On the menu today: The U.S. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle and the insurmountable risk of a sloped roof; the strange dearth of left-wing protesters in Milwaukee; and the dramatic contrast between what Adam Schiff tells the public versus what he tells his donors.
Haley’s Argument
Milwaukee — Yesterday’s newsletter noted that 4.3 million people voted for Nikki Haley in this year’s Republican presidential primary, and about 1.2 million of them live in the swing or competitive states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Yes, a bunch of those folks probably have already decided to vote for Trump, but the GOP nominee ought to be trying to catch them all like they’re Pokemon.
Tuesday night, at the Republican National Convention, Haley herself made the most cogent, compelling, and direct argument possible to those 4 million Trump-skeptical voters that the fate of the country is in their hands:
I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period.
We should acknowledge that there are some Americans who don’t agree with Donald Trump 100 percent of the time. I happen to know some of them, and I want to speak to them tonight. My message to them is simple. You don’t have to agree with Trump 100 percent of the time to vote for him. Take it from me. I haven’t always agreed with President Trump, but we agree more often than we disagree.
We agree on keeping America strong. We agree on keeping America safe. And we agree that Democrats have moved so far to the left that they’re putting our freedoms in danger.
I’m here tonight because we have a country to save, and a unified Republican Party is essential for saving her.
There’s a flaw in a lot of convention speeches — in both parties — because they start with the assumption that the audience watching at home is as enthusiastic as the delegates in the arena, already convinced that the nominee is just the most swell person ever. Rarely do convention speakers even bother trying to construct an argument to persuade anyone who’s undecided or wavering.
Haley won’t have the biggest, most celebrated, or most-watched speech of the convention. But it may be one of the most consequential. It was an explicit declaration to her supporters and the “double haters” that Donald Trump’s copious flaws — much more significant and consequential than “mean tweets” — aren’t as dangerous to America’s future as four more years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Haley found the part of the Venn Diagram where Trump-style Jacksonianism and her hawkish interventionism intersect — sending a clear and intimidating message to America’s enemies:
When Barack Obama was president, Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea. With Joe Biden as President, Putin invaded all of Ukraine. But when Donald Trump was president, Putin did nothing. No invasions, no invasions. No wars. That was no accident. Putin didn’t attack Ukraine because he knew Donald Trump was tough. A strong president doesn’t start wars. A strong president prevents wars. . . .
Once again, compare Trump and Biden. Trump got us out of the insane Iran nuclear deal. He imposed the toughest sanctions ever on Iran, and he eliminated the arch terrorist Kassam Suleimani. Iran was too weak to start any wars. They knew Trump meant business. . . .
Even now, while Hamas is still holding Americans hostage, Biden is pressuring Israel instead of the terrorists between Israel and Hamas. Donald Trump is clear about who is our friend and who is our enemy.
Like our old friend Jonah, I’ve heard from a lot of folks who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020 who are fed up with Biden. And Haley deftly tied dangers overseas to dangers closer to home: “Our foreign enemies win when they see Americans hate each other. They see that today, whether it’s on college campuses or in a field in Butler, Pennsylvania.”
Trump insulted Haley relentlessly during the primary, nicknaming her “Bird Brain.” It was good of him to invite Haley to speak, and she more than returned the favor.
The Insurmountable Peril of a Sloped Roof
I was tempted to make this the lead item of today’s newsletter, because I think the entire country’s attitude toward the U.S. Secret Service is shifting from bewilderment to anger.
Failing to recognize and react in time to stop someone from firing an estimated eight shots at Donald Trump was bad enough, but now there are claims of scapegoating local police and nonsensical explanations. So far, authorities have released little information about the shooter, still not elaborating on why he took his terrible actions.
And now we learn, “Local police who were assigned by the Secret Service to help spot threats in the crowd at Donald Trump’s rally Saturday were inside the building where a gunman had positioned himself on the roof to shoot at the former president,” and that those police “radioed a Secret Service command post to alert them.”
U.S. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle has done one televised interview since the assassination attempt on Trump, with ABC News. In that interview, Cheatle declared, “The buck stops with me.”
But viewers didn’t see all that Cheatle had to say. Note this detail from our James Lynch:
“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,” Cheatle told ABC News in an exchange that was not included in the outlet’s write-up of the interview nor the published transcript.
First, if I told you Cheatle had voluntarily turned in her resignation over Saturday’s failures, how shocked would you be? People who run government agencies don’t resign after massive failures anymore. We no longer even expect them to do that, even when the consequences of those failures are deadly. This morning, the editors of NR declare that Cheatle must resign as the director of the Secret Service.
As noted in yesterday’s Jolt, when Lester Holt asked President Biden about Cheatle, the president replied, “I’ve heard from him.” This raises the question of whether Biden just used the wrong pronoun, or whether Biden can’t remember who the director of the U.S. Secret Service is.
Cheatle was on Biden’s security detail while he was vice president; when Biden named her the director in August 2022, Biden’s issued statement declared, “Jill and I know firsthand Kim’s commitment to her job and to the Secret Service’s people and mission. When Kim served on my security detail when I was Vice President, we came to trust her judgement and counsel.”
The New York Post, citing unnamed sources, claimed Cheatle “landed her role thanks largely to a close relationship with first lady Jill Biden.”
Imagine how shocked you would be if you heard that President Biden had requested Cheatle’s resignation or fired her.
President Trump, in his debate with Biden:
The other thing is, he doesn’t fire people. He never fired people. I’ve never seen him fire anybody. I did fire a lot. I fired Comey because he was no good. I fired a lot of the top people at the FBI, drained the swamp. They were no good. Not easy to fire people. You’d pay a price for it, but they were no good. I inherited these people. I didn’t put him there. I didn’t put Comey there. He was no good. I fired him.
This guy hasn’t fired anybody. He never fires. He should have fired every military man that was involved with that Afghan — the Afghanistan horror show. The most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. He didn’t fire?
Did you fire anybody? Did you fire anybody that’s on the border, that’s allowed us to have the worst border in the history of the world? Did anybody get fired for allowing 18 million people, many from prisons, many from mental institutions? Did you fire anybody that allowed our country to be destroyed? Joe, our country is being destroyed as you and I sit up here and waste a lot of time on this debate. This shouldn’t be a debate.
In the second debate, Trump is likely to say something like, “I got shot, and he didn’t even fire anybody. What’s it going to take?”
Biden’s New Slogan: We Couldn’t Get It Done
President Joe Biden, in an interview with BET: “I think I’ve demonstrated that I know how to get things done for the country, in spite of the fact that we couldn’t get it done.” Couldn’t say it any better than that, Mr. President!
The Strange Dearth of Left-Wing Protesters in Milwaukee
I appreciate our man Luther Ray Abel covering the protest beat here in Milwaukee.
But so far — at least in the spots where I’ve been since I’ve arrived — the left-wing protests feel lighter and quieter than usual.
It’s not that protesters aren’t here in Milwaukee. About 3,000 gathered Monday in a park near the arena. There were a handful — and I mean one hand’s full — of Code Pink protesters by the State Street Bascule Bridge around midday Tuesday. The crowd size may well pick up on Wednesday and Thursday.
Maybe it’s because Trump just survived an assassination attempt. Maybe it’s because folks like this have been protesting Donald Trump for eight years, and as Saul Alinsky warned in Rules for Radicals, “A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.”
Maybe it’s because left-wing protesters aren’t all that enthused about the Democratic nominee, whom they’ve been denouncing as “Genocide Joe” for the past half-year or so. In fact, one of the protesters in Milwaukee characterized the 2024 election as a choice between “a genocidal man and a fascist man.” If the typical grassroots progressive activist thinks Biden and Trump are about equally bad, how motivated are they to stand out in a park in the middle of the day, when the heat index is 95?
Don’t take my word for it. Shia Kapos, writing at Politico: “This week’s much-hyped protest movement against the Republican National Convention has been mostly meh, with a few thousand protesters marching through downtown.”
Let me throw out one other theory: Left-wing protesters expect a lot more from Democrats than they do from Republicans, and feel like their protests have a better chance of actually influencing Democrats, as opposed to Republicans.
Now, I’ve never been the protesting type. But being a left-winger and attempting to protest a huge gathering of right-wingers, or vice versa, seems like one of the least effective forms of political activism. It’s not like if the Milwaukee protesters chant, “Viva, viva, Palestina! Viva, viva, Palestina!” enough times, the Republican delegates within earshot are going to suddenly abandon their support for Israel.
The Public Adam Schiff vs. the Private Adam Schiff
California Democratic representative and Senate candidate Adam Schiff, appearing on NBC News’ Meet the Press, July 7, discussing whether Joe Biden should remain the Democratic Party’s nominee:
He should seek out people with some distance and objectivity. He should seek out pollsters who are not his own pollsters. He should take a moment to make the best informed judgment. And if the judgment is run, then run hard and beat that S.O.B.
Adam Schiff at a fundraiser, July 13:
“I think if he is our nominee, I think we lose,” Mr. Schiff said during the meeting, according to a person with access to a transcription of a recording of the event. “And we may very, very well lose the Senate and lose our chance to take back the House.”
ADDENDUM: Tuesday morning, I spoke on The Editors about the attempted assassination of Trump, the fallout, and the selection of J. D. Vance as VP. Then I taped another podcast with my colleagues on the Washington Post editorial page. Then I taped the Three Martini Lunch podcast with Greg Corombos. It was a busy start to the day. And make sure you’re checking out National Review’s live-blog coverage of the convention speeches each night!