Mystery Deal Hard to Analyze Sans Details. FBI Arrests 5 in Plot Against White House UFC Event Sunday. Vance on ‘The View’ Today. UK’s Teen Social Media Ban. Maine Dads. And More
The U.S.-Iran interim agreement is the big news. But analysis is sidetracked because nobody knows what’s in the deal. The New York Post cover refers to “Trump’s Mystery Deal.”
Docusign. The deal was virtually signed by President Trump, who is now attending the G-7 summit in France, Vice President Vance, and Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The ceremony takes place Friday, but Vice President Vance indicated that the details could be released earlier.
Meanwhile, tentative interpretations are emerging. The opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal are a hub of analysis. “Trump, Cynicism and the Deal” is the headline on international affairs authority Walter Russell Mead’s column. Mead argues that the negotiations demonstrate both President Trump’s strengths and weaknesses:
The memorandum of understanding is, in other words, a thoroughly typical example of Mr. Trump’s second-term diplomacy. He is driving world events with an agreement that hasn’t been formally signed, whose specifics are unknown and whose prospects are at best murky.
Viewed from that angle, this deal exemplifies both the strengths and the weaknesses of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy. He is a master of political theater, producing, directing and starring in the greatest and most compelling spectacle of our time. Yet faced with opposition from serious and determined opponents, he often fails to achieve the kind of concrete results that mark the difference between a P.T. Barnum and an Otto von Bismarck.
For Gerard Baker of the same publication, the deal marks Trump’s foreign policy’s “return to realism”:
Not for the first time, we may be on the brink of a deal to end the war with Iran. If this one holds, President Trump is to be congratulated, not pilloried. He faces a choice between high-risk escalation with an uncertain outcome and cutting our losses with an imperfect deal….
The Hobbesian approach isn’t very idealistic. It doesn’t appeal to the American instinct for moral as well as material superiority. But the naked pursuit of our national interest is a surer route to the survival of our values than the fruitless chasing of unrealistic aspirations.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal sees the deal as President Trump staging a retreat. Daniel Pletka (whose punchy writing is always a pleasure) writes in a Substack column headlined “The Trump Problem“:
Perhaps it’s not as bad as it looks. And perhaps Donald Trump will be wise enough to do what’s necessary to eliminate the threat the regime poses. But it doesn’t look like that right now. What it looks like is that version of Donald Trump that had the courage to do what was necessary to stop Iran has lost out to the Donald Trump who got bored and gave up on a war that wasn’t going as quickly as he would have liked. That bodes ill for the future.
Well, maybe the reviews will be better when we know more. Oil prices have responded positively. President Trump warns Iran of “ultimate consequences” if the regime obtains nukes. Vice President Vance today faces a really hostile audience: the women of “The View”:
Vance is appearing on the program the same day his second memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, is released. The book focuses on his conversion to Catholicism and how his spiritual journey has shaped his public service.
Early Christians faced wild beasts in the Roman Coliseum. Vance faces the modern equivalent:
All six of The View’s co-hosts, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines, Alyssa Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro, are expected to be present in the New York studio for the live interview.
Not a Movie. The FBI has revealed a shocking plot to target President Trump’s birthday party/ UFC fight with drones and explosives. Five people have been arrested in connection with the alleged attack:
The multi-phase terror attack allegedly involved using explosive-laden drone aircraft to strike buildings in the vicinity of the event, sparking mass panic and driving the fleeing crowd toward a sniper team poised to pick them off, officials told Fox News Digital.
A “second wave” of attackers then allegedly planned to storm the White House gate, officials said.
A suspect told investigators the goal of the attack was to target “capitalist elites,” “billionaires” and politicians who received money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), according to the outlet.
The first arrest was made in Cincinnati. Several suspects had gathered in Fredericksburg, Va., to plan the attack. It’s customary to compare what’s happening in the U.S. today to the French Revolution. This looks more like the Russian Revolution. So far, the legacy media doesn’t appear to have jumped on this story.
“Gruesome Newsom.” “The few months of relative silence from Gavin Newsom have, unfortunately, come to an end,” writes James Billot in “Undercurrents,” the newsletter of Unherd. (Sorry, no link.) Billot is referring to Governor Newsom’s claim that he is being investigated by the Justice Department. Axios has a story on the “apparent probe” into Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
There’s more electoral news today. Georgia voters decide who advances to several high-visibility runoffs. The primary for a U.S. Senate seat features Trump-backed state Rep. Mike Collins and Governor Brian Kemp-backed former football coach Derek Dooley. The winner of the DC Democratic primary for Mayor, which today uses ranked choice voting for the first time, is almost assured of a November win—if that is, the District manages to figure out ranked choice vote counting by then.
Mamdani Moment? Democratic Socialist Janeese Lewis George, who is polling well, vows to overturn the fine on her campaign for illegally coordinating with unions to fundraise. A win for Lewis George could inspire President Trump to attempt a DC takeover. Which means that the white-haired ladies in my ‘hood who bang on pots and pans to “Free DC” might be further energized.
American parents will be watching the social media ban for under-16-year-olds in the U.K. that will begin next year. Telegraph columnist Isabel Oakshott supports the ban because “parents need all the help they can get.” “Starmer’s social-media ban is driven by pure hysteria,” counters Joanna Williams of Spiked Online. Libertarian Reason suggests that, based on evidence, the ban probably won’t work:
Britain is following Australia into a policy that has already struggled to keep children off social media, while forcing adults through intrusive age checks.
American Dads. The Wall Street Journal’s Bill McGurn has a great column (“Girl Dads Take on Maine“) on the fathers behind a Maine ballot initiative to protect female spaces from boys and men.
American Brother. The London Spectator has an amusing “Cockburn” column on LA Mayor Karen Bass’ brother Kenneth, who has joined defeated mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt in suing Mayor Bass for “reckless negligence” during the horrific LA fires.
American Tragedy. Here is the beginning of Rich Lowry’s column on Karmelo Anthony:
The system failed Karmelo Anthony — he stabbed someone to death and is going to jail for it.
If this doesn’t strike you as an injustice, you haven’t been paying attention to the voices defending the 19-year-old who was just sentenced to 35 years in prison for murdering another teenager at a high school track meet in Texas two years ago.
New Day. This is new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s first Fed meeting as head. Former World Bank President Davis Malpass to pursue a slate of reforms to rebuild market confidence.
A Novel Idea Worth Considering—For Both Sides. “America’s Birthday Isn’t About Trump” is the headline on the lead story at The Free Press. The byline is the outlet’s editors, who boldly propose:
Trump and his critics are making the president the focus of the country’s 250th anniversary. But Americans have so much more to celebrate.
Radical.
