Foreign desk: AMLO Punks Biden

“Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was so supremely confident that his thumb on the scale can tip the U.S. presidential election that he just issued a cash demand to President Biden along with a threat: give me money or Donald Trump wins,” scoffs Todd Bensman at The American Mind. On “the grand stage of CBS’s 60 Minutes,” AMLO said if “Biden wants his mass migration crisis to recede” before the election, he will “slow the flow of migrants — for the ripe price of a $20 billion down payment” under the “root cause” theory of immigration. If not? The “flow of migrants . . . will continue.” Watch whether “the Biden campaign sends those ‘root causes’ checks. Then we’ll know who’s in charge.”

From the right: GOP Can Turn Tables on Dems

“Democrats are finally alive to the threat” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could “pull crucial votes away from Joe Biden” — and “Republicans will help” by “running the same playbook Democrats honed in GOP primaries,” chuckles The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel. “And why not? All’s fair in love and meddling.” Neither Kennedy nor any other minor candidate has “a shot of winning.” So how “long before GOP super PACs” run ads subtly touting them, offering Biden voters a “palatable alternative” — just as Dems boost GOP-primary “candidates they consider most beatable in a general election”? Democrats may scream a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Donald Trump. But as their own meddling proved, “voters don’t calculate beyond top-line impressions.” 

Border watch: Texas Law Isn’t the Problem

The White House and the Lone Star State are in federal court over a “bill that makes illegal border-crossers deportable under Texas state law,” notes Nolan Rappaport at The Hill. The clash is “unprecedented,” and the Supreme Court “could decide that the administration’s policies that caused Texas to enact” Senate Bill 4 “are unconstitutional.” Texas isn’t looking to usurp federal authority: “It is merely trying to deter illegal crossings.” As for interfering with federal operations, agency head Jason Owens says there’s “no better partner for the Border Patrol than the Texas Department of Public Safety” — and adds that “what’s keeping me up at night is” the “national security threat” of “the 140,000 known got-aways.” The “real problem”: “Biden is violating the constitutional mandate requiring presidents to take care that laws be faithfully executed.”

Iconoclast: Hamas’ Unprecedented Assault

By broadcasting the “peculiarly horrifying” Oct. 7 “pogroms” it “took pride in,” Hamas “exceeds much of what the totalitarian states of the last century did, because the Soviets covered up the Katyn massacre and Hitler tried to keep his fingerprints off the Holocaust,” deplores John Gray, interviewed by Gene Callahan in Modern Age. Back then, “civilized norms still had a certain weight inasmuch as powers that violated them at least on occasion tried to conceal the worst violations.” The “so-called international community” is “making a misjudgment of this war based on the belief that the Israelis can conduct what would be, by international standards, a fully just war in circumstances where the other side has essentially weaponized the civilian population.” The long-term cease-fire it demands would let Hamas “recoup its forces and plan further attacks” — and we know the terrorists would because “they broadcast their intentions just as they broadcast their atrocities.”

From the left: Year’s Funniest Media Story

Racket News’ Matt Taibbi mocks NBC for hiring and then firing Ronna McDaniel. The network had problems before it “puked on itself in its public divorce” with the former Republican National Committee chief, already enlisting “politicians as on-air personalities” and frequently interviewing “fingernail-pulling ex-spooks like John Brennan” and “Iraq war sales-goons like Nicolle Wallace.” NBC’s coverage of its mishap is especially cringe. It’s “rolling out ‘ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY’ chyrons” in reference to McDaniel, sounding the alarm over its “own hiring decision.” Taibbi laughs, “TV hasn’t been this funny since Ren and Stimpy. NBC, keep being you!”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board