WSJ Pushes Back Against the Left's 'Renewables' Lobby Amid Texas Energy Catastrophe

Following-up from yesterday, "Global Warming is Man-Made," the Wall Street Journal comes back with a humdinger of an editorial.

See, "Texas Spins Into the Wind: An electricity grid that relies on renewables also needs nuclear or coal power":

While millions of Texans remain without power for a third day, the wind industry and its advocates are spinning a fable that gas, coal and nuclear plants—not their frozen turbines—are to blame. PolitiFact proclaims “Natural gas, not wind turbines, main driver of Texas power shortage.” Climate-change conformity is hard for the media to resist, but we don’t mind. So here are the facts to cut through the spin.

Texas energy regulators were already warning of rolling blackouts late last week as temperatures in western Texas plunged into the 20s, causing wind turbines to freeze. Natural gas and coal-fired plants ramped up to cover the wind power shortfall as demand for electricity increased with falling temperatures.

Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday ("The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage") that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity.

Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation. Texas has a total winter capacity of about 83,000 megawatts (MW) including all power sources. Total power demand and generation, however, at their peak are usually only around 57,000 MW. Regulators build slack into the system.

Texas has about 30,000 MW of wind capacity, but winds aren’t constant or predictable. Winds this past month have generated between about 600 and 22,500 MW. Regulators don’t count on wind to provide much more than 10% or so of the grid’s total capacity since they can’t command turbines to increase power like they can coal and gas plants.

Wind turbines at times this month have generated more than half of the Texas power generation, though this is only about a quarter of the system’s power capacity. Last week wind generation plunged as demand surged. Fossil-fuel generation increased and covered the supply gap. Thus between the mornings of Feb. 7 and Feb. 11, wind as a share of the state’s electricity fell to 8% from 42%, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Gas-fired plants produced 43,800 MW of power Sunday night and coal plants chipped in 10,800 MW—about two to three times what they usually generate at their peak on any given winter day—after wind power had largely vanished. In other words, gas and coal plants held up in the frosty conditions far better than wind turbines did.

It wasn’t until temperatures plunged into the single digits early Monday morning that some conventional power plants including nuclear started to have problems, which was the same time that demand surged for heating. Gas plants also ran low on fuel as pipelines froze and more was diverted for heating.

“It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” Electric Reliability Council of Texas senior director Dan Woodfin said Tuesday. The wind industry and its friends are citing this statement as exoneration. But note he used the word “today.” Most wind power had already dropped offline last week.

Gas generation fell by about one-third between late Sunday night and Tuesday, but even then was running two to three times higher than usual before the Arctic blast. Gas power nearly made up for the shortfall in wind, though it wasn’t enough to cover surging demand...

Still more.

 

Chris Cuomo's Conflicts of Interest (VIDEO)

My wife and I have been talking about this for weeks. 

You see, we were both watching a lot of CNN back in March, April, May or so of last year, and some of these segments were the "family hour" on Chris Cuomo's prime-time show on CNN. Honestly, I thought some of the brotherly back-and-forth was pretty funny, although even then I was thinking, "This is probably not a good look for a purportedly "non-partisan" news outlet," but what the heck? Comic relief during the pandemic? And of course, no one knew then what we know now, and what we know now, about Andrew Cuomo, is criminal.

In any case, I watched Governor Cuomo's press conference on Monday, and he looked like he was lying remorselessly. I think later I even caught a critical segment discussing the governor on CNN, but not with Chris Cuomo. Maybe HE should be fired. 

In any case, WaPo, of all places, has the story, "CNN’s Chris Cuomo is reminding us why conflicts of interest poison the news":

On his Monday night CNN program, host Chris Cuomo provided an update on the biggest story of the past year. “Now, good news: When it comes to coronavirus, we’ve had the best week we’ve seen so far, in terms of getting people vaccinated. And every week since New Year’s, the rate has only improved,” said the host.

Here’s an update that he skipped: Just hours before “Cuomo Prime Time” aired, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo held a news conference to address his state’s nursing-home scandal. Under his leadership, the state has shown a staggering lack of transparency regarding the extent of coronavirus-related deaths in New York nursing homes. “We should have provided more information faster,” said Cuomo in the press briefing, which addressed an undercount of nursing-home deaths in the state.

That story — the hottest on the covid beat on Monday — didn’t make the cut on “Cuomo Prime Time.” Perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise: Chris Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo are brothers, and journalists can’t reliably cover their brothers.

Except that Chris Cuomo did cover his brother, famously, during the early months of the pandemic. As the coronavirus spread around the country, Andrew Cuomo turned in more than 10 appearances on “Cuomo Prime Time.” The heartwarming moments stick out: In May, Chris Cuomo presented a gigantic test swab to joke about the governor’s televised coronavirus test. They laughed about their parents quite a bit, too. At the end of one appearance, Chris Cuomo thanked his brother for coming on the air. “Mom told me I had to,” replied the governor. The TV host rolled his eyes...

Well, it's not so funny now, is it?

And if you're watching Fox News at all, do try to catch a segment with Janice Dean, the network's weather-caster. She lost her in-laws (husband's parents) after they were sent to nursing homes during the height of New York's deadly pandemic, and Ms. Dean has never been political in her life, and certainly not on her network, but she's been out there with all cannons firing, and wants prosecution and imprisonment for the perpetrators of the deaths of thousands of thousands of New York's elderly covid-19 victims.

What an awful story, man.

California's Employment Development Department Was Completed Unprepared for the Flood of New Claims During the Pandemic, And It's a Scandal of Lessons Not Learned During Earlier Crises, Such as the 'Great Recession'

Boy, is it ever a scandal. 

While New York is no doubt the worst state in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, the once-Golden State is so bad that Governor Newsom is nipping at Governor Cuomo's heels.

At LAT, "EDD’s lack of planning deprived jobless Californians of needed benefits amid pandemic, audit finds":

SACRAMENTO — Poor planning and ineffective management left California’s unemployment agency unprepared to help workers left jobless by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it failed to address problems in its system that were known for nearly a decade, according to an emergency state audit released Tuesday.

The report by State Auditor Elaine Howle was ordered by a bipartisan group of 40 state lawmakers who had criticized the state Employment Development Department for large backlogs of significantly delayed claims and its failure to prevent widespread fraud since the pandemic forced many businesses to close, putting millions of Californians out of work.

“Although it would be unreasonable to have expected a flawless response to such an historic event, EDD’s inefficient processes and lack of advanced planning led to significant delays in its payment of [unemployment insurance] claims,” Howle wrote to the governor and Legislature on Tuesday.

Howle said the agency was unable to automatically process nearly half of the claims submitted online between March and September 2020, and was forced to instead have the claims manually processed by staff.

“As a result, hundreds of thousands of claimants waited longer than 21 days — EDD’s measure of how quickly it should process a claim — to receive their first benefit payments,” Howle said. “EDD has begun to modify its practices and processes to increase the rate at which it automatically processes online claims, but the automation it has gained during the pandemic is not fully sustainable.”

The audit recommends the agency develop plans for times of high unemployment and address problems including call centers unable to handle large numbers of phone calls.

“EDD has at times been unable to help virtually any of the claimants that contact its call center and has not answered all web correspondence that claimants submit,” the audit said.

State lawmakers who requested the audit, including Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), said Tuesday the report confirmed their worst fears about the agency’s preparedness and operations.

“This audit confirms that EDD has known it has been failing Californians for over a decade but hasn’t taken anywhere near the necessary steps to fix its situation,” Chiu said.

EDD director Rita Saenz, who took over the agency from outgoing director Sharon Hilliard on Jan. 1, told reporters Monday that she was working to address the problems in the state’s unemployment system, which has paid out an unprecedented $114 billion in benefits since the pandemic began in March 2020.

“We know that too many Californians are waiting on their payments, and we are working quickly to validate their claims and get their benefits to them,” Saenz said during a conference call.

In a written response to the audit released Tuesday, Saenz acknowledged that there were issues that needed to be addressed but said steps were being taken to improve the department.

“While there are additional improvements that EDD must make,” she said, “the department has taken steps to increase efficiencies, expedite payment processes and prevent fraud.”

The audit said the EDD knew of problems going back to the Great Recession of a decade ago but that in March 2020 the agency “had no comprehensive plan for how it would respond if California experienced a recession” and jobless claims surged.

“The 2020 claim surge was unprecedented and would have presented significant challenges no matter how prepared EDD was, but it failed to act comprehensively to prepare for downturns and to address known deficiencies,” the audit said.

Howle also said that EDD responded to the claim surge by suspending its determination of eligibility for most claimants, “thereby compromising the integrity of the UI program.”

State officials on Monday said they had confirmed that some $11.4 billion in benefits paid out by California involved fraud, and they are investigating suspicious claims involving another $19.3 billion in benefits.

Efforts to block fraud are hindering EDD’s work to get claims paid quickly, Saenz said.

“Security is stopping fraud and unfortunately creates longer waiting times,” she said. “Of course people are frustrated and angry.”

The lawmakers asked the state auditor to evaluate the performance of EDD call centers, the effects of the agency’s outdated technology, and the reasons for a backlog of delayed claims that last week totaled 941,000.

The EDD has made improvements in response to a strike team report by government experts in September, including hiring a contractor who put in place an identity verification system that allows more claims to be approved online, reducing the delays that accompany manual processing...

 

Lori Laughlin's Daughter Lives It Up at Santa Barbara's Rosewood Miramar Resort While Her Mother Lori Does Time for Admissions Scandal Conviction at Federal Correctional Institution, in Dublin, California

Oh these daughters make my blood boil. 

Sure, these parents are literally imbeciles, especially for the fact that for all they did to get their daughters into an "elite" private university (U.S.C.'s not "elite," but that's another story), their daughters couldn't care less. Olivia Jade even attacked her mom when the scandal broke --- she slammed her for getting arrested, because it ruined her career as a YouTube influencer. The youth generation is the greatest generation of spoiled, no-talent trust-fund brats. This story has always blown me away. 

See, "Lori Loughlin's daughter Isabella Rose Giannulli, 22, relaxes at a luxury Santa Barbara resort as her parents languish in jail for paying $500k in bribes to get her and her sister into USC":

Lori Loughlin's daughter Isabella Rose Giannulli, 22, relaxes at a luxury Santa Barbara resort as her parents languish in jail https://t.co/ob4otPcae3

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) November 27, 2020

Her parents' prison time seemed a distant memory as she relaxed with a dark-haired male companion wearing a dark t-shirt and blue shorts and joked around, appearing to bury her feet in the sand at one point. 

Rooms at the luxury beachside getaway currently start from $806 per night, with many boasting views across the ocean. 

It's a far cry from the current dwellings of her parents who are both serving time in California prisons for their parts in the college admissions scandal. 

Loughlin, 56, started her two-month sentence at FCI Dublin in California on October 30. 

She is said to have been a 'wreck' during her first few weeks behind bars. 

A former inmate turned prison consultant told DailyMail.com this month that the mom-of-two was 'anxious about contracting COVID, is living off a diet of dry cereal and fruit and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, is sharing a cell with three other inmates and is only allowed to shower three times a week.

Still more. 

Hunter Biden's Laptop Allegedly Features Photos of 'Underage Girls'

 At Big League Politics. "SHOCK CLAIM: Rudy Giuliani Says Hunter Biden Laptop Had Pictures of “Underage Girls,” Bizarre Texts."

RELATED: This is gold, Scaachi Koul, at BuzzFeed, via Memeorandum, "Jeffrey Toobin Can't Be The Only Person Masturbating On Work Zoom Calls."

'The Woke Primary'

At Instapundit, "MATT WELCH: The Woke Primary Is Over and Everyone Lost."

It's pretty darn funny, when you think about it, heh.

ABC Executives Tried to Get Abby Huntsman to Shut Up About Toxic Culture at ‘The View’

Yeah, she told 'em to fuck off.

At the Daily Beast, "ABC Execs Try to Get Abby Huntsman to Cover for Toxic Culture at ‘The View’."

EXCLUSIVE: Behind-the-scenes melodrama at The View amped up on Tuesday when departing co-host Abby Huntsman didn’t comply with network executives’ urgent entreaty to contradict reports describing the show’s “toxic culture"https://t.co/lw4P75hfZ1

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) January 15, 2020

Photo Shows Joe Biden Golfing with Top Ukraine Oil Executive in 2014

Yes, Joe and his son Hunter.

At the Washington Examiner, "Photo shows Joe and Hunter Biden golfing with Ukraine gas company executive in 2014."

LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH! pic.twitter.com/QQYTqG4KTt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2019

Biden's a liar.

See the Daily Beast, "Joe Biden: ‘I’ve Never Spoken to My Son About’ Ukraine Business Deals."

Dazed and Confused

Previously, "Mueller Tesimony: Dueling Circus Realities."

And at VodkaPundit, "Drunkblogging the Mueller Hearing."

Matt @DRUDGE has gone a little TDS lately, but this is on the money. pic.twitter.com/7lbzdmPHGy

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) July 24, 2019

Mueller Tesimony: Dueling Circus Realities

The Mueller testimony is live right now, and I'm unimpressed.

Here's Politico, "Mueller refutes Trump’s ‘no collusion, no obstruction’ line."

Actually, this whole thing's a dud. Mueller claims he hadn't heard of Fusion GPS.

I just tuned in, though I'll post highlights this afternoon.

Meanwhile, at this morning's LAT, a pre-analysis, "Democrats and Republicans prepare for Mueller testimony, but with competing goals":

WASHINGTON —  As a senior Justice Department official and then FBI director for 12 years, Robert S. Mueller III carefully guarded his reputation as a straight shooter in the midst of political upheaval and partisan warfare.
His square-jawed, just-the-facts approach will be put to the ultimate test Wednesday when the former special counsel testifies for five hours in nationally televised House hearings about the Russia investigation, which examined Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and President Trump’s attempts to shield himself from the probe.

Democrats and Republicans are plotting ways to transform his testimony — first to the House Judiciary Committee and then to the House Intelligence committee — into a series of politically charged sound bites they can use to attack or defend the president.

Democrats plan to steer Mueller toward the most damning parts of his final report, particularly incidents where Trump directed underlings to fire Mueller — none did so — or discourage witnesses from cooperating with the special counsel’s office.

The key question is whether Democrats can get Mueller to say point blank that Trump would have faced criminal charges if he weren’t the president, a declaration that would further blunt Trump’s false claims of full exoneration.

Republicans are expected to pursue a two-pronged approach. They’ll try to undermine Mueller’s credibility by suggesting his team was politically biased against Trump. They also want to highlight conclusions in the report that benefit the president, such as Mueller’s determination that he could not establish a criminal conspiracy between his campaign and Moscow.

Both Democrats and Republicans have at least one thing in common: They expect to face a reluctant witness with a history of terse, dry answers to overheated congressional questioning.

“I think he will be equally parsimonious with both sides,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

Mueller did not want to testify, telling reporters on May 29 that he would not go beyond the details contained in the 448-page report released six weeks earlier. But he agreed to appear on Capitol Hill after Democrats issued him a subpoena.

Jim Popkin, a spokesman for Mueller, said he’s preparing for the hearing with a small group of former officials from the special counsel’s office.

“This is someone who has prided himself over the years for very careful preparation. He will be extremely well prepared come Wednesday,” Popkin said Monday.

Mueller will make an opening statement and submit a redacted copy of his report for the record.

“I think it’s safe to say that on Wednesday he will stick to the four walls of the Mueller report as much as he can,” Popkin said.

In a Monday letter, the Justice Department told Mueller that his testimony “must remain within the boundaries of your public report” to avoid infringing upon executive privilege and other confidentiality requirements. The letter said Mueller had requested guidance from the department earlier this month, a suggestion that he may rely on it to avoid answering questions he wants to avoid.

Democrats have made no secret of their goals — they worry that Trump paid little price for pushing legal and political boundaries, and they’re concerned that voters struggled to digest the lengthy report.

“Not everybody will read the book, but people will watch the movie,” said a Democratic staff member on the Judiciary Committee, who requested anonymity to discuss preparations for the hearing...

Jeffrey Epstein

Robert Stacy McCain has the story, "MSNBC and CNN Are Trying to Spin the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Against Trump."

And the biggest journalist on this has been Julie K. Brown, at the Miami Herald, who even had a New York Times write-up about her investigative reporting. See, "The Jeffrey Epstein Case Was Cold, Until a Miami Herald Reporter Got Accusers to Talk."

NEW: Great work by My Miami Herald team today. Love the headline. Thank you to my editor @caseyfrank1 pic.twitter.com/VjKdNzYFrR

— julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) July 9, 2019

ICYMI: From the penthouse to the jailhouse: Jeffrey Epstein pleads not guilty to sex traffickinghttps://t.co/4qAuqNAxhH

— julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) July 9, 2019

What the Hell Happened to Rachel Maddow?

She was hardest hit by Trump's exoneration.

At Slate:

Rachel Maddow’s show this week has been a reminder that partisan paranoia has bipartisan appeal. https://t.co/Rmtuvyq53s via @slate

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 30, 2019

Ben Shapiro Responds to Democrats' Reaction After the Mueller Report Lands (VIDEO)

Shapiro's got a new book out, at Amazon, The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great.

And at Fox News:

Democrats Crushed as Mueller Report Lands with a Thud

The big, big news yesterday.

I'm visiting my sister's house in Yucca Valley and she had on CNN all afternoon, so I watched for a while. I mean, even leftist Jeffrey Toobin says the report is a big victory for President Trump.

All the latest is a Memeorandum, "AG Barr aims to release Mueller report ‘top-line’ conclusions Saturday night, won't ‘parse words, play games,’ source says."

And at Tucker Carlson's show last night, the analysis from Laura Ingraham:

Parenting and Privilege in College Admissions

At the Los Angeles Times, "A wiretap brings privilege and helicopter parenting to the fore in the college admissions scandal":

A wiretap brings privilege and helicopter parenting to the fore in the college admissions scandal https://t.co/Xmitac00jq

— Benjamin Oreskes🦅 (@boreskes) March 21, 2019

Gordon Caplan had a problem. Last year his teenage daughter was slogging her way through a series of practice ACTs. But her scores were unlikely to get her to where he believed she should be: a high school senior with a clutch of acceptance letters.

She needed a higher score.

Caplan, a high-powered lawyer from Greenwich, Conn., and his wife began talking with William “Rick” Singer, the admitted mastermind of the college admissions scandal that continues to dominate a national conversation about privilege and parenting.

According to transcripts of wiretapped conversations that were released by federal prosecutors when charges against 50 people — including Singer and Caplan — were announced, Caplan was concerned that his daughter might find out about the ruse.

“To be honest, I’m not worried about the moral issue here,” Caplan said. He was worried about discovery.

“If she’s caught doing that, you know, she’s finished.”

The Newport Beach admissions consultant told his client that their silence was key to achieving the desired outcome. Authorities say that Caplan, who declined to comment through his attorneys, then signed off on a $75,000 payment, which was masked as a donation to Singer’s foundation.

Wealthy parents have been going to great lengths to help their kids get into elite universities for years. But this well-documented — and viral — moment in the helicopter-parenting era indicates a willingness to go to greater extremes.

In an era of badly behaving bankers, entertainment and sports figures, and government officials who tweet first and think later, the cheating may seem like perversely logical behavior.

But experts in parenting say the win-at-all-costs attitude can have a pernicious effect on a child. When they try to clear the way for their children’s success, parents are essentially saying to their kids that they can’t do it on their own, a stance that may block the path to successful adulthood.

In an effort to ensure that his son was admitted to the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy at USC, Bill McGlashan allegedly paid Singer $250,000 to, among other things, fabricate a football career. Although McGlashan’s son’s high school didn’t have a football team, his son was suddenly a kicker. Authorities say the new addition to his list of achievements partially came thanks to Photoshop.

McGlashan, who founded and was fired last week from the private equity investment firm TPG Growth, had been called “one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent voices for ethical investing.”

According to the transcripts, McGlashan asked Singer, “Is there a way to do it in a way that he doesn’t know that happened?”

Singer told him that his son would know only that Singer was “going to get him some help.”

“That [networking] he would have no issue with,” McGlashan is quoted saying to Singer. “You lobbying for him.”

“No issue.”

But a slew of people who regularly interact with and study the behavior of frantic parents overwhelmingly disagree.

This kind of behavior can breed a helplessness in children who never face adversity or failure. That, in turn, can lead to increased anxiety and depression, said author and teacher Jessica Lahey, who regularly writes about parenting and is the author of a book titled “The Gift of Failure.”

Lahey recounted a recent visit to a college where she met the mother of a 20-year-old with diabetes. The mom still tracks her daughter’s blood sugar via a computer app and says she has no plans to stop. That’s an indication, Lahey said, the mother doesn’t think her daughter is capable of doing this seemingly basic task on her own...

Keep reading.

Islamist Democrat Rashida Tlaib Calls Out Rep. Mark Meadows for Bringing 'Black Friend' to Committee Hearing (VIDEO)

Following-up from last night, "Michael Cohen's Opening Statement to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform (VIDEO)."

Background at the Daily Beast, FWIW, "Cohen Hearing Explodes After Rashida Tlaib Calls Out Mark Meadows’ ‘Black Friend’ Stunt."

And the videos:

Michael Cohen's Opening Statement to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform (VIDEO)

I was teaching all morning and early afternoon, and didn't get a chance to watch live.

Here's the video in any case. I'm going to watch it and have more to say later.

Via CNN:



Also at Memeorandum, "Michael Cohen's Testimony: Live Updates."

Rachel Notley's NDP Government Launches Stalinist Campaign to Shut Down Rebel Media (VIDEO)

It's shockingly unreal that this kind of stuff is going on in one of the West's great democracies, but that it is calls into question how democratic is Canada under all the far-left governments, at the national and the provincial levels.

This is really stunning.

At the Rebel, "Stand With The Rebel Against Elections Alberta - The Rebel."

Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes Mulls Retirement

Heh.

Serves her right.

At Instapundit, "THE DEMOCRATS MUST HAVE TOLD HER THEY COULDN’T PROTECT HER ANYMORE."

What the Establishment Misses About Trump's Foreign Policy

From Professor Randall Schweller, at Foreign Affairs, "Three Cheers for Trump’s Foreign Policy":

No more Uncle Sugar, no more multilateralism, no more free riding: Three cheers for Trump's foreign policy. https://t.co/uteDMsvf9o

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 16, 2018

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election heralded nothing less than certain catastrophe. At least, that was and remains the firm belief of “the Blob”—what Ben Rhodes, a foreign policy adviser in the Obama administration, called those from both parties in the mainstream media and the foreign policy establishment who, driven by habitual ideas and no small amount of piety and false wisdom, worry about the decline of the U.S.-led order. “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight,” the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman forecast after Trump’s victory. Others prophesied that Trump would resign by the end of his first year (Tony Schwartz, the co-author of Trump: The Art of the Deal), that he would be holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in six months (the liberal commentator John Aravosis), or that the United States might be headed down the same path that Germany took from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich. That last warning came from former U.S. President Barack Obama last December at the Economic Club of Chicago, where he invoked the specter of Nazi Germany. “We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly,” he said. “Sixty million people died, so you’ve got to pay attention—and vote.”

So far, the world has not come to an end, far from it. A year into Trump’s first term, the Islamic State, or ISIS—a fascist organization, by the way—had been virtually defeated in Syria and eliminated from all its havens in Iraq, thanks to the Trump administration’s decision to equip the largely Kurdish militia fighting ISIS in Syria and give U.S. ground commanders greater latitude to direct operations. All the while, Trump has continued the Obama doctrine of avoiding large-scale conventional wars in the Middle East and has succeeded where his predecessor failed in enforcing a real red line against Bashar al-Assad’s use of nerve gas in Syria by launching targeted air strikes in response. In North Korea, Trump’s strategy of “maximum pressure” has cut the country’s international payments by half, forcing Kim Jong Un to realize that his only choice is to negotiate.

On the domestic front, the unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent in May, a level not seen since the heady days of the dot-com boom—with unemployment at an all-time low among African Americans; at or near multidecade lows among Hispanics, teenagers, and those with less than a high school education; and at a 65-year low among women in the labor force. Meanwhile, on Trump’s watch, the stock market and consumer confidence have hit all-time highs, the number of mortgage applications for new homes has reached a seven-year high, and gas prices have fallen to a 12-year low. Finally, with Trump pledging to bring to an end the era in which “our politicians seem more interested in defending the borders of foreign countries than their own,” illegal immigration was reduced by 38 percent from November 2016 to November 2017, and in April 2017, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded 15,766 apprehensions at the southwestern border—the lowest in at least 17 years.

As his critics charge, Trump does reject many of the core tenets of the liberal international order, the sprawling and multifaceted system that the United States and its allies built and have supported for seven decades. Questioning the very fabric of international cooperation, he has assaulted the world trading system, reduced funding for the UN, denounced NATO, threatened to end multilateral trade agreements, called for Russia’s readmission to the G-7, and scoffed at attempts to address global challenges such as climate change. But despite what the crowd of globalists at Davos might say, these policies should be welcomed, not feared. Trump’s transactional approach to foreign relations marks a United States less interested in managing its long-term relationships than in making gains on short-term deals. Trump has sent the message that the United States will now look after its own interests, narrowly defined, not the interests of the so-called global community, even at the expense of long-standing allies.

This worldview is fundamentally realist in nature. On the campaign trail and in office, Trump has argued that the United States needs its allies to share responsibility for their own defense. He has also called for better trade deals to level a playing field tilted against American businesses and workers and to protect domestic manufacturing industries from currency manipulation. He is an economic nationalist at heart. He believes that political factors should determine economic relations, that globalization does not foster harmony among states, and that economic interdependence increases national vulnerability. He has also argued that the state should intervene when the interests of domestic actors diverge from its own—for example, when he called for a boycott against Apple until the company helped the FBI break into the iPhone of one of the terrorists who carried out the 2015 attack in San Bernardino, California.

This realist worldview is not only legitimate but also resonates with American voters, who rightly recognize that the United States is no longer inhabiting the unipolar world it did since the end of the Cold War; instead, it is living in a more multipolar one, with greater competition. Trump is merely shedding shibboleths and seeing international politics for what it is and has always been: a highly competitive realm populated by self-interested states concerned with their own security and economic welfare. Trump’s “America first” agenda is radical only in the sense that it seeks to promote the interests of the United States above all...

Still more.