On the menu today: It’s primary day in Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, and a state dear to my heart, South Carolina. The behavior of the candidates in the Palmetto State’s gubernatorial primary indicates that a Trump endorsement is still seen as a golden ticket to a primary victory. Meanwhile, what was the cost-benefit breakdown of President Trump choosing to attend last night’s game of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in midtown Manhattan? And finally, a history book you won’t want to miss. Read on.

Primary Day in the Palmetto State (and Beyond)

In the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary, the top candidates are current Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette, Representative Ralph Norman, Representative Nancy Mace, businessman Rom Reddy, and state AG Alan Wilson. If no candidate receives a majority of votes today, the top two will compete in a runoff June 23. Right now, Evette and Wilson appear to be most likely to qualify for a runoff.

I don’t live in South Carolina, but most years I spend more time there than in any other state besides my home state of Virginia. In a governor, I want the maximum dedication to conservative principles aligned with the maximum ability to actually get things done, with the minimum propensity for hysterics, flim-flam, and demagoguery. If I lived in the Palmetto State, my choice would be Alan Wilson. As a state attorney general, he’s accumulated a record that is about as close to the platonic ideal as you’re going to find in that position:

He has protected South Carolina’s right-to-work laws; helped lead the 26-state challenge to the federal health care mandate; successfully safeguarded South Carolina’s voter identification law; and fought to protect its immigration laws in court. Wilson works closely with other attorneys general across the nation to protect the rule of law and defend the Constitution on issues such as Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, EPA overreach, Yucca Mountain, MOX Facility, religious freedom, and many others. He is currently fighting to protect the South Carolina coast from seismic testing and possible oil and gas exploration.

On that last point, I could see some right-of-center folk wondering why a Republican state attorney general opposed offshore oil and gas exploration. Well, when beach tourism generates at least $16.6 billion annually in economic development and about $1.8 billion in taxes, no one in their right mind wants to risk killing, or injuring, the goose that lays the golden egg.

Note the Trump administration’s Department of the Interior’s proposed National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program includes “21 areas off the coast of Alaska, seven in the Gulf of America, and six along the Pacific coast” . . . and none off the Atlantic coast. It’s not like the president loved the idea of offshore oil derricks that could be visible from Mar-a-Lago, either.

Speaking of hysterics, flim-flam, and demagoguery, the angle of today’s primary that most interests the national press is the likely end of Nancy Mace’s time in elected office, at least for the foreseeable future. The first district representative was, as Kathleen Parker writes, “the erstwhile Republican front-runner in the governor’s race,” but that was a while ago; Mace hasn’t led a poll since mid-March. Mace has been telling anyone who will listen that she sacrificed her chance for Trump’s endorsement by voting to release the Epstein files.

The last nine months of this gubernatorial campaign have been a demonstration about how a Trump endorsement is still seen as a golden ticket to a GOP primary victory, at least in this state. And if you win the Republican primary, you’re likely to waltz into office in November. Not only has no Democrat won the governor’s race since 1998, only once since then has the Democratic candidate exceeded 47 percent.

The first television commercial of Evette’s campaign began with footage of Trump at a rally saying, “Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette, she’s fantastic.” Then Evette herself addressed the camera: “It’s good to have President Trump’s back. I’ve backed him from day one. I’m Pamela Evette. When Trump ran for president, I stood by him every time, even when others turn their backs. Now, I’m going one step further, bringing President Trump’s America First agenda to South Carolina.” The ad closes with Trump saying during a press conference, “Your lieutenant governor is going places. You do know that, right?”

Mace’s campaign reacted with outrage: “The ad falsely suggests both President Donald Trump and Governor Henry McMaster have endorsed her candidacy, a lie that Evette has pushed multiple times throughout this campaign both publicly and privately in an effort to confuse voters. At the very least it is unethical, and at the very most it is disqualifying.” Mace’s campaign demanded “stations across South Carolina stop airing Evette’s ad immediately to protect voters from being lied to.” (South Carolina is a free state, meaning you’re even free to end a sentence with a preposition.)

Throughout the campaign, Mace kept arguing that Evette was claiming an endorsement that hadn’t occurred. At 2:05 p.m. on May 29, she posted on X, “Pamela Evette is NOT ENDORSED by DONALD TRUMP. Do not believe her LIES.” Her post included an AI-generated image of herself alongside the president, with both giving the thumbs-up sign.

Accusing someone of falsely claiming to be endorsed by Trump while using a fake picture of yourself with the president . . . well, even Mr. Magoo could see the contradiction there.

Even worse for Mace, less than four hours later, President Trump endorsed Evette.

I notice that Mace’s campaign website touts an agenda that might as well be tailor-made for segments on Jesse Watters’s program on Fox News Channel: “Nancy Mace proposes ban on genital mutilation act.” “Nancy Mace proposes sharia law ban.” “Nancy Mace proposes ban on transgenders in women’s bathrooms.”

This is South Carolina, one of the most heavily Republican states in the country. Less than two-tenths of 1 percent of South Carolinians are Muslim; just how likely is it that you think the state will enact “Sharia law” anytime soon?

Mace also touted her introduction of a bill to bar “foreign-born and dual citizens from serving in Congress, as Federal judges, and as ambassadors or Senate-confirmed officers in the Federal government.” Yeah, that’s some grade-A xenophobic nativist bullcrap right there.

First, dual citizens are full U.S. citizens, full stop; citizenship with another country does not alter anything about your citizenship with the United States; upon claiming citizenship in a second country, you still have all the rights, responsibilities, and duties as any other U.S. citizen. Citizenship is not a dimmer switch; you either are one of ours, or you aren’t. Mace’s proposal not-so-subtly contends that anyone with dual citizenship cannot be considered a loyal American citizen.

Second, barring anyone foreign-born from serving in cabinet positions would have barred not just recent appointees like former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. The message of Mace’s bill is that anyone born outside of the United States cannot be trusted with responsibility in our government, which is nonsense enough. But take a look at any list of the most notorious traitors to the United States in recent memory — Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames, John Anthony Walker Jr., John Walker Lindh, Nidal Hasan, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Alger Hiss — they were all born in the United States!

South Carolina may be in better shape than many other states; U.S. News and World Report ranks the state 14th in its economy and 22nd in cost of living, and WalletHub ranks it 17th in its list of best states in which to retire. The Census Bureau found South Carolina is the fastest-growing state in the country and it ranked in the top six among all states in each of the last five years for percentage change.

But the state still has significant problems for the next governor to tackle. The schools are nowhere near as good as they ought to be; U.S. News and World Report ranks the state 43rd in education. The Tax Foundation ranks South Carolina 29th in state tax competitiveness, which is probably lower than you would expect. Rapid growth strains infrastructure, as well as the health-care system. (You probably remember hearing about that measles outbreak.) When you’re smack in the middle of the Atlantic coast, you’re going to get hit by a hurricane sooner or later; the need for maximum preparedness and likely considerable reconstruction expenditures are just facts of life.

In other words, South Carolinians need a governor focused on the real problems of here and now, not the looming menace of Sharia law or foreign-born cabinet officials.

There’s No Need for a President at an NBA Game

The San Antonio Spurs beat the New York Knicks last night, ending an astounding 13-game playoff winning streak for the Knicks. And New York is now 0–1 with President Trump in attendance this season.

I come down quite differently from Noah Rothman on the issue of the extensive security measures around Madison Square Garden for Monday night’s NBA Finals.

I will buy that Donald Trump is a Knicks fan. I do not buy that he is an ardent fan of the Knicks, considering how infrequently the team and his fan-hood comes up in Trump’s considerable volume of conversation or copious opinions on every topic under the sun.

Either way, there’s no real need for the president of the United States to attend an NBA Finals game. No other U.S. president has ever attended a game of the NBA Finals. (Barack Obama attended the 2019 NBA Finals as a former president.) Oh, and either there’s a war on, or there’s an extremely violent cease-fire in effect.

Everywhere the president goes, an extensive, unparalleled security perimeter goes with him — and thus, what was deployed around MSG last night was not just a garden-variety (no pun intended) police presence to prevent postgame hooliganism.

Because of the president’s attendance, watch parties around the arena were canceled, and a ten-block section of midtown Manhattan was cordoned off to traffic and pedestrians.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch laid out the security conditions during a press conference Monday morning:

Tonight, in the area around Madison Square Garden, the NYPD will establish a security perimeter that runs from West 30th Street to West 35th Street between 6th Avenue and 8th Avenue.

Within the security area, 7th Avenue and 8th Avenues will be closed to vehicular traffic and general pedestrian traffic beginning at 4:00 p.m. Starting at 4 p.m., no one will be allowed inside the secured area unless they have a ticket to the game, a train ticket, they are going to a business inside the area, they have credentials, or they have some other authorized reason to be there.

If you have reason to be in the secure area, you can enter at one of five designated entry points where that screening will occur. . . .

Businesses inside of the perimeter, including bars and restaurants between 6th and 7th Avenues and those between 7th and 8th Avenues, will be allowed to operate with strict capacity limits.

If you are not going to the game, we are asking you to avoid the area around Madison Square Garden tonight.

Matt McCool, the director of the Secret Service field office in New York, added, “I strongly encourage fans to arrive at MSG at least 2 hours before tip-off.”

Before last night, Madison Square Garden had not hosted an NBA Finals game since June 25, 1999.

Trump’s decision to attend the game created a massive hassle for tens of thousands of diehard New York Knicks fans who have waited a quarter century for the opportunity to see their team in the finals, and who haven’t seen a championship banner since 1973. Donald Trump always finds new and innovative ways to make everything about himself, and he doesn’t care who else he inconveniences as he goes about enjoying life.

ADDENDUM: Over in the Washington Post, a look at the foreign allies who helped our Founding Fathers defeat the British and secure our independence. This column was inspired by my friend Derek Baxter’s new book, The Forgotten World War: Exploring the Secret History of the American Revolution, from Spain to India and Back Again.