The Biden team would like us to believe that they are doing all they can to address the high gas prices. But that’s not true. If it were, they would work to stabilize and encourage the energy industry, rather than attacking it.
But they’ve made clear that the priority is their “liberal world order” goals, and everything must fall to those goals. Indeed, they see the pain as the point to further push their climate goals to get rid of fossil fuels. If it wasn’t clear that is their point, let’s see how the Biden officials are all pushing some version of saying that now is the time to “accelerate the transition.”
Biden energy advisor Amos Hochstein admits that they can’t take steps that will “endanger their climate work that we’re trying to do” to “make sure that we’re on a better footing to accelerate the transition.”
Here’s Biden climate czar John Kerry saying that “we’re behind” and we have to “accelerate the transition.”
I’m intrigued by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s phrasing.
“Right now, we are witnessing the beginning of one of the most significant events in human history — the clean energy transition. It is long overdue and it can’t progress fast enough.” So, this is the moment, in her mind, not some moment in the future.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was slightly more cautious, adding “in the long run,” but still saying “the solution is to move as fast as possible away from fossil fuels.”
Okay, who voted for this “transition” that they all want to be underway, particularly if it means the results we have gotten from it so far? I surely didn’t, and I’m willing to bet most Americans wouldn’t vote for this insane view of eliminating fossil fuels. Again, it would destroy our economy and our society because we’re nowhere close to being able to substitute things with their alleged clean energy schemes.
On top of that, we see the constant hypocrisy of the Biden team. We’re told we shouldn’t even have regular cars, that we should be getting electric vehicles. Yet, they don’t even have that. When Joe Biden went to Massachusetts in the middle of the week to deliver his remarks on the seriousness of the climate problem, he arrived in a big motorcade of gas-guzzling SUVs. What an incredible “rules for thee” moment this was.
Let’s also talk about the Biden climate czar, John Kerry.
He has a massive carbon footprint, just with his private jet on the 48 trips he’s taken since the beginning of the Biden Administration — that’s 325 metric tons of carbon emitted. But, he’s going to lecture us and tell us what to do? Take the carbon footprint out of your own eye, John, before you start preaching at others.
But, it shows they don’t truly care about it. It’s just about using it for control.
That headline could refer to so many things, nearly
everything, as a matter of fact. Just about the only thing Democrats do
well is lie with a straight face, and that’s accounting for the curve
being ruined by Nancy Pelosi’s inability to move most of her face thanks
to Botox. But no lie they’ve told comes close to the ones they’re
casually tossing around regarding January 6th. Their sham hearings have
taken me from someone disgusted by the events of that day to being more
disgusted by the way these leftists are exploiting and lying about it.
Watching
the events of that day, I was sickened. I love the Capitol building,
for having crawled through every inch of it when I worked there, for its
beauty and for what it represents. Watching jackasses trash it was
awful. Watching these committee jackasses trash everything that building
stands for is worse.
It was bad enough when, in
desperation to get people to care, Democrats started calling January 6th
the worst thing to happen to the country since the Civil War. Having
lived through 9/11 and learned about Pearl Harbor, WWII, the Kennedy
Assassination, the Carter administration, the push to make Lena Dunham a
thing, we all knew that was BS.
That realization
didn’t deter Democrats. These are people who insist “plus-sized” models
who are 100 or more pounds overweight are “perfectly healthy” and men
can get pregnant – they aren’t known for their deference to reality when
it comes to imposing their agenda.
In Thursday’s hearing, Chairman Bennie Thompson
started it off with a video (just because he has COVID doesn’t mean he’s
going to skip out on having his face seen in prime time television,
some things are more important than a pandemic) in which he talked about
the “armed and violent mob savagely beating and killing law enforcement officers.”
That
is a lie. That is an easily proven lie. Not one single legacy media
outlet called it out. No police officers were killed that day. One died
the next day from natural causes, two others committed suicide weeks
later for reasons unknown. But Democrats would have you believe those
suicides were due to a bad day at work a month earlier, which is absurd
and gross.
But Democrats never have to worry about their
lies being called out by people who, presumably ironically for a laugh,
proudly proclaim they “speak truth to power.”
I forced
myself to watch Thursday, I couldn’t force myself to care. I haven’t
cared since about day 2. The lies of the left about January 6th are the
bigger “threat to democracy” than a bunch of people taking selfies
inside the rotunda that day.
This was as much of a coup as a bowl of soup. What was the
plan? To chant in the halls and…what? And why were Capitol Police
letting marchers into the building, holding open the doors? Why is there
no curiosity about that from Democrats? Because they know it wasn’t a
coup.
The Capitol his huge. The violence happened at the
House end on the Mall side. People were invited in by police on the
Senate side across from the Supreme Court – about a city block away. The
people walking in couldn’t have had any idea what was happening on the
other side of the campus, but the police sure as hell should have heard
it over the radio. Why’d they hold open the doors?
Those
were sent in the time window Democrats claim Trump was silent. Why
would they lie when the truth is so easily accessible? Because they know
those dumb enough to fall for their scripted propaganda aren’t going to
look for it and the media sure as hell won’t bring it up either.
And scripted it was. Every committee members who
spoke Thursday was reading from the same centrally located teleprompter,
eyes going side-to-side while locked on the screen. They’d ask a
“witness” a leading question which was followed by a very short video
clip speaking to exactly what was just said. You either recognize the
whole thing was rehearsed or you have to believe there is a control room
with infinite clips and a staff able to play any one of them at a
moment’s notice because a committee member who doesn’t know the material
well enough to speak off the cuff on it has an encyclopedic knowledge
of the thousands of hours of video they’ve compiled and can call for
very specific, heavily edited clips when needed.
The whole thing was bad dinner theater with a meal that gives you diarrhea.
Honestly,
if the members of the committee don’t care enough about the material to
speak extemporaneously on it, forgive me if I question their
sincerity.
It’s amazing how bad Democrats are at this. This
level of failure only comes from years of knowing they have a press that
not only won’t hold them accountable, but would lay down their
professional credibility to insulate them from any exposure of their
frauds. When you don’t have to worry about being called out for your
lies, your lies get lazier and lazier.
Democrats are
great a propagandizing to their choir, they suck at trying to win anyone
over to their side. They don’t try anymore, they simply demand
obedience and set out to destroy anyone who won’t comply. It’s
progressive. It’s Hitlerific! And it’s why they absolutely must be
destroyed this November.
Let me say from the outset, with a degree of specific assurance we generally reserve for other matters, Russia had nothing to do with the targeting of a grain facility in the port city of Odesa. Geopolitically and strategically, such an action would be against their interests. These events have the smell of the U.S. State Dept and CIA all over them.
Start by first reviewing the agreement between Russia and Ukraine that was announced Friday. July 22 (Reuters) – Russia and Ukraine signed a landmark deal on Friday to reopen Ukrainian Black Sea ports for grain exports, raising hopes that an international food crisis … can be eased.” NATO country Turkey, specifically Recep Erdogan, brokered the deal between Russia and Ukraine. Ignore the narrative engineering and WATCH:
Russia was particularly a geopolitical beneficiary from the agreement itself. No longer could NATO and the western alliance blame Russia for the void in gobal food markets associated with the conflict in Ukraine.
From the perspective of Russian President Putin, the grain movement through the port city of Odesa was a net benefit. “Russia has taken on the obligations that are clearly spelled out in this document. We will not take advantage of the fact that the ports will be cleared and opened. We have made this commitment,” said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
However, from the perspective of the Western alliance, the agreement mooted one of their biggest justifications for the upcoming global food shortage. If Ukraine and Russia are exporting food, and yet food costs are still rising…. well, the food shortage impact from western energy disruption, the Build Back Better agenda, starts to become increasingly visible.
Suddenly, within hours of the trade agreement, the grain transportation system and the port city of Odesa come under fire from mysterious cruise missiles.
Europe – Missiles struck a key Ukrainian port Saturday, just one day after Kyiv and Moscow signed a breakthrough deal to unblock shipments of grain. Pointing the finger at Russia, Ukraine’s air force chief said the port — a key site for exporting Ukrainian grain — had been deliberately targeted.
“The port of Odesa, where grain is processed for shipment, was shelled. We shot down two missiles, and two more missiles hit the port territory, where, obviously, there is grain,” Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ignat told reporters.
Russia has denied any involvement in the strikes, says Turkey’s defence minister.
The strike has been “unequivocally condemned” by the UN, alongside EU officials, such as European Commission vice president Josep Borrell, who said it “demonstrates Russia’s total disregard for international law.” (read more)
The origin of the mysterious missile attack becomes clear when you overlay the question of ‘who has motive’?
It wasn’t Russia.
We can be almost certain it was the U.S. State Department, and covert CIA operators, who used their operational control within Ukraine to target the exports.
Stopping the export of Ukrainian grain is in the interests of the western alliance. After all, it was the United States who previously claimed, “Vladimir Putin is weaponizing food.”…
Apparently, Russian President Vladimir Putin has the ability to drive up U.S. inflation, explode U.S. energy costs, increase gasoline prices, influence global agriculture, weaken U.S. oil refining capability, disrupt availability of diesel fuel, impede the transportation of U.S. goods, force municipal energy companies to raise prices, cancel airline flights, stop the manufacturing of infant formula and now block the production -and increase the cost- of food in North America.
That’s their collective story, and they’re sticking to it.
The historic surge of illegal immigrants across America’s southern border is fueling a hidden crime spree few in Washington seem willing or able to address: widespread identity theft victimizing unwitting Americans, perpetrated by migrants who need U.S. credentials to work.
An extensive review of government reports, think-tank research, news accounts, and interviews with policymakers and scholars suggests the problem involves millions of people—though measuring it with precision is difficult because of the lack of data provided by authorities.
A telling indication of the scope of the criminality is provided by a little-known government accounting book, the Social Security Administration’s Earnings Suspense File (ESF). It reflects the earnings of employees whose W-2 wage and tax statements have names and Social Security numbers that do not match official records. The total logged in the file has increased tenfold from $188.9 billion at the dawn of the millennium to $1.9 trillion in 2021.
Officials have historically ascribed a “high proportion” of the file’s growth to wages reported by illegal immigrants, and it has swelled alongside their population, which stands at a conservatively estimated 11.5 million today, 7 million of whom are employed. Among those doing so on the books, federal authorities have found that well over1 million are using social security numbers belonging to someone else—i.e., stolen or “shared” with a relative or acquaintance—or numbers that are fabricated. The data held in the ESF would enable authorities to pursue many of the fraudsters, but the IRS and other agencies responsible for enforcing the law have been reluctant to investigate, and regulations have prevented meaningful information-sharing among them.
This identity-related crime is providing a windfall for the U.S. government. A 2017 study from the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform found that the federal government collects about $22 billion annually in tax receipts from illegal aliens, with the bulk going toward Social Security ($12.6 billion) and Medicare ($5.9 billion)—programs from which noncitizens are ineligible to receive benefits. FAIR estimated that illegal migrants also paid $3.3 billion in federal income tax—a smaller proportion primarily due to illegal aliens’ lower wage levels—and another $1 billion in state income taxes.
In other words, the fraud has the effect of bolstering financially shaky federal programs. In one of the agency’s rare direct statements on the issue, Social Security Administration Chief Actuary Stephen Goss told CNN in 2014 that without “undocumented immigrants paying into the system, Social Security would have entered persistent shortfall of tax revenue to cover payouts starting in 2009.” Leading progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal echoed this observation in 2018, arguing that a “complication of [then-president] Trump’s plans to limit immigration is the effect to our Social Security Earnings Suspense File—money that keeps our Social Security system afloat,” including money provided by “undocumented immigrants.”
Given Washington’s bipartisan willingness to tolerate illegal immigration—whether driven by the multicultural Left or businesses interests seeking cheap labor—authorities have focused on this apparent windfall to the U.S. Treasury. But they have largely ignored the costs. These include the significantstrain illegal immigrant households place on public finances, which FAIR and others estimate vastly outweigh their tax contributions, and their impacts on crime and the job market—and on the victims of identity theft.
Reports dating back over a decade show that hundreds of thousands of Americans are unknowingly “sharing” their Social Security numbers with illegal immigrants. Such victims may face tax bills for income they didn’t earn or depleted benefits. Worse, some may experience the burden of bad credit histories and criminal records inaccurately attributed to them after being issued SSNs that illegal aliens had previously invented and used. The overall impact on American citizens is largely unknown because federal, state, and local governments as well as financial institutions have generally failed to notify them, even when fraud is suspected.
The relevant agencies were largely non-responsive to RealClearInvestigations’ requests for updated figures on the size, scope, and extent of the fraud. Nor have lawmakers recently given voice to the victims. Congress seems to have last held a hearing spotlighting the defrauded over a decade ago. Related legislation aimed at reducing Social Security number fraud in employment has typically languished, and many lawmakers whom RCI contacted indicated only a passing knowledge of the issue.
One thing experts do agree on—the problem will likely get worse as more illegal immigrants cross the border and seek work.
The rapidly changing political landscape may be the only thing that could impact the broader trajectory of illegal immigration from which the fraud springs. The populist turn of the post-Donald Trump Republican Party is appealing to working-class voters with a strong interest in curbing illegal immigration. Recent elections also show Hispanics voting for Republicans in significantly higher numbers, in part because of the Democrats’ more liberal border policies.
In the meantime, though, the illegal immigrant population continues to swell.
Los Angeles Unified School District adopts radical “trans-affirming” programming and instructs teachers to work toward “the breakdown of the gender binary.”
Los Angeles Unified School District has adopted a radical gender-theory curriculum encouraging teachers to work toward the “breakdown of the gender binary,” to experiment with gender pronouns such as “they,” “ze,” and “tree,” and to adopt “trans-affirming” programming to make their classrooms “queer all school year.”
I have obtained a trove of publicly accessible documents from Los Angeles Unified that illustrates the extent to which gender ideology has entered the mainstream of the nation’s second-largest school district. Since 2020, the district’s Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department has created an infrastructure to translate the basic tenets of academic queer theory into K-12 pedagogy. The materials include a wide range of conferences, presentations, curricula, teacher-training programs, adult-driven “gender and sexuality” clubs, and school-sponsored protests.
In a week-long conference last fall, titled “Standing with LGBTQ+ Students, Staff, and Families,” administrators hosted workshops with presentations on “breaking the [gender] binary,” providing children with “free gender affirming clothing,” understanding “what your queer middle schooler wants you to know,” and producing “counter narratives against the master narrative of mainstream white cis-heteropatriarchy society.” The narrative follows the standard academic slop: white, cisgender, heterosexual men have built a repressive social structure, divided the world into the false binary of man and woman, and used this myth to oppress racial and sexual minorities. Religion, too, is a mechanism of repression. During the conference, the district highlighted how teachers can “respond to religious objections” to gender ideology and promoted materials on how students can be “Muslim and Trans.”
In another training program, titled “Queering Culture & Race,” the Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity office encouraged teachers to adopt the principle of intersectionality, a key tenet of critical race theory, and apply it to the classroom. First, administrators asked teachers to identify themselves by race, gender, and sexual orientation, and to consider their position on the identity hierarchy. The district then encouraged teachers to “avoid gendered expressions” in the classroom, including “boys and girls” and “ladies and gentlemen,” which, according to queer theory, are vestiges of the oppressive gender binary. Administrators also warned teachers that they might have to work against the families of their minority students, especially black students, regarding sexuality. “The Black community often holds rigid and traditional views of sexual orientation and gender expression,” the presenters claimed. “Black LGBTQ youth experience homophobia and transphobia from their familial communities.”
Finally, Los Angeles Unified has gone all-in on “trans-affirming” indoctrination. The Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department has flooded the district with teaching materials, including, for example, videos from the consulting firm Woke Kindergarten encouraging five-year-olds to experiment with gender pronouns such as “they,” “ze,” and “tree” and to adopt nonbinary gender identities that “feel good to you.” The district requires teachers to use a student’s desired name and pronoun and to keep the student’s gender identity a secret from parents if the student so desires. In other words, Los Angeles public schools can facilitate a child’s transition from one gender to another without notifying parents.
And the district is far from neutral: it actively celebrates sexual identities such as “pansexual,” “sexually fluid,” “queer,” “same-gender-loving,” and “asexual,” and gender identities such as “transgender,” “genderqueer,” “agender,” “bigender,” “gender nonconforming,” “gender expansive,” “gender fluid,” and “two-spirit.”
The problem with creating a “trans-affirming” culture is obvious. In one of the district’s own materials, “Mental Health Among Transgender Youth,” the Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department cites a survey by Mental Health America pointing out that, among 11-to-17-year-old transgender youth who were screened for mental health issues, 93 percent were at risk for psychosis, 91 percent exhibited signs of posttraumatic stress disorder, 90 percent likely used drugs and alcohol, 90 percent experienced moderate-to-severe anxiety, and 95 percent experienced moderate to severe depression. Additionally, according to a Trevor Project study, 71 percent of transgender youth have been diagnosed with eating disorders, with the ratio even higher for female-to-male transgender children.
These numbers are deeply alarming. But rather than provide a sober assessment of these risks and seek to mitigate them, Los Angeles Unified has adopted a year-round program glamorizing transgender identity and promoting an uncritical, “trans-affirming” culture in the classroom. It is, of course, a noble goal for schools to provide a safe environment for minority groups and to affirm the basic dignity of all children regardless of their sexuality. But Los Angeles Unified’s program goes much further, promoting the most extreme strains of transgender ideology, which almost certainly contributes to the “social contagion” effect documented by Abigail Shrier and others.
The Los Angeles Unified School District governs the educational life of more than 600,000 children, the majority of whom are racial minorities from poor families. The implicit cynicism of the district’s gender-ideology instruction is sickening: highly educated, well-paid bureaucrats promote fashionable academic programming that will do nothing to provide a basic education for these children or help them move up the economic and social ladder. It will only keep them trapped in a morass of confusion, fatalism, and resentment—while the bureaucrats keep collecting their paychecks.
The New York Times on Thursday ran a slew of pieces by its full-time columnists wherein they purported to offer a confession of sorts about something each of them had gotten wrong in the past.
Each headline began, “I was wrong about…,” when they should have more accurately begun, “It’s safe now to profess that I was dishonest about this thing because it’s no longer a factor in my political pursuits.”
Michelle Goldberg’s column,”I was wrong about Al Franken,” is about how she regrets having called for the shunning and resignation of the former senator, who was credibly and accurately accused of sexual assault, an allegation replete with photographic evidence, multiple witnesses, and an apology from Franken himself. Goldberg writes that today she believes it was wrong of her to call for him to lose his job without first there being a Senate investigation.
What she really means is that Franken was sacrificed so that Democrats and liberals could further use the so-often-absurd #MeToo movement as a political weapon against their opponents, but unfortunately it backfired.
Gail Collins’ piece, headlined, “I was wrong about Mitt Romney (and his dog),” is her apology for so gleefully mocking and attacking the Republican senator when he ran for president in 2012. What she really means is now that Romney attacks the head of his own party, he’s good.
But the most awe-inspiring of the whole series is Bret Stephens, the former Wall Street Journal writer who identifies as a conservative despite calling for Republicans to lose every election of the past decade. His column, “I was wrong about Trump voters,” is hysterical in its blatant dishonesty wrapped up nicely in a shocking degree of self-regard.
“When I looked at Trump, I saw a bigoted blowhard making one ignorant argument after another,” he wrote. “What Trump’s supporters saw was a candidate whose entire being was a proudly raised middle finger at a self-satisfied elite that had produced a failing status quo. I was blind to this.”
Stephens went on to use the opportunity to brag about how nice his life is. “I belonged to a social class that my friend Peggy Noonan called ‘the protected,'” he said. “My family lived in a safe and pleasant neighborhood. Our kids went to an excellent public school. I was well paid, fully insured, insulated against life’s harsh edges. Trump’s appeal, according to Noonan, was largely to people she called ‘the unprotected.'”
Definitely sounds like a man with his tail between his legs.
Nobody buys for a second that Stephens is in any way genuinely reflecting on his contempt for the people who dared support Trump. (He literally says in the piece that he believed Trump’s voters were “moral ignoramuses.”) I can promise you this is not something he would have written had Trump won reelection in 2020.
Stephens even admits it. “Would I be wrong to lambaste Trump’s current supporters,” he says, “the ones who want him back in the White House despite his refusal to accept his electoral defeat and the historic outrage of Jan. 6? Morally speaking, no.”
What Stephens is really trying to say is that it’s one thing for him to tell you that it’s too bad you’re not doing as well as he is, after he’s fought in every way to keep it that way. It’s another for him to do anything that would actually have changed that.
But in the same spirit of that Times series, I have my own confession: There was a period when I believed journalists in the national media were honest and decent people who were imperfect but always trying. I was wrong about all of that.
Dave Chappelle is currently too big to cancel. Being a black man is also a plus. He hasn’t prostrated himself at the transgender alter while asking for forgiveness, and vowing to “do better.” He’s continued to do his thing. His thing is comedy.
Last week a Minneapolis venue canceled Chappelle’s show.
The reason was an online petition signed by 128 people. 128 signatures. I could create a petition demanding that aliens be released from Area 51 and I’d bet my house that I’d get more than 128 signatures. It’s entirely possible — if not likely — that half of those who signed were bots but never mind, the venue canceled.
Chappelle has made a 20-year career of making fun of white people, but white people didn’t sign petitions to ban him.
On Wednesday, they plunked down a minimum of $129 to watch him make fun of white people (and just about every other demographic). First, they had to brave a gaggle of sign-holding “transgender lunatics”. Not a big gaggle, but a gaggle.
“Transgender lunatics” is not my term (although I accept it without reservation), Chappelle used that term during his Wednesday show. Why? Because they are. Although they/them complain about being marginalized, they are anything but. They are the most powerful “marginalized” group in the history of mankind. They dictate the narrative for media, business, and government. Google, Yahoo, Twitter Reddit will ban you for misgendering or dead-naming. Social media, particularly Google, controls what you see, and what sources it allows. For instance, doing “research” for this piece all of my search terms and keywords returned a first page of hard-left sites. I had to scroll through multiple pages before I found any center to right-of-center sites commenting on Dave Chappelle’s show. “PinkNews” was on the first page. It’s a hard-left site. Its headline reads:
‘Comedian’ Dave Chappelle brands critics ‘transgender lunatics’ and calls monkeypox a ‘gay disease.’
Comedian is in quotes. For PinkNews, Dave’s not funny.
I don’t know what the context of monkeypox being a “gay” disease was during his set but the reality is, the majority of infections are, weirdly, and by total coincidence found in the alphabet community. Scott Bertani, the Director of advocacy at the National Coalition for LGBT Health was quoted in USA Today. He said:
“While the queer population seems to be associated with this outbreak, we got to remember that the biology of this disease knows no limits with respect to who it can [infect]”.
The entire USA Today article went to great lengths to remind its readers that although monkeypox is explosively and almost exclusively infecting gay men, it can, in theory, infect a celibate Himalayan monk. In theory, a monkeypox-infected man could fall out of the sky right on top of the monk and infect him. It COULD happen. Did Chappelle use that joke? Doubt it, but that’s the type of mocking complainers hate about Chappelle.
If you insist that a “woman” in a women’s prison who impregnated two women was really a dude you’re going to be on social media life support within minutes. A “woman” with a penis and testicles who IDs as a woman is a woman damn it. It doesn’t matter that that woman has a bat and balls – you’d best bend a knee and accept, contrary to biology, that that “woman” impregnated two other women. Soon, you will be reading stories of a man impregnating a man. Never mind, that has already happened.
Chappelle has, for 20 years, made fun of and mocked everyone and everything That’s what comedy is. However, if you reviewed all of Chappelle’s comedy sets, transgenders likely comprise a tiny portion, yet they are the loudest complainers. Why do transgenders get their way? Because business, social media, and government bend the knee apologizing for the slightest slight or “micro-aggression” and insist that they will “do better.” They are scared, apparently, of 128 people signing a petition.
I think the majority of people are like me – if you want to pull on a dress and wig and call yourself a woman that’s your business. Leave me alone. But if you have your junk and yet insist that I must engage in your fantasy and insist that I call you ma’am? That’s a bridge too far. If you insist that you are a Dalmatian and that I must bark a greeting in return, we are at an impasse.
You might think and insist that you’re Napoléon Bonaparte, but don’t expect me to call you Emperor.
The Select Committee on Jan. 6 introduced new footage of the Capitol riot Thursday night featuring Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley fleeing the complex as members of Congress were evacuated from the chambers.
“Earlier that afternoon before the joint session started, he walked across the east front of the Capitol,” said Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., who played the clip after airing an image of the senator cheering demonstrators hours before the riot. “As you can see in this photo, he raised his fist in solidarity with the protesters.”
Luria proceeded to show Hawley running out of the Capitol as peaceful protests turned into violent trespassing and shut down congressional proceedings. The committee played the clip twice, once in real time, and then in slow motion to drive home the point, as if an active 42-year-old jogging down a hallway or a flight of steps was a rare sight (the average age in the Senate is 64).
The committee sought to smear Hawley as a coward who was complicit in the violence by raising his fist to the same crowd that would later obstruct the joint session of Congress. The image of the senator’s fist, however, which Hawley promoted on a campaign mug Friday morning, was captured hours before rioters would breach the first barriers of the Capitol. There is no proof Hawley knew protesters were preparing to riot, or that the senator’s single raised hand incited the turmoil. By the Jan. 6 Committee’s standards, however, objections to certification of the electoral votes are synonymous with incitement — never mind that Democrats tried to halt the process in 2001, 2005, and 2017. Meanwhile, it wasn’t just Hawley who was forced to leave the Capitol. Every lawmaker was either evacuated or forced to hunker down.
The committee’s deceptive footage of the senator is a telling reveal of the panel’s true intentions. Initially established in pursuit of a third impeachment of President Donald Trump, the probe has widened its targets as the former Republican president is no longer the only conceivable contender to be the nominee in 2024. The committee weaponized to persecute political opponents ahead of the upcoming elections has now taken the opportunity to pivot its smears toward other potential White House rivals, Hawley included.
In what was supposed to be the final hearing, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney opened the summer finale with the announcement of season two coming in September.
“We have far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather,” said Cheney.
The committee placing a target on Hawley also showcases how little panel members appointed to investigate the Capitol security failures actually care about those Capitol security failures. What does a spotlight on a single Republican senator evacuating with his colleagues have to do with the fact that Capitol Police were half-staffed, under-trained, ill-equipped, and unprepared to fend off a horde of demonstrators storming barricades? Out of eight hearings theatrically produced for national television by a former ABC News executive, the committee devoted a fraction of its time to legitimate oversight of the lapses in Capitol security. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s repeated refusal to dispatch the National Guard in the run-up to the riot offers far more probative value to a legitimate investigation than a clip of Sen. Hawley doing what virtually every other member of the legislature was instructed to do.
