Programming note: Please join me later today for a brand new episode of our current Tale for Our Time - The Flying Inn by G K Chesterton - and tomorrow for another edition of my still newish weekend music show Mark Steyn on the Town. It airs Saturday at 5pm UK/6pm Western Europe/12 noon North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
~Tradition holds that most Americans don't start paying attention to the presidential election until after Labor Day. So on Tuesday morning millions of people are going to be discovering that the one candidate got shot in the head and the other was more effectively dispatched and whoever's actually running the United States no longer feels the need to pretend that the dead husk of a moth-eaten sock puppet is the chief executive of the global superpower.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians say Moscow is "threatening the world with nuclear catastrophe". Given that an American client state has spent the last month bombing Russia daily, it would be unusual if they were not. But that's no reason to divert the dead husk from another week at his beach house in Delaware.
The removal of Biden has given his successor the proverbial dead cat dead husk bounce. Which appears to be over:
#Latest @NateSilver538 forecast (chance of winning)
August 14
🟦 Harris: 56.7%
🟥 Trump: 42.7%
.
August 29
🟥 Trump: 52.4%
🟦 Harris: 47.3%
——
Swing States: chance of winningPennsylvania - 🔴 Trump 52-48%
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) August 29, 2024
Nevada - 🔴 Trump 52-48%
Arizona - 🔴 Trump 60-40%
Georgia - 🔴 Trump... https://t.co/sYNPuTSk3q pic.twitter.com/RX8BHgcu0U
That's if you take polls seriously. Which I don't, except as an indicator of whether the race is within the Margin of Steal. That's why Joe was removed.
Yesterday, in what she hopes will be her only interview before her victory, Kamala demonstrated that she's the perfect candidate if you're looking for someone who's half Biden's age and with even fewer marbles. Everyone on set - Harris, Walz, CNN's boundlessly cooperative Dana Bash - was acting, but unfortunately they're lousy at it. This was despite the fact that it was pre-taped, although billed as "LIVE" by CNN - and helpfully edited down from an hour to a mere eighteen minutes of softballs'n'word salads. The leading lady, unable to memorise her lines, was apparently reading from a script thanks to a weirdly tight camera shot for her "answers" that no director would normally choose, extending as it did just a couple of inches below her chin. Oh, and the producers of this third-rate summer-stock took the additional precaution of having her understudy sitting next to her on stage.
Thirty-five years ago, I saw Sir Rex Harrison in a revival of The Admirable Crichton (alongside Lozza's Uncle Edward) at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He was still, to the ladies present, "Sexy Rexie", but, being of uncertain memory, had to be fed his lines through a discreet earpiece. The producers of Dead Husk II might have done better to opt for that. Regular readers will recall the memorable observation a decade ago by the then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, that 9/11 was obviously staged, on the grounds that he'd just seen Avatar and, if the Americans can make that, they can make anything. But that wasn't exactly Avatar on CNN...
In our comments section, Walt Trimmer, a member of The Mark Steyn Club, writes:
The FBI finally released a photo of [would-be Trump assassin] Crooks' rifle. It was equipped with a red dot sight. The red dot would cover a 6 inch circle at 150 yards, basically covering Trump's head. After the bullet left the barrel there would be a statistically even chance it would hit anywhere in that circle. So the odds of a kill shot are about the same as a miss. Just clipping Trump's ear would actually be statistically unlikely, but of course that is what happened.
As a mental exercise, what if Trump had been killed? On July 13 JD Vance had not been selected and Kamala had not been installed in the coup d'etat... I think the Republicans would have reverted to their true nature. What would the party of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan do? Nikki Haley!! or who? Meanwhile, would the Demsheviks have stuck with Old Joey? A good puppet is hard to replace.
To which Veronica, a Steyn Clubber from Auckland, responds:
In addition to the gun photo, we've also been told that Crooks had at least two cellphones and three encrypted overseas accounts, rather odd for an anonymous 20 yr old with little money and no apparent online presence, but despite this the FBI can find no evidence regarding motive and whether or not others were involved.
Just another random, motiveless shooting by a shadowy anon, similar to Vegas and Nashville, soon to be memory holed (if it hasn't been already).
Amazing what almost total media and thus narrative control can do.
As to your 'thought experiment' Walt, I am much of your opinion - if Trump had been killed, Haley would've become the GOP nominee and Biden would've been retained by the Dems.
No need to dump him with Haley as the 'opponent' - plus, given all the 'emergency' security measures that would've been brought in after Trump's demise, Biden could just have been hidden in the basement again while the election was 'conducted' by mail or something similar.
As it was, when the attempt on Trump's life failed, old Joe was swapped out very quickly.
Coincidental I'm sure.
It's actually worse than the Vegas shooter: If you remember, back then they at least went through the usual crapola - daily press conferences with representatives of the 147 law-enforcement agencies all jostling behind the microphone. Now you can come within a quarter-inch of blowing apart a presidential skull live on TV ...and neither the authorities nor the media are interested. A Scotland Yard detective to Sherlock Holmes:
'Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?'
'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.'
'The dog did nothing in the night-time.'
'That was the curious incident.'
From which Holmes concludes that there was no stranger in the night: the intruder was well-known to the dog.
Likewise the curious incident of the media poodles in the daytime: there is no agitated yapping at the first near-successful presidential assassination plot in four decades - and for the same reason; the forces who created the conditions that permitted eight shots (one of them fatal for an American citizen) to be fired in Pennsylvania are regarded as familiar and friendly.
So Kamala was a bit of hasty improvisation. After yesterday's non-stellar performance, there is at least a question-mark as to whether they can keep it going until November.
So there will be more plot twists ahead.
A couple of hours south of me in New Hampshire, they have these semi-improv murder-mystery cruises on the lake, where the cast do some Agatha Christie-type caper and the audience gets to vote on whodunnit before the pre-planned conclusion is revealed.
That's what we're watching.
~I thank you for all your supportive comments these last grisly months - and thank you especially to all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club, and those old members who've signed up a chum for a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in the years ahead, and I look forward to your company on Tales for Our Time tonight, and Mark Steyn on the Town tomorrow.
