Donald Trump, America’s comic, Dachau’s lessons for Congress and other commentary

“You know Donald Trump is feeling good when he moves into Triumph the Insult Comic President mode, early in a speech,” reports Racket News’ Matt Taibbi. “In Iowa Friday, ten days before Americans officially start voting for the man, Trump was a violin short of Henny Youngman,” with opening jokes on rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. Then his new-ish “Crooked Joe searching for the exit” schtick, which is “funny. It just is. In part this is because Biden is funny, a physical comedy wonder, unfortunately just not on purpose.” Other times, he had “a strong late-stage Lenny Bruce vibe” plus “homages to Richard Pryor” as well as “Milton Berle, Dangerfield . . . In a few places he even drifted tonewise toward Louis C.K.” In all, “Trump and his opponents probably share responsibility for turning American politics into a joke, but only one of the two parties is trying to tell us it’s not funny. And ‘that’s not funny’ is a losing political slogan.”

You can’t visit Dachau, “the first concentration camp Hitler established,” without shuddering “in terror when walking into the gas chamber and then to the adjacent crematoria,” meditates John Nagl at The Hill. Yet “the horrors documented” there “are happening again”: “Russia’s unjust invasion of Ukraine has been followed by the kidnapping of Ukrainian children and the rape, torture and murder of Ukrainian civilians in a tragic echo of the Nazi techniques honed at Dachau.” But “America is wavering in its support for Ukraine” — “a small country fighting fascism in Europe.” Members of “Congress should visit Dachau in January” to “see what fascism looks like, and then gaze east, while they decide whether they will let it happen again.”

The Biden administration just quietly changed the rules “to give state and local governments more time to spend their American Rescue Plan Act” funds, gripes Reason’s Eric Boehm. That law stipulated “governments had to ‘obligate’ those funds — in other words, attach them to a specific project — by the end of this year,” but the new rule offers “several ways for the recipients to hoard their federal bailout funds without committing them to specific projects,” though “many of the projects already funded through ARPA seem to have little to do with pandemic relief.” “The federal government considers the pandemic to be over.” But “why should that stop the federal gravy train from rolling along?”

With Donald Trump’s huge lead heading into the Iowa caucuses, “the big question is what is going to happen with the remaining Trump opponents,” argues Mark Penn at Fox News. If Ron DeSantis “finishes a strong second, he could revive his campaign; if he finishes third, I would expect him to drop out.” Nikki Haley “was never expected to do well in Iowa,” yet “the polls place her in a close third place and that kind of finish would set her up for New Hampshire.” Meanwhile, “Democrats have called off the Democratic caucus” — it’s “part of their ‘threat to democracy’ campaign which they seem to advance by eliminating actual democracy.” And Rep. Dean Phillips “has been removed from the ballots in Florida and North Carolina even though he is not accused of leading an insurrection”

President Biden is kicking off his campaign “with two speeches designed only to divide voters and scare them,” fume the Washington Examiner’s editors. One marked the Jan. 6 riot anniversary, the other at the Mother Emanuel AME Church, where nine people were fatally shot in 2015.

His theme is “that Trump is the head of a white supremacist movement seeking to overthrow the United States government violently.” Yet such “rantings” are those of a “divisive demagogue, someone who might also say that [his] political opponents would put black people ‘back in chains’ ” — as Biden said of Mitt Romney in 2012. Yes, Trump is “unfit for office.” But that doesn’t mean he’s “leading a violent white supremacist movement.” That’s “pure hysteria.”