Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. So much ground for us to cover this week. First up, Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor and the Republican Party’s nominee in the governor’s race. I don’t even know if we’re allowed to discuss the latest, er, revelations in a family newspaper ….
Gail Collins: Ah, Bret, that’s certainly one of the few advantages of the Trump era — never a shortage of topics that are too offensive to discuss. Here we have a crucial Donald Trump supporter in a crucial swing state who apparently once called himself a “Black Nazi.”
Bret: The “Black Nazi” part is almost the least of it. Let’s just say this is yet another case of self-declared morality being at variance with actual behavior.
Gail: And if you pursue the story, you learn that Trump once praised Robinson as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” which I found offensive even before there turned out to be so much more to be offended about.
Bret: What makes the story all the more remarkable is that this could hand the election to Kamala Harris. North Carolina was supposed to be in Trump’s corner, but the race was basically tied on the day the latest Robinson story broke. If Trump can’t win the state, it’s hard to see how he gets to 270 electoral votes. Who knew that karma is a porn site message board?
By the way, since we’re on a prurient streak, any thoughts on the story of New York City’s former Covid czar, Jay Varma?
Gail: Well, apparently while Varma was telling all New Yorkers to stay home to avoid Covid transmission, he and his wife were holding a sex party in a hotel and going to a huge underground dance party on Wall Street.
Rule one would be not to do something like that and rule two would be not to brag about it to people if you do. Varma has said he’s taking responsibility “for not using the best judgment at the time,” which is certainly an … understatement.
Bret: I’ve never met Varma, much less seen him undressed, but I’m just going to assume he probably wasn’t honoring the six-foot rule.
Gail: Pretty depressing for us New Yorkers who want to believe the city government can be efficient in times of crisis. But since we’re obsessed with the presidential election, at least we can be glad none of this happened in Pennsylvania.
Bret: For me, the larger import of the story isn’t the hypocrisy — that the rules they enforced to draconian effect on others, they felt free to ignore themselves. It’s that some of the rules were exactly the nonscientific nonsense that a few brave and much-pilloried critics, like Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya, said they were. It’s a story in miniature about why populism remains such a potent political force — and why Kamala Harris isn’t running away with the election, despite her fund-raising advantage. Or do you have a better theory as to why the race basically remains tied, despite the awfulness of Trump and his minions?
Gail: We’re in an era of repackaging — people don’t identify with the actual political parties much anymore. They get barraged by information online that just reinforces their existing prejudices. Without doing the critical thing the outsiders used to do, of pressing the insiders to create a whole new uplifting movement.
Bret: No doubt there’s a lot of truth to that on both sides of the ideological divide: I don’t think the MSNBC crowd is particularly better informed than the Fox News crowd, and they’re about equally dyspeptic. But I also think that the Varma story captures a lot of why so many people find Trumpism alluring: Ordinary people are furious at a liberal elite that talks the language of the public good but — like Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, dining maskless at the French Laundry restaurant — plays by a different and self-serving set of rules. Unfairly or not, Harris is seen by many people as typical of that elite.
Gail: But give Kamala Harris some more time — she’s got until November to sell her vision of a more compassionate government that taxes the rich, provides better services to the poor and raises up the middle with help on everything from housing to health care.
And of course Trump still has time to be spectacularly awful, over and over.
Bret: Most recently on the subject of Jews who won’t vote for him …
Gail: And wasn’t his latest disloyal Jews rant given to a crowd that was supposed to be rallying against antisemitism?
Bret: I don’t for a second believe that Trump is an antisemite: He has Jewish grandchildren through his daughter Ivanka and was probably the most pro-Israel president in history. But I also think he’s perilously clueless about classic antisemitic tropes, which lead him to make some spectacularly stupid comments. What worries me a lot more is his proximity to much more sinister and cynical figures like Tucker Carlson, who knows exactly what he’s doing when he offers a platform to a Holocaust denier. It’s yet another reason I’ll never vote for Trump.
Gail: Bret, this is about the time that I should be asking you to admit you’ll vote for Harris in November. Our readers certainly want me to keep nagging, but I’m gonna let you go this week. Just as a matter of principle, which will give me at least one sure topic next time around.
Bret: The suspense is killing them, right?
Gail: Unless, of course, you’re dying to volunteer ….
Bret: I’m still where I was last week: waiting for Harris to persuade me to vote for her. What’s wrong with asking her to sit down for a one-on-one interview with a serious journalist who will ask some tough but reasonable questions about urgent public policy matters? The same, of course, should be done with Trump.
Gail: You know I’m not gonna tell you that Harris is doing enough serious interviews with national reporters. She’s not. Neither, obviously, is Trump, but we have a right to hold her to a higher standard.
Bret: I just want reassurance that she is up for the job. Different subject, Gail: The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating story about a strange new type of gun owner in America: liberals. Turns out, according to a researcher cited by the Journal, that “gay and transgender gun owners worried about rising hate crimes and Jewish people feared potential violence from pro-Palestinian groups or individuals. Black gun owners shared similar anxieties, along with mistrust of police in some areas and concerns about crime.”
Wondering how you feel about this development, given your strong views on the subject.
Gail: We’ve been hearing a lot about Harris as a gun owner, too — something she clearly wants to stress as part of her see-really-I’m-not-too-liberal messaging.
Bret: More, please. She should pledge to increase defense spending by 50 percent over four years. It’s an investment in security and our industrial base — including a lot of unionized jobs. But back to the other kind of guns.
Gail: Here’s my bottom line: First, ban all assault weapons. Second, communities that want to keep guns out, like New York, should be protected by super-regulation of online gun sales. Communities that want to permit gun ownership should still keep careful track of where weapons are bought. And anyone who wants to own one should prove his or her respect for safety issues by passing a marksmanship test of skill in handling a weapon. Which would often require a serious gun-education program.
Seem fair?
Bret: Totally. I would also insist on every gun owner having gun insurance, just as every car owner has car insurance. It would curb a lot of terrible behavior, like letting your kids play with your guns.
Oh, and speaking of guns, wondering what you think of Trump’s argument that rhetoric against him is what’s responsible for the two assassination attempts.
Gail: Not much, given the fact that if Trump had been attacked by rabid panda bears, he’d have found a way to try to pin it on his political opponents.
Bret: I can hear him now: Chinabears.
Gail: Think about it, Bret. Can you think of anything bad that Trump doesn’t blame Trump critics for?
Bret: Nope. And it’s certainly rich that the man who brought presidential rhetoric to a historic low, who called the press “the enemy of the American people,” who never passed up a chance to insult and defame his critics, should now cry that his opponents have gotten dangerously mean. Pot-Kettle-Black.
Which reminds me: I hope our readers spend a few minutes with Mike DeWine’s powerful and important guest essay about Springfield, Ohio — lately in the news as the town where fictitious pets are eaten by imaginary immigrants. DeWine, who grew up near Springfield, is the Republican governor of Ohio and a Trump supporter, but he speaks powerfully on behalf of hard-working Haitian immigrants who are helping to bring a depressed city back to life. It’s a reminder that there are still a few prominent G.O.P. politicians with brains, hearts and spines. If only there were more.
Gail: Amen, Bret. Amen.
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