“This Is Their Time”
For a few hours last night, Armageddon seemed uncomfortably close, as the Russians attacked a nuclear power plant and set parts of it on fire. The good news is that the site seems secure for now, after firefighters put out the flames.
But the bad news was very bad indeed. President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of “nuclear terror.”
In real time, the tweets were… unnerving. Here was Ukraine’s foreign minister, warning that an explosion “will be 10 times larger than Chernobyl.” (Which was probably not true, but certainly focused the mind marvelously.)
Megan McArdle noted last night, “I feel like the point at which the dictator's troops are shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is the point at which we should probably stop debating whether he is simply a rational actor mounting a calculated, completely understandable response to NATO expansion.”
Meanwhile…
The former president of the United States called into the show hosted by the Conspiracy Theorist Formerly Known as the Money Honey, and had some thoughts.
“Do you expect China to invade Taiwan sooner rather than later?” asked Maria Bartiromo. “I do because they're seeing how stupid the United States is run,” TFG guy answered. “They're seeing that our leaders are incompetent. Of course they’re going to do it.
“This is their time.”
I am not making this shit up, people.
This was, as Tom Nichols put it: “[The] Former president encouraging our enemies to open war on two fronts.”
Mona Charen: “Trump essentially inviting a hostile power to destroy a vibrant democratic ally, kill God knows how many innocents, and crush freedom . . . to make his successor look bad?”
Yes.
Ukraine’s Unexpected Hero
Really, do yourself a favor and watch Tim Miller’ latest “Not My Party.”
I’ll wait.
Bill Barr: Then vs. Now
He’s promoting his book, but we have to admit this was pretty juicy and graphic:
Barr said Trump called him in to a meeting that day in his private dining room and questioned him about his comments.
Barr said he told Trump the Justice Department had investigated and found no evidence to support the various conspiracy theories that Trump and his legal team were pushing.
"He was asking about different theories, and I had the answers. I was able to tell him, 'This was wrong because of this,'" Barr recounted.
Trump listened, but "he was obviously getting very angry about this."
Barr said he told Trump: "I understand you're upset with me. And I'm perfectly happy to tender my resignation."
Barr said Trump then slapped his desk and said: "Accepted. Accepted."
"And then — boom. He slapped it again. 'Accepted. Go home. Don't go back to your office. Go home. You're done,'" he said.
This inspired a quick look back at Barr’s resignation letter, which was nauseatingly fulsome even by the standards of Trump-era sycophancy. Via Vox:
In it, Barr praises the president effusively, saying that he is “greatly honored that you called on me to serve your Administration and the American people once again as Attorney General.”
“I am proud to have played a role in the many successes and unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the American people,” Barr writes. He continues:
Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance. Your 2016 victory speech in which you reached out to your opponents and called for working together for the benefit of the American people was immediately met by a partisan onslaught against you in which no tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds. The nadir of this campaign was the effort to cripple, if not oust, your Administration with frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russ
Once again, it would have helped if Barr had told us then what he is telling us now.