#How Trump outfoxed Democrats and other commentary

Is President Trump “crazy like a fox?”
MediaPunch / BACKGRID

“Democrats thought they had Republicans cornered” in the latest COVID-relief package fight, snarks Marc A. Thiessen at The Washington Post. But they “failed to anticipate that Trump could go around them” and aid Americans on his own. “Now the political tables are turned”: Democrats “get no credit for extending relief,” nor any of their priorities in a new bill. They “handed Trump a big political win,” and their only recourse is to sue Trump to block aid. That would be “political suicide,” but even if they did, they’d lose, given the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program, which basically gives presidents discretion not to enforce laws. Trump’s action was “politically brilliant,” cheers Thiessen. And “he might just be getting started.”

Campaign beat: Harris Pick Is a Trump Win

Joe Biden merely had to “pick a vice president who would appear non-threatening, mainstream and generally normal,” yet he blew it, chides Creators syndicated columnist Ben Shapiro. Though the veep pick usually “means little or nothing,” Biden “appears to be slipping significantly mentally,” so most Americans think his vice president would “finish his first term.” Not only did he make “an early error” by declaring he’d pick a woman, but he ended up choosing Kamala Harris, who is “far worse than all the others.” Among other things, Harris is “deeply radical,” is “unpopular with black Americans” and has “alienated moderates” by blasting Biden himself in the primaries. In sum, Biden has “undercut” his entire campaign strategy of ­“alleged moderation” by picking Harris. “Trump should be ecstatic.”

Media watch: The ‘Rules’ for Criticizing Kamala

An “ad-hoc group of Democratic operatives” warned media outlets that it will consider criticism of “a black or brown woman candidate,” such as Kamala Harris, “racist and sexist,” Tammy Bruce eyerolls at The Washington Times. Of course, the Democrats have always “enjoyed a pliant media” establishment, so the group just sent this “public reminder” because “identity politics demands it.” Yet the group’s stance is really “the ultimate in sexism” — ­implying that Democratic women “can’t handle the heat” — and “especially ironic” after Democrats have “regularly blasted, mocked” or ignored conservative women. The “Democratic gang that treated Sarah Palin like a piece of meat on the Serengeti,” in other words, only really cares about women who “conform” to and “obey” left-wing beliefs, “no matter how bad their policy.”

Urban desk: Chicago in Chaos

A “false story on social media” led “hundreds of young black men and women” to loot businesses around Chicago, with some targeting police, notes Charles Love at City Journal. Yet Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx thinks prosecuting so-called “non-violent offenses” would “waste resources.” Though many would think the term “nonviolent” means “peaceful,” Foxx’s definition includes “property crime, public disturbance and looting,” leaving many business owners with “no reason to feel confident” the city will protect them even after weeks of “persistent lawlessness.” Love offers a “simple” solution: Police “must arrest offenders,” and Foxx must “do her job,” whatever “her personal feelings,” and prosecute them. Public officials need to restore order in Chicago. “It’s the least that law-abiding citizens and business owners deserve.”

Conservative: The Left’s Molotov ‘Heroes’

When lawyers Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman threw “a Molotov cocktail into an empty, already-vandalized NYPD patrol car,” they knew it “was against the law” — yet, Jonathan S. Tobin sighs at National Review, some on the left are painting them in a “highly sympathetic” light. New York magazine, for example, cites descriptions of the pair as “civil-rights heroes, even martyrs.” True, the punishment (“a mandatory minimum term of 30 years”) is harsh, but as lawyers Mattis and Rahman knew their crime carried “the most severe consequences.” And the “effort to turn them into anti-Trump martyrs is connected to the broader justifications for the protests” — and turning “an open-and-shut case of domestic terrorism” into “a referendum on the legitimacy of the Trump administration and America’s past.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann & Adam Brodsky