BY BRIAN BEUTLER

& CROOKED MEDIA

Thursday, March 21, 2019

—John Hickenlooper/THE ARISTOCRATS

ZERO SUMMIT GAME

A growing number of Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Beto O’Rourke, and South Bend, IN, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, will boycott this year’s summit of the America-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).

Until very recently, Democratic leaders getting crosswise with AIPAC was unthinkable. AIPAC, the country’s largest pro-Israel lobbying organization, was founded to foster enduring and unquestioning bipartisan support for the U.S.-Israeli alliance. In the past several years, though—as the Israeli right consolidated power, and forged a political partnership with the Republican Party—the group has drifted beyond simply enforcing pro-Israel orthodoxy into strategic alignment with the American conservative movement.

But the Democratic boycott mirrors growing unease among American liberals, a group that includes the overwhelming majority of American Jews, with Israel’s lurch to the right, its human-rights abuses, and its partisan interventions into U.S. politics, as much as the party’s specific frustrations with AIPAC.

The progressive advocacy group MoveOn has encouraged all Democratic candidates to boycott the AIPAC summit, arguing that it has basically become alinged with the Republican Party. It tried to sabotage the Iran nuclear deal, tolerates anti-Muslim rhetoric, generally supports Benjamin Netanyahu, and has refused to condemn some antisemitic Republicans.

Democratic candidates will have other opportunities to debate these issues. In October, the group J Street, a progressive alternative to AIPAC, will host its own summit. And of course, if he were to win the primary, Sanders would be the first Jewish major-party presidential nominee. These are important facts to remember when the candidates come in for bad-faith accusations of antisemitism.

But it’s worth looking at this story less through the lens of U.S. presidential politics than as a trend in U.S.-Israeli relations. Driven by partisan Republicans in Washington and their allies in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, there has been a concerted effort to turn the U.S.-Israel alliance into a polarizing issue, not a relationship between two countries as much as a relationship between two right-wing movements within those countries. Its effect has been to undermine Israel’s security, and leave American Jews exposed to more antisemitism than they’ve faced in decades, as Republicans use antisemitism accusations as a cudgel against Israel critics while ignoring anti-Jewish sentiment now flourishing on the far right, which Trump has welcomed into the GOP coalition. Hopefully, by boycotting AIPAC, Democratic candidates and the American Jews who support them will make clear to the right that the strategy won’t work, while pointing toward a healthier dynamic on the issue.

Democrats on the House oversight committee have learned that Jared Kushner has conducted shadow diplomacy on WhatsApp, Ivanka Trump uses the private email server she and Jared share to conduct official business, and former deputy national security adviser KT McFarland used her AOL email account when communicating with Trump donor Tom Barrack about an illegal White House scheme to transfer “sensitive U.S. nuclear technology” to Saudi Arabia. INSANE.

Side note: Republicans ran the entire 2016 presidential campaign on a platform of saying Hillary Clinton should go to jail for using a personal email server to do work stuff.

Democrats have added requests for documents related to these controversies to their long list of requests—about security clearances, President Trump’s secret meetings with Vladimir Putin, etc.— that the White House has blown off sight unseen. The fact that the Trump administration has taken an historically hostile, norm-breaking approach to congressional oversight is the least surprising news of the year, and Democrats have eaten up nearly three months catching up to the obvious. The Democratic base correctly views the Trump presidency as a national emergency. Don’t demobilize it by communicating through words and actions that this isn’t a crisis. Subpoenas, yesterday, please.

Remember President Trump’s unjustified election-season deployment of U.S. troops to the southern border to generate B-roll for Fox News? And remember when Trump declared a fake national emergency to raid tax dollars meant for the Pentagon in order to build a wall Congress said no to? Well, according to internal memos written by Marine Corps Commandant Robert Neller, these decisions pose an “unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency.” Seems bad!

Less than a week after the mosque massacres in New Zealand last week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a ban on semi-automatic assault rifles. Weird that she did this instead of nothing—instead of doing nothing, time and time again, no matter how many people die.

Vice President Mike Pence has been courting Trump-skeptical Republican billionaire donors by giving them private policy briefings at the White House. Can’t be alone with a woman, but he can get very cozy with plutocrats.

Fox News radicalizes its Republican viewers by making them measurably more uncompromising, scared, and conspiratorial than Republicans who don’t watch the channel. Terrific.

Former FBI Director James Comey insists the Justice Department can and should “provide details about finished investigations when the public needs to know them,” and that this standard (which he infamously applied to the Clinton email investigation) should apply to the Mueller report.

A Wisconsin judge has temporarily blocked the laws lame-duck Republicans passed late last year to strip the incoming Democratic administration of its power after Democrats swept the midterms there. Never forget that Scott Walker was so bad. So bad.

Facebook stored hundreds of millions of passwords in plain text for years after researchers discovered the vulnerability and warned the company about it, leaving its users horribly exposed to Facebook employees if not to hackers. From Brian: I’m tired of writing about how this company always does every bad and negligent thing it possibly can.

It’s finally Spring! According to Instagram, flowers are super-blooming, the weather’s warming up, and everything feels pretty aesthetically pleasing, don’t you think? Speaking of things that please—Parachute, ever heard of ‘em? Parachute has everything from super soft sheets to plush towels to thick slippers and the world’s comfiest robes. Do it for the gram! Get a 90-day trial on everything they offer, plus free shipping and returns → ParachuteHome.com

Hot take: Anonymous millionaires who use LLCs to hide their identities shouldn’t be allowed to funnel $2.9 million (or any amount of money) into President Trump’s pockets, whether by overpaying for real estate or by any other means.

Vice will partner with tobacco giant Phillip Morris on a sponsored content channel about how vaping is cool. Vaping! Because getting teens to smoke has never caused any problems.

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