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Illustration by Brian Stauffer for POLITICO | Here’s one way the war could begin: Chinese planes and rockets blow Taiwan’s navy and air force to smithereens in the wee hours of the morning. The People’s Liberation army and navy launch an overwhelming amphibious assault on the Taiwan Strait. Taking seriously President Joe Biden’s pledge to protect the island, Beijing preemptively strikes U.S. air bases and ships in the Indo-Pacific, and though Washington tries to punch back with sophisticated submarines and stealth bombers, it finds its munitions in the region utterly depleted in just a few days. The U.S. and Japan bleed dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft and thousands of servicemembers. The Chinese assault shreds Taiwan’s economy, and the U.S., with a shriveled industrial base that pales against China’s ascendant manufacturing power, takes years to rebuild. And that’s assuming the two superpowers don’t go nuclear. War game scenarios between the U.S. and China have played out dozens of times, most recently in April by the House Select Committee on competition with China. The ultimate outcome isn’t clear — sometimes the U.S. does better, sometimes it does worse — but there’s no question that such a conflict would plunge the nation into a horrifically bloody conflict. “The most common thread in these exercises is that the United States needs to take steps now in the Indo-Pacific to ensure the conflict doesn't happen in the future. We are hugely behind the curve,” says Becca Wasser, who played the role of the Chinese leadership in the Select Committee’s wargame and is head of the gaming lab at the Center for a New American Security. The war in Ukraine has only made matters worse, draining U.S. munitions stockpiles as China ramps up military spending and threatening rhetoric against Taiwan. “Yet critics on both sides of the aisle say the Biden administration has been slow to respond to what is minimally required to prevent an Indo-Pacific catastrophe, which is the need to rapidly build up a better deterrent — especially new stockpiles of munitions that would convince China it could be too costly to attack Taiwan,” writes Michael Hirsh in this eye-opening deep-dive. Read the story.
| | | |  | “A leader like that thinks America’s greatness resides in the mirror he’s looking at.” Can you guess who said this about former President Donald Trump? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**
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Saudi Arabia — led by Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, shown here at a 2022 summit in the city of Jeddah — supported the LIV Golf/PGA merger. But it's hardly a PR win for the kingdom, argues Michael Schaffer. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images | A Hole in One — for Hypocrites … Before the announcement of the PGA/Saudi-backed LIV Golf merger, the two sides made soaring moral claims. The PGA pointed to 9/11, the murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record. LIV painted a picture of a monopoly choking out a plucky younger competitor. But apparently, a whopping load of cash was enough to smother any surely sincere concerns about brutal autocracies “sportswashing” their image or titans maintaining total control over a sport. In this week’s Capital City column, Michael Schaffer reveals the hypocrisy that has closed the 18-month war over the future of golf. “Was it all, for lack of a better term, BS?” Brett Eagleson, who leads 9/11 Justice, told him. “I don’t think they actually gave two shits about Khashoggi or the carpet bombing of Yemen or women or 9/11. As soon as they were offered a deal, they folded like a beach chair.”
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| Donald Trump has been indicted again, this time over his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House. Not exactly up to speed? Catch up with these points: — Trump announced the indictment himself on Truth Social yesterday, saying he’d been summoned to federal court in Miami on Tuesday. He could potentially face further charges in Washington, where special counsel Jack Smith’s documents investigation is based. — Prosecutors are bringing seven criminal counts against Trump, though the exact charges are not clear. One of Trump’s attorneys, Jim Trusty, said in television interviews Thursday that he’d seen a summons document with a summary of the laws Trump allegedly broke, including the Espionage Act, a statute regarding obstruction of an official proceeding, a statute against falsifying or destroying records pertinent to a federal investigation and statutes prohibiting false statements and conspiracy. — Yes, Trump could go to prison if convicted. And yes, he could still run for president, even from behind bars. — Trump wasted no time incorporating the indictment into his fundraising. Donors immediately received an email appeal under the heading “BREAKING: INDICTED.” | | | | 
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Ousted CNN chief Chris Licht never stood a chance, writes Jack Shafer in his Fourth Estate column. | Mike Coppola/Getty Images | Why Chris Licht Really Got Fired … D.C. can’t stop talking about Tim Alberta’s mammoth takedown of former CNN chair Chris Licht. But the truth is that Licht never stood a chance, writes Jack Shafer. There was the Trump town hall disaster. His distance from the newsroom. A perception that he was just a crony for Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. And beyond all that, Licht “was expected to do the impossible — both remake the network and help its parent corporation, Warner Bros. Discovery, reach its cost-cutting goal of $3.5 billion to cover the $50 billion debt load incurred from the merger of the two companies one year ago.”
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Chasten Buttigieg stands on a sand dune in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, in Pyramid Point, Michigan, on Friday, May 12, 2023. | Sarah Rice for POLITICO | Chasten Comes Home … Chasten Buttigieg never felt quite at home in his small hometown of Traverse City, Michigan, with its conservative politics and atmosphere of homophobia. He fled when he was 18, thinking he might never return. But now, he and his high-profile husband, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, have bought a home in Traverse City, splitting their time between there and D.C. They’ve found a town that flies Pride flags and screens movies like Billy Eichner’s gay rom-com, Bros. Buttigieg even filled a local theater on his tour promoting his memoir, I Have Something to Tell You. “Little Chasten did not see this coming,” Buttigieg recently told Adam Wren, who went to Michigan to find out how Buttigieg found his way back to the home that once rejected him.
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Al Franken portrays televangelist Pat Robertson, who died on Thursday at age 93, in a 1988 SNL skit. | Pat Robertson, the incendiary televangelist who ran for president in 1988 and galvanized an evangelical voting base that wields incredible political power to this day, died Thursday at age 93. In the late ’80s, former Sen. Al Franken portrayed Robertson on SNL, and in 2016, he included his Robertson role in a list of his 10 favorite political SNL sketches. So POLITICO Magazine reached out to Franken for his thoughts on the passing of a man he didn’t resemble at all in real life — but nonetheless loved to play. Robertson was a fun character to play because he had the “Happy Christian” effect. I’d watch the 700 Club occasionally, not just for the impression, but to get a sense of what he was all about. Every so often, he’d do faith healing: “There’s a woman in Ohio who’s just been cured of her diverticulitis!!!” And I found that odd. Because I knew he had a big audience, and I’m sure he had more than one woman viewer in Ohio with diverticulitis. Say you were a woman watching in Dayton and you had diverticulitis. And she assumes she’s the one who the Lord cured of her diverticulitis. But instead, it’s a woman in Toledo. But the woman in Dayton believes she’s been cured and goes and eats a bowl of nuts! And dies! That’s why I thought he was dangerous. That and how much he seemed to hate so many people. You may remember that two days after 9/11, he and Reverend Jerry Falwell were on TV together. At one point, Falwell got a full head of steam: “I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who are trying to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say you helped make this happen.” Then Robertson replied, “Well, I totally concur!” I hadn’t been a big fan before that, and not just because of the reckless faith healing. There was also the odd prayer to God to steer hurricanes away from his property to cause enormous damage elsewhere. But mainly it was the intolerance and hatred. — Al Franken
| | | **Who Dissed answer: It was former New Jersey governor and current GOP presidential primary longshot Chris Christie, who criticized his former boss at his campaign launch in New Hampshire on Tuesday, saying Trump is a “self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog.” politicoweekend@email.politico.com | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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