography, and directing two staff members from the transportation secretary’s office to send a copy of her father’s book “to a well-known C.E.O. of a major U.S. corporation” to ask if he would write a foreword for the book.
But hey, she resigned out of protest… right?
Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder… It’s one of my favorite lines from JFK’s address to the Canadian Parliament. And while geography has made us neighbors and history has made us friends, seeing the Canadian 413 Transport and Rescue Squadron and the U.S. Coast Guard save 30+ lives on a sinking ship 200 km out in the Atlantic and not losing a single soul is a good note to end on.
See you on the livestream tomorrow! Drop me a line at swift@thebulwark.com.
—30—