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Democrats’ Hubris Paves the Way for a Second Trump

Term

Biden promised an end to chaos and lunacy. He barely

won, then utterly failed to deliver. 

By Gerard Baker

The state of our union is strong, President Joe Biden will doubtless insist on Thursday night. But as a description of America in 2024, the claim has about as much credibility as the protestations from the White House that the president has the mind of a chess grandmaster and the stamina of a thoroughbred.

Mr. Biden presides over a weakened, divided, fearful nation whose voters face a bleak choice about their future.

It must have dawned on Democrats by now that eight months from Election Day, it’s getting awfully late. Mr. Biden’s approval ratings remain in Jimmy Carter territory. In poll after poll, swing state after swing state, he is losing to the man he beat in 2020.

Incumbent presidents are blessed with often-decisive advantages. Donald Trump was only the fourth elected president in a century to lose re-election. But unless something changes Mr. Biden is set to join him on that short list, even as he adds his predecessor to the even shorter roll of third-time’s-a-charm candidates.

The Democrats have made three critical miscalculations that have brought them here.

The first was to underestimate Mr. Trump and to overestimate their ability to dispatch him. Except for a few empathic souls, most Democrats have never really understood the former president’s appeal. They like to ascribe it, in their own words, to a “basket of deplorables,” “bitter clingers” or, in Mr. Biden’s characteristically less imaginative phrasing, “semi-fascists.”

They gaze out from their Ivy League casements and Hollywood balconies on a Hobbesian hinterland of racists, bigots and fools, fed a diet of “misinformation” by right-wing media. From those secure perches they don’t see people who feel betrayed at home and abroad by successive leaders, American communities battling devastating health and financial crises, workers whose incomes have struggled to keep pace with costs, parents who fear their children’s lives will be worse—all told by a modern aristocracy that their American values are wicked, that people from other countries who have no legal right even to be here are entitled to the same privileges, even when they commit violent crimes.

Never having grasped how validating it is for many Americans to hear someone who gets this, Democrats thought they could put him down with ease. But 2024 isn’t unfolding by that script. They thought Mr. Trump would fail to make it across a criminal-law minefield, being convicted before the first votes are cast. But he has always had a charmed ability to slip between the interstices of the law. And many voters, whatever they think of his flaws, are uneasy about the spectacle of Democratic state prosecutors and a Democratic administration’s Justice Department striving to put their principal opponent in jail.

The second miscalculation was Mr. Biden’s own misplaced self-belief that despite his declining powers he was the only candidate for the job. If the president had kept the implicit promise in 2020 that he would be a caretaker president, he wouldn’t now be asking Americans to take the terrible risk of voting for a ticket that consists of a man who may not finish his term and a designated successor who shouldn’t be allowed to.

It’s simply untrue that the Democrats have a hopelessly weak bench. Vice President Kamala Harris may have demonstrated her unfitness for the office, but there are a slew of governors who could have made a strong case. Gavin Newsom may be too oleaginous and too Californian for swing-state voters, but Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Wes Moore of Maryland all have strong credentials and are at least a generation younger than Mr. Biden and his opponent.

The third miscalculation was the decision to interpret the narrow victory of 2020 as a mandate to rewrite the social contract. At the presidential and congressional levels, the Democrats won a squeaker four years ago and decided they were the reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.

The implementation of the left’s agenda—dismantling the border, a massive stimulus into a supply-constrained economy, the regulation of American capitalism and a federal industrial policy, taxpayers forced to foot the bill for the education of the privileged, the rewriting of social relations in line with the dictates of the “diversity, equity and inclusion” ideology—all this would have been ruinous in a country that had actually voted for them. In a country that simply sought to escape the chaos and lunacy of the Trump years, it is almost criminal.

The common element in all these miscalculations is the familiar flaw in the left’s mindset—hubris, the absolute self-assurance that they alone know what is good for the rest of us. Disdainful of the concerns of regular people, supremely confident that, even in their dotage, they should make choices for us that we can’t be trusted to make for ourselves, their unshakable faith in the ability of government to order our lives better than we can.

As I said, it’s getting late. There may still be time. Perhaps at least their hubris about Mr. Trump may prove justified. More likely, nemesis awaits.

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Netanyahu’s Bold, Realistic Plan for ‘the Day After Hamas’

Gazans appear ready to rebuke the terrorists and work

with Israel to create a new governing body.

By Daniel Pipes

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month presented Israel’s security cabinet with a short document: “The Day After Hamas.” Its key passage states that Jerusalem plans to work primarily with Gazans to rebuild their territory. “Civil affairs and responsibility for public order will be based on local actors with ‘management experience,’ ” it says, and “not identified with countries or organizations supporting terrorism” or receiving payments from them.

In a step toward this program of self-rule, the Israeli military has begun an informal pilot program of what it calls “humanitarian pockets” in parts of north Gaza cleared of Hamas. These local governing bodies consist of community leaders, whose duties will include distributing humanitarian aid and revising school curricula.

The concept of Israelis working with Gazans is brave, bold and contested. It faces two main criticisms. First, the U.S. and other governments want to hand Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, which rules most of the West Bank and seeks Israel’s destruction. Second, many Israelis and Palestinians alike insist that Jerusalem won’t find those “local actors” to work with.

Yet Mr. Netanyahu’s plan, and the optimism implicit in it, is correct. The proposal envisages a decent Gaza run by decent Gazans. That isn’t inconceivable. It recognizes that Gazans have endured 17 years of unique hell: exploitation by their rulers as cannon fodder for public-relations purposes. Unlike other dictatorial regimes, which sacrifice soldiers for battlefield gains, Hamas sacrifices civilians for political support. The more misery Gazans endure, the more convincingly Hamas can accuse Israel of aggression and the wider and more vehement its global backing becomes.

A trove of evidence, however, suggests that Gazans reject being used as pawns in the terror group’s strategy. Two surveys taken before Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre signal that Gazans want to live normal lives.

One, conducted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in mid-2023, found that 61% wish that more Israeli jobs were offered to those living in Gaza and the West Bank. Sixty-two percent want Hamas to preserve the cease-fire with Israel, and 67% believe that “the Palestinians should focus on practical matters, . . . not on big political plans or resistance options.” Seventy-two percent say “Hamas has been unable to improve the lives of Palestinians in Gaza,” and 82% agree that “Palestinians should push harder to replace their own political leaders with more effective and less corrupt ones.” Eighty-seven percent find that “many people are more preoccupied with their personal lives than with politics.”

The second survey, taken by Arab Barometer days before the war began, found that “the vast majority of Gazans have been frustrated with the armed group’s ineffective governance as they endure extreme economic hardship.”

These findings have been borne out on the ground. Since Oct. 7, videos have shown crowds of Gazans chanting “Down with Hamas,” cursing Hamas leaders, and proclaiming: “The people want to end the war. . . . We want to live!” Hamas’s stealing of humanitarian aid has likewise reportedly provoked local anger and tension.

The same resistance has begun to break through in popular media. Live interviews of Gazans on Arab media networks often inadvertently broadcast sentiment critical of Hamas and its state backers. In a Nov. 5 interview with Al Jazeera, an elderly, wounded man said of Hamas members: “They can go to hell and hide there.” The journalist cut him off.

These and other data points indicate that many Gazans want to be liberated from Hamas. However hostile to the Jewish state, they desperately want to move on from their present squalor, even if that means working with Jerusalem.

Israel, therefore, can reasonably expect to find many cooperative Gazans ready to establish a new governing authority capable of taking on a range of tasks, from policing, utilities, municipal services and administration to communications, teaching and urban planning.

A decent Gaza will require tough Israeli military rule, overseeing a tough police state along the lines of what exists in Egypt and Jordan. In those countries, citizens can lead normal lives so long as they stay out of trouble and refrain from criticizing the ruler. Under such conditions, Gaza could become decent and economically viable. As others such as Singapore and Dubai have shown, democracy isn’t necessary for such a project to succeed.

If the Israelis have the acumen and stamina to make this happen, they will have retrieved something positive out of tragedy.

Mr. Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum and author, most recently, of “Islamism vs. the West: 35 Years of Geopolitical Struggle.”

And:

Ballistic Missiles Allow Iran to Act More Boldly

It has fired them into Iraq, Syria and Pakistan, and Israel is

within their roughly 900-mile range.

By Behnam BenTaleblu

While the world focuses on the threat posed by Iran’s growing nuclear program and its terror proxies, Iran’s ballistic-missile program is underwriting the expansion of both. Over the past decade, Iran has transformed much of its ballistic-missile arsenal, the largest in the Middle East, from mere tools of terror to battlefield-ready systems. Iranian missiles are more precise, mobile, lethal and abundant than ever before—giving the regime more dangerous options when it wants to throw its weight around.

Iran spent decades mastering the art of covert and deniable military action by using proxies. It still does that, as we’ve seen since Oct. 7, but Iran also has a newfound confidence, which has reduced its threshold for the use of overt and attributable force.

Since 2017, Iran has engaged in at least 11 separate ballistic-missile operations from its own territory against Kurdish, U.S., Islamic State, Baluch and other targets and interests across Iraq, Syria and Pakistan. Iran is likely to use these missiles to respond to any serious or perceived provocation in the future. Citing this newfound missile power, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said in 2018 that “the enemy knows if he hits one, he will receive 10.”

In January, Iran launched four medium-range ballistic missiles at Syria in response to Islamic State attacks. Though the strike was on Syrian territory, the projectiles also sent a message to Israel. Their stated range of 900 miles is roughly the distance between Iran and Israel, and the missile’s name—Kheibar Shekan or “Breaker of Kheibar”—invokes the destruction of a Jewish stronghold in seventh-century Arabia by the prophet Muhammad’s armies.

In 2023 the regime claimed to have developed its first-ever hypersonic missile and celebrated with a poster in Persian, Arabic and Hebrew proclaiming that it needed only “400 seconds” to strike Tel Aviv. In late 2021, Tehran built a mock-up of Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona and struck it during a military drill using ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones. Iran also fired ballistic missiles at a mock-up of the Star of David in 2017 and has emblazoned anti-Israel slogans on a host of ballistic missiles.

These declarations and drills aren’t merely performative. Ukrainians and Israelis have learned the hard way not to play down the irredentist or genocidal intentions of their adversaries. Leaders often mean what they say and will spend time and resources to effect ends they desire. No one has ever accused the Islamic Republic of shying away from telegraphing its intentions.

Some experts see the regime’s recent missile operations as sign of internal weakness and external limits. In response to Israel’s killing of an Iranian general in Syria in December, Tehran opted to launch missiles at what it alleged was a Mossad stronghold in Iraq—in reality, the missiles hit the home of a Kurdish businessman—rather than attack Israel directly. In this case, Iran used its missile capability to save face.

Better missiles don’t mean that Iran will become a conventional military power overnight, and the regime isn’t expected to shun its carefully cultivated proxy network. But the West should fear how Tehran might incorporate its improved long-range strike capabilities into a larger strategy in pursuit of its ideological goals.

Tehran is already taking advantage of its missile capability to provide cover for other escalatory acts against the U.S. and Israel. When Israel thinks about how to respond to Hezbollah’s attacks, it must take into account a deadly and potentially direct Iranian response. This, on top of Hezbollah’s Iran-supplied precision-guided munition capabilities, helps deter Israel and is keeping 80,000 Israelis from returning to their homes in the north. The missiles also distract from Iran’s nuclear progress, which could provide the clerics with the ultimate sword of Damocles to dangle over the Jewish state. To date, Israel hasn’t been able to stop either threat from advancing, largely because of the costs of a potential Iranian reprisal.

Tehran can also use its missile capabilities to limit the options available to its adversaries, forcing them into grudging accommodation. One need only look at Saudi Arabia, which for years was under a barrage of Iran-supplied missiles and drones via the Houthi rebels in Yemen and has settled for a not-so-cold détente with Iran.

As the gap between Tehran’s missile capability and its braggadocio narrows, the risk of harsh Iranian responses to threats grows considerably. Missile mastery has emboldened the Islamic Republic, making it keen to take more risks and to respond to fire with fire.

Mr. Taleblu is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

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Opinion | What We Learned From the Biden Family Depositions

by The Editorial Board

 • 

House Republicans have released transcripts of their depositions with Hunter and James Biden, and we’ve read them so you don’t have to trust what other papers don’t want to report. Far from Democratic claims that they show nothing wrong, the testimony confirms the story of political influence peddling and family profiteering. Even if he didn’t get a dime himself, Joe Biden willingly assisted his son Hunter and brother James in schemes to cash in on the Biden family name.

Under hours of questioning, Hunter and James acknowledged unsavory facts revealed by prior witnesses. Hunter finally admitted that former partner James Gilliar was indeed referring to Joe when he envisioned an equity partnership that included “10 held by H for the big guy” as part of a 2017 deal with Chinese energy company CEFC. This is notable after years of Democratic claims that the laptop on which this email was found was “Russian disinformation.”

Hunter also confirmed former business partner Tony Bobulinski’s testimony of a meeting that same year in Los Angeles with Hunter, James, Tony and Joe—in the midst of the CEFC deal-making talks. He didn’t “contest” former partner Rob Walker’s testimony that Hunter introduced Joe to the CEFC chairman at the Four Seasons hotel in New York.

He conceded former partner Devon Archer’s testimony that Joe showed up at business dinners that Hunter hosted in Washington’s Café Milano with Kazakhstan and Russian oligarchs, and that he put his father on speakerphone during other meetings.

Several witnesses have explained Hunter’s role as selling the Biden family “brand”—that is, his father’s influence in Washington. Mr. Archer, who sat on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma with Hunter, told the committee: “Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it.”

Mr. Bobulinski said Hunter’s speakerphone calls were engineered so Joe could impress would-be clients, “enabling the transaction.” A recent Politico piece about James Biden’s ill-fated venture with a hospital operator cited executives who said James invoked Joe while “wooing potential business partners.”

Yet even as the duo confirmed all this, they want the public to believe that testimony by the same witnesses about influence peddling is dishonest. Hunter said his father’s calls were merely coincidental bonding moments—doesn’t everyone put dad on speakerphone during business meetings? He said the “big guy” email was Mr. Gilliar engaging in “pie in the sky” dreams of working with a “former Vice President,” and that Hunter “shut it down.” He explained that Joe sojourning to Café Milano to say hi and order spaghetti was different than Joe coming “for” dinner.

Hunter didn’t claim his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions, but he did reveal a conveniently spotty memory. Hunter couldn’t recall reading the famous “big guy” email, or writing threatening texts, and he disclaimed knowledge of the origins of the $142,000 used to buy him a luxury car. (Mr. Archer said it came from a Kazakhstan oligarch.)

James claimed not to recall his specific interactions with Mr. Bobulinski during the CEFC deal, even as he insisted Mr. Bobulinski never met Joe—a claim contradicted by Hunter. Hunter blamed his faulty memory and bad behavior on being “out of his mind” at times on alcohol and drugs, yet he suggests his substance abuse never caused him to cross ethical lines when it came to his father.

Joe’s involvement with CEFC and the “big guy” email occurred shortly after he left the Vice Presidency. This suggests Joe thought his political career might be over and was out to make money in the Beltway habit. That was his right, but then why didn’t he say that in 2020? The facts from the House investigation show he lied to the public about the extent of his knowledge and involvement with the Hunter-James businesses.

The interviews verified that Hunter and James made a bundle from their overseas work, though both struggled to describe what they provided in return. Both men failed to provide compelling explanations for their Escher-like financial accounts, which often involved odd payments, wires and entities. The committee has found more than $20 million from foreign sources that went to Hunter, James and business associates.

***

Republicans plan to invite Hunter for a public hearing, and they may move to impeach President Biden. The latter won’t go anywhere in the Senate, and it could backfire politically by mobilizing Democrats in the President’s defense. They’d accomplish more by educating the public about the Biden family’s influence peddling, and letting voters decide if they want to reward it with a second term.

Finally

Letitia James Sacrifices the Rule of Law to Get Trump

Her dubious civil fraud suit is more damaging

to the market’s integrity than his conduct is. 

By Alleysia Finley

New York isn’t Venezuela, but its political system is going the way of Caracas. Whatever Donald Trump’s financial transgressions, they pale in comparison with Attorney General Letitia James’s desecration of the law in service of destroying a political opponent.

Last week, a New York appellate court rejected Mr. Trump’s petition to stay a legally dubious $454 million civil fraud judgment while he appealed the verdict. Ms. James is threatening to seize Mr. Trump’s properties if he doesn’t pay up by March 25. His appeal suggests he lacks the liquid assets to do so and might be forced to sell or mortgage properties.

It would be one thing if Ms. James were seeking restitution for victims. She isn’t because there are none. Instead she’s seeking financial penalties against Mr. Trump, which Democrats in Albany will spend on rewarding government unions and other political allies. This is the stuff of banana republics.

Ms. James ran for office in 2018 on the promise of taking down Mr. Trump. That she turned up evidence of inflated assets on financial statements he provided banks to obtain loans should have come as no surprise given his penchant for puffery. But her investigation into his vast business dealings failed to produce evidence of fraud.

No bank claimed to have lost money by lending to Mr. Trump, or to have been deceived by his financial legerdemain. Nor did any witnesses at trial say his alleged misrepresentations changed its loan terms or prices. Ms. James’s 2022 lawsuit lacked any evidence that Mr. Trump profited from any alleged wrongdoing.

A former Deutsche Bank risk manager testified at trial last year that the bank’s loan decisions were based on its own analysis, not Mr. Trump’s word. Banks know regulators can punish them for failing to do due diligence when underwriting loans.

Before the 2007-08 housing meltdown, banks qualified borrowers for larger loans than they could afford, often based on inaccurate financial records. Regulators later dunned them for slipshod underwriting. Yet Ms. James bizarrely argued that banks have somehow been victimized by Mr. Trump’s alleged misrepresentations even though they made money from the loans.

Because she couldn’t demonstrate that banks relied on Mr. Trump’s misrepresentations—a critical element of common-law fraud—she rested her case on a sweeping state civil fraud law known as Executive Law Section 63(12). The statute substantially mirrors federal criminal fraud statutes.

Yet in the interest of limiting freewheeling prosecutions, federal courts require proof of property loss or damage to prove fraud. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year in Ciminelli v. U.S.—a case involving New York public corruption—that misrepresentations aren’t enough. New York courts, on the other hand, have given a broad sweep to the state’s fraud law.

The state trial judge, Arthur Engoron, ruled on Feb. 16 that Mr. Trump’s false financial statements, no matter whether they harmed anyone, deserve to be punished. He required Mr. Trump to “disgorge” $355 million in “ill-gotten gains.” How did he come up with this figure? Financial legerdemain.

Ms. James hired a financial expert, who assessed the “interest rate savings” that Mr. Trump supposedly netted as the difference between what he paid and what he would have paid on his loans had his statements been accurate. The judge then tacked on the profit Mr. Trump putatively made on properties for which he submitted false financial statements.

On top of that, Judge Engoron added roughly $99 million in “pre-judgment interest” dating back to March 4, 2019—the day the attorney general launched her investigation—to punish Mr. Trump’s “corrupt intent or desire for personal profit.” Who cares that the lawsuit was motivated by Ms. James’s desire for political gain and government profit?

Ms. James last week jeered that Mr. Trump owes an additional $114,553.04 in interest to the state each day he doesn’t cough up the moolah. It could be argued that the grossly inflated penalties against Mr. Trump constitute ill-gotten gains for the state. Mr. Trump enjoys playing the victim, and Ms. James is more than enabling him.

If the judgment isn’t stayed or sharply reduced, Mr. Trump will have no choice but to dump his properties in a fire sale. Yet it’s doubtful Ms. James actually wants to seize those assets. That would require the state to operate and maintain them before auctioning them off, which it is manifestly incapable of doing. New York City public housing, Q.E.D.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers rightly argue that the state is trampling the rule of law by “unwinding complex commercial transactions between sophisticated parties” even when nobody has been harmed. What’s to stop the attorney general from doing the same whenever she disagrees with how a bank or business has valued an asset?

Ms. James says punishing Mr. Trump is necessary to preserve the integrity of the financial marketplace. But she’s doing more damage than Mr. Trump is.

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Biden Campaign Focusing on Going for 'Trump's Jugular'

By Matt Vespa

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Liberal Reporter Notices Something Odd About California's Democratic Primary Results

By Matt Vespa

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