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Marco Rubio (left), Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich participate in a Republican primary debate in Detroit, March 3, 2016.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

On the homepage today, Phil argues that it would be better for the Republican Party if Donald Trump were to run for president in 2024 but lose in the primary. I profoundly dissent from this view.

My disagreement with Phil seems to be a matter of degree. He acknowledges that:

Trumps running would mean months of relitigating his grievances from the 2020 election in addition to generating new controversies. Given his track record of turning the base against anybody who challenges him even conservatives in previously good standing a Trump run could mean decapitating a whole new generation of Republican talent. Or, forcing many potential candidates to wait until 2028, when circumstances may not be as ripe for a Republican victory.

In my view, this is a concession that cannot be followed by a useful but. Indeed, to do so is akin to saying that it would be good, on balance, to have a bull in a china shop providing that it is ultimately captured. The potential consequences of Donald Trump taking part in a primary even if he were to lose that primary will be disastrous and irrevocable. Trump will undermine the process itself, arguing at every stage that it is rigged or has been corrupted. He will weaken his opponents without regard to the broader aim, which should be to get a Republican elected in 2024. He will use his platform to spread pernicious lies about the American electoral system, and about the riot that those lies engendered. And he will, as ever, totally dominate the media coverage of the race, and thereby distract voters from the many legitimate criticisms of the Biden administration that ought to be the GOPs focus going forward.

Phil is right to argue that there would be some upsides to Trump being vanquished by the primary electorate, but those upsides do not come close to making it worthwhile.

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Re: The Benefits of Donald Trump Running Again - National Review

In September 2015, Dawn carried my op-ed article, Pakistans Donald Trump. This was 16 months before Trump became president of the United States and about three years before Imran Khan became prime minister of Pakistan. It generated much commentary both ways. Days later, Washington-based analyst Michael Kugelman published his riposte, also in Dawn, dismissing my comparisons as merely superficial. He concluded that Naya Pakistan may be nave, but it is neither nasty nor nefarious.

Seven years is an eternity in the world of politics. What has Naya Pakistan come to mean? Since 2015, much has happened: Trump narrowly won the presidency but failed at re-election. Since then, he has not stopped trying to claw his way back to power. Khan was the winner in the controlled elections of 2018 and has had nearly four years for selling Naya Pakistan. His fate presently rests upon the no-confidence motion before parliament.

To redo the Trump-Khan comparison is timely. Certainly, some similarities I had alluded to earlier remain unaltered. Then, as now, the political toolkits of both men include abundant use of abusive language for firing up supportive mobs. So is making promises which, even if unfulfillable, help generate fantasies in their followers.

The first time around these tools, together with practised theatrics, worked well. Once installed in power, the orange-skinned president cultivated an ecosystem of sycophants, sellers of snake oil and white extremists. In a blizzard of disinformation, his political opponents were blamed for all failures of governance and economic mismanagement. The Washington Post says Trumps false or misleading claims total 30,573 over four years. Impressive!

But Americans soon realised that although Trump was brilliant before the cameras, on governance he was clueless. The economy, race matters and foreign relations headed south. Relations with European allies plummeted even as the Putin-Trump personal rapport grew stronger. When voters rejected Trump for a second term, this was incomprehensible to a man who adored himself beyond limit.

To reverse the election results he tried everything but, unfortunately for him, American democracy proved too robust. The Department of Justice and the military flatly rejected his proposal to seize voting machines and redo the elections. The siege of Capitol Hill in a country with 200 years of democracy shocked the world.

While places, times, and people are obviously different for Pakistan, many similarities are startlingly close and growing closer. Khan is already concocting an explanation for his possible ouster: he is being punished by the West for his independent foreign policy and jihad against Islamophobia. He threatens to unleash hell upon turncoat members of his own party and, of course, the opposition.

On March 27 D-Day at Islamabads D-Chowk PTI is mobilising party and state resources for holding what it says will be the biggest rally in Pakistans history. The goal: to message parliamentarians, both PTI and opposition, that they must not enter parliament to vote on the no-confidence motion.

One significant difference separates Capitol Hill from D-Chowk. Whereas Trump brought out his supporters with winks and nods, nothing has been left to the imagination here. Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry says all parliamentarians arriving to vote on that day would have to pass through a million Khan supporters on their way to the National Assembly and even more significantly on their way back as well. There they will face a lynch mob.

How violent it all gets on D-Day, and the final outcome, cannot be presently known. The siege of the Capitol left American democracy hanging by a thread. Nevertheless, the system was robust enough to blunt the worse. In Pakistan, what lies ahead may or may not end with Khans ouster. But what will be his legacy when he does finally go?

On democracy: depriving parliamentarians of their right to vote is a slap in the face to democracy and decency. That this violates the Constitution is clear as day. But, to be honest, worse has happened before. Four martial laws have trampled the Constitution under the boot. And, even without overt constitutional violations, crooked politicians and generals have stuffed their pockets for decades and parked their assets in unreachable places.

On the economy: todays galloping inflation, repeated returns to the IMF, more whitewashing of black money, dramatic fall of the rupee, and performance levels well below that of India and Bangladesh, are significant negatives. But dont blame PTI alone. Pakistans systemic economic weaknesses stem from overspending on defence, elite capture of national wealth, and a hopelessly under-skilled workforce. Thats why CPECs new infrastructure led to insignificant industrialisation. The same would have happened in a PML-N or PPP government.

On foreign relations: the world noticed PM Khan hailing Osama bin Laden a martyr; calling the Taliban liberators; shaking hands with Putin just before the Ukraine war; wantonly spiting the EU although it is one of Pakistans economic props; and sending relations with Saudi Arabia crashing down. Still, these are reversible. A new prime minister can set things right.

On education: Khans toxic legacy will be nearly irreversible. While madressahs do exactly today what they have done for decades and centuries, Punjabs regular schools now function more as madressahs and less as schools. Even the super-rich are only partly exempted. The kind of mixed-up, confused and ignorant generations that the so-called Single National Curriculum will produce is absolutely terrifying. On the higher education front, Khan has disembowelled the HEC and made it a hotbed of intrigue.

When Khan proclaimed Naya Pakistan would be Riyasat-i-Madina, most people thought it was a metaphor for a cleaner, more equitable Pakistan. Our friend from Washington can be forgiven for thinking this as neither nasty nor nefarious. Almost everyone failed to see the hidden text: the head of any religious state must claim divine sanction in some form. With near-daily fiery pontifications on his ideas of moral behaviour and proper dress, Khans high vision is fully before us. And, just in case you are unsure whether Naya Pakistans head should stay or go, please remember that only animals can be neutral.

The writer is an Islamabad-based physicist and author.

This article was first published in Dawn on 19 March 2022 and it has been republished here with permission.

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Imran Khan is another Donald Trump. But real danger is that Pakistan isnt another US - ThePrint

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wrote an opinion piece about Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical ... [+] Advisor and Director of the NIAID for FOX News. (Photo by GREG NASH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

With Russia attacking Ukraine right now, whom did Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) call a dictator in chief in his March 14 Opinion piece for FOX News? Well it didnt seem to be the Russian dictator, invading a foreign country, that U.S. President Joe Biden mentioned in his State of the Union Address on March 1. Nope, Pauls opinion piece was about, surprise, surprise, Anthony Fauci, MD, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Yep, as the Covid-19 coronavirus continues to claim over 1,200 lives each day and Russia threatens Ukraines sovereignty, it looks like Paul is continuing to focus on one of his fellow humans and Americans: Fauci. Pauls piece bore the headline: Covid lockdown lessons learned Fauci amendment would mean no more health 'dictator in chief.' And beneath this headline was the following subhead: My amendment would eliminate Dr. Faucis position as NIAID director, divide his power into 3 separate institutes. He didnt specify in the article as to why specifically he chose the number three. But many good things do come in threes such as Stooges, little pigs, French hens, and the members of the musical group Hansen.

Pauls Senate office also released a press release re-iterating what he wrote in the FOX News piece. In the article, Paul wrote, Weve learned a lot over the past two years, but one lesson in particular is that no one person should be deemed dictator in chief. No one person should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans. Indeed, many would probably agree that the U.S. shouldnt have a dictator in chief. For example, who would want a President who wasnt actually elected by the American people? So what was Pauls solution? Making sure that every American has equal access to voting? Putting in safeguards to prevent an election from being overturned?

Not exactly. The next sentence in Pauls piece read: To ensure that ineffective, unscientific lockdowns and mandates are never foisted on the American people ever again, I will introduce an amendment to eliminate Dr. Anthony Faucis position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and divide his power into three separate new institutes. Umm, how exactly could Fauci have been a dictator in chief when ultimately it was the U.S. President who has had the final word followed by the Vice-President, Congress, and a number of other Presidential appointees?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical Advisor and Director of the NIAID, shows a screen grab ... [+] of a campaign website for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) while answering his questions at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)

Speaking of dictators, throughout history dictators have seized power by first controlling anyone who may offer dissent such as scientists and the media. Thats why its usually a good idea to keep people like scientific leaders and the media separate from the control of political leaders. Doing so could prevent a wannabe dictator from having undue influence on what scientists and the media say. Yet, Paul proposed the following: Each of these three institutes will be led by a director who is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term.

Imagine what might have happened over the past several years had the President had even more control over Faucis position. Remember when Fauci pushed back on Trumps assertion that the pandemic had rounded the corner in September 2020? Or how about later that month when Fauci contradicted Trumps claim that the the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) affects nobody young during a CNN interview:

Then, there was Fauci dissenting again with Trump the next month after the latter had stated that was only as deadly as the flu, as Corky Siemaszko reported for NBC News. Imagine what could have happened had Trump been able to readily appoint and dismiss someone in Faucis position? At times, it seemed like Fauci was the only one appearing at the White House press briefings in 2020 who offered any disagreements with Trumps statements about the pandemic. So when Paul argued in his piece that No one person should have the sole authority to dictate science, especially when that one person wasnt ever following the science, how exactly would having a non-scientist having even greater control over Faucis position prevent this?

Pauls use of the words dictator in chief was interesting, since its not even clear how much power Fauci even wielded with the Trump Administration calling the shots. Most of the public health guidance in 2020 came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which was being run by Trump appointee Robert Redfield, MD. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which was guided by Trump appointee Stephen Hahn, MD, determined which Covid-19 vaccines and treatments would get authorized and approved. And throughout 2020, Trump brought in people of his choosing such as Scott Atlas, MD, to guide the Covid-19 response and seemed to increasingly sideline Fauci.

In his piece, Paul didnt really point too many specifics about what Fauci did wrong. Paul did write that When Dr. Fauci said that cloth masks worked, I was truly concerned because thats not what the science demonstrated. While medical grade face masks like N95 respirators are certainly more effective than cloth masks at blocking the SARS-CoV-2, it is not necessarily accurate to say that cloth masks dont do anything. Scientific studies have suggested that wearing a cloth mask may reduce the amount of virus that an infected spews out into the air. Paul also cited a report from a group of researchers at Johns Hopkins University. He didnt specifically name that report but I covered for Forbes a report that was not peer-reviewed and co-authored by a professor from Johns Hopkins University that made claims that didnt seem to match the evidence provided. Of note, YouTube did suspend Paul in August 2021 after the ophthalmologist posted a video claiming that most masks dont work against the Covid-19 coronavirus, as Joe Walsh reported for Forbes back then.

Paul concluded his Opinion piece with The biggest lesson we have learned over the last two years is that no one person should have this much unchecked power. And my amendment, which will get a vote this week, will finally force accountability and fire Dr. Fauci.

Its probably safe to say that Paul and Fauci are not BFFs. During a Senate Committee hearing in January of this year, Fauci told Paul,You keep distorting the truth. It is stunning that you do that, as covered by Ta Kvetenadze for Forbes and as you can see in this C-SPAN video:

Pauls continued attacks of Fauci do show the importance of maintaining and even creating more scientific leadership positions that are more independent of the U.S. President and Congress. This would better allow science rather than politics determine public health policy. Keep in mind that Fauci first became the Director of the NIAID under a Republican President, Ronald Reagan. He then continued to serve in that role under two more Presidents (George H.W. Bush and George Bush) interspersed with two Democratic Presidents (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) before Trump reached the White House. It is important, especially during a public health emergency such as the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, to have leaders who follow the science rather than what specifically any political party wants to see. Otherwise, the U.S. could very well end up with a Dictator-in-Chief.

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Rand Paul Will Try To Fire Fauci By Introducing New Amendment - Forbes

UN Special Adviser on Libya, Stephanie Williams, convened a meeting with the Czech Republic Ambassador to Libya, Jan Vytal, in Tunis, on Friday.

"Ambassador Vytal expressed support for the UN-facilitated talks between the House of Representatives and the High State Council to build consensus on a constitutional basis to enable the holding of elections," the UN Rep wrote on Twitter.

She said they agreed on the importance of ensuring that all international efforts on Libya are both coordinated and constructive.

Following her appointment last December as Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General, Williams presented a mediation initiative to overcome the political stalemate, as she put it.

The initiative proposes the formation of a 12-member joint committee between the east-based Parliament (HoR) and the High Council of State in Tripoli, which task is to establish a consensual constitutional basis for holding elections as soon as possible.

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Czech ambassador to Libya supports Williams initiative - The Libya Observer

The EU Ambassador to Libya, Sabadell Jose, has reiterated the need to preserve Libya's oil revenues and the independence and impartiality of its institutions, including the Central Bank and the state-run oil company (NOC).

"In current exceptional circumstances, in Libya and globally, it is for Libyans to ensure that oil revenues continue and benefit all Libyans. An independent and well-resourced NOC and a unified Central Bank are indispensable, the EU official tweeted on Friday.

He described the meeting between the CBL and the Ministry of Finance with the co-chairs of the UN mission, the US embassy, and Egypt as very good.

Sabadell also expressed aspiration to work with all actors willing to play a constructive role based on dialogue and consensus.

He said the EU is looking forward to ensuring that the economy becomes an engine for peace and that oil income is managed for the benefit of all Libyans and preserved from corruption or mismanagement.

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EU reiterates need to preserve oil revenues and institutions of Libya - The Libya Observer