Notes on the Way

Goodbye Justin, Tony's alternate reality, shameless Schumer, Mr. Lucky, terrorists are citizens too

---

It looks as though Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won’t get to serve as governor of America’s fifty-first state after all. With the Canadian economy in bad shape, his approval ratings in the toilet, and a scheduled election in October that will likely return the opposition Conservative Party to power, Trudeau is said to be on the verge of stepping down as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party. Twenty-four members of the party’s parliamentary contingent have called for his resignation and indeed, the announcement may come before I finish writing this note. As indeed it has. I feel confident in predicting that Justin Trudeau, the Peter Pan of Canadian politics, will not be missed.

No decent interval is being observed in the foredoomed attempt to rehabilitate the Biden Administration’s truly disastrous foreign policy. In an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times, outgoing Secretary of State Anthony Blinken insisted that he and Biden made “all the right calls” on Afghanistan, Ukraine, the Middle East, et. al. Regarding the former, Blinken said that “I make no apologies for ending America’s longest war. This, I think, is a signal achievement of the president’s.” He went on to claim, hilariously, that the Great Afghanistan Skedaddle “actually strengthened our position around the world.” Seriously, Mr. Secretary? Seriously…?

Soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer didn’t like it when NBC News’s Kristen Welker challenged him over his disparaging comments about special counsel Robert Hur’s report on the investigation into Joe Biden mishandling of classified material. Hur concluded that there was probable cause to believe that Biden had violated federal law. But he added that he would not bring charges, citing the President’s age and evidence of cognitive decline. Schumer hotly denied that he’d misled the public about Biden’s condition—not very credibly given what he said a year ago when Hur’s report was made public. At that time, Schumer dismissed it as “right-wing propaganda” and went on to say of the President, “His mental acuity is great, it’s fine, it’s as good as it’s been over the years.” These falsehoods were echoed by many other Democrats, not to mention by much of the media. Now, of course, we know that they were gaslighting the American people. Joe Biden wasn’t fine at all.

Today, Donald J. Trump’s election as president was certified by a joint section of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate presided over by Vice President Kamala Harris, his defeated 2024 rival. The certification places an official imprimatur on the most astonishing comeback in American political history, and it will occur four years to the day after the Capitol Hill riot that many assumed would certify the end of Trump as a factor in American politics. But instead, Trump became the second person to be elected to nonconsecutive presidential terms—despite the events of January 6, 2021, despite lawfare, despite a hostile press, despite two assassination attempts, despite the ponderous baggage he lugs, despite his mercurial temperament, uncertain judgement, and frequently intemperate rhetoric. This moment of history will be the subject of study and controversy for years to come. For now, however, it may suffice to say that Donald Trump has got to be the luckiest man alive.

Finally, on the Substack front, I was taken to task recently on Notes for describing the NOLA terrorist—whose name I will not mention—as an Islamofascist terrorist who’d pledged allegiance to ISIS. Now, that comment seemed to me to be unobjectionable, if not a genius of the manifest. But the times being what they are, I received pushback from a commenter, no doubt of progressive views, who snottily informed me that the dead terrorist was also an American citizen and a veteran. To this gratuitous b.s. I responded that a terrorist whose crime fits the constitutional definition of treason forfeits the right to be called an American. Also, having disgraced the uniform he’d worn, he forfeits the title of veteran. Indeed, to apply the title veteran to a terrorist who killed fourteen Americans is simply an outrage. To this my interlocutor replied that “facts are facts.” Indeed they are. But to paraphrase Mr. Orwell, some facts are more equal than others…