For the Record I

“Look, I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just, I can’t speak to that. But what I can speak to is if you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction and he chooses to go back many, many years ago to try to do something about pornstar hush-money payments, that’s an example of pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office and I think that that’s fundamentally wrong.” —Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

“Claiming that he is going to be arrested this week, Donald Trump implored his 500,000 active users on his social media platform, Truth Social, to ‘PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!’ … Clearly, 99.999% of Trump supporters, past and present, are law-abiding American Patriots, but as was grossly demonstrated by the J6 riot, some of his followers can become unhinged and violent. Repeatedly calling for protests on Truth Social, where the most vociferous residual of Trump’s supporters hang out, was at best careless.” —Mark Alexander

“If Trump being arrested causes Republicans to arrest Democratic politicians which causes Democrats to arrest Republican politicians which causes Republicans to arrest more Democratic politicians, that seems like the optimal outcome of all this.” —Frank J. Fleming

For the Record II

“The chaos in the banking system is the result of decades of low to zero interest rates and $6 trillion in fiscal stimulus since 2020. That flood of money and credit produced the worst inflation in four decades. In 2022 the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to restore price stability. The Fed should have acted sooner. It waited because it assumed that inflation would be temporary. That assumption was false. The Fed’s complacency made the situation worse. By the time it started raising rates, inflation expectations were fixed. The past year of Fed hikes may have slowed inflation. What they haven’t done is kill it.” —Matthew Continetti

“SVB donated over $73 million to BLM related groups. Their collapse should reinforce the need to support local and community banks. Trust your money to financial institutions that prioritize risk assessment over DEI and ESG.” —Michael Seifert

Observations

“The problem isn’t the goal of diversity, equity, or inclusion in the traditional meanings of those words. It’s that each one and especially the triumvirate has come to mean a conformity of ideology based upon division and hatred of whites and traditional American values. DEI is driven by Marxism, which thrives on fomenting the struggle between classes of people. Ironically, DEI is also driven by capitalist profit.” —Nate Jackson

“What most people don’t understand … is that most of the ‘trans’ stuff among men today is not gender dysphoria, or even rapid onset gender dysphoria, or even autogynephelia. It’s a humiliation fetish popularized through porn.” —Allie Beth Stuckey

Non Compos Mentis

“People of color need to get away from white people and have some community with each other.” —Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility (“When Robin DiAngelo says it, it’s inspirational and she gets paid $20k. When Scott Adams says it, it’s racist and he loses his job.” —Allie Beth Stuckey)

“Oh my God, [red states] are going to keep the outbreak smoldering in the country [because they won’t get vaccinated]. It’s so crazy. I’m mean, they’re not doing it because they say they don’t want to do it. They’re Republicans. They don’t like to be told what to do. And we gotta break that.” —Dr. Anthony Fauci

And Last…

“If the Bush administration deserves criticism for the way it governed Iraq after the invasion, the invasion itself was clearly justified. Saddam was a malignant and dangerous dictator who not only ruled Iraq with horrific cruelty but also posed an ongoing threat far beyond his borders. He was a psychopath who had amassed a record of war crimes with few parallels in modern history. … Politics being what it is, the president’s foes were quick to attack Bush for having ‘lied’ the country into war. But a broad intelligence failure is not a lie. More important, the supposed weapons stockpiles were never the chief reason for going to war. Bush’s primary case for regime change was the undiminished threat posed by Saddam to Iraq’s neighboring countries and, through collaboration with terrorists, to the US homeland.” —Jeff Jacoby