Does Trump Warrant a Blessing?

Plus, Crimson wins against anti-Israel commenter; Kendi leaves B.U.; Turkey hosts Hamas

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Trump’s second inauguration.

The founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, said in his quarterly earnings call this week, “We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading company, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad. I'm optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock.”

This is a remarkable turnaround for Facebook, which in 2021 indefinitely blocked President Trump from accessing his Facebook and Instagram accounts, a ban that it later walked back to a two-year term. In 2021 Facebook thought Trump was such a threat that he had to be silenced or suppressed; now Zuckerberg is “optimistic” about the Trump restoration. You can view it as Russia-style oligarchy or creepy authoritarianism, with the big-business chiefs obsequiously praising the political leaders and coughing up money (a $25 million settlement reportedly in Meta’s case) in response to a shakedown. Or maybe Zuckerberg’s assessment is approaching something close to the truth. (Or maybe, also, it’s a little of both—simultaneously obsequious and true.).

Also this week, in my page-a-day Talmud study, in the tractate Sanhedrin, page 42a, I encountered a mention of a Jewish blessing with the term “הַטּוֹב וְהַמֵּטִיב,” “blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who is good and Who does good.” A note in the Koren Steinsaltz edition of the Talmud that I use explains that this is a reference to “a blessing that is pronounced upon hearing good news that benefits more than one individual or when one experiences an improvement over an existing situation.”

Merely asking if Trump taking over the White House warrants this blessing will surely be enough to cause some readers to delete this email, stop reading, or cancel their subscriptions. Longtime readers know that that isn’t exactly a Trump fan site. (As Bradley Tusk put it recently, “if you’re new to our substack…and you’re looking for someone who will reliably reinforce your views either for or against Trump — or anyone — this is not the right place for you.”) While I like to be provocative and contrarian, I also understand that the administration is causing disruption and concern for a lot of people. Over the past week, I watched some of Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings, I saw Trump suggest that diversity, equity, and inclusion had contributed to a deadly plane crash, and I heard from people worried that freezes in federal spending could cause genuinely harmful disruption.

Yet I have to confess, for all the chaos and in some cases justified concern, the reference in the Talmud note to “an improvement over an existing situation” made me think of Trump. In ten days, he’s turned things around.

On taxes, look at some of the things the Republicans are talking about, according to a document obtained by the New York Times: “eliminate tax on tips” “eliminate tax on overtime,” “eliminate the death tax,” “lower the corporate rate to 15 percent.” Biden was wanting to raise taxes by $7 trillion, including with a new Biden-Wyden wealth tax on unrealized capital gains. Trump and the Republicans are trying to cut taxes. Even if the Republicans get only a portion of what they are hoping for, it’s a significant change in direction. Trump is even reportedly musing about eliminating the income tax altogether. If you believe taxes heading lower will help spur economic growth and that individuals and companies are better at allocating capital than Congress is, Trump trying to cut taxes is an improvement over the previous situation of Biden trying to raise them.

On spending, with Biden, the president was in court trying to spend money on student loan forgiveness that Congress had not approved. With Trump, the president is in court trying not to immediately spend money that Congress has approved. Again, this is a dramatic turnaround. I get that under the Constitution Congress has the spending power, though it’s not clear that Congress has required the new president to shovel money out the door at such a rapid pace that he has no assurance it isn’t being wasted. Again, though, if you think the federal government is spending too much—and, at a $2 trillion deficit at a time of low unemployment and no hot major U.S. war, it’s hard to escape that conclusion—a president fighting not to spend money is an improvement over a president who was fighting to spend money.

On Israel, the Trump administration, after an initial misstep or two, has also been an improvement over Biden. Hamas is releasing hostages. Trump issued an executive order reminding colleges and universities to “monitor” and “report activities by alien students” so that pro-Hamas foreign students get deported back to their home countries. Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, called the Israeli defense minister and issued a statement “that under President Trump's leadership, the United States fully supports Israel's right to defend itself, and that Israel is a model ally for the region.” Trump’s invitation to host Prime Minister Netanyahu as his first foreign leader in his second term referred to discussing “efforts to counter our shared adversaries.” The “our” cleaned up the pronoun problem (“It’s their war, not our war”) I wrote about on January 22. Trump posted to social media that “A lot of things that were ordered and paid for by Israel, but have not been sent by Biden, are now on their way!” Trump’s repeatedly been urging Egypt and Jordan to accept Palestinians from Gaza. Egypt and Jordan haven’t exactly leapt at the offer, but Colombia didn’t initially want to take the plane full of Colombians Trump sent there, either, and you saw them rapidly back down when Trump insisted. Again, what a dramatic reversal this is. Biden was busy trying to prevent Israel from going in to parts of Gaza; Trump is busy trying to get the Palestinian Arabs out of Gaza.

Anyway, people can worry about Trump’s personality or some of his personnel choices. On the policy, so far, I think Zuckerberg is correct to be optimistic. We’re still early in the administration, and there will be ups and downs, as in any presidency. I’m not, personally, pronouncing any blessings just quite yet. But it is sure shaping up to look like, as the note in the Talmud puts it, “an improvement over an existing situation.”

Crimson wins court case: While Harvard has been trying to promote intellectual vitality and civil discourse, at some point after October 7, 2023, the Harvard Crimson student newspaper turned off the user comment function on its website that some readers, including myself, had been using to point out some problems with the newspaper’s website. Perhaps relatedly, in March 2024 the Crimson had been sued in federal court by Jonathan Affleck, also known as Joachim Martillo, who claimed that the newspaper was violating his rights by refusing to publish his virulently anti-Israel online comments. Maybe the Crimson figured rather than expose itself to the hassle of a legal claim that it was discriminating against anti-Israel commenters, it would simply stop publishing comments altogether, though it doesn’t seem to have stopped the paper from publishing anti-Israel opinion pieces or even news headlines.

The new development is that this week, Judge Angel Kelley of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts dismissed the case for failure to state a claim. The judge held in Affleck v. The Harvard Crimson that “the deletion of content posted by Affleck and the disabling of his account are well within the Crimson’s traditional editorial functions protected by” the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

Affleck represented himself in the case on a “pro se” basis, and the Crimson brought in lawyers from New York, Alexandra Settelmayer and Rachel F. Strom of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. Maybe now they’ll turn the comments function back on? Some of the brighter Crimson commenters, including Michael Segal and Jonathan Burack, can now be read in the comments section here.

Kendi Leaves B.U.: I’d been getting ready to write a piece about how inappropriate it was that a Boston University publication, The Emancipator, co-founded by the director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at BU, Ibram X. Kendi, sent out a blatantly partisan panic-stoking email on January 28.

“Hours after his second inauguration, President Donald Trump signed nearly 100 executive orders, launching an all-out policy blitz to realize a nightmarish far-right vision. New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie noted Friday that the goal of the Make America Great Again movement is specifically to take us back to a time before Reconstruction, when the government had incredible power over the scope of your rights, when explicit discrimination had legal protection. In a review of Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts book ‘Dawn’s Early Light,’ culture critic Tope Folarin explains how MAGA’s vision for Americanness is narrowly defined and intrinsically tied to White supremacy and the patriarchal doctrines of evangelical Christianity. All who fall out of those bounds are inherently inferior, abnormal, and hostile; deserving of exclusion, abuse, and harm,” the email said.

“In the wake of a painful, frightening week, The Emancipator is giving space to those from targeted marginalized communities to examine how they are being impacted, what reverberations will be felt by the rest of the country, and how we can all resist,” the email said.

Now it turns out Kendi is leaving B.U. for Howard, where he will be “the director of the newly established Howard University Institute for Advanced Study. The institute will be dedicated to interdisciplinary study advancing research of importance to the global African Diaspora, including inquiry to race, technology, racism, climate change, and disparities.”

It looks as if Melissa Gilliam, the Robert Zimmer mentee who is the new president of B.U., is already making some positive changes. Kendi’s departure is good news for Boston University. With any luck he’ll take the Emancipator and its nightmares along with him.

Turkey hosts Hamas: President Erdogan of Turkey posted to social media on January 29 a photo of himself hosting “Mr. Mohammed Ismail Darwish, Chairman of the Hamas Shura Council, and his accompanying delegation at the Presidential Complex.” In the delegation, apparently, was Khaled Meshaal, who was charged in September 2024 on terrorism and murder conspiracy charges related to planning, supporting, and perpetrating the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel.

Aside from an Aipac email newsletter I’ve seen little to no U.S. attention to this meeting. It’d seem like the U.S. should ask Turkey to hand Meshaal over. These Hamas terrorists are prone to having bombs explode and kill them, so Erdogan may want to keep his distance. This is strange behavior for a NATO ally of the United States, and it’s going to be a complicated situation for the U.S. to manage having a NATO ally, Turkey, that has basically become the headquarters of the radical Muslim Brotherhood network of which Hamas is a part.