James Comey + Taylor Swift August 19, 2025 But first . . . Fareed Zakariah: Alienating India is Trump’s greatest foreign policy mistake thus far. President Donald Trump’s sudden, inexplicable hostility toward India reverses policies pursued under five administrations, including his own previous one. . . . Enter Trump 2.0. With little warning, Trump has undone decades of painstaking work by U.S. diplomats. Trump has called India’s economy “dead.” In fact, for several years, India has had the fastest-growing large economy in the world (“in the second quarter of this year, India exported more smartphones to the U.S. market than China did’) . . . Read it and weep. Also . . . President Trump’s top informal advisor (now that Four Seasons Landscaping Giuliani and the My Pillow Guy are gone) . . . conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer . . . Congratulates Herself for ‘Personally’ Saving Americans from Hamas. Which she did not do. The headline for which she can take credit: US suspends Gaza visas after Laura Loomer criticizes admission of children for medical care. Isn’t that great? Denying desperate children medical care? HEAL Palestine, the Ohio-based nonprofit that organized the care, explains: HEAL Palestine . . . deliver[s] urgent aid and medical care to children in Palestine, including sponsoring and bringing severely injured children to the US on temporary visas for essential medical treatment not available at home. After their treatment is complete, the children and any accompanying family members return to the Middle East. This is a medical treatment program not a refugee resettlement program. Our mission gives children a renewed chance at life whether through life-saving surgery or the ability to walk again. US tax dollars do not fund this treatment. Guided by human and American values, HEAL is committed to offering hope and healing to the few young lives we can reach. And Laura Loomer will not stand for it. Not on her watch. And now . . . Carl sent three separate emails yesterday, hoping to set me straight. The last of which will bring us to James Comey and Taylor Swift — which you must not miss — but let’s take one at a time: 1. “Yes Andy,” Carl writes in bold face, “another of your toilet cleaners killed 3 people… If the victims were your friends you still wouldn’t give a Schiff!” Illegal-migrant driver in Florida make rogue U-turn, kills 3 The alleged semi-truck driver who killed three people while making a U-turn at an “Official Use Only” turn on the Florida Turnpike is an ILLEGAL MIGRANT who was granted a commercial driver’s license by the State of California. → But he’s wrong on at least two counts. First, like most progressives (or anyone else), I actually do care when people are hurt or killed and would be beside myself if they were my friends. Second, the conservative Cato Institute found that “in fact, illegal immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to be arrested or convicted for violent crimes, including vehicular homicide.” And the Center for Growth and Opportunity found that “extending driving privileges to undocumented migrants improves public safety.” It’s quite true that if we managed somehow to get rid of all undocumented immigrants there would be fewer traffic fatalities and less crime of all kinds. But that’s also true of rounding up all native-born Americans as well. Especially teenagers. Indeed, if there were none of us, there’d be no crime at all. I’m sorry Trump killed the long-sought, hard-won bipartisan immigration bill the House and Senate passed in 2023 so he could use the border crisis as a campaign issue. And I’m sorry that, ten years earlier, Republicans killed the comprehensive immigration reform that passed the Senate 68-32 and would have remedied the problem that much sooner. Almost everyone — including me — agreed with Carl that we needed to secure the southern border and address the immigration issue. Relatively few thought we should have masked men grabbing people off the street and denying them their Constitutional rights. That’s where Carl and I disagree. 2. “So Andy,” he wrote in response to my plug for The Pando Plan, “you want to make a better world? Give up your insane Democrat ideas and join America!” Insane Democrat ideas: Open borders. Increased regulation on business. Medicare-for-All. Abolishing the Electoral College, ending the legislative filibuster. Universal basic income. Defund the police. Trump is a fascist and Hitler. Men can be women if they say so. Men in women’s sports, locker rooms and bathrooms. Start with those! → Open borders is not “a Democrat idea,” it is a dumb idea espoused by almost no Democrats. Same with defunding the police. The right says it anyway and Carl believes it. There is nothing insane about regulation in general. Some regulation is insane and should be eliminated or adjusted; but much of Trump’s deregulation will make life worse for everyday Americans (though better for wealthy shareholders). Medicare-for-All is only insane if you consider the rest of the developed world, all of which has it in some form, insane. It’s not immediately practical to be sure, just as it would not be immediately practical for us to switch to the metric system; but hardly insane. Trump is not Hitler, but he is a fascist and an authoritarian. (Also an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon; twice impeached with a 57-43 majority of the Senate, including Republicans, voting to convict him.) Abolishing the Electoral College would just leave the choice of president to the voters, as we do for governors and mayors and senators and representatives — and few think that’s insane. Ending the filibuster has never been a plank of the Democratic platform. It does, however, respond to the frustration that people — of every political persuasion — feel that the country can’t get things done. Which is (sadly, but relatedly) why so many Americans now favor an authoritarian who simply ignores the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution. A majority of Republicans score high on the Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale, a measure developed in 1950 after the Second World War and our defeat of fascism. Many Democrats do favor modifying the filibuster, as has been done more than 160 times. Universal Basic Income is an idea whose time will come — throughout Europe by 2032, according to futurist Ray Kurzweil, and to the U.S. in 2038. Artificial intelligence and other advances in technology will both allow and require it. Allow it, because our productivity gains will provide enormous wealth; require it, because the things the world actually needs — like food and shelter — will no longer require a giant workforce. But this is nowhere in today’s Democratic platform. And of course men should not be able to compete in women’s sports. The issue of transgender athletes is more nuanced than Carl realizes or wishes to acknowledge — it would be easier for him if there simply were no trans people. But there are, so I’d like to leave that one up to the coaches and the NCAA and the Olympic Committee. Either way, it affects so few people, compared to, say, losing our democracy after 250 years, that I think we should keep it in perspective. 3. “You say: <<Trump’s daddy void….. see what you think.” To which Carl replies: BIZZAR OBSESTIONS! What do YOU think? James Comey raves about Taylor Swift in bizarre video | Fox News Video → So I was genuinely curious to see what Carl was referring to — and am now grateful to him for having shared with me. Whatever you may think of Comey — who arguably threw the 2016 election to Trump — if you can find 5 minutes, watch him “rave” “bizarrely.” It is diametrically opposed in tone to everything Carl seems to embody.