Wednesday, November 27, 2024

There's Some Shady Election Shenanigans Happening in Minnesota

 

Minnesota’s State House elections have become controversial after we’ve learned that ballots were trashed in a crucial race that could’ve determined the composition of the lower chamber. It’s tied 67-67 now, but some calling for a new election in Minnesota’s 54th state House race over these developments. This race was decided by only 14 votes (via CBS News): 

The preliminary investigation into what happened to 20 ballots unaccounted for in the closest state House race in Minnesota were likely thrown away and won't be recovered, the Scott County attorney said Wednesday. 

The update adds a new layer to a contest that Republicans have pledged to challenge in court. A recount of ballots last week showed DFL incumbent Rep. Brad Tabke maintained his lead over GOP challenger Aaron Paul, widening his victory by just one vote for a total of 15. 

But looming over that recount was the question of a 21 ballot discrepancy that Scott County officials found in two precincts: Officials said they had records of 21 more people voting than ballots received. 

"The preliminary investigation into the 21-ballot discrepancy hasn't been determinative thus far, and it appears likely to be the result of human error that occurred during the collection of early absentee ballots at the City of Shakopee," said Ron Hocevar, the Scott County attorney in a news release.  "This unfortunate situation resulted in a level of confusion that should not have occurred." 

[…]

The investigation is not complete but Hocevar said county staff made a preliminary conclusion the ballots   "most likely will not be recovered." 

"Even if 20 ballots were found, it is unlikely that their chain of custody can be proven to assure they have not been tampered with," he added 

It’s excusable. What happened here is almost as laughable as California still counting ballots weeks after Election Day. Again, for those keeping score, this is how election conspiracies start and sometimes become vindicated. 

And This Is Why the Public Doesn’t Trust the DOJ

 

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has released its annual report identifying the top management and performance challenges currently facing the federal agency.

Among the OIG’s findings, a lack of public trust in the DOJ remains a “longstanding” problem, Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz announced Monday, and strengthening such trust poses “a significant challenge.”

However, in its 59-page report highlighting incidents that have contributed to the department’s confidence crisis, the DOJ watchdog largely overlooked transgressions under the Biden-Harris administration, which still reigns. Instead, the OIG looked farther back to Trump’s time in office, his first term, as we head into the president-elect’s second.

Today we released the 2024 Top Management and Performance Challenges Facing the DOJ. The challenges are identified based on our oversight work and are meant to help the DOJ improve its operations.

Learn more about this report and explore the challenges: https://t.co/HoENPob5Em pic.twitter.com/eHiiZxOWbC— DOJ Inspector General (@JusticeOIG) November 25, 2024

Based on the OIG’s oversight work, the inspector general’s office blames a medley of Trump-era episodes as reasons why public trust in the institution has eroded over time.

First, the OIG report points to public statements that former federal prosecutor David Freed, a Trump-nominated U.S. attorney, made about an ongoing criminal probe into alleged ballot tampering during the 2020 presidential election.

Freed had said several mail-in military ballots, mostly cast for Donald Trump, were discarded (tossed into the trash) at a Pennsylvania election office in pro-Trump Luzerne County.

Ultimately, the OIG concluded that Freed’s comments “unnecessarily inserted partisanship into the investigation” and “created a false impression” that the incident was “much more serious than DOJ leadership knew it to be.”

The report also calls attention to another OIG inquiry into claims that senior DOJ appointees placed “political pressure” on the trial team prosecuting Roger Stone, a close confidant of Trump, so that they lowered their sentencing recommendations.

While the OIG did not find evidence that the prosecution’s revision was the result of “improper political considerations,” the report chastises the “unusual substantive involvement,” though not prohibited by law or policy, of then-Attorney General Bill Barr and other high-level DOJ officials in the second sentencing recommendation’s preparation and filing.

Their embroilment in the case against the president’s political ally “affected the public’s perception of the Department’s integrity, independence, and objectivity,” the OIG says.

The report then cites an old OIG review blasting the DOJ’s response to the George Floyd riots in Washington, D.C., specifically the clearing of Lafayette Park when Trump walked through shortly afterward to visit St. John’s Church, which was set ablaze the night before, on June 1, 2020. Joined by Barr and other DOJ officials, Trump posed for a photograph in front of the church while holding up a Bible and promising to uphold the rule of law. 

“In doing so, Department leaders placed the safety of the Department’s personnel and members of the public at risk, thereby jeopardizing the public’s perception and confidence in the Department,” the OIG report says.

This despite the fact that a separate U.S. Department of the Interior inspector general’s report debunked the false narrative that federal authorities had forcibly cleared peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors to make way for Trump’s photo-op.

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The bombshell Interior Department report, vindicating Trump, determined that U.S. Park Police were given permission to carry out the park’s clearing long before anyone knew Trump was walking over.

In fact, the operational plan in place allowed for the safe installation of anti-scale fencing to ward off property destruction and injury to officers that occurred days prior.

Of course, the OIG report makes no mention of the now-failed federal prosecutions of President-elect Donald Trump or the discriminatory use of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act overwhelmingly against pro-life defendants for peacefully protesting at abortion clinics.

Although the report did mention the sprawling January 6 cases, in which over 1,424 defendants were federally charged following the event and hundreds ultimately convicted, the subject was categorized under combatting the threat of “Domestic Terrorism and Domestic Violence Extremism.”

“The riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, serves as an indication that the charged political climate magnifies the domestic terrorism threat,” the OIG report says.

However, the report acknowledges that the OIG is reviewing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s direction and handling of its confidential human sources (CHS) in the lead-up to and on January 6, 2021, as well as whether the agency exploited its CHSs to obtain incriminating information. “Implementing the remaining recommendations from the OIG and the U.S. Government Accountability Office reports would ensure the Department is better coordinated and able to meet the DVE [domestic violence extremism] threat while at the same time safeguarding civil liberties.”

To ensure that the agency is free from political influence, DOJ officials ought to strictly adhere to policies and procedures designed to protect the department from accusations of political influence or politically motivated application of the law, the OIG report recommends. Political appointees should “exercise discretion and judgment when considering whether to personally involve themselves in DOJ criminal prosecutions.”

Under the Biden-Harris White House, public trust in the federal government has hovered near record lows. According to Pew Research, in June 2023, fewer than two-in-10 Americans said they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (1 percent) or “most of the time” (15 percent). Those figures were among the lowest trust measures in nearly seven decades of polling.

Government Efficiency Requires Federal Workers to Go Back to Their Offices

 

Election Day was three weeks ago, resulting in a win for President-elect Donald Trump, with Republicans also taking control of the Senate and keeping control of the House. Although Trump was declared the winner in the early morning hours following the election, Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t address her sniffling supporters until Wednesday afternoon, a move she was strongly criticized for. On Tuesday night, Harris delivered another message, shared over X.

In a clip that’s less than 30 seconds long, Harris declares, “I just have to remind you, don’t you ever let anybody take your power from you. You have the same power that you did before November 5, and you have the same purpose that you did. And you have the same ability to engage and inspire! So don’t ever let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you,” she concludes, after sounding as if she were slurring her words at moments. Intoxicated or not, her tone and demeanor also did not match the message Harris was trying to send. 

Another clip, where Harris still seems to be slurring her words, shows Harris offering, “again, I’ll say, you know, the election didn’t turn out like we wanted it to, certainly not as we planned for it to, but, understand that the work we put into it was about empowering people, that was the spirit with work we did.” It became trickier to decipher her words at the end of such a clip.

Vice President @KamalaHarris’ message to supporters. pic.twitter.com/x5xMUGTtkz— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) November 26, 2024

KAMALA: “Again I’ll say, you know, the election didn’t turn out like we wanted it to — certainly not as we planned for it to…” pic.twitter.com/bO2FYQtH4u— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 26, 2024

Harris’ remarks have become a trending topic over X for Tuesday, with many taking to brutally savaging the vice president and failed Democratic nominee for how such brief remarks come off. Many of the quoted reposts and the close to 4,000 replies have pointed out it looks like Harris has been drinking.

The vice president hasn’t been seen around much at the White House, and still looks to be on less than friendly terms with First Lady Jill Biden, given how much they avoided each other for Veterans’ Day. She was also just in Hawaii, as Bob Hoge reminded when covering Harris’ remarks for our sister site of RedState. 

This is after a week in Hawaii… https://t.co/rakkHtuk99— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) November 27, 2024

When you lose every swing state pic.twitter.com/2g4TZ7s0Re— Abigail Jackson  (@abigailmarone) November 26, 2024

This is Harris’s attempt at cheering up her supporters? She looks so depressed and drunk herself lmfao https://t.co/2S73tiQZyp— Mearsheimer Fan (@Real_Politik101) November 26, 2024

This is like those photos of soldiers from before and after World War II pic.twitter.com/uOEnFVEnMI— Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) November 27, 2024

Kamala has wine days and pill days. Today’s answer appears to be BOTH: https://t.co/NwqL7hyelu— Jimmy Failla (@jimmyfailla) November 26, 2024

Others chimed in to stress on how the official DNC X account actually put out such a message from Harris when she looked to be doing this poorly.

Take some time to reflect on the fact that they posted this on purpose. https://t.co/ujpokwdWtJ— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) November 27, 2024

Whoever posted this video on behalf of @TheDemocrats has got to HATE Kamala Harris. https://t.co/mfiVJ27T5E— L A R R Y (@LarryOConnor) November 26, 2024

Harris wasn’t the only one out with a message, as Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), her running mate who was always an odd choice and looks to have done the ticket no favors, also shared a message. Just as he did while on the campaign trail and in Minnesota a few days following the election, Walz went for a rather unhelpful tone. 

“I know it’s incredibly disappointing now, and look, candidly, it’s–it’s a bit scary, because there’sElection Day was three weeks ago, resulting in a win for President-elect Donald Trump, with Republicans also taking control of the Senate and keeping control of the House. Although Trump was declared the winner in the early morning hours following the election, Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t address her sniffling supporters until Wednesday afternoon, a move she was strongly criticized for. On Tuesday night, Harris delivered another message, shared over X.
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In a clip that’s less than 30 seconds long, Harris declares, “I just have to remind you, don’t you ever let anybody take your power from you. You have the same power that you did before November 5, and you have the same purpose that you did. And you have the same ability to engage and inspire! So don’t ever let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you,” she concludes, after sounding as if she were slurring her words at moments. Intoxicated or not, her tone and demeanor also did not match the message Harris was trying to send. 
Another clip, where Harris still seems to be slurring her words, shows Harris offering, “again, I’ll say, you know, the election didn’t turn out like we wanted it to, certainly not as we planned for it to, but, understand that the work we put into it was about empowering people, that was the spirit with work we did.” It became trickier to decipher her words at the end of such a clip.
Vice President @KamalaHarris’ message to supporters. pic.twitter.com/x5xMUGTtkz
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) November 26, 2024
KAMALA: “Again I’ll say, you know, the election didn’t turn out like we wanted it to — certainly not as we planned for it to…” pic.twitter.com/bO2FYQtH4u
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 26, 2024
Harris’ remarks have become a trending topic over X for Tuesday, with many taking to brutally savaging the vice president and failed Democratic nominee for how such brief remarks come off. Many of the quoted reposts and the close to 4,000 replies have pointed out it looks like Harris has been drinking.
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The vice president hasn’t been seen around much at the White House, and still looks to be on less than friendly terms with First Lady Jill Biden, given how much they avoided each other for Veterans’ Day. She was also just in Hawaii, as Bob Hoge reminded when covering Harris’ remarks for our sister site of RedState. 
This is after a week in Hawaii… https://t.co/rakkHtuk99
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) November 27, 2024
When you lose every swing state pic.twitter.com/2g4TZ7s0Re
— Abigail Jackson  (@abigailmarone) November 26, 2024
This is Harris’s attempt at cheering up her supporters? She looks so depressed and drunk herself lmfao https://t.co/2S73tiQZyp
— Mearsheimer Fan (@Real_Politik101) November 26, 2024
This is like those photos of soldiers from before and after World War II pic.twitter.com/uOEnFVEnMI
— Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) November 27, 2024
Kamala has wine days and pill days. Today’s answer appears to be BOTH: https://t.co/NwqL7hyelu
— Jimmy Failla (@jimmyfailla) November 26, 2024
Others chimed in to stress on how the official DNC X account actually put out such a message from Harris when she looked to be doing this poorly.
Take some time to reflect on the fact that they posted this on purpose. https://t.co/ujpokwdWtJ
— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) November 27, 2024
Whoever posted this video on behalf of @TheDemocrats has got to HATE Kamala Harris. https://t.co/mfiVJ27T5E
— L A R R Y (@LarryOConnor) November 26, 2024
Harris wasn’t the only one out with a message, as Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), her running mate who was always an odd choice and looks to have done the ticket no favors, also shared a message. Just as he did while on the campaign trail and in Minnesota a few days following the election, Walz went for a rather unhelpful tone. 
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“I know it’s incredibly disappointing now, and look, candidly, it’s–it’s a bit scary, because there’s a very different vision being put out there,” Walz shared. At least he didn’t pretend to be comforting with such a point. 
Tuesday has been full of bad news for the DNC, though. As Katie covered earlier, DNC staffers have needed to set up GoFundMe pages, though they say they’re still fighting to get severance. 
Tim Walz says it’s “scary” that Americans resoundingly rejected him and Kamala on Election Day pic.twitter.com/PmTxIPtxu8
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 26, 2024 a very different vision being put out there,” Walz shared. At least he didn’t pretend to be comforting with such a point. 

Tuesday has been full of bad news for the DNC, though. As Katie covered earlier, DNC staffers have needed to set up GoFundMe pages, though they say they’re still fighting to get severance. 

Tim Walz says it’s “scary” that Americans resoundingly rejected him and Kamala on Election Day pic.twitter.com/PmTxIPtxu8— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 26, 2024

Trump Announces List of New Picks to Serve in His Administration

 

Last Friday, President-elect Donald Trump announced several nominees he selected to serve in his Cabinet, and he’s now announced a list of several other names of those who will serve in his administration. Many of the picks have served with him previously, as are mentioned in Trump’s statements.

Among those announced on Tuesday night include Vince Haley who has been tasked with serving as for Director of the Domestic Policy Council. He had served as the Director of Policy and Speechwriting for his campaign. In his statement in praise of Haley, Trump took the opportunity to reference his 2024 win:

The 2024 Presidential Election was won by an unprecedented margin, which many in the Mainstream Media and Washington, D.C. did not expect, because the size and magnitude of our MAGA Movement was greatly underestimated. The American People gave us a Mandate to deliver on our Promises, and put AMERICA FIRST. As Director of the Domestic Policy Council, Vince will help make life better for ALL Americans, and unify our Country through SUCCESS. Together, we will defeat Inflation, rapidly bring down Prices, secure the Southern Border, cut Taxes and Regulations, reignite Growth, build the Greatest Economy in History and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

From there, other names announced included:

  • Jamieson Greer, who has been nominated to serve as the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Greer is lauded in Trump’s statement for having replaced NAFTA with USMCA.
  • Dr. Kevin A. Hassett, of Massachusetts will serve as the Director of the White House National Economic Council, who, as the chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, “played a crucial role in helping to design and pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017,” Trump noted. Trump also spoke about putting Hassett to use in recovering “from the Inflation that was unleashed by the Biden Administration,” Tax Cuts, and Fair trade. 
  • John Phelan as our next United States Secretary of the Navy

The last two names to be announced on Tuesday night both have to be confirmed, and will work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was nominated by Trump earlier this month to serve as his Secretary of Health and Human Services

Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD has been nominated to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), while Jim O’Neil has been nominated to serve as Kennedy’s deputy. O’Neil is no stranger to the department, as Trump’s statement noted that “Jim previously served as the Principal Associate Deputy Secretary of HHS. He led reforms at FDA to overhaul Food Safety Regulations, and implemented the FDA Amendments Act, which improved Drug and Medical Device Safety, and ensured greater protection for Public Health.”

While Matt has highlighted concerns about one of Trump’s picks from last week, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as the United States Surgeon General, over her support for masking, lockdowns, and vaccines, this pick of Bhattacharya may put such concerns to rest, as it looks like he may provide a balanced approach. 

Bhattacharya was particularly critical of the federal government’s response to COVID. As Katie covered at the time in December 2022, he was blacklisted on X, then known as Twitter, for daring to speak out. 

“Jay is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an alternative to lockdowns proposed in October 2020. His peer-reviewed research has been published in Economics, Statistics, Legal, Medical, Public Health, and Health Policy Journals. He holds an MD and PhD in Economics from Stanford University,” Trump’s statement about Bhattacharya noted in part.

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Remembering Why the U.S. Navy Was Formed: To Combat Islamic Terror

 uring a recent mosque sermon at the North Hudson Islamic Center in New Jersey, a CAIR official, Ayman Aishat, made a seemingly startling claim: 

We live in America, the United States of America. Brothers and sisters, those who do not know history, not too long ago, the USA was paying the jizya to the Ottoman Caliph.

Could this be?  

First, let us define jizya. In brief (full discussion here), it is the monetary tribute that conquered or cowed infidels pay their Islamic overlords in exchange for peace, according to Koran 9:29:

Fight those among the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not believe in Allah, nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth [Islam], until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.

And yes, Aishat is correct: once upon a time, in its fledgling youth, the United States succumbed to paying jizya to appease Muslim terrorists. That story is instructive — not least as it includes the genesis of the U.S. Navy.

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the Muslims of North Africa (“Barbary”) thrived on enslaving Europeans. According to the conservative estimate of American professor Robert Davis, “between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.” (With countless European women selling for the price of an onion, little wonder by the late 1700s, European observers noted how “the inhabitants of Algiers have a rather white complexion.”)

As Barbary slaving was a seafaring venture, nearly no part of Europe was untouched. From 1627 to 1633, Lundy, an island off the west coast of Britain, was actually occupied by the pirates, whence they pillaged England at will. In 1627 they raided Denmark and even far-off Iceland, hauling a total of some 800 slaves. 

Such raids were accompanied by the trademark hate. One English captive writing around 1614 noted that the Muslim pirates “abhor the ringing of the [church] bells being contrary to their Prophet’s command,” and so destroyed them whenever they could. In 1631, nearly the entire fishing village of Baltimore in Ireland was raided, and “237 persons, men, women, and children, even those in the cradle” were seized. 

By the late eighteenth century, Barbary’s strength relative to Europe had plummeted, and the Muslims could no longer raid the European coastline for slaves — certainly not on the scale of previous centuries — so its full energy was spent on raiding non-Muslim merchant vessels. European powers responded by buying peace through tribute, which the Muslims accepted as jizya.

Fresh and fair meat appeared on the horizon once the newly born United States broke free of Great Britain and was therefore no longer protected by the latter’s jizya payments. In 1785, Muslim pirates from Algiers captured two American vessels, the Maria and Dauphin. They enslaved and paraded the sailors through the streets to jeers and whistles. Considering the horrific ways Christian slaves were treated in Barbary — sadistically tortured, pressured to convert, and sodomized, as described in the writings of missionaries, redeemers, and others (e.g., John Foxe, Fr. Dan, Fr. Jerome Maurand, Robert Playfair; see pp. 279-283) — when the Dauphin’s Captain O’Brian later wrote to Thomas Jefferson that “our sufferings are beyond our expression or your conception,” he was not exaggerating.

Jefferson and John Adams, then ambassadors to France and England respectively, met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Rahman Adja, in an effort to ransom the enslaved Americans and establish peaceful relations. In a letter to Congress dated March 28, 1786, the hitherto puzzled American ambassadors laid out the source of the Barbary’s unprovoked animosity: 

We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. 

This, of course, was a paraphrase of Islam’s so-called “Sword Verse” (Koran 9:5), which ISIS invoked earlier this year. 

At any rate, the ransom demanded to release the American sailors was over fifteen times greater than what Congress had approved, and little came of the meeting. 

Back in Congress, some agreed with Jefferson that “it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them.” In a letter to a friend, George Washington wondered:

In such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary? Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence.

But the majority of Congress agreed with John Adams: “We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.” Considering the perpetual, existential nature of Islamic hostility, Adams was probably more right than he knew. 

Congress settled on emulating the Europeans and paying off the terrorists, though it would take years to raise the demanded ransom. In 1794 Algerian pirates captured eleven more American merchant vessels. 

Two things resulted: the Naval Act of 1794 was passed, and a permanent standing U.S. naval force was established. But because the first war vessels would not be ready until 1800, American jizya payments — which took up 16% of the entire federal budget — began to be made to Algeria in 1795. In return, some 115 American sailors were released, and the Islamic sea raids formally ceased. 

American jizya and “gifts” over the following years caused the increasingly emboldened pirates to respond with increasingly capricious demands. 

One of the more ignoble instances occurred in 1800, when Captain William Bainbridge of the George Washington sailed to the Dey of Algiers (an Ottoman honorific for the pirate lords of Barbary) with what the latter deemed insufficient tribute. Referring to the American crew as “my slaves,” Dey Mustapha proceeded to order Bainbridge to transport the Muslim’s own annual tribute — hundreds of black slaves and exotic animals — to the Ottoman sultan in Constantinople (Istanbul). 

Adding insult to insult, the Dey commanded the U.S. flag taken down from the George Washington and the Islamic flag hoisted in its place; and, no matter how rough the seas might be during the long voyage, Bainbridge was ordered to make sure the vessel faced Mecca five times a day for the prayers of Mustapha’s ambassador and entourage. Bainbridge condescended to being the Muslim pirate’s delivery boy. 

Soon after Jefferson became president in 1801, Tripoli demanded another, especially exorbitant payment, followed by an increase in annual payments — or else. “I know,” Jefferson concluded, “that nothing will stop the eternal increase of demand from these pirates but the presence of an armed force.” So he refused the ultimatum, and, on May 10, 1801, the pasha of Tripoli, having not received his timely jizya installment, proclaimed jihad on the United States. 

Thus began America's first war as a nation, the First Barbary War (1801-1805) — and it was with Muslims who think and act just like ISIS.

The Morning Briefing: Are the Lawfare Lunatics Sweating Yet?

 

Happy Thursday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Brezmerick never ceased to be amazed at how well Irish coffee paired with Count Chocula.

The Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media Spent a good portion of this year insisting that Donald Trump would be a vengeful tyrant if he was elected again, hell-bent on retribution against, well, them. That didn't go over quite like they thought it would, obviously. Heck, it sounded like a strong selling point to some of us. 

When Trump returns to office in January, he'll have plenty of work just beginning to undo the overwhelming damage that Joe Biden and the commie cabal running his brain have done. Getting the southern border under control, putting out the international fires that President LOLEightyonemillion has started, and ridding the economy of all of the Dem stink will be time-consuming. It's not likely that Trump will be spending his lunches plotting payback.

The Democrats are going to be alternately relieved and crushed when they realize Trump isn't going to Hitler for them. 

There is still a conversation to be had about some of the worst players in the 2024 anti-Trump jihad. People tasked with upholding law and justice became an election interference racket and were fervently hoping that they could get him in jail before the election. It was a truly frightening, un-American spectacle, and a legitimate threat to the Republic.

Article III Project founder and president Mike Davis emphasized that New York authorities’ postponing Donald Trump’s sentencing illustrates how political the whole case was from the start in exclusive comments to PJ Media.

Davis, a Republican legal expert, has repeatedly called out the judges, DOJ officials, and DAs involved in the many and various lawfare cases against Trump. Now, corrupt Judge Juan Merchan and Soros-backed Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg admitted that Trump’s sentencing in the case involving alleged “hush money” payouts and records falsification has been indefinitely delayed. Davis sees this as a vindication not only of Trump but of all those who consistently exposed the corrupt lawfare.

Davis stated, “The postponement of the sentencing in New York proves that this case was always about Democrat lawfare and election interference.” If the case were legitimate, why keep delaying the sentencing? 

It is difficult to figure out who the most egregious Trump-hating perverters of the law were in this tawdry assault on justice, but Alvin Bragg and Juan Merchan would probably get my vote. Bragg is a daddy issues-laden freak show who doesn't hide his creepy obsession with Trump. He's a typical Soros hack who is more interested in protecting criminals than law-abiding citizens. 

We know that Trump can deal with the rot at the federal level. Department of Justice employees have been operating as Joe Biden's personal goon squad since Biden got into office, and they know what's coming. Their days of arresting family men for singing hymns outside abortion clinics are numbered. This is something I shared in a column I wrote the other day:

Whatever housecleaning Trump ends up doing at the DOJ won't be retribution; it will be a necessary reorganization for the survival of the United States. 

I'm not even sure what can be done about the likes of Bragg, Merchan, and the rest of the lawless people in the legal profession who targeted Donald Trump. The mood of the electorate is hopefully giving them some cause for concern. As we just saw in Los Angeles with the defeat of the criminal-friendly DA George Gascón, the Soros operatives aren't safe even in the bluest of cities. 

Some kind of message has to be sent that what we witnessed this year can never happen again. The Democrats can't come away thinking that lawfare is an option in every election, which they will if Bragg & Co. emerge from this unscathed.

Kyiv Reports Russia Fired an ICBM Into Ukraine. A Western Official Denies It.

 

The Ukrainian military is reporting that Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) along with six other missiles at Dnipro, in Ukraine's southeast. But an unnamed Western official told ABC that the missile was not a long-range weapon, but rather a shorter-range ballistic missile.

The Russian missile was launched from the Astrahan region, in Russia's southwest. According to Google Maps, the distance from Astrahan oblast to the city of Dnipro is more than 1,200 miles. The other missiles fired at Dnipro were KH-101 missiles with a range of about 2,100 miles.

If true, this is a major and troubling escalation by Russian President Vladimir Putin, after Biden did some escalating of his own, giving the green light for Ukraine to launch American ATACMS into Russian territory for the first time. This kind of tit-for-tat escalation could get out of control. Previously, Putin said he changed Russia's nuclear doctrine to make any attack on Russian territory by Ukraine with Western missiles an attack that would require a nuclear response.

I'm not trying to be an alarmist. But once the escalation game starts, someone is going to have to climb down off the ledge or the world will be in big trouble. I don't see Putin backing down. And the real scary thing is that Biden is allowing Ukraine to unleash the full panoply of U.S. weapons on Russia proper because he thinks that his "Ukraine Project" won't last much into Donald Trump's term of office.

Obviously, Putin was sending a message with the ICBM launch. Washington and the West probably see this "message" in the same context as other Putin warnings about red lines in giving Ukraine Abrams tanks, fighter jets, and long-range missiles.

Associated Press:

The developments come as the war has taken on a growing international dimension with the arrival of North Korean troops to help Russia on the battlefield — a development that U.S. officials said prompted U.S. President Joe Biden’s policy shift on allowing Ukraine to fire longer-range U.S. missiles into Russia. The Kremlin responded with threats to escalate further.

Putin has previously warned the U.S. and other NATO allies that allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied longer-range weapons to hit Russian territory would mean that Russia and NATO are at war.

Biden keeps stepping across Putin's red lines, confident that the Russian president won't act on his threats. What if Biden is wrong? I'm sure Biden and his advisors have gamed out dozens of scenarios, and the psyche folks at CIA have analyzed Putin's words and actions and are assuring Biden that Putin isn't serious, just as he wasn't serious about enforcing all his other "red lines" during the war.

I needn't remind anyone that if Biden and his advisors are wrong, there are no do-overs, no second chances. And that's a huge problem.

If you've never read it, you should read Robert F. Kennedy's "Thirteen Days," a book about the Cuban missile crisis. The movie doesn't do the book justice. It was a harrowing time, as you can imagine. President Kennedy struggled not to put Kruschev in a corner while trying to keep the U.S. from surrendering. 

In the aftermath, the myth arose that “We were eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked." In fact, Kennedy gave up some strategically valuable Jupiter ICBM's stationed in Turkey, so who "blinked" is a matter of perspective.

I don't trust Joe Biden to manage the situation. At this point, presidents are concerned about their "legacy." How that plays out in Ukraine and with Russia will determine whether Biden and we will even have a legacy to examine.

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes: Business Receives Backlash After Refusing to Serve Trump Supporters

 

At times, it can feel like the country is only concerned about all things red and blue, but if you're a business owner, you're typically only worried about another color: green (despite what Whoopi Goldberg says). However, one woman in Tennessee broke that unspoken rule and decided she only wanted to work with people who supported her own political views. The backlash came so fast and furiously that she had to shut down her business. 

49-year-old Kristin Wolter of Memphis is the owner of the florist shop Everbloom Designs in Memphis, Tenn. In a video posted on social media, she announced after Election Day that she was changing her business policies. "I won't do business with people who support the president-elect, and it is because I need to create a safe place for me, my staff, and my family," Wolter said.  

According to NewsMax's Todd Starnes, Wolter also said she was "triggered" by the election results and couldn't believe her "community chose financial concerns and economy over human rights and decency." 

Apparently, Wolter received such harsh backlash online and in person that she made her social media accounts private and shut down her shop temporarily. According to KWAM News Radio 900, she posted a note on the shop door that stated, "I knew standing up for what I believe in would have consequences. I am so grateful to those of you that have supported me in this. They are showing their true colors and lack of decency and humanity." 

Look, we all have strong political views. But as of the time this article is published, Decision Desk HQ reports that 76,837,044 people have voted for Donald Trump and 74,313,883 people voted for Kamala Harris. Why would you want to risk alienating any of those people? As a small business owner myself, I have strong political views, too, but I'm also a capitalist who enjoys earning as much money as I can. I don't stop and ask people who they voted for when they request my services. Then again, I gave up trying to figure out liberal reasoning years ago.   

The other thing that I'm absolutely tired of hearing from the left is how Trump supporters "lack decency and humanity." I don't know, but to me, telling people they're not welcome in your business when they haven't really done anything to you sort of lacks decency and humanity in itself. Maybe instead of showing contempt for people who vote differently than you do, reach out and ask for a conversation and ask them why they do what they do so you can maybe understand them better.

Celebrate Diversity (Or Else)!

Somewhere along the line the Democratic Party went from “celebrate diversity” to “CELEBRATE DIVERSITY OR ELSE, YOU BIGOT!” They lost the American public – that was perfectly happy to acknowledge firsts and applaud people who achieved them – once the demanded conformity and the bastardizing of reality. And now we find ourselves fighting to keep reality in our public spaces and men out of the ladies’ room.  

If you could travel back in time just a few years and tell your younger self that one political party would be fighting tooth and nail to make sure a man in a dress is treated like they were your mother, you’d have your older-self committed. Yet, that’s where the Democrats have led society. 

When Delaware elected the first “trans-woman” to Congress, a man named Tim McBride who now goes by Sarah, you knew a conflict was coming between Democrats and reality. See, McBride is one of those leftists who want to be celebrated for existing in a way the left deems important. We normal people are not worthy of celebration for our existence, and most of our accomplishments are diminished because of our skin color, our sexuality or political beliefs – the same reason Democrats celebrate their chosen groups.

As a “trans woman,” the left insists, McBride is a “real woman.” Every bit as real a woman as your sister, your wife, your mother – you can tell by the way a hyphenate is required to explain the penis. 

It’s insanity, of course, but people can live insanely if they so choose. What they don’t have is the right to force everyone else to live in crazyland with them.

I’m not saying be rude – Tim changed his name to Sarah, so I’d call him Sarah – but I’m not going to pretend he’s a woman or use whatever pronouns he decrees as the only acceptable ones to use in reference to him. 

I would mostly rectify this situation by avoiding him; live and let live doesn’t mean I have to live with anyone or anyone has to live with me. If we worked together, I’d deal with him as little as possible (a feeling that would probably be mutual), but any required interactions would be respectful. Outside of work, we wouldn’t interact at all. I’m too old to play these game or to allow reality to be perverted in order to protect the fragile psyche of anyone – grow the hell up and be more than superficial and we can talk, till then…pass.

That being said, the outrage over Congresswoman Nancy Mace’s desire to keep men out of women’s bathrooms and locker rooms is everything wrong with the left, why they lost the election and why they should continue to lose in perpetuity. 

I have no interest in the people who created the concept of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” for adults uncomfortable with having someone who disagrees with their politics appearing somewhere on campus having a role in my life at all. If you bring in puppies and Play-Doh for snowflakes to play with after shouting down conservatives or in their post-throwing Molotov cocktails at police, your indifference toward a genuine rape survivor being uncomfortable having men, in a dress or not, in a women-only space speaks louder than you ever could with Metallica’s sound system.

Many on the left are pretending to be outraged that so many conservatives, especially women, are trying to make one little old person feel uncomfortable; that they have no right to do that. Why does one man have the right to make so many other people (and it’s not just Republicans who feel it, they’re just the only ones who won’t be destroyed for admitting it) uncomfortable; to make a rape survivor uncomfortable? 

It’s free for female Democrat Members of Congress to pretend to be angry at Mace, “Believe all women” hypocrisy aside, each Member has a private bathroom in their office, so they can make sure it’s never an issue for them, if they’re careful.

But the ultimate simple fact is if it weren’t for the demands of Democrats to “celebrate” this, rather than just exist and ignore it, this whole issue would likely never have risen to this level. McBride has been all over leftist media, with multiple interviews on CNN and MSNBC, for the express reason that he’s a “trans woman.” There is literally no other reason to even acknowledge the existence of a backbench Freshman Congressman from Delaware or anywhere else. 

Live by raising a stink, die by raising a stink. 

The odds are about even that you’ve been in a public bathroom with someone in drag, either direction, or just someone of the opposite gender. As the father of 2 girls, I’ve been a part of it. Most people don’t notice because you don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself – the business gets done, hands get washed and you get the hell out – no one goes into a bathroom to make friends or put on a show.

But if your existence is continually validated through external forces and attention, positive or negative, you can’t just go about your business. It’s the mentality that asks, “Did I really eat a meal if I didn’t post a picture of it on Instagram?” 

That’s not a healthy way to live, but if an adult wants to live that way, who cares? The problem comes in when others insist you live that way too, or else. There’s a difference between not caring what an adult does, as long as what they do it with is of age and willing, and being forced to applaud it. Democrats don’t care as much about the first part; they demand conformity through the second. To hell with that.

John Oliver Defended Transgender Athletes Competing in Women’s Sports. JK Rowling Responded.

 

This week, best-selling author J.K. Rowling ripped into HBO’s John Oliver for one of his recent monologues defending transgender athletes in women’s sports. 

“There are vanishingly few trans girls competing in high schools anywhere, even if there were more, trans kids like all kids vary in terms of athletic ability, and there is no evidence they pose any threat to safety or fairness,” Oliver said on Friday.

Rowling responded in a lengthy post shared on X.

“An undoubtedly intelligent person spouts absolute bullshit to support something he wants to be true, but isn’t,” Rowling wrote, before delving into the fact that a recent report from the UN showed that women have lost nearly 900 medals to men.

“Again and again I’ve come up against men who argue exactly what Oliver does here, using the very same talking points. With a straight face, the ‘believe the science’ guys will say ‘actually, we don’t yet have enough data to say whether men and boys are stronger and faster than women and girls’. The ‘be kind’ crew can’t see what the issue is. ‘Why are you bothered, it only affects a tiny minority of females?’” she added. 

“They’ll stare unabashedly into a camera and insist that their audiences’ eyeballs are incapable of seeing what’s plain as day, and that there’s something wrong with the great unwashed for believing that girls are being robbed of opportunities and put at physical risk. If you want to tell the world you’re happy to watch females suffer injury, humiliation and the loss of sporting opportunities to bolster an elitist post-modern ideology embraced by a minute fraction of the world’s population, fair enough; you’re allowed your opinion. But if you’ve just told girls they don’t deserve fair sport, maybe rethink using all too real and common sexual predation against young women as a punchline for your ‘edgy’ closing joke,” she concluded.

Nothing about this feels good, because John Oliver generously gave his time for my charity Lumos and I liked him very much when I met him, but God knows, if you ever need an example of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, this video’s for you. An undoubtedly intelligent… https://t.co/3IS4onzXq0— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 17, 2024

Rowling has long been outspoken about transgenders competing in women’s sports. In May, Townhall covered how she was accused of “bullying” after she called a transgender soccer manager a “straight, white, middle-aged bloke” on social media. Rowling’s statement came after a new law was enacted in Scotland making “misgendering” someone a crime. 

That’s not all. In recent months, Townhall has covered how Rowling fired back at a news outlet that referred to a so-called “transgender” killer as a woman. In addition, the United Kingdom’s first “transgender” news anchor reported Rowling to the police for intentionally “misgendering” “her” as a “man” on social media.

Restoring Deterrence Will Prevent Endless Wars

 

On Jan. 3, 2020, the Trump administration conducted a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport, killing Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Soleimani had a long record of waging surrogate wars against Americans, especially during the Iraq conflict and its aftermath.

After the Trump cancellation of the Iran Deal, followed by U.S. sanctions, Soleimani reportedly stepped up violence against regional American bases—most of which President Donald Trump himself ironically wished to remove.

A few days later, Iran staged a performance-art retaliatory strike against Americans in Iraq and Syria, assuming Trump had no desire for a wider Middle East war.

So, Iran launched 12 missiles that hit two U.S. airbases in Iraq. Supposedly, Tehran had warned the Trump administration of the impending attacks that killed no Americans. Later reports, however, suggested that some Americans suffered concussions, while more damage was done to the bases than was initially disclosed.

Nonetheless, this Iranian interlude seemed to reflect Trump’s agenda of avoiding “endless wars” in the Middle East while restoring deterrence that prevented, not prompted, full-scale conflicts.

Yet in a second Trump administration, rethreading the deterrence needle without getting into major wars may become far more challenging. The world of today is far more dangerous than when Trump left in 2021.

An inept Biden administration has utterly destroyed U.S. deterrence abroad through both actual and symbolic disasters: the Chinese dressing down of U.S. diplomats in Anchorage; the humiliating skedaddle from Afghanistan; the brazen flight of a Chinese spy balloon across the U.S.; the invasion of Ukraine by Russia; the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 Israelis; the serial Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea; the visible restraint of Israel from fully replying to Iranian missile attacks on its homeland; and renewed bellicosity on the part of both North Korea and China toward American allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Of course, a second-term Trump must radically reform the Pentagon and beef up the military while warning enemies of the consequences to follow from any unwise aggression.

But if opponents believe such admonitions remain only vocal threats, then empty verbiage surely will erode deterrence further—such as President Joe Biden’s serial and empty braggadocio, “Don’t!”

Biden’s past theatrical finger-shaking translated into aggressors like Russian President Vladimir Putin going into Ukraine, Iran sending missiles into Israel, and the Houthis serially hitting shipping in the Red Sea.

Given the past messes of the Iraqi, Libyan, and Syrian interventions, and the catastrophic Biden humiliation in Afghanistan, Trump in 2024 is much more emphatic about the need to avoid such overseas dead-end entanglements or even the gratuitous use of force that historically can sometimes lead to tit-for-tat entanglements.

Still, Trump’s selection of JD Vance as vice president, along with Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., and Tucker Carlson as close advisers, coupled with the announcements that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and prior U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley will not be in the administration, may be misinterpreted by scheming foreign adversaries as proof of Trump neo-isolationism.

Moreover, the U.S. is battered by an unsustainable $37 trillion national debt and a nonexistent southern border that saw 12 million illegal aliens enter with impunity.

So, the use of force abroad is now often seen in a zero-sum fashion as coming at the expense of unaddressed American needs at home.

Moreover, a woke, manpower-short military has not achieved strategic advantages from wars abroad, while disparaging and alienating the very working-class recruits who disproportionately fight and die in them.

Recently, even as President-elect Trump’s inner circle emphasized an end to endless conflicts, Trump warned Putin not to escalate his attacks against Ukraine. Yet that advice was followed by a Russian massive drone onslaught against civilian Ukrainian targets.

Putin no doubt wishes to encourage American enemies to test Trump’s deterrent rhetoric against his campaign’s domestic promises to mind America’s own business at home.

Is there a way to square the deterrence circle?

Trump will have to speak clearly and softly while carrying a club. And for the first few months of his administration, he will be tested as never before to make it clear to Iran and its terrorist surrogates, China, North Korea, and Russia, that aggression against U.S. interests will be swiftly and quietly met with disproportionate and overwhelming repercussions.

Yet Trump will likely have to rely on drones, missiles, and airstrikes and not on major engagements, to deter enemies from aggression—and his domestic critics from claiming he turned into a globalist interventionist.

He is not.

Trump remains a Jacksonian. But such deterrence entails warning from time to time the reckless and adventurous abroad that our allies have no better friend than America and our adversaries no worse enemy.

In other words, Trump must remind Americans only by periodically deterring enemies can he prevent endless wars.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Pentagon Has Two Years to Prevent World War III

 

Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. Whether he launches an invasion may depend on President Trump’s defense secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s nominee, will have to confront the collapse of deterrence in Europe and the Middle East, resource constraints on Capitol Hill, recruitment challenges, and a deteriorating balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. The only way to promote peace is to go to war on day one—not with China, Russia or Iran but with the Pentagon bureaucracy.

The first task is to fix the U.S. Navy. America needs a maritime industrial base that can counter China’s. Pentagon requirements for building maritime assets involve too many uncoordinated stakeholders. The Pentagon establishes war-fighting requirements—such as the number of missiles on a ship—without regard to interdependent technical specifications such as that ship’s center of gravity. When those technical specifications aren’t tightly linked to war-fighting requirements, the mismatch can cause underperformance or unplanned costs and time. The Defense Department should return to the board model that served the Navy well until the 1960s. The Navy would have a forum of senior stakeholders with a chairman empowered to decide both requirements and specifications, ensuring that these work in harmony.

The Navy should also create an office focused on expediting the development and deployment of certain war-fighting technologies, similar to the Rapid Capabilities Office at the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force. The next secretary should insist on more flexible processes to deliver unmanned surface, aerial and underwater vehicles with speed and at scale. He must also work with Congress to help shipyards attract and retain talent.

Rebuilding the maritime industrial base can also help save Aukus—the security partnership between Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.—which is in danger of stalling. Under the Aukus agreement, the U.S. Navy intends to sell Australia at least three Virginia-class attack submarines by the early 2030s. To realize this goal, the Navy needs to build more than today’s 1.2 hulls a year and shrink maintenance backlogs that have sidelined nearly 40% of the fleet. Addressing these challenges will demand consistent funding, which will come only if t

World War III Warning Issued by Retired General

 etired four-star General Jack Keane has said "World War III is in the future" while discussing the U.S. election's impact on global stability.

Donald Trump won last week's election at a time when the western world is grappling with a war in the Middle East, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and tensions with North Korea and China.

General Keane has said that while Trump's victory will force U.S. adversaries to "reassess," the world is headed for "global war."

He told Fox News' Life, Liberty & Levin that the global security challenges that we are facing, "are the most serious, the most dangerous and the most challenging we have had since World War II.

He added: "And I do believe that we're in a pre-war era leading to global war - that is the status that we're facing."

General Keane went on to add that "all of these adversaries - China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, who are cooperating, collaborating coordinating together in a degree that exceeded the expectations of all of our intelligence agencies, by the way, and they have been honest about that appraisal" will have to "reassess, based on this election that's taken place."

"Because they have been acting so aggressively, so assertively, because they believe that our leadership in the United States is weak, that we've lost the political will to confront them, much less go and fight them," he added.

Later on in the interview, General Keane said: "This election has been a seminal event. And I'm convinced that President Trump knows that World War III is in the future.

"And we have got to take action to restore deterrence in dealing with our adversaries. And one of those is rebuilding a military - it has to be done. And we have to fix how the Pentagon does its business, or we're going to be throwing taxpayers' money away."

General Keane went on to say: "And we absolutely have to support our allies who are fighting these adversaries. Israel is fighting a major adversary - give them everything they need to finish it as soon as possible.

He added: "Ukraine is fighting Russia - give them everything they need and finish it as soon as possible. These are investments in our security when our allies are fighting our adversaries."

A major theme in Trump's campaign message was his promise to end wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, often claiming that they would never have started if he was in office.

The President-elect has reportedly spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a post-election phone call, according to The Washington Post, which said Trump reminded Putin about "Washington's sizeable military presence in Europe" and said he would look for a follow-up conversation to discuss a "resolution of Ukraine's war."

Steven Cheung, Trump's communications director, told Newsweek in an emailed response to a request for comment that "we do not comment on private calls between President Trump and other world leaders."

Meanwhile, a senior Hamas official has called for an immediate end to Israel's war against the group in the Gaza Strip in a statement shared with Newsweek in the wake of Trump's victory.

In regards to North Korea, Pyongyang responded to Donald Trump's claim that the nation's leader Kim Jong Un misses him, saying it does "not care" about his re-election.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called President-elect Donald Trump to congratulate him on his win, in a statement that also said he hopes China and the U.S. will strengthen communication, "properly manage differences" and "find a correct way for China and the United States to get along in the new era, so as to benefit both countries and the world."

Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that "Iran respects (the American people's) right to elect the President of their choice" and called for "respect," insisting that Iran is "NOT after nuclear weapons" and denying accusations that an Iranian man was involved in a murder-for-hire scheme to kill Trump.

Melania Trump Sets the Record Straight About Not Meeting With Jill Biden

 

Future First Lady Melania Trump did not join her husband, President-elect Donald Trump, at a White House meeting on Wednesday with President Joe Biden. 

In a statement, the Office of Melania Trump wished her husband “great success” in the transition process, but slammed “several unnamed sources in the media” for providing “false, misleading, and inaccurate information” about the ordeal. 

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“Be discerning with your source of news,” the statement, shared on X, said.

This week, the Daily Mail reported that Trump was “snubbing” Jill Biden by skipping the visit to the White House (via Daily Mail):

Traditionally, when the outgoing president hosts the incoming president-elect in the Oval Office, the first lady hosts her successor for tea in the residence. 

Michelle Obama hosted Melania Trump for tea in the Yellow Room after the 2016 election. However, Melania Trump did not meet with Jill Biden after the contentious 2020 race as Donald Trump falsely and repeatedly claimed he was the true win

A source told Daily Mail that the two women have not spoken since Donald Trump defeated Harris in the election.

Daily Mail claimed that Jill Biden’s office “extended congratulations and a joint invite to the Trumps to meet at the White House.”

Reportedly, the Trumps have not been back to the White House since they left the morning of Biden’s inauguration in 2021.

Thanks to Tim Walz, Kamala Lost This Key State

 

Vice President Kamala Harris’ first significant campaign decision backfired almost immediately, costing her and the Democratic Party the keys to the White House. 

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Harris’s choice to pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) over Jewish Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) had a lasting effect that, according to a report, is among the top reasons she lost to President-elect Donald Trump. Exit polls reveal that in addition to Harris struggling to unify the Democratic base, her running mate, Walz, also had trouble rounding up Americans from a critical group: Jewish voters. 

Although the Harris-Walz ticked won Pennsylvania  Jewish voters 48 to 41 percent against Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, leaving Shapiro off the ticket was a significant failure for Democrats. A survey conducted by Honan Strategy Group for the Teach Coalition, a branch of the Jewish Orthodox Union, found that 53 percent of Jewish voters would have preferred Shapiro as vice president over Walz.

If 53 percent had voted for Harris and had Shapiro been her running mate, support for Trump would have decreased to 38 percent.  

Ultimately, Trump and Vance won Pennsylvania by securing the state’s 19 electoral votes, 50.4 percent to Harris’ 48.6 percent.

Meanwhile, 43 percent of Pennsylvania voters suggested that the increase in antisemitism influenced how they voted in the 2024 election. Ironically, Shapiro was reportedly targeted by an “ugly, antisemitic campaign.” As a result, Harris failed to secure the majority among a group traditionally favored by Democrats. 

“The far-left has made anti-Israel activity a cornerstone. They have sway in the Democratic Party,” the founder and CEO of the Teach Coalition, Maury Litwack, said. “This is a wake-up call for the Democratic Party in New York.”

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) accused the Democratic Party of being antisemitic. 

“You oughta ask yourself why didn’t she pick Josh Shapiro as her VP?" Texas Cruz said during an interview on Fox News. “The answer is, in today’s Democrat Party, they could not stomach a candidate who was Jewish."

Kamala Harris Was Always Doomed


The presidential race was not unpredictable, as the now once again discredited polls swore to us.

The Republicans had made massive gains in voter registration since 2020, when Donald Trump lost the Electoral College by only a few thousand strategically placed votes.

Republicans began to master the transition to non-Election Day balloting—first engineered by the Left in 2020 under the pretext of COVID-19.Republicans not only vastly exceeded their early or mail-in voting totals of 2020, but by Election Day they often outpaced Democrats.

For months, it was widely reported, albeit grudgingly, that there were large defections in Hispanic and African American voters from Vice President Kamala Harris.

The betting odds over the past three weeks usually favored Trump.

Harris simply could not run on anything she had so emphatically promoted in the past—given these left-wing, unpopular, and failed policies had no majority support.

So, the chameleon Harris renounced her prior 30 years of earlier radical advocacy that, along with her race and gender, had forced Joe Biden in 2020 to select her as vice president.

There was no way Harris could still support banning fracking, defunding police, opposing border security and the wall, or calling for mass amnesties and an end to the Border Patrol.

Nor could Harris still promote racial reparations, ending private health care insurance, or advocating higher income and capital gains taxes as well as a wealth tax.

Much less could Harris still boast of wanting mandatory “buyback” or confiscation of some semi-automatic weapons—including entering private homes to seize them.

So given all that, Harris simply flipped—and serially lied about who she was, renouncing her entire political career.

Indeed, Harris began to copycat Trump’s own positions. And so, she never convinced the electorate that she would not flip back to her earlier radicalism once elected or even in defeat finishing out her vice-presidential term.

There were three damning realities that even if Harris had been a gifted politician and an adept speaker, she could never have changed.

One, Harris was preposterously running as a turn-the-page, new-generation candidate.

But why had she not sought to implement such a “new chapter” for the prior 45 months as an incumbent vice president, especially while in office during the campaign itself?

Voters knew the answer: The entire Biden-Harris tenure was an utter, far left-wing disaster, one for which the radical Harris 1.0 had for three-plus years claimed co-ownership.

Two, why did Harris avoid all impromptu interviews and the media for most of the campaign—only to reverse course and seek out reporters when her polls eroded?

Did it hurt Harris more to avoid the media—or meet with reporters and thus confirm her inanity to millions of viewers and listeners?

Three, why did Harris serially lie to America that Biden was hale and vigorous as president—until hours before his senility prompted leftist donors and party insiders to force him off the ticket?

And why could she not declare her independence from the historically unpopular Biden?

Harris instead chose to terrify voters to vote against a demonized and “fascist” Trump rather than to vote for Harris and her make-believe agendas.

But even in demonizing Trump, the maladroit Harris hit a wall.

By campaign’s end, Trump’s favorables were often higher than her own.

His prior four years as president polled higher than the current Biden-Harris train wreck.

Trump, the purported “racist,” won more Hispanic and black voters than past “moderate” Republicans such as Bob Dole, John McCain, or Mitt Romney.

It was hard to damn Trump as a crazy fascist when iconic liberal figures, like Robert Kennedy Jr. or Tulsi Gabbard, were campaigning for him.

Trump had reinvented the Republican Party by substituting ecumenical, middle-class solidarity for polarizing racial tribalism. Elitist Democrats were left to cater to the interests of their well-off and very rich donors as well as the subsidized poor.

Finally, workaholic Trump campaigned nonstop for two years, won all the Republican primaries, and was endorsed by his two chief primary rivals.

In contrast, the Harris “nomination” was the product of a coup that, in 48 hours, removed from the ticket an incumbent president, nullified the will of his 14 million primary voters, and coronated Harris, who had neither won nor ever entered a primary.

That late July forced abdication of Biden lent an air of illegitimacy to Harris’s candidacy, as well as truncating the time available to campaign.

Finally, Harris’ first major decision was to nominate as her vice president the buffoonish and inept Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. His radicalism, serial lying, and herky-jerky “weirdness” proved a force multiplier of her own mediocrity.

In contrast, the calm, empathetic, and astute Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate, eviscerated Walz in their sole debate and did the same to the media.

Add it all up—and Harris and her star-crossed candidacy were simply and rightly doomed.

Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).

My College degrees were $33,000 from 2003 – 2015 of education at WITC New Richmond, Chippewa Valley Technical College and Rasmussen University. The Rasmussen University had a mascot, but no sports, no dorms, and mostly online education off message boards, and 10-12 pages of APA papers weekly. WITC and Chippewa Valley were on campus. There was no cameras on campus except they didn’t enforce that totally. There were only class pictures by staff and events or holidays on the colleges instagram and facebook page unless someone snuck phone camera inside it.

I paid $800 for a Dell PC Tower with Ryzen 1700, 16 GB of RAM, a Radeon, and 1 terabyte hard drive in 2018.

It’s Happening: Trump Tasks Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to Lead Department of Government Efficiency

 

This piece has been updated to include another post from Vivek Ramaswamy about other political endeavors.

During the 202 election, President-elect Donald Trump had the enthusiastic support from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the latter who had once been a primary opponent. After Musk’s frequent references to being involved in a department to do with government efficiency, which our own Kurt Schlichter predicted, the Trump-Vance transition team made it official with a statement on Tuesday night

According to the statement, Musk, in conjunction with his American Patriot PAC, and Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as “DOGE.” The statement also included a quote from Musk himself, who declared that “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”

As the full statement read:

I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”). Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the “Save America” Movement. “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” stated Mr. Musk.

It will become, potentially, “The Manhattan Project” of our time. Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of “DOGE” for a very long time. To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.

I look forward to Elon and Vivek making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all Americans. Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending. They will work together to liberate our Economy, and make the U.S. Government accountable to “WE THE PEOPLE.” Their work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026 – A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence. I am confident they will succeed!

The statement also made reference to America’s 250th birthday celebrating, noting that Ramaswamy and Musk will have concluded their work by July 4, 2026, on that 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. 

Musk was a frequent guest for the Trump-Vance rallies in the final weeks of the campaign, appearing in places such as Butler, Pennsylvania, as well as at Trump’s October 27 rally at Madison Square Garden. 

Ramaswamy shared the statement over his X account, also noting, “We will not go quietly,” complete with a tag of Musk and the American flag. 

We will not go gently, @elonmusk. 🇺🇸 https://t.co/sbVka2vTiW— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 13, 2024

Later in the evening, Ramaswamy also posted that such a role means he is removing his name from consideration to replace Vice President-Elect JD Vance, who currently serves as a U.S. Senator representing Ohio. He was elected to the role in 2022.

“And yes, this means I’m withdrawing myself from consideration for the pending Senate appointment in Ohio. Whoever Governor DeWine appoints to JD’s seat has some big shoes to fill. I will help them however I can,” Ramaswamy posted, still signaling a willingness to help. 

And yes, this means I’m withdrawing myself from consideration for the pending Senate appointment in Ohio. Whoever Governor DeWine appoints to JD’s seat has some big shoes to fill. I will help them however I can.— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 13, 2024