Crunch(y) time in the Rose City

Congresswoman Maxine Dexter of Oregon, who once briefly went viral for saying we have to “fuck Trump,” has posted a cringey video of a gray-haired Portland ukelele orchestra playing and singing the most off-key version of “This Land Is Your Land” imaginable. “Portland is not a military target,” the caption reads.

Ah, but it is, and for good reason. Armed leftist radicals have firebombed a courthouse and are regularly attacking an ICE facility. Residents at the Multnomah County Plaid Shirt Senior Center may not see that on MSNBC (soon to be MS NOW!) or in their daily Heather Cox Richardson newsletter, but it’s happening.

Boomer denialism is in full swing, as evidenced by an ungodly cringe video from New York Times columnist and one-time Oregon gubernatorial candidate Nicholas Kristoff yesterday, in which he appears from behind a small tree, whisper-finger raised to his lips and sarcastically says “Be careful. Portland is on fire,” and then says “NAH” and walks off to a boring Oregon Historical Society dinner. How much did OHS pay him? It was too much.

The libs have it all wrong. Trump has not “declared war” on American cities. People still brunch in Portland. There will be at least one more game in Wrigley Field this year. The secret police are not watching the comings and goings of DC barflies. But antifa chapters are definitely throwing Molotov cocktails in select locations and rogue SUVs are boxing in ICE convoys. The refusal to admit this is a problem is “mostly peaceful protest”-style deflection, with slightly different language. The next time Cockburn hears it, he’s calling for the National Guard.

On our radar

HEY BUDDY Canadian PM Mark Carney is currently joining President Trump at the White House for a bilateral meeting and lunch.

MARKING 10/7 Trump will then meet with Edan Alexander, the last American hostage to be freed by Hamas after 584 days in captivity.

SAVIOR COMPLEX The President has also returned to TikTok, posting his first video since the election to tell young people to thank him for “saving” the app. Oh, and J.D. Vance is back too.

Kash on the kase

After DC withstood weeks of “militarized federal overreach” (read: National Guardsmen loitering under trees, picking litter and mooching around Dupont Circle), America’s Second City is next on the list – and the federal government is sending the best man for the job. “Chicago will be saved, and this FBI will continue to crush violent crime there, and all around the country. Heading to the Windy City now,” Director Kash Patel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation posted this morning.

If his track record with the Epstein Files and wrongly claiming to have Charlie Kirk’s assassin in custody – twice! – during a manhunt are anything to go by, Chicago won’t know what hit it.

Vivek shows his softer side

One-time presidential candidate and now Ohio gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has offered an olive branch to his opponents. Later today he is set to declare that the American right is at a “fork in the road” and that “we can still stand for truth, while viewing those who believe in falsehoods not as our enemies who must be vanquished, but instead as our fellow citizens who have lost their way and must be shown the light.”

Long-time Ramaswamy-watchers will look at this askance. The tech investor had previously made his name as one of the right’s most abrasive voices. His 2024 campaign for the presidency was a callow affair; he sought – as many have done – to “out-Trump Trump” from the right, and had an unconvincing go at ridiculing his opponents on the debate stage à la Trump 2016. He could not quite recapture the magic and instead came across as a sort of annoying poltergeist, something that was not helped by his extreme youth (for a presidential candidate) and slightly impish mien.

Nor did this showily combative manner serve him well after his campaign wrapped up. Tipped to be Elon Musk’s co-chair at DoGE, Ramaswamy spent the Christmas holidays giving stern lectures to American workers, warning that they were ill-suited for the “hyper-competitive global market.” The answer in the meantime would be an extension of the H-1B visa program. The medicine for Americans would be “more movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of Friends. More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.’”

Ramaswamy was eased out of DoGE shortly afterward. As he urges civility, he might first reflect on how unwilling he has been to extend it to others.

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