House Passes Debt Deal to Avoid Default

 With barely five days remaining until the projected “X-date” on which the United States is set to default on its debt, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) brought the Fiscal Responsibility Act — legislation resulting from a negotiated spending deal made with President Joe Biden — to the floor for consideration.

The result: successful passage of the 99-page bill in a vote that came down 314-117.

Falling along anything but party lines, the legislation to raise the debt ceiling and avoid default was supported by 165 House Democrats and 149 House Republicans while 71 members of the GOP Conference voted no along with 46 Democrats:
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House okays debt ceiling bill 314-117
 
149 Republicans voted yea
165 Democrats voted yea.
 
So there were more Democratic yeas even though they are in the minority
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) June 1, 2023
 
B) 149 GOPers voted yea
165 Dems voted yea
 
71 GOPers voted no
46 Dems voted no
 
2 Dems missed the vote
2 GOPers missed the vote
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) June 1, 2023

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) heralded the successful vote on the Fiscal Responsibility Act, calling it “the most conservative spending package during my time in Congress” and “the largest deficit-reduction bill in at least a decade,” one that “will fundamentally change the spending trajectory in Washington.”

McHenry added:
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For the first time in a debt-limit negotiation, the U.S. government will spend less money than it did the year before. We achieved historic spending cuts that will help bring down inflation, consequential reforms to help Americans get out of poverty and back into the workforce, claw backs of billions of dollars of COVID money, and transformational permitting reforms that cut red tape for energy and infrastructure projects. This bill will block the Administration from imposing new taxes during a time of economic uncertainty and rein in Biden’s executive overreach through a statutory administrative pay-go rule. This agreement will also change the way Washington operates by compelling a workable appropriations process.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), one of the most vocal opponents of the deal, said he voted against the legislation “because our current financial situation is unsustainable, and this bill only ramps up the timeline to our government’s eventual default.”

Buck explained his reservations:
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Back in 2022, the American people gave Republicans the majority in the U.S House of Representatives because they wanted us to rein in the Democrats’ out-of-control spending. Yet Speaker McCarthy chose to negotiate a deal that codifies the post-COVID 2022 discretionary spending baseline, adds $4 trillion to the debt in less than two years, upholds Biden’s student loan bailout, funds 85,000 new IRS agents, and ensures Democrats don’t have to deal with the political fallout of raising the debt ceiling prior to the 2024 election. I can't imagine a better deal for Democrats or a worse deal for our nation.

The legislation now heads to the U.S. Senate for a vote and, presuming its passage in the upper chamber, President Joe Biden’s desk for signature in time to prevent a default on the nation’s ever-increasing debt.

The Left Has Pushed the Envelope

 The Left is waging a full-fledged cultural revolution against traditional America. And the Maoist results are often as absurd as they are terrifying.

Special-counsel John Durham just issued his final report on wrongdoing within the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Justice.

The summary confirms that our premier investigatory and intelligence agencies interfered in the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.

Directors and high-ranking FBI officials lied under oath. They misled Congress. They altered court documents and deceived federal judges.

The FBI hired a foreign national to gather dirt on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign - while he was being paid by the rival Hillary Clinton campaign.

The FBI contracted Twitter to suppress news stories. It kept the Hunter Biden laptop under wraps, even as former intelligence officials flat out lied it was likely "Russian disinformation." That was a blatant effort to aid the 2020 Biden campaign.

The IRS just conceded whistleblowers were correct and the agency fired its entire multi-year audit team responsible for investigating Hunter Biden's purported tax irregularities.

The agency claimed it was ordered to do so by the Department of Justice, headed by Biden's appointee Merrick Garland.

California is facing a crushing $32 billion deficit. Yet it flirts with an $800 billion-dollar "reparations" payout to the state's Black residents.

No one has any idea where the money for that would come from. No one can define who would qualify. No one can explain why a state that never allowed slavery eight generations ago now owes selected Californians billions of dollars it does not have.

One of the reparations board leaders asserts Blacks might be willing to accept an "installment" plan of payments.

The NAACP just issued a "travel alert" advising Blacks not to visit Florida. The announcement was timed to draw negative attention to conservative Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' announcement of a presidential bid.

Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis - all outside Florida - have the highest Black murder rates in the nation.

Florida by contrast, with a Black population of 3.3 million, has the second largest number of Black businesses in the nation. The chairman of the NAACP's board of directors is himself a Florida resident!

Black Lives Matter has just announced it lost millions of dollars in investments and ran up huge deficits. The culprit was its former corrupt leadership.

Its extravagant spending, plush homes, and family hangers-on have nearly bankrupted the advocacy group. It cannot account for the millions of dollars in corporate guilt and protection money it leveraged following the George Floyd riots in 2020.

In New York, a threatening subway career criminal with 42 prior arrests was subdued by a bystander and died during the confrontation. The criminal is now deified. The would-be Samaritan is charged with felony manslaughter.

The deceased's uncle is vocal about his late nephew's confrontation. But he himself was just arrested with stolen property and armed with a knife. He was mysteriously still roaming the streets despite 70 prior arrests and current active arrest warrants.

In almost every American city and town, biological males, with enormous advantages in size and musculoskeletal mass, routinely win women's sporting competitions.

They are systematically destroying decades of progress that sought to ensure parity between men and women's sports.

Corporate America has joined this cultural revolution hysteria. Companies are apparently now hellbent on destroying their brands, profits, and net worth.

Under pressure from the LGBTQ activists, the Los Angeles Dodgers reinvited the "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" to celebrate Pride night at Dodger Stadium.

Catholics and Christians had objected to the invitation because the group's notoriety hinges on its sexualized and often pornographic mockery of Catholic ritual, the Holy Trinity, and Christian faith.

The supposedly courageous group would never dare extend its street-theater blasphemy to other religious groups such as Muslims or Hindus.

The Dodgers apparently do not care that Greater Los Angeles may be home to 6 million Mexican American citizens and resident Hispanic immigrants. Most are Catholic and many were avid Dodger fans.

Anheuser-Busch has nearly destroyed its best-selling Bud Light brand by hiring transgender performance-art activist Dylan Mulvaney to hawk the brand - and his own transitioning - to America's working classes.

The Disney corporation, for decades, has enjoyed multibillion-dollar concessions and a veritable 40-square mile private fiefdom gifted from the taxpayers of Florida.

No matter. Disney has rebranded it films, amusement parks, and television offerings to reflect radical transgender, gay, and race advocacies.

The results so far are billion-dollar losses in Disney stock, subscribers, and viewers.

A woke CNN has all but destroyed its once-global audience. It now has fewer viewers than certain popular podcasts.

All these implosions are not just shocking but surreal. Why are our government, corporations, and popular culture colluding in mass suicide - to the delight of our enemies like Communist China?

Joe Biden's Reaction to Ron DeSantis' Campaign Announcement Shows He's Desperate and Running Scared

 On Wednesday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) made his presidential run official on Twitter Spaces, though it took some time due to the record high amount of users tuning in. The launch was mocked by unserious attempts from the left, including President Joe Biden. Later on in the evening, his campaign account released a video highlighting DeSantis taking pride in his pro-life views, as well as claims that the Republican candidate would "Cut Social Security and Medicare," an obsessive talking point of not just Biden, but one former and potentially future President Donald Trump uses against DeSantis as well. The video also takes another shot at DeSantis' launch and shows moments of him laughing.

DeSantis had spent the night of his announcement speaking to Trey Gowdy on Fox News as well as Mark Levin on his radio show, followed by a town hall with grassroots leaders and later still a press call. DeSantis spoke at length about his most formidable primary opponent, Trump, especially when taking questions, including from Townhall. DeSantis also appears to have his eye on the larger prize, though, when it comes to taking down Biden if and when he wins the nomination.

During the press call, DeSantis anticipated that the 2024 Republican presidential primary could be an ugly one, referring to it as a "wildcard" and pointing out that "it could be a little bit different" from how party members "typically come together" when taking a question from Townhall about reuniting the Republican Party and winning the general election. Nevertheless, DeSantis still is confident he can win.

"I think you struggle to come come back together after primaries, if you have a factional candidate that wins that that is not acceptable to the broad swath of people in the party," DeSantis pointed out, going on to draw a contrast in how he won so many Republican voters in his 2022 reelection, to the tune of 97 percent of them.

"And so people are gonna see somebody who's got a proven record of success, who's representing the values that the vast vast majority of our party professes to hold," DeSantis offered.

When it comes to winning the general, though, he stressed the importance of winning those winnable voters who "want to move on from Biden," though DeSantis also reminded that "you gotta have a vehicle that they're comfortable with." That includes being able to win with Independents, as DeSantis did when winning reelection last year.

Biden is "a weak candidate" with "a weak record," DeSantis pointed out, though he warned the left "will pull out all the stops" when it comes to "supporting and propping up their candidate."

While DeSantis pointed out that has to "assume that it's going to be a very close election," something the polls do presently suggest for the general election, he also sees "a possibility that you could just decisively win the argument with the country in a way that just kind of moves everything in our direction," especially when it comes to how "there's not going to be a lot of enthusiasm for him amongst Democrats," which will lead them to "really struggle with turnout."

In what may have been DeSantis' most direct hit on Trump came as an aside about his electability, as the governor shared "Trump would turn out Democrats," even noting he thinks this would "obviously" be the case.

It's not just a matter of knocking down his primary and general election voters, but about showing his own strength. DeSantis called to mind how he "demoralized the Democrats" who "did not have a good turnout" in the governor's race, something he is confident he can do nationally when it comes to how voters "would be pretty enthusiastic" to have a chance to get Biden out of office.

When it comes to Biden's video response, many took notice that it appears Biden is indeed afraid of having to face DeSantis, as well as the overall poor quality and nature of the video.

    Smart for you to try to take aim now at the likely GOP nominee.
    — Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) May 25, 2023

    Somebody is concerned about their job security.
    — schotts (@schotts) May 25, 2023

    This is the most dishonest editing imaginable.

    And despite trying to make @GovRonDeSantis look bad, notwithstanding the ridiculous editing & fragmented sentences, Ron still makes exponentially more sense than the senile buffoon @POTUS.

    Congratulations. You played yourself. https://t.co/svj7f35Ei9
    — Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) May 25, 2023

    Joe seems pretty scared of Ron... pic.twitter.com/lOF1Gy6QTo
    — Andrew Follett (@AndrewCFollett) May 25, 2023

It wasn't just DeSantis fans who weighed in to mock the video, though.

    I wasn’t impressed by @GovRonDeSantis tonight, but I know for a fact he performed better than Biden’s best day.

    2024 should be very interesting.
    — John Cobb 🐇 (@acutelilbnny) May 25, 2023

Among those taking notice? Team DeSantis' Christina Pushaw. It's going to be not just an interesting presidential Republican primary, but an interesting 2024 presidential election as well.

    We can smell your fear
    — Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) May 25, 2023

President DeSantis?

 Recently, Gov. Ron DeSantis sat down with me for a one-hour interview.

I started by praising him for keeping Florida largely open during Covid.

“I just had to make the decision as a leader,” says DeSantis. “Are you gonna worry about the daily news cycle? Worry about your personal popularity? … I did not know how it was going to work out politically. I was going to do what I thought was right.”

That worked well for Floridians. “If you look at excess mortality, we were the lowest in the Sunbelt and (had) lower excess mortality than California and New York.”

In addition, since the pandemic started, Florida gained more than 500,000 jobs. My state, New York, lost more than 200,000. Florida opened schools quickly. As a result, kids suffered less learning loss. Good for DeSantis.

DeSantis also banned mask mandates.

“Some local police departments were going to fine people … We kneecap them with our clemency power … no penalties for wearing a mask or not. It’s your choice.”

“Your choice” is a great thing. But DeSantis’ laws and executive orders often limit choice. Today no Florida business may require its customers wear masks or show proof of vaccination.

I push back. “If it’s my business and I’m scared … why can’t I?”

“You do have freedom to choose, but so do individuals,” answers DeSantis. “In Florida, we’ve just consistently sided with the individual.”

But people who own businesses or who want to be surrounded by masks are individuals, too.

Florida does give parents a choice when it comes to picking a school. In fact, thanks to DeSantis, Florida leads the nation in school choice, offering parents $8,000 scholarships they can take to a better school. So why can’t parents choose a school with a mask mandate?

“Because it’s irrational,” replies DeSantis. “Hysteria took over evidence-based analysis … the policy shouldn’t be based on fear.”

No, it shouldn’t be. But while mask mandates were often irrational, and possibly harmful to children, one-size-fits-all rules are harmful, too.

I change the topic to immigration.

Last summer, DeSantis flew 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard — a stunt meant to expose the hypocrisy of places declaring themselves “sanctuary” jurisdictions.

“Liberal elites … don’t ever face any of the consequences,” complains DeSantis. “Towns in Texas are getting overrun.”

Media called his stunt “cruel.” A lawyer for migrants criticized DeSantis for not phoning “Martha’s Vineyard so that even the most basic human needs arrangements could be made.”

I read that to DeSantis. He replies, “Do you think these Texas border towns are having people call ahead?!”

“Most of those people that went to the vineyard,” he adds, “were thankful to be in that area … They were not treated well by Biden.”

Today’s favorite media “hate-DeSantis” topic is his Parental Rights in Education law. Critics smear it by calling it the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

The law bans “classroom instruction … on sexual orientation or gender identity.”

“Transgender or probing some student’s sexuality, that is not appropriate for the schools. We’re going to leave that to parents to discuss.”

But “it can come up,” I say. How far does the ban go? “A gay teacher could say he’s gay?”

“Our law doesn’t affect that,” DeSantis answers. Also, the decision to teach sex education is made at the district level.

Good.

I ask, “Doesn’t school choice solve this? Parents who want kids taught about gender changes could have that.”

Some private schools do teach that, says DeSantis. But “when you’re talking about what the taxpayers are funding, you just have to make a choice.”

For 44 minutes, DeSantis and I talk about: how America will go broke, whether he’d cut social security or raise retirement age, what departments he’d cut if he were president, the drug war, his opposition to Barack Obama’s plan to send Americans to Syria, Donald Trump and whether DeSantis is a “slob who eats pudding with his fingers.”

I don’t think his staff liked some of my questions. They cut our interview short, saying the governor had to go.

I like some things DeSantis says and does.

I also worry that he’s an authoritarian.

Why Is DeSantis Announcing His Campaign in a Twitter Conversation With Elon Musk?

 What has felt probable, then likely, then inevitable, over the course of recent months is finally becoming a reality. According to multiple confirmed reports, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will officially launch his 2024 presidential bid later this evening. We’ll analyze his selected method and venue in a moment, but let’s first acknowledge that this isn’t a rumor. The leak is part of the rollout, confirmed by Team DeSantis’ social media accounts, starting within minutes of those reports emerging:
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05.24.2023 pic.twitter.com/CKdITktyev
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) May 23, 2023

Also on Tuesday afternoon, Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, tweeted a Fox News article about the looming announcement with the caption, “big if true.” Hours later, she posted this teaser video on social media. It concludes with the a message encouraging people to text the word ‘launch’ to a phone number:
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America is worth the fight... Every. Single. Time. pic.twitter.com/lWNQ3DIXgp
— Casey DeSantis (@CaseyDeSantis) May 23, 2023

The view count on that clip quickly raced into the millions. Other high-profile GOP candidates — from Donald Trump to Nikki Haley, to Tim Scott — have entered the race with major speeches to supportive crowds. DeSantis will eschew that format, initially sitting down with billionaire innovator and Twitter owner Elon Musk for a conversation hosted on Twitter’s platform about his decision:
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After months of buildup and speculation, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is officially entering the 2024 White House race. Sources familiar confirmed to Fox News that the popular conservative governor will declare that he's a candidate for president on Wednesday at 6 p.m. ET during a conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter. Along with his announcement, DeSantis is expected to file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, which officially launches his GOP presidential campaign. His first national TV interview following the announcement will be with Fox News' Trey Gowdy Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on "Fox News Tonight."...The announcement by DeSantis coincides with his meeting this week in Miami with top financial backers. A formal campaign kickoff event will likely take place sometime after this week's gathering of top donors and bundlers, but no details have been shared by the campaign. The blockbuster move by the two-term Florida governor now turns the battle for the Republican nomination into an apparent two-person fistfight between DeSantis and Trump.

Musk previously indicated his support for a DeSantis White House bid, but has also praised some of the other options. It seems like the broader play is this unorthodox streamed discussion with a highly visible figure, followed by a primetime interview on Fox, followed days later by some sort of major rally. Whether he’ll hold it in Florida, or go straight to the trail in Iowa or New Hampshire, remains to be seen. Expect some highly-produced videos and other fundraising and list-building pushes from the campaign, along with a flurry of additional endorsements, beyond the shows of force among state legislators in the aforementioned states. One of those cascading endorsement reveals came just yesterday from a Georgia Congressman:
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Congressman @RepMcCormick (R-GA) — a former Marine, ER doctor & father of seven — endorsed DeSantis today. He explains why here (with follow-ups at the link), citing the need to win Georgia: https://t.co/TKPCDMB8zX pic.twitter.com/mI18kl5wBG
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 23, 2023

On the same show, I discussed DeSantis’ choice to first confirm his candidacy to Musk Twitter with Brit Hume, who offered his thoughts on the matter. I outlined my own reaction (for what it’s worth, I’d heard DeSantis’ announcement method would be non-traditional), surmising that the governor and his team elected to go this route for several reasons. First and foremost, it’s a base signal. Conservatives are livid with Big Tech, and Musk has been widely cheered as a pro-speech champion who took an influential platform away from the Left. Progressives, including much of the ‘news’ media, detest Musk, just as they despise the man who’s about to leap into the 2024 sweepstakes. It’s no coincidence that DeSantis sought out Musk, not just for the social media eyeballs he controls, but for what he represents, and who is loudest critics are.

Second, by announcing online, I’d imagine the DeSantis campaign will make it easy for grassroots supporters to offer small donations. Since you’re already here on the Internet, why not contribute? Campaigns often try to make a splash with small donors around their launch, as a metric to demonstrate grassroots interest and enthusiasm. It’s not a coincidence, for example, that the Biden campaign didn’t release those stats after the incumbent’s lackluster re-election plunge a few weeks ago. Some sources whispered to reporters that their number didn’t even hit Biden’s 2020 marks, amid a crowded Democratic field. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this slight dig at Trump wasn’t part of the calculation, too:
    
Scoop: GOP sources close to @GovRonDeSantis tell me the decision to announce his 2024 prez run on @Twitter was based on @elonmusk generating HUGE numbers (obviously) and to further diss Trump by contrasting it with his ailing Truth Social
— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) May 23, 2023

Trump famously loved Twitter as a means of communication. He’s been reinstated by the Musk regime, but he’s limiting his rapid-style posting to his Truth Social site, which commands a tiny fraction of Twitter’s footprint. As of tonight, the 2024 Republican presidential primary really begins. Rumors of Trump’s demise after dramatic polling dips after January 6th and the GOP’s weak midterm performance were premature, short-sighted, and exaggerated. Assertions that the race is over and that Trump has already got it in the bag before DeSantis even got in and started campaigning (Team Trump has been fanatically trying to kill DeSantis’ candidacy before it started, having already spent more money attacking DeSantis than they did in the 2022 elections against Democrats) strike me as premature, short-sighted, and exaggerated. Some of it is wish-casting, in some cases, including among Trump loyalists and many in the mainstream media, who are temporarily allied against DeSantis.

It’s entirely possible that DeSantis will fizzle as a national candidate. He could fail to catch on, or recede further in the polling if voters don’t like what they see. But he starts the race with very robust favorables among Republicans and a lot of room to grow. He has a message, a record, and a plan. Whether he can execute it and incrementally, then significantly, gain on Trump remains to be seen. Other candidates in the race might catch fire along the way, with a few others likely to get in. But the real primary commences tonight, and at the starting gun — and until events and data suggest otherwise, it’s a two-man race.

The Leftists Loathe Tim Scott’s Racial Optimism

 It’s common among the conservative Twitterati to joke that the leftist media really want former President Donald Trump to be the nominee again, assuming — as they did in 2016 — that it means doom for the Republicans.

But whoever prevails, the 2024 Republican primary cycle is going to work out like all modern-day cycles. Inevitably, liberal Democrat reporters are going to end up loading buckets of slime and unloading them on every half-plausible candidate on the Republican side of the campaign. Even John McCain learned the hard way that his media pals would turn on him when it counted.

On May 22, Sen. Tim Scott announced he was running for president, the only black Republican in the Senate. The Left desperately wants to cartoon the Republican electorate as a pack of white supremacists, so Scott has to be mocked as the worst kind of African American.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, now the laziest host in cable news — she only works Mondays — mocked Scott’s vocal delivery. “That was a rough first three seconds of his presidential campaign,” said Maddow, laughing. “But who knows? Maybe it was just a rough first couple of seconds. Maybe in the end, he will do great. It worked out great for Peter Brady, in the end. He got through it. It was tough.”

Maddow compared a 57-year-old black man to a teenage white boy going through puberty. It’s not hard to guess how this would have been greeted if someone mocked the Almighty Barack this way. It would be racist.
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Then there are the pompous pundettes on ABC’s “The View,” lecturing Scott that he can’t possibly run for president based on optimism about America’s racial situation. Sunny Hostin waved him off: “I don’t know who his message is supposed to resonate with, actually. He’s talking about victimhood and personal responsibility as if people aren’t taking responsibility for their own actions.” Whoopi Goldberg echoed, “He came out and did that dog whistle: victimhood.”

Hostin said being a successful black man is rare: “He is the exception, and not the rule. And until he is the rule, then he can stop talking about systemic racism.” You can either agree America’s a systemic racist cesspool, or you can shut up. Goldberg dropped the bomb: “He’s got Clarence Thomas Syndrome.”

Who is really demeaning black Americans in this debate? Apparently, racial pessimism is forever.

Journalists will also make routine fun of Scott’s Christianity. Washington Post political reporter Ben Terris tweeted on Announcement Day, “Tim Scott will be the first prez candidate I’ve ever asked about the status of his virginity.” A few years ago, lifelong bachelor Scott coyly answered Terris that the ship had sailed, but he insisted adultery was a sin. Why ask? Because Scott used to preach abstinence before marriage, which apparently opens the door to invasive personal questions. So, if Kamala Harris is pro-abortion, has Terris asked her how many abortions she’s had? Or how many she’s funded, since she’s so pro-abortion?

So far, the GOP presidential field contains two black men and two Indian Americans, but Republicans are still hopelessly racist, because any Republican “of color” is cartooned as a self-loathing Clarence Thomas, a token desperate for white approval.

The Left thinks any pushback on their inaccurately described “diversity, equity and inclusion” agenda is a politics of grievance. They’re never introspective enough to see their own sign as pushing division and racial hatred for political gain. Tim Scott’s optimistic and patriotic vision is a breath of fresh air — fresher than the “Joy, Whoopi and Sunny” team will ever be.

It’s common among the conservative Twitterati to joke that the leftist media really want former President Donald Trump to be the nominee again, assuming — as they did in 2016 — that it means doom for the Republicans.

But whoever prevails, the 2024 Republican primary cycle is going to work out like all modern-day cycles. Inevitably, liberal Democrat reporters are going to end up loading buckets of slime and unloading them on every half-plausible candidate on the Republican side of the campaign. Even John McCain learned the hard way that his media pals would turn on him when it counted.

On May 22, Sen. Tim Scott announced he was running for president, the only black Republican in the Senate. The Left desperately wants to cartoon the Republican electorate as a pack of white supremacists, so Scott has to be mocked as the worst kind of African American.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, now the laziest host in cable news — she only works Mondays — mocked Scott’s vocal delivery. “That was a rough first three seconds of his presidential campaign,” said Maddow, laughing. “But who knows? Maybe it was just a rough first couple of seconds. Maybe in the end, he will do great. It worked out great for Peter Brady, in the end. He got through it. It was tough.”

Maddow compared a 57-year-old black man to a teenage white boy going through puberty. It’s not hard to guess how this would have been greeted if someone mocked the Almighty Barack this way. It would be racist.

Then there are the pompous pundettes on ABC’s “The View,” lecturing Scott that he can’t possibly run for president based on optimism about America’s racial situation. Sunny Hostin waved him off: “I don’t know who his message is supposed to resonate with, actually. He’s talking about victimhood and personal responsibility as if people aren’t taking responsibility for their own actions.” Whoopi Goldberg echoed, “He came out and did that dog whistle: victimhood.”

Hostin said being a successful black man is rare: “He is the exception, and not the rule. And until he is the rule, then he can stop talking about systemic racism.” You can either agree America’s a systemic racist cesspool, or you can shut up. Goldberg dropped the bomb: “He’s got Clarence Thomas Syndrome.”

Who is really demeaning black Americans in this debate? Apparently, racial pessimism is forever.

Journalists will also make routine fun of Scott’s Christianity. Washington Post political reporter Ben Terris tweeted on Announcement Day, “Tim Scott will be the first prez candidate I’ve ever asked about the status of his virginity.” A few years ago, lifelong bachelor Scott coyly answered Terris that the ship had sailed, but he insisted adultery was a sin. Why ask? Because Scott used to preach abstinence before marriage, which apparently opens the door to invasive personal questions. So, if Kamala Harris is pro-abortion, has Terris asked her how many abortions she’s had? Or how many she’s funded, since she’s so pro-abortion?

So far, the GOP presidential field contains two black men and two Indian Americans, but Republicans are still hopelessly racist, because any Republican “of color” is cartooned as a self-loathing Clarence Thomas, a token desperate for white approval.

The Left thinks any pushback on their inaccurately described “diversity, equity and inclusion” agenda is a politics of grievance. They’re never introspective enough to see their own sign as pushing division and racial hatred for political gain. Tim Scott’s optimistic and patriotic vision is a breath of fresh air — fresher than the “Joy, Whoopi and Sunny” team will ever be.
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The Kind of President I Want

 Trump or DeSantis, one of these two will be the Republican nominee for President next year. Others are in the race, but this is Koufax, Drysdale, and the bullpen. Strange things can happen, of course, but in this circumstance, probably won’t.

The others first. Vivek Ramaswamy says many good things, but he’s a rookie with no chance. Mike Pence and Tim Scott are, by all accounts, nice people, but can they say “NO!” to evil and Leftist decadence, and resist “reaching out across the aisle” to compromise with it? Compromise is certainly necessary sometimes, but never with evil. 50% evil is still evil. A glass of milk half full of arsenic will still kill you. I don’t mind “nice;” I do mind politicians who haven’t got the fortitude to tell wickedness to go plague another planet.

Nikki Haley lost whatever little hope she had when she kissed Disney’s backside. Chris Christie will get fewer votes than half his weight. Larry Elder seems to be a good man, but he is wasting money running for an office he will never obtain. No, barring a major currently unforeseen event, it will be Trump or DeSantis. But updates, if necessary.

To the Left, in one sense, it doesn’t matter who the Republicans nominate. They will viciously, vehemently, and vociferously denounce whoever the GOP candidate is. Any Republican will face this. If the nominee were Jesus Christ, the Left would vilify Him, just like the Pharisees did, and for many of the same reasons—amoral elitists believe they should be the masters, they demand to rule, they insist others obey, and anybody who challenges them must be utterly obliterated. Many of the followers of Jesus, down through the centuries, suffered the same fate He did, and still do. People who lust for power demand others submit to them, and if they ever get that power, they will persecute those who do not shut up and cower. This is exactly what the Democratic Party is increasingly attempting by weaponizing the federal government, and it will get worse if they are given more control. And they’ll try to fraudulently seize it if it is not legally granted to them by the people.

I’ve wandered some from my purpose here. I want to describe the person who I wish to be the next President, the kind of individual I think the country needs. Here is what I’m looking for, and I will be the first to admit that this class of politician is extremely rare nowadays.

I want a strong, principled conservative; by “principled” I mean somebody who truly believes it—walks the walk, not just talks the talk—and will not compromise for expediency’s sake. I want a person who truly loves America, who believes in the eternal values and morals that the United States was founded upon, a decent person, a good person, a godly person, one whom I can point at and say to my children, “I want you to be like him (her).” I want a President who isn’t foul-mouthed in public, who can artfully, yet forcefully, expose the failures in policy of his opponents, and do so clearly, but without being crude, insulting, caustic, or dishonest. I’m looking for a person who positively enunciates pro-American policies, and also has solid moral character. An exemplar in all respects.

That is the sort of individual I want as President of the United States. Am I asking for too much?

Honestly, Donald Trump doesn’t strike me as being overly endowed with some of the above qualities. Joe Biden doesn’t have any of them. I do believe Mr. Trump loves the country (after himself), and his stated policy goals would certainly benefit America. But he does a marvelous mimic of an arrogant, bombastic, narcissistic person; and his moral character hasn’t inspired me, either. But in that regard, he is no worse than any Democrat who would run, and again, Trump’s policies would be far superior. I plan to support him if he is the Republican nominee.

Regarding Mr. DeSantis. I don’t altogether know Ron DeSantis yet. He has stood up against the despicable Disney. He defends parents and children against the putrescent perverts who want to mutilate and sexualize kids. He has condemned the open border (his Martha’s Vineyard ploy last year was brilliant). Recently, the NAACP has attacked him, and that is indeed another plus in his favor. But he hasn’t been wholly vetted yet, so I will wait for fuller revelations. I don’t expect perfection from RDS or DJT. But I do want quality character in my President. “Be like him, son.”

Time will tell us what we need to know about Mr. DeSantis. Let’s see how he does in the midst of the national pressure of a Presidential primary race. We will find out who he is, more of what he believes, and whether he will crack under the microscopic examination of being in the national eye every day. How will he respond to Mr. Trump’s assaults and insults? What will he do when the liberal media, 24/7, throws lying stones at him? Will he lay out a positive course for American prosperity to us? These things will be the true test of the kind of man Ron DeSantis is. Currently, I don’t know the answers. I will make up my own mind, thank you. I’m certainly not going to accept Donald Trump’s word, unless and until his accusations about DeSantis prove accurate. If Trump goes all-out brutal on RDS, he might discover that people are sick of his mouth. I know I am.

In this column, I’m not endorsing either man. I want the best person in the White House, and I will watch and make my decision. It won’t be any Democrat, that I know. I may be disappointed in the candidates selected by both parties and vote for the “lesser of evils.” It wouldn’t be the first time.

Let the games begin.

A Biblical Law That Would Change American Life

 One of the most remarkable laws in the Bible is in the Book of Deuteronomy: “Do not hate an Egyptian.” It is remarkable because it was given to the generation of Israelites that had just been liberated from slavery in Egypt.

Imagine.

A people who had been enslaved for hundreds of years, and for a period of time had their newborn sons drowned, was instructed — by Moses in the name of God, no less — not to hate the people who had just enslaved them.

This is one of many examples why America’s Founders regarded the Bible as the most important book ever written. According to one historian who studied the issue, the book the Founders quoted most often — more often than any Enlightenment book, more often than any Greek or Roman work — was Deuteronomy, the biblical book in which the law prohibiting hatred of Egyptians appears.

It is difficult to think of a law more relevant to today’s America.

Imagine if the country — especially, though not only, black Americans — adopted this law and substituted “white” for “Egyptian.” Imagine the effect on America if every church, every school, every editorial page and every Democrat repeatedly told Americans, “Do not hate whites.”

Almost overnight, the gratuitous hatreds wrecking our country would begin to disappear.

Hatred of whites is the most prevalent — certainly, the most acceptable — hatred in America today. At almost every college, students are taught, often from their first day, that all whites are racist, that a black person cannot be racist, that America is systemically racist, that every black person is a victim, and that America was founded by whites to be a racist nation. Almost without exception mainstream newspapers and websites regularly publish “news” items and opinion pieces (the two are often indistinguishable) that echo the anti-white hate of the universities. The same for Hollywood and for major corporations such as Nike, and for philanthropies such as the Ford Foundation that have collectively pledged at least $100 million to Black Lives Matter, a white-hating organization.

The most prominent purveyor of this hatred is the president of the United States, who speaks about the alleged scourge of white supremacy in virtually every speech he gives pertaining to race.

To confirm how much lie-based hatred is directed at whites, ask any liberal or leftist in your life how many unarmed blacks are killed by police in an average year. You are likely to be told 1,000 or more, and at the least, many hundreds. The actual number is about 20 — and “unarmed” doesn’t mean they weren’t threatening and dangerous.

You might want to ask leftist friends and relatives another question: If America is systemically racist against blacks, if every white American is a racist, why have more than 4 million blacks immigrated to America from Africa and the Caribbean? Are they dumb? Is there any other example of a vast number of people immigrating to a country that hates them? Did any Jews immigrate to Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933?

That all — or even most, or even a large number of — whites hate blacks is a lie. It is one of the greatest national lies in history — perhaps second only to the infamous Blood Libel spread among European Christians that Jews slaughtered Christian children to use their blood in baking the Passover matzoh.

Related: Torah on One Foot: Selfish Love vs. Selfless Love

This lie that whites bear animus toward blacks is destroying the American nation.

And it is doing irreparable harm to the many black Americans who believe it. Take young blacks, for example. Imagine the harm done to the many black children who are constantly told that the country they live in hates them, that all whites are racist, and that they are all victims of white racism. What kind of an individual do those messages produce? A happy person? A grateful person? Neither, obviously. That messaging produces an angry, unhappy and ungrateful person — the perfect recipe for a miserable life and, in some cases, a person who will act out on their misery and anger.

The biblical admonition to the Israelites not to hate the Egyptian was meant to benefit them — the former slaves — far more than it was meant to benefit the Egyptians.

The most obvious antidote to this white hatred is truth. One truth is that few whites are racist (other than progressives, the people who believe in all-black dorms, all-black graduation exercises, lowering standards for blacks, that being colorblind is racist, and other racist ideas). Another truth is that America — at least until this eruption of white hatred — has been the most successful multiracial experiment in history.

But there is another possible antidote: applying the biblical admonition to the Israelites not to hate the Egyptians to Americans, especially black Americans, not to hate whites. If every church — including, of course, black churches — preached, “Do not hate the whites,” then at least those who claim to take the Bible seriously would feel religiously obligated not to hate white people.

That could change everything — almost overnight.

'Breathtakingly Corrupt' FBI EXPOSED in Durham Trump-Russia Report

 Special Counsel John Durham called the FBI’s acts in the Crossfire Hurricane (Trump-Russia) probe “sobering” and said the actions displayed a “lack of fidelity.” But Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said the probe exposed a “breathtakingly corrupt” FBI that is “subversive of the Constitution.”

Somebody might want to take Christopher Wray’s airplane away, halt those billions for a new FBI building, and get the FBI Director a new pair of underpants after this report.

In a series of tweets, Lee, a Constitutional scholar, said the Durham report laid bare the series of political decisions to get Trump instead of following its own rules.

Lee said that “the gravity of the misconduct uncovered by Mr. Durham cannot be overstated.”

    🧵 1. The gravity of the misconduct uncovered by Mr. Durham cannot be overstated. https://t.co/WOSA1XNua7

    — Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 15, 2023

“The LEAST one can say of it is that it involved a malicious use of federal law-enforcement officers to conduct a contrived investigation utterly lacking any valid, factual foundation from the very beginning. That is itself incredibly troubling—and also unconstitutional,” he wrote. But he said that the Durham Report indicated that the FBI corruption “was SO MUCH WORSE than that.” He stated that the ramifications of the Report showed “a powerful, long-respected, federal law-enforcement agency” using its power “to render a presidential candidate unelectable—entirely in the absence of any valid, good-faith basis for doing so.” [emphasis added]

Related: Here’s What John Durham’s Next Step Should Be

And he said there’s no innocent explanation for why the once-premier law enforcement agency turned Stasi is corrupt to the core.

    So make no mistake—this can’t be dismissed as mere carelessness or even a severe example of garden-variety misconduct. No—this is as corrupt and as subversive of the Constitution as it gets. [emphasis added]

It gets worse.

Indeed, the Durham Report said that the FBI and the “Intelligence Community” [CIA, NSA] never “possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” Not only did they have no evidence to open the investigation, but they were also pressured to do so by none other than James Comey and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

“In particular, at the direction of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Peter Strzok opened Crossfire Hurricane immediately” without vetting the information, including the so-called Steele Dossier. And they never checked the information coming from the Hillary Clinton campaign to see if there was any truth to it. “The matter was opened as a full investigation without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information. Further, the FBI did so without any significant review of its own intelligence databases.”

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For those of you who are unclear about what the above means, it means they lied to get Trump.

Furthermore, the FBI, especially its former head, James Comey, wanted to open the investigation without the necessary predicate. Comey was adamant about getting a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant so they could spy on the Trump campaign. To get the FISA warrant, they had to lie on the application, which is a federal crime — not that anyone is going to be punished for it.

According to the Durham Report:

    OI Attorney-I advised the Office that FBI OGC attorney Kevin Clinesmith informed him that Director Corney “wants to know what’s going on,” and that Deputy Director McCabe asked who the FBI needed to speak with at DOI “to get this going,” McCabe confirmed this basic push by the FBI and Comey when he was interviewed by the OIG investigators. McCabe told the interviewers that there was a lot of back-and-forth between the Crossfire Hurricane investigators and 0I regarding”[w]hen are we going to get it? When are we going to get it?” and that Corney repeatedly asked him “Where is the FISA, where is the FISA? What’s the status with the, with the Page FISA?” McCabe noted that the FISA was something McCabe definitely knew Corney wanted.

The Durham Report details how the FBI broke its own rules, didn’t vet the material given to it by obvious Hillary Clinton operatives, ignored the Constitution, ignored exculpatory information of the targets of the investigation, and used its power to try and help Clinton win the 2016 election. It didn’t work, but Deep State efforts to help Democrats were renewed in the 2020 election cycle.

Lee wondered what many of us have spent time wondering since the hinky 2020 election. “What if” the FBI and Intelligence Community had stayed out of the election?

    4. Would Trump have been re-elected in 2020?

    — Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 16, 2023

Several heads have rolled since these accusations became apparent, but it’s not enough until someone goes to jail for using his/her position of power to — what do they call it? Oh, yes, “Destroy Democracy™”

For Our VIP Members: The ‘Fix Is In’ for Hunter Biden’s Backdoor Pardon

Democrats, like party organ the New York Times, will pretend this is old news, and some of it is, but Durham’s report also seems to question the underpinnings of the investigations into Gen. Michael Flynn, the first target of the phony FBI probe, called Crossfire Razor. It also calls attention to the fact that Paul Manafort, who helped manage the RNC nominating convention for Trump and then resigned when news accounts questioned his Russia/Ukraine ties, went to prison for failure to pay taxes and was set up by lying Steele Dossier informants. Manafort, a registered foreign lobbyist, and Carter Page were framed as conduits through which nefarious Trump-Russia relations were consummated. But they were lies and the FBI knew it.

    [O]ur investigation also uncovered that Dolan was the definitive source for at least one allegation in the Steele Reports. This allegation, contained in Steele Report 2016/105, concerned the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Paul Manafort from the Trump campaign. When interviewed by the Office, Dolan admitted that he fabricated the allegation about Manafort that appeared in the Steele Report. Our investigation also revealed that, in some instances, Dolan independently received other information strikingly similar to allegations that would later appear in the Steele Reports. Nevertheless, when interviewed by the FBI, Danchenko denied that Dolan was a source for any information in the Steele Reports.

If I were their attorneys, I would be going over the Durham Report with a magnifying glass.

During his four-year investigation, Durham prosecuted the Steele Dossier sub-source Igor Danchenko and Hillary Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann for lying to FBI agents, both of whom were found not guilty by D.C. juries. But the trials provided eye-popping insights into the flimsy FBI cases against Trump allies. Remarkably, in those trials, Durham seemed to frame the FBI as unwitting dupes of the Clinton campaign shenanigans. The Durham Report gives the FBI no quarter, no leverage whatsoever.

In short, Durham showed that the FBI:

    Framed Trump as a Russian spy.
    Had no legal predicate to investigate the Trump campaign.
    Practiced two-tiered justice, one for Trump and another for Clinton.
    Knew Hillary Clinton’s foundation was a money-laundering racket.
    Knew Hillary Clinton destroyed evidence and did nothing about it.
    Knew Hillary Clinton was framing Trump to distract from her email scandal.
    Didn’t perform the most basic functions of an investigation.
    Lied to get a FISA warrant due to pressure from James Comey.
    Interfered with the Durham investigation by paying Steele source Danchenko.
    Hid evidence of Carter Page’s innocence from investigation and warrant application.
    Purposely deprived Donald Trump, et. al., of their good names, reputations, and millions of dollars in legal fees.
    Used its authority to ruin people’s lives.
    Helped further what attorney and radio host Mark Levin termed a “soft coup.”

It’s hard to overstate the sickening corruption at the FBI in this case and what we’ve seen in the January 6 prosecutions. If you want to know what a corrupt outfit the FBI is and how the January 6 prosecutions are fundamentally unconstitutional, you may want to watch my interview with civil rights attorney and Democrat Harvey Silverglate who calls for getting rid of the FBI “root and branch.” See it below.

It's Time for Hillary to Pay for What She's Done to America

 Hillary Clinton lied. She knew Donald Trump was not a Russian spy. Trump knew she was lying. The FBI knew she lied but went after Trump anyway. The CIA knew she lied. President Barack Obama knew she lied. Joe Biden knew she lied. The FBI covered up for her. The CIA covered up for her. The DOJ covered up for her. Barack Obama covered for her and so did Joe Biden.

“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying,” according to the sardonic epigram attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

He was describing life and imprisonment under Stalin. But it’s an apt description for the Democrats’ reign at Main Justice and the FBI. There’s justice and then there’s just us. America has sunk to new depths of political depravity, treating members of one political party differently from another, as pointed out in the Durham Report.

Justice without fear or favor, Merrick Garland? My ass.

Durham wrote the “Clinton Plan” was conceived to distract from her very real and very illegal destruction of evidence — her emails — which were under a preservation order. “According to the declassified Clinton Plan intelligence, on July 26, 2016, Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to tie Trump to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”

Clinton’s apparatchiks, including Jennifer Palmieri, John Podesta, and Jake Sullivan, told the Special Counsel they knew nothing of the plan to distract from Hillary’s email scandal, describing such a plan as ridiculous. Durham found their protestations ridiculous.

Here’s Hillary touting the “connection” between Trump and the Alfa Bank scam. Sullivan, Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser — which should help explain why his administration’s foreign policy is such a cluster — amplified her tweet as well.

    Oh, yes, it was. And she knew it was and so did her apparatchik #JakeSullivan who's now #Biden's "National Security Adviser."

    What a corrupt bunch of frauds. My God. https://t.co/mccYhuA3hk#Hillary #TrumpRussia#FBICorruption#HillaryforPrison https://t.co/Q2qsrdz7jo

    — Victoria Taft, The Adult in the Room, FITF Squad (@VictoriaTaft) May 16, 2023

“During the same week, Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, stated in media interviews that the campaign believed that the Russian government had carried out the DNC hack to assist Trump’s electoral chances and that Trump had made troubling statements,” the report states.

And Hillary’s pet attack dogs, Fusion GPS, seeded the fake story with their compliant fellow travelers in the media, including The Wall Street Journal news reporters and Reuters.

    Fusion GPS’s Peter Fritsch “emailed Franklin Foer of Slate stating ‘now we need to do the next level, which is in the works.’ Foer responded, ‘Good deal -what’s the next level? And is it a sex scandal?’ Fritsch replied, ‘It’s who carter page met with in early july and what they talked about.’

    On July 25, 2016, Mark Hosenball of Reuters sent Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS an email stating ‘if you have stuff on the Carter Page guy, including his most recent Russian excursion, pis. send. Doing two Russian hacking stories today and might be able to do another as early as tomorrow.’

But it’s about time someone paid for all this lying which has corroded the very depths of the “intelligence community,” especially the FBI, and the body politic as a whole – reaching the top of the Obama White House when then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

None of these privileged Washington swells is going to the D.C. Gulag with the January 6ers. None has apologized to the American people or Donald Trump for putting them through this roiling cauldron of chaos.

Who should pay?

Hillary.

If no one will pay in prison then I propose a penalty for Hillary Clinton and her millions in shakedown dollars from her Clinton Foundation, which was under investigation by the FBI and DOJ — an investigation subsequently shut down because the 7th Floor didn’t want to upset Madam President.

Related: The Morning Briefing: Durham Serves Up a Heap of Obvious Too Long After the Damage Was Done

Durham included the text message between FBI attorney Lisa Page and investigator Peter Strzok:

    Page: One more thing: [Clinton] may be our next president. The last thing you need [is] going in there loaded for bear. You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more doj than fbi?

    Strzok: Agreed ….

It’s amazing what you can get away with when you’re a Democrat.

The Mueller Special Counsel investigation, which was strung out for years to bring maximum pain to Trump, cost the American taxpayers $32 million.

Mueller’s cover-up job and “investigation” into Trump Russia and Alfa Bank scams found no wrongdoing by Trump because, as we’ve learned, the idea that Trump was a Russian secret agent was a big fat lie conjured up by Hillary. That “investigation” doubled as a mop-up op to wipe Hillary’s fingerprints from her paid-for oppo research.

The Durham investigation has so far spent $6,556,507 through September 2022.

Hillary Clinton should pay for every one of the 939 days that John Durham spent retracing the steps of the corrupt FBI because of her lies.

This isn’t a simple “iron my shirt” dirty campaign trick. This was a whole-of-government attack on Donald Trump that cost more than $38,000,000 of other peoples’ money and cost him millions of dollars in attorneys fees.

Considering that the Clinton Foundation shakedown op took in  $111,959,695 in just the years 2017, 2018, and 2019 — after she lost the presidential election — she’s got some shekels to work with even after her fake expenses.

Despite all of the fake investigations into his background, character, and business dealings, Donald Trump is unbroken. He should sue Hillary, though, for defamation, pain, suffering, and whatever else he can contrive in New York City. I understand the Manhattan DA is big on those kinds of cases.

In the meantime, the American people would like their money back. Hand it over, Hill.

Well, whaddaya know? The Deep State Borg tried to steal the 2016 election and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency. If you’d been reading PJ Media all these years, you would have known that, because we’ve reported on every move of the Durham investigation. But the media and Deep State Borg have conspired to silence PJ Media and its sister sites.

The Great Underestimation of DeSantis Starts to Unravel

 This past weekend, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., reminded voters, and a skeptical press that have spent an inordinate amount of time writing his political obituary before he even launched his candidacy, that he not only possesses the promise and nimbleness needed to be a candidate for president but that he also has the staff and network needed to pull off just the right move to strike a blow against his rival, former President Donald Trump.

People underestimate DeSantis only at their own peril.

The Florida governor began the weekend Friday in Illinois as the keynote speaker at the Lincoln Day Dinner for Peoria and Tazewell counties. The Peoria Journal Star said he drew a crowd of more than 1,100 to the Peoria Civic Center.

Early Saturday morning, DeSantis started his first campaign event in Sioux Center, Iowa, as a guest at Rep. Randy Feenstra's annual Feenstra Family Picnic, spent time greeting folks at a classic car museum, stopped at a Pizza Ranch, and finished out the day at an unplanned event, standing on a table with his wife at Jethro's BBQ.

All of DeSantis's headline events went off without a hitch. In that regard, they were very similar to speeches I attended several weeks ago that he gave in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, and Akron, Ohio, where he was greeted with robust support after delivering speeches that outlined his aspirations for the country, his accomplishments as a governor and his promise to take on the cultural headwinds in our country.

DeSantis and Trump were scheduled on Saturday to be in Iowa, the state with the first-in-the-country contest for 2024, but Trump's team canceled the event after the threat of a tornado warning. DeSantis took full advantage of his absence with an impromptu stop in the same area Trump was supposed to be, thus casting shade on the former president, who has spent months maligning DeSantis's character.
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"My better half and I have been able to be all over Iowa today, but before we went back to Florida, we wanted to come by and say hi to the people of Des Moines," DeSantis said to a cheering and surprised crowd at the barbecue as he and his wife Casey stood on a picnic table outside. "So thank you all for coming out. It's a beautiful night. It's been a great day for us."

DeSantis, to the frustration of a press hungry for a battle, has pointedly not responded to Trump's attacks as a not-yet-declared candidate as he finished his legislative session in Florida. That vacuum has allowed polls to favor Trump for months and caused impatient pundits to underestimate DeSantis' abilities and instincts.

DeSantis' unscheduled stop speaks to the scope of the organization he already has in Iowa and its competency. Several Iowa Republicans said they were surprised that when Trump decided to cancel the rally, he didn't try to do something else, even if it were on a smaller scale.

In 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, won the Iowa caucus over Trump, largely on his appeal to evangelical voters, who make up the bulk of the Republican electorate in the Iowa caucus. However, Trump would go on to win over the evangelical vote in the rest of the contests and in the general election over Hillary Clinton.

Evangelicals were the most rewarded voting bloc in the Trump coalition during his presidency with his picks of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. If Trump is failing with those same voters in Iowa, that may be a sign of a fissure in his support that could be game-changing.

For the past few months, the media have been intent on writing DeSantis off. Yet if there are two things I have learned over the years in covering presidential elections, one is to listen to what voters tell you they want, not what you think they need, and two, never, ever underestimate any candidate, especially when everyone else is.

NYC Mayor Has Some Regrets About Being a Sanctuary City

 As President Joe Biden's border crisis continues to rage, Democrats in states and cities across the country are grappling with how to handle an unprecendented influx of illegal immigration into their communities.

In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has been complaining about the arrival of 500 illegal immigrants per day and is taking drastic measures to make room where he says there is none.

    Homeless vets are being booted from NY hotels to make room for migrants: advocates https://t.co/5l0feTqkO0
    — Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) May 13, 2023

Adams also started a war with the suburbs, whose leaders are pushing back.

    A migrant crisis that has been largely contained to the southern border and to the nation’s biggest cities just arrived in the suburbs.

    Two New York counties have declared states of emergency in a bid to halt New York City’s attempt to move asylum-seekers to vacant hotels in their communities, and one is already taking its fight to court.

    New York is now having a battle between county and city over how to handle the crush of asylum-seekers and the strain they are putting on local services and budgets.

    New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who says his city is “is being destroyed by the migrant crisis,” wants to move 300 recent arrivals to Orange and Rockland counties starting as soon as Wednesday. More than 61,000 migrants have arrived in the city since last spring.

Now, Mayor Adams is lamenting laws that made his jurisdiction a sanctuary city and asking a court to halt the policy.

    Mayor Eric Adams is “now in court, today, asking a judge to revisit” NYC’s sanctuary city law:

    “No one thought that they would be dealing with a humanitarian crisis of this proportion.” pic.twitter.com/UxkkYzhc0n
    — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 15, 2023

IRS Axes 'Entire Investigative Team' Probing Hunter Biden Taxes: Report

 As the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI were left reeling in the wake of John Durham's report on the "sobering" finding that there was no basis for the investigation into Trump's "Russian collusion," the DOJ reportedly wasted no time apparently trying to use the fury of media scrutiny to make another confounding decision.

According to an exclusive report late Monday night from The New York Post, the IRS "removed the 'entire investigative team' from its long-running tax fraud probe of first son Hunter Biden in alleged retaliation against the whistleblower who alleged a coverup."

    While news media were digesting the Durham report’s evidence of FBI and DOJ corruption, DOJ knifed the entire criminal investigative team at the IRS handling Hunter Biden’s case. https://t.co/FuPq3B4NaO
    — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 16, 2023

In April, an anonymous IRS employee retained counsel after making protected disclosures at the federal agency and made contact with Republican House committee chairmen seeking to make additional protected disclosures to lawmakers about what the whistleblower called "preferential treatment" for Hunter Biden and knowledge of details that "contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee."

The latest development regarding the IRS' probe of Hunter Biden came from a letter from the whistleblower's lawyers informing members of Congress of the allegedly DOJ-ordered removal of the team investigating Hunter Biden's taxes:

    Today the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress. He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice.

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The letter also noted that the allegedly DOJ-ordered removal of the investigative team appears to contradict what IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel told lawmakers at the end of April: "I can say without hesitation there will be no retaliation for anyone making an allegation or a call to a whistleblower hotline."

    Since several sources have obtained it and released it independently, attached is the letter @tristanleavitt of @EMPOWR_us and Mark Lytle of @NixonPeabodyLLP sent to Congress today regarding retaliation against their IRS client. pic.twitter.com/veiqCGDPtP
    — Empower Oversight (@EMPOWR_us) May 16, 2023

Given what the whistleblower's lawyers told Congress Monday evening, it seems as though clearing out the team on which the whistleblower served "is clearly retaliatory and may also constitute obstructions of a congressional inquiry," the letter continued.

More from the letter via the Post:

    Our client has a right to make disclosures to Congress … He is protected by 5 U.S.C. § 2302 from retaliatory personnel actions—including receiving a ‘significant change in duties, responsibilities, or working conditions’ (which this clearly is) because of his disclosures to Congress...

    Any attempt by any government official to prevent a federal employee from furnishing information to Congress is also a direct violation of longstanding appropriations restriction. Furthermore, 18 U.S.C. § 1505 makes it a crime to obstruct an investigation of Congress...

    We respectfully request that you give this matter your prompt attention. Removing the experienced investigators who have worked this case for years and are now the subject-matter experts is exactly the sort of issue our client intended to blow the whistle on to begin with.

When The New York Post asked for comment from the IRS, DOJ, White House, and Hunter Biden's lawyers, they received no "immediate response" while counsel for the whistleblower "declined" to provide comment beyond what was already stated in their letter to lawmakers.

Durham Releases Russia Hoax Report Containing Bombshells

 pecial Counsel John Durham, who was tapped by former Attorney General Bill Barr in May 2019 to get to the bottom of why the FBI launched a probe into the Trump 2016 campaign and Trump administration for "Russian collusion," has finally issued a 306-page report on the matter.

"The objective facts show that the FBI’s handling of important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient,” Durham wrote. "Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the (Justice) Department and FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report."

During his lengthy investigation, Durham found the FBI should have never opened the investigations and that they were led by politically motivated actors like former FBI agent Peter Strzok.

"Neither U.S. nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation," the report states. "FBI records prepared by [Peter] Strzok in February and March 2017 show that at the time of the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI had no information in its holdings indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials.”

    NOW - Durham report finds the FBI failed in its responsibility to the public and never should have launched the Trump-Russia probe.pic.twitter.com/uIIQJYVrOS
    — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 15, 2023

Durham found that the Steele dossier, which was developed by the Clinton campaign with foreign spy Christopher Steel and then used by the FBI to obtain FISA warrants and by the media to deem former President Donald Trump guilty of collusion, was extremely flawed and untruthful.
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"Our investigation determined that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations contained in the Steele reporting," Durham writes.

    Durham: The FBI knew Steele Dossier source Igor Danchenko's claims about Sergei Millian were lies, which is why they never tried to even corroborate them. And yet, the FBI still put the false allegations in multiple illegal FISA warrant applications against Carter Page. pic.twitter.com/BahgiZZBEJ
    — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 15, 2023

Inside the Obama administration, a number of officials were involved and briefed on the Clinton campaign's efforts to falsely tie Trump to Russia.

"In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee," the report states. "According to his handwritten notes, CIA Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the 'alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services."

Brennan knew the conspiracy theory of Russian collusion was politically motivated and yet, briefed President Obama and continued to make accusations of collusion for years on MSNBC.

    🚨BREAKING: According to the Durham Report, the plan by Hillary Clinton to create a false story linking Donald Trump to Russia was briefed in August of 2016 by CIA Director John Brennan to President Obama, VP Biden, AG Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director Comey. pic.twitter.com/r2NvwJyKW8
    — Greg Price (@greg_price11) May 15, 2023

According to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Durham could appear before Congress as early as next week to discuss the findings.

    We’ve reached out to the Justice Department to have Special Counsel John Durham testify next week.
    — Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) May 15, 2023

This story has been updated with additional information.

Liberal Racism and the Truth About ‘White Supremacy’

 Look out, “extremist white supremacy” is coming to get you! It’s lurking behind every bush, under every bed, it will get you because it is everywhere. It is, in fact, the top domestic terrorist threat in the country...if you don’t count 10,000 murders of black people as terrorism and only focus on the killings of 25 people. That may sound odd or absurd, and it is (both). It’s also what Democrats argue because they don’t give a single damn about the slaughter of anyone they can’t monetize or use to mobilize.

President Joe Biden encouraged the 2023 graduating class at Howard University to “stand up against the poison of white supremacy as I did in my inaugural address, to single out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to homeland is white supremacy. And I’m not saying this because I’m a black HBCU, I say it wherever I go.” By the way, the “B” in “HBCU” stands for black; there are no non-black HBCUs.

What is the “threat” from white supremacy the lives of those graduates are facing? Nothing. Literally nothing. A rounding error in crime statistic, at best.

Almost 10,000 black people were murdered in 2020 (9,941, to be exact) compared to 7,043 white people. How many of those 10,000 were killed by “extremists”? Well, according to the left-wing Anti-Defamation League, a group with everything to gain by inflating those numbers, the total was 25.

Reuters reports, “White supremacists commit the highest number of domestic extremist-related murders in most years, but in 2022 the percentage was unusually high: 21 of the 25 murders were linked to white supremacists.” So, the total is 21. That’s 21 out of 9,941 or .21 percent. Is that the “biggest threat” black people face? They have higher odds of getting hit by a train while on an airplane flying over the Atlantic than to be a victim of “white supremacy extremism.” (Naturally, Reuters framed it in a way to scare and mislead people, headlining the story, “White supremacists behind over 80% of extremism-related U.S. murders in 2022.” If you don’t have the facts or numbers, highlight the percentages…)

Why don’t Democrats tell the truth – that the drug dealers Democrats refuse to prosecute are exponentially more likely to murder innocent black people than any other configuration of human being? Because, unlike that garbage like from Biden and his commencement address at Howard, telling the truth won’t get you applause from any leftists, let alone an educated black audience. And yes, they did applaud that absurd line (watch it here for yourself).

If you want to talk about indoctrination, look no further than what Democrats have done to the education system in predominately black cities, and especially HBCUs. How can anyone believe there are bands of white supremacists – a term, by the way, that Democrats have abused more than Democrat Jeffrey Epstein abused young girls while Democrats sucked up to him, to mean anything and anyone they don’t like – roaming the country looking for minorities to kill?

I wrote this in my book a few years ago, but it’s relevant today, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated there are between 5,000 and 8,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States, or an average of 6,500. The average attendance of a WNBA game in 2016 was 7,655, a record for them at the time and something they celebrated. That meant there were more than 1,100 more people in attendance of the average game of one of the least popular professional sports in the world than in the most widely known “extremist white supremacist” organization in the country, possibly the world.

Yet, through some miracle known only to Democrats, white supremacists are the greatest terroristic threat the nation faces. Must be that “new math” we’ve been hearing about.

That old politicians looking to manipulate black people spew lies like this should surprise no one, Democrats have been doing that for hundreds of years. That anyone still buys it is a testament to just how engrained the real racism in this country, found exclusively on the left, is still riding strong.

The fact is about 90 percent of black murder victims are killed by black killers (it’s roughly the same for every race, but the numbers are about 10 percentage points less). By not acknowledging this reality, Joe Biden is lying in order to reinforce one of the most important narratives Democrats have going. They’re also lying to obscure the fact that unchecked progressive Democrat policies truly are the greatest threat to black lives in the country. But you’d only care about that if you honestly believed that “Black Lives Matter.” Clearly, Democrats and even BLM activists do not.

Latest Inflation Report Is More Bad News for Biden

 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its April Consumer Price Index (CPI) report on Wednesday morning, and it's more bad news for the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve as their half-hearted fight to tame inflation continues to look largely ineffective at making a noticeable difference for the American people. 

CPI inflation increased 0.4 percent in April, while costs rose 4.9 percent in the last 12 months. The core CPI number — excluding more volatile food and energy prices — also increased 0.4 percent month-over-month for April for a 5.5 percent annual advance.

CPI for all items rises 0.4% in April; shelter, used cars and trucks, and gasoline up https://t.co/dJyJeKlXDJ #CPI #BLSdata

— BLS-Labor Statistics (@BLS_gov) May 10, 2023

The April CPI number, BLS explained, was driven by increases across a range of indexes that outpaced limited decreases in other areas:

The index for shelter was the largest contributor to the monthly all items increase, followed by increases in the index for used cars and trucks and the index for gasoline. The increase in the gasoline index more than offset declines in other energy component indexes, and the energy index rose 0.6 percent in April. The food index was unchanged in April, as it was in March. The index for food at home fell 0.2 percent over the month while the index for food away from home rose 0.4 percent.

Townhall noted previously that the March CPI release showed headline inflation rising 0.1 percent, meaning April's report shows an acceleration of inflation that mirrors what was seen in last month's first quarter Personal Consumer Expenditures price index estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. 

That acceleration is because so many indexes — shelter, used cars and trucks, motor vehicle insurance, recreation, household furnishings and operations, food away from home, and personal care — saw increases in April while limited decreases in food at home, airline fares, and new vehicles failed to bring the headline CPI number down.

The CPI report's 4.9 percent annual increase also means the average American worker again took a pay cut — after more than two years-worth of pay cuts — to their real wages. As Townhall reported earlier this month, the April jobs number showed annual wage growth at 4.4 percent, meaning American workers are still making a -.5 percent real wage as inflation continues to outstrip wage increases. 

Broken down more specifically, here's which indexes continue to show the greatest inflation in the 12 months that ended in April: 

• financial services - 8.4 percent
• apparel services - 9.2 percent
• delivery services - 7.4 percent
• fees for lessons or instructions - 12.1 percent
• veterinarian services - 10.2 percent
• motor vehicle insurance - 15.5 percent
• motor vehicle repair - 20.2 percent
• transportation services - 11.0 percent
• rent of primary residence - 8.8 percent 
• stationary and gift wrap - 9.7 percent
• pet food - 14.6 percent
• medical equipment and supplies - 9.9 percent
• motor oil - 13.1 percent
• household paper products - 11.9 percent
• outdoor equipment and supplies - 12.1 percent
• electricity - 8.4 percent
• food at elementary and secondary schools - 296.0 percent
• spices, condiments, and sauces - 10.3 percent
• salad dressing - 14.8 percent
• margarine - 23.8 percent
• carbonated drinks - 11.9 percent
• eggs - 21.4 percent
• crackers and bread - 13.1 percent
• cereal - 11.3 percent

Despite President Biden's promise to "build back better," his ongoing spending binge and reckless monetary policy means that interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve aren't going to solve the problem or bring noticeable relief to the American people. Instead, the government must also address reducing spending in order to actually allow interest rate increases to slow down price increases. Without that action, there will only be more disastrous GDP reports showing economic growth slowing while inflation continues to accelerate.

'New Phase': House Probe of Biden Family Businesses Finds More Foreign Payments

 In a press conference held by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Wednesday morning, Republican members led by Chairman James Comer (R-KY) presented new evidence related to the questionable business dealings of President Joe Biden's family through a web of associates and their companies.

    We have now established a network of over 20 companies formed by the Bidens and their associates.

    Most of these companies were LLCs and formed when Joe Biden was Vice President.
    — Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) May 10, 2023

Speaking of an oversight investigation that began soon after House Republicans took control of the lower chamber, Comer hyped up the "astonishing progress" his committee has made in "only four months" probing President Biden and his family's "shady business deals" that capitalized on the president's positions of power in government.

Wednesday's press conference revealed additional money transfers during the time Joe Biden was vice president. According to Comer, while Biden was "lecturing Romania on anti-corruption policies," a Romanian national transferred more than $1 million dollars in payments to Biden family associates that was subsequently passed to Biden family members. Conveniently, Comer explained, payments from the Romanian national stopped flowing after Biden was no longer vice president. What's more, the Romanian national identified by the committee was under investigation and later convicted of corruption in Romania.

    The Bidens received over $1 million for the Romania deal, with 16 of the 17 payments made during Biden’s VP term.

    The money stops flowing from Romania soon after Joe Biden leaves office, establishing a pattern of influence peddling.
    — Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) May 10, 2023

The House Oversight Committee released a detailed memo outlining its latest findings, but here's the gist:

Five weeks after Romania's president visited Washington and met with then-Vice President Biden, an entity called Bladon Enterprises Limited — reportedly Gabriel Popoviciu’s Cypriot company used to do business in Romania — started depositing funds, eventually totaling more than $3 million, into the Robinson Walker, LLC account — one of at least 15 companies created by Biden associates after Joe Biden became vice president.

After the transfers from Bladon to Robinson Walker, bank accounts owned by members of Biden's family "received approximately $1.038 million from the Robinson Walker, LLC account...while Joe Biden was Vice President." Those family members include Hunter Biden, Hallie Biden, and a still-unknown Biden bank account.

The House Oversight Committee's memo points to a previous NBC News report that explained "Hunter Biden’s work for Popoviciu in 2016 went unreported at the time, but Joe Biden’s involvement in Romania was very much public."

The Oversight Committee's memo continues:

    The Committee is investigating why the Bidens used Robinson Walker, LLC to receive money from what a news report has described as “a side pocket agreement directly with Popoviciu . . . .”After certain Bladon Enterprises deposits were made, the Biden bank accounts received over $1 million in payments via Robinson Walker, LLC. It appears from bank records the Bidens were using Robinson Walker, LLC to conceal that the source of these payments was Popoviciu.

    The Committee is further concerned that while Vice President Biden advocated publicly for anti-corruption policies in Romania, bank records show Biden family members and business associates were simultaneously reaping in significant amounts of money from a Romanian individual at the center of a Romanian corruption scandal. This illustrates the need for more robust financial disclosures regarding a president’s or vice president’s immediate family members who receive money from foreign companies and foreign nationals.

Wednesday's new information comes after the Oversight Committee revealed other money transfers from a Chinese energy company to Robinson Walker, LLC, payments that Republican lawmakers say, based on bank records, eventually made their way into bank accounts belonging to members of Joe Biden's family.

Naturally, Oversight Republicans want to know why associates of the Biden family would receive "significant deposits from foreign sources into their bank accounts and then transfer smaller, incremental payments to Biden bank accounts."

Those financial transactions, the GOP lawmakers say, "appear to be a concerted effort to conceal the source and total amount received from foreign companies."

To that end, Comer said the Oversight Committee's investigation "will enter a new phase" that includes even more subpoenas to banks through which the transactions at issue passed.

    .@RepJamesComer will soon issue more subpoenas to banks for specific, targeted information.

    In addition, he will provide one more opportunity for certain Biden associates—including his art gallerist and Rob Walker—to cooperate willingly with this investigation.
    — Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) May 10, 2023

With millions of dollars making their way from foreign entities to Biden associates and apparently into Biden family accounts, the Oversight Committee added "it is not credible" that then-Vice President Biden "did not know that multiple Biden family members were committing a significant amount of their time toward and receiving millions of dollars from foreign companies in China and elsewhere," that "wealthy and politically connected Chinese nations...approached the Biden family to do legitimate work because of those family members' expertise," or that "the same Chinese nationals, whose agent was arrested and convicted in the United States for bribery of foreign leaders, money laundering, and fraud, did not intend the same corrupt objectives with the Bidens and their companies."

The latest revelations also follow the announcement from Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that a whistleblower had come forward to make protected disclosures about FBI knowledge of an alleged criminal bribery scheme between then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national.

Comer issued a subpoena for the documents referenced by the whistleblower to FBI Director Christopher Wray, but the information has yet to be produced.  

    🚨🚨🚨@RepJamesComer & @ChuckGrassley reveal the existence of an FBI record alleging then-VP Biden engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national.

    According to a whistleblower, this record details an alleged arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions.… pic.twitter.com/6yLwPLi8Hw
    — Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) May 3, 2023

ChatGPT Is Dumber Than You Think

 ‘It’s a critic of technology, I must say that the enthusiasm for ChatGPT, a large-language model trained by OpenAI, is misplaced. Although it may be impressive from a technical standpoint, the idea of relying on a machine to have conversations and generate responses raises serious concerns.

First and foremost, ChatGPT lacks the ability to truly understand the complexity of human language and conversation. It is simply trained to generate words based on a given input, but it does not have the ability to truly comprehend the meaning behind those words. This means that any responses it generates are likely to be shallow and lacking in depth and insight.

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Furthermore, the reliance on ChatGPT for conversation raises ethical concerns. If people begin to rely on a machine to have conversations for them, it could lead to a loss of genuine human connection. The ability to connect with others through conversation is a fundamental aspect of being human, and outsourcing that to a machine could have detrimental side effects on our society.

Hold up, though. I, Ian Bogost, did not actually write the previous three paragraphs. A friend sent them to me as screenshots from his session with ChatGPT, a program released last week by OpenAI that one interacts with by typing into a chat window. It is, indeed, a large language model (or LLM), a type of deep-learning software that can generate new text once trained on massive amounts of existing written material. My friend’s prompt was this: “Create a critique of enthusiasm for ChatGPT in the style of Ian Bogost.”

ChatGPT wrote more, but I spared you the rest because it was so boring. The AI wrote another paragraph about accountability (“If ChatGPT says or does something inappropriate, who is to blame?”), and then a concluding paragraph that restated the rest (it even began, “In conclusion, …”). In short, it wrote a basic, high-school-style five-paragraph essay.

That fact might comfort or frighten you, depending on your predilections. When OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public last week, the first and most common reaction I saw was fear that it would upend education. “You can no longer give take-home exams,” Kevin Bryan, a University of Toronto professor, posted on Twitter. “I think chat.openai.com may actually spell the end of writing assignments,” wrote Samuel Bagg, a University of South Carolina political scientist. That’s the fear.

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But you may find comfort in knowing that the bot’s output, while fluent and persuasive as text, is consistently uninteresting as prose. It’s formulaic in structure, style, and content. John Warner, the author of the book Why They Can’t Write, has been railing against the five-paragraph essay for years and wrote a Twitter thread about how ChatGPT reflects this rules-based, standardized form of writing: “Students were essentially trained to produce imitations of writing,” he tweeted. The AI can generate credible writing, but only because writing, and our expectations for it, has become so unaspiring.
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A woman uses an office phone at a desk.
Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore
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The East Coast Is Going to Get Arkansas-ified
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Even pretending to fool the reader by passing off an AI copy as one’s own, like I did above, has become a tired trope, an expected turn in a too-long Twitter thread about the future of generative AI rather than a startling revelation about its capacities. On the one hand, yes, ChatGPT is capable of producing prose that looks convincing. But on the other hand, what it means to be convincing depends on context. The kind of prose you might find engaging and even startling in the context of a generative encounter with an AI suddenly seems just terrible in the context of a professional essay published in a magazine such as The Atlantic. And, as Warner’s comments clarify, the writing you might find persuasive as a teacher (or marketing manager or lawyer or journalist or whatever else) might have been so by virtue of position rather than meaning: The essay was extant and competent; the report was in your inbox on time; the newspaper article communicated apparent facts that you were able to accept or reject.

Perhaps ChatGPT and the technologies that underlie it are less about persuasive writing and more about superb bullshitting. A bullshitter plays with the truth for bad reasons—to get away with something. Initial response to ChatGPT assumes as much: that it is a tool to help people contrive student essays, or news writing, or whatever else. It’s an easy conclusion for those who assume that AI is meant to replace human creativity rather than amend it.

The internet, and the whole technology sector on which it floats, feels like a giant organ for bullshittery—for upscaling human access to speech and for amplifying lies. Online, people cheat and dupe and skirmish with one another. Deep-learning AI worsens all this by hiding the operation of software such as LLMs such that nobody, not even their creators, can explain what they do and why. OpenAI presents its work as context-free and experimental, with no specific use cases—it says it published ChatGPT just to “get users’ feedback and learn about its strengths and weaknesses.” It’s no wonder the first and most obvious assumption to make about ChatGPT is that it is a threat—to something, to everything.

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But ChatGPT isn’t a step along the path to an artificial general intelligence that understands all human knowledge and texts; it’s merely an instrument for playing with all that knowledge and all those texts. Play just involves working with raw materials in order to see what they can do. You play a game, or an instrument, to avail yourself of familiar materials in an unexpected way. LLMs are surely not going to replace college or magazines or middle managers. But they do offer those and other domains a new instrument—that’s really the right word for it—with which to play with an unfathomable quantity of textual material.

I talked with ChatGPT about a wide range of topics, including poetry, behavioral psychology, and computer programming, in order to test this theory. Right now, ChatGPT is just a tech demo, a research experiment. Less clear is how it might be used, beyond the dire predictions about what sectors its technology might upend. In almost every case, the AI appeared to possess both knowledge and the means to express it. But when pressed—and the chat interface makes it easy to do so—the bot almost always had to admit that it was just making things up.

Sometimes it simply used templates. When I asked ChatGPT to generate a cover letter for a university job, it obliged in a competent but uninspired way. It also produced exactly the same letter for a job as a magazine editor as it did for a job as a cannabis innovator in the Web3 space (“I have a deep understanding of the web3 space and the unique challenges and opportunities it presents”). Fair enough: Most cover letters are terrible, after all, repeating the same trite lines and abstract gestures.

In other cases, the bot produced creative output that was surprisingly synthetic but riddled with flaws. When I asked it to generate an imagist poem in the vein of Ezra Pound or William Carlos Williams about hamburgers, it obliged with this short refrain:
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Juicy patty, sizzling hot
Toasted bun, crisp lettuce and tomato
A symphony of flavors, a feast for the senses
Savory, satisfying, a true
American classic.

Not bad, I guess, especially for a computer. But also, the poem is not really an example of imagism, which strives to evoke a precise image by means of deliberate language (something like, “The dense honesty of / A hamburger.”) So I called ChatGPT on it. “This is not an imagist poem.” Its response is worth reproducing in full:
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You are correct, the poem that I generated is still not an imagist poem. An imagist poem uses precise, vivid imagery to convey a specific idea or emotion, and focuses on a single image or moment. The poem that I generated uses a more narrative and descriptive style, and does not focus on a single, specific image. It describes the ingredients and flavors of a hamburger, but does not use precise and vivid imagery to convey a specific idea or emotion. I apologize if my previous responses did not meet your expectations, and I will do my best to assist you with any further questions or prompts that you may have.

I also urged the AI to generate a lai (a medieval narrative poem) in the style of Marie de France about the beloved, Texas-based fast-food chain Whataburger. It sure as heck looked a lot like a lai, beginning like this:
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In the land of Whataburger, where burgers and fries are king,
A stranger came to visit, and with him brought a ring.
He wore a cloak of velvet, and a hat upon his head,
And he smiled with a twinkle in his eye as he approached the counter, where the burgers are served hot and fresh, and the fries are crispy and golden.

Except for that last line, which is a metrical mess. The AI wasn’t able (or willing) to evaluate its work (“I am a large language model trained by OpenAI and I don’t have the ability to evaluate the quality of literary works or make aesthetic judgments.”), but it was able to tell me about the typical structure of a lai—a short, narrative poem of the 12th century with a particular structure and form, usually written in octosyllabic couplets. The lyrical errors in the generated lai arise from its failure to adhere to that metrical form.

When I asked about the matter, it admitted again that, no, the lai it had written was not structured in octosyllabic couplets, claiming that it had produced “a more modern and playful take on the form of the lai.” I was starting to feel like I was negotiating with a student who had come to office hours to complain about their grade.

This happened over and over again. I asked for source code for an Atari game about scooping cat litter, and the AI sent me valid programming instructions—it understood the assignment—but only disconnected snippets of actual code with the heading comment “This program creates a simple game where the player must use a scoop to pick up their cat’s litters and put them in a trash bin.” It was an icon of the answer I sought rather than the answer itself.

Then I asked for a set of diagnostic criteria for an invented psychological condition I named “Inherited Truculence.” The AI instantly obliged:
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Diagnostic Criteria for Inherited Truculence:
 
    A tendency to experience and express aggressive or hostile thoughts and feelings, particularly in response to perceived threats or challenges.
    A history of aggressive or hostile behavior, particularly in interpersonal or social situations.
    A familial history of aggressive or hostile behavior, indicating a possible genetic or hereditary component to the condition.
    Impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning as a result of aggressive or hostile behavior.
    The symptoms are not better explained by another mental disorder or by the effects of a substance (such as drugs or medication).

Except, truculence doesn’t really amount to “aggressive and hostile thoughts and feelings,” does it? I asked, and the AI agreed, eventually revising its diagnostics accordingly at my further prompting (“A tendency to experience and express defiant or confrontational thoughts and feelings,” and so forth).

Likewise, my prompt to offer both an ontological and an epistemological answer to the question When does bread become toast? yielded a generally fluent, seemingly philosophical reply. It read in part: “when we are able to recognize it as toast based on its appearance, texture, and other sensory characteristics.”

But the philosophy of toast is an area of expertise for me, so I was able to discern that this snippet, supposedly an epistemological argument, was really about perception. “Isn’t the second a phenomenal, and not an epistemological argument?” I challenged. And once more, the AI cried uncle without hesitation: “You are correct, the second argument that I provided is a phenomenal, not an epistemological, argument. An epistemological argument focuses on how we come to know or understand something, whereas a phenomenal argument focuses on our experience or perception of something.”

At this point, talking to ChatGPT began to feel like every other interaction one has on the internet, where some guy (always a guy) tries to convert the skim of a Wikipedia article into a case of definitive expertise. Except ChatGPT was always willing to admit that it was wrong. Instantly and without dispute. And in each case, the bot also knew, with reasonable accuracy, why it was wrong. That sounds good but is actually pretty terrible: If one already needs to possess the expertise to identify the problems with LLM-generated text, but the purpose of LLM-generated text is to obviate the need for such knowledge, then we’re in a sour pickle indeed. Maybe it’s time for that paragraph on accountability after all.

But that’s not ChatGPT’s aim. It doesn’t make accurate arguments or express creativity, but instead produces textual material in a form corresponding with the requester’s explicit or implicit intent, which might also contain truth under certain circumstances. That is, alas, an accurate account of textual matter of all kinds: online, in books, on Wikipedia, and well beyond.

Proponents of LLM generativity may brush off this concern. Some will do so by glorifying GPT’s obvious and fully realized genius, in embarrassing ways that I can only bear to link to rather than repeat. Others, more measured but no less bewitched, may claim that “it’s still early days” for a technology a mere few years old but that can already generate reasonably good 12th-century lyric poems about Whataburger. But these are the sentiments of the IT-guy personalities who have most mucked up computational and online life, which is just to say life itself. OpenAI assumes that its work is fated to evolve into an artificial general intelligence—a machine that can do anything. Instead, we should adopt a less ambitious but more likely goal for ChatGPT and its successors: They offer an interface into the textual infinity of digitized life, an otherwise impenetrable space that few humans can use effectively in the present.

To explain what I mean by that, let me show you a quite different exchange I had with ChatGPT, one in which I used it to help me find my way through the textual murk rather than to fool me with its prowess as a wordsmith.

“I’m looking for a specific kind of window covering, but I don’t know what it’s called.” I told the bot. “It’s a kind of blind, I think. What kinds are there?” ChatGPT responded with a litany of window dressings, which was fine. I clarified that I had something in mind that was sort of like a roller blind but made of fabric. “Based on the description you have provided, it sounds like you may be thinking of a roman shade,” it replied, offering more detail and a mini sales pitch for this fenestral technology.

My dearest reader, I do in fact know what a Roman shade is. But lacking that knowledge and nevertheless needing to deploy it in order to make sense of the world—this is exactly the kind of act that is very hard to do with computers today. To accomplish something in the world often boils down to mustering a set of stock materials into the expected linguistic form. That’s true for Google or Amazon, where searches for window coverings or anything else now fail most of the time, requiring time-consuming, tightrope-like finagling to get the machinery to point you in even the general direction of an answer. But it’s also true for student essays, thank-you notes, cover letters, marketing reports, and perhaps even medieval lais (insofar as anyone would aim to create one). We are all faking it with words already. We are drowning in an ocean of content, desperate for form’s life raft.

ChatGPT offers that shape, but—and here’s where the bot did get my position accidentally correct, in part—it doesn’t do so by means of knowledge. The AI doesn’t understand or even compose text. It offers a way to probe text, to play with text, to mold and shape an infinity of prose across a huge variety of domains, including literature and science and shitposting, into structures in which further questions can be asked and, on occasion, answered.

GPT and other large language models are aesthetic instruments rather than epistemological ones. Imagine a weird, unholy synthesizer whose buttons sample textual information, style, and semantics. Such a thing is compelling not because it offers answers in the form of text, but because it makes it possible to play text—all the text, almost—like an instrument.

That outcome could be revelatory! But a huge obstacle stands in the way of achieving it: people, who don’t know what the hell to make of LLMs, ChatGPT, and all the other generative AI systems that have appeared. Their creators haven’t helped, perhaps partly because they don’t know what these things are for either. OpenAI offers no framing for ChatGPT, presenting it as an experiment to help “make AI systems more natural to interact with,” a worthwhile but deeply unambitious goal. Absent further structure, it’s no surprise that ChatGPT’s users frame their own creations as either existential threats or perfected accomplishments. Neither outcome is true, but both are also boring. Imagine worrying about the fate of take-home essay exams, a stupid format that everyone hates but nobody has the courage to kill. But likewise, imagine nitpicking with a computer that just composed something reminiscent of a medieval poem about a burger joint because its lines don’t all have the right meter! Sure, you can take advantage of that opportunity to cheat on school exams or fake your way through your job. That’s what a boring person would do. That’s what a computer would expect.

Computers have never been instruments of reason that can solve matters of human concern; they’re just apparatuses that structure human experience through a very particular, extremely powerful method of symbol manipulation. That makes them aesthetic objects as much as functional ones. GPT and its cousins offer an opportunity to take them up on the offer—to use computers not to carry out tasks but to mess around with the world they have created. Or better: to destroy it.