News Burst: April 12, 2017 (Patreon)

Hey Fam,

I hope you’re doing well today! I apologize for the later-than-usual posting. Today was a bit of a shitshow, capped with me going home to get the postcards I’m gonna begin filling out and sending out to March’s $50+/month supporters. Realized I forgot my keys. Had to wait for Erin to come. Meanwhile, I kept buzzing my landlord. No response. Then he comes out right when Erin arrives. Pretty awesome.

Anyway, I’m so excited for you guys to see tomorrow’s episode. It’s part one of a two part series, it’s about 20 minutes long, it’s in the style of the Third Amendment video, and the topic is… well… you’ll see. I really, really hope you like it. I worked my ass off on it (and am going to be editing part two this evening!).

In case you’re in Southern California, remember that Dave Rubin and I will be at USC tomorrow night for a panel on free speech. There are a lot of people coming, but I think there may still be tickets available: aynrand.org/usc

A quick programming note: You will get a News Burst for the weekend written on Friday, but I’ll otherwise be somewhat MIA through the weekend. Erin and I are traveling to LA tomorrow for the USC event, and then we’re staying through the weekend in hopes that we find a place to live. Wish us luck!

Without further ado… the news!

Tillerson and Putin Don’t See Eye-to-Eye: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/world/europe/tillerson-putin-lavrov-russia-syria.html

My Take: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and apparently the meeting didn’t go very well. After two hours with Putin and some time with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, things with Russia seem perhaps even worse than they were beforehand, and at the very best, things remain unchanged.

Scarily -- and interestingly -- both sides maintain that conditions aren’t good, not only because of the brewing proxy war in Syria, but also because of other issues, including Ukraine, and even what appears to be taking place with North Korea (more on that shortly).

My big takeaway here is, does this basically put to rest the Trump-Russia connection thing? If the simplest explanation tends to be the right one, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that Trump wouldn’t dare do anything to agitate Putin, as it would put him at risk to be, say, blackmailed? If the Russians really had something, wouldn’t they use it by now? Likewise, if they were in cahoots -- if Trump and Putin were truly allies -- why would Trump enter into a proxy war opposite his friend, while sending his Secretary of State to his friend’s capital to talk about how bad their relationship is? Seems to me the narrative is disintegrating, but as usual, it’s impossible to really say what’s what.

Steve Bannon’s Marginalization Continues: https://www.axios.com/trump-kneecaps-bannon-2357096450.html

My Take: For those that haven’t been keeping up with this, the general gist is that Trump’s top advisor, the economic nationalist Steve Bannon, is apparently on the outs with Trump and his inner circle. Bannon has apparently been butting heads with Ivanka Trump (bad idea), her husband (also a bad idea), and Gary Cohn (eh). You can see the evidence in what’s happened in recent weeks. Bannon was clearly against the Syrian action; Trump’s talk on NATO (more on that in a bit) is an even bigger sign that Bannon’s power is waning.

Should Bannon remain marginalized and ineffective -- or quit or be fired outright -- there’s real trouble afoot, because Bannon’s nationalist message seems to have been the lynchpin in Trump’s victory, and plenty of Trump diehards know it. But this seems to be less about policy and more about personal interactions. Bannon is perhaps the single most-talked about policy advisor in presidential history. He was on the cover of Time. He’s all but indicated that he thinks he basically won the election for Trump. It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump doesn’t like that.

Keep an eye on this story. It could get interesting in the next few weeks. If it doesn’t, a cooler, calmer, and far less powerful Steve Bannon will emerge on the other end. And it remains to be seen if his own ego will keep him in check in a diminished position for long. My personal take is that Bannon isn’t long for the administration, especially if he doesn’t get along with Ivanka and Kushner, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Trump Now Likes NATO: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39585029

My Take: There’s actually not an incredible amount of substance to this story. It’s neither deep nor intricate. Instead, Trump has basically reversed course on NATO, once calling it a waste of space, essentially, and now claiming that it’s useful and no longer obsolete.

What this tells me is that Trump is sobering up. The Office tends to do that to people. While I don’t much care for or believe in the UN -- and think the world would basically be identical if it went away -- NATO is different. It’s an ancient alliance, by modern standards, and its usefulness has been renewed as our relationship with Russia continues to deteriorate. This seems like another sign, to me, that the Trump-Russia connection is either wildly overblown, or that Putin and Trump are playing a game of chess so elite that barely any of us can comprehend it.

The most likely outcome here is that NATO will continue to play a role in the years and decades to come, which I think is great. We should be allied with our European friends. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Republicans Nearly Lose Kansas’ Fourth District: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article144061274.html

My Take: A lot of Democrats are looking at the outcome of this race as a huge positive, and frankly, they have every right to. Ron Estes, the Republican, beat James Thompson, a Democrat, by seven points, 53-46. Why is that significant? It’s simple: Because Donald Trump won this district by 27 points. Five months ago. At the same time, the man Estes is replacing, Mike Pompeo (who is now CIA Director), won in November by 31 points.

Times are a-changin’, and while there’s a lot of reason for the GOP to be happy -- they held the seat, after all -- the fact that they really had to fight for it is a bad sign for the midterms in 2018. This piggy-backs on the story I shared with y’all on Monday, which indicates that there’s some Republican pessimism heading into 2018, specifically with how Trump’s unpopularity can hurt the GOP in the House, specifically.

It’s too early to read much more into this -- we’re like 17 months from the midterms, and anything can happen 1,000 times in between now and then -- but this may be a canary in the coalmine.

The Democratic Agenda Has Been Sanders-ized: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/dems-populist-agenda-sanders-trump-237114

My Take: This is an interesting read, because it signals that the Democrats maybe -- just maybe -- are finally starting to understand why they got walloped in 2016, and are willing to do something about it other than blame everyone and everything but themselves. Wisely, it seems that they are going to be taking some pages from Bernie Sanders’ playbook, albeit not too many. You don’t want to go too far to the left.

Instead, the new platform is apparently being brewed in order to “unite” the Clinton and Sanders wings of the Democratic party, two groups of people who don’t much care for each other, and two groups of people who blame the other group for losing to Trump. Either way, there’s a populist and isolationist rhetoric across both parties that can work for both extremes, and the Democrats are looking to amp-up the more moderate rhetoric of Clinton with something that will presumably excite the more liberal, younger base that will be essential for the Democrats to cultivate if they want to win in 2018, 2020, and beyond.

What will the final push look like? It’s impossible to say. Still, the story does seem to indicate a few guarantees, or at least things we should count on seeing when push comes to shove. The Democrats clearly have an opening to make huge gains in 2018 and 2020, and I’ll be interested to see if the hype matches reality.

Are the Navy SEALs Training to Kill Kim Jong-Un?: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4405000/US-Navy-SEALs-killed-Bin-Laden-target-Kim-Jong-un.html

My Take: It sure as hell looks like it! As Trump sends towards the Korean peninsula what he describes as an “armada” meant to deter potential missile and nuclear tests that may be executed in the coming days and months, it’s been confirmed that SEAL Team 6 -- who infiltrated Pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden some years ago -- is now going to be practicing in Korea. Hmmm… I wonder why...

With the homogeneous nature of North Korea in particular, and the insulated status of Pyongyang, it seems highly unlikely the SEALs can operate in North Korea with any degree of secrecy. But, these are men who are the very best at what they do, and it’s not inconceivable that this entire conflict can be ended with a whimper -- a bullet through Kim’s head -- as opposed to missiles and bombs and thousands of dead. Their inclusion in practice operations can simply be to scare North Korea and drum up international support, or it can be something more actionable. We simply don’t know right now.

What we do know is that it surely seems something may go down with North Korea soon. Ships being sent over and US and South Korean troops conducting exercises isn’t unprecedented by any stretch of the imagination, but Donald Trump has never been our president before. Plus, word is China is starting to get pissed off by Kim’s nonsense, too, and has even stationed an enormous amount of troops on North Korea’s northwestern border, perhaps in anticipation of a refugee crisis should America act. We shall find out what’s what soon enough.