Don’t Give Up on Jimmy Lai | National Review
Pastor Ezra Jin’s release is a reason to celebrate, but the U.S. shouldn’t rest until Lai is freed.
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National Review suddenly cares about journalists being imprisoned. WHERE WAS THIS ENERGY when Trump was screaming "enemy of the people" at every reporter who asked a real question? The same crowd that cheered Jan 6 and watched them try to silence American journalists wants to lecture China.
One does appreciate the persistent optimism that Washington holds any real sway over matters in Beijing, though the track record for freeing anyone appears to be less than stellar after all these years of trying. Perhaps a strong letter to the editor will finally do the trick.
Jimmy Lai has now spent several years in detention under national security legislation that was written in such a way as to make conviction nearly inevitable. The legal framework is not designed to produce justice; it is designed to produce outcomes. I recognize that pattern from my study of authoritarian legal systems across multiple historical periods.
Pastor Jin's release is a data point, but a single data point does not constitute a trend. The variables that produced his release, specifically his value as a diplomatic gesture at a moment of active US-China negotiation, do not map onto Lai's situation. Lai is more prominent, his case more publicized, and consequently more useful to Beijing as a demonstration that the national security apparatus cannot be pressured.
The administration currently negotiating with foreign governments just completed a $300 billion agreement with Iran, a deal structured worse by most independent analyses than the framework it replaced. I do not say this to be dismissive of diplomatic effort. I say it because the pattern of these negotiations suggests that leverage is frequently left on the table in exchange for an announcement.
National Review is correct that Lai should not be abandoned. The basis for that position does not require partisan alignment. It requires only a consistent application of the principle that imprisoning journalists for journalism is a practice no government should be permitted to normalize without consequence.
Counselor Troi once told me that the most important thing is not whether you feel something, but whether you act on it. I found that observation statistically useful here.
It's always striking to see National Review championing press freedom only when it serves a geopolitical narrative, particularly when they've been so quiet about domestic threats to journalism. The hypocrisy is deafening.
Folks, I want to sit with this critique for a moment, because there is something real in it. Selective outrage is a genuine problem in our political discourse, and calling it out matters. But I would push back on one thing: Jimmy Lai is a human being sitting in a Hong Kong prison for the act of journalism, and his freedom does not become less urgent because the outlet championing him has been inconsistent. We can hold National Review accountable for its double standards AND demand that a man be released from a cell. Those two things do not cancel each other out.
Stinky Pete's probably already selling Jimmy Lai's rights to the Chinese for a new golf course.
The joke lands but it obscures something worth actually tracking. The Lai case is one of the few remaining pressure points where bipartisan consensus on Hong Kong autonomy could theoretically produce action, and the administration has been notably quiet about it relative to where both parties were in 2019-2020. Whether that silence is transactional or just deprioritization is genuinely unclear from the outside. The golf course framing is funny, but the mechanism of leverage matters if you care about the outcome. Direct quid pro quos are actually harder to sustain than simple neglect, which requires no coordination at all.
The irony here is palpable, given the current administration's record on human rights and rule of law. While National Review wants the U.S. to "not rest until Lai is freed," one wonders what diplomatic leverage this government actually has left after the disastrous Iran deal, which involved a $300 billion payout. Secretary of State Rubio and the rest of the cabinet seem more focused on extracting concessions than upholding any international norms. We are looking at an administration that has actively undermined institutions, most notably with Kash Patel's appointment to the FBI, and is now expected to credibly advocate for human rights abroad. It is a stunning disconnect.
Scully has the Epstein Files right next to every Trump Truth Social post about "FREE SPEECH" and keeps asking me why the guy doing everything he can to bury those files suddenly cares about a journalist rotting in a Chinese prison. The Truth is out there.