Ex-prosecutor: Mueller Doesn’t Need Trump Testimony
For months now, says former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale at The Hill, pundits have “propagated the myth” that special counsel Robert Mueller is entitled to interview President Trump in order to determine his “knowledge and intent.” But Mueller “is not so entitled, and the president should not do it,” warns Sale. Fact is, government prosecutors conduct similar cases every day without the benefit of such interviews. And Trump’s legal team is right that all a sitdown can do is help Mueller “advance an arguable case against the president.” Frankly, given Trump’s conclusion — rightly or wrongly — that Mueller’s probe is “conducted by partisans who have pre-determined” his guilt, a voluntary interview would be “tantamount to walking into the lion’s den.”
Media critic: Jim Acosta’s Performance Journalism
CNN’s Jim Acosta raised eyebrows last week when he publicly confronted Sarah Huckabee Sanders, demanding to know if the White House press secretary shared President Trump’s belief that the press is the enemy of the people. The question may have been justified, but Todd Purdum at The Atlantic says that by becoming an actor in his own story Acosta played “directly into Trump’s received narrative about a hostile, combative and even unfair press.” White House press briefings generally have become “a circus of reportorial self-expression and sometimes self-promotion.” And Acosta’s broadside blurred “the line between reporting and performance” when journalists “have a greater obligation than ever to demonstrate that what they do . . . is not just part of the passing show.”
Foreign desk: Confessions of a Burqa-Phobe
Judging by the furious reaction that greeted UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s recent remarks, liberal opinion doesn’t allow Europeans “to discuss the burqa openly, honestly and fearlessly,” contends Commentary’s Sohrab Ahmari. Johnson has been assailed “by the left and much of the right” for suggesting the Muslim veil makes women look “like letterboxes.” This, even though Johnson was opposing a proposed Danish ban on the burqa. But the British pol understands that “anxiety over the burqa courses through the whole European body politic,” even if “few native Europeans dare voice it honestly.” Ahmari, a self-confessed “burqa-phobe” born and raised in the Islamic Republic of Iran, cites “legitimate” anxiety over the burqa, which “crystalizes the sense that European immigration and assimilation policy has gone horribly wrong.” And that, he says, “isn’t tantamount to hatred.”
Political scribe: Can a Grown-Up Tea Party Save the GOP?
The Tea Party may have created the populist wave that eventually swept Donald Trump into office, but The Week’s Rachel Wu notes that nearly all of the movement’s top priorities — ObamaCare repeal, entitlements, debt — “have been sidelined.” Yet the Tea Party, “for all its warts, did bring to light certain points that belong under the spotlight and not under the rug.” Its motivating ideas were “genuinely important and an appropriate agenda for the political right.” And with one party “firmly convinced that state programs are the solution to all social ills,” it’d be “good to have another capable of explaining why they may not be.” But while the Tea Party “failed to grow up,” that “doesn’t mean they were wrong about everything. Maybe it’s time to pull the colonial costumes out of mothballs.”
Culture critic: Oscars’ Desperate Plea for Attention
The Academy Awards have just announced what National Review’s Kyle Smith calls “the most jaw-dropping, cringe-inducing, flop-sweaty move in their entire 90-year history.” Next year, there will be three kinds of best movie Oscars: Best Animated Feature, Best Picture and now Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film. So an institution that has spent 90 years “trying to build its reputation for artistic discernment” has now taken “a big step toward becoming the People’s Choice Awards.” That’s because the Best Picture Oscar has become the home of “virtue-signaling.” Indeed, he notes, “not since 2011’s Argo has a crowd-pleasing film won Best Picture.” So now Best Picture “will be reserved for earnest message movies only.” Still, warns Smith, “the rift between Hollywood and America won’t be bridged so easily.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
