Bret Stephens: Gail, I really feel heartsick watching the photographs popping out of Los Angeles. Lives, houses, companies, landmarks, neighborhoods — charred, destroyed, vanished. I do know there was certain to be a political dimension to this, and quite a lot of blame to throw round, however this ought to be an event for unity of function.
Gail Collins: Completely. The entire world is united in sorrow.
Nevertheless, as soon as the hearth’s lastly below management and we move by our first phases of grief and mourning, I actually, actually imagine we have to take care of international warming and local weather change — a phenomenon our incoming president says he doesn’t imagine in.
Bret: Yep — but it surely’s manner too quickly for political arguments and ideological score-settling, whether or not the alleged offender is local weather change or D.E.I. For now, let Democrats and Republicans work collectively to get Angelenos the assistance they want. Later, we will struggle about all of it.
Gail: Agree. And we’ve received quite a lot of different stuff to struggle about with the brand new Congress beginning up. However we have to start with — sigh — Donald Trump. I’m kinda happy with the end result of his trial right here in New York.
Bret: Say extra.
Gail: Can’t ship a man to jail when he’s simply been elected president by individuals who have been totally knowledgeable about his conviction on 34 felony counts. For, um, falsifying enterprise data to cowl up a intercourse scandal.
However giving him an unconditional discharge makes him the primary felon ever to function president. Assume that’ll be his footnote in historical past?
Bret: To me the conclusion of this drama simply reinforces the sense that the prosecution, verdict and sentence have been basically political.
I’m not speaking concerning the morality of Trump having an affair with a porn star whereas his spouse was at residence with a new child after which making an attempt to cowl it up with a hush-money fee. Voters can resolve for themselves what to make of that — and so they have. I’m speaking concerning the convoluted rationale for the case — a misdemeanor record-keeping offense reworked right into a felony — which might nearly definitely not have been introduced towards a much less infamous defendant. Additionally, the wrist-slap sentence, which might not have been given to a much less vital defendant — or do defendants convicted of 34 felonies ordinarily get off scot-free? Lastly, the political impact of the case, which was to boost Trump’s standing along with his base, to not point out serving to him elevate a fortune for his marketing campaign, whereas furthering the notion of politicized justice within the palms of progressive prosecutors.
Gail: The Trump base can be enthralled if he received arrested for something.
Bret: Which is another excuse to oppose him solely within the courtroom of public opinion. Lengthy story brief: Liberals now get to name Trump a “felon” whereas the remainder of America calls him “Mr. President.” Any sense of what his first few weeks again in workplace will seem like?
Gail: I’m very, very fascinated by seeing what occurs in Congress. The place the very slim Republican Home majority needs to increase the Trump tax cuts, lots of them focused towards the rich.
Speaker Mike Johnson has made it clear he needs to keep away from any cuts to Medicare or Social Safety.
Sounds ache free, aside from that previous satan, the nationwide debt. Bret, you’re a real fiscal conservative. How does all that strike you?
Bret: Effectively, sustaining present tax charges as a substitute of letting the 2017 cuts expire would help non-public spending and funding, create jobs and improve productiveness, and cut back the burden of debt relative to gross home product. I’m additionally hoping Trump is severe this time about taking an ax to authorities waste — just like the $100 billion a 12 months misplaced to Medicare and Medicaid fraud — and dumb federal mandates, rules and subsidies, just like the billions we waste yearly on ethanol and different environmentally damaging biofuels. In accordance with one examine, there have been some 1,091,860 federal rules as of January 2023.
Gail: Let’s see if Elon Musk and associates really decide the unwise ones to get rid of.
Bret: Honest level. Possibly he can whittle it right down to a mere 420,000 regs and see who will get the joke. And, sure, Musk’s prominence in Trumpworld does fear me. Far too nice a focus of private wealth, political energy and media affect. That, plus his newfound fondness for far-right events in Europe. The query is whether or not the Trump-Musk bromance will final 4 years — or 4 months?
Gail: May go both manner, proper? Huge private wealth is one factor Trump actually respects. But when we ever hit the purpose the place the president thinks Musk is getting extra consideration than he’s, all bets are off.
Bret: One other “only-in-Trumpworld” topic I’ve been mulling, Gail, is his demand to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Whereas he’s at it, what about altering the identify of New Mexico to “Not Mexico”? Or Arizona to “Amerizona”? Or El Paso to “No Pasarán”?
Gail: Hey, we will ask Musk whether or not making an attempt to rename a significant worldwide physique of water is an environment friendly technique to spend cash.
Bret: To not point out the forthcoming renaming of Greenland, as one viral meme had it, as “Mar-a-Igloo.” Which jogs my memory: Ought to we purchase it?
Gail: Many Greenlanders wish to get out from below Denmark’s thumb, however I doubt Donald Trump’s large hand can be an enchancment.
Can’t consider new territories I’d need to see us purchase. However you’re the international affairs man, what do you suppose?
Bret: Effectively, right here goes: I’m for it. Not by power, after all. However Greenland is strategically vital, minerally rich and economically underdeveloped — which is why the Chinese language have taken an unwholesome curiosity in it. Additionally, why is there nonetheless an infinite European territory, bigger in measurement than Mexico, on the North American continent?
We should always urge Denmark to permit Greenlanders to carry a referendum on the next: a U.S. provide to make Greenland a self-governing U.S. territory, with a standing just like that of, say, the U.S. Virgin Islands — which we additionally purchased from Denmark, throughout the First World Warfare — and a proposal to pay each particular person in Greenland $1 million over 10 years to develop into U.S. residents. With round 57,000 folks in Greenland, that may price the U.S. about $5.7 billion a 12 months. Not a steep value for an island that would sometime be as vital to america as Alaska, as soon as often known as “Seward’s Folly.”
Gail: It’s one week till inauguration day, Bret. Any entertainers you’d wish to suggest for the — shudder — celebration?
Bret: Are the Village Individuals nonetheless round? Who would you recommend? Rudy Giuliani doing his finest Frank Sinatra imitation?
Gail: Ah, glad you introduced up Giuliani. He’s a superb instance of why the general public ought to all the time keep in mind that simply because anyone is nice at doing one explicit factor doesn’t imply he’s good at every thing. And even two issues.
Wonderful crime-fighter again within the Eighties, however going into politics was a catastrophe for Rudy — from dangerous mayor to loopy Trump acolyte who’s mainly going to lose every thing he ever earned to 2 Georgia election employees he wildly defamed after Trump’s election defeat.
Bret: I keep in mind Rudy a little bit in another way: showboating U.S. Legal professional, terrific mayor, human practice wreck.
Gail: As for the entertainers, I suppose it’s Child Rock all the best way.
Bret: There’s a musical time period for his artwork: barf. Completely different topic — any ideas on Mark Zuckerberg’s resolution to overtake Meta’s speech guidelines to make it much less censorious and even transfer a part of its operations from California to Texas?
Gail: We have now to keep in mind that we’ve moved into an unprecedented world of human communication, the place the previous guidelines we made to control public speeches and the printed phrase received’t essentially all work.
However the concept that we’ve moved past fact-checking is … manner farther than I’m able to go. And as you most likely know, Bret, I as soon as wrote a ebook about Texas. Many fantastic folks in Texas, however highly effective folks who transfer their companies there are usually not usually seeking Texan enter.
Bret: Effectively, the issue is that Zuckerberg mainly admitted that left-leaning, California-based Meta staff have been censoring opinions they didn’t like, and {that a} social-media platform shouldn’t be within the enterprise of making an attempt to tip the scales in political debates.
Whereas he was at it, Zuckerberg additionally informed Joe Rogan that “folks from the Biden administration would name up our staff and, like, scream at them and curse” to get them to take posts down, which is a heck of a manner for a Democratic administration to guard the rules of the First Modification. Possibly it’s time that liberals keep in mind that if liberalism stands for something, it’s freedom of speech for all.
Gail: We are able to all be a part of palms and agree that representatives of the president mustn’t curse at publishers whose contributors criticize the administration.
So significantly better to have civilized … conversations. Proper?
Bret: Completely. Though there’s one thing to be stated for solitude. Which jogs my memory: Remember to learn Elisabetta Povoledo’s fascinating obituary in The Occasions for Mauro Morandi, often known as “Italy’s Robinson Crusoe.” Morandi, who died this month, lived alone for 32 years in an deserted hut on the gorgeous and otherwise-uninhabited island of Budelli, simply north of Sardinia, till previous age and native officers pressured him off a couple of years in the past.
“An important factor,” he stated, “is that I’ve a serene relationship with time.” If solely all of us may.
