Swamp Gatekeeper Chris Wallace Leaving Fox News Effective Immediately for New Position at CNN

It was always Chris Wallace’s job to protect the DC interests by tamping down any sunlight upon corrupt UniParty politics.  That’s the reason why CTH called Wallace the deep swamp ‘gatekeeper‘ for a decade.

Wallace, the top player amid many such players at Fox News, was always a narrative platform provider to distribute media points that supported the institutional administrative state in DC.    However, thanks to the rise of pragmatic conservatism, a movement created by Donald Trump and commonly identified as MAGA, in recent years more people have caught on to how this insufferable media game is played.

Chris Wallace was increasingly becoming naked to his audience, and as a direct outcome, increasingly useless for propaganda distribution.  Today, the functionally obsolescent gatekeeper announced, effective immediately, he was leaving Fox News.  Moments later, CNN announced Chris Wallace was joining them.  In essence, Wallace moves from controlled opposition to direct opposition. WATCH:

The CNN welcome announcement is AVAILABLE HERE.

Wallace was not the first departure.  The increased public awareness of the manipulative construct that is Fox News (writ large) is the same reason why Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg were released.  That is also the same motive for Fox hiring Dan Bongino.

Although it is yet to be announced, the Fox News contracts for Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham also will not be renewed after their current terms expire.   With more people finding more places where genuine source material facts are cited with sunlight, the ability for controlled opposition pundits to thrive is demonstrably lessened.

Traditional cable news is modifying itself accordingly with subscription based services.

If you want to avoid uncomfortable truth, if you want to be fed propaganda, if you want to get talking points just to support your skewed and ideologically flawed world view, and if you want to avoid confronting your own preconceptions, the subscriber services from both Fox News and CNN will now provide the direct injection of propaganda and misinformation you need to retain the status quo.  This is the new business model for cable news platforms.

An entirely new media infrastructure has assembled outside the influence of corporations.  Understanding current events, real news and information based on fact, is no longer dependent on corporations.  Independent researchers and information providers are giving the raw material citations directly to audiences on a variety of platforms.

In the bigger picture, these are the consequences from identifying “fake news” publicly, and yes, we can thank Donald J. Trump for that.  This is the biggest gift that Donald Trump created outside of his America First political agenda.  Donald J. Trump was/is a walking red pill; a “touchstone”: a visible, empirical test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of anything political.

Without Trump, the business models of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and the alphabet broadcasters would never have collapsed as quickly.  He alone accomplished that.

X22, On the Fringe, and more-Dec 12

 

Evening! Here's tonight's news:

Devin Nunes Isn’t Done Saving Our Republic

It became clear to the California Republican that his choice was to either try and tackle Big Tech through the legislative process or to do it through direct competition in the marketplace.

by Thaddeus G. McCotter for American Greatness

In a stunning move that has stupefied and unsettled the swamp and its Big Tech and corporate media cohorts, U.S. Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) is retiring from Congress to become chief executive officer of Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG). Nunes will commence his new role effective January 1. 

Despite his personally momentous decision, as the current ranking member (and former chairman) of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Nunes knows he will be doing anything but retiring. While his duties have changed, his core mission remains: protecting and promoting Americans’ liberty in our free republic.

A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work in exposing the corruption and weaponization of the federal government to pimp the Russiagate lie, Nunes stated this in no uncertain terms: “The time has come to reopen the Internet and allow for the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship. The United States of America made the dream of the Internet a reality and it will be an American company that restores the dream.”

For his part, former President Trump, who praised Nunes as “a fighter and a leader,” reaffirmed the new company’s mission: “Devin understands that we must stop the liberal media and Big Tech from destroying the freedoms that make America great. America is ready for TRUTH Social and the end to censorship and political discrimination.”

While his enemies initially were delighted and, upon reflection, ominously unsettled by the California Republican’s decision, many of his friends, supporters, and admirers were stunned and saddened by Nunes’ decision to leave the House—especially as he was expected to become the next chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee in the event the GOP captured the majority in the coming 2022 midterm elections. After everything Nunes had accomplished in office, there was justifiable concern about his loss to the GOP caucus and the country. 

As House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), a close friend and ally of Nunes, noted: “Devin’s departure leaves a gaping hole in this institution, but his dedication to our country will persist . . . There is no better person prepared to compete head-to-head and lead an alternative to the big tech and big media cartel that has carried water for the Democrat Party for years than Devin.”

Still, as has happened in the case of McCarthy, when the shock subsides Nunes’ supporters will come to see this move as the logical extension of his commitment to our free republic; and be glad he accepted this new challenge to champion our liberty.

In retrospect, it is not quite as surprising as it seems. Nunes has long fought against Big Tech and the corporate media’s disinformation and censorship. It was a battle that even pre-dated his work in revealing the truth about the Russiagate scam in the face of a deceitful media determined to propagate the lie to abet their governmental cronies in subverting the duly elected President Trump.

While Nunes has long warned about the deliberate, leftist disinformation spewed by the corporate media, early on he sounded the alarm about the concentrated, increasingly unaccountable power of Big Tech to stifle and silence information and dissent—done in an abjectly censorious vitiation of every free speech reason it once proffered for special treatment under federal law. An early, ardent proponent of Parler as an alternative to the increasingly censorious Twitter, Nunes was outraged by Big Tech’s monopolistic decimation of that site. 

Consequently, it likely became clear to Nunes that his choice was to either try and tackle Big Tech and the corporate media through the legislative process or to do it through direct competition in the marketplace.

As a supporter and practitioner of free markets and entrepreneurship, the dairy farmer Nunes chose the latter, leaving life as a servant in the public sector to ascend back to the status of a citizen in the private sector—one ready, willing, and able to defend and advance Americans’ liberty in the face of the increasingly fascistic “woke” cabal infesting and corrupting the swamp, Big Tech, the Pravda media, and the corporate world.

Nunes’ decision makes eminent sense. For as the communications revolution continues apace, it is increasingly evident to all how the power that once projected from Congress now projects onto Congress; and how, like a laser through butter, it cuts that institution to accord with its will. Big Tech and the corporate media know and leverage this power better than anyone. Compounding the dilemma, even with a Republican majority in 2023, legislative remedies to rein in Big Tech will not soon be forthcoming, due to a Democratic president’s veto pen. 

And time is of the essence.

Absent a viable alternative to the leftist social media stranglehold and other organs of communication, our once free republic will continue to see citizens subjected to an emerging social credit system bent upon turning them into serfs in the service of an elitist, kleptocratic oligarchy—and that is the best-case scenario.

So, good luck and godspeed, Devin Nunes, as you guide TMTG to success and continue your work to save our free republic.

Civilizational Suicide, Not Omicron, Is Killing Us

Emergencies justify emergency powers, and emergency powers mean that you can push ahead with your agenda on all fronts.

by Roger Kimball for American Greatness

Last week in this space, I included a few words about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s remarkable new book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. I also included a link to Kennedy’s appearance on “Tucker Carlson Today.” 

It was a remarkable exchange and I commend both the book and the interview to your attention. I disagree with Kennedy about various things, including the efficacy of vaccines in general, but his assessment of the highest-paid employee of the federal government, Anthony Fauci, is worth the price of admission. 

As I remarked a couple of weeks ago, I thought I had done writing about COVID. Surely, I thought, the hysteria is on the wane. Most people are rational. They know that the flimsy porous masks you see everywhere are useless tokens of conformity. They understand that the disease is serious for only a tiny part of the population. They also know staying home and practicing “social distancing” has its own liabilities, not least of which is a diminution in the potency of one’s immune response.

Unfortunately, the people making the rules are not “most people.” They are bureaucrats being advised by public health “experts” like Anthony Fauci who has demonstrated ostentatious incompetence at least since the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. When news of the so-called Omicron variant first surfaced a few weeks back, I assumed the fact that doctors first described it as very contagious but also with symptoms that were “very mild,” meant the “experts” would let us get on with our lives.

Fat chance. It’s not just the old Rahm Emanuel wheeze of never letting a crisisgo to waste. It’s also a matter of fabricating crises where none exist because emergencies justify emergency powers, and emergency powers mean that you can push ahead with your agenda on all fronts using the fake crisis as justification for bending or discarding the rules. 

So, even as Fauci warns that it is a matter of “when not if” the definition of “fully vaccinated” will change to include at least one who-knows-how-many booster shots, the CEO of Pfizer, dollar signs in his eyes, has already said that a fourth jab may be needed “sooner than expected” because of the Omicron variant.

New York City is once again flirting with lockdown, stiffening various protocols and prohibitions. And the United Kingdom, having rolled out “Plan B” which imposes new quarantine rules, mask mandates, and work-from-home rules, is contemplating an even more stringent “Plan C.”

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization reports that it has documented zero deaths from the Omicron variant of the world’s most popular virus. 

Yes, you read that correctly. “[W]e have not had any deaths reported,” but of course it’s early days yet and “this may change.” 

Still, it makes one think. And it’s worth noting that the CDC, ever eager to ratchet up the seriousness of COVID, has nevertheless made a similar report. Its latest data, from early December, indicate that “there were no documented deaths from Omicron during that period.” 

There are a lot of cases attributed to Omicron, but so what? The number of people who “test positive” for COVID is a meaningless data point. The new variant showed up first in South Africa, but Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the chair of the South African Medical Association, cautions against overstating its seriousness. “Let me be clear: nothing I have seen about this new variant warrants the extreme action the UK government has taken in response to it.” Why? “No one here in South Africa is known to have been [hospitalized] with the Omicron variant, nor is anyone here believed to have fallen seriously ill with it.”

Early on in our experience of Wuhanomania, many commentators, including me, noted the pertinence of of Farr’s Law in understanding the behavior of the “novel coronavirus.” William Farr’s name has receded from the commentary on the disease, but the pertinence of his model has not. Epidemics, Farr noted in 1840, follow a predictable bell-curve-like course. They are born, rise in virulence, and then recede. They do this with or without human intervention. 

As I noted at the time: 

Our panic has destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth, impoverished millions, and handed much of society over to the machinations of socialistically inclined bureaucrats. It has also precipitated a huge and irresponsible disgorging of federal funds, the baneful effects of which will be felt for decades if not generations.

That was in April 2020. 

One of the most percipient commentators on COVID is Aaron Ginn, a Silicon Valley technical writer. In March 2021, Ginn predicted that when the COVID crisis was finally over, we should expect “massive confirmation bias and Pyrrhic celebration by elites. There will be vain cheering in the halls of power as Main Street sits in pieces. Expect no apology, that would be political suicide. Rather, expect to be given a Jedi mind trick of “I’m the government and I helped.’” 

It’s too early to say whether Ginn will be proved right, but all indications are that he will. Commenting on Ginn’s prediction at the time, I invoked the political philosopher James Burnham, who famously observed that civilizations tend to end not because they are invaded by an external enemy but from an inner collapse. “They are not murdered; they commit suicide,” I wrote, and went on to observe that “The really scary thing about this latest health scare is not the disease but the unexpected depths of passivity it revealed.” 

Some things never change. 

The Russia-Ukraine Crisis: The History Our Media Got Wrong

Our media’s simplistic partisan narratives have done more than elect favored politicians. They also threaten the security of Europe, the United States and the rest of the free world.

by John D. O’Connor for American Greatness

Russia’s looming invasion of Ukraine presents a clear and present danger to the safety of the European Union and a direct challenge to the NATO alliance, but only now are our major media waking up to this dire threat to Western security. We must now confront urgent questions: Did the United States strengthen Russia, did it weaken Ukraine, and did it do so under the nose of these media?

First, a quick run-through of American actions that strengthened Russia. In his 2009 inaugural address, Barack Obama promised to approach adversaries with an open hand, not a closed fist. For this, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, an oxymoronic name, equivalent to the Affordable Care Act.

Accordingly, Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began the “Russian reset” initiative, in which “reset” was misspelled in Russian to mean “overcharge,” the latter ultimately proving more descriptive. 

Soon after his election, Obama scuttled existing plans to deploy ground-based interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic, because Russia expressed disapproval, and Obama did not want to be provocative. The media did not seem to notice that since these missiles were defensive only, and should only worry a Russia intending to go on offense. Obama and Clinton also supported a head-scratching Megatons to Megawatts program to cause the shipping of nuclear warheads from around the world to Russia, which in turn was to use the uranium for commercial purposes, oblivious to Putin’s use of energy as an economic weapon against states such as Ukraine.

Clinton also had the “equity” vote in approving the sale of Uranium One, with rich stocks of American and Kazakh uranium, ultimately to Russia, giving Putin monopolistic pricing power to utilities around the world, including those in the United States. While our media easily tumbled to the fantasy that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia, the media had no criticism of Clinton’s actual collusion with Russia, for which the Clinton Foundation received hundreds of millions. 

Again, with Obama’s blessing, Clinton helped develop Skolkovo, “Russia’s Silicon Valley,” by allowing the transfer of valuable dual-use technology, perhaps by coincidence also enriching some of the biggest contributors to the Clinton Foundation from both the United States and Russia. The Defense Department called this an “overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage.”

Clinton’s successor John Kerry then forged a deal with Iran that would allow the country nuclear weapons at least by 2030, likely before, given the lack of real verification. The contractor on Iran’s largest nuclear reactor at Bushehr? Russia.

To encourage this deal, Kerry and Obama thought it best that America strengthen both Iran and its ally Syria so that, counterintuitively, Iran would be persuaded to agree. Russia began huge shipments of weaponry to Syriawithout any protest from Obama or Kerry or, significantly, our major media. It is noteworthy that after Obama drew a “red line” in the sand against Syrian chemical weapons use, Syria crossed it 16 times without consequence.

Following all of the above, the major media credulously decreed that it was Trump who was Putin’s puppet, a misconception that for four years both manacled our president, and plunged the country into contention and turmoil, to the evident delight of Putin. 

Recent Russian history merges with Ukraine’s. Putin, emboldened by Obama’s “red line” dithering, invaded Crimea in 2014, whereupon Obama provided desperate Ukrainians only blankets and food rations. As Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko said, “One cannot win a war with blankets.”

In 1991, Ukraine possessed the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. President Bill Clinton quickly pushed Ukraine to rid itself of its nuclear weapons by giving them to Russia, while the United States agreed to defend Ukraine, a deal simultaneously weakening Ukraine, strengthening Russia, and obligating the United States.

In 2005, after ridding itself of nuclear weapons, Ukraine still had plenty of conventional weaponry with which to repel a Russian assault. But Senator Obama took it upon himself to push Ukraine to agree to give up 15,000 tons of ammunition; 400,000 small arms; 1,000 anti-aircraft portable or shoulder missiles. 

Later, as president, Obama took the lead to sponsor a three-year NATO program to destroy Ukraine’s remaining weapons, including 117,000 tons of ammunition and 1.1 million small arms and light weapons. 

Because of clear military and energy weakness, Ukraine was now forced to become a geopolitical “jump ball” between Russia and the EU, the latter seeing Ukraine as a bulwark of European security.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was portrayed in the media as a Russian-leaning politician, which Obama policies had forced him to be. But his American advisor, Paul Manafort, persuaded him that Ukraine’s best future was with the EU, whereupon Yanukovych agreed to sign an EU Cooperation Agreement. But Yanukovych knew that Ukraine would suffer economically because Russia had such great energy and financial leverage. In exchange for signing the agreement, he wanted the United States to guarantee foreign aid to make up for lost Russian benefits. But the Obama Administration played it cute, cutting the prosciutto too fine, thinking that the Cooperation Agreement was in the bag, and that it could force Yanukovych out by starving him, while supporting a successor. Yanukovych’s mother raised no fool, no deal was signed, and the country erupted. 

In the wake of the ensuing Maidan Revolution, Putin invaded Ukraine to annex Crimea, an extremely valuable strategic location, and also invaded Eastern Ukraine. By sending only blankets and food rations, weak-kneed Obama violated the Budapest Memorandum and the Trilateral Statement. But there was no blowback from our media.

Knowing that Ukraine would continue to be weakened by its endemic corruption, Obama appointed Vice President Joe Biden to be the administration’s “point man” to fight corruption. Think fox, henhouse.

Biden proceeded to protect his son Hunter’s corrupt clients, which included violent oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Mikola Zlochevsky, owners of the corrupt PrivatBank and Burisma. Biden forced the firing of honest prosecutor Viktor Shokin, and funneled the Burisma prosecutions to the American-backed National Bureau of Corruption, advised by James Comey’s FBI, which gave a sweetheart deal to Burisma. Biden’s hand-picked ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, refused U.S. visas to two prosecutors who wished to come to the United States to complain of Biden-centric corruption.

This was the universe Donald Trump inherited when he came into office, immediately weakened by the “Russian collusion” canard gullibly embraced by the media. Then he was further weakened in fighting Russian influence over Ukraine by a partisan impeachment based upon a single phone call to newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky. The unintended consequence of this nakedly partisan stunt was that Zelensky was not forced to investigate corruption in Ukraine.

Yes, such an investigation would have hurt Joe Biden, because Ukrainian corruption was synonymous with Hunter Biden, protected by his father. But America would have been the main beneficiary, because a probe would have fingered the most corrupt and violent oligarch in Ukraine, Kolomoisky, forcing Zelensky to disassociate. Instead, Kolomoisky, the biggest sponsor of Zelensky, soon began importuning Zelensky to welcome Russian influence.

Oh, yes, let’s not forget that recently Joe Biden overrode Trump’s policy and allowed Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to become a vulnerable German jugular vein, weakening NATO.

So, while Ukraine has been weakened and Russia strengthened, what was the narrative adopted by our major media? Everything that the Clintons, Obama and Biden did in Russia and Ukraine made our country safer. The direct opposite was true, however. Our media’s simplistic partisan narratives have done more than elect favored politicians. They also threaten the security of Europe, the United States, and the rest of the free world. 

The Washington Post’s masthead proclaims, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” The Post’s media cohorts have shown why this is true.

Prosecutors Are Trying to Break Up a Network of US Antifa Cells for the First Time

by C. Douglas Golden for Western Journal

It’s one of the great paradoxes of the modern left. Antifa isn’t real, but it’s also an anti-fascist organization — and if you’re against people who call themselves anti-fascists, what does that say about you?

It’s not that the charade works particularly well, especially when organizations that openly advertise themselves as antifa — a contraction of “anti-fascist,” a particularly inapt descriptor — actually have websites with instructions on how to apply for membership. 

In California, of all places, the realities of antifa — the fact that it exists and that its members are indiscriminate hooligans — are coming home to roost. For the first time, a U.S. prosecutor is trying to break up a group of antifa cells with felony conspiracy and assault charges.

According to a Newsweek writeup by antifa chronicler Andy Ngô, the San Diego County district attorney’s office has charged 11 alleged antifa rioters on charges of beating up supporters of former President Donald Trump — along with other random individuals who happened to be in the vicinity — during a Jan. 9 fracas in Pacific Beach, California.

Search and arrest warrants for eight of the suspects were issued last week in Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Law enforcement seized guns and ammunition during the searches, in addition to body armor and drugs.

The antifa groups gathered to confront individuals protesting Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, with the counterprotesters carrying “shields, banners and signs displaying the antifa logo,” according to Ngô. The criminal complaint said they used social media to call for action against those attending the Trump rally in the days beforehand.

“ANTIFA is known to use force, fear, and violence to further their own interests and to suppress the interests of others,” the complaint read.

“This tactic is referred to as ‘Direct Action’ and is known to mean acts of violence such as assault, battery, assault with deadly weapons, arson, and vandalism. The alleged object of this conspiracy was to incite and participate in a riot using direct action tactics.”

“The Antifa-affiliated group surrounded several minors who they believed to be attending the Patriot March, sprayed them with mace and chased them up the boardwalk, shoving one of the minors to the ground. The minor was surrounded and beaten resulting in the minor victim being taken to the hospital to be treated for a concussion.”

It wasn’t just the pro-Trump protesters who suffered antifa’s wrath, either. Local photographer John Cocozza said he was attacked by members of the left-wing mob.

“Police were standing 40 feet away and did nothing,” Cocozza said. He said he sustained bruising on his back when one of the rioters hit him with a wooden stick. “That guy was aiming for my head. I saw him coming and I turned at the last moment.”

The thuggery was not coming from both sides.

“Video evidence analysis shows that overwhelmingly the violence in this incident was perpetrated by the Antifa affiliates and was not a mutual fray with both sides crossing out of lawful First Amendment expression into riot and violence,” District Attorney Summer Stephan’s office said in a news release, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Eight of the 11 antifa suspects were arraigned in court this week. All of them pleaded not guilty.

Amazingly, this occasioned a few liberal blue checks to take to Twitter and loudly insist that antifa isn’t real. These included Shane Burley (author of “Fascism Today” and “Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse”), left-wing journalist Jordan Chariton and actress Tina-Desiree Berg:

Antifa isn’t like Tinkerbell: It doesn’t stop existing if you don’t give it attention.

Again, if antifa cells aren’t real, someone should point this out to Portland’s own Rose City Antifa — which, as Ngô noted, has a recruitment page on its website.

But again — not a real thing! Don’t pay attention to it. Also, “antifa” means “anti-fascist” — so if you’re anti-anti-fascist, what does that really make you?

It makes you someone who believes freedom of speech should be free of the thug’s veto, that’s what.

Biden Decries Lack of Civility Then Attacks GOP and Insults Americans on 'Tonight Show'

Nick Arama reporting for RedState

As we reported yesterday, Joe Biden is being accused of being the “hider-in-chief” and “least accessible” occupant in the White House to the press in recent history.

Among the problems? Biden is reluctant to do interviews. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki indicated three weeks ago that he would be involved in doing interviews to push his agenda. But he hasn’t been. And as we noted, one of the reasons why is that because when he does do an interview, even a limited one like he did in November with a local station, he still manages to make problematic comments. In that local interview, Biden managed to insult Americans by claiming that one of the reasons his poll numbers were low — that Americans weren’t thinking highly of him — was that Americans had “psychological scars” from the pandemic. The problems aren’t his, you’re just confused if you think so.

So how do they address the problem that even the media is noticing and commenting on how inaccessible Biden has been?

Biden did an interview with Jimmy Fallon last night on the “Tonight Show.” Let’s face it — no one is going to think that’s anything but a friendly cushy interview, and it was exactly that. It’s not designed to be a tough interview, and it wasn’t.

Fallon did talk about Biden’s approval numbers, but Biden made a joke about it. Pro-tip to Joe? Joking about Americans suffering is not particularly funny.

Biden claimed that he no longer looked at the polls “anymore.”

Biden claimed that he was paying attention “when they were in the mid-60s, but now that they’re in the 40s, I don’t pay attention.”

That’s a lie on both ends of it. His ratings at the start, for example with FiveThirtyEight and Gallup, were in the 50s, not the “mid-60s” and now they’ve dipped into the 30s, with the lowest being the Quinnipiac poll at 36 percent approval. Part of the problem is exactly what Biden said — he’s ignoring/not paying attention to what Americans are voicing their concerns about, so he’s not changing his policies.

Fallon didn’t question Biden on what he said, he just said he “appreciated his honesty.” “You came in hot and then you got to medium and now you’re at a low,” Fallon exclaimed, saying Biden just had to “keep his head down and keep doing the right thing.” When is Biden going to start doing the “right thing”?

Biden then downplayed the concerns of Americans once again, suggesting that their opinions were informed by “inaccurate information.” It’s our fault that we don’t understand how perfect he is. It’s insulting that he keeps saying things like this.

“They’re being told that Armageddon’s on the way,” Biden said. “The truth is the economy’s grown more than it has any time in close to 60 years, the unemployment rate is down to 4.2 percent — it’s going to go lower, in my view.”

Translation? People are returning to work after the pandemic closures. Trump had unemployment down to 3.5 percent before the pandemic. He presents no evidence to suggest that inflation is going to come down anytime soon and in fact if he managed to pass his Build Back Better bill, that could only make things worse. It’s already at historic levels — it surged 6.8 percent, even more than expected, in November to the fastest rate in 39 years.

Fallon praised Biden for bringing “class” back to the office for eulogizing former Sen. Bob Dole. But he ignored Biden attacking Republicans on his show. This promotion from Fallon should be considered a donation in kind to the Democratic Party.

Biden decried the lack of civility in politics, but claimed there was still a lot of bipartisanship, “except for the Q-Anon and the extreme elements of the Republican party … it makes it awful hard.” He then claimed President Donald Trump was “feeding” into partisanship. So he attacks Republicans as “extreme,” but he’s the one working for bipartisanship? Does he even listen to himself as he attacks Trump at every opportunity over the past two years? And has he looked at his own extreme party lately? Or does he just do what the extremists say without question?

Biden also claimed — falsely — that people (obviously those evil Republicans) were trying to prevent Americans from voting in 30 “cities” (I think he meant states). Talk about pitching division and not being honest.

At no point did Fallon push back with facts on anything Biden said. He delivered the fluffy, softball interview Biden wanted. But even for that softball interview with his highly questionable answers, Biden had to have notecards.