Trump aims at the wrong enemy
The Friday Letter / No. 536 / April 14, 2023
Second Sunday of Easter
Updated at 8:43 a.m. EDT. The original post incorrectly identified Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader. He is Minority Leader
The headline at state-friendly Business Insider was journalism as usual: “Ron DeSantis backed deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare while in Congress. Trump is ready to hammer him for it ahead of 2024.”
This is the go-to arrow in the Democrats’ quiver. It’s worked in the past. They figure it will work again.
When election time rolls around, like clockwork they spook old people into believing that Republicans will cut (probably even eliminate!) their Social Security payments.
Leftists have enjoyed this ploy for so long that even they must marvel at its enduring value. But it's a sad day when Trump's political action committee – that is, Trump himself – uses this tired and wholly dishonest claim against one of its own. Democrats couldn't be happier, having someone else carry their water.
Quoted in a cnn.com piece, Trump calls DeSantis “the man who wants to cut Social Security and Medicare” and “a wheelchair over the cliff kind of guy, just like his hero, failed politician Paul Ryan.”
If Republicans harbor fantasies of winning in 2024, they don't need this political canker sore. Facts are stubborn things, Reagan liked to say. Let's review some.
It's true that in Congress, DeSantis voted for a non-binding resolution that would raise the full Social Security retirement age to 70. Anyone who doesn't believe that this will be a mandatory eventuality isn't dealing with reality.
Here is how a writer at PolitiFact – no fan of fair treatment of conservatives – analyses a commercial for DeSantis' primary opponent, Adam Putnam, in the 2018 primary election for Florida governor:
“DeSantis did vote on nonbinding budget resolutions that called for raising the retirement age and slowing the rate at which future spending would grow. Whether that is a 'cut' is debatable.”
Putnam's campaign said DeSantis voted for three budget resolutions proposed by the Republican Study Committee from 2013 to 2015. All three failed. The resolutions were only a plan, not law.
An analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget explained that the “premium support system,” had it become law, would have applied only to new beneficiaries as of 2019. It included this policy statement:
“Current Medicare benefits are preserved for those in or near retirement.”
What the Putnam campaign failed to acknowledge was that the proposals were designed to save Social Security, not steer it into bankruptcy as will occur in a few years absent changes.
The Putnam campaign plagiarized the Democrat playbook to create its misleading claims. And that is exactly what the Trump PAC is doing today.
It's difficult to understand Trump's thinking here. Trump doesn't need to take pot shots at DeSantis to keep his base. His base is secure. But with new reports showing something like half the electorate registered as independent, he needs to focus his attention on them. His support is rising among blacks, Latinos, Asians, and even Muslims – ethnic groups that are culturally conservative.
Trump needs the suburban and single women vote, and he won't get it by continuing to do what brings out the worst in him: attacking DeSantis and replaying his grievances about 2020 in an endless loop. His surrogates can remind voters of the stolen (yes, it was) election. He's got to take the high road.
He will also need DeSantis, not as his running mate but as his energetic supporter and successor.
He showed signs of taking that high ground this week in his interview with Tucker Carlson. Asked about Biden's fitness to serve, Trump acknowledged what the entire country knows, that Biden isn't fit to serve.
“Look, I watch him just like you do, and it would be almost inappropriate for me to say,” he told Carlson.
It's not about age, Trump said in noting that Bernie Sanders, older than Biden, is lucid, of sharp mind, capable and competent. It was the most diplomatic tone we've yet heard from him. This is exactly what the fence-sitters need to hear.
A lot of smart people with opposing and concurring viewpoints are writing about the country's best chance of saving itself in 2024. Here are four to consider.
"The Painful Reality of Trump the Candidate” by Rod Thomson at American Greatness.
“Trump Should Fight Fire with Fire” by Paul Ingrassia at American Greatness.
“Trumpism without Trump Is a Media Illusion” by Eddie Scarry at The Federalist.
“Bragg's Farce and the Path to 2024” by Hicham Thome at American Greatness.
More of the same?
McConnell, recovering from a brain concussion suffered in a fall, dismisses rumors of his impending retirement, saying he looks forward to returning to the Senate. The sharks are already swirling, however, and the lineup doesn't look good for constitutional conservatives.
Three Senators have already started their campaigns. The least liberal is John Barrasso of Wyoming, who gets a 72 percent favorability rating by the conservative ranking project Heritage Action for America. The others are Uniparty Republicans: John Thune of South Dakota (65), and big-spending neocon John Cornyn of Texas (69).
McConnell is the least conservative of all three prospective successors at 62 percent.
Rick Scott of Florida (96 percent) got only 10 votes when he challenged McConnell for Senate Minority Leader at the start of the session, for which McConnell sacked him as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Short takes on the news
The Federalist
U.S. corporations cut dividends and fired employees while giving billions of dollars to race-hustling shakedown groups. Among them: AT&T, Boeing, General Motors, Uber, Bed Bath & Beyond, and UPS. “. . . these and other corporations transferred more than $340 billion to anti-American radicals and their pet causes,” the Claremont Institute report says.
Beneficiaries include the NAACP, National Action Network, Equal Justice Initiative, and Color of Change, all affiliated with pro-violence, anti-police Black Lives Matter.
The Blaze
A leftist lawyer rejected for a federal appeals court seat in the last Congress gets a new Biden nomination and may be confirmed. Nancy Abudu has been strategist for the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2019. She has advocated violence against the police. She has no judicial experience.
One of her fellow lawyers at SPLC, Thomas Webb Jurgens, was arrested last month for throwing Molotov cocktails and committing other acts of violence at the proposed Atlanta Police training center.
Abudu said the arrests of Jurgens and other political extremists “are part of ongoing state repression and violence against racial and environmental justice protestors, who are fighting to defend their communities from the harms of militarized policing and environmental degradation. Each of these instances, including the many protestors charged with domestic terrorism, make clear that law enforcement views movement activists as enemies of the state.”
Quick picks. As the world crumbles, Biden tells an Ireland audience that the greatest threat facing the world is climate change. . . .
Announcements: Larry Elder, Republican, former radio talk show host and recently candidate for California governor, for president. . . .
A Nashville flower shop refuses to serve a Republican National Committee event, blaming Republicans for the murder of three children and three adults at a Christian school by a psychotic leftist infected with sexual dysphoria. . . .
An ex-Obama staffer says he's ready to testify that Joe Biden, as VP, was involved in the Burisma kickback scheme. . . .
A fanatical LGBTQ group issues a “travel advisory” to homosexuals planning to visit Florida. . . .
The new normal in political discourse: Leftist fanatics take a lesson from their fellow malcontents in Tennessee, storming the Florida House after it passes bill to ban abortions after six weeks. . . .
Great strides in statesmanship. Ousted and then reinstated Rep. Justin Jones, who took part in the mayhem on the Tennessee House floor last week, was arrested in a 2020 George Floyd riot near the state capitol for assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, disrupting a meeting, disorderly conduct, criminal trespassing, obstruction of a passageway, and aggravated littering. One of his stunts was to jump up and down on a police car. A Democrat judge dismissed the charges. . . .
Great moments in cluelessness. Anheuser-Busch is surprised at the backlash from cowboy beer drinkers over its new cartoonish cross-dressing pitchman, er, pitchwoman. Whatever.
. . . Remember the 1971 Pentagon Papers release. Leaked top secret documents from the Pentagon throw the administration and pro-war neocons into a panic, revealing that the U.S. has combat troops in Ukraine, claiming that Ukraine is losing the war badly, and erasing any doubt that we are now in a direct war with Russia. The leaked papers detail rumors of a plot to overthrow Putin, said to be getting chemotherapy treatment for cancer. . . .
Oh, you sexist pigs. Senate Democrats call for Diane Feinstein to resign because she's keeping them from rubber stamping Biden's leftist judicial nominees. They appear unbothered by John Fetterman's absence.
Headline of the week
“Family Arriving for Easter Service Surprised How Different Church Looks Without the Christmas Decorations” – Babylon Bee
To contact Steve: stephencombs@substack.com. The Friday Letter is published in the op-ed section of USSA News. Ask your friends to read the Friday Letter and sign up for a free subscription. It's easy: Just go to fridayletter.us.