Ex-prosecutor: What Cohen/Manafort Really Means Who would’ve thought the conviction of his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, would be the good news for…
Ex-prosecutor: What Cohen/Manafort Really Means
Who would’ve thought the conviction of his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, would be the good news for President Trump? As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy notes, the admission by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, that Trump told him to pay hush money to two women, likely violating campaign-finance laws, is “the more damaging news.” Yet the Justice Department “has a history of treating serious campaign-finance transgressions as administrative violations, not felonies,” as it did with Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. And what happened here “is an infraction committed by many political candidates and often not even prosecuted.” Nor was it so egregious that it rises to “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the standard for impeachment. Though if Democrats take the House by a wide-enough margin, you can “expect that the Clinton rallying cry — it’s just lies about sex — will no longer be in vogue.”
Conservative: What Happens to the Left If Dems Lose?
Dems seem to “have the wind at their backs,” says Commentary’s Noah Rothman, though most pollsters are “hedging their bets” and suggesting the party may well fall short of retaking either house of Congress. If that occurs, “it is difficult to overstate the extent to which Democrats would suffer psychologically”: We’ll “hear that the House is hopelessly gerrymandered in favor of the GOP, voter-identification laws and other onerous burdens have yielded a ‘rigged system’ and the Russians tampered with vote tallies.” But while some despairing liberals will simply “withdraw from public life,” Rothman suspects “a sizable contingent” may “take a more radical course,” once “both the radical left and conventional Democrats believe their grievances are no longer receiving a fair hearing.”
Security desk: Annan Symbolized What’s Wrong With UN
The posthumous praise for former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who died Saturday at 80, is misplaced, argues Michael Rubin at the Washington Examiner: Simply put, he says, Annan’s tenure was “marked by cravenness, corruption and cover-ups.” Even before taking office, he was “in charge of UN peacekeeping in 1994 but dismissed warnings of an impending genocide in Rwanda.” And while he didn’t create the corrupt oil-for-food program in Iraq, Annan “subsequently tried to cover up the corruption and end any independent probes. Far from being a reformer, Annan proved himself a conspirator.” Plus, he confirmed the transformation of the UN Human Rights Commission “into a farce.” Says Rubin, “there’s no avoiding the truth: He was incompetent, corrupt or both.”
From the left: All Should Applaud Nazi’s Deportation
There’s been bipartisan acclaim for the deportation to Germany this week of 95-year-old Jakiw Palij, likely the last Nazi death-camp guard to be expelled from the US, according to The Washington Post’s David von Drehle. Palij’s deportation came 14 years after a court first ordered it, but he remained in his Queens home because no country would take him. Then “along came Trump, who finally made a priority of enforcing the deportation order” and “instructed his envoy to turn up the heat on Berlin to issue the required travel documents.” Hopefully, Germany will reconsider its intention of letting Palij die without a trial, “because his story is worth a hard look at a time when anti-Semitism is creeping back out of its swamps across Europe.”
Media critic: Go Ahead, Ocasio-Cortez, Ban the Press
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s banning of journalists from two public town hall events worked like a “summer spotlight,” contends Politico’s Jack Shafer. Meaning it only attracted “the buzzing, biting insects of the press” who “landed on her backside to give her a sting or two for excluding them.” Sure, the press corps’ “sense of entitlement doesn’t guarantee them automatic invitations to privately funded affairs, even if the subject is campaign politics.” But by the same token, while a movie distributor doesn’t owe critics an invite to a pre-release screening, “once the movie is out, he can’t bar critics from attending a free screening or a paid one.” Besides, “if Omarosa Manigault Newman has taught us anything,” it’s that “nothing is off the record, because everybody carries the equivalent of a mini-TV studio in their pocket.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
