One of the criticisms you hear of Republican senators is that, in modern parlance, they’re “performative”—in other words, all talk and no action. They’re performing.
But it’s difficult to act when you’re in the minority, and sometimes, talk is welcome, with action hopefully in the wings after the next election.
Toward that end, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has been making some useful talk—more accurately, doing some useful interrogating—on two matters, one domestic and one foreign with domestic ramifications.
From the domestic side, on Dec. 5, she was grilling FBI Director Christopher Wray at a Senate hearing regarding the flight logs from Jeffrey Epstein’s so-called “Lolita Express” to his private Caribbean island known, not without irony, as Little Saint James.
Ms. Blackburn had tried to subpoena these logs but was apparently blocked by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) for reasons unspecified (but we can guess).
No chance of that with Mr. Wray, and Ms. Blackburn undoubtedly knew it. This was indeed “performative,” but so be it. It was a good and needed performance.
Mr. Wray’s serial prevarications, not even faintly imaginative at this point (he’ll look into the matter ... it’s been a while since he’s studied the specifics, etc.), deserve as much public exposure as possible.
The director’s constant goal, it appears, is the defense of an organization that has become indefensible.
If that means covering up for powerful people in government, industry, and entertainment engaged in pederasty and human trafficking, again, so be it. They are, after all, above the law.
The powerful are those who protect the FBI and vice versa, especially when they’re of the approved ideology at the proper time.
One can only imagine what the internal culture of the FBI must be like to keep this two-tiered justice system operating.
Which brings me to Ms. Blackburn’s other salutary “performance” questioning another organization: the United Nations.
But Ms. Blackburn is focusing on a particularly timely—although it’s been around a long time—and questionable branch of the United Nations, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has been suspected of collaborating with, or at least covertly aiding, Islamic terror organizations for decades. (The instances of this are numerous, but don’t look for them on the front pages of Google, where they have been, of course, sanitized.)
“It is deeply concerning that, despite the prevalence of these reports, the United Nations has seemingly done nothing to investigate or prevent the siphoning of UNRWA funding by terrorists. And UNRWA continues to double down on its claims that each subsequent, documented report is ‘unsubstantiated,’” she wrote.
When I wrote above that this foreign issue had domestic ramifications, I was referring to the ongoing controversy of whether and to what extent the United States should continue to fund the United Nations.
As of now, the United States pays 22 percent of the budget and is assessed 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget. That was capped at 25 percent by Congress in 1993.
I have long advocated against funding or, at least, for a serious diminishment. Years ago (roughly 2009), I made a (supposedly humorous) video for the now-defunct PJTV called “The Trump UN” in which I advocated that none other than former President Donald Trump should take over the U.N. complex in Manhattan. The U.N Secretariat building would be turned into a posh home with an East River view for retired dictators as motivation for them to step down.
Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you want to view it—this video has disappeared from the internet. But who knows? Perhaps it will reappear in something closer to a real-life version next November.
We shall see then the level of U.N. funding. Meanwhile, Ms. Blackburn should keep on “performing.”
