Kraft Calls Trump a “Lunatic”

Plus, New York Times Israel-bashing spreads to “Modern Love” column; Obama talks to Mamdani

A direct mail piece from Josh Kraft’s Boston mayoral campaign.

A campaign mailing from Boston mayoral candidate Josh Kraft calls President Trump a lunatic.

Kraft is running against Mayor Michelle Wu, not Trump, so the mailer is somewhat puzzling.

“Here in Boston, we don’t let lunatics like Donald Trump push us around,” the direct mail piece says.

Josh Kraft may feel the need to distance himself from Trump because his father, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, is a longtime friend of Trump’s. Though the Robert Kraft-Donald Trump relationship has had ups and downs, any hint of association with Trump could be damaging to a mayoral candidate in Boston’s heavily Democratic electorate.

Trump has found political success by insulting his opponents in withering terms, so by calling Trump a lunatic, Kraft is also in some ways imitating him, joining him in coarsening the culture.

There are plenty of substantive criticisms to make against Mayor Wu—she’s failed to deliver promised improvements on transit or education, there’s still a problem with public drug use and homelessness at Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, she’s spending lots of taxpayer money on a stadium in a public park for a professional women’s soccer team. But the idea that Josh Kraft is going to be better than Wu at standing up to Trump seems speculative. Maybe Bostonians aren’t looking for someone to stand up to Trump, but for someone who can work with Washington and state officials to advance the city’s interests.

Lunatic or not, Trump is president of the United States. He managed to win re-election despite unprecedented legal attacks, win passage of One Big Beautiful Bill, and obliterate or at least severely set back Iran’s nuclear program. The stock market is hitting record highs. For a “lunatic,” the results so far have been not too shabby.

The other side of the campaign mail piece.

It’s also interesting in terms of the campaign finance law dimensions of it. Kraft’s spending on mail calling Trump a lunatic doesn’t get disclosed as federal campaign spending. Kraft may think Trump is insane. But spending millions of dollars on an effort that has not yet gotten much traction to get elected mayor of Boston by calling Trump a lunatic is the sort of thing that might strike a lot of political veterans as, in its own right, something less than entirely sane.

It’s also mildly ironic, because the same mailing that on the front calls Trump a lunatic on the back vows to “support mental health.” Support by calling names in public after diagnosing from afar?

New York Times Israel-bashing spreads to “Modern Love” column: “Israeli military…policy to minimize the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank while expanding Jewish settlements there.” An opinion piece? A front-page news article? No, this is the “Modern Love” column of the New York Times, in the Sunday style section. It is by Sari Bashi.

The same writer had a July 28 New York Times opinion piece denouncing Israel as “an ethnonationalist state aimed at maintaining Israeli Jewish dominance over Palestinians.” The opinion piece called for a “right of return” to Israel for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, a policy that would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority state.

As if there were any more evidence needed that the Times is all-in for the anti-Israel cause. Two pieces in three weeks from the same outside writer? Devoting the usually romance-oriented Modern Love column to a political screed?

Obama talks with Mamdani: Israel-hating socialist New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has spoken to Barack Obama “a number of times,” since winning the Democratic primary, The Telegraph reports, following up on a New York Times column that says Obama called and also that former Obama aide David Axelrod “stopped by Mr. Mamdani’s campaign headquarters” after being “introduced to Mr. Mamdani by Patrick Gaspard,” a former aide to both Obama and to George Soros.

Times columnist Mara Gay writes, “It seems very possible that Obamaworld views Mr. Mamdani differently: not as a threat or a liability, but as a promising figure in a Democratic Party with a pressing need for fresh blood.”

It’s sad that Obama, who rose to prominence as a unifying figure, is now flirting with Mamdani, the candidate of boycott-Israel and government-run grocery stores and build-more-public-housing-projects.

There’s been lots of reports that they are talking but not a lot of disclosure about the substance of the conversations. What’s the content? Obama telling Mamdani how to appear moderate and get elected while advancing a radical and destructive agenda?

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