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What Prince Andrew's Arrest Says About America

When the thirteen colonies broke away from the United Kingdom, the government they established barred monarchs and aristocratic titles.  Moreover, they held the concept that no one was above the law and the president and other high officials were barred from receiving large gifts and "emoluments" from domestic or foreign sources. Fast forward over two centuries and we see on daily display the Felon's complete violation of this ban and corruption on  a scale that the Founding Fathers likely could not have imagined. Worse yet, the Felon views himself as a monarch of sorts who is above the law - ignoring the law has long been a benchmark of the Felon's life and business practices - and he has his Department of Justice hard at work protecting him and his wealthy cronies and fellow misogynists from consequences for their long time association (and seeming crimes) with Jeffrey Epstein.  Ironically, in the United Kingdom, rather than America, we see the concept that no one is above the law playing out with the arrest of former Prince Andrew - the first member of the royal family to be arrested in 400 years. Where the arrest will lead no one knows, but the events in the UK demonstrate that the rule of law in America arguably no longer applies to the rich and connected. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the juxtaposition and the failure of America to confirm that no one is above the law:   

On Tuesday, November 30, 2010, at 2:57 p.m., Prince Andrew—as he then was—received details of his upcoming trips as Britain’s official trade envoy: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Vietnam, Singapore. At 3:02 p.m., he forwarded the entire email to Jeffrey Epstein.

At dawn today, that stupid and unethical decision—and many others like it—finally caught up with him. Police arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on the morning of his 66th birthday, on suspicion of misconduct in public office, and are now searching his homes. Prosecutors have not yet released specific charges, which are thought to relate to Andrew passing on sensitive government information to Epstein. The offense carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. His brother, King Charles III, was not officially informed in advance, but had signaled that the royal family would cooperate with any police inquiry.

Charles had already stripped Andrew of his title after the latest batch of Epstein files dropped, because the newly released emails proved beyond doubt that Andrew had lied about breaking off contact with Epstein, a convicted sex offender, in 2010. The disgraced former prince had also been evicted from his lavish residence in Windsor, just outside London, where he had lived effectively rent-free for many years. “Let me state clearly: the law must take its course,” Charles wrote in his statement on the arrest, adding: “Meanwhile, my family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all.”

In the United States, the Epstein affair is still seen primarily as a sex scandal. The financier was well known as a man who could easily find women—“no one over 25 and all very cute,” he told Elon Musk—to go on dates with his rich friends. (“Pro or civilian?” Steve Tisch, a co-owner of the New York Giants, asked about one such woman.) But here in Britain, this is a corruption scandal—and not just because Andrew sent Epstein confidential information about investment opportunities in Afghanistan. The police recently searched two addresses linked to Peter Mandelson, a former government minister and an ambassador to Washington who also lied about the extent of his friendship with Epstein.

During his time in government in the late 2000s, the files show, Mandelson forwarded market-sensitive emails to Epstein, on subjects such as the eurozone bailout of Greece, mixed in with laddish banter and discussions about how Mandelson might make money after leaving office. Mandelson has already been stripped of his seat in the House of Lords and his affiliation with the Labour Party; for a few hours, many in the press corps thought the scandal might bring down Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who had bafflingly appointed Mandelson as U.S. ambassador, despite his long record of other scandals. In the end, Starmer’s chief of staff, who had recommended Mandelson for the job, stepped down instead.

The allegations against Andrew date from a similar period, when he was a trade envoy for the British Foreign Office. That job turned out to involve flying around the world in high style—often to places run by oligarchs, dictators, and fellow royals, on the basis that they would be flattered to deal with a prince. Once there, he might also take the opportunity to watch, say, a Formula One race or have a few rounds of golf. Attractive young women seem to have been present at many of these events. Foreign intelligence services must have regarded Andrew’s appointment in 2001 as a gift from the heavens.

In 2007, for example, he sold his white elephant of a mansion, Sunninghill, which his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, had given him as a wedding present. A Kazakh oligarch paid millions over the asking price, and then never moved in.

The problem for the royal family was that Andrew and his then-wife, Sarah—known in Britain as “Fergie,” after her unmarried name—had no discernible talents but extremely expensive tastes. . . . .The couple separated in 1992, but Sarah continued to use her title, the Duchess of York, to boost her commercial ventures. In 1995, Buckingham Palace refused to pay off any more of her debts, and issued a statement saying that “the Duchess’s financial affairs are no longer Her Majesty’s concern.”

After this, despite making millions of dollars from her series of children’s books, Fergie went crawling to Epstein for loans. . . . . Both she and Andrew were tethered to Epstein by their greed and entitlement. They wanted millionaire lifestyles. More than that, they felt that they deserved them. Why? Because of an accident of birth in one case, and a fortuitous marriage in the other. The couple have been divorced for three decades but have never really moved on, possibly because they are mirror images of each other.

Until 2022, he also benefited from the protection of his mother. Andrew was widely perceived to be the late Queen’s favorite child: Charles was sensitive, unlike his parents, who had been raised as emotionally stunted aristocrats; Anne, a tougher, horse-mad child, was Prince Philip’s pet; Edward, like many youngest children, benefited from his parents softening with middle age. But no one really knew what to do with Andrew, who was nicknamed “Baby Grumpling” because of his temper.

Over the years, the late Queen had repeatedly smoothed Andrew’s way in life. But even she could not save him after his disastrous decision to give an interview to the BBC in 2019 about his connection with Epstein. He presented a portrait of blithe privilege, denying a deep connection with the financier by saying he had hosted him only for a “straightforward shooting weekend.” He claimed to have spent three days with Epstein in New York in 2010 for the sole purpose of breaking off their friendship. This was unbelievable at the time, and has now been debunked by the latest files. “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!” a 2011 email from Andrew declares. The revulsion at his appearance on the BBC prompted his mother to strip him of his ceremonial titles and retire him as a “working royal.”

Charles has gone even further—supported by his son Prince William. Both the king and his successor believe that Andrew’s actions could destroy the royal family, and they are keen to amputate him from the Windsors and cauterize the wound. None of the statements from Buckingham Palace has carried the slightest hint that they believe Andrew has been wronged by a witch hunt. The king’s last statement before today included a telling line: “Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and sympathies have been, and remain with, the victims of any and all forms of abuse.”

All this presents quite a contrast with the U.S., where the fallout from contact with Epstein has largely been restricted to second-tier names—some of whom are provably guilty only of being chummy with a sex offender, which is not itself a crime. Like Andrew, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also claimed to have broken off contact with Epstein . . . . However, Lutnick has the fortune to work for Donald Trump. The [Felon] president is unlikely to request that anyone resign for being friendly with Epstein, since that would apply to him, too.

The former Prince Andrew acted as he did because he lived in a world in which someone like him never faced consequences. That isn’t true anymore. “Nobody is above the law,” Starmer said in response to the news. In Britain, at least, that might actually be true.

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The End of Reagan-Era Republicanism

As often noted on this blog, I grew up in a Republican family and was a GOP activist, serving on the Republican Party City Committee for Virginia Beach (I incorporated that body as Virginia State Corporation Commission records confirm) for eight years in the 1990's.  That political party is dead and gone and what now exists is party headed by the equivalent of a crime boss, racism is once again overt, bigotry. hate and division are the stock in trade of the GOP when it's not pursuing its reverse Robin Hood agenda, and accountability for those in power is gone.  Former Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom has been arrested in connection with Epstein related matter, yet here in the USA the Department of Justice instead of seeking to prosecute Epstein's coconspirators and accomplices is running a coverup operation to protect the Felon and other members of the elite. Looking back at Bill Clinton's impeachment, one has to wonder at the quaintness of a time when the GOP argued that personal, private conduct supposedly mattered. Now, corruption is on open view, the Felon's FCC chair is threatening media outlets for carrying news segments or shows that are not to the Felon's liking, and the Felon stands accused of sexual assault by numerous women.  The era of Reagan and arguably true conservatism is truly dead and gone as a very long piece with two Never Trumpers in The Atlantic underscores.  Here are highlights:

On this week’s episode of The David Frum Show, David opens with a warning about [the Felon's] President Trump’s escalating efforts to bend American institutions to his will. David explains how episodes including the Justice Department’s attempted prosecution of members of Congress, the political pressure on the Federal Reserve, and the campaign-style appeals delivered at Fort Bragg represent a systematic attempt to erode the guardrails of American democracy.

Then, David is joined by Mona Charen, a contributor at The Bulwark and longtime conservative commentator. Together, they reflect on their shared political evolution—from their early days as Reagan-era conservatives to their break with today’s Republican Party. They discuss what they believe they got right and what they got wrong, how Trump transformed the conservative movement, and why the version of conservatism they once believed in may be gone.

One of the defining characteristics of the Trump years has been the determination of [the Felon] President [Donald] Trump and the people around him to turn into instruments of presidential will federal agencies that were always thought of as more or less independent and apolitical. The Department of Justice, well, it’s part of the administration, for sure, and the attorney general is an appointee of the president. But there had always been a belief that the actions of the Department of Justice, especially the criminal-enforcement actions, were not dictated for political reasons by the president.

Well, that idea has just gone up in smoke in the Trump years. This has been the most nakedly political Department of Justice perhaps since [President] Warren Harding’s in the 1920s and maybe the most in history because of the recent event where Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia—supposedly acting on her own but obviously acting at the command of Attorney General [Pam] Bondi, who was acting, obviously, at the command of Donald Trump—when the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia actually tried to indict six members of Congress, four of them members of the House of Representatives, two of them United States senators, for making a video urging U.S. military personnel to obey lawful orders and not to obey illegal orders, which you would think is something that would be as basic as telling the president of the United States not to take bribes. How could such a statement be controversial unless the president was taking bribes and unless the military was contemplating illegal orders? So they took offense for that reason, and they tried to prosecute members of Congress.

Now, the speech of members of Congress is protected not only by the First Amendment, like as yours and mine is, but by the speech and debate clause of the Constitution, which puts very severe limits on the ability of anybody to punish a member of Congress for something that the member of Congress said. And yet the Department of Justice tried just that. Happily, a grand jury completely rejected the charges—there was reportedly not a single member of the grand jury who took this seriously; it was unanimous rejection, an unparalleled humiliation for the Trump Justice Department. But the litigation of other attacks on those members of Congress continues.

At the same time, we saw in this past weekend a really shocking event, where President Trump traveled to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. . . . . President Trump appeared onstage with the Republican candidate for Senate and urged military personnel to vote for that candidate.

The military is, of course, the most important apolitical institution. Presidents address the military all the time, but they are not supposed to make political speeches, rally speeches, to ask the military to vote a certain way. That’s unheard of. That’s shocking. It’s the prelude to authoritarian rule.

Now, fortunately, again, as with the rejection of the attempt to indict members of Congress for what they said, the attempt to mobilize the troops as political actors, that also looks to have fallen flat. Reporters who were present noted that the soldiers, who maybe were warned by their commanding officers, made a point of clapping for the president’s appearance, clapping when the president talked about raising their pay—well, that’s traditional—but keeping very quiet when the president made his pitch that they should vote for the president’s preferred candidate for United States Senate. But in both cases, these are mere instances of failure, not stories of the successful pushback by institutions.

One of the most important independent institutions in the United States government is the Federal Reserve. . . . [the Felon] Trump has tried to put pressure on Powell to cut interest rates by bringing up all incredible things or by preparing to bring—it’s not filed yet—a criminal investigation of Powell for some series of nonsense charges. Now, the charges aren’t filed, but the [Felon] president has been huffing and puffing and the Department of Justice has been subpoenaing Powell as if these actions were ready.

But Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is outgoing, has said, I am not going to consider any nominee by the president, meritorious or not, unless we end these full prosecutions, these sinister prosecutions, that Trump has instituted against one Federal Reserve governor already, Lisa Cook, and is threatening against another, Jerome Powell, because they wouldn’t cut interest rates as fast as he wanted. Until these prosecutions are at an end, no consideration of any nominee whatsoever. And because of the closely balanced nature of the Senate and the rules of the Senate, Tillis may be able to make this stick.

So the punishment for Trump’s attempt to pervert the Federal Reserve may be getting more of what he doesn’t like, which would be a fit irony. But the best outcome: End this nonsense. Ideally, replace Bondi with an attorney general with some integrity, but failing even that, just end these shameless prosecutions, end these shameless acts of intimidation, drop the cases, close them, and then let the Senate consider the Warsh nomination on its merits, such as they are.

And I was a conservative columnist and speaker and all of that—pundit. But with the rise of Trump, I saw the destruction of pretty much everything that— . . . he was also the antithesis of what I regarded as conservative virtues. So for example, he encouraged people to believe that he personally, through force of will, could solve huge problems that face us as a country. I thought that was the antithesis of everything that conservatism believed; it was Caesarism.

And then, of course, all of his various heresies, like his attacks on free trade and his racism, which, again, I thought was the fulfillment of every fever dream of the left that thought conservatives were all racists underneath, that if you scratched them, you’d find that they were really racist. And here, along comes Trump, who confirms this. So I resented that as well.

[National Review editor] Jonah Goldberg put it best many, years ago where he had an article where he said it was watching people that he knew and believed he understood gradually become Trumpy was like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where people, they just were absorbed into this thing. And so I watched one after another, and for a long time, it was a subject of grief for me that I watched these people that I respected bend the knee. It was an ongoing process that took years, and during that time, unfortunately, I lost many friends.

Trump is now running roughshod over law and has allies aplenty in the MAGA movement who are ready—in his first term, he was trying to do it pretty much by himself; now he has eager allies. They’re destroying our system of justice and civil liberties in this country, and they’re destroying our international posture. And maybe I should mention, as that’s another thing I still believe in, I still believe the United States should be the leader of the free world, should have alliances, should stand up for countries that are invaded by aggressive neighbors, rather than finding common cause with their oppressors.

I hope that there will come a time when there’s enough recognition across party lines that we’ve gone off the rails that there will be an openness to a true accounting. There are people who are committing real crimes, including the president of the United States right now. The blowing up people in boats who you just suspect may be drug traffickers is a prime example. But it’s gonna take time and a huge amount of persuasion, and more than the persuasion, it’s gonna take more experience of the awfulness for the American people to get to the point where they’re ready for an accounting.

What Trump is doing to poison the social conversation here at home, to allow in these voices, to really mainstream people like Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson, that is deeply frightening. That’s where we live. (Laughs.) And it is opening the door to the kind of—there’s a lot of left-wing anti-Semitism, but frankly, the right-wing variety still scares me a little more because it is truly Nazi-like in its ferocity against Jews. . . . But the world has changed. The conservatism that I signed up for is completely gone. There’s no coherent set of ideas that is held by a movement, far less a party, now that is recognizable.

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The Felon's Cratering Poll Numbers

The Felon's 2024 campaign promised to lower consumer prices, strengthen the economy, and create more jobs along with promises to strengthen border security and to deport criminals.   Fast forward 13 months, and other than brutal immigration raids and the seizing of everyday, law abiding undocumented immigrants, the Felon has delivered on none of his economic promises.  Prices have risen in part due to the Felon's tariffs - 90% of which have been paid by American consumers - and trade wars, spending on green energy and electric vehicles have been slashed, handing a huge gift to China, handing a huge gift to China which may come to dominate both industries.  Job creation has been flat with few jobs added in 2025, and the Felon's cruel and brutal immigration policies have harmed both the agriculture and construction industries which have seen workers either seized or afraid to show up for work and caused higher prices.   The Felon's poll numbers reflect both the Felon's regime's  terrible handling of the economy and the revulsion of a majority of Americans to cruel and brutal immigration policies and the lawlessness of ICE.  Nowhere has support for the Felon cratered more than with younger voters, many of whom were naive enough to believe a con man.    A piece in The Atlantic looks at the Felon's collapsing poll number with younger voters:

The past two months have been some of the worst for Donald Trump’s approval rating—ever. Polling aggregators have his net approval in the low 40s, with 34 percent approval on the economy and 30 percent on cost of living. In individual polls, his overall approval dips down into the mid 30s. The last time Trump’s numbers looked this bad was right after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The slippage is especially drastic with young voters. In the 2024 election, a majority of 18-to-29-year-olds voted for Kamala Harris, but compared with 2020, young voters swung hard toward Trump. According to the Cook Political Report, on March 1, 2025, Trump’s net approval rating with these voters was minus 7. Yet by February 1 of this year, it was an astonishing minus 31.8. Now young people are abandoning Trump faster than any other voting bloc.

It’s tempting to think that this is all happening because of this administration’s blatantly authoritarian and norm-shattering actions: deploying masked ICE agents into American cities, stonewalling on the Epstein files, demolishing the East Wing, capturing Venezuela’s president, sharing racist videos on social media. All of those actions matter, and are slowly chipping away at Trump’s base of support.

But they’re not the whole story—or even the main story—of why Trump is losing young people. I run focus groups with voters every week, and what I’ve heard from this age group is much simpler: Trump is not doing the things that he told Americans he would do to fix prices and the economy. In the focus groups, young people who voted for Trump have said that they believed him during the campaign when he promised to “build the greatest economy in the history of the world.” Now they say they feel duped and let down.

For these young people to have placed their faith in a con man like Trump might seem naive. But most members of Generation Z were still children when Trump came down the escalator. They don’t remember a lot of the chaos and dysfunction of Trump’s first run for president, or even his first term. They don’t view Trump as sui generis or beyond the pale, because he’s been the dominant force in our politics for as long as they’ve been politically aware.

Now, though, they’re young adults entering the workforce. Many of them have student loans, and they’re at a particularly cost-sensitive point in their lives. They notice when a politician like Trump promises to lower prices, and then doesn’t deliver.

Compared with 2020, in 2024 young voters swung to Trump in every key battleground state except Georgia. That includes a 24-point swing in Michigan, an 18-point swing in Pennsylvania, and a 15-point swing in Wisconsin. About 56 percent of young men voted for Trump in 2024, the same share that voted for Biden in 2020. Trump’s overall youth support jumped 10 points relative to his performance in 2020. . . . .The red-Solo-cup energy that sustains MAGA was in full effect, and America’s youngest voters—especially young men—were drawn in.

Young people like these were receptive when Trump said he would bring down prices and tame inflation, fix America’s broken health-care system, make housing affordable, create millions of new jobs, and do away with other economic woes that were plaguing many Americans, but that felt especially acute for young voters just entering the job market. The young people in my focus groups talk about how their student-loan debt is rising, housing is out of reach, and looming AI-powered disruption makes many jobs feel precarious. They’re clear-eyed that they might not be as well off as their parents’ generation.

Over the past 13 months, though, America’s young people have watched as Trump did a whole lot of things that weren’t what they elected him to do. Relative to when Trump took office, housing prices are up, job growth is stagnant, inflation has been persistent, college is less affordable, and people are more likely to be uninsured. That, more than anything else, is why young people in the focus groups say they’re disappointed.

“ From an economics factor, so many of the things that I would say are not wants, but instead needs, have just absolutely skyrocketed,” Joseph, from Michigan, said in September. “And basic families are spending so much on just the cost of living that they don’t have a cost to save, or anything like that. There’s just no financial way out.”

All of this suggests that Trump didn’t own the votes of young people who supported him in 2024; he rented them. And many of them are now getting tired of antics that, in their minds, take the focus away from the economy. When we asked a recent group about Trump’s threats against Greenland, Mukesh, a Trump voter from California, said: “I think we should just respect it, and leave it, and just focus on what’s actually happening inside the nation.”

Based on what I’ve heard in the focus groups, Democrats have a big opportunity with young people, because they’re some of the latest arrivals to Trump’s coalition. Democrats need to offer these voters a platform that addresses their concerns, while hammering Trump for his failure to do so.

In a recent focus group, the moderator asked Ruben, a Trump voter in Georgia, what advice he would give Democrats. He said: “ I’d say put a larger focus on the economic development. A lot of people these days are really coming of age, like being able to vote. And the younger Generation Z, we care about our finances, being able to pay rent, being able to afford food.”

These young people want someone who sees the economic pain they’re going through, and promises to actually do something about it. They don’t want policy papers. They want hope, good vibes, the red-Solo-cup energy—but directed toward what actually matters to them.

The Felon played these voters for fools. Hopefully, they will not be duped by him again.

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