"A dedicated public servant"

New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer

The name of this newsletter is The Warning.

There are many media destinations to choose between where delusion, political idolatry, denial and propaganda are served up hot and cold 24/7, 365 days a year. This will never be one of them. 

I deeply believe that the United States of America is facing the greatest crisis to its survival since the Civil War. I am not alone in this view. It is shared by Ken Burns, America’s preeminent historian, documentarian and chronicler of America’s story. If it was within my power, I would find a way to sit down with every persuadable voter in America and personally read them Jeffrey Goldberg’s chilling account of General Mark Milley’s service as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Donald Trump. The danger is real, present and growing. There is a movement of fascists, nihilists, religious zealots, cynics, foreign powers, white supremacists and anti-semites who are united under the MAGA banner. They are well-funded, organized, and confident that they will return to executive power in the United States. If they do, the result for the country will be catastrophic.

The only institution in America capable of stopping this historic tragedy from taking place is the Democratic Party. Period. 

It must do better. It must stand for better. It must be the antidote to the filth, corruption, division, malice, menace and ignorance of the MAGA movement. It cannot excuse the inexcusable. It cannot tell its voters that up is down and down is up. It can’t lie as a first instinct and smear as the second. It can’t be a progressive version of the MAGA cancer. The Democratic Party must be our national chemotherapy. It must stand for cleansing the corrupted and broken system that brought Trump to power, and it must frame the issue in the only terms in which it can be framed, which is morally.

Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey was charged with bribery, along with his wife, Nadine Arslanian, in connection with improper foreign relations and business dealings. The federal prosecutors detailed payments and photographs of gold bars, cash hidden inside jackets and the sordid details of the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee whoring for the Egyptian government. There is another term for what Menendez did. The word is espionage.

Menendez with his wife Nadine (Francis Chung/Politico)

The charges are spectacular, the misconduct epic and the excuses banal. According to the senior scumbag from the great state of New Jersey this is all happening to keep Latinos down.

Here’s what he said:

It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere.

What a joke. 

Here is what Chuck Schumer said about the alleged criminal, who has been credibly accused of working for the Egyptian government. Incredibly, it occurred during the same week he eviscerated some of the last shreds of decorum in the US Senate, handing the insurrectionist party an easy turnover and layup. 

Bob Menendez has been a dedicated public servant and is always fighting hard for the people of New Jersey. He has a right to due process and a fair trial.

Senator Menendez has rightly decided to step down temporarily from his position as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee until the matter has been resolved.

His comments are despicable. They are unacceptable, and they help Donald Trump and his extremist cause because hypocrisy only accrues to Trump’s benefit. When the American people can see no difference between the two sides this is all over — for good. 

Robert Menendez, like all American criminal defendants, is entitled to the presumption of innocence. That is not the standard for service in the US Senate. He should either resign or be expelled. 

The Democratic Party must become hard in these situations. It must be ruthless. Menendez is more than expendable. Schumer’s political incompetence is becoming an unbearable weight for Americans who wish to see democracy preserved in America. 

While Schumer continues to celebrate Robert Menendez’s contributions to public service The New York Times remains curiously silent about the author of “The Road to Character,” David Brooks. 

Here is the tweet that started it all:

The Brooks’ story fell apart in seconds, and ultimately the abused company weighed in:

Is this a big deal, or is it something petty, stupid, dishonest and unimportant? 

Let’s go to The New York Times’ Ethical Journalism Handbook for the laugh:

In addition to this handbook, we observe the Newsroom Integrity Statement, promulgated in 1999, which deals with such rudimentary professional practices as the importance of checking facts, the exactness of quotations, the integrity of photographs and our distaste for anonymous sourcing; and the Policy on Confidential Sources, issued in 2004. These documents are available from the standards editor or on the Newsroom home page under Policies.

David Brooks misled hundreds of thousands of people on inflation, a volatile political issue. He brutalized The New York Times’ standards, but then again, they are brutalized every day by its access media political reporters like Maggie Haberman, whom Donald Trump refers to as his “psychiatrist.”

The MAGA movement feeds off of hypocrisy and corruption. It feeds off of stupidity and dishonesty, and especially dishonest stupidity of the type being exhibited by profoundly out-of-touch elites like Brooks and Schumer. 

With regard to Brooks and his book on character, The Guardian review seemed rather spot on when it described the book as a “smug search for the roots of good nature.” The review continued:

He tells us in The Road to Character that he has a “natural disposition to shallowness.” At full mea culpa throttle, he adds that he is paid to be “a narcissistic blow hard… I have to work harder than most people to avoid a life of smug superficiality.” In this book, at least, his struggle is less than successful. Brooks is a wealthy high achiever and — if this book is any guide — he doesn’t like himself very much. He dislikes the narcissistic society, “The Big Me,” of which he is a part, even more. So he wrote the book to reach for something more than happiness, he tells us, with an ironic touch of the self-centred, “to save my soul.”

The Road to Character is confused and contradictory. Brooks berates the lack of an inner life, in a culture in which he says, “the competition to succeed and win admiration is so fierce that it becomes all-consuming.” He argues we need “humility, sympathy, honest self-confrontation” to build character. His quest is to identify the virtues that help an individual to become “deep… rooted in something spiritual and permanent.”

Maybe Chuck Schumer can pick up a few copies for a grab bag gift at the Senate Democratic leadership salute to bid Robert Menendez farewell. After all, it would be a failure of character to show a lack of gratitude for his extraordinary service.

Do you want to know what the sum of the non-stop accumulating bullshit is going to be? 

Here is the warning:

It’s going to elect Trump. 

I’m worried, and you should be too. 

Politics is a brutal business when hope becomes the strategy. Chuck Schumer distinguished himself this week. He was Donald Trump’s most valuable player. He shouldn’t be.