Look at how the Senate judiciary committee confirmation hearing into the Supreme Court candidacy of Judge Brett Kavanaugh turned into a circus on day one. It is standard procedure in the US that when the presidency changes political colour, the political makeup of the Supreme Court may also change as a result.
President Trump has accordingly nominated the conservatively-minded Kavanaugh. This judge resolutely focuses on the dispassionate exercise of the law and upholding the constitution. Admirably, he refuses to deviate from those principles into ideological or political partisanship. He would seem therefore to be a stellar candidate for the Supreme Court bench.
What was the left’s response to such a fair-minded, judicious and constitution-minded judge? It set out to destroy the confirmation hearing and his candidacy.
On the first day of the hearing, left-wing activists screamed, chanted and cheered more than 60 interruptions as the Democrats tried to get the hearing suspended altogether. More than 70 people were arrested. The atmosphere became so offensive that the judge’s wife was forced to escort her visibly upset young daughters from the hearing.
This wasn’t just hooliganism; it also showed signs of mental derangement. As the Washington Times reported:
“Over three days of hearings, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh has been accused of being an accomplice to criminal theft, of being complicit in sexual harassment and of using code words to suggest allegiance to racists. The careless hand gesture of an aide sitting directly behind him sent Twitter into a tizzy with speculation that she was secretly flashing a “white power” symbol to millions of people watching at home.”
Disgracefully, Senator Diane Feinstein, the judiciary panel’s senior Democrat, endorsed the anarchy. “Behind the noise is really a very sincere belief that it’s so important to keep in this country — which is multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-economic – a court that really serves the people and serves this great democracy.”
What this means is that that the only judges Feinstein would accept – and the only “people” she would serve – are those in her own ideological image.This is a position more suited to a banana republic. The behaviour by her side not only showed profound contempt for democracy. It also displayed pathological hatred of any opposing views.
Then there was the Aretha Franklin funeral. In a place of honour on the dais, seated near former President Bill Clinton, no less, was the founder of the Nation of Islam, the demagogic Louis Farrakhan.
Farrakhan, who has called Jews “satanic” and expressed his admiration for Hitler, is a virulent antisemite and anti-white, Black Power racist. He has said offensive things about women, gay and transgender people.
The left declare these attitudes “hate crimes”. They no-platform anyone who might express such views. Indeed, they no-platform just about anyone they can smear as a hate-monger. When leftists who were booked to speak at an event to be held by The New Yorker discovered that it would also feature an interview with Steve Bannon, they threatened to boycott it – as a result of which the editor cancelled the interview.
Yet at the Franklin funeral, the same kind of starry leftists remained firmly in their seats. For such people, it seems, the foulest and most disgusting hate-speech is nothing to get upset about if it is voiced by a representative of a “victim” group that they champion.
Then there was the McCain funeral. I rubbed my eyes at the repeated description of McCain as a “bipartisan” figure in stark contrast to the divisive incumbent in the White House. McCain reportedly spent an entire year planning his funeral to be what we saw staged – a political rally attacking President Trump.
Now, McCain was an undoubted war hero. Whatever you think about his political views (I thought most positions he took were profoundly wrong) he fully deserved a funeral celebrating his courage and character.
But this was not a funeral characterised by respect for the man who had just died. It was a choreographed event in which establishment grandees took to the microphone one after the other to denounce, in more or less coded fashion, Donald J Trump.
As one writer gloated in The New Yorker: :”It was a meeting of the Resistance, under vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows”, while for this Esquire writer, “John McCain’s funeral was a council of war, and it was a council of war because that’s what John McCain meant it to be”.
A funeral should be an occasion which brings people together in an atmosphere of love. This one set out to divide, and its message was one of hate.
And then last but by no means least, there was the article in the New York Times in which “Anonymous”, who the paper said was “a senior official in the Trump administration”, claimed that many of his senior officials “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations”.
It’s hard to know where to start with this travesty of journalism and insult to the intelligence. Most obviously, we have no way of judging the authority of what this individual has written since we have no idea who he or she is.
Second, “Anonymous” produces not one shred of evidence that Trump has done anything wrong. The complaint is entirely over his style, that “the President continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.” So what are these “misguided impulses” that these heroic officials are trying to thwart?
“He is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people”.
And the evidence for that is…? We are not told. His impulses are said to be “generally anti-trade and anti-democratic”.
So America is being hugely damaged by this president? Er, no; in fact, “Anonymous” acknowledges that many of the administration’s polices “have already made America safer and more prosperous”. Moreover: “There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.”
Apparently, though, none of this can be credited to Trump but instead…to his officials!
Oh dear.
The whole thing is beyond parody as a hyper-partisan, intellectually incoherent whinge. But the key point, and the reason why this was such an astonishingly stupid thing to write and to publish, is that it offers boastful proof of what Trump has alleged since day one – that he is facing a treasonous conspiracy by the official class in Washington DC to subvert his presidency. And the New York Times has now shown the world that it is part of this conspiracy against democracy. How stupid is that?
As Newt Gingrich has written, the article is
“the most stunning proof we have seen so far of the liberal media’s aggressive bias and the very real efforts by parts of the institutional establishment to undermine President Trump, the U.S. Constitution and the will of the American people.In its fervor to attack the White House – and influence the midterm elections – The New York Times happily eschewed basic journalistic standards and offered its page and waning credibility to a nameless, disgruntled, elitist coward who seems to believe he or she has the moral authority to ignore and undermine the elected leader of the free world.The collusion between this supposed senior administration official (who could be one of thousands of minor-but-experienced appointees) and the newspaper (which is the standard bearer of elite media power) is also clear evidence that members of the old guard, institutional establishment are working to protect old Washington power structures and prevent the changes that the American people elected President Trump to bring to our country.”
What do all these stupefying developments tell us? That the Democratic party is now the party of hate; that an axis of the American left and the official class “swamp” is now the biggest single threat to American democracy; and that a great swathe of the American establishment appears to have lost its collective mind.
Melanie
Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster and author - you can follow her
work on her website HERE.
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