Attention to the Unseen

David Frum writes: Republicans have decided not to publish a party platform for 2020. This omission has led some to conclude that the GOP lacks ideas, that it stands for nothing, that it has shriveled to little more than a Trump cult. This conclusion is wrong. The Republican Party of 2020 has lots of ideas. I’m about to list 13 ideas that command almost universal assent within the Trump administration, within the Republican caucuses of the U.S. House and Senate,…

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Forbes reports: Donald Trump continued to shift money from his donors to his business last month, as his reelection campaign paid his private companies for rent, food, lodging and other expenses, according to a review of the latest Federal Election Commission filings. The richest president in American history, who has yet to donate to his 2020 campaign, has now moved $2.3 million of contributions from other people into his private companies. The most recent expenses look familiar. The president accepted…

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Tim Alberta writes: Earlier this month, while speaking via Zoom to a promising group of politically inclined high school students, I was met with an abrupt line of inquiry. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand,” said one young man, his pitch a blend of curiosity and exasperation. “What do Republicans believe? What does it mean to be a Republican?” You could forgive a 17-year-old, who has come of age during Donald Trump’s reign, for failing to recognize a cohesive…

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Reuters reports: In a claim likely to intensify the controversy surrounding one of the most influential figures in the American Christian conservative movement, a business partner of Jerry Falwell Jr has come forward to say he had a years-long sexual relationship involving Falwell’s wife and the evangelical leader. Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and…

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James Downie writes: This time, the false hope started with the president’s press secretary. In a tweet Saturday night, Kayleigh McEnany told the world that Trump would announce “a major therapeutic breakthrough” on the novel coronavirus at a Sunday evening news conference. As the president took the podium, he echoed McEnany, promising a “very historic breakthrough … that will save countless lives.” The truth — not surprisingly — was different: Trump did not announce any breakthrough vaccine or miracle cure,…

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Avi Shlaim writes: At a press conference in the White House on 13 August, US President Donald Trump proudly announced the deal he had helped broker between the United Arab Emirates and Israel to establish full diplomatic relations. He lauded it as “a significant step towards building a more peaceful, secure and prosperous Middle East”. Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien told reporters that this deal should make the president “a front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize”. Reactions to this…

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The Washington Post reports: Soon after Louis DeJoy arrived at the U.S. Postal Service’s L’Enfant Plaza headquarters in mid-June, Mark Dimondstein, the veteran leader of the agency’s largest union, called to get on the new postmaster general’s schedule. He had urgent matters to discuss: The coronavirus pandemic was forcing widespread absenteeism among his 200,000 members. Protective gear was running low. The post office needed a plan to handle a historic crush of mail-in ballots. Dimondstein had spoken weekly with DeJoy’s…

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The Washington Post reports: Maryanne Trump Barry was serving as a federal judge when she heard her brother, President Trump, suggest on Fox News, “maybe I’ll have to put her at the border” amid a wave of refugees entering the United States. At the time, children were being separated from their parents and put in cramped quarters while court hearings dragged on. “All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said in a conversation secretly recorded by…

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The Daily Beast reports: In the final months of an uphill election fight, Donald Trump’s mind is on weed. The president and some of his team, already obsessed with the potential drop-off of various demographic groups that make up his battered coalition, have begun openly worrying that the drive to legalize or decriminalize marijuana might hurt him and fellow Republicans at the ballot box. According to two GOP strategists who’ve independently discussed the topic with Trump this year, the president…

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Silas House writes: When I worked as a rural mail carrier in the hills of southeastern Kentucky in the early 2000s, my route snaked along the most mountainous parts of the county. I forded creeks and climbed steep dirt roads. Sometimes I’d have to drive for five miles to get to the next house. I delivered everything, including cages full of baby chickens and new sets of tires. I saw the joy that a parcel of books, clothing, or music…

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The New York Times reports: In early February, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin invited two Republican members of the Postal Service’s board of governors to his office to update him on a matter in which he had taken a particular interest — the search for a new postmaster general. Mr. Mnuchin had made clear before the meeting that he wanted the governors to find someone who would push through the kind of cost-cutting and price increases that President Trump had publicly…

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The Daily Beast reports: A south Texas butterfly conservationist has a message for Steve Bannon and three others arrested on Thursday for fraud and money laundering in what the feds describe as a border wall fundraising scheme. “I just wish them well in their cavity searches,” says Marianna Treviño-Wright, executive director of the National Butterfly Center. Treviño-Wright was targeted by We Build the Wall late last year, when she sought to stop the construction of a barrier beside the center’s…

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