There WAS No Cherry Tree July 7, 2025 But first . . . ZOHRAN MAMDANI If you happen to be a New York City voter, I think he deserves your consideration.* > The anti-Semitism charge is bogus: witness this quick video from a young Israeli American. > His inexperience and the impracticality of some of his proposals are real, but so are his talent, vision, energy and decency: see his appearance on Meet The Press. Andrew Yang’s analysis, I think, is spot on: If elected, Mamdani will need to learn fast, adapt, and make really smart appointments. And even then it will be a hugely tough slog. This is New York City after all. The mayoralty is never easy, even when there’s a normal president (like all those of my lifetime until now) who believes in common decency and the rule of law. Mamdani says — and seems truly to mean — everyone is welcome in New York City. (By contrast, Idaho bans ‘Everyone Is Welcome Here’ Classroom Signs.) Given the unfortunate alternatives, and the badly needed excitement he’s generated among disaffected young people and almost everyone who meets him, I think he’s the right choice. *The one important edit I would have made – she uses the term genocide, which is wrong. War crimes, arguably, which is bad enough — but genocide is the intentional extermination of a whole people (just ask the ghosts of 6 million Jews or 500,000 Rwandan Tutsis), which Israel does not now nor ever has intended. All Hamas would have to do to end the nightmare is surrender — as Germany and Japan once did. And all they would have had to do to avoid a single death was to accept Israel’s voluntary 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and build a thriving, peaceful society instead of an underground military complex bent on Israel’s eradication. YOUR MONEY Many — most? — U.S. stocks are overpriced. One newsletter I read (without upgrading to the paid edition as of yet) is Slow Money by a devotee of Benjamin Graham (Warren Buffett’s mentor). Among much else in this latest letter is the discrepancy between ADP’s gloomy employment data and Trump’s: For example, on Wednesday, payroll giant ADP announced that the private sector had lost 33,000 miles in June. A day later, however, the Labor Department reported that 147,000 new jobs were added that month, more than half of these in the private sector. Is the economy really solid, then? Is the Trump Golden Age upon us? Are we not, as has been asserted here so often, trapped in a stagflationary vortex in which every penny of economic growth is borrowed—and then some? Well, the answers now depend on if you trust the government or the private sector. Of course I’d bet on the latter, because doing so would (finally) put me in the company of JP Morgan Chairman Jamie Dimon, who last month told analysts he doesn’t trust the official numbers . . . If you come to my site for occasional crazy speculations, consider James Scurlock’s for the opposite. THAT CHERRY TREE Invariably, after I post something, I have afterthoughts I wish I had included or things I had said more clearly. The conclusion I now wish I had included yesterday (“The Most Popular Bill Ever Signed In The History Of Our Country”) would have read something like this: The fever will surely break. People will surely come to see that constant lying and disregard for the law works in North Korea and Russia (except for those who live there) and worked fine in 1930’s Italy and Germany (until it didn’t). But constant lying and disregard for the law are not what we aspire to here. Ever since biographer Mason Weems invented the myth of George Washington and the cherry tree, Americans have been taught that honesty and decency and responsibility are American virtues. Humility, I would argue, is another. One of the dozens of differences between Trump and George Washington is that where Trump invents his own self-aggrandizing myths — daily — George Washington never invented even that famous one. It was added to the fifth edition The Life of Washington in 1806, seven years after his death. Trump lied endlessly — and still lies — that Biden’s victory in 2020 was rigged. Isn’t it odd, I suggested yesterday, that when Democrats were IN power, they were unable to rig anything and twice handed the presidency to Trump . . . . . . but when they were OUT of power, they somehow made it appear Biden won by 7 million votes when “everybody knows” Trump won by a landslide? Yes, Trump’s own chief of election integrity deemed it “the most secure election in American history,” yet he gulled many of his followers into shouting “STOP THE STEAL!” at every occasion, not least when they went to hang Mike Pence, thinking they were engaged in righting a grievous wrong when in fact they were committing one. So Peter Stolz suggests we chant REPEAL THE STEAL non-stop between now and the mid-terms, referring to his Big Ugly Bill that will rob the hungry of food, deny the sick health care, and add trillions to the National Debt — all in order to help billionaires and millionaires. They presumably won’t repeal it. And have designed it so that much of the steal only begins to hit after the mid-terms . . . . . . but REPEAL THE STEAL, Peter argues, should be part of a constant drumbeat. Let me know whether you agree.