TGIF: Everyone’s a Fraud

We’re hosting a fight! A debate onstage in Los Angeles on September 13. The question: has the sexual revolution failed? Details here. 

Now, to the news.

→ Always a good week for another indictment: Special counsel Jack Smith has indicted former president Trump, charging him with—what else?—conspiring and obstructing. Smith alleges Trump knew he lost the election but lied and said it was stolen “to erode public faith in the administration of the election,” among other things. As with all of Trump’s legal woes, it’s very hard to parse the truth from the hair-on-fire analysis you get in the mainstream press, conservative and liberal alike. The only outlet I recommend is Politico, and actually this statement from our friends at FIRE, which was useful in outlining the stakes. 

Definitely Trump tried to overturn the 2020 results and said many times that the election was stolen and tried to convince people to break laws to help him stay in power, but what if he genuinely believed that the election was stolen? He’s tricky, Mr. Smith. Anyway, congratulations to Yale’s 2023 graduating class for completing your final assignment: another Trump indictment. 

Meanwhile Trump continues to rise in the polls, with the latest one putting him at 54 percent. Ron DeSantis is at 17 percent. 

→ Yikes, Biden: The president’s approval rating is really low.

But given the competition, I’m not sure it means much. Like, Dianne Feinstein’s daughter now has power of attorney over the 90-year-old, but the woman is still a sitting senator. No one likes our leaders, but no one likes the alternatives either. And so, a proposal: Artificial Intelligence Feinstein and Biden take office. Let the flesh and blood retire. AI Biden can give a few comforting malarkey quotes, and we’ll be none the worse off. AI Feinstein will finally break that glass ceiling (the robot president one), and all young girls will be inspired also to upload their consciousness. I’m tearing up already.

→ Vivek Ramaswamy isn’t sure we know everything about 9/11: Republican presidential candidate Vivek this week is letting his freak flag fly and saying we should all ask some more questions about 9/11. 

“Do I believe our government has been completely forthright about 9/11? No,” Vivek said on BlazeTV. He later tweeted, “Al-Qaeda clearly planned and executed the attacks, but we have never fully addressed who knew what in the Saudi government about it. We *can* handle the TRUTH.” In terms of facts, for sure there are some weird coincidences, and of course I don’t trust Dick Cheney’s account of anything after what he did while we were duck hunting. As a campaign strategy, though, I’m not entirely sure the just asking questions about 9/11 route is Vivek’s winning path. 

Me? I actually can’t handle the TRUTH. And don’t want to know it. 

→ A really good DeSantis idea: DeSantis wants to make student loan debt dischargeable during bankruptcy—like any other loan—which would be an enormous relief for those drowning in student debt, which currently clings to you for life like a barnacle. The twist: he would put universities on the hook for it. “I think the universities should be responsible for the student debt. You produce somebody that can be successful, they pay off the loans, great. If you don’t, then you’re gonna be on the hook,” he said on the campaign trail. I like this a lot. Most of the people who want student debt forgiven argue that the government should do it all, that the truck driver’s taxes should cover that MA in Modernist Art. None of these activists would dare touch Harvard’s endowment (currently $53.2 billion as of June 2021) or any other university bank accounts. DeSantis is right. Free the student debtors. Raid the endowments. Make schools make their students employable, or at least, you know, functional. Let’s start there. 

→ Narrative violation: Miami is actually losing residents.