TEXT JOIN TO 77022

Mona’s Mendacious Moaning Over J6

The House of Representatives’ far from impartial January 6 committee has provided Trump haters on the fictitious Right with a new occasion for grandstanding. The resulting theatrics seem to have reached a crescendo with last week’s testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, who has supposedly spilled all the beans on her (to quote Douglas Murray) “tainted” former boss. Despite the highly relevant fact that much of what Hutchinson said was second-hand information that real participants have energetically challenged, Hutchinson’s testimony has enjoyed (thanks to the ideologically uniform Western media) international resonance. A close friend in Regensburg reported how impressed his acquaintances were by Hutchinson’s damning testimony and how relieved they were to be living in a model democracy (meaning a homogenized woke Germany) as opposed to a Hitlerian America under Trump.

Looking around at who should get the prize for being the most tiresome pseudo-conservative gasbag last week, I am giving my award to The Bulwark’s Mona Charen. Yes, I know that National Review went after West Coast Straussians as Nazi-like for supporting Trump, and that other mainstays of the liberal establishment pretending to be conservative have said equally dumb things. But I am picking Charen because she irritated me last. Since our syndicated-columnist provider for the Chronicles’ website substituted this lady for one of our regulars, I ended up reading her column from beginning to end.

Charen does not blame Trump alone for our decline as a moral nation. Like a reflective German meditating on the crimes of the Third Reich after World War II, she blames the entire political class for the catastrophe she has witnessed:

When Trump first crashed into American politics in 2015, it required only political courage to oppose him. Yet one after another, the leading figures of the GOP, from Chris Christie to Jeff Sessions to Ted Cruz, snapped like dry twigs under his boots.” Furthermore: “This is the world that every Republican and conservative brought on us by failing to show the minimal amount of integrity. Now they are shamed by the shining example of a 26-year-old woman with her life ahead of her, with no motive but love of her country and with no power except that which comes from a clear conscience.”

Apparently, Hutchinson has so little power that the media throughout the Western world are breathlessly celebrating her heroism and taking her questionable testimony for Gospel truth. We are also supposed to be concerned that anti-Trump activist Republicans have reported death threats, although it is hard to determine how many of these threats have been corroborated. 

What about the public figures on the pro-Trump side who have not only been threatened and insulted but visited by the FBI and even put in prison for not cooperating with Charen’s version of a fair investigative committee? What about the people suspected of being involved in an unproven insurrection on January 6 who are still rotting in D.C. prisons? Should we not be more concerned than Charen about this threat to our civil liberties, about which Julie Kelly has dutifully kept us informed? Why does the denial of freedom to our political prisoners matter less than Rep. Adam Kinziger’s (R-Ill.) political future, after he agreed to participate in an opposition-free court organized by congressional Democrats against Trump?

Even more relevant, why should I care about punishing a former president after looking at the scoundrel who replaced him? Whether it comes to packing the Supreme Court with Democratic lackeys, keeping open the Southern border for fentanyl and future Democratic voters, trying to remove the Senate filibuster to allow Democrats to push through radical legislation, or removing voter identification nationwide for federal elections to enable his party to cheat more easily, Uncle Joe has gone well beyond any president in my memory in subverting the foundations of our constitutional republic. His personal life has been at least as scandalous as his public one and has gone from being involved in taking money from hostile foreign governments to covering his son’s crimes to sexualizing his young daughter. With the modern equivalent of Caligula or Nero in the White House, I find it ridiculous to dwell on the alleged political sins of his predecessor. 

Whoops! I forgot to mention that Charen was a “proud” supporter of Biden, who produced columns expressing her attachment to our current president. She is also still upset that the GOP back in 2016 failed to pick a presidential candidate who appealed to her neocon camarilla. Now she has her guy occupying the White House and is less concerned with his disastrous presidency than with the latest charge against Trump. Least of all does Charen want us to forget the most “frightening thing we’ve learned over the past six years.” It is not that Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi is trying to turn this country into a one-party, socially radical hellhole. It is “how indifferent the vast majority of the Republican Party is to the rule of law.”

Get the news corporate media won't tell you.

Get caught up on today's must read stores!

By submitting your information, you agree to receive exclusive AG+ content, including special promotions, and agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms. By providing your phone number and checking the box to opt in, you are consenting to receive recurring SMS/MMS messages, including automated texts, to that number from my short code. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP for help, STOP to end. SMS opt-in will not be sold, rented, or shared.

About Paul Gottfried

Paul Edward Gottfried is the editor of Chronicles. An American paleoconservative philosopher, historian, and columnist, Gottfried is a former Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, as well as a Guggenheim recipient.

Photo: Marvin Joseph/Getty Images