I can disagree with far-left liberals, far-right conservatives, even, ahem, radical centrists. They pose ideas worth wholesome debate. But as you’ve so brilliantly written—you still have the gift—there’s one thing on which we must agree: Trump is diabolically batshit crazy. Oh, and you had me running to the dictionary to look up “dispositive” and “Gadarene.” (Should have known Gadarene, having recently read that Gospel scripture.)
Jay Clayton - a partner at the elite white shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell for over twenty years cannot tell the truth to the U.S Congress. The capitulation of the elites is a very shameful thing.
Shameful yes; but, to paraphrase Talleyrand, worse. It is incomprehensible. He cedes his reputation for what? Power? Trump ignores advice from the intelligence community. Fame? His S&C predecessors, the Dulles brothers and Arthur Dean had the advantage of not serving a buffoon.
I am a lifelong Democrat (age 70) who now votes only for Republicans, because the Democrats are all batshit insane with transqueerism.
EVERY Democrat in Congress CO-SPONSORS a bill to make gender self-ID instantaneous and unquestionable nationwide.
EVERY single one! No exceptions! Including Bernie and Angus King. From the Squad to the Blue Dogs, every last one of them completely and totally agrees that any man who SAYS he is a woman (at that moment) IS a woman, for all legal purposes, and they are going to force all of us sane people to agree to that, by law.
Talk about a wackocracy!!!
Trump has nothing, NOTHING, on the Democrats for wackocracy.
My daughter is a lesbian, so I’m speaking on her behalf. I don’t understand the obsession over transgender issues. Those who identify as transgender represent less than one percent of the nation’s population. Do you feel the same way about gay people? I’m close to a trans man and have many gay friends. They are normal, well-adjusted people, living life as responsibly as me — or more so. (Including my daughter who is happily married and raising two great kids.) Gender dysphoria is a clinically recognized disorder. What’s more, people with, um, different gender identities have been among us forever.
I also strongly support the right of women (and also men) to free association, which means to single-sex spaces, events, competitions, prisons, etc.
We are the first human society in history to say that any male claiming to be a female (at that moment) must be granted access to any and all female-only spaces.
The law that the Democrats in Congress want to pass (and have already passed in many blue states) allows ANY male access to female-only spaces. They do not have to be "trans", they just have to be willing to say that they are if challenged.
Already there have been many instances of registered male sex offenders hanging out in women's locker rooms at public gyms and pools.
Already there have been many instances of convicted male rapists claiming to be trans and put into women's prisons, where they have raped female inmates.
Thank you for being open minded. Another issue is pediatric "gender affirming care". Today, a girl reaching puberty who starts to feel same-sex atrraction will be told (at school, on social media) that she is most likely actually a boy, and therefore needs drugs and surgeries to be her "true self". And so, in the US, over a thousand underage girls have their healthy breasts surgically removed each and every year. There is NO reliable diagnostic for which children will have their gender dysphoria persist into adulthood, and which will desist. The limited existing studies show a majority will desist. So how many children are we putting under the knife needlessly? But this cannot even be discussed in liberal circles.
Thanks to both of you for the quality of this exchange. If only the rest of the world were so civil and sane. My--immodest--goal is to encourage these sorts of discussions in this space.
Just as the phrase "safe, legal and rare" brought sanity to the abortion debate, the Dems could use a phrase that creates a bridge for the trans issue. Something along the lines of "compassion but not coercion" - which is to say those states and communities that want to allow trans people to play different roles and even compete in some sports can do so, but also, critically, establish that trans culture will not be forced down a given community's throat and that transitions will not be allowed until people have reached adulthood. In my own family, I have seen counselors advise for a girl's transition when the girl in question was simply on the path of becoming a robust lesbian. The Left wants to define the "T" as a rights issue when it is really a mental heath issue, very different from the campaign for gay marriage. The Dems have allowed the trans issue to lead them to defeat once - with devastating consequences; it must not happen again.
Every human society has had single-sex spaces. I believe that access to single-sex spaces is a fundamental human right that cannot be abridged on a community-by-community basis, any more than any other human right.
I also beleive in democracy (literally, "rule by the common people"), so I would be happy to put that up for a national popular vote to decide.
Is there a reason that the 25th Amendment has not been invoked to remove this lunatic. Why do we have to tolerate this?
“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President…”
President Trump has assembled the most knowledgeable, talented cabinet in our life time. How exactly are they "making money surreptitiously"? And Joe, I don't recall you ever questioning the Clinton and Biden crime families pay to play corruption.
The big lie is that there wasn’t widespread election fraud in 2020. President Trump gave a sober and judicious speech on some of the international interference that the Biden administration had covered up. The reason NBC and ABC didn’t carry President Trump’s speech is because they’ve always ignored the evidence of election fraud and don’t want to be caught in their false reporting. But even ABC admitted later that while much voter registration information is publicly available, some is not. The documents released by the White House, U.S. intelligence officials indicated that the datasets that the Chinese stole went beyond standard public records by aggregating unredacted, historical data fields that are restricted from public purchase.
Furthermore, the next day Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin cited a declassified review from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) outlining severe software and network vulnerabilities across state and local government IT infrastructure. He promised that CISA would deliver an updated federal election infrastructure plan within 30 days. Furthermore, Mullin reported that a DHS review identified over 250,000 potential non-citizens registered to vote across California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
The objective is not to relitigate the 2020 election, it is to shore up the vulnerabilities in the US election systems and practices, vulnerabilities that the democrats exploit to rig elections. Otherwise, why are they opposed to the SAFE Act or the DOJ auditing of ballots? The dims corrupt lawyer Marc Elias told a judge they want the Fulton County, GA ballots returned so they can destroy them. Heck, Georgia Senators Ossoff or Warnock would not be in office were it not for the election “irregularities” in Fulton County. Everyone should want free and fair elections, but not the democrats.
President Trump continues to demonstrate that he is the greatest president in our lifetime, and he continues to champion every issue I voted for, plus some bonus issues:
No other president has had the gonads to take on the Iranian IRGC regime, and he did it in an election year. Trump made a good faith effort to negotiate, but now it’s back to the stick. This apocalyptic regime cannot have a nuclear weapon which the foolish Obama/Kerry nuclear deal set them on a path to.
President Trump also made fools of all the economists who predicted the tariffs would cause inflation, which they have not.
Those of us who have actually studied climate science and know the mathematics used in the IPCC GSMs that are used to predict global warming, know that the global warming / climate crisis is a hoax. It is not based on science; it’s an emotional religion and grift from government subsidies. President Trump has ended the ridiculous subsidies and by the way, the US is the leader in geothermal and AI.
Complain all you want about ICE, but the democrats caused the problem, and the Trump administration is fixing it. It was never going to be pretty, and the dims knew it.
Why was there never a DOGE before? What is wrong with President Trump’s tax policies? Under them, the bloated, incompetent, evermore corrupt US government extorted less of my money. And President Trump has jawboned the NATO countries (other than Spain) to take their promises to contribute to NATO seriously. I don’t care if the leaders of foreign countries like or don’t like the US, but I am pleased that President Trump has made every foreign country respect the US. It’s far better than Obama’s world apology tour and the Biden crime families grift.
Today’s democrat party is always on the wrong side of the 80/20, 30/70 issues. Their old guard will do whatever it takes to hold onto the power, privilege and lucrativeness of their office. However, their party has been taken over by the Democrat Socialists, who are owned by far left, trust-fund Marxists, who I don’t think would object to being called communists. In fact, I think they’d embrace it.
We sometimes overlook that Donald Trump the successful businessman, unrivaled world leader, master of marketing branding is also an entertainer. I love that the master builder is putting his personal touch on the architecture of our nations’ capital. And after decades of incompetent government bureaucrats’ failures to maintain the existing infrastructure, President Trump has reported that his administration has restored 43 monuments, that there are 21 water fountains in DC and when he took office none of them were functional. Now all 21 work. And of course he fixed the reflecting pool. And President Trump continues to make the celebration of America’s 250 year anniversary spectacular!
Face it, the foreign tourists who found our country and culture kickass didn’t find that in the democrat run, big, dirty, crime-ridden, homeless occupied, obnoxious cities; they found it in Trump country.
By the way, I just read E.J. Dionne’s NYT piece on whether Mamdani et al are Democrat Socialists or Social Democrats. I can’t help but to think there’s a generational divide here. I recoil at the former, because “socialism” is freighted with negative connotations. The again, I’m 72, grew to adulthood during the Cold War. “Socialism” meant Communism meant the USSR, and the USSR meant to bury us. So to at least a certain demo, “Democratic Socialism” is
bad optics, and the Dems don’t need to shoot themselves in the foot by engaging in them—not if we’re to be rid of Trump’s Evil Empire. Furthermore, I figure Mamdani and his younger ilk don’t think about the potentially poisonous semantics because they didn’t live through what we oldsters did.
I can disagree with far-left liberals, far-right conservatives, even, ahem, radical centrists. They pose ideas worth wholesome debate. But as you’ve so brilliantly written—you still have the gift—there’s one thing on which we must agree: Trump is diabolically batshit crazy. Oh, and you had me running to the dictionary to look up “dispositive” and “Gadarene.” (Should have known Gadarene, having recently read that Gospel scripture.)
Jay Clayton - a partner at the elite white shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell for over twenty years cannot tell the truth to the U.S Congress. The capitulation of the elites is a very shameful thing.
Shameful yes; but, to paraphrase Talleyrand, worse. It is incomprehensible. He cedes his reputation for what? Power? Trump ignores advice from the intelligence community. Fame? His S&C predecessors, the Dulles brothers and Arthur Dean had the advantage of not serving a buffoon.
I am a lifelong Democrat (age 70) who now votes only for Republicans, because the Democrats are all batshit insane with transqueerism.
EVERY Democrat in Congress CO-SPONSORS a bill to make gender self-ID instantaneous and unquestionable nationwide.
EVERY single one! No exceptions! Including Bernie and Angus King. From the Squad to the Blue Dogs, every last one of them completely and totally agrees that any man who SAYS he is a woman (at that moment) IS a woman, for all legal purposes, and they are going to force all of us sane people to agree to that, by law.
Talk about a wackocracy!!!
Trump has nothing, NOTHING, on the Democrats for wackocracy.
Yah. We can disagree without being, ahem, deplorable. 😜
My daughter is a lesbian, so I’m speaking on her behalf. I don’t understand the obsession over transgender issues. Those who identify as transgender represent less than one percent of the nation’s population. Do you feel the same way about gay people? I’m close to a trans man and have many gay friends. They are normal, well-adjusted people, living life as responsibly as me — or more so. (Including my daughter who is happily married and raising two great kids.) Gender dysphoria is a clinically recognized disorder. What’s more, people with, um, different gender identities have been among us forever.
I am a strong supporter of LGB rights:
https://lgbausa.org
https://www.lgbcouragecoalition.org
I also strongly support the right of women (and also men) to free association, which means to single-sex spaces, events, competitions, prisons, etc.
We are the first human society in history to say that any male claiming to be a female (at that moment) must be granted access to any and all female-only spaces.
The law that the Democrats in Congress want to pass (and have already passed in many blue states) allows ANY male access to female-only spaces. They do not have to be "trans", they just have to be willing to say that they are if challenged.
Already there have been many instances of registered male sex offenders hanging out in women's locker rooms at public gyms and pools.
Already there have been many instances of convicted male rapists claiming to be trans and put into women's prisons, where they have raped female inmates.
I am against this.
Thank you for this reply. Thank you even more for the civil response.
Thank you for being open minded. Another issue is pediatric "gender affirming care". Today, a girl reaching puberty who starts to feel same-sex atrraction will be told (at school, on social media) that she is most likely actually a boy, and therefore needs drugs and surgeries to be her "true self". And so, in the US, over a thousand underage girls have their healthy breasts surgically removed each and every year. There is NO reliable diagnostic for which children will have their gender dysphoria persist into adulthood, and which will desist. The limited existing studies show a majority will desist. So how many children are we putting under the knife needlessly? But this cannot even be discussed in liberal circles.
Thanks to both of you for the quality of this exchange. If only the rest of the world were so civil and sane. My--immodest--goal is to encourage these sorts of discussions in this space.
Just as the phrase "safe, legal and rare" brought sanity to the abortion debate, the Dems could use a phrase that creates a bridge for the trans issue. Something along the lines of "compassion but not coercion" - which is to say those states and communities that want to allow trans people to play different roles and even compete in some sports can do so, but also, critically, establish that trans culture will not be forced down a given community's throat and that transitions will not be allowed until people have reached adulthood. In my own family, I have seen counselors advise for a girl's transition when the girl in question was simply on the path of becoming a robust lesbian. The Left wants to define the "T" as a rights issue when it is really a mental heath issue, very different from the campaign for gay marriage. The Dems have allowed the trans issue to lead them to defeat once - with devastating consequences; it must not happen again.
Every human society has had single-sex spaces. I believe that access to single-sex spaces is a fundamental human right that cannot be abridged on a community-by-community basis, any more than any other human right.
I also beleive in democracy (literally, "rule by the common people"), so I would be happy to put that up for a national popular vote to decide.
Wonderful column. I have a question.
Is there a reason that the 25th Amendment has not been invoked to remove this lunatic. Why do we have to tolerate this?
“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President…”
But they're mostly flunkies, making money surreptitiously.
President Trump has assembled the most knowledgeable, talented cabinet in our life time. How exactly are they "making money surreptitiously"? And Joe, I don't recall you ever questioning the Clinton and Biden crime families pay to play corruption.
The big lie is that there wasn’t widespread election fraud in 2020. President Trump gave a sober and judicious speech on some of the international interference that the Biden administration had covered up. The reason NBC and ABC didn’t carry President Trump’s speech is because they’ve always ignored the evidence of election fraud and don’t want to be caught in their false reporting. But even ABC admitted later that while much voter registration information is publicly available, some is not. The documents released by the White House, U.S. intelligence officials indicated that the datasets that the Chinese stole went beyond standard public records by aggregating unredacted, historical data fields that are restricted from public purchase.
Furthermore, the next day Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin cited a declassified review from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) outlining severe software and network vulnerabilities across state and local government IT infrastructure. He promised that CISA would deliver an updated federal election infrastructure plan within 30 days. Furthermore, Mullin reported that a DHS review identified over 250,000 potential non-citizens registered to vote across California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
The objective is not to relitigate the 2020 election, it is to shore up the vulnerabilities in the US election systems and practices, vulnerabilities that the democrats exploit to rig elections. Otherwise, why are they opposed to the SAFE Act or the DOJ auditing of ballots? The dims corrupt lawyer Marc Elias told a judge they want the Fulton County, GA ballots returned so they can destroy them. Heck, Georgia Senators Ossoff or Warnock would not be in office were it not for the election “irregularities” in Fulton County. Everyone should want free and fair elections, but not the democrats.
President Trump continues to demonstrate that he is the greatest president in our lifetime, and he continues to champion every issue I voted for, plus some bonus issues:
No other president has had the gonads to take on the Iranian IRGC regime, and he did it in an election year. Trump made a good faith effort to negotiate, but now it’s back to the stick. This apocalyptic regime cannot have a nuclear weapon which the foolish Obama/Kerry nuclear deal set them on a path to.
President Trump also made fools of all the economists who predicted the tariffs would cause inflation, which they have not.
Those of us who have actually studied climate science and know the mathematics used in the IPCC GSMs that are used to predict global warming, know that the global warming / climate crisis is a hoax. It is not based on science; it’s an emotional religion and grift from government subsidies. President Trump has ended the ridiculous subsidies and by the way, the US is the leader in geothermal and AI.
Complain all you want about ICE, but the democrats caused the problem, and the Trump administration is fixing it. It was never going to be pretty, and the dims knew it.
Why was there never a DOGE before? What is wrong with President Trump’s tax policies? Under them, the bloated, incompetent, evermore corrupt US government extorted less of my money. And President Trump has jawboned the NATO countries (other than Spain) to take their promises to contribute to NATO seriously. I don’t care if the leaders of foreign countries like or don’t like the US, but I am pleased that President Trump has made every foreign country respect the US. It’s far better than Obama’s world apology tour and the Biden crime families grift.
Today’s democrat party is always on the wrong side of the 80/20, 30/70 issues. Their old guard will do whatever it takes to hold onto the power, privilege and lucrativeness of their office. However, their party has been taken over by the Democrat Socialists, who are owned by far left, trust-fund Marxists, who I don’t think would object to being called communists. In fact, I think they’d embrace it.
We sometimes overlook that Donald Trump the successful businessman, unrivaled world leader, master of marketing branding is also an entertainer. I love that the master builder is putting his personal touch on the architecture of our nations’ capital. And after decades of incompetent government bureaucrats’ failures to maintain the existing infrastructure, President Trump has reported that his administration has restored 43 monuments, that there are 21 water fountains in DC and when he took office none of them were functional. Now all 21 work. And of course he fixed the reflecting pool. And President Trump continues to make the celebration of America’s 250 year anniversary spectacular!
Face it, the foreign tourists who found our country and culture kickass didn’t find that in the democrat run, big, dirty, crime-ridden, homeless occupied, obnoxious cities; they found it in Trump country.
Thank God for President Trump!
By the way, I just read E.J. Dionne’s NYT piece on whether Mamdani et al are Democrat Socialists or Social Democrats. I can’t help but to think there’s a generational divide here. I recoil at the former, because “socialism” is freighted with negative connotations. The again, I’m 72, grew to adulthood during the Cold War. “Socialism” meant Communism meant the USSR, and the USSR meant to bury us. So to at least a certain demo, “Democratic Socialism” is
bad optics, and the Dems don’t need to shoot themselves in the foot by engaging in them—not if we’re to be rid of Trump’s Evil Empire. Furthermore, I figure Mamdani and his younger ilk don’t think about the potentially poisonous semantics because they didn’t live through what we oldsters did.
Fox News is just a bunch of flunkies paid high amounts of money. The Vice President used taxpayer money to get his children away from his office.
Huh? What are you talking about? What "taxpayer money" to get his children away from "what"?