NYT’s Apologist For Israel is No Longer a “Never Trumper”

“Is it time to drop the heavy moralizing and incessant doomsaying that typified so much of the Never Trump movement—and that rendered it politically impotent and frequently obtuse? Yes, please”

–Bret Stephens, The New York Times, December, 2024

“The man is crass but charismatic, ignorant but intuitive, dishonest but authentic.  The movement is patriotic—and angry.”

 – Bret Stephens, The New York Times, December, 2024

“Let’s enter the new year wishing the new administration well, by giving some of Trump’s cabinet picks the benefit of the doubt, by dropping the lurid historical comparisons to past dictators, by not sounding paranoid about the ever-looming end of democracy, by hoping for the best and knowing that we need to fight the wrongs that are real and not merely what we fear, that whatever happens, this too shall pass.  Enjoy the holidays.

– Bret Stephens, The New York Times, December, 2024

“We warned that Trump would be a reckless president who might stumble into WWIII.  If anything, his foreign policy in his first term was, in practice, often cautious to a fault.”

– Bret Stephens, The New York Times, December 2024

One of the reasons I’m having difficulty “enjoying the holidays” is the editorial writing of Bret Stephens.  His columns defending Israel’s brutal military campaign that targets sanctuary areas and so-called safe zones in Gaza are typically chauvinistic and bellicose.  Stephens supports any Israeli military option that “advances Israel’s national interests on all fronts.”  His lecture at Harvard last year argued that “taking out most, but not all, of Hamas is not enough,” which seems to justify the genocidal campaign that Israel conducts.  Stephens has never mentioned that this campaign targets Gaza’s hospitals and health infrastructure.  As for those who protest Israeli actions, Stephens calls them “Iran’s useful idiots” and anti-semites.

Now, Stephens has turned his attention to Donald Trump, and essentially argues that bygones should be bygones.  We are expected to forget his constant lies and “misleading claims.”  We are to give his cabinet picks the “benefit of the doubt,” although they range from miscreants like Matt Gaetz, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth to conspiracy thinkers such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard.  Trump constantly rails against “losers,” but his appointees represent a Hall of Fame of…..Losers!  They typically lack experience, and their common denominator is their “loyalty” to Donald Trump.  The fact that “loyalists” will denominate the cabinet selections in the judicial and national security areas is particularly troublesome.

Finally, Stephens’ reference to Trump’s foreign policy as “cautious to a fault” was simply risible.  There was no strategic coherence to Trump’s foreign policy, and President Joe Biden’s greatest successes were the reordering of U.S. national security policy, particularly the restoration of trust with our traditional allies.  In addition to reviving the European alliance, Biden built a virtual alliance with our allies and friends in the Indo-Pacific region, which bolstered our security and economic interests there.  Unfortunately, both Trump and Biden have given Israel a free hand in the Middle East where Israel is pursuing hegemony and, as a result, the United States is complicit in supporting Israel’s genocidal campaign.

Everything about Trump is crass and reckless, and there is no area of greater worry than the fact that Trump will have his finger on the nuclear button and has even proclaimed a willingness to use it.  The past several years found the mainstream media documenting Biden’s cognitive decline, but used its power to make the irrational statements of Trump seem rational.  The simple fact is that we are about to have a leader who is psychologically unfit, and whose mental health is clearly deteriorating. This could have some bearing on the issue of nuclear risk, which is not being taking seriously enough by politicians and pundits.  All of us should compare Trump’s interviews of the 1980s and the 1990s to the interviews over the past five to ten years. In the latter, there are rarely complete sentences; there is no sign of complex thought.  Trump’s vocabulary is thin to say the least, and his reasoning his loose.  He can’t finish a sentence and rapidly resorts to some kind of irrelevancy.

Lord knows what will happen if Trump ever receives that proverbial 3:00 a.m. phone call.  John Gartner, a psychiatrist who taught at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for nearly 30 years asks the right questions regarding Trump’s potential performance on that call.  Will he comprehend what is happening?  Will he be able to evaluate the veracity and the wisdom of he information and advice he receives?  And then there is the matter of Trump’s personality disorder, which finds him suffering from malignant narcissism, paranoia, and sociopathy.

Stephens urges all of us to drop the “lurid historical comparisons to past dictators.”  Sorry, but I can’t help thinking of the warning from the philosopher George Santayana: “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Meanwhile, Stephens says that we should “enjoy the holidays.”

The post NYT’s Apologist For Israel is No Longer a “Never Trumper” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.