Gail Collins: Brett, I want to talk about something pretty serious today, but first I want to solve the dog problem. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is publishing a new memoir, perhaps to improve her chances of being named President Donald Trump’s running mate.
Brett Stevens: It became an instant literary classic, albeit inadvertently diverse.
Gail: In it, she boasts that she killed her dog, Cricket, for a series of misdeeds. Will it hurt her future? After all, Trump is not what you would think of as an animal lover.
Brett: When I first heard about this, I thought there must be some obvious detail that the mainstream media was missing. But Cricket’s crime seems to have been that he preferred the taste of chicken to pheasant. As I learned from Seth Tapper of the South Dakota Searchlight, the greater outrage is directed not so much at Nomu’s shooting of the cricket as at his later killing of the goat in pure anger.
Gail: I’m sure there’s a lobby of goat lovers out there.
Brett: In the same memoir, Noem claims to have met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, although that never happened. Perhaps she was confusing him with North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum? I don’t think she will be the next Republican vice presidential nominee anyway. Because she knows she needs to surround herself with more competent liars, even Trump.
Gail: Now, this also gives me another chance to say I’m sorry for spending so many columns making fun of Mitt Romney, who went to Canada with his dog in a carrier on the roof of his car. . I was mainly trying to find a little diversion in a very boring presidential campaign, but Noem gave Mitt a chance to say, “I didn’t shoot the dog,” and he accepted.
Brett: Gail, we went from horribly ridiculous to ridiculously awful: campus protests.
I know we’ve discussed this in recent weeks, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on the political implications. Just as the campus riots of the 1960s destroyed Hubert Humphrey’s campaign, threw the Chicago Democratic convention into chaos, and helped elect Richard Nixon, so the riots uplifted President Trump while raising the stakes for President Biden. It is difficult to understand how it would not have such negative effects.
What is your opinion…
Gail: First, let’s talk about the protests themselves. I live a few blocks from Columbia, and on the night of the big crash, I could hear for a long time the wail of police sirens and the thud of police helicopters flying overhead. Ta. There was no serious violence, but the atmosphere was very 1960’s.
I suspect that even many adult voter observers like myself are sympathetic to the idea of ​​students speaking out on important political issues. I don’t think the demonstrations are fundamentally anti-Semitic, but I am certainly concerned that they could go that far, even if the bigoted demonstrators were a minority.
And the university’s decision to send in police, including at least one man who thought it would be a good idea to pull out a pistol and accidentally fire, was beyond bad.
what is your opinion?
Brett: I support freedom of speech on campus, including speech I dislike or despise. I do not support students who ignore reasonable restrictions on time, place, and manner of protest. Or for them to seize, desecrate, and destroy buildings. or disrupt normal campus life or graduation ceremonies or force the cancellation of classes. Or they may prevent other students from walking on campus or clashing with counter-protesters. Or they may bring in suspicious outsiders to participate in protests. Or, university administrators’ disregard for deadlines could ultimately force police to respond to riots.
Gail: I think I understand your way of thinking…
Brett: And I believe that so many Jewish students – certainly most of them who identify as Zionists, at least insofar as they believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist – are threatened and harassed. I’m definitely not in favor of creating an atmosphere where people complain that they’re being accepted. If another minority group were made to feel the same way by campus protesters, we would be having a very different national conversation.
We tend to romanticize the protests of the 1960s, but I think we forget that there were a lot of ugly acts associated with it, including groups like the Weather Underground. Will the current protests lead to the same thing?
Now, back to politics…
Gail: OK, without further discussion, the protest movements of old have led to a generation of Americans who believe they are morally obligated to take strong stands on political and social issues, including civil rights and women’s rights. All I have to say is that I created people.
Brett: Very true. And I would be more charitable towards the current protest movement if I saw them stop to condemn Hamas.
Gail: But moving on, you have to admit that this whole scene isn’t going to help Biden. Even though I appreciate him standing up for my right to free speech last week. The policy is unlikely to rally moderate or perhaps even disinclined voters. On the other hand, I don’t see many undecided people who look at the protests and say, “Now I’ve decided to vote for Donald Trump.”
Brett: You can totally do it.
Gail: continue …
Brett: worry. The president was right in condemning the student protests. “Vandalism, trespassing, smashed windows, campus closures, forced cancellations of classes and graduations, none of this is peaceful protest.” But I felt a day late and a dollar short. Since he took a strong pro-Israel position after October 7, he should stick to his original beliefs, like my new hero, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. If anything, Biden seems confused. He seems to be dominated by events rather than controlling them. Jimmy Carter’s shades are scary.
Gail: So, while we disagree, we probably agree that there are a lot of things worse than Jimmy Carter in our current political world.
Brett: A second term for Democratic incumbents is irrelevant! But then there are playing cards similar to Shades of Hades.
Have you been following his trial?
Gail: Yes, it is indeed a show – the return of Stormy Daniels! Is Trump just showing off in court, or is he trying to cover up his shaking in the boots?
Brett: From what I see, he mostly seems to be dozing off.
Gail: But I can’t imagine that what’s happening there will have an impact on politics. We all knew this guy was this guy. His supporters have happily ignored something far more terrifying than the political payback for preventing sex scandals.
Brett: Totally agree. The trial so far feels like a wholesale rehash of everything we already knew about a despicable character we’ll soon forget. For example, the last time I thought about Michael Avenatti and Michael Cohen was when they went to prison. Meanwhile, polls show Trump ahead of Biden in every battleground state from Arizona to Wisconsin. Have my liberal friends ever considered that all these trials might, uh, help Trump?
Gail: Well, there’s no reason not to do it, right?
Brett: No more. Not that it was wise to do them in the first place.
Gail: I’m not as negative about Biden’s chances as you are. The country is doing very well, the president is a successful non-Trump, and he is a good leader himself.
The only thing I’m concerned about is age. As I listened to Biden give a very reasonable short speech about the student movement, I couldn’t help but notice his apparent age.
Brett: And then there’s a sound. and walk.
Gail: Maybe he just needs a big moment — Biden, who gave the State of the Union address, was a major leaguer, not an old man. I just hope he gets to experience those moments to the fullest. I know he wasn’t always into presidential debates, but this could be an opportunity.
Brett: At this point, the only thing that can save us from Trump is…Trump. He did himself a great disservice by being so rude and nonchalant when he debated Biden in 2020. Maybe he will do the same this year. He could choose a terrible running mate like Kali Lake, or he could continue to vocally defend the January 6th attackers. Or maybe he really ends up in jail, alienating a significant number of non-MAGA voters.
But I’m wondering. So what if he wins?
Gail: I decided not to think about it. Remember, his sex scandal and trial, Stormy Daniels’ story is just the beginning. And lord knows what he’ll do in the run-up to this summer’s party convention.
Cheer up, Brett. The best and worst are yet to come.
Brett: It reminded me of the old shtetl joke. What is the difference between a Jewish optimist and a Jewish pessimist? A pessimist says, “It can’t get any worse.”
The optimist replies, “Oh, it can be done.”
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