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David Frum
Read more at https://t.co/ncUQxYcjF4 and at https://t.co/k8AaBWWopx Reach me via https://t.co/7LYiJE1CvB
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Sep 29 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Twenty years ago, I wrote an article predicting the emergence of "unpatriotic conservatives." The piece caused a ruckus at the time, but it's been all too sadly proven prophetic. Many particulars of my 2003 piece have passed out of date. davidfrum.com/article/unpatr… But its core argument holds: those who yearn for a homogeneous, authoritarian, deferential society - of course they're going to turn against the United States, flag pin or no.
Sep 24 • 4 tweets • 5 min read
Some things from the past week

On DeSantis and his airlift of Venezuelan asylum seekers to Martha's Vineyard theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… At @TheAtlantic Festival w @itscaitlinhd @AdrienneLaF and @RadioFreeTom on a Trump second term
Sep 21 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Former French ambassador to US. I suggested a plan like the below at the very beginning of the war 1/x EG from February 2022. It seems even more pertinent now that Putin is calling up reservists who are probably even lower in morale than the conscripts he tossed into the fight half a year ago 2/x
Sep 21 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The Putin mobilization speech seems pretty much vaporware. Eight months ago, Putin invaded Ukraine with his best-trained, best-equipped 175,000 troops. That army is now wrecked, its equipment depleted, maybe 50,000 killed, who knows how many maimed/wounded. 1/x So now he's calling up a reserve army of 300,000: worse-trained, worse-equipped. How much can they accomplish against a Ukrainian force that is progressively better armed every passing month? 2/x
Sep 20 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
The peak years of the baby boom in the US were 1957-61, when as many as 4.3 million were born each year. That massive cohort is beginning to turn 65 this year. That's driver 1 of the US labor shortage of the 2020s ... Other drivers are the ravages of drugs and addiction on native-born workers, the inadequacy of childcare, and more mysterious factors that have reduced the work commitment of post-boomer cohorts. (See this interesting post by @tylercowen marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu… )
Sep 20 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The US border is being overwhelmed for two main reasons: flaws in the US asylum system and the ultra-hot US job market, literally two openings for every one available US worker. The DeSantis airlift assumes the border problem is a *plot* by disloyal elites theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… If you don't understand a problem, you cannot solve the problem theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Sep 16 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Watching the filming of a Nollywood historical movie in Benin City, Nigeria, last October. The red doorway belongs to one of the city's oldest surviving dwellings, dating back to pre-colonial days With the director in front of the house, she was a fan of @TheAtlantic
Sep 11 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Atrocities on the retreat don't improve a defeated aggressor's position on the battlefield. They do substantial harm to the defeated aggressor's future negotiating position when he must sue for peace. When this war ends, Russia will still need to negotiate the lifting of western sanctions. New EU candidate member Ukraine will have a powerful veto over sanctions-relief. Russian leaders are deluded if they imagine they can just withdraw and sulk.
Sep 7 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
The unveiling today of the Obama official portraits at the White House opens an awkward question: what is to be done about a Trump portrait? Thread ... In some ways, the problem is not as hard as it sounds. It's entirely up to the current president which (if any) portraits are to hang in the White House and where. There's no obligation to hang all the portraits, that's what the National Portrait Gallery is for. 2/x
Sep 5 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Why did Biden give that speech in Philadelphia? Three reasons from the past week. First - it was true, in @TheAtlantic on September 2. @TheAtlantic Why did Biden give that speech in Philadelphia? Three reasons from the past week. Second - it helped him build the necessary coalition to stop the Trump faction in November 2022. Twitter thread from September 3. Start here:
Sep 3 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
So about this idea, much discussed in certain quarters, that Biden should have expressed himself in a more high-minded manner in Philadelphia, with less effort to win votes for Democratic candidates in 2022 ... American democracy was in grave danger in the summer of 1864. The military situation was grim. Inflation was devouring wages. The draft pressed hard. The Democratic platform offered the rebel South a negotiated peace. Lincoln's grip on his own party was loosening ... 1/x
Aug 30 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
If the popular vote had prevailed in 2016, the US would have elected President Hillary Clinton balanced by a Republican House and Senate. Instead of losing their congressional majorities in 2018, as under Trump, Republicans would surely have enlarged them under Clinton 1/x No party has held the presidency for three consecutive terms since WW2, so President Hillary Clinton would likely have lost in 2020. The Republican elected that year would have been supported by huge Republican majorities in House and Senate too. 2/x
Aug 22 • 22 tweets • 3 min read
Trump-Russia a hoax? Well, except for the part where ... Trump-Russia a hoax? Except for the part where candidate Trump publicly beseeched Russian intelligence to purloin and publish his opponent's emails - and then Russia intelligence immediately did so. 1/x
Aug 20 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Thing I just learned from Linda Colley's "The Gun, The Ship, and the Pen." When Aaron Burr stayed as a houseguest of Jeremy Bentham's after fleeing the US in 1808, he brought his host as a thank-you gift ... a bound copy of Hamilton's "Federalist Papers." wwnorton.com/books/97808714… p. 206
Aug 15 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Unwelcome but important fact to face

Trump absconding with the country's highest secrets - storing them unsafely - and then lying about returning them - SHOULD have upset his supposedly patriotic supporters.

It didn't.

If anything ...

1/x If anything, the latest Trump scandal has strengthened Trump's hold, not only on his core support, but on the broader GOP.

A friend tightly connected to major GOP donors wrote me over the weekend about this.

2/x
Aug 10 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Conspicuous lack of Trump supporters arguing that the president obeyed the law, did nothing wrong. Instead, we're getting this weird line of defense: "The FBI is reportedly investigating Trump's illegal retention of classified documents -but we think the reports are wrong. We think the FBI is really investigating Trump's illegal attempt to overthrow a US election by violence."
Aug 1 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Hawley: Running fast away from danger *is* my consistent self-defense policy, why do you ask? The Hawley argument is that being a weak and unreliable ally in Europe will make the United States a more credible coalition leader in Asia.
Jul 27 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A PS to this ... In June 1939, King George VI and his wife Queen Mary made first visit to the United States by a reigning British monarch. On June 11, they came to lunch at the home of President Roosevelt. FDR served hot dogs - and invited the press to watch and photograph.
Jul 23 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This clip is attracting much derision, deservedly. Two things that have so far escaped comment:

1) Notice Chomsky's use of the phrase "Soviet Russia" - erasing the other peoples of the USSR. The so-called anti-imperialist reflexively uses the language of Russian imperialism ... 2) Chomsky does not complain that Americans cannot hear the voice of Alexei Navalny, silenced inside Putin's prison. He complains that they cannot hear the voice of PM Lavrov. Not only is that untrue ... eg BBC interviewed him just a month ago
Jul 21 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I'm reading Thomas F. Madden fascinating history of Istanbul and learned something in first chapter that maybe was old news to everybody else ... ohhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/315277/istanbul-by-thomas-f-madden/9780143129691 According to legend, an oracle told the first settlers of Byzantium to found their city "opposite the city of the blind." The voyagers were baffled by the saying, until they sailed into the Sea of Marmara and spotted the city of Chalcedon opposite the Golden Horn.
Jul 20 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I dont think I need to say more than ... prepare the oxygen tank for the laughing convulsions, and then read this newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a… PS

If I were one of America's most publicized criminal lawyers ...

and a reader sent me an email claiming to have been the victim of a vicious violent assault ...

I would have encouraged the reader to call the cops before I posted about the crime on my Substack ...