Monday Briefing

The usual media malpractice, a lesson from the past, and our newest competition on Substack

• So the New York Times, and most of the major media, are dismayed by the Charlie Kirk memorial service, because religion and all that yucky stuff:

The funny thing is, I was reliably informed by the mainstream media that Trump had killed off the religious right in America. I wish they would make up their mind. (Why not, since they make up most of their “news.”)

Chaser:

• On a more important note than media malpractice, Hugh Hewitt and others voiced concern (which I shared to a small extent) that there was a risk that given the high passions of the moment the Kirk memorial might turn into the Republican version of 2002’s Paul Wellstone memorial, which degenerated into a grotesque partisan campaign rally that backfired badly on Minnesota Democrats, because it proved they had no class. Early on I could see it wasn’t going to happen with the Kirk memorial, chiefly because of the presence of devotional music and overt piety. But of course I suppose we are still awaiting the Turning Point riots throughout America that will no doubt start any minute now. . . (/sarc, in case anyone is wondering).

• We haven’t heard much lately about Trump’s designs on Greenland—whether to acquire it as a full-fledged U.S. territory, or just gain greater American access to its minerals and strategic position against Russo-Chinese encroachment in the Arctic.

Once again an episode from the past may put the matter into a different light. I’ve been reading Tom Gallagher’s excellent biography of Antonio Salazar (Salazar: The Dictator Who Refused to Die), Portugal’s long-time leader who chauvinist Western thinkers have always carelessly grouped with Franco, Hitler, Tito, and other dictators. Salazar may qualify as an “authoritarian,” but it’s a bad rap. I won’t go through the revisionist story here, but instead want to limit myself to one passage from the book that parallels our current concern with the strategic balance in the Arctic. Salazar actually kept as much distance as he could from Franco, and especially Hitler, but being a small country in an important location Portugal was not in a strong position to resist pressure from either side. Let’s pick up Gallagher’s narrative at this point:

It was the attempt to preserve control over Portugal’s dispersed territories which probably occupied the bulk of Salazar’s time during World War II. The fate of the strategic mid-Atlantic Azores was perhaps his main concern. Germany’s plans for their seizure have already been discussed. Long before the U.S. entered the war, President Roosevelt publicly expressed strong interest in their fate. He declared an unlimited national state of emergency on 27 May 1940, and, in a radio address that evening, stated: “Unless the advance of Hitlerism is forcibly checked now, the Western Hemisphere will be within range of the Nazi weapons of destruction. . . Equally, the Azores and the Cape Verde islands, if occupied or controlled by Germany, would directly endanger the freedom of the Atlantic and our own American physical safety. . . Old-fashioned common sense calls for the use of strategy that will prevent the enemy from gaining a foothold.”

So maybe Trump’s perception of the strategic importance of Greenland is not far-fetched or without precedent after all. (Note: neither Germany nor the Allies ever did occupy the Azores, in part because Portugal effectively deterred the Germans from making a move.)

• Save up for this: Kamala Harris has started her own Substack! So far it consists of a single excerpt from her new book 107 Days, whose official publication date is tomorrow. I suspect it will take 107 days to get through it even with lots of coffee.

Meanwhile, pass the popcorn while we take in the Washington Post’s reporting about the bad reception the book is receiving already:

Published excerpts from Kamala Harris’s new book are sparking pushback from prominent Democrats who are among Harris’s likely opponents if she decides to run for president again in 2028.

Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg told Politico on Thursday that he was “surprised” by Harris’s analysis that he would have been a risky pick as her 2024 running mate. And a spokesman for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro pushed back on Harris’s characterizations of their meeting when he came to see her for his interview as one of three finalists for the job. . .

The best part, though, is the revelation of how out of touch she was on election night:

Her team felt confident that they would win, in part because their internal analytics had found that they were ahead in all the battleground states as of the previous Friday. . . “We had plans for all kind of contingencies — that Trump might win Pennsylvania and claim premature victory, that we might win narrowly and Trump’s supporters would react with violent rejection of the result, that the count might drag on for days. We’d planned for everything, it seemed, except the actual result,” she writes.

Here is the “icing on the cake,” quite literally:

Harris’s social secretary peeled icing that read “Madam President” off the cupcakes that had been ordered for the occasion, and sent them out to the campaign staffers, along with wine.