JIM TREACHER: Trump Didn’t Clear the Rioters Out of Lafayette Park, But It Would’ve Been Fine If He Had.

Trump fans get mad at me because I criticize him when he’s wrong, but they don’t give me any credit for defending him when he’s right.1 Or when he’s… not all that wrong.

For example, a year ago I thought it was ridiculous that journos screamed about Trump holding up a Bible in front of St. John’s Church near the White House, while ignoring the fact that rioters had tried to burn down that very church less than 24 hours before.

Sorry, but trying to burn down a church is way worse than standing in front of it with a Bible, no matter how much you hate the guy. I tend to find such details relevant, which is why both journalists and MAGA-heads find me so annoying.

The journos all screamed that Trump was a fascist for sending in the cops to clear out Lafayette Park so he could do a photo op, both of which I thought were bad ideas but also didn’t make him the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. Now it turns out only one of those things was a bad Trump idea, because he wasn’t the one who ordered the park cleared in the first place.

“A narrative we thought we knew is not the reality,” NBC News’ Ken Dilanian muttered yesterday, which neatly sums up the last few decades of the DNC-MSM.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Rep. Rashida Tlaib Tweets ‘Freedom of Speech Doesn’t Exist for Muslim Women in Congress’ to her 1.4 Million Followers

HE’S BACK! CNN interviews Jeffrey Toobin: How did it feel to be caught masturbating on a Zoom call?

I don’t know what CNN was thinking. Bringing Toobin back is bad enough but if they were going to do it they could have skipped over the reason for his hiatus and jumped back in by interviewing him about some court case somewhere. But either Toobin or Jeff Zucker — or both — wanted to clear the air, apparently, with a full-throated mea culpa.

About getting caught jerking off on a Zoom call.

How much must this guy love his CNN job to accept going on national television to discuss pleasuring himself as a condition of retaining it?

And how much must Alisyn Camerota hate her job after having been tasked with rehabbing him? How was that assignment handed out?

At the start of the week, Charles Cooke pondered what sort of dirt Chris Cuomo must have on CNN’s executives that allows him to keep his job. The same question could be asked about Toobin: “The common thread between Toobin and Cuomo, by the way, is that CNN has been willing to endure truly humiliating scandals in the name of keeping them employed even though both guys are replacement-level at what they do. It’d be one thing if Toobin were a superstar legal commentator offering insights that the average TV law-pundit couldn’t muster. But he is the average TV law-pundit. Why embarrass your network this way for a guy who’s not adding much value?”

WELL, IF THERE’S ANOTHER PANDEMIC IT’S GOING TO BE VERY HARD TO GET PEOPLE TO COMPLY WITH EXPERT DECREES: MERS-CoV just a few mutations away from becoming a pandemic threat.

Related: COVID marked the twilight of America’s arrogant ‘expert’ class.

A GOOD DEFENSE AGAINST CAR THEFT BY MILLENNIALS/ZOOMERS: 2022 Honda Civic Hatchback Will Offer a Six-Speed Manual.

WHY IS THE CALIFORNIA BAR SO RACIST? Racial Disparities Persist In California Bar Exam Pass Rates: White: 72%, Asian: 66%, Hispanic: 61%, Black: 31%.

Actually, we looked into this kind of thing among our own graduates some years back, and it turns out that bar passage rates correlate pretty tightly with LSAT scores. This isn’t surprising: One’s a big stressful law-related exam, and the others a bigger, more stressful law-related exam. So if you admit a cohort with lower LSAT scores, that cohort will tend to have a lower bar passage rate. And it’s not linear — there’s a cutoff below which the passage rate plummets sharply. This is, in fact, well-known in legal academia. Many think it’s immoral to admit students at or below that cutoff because their chance of passing the bar is so low. But many schools do so anyway.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: No, That Crazy Price Carvana Offered For Your Car Isn’t Too Good To Be True. “An eight-year-old Tacoma selling for above its original sticker price. An instant cash offer thousands of dollars above the lease buyout price of a Mazda 3. A mainstream used car bought three years ago, now worth more than it was purchased for. It’s not a fluke, it’s not just Carvana or Vroom, and it’s not going away anytime soon. This is what the used car market looks like in 2021.”

TEACHING THE UNTEACHABLE: “I teach students who recoil from a poem because it was written by a man. I teach students who approach texts in search of the oppressor.”

They’ve been brain-damaged by the establishment. They should sue.

PRIORITIES: Oregon Dept of Education raided student absentee program funding to pay Nikole Hannah-Jones $50,000.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN, on Yale’s Meltdown, and America’s.

MAY I CROW FOR JUST A MINUTE: Guess who is the single fastest-growing U.S. news site? The Epoch Times, according to the Press-Gazette, which is a UK-based media industry publication. They don’t sound too happy about it, but the data is there. Check out the tremendous growth for Newsmax, too.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Why Hunter Biden’s Racism Matters. “There is more evidence of Biden’s racism than there ever has been of Trump’s alleged racism. In fact, those who accuse Trump of racism rely solely on subjective assessments of policy, in which they ‘find’ racism when none exists, or simply claim that Trump’s alleged racism is simply a matter of fact, something that can’t be questioned because it’s obvious—a forgone conclusion that doesn’t require actual evidence.”

Bryan Preston: Is the IRS Weaponized Again? Four Questions About the Disturbing IRS Personal Information Leak. “Have a problem with Hunter Biden’s ties to China or his racist texts? Don’t like Biden’s cancellation of motherhood in his budget proposal? If a Biden supporter leaked the ProPublica information and is not caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, you may expect to have your tax returns and your personal information disclosed as punishment. It’s the ultimate form of doxing, coming from the federal agency that has the most private financial information about all Americans. This is beyond sinister.”

Yours Truly: The End of a 40-Year Love Affair: Saying Goodbye to Nikon. “The sad fact is that Nikon is probably a dead cameramaker walking.”

GET WHAT YOU NEED BEFORE THE NEXT BUYING SURGE: Gun Sales Decrease, Ammunition Reappearing In Stores.

UGH: Teen kills father of four after NY judge releases him for third time in four months. “Alberto Ramirez is accused of shooting Eric Velasquez on May 16. Ramirez, who was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, first degree manslaughter, and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon, would not have been on the street had he not been previously released by NYC Supreme Court Justice Denis Boyle—twice, according to the New York Post.”

AT HELEN’S PAGE: Korving & Co., publishers of Before I Go answer your questions on retirement.

THERE WILL BE MASSIVE NONCOMPLIANCE IF THERE’S ANOTHER PANDEMIC ANYTIME SOON: COVID rules that make no sense — and the politicians who refuse to give up control.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: “A number of Omar’s fellow Democrats believe [Ilhan] Omar is an anti-Semite, even if they don’t say so publicly.”

Related: ‘Stop attacking us’: Cori Bush has had ‘enough with the anti-Blackness and Islamophobia’ from Jewish Dems who called out Ilhan Omar.

COMING UP AT 3:30PM EASTERN: ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ Live Chat with Kruiser, Preston, VodkaPundit.

WAS IT OVER WHEN THE GERMANS BOMBED FORT SUMTER? Dem Rep. Cindy Axne invokes Civil War while trying to defend HR 1. “‘If we don’t work together, we become the country that we’re not supposed to be,’ Axne said. ‘And, as a matter of fact, people who are tearing that down, you know, we fought for these things in the Civil War.’ The Civil War was fought over whether or not the institution of slavery should exist in America, not election integrity issues. Axne, who took office in 2019, is one of the vulnerable House Democrats targeted by the National Republican Congressional Committee for a seat swing in the 2022 midterm elections.”

COLD WAR II: Look Closely — That’s A Stealth Fighter On China’s Pretend Aircraft Carrier Deck.

INTERESTING: University of Minnesota, Mayo report COVID-fighting success with anti-aging therapy: Clearing out so-called zombie cells could reduce inflammation and immune system overreaction to COVID-19 that often causes severe illnesses and deaths. “If you’ve got a lot of senescent cells, what’s going to happen is you’re going to have an exaggerated response … and you’re going to get all of these things that happen in older people that kill them with COVID.”

WAIT, RECORD COMPANIES ARE STILL A THING? Record labels sue another ISP, demanding mass disconnections of Internet users.

SPOILER: THEY WON’T BE. Trump Wants DNC and Hillary Campaign Held Accountable For Bogus Russian Collusion Witch Hunt.

FASTER, PLEASE: Team develops potential treatment for life-threatening microbial inflammation.

IT REALLY IS OBAMA’S THIRD TERM: Biden’s first defense budget batters the Army. “It’s a budget calculated to take the Army back to the final years of the Obama administration, when readiness was miserable. After years of overuse and inadequate defense funding, Vice Chief Gen. Dan Allyn informed Congress in February 2016 that only three of the Army’s 58 brigade combat teams were fit to go to war.”