THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: October Unsurprises.

RIP: Mitzi Gaynor, star of South Pacific, dies at 93.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE:

Related: How Al Sharpton Inflamed The Crown Heights Riot And How The Media Lied.

OLD AND BUSTED:

The new hotness? I’m an ex-McDonald’s chef — Trump has no idea how difficult it is to be a french fry cook.

Not surprisingly, Twitter had loads of fun with that headline: McWow: The NY Post Attempts to Cook Donald Trump With Ex-McDonald’s Fry ‘Chef’ and Gets Burned.

If minimum wages keep shooting up, I don’t think Musk’s Optimus robots will be necessary to replace that 16 year old dope smoker: McDonald’s pilots robot fryer in kitchen.

In any case, if Trump wins next month, and he really wants to Make America Great Again, hopefully his first executive order will be for McDonald’s to return to cooking the fries in beef tallow again.

AYN RAND DIDN’T INTEND FOR THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: High Electricity Prices Have Europe Facing Deindustrialization; Don’t Let It Happen Here.

Deepening Europe’s crisis, the Biden administration has announced a pause in liquefied natural gas export license approvals. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm claims the pause won’t affect the country’s “ability to supply our allies in Europe, Asia or recipients of already authorized exports.” But the market for LNG exports is global. With global demand increasing, and Europe particularly desperate for more LNG since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a restriction in U.S. exports anywhere will raise LNG prices for all importers. U.S. allies in Europe and Asia may soon be accusing President Biden of waging economic warfare against them.

Desperate to cushion the blow of soaring electricity prices, Germany is now plowing more than 4 percent of GDP into energy price mitigation for households and businesses. That’s almost the entire U.S. budget deficit in an average year. Decades of German fiscal discipline have vanished in a single energy shock, along with the ability of its industries to compete globally.

Great Britain is facing a similarly dire situation. In a devastating new report, Rupert Darwall notes that British businesses are paying almost five times more for electricity now than in 2004, and in 2022 paid 2.3 times what American businesses paid. Britain’s electricity prices would be even higher, but for its anemic GDP growth in the last two decades. That represents a lost generation of economic growth due in part to Britain’s self-destructive energy policies.

America has thus far been spared similar pain, but alas, it is headed down the same road. Buffeted by the anti-fossil fuel policies of the Biden administration and states such as California and New York, average electricity prices in the U.S. have risen 30 percent since the start of 2021. That has contributed to cumulative inflation of 25 percent since President Biden’s inauguration, wiping out a generation of wage gains for American workers.

Making matters worse, Biden’s proposed electric vehicle mandates would significantly add to electricity demand, and his new power plant rules would force many coal and natural gas plants to shutter. If implemented, the new rules would wreck America’s electricity grid and make American electricity prices even more expensive than Europe’s.

Those nutty “Progressives in a hurry” in Cuba are really taking a crash course on deindustrialization and its aftermath right now: Island-wide blackout sweeps Cuba after power plant failure.

Cuba’s electrical grid shut down on Friday, plunging the whole country into a blackout after one of the island’s major power plants failed, according to its energy ministry.

In a statement on X, the ministry said “the failure” of the Antonio Guiteras Power Plant caused “the total disconnection of the National Electrical System” from 11 a.m. ET on Friday.

In Havana, motorists on Friday tried to navigate the city where no street lights appeared to be working and only a handful of police were directing traffic. Generators are a luxury for most Cubans and only a few could be heard running in the city.

The country’s health minister, José Angel Portal Miranda, said on X that the country’s health facilities were running on generators and health workers continued to provide vital services.
This week, Cuba’s increasingly energy-strapped government called for draconian measures to save power, including telling many workers to stay home.

The Biden-Harris administration is probably taking notes right now: Are you ready for the climate lockdowns?

Related: “Roll the country back to more oil and gas:”

RIOTS FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME:

Her tweet offering to bail out rioters is still up, incidentally: Kamala Harris Lies, Claiming That She Never Promoted the Bail Fund That Bailed Out BLM Rioters As Well As Murderers and R4pists; But the Tweet In Which She Promoted that Bail Fund Is Still Up!

Earlier: Did Tim Walz ‘Let Minneapolis Burn?’

(Classical reference in headline.)

EXTRA STRONG CANNABIS CHANGES DRUG USERS’ DNA, STUDY FINDS:

High-strength cannabis changes drug users’ DNA, researchers have found.

Researchers at King’s College London and the University of Exeter discovered high-potency cannabis leaves a distinct mark on DNA, which could provide insight into the biological impact of using the drug.

It raises the prospect of developing a test that could identify cannabis users at risk of suffering psychosis as a result of taking the drug.

High-potency cannabis is defined as having tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content of 10 per cent or more. THC is the psychoactive component of cannabis and causes users to feel high, but it can also cause anxiety and paranoia in higher doses.

The amount of THC has been steadily increasing since the 1990s in the UK and US. In Colorado, where the drug is legal, it is possible to buy cannabis with 90 per cent THC.

Scientists have previously warned that some people who smoke strong cannabis may be at greater risk of developing psychosis or schizophrenia, but the extent of the risk is contested.

Teenagers are thought to be at particular risk of psychosis as the brain is developing during adolescence.

Earlier: Is Mary Jane to Blame For Teen Suicides?

We’ve been looking at almost 30 years of the liberalization of marijuana prohibitions. A recent study looks at an unintended consequence of the move.

Medical, Recreational Marijuana Legalization Associated With Higher Rates of Youth Suicide, Study Shows
Female youth aged 12 to 24 and youth of both sexes aged 14 to 16 living in states with legalized medical marijuana or recreational marijuana between 2000 and 2019 had higher rates of death by suicide than youth in states with no such laws, according to a report in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

“The findings translate to nearly 5,000 excess suicide deaths of female adolescents and young adults related to medical marijuana and recreational marijuana legalization,” the report claims. “Given dramatic shifts in cannabis policy over the past 20 years, it is important for clinicians and policymakers to understand potential downstream public health outcomes related to changing cannabis policy.”

Flashback: Second Thoughts on Pot: “‘Yeah, they all smoke.’ ‘Well . . . other things too, right?’ ‘Sometimes. But they all smoke.’”

DONALD TRUMP, KING OF COMEDY? ‘I used to think the Democrats were crazy for saying that men have periods, but then I met Tim Walz.’

In spooky season, it’s only appropriate that the “joy” has been drawn out of the Harris campaign like a demon facing an exorcist. It may have found a new host in her opponent: former president Donald Trump brought down the house at the Al Smith dinner for Catholic charities in New York City last night, which Kamala opted to skip. Trump has also faced criticism this week for canceling events and dodging interviews with CNBC and the Shade Room.

His remarks are worth watching in their entirety (you can do so below), but here are some choice one-liners. Clearly Trump has benefited from keeping the company of comedians Andrew Schulz and Theo Von lately.

On Kamala: “Instead of attending tonight, she’s in Michigan receiving Communion from Gretchen Whitmer.”

On Biden: “Joe has almost disappeared from view, the only way he could be seen less is if he had a show on CNN.”

On Schumer: “Chuck Schumer is here, looking very glum… but look on the bright side, Chuck: considering how ‘woke’ your party has become, if Kamala loses you still have the chance to become the first woman president.”

Earlier from Steve: Trump Slays at Al Smith Dinner but Wait’ll You See No-Show Kamala’s Reaction.

JIM TREACHER: Dead Terrorists Are Good, Actually.

Wow. Remind me never to start a war with Israel, huh? The bad guys got a jump on them a year ago, but ever since, the Jews have been kicking ass.

I thought Operation Beep-Beep-Boom would be the highlight, but they saved the best for last. Witness the glorious farewell of October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar:

It’s good to see that before they put him out of his misery, he was literally disarmed.

Sinwar has now ceased firing.

“What has one thumb and just got pwned by the Jews? This guy!”

That scumbag’s last great act of defiance was lobbing a stick at a camera drone. Yet according to his fans (mostly American college students and Congressional Democrats), Sinwar “fought to the end.”

LOL!

Gotta say, putting a hole in this guy’s head only improved his looks. As the great Andrew Stiles puts it: “World’s ugliest terrorist killed in war he started.”

Bye-bye, Yahya. If you didn’t want to go out like a bitch, you shouldn’t picked a fight you knew you couldn’t win.

Score one for the good guys. If only our government had agreed when it mattered.

Indeed: Recalling When Kamala Harris Warned Israel Not to Send Forces Into Rafah.

CART MEETS HORSE: Did Inflation Save Us From ‘New Progressive Economics?’

The Biden era’s high inflation has been terrible for the economy and the country generally. But did it save us from a more permanent progressive takeover of federal government policy?

That’s the tantalizing question hanging over a recent piece published by Vox Senior Politics Correspondent Andrew Prokop that chronicles the rise, and pending fall, of “New Progressive Economics.”

President Joe Biden obviously was not the left’s preferred candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary.

But, as Prokop tells it, he staffed his administration with lots of ultra-progressive wonks and political operatives who wanted to overthrow the Democratic Party’s perceived “neoliberal” consensus on trade and regulation in favor of aggressive anti-trust enforcement, proactive industrial policy, protectionism, and a massive increase in social spending.

They basically got most of what they wanted, starting with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP)—a law pitched as a pandemic recovery bill that was stuffed full of progressive spending items.

Now, however, depression is setting among the New Progressives. There’s a good chance that no matter what happens in November, they’ll see their influence and policy legacy crumble.

That’s obviously true if former President Donald Trump wins and Republicans get a shot at staffing the executive branch.

But Vice President Kamala Harris also appears a lot less enamored with “post-neoliberal” ideas than her boss. Her campaign trail overtures to big business, friendly relations with select billionaires, and a general instinct to run away from every progressive position she’s ever taken (save on abortion) all have them sweating.

Should she get elected, the New Progressive agenda might still be a dead letter.

If that’s true, they have only themselves to blame.

What did they think would happen? While Biden promised his DNC operatives with bylines in the run-up to the 2020 election that “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore,” Friedman had long ago accurately predicted the trajectory of Biden’s governing efforts, when he warned in 1970 (back when the inflation caused by LBJ’s massive Great Society spending was just beginning to make itself known) that “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”

In any case, mister, we could use a man like Paul Volcker again.

KINSLEY GAFFE: Kamala Harris makes a brutal gaffe in speech to Wisconsin voters: ‘I stood up to veterans.’

ROGER KIMBALL: If Kamala Harris Wins.

Imagine you are a mini-Rip Van Winkle. You sink into a deep slumber on November 4 and do not awaken until, say, December 2026. You won’t have missed the original American Revolution, as the first Rip did. But you will have missed another revolution that undid many aspects of the first. You won’t be subservient to a foreign king in far-away England. You will now be utterly subservient to a tiny, home-breed oligarchy. Will it quarter its troops—otherwise known as illegal immigrants—in your homes? Maybe. In fact, some Democratic politicians have suggested just that. And of course, dropping thousands of foreign criminals into your small town, a notorious practice that has become increasingly popular under the Biden-Harris Administration, has pretty much the same effect.

Expect such community-destroying expedients to multiply if Harris wins. Here are few other features of the new Kamalist dispensation you will discover as you shake off the cobwebs of your long slumber.

First, you will discover that there are no longer any any swing states in America. As Elon Musk observed, the Democrats will declare illegal migrants legal voters by fiat, thus transforming America into a one-party state. What Gavin Newsom just did in California, banning local checks on voter ID, will be nationalized. No voter ID, no meaningful elections.

And speaking of Elon Musk, X will be regulated into oblivion—or, if not into oblivion, then at least into a reliable adjunct of the propaganda press now replicating the Democratic narrative. Remember, John Kerry, speaking recently from the World Economic Forum, said that the First Amendment was the great “block” in the battle against “disinformation.” If the Democrats win, he said, they can “change,” that is, gut, the First Amendment.

In a similar vein, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly called for greater supervision—that is, censorship—of social media. People who spread “disinformation,” she said, should be “civilly or even in some cases criminally charged.” Forget about the fact that she actually paid for “opposition research” against Donald Trump and then assiduously spread the gigantic disinformation of the Russia Collusion hoax in order to discredit him. In one revealing comment, Clinton acknowledged that the real threat of platforms like X under Elon Musk was that “we”—that is, people who agree with Hillary Clinton—“lose total control.” We can’t have that, now.

Back in 2019, Harris herself evinced a similar sentiment. Donald Trump, she said, had lost the “privileges” of free speech. No one was there to explain the difference between a “privilege” and a constitutional right to the vice president. Clearly, the distinction does not signify under the new dispensation.

Read the whole thing.

HOW IT STARTED:

Under the inescapable smog that still blanketed the city, Los Angeles in the early 1970s was poised between its parochial past and its global future…Downtown Los Angeles was a ghost town. The big East Coast department stores had not even opened LA branches yet. The Los Angeles Times was just emerging from its insular, arch-conservative past to pursue its ambition of becoming a world-class newspaper. Control of City Hall finally shifted in 1973 from longtime mayor Sam Yorty, an erratic midwesterner who held power in his final years by overtly appealing to white anxiety about racial change, to African American Tom Bradley, a dignified and reserved former police officer who became the first Black mayor of a mostly white large city. The model and actress Anjelica Huston, who arrived just before Bradley’s victory in the spring of 1973, wrote later that “Los Angeles was a small town then; it felt both incredibly glamorous and a little provincial.” Huston arrived from Manhattan, leaving a tumultuous relationship with a brilliant but erratic fashion photographer that had immersed her in the nocturnal Andy Warhol demimonde of the Lower East Side. Bright and sunny, healthful and relaxed, Los Angeles then seemed to her “the antithesis of New York,” as she recalled. Unlike New York, “there were no rats in the trees, no smell of urine on Third Avenue.” Huston rode horses through Griffith Park and planted wisteria, dahlias, and chrysanthemums behind her house on Beachwood Drive. “It was like a big garden to me,” she remembered of LA in those years. “After those years in New York, it was like the land of milk and honey.”

—Ronald Brownstein, Rock Me on the Water: 1974-The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics, published in 2021.

 How it’s going:

A journey through Los Angeles, the adopted home of Vice President Kamala Harris, offers a masterclass in urban dysfunction. As you drive through the streets of the southside, and along Central Avenue, the historic main street of black LA, now mostly Hispanic, the ambience is increasingly reminiscent of Mexico City or Mumbai: broken pavements; battered buildings; outdoor swap meets; food stalls serving customers much as one would see in the developing world.

Democrats, particularly in deep blue California and even bluer cities like Los Angeles, can clearly win elections. But what they can’t do is govern effectively. Virtually every Democratic city in the land is now in decline. Crime, especially of the violent variety, is rising. That’s shadowed by continued out-migration to less dense, more conservative areas, a trend that’s seeing the country’s biggest cities lose out economically.

But if signs of progressive failure are clear from New York to San Francisco, it’s Los Angeles where I feel it most keenly. I’ve lived here since 1975. Back then, the idea that this diamond in the sands could tarnish was unimaginable. But it has. Once a middle-class haven with a broad industrial base, LA now suffers the highest poverty rates in the state, and among the worst in the country. Dovetailed by failing schools and parks, and an exodus of residents and businesses, long-term prospects of this great American city look bleak — a future that could yet be translated right across the country.

— Joel Kotkin, “How the City of Angels went to hell,” UnHerd, yesterday.

Gooder and harder, California.

Related: Americans Are Fleeing Los Angeles More Than Anywhere Else for First Time.

Earlier, from Jack Dunphy: The Slow, Agonizing Death of Los Angeles. “I was born in Los Angeles and spent most of my life within its city limits. My father was born there, also, and by the standards of L.A., where most people’s roots are as deep as a tumbleweed’s, this is rather like tracing one’s lineage back to the Mayflower. About twelve years ago, while still employed with the Los Angeles Police Department, I made what was at the time an anguished decision to move my family to the suburbs. Today, the only anguish I feel about Los Angeles comes when I’m obligated to go there for some work, social, or entertainment activity, and I’m grateful these are more infrequent as the years pass.”

‘WHEN HITLER ISN’T BAD ENOUGH!’ The Atlantic Ups Dictator Ante to Sound Alarm About Trump:

When it comes to the alarmist rhetoric from Democrat, the media and self-described anti-Trump “Republicans” who now only support Democrats, a lesson that should have been learned is “don’t peak too soon.”

Trump was laughably framed as “Hitler” and then “worse than Hitler” years ago, but now that the Republican nominee is leading in most (if not all) swing state polls with the election coming up quickly, something bigger is needed.

The Atlantic has served up another doozy for an emergency “when Hitler isn’t bad enough”:

“Trump’s worse than every dictator ever combined, and then some!”

Applebaum wrote Gulag: A History in 2003, so she knows how badly she’s gaslighting her readers, but then, as Christine Rosen wrote in Commentary, reading the Atlantic these days “is like being a therapist whose severely anxious patient flops on the couch and delivers a monologue about the tortures of his daily life.”

But hey, you know who’s even worse then Trump? Scratch ‘Joy,’ Time to Push Fear: The Hill Claims J.D. Vance Is Even Worse Than Donald Trump:

But every Republican president or presidential candidate is Hitler, until he’s rehabilitated, given a new suit, allowed to leave the bunker, and treated as a wise elder statesman by the DNC-MSM to attack the latest Hitler.

OKAY, GROOMERS: Under Tim Walz, Minnesota Pays For Kids To Go On ‘Queer’ Wilderness Trips Without Parents.

SHE’S STUDIED THE MAPS!

“It would be a huge mistake for Israel to enter Rafah. I've studied the maps”

I will never get over this sound bite. The worst possible combination of ignorant and arrogant. pic.twitter.com/oNVDQVGLLr https://t.co/4wX1bqdldH

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) October 17, 2024

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN: Maxim makes an endorsement for the 2024 presidential election: ‘You just lost zero fans.’

Would Trump drive a Lambo? I thought he’d be more of a Pagani Zonda or Bugatti Chiron man, myself.

TO BE FAIR, THAT’S THEIR JOB: The Media Shouldn’t Overlook Kamala Harris’ Plagiarism.

CNN’s report on the Harris plagiarism accusation is headlined: “Conservative activist accuses Harris of plagiarizing passages in co-authored 2009 book.” Note that the identity of the accuser—of the plagiarism discoverer—was not at issue in the Melania Trump case. But here, mainstream media feels compelled to position Rufo rather than Harris at the center of the controversy.

Conservatives complain ceaselessly—and not without reason—that scandals involving Republicans, conservatives, and Trump world personalities are reported in straightforward fashion, whereas scandals involving Democrats, liberals, and the media itself are not. In these latter cases, the media focuses on the motivations, agendas, and responses of conservatives who are involved in surfacing the controversy. This is often done, in headlines, using the exact phrasing Republicans pounce on X or Republicans seize on X, where X is the thing Democrats did wrong.

This is such a well-worn trope by now the one might have expected mainstream media institutions to take greater pains to avoid it, if only to deprive conservatives of ammunition. And yet The New York Times write-up of the Harris plagiarism accusations is headlined: “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book.”

The article itself minimizes the extent of Harris’ wrongdoing, and cites a plagiarism expert, Jonathan Bailey, who claims that Rufo was “making a big deal” out of relatively minor transgressions. The Times did not share with him the full list of plagiarized passages in the book, however; on his website, Bailey noted that after reviewing all the allegations, the case is “more serious” than he first thought, although he maintains Harris did not engage in “wholesale fraud.”

It’s perfectly fine for journalists to report on the agendas of conservative activists making such claims; Rufo does not deny that he is politically motivated; on the contrary, he constantly explains his agenda, and strategy for implementing it, in posts on X. But perhaps The New York Times might consider whether the pouncing and the seizing are the most important parts of this story.

From their point of view, invariably it is:

WHEN BRET MET KAMALA:

For a long stretch, Americans have hungered for real leadership. We’ve yearned for a figure who was sharp, well-versed on all the tough issues on our national political scene, and not afraid to get into the details. A level-headed thinker who challenges assumptions and rejects the knee-jerk rhetoric and partisan talking points. Someone on the hunt for genuine answers to the country’s questions, with little patience for blather. Whether it’s a moment of crisis or a relatively normal evening, we just want to turn on the television and see someone talking to us who’s poised, reassuring, and direct.

Finally, last night, the 2024 presidential campaign delivered us that figure.

The only problem is that Bret Baier isn’t running for president.

Last night marked the first time that Vice President Kamala Harris had ever sat down for a formal interview with Fox News. She had never done so as California state attorney general, or U.S. senator, or presidential candidate, or as vice president.

Last night was also probably the last time she’ll ever agree to an interview with Fox News.

How did it go? The Journolist got its marching orders: “Democrats and multiple media personalities took to X to do damage control because, as Mark Hemingway noted, ‘If Kamala had done well, they’d be posting her highlights from the interview, not attacking Baier, who was perfectly professional.’”

READY TO HELICOPTER AGAIN BACK INTO THE BATTLE ZONE! Amazon makes first foray into live news with election night special hosted by Brian Williams.

Amazon said Thursday it plans to host an election night special anchored by Brian Williams, marking the company’s first foray into live news coverage.

The one-night special will provide election results and analysis on Prime Video starting at 5 p.m. ET on Nov. 5, the company said. Amazon emphasized it will be a “non-partisan presentation” pulling information from a variety of third-party news sources.

Williams will lead the special and interview analysts across the political spectrum. Viewers will not be required to have a Prime subscription to access the stream.

“After 41 years in the business — from local news to network shows to cable news — this feels like the next big thing,” Williams, who left NBC News in 2021 after a 28-year run, said in a release. “And the global marketplace of Amazon is a natural home for this first-of-its-kind venture.”

Williams hosting election night brings together two of former NBC president Jeff Zucker’s most, err, unique talents. Regarding Williams, as USA Today reported in November of 2004:

Williams has more plebian interests than his soon-to-be rivals, CBS’ Dan Rather, 73, a friend from CBS days, and ABC’s Peter Jennings, 66.

A onetime volunteer firefighter, Williams talks excitedly about the prospect of handling hoses and climbing ladders again on an upcoming story. He has been a stock-car racing fan since childhood days at the Chemung Speedrome near Elmira, N.Y., and is part owner of a dirt-track stock car team.

“No one understands this NASCAR nation more than Brian,” says NBC president Jeff Zucker, who once produced Nightly News for Brokaw.

As part of the Blogosphere Full Employment Act of 2015, Williams would of course apologize for lying about being in a helicopter forced down by an RPG in 2003 during the Iraq War, arguably the biggest of the many fables he told as anchor of NBC’s Nightly News. Rather than being fired by NBC, Williams was merely sent down to host shows for the farm team at MSNBC, until 2021, when the man who once praised Antifa as being the equivalent of the men who stormed the beaches of D-Day, signed off by lying, “I’m not a liberal or a conservative.”

Additionally, as Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post fumed in 2022: Jeff Zucker’s legacy is defined by his promotion of Donald Trump.

Zucker, as much as any other person in the world, created and burnished the Trump persona — first as a reality-TV star who morphed into a worldwide celebrity, then as a candidate for president who was given large amounts of free publicity.

The through line? Nothing nobler than TV ratings, which always were Zucker’s guiding light, his be-all and end-all and, ultimately, his fatal flaw.

Two decades ago, as an NBC executive searching for a way to goose the floundering network’s popularity, he gave the green light to a reality show, “The Apprentice,” featuring a flashy mogul whose soon-to-be-famous tagline was “You’re fired.” Trump had a checkered history of bankruptcies, racism and failed real estate projects, but his confident bluster made him a natural on television.

“The show was built as a virtually nonstop advertisement for the Trump empire and lifestyle,” Washington Post journalists Marc Fisher and Michael Kranish wrote in their 2016 book, “Trump Revealed.” The stunning rise of Donald Trump had begun.

Zucker created Trump the TV sensation, which was the necessary foundation for Trump the candidate. Years later, after moving from NBC to CNN, Zucker recollected very well that Trump was a self-proclaimed “ratings machine” — a rare instance of Trumpian truth-telling.

CNN infamously took his campaign speeches live, sometimes going so far as to broadcast images of an empty lectern with embarrassing chyrons such as “Breaking News: Standing By for Trump to Speak.” You can’t buy that kind of media.

Zucker also brought on the air Trump surrogates who should have had no place on a national news network: people like the bully Corey Lewandowski, the sycophant Jeffrey Lord (who praised Trump as the Martin Luther King of health care) and Kayleigh McEnany, who later became a White House press secretary bad enough to somehow make one pine for Sean Spicer.

When Trump became the Republican nominee for president and started trashing Zucker’s network and staff with invective about its “fake news,” it was too late for second thoughts. By then, the standard had been set. Every Trump utterance became breaking news, and CNN, like many other news organizations, never figured out how to responsibly cover Trump throughout his democracy-damaging presidency.

Zucker expressed a modicum of regret in late 2016. “If we made any mistake last year,” he said, “it’s that we probably did put on too many of his campaign rallies in those early months and let them run.”

But he excused his decision-making: “You never knew what he would say.” Audiences were riveted, so what could he do?

Not to mention thinking Trump would be a pushover for Hillary. How did that work out in 2016?

After Zucker was pushed out of CNN in 2022, Wikipedia notes:

In December 2022, Zucker was named an executive with Redbird IMI, a consortium with majority funding from Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President of the UAE.^[49] The consortium is a joint venture between Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital Partners and International Media Investments, a media investment fund backed by the United Arab Emirates.^[50] The position also includes an active role in the XFL, a professional football league partially owned by RedBird.^[51]

The consortium’s planned purchase of The Telegraph, a prominent British newspaper, has caused controversy in the United Kingdom, as concerns were raised that the newspaper would be coming under the control of an autocratic state.

I wonder if Zucker gives any thoughts to the ramifications of what he set in motion twenty years ago, and how its aftermath will come together in November like a bad hangover? And I wonder if Jeff Bezos has thoughts about who he’s hired to cover that night?

OLD AND BUSTED: Russian Interference in American Presidential Elections.

The New Hotness? British Interference in American Presidential Elections! British Labour Party sending staff to campaign for Harris in US swing states.

The left-leaning British Labour Party is sending nearly 100 members to U.S. battleground states to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the presidential election.

Sofia Patel, head of operations for the Labour Party, shared the plans via LinkedIn Wednesday. She claimed current and former party staff will target key swing states like North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

“I have 10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of North Carolina – we will sort your housing,” Patel offered in the post.

Patel also noted she plans to arrive in the U.S. two weeks prior to the election and stay in Washington, D.C., for a few days afterward.

Patel’s profile shows she previously spent time in the Hillary Clinton campaign from October to November of 2016. She included the description “travelled to the US to campaign for Clinton in the presidential election.”

Reacting to Patel’s post was Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who suggested via X it was “yet another reason to vote for President Trump.”

Heh, indeed. But would this move the needle in either direction? I’m finding it difficult to think of many undecided voters thinking, “Well, I was on the fence about who to vote, but now that Keir Starmer and Sofia Patel have spoken, it’s definitely Kamala for me!”

But turnabout is fair play. It would be fun to see Trump officials parachuting in to Old Blighty to offer the Tory Party a boost should he win next month.

SINWAR DEAD: The Israelis Get Their Yahyas Out! — Live in Concert.

For the State of Israel, Sinwar was literally the single most wanted man in the entire world, more so than any Iranian official you could name. Sinwar was the monster who planned and executed the most traumatic terrorist attack in Israeli history, kicking off a regional war. When the Israelis brilliantly targeted the leadership of Hezbollah a few weeks ago, the attacks were a spectacular execution of tightly orchestrated spycraft involving high and low technology, the sort of work that will be professionally studied by other intelligence agencies for years to come.

But this? Sinwar was apparently found completely by chance. A young IDF tanker merely nine months into his first deployment, doing a random patrol, spotted a terrorist poking his head out a window. An online friend suggested that the American analogy to this would be like Osama bin Laden getting taken out by a random artillery regiment of the Iowa National Guard instead of SEAL Team Six, but I prefer to think of it as Sinwar getting iced by the Israeli equivalent of Harold Ramis and Bill Murray in Stripes. (ZISKEY RATES HAMAS: “They’re P***ies!”) Either way, the world became a better place for his absence in it.

And as America’s Newspaper of Record reports: Washington Post Gives Entire Staff Day Off To Mourn Loss Of Hamas Leader.

The staff of CBS News, Te-Nehisi Coates, and Roger Waters are all likely in mourning as well, as well as many in the Biden-Harris administration:

UPDATE: And here we go!

“I DON’T SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR RELIGION:” DeSantis rips reporter on climate change: ‘Chance of me virtue signaling for people in media is zero.’

KEEP ALL MODALITIES OF COCKINESS FIRMLY IN CHECK: Biden tells Obama ‘she’s not as strong as me’ — and ex-prez agrees ‘that’s true’ at Ethel Kennedy funeral.

HUGH HEWITT INTERVIEWS NRO’S NOAH ROTHMAN ON KAMALA’S FOX NEWS INTERVIEW (Video):