Mark Steyn grudgingly pays a bit of attention to US politics, or more accurately, the parts of US politics that the legacy media wants Americans to know:

Donald Trump, surrounded by Secret Service agents, raises his fist after an attempt on his life during a campaign speech in Butler, PA on 13 July, 2024. One spectator was killed and two others were reported to be in critical condition. The shooter was killed by Pennsylvania State Troopers, according to reports in the succeeding hours.

In one party, the presidential candidate came within maybe an eighth-of-an-inch of having his head blown off on live TV.

In the other party, the presidential candidate was more successfully dispatched — and the millions of primary votes he’d supposedly received simply nullified.

Either of these would be extraordinary events in any other country. And yet, under the smooth narrative management of the American press, they were mere spasms of momentary discombobulation before the normal somnolent service was resumed. “Democracy Dies in Darkness”, The Washington Post informs its readers every morning. In fact, under the court eunuchs of the US media, democracy dies in broad daylight.

First, the Pennsylvania assassination attempt was memory-holed — in an industrial-strength illustration of Orwell’s brilliant coinage: any day now there will be some poll showing thirty-seven per cent of registered voters are entirely unaware that a would-be killer hit Trump in the ear. And this despite the fact that every few hours there are — oh, what’s the word they use in nations with a real press? — newsworthy revelations about all that the Secret Service did to facilitate the operation, to scrub the evidence afterwards, and to lie to Congress about both.

At this stage, they might as well remake In the Line of Fire with Clint lying on the roof next to the goofball lining up his shot and helpfully suggesting, “Think you might be maybe a half-centimeter off there, sonny …” (On the other hand, if you’re looking for some guys to break into a Massachusetts hair salon to use the toilet for two hours and then leave the joint unlocked for the rest of the weekend, this is the federal agency for you.)

In the American media, a tree can fall in the forest in front of twenty million people — and it still doesn’t make a sound.

On the other hand, we have … wossname, you know, the stiff who was nose-diving off the steps to Air Force One just twenty minutes ago. In the entirety of last week the so-called “President of the United States” had only one bit of state business to perform — a Monday telephone call with the King of Jordan. Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had a heavier workload the day before she died at ninety-six. But the same people who’ve spent the last three-and-a-half years insisting that Joe Biden was the chief executive of the United States can no longer be bothered with the elaborate pretence: the show supposedly has five months to run, but they’ve struck the set and sent the crew home, and left the star sitting slack-jawed and drooling in his Chinese Barcalounger in the dark on an empty stage. Joe’s sole residual presence in the news cycle is when Nancy Pelosi goes on TV and breezily claims to be the one who had him whacked (although the party’s other “senior powerbrokers” are reported to be mildly irked by her braggadocio: they assert that, as in Murder on the Re-Orient Express, everybody did it).

So who is running the United States? If the presidency is so important it’s worth holding a two-year contest to decide who gets to occupy it, why isn’t who’s exercising those powers right now of any interest?

Well, that’s been memory-holed, too. America’s uniquely unique “peaceful transfer of power” has begun six months early, that’s all.

So, on the one side, 24/7 coverage of the candidate being indicted, sued, tried, convicted and (coming soon!) banged up in Rikers Island will continue … but it doesn’t leave any resources to investigate him getting shot in the head on live TV.

And, on the other side, a candidate with not a single primary vote to her name has been imposed on the party by who knows who … but it would be grossly disrespectful to the majesty of her office (President-Designate) to expect her to sit down for a puffball interview with George Stephanopoulos. (“Do you think all these GOP demands that you be able to answer questions on your platform and if you know where it’s being kept are because many Republican men are still uncomfortable with the idea of a strong black Montreal schoolgirl running for president?”)

But it’s not just the regime-aligned mainstream media who want to control what you get to see and hear — the European Union seems to think it can dictate to American social media companies what they’re allowed to share:

“The European Union’s digital enforcer wrote an open letter to tech mogul Elon Musk on Monday ahead of a planned interview with former United States President Donald Trump to remind him of the EU’s rules on promoting hate speech,” reports Politico.

“As the relevant content is accessible to EU users and being amplified also in our jurisdiction, we cannot exclude potential spillovers in the EU,” wrote Digital Commissioner Thierry Breton on X. “With great audience comes greater responsibility.”

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Bruce Daisley, Twitter’s former vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has said Musk should face “personal sanctions” — which are “much more effective on executives than the risk of corporate fines” — and even, possibly, an “arrest warrant” if he “continue[s] stirring up unrest” on the platform.

“The question we are presented with is whether we’re willing to allow a billionaire oligarch to camp off the UK coastline and take potshots at our society,” says Daisley. “The idea that a boycott — whether by high-profile users or advertisers — should be our only sanction is clearly not meaningful.” (All Musk has done, for the record, is criticize British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for his handling of riots over immigration, calling him a “hypocrite” and “two-tier Keir“.)