From the slightly-delayed Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:
John Kerry 2020! Hey, What’s John Edwards Doing These Days?
Wonderful: I’ll be writing the Kerry Spot until I’m old(er) and gray(er).
The Jerusalem Post quotes sources in the Palestinian Authority who said John Kerry is encouraging Palestinan officials to defy the Trump administration, that he has doubts Trump will be in office a year from now, and that he himself is thinking of running for president again.
…former US secretary of state John Kerry met in London with a close associate of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Hussein Agha, for a long and open conversation about a variety of topics. Agha apparently reported details of the conversation to senior PA officials in Ramallah. A senior PA official confirmed to Maariv that the meeting took place.
During the conversation, according to the report, Kerry asked Agha to convey a message to Abbas and ask him to “hold on and be strong.” Tell him, he told Agha, “that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President [Donald] Trump’s demands.”
According to Kerry, Trump will not remain in office for a long time. It was reported that Kerry said that within a year there was a good chance that Trump would not be in the White House.
It’s good to see Kerry’s assessment of American politics is as bad as his assessment of foreign politics. Look, maybe Trump has (God forbid) a heart attack, or a full-scale public breakdown, or he gets bored with the job and decides he wants to turn it over to Pence and go back to being a television star. But Trump’s not getting impeached, barring an unbelievable smoking gun that spurs a bipartisan appetite to replace the president. You need a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove a president from office, and at this point, there’s little sign of that happening.
He surprised his interlocutor by saying he was seriously considering running for president in 2020. When asked about his advanced age, he said he was not much older than Trump and would not have an age problem.
Let me offer a dollop of sympathy to Kerry – after all, he’s been very good for my career. Yes, his judgment is terrible, his mouth gets him in trouble all the time, he comes across as haughty and arrogant and smug and ludicrously out of touch and… er, where was I going with this?
Ah, yes, John Kerry, if nothing else, was willing to put in the work. He’s got the kind of resume that usually made someone a presidential contender, in better, simpler times like… 2004. He’s not a reality show host, he’s not Oprah, he’s not some no-name congressman like John Delaney of Maryland, or some little-known mayor like Mitch Landrieu. By traditional standards, Kerry is qualified and prepared to be president. He’s spent his adult life working with policy and law, and that’s the sort of thing a president is actually supposed to do. Twitter, funny videos, NCAA Bracket picks, giving imaginary ‘awards’ to media institutions the president hates – that’s all the circus that’s built up around the job, but none of that is the actual job.
Mind you, I think Kerry would be terrible at the actual job. But it’s not hard to imagine Kerry looking at buzz around Mark Cuban, Mark Zuckerberg, The Rock, and thinking, “you’ve got to be kidding me.”
Of course, he’s already out trying to create a separate negotiation with the Palestinians. Allahpundit quips, “If Bob Mueller can bring FARA back from the dead to indict Paul Manafort, surely Jeff Sessions can bring the Logan Act back from the dead to put an end to Waffles’s freelance diplomatic career.”