Newt Is Right December 3, 2022December 2, 2022 Yesterday: Reich is usually right — but was wrong: Biden’s not too old. (The alternative to a Biden candidacy is a s—t show that has Democrats spending a fortune fighting each other, leaving us depleted and divided three months before November 5, 2024, while their presumptive nominee, flush with cash, has had what could be a year-long head start. Sure we wish Joe were younger. He doubtless wishes it, too. But with age comes stature and experience — who else could meet with Xi having known him for 30 years? — and a team of 1,200 younger, vigorous appointees that has shown itself to be effective. With Joe, you’re not getting an octogenarian; you’re getting that team of 1,200 led by a wise, decent, deeply good-hearted octogenarian who has earned the trust of our allies around the world. And united them in thwarting Russia’s aggression. Why would you change administrations when so much is going well — jobs for anyone who wants one, lower drug prices, chip manufacturing coming back to the US, a decade of revitalized infrastructure and rural broadband teed up — and when progress is being made on the things we all agree need improvement? Why would you mess with that? Have you seen the SNL Horror Movie Trailer on this topic? Brilliant.) Today: Gingrich is usually wrong — but is right: Quit Underestimating President Biden. Needless to say, I disagree with all his premises. His party has long favored the uber-rich at the expense of everyone else and treated straight white Christian men as better than the rest of us. But as much as he dislikes the Biden administration’s accomplishments, he reminds us how much he has accomplished. On that much, he is right. DESANTIS From Robert Hubbell’s Substack: Rolling Stone reports that DeSantis has instructed his team to “keep quiet” about Trump’s dinner with Kanye and Fuentes. See Rolling Stone, Team DeSantis 2024 Keeps Quiet Over Trump’s Dinner with Kanye, Fuentes. The article is well-written, detailed, and balanced. But it is all about “inside baseball” in the political world—who said what, who is stabbing who in the back, and which way the political winds are blowing. So, what’s missing from the article? What’s missing is any comment on the fact that the governor of a state with a large Jewish population has chosen silence in the face of Trump’s socializing with two antisemites and a white supremacist. There is no sense from the author that DeSantis has done anything wrong, merely that he is calculating the political consequences of his every move. Really? That’s the story? Not DeSantis’s silence in the face of a groundswell of antisemitism in the GOP? Journalists are under no obligation to be cheerleaders for the Democratic Party, and they must be fair and balanced—to a point. When someone burns down a synagogue, the story is not what type of accelerant the arsonist used or how long the fire burned—it is that someone burned down a synagogue because of animus toward Jewish people. The story about Ron DeSantis’s silence in the face of Trump’s antisemitism is not how that decision will affect DeSantis’s chances of becoming president—it is that DeSantis is a calculating coward who will condemn antisemitism only if and when it benefits him politically—which makes him unfit to hold any public office. That’s the story Rolling Stone missed. Frank Bruni: Ron DeSantis’s God Complex Ron DeSantis Is An Optical Illusion