Gail Collins: Bret, there’s a lot of serious stuff to talk about today, but I want to deal with my dog problem first. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota is publishing a new memoir that she perhaps hopes will give her a shot at being named Donald Trump’s running mate.
Bret Stephens: An instant literary classic, albeit with an unintentional variety.
Gail: In it, she brags about killing her dog Cricket for a series of bad behavior. Will it harm her prospects? After all, Trump is not the animal lover you think.
Brett: When I first heard about this, I thought there must be some explanatory detail that the mainstream media was missing. But it seems Cricket’s crime is that he prefers the taste of chicken to pheasant. The outrage grew, as I gathered words Seth Tupper of South Dakota SearchlightNoem’s shooting of Cricket is less than her subsequent killing of a goat in pure rage.
Gail: There must be a lobby for goat lovers out there.
Brett: In the same memoir, Noem claimed to have met Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, which never happened. Maybe she’s confusing him with North Dakota governor Doug Burgum? Anyway, I don’t think she’ll be the next Republican vice presidential nominee, because even Trump knows he needs to surround himself with more competent liars.
Gail: Well, this gives me another chance to say I’m sorry for spending so many columns mocking Mitt Romney for transporting his dog to Canada on the roof of his car. I was mainly trying to find some entertainment in an extremely boring presidential campaign, but Noem gave Mitt a chance to say “I didn’t shoot my dog,” and he did. take it.
Brett: Gail, moving from the absolutely ridiculous to the absolutely horrifying: campus protests.
I know we’ve discussed this in recent weeks, but I want you to better understand the political implications. It’s hard to see how the unrest wouldn’t hurt President Biden while elevating Trump, in the same way that campus unrest in the 1960s devastated Hubert Humphrey’s campaign. , which gave us the chaotic Chicago Democratic convention and helped elect Richard Nixon.
Your comment…
Gail: Let’s talk about the protests first. I live a few blocks from Columbia, and on the night of the big confrontation, I listened for a long time to the police sirens and the pounding of police helicopters flying overhead. It doesn’t represent any serious violence, but the atmosphere is very… 1960s.
I suspect even many adult voter observers, like me, are on board with the idea of students speaking out on important political issues. Don’t think the protests are fundamentally anti-Semitic, but of course worry that it might get there, even if the bigoted protesters are a small minority.
And the university’s decision to call in the police, including at least one guy who thought pulling out a pistol and accidentally firing it was a good plan, was something even worse.
What do you think?
Brett: I fully support free speech on campus, including speech that I dislike or despise. I do not support students flouting reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner of their protests. Or let them occupy, demolish and destroy buildings. Or disrupt normal campus life and opening ceremonies, forcing classes to be cancelled. Or block other students from walking on campus or clash with protesters. Or admit suspicious bystanders into their protests. Or ignoring university administration deadlines that ultimately led to police being forced to deal with the unrest.
Gail: I think I can see the tendency of your thinking…
Brett: And I certainly don’t support them creating an atmosphere in which a lot of Jewish students – most of whom certainly identify as Zionists at least insofar as they believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist – reported feeling threatened and harassed. If another minority group had been made to feel this way by campus protesters, we would have a very different national conversation.
I think we tend to romanticize the protest movements of the 1960s while forgetting that there was a lot of evil associated with them – including groups like the Weather Underground. I wonder if these protests will produce something similar.
But back to politics here…
Gail: Okay, I’ll defer to further debate, except to say that the old protest movement created a generation of Americans who believe they have a moral obligation to take strong views on political issues. political and social rights, including civil rights and women’s rights.
Brett: Correct. And I would be more charitable towards the current protest movement if I saw them stopping to condemn Hamas.
Gail: But moving on, I have to admit that this whole spectacle is not going to help Biden. Although I appreciate him standing up for free speech last week. Moderate or likely voters who wouldn’t bother voting are not likely to be rallied by it. On the other hand, I don’t see many people hesitating watching the protests and saying, “This convinced me to vote for Donald Trump.”
Brett: I absolutely can.
Gail: Go on …
Brett: IM worry. The president’s condemnation of the student protests was correct: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, closing schools, forcing cancellation of classes and graduation ceremonies – no None of this is a peaceful protest.” But it seems a day late and a dollar short. He took a strong pro-Israel stance after October 7 and should stick to his original beliefs, like my new hero, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. Instead, Biden seems confused: more controlled by events than in control of them. I fear shades of Jimmy Carter.
Gail: So we disagree, while perhaps agreeing that there are worse things in the current political world than Jimmy Carter.
Brett: It has nothing to do with the second term of the Democratic Party incumbents! But then there’s Trump, who is more like Shades of Hades.
Have you followed his trial?
Gail: Yes, and it was definitely a show – the return of Stormy Daniels! Is Trump just bragging in court or trying to hide the shaking in his boots?
Brett: From what I could see, he was mostly dozing.
Gail: What I can’t imagine, however, is that whatever is going on there has political implications. We all know this guy is this guy. His supporters happily overlooked far more terrible things than political gain to prevent a sex scandal.
Brett: Totally agree. The trial so far feels like one big reiteration of everything we already know about a sordid cast of characters we will soon forget. For example, the last time I thought about Michael Avenatti and Michael Cohen was when they went to prison. Meanwhile, polls show Trump beating Biden in every state ranging from Arizona to Wisconsin. Do my liberal friends ever think that all these challenges might help Trump?
Gail: Well, you can’t help but do them, right?
Brett: No more. That doesn’t mean it’s wise to do it in the first place.
Gail: I’m not as negative about Biden’s chances as you are – the country is doing very well, the president is both a successful non-Trumper and a good leader in his own right.
What worries me the most is the age issue. Listening to Biden give a perfectly reasonable short speech about the student protests, I couldn’t help but focus on how old he looked.
Brett: And sound. And walk away.
Gail: Maybe he just needs a big moment — Biden delivering his State of the Union address isn’t an old man, he’s a major leaguer. Just hope he has enough of those moments. I know he’s not always excited about presidential debates, but it could be an opportunity.
Brett: Right now, the only person who can save us from Trump is… Trump. He did himself a huge disservice debating Biden in 2020, just by being rude and disingenuous. Maybe this year he’ll do the same thing. He could also have chosen a lousy running mate like Kari Lake, or continued to loudly fight for the January 6th looters. Or maybe he really will end up in jail and alienate a large number of non-MAGA voters.
But I have my doubts. So what do we do if he wins?
Gail: I decided not to think about it. Let’s focus on his sex scandals, trials – remember, the Stormy Daniels story is just the beginning – and god knows what he’ll pull out before we We approach these summer conferences.
Cheer up, Bret. The best and the worst are yet to come.
Brett: You remind me of an old joke. What is the difference between optimistic Jews and pessimistic Jews? The pessimist says, “It can’t get any worse than this.”
The optimist replies: “Oh, maybe.”
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