I used to think the Bush administration was the heyday of Bill Kristol, but recent days have been very good for the neoconservative, as Donald Trump bombs Syria and Afghanistan and threatens North Korea too. Kristol was on Andrea Mitchell’s broadcast Friday afternoon celebrating the return of a “normal” foreign policy– military engagement in the Middle East.

The former leader of the Never Trump movement among Republicans was thrilled by Trump’s black-and-white characterization of Russia and Syria on Fox. “Putin is backing a person that is truly an evil person. I think it’s very bad for Russia, I think it’s very bad for mankind.” Kristol tried out a new/old phrase:

You could almost say that Russia, Iran & Syria constitute an axis of evil persecuting their own citizens & threatening the civilized world.

Two days later he dispensed with that almost:

An axis of evil. Three regimes worth changing. https://t.co/Pz0PB63YRz — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) April 14, 2017

So Russia has now replaced Iraq in the axis of evil. They sure took care of Iraq!

And to that triumvirate of states ripe for “regime change”, Kristol added North Korea too:

It would be ironic if Trump, who campaigned against regime change, ends up pursuing it in both Syria and North Korea.

Kristol revels in the ironies. Responding to a White House statement five days ago, “if you gas a baby, if you use a barrel bomb, you’ll see a reaction from this President,” Kristol said:

Hey, great news–George W. Bush is apparently back in the White House.

He has turned to taunting Trump’s “populist” (his quotes) base, telling them their man is an elitist. Kristol doesn’t worry much about Steve Bannon, rubbing in Trump’s real values:

The Trump administration: The voice is the voice of Andrew Jackson, yet the hands are the hands of Goldman Sachs.

Two months ago, Bill Kristol was pushing for the Deep State over the Trump coup.

Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.

Now it seems he’s got his wish. This is why I say that the deep state in Washington is the Israel lobby with all its militancy. One of Bill Kristol’s earlier brags was purging the “old fashioned Arabists” from the Republican Party in the ’90s; more recently his Emergency Committee for Israel helped make Tom Cotton the senator from Arkansas, but failed to stop the Iran deal. Today Israel lobbyists are in thinktanks, and policy positions, they survive elections in the anti-terror job at Treasury. They had Hillary Clinton’s unquestioning support, and were threatened by Trump for a while, but now it’s business as usual. “Trump with his attack on Syria has revealed his true colors so consequently, he’s been welcomed back into ‘respectable company’: by Deep Statists, McCain, Graham, etc.,” says Todd Pierce. That’s Lindsey Graham, who joked that his Cabinet would be all Jewish because of all the pro-Israel funding. Both the Washington Post and New York Times editorial columnists include fervent Zionists. No anti-Zionists.

Kristol is supporting David Abroms in his run for a Georgia congressional seat vacated by Tom Price, now Secretary of HHS. Abroms is a former AIPAC intern who visited Israel on his “Birthright” tour and says the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The leading Democrat in that race, Jon Ossoff, studied at the knee of Michael Oren, according to his official campaign biography, and has distanced himself from the Iran Deal.