Trump’s Second Term Approaches

◼ Hearings on Donald Trump’s key cabinet choices have thus far been a study in contrasts, but they seem headed toward the same denouement. Fellow senators gave Marco Rubio a lovefest in hearings about his appointment as secretary of state. Rubio took a preemptive step to quell MAGA skepticism of him with an opening statement declaring that “the postwar global order is not just obsolete” but “a weapon being used against us.” Pam Bondi got the usual fireworks around a nominee for attorney general, but to little effect. She was asked, rightly, to repudiate theories that voter fraud had swung the 2020 election, and demurred. She was asked, ridiculously, by Democrats to pledge not to weaponize the Department of Justice, and she responded with a denunciation of its present weaponization. But Pete Hegseth was the main event: Doubts remain about his personal life and preparedness for the job, but Senate Republicans are afraid of crossing the forces mobilized behind him. He was sharp and polished. Democrats are showing that they haven’t yet figured out how to handle Trump’s second term.

◼ In anti-Trump lawfare’s swan song, DOJ special counsel Jack Smith issued a final report on the January 6 investigation of Trump, just days after Manhattan’s progressive Democratic district attorney Alvin Bragg and his Tonto, Judge Juan Merchan, branded Trump a convicted felon by getting him sentenced—to no punishment whatsoever—on the jury’s guilty verdicts in the farcical “hush money” case. Much of the media highlighted Smith’s conclusion that he would have convicted Trump if the case had proceeded. Of course that’s what he thought: Otherwise he would not have brought the charges in the first place. To get to that conclusion, Smith had to reimagine the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling; had he been litigating before courts rather than issuing a fantasy version of his case to shape public opinion (and for the second time, following his 2,000-page proffer three weeks before Election Day), he would have less proof to work with. The report’s release was gratuitous and petulant.

◼ Joe Biden bade farewell Wednesday night to a nation that is already done with him. The final CNN poll of his presidency shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the job he did. He drearily recited fictitious accomplishments such as an expansion of broadband access that never actually happened. He took credit for Israel striking a peace deal that it obtained by resolutely ignoring his advice for over a year. He called for tax hikes on the rich, a mantra he has been repeating since the mid-1970s regardless of tax rates or economic conditions. He praised “our system of separation of powers” as if he hadn’t spent four years assaulting it. He could have offered some self-reflection or hard-earned wisdom, but instead—less than two weeks after giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to billionaire megadonor George Soros—he whined about “an oligarchy” supposedly taking over the country. Where Eisenhower once warned against an unholy alliance of industry and government, what irks Biden is that social-media giants stopped taking marching orders from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on what speech may be heard. At least we’ll hear no more of Biden’s.

◼ In the final days of the Biden administration, the FDA has proposed that the nicotine in cigarettes should be reduced to low levels. If cigarettes continue to bear punitive levels of taxation, it would be extremely expensive for people to make up their nicotine shortfall by smoking more. (It would also be dangerous: It’s smoking, not nicotine, that does such damage.) The Trump administration is expected to reject the idea, and rightly so. It would be an attack on consumer choice and a gift for black-marketeers.

◼ At this writing, the Supreme Court has yet to rule on TikTok’s challenge to the federal statute requiring Chinese-based ByteDance to divest or cease operating the social-media platform in the United States by January 19. (National Review joined an amicus brief supporting the law.) At the oral argument on January 10, the justices appeared unanimous in supporting the authority of Congress to prevent China from operating a business inside America to spy on Americans, even if that business is a media platform that engages in speech. Crucially, they appeared ready to defer to Congress’s assessment of the national-security threat. Justice Brett Kavanaugh opined that it “seems like a huge concern for the future of the country” to let China collect data on young people who may later go into government. Some justices were less convinced that Congress could regulate TikTok’s use of a content-recommendation algorithm even if ByteDance divests. The government defended such a measure as a protection against manipulation of the news. Donald Trump is furiously working to find ways to evade the ban, which (if upheld) should go into effect the day before he enters office. He shouldn’t. This will be the first test of his seriousness about backing up with action his hard rhetoric about the Chinese threat.

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◼ South Korean anticorruption investigators, this time accompanied by a thousand police officers, arrested President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday. His security detail had repelled officials when they tried to arrest him at his residence two weeks ago. Yoon has been suspended from office since December 14, when twelve members of his party in the National Assembly joined the opposition to impeach him for his declaration of martial law, which legislators had swiftly rejected. The deputy prime minister is serving as the acting president while the Constitutional Court decides whether to remove Yoon from office permanently. He may face a criminal trial as well, for attempted insurrection. His electoral win in 2022 was narrow. He was considered a lame duck after his party lost a landslide parliamentary election to the opposition Democratic Party last year. He reportedly had been musing with confidants for months about plans to circumvent the democratic process to stay in power. A win for constitutional democracy may be in the offing, but the risks to geopolitical stability bear watching.

◼ OnlyFans, the pornographic social-media subscription service, raked in $6.6 billion in 2023. The latest and most profitable venture on OnlyFans is the “sex competition”—the race to see who can have sex with more men, in a shorter time frame. After Lily Phillips went viral last year for having sex with 101 men in 24 hours, she committed to reaching 1,000. Soon she plans to train for the escapade by attempting 300. But Bonnie Blue, an OnlyFans performer famous for petitioning “barely legal” college men to have sex with her, beat Phillips to the punch in January when she had sex with 1,057 men in twelve hours. Other OnlyFans stars are worried that the arms race won’t end with 1,000 and that viewers and creators will demand and produce content that is yet more extreme. Five thousand in 36 hours? Ten thousand in one week? The alternative ideal has never sounded better: one, for the rest of your life, with frequency up to the two of you.

◼ Every conservative or classical liberal has been labeled “far right” at one time or another. That does not mean the Far Right does not exist. Jean-Marie Le Pen was a representative and leader of it. He ran for president of France five times (making it to the runoff once). He spoke warmly of Marshal Pétain, and critically of General de Gaulle. He was ambiguous about the Holocaust. He denied there were “mass murders.” One notorious Le Pen statement went like this: “I’m not saying the gas chambers did not exist. I haven’t seen them myself. I haven’t particularly studied the question. But I believe it’s just a detail in the history of World War II.” He hated liberalism, capitalism, and pluralism. To him, America was a “mongrel nation.” He called Nicolas Sarkozy, the French conservative, “the foreigner.” (Sarkozy is of partly Hungarian and Jewish heritage.) He said that France should join with Putin’s Russia to save the “white world.” And so on and so forth. Le Pen got to be too much for his own daughter, Marine, who found it necessary to split with him, politically. Lepénisme, as an ideology and attitude, may not be through in France, or elsewhere. But Jean-Marie is. Dead at 96. R.I.P.

◼ Bob Uecker watched more bad MLB games than most people have. He was the radio play-by-play announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers for all but the team’s first season in 1970. The Brewers are one of only five active teams never to have won the World Series, and despite a string of solid seasons recently were mediocre or terrible for most of their franchise history. No matter how they were doing, though; fans could count on turning on the radio and hearing Uecker. Always upbeat and energetic, even in his old age, Uecker was full of stories that could fill the space between pitches. His home run call—“Get up, get up, get outta here, gone!”—is a permanent fixture on a light-up sign beyond left field at the Brewers’ home ballpark. Born in Milwaukee and having played briefly for the Milwaukee Braves, he was beloved not only there. His 100 appearances on the Tonight Show, his roles in movies and TV, a memorable series of Miller Lite commercials, and his record of personifying the fun side of baseball for decades made him an American icon, not just a Wisconsin one. Dead at 90. R.I.P.