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If Biden has dementia, should his pardons still stand? PART 2
December 18, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Yesterday, we dared to question the pardoning authority of a President who is clearly not playing with a full deck. The undercover video recently obtained by James O’Keefe makes it clear that those working with Biden have known how serious his condition was and just kept it quiet (at least until they went out on first dates).
Here’s PJ MEDIA on that video, in case you didn’t see our story, and even if you did…
Biden hasn’t been functioning well for a long time, but only in recent months has this been widely acknowledged, though his party declined to invoke the 25th Amendment. Not only has the sitting President pardoned close to 1,500 of his closest friends, but many more are reportedly anticipating blanket pardons along the order of what Hunter Biden received, covering them for whatever they might have done during a set period of time. This turns the whole pardon authority on its head.
“...Joe is only getting started,” said FOX NEWS’ Sean Hannity Tuesday night. “How many other Bidens will be pardoned by the time this is all said and done? Will Joe pardon himself, [with one of] these ‘pre-emptive’ pardons?” Hannity went on to cite a few confounding examples of Biden’s inexplicable clemency, such as the doctor found guilty of diluting chemotherapy drugs being given to cancer patients (!!!). Using presidential authority to let this person walk free after what she did is unconscionable.
Just wondering: How would Joe Biden have liked it if his son Beau’s doctor had done the same thing to Beau during his treatment for brain cancer? Would that have deserved clemency?
At the time this doctor was sentenced, U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III said, “It’s a very small thing to send this woman to jail for the next 20 years when you compare it to the damage she has done.” But for some reason, whoever put that piece of paper in front of President Biden for him to sign thought differently, and so this (former?) doctor has a get-out-of-jail-free card. We’d love to know what Judge Jordan thinks about this.
Biden also commuted the sentences of two Chinese spies convicted of espionage (WHAT??), as well as the relative of a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party convicted of possessing over 47,000 images of child porn on his computer. This was reportedly part of a prisoner swap, an exchange for three Americans who were being held there.
At the time of the sentencing of one of the spies, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Today’s sentencing demonstrates the seriousness of those crimes and the Justice Department’s determination to investigate and prosecute efforts by the Chinese government, or any foreign power, to threaten our economic and national security.”
Well, so much for that!
The NEW YORK POST story is a must-read. (The POST has uncovered a wealth of CCP spying in New York City.)
https://nypost.com/2024/12/13/
Even the “fact”-checkers at NEWSWEEK have confirmed that the story on Biden giving clemency to these three Chinese criminals, two of them spies, is TRUE. This may or may not be part of a prisoner swap, they say.
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-
Of this transition period, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said, “When you look at the vote of the American people, and you look at how clear the issues were, and some of what’s gone on, it’s not technically treason, but it is certainly a deliberate and willful undermining of the American people --- not undermining Donald Trump; he’s undermining the American people.”
These are the American people who want a border wall built and a tougher relationship with China, he said. “And I’m watching what I think is a deliberate, and I think malicious and despicable, undermining of the American people.”
“...The Congress right now should be demanding records on every single commutation and pardon,” he continued, “’cause you have some really sick people who Joe Biden released. I have no idea how they got on the list, and we ought to be able to track down every memo, every single example. Why would these people, some of whom are pretty sick --- child pornographers, people who are totally corrupt, people who bankrupted small towns --- [have made that list]? What the American people deserve is the truth, and we ought to be committed to giving [them] the facts.”
Incidentally, Gov. Huckabee appeared on Hannity’s show Tuesday night, along with former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, to talk about the transition and the strategies Biden is using to leave a gigantic mess behind. Here’s that segment…
“I think [Biden] underestimates what Donald Trump is gonna do when he gets into office,” the Gov. said. “...That’s gonna be the beginning on January 20. And I can’t wait. It’s just not gonna get here quick enough.”
But that’s precisely the problem right now. Biden and his puppeteers still have about five weeks in which to do their dirty work. Much more clemency is likely, because why the heck not? As for short-circuiting this by invoking the 25th Amendment, that simply won’t happen when Cabinet members are in as much denial as the current ones are. A startling new report from REDSTATE reveals that even members of Biden’s own Cabinet, when polled recently by FOX BUSINESS NEWS Digital, continued to stand by statements they have made concerning Biden’s absolute fitness to serve.
This poll was taken even after First Lady Jill Biden, in September, was actually put in charge of a Cabinet meeting. And you’re aware of the President’s current state if you saw the undercover video obtained by James O’Keefe, in which someone who’s worked with Biden for over a year (probably longer) says everyone at the office knows the President is non-functional. Staffers and Cabinet members might admit it to each other, but they obviously are NOT going on the record.
Here’s an example of a statement made in September by one of Biden’s Cabinet members, HHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas:
"As I’ve said before, I come fully prepared for my meetings with President Biden, knowing his questions will be detail-oriented, probing, and exacting. In our exchanges, the President always draws upon our prior conversations and past events in analyzing the issues and reaching his conclusions." Mayorkas said he had “full confidence” in Biden’s ability. And on Monday, DHS stated that Mayorkas stands by his comments.
Good grief; they actually expect us to believe this.
“It’s a level of gaslighting rarely seen even in Washington,” says Becky Noble at REDSTATE. “Once Joe Biden is gone, will anyone finally speak up because they think it’s ‘safe’?”
Yesterday, when we first began to tackle the issue of Biden’s incapacity as he (or someone) commits presidential pardon abuse, we looked for input from an attorney whom we respected. Today, we have some, from Jonathan Turley. And he’s very concerned that this idea of “pre-emptive pardons” is going to fundamentally change the nature of presidential power. Turley --- perhaps because he grew up in the Democrat Party --- has strong insight into what they’re up to now and the damage they could wreak.
Such wholesale pardoning, he says, “will give Presidents cover to wipe away any threat of prosecution for friends, donors and associates. This can include self-pardons issued as implied condemnations of their political opponents. It could easily become the final act of every President to pardon himself and all of the members of his administration. We would then have an effective immunity rule for outgoing parties in American politics.
“...No President has seen fit to go as far as where Biden appears to be heading,” he says. It’s uncharted territory.
The Democrats have touted a Trump “enemies list” but can’t prove there really is one, Turley says, so they’re introducing a Biden pardon list in anticipation of Trump’s supposed revenge (which Trump says he’s not doing). “After years of lying to Americans about the influence peddling scandal and promising not to consider a pardon for his son,” Turley says, “Biden would end his legacy with the ultimate dishonesty: converting pardons into virtual party favors.”
“Joe Biden has become the President that Richard Nixon only imagined. He would establish with utter clarity that this power is not presidential, but personal and political...and many in the Beltway are waiting to give him a standing ovation.”
Unfortunately, Turley does not get into Biden’s cognitive issues here, the fact of his mental decline. Is there any way to legally address the validity of these many pardons and commutations --- and the precedent they set for future Presidents --- considering they’ve been signed by, as one investigator kindly put it, “an elderly man with a poor memory”? And what if it can be determined that most of these came from donors, lobbyists and even global adversaries, set quickly before a vacant-eyed old codger in need of a nap, as a pen is placed in his hand? After all, he has been officially declared by a DOJ special counsel to be too old and incompetent to stand trial on his handling of classified documents, so how is he legally competent to sign pardons that don’t even fit the legal definition of a pardon but of blanket “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards?
Mike Huckabee: I ‘love’ the way Trump does business
December 17, 2024
New O’Keefe video begs question: If President Biden has dementia, should his pardons stand?
December 17, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Before even getting into this, one caveat: Although we greatly welcome and always seek out input from attorneys we respect, we ourselves are not attorneys. At the same time, we revere the Constitution and believe we have a pretty solid idea of how the framers intended it to work. Although in Article II they gave the President the unfettered power of the pardon, they also gave us the 25th Amendment in part to avoid the scenario of a senile President issuing ill-advised and even absurd executive orders and pardons that others in his administration have likely put in front of him to sign, just as shady relatives might do with an incompetent grandfather’s “new will.”
Biden, if only by proxy, can do incredible damage on his way out the door.
Note also that our question isn’t WILL these pardons stand, but SHOULD they? Short answer: NO.
Now, to the discussion. A number of Biden’s roughly 1,500 (so far) pardons and commutations have garnered individual attention, for all the wrong reasons. One spectacular example is the commutation of the prison sentence for corrupt Judge Michael Conahan, convicted of his role in the so-called “Kids for Cash” scandal, taking huge kickbacks for committing minors to a particular private detention facility.
As Democrat Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro pointed out, “Some children took their lives because of this. Families were torn apart.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/
The DAILY CALLER cites Conahan, along with multiple other convicted Democrat politicians who were granted clemency.
President Biden, constitutionally, has the authority to pardon anyone, without any obligation to explain why he’s doing it.
But does he even KNOW why he’s doing it? Or know that he’s doing it at all?
This brings us to the latest James O’Keefe undercover video, dropped Monday, which offers word from one of Biden’s national security advisors that the sitting President is much worse off cognitively than the public knows.
And we already knew his condition was bad. We’ve witnessed countless presidential brain glitches. We’ve watched him go mentally vacant, or become physically lost, shaking hands with people who weren’t there, looking around to find his way offstage or wandering aimlessly off into the trees. Biden had noticeable issues for a long time, but they seemed to be progressing more rapidly in the past year or so, culminating in his scary-bad performance during the Biden-Trump debate.
After he dropped out of the race, his deterioration visibly accelerated even more.
Still, Democrats resisted using the 25th Amendment to replace him with Kamala Harris, much as that was the honest thing to do and even might have helped them chalk up political points. (Why they didn’t do this is a mystery we can’t begin to understand, because we are sane.)
O’Keefe’s video captures National Security Advisor Henry Appel speaking candidly to an undercover reporter about Biden’s mental state: “Joe Biden is, like, dead. Not literally. Like, he, like, can’t say a sentence.”
“He’s like, really progressed in his old age,” Appel said over a meal in a restaurant. “Everybody recognizes it. I can’t believe it wasn’t a bigger scandal earlier. He’ll be dead in a year. Or he’ll be, like, out of public life.”
Appel went on to describe a conversation in which Biden couldn’t understand the phrase “novel phenomenon.” When Jake Sullivan used that term, Biden became confused and said, “What, do you mean, like a book?”
Appel said, “The two meanings of the word ‘novel,’ like, he lost them.”
(Editorial aside: We assume it’s not dementia but some milder form of mental deficiency that causes some very annoying people to repeatedly interject the word “like” in conversations. Another symptom might be that it causes people in high level national security roles to run their mouths in front of undercover reporters.)
Appel went on to describe some phone exchange that will be very familiar to those who have family members with Alzheimer’s. Biden was calling while on a foreign trip; Appel thought it was to Europe. “I picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello, Mr. President. It’s Henry.’ And he was like, ‘Is Jake [Sullivan] there?’ And I was like, ‘No, he’s traveling with you. He’s on the same trip that you are.’
Another example: “A couple of weeks ago, I was, like, the last one in the office. And he [Biden] called for my boss [Sullivan]. And so I picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello, Mr. President. It’s Henry on Jake’s phone. He’s out for the day, but I can try to get him on the line for you.’” Appel described how Biden said he’d try to track Sullivan down, call his Secret Service detail or use his unclassified phone. “And then, like, ten seconds later, same phone rang. I picked it up again. I was like, ‘Hi again, it’s Henry.’ And he was like, ‘Is Jake there?’ And I was like, ‘No, you called the same office…”
“That was, like, a year ago.”
Appel works for the Intelligence Programs Directorate of the National Security Council. O’Keefe refers to him as a “former spy” and quotes government websites that say “the Division is responsible for overseeing and coordinating intelligence activities across various U.S. intelligence agencies, providing the NSC with crucial intelligence analysis to inform national security decision-making.” It is “essentially acting as the primary point of contact between the Intelligence Community and the National Security Council on intelligence matters.” In the video, Appel speaks of his team’s responsibility for providing senior policymakers with “all” the top secrets, noting that much of what his office does has to do with Ukraine. (Side note: In Trump’s new administration, these people will apparently be answerable to the new Director of National Intelligence [DNI]. Trump has nominated Tulsi Gabbard, who should start by firing them all and starting over.)
At the link, Mike Miller at REDSTATE relates the story Appel told about Biden, as difficult as that must have been for him because he lost his own mom to Alzheimer’s and recognized some of the same symptoms Appel was describing. And don’t miss O’Keefe’s video; it’s highly entertaining and well worth your time.
Incidentally, the conversation between Appel and the undercover reporter goes on, with Appel saying that he and members of the national security team were crying the night of Trump’s win and claiming they were all “trauma-bonded.” They’re also concerned at the prospect of Trump “coming after us [legally],” that he’d “investigate us or whatever.”
“I don’t know, they’d make up, like a fake scandal, or something…”
(As if they didn’t have enough real stuff to investigate.)
Fun note from O’Keefe: This person who has been entrusted with the nation’s most sensitive secrets says on his dating profile that his greatest strength is “oversharing on the first date.” And how!
…….
So, it’s obvious now, even to those who work most closely with him, that Biden is so cognitively impaired, any decision he makes as President has to be second-guessed. As Mike Miller says:
“Joe Biden is the sitting President of the United States. He figuratively has his finger on the nuclear button. He is handing out pardons to people, including his son Hunter, like they’re going out of style, not to mention that the pardon of Hunter and other undeserving recipients makes a mockery of justice.”
It should never happen again. “Heads should roll,” he says, “for it happening this time, and legislation or a constitutional amendment should be passed to ensure that it doesn’t.”
Some are still trying to pretend that Biden is of sound mind and actually came up with that vast list of people he personally wanted to pardon. No one who actually IS of sound mind believes that. Not being attorneys, we’re not sure of the best way to solve this problem, legislatively or judicially. What do we do when those in power care so little for the law that they just ignore the 25th Amendment and leave the nation rudderless and themselves unaccountable? Yes, we held an election and fixed it at the ballot box (thank God), but at least in our lifetimes, there’s never been a transition as potentially damaging as this.
RELATED: While roughly 1,500 of President Biden’s closest friends are being pardoned or getting their sentences commuted, Judge Juan Merchan, to no one’s surprise, has rejected the request from Trump’s legal team to dismiss the case against him based on presidential immunity. Trump attorney Todd Blanche had argued that evidence brought against Trump during the trial had involved his official duties and so was improperly admitted. Merchan doesn’t care.
This is the case New York v. Trump, in which Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury of falsifying business records related to payments on the non-disclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels. (His office recorded them as “legal expenses.” Seriously, that’s what this is about.) The case, and the prospect even of a prison sentence (however unlikely), will now apparently loom until Trump is out of office at age 82 (although Merchan could still salvage a molecule or two of his legal reputation by simply voiding the bogus guilty verdict and throwing the entire case out, but don’t hold your breath.) Details here…
Further legal analysis at LEGAL INSURRECTION…
Also, as we reported last week, the DOJ has actually accelerated its indictments of still more J6 defendants, even though they know President Trump will pardon them precisely one nanosecond after re-entering the Oval Office on January 20. They don’t give a flip, and are apprehending at least two new J6 suspects every day. Here’s an update…
https://www.wnd.com/2024/12/
RELATED READING: Speaking of Tulsi Gabbard being Trump’s nominee for DNI, she’s got some organized opposition, in the form of a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and soon-to-be Majority Leader John Thune. This letter reportedly is signed by members of left-wing organizations, intelligence agencies, defense contractors and groups targeting “election misinformation.” In other words, the Swamp, the very people who need to be gotten rid of. They don’t want her because she’s over the target (them). Show support for Trump’s choice; contact your Senators!
This is the ‘most significant’ move to be made since October 7: Huckabee
December 16, 2024
About those drones
December 16, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Not since all the empty talk about Kamala Harris’ many paths to victory have cable news outlets expended more time on a subject they know nothing about than on the mysterious drone sightings. Most talked about it all weekend, and we still know no more than we did on Friday. We have the same vague White House reassurances that the drones aren’t foreign spies or invaders or dangerous, while simultaneously claiming that the government doesn’t know what they are.
And of course, we have the not-at-all reassuring claims that there’s nothing the government can do about them, which nobody in his right mind believes. Well, considering the way Biden let Chinese spy balloons float all the way across the country before shooting them down, maybe this Administration really is that incompetent. But it’s not likely to go on past next month, since Trump posted this on Truth Social Friday:
“Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge? I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!”
It seems reasonable to assume that they must be US government aircraft or they’d be gone by now…
https://www.foxnews.com/us/nj-drone-sightings-could-classified-exercise-former-cia-officer
We’re not going to fill the newsletter with pointless speculation about what these drones are, but we will give you some useful information. First, you might read this article by Brandan Smith. Please note that we make no endorsement of his theory about this being a false flag operation by the US government for nefarious purposes. That’s speculation, and nobody knows yet what they are. But this article has a lot of information about laws, regulations and technical specs of drones that may help us deduce what they are NOT.
https://americafirstreport.com/unidentified-drones-in-americas-skies-smells-like-a-false-flag/
There are also conspiracy theories being floated about what they are, from a false flag operation to simulate an attack by a foreign power and lure us into World War III, to an attempt to panic the public into demanding more government protection and thwart Trump’s agenda. to them being radiation detectors looking for a dirty bomb. Again, these are all unconfirmed speculation, but unlike the government, we think people should be informed of all claims and opinions so they can sort them out for themselves rather than having the government censor the ones it doesn’t like.
That brings us to a theory that’s spreading online that this is something called Project Blue Beam. That’s a conspiracy theory dating back to the 1990s that global elites plan to use high technology and drone lights in the sky to simulate an alien invasion or theological event to undermine religious beliefs and fool people into accepting a fake global religion and one-world government.
https://www.newsweek.com/what-project-blue-beam-conspiracy-theory-erupts-over-drones-2001051
If that’s the plan, they’re launching it a bit late. By this point, we’ve all seen amazing synchronized drone light shows in Fourth of July fireworks displays. Our reaction wouldn’t be “Martians are invading!” it would be more like, “What are those drones doing up there?”
And that’s exactly the question we all have. We’ll write about this again when we actually get an answer to it.
Larry Gatlin on America, Faith, and SERVING TROOPS | Huckabee Today
December 16, 2024
More admitting we were right all along about January 6
December 16, 2024
“My big issue is that I’m really, really sick and tired of every time I turn around, finding something else that the Democrats have lied about or downplayed or misrepresented along the way.”
That was podcaster Stephen A. Smith, speaking about the latest revelations about January 6. He had a message to the Democrat Party, saying he was sick of the fact that when the likes of Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity (and we’d be in that category) had anything to say “about something pertaining to y’all, THEY SEEM RIGHT.”
Well, we ARE right. We’ve been right over and over and over again.
“They’ve actually made Donald Trump look like HE was right,” Smith said. Well, yes. That’s because he was.
We learned from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s J6 report last week that dozens of FBI informants (but only three “employees” per se) were at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. The media have been trying to soften this story as much as they can. One example: A headline from THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, quite a Democrat propaganda rag in a predominantly red state, said, “Review finds FBI missteps,” with the subhead, “...Report debunks theory of bureau’s involvement, participation.”
Um, did they READ the report? But that’s the DMN for you. (And they ran the AP story; same deal.) This is why your humble writers choose to use its pages to line their parrots’ cages.
Anyway, back when Mike Lee was asking questions of FBI Director Christopher Wray about FBI involvement in January 6, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney called him a “nutball conspiracy theorist.” But the report shows he was right to ask. Long before it came out, but after she posted some J6 video, he responded, “Liz, we’ve seen footage like that a million times. You made sure we saw that --- and nothing else. It’s the other stuff --- which you deliberately hid from us --- that we find so upsetting. Nice try. PS. How many of these guys are feds? (As if you’d ever tell us).”
Well, now we know.
https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/
Word is getting around that one of the FBI confidential human sources (informants) who entered the Capitol on January 6 --- an action for which many people are currently serving jail time --- not only was not prosecuted but also got his travel expenses reimbursed. He later attended the inauguration, also with his bill footed by Uncle Sam.
As we quoted Michael Stenger, U.S. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms during January 6 (now deceased), “Investigations should be considered as to funding and travel of what appears to be professional agitators.” You can see him here…
https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/
What, professional agitators working with the FBI? How shocking!
And, of course, Wray hasn’t left yet. The WASHINGTON TIMES ran a story about his plan to promote senior employees and somehow delay presumed incoming FBI Director Kash Patel by “three to four months.”
“If Wray succeeds,” the INDEPENDENT SENTINEL reports, “Patel will likely have trouble running the FBI effectively, as Wray’s deep state goons constantly leak and defy orders without repercussions. This would be great news for dangerous criminals and awful news for law-abiding Americans.”
Patel had better have a plan for dealing with this. But we have a feeling that, given his experience with these people, he does. It needs to involve firing a lot of people, even those who just got promoted. Especially them.
https://www.
When the J6 report came out, one aspect of it was glaringly missing: the pipe bomber story. As Victoria Taft reports in PJ MEDIA, “The radio silence on what we’ve been assured are ‘viable’ pipe bombs planted outside the DNC and near the RNC on J6 continued in the Inspector General’s report when he offered only a few treacly paragraphs on the issue.” The bombs were quickly dispensed with in just one mention on page 49.
This is looking more and more like a planned diversion (by...who?) to stop the counting of Electoral College votes when it was known Republican senators might be prepared to offer evidence of questionable ballot counting, perhaps even calling for an audit of the election. Both bombs were “discovered” a very short while before the certification was scheduled to start.
Taft describes how she thinks this plan would have gone: “All available cops would be sent to the bomb reports, the count would stop, Kamala Harris, the nation’s first woman of color who ascended to the nation’s second most powerful position and could have been killed by a ‘viable’ pipe bomb, would be feted as a woke heroine and survivor. Joe Biden would officially be declared the winner. Game over.”
We’ve never learned why VP-elect Kamala Harris --- there’s a name you won’t be hearing very often from now on, except in this context --- left the Capitol building to go to DNC headquarters that day. Was she ever asked about this (or anything else) for the IG report? NO.
Turned out, the Democrats didn’t need their pipe bomb story, because they got their riot.
Taft reminds us that all the Secret Service communications from both January 5 and 6 were destroyed in a very conveniently timed cell phone swap. This happened in spite of four congressional committees ordering them to keep the data. And even the “geofencing” that was used --- and continues to be used --- to track down J6 rallygoers was “corrupted” in the case of the so-called bomb planter.
Taft concludes that we were promised answers by the IG and got none, certainly about the pipe bombs, which were all but ignored. Having called the pipe bomb story “the smoking gun” of January 6, investigative reporter Darren Beattie entreats Kash Patel: “As uncomfortable as it is, we will need soon-to-be FBI Director Kash Patel to take the sham pipe bomb story to its final conclusion. I can hand it to him on a silver platter.” And he can.
Just a thought: this is one reason Chris Wray might want to delay Patel’s assumption of the directorship at the FBI.
https://pjmedia.com/victoria-
Taft made the case over the weekend that “FBI agents were everywhere” that day. She includes an excerpt from the IG report featuring a description of “SWAT teams” responding to the pipe bomb discoveries. “Are SWAT members for the FBI not AGENTS?” she asks rhetorically.
“So, if we take the IG’s conclusion at face value,” Taft says, “if there were no FBI UNDERCOVER AGENTS there, how come there were so many FBI AGENTS there? And does the lack of a uniform determine whether entrapment has taken place?” The IG report seems to have just muddied the water.
https://pjmedia.com/victoria-
As outlined in a new report, Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt on January 6 (and was recently promoted to captain), was recommended for termination in 2001 for abandoning his post and lying about it to Internal Affairs. A source told BLAZE MEDIA investigators that this was one of three disciplinary cases “for which records could not be found when a House oversight subcommittee [this must be Barry Loudermilk’s committee] requested them in early 2024.”
For when you have time, there’s much more here about Byrd’s dicey history with the Capitol Police. Even after killing an unarmed person, Byrd was helped financially and continued to fail up.
Bonchie at REDSTATE takes an even harsher tone.
In this highly recommended piece, John Solomon has more about the favoritism and financial benefits directed towards Byrd, much more than what other officers have received. Why?
Last week, the sentencing of one J6 defendant (on the same nonviolent charges that most J6 defendants have pleaded guilty to or been found guilty of), Philip Grillo, got pretty wild, as he and presiding Judge Royce Lamberth exchanged words.
Before handing down the sentence, Judge Lamberth said, “I will do my job as I’m bound by oath to do, and the President will do his. It’s as simple as that.” He said the administration of justice is necessary “no matter what the political winds of the day.” (Not that the political winds had anything to do with this case being in his courtroom in the first place. For someone who says he doesn’t care about the political winds, he has done his share of politicizing.)
Then Lamberth, true to Julie Kelly’s depiction of him as “one of the cruelest judges,” sentenced Grillo to a year in prison --- to begin IMMEDIATELY --- followed by one year of supervised release.
But Grillo had the final word. As he stood there, with the U.S. Marshal taking off his tie and belt and placing him in handcuffs to transport him to prison, he yelled at Lamberth, who was exiting the room, “Trump’s gonna pardon me anyways!”
And we’re counting the minutes till that. In the meantime, Jonathan Turley is asking why the FBI informants whom we now know were at the Capitol walked free when nearly 1500 American citizens faced charges, some for just wandering through the Capitol building like tourists. FOX NEWS’ Martha MacCallum talks with him here; you can also see Tucker Carlson’s revealing interview with former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund, if you missed that.
To end on a positive note, President Trump has just named Devin Nunes, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and current CEO of Truth Social, to lead the Intelligence Advisory Board. (He will stay on in his position with Truth Social.) This board, made up of non-government people, “exists to provide an independent source of advice on the effectiveness of the intelligence community’s data and its data acquisition.”
Nunes is up there with Kash Patel as a great choice to help oversee reform of the intel community. You know the IC can’t stand it, which is a good sign
https://www.newsmax.com/
Big Secret Service update; final House Task Force report released
December 12, 2024
With unidentified drones hovering over New Jersey (or as that would be known in Texas, “target practice”) and Secret Service documents on the attempted golf course shooting of President Trump still being withheld, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley says it’s time for the acting Secret Service director to hit the road.
Hawley didn’t mention the catch, but we all know: Trump can’t fire acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe until he takes office on January 20. And the whole agency needs an overhaul. In the meantime, every day between now and Inauguration Day (and after), Trump’s life is at incredible risk.
As reported Tuesday by FOX NEWS, the bipartisan Congressional Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump, which investigated both attempts on Trump’s life, confirms the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security has failed yet again, this time to produce documents related to the apparent wannabe Trump assassin who set up camp with an AK-47-style rifle in September on the perimeter of Trump International Golf Course in Florida. The man’s presence there in the bushes was given away only by a flash of light on the muzzle of his gun.
“How is it possible that you have no urgency when you have drones the size of a dining room table flying all over the state of New Jersey and nobody seems to care?” Sean Hannity asked Sen. Hawley on Tuesday night.
Hawley accused the Secret Service of not wanting to cooperate. “They don’t want us to know the facts,” he said. “They’ve stonewalled, they refuse to testify, they refuse to turn over documents…”
He is convinced that Rob Rowe, who was promoted from deputy director after former Director Kim Cheatle’s departure, has got to be relieved from duty.
“I mean, he is not doing his job,” Hawley said. “He endangered the life of the President with his poor response. And for them to stonewall the American people, this many months after not one but two assassination attempts, just like the FBI and the rest are stonewalling us now on these drones over New Jersey --- and who knows where else...that they’re not telling us about? --- it’s time for some accountability at these agencies. It’s time to clean house.”
As for the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, Hawley said they had “whistleblower after whistleblower” come forward to say the Secret Service had failed to secure the buildings, and their claims are confirmed in the House report. It was the same at the golf course, where agents reportedly ignored the protocol of doing a sweep of the perimeter.
“I mean, it’s a miracle Trump is alive,” Sen. Hawley said.
Hannity suggested bringing in Special Forces “to reinforce the good agents that do work for the Secret Service.”
As for the large drones flying over New Jersey, Sen. Hawley said just what we would think, which is to say, “You can’t tell me that they don’t know what that is. I just think they’re not being honest with us. If we don’t know --- if our government really has no idea --- then they’re even more incompetent than I thought.”
“...They need to level with the American people about what’s going on. It’s crazy.”
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6365833152112
The 180-page Task Force report is calling for specific changes to the Secret Service, including possibly moving it from the jurisdiction of Homeland Security, where it has been since DHS was created after 9/11. Before then, it was part of the U.S. Treasury Department, and it still divides its efforts to continue investigating fraud and financial crimes. It also protects foreign dignitaries while they’re in the U.S., with the number of people it’s been tasked with protecting “greatly expanded” in recent years. The Task Force recommends that its array of responsibilities be reviewed so that the agency --- especially during campaign season --- “can prioritize the protection of U.S. leaders and candidates running for office.” Their mission there has to be one of “zero fail.”
One big problem, they say, is that the U.S. General Assembly meets in New York City every September. “The Secret Service’s protective mission is at the core of the agency’s purpose,” they say in their report. “Anything that distracts or diverts resources from the agency’s zero fail mission must be reconsidered.” This year, as it does every four years, the Assembly fell at the height of a presidential election campaign season. (Certainly, this is a factor. We would mention, though, that the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting, which was a total Secret Service disaster and abject humiliation, took place on July 13.)
“Congress, DHS and the USSS [U.S. Secret Service] should jointly consider the protective role the USSS plays for foreign leaders and consider whether such duties can be transferred or abrogated in order to focus on the USSS’s primary duty: to protect the President and other critical U.S. leaders,” the report says.
If you’d like a deep dive, here’s the full, 180-page report.
Fortunately, once Trump gets back to the White House, he can fire anyone he wants to, and if Biden doesn’t like it, he’ll have no one to blame but himself. You see, Democrats’ way of using the most expedient, right-now strategy to get what they want sometimes comes back to bite them, and that happened after former White House press spokesman Sean Spicer was fired from his position on the Board of Visitors to the United States Naval Academy, even though he had a three-year term. When he challenged his firing in court and lost, that decision gave the incoming President legal backing to fire any of Biden’s over 4,000 appointments, immediately. Ha ha.
RELATED TRANSITION NEWS: In quite a stunning development, Trump’s pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, confirms that he was one of over three dozen staffers and two members of Congress whose communications were improperly swept up by the DOJ during the so-called “Russia” investigation in 2017. The DOJ obtained phone records without notifying the courts that the search involved members of Congress or congressional staffers. They were also trying to get their hands on emails from reporters at CNN, the WASHINGTON POST, and THE NEW YORK TIMES. This has just come out in a report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Also, there is this: “Another former staffer, Jason Foster, previously told JUST THE NEWS that he confirmed that the government successfully asked a federal court to hide its spying on Congress for five consecutive years.” At the time Foster was being spied on, he was chief investigative counsel for Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
We find this story quite ironic considering that Patel, in early 2018 as chief investigator for then-House Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, was the one who discovered the improper surveillance of Carter Page. There was a whole lotta spyin’ goin’ on, and probably still is. That’s one thing Patel is going there to fix.
As Nunes told FOX NEWS Digital, “The feds spied on Kash during the probe and ran information warfare against him, but Kash helped expose them anyway.”
A new piece from Brooke Singman mentions this revelation and also offers a history lesson on Kash Patel as Trump’s perfect pick to head the FBI. It’s not surprising that there’s panic in the swamp over Patel’s installation there in just a little over a month. They’ll try anything to derail his nomination.
RELATED: There’s something else that just needs to end, but it won’t at least for now. That’s the state-level lawfare brought by State Attorney General Letitia James in New York and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia. James says she will not drop the civil fraud case against Trump, the one in which no one doing business with Trump had any problem at all. She’s just sent a letter to Trump’s attorneys to that effect.
And Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is reportedly “laying out alternatives” to dismissing the case against Trump on falsifying business records for payments on a non-disclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5032679-bragg-trump-hush-money-conviction/
To wrap this up, here’s an amusing postscript to our commentary from yesterday on the need for accountability for members of the Biden administration who broke laws. It’s a brief video montage of new California Sen. Adam Schiff (we feel for you, sane Californians who didn’t vote for him) speaking about whether outgoing officials should be indicted. The comments are from 2018, 2019 and now 2024.
Note that consistency is not his strong suit.
Syria Update
December 12, 2024
While many media outlets were celebrating the overthrow of the Assad dictatorship in Syria, we warned that as good as that news was, the new bosses may be just as bad or worse, since they’re a collection of radical Islamic militants led by a former al-Qaeda leader. Well, it’s only been a few days, and the world is fast learning some hard truths. The rebels are reportedly already executing their opponents, kidnapping women, imposing Sharia law and threatening non-Muslim populations, such as the Kurds.
Meanwhile, the Taliban terrorist government of Afghanistan (thanks, Joe) congratulated the rebels and said, “We express hope that the remaining phases of the revolution will be managed in a way that secures a peaceful, unified, and stable system.” Feel free to shudder at that thought.
As that article reports, the Syrian terrorist leader is doing a full-court propaganda press to the Western media, assuring them that they won’t oppress the Syrian people, and outlets like CNN appear to be falling for it. As Beege Welborn at Hotair.com reports in entertainingly brutal style, our incompetent Secretary of State Antony Blinken also seems to be falling for it.
All this while Israel is again being criticized for taking advantage of the chaos to wipe out Assad’s war-making facilities before they fall into the rebels’ hands. And the Biden White House does deserve credit for reiterating our support for Israel in defending itself. A word of warning: If Israel doesn’t destroy Assad’s chemical weapons, someone will have to do it, and we doubt it will be the terrorists some media outlets are fawning over.
Here’s video of Gov. Huckabee with more on this story from News Nation:
https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=A754564E-7B61-4A96-8BC7-A3BC5C89EEC0
George Seay on Trump’s Plan to REVIVE the Economy | Huckabee Today
December 12, 2024
Bidenomics increases inflation again
December 12, 2024
The Labor Department reported Wednesday morning that in November, the consumer price index rose 2.7% from 12 months before, while the core inflation rate, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 3.3% from a year before. That’s a 0.3% increase, the fastest rise in prices since March. This marks the second consecutive month of accelerating inflation, and the fastest increase in four months. Wait, we thought Biden had "fixed" inflation!
So Biden and Harris are leaving office the same way they came into it: expanding government regulations, rushing through wasteful spending, defying the will of the people, prosecuting their political opponents and increasing inflation. Meanwhile, the press continues to run “think pieces” about why the Democrats lost.
RELATED: Well, there is one difference between Biden’s start and his ending. He’s leaving even less popular than he was when he came in. In fact, a new poll suggests that thanks to his pardon of his son Hunter, by the time he moves out of the White House, his family might be the only Americans who still approve of him.
Daniel Penny speaks after verdict
December 12, 2024
Last night, Marine veteran Daniel Penny gave his first post-acquittal interview to Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro. He demolished the false narrative that he’s a racist who targeted and strangled a black man. Penny said, “He was threatening to kill people,” adding:
"I didn't want any attention or praise, and I still don't. The guilt I would've felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself. And I'll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt, or killed."
You can read more and see the interview here:
We don’t say this often, but hats’ off to New Yorkers. They deserve credit both for the jurors who refused to buy Alvin Bragg’s racialized, politicized prosecution of Penny, and also for having voted out of office “Squad” member Jamaal Bowman. Bowman took time out from disrupting Congress by setting off false fire alarms to pen an unhinged racist screed about the Penny verdict. It’s being met with the negative reactions it richly deserves.
Of course, Bowman isn’t the only leftist trying to rewrite the facts of this case to turn it into a “white supremacist” killing (they conveniently ignore the fact that two minority men helped Penny hold down subway attacker Jordan Neely, who was threatening passengers of various races.) Elizabeth Stauffer at Legal Insurrection has a good article on the actual facts of the case and some of the hyperbolic rhetoric that’s being spewed in an attempt to gin up divisions and racial violence.
We also shouldn’t ignore the slanted media outlets like the New York Times that are trying to depict Neely as a “subway rider,” “street performer” or “Michael Jackson impersonator,” leaving out inconvenient details such as that he was a mentally-unbalanced drug addict with a lengthy criminal record who was threatening to kill the other passengers.
So New Yorkers, if you want to keep up your winning streak, here are your next two moves: Vote out Alvin Bragg and cancel your subscriptions to the New York Times.
Happy Birthday, Brenda Lee
December 12, 2024
During the season when we hear “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” twice an hour, let’s take a moment to wish a happy 80th birthday to “Little Miss Dynamite,” Brenda Lee. Brenda’s powerful voice propelled a number of songs to the charts in various genres from country to pop to rockabilly. She’s sold over 100 million records worldwide, and her 1960 hit “I’m Sorry” made her only the second woman to top the Billboard Hot 100 after Connie Francis. Last year, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” hit #1 again, making her the oldest artist ever to top the Billboard charts.
And now, something you won’t find anywhere else. Newsletter reader "opaobie" shares this personal anecdote about Brenda Lee. When his Oklahoma-born wife was a teenager, she saw Brenda at the Grand Ole Opry early in her career and it left a lasting impression:
“They were in the ladies’ restroom, and Brenda Lee accidentally left a (big diamond) ring on the sink after she washed her hands and walked out. My wife picked it up and went out and found her and returned it before she went backstage.
Brenda gave a shout out from the stage as she started her performance to the honest girl who found and returned her ring, proving that all the good things she had heard about ‘Okies’ (were) true...What a thrill for a young teenage girl.”
Just one of many thrills Brenda Lee has given us over the years. Happy Birthday!e
Some liberals have smugly assured the media that Pete Hegseth’s nomination as Defense Secretary is doomed, with one saying he’s like Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense” (SPOILER ALERT!): “He’s dead but just doesn’t know it yet.”
Someone forgot to tell that to Hegseth, or to Trump and J.D. Vance, who are doubling down on their support for Hegseth. And after having a second meeting with him – plus getting an earful from constituents – Republican Sen. Joni Ernst now seems to be leaning toward confirming him.
There are a lot of ways in which Trump 2.0 is unlike the Trump who came to DC in 2016 with no experience at dealing with the eels and snakes inhabiting the swamp. He’s wise to their games now, and Democrats need to learn that decades-old sleazy accusations by anonymous sources are no longer a lethal political weapon.
The Amazing Kreskin Goes to the Great Beyond
December 12, 2024
By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)
I’m sad to have to report that one of my favorite performers, magician and mentalist The Amazing Kreskin (born George Kresge), has died at 89, just one month shy of his 90th birthday.
https://variety.com/2024/tv/
Kreskin was one of the most popular talk show guests of the 1970s, author of numerous books, and he kept current with social media and regular videos on YouTube. From 1972 to 1975, he hosted the syndicated TV series “The Amazing World of Kreskin,” reruns of which made me a fan. While some magicians accused him of making people believe in psychic powers, he wrote in his 1991 book, “Secrets of the Amazing Kreskin,” that he is “not a psychic, an occultist or fortune teller. I am not a mind reader, medium or hypnotist. There is nothing supernatural about anything that I do. I am a scientist, a researcher in the field of suggestion and ‘extrasensory’ perceptions. I perform what I discover.”
While Kreskin never attempted to sing, he did record a spoken-word album in 1967 called "The Basic Principles of Kreskin's ESP."
https://www.discogs.com/
The 2008 movie "The Great Buck Howard" was inspired by the writer/director's time as Kreskin's road manager. And does anyone remember his Milton Bradley board game, “Kreskin’s ESP,” featuring the swinging “mystery pendulum”?
Finally, a flashback to four years ago, when Kreskin was still performing and made a memorable appearance on “Huckabee” on TBN. RIP and Godspeed into the Great Beyond!
A Note on the News
December 12, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Much of the current news coverage is dominated by details about the alleged murderer of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson. We’re being inundated with information about the suspect’s life, mental state, education, social media posts and potential motives (like this theory by a retired FBI agent that he might have been “triggered” to murder an insurance executive because he was 26, the age when people are kicked off their parents’ insurance under Obamacare.
Let’s not forget that 26 was chosen because that was the latest possible age that liberals could pick to designate someone as an “adult,” despite the fact that for generations, 18 has been considered legal adulthood for marrying, joining the military and signing contracts – like buying your own insurance.
If that’s what “triggered” him to commit murder, then it’s just proof that he’s either mentally unstable or a perfect example of an emotion-driven, infantilized, 21st century leftist, which is not grounds for an insanity defense, although maybe it should be.
Frankly, we don’t care what might have “triggered” him to commit a cold-blooded, execution-style murder. If he’s guilty, he should pay the price. What matters is that an innocent human being is dead, (allegedly) because of his violent, selfish actions. That should be the focus of the news coverage. That and the horrifying reactions from leftists who are trying to rationalize, justify and even celebrate this shocking murder.
From killing “inconvenient” babies in the womb to making the Boston Marathon bomber look like a rock star on the cover of Rolling Stone to cheering for the assassination of Donald Trump to celebrating this pathetic sicko, the left in America is demonstrating that it has lost all regard for the sanctity of human life as well as any basic human decency. “The Daily Show’s” studio audience even booed a mention of his arrest, and they didn’t seem to be booing him.
Even some Democratic Senators don’t seem to have grasped the idea that no matter what you’re upset about, murder is ALWAYS unjustifiable.
They fail to see the irony in denouncing Trump as an “authoritarian” while cheering for the murder of anyone they disagree with, one of the most common actions of the worst authoritarian regimes in history.
So if you’re driven to know every detail about this suspect’s life, like whether he was so angry because his parents didn’t pat him on the head when they tucked in to bed at the age of 25, look elsewhere. We’ll cover the trial, honor the victim and shine a spotlight on the horrifying reactions because that’s where the real news is.
RELATED: Some more recent and historical commentary about the left’s “sick hypocrisy” in claiming to be tolerant and non-violent while celebrating the killing of its opponents.
https://instapundit.com/689466/
ALSO RELATED: More evidence of the pro-violence/anti-Semitic leftist stain on American universities:
O.S. Hawkins on Finding the SPIRIT CODE in Scripture | Huckabee Today
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Elliott Abrams: TRUMP'S STRATEGY Against HAMAS and IRAN | Huckabee Today
December 11, 2024
Mike Huckabee ‘commends’ Biden admin support for Israel’s self-defense | Vargas Reports
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So, do J6 Committee members deserve to go to jail? WILL they?
December 10, 2024
On Monday, Jonathan Turley, one of our go-to legal experts, wrote a column sparked by a comment this weekend by President Trump on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the whole J6 Committee --- the sham House committee chaired by Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson and now-ex Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney --- “should go to jail.” Turley said that with this statement, Trump has undermined his previous statement that he did not plan to be a vengeful President, that success would be his revenge.
First, let it be said that to remark, as Trump did, that someone SHOULD go to jail is not the same thing as actually SENDING them to jail as political prisoners, as Democrats themselves did with a large number of J6 defendants. Do Democrat members of that committee deserve to spend a considerable amount of time as guests of the Graybar Hotel, considering what they did to corruptly shape the narrative of January 6, even to the point of destroying evidence that was supposed to be turned over to the Republicans who now head the oversight committees? Yes, they do deserve it, and Trump is right to say so.
Turley is right, however, to say that Democrats are going to use Trump’s statement, just as they twist everything else he has ever said, to try to justify Biden’s wholesale pardoning of his son and probably a lot of other people who deserve prison time.
Still, we wonder if Turley should say that “there’s no viable criminal case to be made against the J6 Committee members for their investigation or report.” We’re not attorneys but are dismayed that even looking into this strikes Turley as unseemly when he says, “We need to move beyond the rage rhetoric if this country is going to come together to face the tough challenges ahead.” The point needs to be made (so we’ll make it) that this country will not come together if Biden can just pardon all his friends and allies and there are no consequences for anything any of them ever did.
Trump was absolutely right to criticize the committee’s deletion of evidence from their investigation. “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable,” he said, “along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps.” Love it.
And he went on: “Cheney was behind it. And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”
Turley did say that he considers “the J6 Committee to be not just a colossal failure but a missed opportunity for a bipartisan look at that tragic day.” And that is true. He also made it clear he supports the continued efforts of House committees to finish their own investigation of security failures that day as well as the records of the J6 Committee. We assume he’s referring to what is left of those records, if there’s anything left after all the deleting.
But Turley’s main point was that “these are ethical and political failings, not criminal violations,” as “politicians routinely distort facts on both sides of scandals, including Presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama.” It’s elections, he said, that remove such people from office, as the election in Wyoming got rid of Liz Cheney.
Sorry, that’s not good enough. As Turley acknowledged, “Cheney’s work on the committee was rife with false claims and the manipulation of evidence.” Yes, politicians make false claims all the time, but it’s that pesky “manipulation of evidence” that should not be let go.
Turley cited Article 1, Section 6, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which states that members of Congress “shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”
What on earth does that have to do with prosecuting someone like Liz Cheney, who is not even in the House any longer, for what she did to hide evidence? Nobody is proposing arresting legislators on the floor of Congress or going and coming from sessions. And this isn’t just “speech or debate” we’re talking about, but active suppression of exculpatory evidence in violation of someone’s rights.
Turley said that “the omissions and unfairness of the process do not constitute crimes.” And when he acknowledges that over a hundred files were allegedly destroyed, and that this does appear to violate the House’s archiving rules, he says “this is not ordinarily a case for criminal prosecution.” Really?? Well, if it’s not, it should be.
He says that “these rules have sufficient room for interpretation to make any such claim difficult to prosecute.” If the committee can just destroy evidence willy-nilly, then there’s something wrong with the rules. Do they not have to follow the LAW about destroying evidence, or do laws not apply to them? We guess we’ll find out.
“Clearly, a false statement to federal investigators or an effort to obstruct an investigation can be separate criminal violations,” Turley wrote, “but there is no indication of such allegations.” There isn’t?? This seems, on its face, to be obstruction of justice.
Turley thinks Trump needs to stop “fueling divisions.” (This is like punching someone 20 times, then the second he finally punches back, saying, “You need to stop this violence.”) He’s right about the damage caused by “rage rhetoric,” but he might be mistaken in arguing that Trump’s statement about J6 Committee members needing to go to jail is giving his critics a political windfall. It might be just the opposite, so why not see how this plays out? If anyone deserves to speak with a little rage after all that has been done to him, it’s President Trump.
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/12/09/no-the-j6-committee-should-not-go-to-jail/
Perhaps Turley’s column was written before Liz Cheney issued a threat to the DOJ on Monday that any move to investigate the now-defunct J6 Committee would be “sanctionable conduct.” Really?? Sanctionable...by whom? Not by her, as she’s not even in Congress any longer, haha. She seems to have mistaken being a former Congress member for being the current Queen of the Universe.
Cheney was triggered by Trump’s statements to rant that he had committed the “worst breach of our Constitution by any President in our nation’s history.” She said he had “attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power.” (Really??) “He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol…” (Again, really??)
Cheney said, “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”
As Bonchie at REDSTATE comments, “There has STILL never been any evidence presented that Donald Trump intended for anyone to physically attack the Capitol building...Trump did not try to ‘seize power,’ and it has been proven that he requested National Guard troops to be present but was rebuffed.”
It was Cheney herself, along with fellow committee members, who buried the evidence of that.
But when faced with evidence of this, Cheney pulled the same aggressive tactics as the Biden family attorneys are doing. (Notice how they all respond like cornered badgers.) “There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis,” she said, “for what Donald Trump is suggesting --- a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee --- and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct.”
SANCTIONABLE CONDUCT? Again, sanctionable by whom?
The GOP-led Congress would be unlikely to do that, even if they had the authority. Perhaps she means the legal establishment, the state bar associations, as they’ve already acted quite inappropriately to intimidate attorneys who dare to represent President Trump. Recall “Project 65,” which was organized to do exactly the same thing. If that’s what she’s talking about, we predict such tactics will backfire big-time.
Bonchie sounds like us when he calls her threats “toothless.” As he says, “the Trump DOJ SHOULD investigate what happened with the January 6th Committee. It should find out how much evidence was altered and destroyed in what was a clear abuse of power and a waste of taxpayer money. That’s what people voted for in November. They didn’t vote for the status quo. They voted for change and accountability.”
And that’s why we non-lawyers have to disagree with Turley on how the J6 Committee misdeeds should be handled. To just let this go is not going to bring the country together, as it will only reinforce the perception (and reality) that Democrat wrongdoers get to skate. Maybe the worst committee members will go to jail and maybe they won’t, but if some do, it will be because they really, really deserve it.
Here’s more on the same subject from BREITBART. Wendell Husebo points out that when Trump was asked on “Meet the Press” if he’d actually direct his FBI director and attorney general to send them (Cheney and friends) to jail, he said, “Not at all. I think that they’ll have to look at that...they can do whatever they want.” (Perhaps Jonathan Turley didn’t hear that part.)
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/12/09/liz-cheney-accused-destroying-117-january-6-files-says-she-should-not-go-jail/
RELATED READING: Never mind Trump’s promised pardons of J6 political prisoners; Biden’s DOJ continues throwing people into jail after almost four years. If anything, they’ve accelerated the process. Biden-appointed and soon-to-be-fired (yay!) DC U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves has announced the arrest of at least ten J6 protesters since Election Day (!) and says there is “public interest in the prompt and efficient administration of justice.” He plans to make the most of his last few weeks in his job.
DC judges seem to be using Trump’s upcoming inaugural as a reason to push hard these next several weeks. They’re denying defendants’ requests to postpone sentencing in anticipation of a Trump pardon, and three J6 jury trials are set to begin this week. As Julie Kelly reports, “Judge Amy Berman Jackson recently entered an order allowing prosecutors in her extremely biased courtroom to describe January 6 to jurors as an ‘attack on the Capitol,’ ‘attack on Congress,’ and a ‘riot.’” How are these defendants supposed to get a fair trial?
If you want to know what’s currently going on in DC courts concerning these cases, Kelly’s piece is a must-read.
Law professor and Instapundit blogmaster Glenn Reynolds commented on this article, “Something needs to be done about D.C.’s impossibly partisan legal system. Personally, I’m in favor of abolishing ‘home rule’ for DC. Our nation’s capital should be ruled by the nation, not by the apparatchiks who live there.”
https://instapundit.com/689240/
MORE RELATED READING: Don’t miss this piece by Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann at AMERICAN GREATNESS, which spares no words about who the real criminal is in the Hunter scandal. Um, that would be his father.
https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/09/the-real-criminal-here-is-not-hunter-biden
ALSO RELATED: Former Democrat (but still liberal) Ana Kasparian gets that there’s something fishy about Hunter Biden’s “blanket” pardon covering 11 years. She even did the math and figured out that it had to go back that far to cover Hunter’s so-called work on the Burisma board. Gosh, now she’s actually getting suspicious that Hunter might have done something wrong! You know, even puppies open their eyes after no more than two weeks.
My Interview with VINIA CEO ILAN SOBEL & DR EDDIE MARISTANY
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Mike's Monologue: THAT is MY President!
December 9, 2024
After Hunter pardon, Biden and “allies” circle the wagons
December 9, 2024
Now that the Biden Family Protector-in-Chief has pardoned his son Hunter for any and all crimes he may have committed over a period of 11 years, the Biden family and their friends and allies (and their attorneys, of course) are reportedly assuming a highly aggressive stance against any criticism.
The WASHINGTON POST ran a story on their “very public plan,” as described by Jonathan Turley, to target potential witnesses --- and even media, such as FOX NEWS --- concerning allegations of Biden family influence-peddling. To oh-so-subtly warn witnesses that they might face retribution, the Biden team, predictably, leaked news of a recent strategy meeting in California to their helpful scribes at WAPO. The paper even named specific witnesses they’d be targeting. This means you, John Paul Mac Isaac and Tony Bobulinski!
And guess who the host for this meeting was. Why, it was Hunter’s “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, whose name, thanks to Hunter’s pardon, is now back in the news (for this story and also another, which we’ll get to). Recall that Morris seemingly came out of nowhere when Joe was running for President, turning up at a Democrat fundraiser to befriend Hunter, pay his reported $20,000/month rent and other lavish expenses, retire his estimated $2.8 million IRS debt, pay out the wazoo for his trash art, and even produce a movie based on his sorry exploits as the son of a powerful politician. (Note: this documentary is reportedly complete; Biden is said to have previewed it as part of his post-pardon celebration.)
As a result of Morris’ amazing generosity and Joe’s all-inclusive pardon, Hunter will face no consequences, financial or criminal, for his actions during those 11 key years.
In Turley’s words, “Morris’ plan could easily be taken as a declaration of all-out war on potential witnesses against Hunter Biden,” particularly Bobulinski and Mac Isaac. “What’s most interesting about the [WAPO] piece is why the WASHINGTON POST was given such access and such a detailed account. But someone wanted this campaign to be public before the House can call any witnesses.”
Recall that Bobulinski was the business partner who managed foreign business deals and directly contradicted Joe Biden’s claim, which we now know was untrue, that he knew nothing about them. (If memory serves, he’s the one who first identified Joe Biden as “the Big Guy.”) He went public soon after Miranda Devine’s laptop story broke in the NEW YORK POST --- as in, before Election Day 2020 --- with an interview about this, but most media simply ignored him. Now, however, Bobulinksi’s testimony could provide a serious threat to Joe Biden in the coming House investigation in confirming the President’s knowledge and even his possible receipt of funds from the family’s deals.
Turley describes this move against Bobulinski as being “about as subtle as a two-by-four to the head.” To leak details of this meeting, Biden’s team chose a paper that is one of THE most pro-Biden newspapers in the country (even now, apparently). They only recently gave up on the “Russian disinformation” hoax and admitted that Hunter’s laptop was the real deal.
Of course, to create a wall of separation between this meeting and the White House (which is still, sadly and unbelievably, occupied by Joe Biden, even if he’s just sleeping there), WAPO’s article stresses that the effort behind it is “operating separately from the White House.” Sure, right, nudge-nudge, wink-wink. David Brock, the Media Matters founder described by Turley as “one of the most controversial and reviled Democratic operatives in Washington” and “the lowest common denominator” even of that crowd, said his organization is “following its own strategy,” not coordinating with the Hunter Biden team.
Brock has a new group, ironically called “Facts First USA,” which he himself has described as a “SWAT team” designed to “ensure that the media and public do not accept the false narrative that flows from congressional investigations.” I think we have a pretty good idea of where the false narrative will be originating.
Other groups joining forces to protect the Bidens from those evil (truth-seeking) Republicans include the “Congressional Integrity Project” (hahahahaha!!) which according to Turley plans to attack President Trump’s family. The CIP recently hired Jeff Peck, who goes way back with Joe Biden, having served as his chief of staff when Biden was a U.S. Senator pilfering classified documents from secure viewing locations.
As hard as this article tries to establish a wall of separation between these neutralizing efforts and the White House/DNC, the involvement of Biden’s own staff and allies certainly blurs the line. As Turley points out, “Targeting witnesses like Bobulinski could invite congressional investigators to look more closely at these groups and their funding.” (Let it be.) They also need to watch out in case benefactor Morris is called as a witness. But they’re being so publicly aggressive about this, they don’t seem to care.
Unless there’s something we don’t know about the ring of protection around Morris, he’s taking a real risk here. It occurs to us that Morris might be one of those who’d like a blanket pardon from Biden before he leaves office, but if Biden gives him one, Morris won’t be able to plead the Fifth before congressional committees and will be required to answer all questions truthfully or face charges of perjury. (Note: Hunter will, too.)
The Democrats are taking a similarly aggressive stance against Trump’s Cabinet nominees, particularly Kash Patel as FBI director. This is a quick must-read from Victor Davis Hanson…
https://instapundit.com/689032/
RELATED: Chris Swecker, former FBI assistant director, appeared with Maria Bartiromo last Tuesday, saying this: “I know a broad criminal conspiracy when I see one, and the Bidens operated like a crime family --- lots of money moving through the international system, shell corporations, non-services, and family members were involved...So, yes, there’s a lot to protect here, and I expect to see more pardons.”
Be sure to see Maria’s interview with Miranda Devine on Sunday about “pre-emptive pardons” for the likes of Adam Schiff (who, thanks to Gavin Newsom, is joining the Senate today, two months earlier than we expected him to be inflicted on the Senate), Liz Cheney, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Lt. Gen. Mark Milley (who made secret phone calls to China during Trump’s first term in office). Devine expects Joe’s brother Jim to be on the priority list for a pardon, as he “was involved in a lot of the China grift with Hunter Biden.” Jim’s wife apparently signed checks to Joe Biden totaling $200,000 --- which happened to work out as 10 percent for “the Big Guy” --- adding the notation “loan repayment.”
Side note: Interesting comments here from Devine about Liz Cheney and her “untoward behavior” as co-chair of the House J6 Committee, concerning alleged collusion with witness Cassidy Hutchinson.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6365723982112
ALSO RELATED: We might not take this seriously if it came from anyone less esteemed than Victor Davis Hanson, but he suggested on Friday that First Son Hunter Biden was blackmailing his father as leverage for a presidential pardon. Hanson thinks Hunter resents having to do the “dirty work” for the family and probably threatened to testify against them.
AND THIS: Victoria Taft at PJ MEDIA wonders if Hunter Biden was being used by the CIA, which perhaps served as “the root of the poisonous tree of free-flowing money by a connected Hollywood attorney who had just barely befriended the out-of-control addict at a Joe Biden for President event in LA when he started cutting checks.” She makes a good case in this must-read piece.
https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2024/12/04/cia-and-hunter-n4934793
ALSO, THIS: Mark Levin’s Sunday night monologue makes it very clear that the Bidens and their protectors in the so-called justice system have much to fear after all they’ve done. Imagine if it were Trump handing out blanket “pre-emptive pardons.”
https://www.foxnews.com/shows/life-liberty-levin
Levin also interviews Jonathan Turley about his piece for THE HILL, “Pardon envy: Democrats vie to make the Biden pardon list.” Read it here…
……...
And now to what we’ll call Hunter Biden Story #2, which you’ll see as it unfolds has a double meaning. Major sarcasm alert here...
In a story that surely no one, even the most cunning and worldly art investors, could have foreseen, the market for Hunter Biden’s stunningly beautiful and emotionally moving artwork has apparently collapsed. Gee, we’re not sure why, because the work of this artistic genius and son of an esteemed President has been universally acclaimed by experts and wildly praised by the public, but we do have a suspicion it might have something to do with the end of President Biden’s political career and the loss of his influence in DC. Surely that’s not it, though, because then we’d have to become cynical about the world of art investing, which of course is as honest and upright as any other network of financial transaction --- especially any such network involving the Biden family, which we’ve repeatedly been told by Democrats is above board in every way, and that’s good enough for us.
Some critics, who obviously knew nothing about fine art, said from the start that the sale of Hunter’s paintings was really just a cover for President Biden’s political allies to funnel money to him and his family. But it only looked that way because the main investors happened to be Hunter’s benefactor Kevin Morris and Democrat donor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali. Can Hunter help it if wealthy Democrat donors have more sophisticated taste in art than other people?
And recall that there was a stringent arrangement in place to prevent Hunter from ever learning the identities of his art buyers. There was simply no way he could possibly have known who bought his paintings. Never mind that the gallery owner who was selling Hunter’s art did say Hunter knew who purchased the paintings that accounted for roughly 70 percent of his earnings, which according to congressional testimony totaled about $1.5 million.
Before Hunter attained such huge financial success as an artiste, he was already deep into this study. Apparently, he was practicing his painting before he could even afford PAINT. According to one story from a former landlord, when Hunter couldn’t afford to pay off his year of back rent, he scrounged up a spiral notebook and used his own, well, bodily excrement (sorry, but that’s why we had to call this “Story #2”) to create fine works of art with which to fulfill his financial obligation.
This was in 2019. Instead of remaining eternally grateful --- surely any work from Hunter would someday be worth millions --- this landlord, Shaun Maguire, has now gone public with the story. When Hunter’s attorneys denied it, he published photos of the “art” on social media. Yes, we looked; you REALLY, REALLY might not want to. But in case you really want to see a particularly grotesque (alleged) example of Hunter’s brilliance, here’s the link.
https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1865080086657142859
For a while, the Hunter team was threatening to sue those who discussed the Biden/Morris scandal. Jonathan Turley was among those targeted, but he continued to write about it and was never sued. We can’t verify Maguire’s story, but, as Turley points out, he “must have known about the litigious reputation of the Biden team when he decided to go public with this claim.”
We would point out that the veracity of this story could always be confirmed through DNA testing, if it came to that. Perhaps this is why there has been no inclination so far for the Biden legal team to make good on their threat.
Trump doesn't need Biden's help with legal troubles: Mike Huckabee
December 4, 2024
Just a few days ago, NATIONAL REVIEW ran an unfortunate column by legal analyst Andrew C. McCarthy advising the new Trump 47 administration against using “retributive” lawfare against those who spent years abusing the legal system and violating his rights to damage him politically. (We linked to his piece, and then to the Julie Kelly commentary that magnificently dismantled it). But yesterday, NR redeemed itself by posting a related story from James Lynch that shows just how far the FBI went to interfere with the 2020 election by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story. We’re not attorneys, but if McCarthy believes these people should be given the kid-glove treatment now, he is just wrong. They all need the book thrown at them.
As Lynch tells it, we know now that the FBI spent “the better part of a year” working with social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to censor the Hunter laptop story as “Russian disinformation,” withholding information from them that would have told them the laptop was authentic. As you know, the FBI had been aware of its authenticity ever since they took possession of it in November 2019. According to FBI whistleblower Gary Shapley, they authenticated its content soon after, obtaining a warrant and retrieving the data from the laptop’s archive.
But they worked harder on misleading social media than we’d even known. This is the stunning new part, from NR’s story on a bombshell House Judiciary Committee report:
“After authenticating the device, the FBI team on the Hunter Biden (case) briefed the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) multiple times because of the case’s connection to Ukraine. Months before the laptop story broke, the FITF was aware that the FBI possessed Biden’s laptop, multiple FITF officials testified to the Judiciary Committee, according to the report.”
Many months ago, we reported on the media workshop held before the 2020 election by our intel community for media and social media platforms at the Alpine Institute. But as Lynch says, the Judiciary investigation found this was just part of the government’s influence, as the FITF met with them over 30 times (!), beginning in early 2020, to “pre-bunk” allegations that the Biden family had peddled influence to profit from the Biden name.
The FBI declined to comment for NATIONAL REVIEW. Wouldn’t you know.
According to the report, the FITF gave social media a heads-up about potential “hack-and-leak” operations, in the context of election security and potential foreign influence operations. In effect, they primed them to accept that the Hunter laptop story, when it came out, would be fake.
“In response,” the report reads, “some platforms even adopted new content moderation policies designed to address hacked materials.” FBI officials were popping champagne corks.
According to the Judiciary report, the warnings got quite specific, with the FBI warning “multiple times that a ‘hack-and-leak’ story involving Burisma and Hunter Biden was set to drop in October 2020,” Lynch writes.
To cite just one example of how social media staffers interpreted this, one from Facebook “predicted” in September 2020 that “We are likely to have in the next few weeks a leak or series of leaks about Biden’s supposed link to Burisma, where we won’t be able to prove they were ‘hacked,’ but where we will have responsible USG [U.S. government] players publicly saying this is part of a foreign influence operation.”
So when Miranda Devine came out with her NEW YORK POST story about the laptop, what were FB and Twitter employees supposed to think of it? They thought just what the administration wanted them to think, as they’d already been vaccinated against the truth. Just in case, the FITF had even scheduled meetings with both Facebook and Twitter on October 14, the day Devine’s story broke.
(We would add that the FBI surely had been spying on both Devine and her source Rudy Giuliani. How else would they have known the exclusive story was going to break?)
Most of the rest of this, you already know. As the report reads, “The FBI refused to acknowledge that it possessed and had authenticated the laptop.” It was a big con, which later allowed then-candidate Joe Biden to further con American voters when he denied the laptop was real. (Of course, the fake “classic earmarks” letter signed by 51 former intel officials also helped him carry off his lie.)
Interestingly, while FB and Twitter reflexively cracked down on the laptop story, Google left it alone, as their own in-house threat analysis found no evidence the laptop was the product of a hack. Can’t believe we’re saying this, but Google actually deserves a little credit here.
Still, this report from the Judiciary Committee offers even more on the extent to which the FBI tried to interfere in the 2020 election by suppressing real news. Later on, after Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into “X,” he fired the two executives responsible for censoring the Hunter laptop story. As reported by NATIONAL REVIEW, Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde expressed remorse during testimony last year about their decision to suppress the NY POST’s reporting.
For when you have time, here’s the full report from the House Judiciary Committee on how the CIA was involved in discrediting the Hunter laptop story. As you know, former deputy CIA Director Mike Morell (who was still under contract to the CIA at the time) coordinated the “classic earmarks” letter.
The committee’s pithy conclusion: “The infamous Hunter Biden statement had all the hallmarks of an intelligence community influence operation.” How sad that an agency that is supposed to work against our adversaries on foreign soil was turned against American voters.
If the Hunter Biden laptop had been totally buried, we would’ve been none the wiser about the Biden family “business,” casting our ballots in blissful ignorance, just as the left wanted us to. Yes, Hunter’s dirty mess came out, but President Biden has made sure his son won’t have to pay, at the same time trying to minimize the damage to the rest of the family, including himself.
(Side note: To those urging Trump not to take any action against the Deep State spooks responsible for this, recall that polls showed that if voters had known the laptop was real, Biden would have lost the 2020 election by a wide margin. Therefore, they are directly responsible not only for election interference and all the damage caused by Biden-Harris, but for handing Biden the power to cover up the biggest influence peddling scandal in American history, plus any other crimes his son might have committed over an 11-year period. Still want to let all these accomplices off scot-free?)
On Day 1 of Biden’s presidency, spokesperson Jen Psaki promised his administration would “bring transparency and truth back to the administration.” Honestly, this makes us think Karine Jean-Pierre gets a bad rap, because that statement from Psaki is just as ludicrous as anything ever uttered by KJP. The DAILY CALLER’s Katelynn Richardson has a good report on what Protect the Public Trust has to say about this administration’s lack of transparency and disregard of its own ethical promises.
She gives example after example…
In more backlash from President Biden’s all-inclusive pardon of his son, California Judge Mark Scarsi joins Special Counsel David Weiss and Delaware U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika in less-than-heartfelt acceptance of this move. Like them, he simply “terminated” the case under his review without actually dismissing it.
This piece at REDSTATE is a must-read, as it includes Judge Scarsi’s scathing comments. Reading between the lines, he seems disgusted by the President’s complaints about Hunter being treated differently. The President might be granted the authority to issue a pardon, he says, but, “Nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history.” That, and more, here…
The Hunter pardon has generated an avalanche of stories and opinions, so let’s run through a few...
John Nolte at BREITBART tells how the swampy media are trying to spin the real story. For example, the laughable NEW YORK TIMES tries to make you believe that Biden wasn’t lying; he just changed his mind. Nolte’s piece on this should be used in journalism classes, but it won’t be.
(Note: we see that more commentators are picking up on the fact that Hunter, now that he’s been pardoned, can no longer hide behind the Fifth Amendment.)
Joe Manchin has an idea about who Biden should pardon next, and it’s Donald Trump. Manchin says it would “balance the scales of justice.” That’s precisely why it won’t happen.
HOT AIR has more examples of leftists twisting their tiny brains into mini-pretzels trying to praise Biden for pardoning his son after praising him for NOT pardoning his son.
Okay, now let’s contrast the leniency shown to Hunter with the atrocious treatment of the January 6 protesters, most of whom did nothing more than walk peacefully (“parade”) through the Capitol building (or not even that).
Victims of the weaponized justice system are speaking out, as reported by Catherine Salgado at PJ MEDIA, who quotes our friend Brandon Straka of #WalkAway: “I’m still serving a sentence for standing outside the Capitol for eight minutes. Meanwhile, Hunter Biden could have murdered someone over the past decade, and nothing’s gonna happen.”
Here’s a compelling, must-read rationale for Trump pardoning ALL January 6 defendants, especially in light of the Hunter pardon. (Scott Adams, in his Tuesday podcast, happened to say this very thing. Perhaps he had read this.) We’re talking a blanket pardon for everyone, no matter what they allegedly did, because of the inherent political bias of the prosecutions. Defendants simply could not get a fair trial when they were labeled “domestic terrorists,” “Insurrectionists” and “enemies of the state.” Much more, some of it hilarious, at REDSTATE…
RELATED: Speaking of the weaponized “justice” system, let’s get in our Way-Back Machine and take a quick look at Trump’s first sham impeachment. It’s just been found that a ‘journalistic entity” called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP, formed in 2008), which helped shape the impeachment narrative against President Trump, is primarily funded by...drum roll, please!...U.S. government agencies.
Though we had never heard of it, this is apparently an extremely influential group, operating in over 60 countries and employing over 200 reporters. They partner with the WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE GUARDIAN. The head of the OCCRP says the government never exerted editorial control, but they did “veto top personnel hires, including editorial hires.” (Why, that would NEVER affect editorial content!) This report is an eye-opener.
ALSO RELATED: If you know anyone who thinks Kash Patel is somehow wrong for the job of FBI director, please tell them to listen to John Solomon’s interview with retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jeff Danik, in which Danik enthusiastically endorses Patel and explains why.
Joe Biden pardons Hunter Biden
December 3, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Throughout President Biden’s term, we’ve had so many stories that we deemed “shocking but not surprising” that it became a regular category of news stories. And on Sunday night, at the end of a long holiday weekend when most people were in tryptophan comas, Biden dropped the mother of all “shocking but not surprising” stories: he gave his prodigal son Hunter a full pardon. Not just for everything we know he did, but for everything we might find out that he did over an 11-year period (the mind reels at that thought!) It’s not just a presidential pardon, it’s a “Get Out Of Jail Free” platinum card.
https://www.westernjournal.com/breaking-joe-biden-pardons-son-hunter/
The reaction from Republicans was also unsurprising, with Congressional leaders denouncing it as another example of two-tiered justice from the most lawless Administration in history.
But the pardon is no surprise, despite the fact that Biden repeatedly swore he would not interfere with the justice system or the jury verdict by pardoning his son. Recall, he also swore he would return normality to politics, he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone earning over $200,000 a year, he knew nothing about Hunter’s shady deals and never met with his clients, and that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation. So why would anyone believe him when he said he wouldn’t pardon Hunter? We can’t wait to hear Karine Jean-Pierre channel Gene Wilder in “Young Frankenstein”: “Don’t you people know a JOKE when you hear one?!”
Of course, with Joe having been found officially too old and feeble to be prosecuted (although not too old and feeble to continue to be President), this means both Hunter and Joe will be safe from any legal consequences for their (alleged!) long-running family influence-peddling racket. This makes it the most successful high-level corruption ring in American history.
Of course, there are other Biden family members who allegedly benefited, but Biden could always pardon them, too, before leaving office. Some are questioning why he chose to do this now instead of at the last minute. Hunter was scheduled to be sentenced in a few weeks, but chances are he wouldn’t have seen the inside of a jail cell before Trump’s inauguration.
Pardoning Hunter now distracts media attention from the Democrats’ manufactured “OUTRAGE!” over Trump’s Cabinet picks and reminds Americans of the powerful stench of Democrat corruption, which only helps Trump and his message of cleaning up the DC swamp (maybe we should call it a sewer.) Perhaps Biden did it as revenge for being thrown overboard by his Party, like his endorsement of Kamala Harris. It also sucks the air out of the Democrats’ bloviating about Trump pardoning January 6th political prisoners.
Perhaps even better for Trump, in making the sweeping pardon, Biden released a stunningly dishonest statement, claiming poor little Hunter was unfairly targeted by the DOJ for political reasons. In truth, they tried to give him an unprecedented sweetheart deal that was only stopped because the judge read it and was appalled. According to Joe, virtually nobody is actually punished for tax evasion or lying about being a drug addict on gun purchase forms. Really? You try that (WARNING! We’re speaking rhetorically: Do NOT try that!) It is nice of him to admit, though, that not even Democrats take the gun laws they force on us seriously.
Only after Hunter’s crimes became such a hot potato that they were impossible to cover up was the DOJ forced to do its job (which, coincidentally, gave them justification for claiming they were “nonpartisan” as they waged lawfare on Trump and his supporters.)
But in making that self-serving claim that really isn’t true for Hunter, Joe verified that his DOJ is corrupt and unfairly prosecutes people for political reasons. That gives Trump all the ammunition he needs to pardon his supporters who’ve been targeted and to clean out their partisan rats’ nests. Trump made that clear with his reaction to the news on social media:
“Does the pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J6 hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
This anti-climax is frustrating for anyone who cares about justice, since all we can ever hope is that some real journalists (i.e., conservative journalists) will eventually put together the full story of this sleazy scheme and make it all public. It’s a twisted and wide-ranging web of corruption. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene wrote an X post reminding us of all the corrupt members of the “justice” system who turned a blind eye or actively worked to cover it up, and of the fact that the FBI raided Barron Trump’s bedroom but not Hunter Biden’s.
https://thelibertydaily.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-breaks-down-hunter-pardon-warns/
Law professor Jonathan Turley also blasted the pardon, calling it “disgraceful” and “a decision that lives in infamy in presidential politics.” He eviscerated Biden’s rationale for the pardon and said that after all his denials that he would ever do it, this cements his legacy as the “liar-in-chief.”
On Saturday, President-elect Trump confirmed it: his choice for the new FBI director is none other than the brilliant and eminently qualified Kash Patel, who has made it clear that he would work to dismantle the bureaucracy, saying, “I’d shut down the Hoover FBI Building on Day 1 and reopen it as a museum of the Deep State.”
https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1863007459788628379
Of course, this also confirms that current Director Christopher Wray is being given the boot. There’s no need at this point to expound on why that resounding kick out the door and down the steps is so richly deserved on his part.
(To those without a clue who’ve actually said, “But Wray is a Republican who was appointed by Trump,” we’d simply reply that he’s made it clear through his actions and his total lack of transparency that he’s a “Republican” only in the sense that Liz Cheney or his own predecessor James Comey is one. Keep in mind, Wray got that job because he was recommended to DC-neophyte President Trump by Chris Christie, who should forever hang his head in shame for such a lousy suggestion. As time passed and Biden took the White House, Wray just happened to fit right in with the Biden administration’s goals, fulfilling Attorney General Merrick Garland’s dictums as diligently and opaquely as any Democrat might have done.)
If you’d like a refresher on Wray, here’s a scathing reminder from Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who’s in line to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Senate term, to our good fortune...
But enough about Wray. Does someone as perfect for the job as Patel have any hope of actually being confirmed by the new Senate? Texas Sen. Ted Cruz predicts he will be, along with Trump’s other nominees. He quickly runs through Patel’s outstanding qualifications.
“I gotta say,” Cruz continues, “all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, all of the people pulling their hair out, are exactly the people who are dismayed about having a real reformer come into the FBI and clean out the corrupted partisans who sadly have burrowed into senior career positions at the FBI.”
The clip is just a little over a minute long. News analysts at CBS’s FACE THE NATION must have loved hearing this from Sen. Cruz...
Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty concurs that Patel “represents the type of change that we need to see in the FBI.” Here he is on NBC’s MEET THE PRESS, whose host was probably every bit as thrilled to hear this as the folks at CBS were, meaning not. (Read her solemn expression at the end to see how she likely felt.) Mainstream “journalists” must be profoundly dismayed at the prospect of losing their leaky FBI “anonymous sources.” Again, just a brief, must-see clip...
Kash Patel is SO highly qualified for the job of FBI director that anyone who criticizes him on this score is really saying, in the words of commentator J. D. Rucker, “Holy c**p! Kash Patel’s gonna catch us all!”
Rucker also posted in more detail on X that this is why they’re going to come after him “with all they’ve got.” It’s a must-read. Surely both President Trump and Patel himself are aware of what’s ahead for the confirmation process. Those desperate enough, with enough to lose, will try anything and everything, just as they have with President Trump. (Oh, no, are we all going to be subjected again to the Democrats “trotting out the women”?)
https://x.com/JDRucker/status/1863247098969546850
Patel’s name had previously been floated as the possible nominee for DEPUTY director, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation. But Trump apparently is feeling confident that Patel will get through, as he should. Pam Bondi, as U.S. Attorney General, will be his boss.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/11/30/donald-trump-kash-patel-fbi-director/
We hope that together, Bondi and Patel can rid the “justice” system of politicized actions such as this…
At this point, you’ve seen plenty from Patel’s stellar resume. But some are noting that former Attorney General Bill Barr said this about Patel in his 2022 book:
“I categorically opposed making Patel deputy FBI director. I told Mark Meadows it would happen ‘over my dead body.’ In the first place, all the leadership positions in the bureau, except the director, have always been FBI agents. They've all gone through the same agent training and have had broad experience in the field and at headquarters. Someone with no background as an agent would never be able to command the respect necessary to run the day-to-day operations of the bureau. Furthermore, Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency.”
Bonchie at REDSTATE wryly comments: “I can’t think of a better endorsement for Patel to serve as FBI director than that.”
He also notes David Frum’s post on X: “We are headed toward a US constitutional crisis vastly bigger than Watergate.” (What, by appointing people who are not career bureaucrats? Seems as though that would make the framers of the Constitution very happy!) As Bonchie points out, “No, we are not heading for a ‘constitutional crisis,’ because the FBI is not a constitutional agency. It is a bloated, corrupt bureaucracy under the direct leadership of the President and one in desperate need of a house cleaning.” Thomas Jefferson, in his day, would likely have been so fed up that he’d call for much more drastic action than what Trump is taking, which is simply to follow the authority given him under the Constitution to make his own appointments, subject to Senate approval.
But, anyway, get ready for a lot more hysterical nonsense like that.
Here’s REDSTATE’s Nick Arama, commenting on the screams coming from former deputy FBI Director (and current MSNBC contributor) Andrew McCabe’s corner. Delightful to behold!
Becca Lower at REDSTATE points out two more whose jaws are sore from all the teeth-gnashing: former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton and Biden National Security Advisor (and Russia hoaxer) Jake Sullivan. Be sure to read her piece for the quote from Sen. Hagerty about how Biden appointees such as Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who organized the now-infamous “classic earmarks” letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop, “qualified” for their jobs and security clearances
Susie Moore, also at REDSTATE, points out that while former top officials are having a fit, former FBI agents seem quite pleased and even ecstatic about Patel…
In more from REDSTATE, Streiff notes that Bolton actually compared Patel to Lavrenty Beria, a Stalin loyalist who became head of the secret police. According to Streiff at REDSTATE, Beria “carried out the purges of the 30s, ran the gulag system, and kept the Red Army in the field during the trying 1940-1942 period through the use of political commissars, blocking units and summary executions.” Streiff calls Bolton’s statement “mind-bogglingly stupid” and considers it to be quite a solid endorsement of Patel.
FBI agent-turned-whistleblower Steve Friend has some recommendations for the new FBI director. “Director Patel should immediately dissolve the FBI case quota system and Intelligence Branch,” he told PJ MEDIA’S Catherine Salgado. “These protocols have contributed to the bureau’s devolution into a politicized secret police force.”
In the “case quota system,” as explained by Friend, offices and agents are supposed to log a specific number of cases in specific categories, and their promotions rest in their ability to fulfill these. (Think January 6.) Did you even know they had this? On its face, this is a terrible system. It induces agents to create crimes that don’t even exist, and to ignore other types of crimes that aren’t at the top of the priority list, in order to reach arbitrary statistical goals. Patel should retire this system on Day 1.
Over the weekend (before the Patel nomination was announced), legal analyst Andrew C. McCarthy wrote an unfortunate piece for NATIONAL REVIEW called “Trump Needs to End Lawfare,” in which he lamented the thought of Trump using the legal system to go after what he admits were “bad prosecutions.” He found it disturbing that Trump would echo Steve Bannon’s “battle cry for lawfare.” Read it if you’d like…
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/11/trump-needs-to-end-lawfare/
...but what really is a must-read is Julie Kelly’s response, in which she absolutely takes his argument apart. She’s THE preeminent January 6 expert, and her piece is so masterful, we’ll just give her the floor and encourage you to offer her your undivided attention.
Mexico and Canada react to Trump
December 3, 2024
Migrant rights activists are protesting that Mexican authorities have broken up two huge caravans of migrants who were crossing Mexico to enter the US illegally, after Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Mexico. Wait, you mean it’s possible for Mexico to STOP people from walking across their country to enter the US? Who knew?!
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-migrant-caravans-trump-tariffs-c4611c47fc53e2c494545a7cef194e88
And guess who else immediately came calling to talk to Trump about border security. If you guessed Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, you win a cigar.
As you can see from this hilariously snarky report from Scott Pinsker, Trudeau is facing Arctic headwinds in next year’s election, with 57% of Canadians wanting him off the ballot. This is good news for our Canadian cousins.
We’ve received objections from some Canadian readers that the real border security problem is with Mexico, not Canada, and they have a point. However, while there might not be as many entries from the north, it’s not something to be unconcerned about. The National Post of Canada reported Friday that according to US Customs and Border Security, 87% of people identified as “terror suspects” who tried to enter the US via a land border in 2024 came from Canada. The good news: they were stopped at the border. But these are the ones we know about.
Besides, strong border security would also be beneficial for Canada. It would keep them from being invaded by entire states’ worth of whiny leftist insurrectionists who want to secede…
…And while a wall across the entire Canadian border would be very expensive, think of how many Trump-hating Hollywood celebrities it might keep out. Money well spent!
Mike Huckabee
“My word as a Biden.”
Well, we know what that’s worth now. Of course, those of us who were paying attention have known for years that the word of Joe Biden was worth nothing. But now, with the inventive, all-encompassing presidential pardon of son Hunter, everyone can see the emptiness of his trademark phrase.
As with Hunter’s “sweetheart” plea deal that was negotiated with prosecutors before being questioned by the presiding judge, no one has ever seen a pardon like this. It covers any and all charges against Hunter that might arise from his activities during an 11-year time frame. This, after Biden had repeatedly claimed that he would not pardon Hunter, period.
But few are surprised Hunter was pardoned, and even they might be pretending to be surprised. President Trump said to FOX NEWS in October, “I’ll bet you the father probably pardons him. Let’s see what happens, but he’s a bad boy, there is no question about it.”
Still, Biden has lied countless times about this and about his family’s history of influence peddling. Karine Jean-Pierre has the thankless job of covering for him, but in lying to defend the indefensible, she just looks pathetic. This exchange took place Monday with the press on board Air Force One on its way to Angola (notice he’s far from the U.S. right now):
Reporter: “You and Biden said for months that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter...could those statements now be seen as lies [by] the American people?”
Karine Jean-Pierre: “One of the things that the President always believes is to be truthful to the American people. That is something he always truly believes.”
KJP’s biggest challenge these days must be getting through press briefings with a straight face.
Here’s the full story from the NEW YORK POST. Obviously, the focus-group-tested term of the day was “war politics,” which KJP repeated three times. It’s supposed to mean the politicization of the Justice Department, which she insists led to their persecution of...Hunter Biden. (Huh? We thought it was somebody else.) At the same time, President Biden is trying to maintain that, when it comes to Trump prosecutions, the DOJ is NOT politicized. It’s nonsensical.
She said that Biden had simply changed his mind over Thanksgiving. To their credit, some of the reporters actually pressed her on this. But, really, why do they even bother with these ridiculous press briefings at this point? Surely, they aren’t doing it for the free trip to...Angola. These briefings are nothing more than an exercise in hiding the truth, a waste of everybody’s time.
U.S. District Judge Maryellen Norieka, who first raised an eyebrow at that never-before-seen “sweetheart deal” put together by Hunter’s attorneys and U.S. Attorney David Weiss, said in a court filing on Monday that she’ll accept the President’s pardon related to the firearms charges and “intends to terminate the proceedings against Defendant.”
But David Weiss denied that Hunter had been “treated differently” and also that the verdict against him was a “miscarriage of justice,” words Karine Jean-Pierre had used. In a court filing, he said that “there was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case. To the extent that Defendant’s claim that he is being selectively prosecuted rests solely on him being the son of the sitting President, that claim is belied by the facts.” After all, they said, it’s the President’s own appointees who run the Justice Department.
Weiss can’t overturn a presidential pardon, of course, but in “terminating” the case, he’s expressing resistance to actually dismissing the indictment against Hunter. It’s an interesting distinction, and both he and Judge Norieka deserve credit for making it...
Recall that according to IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, it was just the opposite of a political prosecution, in that Hunter, as a member of the First Family, definitely got preferential treatment. As BREITBART reports, Shapley and Ziegler made at least 13 allegations against Hunter and his family in congressional testimony last year, saying that supervisor Lesley Wolf restricted their investigation, particularly when it threatened to include “the Big Guy.”
CNN reports that First Lady Jill Biden was strongly lobbying/pressuring for the pardon. But, really, they’re such fake news, who knows how it really went down? Here’s the story anyway; make of it what you will...
House Speaker Mike Johnson posted this on X: “President Biden has insisted many times he would not pardon his own son for his serious crimes. But last night, he suddenly granted a ‘Full and Unconditional Pardon’ for any and all offenses that Hunter committed for more than a decade! Trust in our justice system has been almost irreparably damaged by the Bidens and their use and abuse of it. Real reform cannot begin soon enough!”
https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/
Indeed, this looks so bad that Democrats are joining the chorus of criticism. According to the NY POST, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis was the first Democrat to denounce the pardon. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation,” Polis said of Biden, ignoring the fact that Biden’s reputation was already badly in need of some Tarn-X.
Arizona Rep. Greg Stanton said, “I respect President Biden [editorial aside: Why??], but I think he got this one wrong. This wasn’t a politically motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”
Mark Penn, a former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, called the pardon “disgraceful.” He actually summed it up in a way we might write about it for the newsletter: “This was not a pardon of just Hunter Biden but of Joe Biden himself as his son ran a scheme with Joe’s brother to shake down adversaries of over $20 million and then didn’t even pay taxes on it. And the loot was distributed even to grandchildren. And this is yet another of the many issues the American public was shamefully gaslighted over.” (Editor’s Note: Well, not ONE grandchild…)
That pretty much tells the story in a few sentences. Penn left out just a couple of things: 1) Joe Biden himself apparently was in the pipeline to receive “loot” from this scheme, and 2) Barack Obama, in naming Biden to be “point man” to Ukraine, surely had to know about the Biden family’s foreign “business” dealings.
Law professor Jonathan Turley, who used to be a Democrat, says that “President Biden has set a standard that is not merely a new low but positively subterraneous for future Presidents.”
“It is not just that the President used his constitutional powers to benefit his family,” Turley wrote in a column for FOX NEWS. “It is because the action culminates years of lying to the public about his knowledge and intentions in the influence-peddling scandal surrounding his family.”
Turley looked at the history of the power to pardon, acknowledging that it was “not a pristine power.” He noted that in 2023 he’d suggested that Biden might withdraw from the 2024 race and then, as a lame-duck President, use his power to pardon Hunter. “The pardon-and-apology approach,” he wrote at that time, “might appeal to Biden not only as an effort to convert vice into virtue but also to justify his withdrawal from the election as a selfless act.”
But Biden is by no means a selfless person. He lingered in office, repeatedly lying --- there’s plenty of evidence of this --- about his family’s business dealings, and insisted on running for a second term when it was obvious to anyone with open eyes that he was cognitively unfit.
“The pardon power was written in absolute terms,” Turley wrote, “and a President can even, in my view, pardon himself. [Editorial aside: that’s a preview of coming attractions.] However, what is constitutional is not necessarily ethical or right. This is one of the most disgraceful pardons even in the checkered history of presidential pardons.”
“The President has now pardoned Hunter for his convicted felonies and ANY CRIMES HE MAY HAVE COMMITTED [emphasis ours] from January 1, 2014, to December 1, 2024.
“It is all now being buried under a sweeping immunity deal and a pack of presidential lies.”
(For the record, presidential pardons normally go to people who have been convicted and served at least part of their sentences, not given as “Get Out Of Jail” free cards for any and all crimes someone might later be found to have committed.)
CNN senior analyst Elie Honig called this pardon “a historic act of political nepotism.”
https://www.breitbart.com/
On the other hand, some Democrats are so shameless that they want pedal-to-the-metal pardons for everyone now. One MSNBC commentator expressed the hope that President Biden would issue preemptive pardons for “Special Counsel” Jack Smith, all his staff, and DOJ attorneys. Not kidding.
Others in the media either ignored the story, as MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” did, or predictably played the sympathy card for the Biden family…
So, what ARE the alleged crimes, charged or not, that Hunter has been pardoned for (just the ones we know about)? Victoria Taft at PJ MEDIA runs through them (brace yourselves)…
https://pjmedia.com/victoria-
Follow-the-money expert Peter Schweizer is expecting Joe’s brother James Biden to be pardoned next…
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/
Scott Pinsker at PJ MEDIA makes a good point: that in offering this sweeping pardon to his son, President Biden might have inadvertently handed Trump the mandate he needs to reform the “justice” system.
This pardon, and the timing of it, was probably orchestrated by President Biden’s legal advisors and Hunter’s legal team. Such a broad pardon obviously had its purposes but at the same time might have been short-sighted. That’s because with Hunter now pardoned for anything he might have done for the past 11 years, he no longer has Fifth Amendment protection, as he can’t be prosecuted for anything during that time. If he’s called to testify under oath, as before a congressional committee next year, and he makes false statements, he can be prosecuted just like anyone else. And Pam Bondi’s DOJ, unlike Merrick Garland’s, might actually do it.
In all the back-and-forth about the pardon, we’ve hardly heard this mentioned.
Even this piece by FOX NEWS legal analyst Gregg Jarrett doesn’t get into it, but it still sums up the whole story very well. Recommended reading...
My Weekend Monologue
December 1, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Bipartisan Conversations with Ro Khanna
December 1, 2024
Some Cautionary Tales about Government Efficiency
December 1, 2024
Kenneth Allard
In the month since Donald Trump’s astonishing landslide, few initiatives have been more intriguing than his dramatic announcement that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will open a new White House-level Office of Government Efficiency. Its probable targets include those hardy Beltway perennials of waste, fraud and abuse as well as cutting a federal bureaucracy grown like Topsy whenever its lordly denizens actually report to work. The canonical example: That Carter-era abomination known as the Department of Education, seen by the incoming administration as the protector of teachers’ unions and usurper-in-chief of parental responsibilities best reserved for the several states. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/new-details-emerge-about-the-department-of-government-efficiency-s-proposed-cuts-to-federal-workforces/
Although prickly Democrats have already promised resistance in Congress and the courts, Republicans seem to be on a roll, despite their paper-thin majorities as well as those other hardy Beltway perennials known as ‘elections.’ Now in my dotage, I can well remember similar circumstances when in July 1985 President Reagan empaneled a blue-ribbon commission headed by David Packard, founder and Chairman of Hewlett-Packard. As an industrialist and public servant, Packard was a most formidable man. So too were the objectives of his reforms: The overall organization and management of the nation’s defense establishment, particularly its development and procurement of weapons systems.
Re-reading his final report nearly forty years later is enough to make is enough to make anyone cry, because those words still resonate: “DOD must displace systems and structures that measure quality by regulatory compliance and solve problems by executive fiat. Excellence in defense management cannot be achieved by the numerous management layers, large staffs and countless regulations in place today.” https://dair.nps.edu/bitstream/123456789/3705/1/SEC809-RL-86-0106.pdf
However imperfect, the Packard Commission provided a continuing blueprint for reform. It spurred landmark changes, particularly the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, that elevated improved armed forces teamwork to our highest defense priority. Just four years later, Saddam Hussein provided that milestone legislation with the ultimate readiness test of high-intensity joint combat. By then, General Norman Schwarzkopf had reduced its complexities to a wonderfully succinct directive: “You get off that plane and you’re working for me!”
After working for Congressman Nichols as an Army Congressional Fellow, a series of bizarre happenstances placed me several years later astride one of the Packard Commission’s principle remaining goals: Reforming the laws affecting defense acquisition. And what an odd fate: I was not a lawyer, knew nothing about weapons acquisition and seemingly had nothing in common with its practitioners. But my experience with Pentagon reform had left me with many useful object lessons in “the art of the possible”- some of which might interest Messrs Musk and Ramaswami.
The first was recognizing that the operational environment surrounding defense procurement was a series of mutually suspicious and well-armed encampments – not unlike the warring factions I later encountered in Bosnia. Bring up any issue, no matter how benign it might seem on the surface, and you should proceed only after doing your homework to determine the most realistic limits of the possible; otherwise, just like with Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, you were likely to emerge only after a long and pointless discussion of lineage, parentage and the egregious failings of persons who may or may not have been present.
We also had to understand precisely where we were. Our charter asked us to analyze the laws affecting defense acquisition. Well, how many of those laws were there? It took some painstaking research but we eventually came up with the astounding total of 800 laws! What was even worse: Each one of those laws generated multiple enabling regulations, the usual ratio being 1:3. So our 800 procurement laws were magically responsible for procreating at least 2400 regulations, an endlessly expanding crowd of orphans every time Congress passed a new law! Where and how could it all end – and what could our advisory panel do about it?
It took a little over two years to answer those questions, putting in place a comprehensive structure to review those laws, analyze their impact and make a well-documented case for retention, amendment or repeal. We kept close contact with our armed camps by ensuring that our reviews and recommendations fully considered their opinions – pro or con. Although often tempted to conclude that this was merely a fool’s errand, I was very pleasantly surprised when newly-inaugurated President Bill Clinton made our report the basis for his “reinventing government” initiatives.
So the good news is that these reforms eventually transformed all of federal procurement: The bad news is that, thirty years later, we need to do it all over again! Either way: Good luck, Elon and Vivek!
COL (Ret) Ken Allard is a former West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst.
Israel, Antisemitism, and Unity | Huckabee Today
November 30, 2024
Mike Huckabee: Hamas must be rooted out
November 30, 2024
Justice, Politics, and Trump
November 28, 2024
It’s STILL the Economy, Stupid
November 27, 2024
A breakneck pace
November 26, 2024
President-elect Trump is nominating officials to fill his Administration at a breakneck pace, with a flurry of new posts filled just since Friday. We don’t want to turn the newsletter into a long list of names and resumes, so we’ll first point you to this page from Fox News that provides an ongoing tally and background info, then focus on a few appointments of special interest.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/from-cdc-labor-secretary-see-trumps-top-picks-cabinet-roles
Trump supporters were likely pleased that Trump chose Scott Bessant as Treasury Secretary. A longtime Trump economic adviser and founder of Key Square Group, Bessant is a major investment expert and supporter of low taxes, deregulation, government spending restraint and using tariffs as a trade negotiation tool.
Trump also named Russ Vought to head the Office of Management and Budget, a role he previously filled in Trump’s first term.
Scott Turner, an NFL veteran and former head of Trump’s White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, was named to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which could certainly use some revitalization. Democrats on the federal, state and local levels have spent billions if not trillions on housing, yet affordable housing seems to get scarcer and scarcer in blue states.
(Latest example: California Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to build 1200 tiny homes in Sacramento to house the homeless. A year later, not a single tiny home has opened. Maybe they're waiting for Kamala to have that government Internet access up and running.)
Some of Trump’s most headline-grabbing appointments include Dr. Marty Makary, an outspoken critic of the government’s COVID response, as commissioner of the FDA…Former White House adviser and Fox News contributor Dr. Sebastian Gorka as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism…And Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor Secretary and Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as Surgeon General. As you can read at the links below, those last two nominations raised some strenuous objections, and not from Democrats for a change, but from Trump supporters.
It’s been quite some time since we wrote in detail about the “long, proud history of the FBI” when it comes to spying and other wrongdoing. For a refresher --- very timely as the prospect of reforming our intel agencies actually seems within grasp --- Mark Levin’s must-see Sunday monologue runs through the highlights of our government’s repeated Constitution-trampling.
To those political enemies who would criticize President-elect Trump and anticipate him abusing his power, Levin points out that he was one of the most well-behaved and that real presidential misconduct started very early in our nation’s history, with second President John Adams, a brilliant but flawed human being. It was soon after our nation was formed, in 1798, that Adams signed the now-infamous Sedition Act, which effectively criminalized criticism of, well, John Adams. This was tough stuff: “If any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or procure...or knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous, and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States...with intent to defame the said government...shall be punished by fine not exceeding $2,000 and by imprisonment not exceeding 2 years.” Conspirators in such activity could be imprisoned by up to five years!
Americans could even be prosecuted under the Sedition Act for criticizing the Sedition Act.
Adams’ political enemy, Thomas Jefferson (who could legally be criticized all the live-long day) was OF COURSE opposed to this law, and once he was President allowed it to lapse. But before that, 17 indictments and 10 convictions went through, “many upon charges so flimsy as to be comical,” according to Peter McNamara of the Free Speech Center. So the beginning of our great nation was tainted by this affront to free political speech. Just ten years after the Constitution was ratified, we were already violating it to the extreme.
Then there was Abraham Lincoln, who in 1861 suspended habeas corpus from Washington DC to Philadelphia, meaning he could jail people without charging them with a crime. In 1862, in defiance of a federal appellate court ruling, he expanded this to cover the entire nation. Under the authority of the military, thousands of Americans, including political opponents, were imprisoned. Over 300 opposition newspapers were closed. Yes, it was wartime, but this was still unconstitutional political warfare.
In 1917 and 1918, respectively, Democrat Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act and Sedition Act, which, according to Levin, “would come to be known as the most egregious assaults on free speech in our history.” Thousands were prosecuted under these laws, most notably Wilson’s own political opponent Eugene Debs, whose sentence was later commuted by Wilson’s successor, Republican Warren G. Harding.
Wilson implemented the most extensive censorship regime of any President, according to Levin. And the Espionage Act of 1917 lives on. We would add that “Special Counsel” Jack Smith used it to charge President Trump with “willful retention of sensitive national defense information.”
Then there’s the IRS. Documents prove that Franklin Roosevelt and his administration used it to destroy the careers of their political enemies, such as former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, a Republican whom they knew was innocent. FDR’s IRS also targeted newspaper publishers, among them William Randolph Hearst and Frank Gannett, who expressed opposition to the New Deal. This is just scratching the surface.
JFK’s IRS provided him with the supposedly private tax information on individuals, businesses and groups. Conservative groups were audited under “the Ideological Organizations Audit Program” (so, Lois Lerner wasn’t the first to do this). JFK used the FBI to spy on Martin Luther King, Jr., tapping his phones, bugging his house and monitoring his every move. Lyndon Johnson went further, using the FBI, IRS and CIA to spy on opponent Barry Goldwater, wiretapping his campaign headquarters.
According to Levin, they found out that one of Barry Goldwater’s staffers was gay, which Goldwater had known, and were threatening to use that. Goldwater called a senior member of LBJ’s campaign and said, “Please do not ruin this man’s life.” Ultimately, they chose not to.
Being paranoid about Robert Kennedy, LBJ sent FBI spies to the 1964 Democratic Convention, where they also continued monitoring Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders. In ‘68, when Hubert Humphrey was nominated, LBJ had the FBI tap his phones as well, to check his loyalty about the Vietnam War. Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg, or spies-berg.
Levin skips over the Nixon administration, perhaps because their most famous spying is so well-known (but note how Democrats at the time pretended to be shocked by it.) He fast-forwards to President Obama and his AG Eric Holder, of whom even CNN’s Jake Tapper said, “The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers who leaked to journalists...more than all previous administrations combined…” That would be seven times.
Recall that in 2013, the “Justice” Department seized, with no notice or justification, phone records for 20 telephone lines to AP offices and journalists’ home lines, affecting more than 100 journalists. Just a week later, the DOJ named FOX NEWS journalist James Rosen a criminal co-conspirator in a leak case, tracking his movements, seizing his email logs and even spying on his parents. Obama’s spying gets much, much worse; check out this story from 2016…
As for Obama-Biden and the Deep State’s actions against Trump, you know all about those horrendous abuses of power: the unrelenting lawfare against Trump and his associates; the spying on his campaign and White House; massive leaking (including Trump’s tax returns); the Russia Hoax; two sham impeachments; the raid on his home; and the agencies’ role in January 6 and the spying, tracking, raiding, arrests and convictions that followed. Not to mention the government’s online censorship activities.
So the good ol’ USA has a long history of abuse of power by its leaders. But not by Trump --- he was the victim of it. How ironic that the very one who’s actually trying to change this, to make this country the kind of open, honest place we’d like to think it is, is the one being hounded and feared and called a dictator. They accuse him of “destroying norms,” but if the norm he plans to destroy is government spying on American citizens and abusing its power for political reasons, then bring on the wrecking ball.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6365141316112
Speaking of January 6 abuses, BLAZE MEDIA has an update on their journalist Steve Baker, who recently chose to plead guilty to four misdemeanor charges (such as “milling” and “parading”) rather than endure a trial. As it happens, his pre-trial hearing was the day after the election, and he says the judge “really showed his intolerance.”
This judge, no doubt ticked off at the election outcome, wouldn’t even allow discovery. “He showed that he was going to be completely inflexible in the trial.” Baker says. “He dismissed all our motions...and the most important motion that we had is, we were requesting from the government discovery on the other 80 to 100 journalists that went through the building and weren’t charged with anything.” According to Baker, his judge is “best friends with Merrick Garland.”
This, combined with the prospect of a Washington DC jury pool, is what led him to change his plea to guilty.
After that, Baker says, the judge “made a serious unforced error” in chastising him. “He criticized none of the [alleged] behavior...but what he did criticize me [for]...[was] my remarks in my journalism about weaponized Department of Justice and the bias of the court.”
So, not his actions, but his words, critical of the government. (Ah, we come full circle to John Adams’ Sedition Act.) Steve Baker needs to be at the top of the list of those J6 political prisoners Trump pardons immediately after his inauguration. Watch this five-minute clip of his interview with Pat Gray here, highly recommended, in which he says the government is still at this, as it just SWAT-teamed and arrested an Austin man (a cancer patient) who had nonviolently entered the Capitol that day. This was done last week, AFTER the election.
https://www.theblaze.com/shows/pat-gray-unleashed/steve-baker-felon
When you have time, here’s investigative reporter Julie Kelly interviewing 22-year Marine Corps. Veteran, Purple Heart recipient and J6 political prisoner Christopher Kuehne.
Tristan Justice at THE FEDERALIST has an exclusive report on the evidence that shows the Pentagon deliberately delayed the deployment of the National Guard on January 6. Recall our recent story about the Inspector General “knowingly concealing” the extent of the delay and Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s letter to IG Robert P. Storch about this, insisting he correct his report.
Kash Patel, who was then chief of staff for the Defense Department, is quoted here from a FEDERALIST story back in March, insisting that President Trump authorized those 10,000 National Guard. It’s now crystal clear that Trump did just that and has told the truth about it all along.
Speaking of Kash Patel, he appeared Sunday on FOX NEWS with Maria Bartiromo to explain how he as FBI Director would restore public trust in the Bureau. Exposure of the corruption is a must, he said. “Put out the documents. Put out the evidence. We only have gotten halfway down the Russiagate hole.”
In other words, it’s far worse than we know after almost four years. Watch Patel’s interview at THE GATEWAY PUNDIT, which also features a rundown of the transgressions (that we know of) by current FBI Director Chris Wray.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/11/kash-patel-displays-why-he-is-best-pick/
In “Justice” Department news, so much to be thankful for this week!
November 26, 2024
On Monday, just as our newsletter staff was preparing to take the occasional pause that refreshes, we had one of the best news days we could’ve hoped for since Election 2024. Talk about ending this short work week on a high note! There’s a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.
First and perhaps most important, as reported by the POST MILLENNIAL, President-elect Trump is “set to nominate Kash Patel to a top role in the FBI or the Department of Justice.” AXIOS, citing “top transition sources,” broke the news more tentatively, saying that “the President-elect is considering him to be deputy FBI director or a high-up investigative role in the DOJ.”
In case you’re not familiar with Patel’s extensive background, the PM report summarizes it well. Another top contender for the job of FBI director has reportedly been Missouri AG Andrew Bailey, another fabulous choice. As we recently reported in another piece of delightful news, Mike Rogers, whose name had been floated (by whom, we have to wonder?) as a prospective FBI director, is not and has never been up for consideration by Trump. One would imagine that once Trump heard Rogers had been given the thumbs-up by none other than disgraced former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now a contributor at MSNBC, that would have cemented his decision.
Regarding any appointment of Rogers to the FBI, Trump was quoted by senior Trump campaign adviser Dan Scavino as saying he had “never even given it a thought.”
So, why might Trump be thinking about Patel for deputy director and not the top spot? Perhaps it’s to keep him out of reach of senators who fear him and plan to refuse his confirmation. Patel is someone of whom it’s often said that he “knows where all the bodies are buried.”
But Mike Davis, who might have similar knowledge of the location of those (figurative?) bodies, says Patel would have no problem with Senate confirmation. After reading what some leftist hack wrote about him in his Wikipedia entry, we’re wondering if Andrew Bailey might actually have more trouble, with Dems and RINOs:
“During his tenure as attorney general,” it says, “Bailey has refused to release prisoners after overturned convictions, attempted unsuccessfully to restrict gender-affirming care, battled initiatives to restore access to abortion in Missouri, and staunchly defended former President Donald Trump over his legal problems.”
That was just the second paragraph, and the author was only getting started. Most of these seem like good reasons FOR Bailey’s appointment. We don’t know the details of those cases in which he allegedly resisted releasing prisoners but unfortunately cannot rely on the Wikipedia entry, which really is just a hit piece. (And, sorry, Wikipedia, after showing us this slanted piece of garbage presented as an “encyclopedia” entry, you do NOT get the small donation your fundraising pop-up screen solicited.)
As for Patel, either as director, deputy director or special investigator, he is a spectacular choice. Until Trump is sworn in and does what he will with current FBI Director Chris Wray (which should involve a man-size Hefty bag in anticipation of trash day), Wray is still there and behaving true to form. As we reported yesterday, agents just last week raided the home of another nonviolent J6 attendee, a cancer patient, and arrested him. January 20 can’t come too soon.
https://thepostmillennial.com/
Speaking of confirmation, it might surprise you to know that there’s nothing in the Constitution that requires FBI background checks for any White House appointees or even the President himself. J. D. Rucker makes the case that this FBI should NOT be doing background checks on Trump’s team.
The actual RULE is this: After someone is hired for the position, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Administration, which is not involved with the FBI at all, does a security check before that person receives top-secret clearance. These professionals are looking for “threats,” Rucker says, while the FBI is looking for “dirt.” The goal of the FBI, as they have shown many times, is to subvert the Trump administration.
This would explain why so often a nominee is derailed --- or almost derailed --- when the opposition resorts to “trotting out the women,” as we like to call it. These alleged personal failings have nothing to do with national security. (Exception: when, as in the case of Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, the woman is a Chinese spy.)
Rucker notes that Tulsi Gabbard is really being “slammed hard” by political enemies with made-up stuff about her being a Russian agent. RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth are in the crosshairs as well. Trump should stand firm, he says: “The moment he allows the Deep State to start weaving their tentacles into his appointees, that’s the moment when we’re going to start seeing the situations such as what we saw with Gen. Michael Flynn, who should have been in the last Trump administration.” It was VP Pence and the FBI who stopped that. Recall that thanks to the machinations of then-FBI Director James Comey, Flynn got to serve as Trump’s national security advisor for 11 whole days.
The Senate really can’t use FBI warnings about “national security” as pretext for rejecting nominees. Again, that’s because after confirmation, there’s another agency that verifies they’re good-to-go.
“If they tell you otherwise,” Rucker says, “they’re lying.” In support of that statement, we would add that one of the most vocal proponents of using the FBI for vetting has been confirmed liar California Rep. (now Senator-elect – thanks, California) Adam Schiff.
As Mollie Hemingway told FOX NEWS’ Laura Ingraham on Monday night, “The idea that these [at the FBI] are people who could in any way vet whether a candidate is good or not, that they would be trusted to do that, is just laughable.”
Likewise Mary Katharine Ham: “The idea that by getting elected by the popular vote and the Electoral College and then naming people to his Cabinet, he’s ‘dismantling’ the government [as another confirmed liar, New York Rep. Dan Goldman, has said] seems insane to me…The idea that the FBI should be trusted by a Trump transition team --- I cannot express how wild that is without using cuss words...”
The other big, happy piece of news we received Monday is that “Special Counsel” Jack Smith finally dropped the four remaining charges against Trump related to January 6. He had already dropped the charges against him in the Mar-A-Lago “classified documents” case.
Sadly for Trump’s two J6 co-defendants, Smith did not dismiss charges against them, as they don’t enjoy Trump’s presidential immunity as established by the Supreme Court this summer. And in Smith’s characteristic weasel fashion, he dismissed the case against Trump “without prejudice,” meaning he could actually pick it up again at some point, presumably when Trump is out of office in 2029. “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant,” he lied.
On the contrary, re-filing this ridiculous case should be met with extreme prejudice.
Julie Kelly has an enjoyable piece on what a graceless loser and pathetic failure Jack Smith is, outlining his history and noting that just this year, this “dirty Democratic operative” was rebuked by the Supreme Court “on three separate occasions.” She also gets her digs in at presiding Judge Tanya Chutkan, a partisan monster in a black robe.
Kelly strongly recommends an investigation into these cases, with criminal charges “where appropriate.” She sees plenty of evidence to support charges of conspiracy, especially in the J6 case, which “revealed collaboration between the National Archives, the DOJ and the Biden White House to concoct a documents case against Trump as early as spring of 2021.”
Continuing: “Court proceedings in Florida also disclosed examples of evidence tampering, destruction of evidence, and witness intimidation not to mention the selective nature of bringing a documents case against a former president for the first time in history while at the same time other public officials including Joe Biden and Mike Pence were found to have unlawfully kept classified files after leaving office.”
And then there’s the shameful Mar-A-Lago raid, which should be investigated as a likely set-up.
“If the DOJ had a Hall Of Shame,” Kelly writes, “it would be named after Jack Smith.”
https://www.declassified.live/
FOX NEWS legal analyst Gregg Jarrett had some good comments Monday night with Sean Hannity, especially about the role played by the media in furthering all this.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/
Here’s more from Jonathan Turley about what a loser Jack Smith is, one that history will not treat kindly. Not that Smith deserves kindness.
Here’s Turley’s full column on the January 6 case.
https://jonathanturley.org/
Aforementioned liar Adam Schiff “had a hissy,” as we say in the South, about Smith dropping the J6 charges against Trump. He blew up on X, and, yes, he actually used the line that “no one is above the law.” (So far, Schiff seems to be. For example, last we heard, claiming homes in two different states as one’s primary residence is called “fraud.”) Bonchie’s excellent piece on Schiff’s reaction doesn’t spare the January 6 “Select” Committee, either. How about “selecting” co-chairs Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, among others, for a nice, big investigation? Not for vengeance, but to know the truth.
Finally, Victoria Taft at PJ MEDIA offers suggestions for how Trump can get “payback” against Jack Smith and “the lawfare mob.” Again, this isn’t about revenge, but rather punishment to the full extent of the law so there’s no repeat of the lawfare against Trump and anyone representing or supporting him. In her words, “this cancer has to be rooted out to stop its corruptive spread.” She’s right; it needs major surgery and chemo.
Taft lays out in bullet points the myriad abuses by “Lawfare Incorporated.” Of particular note is the 65 Project, which targets attorneys who dare to represent Trump. Alan Dershowitz, who himself has been targeted by this group, wants a thorough investigation of that, as well as a probe of the case in New York brought by Letitia James and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.
But for now, it’s time for us to go and give thanks for all the great news. There is so much to be thankful for, this is bound to take us pretty much the rest of the week.
Texas REVOLUTIONIZES Education with Bluebonnet Learning
November 25, 2024
Mike's Interview with Author Ryan Collins
November 25, 2024
Mike’s Interview with Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters
November 25, 2024
Megan Basham EXPOSES How Leftist Agendas TARGET the Church
November 25, 2024
A Mother’s Fight to PROTECT Children
November 25, 2024
Mike Huckabee: Trump understands Israel is the centerpiece of the world
November 22, 2024
What will Mike Huckabee focus on if made Israel ambassador?
November 22, 2024
Can America Be Saved? Todd Starnes EXPOSES the Fight for Our Future
November 22, 2024
Trump striking at the Deep State with bold cabinet picks
November 21, 2024
Trump’s cabinet nominations are the clearest sign he could give that it’s no longer business as usual for the Deep State. (And for those who still question the use of the term “Deep State” and whether or not it’s even real or just a conspiracy theory, we say YES, it’s real, and YES, that’s our preferred term. Expect to see much more discussion of it here in the next months, as we watch it being dismantled.)
(Note: For those who scoff at the idea of Trump being able to dismantle these agencies, Vivek Ramaswamy of Trump’s new Government Efficiency agency explained that the “dirty little secret” of DC is that the government isn’t being run by the people we elect but by unelected executive branch bureaucrats. And most of their power and the damages they cause stem from regulations that the Supreme Court has recently ruled they had no unconstitutional power to impose. So yes, Trump will have the authority to gut them. Remember that some of the same people crying that a smaller government can’t do its job also said Twitter couldn’t function if Elon Musk cut 80% of the work force. It seems to be functioning just fine.)
Matt Gaetz for Attorney General is the most obvious example of a jolt to the Deep State, as the left is freaking out over what they wrongly see as retribution or revenge against the DOJ. Former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherlasky told the DAILY CALLER that “Gaetz is clearly an outsider and disruptor, and that’s the point.” He’s “exactly what President Trump promised for the DOJ during his campaign, namely to end the department’s left-leaning focus on lawfare, censorship, and election interference.”
Sounds perfect. On the other hand, legal analyst Andrew McCarthy isn’t too pleased, suggesting that Gaetz lacks qualification because he was “among the leading proponents of the effort to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election.” Sigh. We have to wonder what McCarthy’s assessment of that election might be one day, after everything comes out in the wash.
Here’s more on the Gaetz pick and others from the DAILY CALLER.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/11/17/trump-doj-bureaucrats-unexpected-leadership-picks/
Speaking of the 2020 election, another sign that things are changing is the discussion of revoking the security clearances for those 51 former intel officials who signed the infamous “classic earmarks” letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop being Russian disinformation. That letter might have been the biggest single piece of election interference of all time. The signers are lucky if they’re not prosecuted.
One might wonder what any FORMER intel officials need with security clearances, anyway. Wouldn’t you think that once they leave the government, they shouldn’t retain them? California Rep. Darrell Issa is asking that question.
Gaetz was the subject of an ethics investigation in the House, and Speaker Mike Johnson is saying that since he has already resigned his House seat --- a curious move --- it would violate House rules for the House Ethics Committee to release it.
Whatever happens with this, and whether or not Gaetz wins Senate confirmation, we trust that whoever ends up with that job will be as tenacious as he is. Details at THE EPOCH TIMES…
As we said last week, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is at the hub of the intelligence wheel. Now Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for DNI, has reportedly sparked “a special kind of unease among Democratic lawmakers, the liberal media, and elements of the intelligence community.” And for ridiculous “reasons” that sound like a rehash of the Trump I Russia Hoax.
Tom Nichols at THE ATLANTIC is having a cow. Likewise, Bill Kristol. Wow, that sounds like the best recommendation FOR Tulsi Gabbard we could possibly have! This piece at THE BLAZE is a must-read…
Biden & company seem determined to undermine Trump
November 21, 2024
Despite his surprisingly cordial transition meeting with Trump, President Biden and his staffers seem determined to do everything they can to undermine Trump before he takes office. We already told you how they’re shoveling billions of dollars from the “Inflation Reduction Act” to shady green “nonprofits” recently formed by their cronies, to keep Trump from canceling the spending. They reportedly just promoted three DEI-pushing woke military leaders that Trump wants to replace. They were also trying to send as much money as possible to Ukraine to continue the war Trump vowed to end. But Biden’s latest move might be not merely unscrupulous but dangerous.
During a press conference in the South American rainforest to promote a reforestation program, Biden announced that he’s given permission to Ukraine to use American-made long-range missiles that can reach into Russia. The reason is that Russia has reportedly amassed 50,000 troops in the Kursk region, including 10,000 North Korean troops, and this will allow Ukraine to go on the offensive and maybe dissuade Kim Jong-Un from further involvement.
But critics across the political spectrum are alarmed that this escalation brings us a step closer to World War III. Vladimir Putin has said that he will consider it an act of war against Russia if any nuclear nation provides Ukraine with weapons to attack inside Russia’s territory, and he reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response.
The leader of an opposition party in Russia said that allowing Ukraine to bomb Russia directly would mean “direct US participation in the military conflict in Ukraine. Which will inevitably entail the harshest response from Russia.” He warned, “The Biden administration cannot help but understand that it leaves the Trump team with the problem of resolving not only the Ukrainian conflict, but also an even more acute one – preventing a global confrontation.”
I assume the Biden Administration does understand that, even if Biden himself doesn’t. He ended his press conference by bizarrely turning around and walking into the rainforest. It would be a blessing for America and the world if his entire Administration would go away now by doing the same thing.
Mike Huckabee says 'past is the prelude for the future' for Trump's foreign policy
November 19, 2024
INSIDE Trump’s Historic Red Wave: Julia Manchester Breaks It Down
November 19, 2024
Why Trump Might Be The Most Pro-Israel President In American History
November 19, 2024
Mike's interview with Senior Editor-at-Large and In-House Counsel at Breitbart News
November 17, 2024
The Lovin Spoonful
November 17, 2024
Mike Huckabee's Show Monologue
November 17, 2024
SGT Cortney & Jesus Carmona share their story on Huckabee
November 17, 2024
Mike's interview with Tennessee State Senator Jack Johnson about his work to protect children from transgender activists
November 17, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Comedian Jeff Allen on Huckabee
November 17, 2024
Thanks, Joe
November 16, 2024
Joe Biden is leaving us something to remember him by: Persistent inflation.
Remember that great Biden-Harris economy we were told we were stupid for not voting for more of? And how inflation was over? The Labor Department reported Wednesday that the October consumer price index rose by 0.2%, same as the previous month. It was actually 0.244%, but the government rounds prices down. Wish the grocery store would do that. This means the annual inflation rate that was 2.4% in September was up to 2.6% in October. I believe that’s moving the wrong way. Thank goodness voters didn’t.
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/11/13/inflation-rose-in-october/
Biden is also helping fuel inflation by leaving us with a big new tax. His EPA finalized a rule imposing a tax of $900 on the oil and gas industry for every metric ton of methane emitted over a certain level in 2024. It rises to $1200 in 2025, $1500 in 2026, and I assume the sky’s the limit. Fortunately, Trump taking over the EPA in January should bring the end of this.
This will be sold by Democrats as a tax on the eeeevil oil and gas companies, but it’s actually a tax on all of us. It will just be passed on to consumers in the form of higher energy prices, which will raise prices on everything that uses energy to create or transport, which is everything. That’s called “inflation.” And guess where the EPA’s authority to do this came from? The trillion-dollar “climate change” spending bill laughably named “The Inflation Reduction Act.” We should tax the people who passed that for all the hot gas they spewed.
Welcome news
November 16, 2024
Mike Huckabee
This is welcome news, even if hard to believe. Podcaster Joe Rogan claims that a number of artists, musicians and comedians have privately thanked him for endorsing Trump. Despite all the public histrionics over the election from leftist celebrities, Rogan says that a surprising number of them actually support Trump and think the country’s going in the wrong direction, but they’re afraid to say it for fear they’ll lose their careers.
Rogan said, “The whole thing is nuts. And it’s a dangerous path that we were on…Trump has vowed to have free speech become a very important part of what he’s standing for. And that this censoring of information needs to stop. And that we need to stop all government influence in what people have to say.”
Of course, the Hollywood leftists have also denounced Rogan as a far-right extremist, but he’s incredibly successful in new media and doesn’t need them. He’s also not even a conservative: the last presidential candidate he endorsed was socialist Bernie Sanders, who just told his party they lost because they are out of touch with working Americans. Sounds like they’ve even out of touch with some of their fellow cowed celebrities.
Wonder if one of them is Sylvester Stallone? Nah, he’s definitely not afraid of being “canceled” by anti-Trumpers.
Report: Major changes coming to "The View"
November 16, 2024
The original idea of “The View” was to present a daily discussion of major topics by women with a variety of viewpoints. It’s morphed into a daily hivemind session where five leftists compete to see who can shout the craziest leftwing talking points to get the audience to clap like trained seals. But after last week’s election shocked them, ABC executives are finally starting to question whether it’s wise for their bottom line to air a show that spends an hour a day calling the majority of Americans stupid, sexist, racist, fascist Nazis.
So the New York Post reports that ABC is planning major changes to “The View,” such as adding some women with actual differing views, even – brace yourselves – a Trump-voting Republican!
If it’s the usual network set-up of one Republican being shouted down by four crazy liberals, we’re not sure who would take the gig. One suggestion we’d love to see was Roseanne Barr. She’d send the other four fleeing to their dressing rooms in tears. But if she didn’t take the gig, who would? Some commentators have suggested they find one of the many hard-working women who take on jobs that nobody else wants to do, from caring for the elderly to changing diapers. That would prepare them for being on “The View.”
RELATED: Whoopi Goldberg accused a New York bakery of refusing to take a cake order from her because the owner didn’t approve of her political views. The bakery got bombarded with calls over it.
We know liberals love to play the victim, but the baker said she turned down the order, as she explained, because her building is from 1930 and has an unreliable boiler so she can’t accept orders weeks in advance since she doesn’t know if the equipment will be working. She did supply 50 treats to “The View” that day, and she said she didn’t know or care about the politics of whoever picked them up.
EPA reform…more likely than ever
November 15, 2024
Huckabee Team
When President Trump attempts to reform the EPA to get it away from radical environmental authoritarianism, he’ll now have a much clearer path. This week, in the case of Marin Audubon Society, et al v. FAA, et al, the US Court of Appeals in DC wiped out 46 years' of federal environmental regulations.
The court ruled that a body called the Council on Environmental Quality inside the Executive Office of the President has for years been writing environmental regulations and guidelines and illegally publishing them in the Federal Record, as if they had the force of law, when the CEQ has no such legal authority.
Streiff at Redstate.com has details at the link, along with the ironic news that the case was actually brought by environmentalists who wanted a regulation enforced, but it caused the judges to notice that the regulations never should have been imposed in the first place.
Look for other agencies to rush to reimpose decades’ worth of now-overturned regulations before Trump gets in, but with the SCOTUS having killed the Chevron deference that gave those agencies preferential treatment in court, the feds may be facing a tsunami of lawsuits against their ironfisted eco-dictates.
I hope to play a role in making Israel, Middle East safer: Mike Huckabee | National Report
November 15, 2024
More of the “Trump Effect,” or good things already happening before he even takes office:
November 15, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Iran reportedly “postponed” a third attack on Israel in hopes of reaching a deal with Trump…
https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2024/11/13/iran-israel-attack-deal-trump/
In an effusively complimentary letter, a member of the Saudi Royals asked Trump to “finish what you started” (i.e., the miraculous Abraham Accords peace deals that were going so well before peace in the Middle East was revoked by executive order of Joe Biden.)
The mayor of New York City is quietly telling hundreds of “migrants” that their free hotel stays will end as of December 15 (not a great time to be kicked out of your hotel in New York), and the deadline to get out has been moved forward from Dec. 31.
Also, the President of South Korea is taking golf lessons in hopes of playing with Trump; the UK hopes to cut a deal with Trump to avoid new tariffs by agreeing to separate more from the EU; EU officials are talking about buying more gas from the US in hopes of getting a discount on Trump’s tariffs; and Steven Colbert revealed that he’s so upset, he’s stress-eating.
Don’t know if this another aspect of the salutary “Trump Effect,” or that Americans are finally unafraid to say how fed up they are with arrogant leftists who are always wrong telling them to shut up, or that media outlets are tired of circling down the financial toilet. But whatever the cause, we’ll take it: The Los Angeles Times has fired its entire leftwing editorial board and wants to replace them with actual journalists who will cover the incoming Trump Administration fairly and factually. Good luck finding any real journalists to hire these days.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/11/los-angeles-times-owner-fires-far-left-editorial/
It’s also not a good time to be a leftist at CNN or MSNBC. Seems that corporate owners will only put up with so much low-rated and money-losing ranting before they start handing the pinkoes pink slips.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/11/12/cnn-ratings-and-lots-of-firings-coming-n2181920
The real enemy for Democrats
November 15, 2024
Mike Huckabee
The Democratic Party is facing an “existential threat,” but it’s not the bad orange man. To paraphrase the comic strip “Pogo,” they have met the enemy, and it is them.
In trying to figure out what caused last week’s shellacking at the polls, some Democrats are crying, pointing fingers, having tantrums and meltdowns, and claiming the problem is that the party wasn’t “progressive” enough (How many men can you fit INTO a girl’s bathroom?!)
But other Democrats are trying to take the party back from the far-left loons and drag it back toward the center. They’ve sensed that catering to the lunatic fringe and its boutique “problems” while calling working class voters stupid bigots and Nazis for complaining about $7-a-pound butter wasn’t a smart election strategy.
Will they be successful in restoring common sense to the Democratic Party? It’s not looking good, if early reactions are any indication.
For instance, former staffers and interns of Rep. Seth Moulton are demanding an apology, and some LGBTQIA+++ activists even want his resignation over "offensive" remarks he made in an op-ed. Here’s what he said (Better cover the eyes of any children in the room):
He said the Democratic Party spends “way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
I guess he should be afraid to say that if he wants to be a Democrat politician. He should join us over on the Republican side. We’ve been speaking obvious truths for years and not caring what lunatics say about us. It’s remarkably freeing.
Chipping away at the Deep State; it’s already starting to happen
November 14, 2024
Mike Huckabee
With Tulsi Gabbard’s strong commitment to freedom, individual rights and peace through strength, along with her military background (two tours in the Middle East with the National Guard), it was a foregone conclusion that President-elect Trump would find a choice spot for her in his second administration. That has happened, with Trump announcing Wednesday that she is his nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI). She’s an outstanding pick.
Relatively few Americans even know what the role of the DNI is, but it’s pivotal, especially at this time of reorganization and reform of the intel agencies. Yet most news stories about this, including the one linked to above, offer little clue as to what it’s for, so we’ll explain. First, the federal government has 18 (count ‘em) different intelligence agencies! We’re all familiar with the CIA, FBI and NSA, but there’s also the Defense Intelligence Agency for military intel and numerous others much more obscure. The State Department, Treasury Department and DEA have their own intelligence bureaus. The Army, Navy, Marine Corps., Air Force, Coast Guard and Space Force each have their own intelligence offices. You can learn much more about this at the DNI website.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/
Of course, part of the reform of the intelligence community will almost surely be to eliminate some of these and consolidate others, but in the meantime, the Office of the DNI is intended to be the go-between, the one who coordinates communication and intelligence sharing among all of them.
As DNI, Tulsi will be at the hub of all that. In theory at least, when, say, the CIA wants to work with the FBI on a particular investigation, they’re supposed to work through the DNI. (The CIA isn’t supposed to just go in and spy on Americans, you know --- only the FBI can do that, haha.)
On their website, they provide this capsule description of the DNI’s role: The DNI “serves as the head of the U.S. Intelligence Community, overseeing and directing the implementation of the National Intelligence Program and acting as the principal advisor to the President, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to national security. Specific duties are outlined here…
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/
Obviously, for someone like Trump who himself has been targeted by multiple intelligence agencies and who wants to bring as much transparency as possible to their activities, the person in this job must be impeccably trustworthy. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s superb nominee for CIA Director, used to be the DNI himself. In Trump’s announcement on Tuesday, he said this about Ratcliffe:
“From exposing fake Russian collusion to be a Clinton campaign operation, to catching the FBI’s abuse of Civil Liberties at the FISA Court, John Ratcliffe has always been a warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American public. When 51 intelligence officials were lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop, there was one, John Ratcliffe, telling the truth to the American people.”
In 2020, Trump awarded Ratcliffe the National Security Medal, which is, Trump said, “the Nation’s highest honor for distinguished achievement in the field of intelligence and National Security.” Previously a Texas congressman, Ratcliffe really has been at the leading edge.
Investigative reporter Julie Kelly is liking what she sees at the DOJ, as she sees the “rats fleeing the ship” in anticipation of Trump’s allies coming in and the scales of justice having a chance to “recalibrate.”
For example, in an update on our “Special Counsel” Jack Smith story from Wednesday, he and his prosecution team confirmed they’ll be resigning before Trump takes office on January 20. It’s not yet clear whether or not Smith will file a confidential report summarizing their work, required under the DOJ’s rules for special counsels. Oh, well, Smith always seemed to make up his own rules. And he’s never really been a special counsel, anyway.
According to a story in THE NEW YORK TIMES, Smith now “finds himself on the defensive” (all together now: “Awwwww!!”). This is because, as we reported yesterday, Republicans Jim Jordan, House Judiciary chairman, and Barry Loudermilk, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, have told DOJ officials working on their two Trump cases to preserve all of their communications for investigators. (Of course, the House’s sham January 6 committee was supposed to preserve all their records, too, and they chose to destroy them instead, with no repercussions so far. I digress.) The NYT writers say this is “a sure sign that a new balance of power in Washington will make Mr. Smith among those being hunted by congressional investigators and others.”
Ah, we get what you’re saying, NYT writers. It’s the REPUBLICANS who are “hunting” now, simply for wanting accountability for the man who was hunting President Trump and exploiting the legal system in every twisted way possible to stop him from becoming President again.
As Kelly details, Smith “filed unprecedented federal indictments” against the President in Washington for the events of January 6 and in Florida “related to Trump’s alleged hoarding of national defense secrets,” but that his all-out pursuit of Trump is ending with “a whimper, not a bang.” This must surprise all the cable news hosts and so-called legal experts who, she says, “hung on Smith’s every move in court, salivating over the vision of the war-crimes prosecutor [that was Smith’s background] hauling their long-time nemesis off to the gulag in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit.”
No, instead they’re going to see their “nemesis” re-inaugurated. And they won’t understand this, but if Smith turns out to be the one wearing an orange jumpsuit, it won’t be for “revenge” but for justice over his abuses of a defendant’s rights.
Rep. Jordan has also indicated that he may ask Smith to testify publicly, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller had to do after his investigation was over. (Remember how oddly confused Mueller appeared to be? It seemed that his second-in-command Andrew Weissmann might have been the actual leader.) From what she knows of Smith’s personality, Kelly anticipates that he “will lay bare his sense of superiority and air of imperviousness for all the world to see.”
She suggests they also interview Jay Bratt, who is also planning to beat a hasty retreat from the DOJ. Recall that Bratt is alleged to have threatened a defense attorney --- the one who was up for a judgeship? --- in the so-called “classified” documents case, to induce him to pressure his client to flip on Trump. Bratt also visited the Biden White House at least twice and is alleged to have pushed aggressively behind the scenes for the armed FBI raid on Mar-A-Lago, which he sure got.
Kelly goes on to note that, according to a story in POLITICO, DOJ employees are “terrified” over Trump’s return, with one attorney saying that department prosecutors are “losing their minds.” He said, “The fear is that career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they’re going to be driven out.”
That’s exactly what needs to happen at the DOJ. And Trump isn’t even in office yet. This is what they’re calling “the Trump effect.” It’s like cockroaches scurrying to hide when the kitchen light comes on.
Prosecutors know they could be in big trouble over such abuses as withholding exculpatory evidence and violating the due process rights of J6 defendants, who often were detained for months and years without knowing the charges against them and without even being able to speak to their attorneys. As Kelly reports, “In June, the Supreme Court concluded the DOJ unlawfully applied 18 USC 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding, in J6 cases but not before hundreds were charged and over 100 sent to prison.”
Then we have selective prosecution. Kelly writes that “no other group of political protesters in U.S. history has been subjected to the kind of federal charges levied against J6-ers.” No wonder these prosecutors are panicked; they know what they did. They might have thought they were safe, assuming they’d “get” Trump before he could come back and “get” them. But, again, a re-tooled DOJ “getting” them on things they actually did sounds more like justice, not vengeance.
https://www.declassified.live/
RELATED STORY: In a very different take on Trump’s new term, MSNBC intel expert Jeremy Bash (Dana Bash’s ex-husband and one of those 51 officials who signed the “classic earmarks” letter about Hunter’s laptop) said on Monday that he “expects” U.S. military and intelligence leaders to undermine President Trump and disobey orders if they decide they’re “unlawful” or “political.”
These are the “institutionalists,” he said, “who will apply “checks and balances.”
Oh, really? Are these the same checks and balances they used when they disregarded Trump’s authorization for 10,000 National Guard troops at the Capitol on January 6, which would have prevented the riot that they apparently really, really wanted to have?
You have to read this. This guy personifies the very attitude that has to be swept from the DOJ and the entire intelligence community.
MORE READING: For when you have time, Trump’s Agenda47 (not to be confused with “Project 2025,” which has nothing to do with Trump) lists point-by-point the actions Trump plans to take to dismantle the Deep State. They involve establishing a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and abuses of power. Transparency at last! Better prepare to be shocked.
And here’s a snippet of Victoria Taft’s interview with investigative reporter Lee Smith about it…
“Your FBI” has been spying on Americans in yet another way
November 13, 2024
Huckabee Team
At the time of this writing early Wednesday morning, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has been nominated by President-elect Trump to head the CIA --- fabulous choice, Mr. President --- but his nominee for FBI director is yet to be announced. That’s going to be such a key position, right up there with U.S. Attorney General, because the FBI has to be taken apart and put back together in order to fix it. The corruption there is breathtaking, as a story that hit late Tuesday reminds us.
An FBI analyst testified before the House Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government (Barry Loudermilk’s subcommittee) that the FBI’s “Foreign Influence Task Force” has been using a new software tool specifically to track election-related speech on social media. Never mind the word “foreign” in this task force’s name, because the task force doesn’t pay attention to that, either. According to this analyst, they’ve been using their new “tool” on Americans.
In a (probably useless) letter to FBI Director Chris Wray, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan wrote that this tool was being used to monitor social media posts “regardless of whether the users are American citizens or foreign actors, to search for ‘content indicative of criminal conduct.’”
According to the analyst, the FBI then shares user names and specific content with social media companies “to censor such conduct accordingly.” That’s right --- they’re STILL DOING THIS.
When the witness was asked about the scope of said “criminal conduct,” FBI counsel repeatedly prevented him from fully answering.
“Therefore,” Jordan continued, “we write to obtain additional information in order to understand whether the FBI has or could use this software tool to censor or infringe upon lawful speech, particularly Americans’ political speech.”
This is more election interference by our own FBI, and Americans have had enough. These power-mad bureaucrats just can’t seem to stop themselves from spying on Americans and controlling what we’re allowed to say, so someone else is going to have to stop them, even if it involves firing the whole lot of them. Every one of them, that is, except the whistleblowers, who deserve a raise and a promotion.
Mike Huckabee addresses role as US ambassador to Israel: 'A new sheriff is in town'
November 13, 2024
A Post-Election Reflection
November 13, 2024
Kenneth Allard
At dawn a week ago, I was driving on an overhead connector in San Antonio, several stories taller than most of the thrill-rides at our local theme parks. Only barely awake after watching the election returns, I listened as a radio announcer played the song the victorious Trump election team sang to celebrate the victory confirmed only moments earlier. To my utter amazement, they sang, “How Great Thou Art,” a traditional evangelical hymn I heard performed by my first-generation Swedish grandparents. At that same instant, a brilliant sunrise peaked over the edge of the horizon, the heavenly light demonstrating that grace might still be spreading to Texas as well as our sister-states.
Or at least some of them since the only ones in which Kamala had gained a clear plurality appeared to be those few which routinely fail to enforce voter standards –and so counting naturally takes longer. But those were the exceptions as the red wave swept inexorably toward the astounding total of over 300 electoral votes. Unlike four years ago, this election had been too big to lie about! Having suffered from a very Protestant skepticism that, all other things being equal, the electorate will usually choose Barabbas, it was hard to believe when TV cameras showed Amish villages enthusiastically hosting Trump caravans. And even died -in-the-blue New Jersey neighborhoods were now featuring Orthodox Jews proudly waving Trump banners. In the end a single pregnant fact underlined the Democratic debacle: Even in the familiar precincts of his home county, Governor Tim Walz had failed to achieve a win.
As regular readers may remember, I have long pondered the possibilities of civil war, those cleavages in our society reminding me both of our own history and my left-over nightmares from Bosnia. The Balkans hung together under the Ottoman Empire, Stalinism, the Cold War and, for a while, even the break-up of the USSR. But when separatism, historical revisionism and fratricidal agendas took over, 800 years of Bosnian unity shattered into three desperately warring factions. My treks over and through that shattered country continuously replayed themselves during what certainly seemed like the summer of our discontents. I have loathed Joe Biden’s reckless rhetoric about “MAGA Republicans” for a long time, his nefarious suggestions seemingly matched by the lawfare campaign organized under White House tutelage. The attempted assassinations mounted against Donald Trump were deeply shocking but not in the least surprising. History provides too many examples of what can happen after an assassination, the murder of Arch-Duke Ferdinand in Sarajevo becoming a proximate cause of World War I. Was something like that in our future as well?
Because so much was unknown and un-knowable, I avoided making firm plans until after the election – which suddenly came, went and we won! All through Veterans Day, I have been profoundly at peace, careful to pray as hard after those events as before, now combined with simple gratitude that maybe, just maybe, we might be spared the worst of all outcomes. As a former soldier, I know only too well what those outcomes could be: watching the steady erosion of our forces and their arms caches; and desperately contemplating those ten million illegals let in by Kamala as a Fifth Column of potential adversaries. Would you seriously expect the Russians, Chinese or Iranians to ignore their potential should push come to shove?
With the prospects for World War III seemingly growing daily, I certainly would not, which was why my day perceptibly brightened when the news arrived that our friend Governor Mike Huckabee will be our next ambassador to Israel, and that another governor, Kristi Noem, will shortly become the head of DHS. And then, later in the day, came the trifecta: Pete Hegseth appointed as SECDEF!
I turned immediately to CNN for a fresh demonstration of the legacy media’s institutional dereliction of duty. Sure enough, there was Erin Burnett, practically in tears as she related the dread tidings of these latest appointments by Donald Trump. Commiserating with a Democratic congressman (naturally enough), she even alluded to a secret plan by the incoming president to dismiss senior generals who were “too woke” to meet his standards. And wasn’t an unqualified Fox analyst like Pete Hegseth the perfect choice for such a scurrilous task? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/11/12/trump-woke-generals-warrior-board-executive-order/
Nonsense, Erin! For the record, Pete Hegseth is an exquisitely experienced junior Army officer and distinguished author. A generation apart, I only wish him Godspeed as he sets out to trim the Pentagon bureaucracy with the nearest axe that might be handy!
Colonel (Ret.) Ken Allard is a former West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and on-air military analyst for NBC News.
Judge Merchan delays decision on fate of Trump’s “document falsification” case; why the case is a mess
November 13, 2024
The moment it was clear last week that President Trump had won another term in the White House, we asked the question, what happens now with all the pending lawfare against him? We’ve got some updates.
Every one of those cases was brought in the first place to try to prevent Trump from being President again --- and if prosecutors needed to put him in jail to accomplish that, so much the better. (As the saying goes, that’s not a bug; it’s a feature.) In that case, putting him in the slammer is what they would gleefully have done. Even now, some on the left are still clinging to the idea that they can somehow paralyze the President-elect with one of these cases. In at least one instance, that would seem to include the judge in the case, Judge Juan Merchan. Otherwise, he’d just drop that hot mess.
In light of the SCOTUS decision that a President has immunity from federal prosecution for his official duties, the two cases brought by “Special Counsel” Jack Smith (never a constitutionally-appointed special counsel) are set to be dismissed by the “Justice” Department. (Yes, we do relish the irony suggested by those quotation marks.) The first of those is the so-called election interference case, the one related to the events of January 6, which the defense argues concerns his duties as President, for which he has immunity.
The other is the so-called “classified” documents case, which Florida Judge Aileen Cannon had already taken off the table. Smith had filed an appeal, but the DOJ will be dropping it now. We saw the most shockingly over-the-top abuses of power with that one, including collusion with the Biden White House to affect a massive land, sea and air armed raid of Trump’s estate Mar-A-Lago. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that something this egregious was actually done in the United States of America, especially when you consider that as President, Trump had the absolute authority to declassify.
(NOTE: Melania Trump declined the traditional First Ladies’ tea with Jill Biden, reportedly because she doesn’t feel like sipping tea with people who called her husband Hitler and a threat to democracy, ginned up hatred toward him that sparked two assassination attempts, and sent armed goons to raid her family’s home at 6 a.m. and paw through her underwear drawer, looking for “documents.” Can you blame her?)
Then there were three state cases. First, we have the RICO (!) case against Trump in Georgia filed by Fulton County DA Fani Willis, which also involved the Biden White House. That case is awaiting an appeals court decision.
Next, we have the New York criminal trial over “fraudulent records” relating to those payments made to Stormy Daniels. (Calling it the “hush money” case, as just about everyone does, is misleading, as this stitched-together case was based on an action that wasn’t even illegal; namely, making payments on an NDA, or non-disclosure agreement, with Stormy Daniels, whom he still insists he never had an affair with.) The payments were listed as “legal expenses” in business records, which actually makes the most sense to us and many business and legal experts.
Since payment was made in 34 installments, the documentation of each check was turned by prosecutors into a separate count, a trick prosecutors use to inflate the charges. Voila! Trump is magically charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. In May, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump on all 34. (If he’s found guilty of one, you know he’s going to be found guilty of 34, because they’re all the exact same thing, just spread out over 34 times.)
Sentencing had been set for November 26. But yesterday, the judge in that case, Juan Merchan, announced he was postponing his decision on how to proceed in the sentencing phase in light of Trump’s re-election. This was done at the request of the prosecution, which agreed with the Trump team that his re-election could have impact on the outcome of the case. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg now has one week, until November 19, to propose what he thinks would be the appropriate next step, which might be to scrap the case. (More on this development below.)
Finally, there’s the New York civil fraud case overseen by State Attorney General Letitia James, who had vowed during her campaign to prosecute Trump on...something, anything, everything. That’s the one in which Trump had supposedly inflated the value of his real estate holdings in a way that’s routinely done in dealings with lenders, who always do their own assessments. No one was damaged, no one had ever complained, the Trump Organization got its loans, the Trump Organization paid back its loans, and everybody involved was happy and wanted to do business together again. Anyway, after a verdict of guilty in a New York court, the case is on appeal.
Prior to Judge Merchan’s decision Tuesday to delay further action in his case, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung had said the sentencing should not stand, so that “as Trump said in his historic victory speech, [we can] unify our country and work together for the betterment of our nation.” After the decision, Cheung said, “It is now abundantly clear that Americans want an immediate end to the weaponization of our justice system, including this case, which should have never been filed.”
On Tuesday night, FOX NEWS host Trace Gallagher brought on criminal defense attorney Nick Bajaj, who said the case, after being delayed, is going to be dismissed. His explanation of the reason for this is clear; here’s the problem:
“If we believe it took legal gymnastics to conjure up a crime that was not in the statute, imagine the legal gymnastics it would take for this judge to say, ‘In light of the Supreme Court’s decision regarding immunity, I’m gonna extract all the evidence that was presented to the fact-finder, the jury, that had to do with or came about while Trump was President.’ [That would include] testimony from his aides, the completion of the financial form, for instance. This judge has to extract that, and then say, ‘Hey, whatever was left was enough for the jury to come back with a conviction.’”
It would just be impossible to sort this out. “Now, why is this important?” he continued. “Because the judge can say, ‘You know what? That evidence [relating to Trump’s presidency] came in, it’s harmless error, it’s enough for the jury, enough for government work, let’s go for the conviction.’ But then it’s gonna go to the appellate courts, [where] this case is absolute toast, and it’s really a testament to the fact that it should never have been brought in the first place.”
Bajaj also commented on the Georgia lawfare brought by Fani Willis, citing corruption in the prosecution for that case and contrasting it with another case: “There has been a highly publicized RICO case involving gang activity, guns, drugs, murder, shootings, and that district attorney’s office fumbled the ball so much, they did such an incompetent job, that the lead defendant in that case was just given 12 years’ probation, if you can imagine that…”
He said that with the “clear conflict of interest” in Willis’ case against Trump, along with evidence of malicious prosecution, he doesn’t see the case going anywhere.
Before Merchan announced his decision to delay, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment, said he thought the sentencing might not happen. “It should not happen,” he told the WASHINGTON EXAMINER. “I don’t understand the case against Trump in New York. If I had a class in criminal law, and they asked me to describe the conviction of Donald Trump, I couldn’t do it. And so, if you can’t even describe it or understand it, this is just no crime here. I think the only real impact of the New York cases, it probably contributed slightly to Trump’s election.”
We’d like to think so.
The penalty for Trump’s non-crime could be as much as four years. Legal experts have suggested that although a full prison term is unlikely, Trump could still face fines or probation. The WASHINGTON EXAMINER summary, written Monday, the day before Judge Merchan’s delay, is a good one.
The unbelievably huge conflict of interest faced by Judge Merchan in this case, the one involving his daughter’s highly profitable work raising money for Democrat interests, has only solidified with time, despite continued efforts in the media to downplay it. Merchan should never have presided over this case, but efforts to persuade him to recuse himself were fruitless. So one might imagine that efforts to persuade him to drop the case will be fruitless as well. It’s probably going to be an appeals court that says, “Enough already.”
RELATED: In other partisan litigation, J6 journalist Steve Baker has changed his not guilty plea to guilty, telling presiding Judge Chris Cooper that he would not be put through a “shaming exercise” of a trial that he’s realized has an almost certain outcome, given the judge’s hardline stance. (Note: according to his defense attorney, a plea of guilty is not the same as a confession.) Here’s how that went…
My interview with Danica McKellar on Huckabee
November 12, 2024
Mike Huckabee
With over two months to go till the Inauguration on January 20, it does feel like the calm before the storm. The Trump 2.0 team seems to be moving as smoothly as a well-oiled machine, tapping some of the best people they could possibly have chosen for positions in his second administration. Maybe even more importantly, he’s NOT tapping others, like former CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, who might have been too swampy themselves for the job of draining the swamp. Trump knows he can’t reform the deep state bureaucracy if he chooses people to run it who came out of it. And so far at least, his stated priorities and his personnel choices are looking good beyond our wildest imaginings.
He’s also not coming off as anything like the vindictive, retribution-seeking President-elect the left has been trying to make America fear. That doesn’t matter, of course, to idiots who have been indoctrinated to hate him as an evil dictator who’s going to destroy democracy, and we’re seeing sporadic threats of violence. At Montoursville Area High School in Pennsylvania, a disturbed 17-year-old boy posted on a bulletin board a “kill list” with the names and addresses of at least eight students and alumni whom he described as Nazis (Trump supporters).
His statement said, “A list of Nazi meeting grounds and conspirators in the Montoursville community that wish death to America and suffering to its people. Destroy the buildings and kill the threats at all cost.”
Some Montoursville residents were horrified that a student had called for burning down houses --- helpfully providing the addresses --- and killing the occupants.
But perhaps even more shocking than the list itself is Superintendent Daniel Taormina’s cavalier attitude about it. He called this a “non-event” and a time-waster and said the threats were “vague.” Vague, really? They seem quite specific to me. One resident said, “The superintendent needs a refresher course in communications. The choice of words doesn’t communicate the level of threat accordingly. Calling for destruction of property with possible victims is simply criminal.”
Another resident agreed that criminal charges were appropriate: “They need to be permanently expelled and mental evaluation done. The rest of the students shouldn’t be worried about having classes with this student and looking over their shoulders.”
We’ve seen so many cases of school shootings in which there had been red flags all over the place and nothing was done until students lay dead. Here’s your huge red flag, Mr. Superintendent, waving right in front of your face. You had better step up, recognize the danger and protect the students in your district. And if this would-be killer came to his hateful attitude with help from any of your teachers or staff, you had better deal with that, too.
https://www.toddstarnes.com/
But in a bit of welcome news, Jonathan Turley has a superb column on why the so-called “resistance” movement against Trump might fare very differently this time, making the case for “significant legal and political headwinds” it faces.
This piece was directed at such individuals as New York AG Letitia James, Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Jersey Gov. Phil “Fight-to-the-Death” Murphy, all of whom are reflexively doubling down on their anti-Trump rhetoric. Not that they should necessarily set aside their positions just because an election didn’t go their way, Turley says, but these politicians will not be giving themselves even one moment of self-reflection after Trump’s win.
There’s also the WASHINGTON POST, which published an editorial saying “The second resistance to Trump must start now.” Their “resistance” will be more challenging this time.
“Pundits,” Turley said, “lashed out [with fury and delirium] at the majority of voters, insisting that the election established that half the nation is composed of racists, misogynists or domination addicts who long to submit to tyranny.” (Note: in truth, when it comes to tyranny, Trump supporters are just the opposite. We see tyranny coming from the left and do NOT want to submit to it.)
Instead of looking inward and seeing that it’s their own attitudes and policies that led to their defeat, leftists are in large part blaming free speech for their loss. MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski expressed the view that voters were “misinformed” by right-wing media. This is why they’re pushing even harder now for censorship when polling has shown that free speech is one of voters’ top issues.
“That does not bode well for the Democratic Party,” Turley said. “As someone raised in a liberal politically active family in Chicago, I had hoped for greater introspection after this election blowout.” But, really, is anyone surprised at their tone-deaf reaction? Turley must see that the wacko Democrat Party of 2024 is nothing like the “liberal” party he grew up in. He’s made the point that they’re addicted to rage. They like it, he said, noting that rage is “the ultimate high produced by the lowest form of political discourse.”
He said that “over the course of the last eight years, the U.S. has become a nation of rage addicts.” Really, though, is it the U.S. as a whole, or does the hottest rage mostly emanate from the left? If Trump had lost this election --- I mean REALLY lost it, fair and square, as devastating as that would be --- don’t you think we on the right would be doing the kind of introspection Turley is talking about, figuring out where we went wrong and strategizing what we need to do? I don’t think we’d be shaving our heads and posting kill lists; at least I hope not.
There’s a difference between anger and rage. That sham January 6 Committee tried to paint Trump supporters as the ones possessed by rage, but that appears to be the projection of their own hatred towards us. I think we’re much more likely to behave like the adults in the room.
Turley singled out Letitia James as the one who “may have done more to re-elect Trump than anyone other than the President himself.” Her Captain Ahab-style pursuit of Trump was and is not a good look and (along with “Special Counsel” Jack Smith, we would add) showed us the ugliest form of lawfare.
Turley described the Democrat Party as “an alliance of political media and academic interests wholly untethered to the views of most of the public.” Too bad most of them are never going to figure this out. (We’ve noticed there are a few exceptions who are starting to see, such as Bill Maher --- good interview on this with actor Michael Douglas --- and Van Jones.) As the majority of Americans wake up to the fact that Democrats are light years away from them in their vision for the country, the left are just going to be left with nothing but their rage.
Here’s a story about some centrist Democrats are finally speaking out to try to wrestle their party back from the insane far-left, but they’ve got quite a battle in front of them.
How kooky has your party become when old time socialist Bernie Sanders now sounds like its voice of reason?
RELATED: Although corrupt DA Fani Willis was re-elected in Fulton County, Georgia, many lefty prosecutors were sent packing. They’re just not in line with what we want to see in our cities, even blue cities.
Another place the blame is going when leftists should be looking in the mirror: straight to Elon Musk, who is right up there with Trump now as a hate magnet. The propaganda arm of the Atlantic Council, THE ATLANTIC, posted a nasty piece by Charlie Warzel that said Musk’s platform X (formerly Twitter) is full of white supremacists and that Musk is one himself.
“X is no longer a social-media site with a white supremacy problem but a white-supremacist site with a social media problem,” Warzel wrote.
Don’t bother reading this garbage; TWITCHY has a brief summary of the piece with some sharp and amusing commentary on it. (Including this gem, which also summarizes Jonathan Turley’s point: “Who needs self-reflection when you can just go bat-poop crazy?”) Leftist publications and social media posts are fueling the hate that will be building over the next couple of months. Right now, that hate is mostly percolating quietly, interrupted now and then by incidents like “kill sheets” posted on bulletin boards.
Illusionists Jeff and Kimberly Bornstein on Huckabee
November 12, 2024
Trump is picking some real all-stars: Mike Huckabee | Newsline
November 12, 2024
Mike Huckabee to be Trump's Israel ambassador | NewsNation Now
November 12, 2024
Trump's not just fighting for him, he's fighting for us: Mike Huckabee
November 12, 2024
My Interview with Linda Gail Lewis on Huckabee
November 12, 2024
Veterans Day
November 11, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Today is Veterans Day, when we should all fly our flags and do whatever we can to express our gratitude to America’s veterans and active-duty military for putting their lives on the line to protect our freedom and security, and for all they do to protect other innocent people all over the world.
Despite all the other news demanding our attention, this day should never be overshadowed or overlooked. Today is about something far more important than passing political news. It’s about the men and women who make it possible for us to have elections and the Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and religion, and to protest and seek redress when we think our government isn’t doing right by us (even though we have far too many people in DC who seem to have forgotten that we have those rights.)
Memorial Day in May is to honor veterans who gave their lives in defense of America. Veterans Day is to honor all veterans, living or dead, past and present.
It began as Armistice Day, declared by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, to commemorate the end of World War I. In 1945, World War II veteran Raymond Weeks of Birmingham, Alabama, began a personal crusade to expand Armistice Day into a state holiday honoring all veterans. In 1953, an Emporia, Kansas, shoe store owner named Al King launched a campaign to make it a national holiday. Just one year later, in 1954, he succeeded. It helped that the President was a retired army general from Kansas named Dwight Eisenhower.
Not only is today Veterans Day, but yesterday was the 249th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. It commemorates the day in 1775 when the Second Continental Congress established the Continental Marines to serve in the war against Great Britain. After the Revolutionary War ended, the Marines were disestablished for a time until President John Adams reestablished the Marines as we know the Corps now, on July 11, 1789. But November 10th, 1775, is still considered the birth of the US Marines.
So if you see someone in uniform, this is a great day to say “Thank you.” Then again, any day is a great day to do that.
RELATED: Vice President-elect J.D. Vance wished a happy birthday to the Marines. It’s hard to believe, but in 249 years, he will be the first Marine veteran ever to become Vice President. Since the Democrats are always wanting us to vote for people because they’ll be the first this or that to hold the office, you’d think they’d be happy about this.
Jordan Sekulow & Michael Knowles on Huckabee
November 11, 2024
So, what will happen during this interminably long transition?
November 11, 2024
With all the problems our country faces, and all the chances for cover-up and sabotage by the outgoing party, don’t you wish Trump could just be inaugurated TODAY? Heck, he’s picked his new chief of staff, Susan Wiles, and we’re already experiencing what’s being called the “Trump effect” in financial markets and global relations. So, let’s roll.
It might surprise you to know that the months-long transition period in the United States between presidential election and inauguration is quite unusual among nations. In most countries, a new president typically just sweeps in, and a new administration begins.
Even though this time the voters’ choice is as clear as can be, with Trump winning not just all the swing states but the popular vote by millions, we still have to wait from November 5 to January 20, a date constitutionally set in stone, to have Trump back in the White House. (I guess in horse-and-buggy days, they needed that long.) So that’s a lot of time for all sorts of things to happen.
It’s been mostly quiet in the week after the election, with the unhinged reactions confined largely to social media (we showed you a few of those over the weekend), but during the next couple of months, expect those reactions to build as the initial shock subsides. We’ve talked about governors saying they’re going to “Trump-proof” their states against his “attack,” with Gavin Newsom in California even calling a special legislative session. But right now, it seems a bit too quiet. Perhaps this is the calm before the storm, though we’ve already seen horror stories about brainwashed people acting on their belief that we just elected a Nazi President. One clearly mentally ill man in Minnesota killed his wife, his ex, the children he shared with both of them, and finally himself.
From his social media posts, it’s obvious that he’d been made to feel fearful of the “religious zealots” who supported Trump. “I have intrusive thoughts of being burned at the stake as a witch,” he wrote, “or crucified on a burning cross.” (I get the distinct impression he didn’t know any Christians.) He also believed that Trump would turn women into chattel, as in the fictional story THE HANDMAID’S TALE. All of this was made up by the left, of course, just to try to defeat Trump. To them, defeating Trump justifies saying ANYTHING.
In July, this man wrote, “We can do better than a binary choice between fascism and not fascism.”
Kamala herself had said in a TV interview, without the slightest hesitation, that she believes Donald Trump is a fascist. This video clip was shared far and wide. (Side note: have you noticed that nobody on the left ever defines “fascist”? If they understood what fascism was, they might start to notice how dangerously fascist-like their own attitudes are.) What’s it going to take for the unhinged left to see --- let alone care about --- the danger posed by their own irresponsible rhetoric? Don’t expect that to happen during this transition period; be prepared for more stories like this one...
Some women have been using this “down time” to go on social media and make what seem like terroristic threats to poison men with a highly toxic substance from the 1600s called Aqua Tofana. Why? You can guess: because men voted for Trump and therefore must die. These women do not appear to be kidding, though we don’t know that anyone has died this way so far. Let’s hope it’s just a deranged fantasy. But men, if your wife or girlfriend voted for Kamala and has in the past week screamed for hours into a pillow or shaved her head on TikTok, please do not eat or drink anything she gives you!
This is the kind of behavior the FBI should be looking into, instead of targeting grandmothers who pray at abortion clinics.
There’s even enough time before Trump’s inauguration for Biden to actually resign his presidency so that Kamala Harris can be sworn in and technically be the first female black/Indian President of the United States until Trump is sworn in on January 20. Kamala’s former communications director, Jamal Simmons, has suggested this be done, as a symbolic gesture. I suppose that even if Biden did it the last day he was in office, it would count. Imagine Biden going along with that after being shivved to make way for her electoral disaster!
But as Amy Curtis wisely pointed out on TWITCHY, “the presidency is not a symbolic gesture.” She likened the idea to that of giving Kamala a participation trophy, as this candidate never received even one delegate in 2020 and no votes in the 2024 primary. So this would have essentially nothing to do with “our democracy.” But, hey, because it checks the boxes, it would make history!
Yes, it would make history as a stupid stunt, as vapid as Kamala herself. When Simmons brought it up on CNN, panel member Scott Jennings greeted it with the best response possible: laughter.
Sure, that’s what Americans want to see: the LOSER of the 2024 election being installed as President in 2024. As Rusty Weiss said in REDSATE in an excellent piece, “Are they all racing for gold in the Bad Idea Olympics?”
The people wanting to do this are so petty, one of the things they like about it is that it messes with Trump’s merchandising of presidential items that say “45 and 47,” as he would now be “45 and 48.” Note to leftist idiots: this would probably make the “47” items even more collectible. I’ll take some of those.
And while we wait for Trump to be inaugurated, the left is not waiting one second to push for even more censorship of “misinformation.” (Note: whenever you hear the term “misinformation,” just know it likely is referring not to facts but to heretical opinions.)
Lexipol, a private consultancy firm geared towards law enforcement, is sending recommendations to its roughly 8,000 subscribers in that community to “establish a unit that would not only tackle supposed misinformation and disinformation, but also ‘collaborate with tech companies and civil society organizations to develop early-warning systems and identify harmful content in real time.’” (Note: whenever you hear the term “harmful content,” just know it likely is referring to so-called Russian disinformation --- you know, like Hunter Biden’s laptop.)
According to Didi Rankovic at RECLAIM THE NET, “Lexipol’s write-up plays on fears that it is ‘disinformation’ that might increase public hostility towards police officers and put them at greater risk.” So now we have yet another rationalization for reining in free speech. You know our incoming administration is chomping at the bit to strike back at such attempts to destroy the First Amendment.
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Before Trump takes office and the top DOJ officials are all out on their shiny behinds, they’ve reportedly been given a directive from the very top to hurry up and prosecute as many January 6th defendants as they possibly can. They’ve been told to oppose any requests for delays.
As Jeff Charles at REDSTATE reports, “The primary reason for the Justice Department’s tighter focus is likely the possibility that Trump will pardon or vacate the sentences of those who were arrested and are facing prosecution over January 6. His victory has sparked optimism among the defendants and those supporting them.” And it should: during his campaign, Trump said he would pardon all nonviolent offenders from that day.
But in the meantime, “Trump’s victory has undoubtedly stirred up a level of unease among prosecutors who pretend the riot was a direct threat against democracy and wish to throw the book at as many people as they can over the matter.”
The original story about this comes not from conservative media but from NBC NEWS.
To those who have a problem with violent offenders being pardoned, it should be noted that most of those who have been prosecuted did not engage in violence that day. (We don’t think Trump should pardon violent offenders, either.) As Charles reports, “The release of the security footage showed that the majority of these individuals simply entered the building after officers opened doors for them...It was obvious that the Justice Department sought to make an example of them for political purposes.”
For these persecuted people, who suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice, President Trump cannot get back into office too soon.
As Joseph Hanneman writes for THE BLAZE, “Perhaps at no time like the modern era has a presidential vote been watched so keenly as January 6-ers watched the evening of November 5...From the dingy cells of the District of Columbia jail, the unwavering tones of the National Anthem rang out more assuredly than on other nights over the past nearly four years.”
That’s one more reason why we wish Trump could just take office. All these people must linger in jail for 2-1/2 more months.
Trump’s also ready to do that super-deep housecleaning all the federal agencies. One way he’ll start is by moving many parts of the federal bureaucracy out of Washington, an idea I’ve advocated for years. He had started this during his first term, by moving the Bureau of Land Management out to Colorado, but the plan is much more extensive. The Trump campaign has said he might move up to 100,000 government positions out of Washington. It’s reported that many of them are already making plans to resign before he takes office, another wonderful example of the “Trump effect.”
Trump also plans to target compromised individuals in the bureaucracy, exposes hoaxes and abuses of power, and reform the FISA Courts.
https://www.westernjournal.
According to an article in POLITICO, “a collective sense of dread has taken hold at the Department of Justice, which drew Donald Trump’s rage like no other part of the federal government during his campaign.” (Editorial aside: AND FOR GOOD REASON.)
One DOJ attorney said, “Everyone I’ve talked to, mostly lawyers, are losing their minds. The fear is that career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they’re going to be driven out.” (Editorial aside: GOOD.) As one wag joked, “I’ve been busier than the shredder at the DOJ.”
They’re afraid Trump is going to replace them with “partisan loyalists.” What, to replace the current partisan loyalists? And some of the attorneys fear being blackballed. What, like the attorneys who have dared to defend Trump? If you already have a good idea of what’s been going on at the DOJ for the past decade or so, you’ll find lots of unintentional humor here…
https://www.politico.com/news/
RELATED READING: Speaking of Russian disinformation and Hunter’s laptop, last week Catherine Herridge, formerly of FOX NEWS and CBS, posted her take on the new whistleblower revelations that case agents were blocked from taking actions that would’ve revealed the investigation’s existence BEFORE the 2020 election. She also details CBS’s handling of the laptop story in October 2020, which was essentially to drop it, after Herridge knew it was true. An absolute must-read. With this kind of fakery out in the open now, we anticipate Trump’s second term is going to be very different from his first.
https://
Smaller government, more transparency, returning power to the people…Worst fascist EVER!
The Election is over
November 11, 2024
My interview with Chaplain (Col) Brandon Moore
November 11, 2024
What a great night for America: Mike Huckabee | Newsline
November 6, 2024
Trump Wins
November 6, 2024
Mike Huckabee
Before I say anything else, please join me in giving thanks to God for blessing America, and giving us one more chance to return to our founding principles of respecting religious liberty, free speech, respect for life and the protection of innocent children.
Don’t expect any long, well-organized essays today, as my writers and I have been up all night following the election returns and need to get some rest. Today’s edition will be mostly bullet points and celebrations. And in the spirit of unity and good sportsmanship, let me say that I sincerely hope someone hid the Drain-o from Bette Midler.
Tuesday, Donald Trump made the greatest political comeback in American history, overcoming years of lawfare and vilification to become only the second person ever elected to non-consecutive Presidential terms (I’m waiting for Rachel Maddow to accuse him of plagiarizing Grover Cleveland.)
At this writing, the news networks have him at 277 Electoral College votes, but despite their stubborn refusal to call the rest of the states, he’s on track to carry all but Maine. Even the New York Times predicts that he’ll eventually win by a 312-226 landslide. He’s even on track to win the popular vote by about five million votes, which is astounding for a Republican. I wonder if all those blue states that hate the Electoral College and want to give their EC votes to the popular vote winner will give them to Trump? Or will that issue suddenly go away?
It proves what I’ve been telling you for the past few months: If our side just ignores the polls and votes, we determine who runs the government, not a bunch of condescending leftist elites. We all just have to show up at the polls and we win.
The media also show the GOP retaking the Senate with at least 51 seats, which seems sure to rise to 55 or more. There was some concern that the Democrats might have won the House, setting us up for at least two years of obstruction and groundless impeachment hearings, but as of now, it appears that the GOP will narrowly hold on to control both Houses of Congress and the White House.
Trump mowed down any number of precedents, earning far greater shares of votes from typically Democratic voting blocs than any Republican in decades, including voters under 30, blacks, young males and especially Hispanic males. For instance, Trump was the first Republican in 30 years to win heavily-Hispanic Miami-Dade County in Florida, and by 55%.
It was truly the “red wave” we failed to see in 2022. Maybe young voters just hadn’t yet figured out how badly they were getting hosed under Biden-Harris, but now, they get it. One of my favorite moments of the coverage came when an analyst on one of the liberal networks cut to a map of all the counties in the US where Harris did better than Biden – and there were none!
My favorite reality-denying headline came from CNN.com: “Trump’s edge over Harris rises to 270.” Uh, guys? 270 isn’t an “edge,” it’s the presidency.
Trump gave an excellent, unifying victory speech, surrounded by his family who were among the strongest members of his campaign team. Here’s video of it and a transcript:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/
He called MAGA “the greatest political movement of all time,” and said he believes what many have told him: that God spared his life for a reason. He went on:
“I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. And every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future, every single day I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body, I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America, that's what we have to have.”
Strangely, he said nothing about setting up concentration camps for MSNBC anchors or any of the other things we were told he’d do as soon as he declared himself dictator for life. You know, all the stuff he forgot to do in his first term.
New York Times “Pulitzer Prize-winning economist” Paul Krugman will also be shocked to see how Wall Street is reacting to Trump’s election:
Let’s also give J.D. Vance credit for killing the Dems' momentum by destroying Tim Walz in the VP debate and being one of the best VP picks we’ve seen in decades. As for Walz, at least he’ll now have plenty of spare time to learn how to load a shotgun.
The Aftermath: Kamala hides from supporters
November 6, 2024
Mike Huckabee
I hope and pray that Trump accomplishes all the things he says he will, which will be great for all Americans, who voted for him across all demographic lines despite the Democrats’ best efforts to divide and conquer us. As usual, Rush Limbaugh was right: The best thing for Republicans’ electoral fortunes is for Democrats to get into power for just a little while and remind people of how much damage they can do in a surprisingly short time.
I was disappointed that Kamala Harris remained on brand to the end, refusing to face the cameras or make a difficult speech. When it was obvious she had lost, a minion was sent out to tell her disappointed followers to go home and get some sleep. There was no unifying congratulatory call to Trump or gracious concession speech. Wags accused her of plagiarizing Hillary Clinton. There was some rumbling from the Dems’ lawfare brigade about the race not being over for days, but when you’re down by five million votes, that’s what meant by “beyond the margin of fraud.”
There were some suspicious incidents at polling places around the nation, but the RNC’s lawyers responded fast, and shut them down PDQ. Kudos to Lara Trump and Michael Whatley at the RNC for fighting back on that front.
I also hope that the Democrats will learn from this that Americans reject the savage and divisive politics of racial grievance and slandering opponents as Nazis and garbage, and will work with Trump to make things better for all Americans. Sadly, their initial reactions to losing don’t fill me with optimism.
Some “progressives” blasted the Dems for not running far enough to the left. Yep, that would’ve done it. One arrogant liberal who flaunts her Ph.D. on Twitter/X decreed that this election shows we’re ruled by stupid, uneducated people. She reminds me of the great comedian Brother Dave Gardner’s observation that “some people are ‘educated’ beyond their intelligence.” I suspect she’s confused “educated” with “indoctrinated.” She may think she’s sipping Chardonnay, but she’s really drinking the Kool-Aid.
CNN seemed to sniff disaster early on, so they refrained from too much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, knowing that conservatives would post it on YouTube and laugh at them for years to come. But there was no such restraint among the lefty loons at MSNBC, where Joy Reid had the predictable meltdown, ranting that Florida is an extreme, right-wing fascist state, apparently because it’s capable of counting votes quickly and efficiently.
Reid and her ilk also claimed that there was voter suppression, despite the heavy turnout. One state they cited was Texas, so I’ll let my writer Pat Reeder, who lives in suburban Dallas, respond to that:
“Laura and I voted early, and we live in a racially-diverse, lower middle-class neighborhood (Note to the Gov: We need a raise.) Not a Kamala Harris ‘middle-class neighborhood,’ but a real one. The line stretched out the door but moved quickly, and it only took about 20 minutes. Both voters and poll workers were of various races. We all smiled at each other, talked politely, voted and left. I didn’t notice me or anyone else being suppressed, except we did all have to show our IDs. Everybody had one, though. Shocking.”
Leaders around the world sent congratulations to Trump, saying they were looking forward to a close and friendly working relationship. I imagine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is especially relieved to know that Israel will once again have a firm ally in the White House.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/
That’s odd: I’d been assured by all the smartest people that other world leaders mocked and disrespected Trump.
The Aftermath: A look at the results nationwide
November 6, 2024
Mike Huckabee
The people who’ve spent the past four years telling us that January 6th was the worst insurrection in history suddenly decided that election denial and rioting are now patriotic again. A bunch of Hamas-supporting morons in NYC demonstrated outside of Fox News in a futile attempt to disrupt the election coverage, and some Antifa idiots tried to riot in Seattle. But not only is there a new sheriff coming to DC, but there are police in Seattle again, and several thugs were quickly arrested. It’s not 2020 anymore: if they think they’re going to shut down America by throwing violent temper tantrums over losing an election, they might want to rethink that.
The proof that their radical moment has passed into history (hopefully along with wokeness, DEI and all the other idiocy of the past four years) was displayed well by an online video of a Harris supporter, yelling angry slogans into a megaphone and trying to gin up a protest all by himself as annoyed passerby ignored him completely.
Sadly, not all the elections went as I’d hoped, like Hung Cao’s Senate loss to the vapid Tim Kaine in Virginia. I hope Trump finds a spot for Cao in his Administration. And Californians cursed America by promoting Adam Schiff, the biggest liar in the House (imagine holding that title!) to the Senate, cementing California as one of the places that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, would vote for a glass of water with a (D) by its name. Of course, they also voted for Kamala, proving that they’ll even vote for an empty glass with a (D) by its name.
But maybe some Californians are finally starting to wake up a bit. They overwhelmingly passed Proposition 36, the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, to undo parts of the Soros-backed soft-on-crime Proposition 46 that’s caused many residents and businesses to flee the state.
And voters in L.A. threw out their criminal-coddling DA George Gascon by nearly a 2-1 margin.
Let’s hope that someday, the little light in their mental fridges finally comes on and they grasp the connection between voting for Democrats and their lives becoming intolerable.
Finally, I was gratified to see that despite the Democrats spending an estimated $570 million to push abortion-up-to-birth measures in Nebraska and Florida (outspending Republicans 15-1), both lost decisively. But pro-abortion measures did pass in other states, although most were blue states like New York and Colorado, where there were already few if any limits. I pray for the day to come when all Americans realize how horrific abortion is and stop trying to cover up the ugly truth with fuzzy euphemisms like “reproductive freedom” and dishonest slogans like “It’s my body.”
Well, that’s it for now. We’ll have more tomorrow as the news rolls in. Right now, we’re all going to go get some rest, and thank God for Elon Musk, McDonald’s, Joe Rogan, garbage trucks, Peanut the Squirrel and all of you who said, “Enough is enough” and voted accordingly.