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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud conservative columnist and “Need to Know” podcast host Mona Charen for speaking the hard truth that too many on the right are willing to look the other way on President Trump’s personal behavior – and even the Roy Moore story – in an effort to achieve political goals. They also rip Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel for looking at the litany of mistakes and missed opportunities for authorities to stop the Stoneman Douglas shooting and flippantly concluding, “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, then O.J. Simpson would still be in the record books.” And they shake their heads as NBC interviews Ivanka Trump at the Olympics and asks her whether she believes her father’s accusers.
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Trump had parents who raised him, he was in the spotlight for decades, and people still voted for him. He wasn’t my pick, but he is the single best hope next to God I have right now from living in a sheer lunatic world. Mona has no power to make my life better or worse.
I don’t know what is gained by beating the dead horse of Trump was a womanizer. Should we demand he resign, be impeached, etc.? I thought he would be gone after the first primary and he wasn’t. I guess some won’t be happy until he is out of office, broke, divorced, ruined and erased from the history books like Matt Laur and others. The left is working on it already.
If he decides to go Clinton in office, then we’ll have a problem. But for now, so far so good.
It’s one thing to support Trump because he’s Not Hillary. (Was he the lesser of two evils in this regard? We know what a cynical, wicked rape-enabler Hillary was.)
It’s quite another thing to say that Trump’s behavior isn’t a problem because Party Unity. I seem to recall the PUMAs from when Hillary lost the primary to Obama. Maybe we’ve got the same thing on the right.
Gregg and Jim,
I am a bit disgusted with your comments in support of Mona’s bomb-throwing at CPAC. The people who attended this conference are for the most part, not strange hyper-conservative hypocrites as Mona would like to call them. They are primarily young. This means they have endured the relentless Chairman Mao’s red guard like indoctrination from the grade school level on. They have looked into the face of Obama’s 1.5% growth sick economy and what it means for their future.
If they are willing to ignore some of the present administration’s flaws because it has filled them with a renewed hope, I don’t think they deserve this kind of high handed criticism. Mona is living in a bubble. She needs to imagine what it must be like to be told from childhood on that there are 47 different genders and ten-year-olds should decide what gender they want to be so they can be permanently surgically altered. She ought to think about what it must be like to have an Obama administration on your back that murdered the economy with hyper-regulation and then announced that 1.5% growth was the new normal.
Mona could have made her points without the name calling and without the bomb throwing. She was intentionally combative and the crowd responded with a good-natured guffaw. If she wants to conflate that into some sort of bad faith behavior it is she who is in bad faith.
Regards,
Jim
The crowd, for the most part, responded like nasty fools. For once apparently, they didn’t like “hearing it how it is”. Seems only Trump can be intentionally combative. He gets cheered by that crowd. Mona didn’t conflate anything and she is acting in good faith.
Mona is the new Milo/provocateur of the Brooks Brothers Country Club Wing of the Conservative movement.
Edison,
Apparently so. It seems so strange that a woman as talented and seasoned as Mona would waste her time playing such a role. I think she has made a very bad choice but I am the last person she would ever listen to for advice. Inadequate resume.
She will rely upon those who will never tell her the truth.
Regards,
Jim
I stopped paying attention to Mona a long time ago. However, I was very dismayed to see this is a Good Martini.
I believe CPAC are the ones at fault.
Evidently(I don’t pay any attention to CPAC) the convention was a bit of a Trump celebration (again I am relying on the reporting) and if you invited a strident Never Trumper like Mona, then WTF did you think was going to happen. Did they honestly think they would convert her, or that she would go along with the Trump love fest and say nothing. Mona did what she has been doing ever since Trump got the nomination, telling the world(she is a pundit for goodness sake) exactly what she thinks of Trump …. and as anybody paying attention to what Mona has been saying should have anticipated …. she has only bad to say about Trump.
Which is to say, if CPAC did not want just such a negative incident(ie: Moan’s tirade) to bubble up at CPAC, then they should not have invited Mona Charon in the first place.
I also do not understand inviting Marion LePen . CPAC had to go way out of their way to invite a person which nobody even new of her existence other than her relationship with her grandfather and the nutty far right party of France. Why would that be useful to CPAC and the Conservative movement …. Why did they do that?
In Trumps defense from Mona’s attacks on him, if Mona were paying attention to the special Alabama Senate election, while Trump ended up endorsing Moore it was quite apparent Trump did so reluctantly only after it looked like Moore was flogging in the polls and all (R)’s were desperate to try to not lose the seemingly unlose-able Alabama (R) Senate seat. For Nora to pretend Trump was a big Moore supporter is disingenuous (which is a polite for “is a lie”)
Edison,
I don’t think I could blame CPAC for not granting Mona her glorious Trump bashing moment. CPAC is a venue for young conservatives. Why shouldn’t young conservatives be pumped up by Trump’s performance? The economy is up, they might get a job. Trump is fighting the culture war almost single-handedly for them. They might even get a graduate position at a university someday, wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants. Why shouldn’t young conservatives be pumped up by the Trump administration at this point? What else have they had in their life except being intellectually bullied from grade school on by the leftwing.
It’s Mona’s fault for assuming her virtue signaling tirade against Trump was appropriate at CPAC. They gave her some high spirited boos, that’s all. If she is so fragile maybe she shouldn’t go to events that aren’t completely controlled environments. You know ones that have live audiences. Perhaps Mona prefers the bubble. I really don’t know why. She is immensely intelligent. Unfortunately, the political climate has changed for the worse. When BHO could call ISIS, a merciless gang of genocidal murderers, the “junior varsity”, then you had to realize that things were out of control. We aren’t talking big government liberals anymore. We are talking Marxist/Jihadist sympathizers who haven’t a clue what Western Civilization is about and don’t care.
Mona is the one who needs to get reoriented. All that talent wasted on virtue signaling nonsense.
Regards,
Jim
I cant believe that nobody has yet to blame the poor showing of American athletes on global warming.
Its been to warm to practice! all the snow melted! the dog ate the homework!
While I agree that Trump has a shameful past with women that he, as far as I know, is unrepentant of, I am not his pastor or priest, nor am I his God, to whom Trump will ultimately have to answer to…and neither is Mona Charen. She has every right to say what she thinks of him and the crowd has every right to boo. She is not, however, breaking any new ground or revealing any new information about Trump that wasn’t already known from his books and TV persona before he ever decided to run for president. New allegations have come to light of additional extra-marital liaisons, but these, if true, only confirm the sinfulness that was already known.
My response to Mona and other Never-Trumpers when they retread over and over again what we all already know is – okay, now what? What do you want to happen? Impeach him? March him naked through the streets and throw tomatoes at him? 40 lashes minus 1? Make him wear a scarlet “A”? Force every one who voted for him to publicly denounce him?
I’ve grown tired of the lectures and the hectoring. It is beating a dead horse and it is virtue signaling. More and more it seems less about Trump and more about shaming conservatives and Republicans who don’t have the right/acceptable/virtuous enough response to Trump in the minds of Mona and other Never-Trump pundits, a response to Trump that accomplishes what, again? (still waiting for an answer to the question “okay, now what?”). Perhaps a little humility is in order. Let the pundit who is without sin cast the first stone. How about between now and the next election we pray for Donald Trump? He certainly needs it, as do we all.
I’m reminded again why I stopped listening to the Three Martini Lunch and unsubscribed from Jim’s newsletter.
Julia. per usual, you are totally on point.
The crowd was rude. Good Natured? Heavens! If these were people on the Left, the same people excusing them now would be calling for their heads. Trump’s policy are good. Check. The Left, as usual, is behaving badly. Check. This country is in some trouble, with the antics and downright creepiness going on today. We got it. But we just can’t let the childish behavior of the President of the United States go unremarked. We aren’t calling for impeachment. We are begging him to grow up, and start caring about the country he is supposed to be leading. Go Mona!!
Jim gets it exactly right. Mona’s just another spoiled baby-boomer woman. She should try maintaining her sanctimonious attitude while trying to get a first job out of college in a 1% growth economy. Nobody who’s not already comfortable cares what Donald Trump tweets about or who he beds. Thumbs down, Martini boys!
Part of the problem with keeping the “jerkiness” of the President in the family is that everyone outside of the family already knows about it. The reporter was also a jerk for asking Ivanka that question.
I was in the audience during the Mona Charon episode. A substantial, but my no means most of the audience engaged in booing. From where I sat, it seemed to be just in the front right of the audience.
I think the biggest news from CPAC was the dog that barely barked. There was very little discussion of social issues. Abortion rarely came up and I don’t remember any reference to SSM. It seems that one leg of the tripod of post-WWII American conservatism was being sawed off.
Thank you, Fred, for giving some perspective to this. It is gratifying to know that most of the audience did not boo Mona. Maybe conservatism can be saved. I sure hope.
I don’t know to what Tripod (stool) you refer. I have made my own formulation (I think it is mine): For me, conservatism consists of Manners + Morals + Policy. And I think the first two legs are being sawed off. I hope we can rescue them, and put them back on.
Thanks again for this contribution.
The tripod is economics (free enterprise), foreign policy (strong defense), and social issues (predominately abortion).
Gotcha. And then concern about abortion seemed to be overtaken by concern for the border. I didn’t hear her say it, but I’ve heard that Ann Coulter either said or wrote that she didn’t care if Trump himself performed abortions in the White House, so long as he built The Wall!
Conservatism needs all different flavors working together to win elections. At best, we have a bare majority if everyone is counted.
Ann is bombastic to a nuclear level.
I think she’s the prototype of the right-wing media darling (verbal) bomb thrower, I dont think you can take her stated opinions as anywhere near typical for her demographic.