In our brief, breaking account yesterday of the Supreme Court striking down New York’s restriction on law-abiding gun owners carrying weapons outside their homes, I said that the ruling seemed obvious based on the Constitution and previous SCOTUS rulings. If the right to bear arms shall not be infringed, and the Court has affirmed that personal right, then forcing people to prove to the state that they have a specific need to carry a firearm outside their homes seems clearly to be an infringement – especially when the reason for needing one for self-defense is so obvious in a place like New York, where other liberal policies have created a violent crime wave. It’s already so obvious to most people that the ruling will have no effect on existing laws in 43 states, as law professor and Instapundit blogmaster Glenn Reynolds explained.
Still, the ruling set off a predictable hair-on-fire reaction on the left. New York Mayor Eric Adams pulled out the tired “it will be like the Wild West” gun control trope. Critics responded that if he means people will be going around randomly shooting and robbing victims, that was already happening in New York under this law, which is precisely why New Yorkers want to carry guns in public for self-protection. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul also condemned the ruling and vowed to impose even more (unconstitutional?) restrictions on gun owners.
And once again showing his contempt for “our democracy” whenever the Courts don’t rule his way, President Biden condemned the ruling and his DOJ issued a statement disagreeing with it. They’re supposed to be an objective law enforcement agency, but this suggests, once again, that they will ignore Court rulings that go against their political beliefs.
As Prof. Reynolds observed, “When Democrats like what the Court does, it’s the supreme law of the land. When they don’t like it, it’s just, like, some court’s opinion, man.”
The most amusingly clueless reaction came from Keith Olbermann, who made news with a deranged Twitter rant calling for the Supreme Court to be dissolved and its ruling ignored (sounds like insurrection), claiming they were “forcing guns” onto states (by affirming the Constitutional rights of citizens to carry guns they already own?) and taking a sexist swipe at Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Even though he got deservedly roasted, it must have given him a nostalgic feeling to once again get a little attention with a deranged rant.
To give you an idea of how out of step with current Second Amendment trends the New York law was, here’s a map showing the states that allow concealed carry with those that put conditions on it colored blue. Notice the blue is all concentrated in the upper Northeast except for California, the only state in blue west of Pennsylvania.
Finally, it was illuminating to see how many of the left’s objections to the ruling completely ignored the Constitution and instead were based on emotional appeals and well-worn gun control tropes that were completely irrelevant to the case. Even the three liberal Justices' dissent was based on those arguments. It was so utterly beside-the-point that Justice Alito wrote a concurring opinion that’s well worth checking out, just to see how he systematically exposed the faulty logic in each of their objections.
No wonder Nancy Pelosi didn’t want Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan on the January 6 committee. We see that he has been one of its intended targets. It has to do with seeking presidential pardons.
Recall that the committee subpoenaed him but that he refused to testify under oath, saying (correctly) that it had been set up in violation of the legislation that had made such a committee possible. But on Thursday, testimony from others pointed to him and other members of Congress who allegedly asked questions about presidential pardons in the wake of the Capitol breach. The committee is trying to make the point that they wouldn’t have been asking about pardons if they didn’t think they were involved in something illegal.
Democrats are trying to tie some in Trump’s circle to a scheme to pick alternate slates of “fake electors” for the Electoral College. But choosing alternate electors to have in reserve is nothing new. If a recount is underway or an election is being contested, it makes sense to have Plan B ready. Besides, we all know Democrats have challenged electors themselves and even pressured them to change their votes in 2016, to stop Trump from being elected President. And the POST MILLENNIAL recalls how Hawaii ended up with two slates of electors from Hawaii in 1960.
Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, said on Thursday that Jordan did not mention a pardon for himself but did ask for “an update on whether the White House was going to pardon members of Congress.”
But late Thursday night, in an interview with FOX News’ Shannon Bream, Jordan said, “I didn’t request a pardon; I didn’t do anything wrong.” He pointed out that this isn’t the first lie being told about him; California Rep. Adam Schiff, several months ago, presented a text of Jordan’s, but only after eliminating the context and changing the punctuation in a way that altered the meaning. That dishonesty was so egregious that the committee actually released a statement saying, “We regret the error.” (Error? It was a deliberate deception. Still, Jordan got a semi-apology.)
But Jordan explained to Bream that they did the same sort of thing to him again in Thursday’s hearing, playing an edited clip of him, obviously intended to mislead. NOTE: if these were real hearings instead of a partisan kangaroo court, the other side could object to this and correct the record.
“That’s what you do [mislead],” he said, “when you have a partisan committee that doesn’t allow Republicans on it --- for the first time in American history --- and you can’t do the cross-examination that every other committee in the history of the Congress has had except this one.”
As for Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy trying harder to get some real Republicans on the committee (Cheney and Kinzinger don’t count), Jordan said, “I don’t think that Nancy Pelosi was EVER going to allow any Republicans who were going to do the kind of cross-examination that needs to be done...She’d have found a reason to always object to someone, ‘cause this is the outcome she wants.”
It’s “completely partisan, one-sided, just a presentation,” with “no due process, frankly, at all in this entire committee,” he said, adding that she might have accepted more Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, but that would have been it.
He said that, yes, of course, he’d love to be in that room, cross-examining the witnesses, pointing out the cherry-picking and the hearsay being presented “in this packaged form, where they read it off a teleprompter, for goodness sake.”
Kinzinger actually said, “I know the only reason to ask for a pardon is because you have committed a crime.” Now, I don’t know who sought a presidential pardon from Trump and who didn’t, but I do have a problem with the Democrats’ assumption that pardon-seeking shows consciousness of guilt. Every Republican involved in this story was well aware of what had been done to destroy the life of Michael Flynn, for example, an innocent man who needed a pardon from Trump to end his legal nightmare because the judge in his case would not LET IT GO. And in the days since January 6, we’ve seen how easy it would be for an innocent person to find himself held without bail in terrible conditions for over a year and denied due process. Seems to me it would’ve been a good idea for all these Republicans to have an idea of where they’d stand legally in case they were prosecuted –- and persecuted –- by a weaponized ‘Justice’ Department. That in itself wouldn’t mean they were guilty of anything.
Speaking of weaponizing the ‘Justice’ Department, on Thursday, the very day that Adam Kinzinger led the questioning of three Trump-era DOJ officials about the allegiances of another Trump DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, Mr. Clark was subjected to one of those early-morning FBI raids. Gosh, what are the odds?
At 7AM, twelve FBI agents and two Fairfax County, Virginia, officers were at Clark’s door, banging loudly and demanding that he come outside. He asked if he could put on some pants first. They said no. They raided his home, confiscating all the electronics. They even had an electronics-sniffing dog, to make sure they didn’t miss anything.
During Thursday’s afternoon hearing, former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen testified that Clark, head of the DOJ’s environmental division under Trump, had gone against a careful DOJ policy by meeting directly with Trump and discussing election theft theories. So I guess that’s what this is all about.
“I just think we’re living in an era that I don’t recognize, Clark said. “And increasingly I don’t recognize the country any more with these kinds of Stasi-like things happening.”
I think that in juxtaposing this hearing with yet more tactics reminiscent of the East German secret police, the Democrats have just undercut their own argument. Even if you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, why NOT check into the possibility of a pardon when you know what this ‘Justice’ Department is capable of?
The radical pro-abortion group “Jane’s Revenge” warned that it would be “open season” on churches and pro-life pregnancy centers if Roe were overturned, and called for a “night of rage” with physical violence. Now, it’s past time to start treating that as the terroristic threat that it is.
The same TV networks that gave wall-to-wall prime time coverage to the Democrats’ insurrection kabuki theater have been noticeably quiet about this open attempt to intimidate the Supreme Court with acts of arson and vandalism and threats of terroristic violence.
The DHS issued a warning to Catholic churches and pro-life groups to prepare for attacks. I hope they will take this seriously and be ready. I have a feeling that if any of these people ever finally face serious consequences for their rotten behavior, and find themselves unmasked, handcuffed and thrown in jail for a few years, it might scare them into behaving like civilized adults for the first time in their lives.
Lila Rose of the pro-life group Live Action responded, "This is the most coordinated & aggressive domestic terrorism in our nation today. All because extremists are angry that they may not get to kill children in the womb, on demand, without limit." But she said they will not deter pro-life people from carrying on their mission.
Now that the DHS has been forced to issue that dire warning, I wonder if they will finally acknowledge that the real domestic terrorist threat is coming from the left – you know, all those black-clad, masked thugs threatening other people’s lives and firebombing their offices and churches – and not from Trump voters and disgruntled parents at school board meetings.
The media love to flatter themselves that “Trump’s LIES” are the reason people don’t trust them to be honest and objective. But before Trump ever came down the Trump Tower escalator to enter politics, I’d already published a book, “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy” (https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Grits-Gravy-Mike-Huckabee/dp/1250060990/), warning media and political elites in NYC, L.A. and DC that they were completely out of touch with the rest of America. They spent so little time visiting or talking to 90% of the nation that they arrogantly referred to their own target audience as “flyover country.”
Their arrogance and ignorance sprang from their lack of interest in finding out what the people really thought. So no wonder it came as a shock when Trump won the presidency. They thought he had brainwashed all those voters when he was actually just saying the things they’d been saying for years, but the elites in the media and political capitals just weren’t listening.
Now, all these years later, and they’ve still learned nothing from Trump’s rise or my book. A new Rasmussen poll reveals yet again how hopelessly out of touch they are with the vast majority of Americans.
The pollster asked likely voters to rank the issues of most importance in the midterm elections, and asked members of the US legacy media the same question. Here’s what voters said was most important, in order from #1: Gas prices, inflation, the economy, violent crime, election integrity, school issues, election cheating and illegal immigration.
Here’s what the media members said were the most important issues, in order: Climate change, abortion rights, the January 6th Capitol riot investigation, COVID-19, LGBTQ issues and Ukraine.
As Monica Showalter at American Thinker points out, that’s a perfect score for the media: not a single issue that they think is most important appears on the list of the public’s concerns, nor do any of the public’s concerns appear on the media’s list. And they wonder why their ratings are in the outhouse? But as Ms Showalter writes, the media are undeterred by the public’s lack of interest in their obsessions and just keep hammering away, thinking they can force us to care about what they care about. In fact, all they’re doing is driving away viewers and readers and putting themselves out of business.
A new Pew Research Center has more proof of the disconnect between the major media outlets and the American public (as well as reality.)
That survey found that media members think they’re doing a great job in these five areas: covering the most important stories of the day, reporting the news accurately, serving as a watchdog over elected leaders, giving voice to the underrepresented and managing/correcting misinformation (i.e., the laughable “fact-checkers.”) The public, however, begs to differ. The biggest gap was in “Reporting the news accurately.” 65% of media members think they’re doing a very or somewhat good job of that. 35% of the public agrees.
Question: if you owned a restaurant and were convinced you served really good food, but only 35% of the public agreed, how long do you think you’d stay in business?
Republicans in the House and Senate have introduced bills that would allow people who undergo “gender transition” (there's no such thing, but that’s another issue) surgeries as minors to sue medical providers for damages if they later regret it. The bills would also bar federal laws that force doctors to provide such surgeries and prohibit federal funds from going to states that do so.
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton explained, "Gender-transition procedures aren’t safe or appropriate for children. Unfortunately, radical doctors in the United States perform dangerous, experimental, and even sterilizing gender-transition procedures on young kids, who cannot even provide informed consent. Our bill allows children who grow up to regret these procedures to sue for damages. Any doctor who performs these irresponsible procedures on kids should pay,"
Of course, the push by the Biden Administration and many school officials and trans activists to block parents from having any say over whether their kids undergo these surgeries deprives them of the traditional protection by the only people who are looking out for their interests without ulterior motives. They’ve swiftly “transitioned” from asking us to show tolerance and compassion for gender-confused minors to separating them from their parents and pressuring them to agree to dangerous, life-altering drugs and surgery, administered either by quack doctors playing God or reluctant doctors being forced to do it.
These bills have no chance of getting through the current House or Senate, since the Democrats have adopted unfettered abortion and mutilation of children as their two tent-pole issues. But maybe that will soon change.
In the meantime, for anyone who might be working up a furious tweet over this story or claim that gender transition surgery is a wonderful, helpful “best solution” in all cases, I’ll direct you to this very disturbing story from the New York Post. They talked to teenagers who felt extreme media, political and peer pressure to believe they needed these procedures and who are now trying to “detransition” after suffering a living nightmare and damage to their bodies that can never be undone. As one put it, “I was failed by the system. I literally lost organs.”
By the way, it also quotes a clinical psychologist who is very concerned that kids are being pressured and rushed into irreversible medical procedures instead of first addressing personal or mental health factors. And before she gets branded as a transphobe, it should be noted that she’s a transgender woman herself.
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court has struck down New York’s requirement that citizens prove to the government that they have a specific need to carry a weapon for self-defense outside their homes.
Writing for the majority, Justice Thomas said the Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense is not a second class right subject to an entirely different body of rules than other rights. For instance, you don’t have to prove to the government that you have a need to voice unpopular speech or freely exercise your religious beliefs.
Justice Alito concurred, writing, "Today, unfortunately, many Americans have good reason to fear that they will be victimized if they are unable to protect themselves. And today, no less than in 1791, the Second Amendment guarantees their right to do so.”
This is a major victory for gun rights, but if you follow the Constitution, it’s hard to imagine it going any other way. The law was obviously unconstitutional from the start, and with each passing day, as New York’s liberal policies hampered police responses and allowed crime to flourish, the need for self-protection wherever you went became increasingly urgent. Personally, I don’t know how the Justices could keep a straight face listening to lawyers from New York argue that nobody needs to carry a weapon to feel safe…in NEW YORK.
Ron DeSantis has been such a success as governor of Florida, it’s easy to forget that Democrat Andrew Gillum came within 38,000 votes statewide of winning that office. We should all thank our lucky stars, whether we live in Florida or not, that DeSantis made it and got the opportunity to show the nation how conservative principles translate into practical solutions. That's especially true now, when Gillum is once more in the news, this time for his indictment on numerous corruption charges.
We don’t want bury the lede, so let us just say: Gillum’s attorney is Hillary-connected former Perkins Coie lawyer Marc Elias. More on that later.
Recall that after losing in that election, Gillum –- once a rising star in the Democrat Party –- was caught in a drug-fueled sex orgy with a male escort who almost died from a drug overdose. Yes, Florida, this was almost your governor. Missed it by THAT MUCH.
Project Veritas captured video of one of Gillum’s employees saying he was very far-left, had to lie to win, and was “crazy, crazy, crazy.” Gillum himself remarked that Ron DeSantis supported slavery. He called DeSantis and Trump “pigs.” Lovely person. From 2018:
This guy was actually the mayor of Tallahassee, which might seem hard to believe until you hear that Tallahassee has the highest crime rate in the state. As reported by INDEPENDENT SENTINEL, anyone who brought this up was called (of course) a racist.
And, yes, Democrat “superlawyer” Marc Elias is defending Gillum against his 21-count indictment for conspiracy, fraud and making false statements. (What, Michael Avenatti wasn’t available?) He'll have his work cut out for him, as the indictment is reportedly accompanied by copious bank records and informant testimony.
As the WASHINGTON FREE BEACON reports, Elias is “a strange choice” for Gillum’s legal team. “Unless being friends with the Clintons counts, Elias has little apparent experience with federal criminal defense,” they say. As you know, in recent years his efforts have been concentrated mostly on election law at the state level, getting judges to eliminate safeguards that would have helped ensure the integrity of mail-in ballots. In the summer of 2020, he and his team of attorneys criss-crossed the country to use the legal system to pressure targeted “battleground” states to change the rules –- even if it meant going around state legislatures. These changes were ruthlessly exploited that November.
I would think it would be highly unusual to be friends with the Clintons without having at least a nodding acquaintance with criminal defense.
Gillum is accused of siphoning political contributions into his personal accounts after DeSantis won, accepting unreported gifts, and working with donors to conceal high-dollar contributions. One unintentionally humorous note in this story: Gillum might actually have defrauded GEORGE SOROS of up to $137,000. The way Soros throws his money around to leftists, I’m surprised he didn’t just GIVE Gillum the money for...well, whatever.
“That accusation is especially awkward for Elias,” the WFB continues, “because Soros is a longtime ally.” They were both major players on the Hillary team. After Trump beat Hillary, Elias even joined the board of a Soros-funded super-PAC. It might be no accident that Elias has these connections to both sides of the Gillum case; perhaps he has some way to leverage his unique position.
Elias released a statement that was the standard attorney blah-blah: “The government got it wrong today. The evidence in this case is clear and will show that Mr. Gillum is innocent of all charges. We look forward to putting this case to rest and giving Andrew and his family peace once and for all.”
According to the indictment, the FBI, looking into corruption in the city of Tallahassee in 2016, were “steered to” then-mayor Gillum and his mentor, Sharon Lettman-Hicks, who currently heads the National Black Justice Coalition and calls the investigation “racially motivated.” (And with DeSantis in the governor’s office, she sees “democracy in peril.”) So, the FBI must have been investigating Gillum while he was a candidate for governor. NBC News says Gillum “had been under federal investigation for years.”
Gillum was the kind of candidate Democrats sadly flock to: he checked a diversity box –- the first black candidate for governor in Florida –- and was a dynamic speaker, as if that alone could actually solve problems. His stated goal was to “turn Florida blue.” After he lost the governor’s race, he became (surprise!) a CNN commentator, Harvard University guest lecturer, and frequent guest on Bill Maher’s HBO show.
With elections this fall and Gillum’s upcoming trial, Marc Elias must be racking up the billable hours. NBC News has much more detail on the Gillum case..
The January 6 committee is scheduled for its Day 4 hearing today at 1PM Eastern Time. (Remember, if you’d prefer to spend your day in more worthwhile pursuits than sitting through a boatload of Democrat propaganda, “we watch the news, so you don’t have to.”) At least watching it won’t be quite so torturous after the fun of watching Tucker Carlson’s Monday night monologue, about the OTHER security breach at the Capitol building by alleged comic Stephen Colbert’s group of “white extremists.” It’s hilarious.
But, all right, it’s time to get serious, because, let me assure you, the Democrats are deadly serious about this, as they always are about going after Trump and his supporters. As Michael Anton, research fellow at Hillsdale College, wrote yesterday in COMPACT magazine (by subscription only), “The Committee has brought to light no important new evidence, no smoking gun that points to, much less proves, “insurrection” or “overthrow.” All they can do is scream in America’s faces. That is, until Merrick Garland brings criminal charges against the former President and God knows how many of his associates. That’s the real plan.”
Anton appeared with Laura Ingraham on THE INGRAHAM ANGLE Monday night, saying he thinks that’s what they’re after. “That’s what they would like to do,” he said. “Whether they have the nerve to do it will depend on whether they think they’ve built enough of a case and have built up enough support in the general public, in the bureaucracy of the media...That’ll just be a calculation or a judgment. Many of them have already said –- and I’ve seen new articles every day, saying –- “slam-dunk case, open and shut, Trump is guilty of X or Y or Z; it’s time to try him. There’s a lot of mainstream, grassroots, Democratic pressure on Merrick Garland and the DOJ.”
He called Adam Schiff’s relentless teasing of what evidence he might have (EDITORIAL NOTE: as he did fraudulently with the Russia Hoax) “a desperate attempt to do something about their looming...disastrous, likely, defeat this fall in the House and, perhaps, in the Senate, too. And 2024 --- it’s a long way away but it’s not looking that great for them, either.” They’re trying to change the conversation, he said, when the most pressing problems in the country are issues such as inflation and the border.
“They’ve made it very plain that they’re don’t intend to do anything about any of those problems that would actually work.” Any practical solutions would “go against their ideology and would anger their base” he said. “They’ve got to come up with something, and this is what they’ve got.”
“Nobody LIKED the spectacle of January 6,” he said, “...but most people think it was a protest that went too far. It was regrettable; it shouldn’t have happened. But now that it happened, it wasn’t THAT big a deal; it’s not the second Civil War. It’s not another 9/11.” And it doesn’t outweigh the problems people have in their everyday lives. There’s a “cynical leadership that says, ‘We can use this to whip up our base and we don’t have anything else to do right now; we don’t have anything else to go on.”
He pointed out something we recently reported here: that the percentage of American voters who think Trump was largely responsible for January 6 has actually gone DOWN. A minority now believe he was mostly or largely responsible. We would add that this is one reason they're holding these hearings through the summer --- to try to get that statistic back up. But they are so obviously stacking the deck that it’s more off-putting than ever, particularly in swing states.
Here’s another, albeit minor, example of the two-tiered ‘justice’ system as relating to security at the Capitol. In March, Capitol Police asked federal prosecutors for an arrest warrant for Timothy Hysom, a longtime staffer for Adam Schiff before becoming top aide to Democrat Massachusetts Rep. Jake Auchincloss, who coincidentally is one of the congressmen responsible for letting Colbert’s “comedy” team into the Capitol. Hysom was captured on security cameras defacing posters outside Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s office. He declined to be interviewed by Capitol Police, their report says, and “retained counsel."
Defacing posters. In the congressional swamp, this is the level where Democrat staffers swim.
Anyway, federal prosecutors declined prosecution. Auchincloss’s spokesperson called the idea of prosecuting Hysom for that “ridiculous” but couldn’t resist adding that the real victims were people forced to read Greene’s posters that stated there are only two genders --- male and female --- calling Greene’s message “bullying.” I wonder if prosecutors would have gone after GOP staffers if they had defaced posters about, say, gun confiscation or abortion on demand. I have a feeling the cops would be at their doors with handcuffs and leg irons.
Saving the best for last, here’s David Harsanyi at THE FEDERALIST, saying, “The day Adam Schiff was named to the ‘Jan. 6’ committee was the day we knew the investigation was going to be a frivolous partisan side show.” That’s exactly what it has turned out to be.
Schiff went on TV this weekend to re-use his tired strategy of claiming he had evidence against Trump. When pressed to be more specific, he said he did not “want to get ahead of our hearing.” I’m not holding my breath, and, really, I don’t think anyone is, with the possible exception of a few deranged MSNBC hosts. And Laurence Tribe.
Harsanyi’s must-read piece goes into a whole series of Schiff’s fabrications. “Schiff’s lying goes beyond the political norm,” he writes, “which, needless to say, is bad enough.” And, of course, when found out, he NEVER apologizes. Pelosi’s appointment of Schiff for this committee is just one more way of showing total disdain for the right. We all KNOW what a serial liar Schiff is, but it doesn’t even matter to the Democrat leadership. They know we know about his lies, and their attitude is “so. what are you gonna do about it?”
Harsanyi says it’s “become insufferable watching the same people who spent four years spinning conspiracies about 2016 lecture us about the importance of honoring the outcomes of presidential elections.” This means you, Hillary –- and, of course, Schiff. “The committee has spent most of its time conflating what looks like completely legal, if often destructive and dumb, actions with the violence of rioting.” The reason they're able to do this is there are no lawyers allowed in the room who might defend Trump's attempts to stall the certification, or, goodness knows, dare to present a factual basis for at least some of his claims.
In other “Enough is enough” news, Disney is trying to put the best face on the news that their big summer Pixar animated release “Lightyear” crash-landed at the box office this weekend. It came in well behind the second week of “Jurassic World: Dominion,” earning $51 million. That may sound like a lot, but predictions had been scaled back to $70-$85 million to lower expectations. For a Pixar summer release with a $200 million budget and no other kids’ movies in theaters, that’s a disaster.
Showbiz media outlets are trying hard to paper over Buzz’s big crash by calling it a “soft opening,” but it’s far worse than that, as John Nolte at Breitbart.com gleefully explains.
As this Western Journal article notes, the friendly liberal media is making every excuse in the book short of mentioning the possibility that parents have had enough of Disney’s “not-so-secret gay agenda.” They’re largely ignoring the well-publicized reports that the film included a lesbian couple and a same-sex kiss that was cut, then deliberately reinserted as a defiant response to Florida’s law barring sexual content in schools for kids up to third grade level. No, that couldn’t possibly be a factor in the film’s failure.
That kiss has also caused a number of other nations, from China to Saudi Arabia, to ban the film or demand edits, which Disney has refused. That’s made news, as did outspoken liberal actor Chris Evans (who voiced Buzz instead of conservative Tim Allen, for some reason – maybe Tim saw the script and passed) calling anyone who disapproved of putting a lesbian kiss into a Disney kids’ movie a “dinosaur.” Ironically, far more people went to see outspoken Christian actor Chris Pratt in the second weekend of a movie about dinosaurs.
All this leads one to wonder, just what business does Disney think it’s in? It used to be synonymous with wholesome, inoffensive family entertainment that was safe for kids. Now, the people running it seem willing to lose billions as long as they can keep pushing unwelcome LGBTQ messages onto small children. And it’s not a matter of “erasing” gay people from movies. It’s just a simple issue of why should a movie aimed at kids include any messaging relating to anyone’s sex life? We used to have a term for this: “Inappropriate.”
Bonchie at Redstate.com compares the politically-motivated decisions behind “Lightyear” to the massive box office success of the unabashedly patriotic and non-woke “Top Gun: Maverick,” and asks whether Disney will learn from this and re-embrace Walt’s vision or continue alienating their core customer base to appease a small demographic of radical LGBTQ activists.
In short, Disney executives can either go back to doing what they did best or keep acting like political activists and go broke as they rocket “To insanity…and beyond!”
The next hearing of the bogus, totally one-sided January 6 kangaroo court is set for Tuesday at 1PM Eastern Time. Here are some updates going into Day 4...
The committee says it “will center on Trump’s attempts to influence state legislators to delegitimize election results.” (Never mind that constitutional scholars such as Mark Levin have said Trump had every right to appeal to state legislators.) Testimony will include Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and aide Gabriel Sterling.
On Thursday, Day 5, they say they’ll show Trump stoked “a violent mob and directed them, illegally, to march on the U.S. Capitol.” They apparently mean they intend to lie, because he did no such thing. And, of course, there will be no cross-examination, with the mainstream media reporting the testimony as fact.
Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, says she “can’t wait” to testify before the January 6 committee, which is looking into whether she had any role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. She says she wants to clear up “misconceptions.”
Perhaps she’d like to clear up the misconceptions at MSNBC. Host Tiffany Cross said, “I mean, listen to this, and I see this playing out and my question is, is Ginni Thomas going to be perp-walked? Because she is clearly in violation of ethical norms and it definitely seems like it is a violation of the law.”
Seeing Ginni Thomas testify before that group of low-lifes might actually make me tune in.
Let’s move on. A look ahead wouldn’t be complete without an assessment of the hearings up to this point, and Margot Cleveland has a must-read piece about what this “show trial” conveniently ignores: “the verifiable evidence of systemic violations of election law, illegal voting, and the constitutionally deficient execution of the November 2020 election –- including issues Trump challenged following the election.”
Remember Georgia? Biden's margin of victory was only 11,779 votes. Before the state certified the results, Trump challenged them, claiming fraud. He alleged that counterfeit ballots in suitcases and tinkering with Dominion Voting Systems software had contributed to this, and also that tens of thousands of illegal ballots were illegally counted.
With so few votes separating the two candidates, Trump’s attorney said that violations of the residence requirements in the Georgia Election Code alone would have more than closed the gap. But Secretary of State Raffensperger would never meet with the attorneys, they said. In fact, his office sent them “a very nasty letter saying they wouldn’t give us ANY data until we dismissed all pending litigation.” When they did exactly that, his office withdrew the offer to pass along that data.
Trump’s legal team found numerous other categories of violations of the election code in Georgia but were never able to present their evidence in court, because the chief judge of Fulton County, Chris Brasher, failed to appoint a judge eligible to hear the case for a month. According to Cleveland, the numbers “far exceeded” Biden’s margin of victory.
When Trump spoke on the phone with Raffenspergers’s chief investigator Frances Watkins and famously told her to “find the fraud,” that was AFTER Trump’s lawyers had already found enough illegally cast votes.
“Yet,” Cleveland says, “the January 6 committee and their cohorts in the press cast all the challenges to the November 2020 tabulations as crazy conspiracy theories of fraud peddled by Trump to steal the election.”
And under Georgia election law, if the “evidence established that there are more illegal or or irregular votes than then the margin of victory, the remedy is a new election.”
Raffensperger told THE FEDERALIST last July that his office’s investigation “remains ongoing.” But since then, their calls to him and key members of his staff have gone unanswered. Since he’s going to be testifying Tuesday, that would’ve been a great time for Republicans to cross-examine him about this information. Oh, wait –- darn it, there won’t be any Republicans there! (Cheney and Kinzinger don’t count.)
“With the corrupt media’s cooperation,” Cleveland says, “the vast majority of Americans may never learn of the systemic violations of election law, illegal voting, and the disparate treatment of voters in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the latter seen most clearly with the infiltration of funding from Mark Zuckerberg to targeted Democrat-heavy populations.”
In April of this year, Pennsylvania held public hearings about the “Zuckerbucks” phenomenon. They were looking at legislation banning outside money for elections. But Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed such a ban last year. (Surprise!)
Now let’s move from Cleveland’s fine legal mind to the deranged Trump-hating mind of Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe. As Jonathan Turley says, Tribe “seems intent upon running through the entire criminal code in declaring clear evidence of every federal crime by former President Trump and/or his family...witness tampering, obstruction of justice, criminal election violations, Logan Act violations, extortion, espionage, and treason...” In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Tribe has now added ATTEMPTED MURDER to his list of charges. He says Trump is clearly guilty of an attempt to murder Mike Pence, on January 6, 2021.
I am not kidding. Tribe said this is true “beyond any doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt, and the crimes are obvious.” Also, “There are other crimes that have been proven,” he said. “Those are plenty to start with.”
Tribe must be taking very seriously the hearsay evidence that Trump, in a moment of extreme frustration, said Pence deserved hanging. Turley says, “I know of no case where a speech of this kind was sufficient to establish attempted murder. Indeed, such a claim would contradict controlling Supreme Court precedent.” Turley calls Tribe’s “attempted murder” delusion “utter nonsense.”
The problem for the committee is that Trump never called for violence AT ALL.
Turley notes how curious it is that, with the crimes obvious “beyond any doubt,” Trump has not been charged with them. It certainly wasn’t due to any loyalty or affection for Trump --- they hate him. No, it was “due to the paucity of evidence of a crime that would hold up in court.”
The people running this kangaroo court would charge Trump with anything, even attempted murder --- we all know they would --- if they could get away with it, but they have no actual evidence. So the most they can do is call witnesses to trash-talk him during this show trial, just to damage him personally and politically. And they can hope their partisan hack AG, Merrick Garland, will just go ahead and charge Trump with...I don’t know, something criminal. Tribe predicts he will.
But you know it’s crazy when even CNN analysts are throwing cold water on it.
The big “news” is that Hillary was asked if she would run for President again in 2024, and she replied, “No, out of the question…First of all, I expect Biden to run. He certainly intends to run. It would be very disruptive to challenge that.”
But I’d remind everyone who’s gabbing about Hillary not running that she left loopholes big enough to sail the Titanic through (yes, I’m comparing her presidential runs to the Titanic.) Note that she only ruled it out because Biden said he intends to run. A lot of Democrats want him to bow out of running for reelection before his approval rating drops below that of COVID-19. And he doesn’t have far to go.
So if he doesn’t run, there goes her only excuse not to. Besides, this is the same woman who assured New York voters when she was running for reelection to the Senate that she had no intention of leaving them high and dry to run for President. Not long after, she resigned to run for President in response to a clamorous public outcry that only she heard.
Of more interest to me was her admission that she expects Trump to run again in 2024, and the things she unintentionally revealed in talking about the Democrats’ motivations. Like saying, “Look, the most important thing is to win the next election. The alternative is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority.” (So "winning is all that matters." Not a surprise.)
She also said her priority is to ensure a Republican does not become President, declaring, “We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy, and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window.”
Okay, let’s break that down. What are the things that most people care about? Plentiful food, affordable fuel, being able to pay our bills, safety from criminals, secure borders, preventing foreign wars, keeping terrorists out of the country? The Democrats have been a Chicago Fire-level disaster on all those fronts.
She also suggested that Republicans are dangerous extremists who are a threat to “our democracy.” That can’t be just because some Republicans challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 election, since a number of Democrats did the same thing to the 2016 election, including Hillary Clinton, who repeatedly referred to Trump as an “illegitimate President.” Her recent comments suggesting that Republicans are cheating when they strategize to win the Electoral College rather than the popular vote also suggest that she doesn’t understand how the election works. And her own campaign helped concoct the biggest attempt to undermine a democratic election in history with the “Russian collusion” hoax.
As for Republican “extremists” who don’t represent American values, is it Republicans who are deliberately letting criminals take over our cities; who have thrown open our borders to illegal immigration and deadly drugs; who are forcing schools to let males invade girls’ lockers and bathrooms and let drag queens teach kindergarteners about gay sex; who have public meltdowns over nonsense like “preferred pronouns;” who are so brainwashed by transgender propaganda that they’re afraid to admit what a “woman” is; who see everything that ever happened in American history as motivated by nothing but racism and white supremacy; who have become so radical about abortion that 49 out of 50 of their Senators voted to allow it up to the moment of birth; who are so fixated on “green” energy that they’re destroying the US oil industry and driving gas to $7 a gallon; and who endlessly obsess over one riot while excusing hundreds of more violent riots? Sounds pretty “extreme” to me, and none of those are from our side.
Still, Hillary was smart enough to realize that the Democrats’ own fixation on radical niche issues like transgenderism is not helping their electoral prospects.
Her comments may seem baffling, but if you want to know what Hillary is really saying, I’ll make it easy for you. Whenever she, or most current Democratic leaders, use the phrase “our democracy,” just substitute the phrase “our grip on power.” As in, “Electing Republicans would be a disastr for (our grip on power.)”
Believe me, I’d much rather post a joke than news like this, but the news just refuses to cooperate. Wednesday, as the Biden White House once again reassured us that the economy is doing just super, the Commerce Department reported that retail sales dropped by 0.3% in May. That’s likely because Americans are putting so much money into their gas tanks, they’re cutting back on other spending.
Then on the same day came part two of the double whammy: the Fed announced that to try to bring down inflation, it was raising interest rates by .75% of a point, the biggest hike since 1994. And it’s likely not to be the last.
The Fed assured Americans that it was not trying to deliberately induce a recession. How reassuring. Some analysts are saying that while we may “technically” already be in a recession, it’s not likely to feel like one to consumers.
That’s funny, because just last week, another analyst was saying that we may not technically be in a recession, but to consumers, it feels like we are.
That does remind me of an old joke: that if you laid all the economists end-to-end, they still wouldn’t point in the same direction.
To try to end on a positive, or at least helpful, note, here are some things you should be doing now to protect yourself from the potential effects of higher interest rates.
Here are a couple of liberal narrative-busting stories that you likely won’t see covered in the mainstream media:
Last week in testimony to the House Oversight Committee, Lucretia Hughes, a black mom whose son was “shot point blank in the head” six years ago, told lawmakers that more gun control laws will not stop gun violence. She said her son was killed by a convicted felon with an illegally-obtained weapon, and that policies pushed by gun control advocates wouldn’t have prevented that.
She said, “My son’s death resulted from a criminal with an evil heart and a justice system failing to hold him accountable for laws he had already broken.” She called it “crazy” to think the solution is more laws when there already are laws, including strict gun laws in blue cities, that aren’t being enforced, She also said law-abiding citizens need guns to protect themselves because the police aren’t doing it, adding, “I don’t need the government to save me.”
Echoing her comments was Jason Young of San Francisco, whose six-year-old son Jace was shot and killed in San Francisco in 2020. Jason told Fox News that more anti-gun laws aren’t the answer, holding criminals accountable is. Young and his family campaigned for the successful recall of criminal-coddling D.A. Chesa Boudin, who kept releasing offenders back onto the streets to do it again and again. Young said, "In my son's case, every suspect that was arrested in regards to his murder was apprehended again with another firearm during their arrest."
Not that it should matter, but both of the victims in these cases were black. Leftists constantly tell us that black lives matter, yet they impose policies that have greatly increased shootings and killings in black neighborhoods. If that’s more than a political slogan to them, then why don’t they prove it by adopting policies that prioritize saving black lives over making the lives of violent criminals easier?
During the January 6 committee hearings, a recorded testimony of former Attorney General Bill Barr was played in which he laughed derisively at the idea that the documentary 2,000 MULES should be taken seriously. He found the geotracking evidence from cellphone data “singularly unimpressive,” he said.
Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza didn’t take kindly to that. “The level of ignorance displayed by Bill Barr here is truly stunning,” he tweeted. “He doesn’t seem to understand the very concept of geotracking.”
He invited Barr to “a public debate” on election fraud. “What do you say, Bill? Do you dare back up your belly laughs with arguments that can withstand rebuttal and cross-examination?”
I’m not holding my breath, but...oh, please, do it. If Bill Barr can laugh at and dismiss what is shown in 2,000 MULES, it would be great to see him try debunking it. The other “debunkers” have certainly not been successful in doing so, though the media have attempted to make it look as if they had.
Anyway, bring it on. I know I’d much rather watch this debate than yet another hearing in Pelosi’s kangaroo court. It’s not as if we’re going to get any rebuttal or cross-examination in that.
Yesterday, we brought you three stories reaffirming that what we knew about the FBI was the tip of the iceberg. (Yes, this swamp has icebergs.) Today, there’s yet another story.
Thanks to Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russia Hoax, we now get to see a very telling document –- a seven-page script of talking points prepared by senior FBI counsel Lisa Page for FBI Director James Comey ahead of his meetings the following day –- March 9, 2017 –- with leadership in the House and Senate. Declassified as part of pre-trial discovery, it shows how the FBI deceived Congress about the reliability of their made-up “evidence.”
And long after they knew the “dossier” was untrue, they let agents include it in their FISA applications as well.
Paul Sperry at RealClear Investigations has an excellent, must-read article that lays this out clearly. As Sperry reports, the talking points were “riddled with half-truths, outright falsehoods, and critical omissions.”
These talking points concerned reports the FBI received in 2016 from a former confidential human source (CHS) alleging former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Carter Page conspired with the Kremlin in the 2016 election. The information she included –- and that Comey used in his meetings –- was known by the FBI to be untrue.
To help allay potential concerns by members of Congress about the quality of this information, Lisa Page suggested in her memo that Comey tell them that "some" of it had been corroborated and also that it came primarily from a “Russian-based source” –- which sounds a lot more credible than “the Clinton campaign,” ha. Igor Danchenko had a Russian name, but he was not in Russia. He was at the Hillary-affiliated Brookings Instittution, right here in the good old USA. Christopher Steele, who put the “dossier” together from unverified stories, was also American-based.
When Danchenko was first interviewed by the FBI in January 2017, he told them the stories he’d passed to Steele were just bar talk, laughed about over drinks with his girlfriend and a couple of high school buddies. Indeed, the special counsel’s indictment of Danchenko says the source for his most sensational stories about Trump –- including the one involving prostitutes in a Moscow hotel –- was made up. Danchenko never spoke to that person, and his other source was a longtime Hillary campaign adviser. (We know this was Charles Dolan, also associated with Hillary and the Brookings Institution. All roads lead to Hillary.)
The FBI did not reveal any of this to Congress, and they also concealed Christopher Steele’s identity and his connection to Hillary’s campaign.
Sperry’s report shows part of one page of this memo. Hilariously, the heading says “DELIBERATIVE PROCESS PRIVILEGED DOCUMENT,” with the word “DELIBERATIVE” highlighted for extra emphasis. Just saying a document is “deliberative” and “privileged” does not make it so, although, goodness knows, if Christopher Cooper were presiding again, he’d feel duty-bound to exclude it from his courtroom.
Lisa Page was full of suggestions for making their dubious sources seem more legit, including the use of the codename “CROWN,” most likely in reference to Steele, making it appear that the “dossier” was a product of British intelligence, as opposed to the HILLARY CLINTON CAMPAIGN.
According to the memo, Comey would also withhold from Congress the fact that Steele had been fired for leaking to the media.
Page wrote to him, “If asked about “CROWN/Steele” during the briefing, say only that “CROWN, a former FBI CHS, is a former friendly intelligence service employee who reported for about three years, and some of whose reporting has been corroborated.”
The official in charge of vetting Steele and Danchenko and corroborating their allegations was FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten. As Sperry reports, by March 2017, Auten knew the “Russian-based” claim was untrue, yet he let case agents slip it into two FISA renewals of the warrant to spy on Carter Page.
Unfortunately, the statute of limitations for the false-statement offenses relating to the March 2017 briefings has lapsed. The five-year statute of limitations related to the false information in the FISA applications expires at the end of this month. BUT...Durham could render these moot (to use a favorite expression of the Supreme Court) by filing conspiracy charges, for which the statute of limitations is seven years. As Sperry reports, “Some former FBI attorneys and prosecutors believe the special counsel is building a ‘conspiracy to defraud the government’ case against former FBI officials and others.”
Sperry goes on to explain how FBI officials Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok, during a briefing on the Trump-Russia probe in March 2017, also misled acting Attorney General Dana Boente, as revealed in handwritten notes Boente took. (Boente was in charge of this because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself.) They again used the “CROWN source reporting” lie. Strzok also lied to Boente --- and this is easily shown to be false --- that part of his probable cause for opening the investigation against Trump was his public call to Russia (which we all know was tongue-in-cheek) to find Hillary’s 30,000 missing emails (which we all know she deleted). They also told Boente their secret monitoring of Carter Page’s email and phone had been “fruitful,” when it had failed to corroborate anything in the “dossier.”
The following month, Boente signed the third application to surveil Page, based on what they had told him. As Sperry reports, the surveillance, which stretched through September 22, 2017, allowed the FBI “to potentially monitor the Trump presidency [!!!] through what is known as ‘incidental collections’ emails, texts, and phone and Skype conversations.”
Comey publicly announced the Crossfire Hurricane investigation on Capitol Hill in March 2017. Two months later, Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate Trump’s “collusion” with Russia in the 2016 election. It was all based on lies. Of course, Mueller never found evidence that Trump or any official or associate colluded with Russia. But, at the time, the media exploded. And Mueller, impressed with Lisa Page’s diligence –- gee, who wouldn’t be? –- hired her on the spot for his team.
Margot Cleveland had a more detailed piece last week on Boente’s handwritten notes and what they reveal. It gets more into the weeds, but one thing she suspects: the FBI’s phony emphasis on British “CROWN sourcing” makes it seem likely that the FISA court would’ve denied their application if the real sources had been known.
One good thing Cleveland mentions about the statute of limitations: The DC Circuit Court has held that if a defendant engages in a scheme to falsify, conceal or cover up material facts, the limitations period does not begin to run until the scheme ends.” She figures this takes us to June 29 of this year. That’s consistent with Sperry, who likewise specified “the end of the month.” Down to the wire!
One thing she still wonders about, though: What if the “CROWN sourcing” does actually refer to British spies, the same ones at Cambridge involved in trying to damage Michael Flynn during the Obama administration? Just when you think the plot couldn’t get any thicker, it (maybe) does.
The Igor Danchenko trial is about four months away. If you'd like more backstory on that case, Margot Cleveland wrote something earlier this month providing some and pointing out the significance of the approximately 1,500 documents that Clinton's people at Fusion GPS withheld during the Sussmann trial under the auspices of "attorney-client privilege." These would include conversations among Steele, Fusion GPS, and Marc Elias of Perkins Coie. She says Durham needs to fight to obtain those documents.
The focus on Thursday was Vice President Mike Pence and what he went through that day. Not that there was any cross-examination in an attempt to really know. We did learn that Pence spent several hours in a secure location, which appeared to be a loading area deep within the complex, and we heard committee Democrats praise him lavishly for his courage in not going along with Trump. Greg Jacob, former counsel to Pence, said that “Pence’s instinct” told him there was no way the framers of the Constitution intended the VP to have that kind of power.
It seems to me that being pulled into this story might actually have helped some viewers understand how Trump was feeling at the time. Obviously, he believed the election HAD been stolen by Democrats in those battleground states and that the Judicial Branch had not done its job. Yes, he chose to listen to the advisers who said what he wanted to hear, as we all do. And the way he saw it, he wasn’t trying to instigate a coup. He was hoping to prevent one, by the left. And some on the right did go way too far.
Mark Levin, speaking Thursday night on HANNITY, pointed out that while Biden, Schumer and Pelosi criticize Trump for not responding “quickly enough” to the January 6 riot, they still haven’t responded to the assassination plot against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanugh, which would certainly represent a more serious threat to our Republic than a bunch of unarmed ragtag Trump supporters.
They also haven’t responded to “the threats that are coming down, the potential need for the National Guard to protect the Supreme Court” when the decision is announced on their landmark abortion case.
He reminded viewers of how “extraordinarily violent” the left is, evoking the summer of 2020, the riots accompanying Trump’s inauguration –- to try to prevent HIM being sworn in as President (that apparently was okay) –- and the attack at the White House that injured 50 Secret Service agents.
So after putting January 6 in perspective, he said he was “disgusted” at the 40 minutes he watched on Thursday, seeing that it was “choreographed,” with teleprompters, spliced-up and cherry-picked video, and no contrary witnesses, contrary evidence, motions, challenges or cross-examination. No opposition whatsoever.
Even the legal analysts sit there on TV and say, we learned a lot today, he said. “You learned NOTHING."
As for the testimony regarding Pence, Levin pointed out that their chief witness, Michael Luttig, was not an adviser to Pence and never spoke to Pence. Levin’s sources close to Pence say Luttig “volunteered” his analysis by submitting it unsolicited to the Vice President’s office. None of that came out in testimony on Thursday --- could it possibly be because there was no cross-examination?
J. Michael Luttig is a conservative former federal judge who testified that Pence had no authority to stop Congress from certifying the election –- he had tweeted this on January 5 –- and that this would have brought on a “constitutional crisis.” He painted a picture of Trump as someone desperately trying to cling to power and called his efforts a “war on democracy.”
FORBES reports that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz clerked for Luttig and considers him to be a mentor. It would be very interesting to get Cruz’s take on his testimony. Amazingly, Luttig’s other law clerk was Trump attorney John Eastman, the very adviser who was the one encouraging Trump –- and Pence –- to challenge the election. What an interesting scenario. If only there were some real Republicans involved in these hearings, to bring in some cross-examination…
Levin also brought up the letter we reported on yesterday, from former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia William McSwain to President Trump, dating from June 2021. Recall that he was telling Trump that Attorney General Bill Barr had instructed him not to say anything publicly about the allegations of election “irregularities” that had been coming to his office, but to pass these along to the state attorney general, who had said Trump could not win.
“Wouldn’t it be nice when Barr was testifying, that somebody was there to challenge Barr? Somebody was there to challenge Luttig?” Levin asked. He pointed out that even some leftist legal professors agreed with Trump attorney John Eastman’s position “before it was John Eastman’s [and Trump’s] position.” The final say on election law was supposed to be with state legislators, he said, not with judges, and Levin holds that Trump “had every right” to ask state legislatures to look into these matters.
He also said it’s not clear under the 12th Amendment what the responsibilities of the Vice President are in such a situation. There needed to be challenges in the hearing about this.
“This is a railroad job,” Levin said of these hearings, “pure and simple. And it’s time the media get off its a-- and pay attention, and legal analysts act like real lawyers.”
At least 124 House Republicans sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, demanding that he investigate violent attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers as acts of domestic terrorism.
The letter lists 11 instances of pro-life pregnancy centers, anti-abortion centers and churches being vandalized, firebombed and sprayed with threatening graffiti reading, “If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you.”
And in case our politicized disgrace of an AG is too busy targeting non-woke parents to comprehend what a real domestic terrorist is, here’s a primer for him. An Antifa-linked pro-abortion group called Jane’s Revenge issued a blatantly terroristic threat online against pro-life organizations, reading in part:
"We offered an honourable way out. You could have walked away. Now the leash is off. And we will make it as hard as possible for your campaign of oppression to continue. We have demonstrated in the past month how easy and fun it is to attack. We are versatile, we are mercurial, and we answer to no one but ourselves. We promised to take increasingly drastic measures against oppressive infrastructures. Rest assured that we will, and those measures may not come in the form of something so easily cleaned up as fire and graffiti.
From here forward, any anti-choice group who closes their doors, and stops operating will no longer be a target. But until you do, it’s open season, and we know where your operations are. The infrastructure of the enslavers will not survive. We will never stop, back down, slow down, or retreat…”
You know what would make them stop? Throwing them into prison for about 20 years. AG Garland, THAT is your job, not harassing critics of Biden policies. If they are organizing and leaving threats online, then they are creating electronic trails that the FBI can use to trace, identify and arrest them. You were able to locate harmless grannies who wandered into the Capitol on January 6th to take a selfie and treat them like terrorists. Now, try using that same set of skills to hunt down and arrest these actual terrorists.
Nancy Pelosi has been conducting a kangaroo-court sham hearing about the January 6 riots, and it’s so theatrical that her committee hired a former “Good Morning, America” TV producer to stage it so it would be good TV. But it’s been very bad government. And the person who ought to be most ashamed of herself isn’t even Pelosi. It’s a pretend Republican from Wyoming, Liz Cheney.
According to the rules of the committee, there was supposed to be bipartisan participation, with the Republicans appointed by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The names he submitted were real Republicans who were determined to make sure the committee acted in good faith. Well, Nancy couldn’t have that, so she arbitrarily rejected the Republican appointees and appointed her own lapdog pet Republicans who would run to the feeding dish when she rang the bell. The only two she could find who would disgrace themselves by being her tightly leashed love-pups were Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who at least had the dignity of not running again for his Congressional seat after he’s made a fool of himself by selling out to the likes of AOC and the radical Squad.
But Liz Cheney has no dignity left. Her personal animosity toward Donald Trump has eclipsed every last ounce of integrity she might have ever possessed, and she joyfully joined the most partisan and vicious Trump-haters in DC to try and blame Donald Trump for a breakdown in security at the Capitol, despite the irrefutable fact that he urged Pelosi, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, and others to allow him to supply up to 20,000 troops for security that day. They all turned him down, and then they had the audacity to blame him for a rally that turned into the riot.
The reason I hold Liz Cheney in such contempt is because she is pretending to be such the law-and-order stickler. But every conservative I know has clearly spoken out against those who did damage to property at the Capitol, or who threatened or challenged a police officer that day. But what Liz Cheney has NOT done is to demand an accounting for the unjustified shooting of the only person who died in the Capitol building that day—an unarmed woman and Air Force veteran named Ashli Babbitt who was shot dead by a Capitol Hill police officer –- but about which the details of the investigation have never been made completely public.
Liz Cheney has not demanded an accounting for Ashli Babbitt’s death. Nor has she said a word about the disgusting and humiliating treatment of Peter Navarro, who was arrested as he boarded a plane last Friday to come to Nashville to be on my show. The FBI office is literally next door to his apartment—next door! He offered in writing and on the phone to voluntarily come in should they wish to talk to him. Instead, they followed him to the airport and waited until he was boarding the flight to Nashville, when they arrested him, handcuffed him, and hauled him away in unnecessary humiliation. They then put him in leg shackles and strip-searched the 72-year-old Harvard scholar who had never been arrested.
Will Liz Cheney demand answers as to why he was treated this way but former Attorney General Eric Holder wasn’t? Holder was charged with criminal contempt of Congress, and even 17 Democrats voted for it because he refused to answer questions about the disastrous Fast-and-Furious operation that resulted in the death of border agent Brian Terry. And Adam Kinzinger, who cried about January 6, didn’t shed a tear about Ashli Babbitt or the treatment of Peter Navarro.
Here's what some of us want to see: Send Liz Cheney and other swamp creatures home and replace them with liberty-loving, courageous constitutionalists who will demand accountability for the corrupt officials at the FBI and DOJ and in the Biden White House who have persecuted their political opponents with the power of the government and hidden the crimes of the connected. As for Republican candidates or incumbents who won’t do that, vote them out and replace them with those who will fight for us and our country. And I mean fight like the third monkey on the ramp to Noah’s Ark when it starts to rain!
According to transgender activists, anything anyone does that they don’t like, from requiring schools to notify parents that they want to give their kids dangerous chemicals and irreversible surgery to comedians telling jokes about their excesses, is going to result in trans kids dying. To be clear, what they’re actually talking about is these kids killing themselves. One would think that if you’re dealing with a group of young people who are that at risk of suicide, you’d want to get them psychological counseling rather than drugs and surgery. But even Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki called that “medically necessary, life-saving” treatment for gender dysphoria. To even suggest psychological counseling gets you branded as transphobic and, you guessed it, will result in more trans kids dying.
To back this up, activists point to studies claiming that suicide rates are higher among kids who are denied hormones and gender surgery. But since we’re talking about kids’ lives, shouldn’t we actually confirm whether or not that’s true?
A new analysis funded by the Heritage Foundation uncovered serious flaws in these studies that are detailed at length here:
The study also found that far from reducing suicides, in 2020, in states that allow hormone therapy and other “gender-reassignment” procedures without parental consent, there were on average 1.6 more suicides per 100,000 residents age 12-23. That’s 14% higher than the average state suicide rate in that age group from 1999-2020. The analysts say an observable rise in suicides began when these hormone therapies became available. They believe there’s a connection. Others will deny a causal link, but if, as they claim, these procedures reduce suicides, why are suicides rising in places there they’re most easily available?
I would think that this study would merit some serious discussion. If it doesn’t, if it’s just ignored and swept under the rug, then I would take that as a pretty good indicator that for all the talk about saving kids’ lives, their lives really take a back seat to pushing a particular social/political agenda.
We’ve said for a long time that what we find out about the DOJ’s malfeasance is the tip of the iceberg. A few more stories currently dripping out support that view.
The NEW YORK POST, through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request, finally received a heavily redacted (of course) DOJ inspector general report on former top FBI official Michael Steinbach. Apparently he’d violated policy by unofficially appointing himself a media liaison. As the POST reports, Steinbach had “’numerous unauthorized contacts with the media’ that began when he was the bureau’s assistant counterterrorism director and continued after he was named executive assistant director of its National Security bureau in February 2016.” By “numerous,” the report was talking about hundreds.
Since the Office of Inspector General can’t compel individuals to be interviewed unless they currently work at the DOJ, Steinbach himself was never interviewed for the FBI probe. He abruptly resigned in February 2017 and thus gave this internal affairs investigation the slip. “Prosecution was declined,” according to the report. We would add that since Director Comey also left the bureau in May 2017 --- when Trump fired him --- there was no way after that for the OIG to ask him if this media connection was Steinbach’s own idea or was encouraged from the top. Perhaps there are memos...
It’s not clear from the NY POST story when this OIG report was issued. Former FBI deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who stepped in for Comey after Comey was fired by Trump, quit the agency “ahead of agency review,” according to BBC News on January 30, 2018. He had been scheduled to retire in March, but Director Chris Wray had apparently pressured him to quit “in advance of an inspector general report examining the agency.” Recall that McCabe was under his own cloud for approving a leak to the press and lying about it. These guys are all as slippery as a snake covered in Vaseline.
Though we haven’t heard his name before, Steinbach, according to the POST, was “overseeing the controversial investigation into Donald Trump’s suspected ties with Russia.”
But what he also was doing can only be described as schmoozing with the press. It would be nice to know the names of the reporters he was corresponding with, but they’ve been redacted. After being invited to the 2015 Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner, he solicited another reporter for a $300 ticket to the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Association gala and reception.
He boasted about being there to an unidentified CNN reporter, who wrote back, “I put you on the map and now you’re cheating on me with [REDACTED].
The POST story quotes more of the schmoozing by this FBI official. It’s pretty sickening.
“The OIG notes it was unable to determine who paid for the drinks or meals during these social engagements.” We can guess, but that’s not really the point. Here’s he point: a strongly politicized FBI was using the media as personal scribes to spread whatever narrative they wanted.
Though the OIG couldn’t interview Steinbach, another FBI official who was interviewed said Steinbach had told him Comey “was trying to change the way the FBI dealt with the media.” Either Steinbach was justifying his own behavior, or Comey really approved this little outreach program. As this unidentified official explained it, “...When you take your credentials out, it needs to mean something. And the only way to do that is to have the trust. And the only way to get the trust is to have good will and the media is a part of that, right?”
When it came to the Trump-Russia Hoax, the FBI sure seemed to have a lot of friends in the media. Steinbach apparently was one of those cultivating that. It came in handy.
That story meshes well with another report from a couple of weeks ago from Jerry Dunleavy at WASHINGTON EXAMINER about another top FBI official. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said that Timothy Thibault, FBI assistant special agent in charge and leader of the Washington field office handling public corruption matters and other criminal investigations, “likely violated several federal regulations and Department guidelines designed to prevent political bias from infecting FBI matters, including the Attorney General Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations and FBI social media policies...”
The nature of Thibault’s social media presence had apparently been brought to Grassley’s attention. “...Thibault’s social media postings, comments and ‘likes’...demonstrate a pattern of improper commentary related to, for example, ongoing FBI investigations including those under his purview.” Grassley described this as “active public partisanship,” with Thibault even using his official title in these withering criticisms of anything GOP. “Accordingly, his actions present a grave risk of political infection and bias in his official decision-making process...”
Grassley called on Inspector General Michael Horowitz to investigate and sent letters to Director Wray and Attorney General Garland that set June 14 as the deadline for them to share documents related to this official. It’s now June 16.
The EXAMINER story includes numerous examples of Thibault’s over-the-top partisan social media posts. To cite just one: he retweeted a Lincoln Project tweet that said, “Donald Trump is a psychologically broken, embittered and deeply unhappy man,” with a link to the corresponding ATLANTIC article. In contrast, according to him, Barack Obama could do no wrong; his only scandal as President “was wearing a tan suit.” Hey, at least this FBI official was telling us what he really thought instead of hiding his partisanship in the name of following FBI “policy.”
Legal analyst Andrew C. McCarthy briefly outlined his concerns about this for NATIONAL REVIEW in a piece called “What the Hell Happened to the FBI?” He points out that the Washington field office “handles many of federal law enforcement’s most politically charged investigations.” This politically-charged individual is in charge of all that, which might explain a lot.
Finally, last week, Judicial Watch reported receiving 102 pages of documents from the DOJ regarding the death of Ashli Babbitt in the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. These reflected some facts we’d already known, such as that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia had declined to prosecute shooter Michael Byrd and that he hadn’t even been made to fill out a police report or other documents.
But there was something else that shows how words are used for propaganda purposes. The words “group” and “crowd” in the original drafts were later changed to the more loaded word “mob.” Five times, just to drive the point home. As in: “Because Ms. McEntee [Babbitt] was an active participant in a ‘mob’ that had just illegally entered the Capitol building, and then broke out the glass doors and removed barricades to forcefully gain entry into the Speaker’s Lobby, there is insufficient evidence to refute Lieutenant Byrd’s fear for his life or the life of others at the time he discharged his weapon.”
Ashli's widower insists she was not participating, but instead was trying to stop the break-in to the Speaker's Lobby. But the DOJ avoided accountability.
Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch says these documents show Byrd got special treatment. Byrd “shot an unarmed woman for no good reason,” he said. “I suspect that this unjustified shooting isn’t of much interest to the...January 6 committee.”
I hate to break it to you, because I know how much you were looking forward to this today, but the scheduled January 6 committee meeting has been postponed.
All together now: “AWWWWWW!!!”
One stated reason was that they needed more time to prepare their video “evidence.” Well, that’s certainly understandable, given that it takes time to go through reams and reams of video, select only the most useful clips, and edit them to create just the right flow and the appearance of guilt. It might even be necessary again to drop in some audio of President Trump speaking from some other time and place. The art of propaganda can’t be rushed.
Also, there was reportedly infighting over whether to make criminal referrals. They should make one on themselves.
“Republican” committee member Adam Kinzinger tweeted that they simply want to “space out” the hearings. Nobody buys this.
Anyway, as long as we’re waiting for the next scintillating installment, this is a great time to look at some of the issues that won’t be mentioned by the committee at all.
Kyle Becker brings up another hearing, this one by the Senate Judiciary Committee in January of this year, in which Texas Rep. Ted Cruz grilled an essentially non-responsive Jill Sanborn, the FBI’s executive assistant director of the National Security Branch, concerning certain events on January 5-6, 2021. She wouldn’t answer, citing “sources and methods.” Sources and methods for WHAT?
It “feels” as if the FBI were invoking the Fifth Amendment.
Ray Epps, from Arizona, was captured on video the night before the rally saying, “Tomorrow, we need to get into the Capitol! Into the Capitol!” His focus on this struck the people around him as so strange and suspicious that they started chanting, “Fed! Fed! Fed! Fed!” But when asked if Ray Epps was indeed a Fed, Sanborn refused to provide that information.
If he were NOT a Fed, then answering would not have given away any sources and/or methods.
The January 6 committee did put out a statement on Ray Epps, for what that’s worth (which is to say, nothing): “The Select Committee is aware of unsupported claims that Ray Epps was an FBI informant based on the fact that he was on the FBI Most Wanted list and then was removed [in July] from the list without being charged. The Select Committee has interviewed Mr. Epps, [who] informed us that he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on January 5th or 6th or at any other time, and that he has never been an informant for the FBI or any other law enforcement agency.” Well, that’s good enough for us! Just kidding; it’s not.
As reported in the WESTERN JOURNAL, our esteemed attorney general wouldn’t answer questions about this, either. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie posted the video described above in October and tweeted, “I just played this video for AG Merrick Garland [during a House hearing]. He refused to comment on how many agents or assets of the federal government were present in the crowd on Jan. 5th and 6th and how many entered the Capitol.”
The WJ story also recalls other situations in which the FBI used informants, including to spy on Trump’s campaign (Stefan Halper), and the 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
So, another question for the FBI not to answer would be, “Why was Ray Epps removed from the Most Wanted list?”
But we’re not just dealing with evasiveness and secrecy in this “investigation.” Nick Arama at REDSTATE reports that the committee has been caught in another outright lie, smearing Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk for supposedly giving a “reconnaissance” tour of the Capitol building to protesters the day before the rally, when he did no such thing. Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney demanded that he voluntarily testify and explain his actions, and released that letter to the media to spread the rumor.
Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, who pressed the Capitol Police to look at the evidence and clear Loudermilk, said Democrats who smeared him need to face accountability before the House Ethics Committee. Think they will? Hah, that’s funny.
Rep. Loudermilk is fighting back himself, though, calling for accountability not just for the Democrats who smeared him but also for the media who helped them do it. “We need these journalistic outlets to actually act like journalists,” he said, “not a wing of the progressive left Socialist Democrat Party, which is what they’ve become. And that’s why the American people have lost faith in the mainstream media, because they actually don’t believe anything they report.”
There’s also more about former Attorney General Bill Barr’s perplexing and inconsistent comments about election fraud. President Trump released a letter from William McSwain, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 2018 till January 2021, in which he’d expressed dismay to Trump about instructions he said he’d received from Barr “not to make any public statements or put out any press releases regarding possible election irregularities,” of which McSwain had received a number of reports. He said he was also told “to pass along serious allegations to the State Attorney General for investigation –- the same State Attorney General who had already declared you could not win.” McSwain also told Trump he was “right to be upset” with the way officials ran the 2020 election in Pennsylvania.
This story still needs some sorting out, and I don’t mean by the “fact”-checkers who worked swiftly to try to dismiss it. Barr denied McSwain’s allegation to the WASHINGTON POST, saying McSwain’s comments to Trump appeared to be designed to “mollify” him to gain his support. Barr has maintained there was no evidence the election was stolen, yet he’s also said there WAS fraud --- in the form of the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story --- that potentially changed the outcome.
So, define “stolen.”
Finally, here’s an excellent article from Julie Kelly of AMERICAN GREATNESS, whose reporting on January 6 is unmatched.
And check out her book, now in paperback: “JANUARY 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War On Terror Against the Political Right.” Forward by Lee Smith, author of THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT and THE PERMANENT COUP.
After hearing that the point of Nancy Pelosi’s January 6th Kangaroo Kommittee and its low-rated prime time show trial was to make the case that former President Trump should be indicted on various federal charges (I assume including trespassing for living rent-free in Democrats’ heads), Chairman Rep. Ben Thompson said the Committee will not make any criminal referrals of Trump or anyone else to the DOJ.
Thompson said, “No, that’s not our job. Our job is to look at the facts and circumstances around January 6th, what caused it and make recommendations after that.”
If getting Trump isn’t their job, then someone failed to give the message to Liz Cheney, who immediately contradicted Thompson. But in fact, indicting people not only isn’t their job, it’s not within their authority, as Thompson correctly stated. They aren’t a grand jury. They shouldn’t even be able to subpoena people, much less have them arrested for defying their subpoenas, considering that the Committee is illegitimately formed in violation of the resolution creating it.
Of course, this could just be a way of attempting to sound magnanimous and above politics as they back down from their blustering rhetoric, so they don’t have to admit they’ve wasted $8 million and months of our time on a political vendetta that would never stand up in court, or that they have no evidence other than their partisan suppositions of what was going through Trump’s mind and bits and pieces of testimony wrenched out of context or altered.
Or maybe they realized that this dog just wasn’t going to hunt when even MSNBC uber-liberal Rachel Maddow admitted that it was impossible for Trump’s rally speech to have incited the breach of the Capitol that was already happening far away, before he’d finished speaking.
For the record, the Monday session included lots of Trump bashing but still no new actual evidence. But Julie Kelly at American Greatness has an excellent primer to explain the truth of what happened on January 6th, minus the “well-oiled fog machine.” It’s called, “January 6 for Non-Dummies.” Share it with your friends who watch CNN.
Today, June 14, is Flag Day, the day set aside to honor the United States flag. It commemorates the day in 1777 that the Second Continental Congress adopted the official design for our first national flag. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed Flag Day into law, so we can’t say there wasn’t something good he did. (Sorry; had to get in my little jab at Woodrow Wilson.)
I had the pleasure on Sunday of singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a celebration of Flag Day held by the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks in Fort Worth, Texas. I’ve done this once before and not only got to express my patriotism by singing the national anthem –- it seems I love it more every year –- but also learned a lot of history about the flag (and the Elks) from the presentation…
Such as: The significance of the American flag is that it is emblematic of the crowning virtue, charity; of justice for all; of brotherly love; and of fidelity. These are the “cardinal principles” of the Elks. “By them,” the Elks say, “we teach love of country and of our countrymen and loyalty to our American way of life. To be an Elk is to be an American citizen who lives for his country and is ready to die for it.”
In his Flag Day prayer, the Chaplain asked God to bless our flag and entreats, “Through the years to come, may this flag wave as the banner of liberty, freedom and enlightenment. May this service bring to each of us a sense of loyalty to our country and enable us to be better patriots, truer citizens, and more loyal Americans, to Thy glory and to the honor of this great nation.”
Then a trustee took us through a history of all the versions of the American flag. A small regiment of high school students in ROTC came to the front one by one, accompanied by historic pieces of music, solemnly carrying the succession of designs. These included the yellow, snake-embellished “DON’T TREAD ON ME” flag that I personally would like to see revived as a companion to our official Stars & Stripes. The design is riveting, and I especially like that sentiment now. Where can I get one of those?
I can’t tell you how refreshing this ceremony was after sitting through the sickening and thoroughly UN-American January 6 hearing last Thursday. There was not a hint of politics in this Flag Day ceremony, even though its emphasis on God and patriotism leaves little doubt as to which way its members lean politically. These are people who care deeply about devotion and duty, in service not to themselves but to higher principles. Yes, this mindset still exists.
And these were the nicest people. It’s easy to see that this isn’t just talk --- they really live it.
Still, there was one thing that left me a little sad. In that big room full of round banquet tables, all looking lovely with white tablecloths and flag centerpieces, most of the tables were empty. In fact, before they were about to start, I even asked the officials on the dais if they’d thought about “holding the curtain” for a few minutes in case more showed up. They said no, they’d go ahead as planned.
After it was over, one of them explained to me that, as he put it, “The average age in this group is 72.” Covid, of course, had caused some to avoid crowds in the past couple of years, and I'm not sure they even had it in 2020. But also, their ranks have naturally thinned over time. It seemed to me that this tradition must have skipped a couple of generations, with seniors represented, along with seniors of the high school variety –- the ones in ROTC –- but very few folks in between.
So I have a suggestion. If you have a calendar for next year, find the Sunday just before June 14 and go ahead and mark it “Flag Day Celebration.” Then go to the website for the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, where you can read more about them and also enter your zip code to find the Elks lodge closest to you.
I can’t think of a better, more inspiring way to celebrate Flag Day than to take your whole family –- all the generations –- to this event, meet some nice people, eat a big stuffed baked potato and learn a lot about the history of the American flag and its meaning, or at least what it’s supposed to mean.
As for that, I’ll leave you with something President Wilson said about that: “This flag, which we honor and under which we serve, is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and shape of this nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours.”
In other words, we define it. That’s why it’s up to us to make sure the flag continues to stand for the best in ourselves and in our country.
Here’s more about Flag Day and some suggestions for how to celebrate it today.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has defeated President Donald Trump in our Huckabee Newsletter Poll. With over 21,000 votes cast from across the country, Gov DeSantis has won:
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, at the conclusion of Monday’s hearing, said the committee appeared to be trying to “lay the foundation” for what they’ve claimed was an attempted coup. But what this really seems to be is a sort of “persona non grata” trial, he said, intended to show that Trump is “a horrible person.”
Turley laughed at something that happened at the end on Monday that he said “sort of put a pin on it” regarding the outrageously one-sided nature of these hearings. “The most telling moment,” he said, was when the chairman said he was going to “introduce this video, unless there is an objection.” Of course, everyone knew there would not be an objection! Who could imagine Liz Cheney suddenly rising to her feet and saying, “Wait, this seems unfair! Maybe we need to look at other evidence to be introduced as well!” That will not be happening.
“..This sort of emphasized,” he said, “there ISN’T anyone to object.”
He’s right --- we won’t be seeing any Perry Mason-like moment when someone in the room lets conscience prevail and tearfully sputters, “I confess! We’re all guilty! This hearing is a sham! We just couldn’t help ourselves!” These people don’t have consciences.
Turley observed that this one-sidedness is a “signature move,” a “fairly common practice” by Speaker Pelosi. She “muscles through, to get the conclusion she wants.” In the first Trump impeachment, for example, she “decided to forego investigation in the Judiciary Committee and the calling of essential witnesses.” In the second impeachment, “she did one better: she had a ‘snap impeachment,’ with no hearings at all.” I would add that she had to move lightning-fast because at that point, Trump was practically out the door. She had to get in just one more impeachment before he left!
But Turley isn’t so sure she’ll get the conclusion she wants. Other than hard-core anti-Trumpers, people will see that there’s no other side presented, the ‘other side’ being not that violent protest was a good thing but that key issues such as the deliberately lax security at the Capitol are not being examined at all.
He also made the point that through all the chaos, the system actually “did actually work to some extent.” Well, it worked in that power was indeed transferred; that’s about all that can be said for it.
We would add that to support their desired conclusion, Liz Cheney had to lie, saying, for example, “Donald Trump did not condemn the attack,” when he did –- unequivocally –- in a heartfelt Oval Office address. Read what he said at the link, here. He also condemned the violence on Twitter; Twitter blocked him. Cheney is a bald-faced liar, but, by design, there was no one at the hearing to point out her lies.
(By the way, as of this writing, President Biden has yet to condemn the unlawful protests at Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home or even the aborted attempt to kill him, which most of the media have ignored as well. Kayleigh McEnany and I spoke about this, and the double standard of justice in general, on last night’’s HANNITY.)
Legal analyst Andrew C. McCarthy said Monday’s hearing was a “much tighter production” than Thursday because it had one theme: Trump must have KNOWN the election was not stolen because those around him were “telling him it was nonsense.” That’s a compelling story to tell, but they’ve set it up in a way that's "not a fair process that’s aimed at getting to the truth and giving whatever contra-arguments there are their day in court.”
So, it’s “more like messaging than it is like a real investigation," he said. No kidding. “I could have been very impressive in court if there were no defense lawyers, you know?” he laughed. “You let the government put on its own case, own witnesses, own exhibits, and then no cross-examination and no defense arguments; I’d have been 1,000-and-0.”
He later said he did not think they’re doing this to stop Trump from running again –- he thinks they might even prefer that he run –- but to set up the case against Trump in case he does. They also want to deliver what they hope would be “the predicates” for criminal prosecution against him. McCarthy is concerned that Biden’s DOJ has been giving in to “the loudest voices on the progressive left” and that a Trump prosecution is what they want, no matter how it divides the country.
Monday evening, Brit Hume echoed what McCarthy had observed, saying that the Democrats might find out “they’ve done the Republican Party a great service” if they stain Trump too much for him to run again. “Because I think many Republicans think they can’t win with Trump at the head of the ticket again. They’re afraid of his supporters --- don’t want to come out against him directly, but they’d like him to go away. If the effect of this committee is to make his possible candidacy go away, I think a great many Republicans would privately be very glad.”
That thought is consistent with our new poll, which, in breaking news, has just concluded and shows a very strong preference for DeSantis over Trump, 56.6 percent to 42.2 percent. (For “someone else,” 2.1 percent.)
Even so, I’d like to think that if Hume had had time to elaborate, he would also have said that, to any conservative, the Democrats’ flagrant abuse of the system to achieve that goal is far too great a price to pay.
But maybe the Democrat’s main goal is something else entirely. According to top Democrat strategist Murshed Zaheed, the primary purpose is “fundraising for a lot of the Democratic Party institutions and establishments.” What the heck, they spent $8 million of YOUR MONEY on this extravaganza, and they’re expecting a big payoff on that investment! Zaheed’s tweets will give you a good “inside” view.
Oh, and here's a bit of good news: Last week, my writers said they would much rather have been watching the re-run of “Young Sheldon” that normally would have run on CBS Thursday night. The ratings are in, and, according to the WASHINGTON FREE BEACON, the January 6 hearing actually did worse in the ratings than the “Young Sheldon” re-run that had aired the previous week. Of course, my writers still wish they could have watched “Young Sheldon," along with just about anything else that would have been on afterwards. That was 2-1/2 hours of their lives they’ll never get back.
One last thing, about Bill Barr. You already know that Democrats have been exploiting clips of him expressing doubt early on about 2020 election fraud. (NOTE: We could cherry-pick other quotes that give the opposite impression of his view on fraud.) Barr laughed heartily at the mention of Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary 2,000 MULES, saying he was not impressed. D’Souza shot back at him in a series of insulting tweets, calling Barr ignorant about geotracking –- which, ironically, was used to find the precise location of January 6 protesters –- and saying, “I’d be happy to appear before the committee and debunk all the debunkers. Let’s settle the issue of who’s perpetrating the ‘big lie’ through open debate...With Bill Barr and Liz Cheney ranting today about the documentary, it’s the perfect occasion to watch 2,000 MULES and see for yourself what the brouhaha is about.”
The 911 call that led to the arrest of the armed young man outside SCOTUS Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home confirmed that he came there intending to kill Kavanaugh because he was all fired up by incendiary rhetoric about the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade. We know this because the would-be assassin made the call himself.
He said he found the house thanks to an article containing a photo and the address (nice doxing job, guys), but when he saw there were officers there, he left and called 911 to give himself up. He admitted needing psychiatric help and said he wanted to be fully compliant.
We can learn a few things from this. Like how incredibly dangerous it is to print the addresses of Supreme Court Justices. And how shockingly irresponsible it is for people like Chuck Schumer to make threatening comments intended to influence the judges’ votes, knowing that there might be mentally unstable people listening and taking him seriously (if you listen to Chuck Schumer at all and take him seriously, you’re likely mentally unstable.) And we learn that the gun didn’t come to shoot a Justice all by itself. As is often the case, it was carried there by someone who had mental health issues.
Of course, some people are incapable of learning, which is why radical pro-abortion groups like Ruth Sent Us are continuing their unconscionable intimidation campaign against not only the Justices but Amy Coney Barrett’s children at her school. And we learn that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s refusal to enforce federal law against harassment of judges at their homes is not only emboldening these dangerous people, it’s also adding more grounds for Garland’s inevitable (and I hope, swift) impeachment in the upcoming GOP Congress.
Related: The New York Times buried the story below 16 other stories, and headlined it, “Armed Man is Arrested Near Home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.” Wonder how they would’ve treated it if it had been an armed man in a MAGA cap admitting he intended to assassinate Justice Sotomayor?
My goodness. And the networks really believe I will tune into this poopoo show. Good luck.
From Scott Adams podcast (Episode 1771), “Real Coffee With Scott Adams”:
“Let me say this: Any time people show you edited video, whether the clip is edited or it’s put together with the other clips from other things, and any time they put an audio overlay over that, especially if the audio comes from a different time or place, which is what the January 6 committee is doing…are we not sophisticated enough yet as voters and the public to know that when anybody does this, it’s propaganda? It wouldn’t matter who did it. If the Pope makes you a “mix” video, it’s propaganda.”
You are being manipulated. If your best friend does this, “he’s not your friend. I don’t know how much more clearly I can say it.”
“Every bit of that is criminal, basically, or should be criminal. We’re allowing our government to do something right in front of us that should be against the law [when the other side isn’t allowed to respond]. But the only reason it’s not is that the people doing it make the laws….and I’m kind of amazed that we put up with it.”
We’ve said it wasn’t the riot that was a threat to democracy, but the REACTION to the riot, and Adams observed essentially the same thing: “If I had to rank them for which was worse, the events of January 6 or the hearings, it’s not even close. The events of January 6, with the violence: REALLY BAD. But, it’s not as bad as what the Democrats are doing in the hearings. I consider that worse, ‘cause the risks are higher. There was no risk that the country was going to be overthrown on January 6...but this hearing...to me, this is a gut-punch to the Republic.”
The fact that we even allow this makes Adams want to “have an insurrection right now,” he said. He never felt the urge before, but he does now. It’s the lack of any counter-argument. The Democrats are doing this with such impunity, that –- although he stressed he does NOT recommend violence –- he said that if he “were going to do an insurrection, they’re talking me into it.”
Adams thinks there should be “a hearing about the hearings.” The GOP, when they retake the House, should look into why these hearings were allowed to happen and how they were put together, “and then the Democrats should not be allowed to respond,” haha. He’d also like to see impeachment for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for his incitement of violence against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who was refused a seat on the January 6 committee by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said essentially the same this weekend on “Sunday Morning Futures.” We need to see ALL depositions, ALL documents, he said. He also reminded us that the committee had previously altered evidence, a text exchange between him and Mark Meadows. Those snakes had to admit it in December of last year. Don't believe anything they put in front of you in these hearings.
I would add that we'll also need to find out about the elephant in the room: the FBI’s role (before and during the event), and the lack of security in spite of the FBI’s intel report to Capitol Police just days before. Another question: why did they not ever locate the person who planted a bomb outside RNC and DNC headquarters? What’s the real story with that?
In Tucker Carlson’s Friday monologue, he explained why this “hearing” –- shown, he said, on every news network except FOX News –- wasn’t a real hearing, because in a real hearing, “the other side can speak.” That’s what we’ve been saying: that Thursday was essentially a prosecutor’s opening statement. Actually, two things are missing from a prosecutor’s opening statement: 1) any opposition, and 2) EVIDENCE. Selectively edited video is not evidence.
And, yes, NEWSMAX did finally give in and run the political theatre --- to provide it “without the spin,” they said. At least they had some good commentators, such as former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker and legal analyst Alan Dershowitz.
This literally was a show trial, to the point where it was scripted and read off teleprompters.
Tucker’s hypothesis is that they’re doing this because every minute they devote to January 6 “and some imaginary threat from QAnon” is another minute “they’re not covering the collapse of the American economy.” As I’ve said, when leftists first started mentioning the so-called right-wing menace of QAnon, my staff and I had to look it up, because we didn’t know what it was.
Later in his broadcast, he recalled what so many seem to have forgotten: “It was just two years ago, live on television, summer of 2020, a mob of Biden voters tried to storm the White House; remember this? They torched a church across the street. They attacked Secret Service officers. A mob called for the President of the United States to be lynched. He was taken to an underground bunker for safety. We don’t like to be hysterical, so we kind of downplayed it at the time…”
“This is what our country’s capitol looked like,” he said, with video of raging fire, broken glass and protesters breaking down barriers in the background.
“It’s just too much,” Tucker said. “Stop lying to us! Stop telling us things that we know for a fact are not true. We watched them in real time.” But no, we’re expected to believe that “January 6, 2021, remains the single worst thing ever to happen to America.”
Ashli Babbitt’s widower Aaron was also on the show. We’ve learned more about her shooting death in recent days, such as that killer Michael Byrd admitted he knew Ashli was likely unarmed, that he never even had to file a police report, and that he received a $200 donation on his GoFundMe page from –- get ready –- committee member Adam Kinzinger. As you know, the committee on Thursday night never mentioned Ashli’s name.
…………………………
Interesting note about Monday morning’s hearing: In an announcement late Sunday, one of the people called to testify --- in his case by subpoena --- is 2020 Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien. Stepien now happens to be campaign manager for Harriet Hageman, Liz Cheney’s Trump-endorsed opponent in her Wyoming congressional race, who is beating Cheney up in the polls. So, Liz Cheney will be interrogating her current opponent’s campaign manager. (Of course, Cheney’s side, the “prosecution,” is the only side doing any questioning.) This is one more hop away from the rules for this kangaroo court.
Jonathan Swan reports that a knowledgable source tells him Stepien might not be a “friendly” witness. Maybe he’s not fond of kangaroos.
Upon hearing this development, Taylor Budowich, communciations director for Trump and Save America, tweeted: “This circus is beyond embarrassment and will forever stain the integrity of Congress.”
The TV ratings are in for the Democrats’ big prime time, anti-Trump show trial, and they are grim. Although to be fair, they’re better than I expected. I thought the audience might be three people: me and my two writers, who were forced to watch it so you wouldn’t have to.
The good news for Democrats is that over 11 million people total watched it on ABC, CBS and NBC. The bad news for them is that the combined daily viewership of those networks' non-prime time evening news shows is usually around 18 million. A few million more watched on CNN and MSNBC, but they were preaching to their choir of rabid Trump-hating viewers, so that wasn’t the audience they needed to convince (and even with the ratings boost, CNN still had 340,000 fewer viewers than Fox News’ regular lineup.)
To give you an idea of how bad that was, 3.24 million people watched the hearing on CBS. That’s 600,000 fewer than watched last week’s rerun of “Young Sheldon” in the same time slot. And on both CBS and ABC, the audience dropped in the second hour as viewers tuned out.
The public has now had a chance to see that the January 6th Kangaroo Kommittee has no game-changing new evidence or revelations, just a lot of dark innuendo, biased narratives and selectively-edited video and testimony. They may be planning days more of this political theater, but since they had just one shot at prime time and didn’t show it then, I assume they have no blockbusters that they’re saving for 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. What they gave us was, to quote Shakespeare, “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Most Americans think the riot was deplorable, but they have far bigger problems to worry about now, and Congress should be dealing with those instead of obsessing over trying to indict Trump. Not that this Committee should be completely ignored. The next Congress will have to investigate it thoroughly and change the rules so that such a biased, illegitimate and unconstitutional abuse of power never happens again.
And for those who do still care about both what really happened on January 6th and why this Committee isn’t really even trying to find out, try this.
And here’s a list of Democrats, including members of this very committee, who previously tried to block the certification of elections of Republican Presidents, back before they decided that was insurrection.
Finally, while Democrats keep falsely claiming that police officers were killed on January 6th, the widower of the only person actually killed, unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt, has spoken out in the wake of the televised hearing where her name wasn’t even mentioned.
We’re mad as heck and we aren’t gonna take it anymore: The newspaper chain Gannett may have finally gotten “woke” in a good way, as in “Woke up to reality and realized they’d go out of business if they didn’t stop annoying readers with leftist lectures.”
The Daily Mail reports that a committee of editors presented a report to Gannett in April, warning them that people are turning away from USA Today and other Gannett-owned papers because they’re fed up with the leftist bias, both in editorials and supposed “news” stories. The editors said that not only are these leftist editorials among the least-read content, but were frequently cited as reasons for canceling subscriptions.
They noted that the public’s trust in the news media had plummeted in recent years due to leftwing bias, and that “readers don’t want us to tell them what to think. They don’t believe we have the expertise to tell anyone what to think on most issues.” Sounds like the readers are definitely smarter than the writers in that regard. They also suggested that the papers hire writers who aren’t leftwing activists. Ironically, that probably means hiring journalists who didn’t attend “journalism” school.
In response, Gannett is scaling back the number of editorials and ending political endorsements except in local races. This reminds me of the old joke about what you call it when a thousand lawyers are dropped into shark-infested waters: “A good start.” Both CNN and Gannett are finally scaling back the leftist activism as a survival measure, but there’s still so much of it infesting “journalism” that the people writing it may not even realize they’re doing it. Maybe they just assume that since everyone they know is a Republican-hating leftist, they spew that attitude without even thinking about it.
The entertainment media echo chambers are particularly bad about this. One of my writers who handles pop culture stories canceled his subscription to weekly Variety (for which he was paying a rock bottom professional rate of something like a dollar a year) because the leftist bias was so thick that even at two cents an issue, it wasn’t worth it. He was also a longtime subscriber to Entertainment Weekly, where you would find Obama cheerleading or Bush and Trump bashing in everything from record reviews to movie previews. He didn’t have to cancel that because they recently stopped publishing it.
Remember free speech? That was great while it lasted, wasn’t it? It obviously no longer exists in the Washington Commanders (formerly Redskins) organization, where defensive coach Jack Del Rio was fined $100,000, even after he apologized for asking why we were making so much of a “dust-up at the Capitol,” where nothing was burned down, but an entire summer of “riots, looting, burning and destruction of personal property,” where people’s livelihoods were destroyed and businesses were burned down, is never discussed and “no problem.” He tried to explain, “I just think it’s kind of two standards and if we apply the same standard and we’re going to be reasonable with each other, let’s have a discussion.”
For that, head coach Ron Rivera accused him of drawing an equivalence “between the events of that dark day and peaceful protests, which are a hallmark of our democracy.” He went on, “I want to make it clear that our organization will not tolerate any equivalency between those who demanded justice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the actions of those on Jan. 6 who sought to topple our government.”
Certainly, there were “peaceful protests,” but I think he was likely referring instead to the people who tried to burn down a courthouse with people inside; and whose violence, looting, arson and vandalism left 19 people dead and over 2,000 police officers and an unknown number of civilians injured, and caused damages estimated at up to $2 billion, the costliest civil unrest in US history.
FYI, just to show how fair I am, I’m going to link to a liberal site that attempts to downplay the riots and debunk that figure.
Also because I find it amusing that even though the writer twists the facts like a pretzel to make it sound not so bad, in the end, he still has to admit that, yeah, it could’ve been as high as $2 billion. But insurance companies had to pay most of it so it doesn’t count, apparently. Because insurance companies don’t raise everyone’s rates when their costs go sky high.
That’s like saying that we all aren’t losing our free speech rights, just because Jack Del Rio was the one who has to pay a $100,000 fine for making a perfectly reasonable statement that millions of Americans agree with.
One who agrees and who is still exercising his right to really free speech is author/blogger Larry Correia, who unleashed a brutal Twitter thread about why most Americans don’t care about January 6th. Warning: really bad language alert. He might have to put $100,000 into the swear jar.
Sunday, a group of 10 Senate Republicans and 10 Democrats announced that they had reached a “breakthrough” deal on a "framework" of new gun laws. It’s not yet in the form of legislation. It doesn’t ban any particular guns, the way many Democrats want; but it includes money for mental health and school security, it would add juvenile records to background checks for any gun buyers under 21, it would deny guns to people convicted of domestic violence, and it includes grants for states to institute “red flag” laws.
These Republicans argue that it would be easier for people caught in red flag laws to appeal on the state level, but I’d say that depends on the state. Some of the provisions are sensible, like increasing school security, while others sound sensible on the surface but wouldn’t have prevented recent school shootings (for instance, most of the shooters didn’t have anything on their records for a background check to catch.)
Even though having the support of 10 Republicans might seem to make this a slam dunk in the Senate, it’s not clear whether Democrats who are pushing for much more radical plans will settle for it, or whether these Republicans will all stand firm after they hear from their constituents, or after they see what Democrats might try to add to it. And it will take 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
In the meantime, conservative commentators are wondering why Republicans so close to a midterm election would want to tick off their constituents by backing new anti-gun laws that are wildly unpopular with them? (Daniel Horowitz, senior editor at The Blaze, noticed that of those 10 GOP Senators, four are retiring and none of the others are running for reelection this year. Coincidence?)
Even laws as seemingly reasonable as red flag laws can be abused to deny Second Amendment rights to someone who’s done nothing wrong. Good luck trying to convince Republican voters that they can trust the government never to falsely brand them as dangerous extremists or domestic terrorists.
The NRA issued a statement, but declined to go into detail until the “framework” actually becomes a piece of legislation.
And Kevin Downey of PJ Media goes further, pointing out that Democrat DA’s aren’t even trying to arrest and lock up the people who are committing the vast majority of shootings. They call it “social justice” or “justice reform,” but Downey’s theory is that leftist DA’s have deliberately created a crime wave to give them an excuse to disarm the law-abiding.
There seems to be no bottom for President Biden’s poll numbers, with even his base now crumbling under him like a California house during a mudslide. A new Quinnipiac poll found that he’s now losing his most loyal constituency, black voters. His approval with them has dropped 14 points since April and is now at 49%, below the majority level for the first time.
With whites, his approval is down to 32% with 60% disapproving, and worst of all is his approval rating with Hispanics: 24%. This is being chalked up to the toll taken on working people by rampant inflation, record gas prices and out-of-control crime in blue cities.
That dismal approval number among Hispanics, and the growing number of Hispanic voters turning Republican, likely explains this story:
In a move that critics say “reeks of desperation,” a group of Hispanic investors with financial backing from leftist billionaire George Soros (the same man who bankrolled the DA’s who created that out-of-control crime) has purchased 18 Spanish language radio stations across 10 cities. They plan to use them to counter conservative Spanish stations, which the group’s founders, former Obama staffer Stephanie Valencia and Obama and Hillary Clinton campaign veteran Jess Morales Rocketto, accuse of spreading “misinformation.” Like what, that inflation is rampant, gas prices are at record highs and crime is out of control? Or just "misinformation" under the current definition: "true stuff I don't want anyone to talk about."
They must not have much faith in the intelligence of Hispanic Americans to believe they can be convinced to ignore what they see with their own eyes and are living through every day. Hispanics are only too familiar with nations where monopoly media outlets pump out 24/7 leftist propaganda. But even in a nation as isolated as Cuba, the people are smart enough to know that they’re being lied to.
FYI: the group is called the “Latino Media Network” (not “Latinx?”), so if you hear that name or the initials “LMN,” you’ll know what you’re dealing with. Just think of LMN as standing for “Lies Mean Nothing.”
I won’t be watching the kangaroo court. I don’t even recognize America anymore. I feel like I woke up in a parallel universe. Where is that portal? I want out!
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Honestly, we deserve hazard pay for watching last night. All those toxic fumes.
The Democrats --- they say their committee is bipartisan, but it isn’t --- said Thursday’s hearing would be “like an opening statement.” And it was, but only from the prosecution. In other words, this may have been billed as a hearing, but we're "hearing" just one side. This kangaroo committee was not formed according to the rules, and their stated goal is to show a “nexus” between President Trump, his allies, and the siege of the Capitol building to violate the will of the people.
To do this, they have to lie and selectively edit. Democracy was never really at risk because of anything those unarmed protesters did. Nobody took over anything, and if they’d had proper security, the breach would’ve been prevented. Biden became President –- happy now? If democracy is at risk, it’s because of the REACTION to those protesters --- labeling Trump supporters “domestic terrorists,” denying any problems with the election, marginalizing roughly half the country, and monitoring American citizens.
“This has all been produced down to the minute,” Bret Baier said on FOX Business News as Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi called the hearing to order. His opening remarks, right out of the gate, recalled the small Mississippi town of his birth, where people used to “justify the actions of slavery, Ku Klux Klan, and lynching.” Never mind that these evils all came courtesy of the Democrat Party –- he said they’d been brought to mind by “the actions of the insurrectionists in 2021.” Ah, we were off to a good start.
Predictably, he brought up the oath that, ever since the Civil War, elected officials and government employees have taken. This was introduced to prevent Southern rebels from “holding a position of public trust.” He said, “That oath was put to test on January 6th,” likening those who breached the Capitol that day with those who’d fought against the Union in 1862. This is the strategy Democrats want to use to disqualify certain members of Congress, and (of course) President Trump, from running again.
“It was domestic enemies of the Constitution,” he said, “who stormed the Capitol, and occupied the Capitol, who sought to thwart the will of the people” (except he said “thowrt”) “to stop the transfer of power.” All Presidents in our nation’s history had accepted the will of the people, he said, “except Donald Trump.”
Thompson apparently knows the 2020 election was perfectly above-board. The American people voted Trump out, he said, and “it was not because of a rigged system,” he added confidently. Then he played a clip from former Attorney General Bill Barr saying that in December 2020 he had advised that “he did not think the election was stolen.” In fact, he had called that idea BS. But that soon after the election, did Barr –- or anyone –- really have that much to go on? Doubtful.
“Donald Trump had his days in court to challenge the results,” Thompson said. “He lost in the courts, just as he did at the ballot box.” (Actually, that’s untrue; the courts rejected his claims without looking at evidence.) “That’s the end of the line. But for Donald Trump, that was only the beginning of what became a sprawling, multi-step conspiracy aimed at overturning the Presidential election, aimed at throwing out the votes of millions of Americans –- YOUR votes –- in our democracy and replacing the will of the American people with his will to remain in power after his term ended.”
Again, not true. In spite of what some (not all) advisers were telling him, Trump firmly believed the election had been stolen, and that he was trying to fulfill the people’s will.
“Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy,” Thompson lied again. “And, ultimately, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down [to] the Capitol and subvert American democracy.
“Any legal jargon you hear about seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States [NOTE: be prepared for a lot of that] boils down to this: January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, ‘a brazen attempt,’ as one writer put it shortly after January 6, ‘to overthrow the government.’ The violence was no accident. It represents ‘Trump’s Last Stand,’ [his] most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power.”
So there it is. Wow, Rep. Thompson laid it on even thicker than we’d thought he would. Of course, you and I (and President Trump) know this isn’t what Trump was doing at all. Doesn’t matter; the most outrageously partisan and extreme interpretation of events is what Thompson led with. He apparently wants Trump charged with sedition.
Oh, and he hilariously denied that this is a political attack on Trump by people who don’t like him. “That’s not the case,” he lied. He said Trump’s people “didn’t want January 6 investigated at all.” On the contrary, they’d welcome neutral parties looking into numerous aspects –- say, the FBI’s role, and the curious lack of security. Think we’ll get that here?
The next committee member to give a statement was “Republican” Liz Cheney. She put up a tweet Trump sent at 6:01 PM January 6 and read aloud from it, conveniently leaving out the part that said, “Go home with love & in peace.”
Cheney must have relished her role as prosecutor. “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said. “...Over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.” She then played selected, context-free clips --- again with no opportunity for more questioning.
She said that in the coming weeks, there would be testimony from officials who’d been in the West Wing that day and had “begged” Trump to do something to stop the protesters. Will there be any cross-examination of those witnesses? NO.
Having no cross-examination is why the Democrats’ big show is ultimately meaningless, though it cost $8 million of taxpayers’ money. The entire committee is advocating for one side. It’s as I said yesterday: Imagine how differently the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial would have gone if there had been no cross-examination of Amber Heard.
The committee hopes their dramatic video of violence and chaos at the Capitol will tear at emotions. Yes, the violence was abhorrent, and we all recall sitting stunned on that day, watching in horror. I know of no Republican who thinks otherwise –- Donald Trump included, no matter what came out of his mouth in anger as it unfolded. This had to be the worst possible turn of events for Trump himself. As we’ve said but the committee did not, Trump had offered Speaker Pelosi up to 20,000 National Guard troops to protect against this very thing.
Notice that the phrase “in the coming weeks” was repeated a lot. Good grief, how much lying are we supposed to endure? Most Americans don’t blame Trump at this point and surely will see this for what it is. (And they might be able to put it into perspective now that we’ve had an attempt on the life of a Supreme Court justice, a story that THE NEW YORK TIMES buried on page twenty-something.) There are hearings next Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. I wonder if networks might pull the plug on this in-kind contribution to the Democrat Party if the ratings tank.
Anyway, let’s not waste more time on this one-sided sideshow. Let’s move on to what some legal experts and other commentators have to say...
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First, here’s a strong antidote, which we know you need. Tucker Carlson said, “This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live. They are lying and we are not going to let them do it.”
“The whole thing is insulting,” he said. “In fact, it’s deranged, and we’re not playing along.”
The Democrats say January 6 was a carefully plotted event, staged by Donald Trump himself. Really? Seemed pretty ragtag to us, especially when compared to the raging violence of BLM/Antifa. Derek Hunter at TOWNHALL spares no words.
Jeremy Brown is a Green Beret –- served his country for 20 years –- and Republican candidate for Congress in Florida. He is also a Jan. 6 political prisoner. He called tonight’s hearing “a well-orchestrated and highly produced lie meant to target the minds and perceptions of the uninformed and misinformed masses with intent to demonize and dehumanize their opposition.”
Republican Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, who was originally appointed to the committee but was pulled by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy when Pelosi refused to seat Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, said McCarthy made the right call. He was asked by Shannon Bream about something Cheney told her Republican colleagues who are, Cheney said, “defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone. But your dishonor will remain.” (Yes, she said that.)
He chose to respond more generally about the committee itself, saying, “...We’re kicking minority members off of committees, we’re silencing the voices of entire constituencies, and I can tell you from ten years of practicing law, the hardest cases are when you need your rules and your procedures to work best. They’re not when you get to change them to fix a narrative, and that’s exactly what has happened with this committee from the beginning. They’re putting pressure on DOJ, they’re getting mad at DOJ...they’re issuing subpoenas and contempt charges without any merit whatsoever...” He says the House isn’t working the way it should because rules and procedures are not being honored.
BREITBART NEWS has a good write-up full of excellent updates and some refreshing tweets. The reviews are in, and they are bad. Also, Jason Miller, featured in a video clip during the hearing, says he was deceptively edited. It also appears they overlaid Trump’s voice onto footage of the Capitol violence. Not a good look for the committee.
At REDSTATE, we see committee members were using teleprompters and Democrats were trying to “temper expectations,” as they really had nothing we don’t already know. More outstanding tweets here as well.
In related news, law professor Jonathan Turley criticized FBI Director Chris Wray for calling the January 6 riot “domestic terrorism,” after the DOJ finally up-charged key Proud Boys leaders on Monday with seditious conspiracy.
And here’s Jim Banks --- Kevin McCarthy's choice for the committee until Pelosi refused to seat him --- with eight questions that remain unanswered about January 6. His questions will give you an idea of why she didn’t want him NEAR that committee!
While the Democrats are trying desperately to convince us that Donald Trump is personally responsible for the January 6th riot, here’s a round-up of seven of the most recent of many violent/terrorist attacks on conservatives by leftwing extremists that seem to be directly inspired by irresponsible, incendiary rhetoric by top Democrat politicians.
Will anyone hold them to account for inciting violence, even attempted assassination of a Supreme Court Justice? I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
Related: Remember when politicians at least had the decency to say that the children of public figures were “out of bounds” for attacks? (I mean actual children, not like Hunter Biden.) That ethical standard has been steadily eroding. Now, thanks to radical pro-abortion extremists, the children of Supreme Court Justices they disagree with are considered to be acceptable targets for harassment and terroristic threats.
I agree with Stephen Kruiser of P.J. Media that these despicable people in groups like “Ruth Sent Us” (I’m sure Ruth Bader Ginsburg would recoil at them using her name) are “a criminal enterprise, not a protest group,” and they “need to have some harsh legal consequences visited upon them soon.”
Let’s all hope that Merrick Garland’s “Justice” Department finds a few minutes free in its busy schedule of harassing and arresting the Democrats’ political opponents to actually enforce the law and arrest these bullying thugs.
Also, here’s more on the accusation that the Biden FBI is purging its ranks of any employees who are conservative or who question the partisanship and skewed priorities of the agency under Biden.
I guess they aren’t supposed to notice things like Biden joking to Jimmy Kimmel about sending his Republican opponents to jail, and then the very next morning, the FBI arresting the leading GOP candidate for Governor of Michigan on charges related to him being in Washington on January 6th, 2021. These are all misdemeanor charges that amount to him filming the crowd and “gesturing.” Yet it was vitally important that they make this very public arrest just before the hyped-up January 6 Committee TV extravaganza.
From kicking Republican candidates off the ballot to arresting them on dubious charges, it seems that someone is desperate to ensure that Gretchen Whitmer gets reelected. For some inexplicable reason, Stockholm Syndrome perhaps, Whitmer is currently safely ahead in the polls. I sincerely hope the voters come to their senses and realize that virtually any Republican short of Liz Cheney would be an immense improvement over power-mad Gretchen Whitmer.
Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media has some brutally funny comments about the January 6th Committee Good Time Variety Hour and its openly-admitted purpose: to try to distract Americans from the real problems they’re dealing with and keep Democrats in power in November so they can keep creating more of them.
By the way, I know how expensive it is to produce a TV show, so let me save them some money by telling the real root cause of the January 6th riots: it’s the pathological, psychotic Trump Derangement Syndrome of Nancy Pelosi and Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Knowing there would be a large partisan crowd, Trump offered 20,000 National Guard troops to insure safety and order. And without even thinking about what would be wise or prudent, they not only refused the help, they attacked Trump for offering it, because that was their response to everything he had done ever since he dared to deny Hillary Clinton her ordained coronation as President. So they could never, ever work with him on anything. If Trump was for it, it must be BAD!
That’s why we no longer have border security, energy independence or a foreign policy that prioritizes American interests, and why they’re trying to undo a tax cut that helped 80% of Americans. Because Trump IS THE DEVIL!! It’s the kind of mindless, psychotic obsession that we used to treat by putting people into psychiatric institutions, not the institutions of government.
So if you really care about these people, in November, please, take pity and remove them from the place where their obsession is allowed to foment and send them home, where they can finally get the mental health treatment they so desperately need.
I trust Mike Huckabee's team, as I don't have the wherewithal to watch 2 hours of political theatre interspersed with leftwing commentary by network "political experts."
From Rick, also on Substack:
Once again, Thank You! I pretty well abide by your suggestion to let you follow the news and keep us informed. It helps!
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Thanks, readers! Of course, you’ll have to try hard to avoid seeing Thursday’s primetime telecast of Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 committee hearings.
We call it “The January 6 Propaganda Machine Good-Time Show.” But this completely one-sided anti-Trump extravaganza, produced by former ABC president and news producer James Goldston, will run on ABC as “Attack on the Capitol: The Investigation.” On NBC, the simultaneous coverage is billed as “NBC News Special: The January 6 Hearings.” On CBS, it’s “CBS News: Capitol Assault Hearings.” On MSNBC, it’s “The January 6th Hearings: The House Investigates.” At CNN, they’re more dramatic, calling it “Attack on Democracy: The January 6th Hearings.” On FOX BUSINESS NEWS (yes, they’re running it), it’s simply called “January 6th Committee Hearing.”
The propaganda machine is wall to wall.
I wonder if this being shoved down our throats has anything to do with the American people gradually coming to see this was not Trump’s fault. According to an NBC poll taken in May, a minority now hold him mostly responsible. Panicked Democrats have to do something about this right away, as January 6 is all they have.
So they’ve brought in the big dogs, propaganda-wise, in what must be the biggest in-kind contribution to Democrats in political history. And Thursday is only the beginning –- this is really about the next election, and the next. As reported by NBC San Diego, “The hearings are expected to be exhaustive but not the final word from the committee. It plans to release subsequent reports on its findings, including recommendations on legislative reforms, ahead of the midterm elections.”
But New York GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of the House Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that the GOP would be “all over the airwaves, setting the record straight” with “a slew of events and media appearances” of their own.
The challenge, though, will be finding any of it. “All over the airwaves” –- that won’t be happening. And even with FBN showing Nancy's hearings, some Democrats have expressed rage that FOX News isn’t showing this propaganda, too. Nothing short of full compliance will satisfy them.
If you can stomach some leftist spin, this CNN opinion piece predicts the GOP counterprogramming “will fail.” I say that if it does, that will only be because the media have systematically shut it out.
CNN thinks it’s “despicable” for Trump allies to try to be heard, even though, as ranking Judiciary Committee member Jim Jordan of Ohio has noted, Pelosi’s committee has set it up so there will be NO CROSS-EXAMINATION OF WITNESSES in her hearings. (Do you think Nancy’s hand-picked “Republicans,” Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, will do that? Get real.) This might be a first: completely one-sided hearings! Goodness, if legitimate legal proceedings didn’t allow for cross-examination, they really would be kangaroo courts. Imagine how the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial would’ve gone if no one had been able to cross-examine Amber Heard.
So, who IS showing the Republicans’ counterprogramming? Good question. Axios say it’s limited to the GOPs’ own platforms, such as Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” “Real America’s Voice,” and Trump’s Truth Social and Save America PAC. So it'll be preaching to the converted. FOX News will run its normal programming.
Come to think of it, Nancy’s hearings might turn out to be unintentionally hilarious. Her star witness, Nick Quested, a British filmmaker who followed the Proud Boys, once posted on Instagram (now deleted) that only one cop was stationed on the Capitol steps and someone “in authority” opened the door for protesters to come inside in a “deliberate act.” Oops!
Oh, wait, that would only come out in cross-examination...
At least the FOX News opinion shows are fighting back. Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue from Wednesday is not to be missed. He describes what Trump’s rally actually was, aside from the foolhardy breach of the Capitol by some acting on their own, and asks many of the questions that won’t be mentioned in Nancy’s hearings.
As I often say, “we watch the news, so you don’t have to,” so you can count on us to keep an eye on the proceedings, though my writers tell me they’d much rather watch the re-run of YOUNG SHELDON that would normally be on CBS. We hope the ratings all tank, and that the only three people watching at all are us, because, well, we have to.
We’d also make the point that in the year-and-a-half since the protest, there have been numerous investigations and analyses that cause many to doubt even more the legitimacy of the election. We don’t have a definitive answer to that question yet, but it’s understandable why some people wanted to take a pause before certifying the vote. That’s all they wanted. If some got rowdy –- and yes, foolishly, some did –- it was out of frustration that the Justice Department was not hearing them and, arguably, not doing their job to SAFEGUARD “our democracy.”
To me, the big take-away from the incident is that if anything is a “threat to democracy,” it’s the growing suspicion that our election outcomes are fake. Anyone questioning those outcomes deserves not to be silenced but to receive proof that they haven’t been rigged. We got the opposite of that; we got the curtain slamming down.
What we’d like to see is Nancy and her winged monkeys very, very sorry in the end that they did this. And perhaps that will happen. Steve Bannon, who’s been charged with criminal contempt of Congress for not “cooperating,” has served subpoenas to Nancy herself and her nine committee members, plus Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Rep. Jim Clyburn, three staffers and the House general counsel, seeking documents relating to the decision to refer his case for a criminal trial. These would also include anything having to do with how the committee was set up in the first place. His trial is scheduled for July 18.
Some legal experts are saying that House members and staff will be shielded by the Speech and Debate Clause. That would be ironic, considering Bannon is refusing to cooperate because the President is supposed to be shielded by executive privilege. Details here.
Both Bannon and Peter Navarro hold that they don’t have to respond to subpoenas by an illegitimate committee. But now the DOJ is reportedly trying to make Navararo shut up about it.
Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs has a must-read piece explaining why he refuses to testify. “I have watched the Star Chamber proceedings...and have reached the conclusion that not only is it illegitimately formed, in violation of the rules of the House, it is manifestly organized for one purpose: a search and destroy mission against any and all perceived political enemies.
I’ll leave you with this definition, from Merriam-Webster:
KANGAROO COURT, noun
1) a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted
2) a court characterized by irresponsible, unauthorized, or irregular status or procedures
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In related news, remember the “Governmental Disinformation Board,” to be run by that Mary Poppins person? Nanny Nina is gone, but, importantly, the board itself has not been disbanded.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has obtained leaked documents that show it was NOT set up just to handle disinformation from foreign sources, as we’d been told. (Why, that was disinformation!) Their “rumor control program” was to monitor Americans as well (as we always knew it was). And, get this: Part of its reason for being was that some Americans were questioning --- get ready --- election integrity and January 6.
As Democrats gear up for tonight’s big attempt to convince you that a couple of hundred rioters 17 months ago represent the entire Republican Party and are the biggest, most violent, extremist threat to our democracy in America, the news seems to be aligning to convince the public otherwise.
Here’s a story about escalating vandalism and fire-bombing of pro-life pregnancy centers by pro-abortion domestic terrorists whom I seriously doubt vote Republican.
And then there’s the 26-year-old California man arrested yesterday outside Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s family’s home. One group that’s been encouraging protesters to illegally target judges' homes initially tried to suggest that it was overblown and he probably didn’t even have a gun. In fact, he was reportedly carrying a black tactical chest rig, a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines and ammo, pepper spray, zip ties, a knife, hammer, screwdriver, duct tape, crow bar and other items.
He told police he was all fired up over the leaked decision overturning Roe v. Wade and the Uvalde killings. He thought Kavanaugh would vote to end Roe and protect the Second Amendment, so he decided to “give his life purpose” by murdering Kavanaugh.
Questions are now reasonably being raised that if Trump and his staffers can be legally hounded for words they spoke, then why isn’t Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer liable for inciting an assassination attempt?
He’s become infamous for threatening SCOTUS Justices on more than one occasion if he thought they were going to rule in some way he didn’t like. Most recently, he declared about the leaked ruling, “I want to tell you, Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch, you have unleashed a whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hits you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Now, why would an unstable leftist think that was a message from an authority figure encouraging an attack on Kavanaugh?
Such threatening, banana republic rhetoric is obviously having an effect: a shocking new poll commissioned by the SPLC found that 44% of male Democrats under 50 believe it’s acceptable to assassinate a politician “who is harming the country or our democracy.”
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, who tonight will try to convince Americans that Trump incited violent insurrection against a branch of the government by telling his supporters to protest “peacefully and patriotically,” blocked an attempt by Republicans to get the House to pass an emergency bill to increase security for SCOTUS Justices - a bill already passed unanimously by the Senate.
Last night, President Biden finally gave an interview for the first time in 120 days, but instead of a live press conference, it was a pre-taped chat with sycophantic late night host, Jimmy Kimmel. As expected, it was like Biden's previous visit with fellow ABC host George Stephanopoulos: a softball session with a DNC mouthpiece who isn’t as funny as he used to be.
Kimmel completely ignored the assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh and brushed off inflation, the #1 concern of most Americans according to the latest polling (Biden seemed to think he’s created the greatest economy ever and Americans just haven’t realized it.) Kimmel let Biden bash Trump and Republicans while claiming that people are always asking him why he “plays square” with Republicans when they don’t do it with him (Who are these people telling Biden that he’s being too bipartisan and conciliatory with the people he brands as the most dangerous extremists in America and who want children to die from gun violence? I’d like some names, please.)
He claimed he won’t issue a lot of executive orders because “I don’t want to emulate Trump’s abuse of the Constitution and constitutional authority.” Again, please explain how Trump abused his Constitutional authority. Almost all of his executive orders, even ones that were clearly within his powers, were held up by activist judges, after which Trump followed the appeals process. Biden has issued a flurry of executive orders that have decimated border security, the domestic fuel industry and Constitutional rights, and we’re lucky if he pays any attention at all when judges put stays on them. In that way, he's like the king of ruling-by-executive-order, his old boss, Barack Obama.
One could easily argue, especially today, that the Democrats have shown nothing but contempt for the Judicial branch and have openly encouraged threats of violence against judges.
If you have the interest and a strong stomach, here’s a write-up of the interview…
Or if you’d like to get the gist of it, including some of the worst moments that the media will gloss over, try these write-ups from Bonchie and Nick Arama at Redstate.com, listing the many delusional moments.
Hey, America! Get ready for the “The January 6 Propaganda Machine Good-Time Show” starring...Nancy Pelosi...(CUE APPLAUSE)...and co-starring her special hand-picked friends, the Good-Time January 6 Committee members...(APPLAUSE)... ready to entertain you by dancing, side-stepping, and sometimes tiptoeing around what really happened on January 6! Produced by ABC, or at least by former ABC producers who shill for the Democrats and try their best to make them interesting! Brought to you, in a round-about way, by Mark Zuckerberg...Perkins Coie, Attorneys-at-Law...and Dominion Voting Systems! It’s the biggest event of the pre-election season! In primetime starting Thursday; check local listings!
Of course, this show will seem a lot like a re-run of Trump’s second impeachment, which was likewise a major video production brought to you by House Democrats. For the REAL show, the one that offers you facts that most people will not have heard before, check out the rebuttal by House Republicans --- the actual Republicans who weren’t allowed on Nancy’s bogus committee.
In breaking news late Tuesday, John Solomon offered a preview of at least one facet of the GOP rebuttal, after obtaining a secret Capitol Police “after-action report” that identified ‘sweeping blunders” regarding security on January 6. This is the difficult subject that Nancy’s committee should talk about in their hearings but won’t, as they’re too busy speculating about what was going through President Trump’s mind and trying to make him and his supporters look like insurrectionists, even though they aren’t.
This just-emerged, year-old report identifies 53 (!) areas of failure needing corrective action, ranging from “delayed deployment of specialized disturbance units” to “the fateful dismantling of an intelligence unit that monitored social media for threats.” Solomon says it “produces a far more stark portrait of leadership failure than those offered by Democrat-led investigations, making abundantly clear that the Capitol police under Nancy Pelosi were ill-equipped to defend one of America’s most symbolic and high-value institutions two decades after the Sept. 11 attacks.”
“...The internal after-action report was constructed from observations from 44 different submissions from frontline Capitol Police commanders and officers to its Coordination Unit,” Solomon writes, “providing a specificity of failings and an unvarnished assessment of the senior leadership and its grasp on command and control during the crisis on January 6.” He said that many of those who requested to see the report, including Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, were not provided with a copy.
These submissions came directly from the front lines that day and support the view that “the Capitol was not protected in a proactive way,” said a senior law enforcement official who would only speak to Solomon about this report on condition of anonymity.
Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik reviewed the report and said it “pointed to failure at the highest level of Capitol security,” adding that legislators showed no interest in actually investigating the security failures he saw that day. The only way this is really going to be investigated, he said, is if Congress gains new leadership after the November elections. “You know, somebody’s got to look at this,” he said. “The next House is going to have to do that.” In the meantime, the Democrats get to put on their show.
Kerik was adamant about current leaders’ negligence, saying, “You mean to tell me that nobody, nobody made any preemptive plans on how they were going to deal with any protest, any crowd, any large gathering around the Capitol for their quick reaction force...that’s crazy.”
He was interviewed by the January 6 committee, and I’d like to think he lit into them this way. it’s hard to believe they could slip up this badly without deliberately trying to leave the Capitol vulnerable. Ironically, the one person who really seemed to be on top of this was President Trump, when he offered up to 20,000 National Guard troops.
Besides having poorly designed equipment and delayed access to it –- it was locked on a bus and nobody had the key –- officials did not receive adequate training and preparation for such an event, the report said. “There were not enough hard platoons for the day.” Civil Disturbance Units (CDU) of the Capitol Police had been taken off their duty to cover other assignments, it said, “leaving an inadequate number to respond to the riot.”
You know, that’s when it would have been good to have those NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS.
Oh, but there was much more. As Solomon writes, “The report found that even the basics of physical security –- like secure elevators and locked doors –- were failures in a Capitol building long feared to be a target of terrorists and violent political extremists.”
Pelosi’s committee won’t be looking for answers about what went wrong with security; that’s not what it’s for. (And if they’ve even read the secret report, they haven’t acted on it, as we’ve learned the CDU has still not revised its readiness plan.) In fact, Nancy’s role in what happened will be “off limits” during the hearings, as the committee chair, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, has said.
Solomon appeared, along with Kash Patel, on Tuesday’s HANNITY TV show to discuss the report. He said there were opportunities to address it during earlier security hearings about January 6 but that never happened. To do so would be to reveal that the “Mayor of the Capitol,” Nancy Pelosi, failed in her responsibility to secure Capitol Hill.
He cited as the most important thing the failure of the leadership of the Capitol Police Department to react to the FBI’s warning that there might be violence. They should have filtered down such active threat information to their commanders and officers. This was “a glaring omission,” he said.
When Hannity asked him about reports that the Capitol Hill Police chief had requested (at least six times!) that National Guard troops be called up, Solomon said that is “irrefutable.” This report doesn’t confirm it but he’s seen it in other documents. He said that over the next few weeks, he’ll be releasing about 10,000 pages.
“The basics of security went out the window,” he said, “and it’s because of their leadership. They have political leaders, not security leaders.”
Patel, who has testified before Nancy’s committee, reiterated what we reported yesterday: that he, Mark Meadows, and former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller were in a January 4 meeting in the Oval Office with Trump and all witnessed his offer of up to 20,000 National Guard troops for the event. Gen. Mark Milley has also attested to this. And there’s documentation, in the form of a “delegation memo” to the Secretary of the Army, who is then supposed to be ready for the Speaker’s request. Pelosi never requested them. And DC Mayor Muriel Bowser was clear that she did not want them, either. Patel once again stressed that all documentation relating to January 6 needs to be made public.
As you know, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik will host the rebuttal --- the REAL story. She also asks important questions, such as “Who placed a bomb outside the headquarters of the Republican National Committee?” “Why was the U.S. Capitol Police left so ill-prepared?”
In more late-breaking news, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, says whistleblowers within the FBI have told him the Bureau is retaliating against staffers who hold conservative views. They are reportedly purging their ranks of conservatives, particularly those who question their January 6 narrative.
According to Jordan, a decorated Iraq war veteran was “being run out of the FBI” for daring to say something “that offended the FBI leadership about the January 6 investigation.” For disagreeing, he was indefinitely suspended without pay.
Another FBI official is being treated the same way because of an answer that person gave on an anonymous questionnaire to a question about January 6. It was something the leadership disagreed with, so that apparently is a career-ender.
Jordan says half a dozen from the FBI have come to his committee to tell their stories. Others have had their security clearances revoked after simply attending the Capitol Hill rally, even though they were far from the Capitol building and had nothing to do with the protest. Attending a Trump rally was enough.
As for the televised hearings, he said this was the only congressional committee hearing he’d ever seen in which there was no opportunity to cross-examine witnesses. “Because there’s no Republican on that committee who will do it,” he said. He explained that even when Adam Schiff had his private impeachment “bunker,” Jordan, as a member of the committee, could still be in that room and ask questions. But for this committee, Nancy Pelosi hand-picked every member, including the two anti-Trump “Republicans” --- that’s what makes it illegitimate --- and they can be counted on NOT to ask the questions that need to be asked.
Again, to hear anyone even dare to ask those questions, we’ll need to go over and listen to Elise Stefanik’s rebuttal. See you there.
New Court Ruling, but not the one you are waiting for
The Supreme Court is really dragging out the wait for a ruling possibly overturning Roe v. Wade. The Court released one decision Wednesday, but it was on an obscure case called Egbert v. Boule. While we continue to wait, you can read about that case here:
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33
If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].
Timely Reminder
A timely reminder to President Biden and other Democrats clamoring for more gun laws and gun confiscation: a major group that you’re talking about disarming is Black Americans who have been buying more guns recently to protect their families from the wave of violent crime set off by your leftist, pro-criminal policies and defunding of police. So why do you racists want to leave law-abiding Black Americans at the mercy of violent criminals?
Here’s more on a growing demographic that Democrat gun control advocates want to pretend doesn’t exist: Black women gun owners. In short, the people who most need protection from the deadly consequences of Democrat policies in blue urban areas.
When you have to keep up with politics for a living, it can really get you down. That’s why I suggest that people let us read the news so you won’t have to. We’ll give you the stuff worth knowing and tell it to you straight so you can be informed then go do more pleasant things.
For instance, it’s easy to get depressed when you have to listen every day to the gaggle of dunces that comprise the Biden Administration. It’s a place where the President refuses to take questions from reporters but will finally sit down tonight for his first Q&A in months…with late night “comedian” and DNC mouthpiece Jimmy Kimmel. Comic Jimmy Failla said it was likely to be about as hard-hitting as a bouncy castle. We should get combat pay for having to watch both Biden and Kimmel at the same time so you don’t have to.
Then there are the incessant inanities of Vice President Kamala Harris, and the utterly clueless comments of Biden’s Cabinet officials, from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (who just didn’t see inflation coming, but now helpfully says, “I very much hope it will be coming down”) to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who said of high gas prices, “The reality is that there isn’t very much more to be done.”
Well, maybe aside from the President calling off his war to destroy the domestic fuel industry and letting Americans pump and refine oil, and build pipelines and nuclear power plants. But that’s crazy talk! We just need a billion more windmills.
Still, even while being forced to keep up with this Category 5 storm of stupidity, there are a few bright spots. One of them is hearing what Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy has to say about it all. Here are a few choice recent quotes, and there are more at that last link:
“The price of gas is so high that it would be cheaper to buy cocaine and just run everywhere.”
As for how Biden can solve all these baffling problems: “Do what we were doing the day before you took office.”
Kennedy said, “The American people understand that,” and that’s why Biden “is about as popular right now as a sinkhole.”
Yet Another Reason Why We Put “Fact Checkers” In Quotes
In a new undercover expose video, Project Veritas caught CBS Documentary Associate Michael Mulford saying that he wants to leave journalism because it’s not as impartial as it was and corporate media prioritizes “money over values” and “money reigns supreme.”
For instance, he says they engage in cheap fact-checking: “I’ll just Google like, whatever, and then like, ‘CBS’ on the end, and if there’s a CBS article about it, then I’m like, ‘Great, [news report] verified.’”
To state that more clearly, he’s saying that CBS “fact-checks” a story by Googling to see if CBS has run a previous story on the same subject, and if so, it’s considered fact-checked. Their fact-checking authority is themselves.
And you thought only the parents of young children could get away with saying, “It's so because I said so!”
“Lightyear”
Apparently, Disney thinks it hasn’t done enough to drive away parents with inappropriate LGBTQ+++ messaging in children’s entertainment. So here’s what you’ll see if you take your kids to their next big movie, "Lightyear."
Remember when Disney used to be considered the only reliably safe choice for wholesome family entertainment? That sure seems like a long time ago.
That article also quotes anonymous Disney employees complaining that the company’s new diversity and inclusion initiative “Reimagine Tomorrow” doesn’t seem to have much room for including Christians or conservatives. They should try reimagining tomorrow in their theme parks as a day when there are no Christian or conservative paying customers.
Bulletin: Armed man arrested outside of Kavanaugh home
Wednesday morning, police arrested a California man outside Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house. Early reports were that he was carrying a gun and a knife and burglary tools, and that he said he wanted to kill Kavanaugh because he was angry about the leak indicating Roe v. Wade would be overturned.
As you can see at the link, Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Joy Reid who have spewed irresponsible rhetoric threatening the Justices are being remarkably quiet, while the “Ruth Sent Us” group that was doxing conservative Justices and protesting illegally outside their homes tried to deflect blame, but not very successfully.
Mitch McConnell called on the House to pass a measure to provide more security to SCOTUS Justices that already passed the Senate but was inexplicably blocked by House Democrats. Some are also urging McConnell to discourage this kind of thuggery by announcing that Republicans will block any SCOTUS nominations for openings created by assassination until after the swearing-in of the next President. This is a breaking story, so we’ll have more details as they become available. But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting on Democrats to apologize for clearly inciting violent insurrection against a branch of our democracy.
Meanwhile, law professor Josh Blackman has a suggestion for the SCOTUS: stop dragging out the release of the decision on Roe v. Wade and get it over with. We don’t need any more time for leftists to work themselves up into homicidal frenzies or for Chief Justice Roberts to lobby conservatives to vote with the liberals and keep a bad court ruling on life support.
Here are a couple more hopeful signs that the tyranny of the Rainbow Mafia may finally be coming to an end as people stand up and say, “Enough.” First, the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team held a “Pride Month” weekend celebration of the LGBTQ community, and several players refused to wear the rainbow logo on their uniforms because it violated their Christian religious beliefs. Before they’re falsely accused of “hatred,” relief pitcher Jason Adam said, “It’s just what we believe the lifestyle he’s (Jesus) encouraged us to live for our good, not to withhold. But we love these men and women, we care about them and we want them to feel safe and welcome here.”
And 70 churches in Georgia have officially split from the United Methodist Church, largely because of church leaders prioritizing LGBTQ activism over the Bible. Like the quote above, they don’t see how loving the sinner requires them to approve of and celebrate the sin.
I keep hearing about how church attendance is falling in America, and it’s usually spun as being people rejecting God or the Bible. But from the comments on that second story from people who claim to have attended Methodist churches in recent years, there seems to be near unanimous agreement that it’s the church that left them. There are many complaints that their churches became more like social centers or coffee houses, and ministers were more focused on pushing current social issues than preaching the Bible. One commenter said until he switched to a Baptist-based church, he’d never ever heard much about the New Testament or anything about redemption through Christ.
People are still looking for God and the message of Jesus Christ. If they aren’t finding that in a particular church, then there are plenty of others where it’s readily available for free.
Good news: Congress is finally doing something to prevent a fertilizer shortage. They’re giving Adam Schiff a microphone.
Schiff is famous for producing more horse manure than the Kentucky Derby, and he’ll get another chance to demonstrate that skill on Thursday, when Democrats desperate for anything to save their seats will hold a prime time session of their illegitimate January 6th Committee (I call it “illegitimate” because it is: its founding legislation required it to contain Republicans chosen by the House GOP leader; Nancy Pelosi rejected his choices and appointed her own, so it’s in violation of its own charter, its subpoenas should carry no weight; and it should be immediately disbanded.)
Democrats have abused their powers horrendously in trying to destroy their political opponents and innocent Trump supporters, and overcharged and persecuted even people who might actually be guilty of something. They’ve also spent a year and half bloviating about what a huge threat to “our democracy” that three-hour riot was (it was deplorable, but actually pretty short and relatively non-violent compared to the Democrats’ own “peaceful” riots.) They’ve tried to convince us it was the end of the world, like a toddler screaming that she’s going to DIIIIIIE from a paper cut.
I don’t know who they think will actually watch this primetime dog and donkey show, since most Americans have real problems of the Democrats’ own making to deal with and are way past caring about January 6th. Like a TV series on its last legs that tries to rekindle interest by throwing in a wild new plot twist, Schiff is claiming to have a “great deal of new evidence” to show how close we came to “losing our democracy.” Quick, spread that on a wheat field!
Does anyone seriously believe that a brag-tag mob was going to overthrow the federal government, or that Trump would have led a violent insurrection? Does anyone believe that Adam Schiff has any “new evidence?” If he did, he would’ve leaked it by now, since lying and leaking are his only two legislative talents. And where has this so-called “evidence” been all this time? In the same coat pocket with all that evidence he claimed to have of Trump officials colluding with Russia?
Or is this the kind of “new evidence” he’s talking about?
It’s another fake news claim that the Secret Service feared Trump was about to turn against Vice President Pence and put him in physical danger. Notice how many of these accusations are about things they “feared Trump was going to do” that he never actually did? Even the head of the Secret Service under Biden shot down this latest imaginary tale, saying no threat against Pence was ever communicated to the Secret Service.
The Republicans are planning a rapid response to all the Democrats’ ridiculous claims, but I question whether anyone will even be watching this garbage, other than CNN and MSNBC hosts and, unfortunately, me. The Democrats could better spend their time trying to fix some of the problems they’ve caused, but they either don’t know how or can’t admit that the damage was deliberate. Going whole hog on abusing their power to punish their political opponents is as dumb and short-sighted a move as killing the filibuster. As law Professor Jonathan Turley writes, they may soon be headed for a long stretch in the minority, and if Republicans follow the precedent they’ve set, it’s going to be a very uncomfortable stretch indeed.
Yesterday, we brought you the disgusting story of what was done to Trump economic and trade adviser Peter Navarro, leading into the week on which Democrats are pinning all their hopes and unrealistic dreams of holding back Republicans this fall: the hearings into January 6 being held by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s sham committee. If you do force yourself to watch any of that --- remember, “we watch the news, so you don’t have to" --- a lot of it will look familiar.
Who could forget the second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, the one that took place when he was already headed out the door? The House impeachment managers went all-out, featuring a professionally produced video that heightened the drama of January 6 and exaggerated the violent “insurrection” that was going to destroy our democracy and take our country down by force! Never mind that it was really just a small group of desperately concerned but tragically misguided people who wanted the final vote to be checked out before the election was certified, and that there was not even ONE GUN among them. Some insurrection.
For the impeachment, video production was done not by a movie company, as was widely reported at the time, but by a firm called DOAR, which specializes in trial strategies, including "crafting visual presentations that aim to persuade juries."
I condemned the behavior on January 6 at the time and repeatedly thereafter, but I do understand that protesters were reacting to a hard truth: that no one in the Judicial Branch was listening to them. Remember, the only person killed in violence that day was an unarmed woman, and her death was at the hand of Capitol Hill security. (As we learned later, another unarmed woman who died may also have been killed by police, beaten as she lay on the ground, trampled.)
Anyway, this time, Pelosi’s hearings, to be held in primetime starting Thursday, will be “produced” by former ABC News president James Goldston, producer for “Good Morning, America,” “Nightline” and “20/20.” His contribution to the Democrats is described as “an upcoming primetime multimedia presentation that has been likened to a high-quality investigative documentary special.”
FOX News reports that Goldston has actually joined the committee as a “soon-to-be announced advisor.” His video is the first in a series “designed to engage the American people and journalists” who had tuned out of the issue. With the country in chaos on virtually every front, Democrats are desperate to brainwash voters into not voting for Republicans no matter how bad it gets.
So expect this “series” to continue till Election Day, cranked out by the big Democrat propaganda machine.
They’ve also enlisted the help of former ABC producer Amy Robach, who’s best known for saying on a hot mic that her network had spiked her Jeffrey Epstein interview and quashed the story for three years. It seems appropriate that Nancy’s committee has hired people with experience in spiking stories; get ready for the real story of January 6 to be similarly suppressed.
What you definitely should watch is the rebuttal by Republicans led by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik. It will tell what Nancy’s committee hearings will not: that on January 4, President Trump himself, in front of multiple witnesses (former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, his chief of staff Kash Patel, and Gen. Mark Milley) in the Oval Office, BROUGHT UP the subject of offering Pelosi --- who as Speaker of the House is in charge of Capitol Hill security --- up to 20,000 National Guard troops for security during his rally, and that she, along with Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Department of Defense, denied his offer.
According to Patel, there is ample documentation of all of this, which the January 6 committee should have but will likely not make a part of their primetime production. He says that what this committee really should do is release all documents and transcripts they have relative to January 6, showing that they acted appropriately, “and that the President’s authorization was unequivocal.”
“I can say definitively,” Miller told Hannity, “President Trump offered any and all support requested by suitable officials within Washington DC...federal and local.” He went on to say that the U.S. military, with 10,000 police officers scheduled for duty in DC that day, had said they could handle UP TO A MILLION DEMONSTRATORS without enlisting additional security. If that sounds crazy to you, it does to us, too. Think Nancy’s committee will address this at all?
Shockingly, Mayor Bowser actively discouraged “additional deployment,” as in this letter from a recent inspector general’s report (which, believe it or not, found preparations for the event “appropriate”): “To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to, and consultation with, MPD [Metro Police Department] if such plans are underway.”
Why not utilize more security if it is available? Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Gosh, you’d think Democrats were deliberately paving the way for the event to get out of control. Nah, surely that couldn't be.
As for Navarro, he was not at the Capitol on January 6 and did not encourage anyone to breach security. He ended up in handcuffs and shackles, sitting in a cell that once held would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley, only because he wouldn’t violate President Trump’s executive privilege for Nancy’s committee. (And he'd told them he would have turned himself in; FBI headquarters is an easy walk from his next-door apartment.) The committee wants to know every detail of Trump’s private conversations, so they can go after him just for discussing the constitutionality of various courses of action. Not for carrying them out --- because he didn’t, of course –- but for TALKING about them with his advisers. Talking about them is not a crime. But this is all they have to try to keep him from running for President again.
Recall that a decade ago, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder was found in criminal contempt of Congress for citing executive privilege in refusing to comply with a subpoena relating to the “Fast and Furious” scandal that armed Mexican drug dealers and led to Border Patrol officer Brian Terry's murder. This charge had overwhelming, bipartisan support. NOTHING happened to Holder.
Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue Monday about the double standard of 'justice' featured a montage of media hacks trashing Navarro for his non-compliance. “This prosecution is really about punishing Navarro based on his blatant disrespect for the congressional subpoena,” said one typical idiot on MSNBC. Ah, so this is really about respect! Hey, if it’s illegal to blatantly disrespect this illegitimate committee or any of its work product, I guess we should be counting the minutes till the FBI breaks down our door and places us in handcuffs. It has given us no reason to grant it the slightest respect.
By now, you might have heard about the scurrilous abuse of power by Nancy Pelosi’s illegitimate January 6th Kangaroo Kommittee (Is my verbiage too subtle for you to tell what I think of them?) in having former Trump adviser Peter Navarro arrested for contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate. Frankly, I think contempt is the only rational reaction to this star chamber.
Navarro was on his way to tape an interview on my TBN show when the feds played their role as Pelosi’s personal Stasi. Here is more on the story, followed by my statement on this unconscionable and un-American action.
The outrageous treatment of Peter Navarro is another example of a federal police agency gone mad. Navarro was actually boarding a plane in DC to come to Nashville to be the primary guest on my show this weekend when he was handcuffed and whisked to a DC jail, put in leg shackles and held until his appearance before a magistrate.
He had spoken to the FBI Wednesday and told them if they were going to charge him to call him and he would turn himself in. Navarro literally lives in an apartment NEXT DOOR TO THE FBI! But they had to “make a spectacle” and publicly humiliate a 72-year-old man who has faithfully served his country.
And the “TRUMPED up” charge (emphasis mine) was because he genuinely believes (as I do!) that Nancy Pelosi’s sham committee failed to meet its own rules for how it was to be constituted, but most importantly involves the very serious Constitutional issue of separation of powers in which a partisan, hate-filled gang of House Democrats are demanding that the Executive Branch give over internal documents, notes and other confidential papers from the White House. This is an issue of grave violation of Executive Privilege and should be settled by the Supreme Court.
This entire episode is another example of how the powers of Washington, the Democrat mafia, and the media colluded not only to destroy a man’s reputation and life, but how they have been active partners in shredding the Constitution. These are the REAL insurrectionists!
Note to anyone wishing to censor, suppress, demonetize or otherwise interfere with the dissemination of this story: It makes no claim that any vulnerabilities of electronic voting systems were used to change the outcome of the 2020 election. (That’s a separate issue.) But a highly anticipated report by CISA --- the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – has provided official documentation of the major security flaws posed by Dominion Voting Machines.
As Kyle Becker reports, the CISA findings were issued based on the analysis of J. Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan and Drew Springall of Auburn University.
Their overview lists nine different security concerns. These vulnerabilities “justify the concerns of election observers who pointed out that admin rights could be used to override security features and that the system could potentially be hijacked due to “spoofing.”
The vulnerabilities of the versions of Dominion’s ImageCastX software they were able to test could allow someone to disguise malicious applications on a device, gain elevated privileges and/or install malicious code, and perform arbitrary administrative actions. It gets worse: An attacker could also gain access to sensitive information and perform privileged actions to potentially affect other election equipment (!). Also, the “authentication mechanism” is susceptible to forgery, allowing an attacker to print an arbitrary number of ballots without authorization.
I’ll put it in layman’s terms. This system is a hot mess. And these are the same potential problems that some cyber experts have been trying to discuss for a year and a half.
CISA has a long, loooong list of recommendations for increasing the level of security in future elections. This list is so exhaustive that it’s hard to imagine all of them ever being followed. So, hey --- I have a great idea! Let’s scrap electronic voting systems entirely and go back to physical paper ballots with no connection to the internet, in-person voting except for very specific reasons, photo ID and poll watchers everywhere. That’s the only way we’re ever going to have faith in our elections now.
Importantly --- though the report itself doesn’t get into how the 2020 presidential election might have been affected --- Becker notes that “a number of these mitigation measures were not followed” at that time. These include:
--- ensuring physical security of machines and equipment (there were lost flash drives)
--- broken chain-of-custody procedures (don’t get us started about the drop boxes)
--- machines proven to have been connected to the internet
--- missing or destroyed ballot images
--- using QR codes instead of printouts that can be read by an actual person
Early on, CISA told us, “We can assure you we have utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should, too.” But, as Becker observes, “...CISA’s infamous claim that the 2020 election was ‘most secure in American history’ is clearly disproven by its own report two years after the fact.”
Ever since the election, voters who expressed any concern at all about election security and integrity were condemned for “destroying faith in our democracy.” Why, we were just conspiracy theorists, upset that the election didn’t turn out the way we wanted. But now, after all this time, we find that we were right to be concerned. And the machines themselves were just one facet of that extremely flawed stone that was the 2020 election.
How I wish this "official" vindication made me feel better. But with it coming so late, and knowing how little acknowledgment it will receive, I still feel a little sick.
Take a look at how it's being reported: CBS News twisted the headline to read, "U.S. finds no evidence flaws in Dominion voting machines were ever EXPLOITED." (Emphasis mine.) According to Becker, we don't know how hard they were even looking for that. "CISA can claim that it has no evidence of voting machines being exploited," Becker writes, "but voters are left to wonder if that is because they didn't seriously look."
Today marks the 78th anniversary of D-Day, the biggest seaborne invasion in history and likely the most complex military operation of all time. Somehow, a massive invasion involving over 300,000 troops was kept secret until the moment it began on the beaches of Normandy. (Leakers were not considered heroes back then, thank God.)
Of the Allied troops who stormed the beaches or parachuted behind enemy lines, thousands were killed or injured by relentless gunfire from the entrenched German snipers’ positions. But they fought on and eventually prevailed, gaining a foothold in France and marking the turning of the tide of World War II in Europe.
Here's a good primer on how the D-Day invasion was planned and carried out, and the aftermath.
This is a report on the commemoration of D-Day in France, and how, with COVID lockdowns finally behind us, veterans in their 90s were once again able to return to be honored and to honor their fallen comrades.
Sadly, many young Americans are in danger of forgetting the incredible heroism of the troops who landed on D-Day and what they did to end the threat of Nazism because they’re not being taught accurate American history. It’s hard to push a narrative about America being evil when you have to tell students how many Americans sacrificed their lives and limbs to save people they’d never met on the other side of the world.
The anniversary of D-Day is a reminder of what true courage really is. It’s doing the right thing, even when it requires charging head-on into the face of death. D-Day veterans often shun the title of “hero,” but nobody is more deserving of it. And nobody is more deserving of being remembered and honored long after their lives are over, and long after all of our lives are over.
To learn more about D-Day, and even more importantly, to help teach your children about it, here’s a link to the website of the National D-Day Memorial. You can also watch today’s commemorative event on video there:
We offered a theory after Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann walked last week that we now formally call The "Loss Leader" Theory. Just as a retail store might offer some product, such as a jug of milk, at below cost –- a “loss leader” –- to get customers into the store and buy more, so Special Counsel John Durham prosecuted a small case he knew he would lose in the DC courts, to introduce evidence suggestive of far greater misdeeds.
This appears to have been done with Michael Sussmann, even as he walked out of court free and clear on his charge of lying to the FBI. Emails included as part of his trial raise questions as to his role in something else involving the FBI; namely, shaping the narrative of the so-called “Russian hack” of the DNC and the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee). You know, the “hack” for which there is no evidence –- at least that the public has seen –- of it being a Russian hack, or even a hack at all.
THE EPOCH TIMES has obtained trial documents and, in a premium story, reports that “Sussmann proposed alterations to an FBI statement on the hacking of the [DCCC] to avoid undermining the narrative for his clients.” And the FBI bent to his will.
In July 2016, Jim Trainor, assistant director for the FBI Cyber Division, wrote Sussmann, who was representing the DNC and DCCC, to get his “thoughts” on the FBI’s draft response to all the phone calls they were getting on the “Russia hack” story. Sussmann read the draft and wrote back:
“The draft you sent says only that the FBI is aware of media reports; it does not say that the FBI is aware of the INTRUSION [emphasis ours] that the DCCC reported. Indeed, it refers only to a “possible” cyber intrusion and in that way undermines what the DCCC said in its statement (or at least calls into question what the DCCC said).”
Trainer went right along with Sussmann’s proposed changes. Instead of saying the FBI is aware of reporting on “a possible cyber intrusion involving the DCCC,” it would say the Bureau “is aware of the cyber intrusion involving the DCCC that has been reported in the media and the FBI has been working to determine the nature and scope of the matter.”
To provide some context, one day before this email exchange between Sussmann and Trainor, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama that Russia was aware of a plan by Hillary to “vilify” her rival, Trump, by “stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” Days later, the CIA told the FBI they had intelligence showing Clinton’s plan was meant to distract the public from her own scandal, the use of a private email server for classified government business.
Recall that the DNC and DCCC hired the private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to investigate the so-called “intrusions.” The FBI opened their own investigation, but they were relying on server images and reports produced by CrowdStrike and partially redacted. The Bureau requested the unredacted documents but never received them. According to another email produced at trial, Sussmann was the point person between the FBI and the DNC/DCCC.
Other emails between Sussmann and Trainor show Sussmann upset that the FBI had announced it was investigating. He requested the Bureau consult him before making public statements about it. A compliant Trainor apologized and agreed. He said the FBI and the “victims” (the alleged hack-ees) would be “equally cooperative partners as we navigate this matter.”
Note that in changing the words of Trainer’s draft, Sussmann was firming up his preferred narrative that this breach DID HAPPEN, not just that it possibly did. He wanted to have no question of this, even though the FBI had not concluded it on their own and would always simply take CrowdStrike’s word. Trainer’s original draft was really more accurate.
So we’ve established that Sussmann was the point man and storyteller for something that still remains a mystery, an event that appears to have set up the whole Russia Hoax. It seems to us that the truth about it might be one of those big-ticket items in the store; Sussmann’s doomed trial on one count of lying was just the jug of cheap milk that got us in there.
Even some who don’t call themselves conservatives were taken aback by the treatment of former Trump economic and trade adviser Peter Navarro by Nancy Pelosi’s sham January 6 committee, which has charged him with contempt of Congress for not turning over materials and details of private conversations that President Trump maintains are privileged. Both Trump and Navarro also claim the committee isn’t even constitutional, as it violates the separation of powers. In addition, Pelosi hand-picked everyone on it, including the only two “Republicans” she allowed, Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, both viciously anti-Trump.
As I’m sure you know, Navarro was arrested and handcuffed at the airport on Friday as he was about to board a flight to Nashville to appear on my TBN weekend show. This was done even though he‘d told them in writing on Wednesday he’d come in on his own if they asked. He also says he lives in an apartment that literally is next door to FBI headquarters, so he could've just walked over, or vice versa. Here’s what he had to say after his arrest, both the video and transcript. Peter has filed a civil suit against the committee.
Here’s what I had to say about it in this weekend’s opening monologue. (I also had a few words for the Michael Sussmann judge and jury.) I hope to have Peter on my show very soon.
Bestselling author and DILBERT cartoonist Scott Adams is one of those who found this committee’s behavior extremely discomforting, and he is not a Republican. In his “Coffee With Scott Adams” podcast on Saturday, Episode 1764 on YouTube, he weighed in. Here’s the link to the entire podcast; below are highlights and our comments.
After describing the manner in which Navarro was arrested, Adams asked, “Do you think they did that to Sussmann? Did Sussmann have shackles; did he get arrested in public?” That question, of course, was rhetorical; not only did law enforcement deal with Sussmann professionally, but the FBI had always treated him like a buddy. Sussmann had his own FBI security badge, free to come and go at their headquarters. According to recent reports, he even occupied the FBI’s “secure work environment” at his law firm, Perkins Coie, with a portal to the FBI database --- a highly unusual arrangement. He was that special!
“So I saw Peter Navarro talking about [his arrest],” Adams said, “after he got released, probably on bail, I guess, and [long pause]...did you see this? Can you tell me how this made you feel? Because, I felt something. And I didn’t like it at all. What happened to Roger Stone, I said to myself, ‘Well, this is a travesty, but it might also be a one-off. It’s not one-off. Apparently, there’s just a different standard for how the Trump supporters are being treated. This is so clear now...I mean, this is just shocking.”
He continued: “Now, Peter Navarro also has a new book out, called TAKING BACK TRUMP’S AMERICA, which as of this morning [Saturday] was #4 on Amazon. And I’ve been pumping it up, telling people to buy his book, ‘cause it’s how he’s gonna pay for his defense. I don’t know if he can even make enough money from the book, even if it’s a #1 bestseller, to pay for the defense, because the defense is pretty expensive, but I thought, ‘I don’t like where this went. I don’t like what my government did, and I would like to push a little power back in his direction.’”
He said that “as one small thing” he could do, he’s been tweeting support for Navarro’s book. “I’ve pre-ordered it,” he said, “and I’d recommend that you do the same. If it gets to #1, then his defense will be bolstered, both financially and in the public, and I think that that’s the appropriate way to handle this.”
Adams then went off on an interesting tangent, saying he can see why some might not support Trump, “because he was divisive," but explaining why he supported him in 2016: “I wanted him to break everything. ‘Cause everything needed to be broken...And in a large way, I got what I wanted. He did demolish everything...[chuckling] not without its cost. It’s not free to demolish stuff...But there wasn’t any chance they could keep working the way they were working. So we needed somebody strong enough to just break the system, and...I think he did that, in a number of ways.”
He said that thanks to Trump, “there are things that we think about differently, permanently now...so we understand ‘fake news,’” etc.
“But this Peter Navarro thing is almost like a Bat-call for Trump,” he said. (He’d also like to hear Ron DeSantis’ take on it.) “But if Peter Navarro ends up serving jail time or something, for this –- what appears to be hunting Republicans, you know, the whole January 6 witch-hunt sort of thing, which is not to say there weren’t bad people who need to be brought to justice; everybody understands… –- this feels as though it could happen to me. Like actually, literally me. Actually, I saw myself in chains.”
Adams is right to consider that possibility. It COULD happen to him, or you, or certainly to me. It’s a risk for anyone they see as effective in running counter to their rules and their message. I would add that those who, like him, have a history of leaning left are particularly at risk. These one-time leftists who have had epiphanies --- Brandon Straka of #WalkAway is a great example --- are well aware of the hatred directed at them now and how the legal system has been turned against them.
Here’s Straka on my show a few weeks ago, describing how he was treated.
As for Adams, he doesn’t “mind a good fight, so let’s bring that on.” He added later in the show that if Navarro goes to prison over this, he’ll likely support Trump, as it would show things still really need to be broken, “though there is a risk of him over-breaking it.” Adams thought DeSantis might also be able to do the necessary breaking but that he still needs to prove himself to be strongly pro-free speech.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared on SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES to explain what’s twisted about Pelosi’s committee and also to provide more details about Navarro’s arrest. Apparently, law enforcement followed him on his ride to the airport to arrest him there and “make a scene and to handcuff him.” He added that with their plan to hold prime-time public hearings, they’re showing themselves to be “a political committee going after their opponents and trying to raise money.”
To end on a high note, the GOP is not taking this lying down, and they'll be running rapid-response programming during the Democrats’ kangaroo-court proceedings. New York Rep. Elise Stefanik is presiding, and she's guaranteed to shine. They’ll address what Nancy’s committee should investigate but won’t: how security at the Capitol Hill rally was completely botched, a disaster. Here are the details.
After a very long count of a very close vote, David McCormick conceded to Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary race and pledged his support.
Oz will face Democrat candidate and current state Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, who made news of his own. Questions have been swirling about whether Fetterman was hiding health problems after he suffered a small stroke and still isn’t back on the campaign trail. This week, he released a letter from a doctor claiming that he has heart problems and a pacemaker/defibrillator. But he’s stable and if he follows doctors’ advice (which he admits he ignored for five years, but claims he's learned his lesson), he should be okay. But since it’s not from his regular doctors but one who, until this week, hadn’t seen him since 2017, it’s raising even more concerns.
Meanwhile, Twitchy.com noted that this will be a Senate race between a retired heart surgeon and a guy who’s off the campaign trail due to a heart problem. At least if any emergencies occur during the debates, there’ll be a heart doctor in the house.
In other political developments, New York Republican Rep. Chris Jacobs announced that he will not run for reelection because of all the angry blowback he’s getting from Republicans and conservatives for joining with Democrats to support a federal “assault weapons” ban.
And in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, Trump-backed GOP House candidate Robby Starbuck won his legal challenge against the state Republican Executive Committee, which voted to remove him, Morgan Ortegus and Baxter Lee from the ballot over alleged eligibility issues. Starbuck did provide alternative proof that he was eligible to run, and the court ruled that the committee violated the state’s open meetings law with its sudden, secretive vote to remove the candidates. There’s more at the link, but it’s not clear if Ortegus and Lee will try to get back in the race, since they were removed from the ballot at the same illegal meeting.
The House Judiciary Committee will hold an emergency meeting today to put together a bill that will reportedly include eight new gun control measures. It includes “proposals to raise the minimum age for purchasing a semi-automatic weapon from 18 to 21, ban ‘high capacity magazines,’ establish a registry for bump stocks and more.” True to form, it’s not called the “Gun Control Omnibus Act” but the “Protect Our Kids Act.” So when you hear that term, you’ll know what it actually is.
Never let it be said that we don’t listen to all sides of an issue. Here’s an op-ed by Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, detailing what he says are some small changes that could be made to gun laws and increasing support for mental health that could help reduce gun violence and prevent school shootings and that members of both parties could agree on.
I invite you to read what he has to say and tell us in the comments whether you would be willing to compromise on such measures, whether you think they would help, and why or why not.
For more, here’s Derek Hunter of Townhall.com analyzing a New York Times editorial demanding more gun control and explaining the holes in their thinking.
Finally, the uncle of one of the young victims of the Uvalde school shooting spoke out against people using their family’s name to promote more anti-gun laws. He said their own family are responsible gun owners, and they believe enhanced security at schools is a far better solution.
I often refer to modern so-called “anti-racist” efforts as the “racist anti-racist” movement. That’s not a partisan pejorative. I honestly believe that the left, under the guise of fighting racism, is actually attempting to divide Americans, foment hatred and suspicion of other races, and bring back the vile days of officially-enforced segregation and judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. Why do I think that? Because they just keep telling us over and over.
Here’s the latest example: Under the cloak of “equity,” some schools are now instituting race-based grading. The latest example is in Oak Park, Illinois, but as the linked story reports, it’s a growing trend that started in San Diego and like exotic diseases, wildfires and most awful leftist ideas, started spreading eastward from California.
The Illinois plan is typical of leftist policies in that it comes couched in fuzzy four-dollar words to hide its toxicity. It’s called “Transformative Education Professional Development and Grading.” It claims that “traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap” through “outdated practices” and “unconscious biases” like letting “non-academic factors” such as student behavior and whether a student shows up to class interfere with teacher evaluation of students. Things like showing up late, misbehaving in class or handing in work late cannot reduce a student’s overall class grade.
While the Illinois plan doesn’t mention any particular race that this is supposed to benefit, it does condemn the traditional system it’s replacing as a “race-based grading system,” so it’s pretty clear what the insulting thinking is behind this. It used to be called “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” but now it’s called “equity.”
This should be abhorrent to people of all races. I do have to say, though, that I admire the one teacher quoted who was brave enough to question what this will do to students. She noted that she has a job where she’s expected to show up on time, do the work and behave professionally. This system will not prepare students for what they’re going to encounter when they leave school and join the real world.
But it is a truly “transformative” system if you want students to be so poorly prepared for the work world that they’re transformed into permanent dependents of the state. I get the feeling that’s the “equity” they’d like to impose on all of us.
Don’t let anyone tell you that Special Counsel John Durham might as well pack it up after his loss in court Tuesday in the Sussmann case. That’s the mainstream media narrative –- at the conclusion of a trial they deliberately ignored –- and since when has a mainstream media narrative been true?
Former Attorney General Bill Barr appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” Wednesday night to comment on the Durham investigation in light of Michael Sussmann’s acquittal. Here’s the big take-away from that interview:
“No one’s more frustrated than the law enforcement people who are trying to uphold the law and trying to uphold one standard of the law –- and there’s not; there are two standards of the law, and we’ve had this struggle with that. And people have done, I think, a very good job trying to develop this case in the face of very strong headwinds. And part of this operation is to try to get the real story out. I’ve said from the beginning...if we can get convictions, if they’re achievable, then John Durham will achieve them. But...the other aspect of this is to get the story out, and I think the Danchenko prosecution [relative to the ‘dossier’] is gonna further amplify these themes and the role that the FBI leadership played in this, which is increasingly looking fishy and inexplicable.”
The prospect that the “dossier” was Russian disinformation fed through the Hillary campaign was “very real,” Barr said, and never looked into by special counsel Robert Mueller, Barr said, “even though he had all the relevant facts.”
Barr said he disagreed with Andrew McCarthy about the case being “lost or mismanaged” because of Durham painting the FBI as being ‘duped.’ (If you read what we said yesterday, you know we’re more in line with Barr than McCarthy on this.) “He didn’t. What I think he skillfully did,” Barr continued, “was focus on the clearest violation of the law that didn’t require him to prove even...[a] much more onerous case of the bad faith of the FBI at this stage. That would’ve been a Herculean case...[with a] high degree of difficulty compared to what he was doing.”
Durham didn’t say the FBI were ‘duped’ –- he “treated them as neutral, and let the facts speak for themselves,” Barr said. And the materiality of the lie told to the FBI, Barr thought, was clear. But this is a case that has to be built “painstakingly.” It would have been “a very hard case to prove, at this stage,” that the FBI “are bad guys,” he said. “Especially in front of a DC jury.”
NOTE that Barr has twice used the qualifier “at this stage,” implying that down the road, given what the investigation has revealed at that point, it might not be so hard to make the case.
“Complicated cases like this take a long time to build,” Barr concluded. “They occur step-by-step, and in secret. People don’t like that. But if they want people punished, that’s what it takes. If they want the facts of what happened, you can get it that much more quickly; you can give people immunity, and then require them to provide evidence. So, if you want the facts, if you want a report, that can be done fairly quickly. But if you want scalps, that takes time.”
If it’s true great minds think alike, I should congratulate the former attorney general for echoing essentially what we said here after the Sussmann verdict was read. The points to keep in mind are these:
– It’s true: there really are two systems of justice, and that is now painfully clear.
– Besides getting convictions if possible, Durham’s larger purpose is to get the full story out.
-- The next trial (Danchenko, involving the Steele “dossier”) will continue doing that.
-- The case did NOT hinge on the FBI being duped. Durham meant to let the facts show their behavior to be “fishy and inexplicable.” (In this courtroom, there would have been an acquittal either way.)
-- One big question to be answered is why the Mueller investigation tiptoed around known facts.
– The case Durham is building is very complicated and will take a long time.
– Durham is after big scalps. Don’t worry; this trial was just to sharpen the cleaver a little.
So, where does the investigation go from here? THE EPOCH TIMES has an excellent piece on that. (Writer Hans Mahncke does agree with McCarthy that Durham was pushing the “overarching” narrative that the FBI was duped; again, we saw that a bit differently.) Of course, there’s Danchenko and the “dossier” --- that trial is scheduled for October --- but there are other private actors such as the infamous Marc Elias, Fusion GPS co-founders Peter Fritsch and Glenn Simpson, and, of course, Rodney Joffe –- who was NOT granted immunity.
There was testimony in the Sussmann trial suggesting that Joffe had a role in analyzing the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC emails in May 2016. “If Joffe was involved in shaping the narrative of the alleged hacking,” Mahncke writes, “it would cast yet more doubt on the flimsy but prevailing conclusion that the Russian government was responsible.”
Let’s hope and pray that Durham is headed in that direction. It might even be the Holy Grail. The so-called “Russian hack” story laid the foundation for the whole Trump-Russia Hoax, yet there’s no evidence, at least that has been made public, that the DNC server was hacked by the Russians. The FBI accepted that explanation from the DNC without even examining their hard drive, which is in the possession of a company called CrowdStrike.
Mahncke points out that if Durham has more serious charges in mind for Joffe, he’s not hemmed in by the statute of limitations. For lying to the FBI, it’s only five years (and the allegations are from 2016), but for major fraud against the United States, it’s seven years.
Of course, there are also the “fishy” government actors such as the FBI’s Peter Strzok, Andy McCabe and Director James Comey. They seem like much slipperier fish to catch, but we now have evidence from this trial that the people on the 7th Floor were “fired up” about the Alfa Bank server and demanded a full investigation even though they had no credible evidence.
Jake Sullivan is another possible target. One fact, however, complicates Durham’s look at some government actors and shows how incestuous Washington DC is: Attorney General Merrick Garland’s counsel, Margaret Goodlander, is married to...Sullivan, who was helping spread the fake Alfa Bank narrative with Hillary and is now working in the Biden White House. For Durham, every day must feel like going to work in a mine field.
Here’s the kind of story that somehow tends to get released on late Fridays of holiday weekends when nobody will notice it: an internal State Department document proves that, just as many of us suspected and said so at the time, John Kerry and other former Obama officials were secretly meeting in 2018 with Iranian officials, continuing to conduct their own US foreign policy.
Some of the topics they discussed included “nuclear weapons, potential prisoner swaps, [the] Afghanistan withdrawal and negotiations with the Taliban.” While President Trump was deciding on sanctions and trying to extricate us from their bad Iranian nuclear deal, they were acting as if they were still in office, trying to preserve it by conducting their own US foreign policy and signaling that Iran should stand firm against America and the policies of the actual elected President.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the former Obama officials “working against their own nation’s policies alongside such a brutal regime” was “bad stuff, dangerous stuff, un-American stuff,” and that they “should be ashamed of themselves.”
Actually, it's far worse. They were illegally conducting US foreign policy with a hostile nation in an attempt to undermine the official foreign policy of the elected President. To accurately use terms that Democrats love to throw at their political opponents, it was sedition and insurrection, possibly treason, and at the very least, a clear violation of the Logan Act that they’re always trying to pin on other people.
Between current National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s alleged role in launching the groundless Russian Collusion investigation and “climate czar” Kerry’s illegal attempts to conduct secret negotiations with Iran, exactly how many treasonous individuals are currently on the Biden Administration payroll?
Over the weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi was charged with DUI in Napa, California, after he reportedly crashed his Porsche into a Jeep while driving home from a party. Nobody was injured, and his attorney denied a report that it was a second offense, claiming the earlier DUI was someone else with the same name.
A spokesman for Nancy Pelosi said, "The Speaker will not be commenting on this private matter which occurred while she was on the East Coast."
Nice job of distancing herself from her husband by a continent. I have a feeling their house will be as frosty as her two luxury refrigerators when she returns home.
I could do an essay about how Nancy holds her political opponents to the strictest standards and wants to send them to jail for any offense, real or imagined. But since there could be personal issues at play here with her husband, I’m not going to pile on, at least not yet. However, I will turn the floor over to one of my writers, Pat Reeder, for a rebuttal of her brief statement:
“The reason I never knew my grandfather, and why my late father was never able to attend college, is that a drunk driver killed my grandfather when my dad was in high school. He had to immediately go into the Army, then to work to support his mother and younger brother. Because of that drunk driver, I was the first person in our family to be able to attend college. So please don’t tell me that DUI is a ‘private matter.’ It’s a matter of public safety that can have massive repercussions for innocent people. A car with a drunk at the wheel is just as deadly a weapon as a gun. I’d like to see you pretend to be just as concerned about the former as the latter.:”
The reign of terror and error by transgender activists might finally be coming to an end, judging by several news stories that all came in over the weekend. First, another top executive at Netflix defended Dave Chappelle's and Ricky Gervais' right to make jokes about trans people as a free speech issue, just as comedians make jokes about anyone else, despite the furious calls for boycotts and censorship and the hyperbolic claims that joking about the excesses of trans activists will cause people to die.
Even some members of the trans community are speaking up in defense of Gervais, saying that he’s not attacking trans people, he’s speaking truth to power about the excesses of trans activists. One trans journalist wrote, “Trans activist ideology has run unchecked for too long, and it is time to call it to account."
“Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling has also refused to knuckle under to the cancel crowd and continues to speak out in defense of women (as Gervais would say, the old-fashioned kind, with wombs.) She was attacked for tweeting a news story about terrified women inmates at a New Jersey prison where officials are housing violent male felons who claim to “identify” as women. But HBO is still seeking a new creative deal with her.
And then the most surprising and possibly portentous pushback of all: the New York Times actually ran a story Sunday on the trans takeover of women’s sports that not only fairly presented the concerns of female athletes (who came across as much more sympathetic than the selfish “#MeFirst” attitudes of the trans activists they quoted), it actually included comments from doctors. These experts who have medical degrees (and I assume, eyes) said that swimmer Lia Thomas does have an unfair advantage because going through puberty as a male confers physical advantages that a year or even four years of testosterone-lowering hormones cannot reverse.
Of course, irrefutable biological facts aren’t enough to stop Thomas, who now wants to compete against women in the Olympics, where officials are still easily cowed by accusations of transphobia.
Sister Toldjah at Redstate.com sees all these things as hopeful signs that the tide of public opinion is finally turning against the tidal wave of radical transgender insanity that’s engulfed society over the past two years. Or at least that people are finally growing spines.
I think the trans people who are defending Ricky Gervais are right: these radical activists are doing them more harm than good. They say they just want to be accepted to live their lives like anyone else, but the radicals are insisting that they be treated as a special class, with the right to never be called out no matter how unreasonable they are, to never be laughed at (as we all are at times), and to have the power to destroy anyone who criticizes them.
They claim to be a poor oppressed minority and say that any criticism of them is “punching down,” even as they’re the ones crushing other people. News flash: When people are cowering in fear that you’ll glare their way and destroy their lives, careers and reputations just because they told a joke you don’t like, you aren’t a powerless underdog. You’re that monstrous child who sent people to the cornfield on “The Twilight Zone.”