For a guy who has clearly demonstrated his willingness to change sides depending upon which way the political winds were blowing Max Boot sure throws the word “traitor” around a lot, at the very least he infers it in what can best be described as his wacko tweets.
If you are unfamiliar with Boot, first of all congratulations and secondly a little history is in order, Wikipedia characterizes Boot as follows:
Max A. Boot[1] is an American author, consultant, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian.[2] He worked as a writer and editor for Christian Science Monitor and then for The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s. He is now the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has written for numerous publications such as The Weekly Standard, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, and he has also authored books of military history.[3] In 2018, Boot published The Road Not Taken, a biography of Edward Lansdale, and The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, which details Boot’s “ideological journey from a ‘movement’ conservative to a man without a party”[4] in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election.
Apparently Widipedia did not have enough room to add “crazy as hell” at the end of their description of Boot. Born in Moscow, Boot emigrated to America where he attended the University of Southern California at Berkley. He has worked as both an author and editor for the “New York Times” the “Christian Science Monitor” and the “Wall Street Journal” where he espoused (or parroted) what he believed to be Conservative viewpoints, although his history demonstrates that he was far more in favor of armed conflict than your average run of the mill conservative.
Following the election of Donald Trump, Boot performed the ultimate defection, leaving the right in order to embrace the viewpoints of the left. When asked to explain his reversal of political position by a breathless media (no doubt stoked beyond belief at the thought of a well known Conservative journalist performing the ultimate betrayal of his declared party) Boot responded, writing in December 2017 for “Foreign Policy” ]
“…. recent events—particularly since the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president—had caused him to rethink some of his previous views concerning the existence of white privilege and male privilege. “In the last few years, in particular, it has become impossible for me to deny the reality of discrimination, harassment, even violence that people of color and women continue to experience in modern-day America from a power structure that remains for the most part in the hands of straight, white males. People like me, in other words. Whether I realize it or not, I have benefited from my skin color and my gender—and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.”
In other words Max Boot had become “woke”, perhaps it was his disdain for President Trump (as evidenced by the headline of one of his articles which declared “I would vote for a sane Donald Trump” or else it was some desire to bond with and gratify liberals (for some odd reason) but whatever the cause, the guy (who some still label as a “Conservative Journalist”) has certainly been a very vocal critic of Donald Trump and his administration.
Just recently, Boot penned an article for the Washington Post where he went off on the Trump legal team. Apparently after watching a completely different impeachment dog and pony show than the rest of the world Boot wrote that
“Democrats in the trial have so far had “not only the stronger arguments but also the stronger arguers.”
He has also written articles for the Washington Post (which should tell you all you need to know about him) with such catchy titles as “Can American Democracy survive another term of Donald Trump” and the totally unbiased (joking) article informing everyone that “Donald Trump is the worst person ever to be president” If Boot was ever indeed an actually Conservative, it was in the far distant past.
Of course Trump Derangement System (aka TDS) is a very serious problem. Look at Billy Crystal, George Conway, Evan McMullin, Karl Rove and Mitt Romney for example, except calling these individuals conservative is akin to calling Jennifer Rubin a conservative (although she claims to be), Rubin who was so impressed with the giant legal mind that is Adam Schiff during his recent appearance at the impeachment lync…. err trial, that she couldn’t help gushing about him on Twitter
This is the most brilliant legal presentation I have heard. None comes close. The tone, the facts, the anticipated defenses. I am in awe.
— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) January 22, 2020
If using the name “Adam Schiff” and “brilliant” in the sentence isn’t considered an oxymoron, it damn well should be
It is quite easy to wonder, if Rubin and Boot are (or ever were) Conservatives, are actual Liberal Progressive “journalists” truly horrific?
Fast forward to Boot’s latest foolishness, in what might well be the greatest example of hyperbole in history Boot claimed that:
“If there is a historical precedent for this egregious misconduct, I’m not aware of it — and Trump defenders haven’t found one either. President Richard M. Nixon was guilty of abusing his authority, but he didn’t subordinate foreign policy to his personal political interests as Trump has. (He did secretly urge South Vietnam not to join peace talks in 1968 to aid his campaign, but he wasn’t president then.) Other presidents — from Andrew Jackson with the Trail of Tears during the 1830s, to Franklin D. Roosevelt with the internment of U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II — have trampled on our values, but they always had a public purpose and usually had congressional support.”
If you are wondering if the gigantic ego that is Max Boot was actually comparing the genocide of Native Americans and the internment of Japanese Americans to a phone call made by Donald Trump (a call for which the transcript is readily available and sure doesn’t seem to rise to the level of mass murder – public purpose or not) then you aren’t the only one. Boot (who has since deleted his tweet, but not the article that highlights it) was shredded on Twitter for his totally inappropriate and tone deaf take
I thought we'd hit peak stupid with "weirdy" body-language analysis, but we've now moved on to Trump's Zelensky call being worse than the Trail of Tears or Japanese internment. #peak #murica https://t.co/1nEu5QiFLf
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 24, 2020
Apparently deleting his tweet wasn’t quite as effective as Boot may have hoped:
For those that missed it, here's the tweet that was deleted (likely after Matt's retweet): pic.twitter.com/k5jERGG8r2
— LSSilver, Pajama Trader (@Long_Stock_Ag) January 24, 2020
If this impeachment disaster has any silver lining whatsoever, hopefully it will serve to expose phony Conservative and hack liberal journalists (along with a slew of narrow mined liberal politicians) in the same way that turning on a light will cause the cockroaches in a kitchen to scurry for cover, but point of fact – the similarities don’t even come close to ending there