NBC News' decision to ditch Ronna McDaniel after the hissy fit thrown collectively by Chuck Todd, Joe Scarborough, Jen Psaki, Nicole Wallace, and Rachel Maddow should be more than enough evidence to support a commitment from the Republican National Committee and its new leadership: there is no working with NBC. Not on debates, not on town halls, not even on campaign season interviews. There's no point in creating content for a network that finds even the most generic Republican figure so vile and scary that they don't even want her in the building.
Obviously this is an unenforceable commitment, and someone like Chris Christie or Larry Hogan will assuredly ignore it. But the point is that NBC News can't possibly be viewed as a good faith participant in ideological debate -- they're just a partisan mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. There are numerous opportunities to debate the left all across today's media that are more prominent than anything on offer from MSNBC. And unlike their network, if you're doing so on a program like Bill Maher's or any of dozens of high traffic podcasts, it's going to be a more legitimate and intelligent battle of ideas than trying to pretend NBC is at all interested in such a discourse.
The timing on this couldn't really be worse for NBC News, because if there's anything you want at the beginning of the longest general election season of the modern era it's to make clear you aren't interested in having anyone representing the other side. Creating tension makes for good television -- without any back and forth, you have none of the argument and disagreement that makes for entertaining back and forth. NBC News deciding to make their tension "next up, who can hate Republicans more? We'll find out" is just a surrender to the instincts of their most vocal and partisan viewers, as vocalized by their most partisan anchors.
Even the New York Times has a greater representation of right of center voices, even as they all hate Donald Trump for different reasons. Even CNN lets an occasional Republican slip through into their ridiculous eight-person panels. But only NBC offers you the purity of no one who will ever challenge your worldviews. Come to 30 Rock, it's the best silo in cable news.
Twilight of the Wonks
Impostor syndrome isn’t always a voice of unwarranted self-doubt that you should stifle. Sometimes, it is the voice of God telling you to stand down. If, for example, you are an academic with a track record of citation lapses, you might not be the right person to lead a famous university through a critical time. If you are a moral jellyfish whose life is founded on the “go along to get along” principle and who recognizes only the power of the almighty donor, you might not be the right person to serve on the board of an embattled college when the future of civilization is on the line. And if you are someone who believes that “misgenderment” is a serious offense that demands heavy punishment while calls for the murder of Jews fall into a gray zone, you will likely lead a happier and more useful life if you avoid the public sphere.
The spectacle of the presidents of three important American universities reduced to helpless gibbering in a 2023 congressional hearing may have passed from the news cycle, but it will resonate in American politics and culture for a long time. Admittedly, examination by a grandstanding member of Congress seeking to score political points at your expense is not the most favorable forum for self-expression. Even so, discussing the core mission of their institutions before a national audience is an event that ought to have brought out whatever mental clarity, moral earnestness, and rhetorical skills that three leaders of major American institutions had. My fear is it did exactly that.
The mix of ideas and perceptions swirling through the contemporary American academy is not, intellectually, an impressive product. A peculiar blend of optimistic enlightened positivism (History is with us!) and anti-capitalist, anti-rationalist rage (History is the story of racist, genocidal injustice!) has somehow brought “Death to the Gays” Islamism, “Death to the TERFS” radical identitarianism, and “Jews are Nazis” antisemitism into a partnership on the addled American campus. This set of perceptions—too incoherent to qualify as an ideology—can neither withstand rational scrutiny, provide the basis for serious intellectual endeavor, nor prepare the next generation of American leaders for the tasks ahead. It has, however, produced a toxic stew in which we have chosen to marinate the minds of our nation’s future leaders during their formative years.
American universities remain places where magnificent things are happening. Medical breakthroughs, foundational scientific discoveries, and tech innovations that roar out of the laboratories to transform the world continue to pour from the groves of academe, yet simultaneously many campuses seem overrun not only with the usual petty hatreds and dreary fads, but also at least in some quarters with a horrifying collapse in respect for the necessary foundations of American democracy and civic peace.
Sitting atop these troubled institutions, we have too many “leaders” of extraordinary mediocrity and conventional thinking, like the three hapless presidents blinking and stammering in the glare of the television lights. Assaulted by the angry, noisy proponents of an absurdist worldview, and under pressure from misguided diktats emanating from a woke, activist-staffed Washington bureaucracy, administrators and trustees have generally preferred the path of appeasement. Those who best flourish in administrations of this kind are careerist mediocrities who specialize in uttering the approved platitudes of the moment and checking the appropriate identity boxes on job questionnaires. Leaders recruited from these ranks will rarely shine when crisis strikes.
The aftermath of the hearings was exactly what we would expect. UPenn, which needs donors’ money, folded like a cheap suit in the face of a donor strike. Harvard, resting on its vast endowment, arrogantly dismissed its president’s critics until the board came to the horrifying realization that it was out of step with the emerging consensus of the social circles in which its members move. There was nothing thoughtful, brave, or principled about any of this, and the boards of these institutions are demonstrably no wiser or better than those they thoughtlessly place in positions of great responsibility and trust.
It would be easier to simply dismiss or take pleasure in the public humiliation of some of America’s most elite institutions—but we can’t. Universities still matter, and as Americans struggle to reform our institutions in a turbulent era, getting universities right is a national priority. The question is not whether our higher educational system (and indeed our education system as a whole) needs reform. From the colonial era to the present, America’s system of higher ed has been in a constant state of change and reform, and the mix of opportunities and challenges presented by the Information Revolution can only be met by accelerating the pace and deepening the reach of that continuing historical process.
Russia Dominates the Prisoner Swap Game
Why Russia holds all the cards in prisoner swaps.
America once had only one prisoner it considered wrongfully jailed in Russia, the 54-year-old Whelan. But through nearly six years of intense and combative negotiations, Putin has run up the score, stockpiling his prisons with Americans to swap for the very few Russians abroad he cares to bring back.
Both Presidents Biden and Trump found themselves facing the crude asymmetry between the U.S. and Russia, whose leader of a quarter-century can order foreigners plucked from their hotel rooms and sentenced to decades on spurious charges.
Putin, whom Biden called “a butcher,” hasn’t been a normal negotiating partner. After news of Navalny’s sudden death interrupted an annual lunch among chiefs of the leading Western security agencies, several attendees immediately wondered if the Russian ruler had ordered a hit. Weeks later, the U.S. hasn’t offered a public assessment of how he died, while Russia has cited only “natural causes.”
At the same time, America has been an easy mark, polarized by its culture wars and susceptible to the power of celebrity-driven campaigns that leveled a degree of pressure on the White House never felt by the Kremlin.
The Biden administration came into office determined to craft a consistent approach to prisoner talks—only to be knocked off course by viral outrage when Russia jailed Olympic basketball champion Brittney Griner. As her representatives lobbied the president to free her, if necessary by trading notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, the Justice Department was concerned such a deal would make it harder to free Whelan and encourage Putin to grab more Americans.
The unreported story of this escalating hostage crisis takes place in clandestine meetings in hotels in neutral capitals booked under false names. The Journal spoke to dozens of current or former U.S., European, Middle Eastern and Russian officials, including individuals directly involved in negotiations. It also reviewed court records and interviewed former prisoners, their families and the people who worked as their backchannel representatives.
The Lab Leak Lies
A former New York Times journalist has attacked a group of leading scientists for “clearly” misleading him over the Covid lab-leak theory in the early days of the pandemic.
Donald McNeil Jr said he became sceptical of the hypothesis the virus was engineered in a Wuhan lab after several top epidemiological virologists insisted it wasn’t possible.
Mr McNeil Jr said their efforts to throw him “off track” influenced the newspaper’s coverage of the theory and likely contributed to the topic being “dropped” for a year.
However, the experts initially thought the lab leak theory was plausible but didn’t want to disclose so for political reasons, according to a raft of messages between them accidentally released by a US congressional committee last year.
In his book The Wisdom of Plagues, which looks back at 25 years covering pandemics, Mr McNeil Jr said the scientists “clearly misled me early on” and he was a “victim of deception”.
He said he was “disappointed, both in them and in myself, that I was so easily taken in”.
“It’s one thing to be lied to by a politician and fail to check it out. But on viral evolution, to whom do you go for a second opinion?”, he wrote.
“If Albert Einstein assured you that nuclear fission is harmless, whom would you trust to quote saying, ‘Einstein’s dead wrong?”
Feature
Patrick Hauf: How Dallas curbed violent crime.
Items of Interest
Foreign
The need to close the U.S.’s defense capabilities gap.
China’s economic collision course.
The return of the Irish right.
Resignations signal early exit for Netanyahu?
Behind closed doors, U.S. pushes Israel on Rafah.
Britain’s conservatives go Trumpian.
Russia executed 32 Ukrainian POWs, UN report finds.
Domestic
Fallout from the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse.
Mayday call from ship stopped traffic, saved lives.
Texas AG Ken Paxton settles 9 year long security fraud case.
Court seems uninterested in restricting mailed mifepristone.
Renting now cheaper than owning in all 50 biggest metros.
Kari Lake won’t defend statement about AZ election official.
Texas immigration law held up by appeals court.
Tuberville and Steele: Democrats vote against women’s future in sports.
2024
Biden plans to go back to Covid campaign strategy.
What RFK sees in Nicole Shanahan: money.
55 things to know about Shanahan.
Is VP contender Kristi Noem ready for prime time?
Media
McDaniel out at both NBC and CAA.
The UAE’s bid for The Spectator, Telegraph is finished.
Mary Harrington: Is Andrew Huberman the new Jordan Peterson?
Tech
TikTok’s woes continue: FTC could sue.
DeSantis signs law banning Floridians under 14 from social media.
Ephemera
Dallas megachurch Pastor T.D. Jakes named in lawsuit against P. Diddy.
Bill Maher launches new podcast network, hiring Sage Steele.
Jerry Bruckheimer promises Pirates reboot.
The Night of the Hunter to get new adaptation by Derrickson and Cargill.
The Kendrick Lamar/Drake beef is years too late.
10 takeaways from the NFL’s owners’ meeting.
Podcast
Quote
“People are often worried. They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, ‘If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?’ When you have found the answer, go and do it.”
— C.S. Lewis