Trump’s Arc Must Play Out

It remains an observable fact that the average American voter —the MAGA voter— is not going to abandon Trump, not even for another attractive candidate.

by Erik Root for American Greatness

In August, Carl Benjamin, also known as Sargon of Akkad, posted a persuasive intellectual case for Donald Trump’s candidacy in which he said that “Trump is the protagonist of an important moral story whose narrative arc has yet to resolve. And resolve it must.” 

This is not some historicist narrative that Trump must be our protagonist because history is forcing the people into some deterministic future. Rather, the people’s reflection and choice must register the definitive judgment whether our republic is going to be determined by the consent of the governed or whether we revert to politics of the dark ages—accident and force. There is only one person who stands in opposition to a ruling class that sneers at our country and the “peasants” who inhabit it. Only one person exhibits the greatness to oppose our self-anointed elites. In other words, there are none on the Republican stage who possess Trump’s je ne sais quoi.

In 2016, the people chose Trump to be the protagonist against a class of elites—Democrats and Republicans—who fleeced the country for their own benefit. In 2020, Trump set an electoral record by increasing his share of the vote. Yet, the job was left unfinished; his arc was interrupted. Whether you believe the election was legally fortified or outright stolen, it denied to a reasonable electorate the opportunity to recover a small slice of liberty for themselves while protecting their families from the purposeful attack on and disintegration of their honorable way of life.

The many objections to Trump’s first term are valid—all princes disappoint. It’s a reasonable concern that Trump may repeat his mistakes by falling for similar traps that the ruling class sets for him. There is evidence, however, that Trump has learned from these mistakes (he has said so privately and, in limited ways, publicly). Going forward, we can hope he will be wiser when traps are set for him, and in any case, they would be set for someone else just as easily. You might say that at least he now knows he needs to set traps for their traps.

The electoral objections to Trump are considerable: while he has the ability to turn out the MAGA base, he also turns out blue anons. But worrying about the Left’s motivated voters is shortsighted. The ability of the ruling class machine to turn out their voters is a given no matter who the nominee is for the simple fact they do not focus on turnout as much as ballots. Fetterman anyone? Legal or not, it is genius, and the practice all but guarantees Democrat victory. The ruling class machine has figured out a way not only to engage in sectional campaigns but also to rig the Electoral College.

Trump, for his part, spent most of his time during midterm rallies speaking of the injustice of the 2020 election without offering an alternative. He rectified this in his announcement at Mar-a-Lago on November 15. People need more than a revenge candidacy. While the control of the vote must be wrested from the cabal, Trump offers a path forward. He contends we need not only paper ballots but same-day vote counts without machines and their proprietary operating systems. It is tricky how he will bring this about since voting is a matter of federalism. Perhaps in-person ballot dropping would work? Regardless, Trump recognizes the problem and therefore has to campaign for 2024 in the new mail/harvest reality, or he will lose. Further, as we saw with Arizona (thanks, John McCain!), same-day voters can easily be disenfranchised by “malfunctioning” machines. All of this is to say, Trump and MAGA cannot run the 2016 playbook—and Trump knows it.

We must do more than complain about past malfeasance. MAGA should make an affirmative case for why things should change. In 1880, Ulysses S. Grant faced similar problems. He gave at least two speeches on the issue of the vote that applies to our present situation: 

That is all we ask . . . that our [fellow- citizens] of every other class who may choose to be Republicans, shall have the privilege to go to the polls, even though they are in the minority, and put in their ballot without being burned out of their homes, and without being threatened or intimidated. All we ask is that just the same privileges shall be granted to us that we grant to the Democrats. Then, when they can beat us under those circumstances, we shall believe that they have been so purified as to be fit to govern the country—until they’re turned out. The beauty of the system of free ballot is that if an Administration is not a good one the next will be of a different sort. 

The ruling class hates the consent of the governed because it, and it alone, is the only peaceful political weapon to rein in despotic rule. In such a voting system that treats the voters equally, a case must be made why a party, or person, deserves the vote. Votes that are fortified can sidestep public arguments. This is why Democrats know they do not have to debate. The present electoral ballot system has encouraged their radical policies because they know they do not have to be held accountable. In this sense, the game is rigged. Every reasonable voter should be able to grasp the simple truth of free and fair elections as Trump and Grant made them. In this vein, Grant had this to say:

I believe the present occasion to be as important as any since 1865. The mission of the Republican party is not ended until a free ballot can be cast throughout this land without endangering the life, property or social position of the voter. Those who have labored to destroy this country should come to us—not we to them. 

Grant and Trump are saying similar things. Like Grant, Trump realizes that the majority party of the ruling class, as Angelo Codevilla once put it, seeks to deny elections to the very people they despise. MAGA voters have endured threats to their jobs, their land, and their lives for their political beliefs. Trump offers a solution to the problem while not compromising on the very mechanism that guarantees we remain a republic. A republic cannot survive without some trust in elections. 

According to a recent Rasmussen poll, Republicans are concerned most about cheating, while Democrats are concerned about making it easier to vote. As we saw this year, Republicans are being targeted to make voting arduous. Trump should make the case for both—they are not mutually exclusive positions. Repairing the ballot is a boon for the republic as a whole, not just the Republican Party.

The aim of MAGA going forward should be not to forget or move beyond past electoral injustices but rather to do something to fix the problem. Having a plan to correct the election shenanigans of the past is what the electorate needs to see. If a clear, targeted plan from the Trump team is conducted quietly (because McLeadership sure won’t do it), it will favorably fortify a path to securing the consent of all citizens. It replaces hopelessness about our present state of affairs with the belief we can win against the corporate globalists who wish to silence us. 

None of this will be easy. Trump said in his announcement that we are all going to walk into the fire . . . together. The situation is dire because failure means no Republican that the ruling class does not choose will ever hold office again.

The Declaration notes that the people will suffer evils while they are sufferable and be slow to change the institutions to which they have become accustomed. Trump said at Mar-a-Lago: 

Our victory will be built upon big ideas, bold ambitions and daring dreams for America’s future. We need daring dreams. It is not enough merely to complain or oppose. We don’t want to be critics. We don’t want to be complainers. I never wanted to be a critic. I never respected critics, they tell people what’s wrong, but they can’t do it themselves.

The people need to do this. As we see in Arizona, the objection to the election is coming from the grassroots. Trump expects something of all of us while our suffering is bearable. Then he had this to say about the 2022 election: 

[T]he Republican Party should have done better. And frankly, much of this blame is correct. But the citizens of our country have not yet realized the full extent and gravity of the pain Our nation is going through. And the total effect of the suffering is just starting to take hold. They don’t quite feel it yet. But they will very soon. I have no doubt that by 2024, it will sadly be much worse. And they will see much more clearly what happened and what is happening to our country.

Many can see with their own eyes that the ruling class is doing everything it can to destroy our way of life. But it is also true that many have not felt the consequences. The elites of this country despise the people who compose it and they want to wreck our soul. Yet, it will take more time for low-information voters to feel the effects of this injustice. Trump is counseling patience. This is peak statesmanship. 

Trump in 2016 was the one man who had the courage to stand up to the elites and do something about it. This is why he has a special connection to the voter that no other candidate has or can yet have. We are all in this together. In his words: 

This will not be my campaign, this will be our campaign altogether. But just as I promised in 2016, I am your voice. I am your voice. The Washington establishment wants to silence us, but we will not let them do that. What we have built together over the past six years is the greatest movement in history because it is not about politics. It’s about our love for this great country, America, and we’re not going to let it fail. I am running because I believe the world has not yet seen the true glory of what this nation can be. 

Trump’s moral arc is our own arc. The people have to finish what they started.

There are formidable obstacles for any Republican path to national victory. McLeadership, corporate and legacy “news,” NeverTrump financial interests, globalists, and normies will all be against him—now more than ever. Only Trump scares them like this because he is the one most capable of destroying their unearned position over us. It does not matter if you love or loathe Trump. It does not matter if you are simply tired of him. It remains an observable fact that the average American voter—the MAGA voter—is not going to abandon Trump, not even for another attractive candidate. The reason for this is because the people sense our moral arch has not concluded—they believe Trump is the best vehicle to bring the great question of whether this republic survives or dies to a close. 

Win or lose, Trump is the only person who has a decent chance to break the obstacles facing the country. The people must have a decisive determination. Therefore, it must be Trump.

X22, Badlands Media and more- Nov 25

 

Long day of watching Christmas movies on the DVR. Here's tonight's news:

The Republicans Form Their Circular Firing Squad

An internecine spectacle would only weaken the GOP and probably help Joe Biden (and his handlers) sleepwalk their way into another term in the White House.

by Brandon J. Weichert for American Greatness

With the disappointing midterms, Republicans have lost a major battle in the fight to restore American greatness. We are now rapidly approaching the final standoff between the flailing Republican Party and the reenergized Democratic Party. The Democrats survived what should have been a political bloodbath in 2022, and the Right seems to be in the most vulnerable position since the 1960s, when Republicans were essentially a permanent minority in Washington. 

It could happen again. Whether the GOP returns to minority status in two years will depend on the party determines who will be its nominee in the next presidential election. While many on the Right assume it will be Donald J. Trump, there are other candidates in the offing. 

The obvious challenger is the wildly popular Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, whose leadership, policies, and personnel choices designed to make Florida the freest state in the union speak for themselves as to why he’d be a worthy successor to the Trump movement. Yet, in classic GOP fashion, the party appears unhappy with having merely two contenders to lead the collapsing party into what could be its final battle as a viable national political party. 

Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former secretary of state and a man with almost Caesar-like ambitions with a last name to match those pretensions, will likely enter the fray in 2024. So, too, will former Vice President Mike Pence. There is much talk that the Trump Administration’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, may also enter the race. 

Beyond these Trump Administration veterans is a cadre of other names who stand no real chance at success in 2024. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) yearns to fulfill what he believes is his destiny by becoming the steward of the party of Lincoln in 2024. The controversial South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, is rumored to be considering a run as well.

Hell, maybe even “Low Energy” Jeb Bush appears for an encore, just to confirm that he still doesn’t have it. Let’s add Kanye West to the lineup too, just to spice things up a bit!

For those keeping count, we are already up to seven possible known, serious (relatively speaking) candidates—including Trump and DeSantis. Thus, the GOP’s circular firing squad is dutifully forming two years before the election even begins.  

Seventeen major Republicans ran for president in 2016. That fight almost destroyed the party. It is incumbent upon Republican Party leadership to recognize that another brutally divided primary only serves the Democrats. The RNC would do well to take a page from the Democrats’ playbook and change the rules going into 2024 to prevent a multi-sided civil war in the primary. 

There really are only two true contenders for the GOP nomination. Both, blessedly, do not share the yearning to be loved by the establishment of either party. 

In both Trump and DeSantis, the GOP has two strong leaders who can protect the MAGA movement and ensure it cannot simply be coopted the way that the Tea Party was by the establishment. The RNC should, therefore, limit the primary in 2024 to just two debates and should place only the top-two Republican candidates who are most popular—in this case, Trump and DeSantis—and simply inform the others they don’t get to run. We are, after all, a party and not a country. The party decides who gets to run and how. The voters then vote on the chosen candidates. 

Now, a Trump-DeSantis fight won’t be pretty. But it could at least be better managed by the two candidates, their staffs, and the RNC than a multi-sided cage match in which all the contenders inadvertently give the media and their Democratic Party allies more ammunition to use on the eventual nominee in the general election. This, by the way, is precisely what happened in 2012, when Barack Obama’s campaign adopted Newt Gingrich’s talking points against Mitt Romney. 

A two-sided fight would be easier for the party to move on from once the general election gets going. 

Even if the Democrats end up primarying Biden in 2024, you can be assured that their process will be far more orderly (and far less open) than the Republican version. It will be akin to an old Stalinist show trial: the outcome already determined by those behind the scenes, and the rest merely political theater to help justify the result in the minds of the public. Regardless, the lack of a similar bloodbath on the Left will likely help to keep the Democratic voters in line and poised to resist the Republican nominee. 

Whatever the GOP decides, though, it must ensure that there is no repeat of the primary debacles of 2012 and 2016. Men like Pompeo or Pence—let alone Cruz—though they have done much for the party, stand no chance at winning the nomination in 2024—unless Trump and DeSantis are out of the running. But at least one of them will be running. Such an internecine spectacle would only weaken the GOP and probably help Joe Biden (and his handlers) sleepwalk their way into another term in the White House—and would jeopardize the GOP’s chances at being a majority party for a generation. 

Hakeem’s Denial

Nazism and racism are rampant in this land only when Republicans challenge elections that Democrats seem to have won, usually with the help of vote harvesters and a noticeable lack of voter ID.

by Paul Gottfried for American Greatness

U.S. Representative Hakeem Sekou Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is about to become the House minority leader, enjoys far more indulgent media coverage than his colleague Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). The New York Daily News, for example, can’t introduce Boebert, even when she expresses condolences for gay victims of a Colorado shooting, without referring to her as a figure of the “far right.” Needless to say, I’m still waiting for the national press to refer to the “far-left” Hakeem Jeffries. 

Despite his immunity to such indignities, the congressman from Brooklyn has voted consistently with the Left, whether in opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, hampering both policing and the maintenance of criminal records, or advancing the LGBT agenda. Jeffries also has repeatedly and emphatically denied that Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, that is legally, and has attributed the election results to Russian interference. Jeffries even refused to attend Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, insisting that Trump had stolen the election with Kremlin support, and he launched a boycott of the event.

Such data makes evident the double standard that even establishment Republicans and Fox News anchors like Bret Baier accept regarding so-called election deniers. Jeffries’ adamant denial that Trump was truly elected president in 2016 has not kept the media from acclaiming him as someone worthy of our respect. Of course, similar acts of denial about Trump’s victory have not brought media harm to Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, or Kamala Harris. Moreover, cable channels are still slobbering over the twice-defeated Stacey Abrams, who continues to deny that she ever legally lost a gubernatorial race in Georgia. 

Election denial does not elicit media disapproval, we have to conclude, when Democrats engage in this action. Democrats, in fact, elicit media approval when they perform it, providing Democratic denials are linked to the customary charges of Russian collusion or, even better, “minority voting suppression.” It seems that the Democrats are not causing trouble when they challenge the election of Republicans to the offices that Democrats are claiming. Supposedly progressive leaders are calling our attention to the telltale heritage of Jim Crow, and/or Vladimir Putin’s alliance with the Republican National Committee. 

I was thinking of this recently when a longtime friend observed that the senatorial election just concluded in Pennsylvania must have been on the up and up. Otherwise, Dr. Mehmet Oz or his surrogates would have protested. I responded by asking rhetorically: “Who knows?” Even if massive irregularities occurred, providing they favored the Democrats, the media, including the electronic media, would not be eager to disclose that fact. In any case, no Republican who is charged with being an “election denier” will survive politically the way Jeffries has not only survived but thrived in his denial activity. The Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt has compared those who question the official election results in 2020 to those who deny Nazi mass murder.

No such outrageous comparison has been circulated about Jeffries and others who deny the 2016 results. Lipstadt, for example, only considers allegations of election fraud to be a danger to democracy if they’re uttered by Republicans. If the wrong people notice that Democratic municipal governments are mass producing voting ballots and sending them to addresses at which there are no present registered dwellers, and that Democratic administrations have dispensed with voter identification, then the unduly suspicious may be compared with impunity to Nazi sympathizers or even Holocaust deniers. 

Allow me to confess my ignorance about whether the brain-damaged social radical who will be Pennsylvania’s next U.S. senator won his race fairly. It is possible that he did, and then again, it’s possible that he didn’t. The problem is Republicans who complain about election irregularities can expect media intimidation and reckless media accusations. The only proper response to this situation is for Republicans to act in a way that addresses the possible fraud. 

Despite the squawking of CNN about “restrictive voting laws,” Governor Ron DeSantis has done what he could to ensure that the overwhelming majority of votes cast in Florida are deposited at polls on Election Day. DeSantis has imposed strict requirements on the use of mail-in ballots and has been able to enforce strict voter identification laws. None of these safeguards exist in Pennsylvania. It is impossible to imagine this discrepancy did not contribute to different election outcomes in our two states.

Still, I’ve no idea what can be done to end the media double standard when it comes to election deniers. If the media now deem this practice to be a threat to Our Democracy™, and an action characteristic of Nazis, then their rhetorical overkill only disadvantages one side. Nazism and racism are rampant in this land only when Republicans challenge elections that Democrats seem to have won, usually with the help of vote harvesters and a noticeable lack of voter identification. The same behavior becomes acceptable and even praiseworthy when Democratic politicians deny elections as champions of the supposedly underrepresented.

Maricopa County Made Arizona’s Elections Even More Of A Disaster Than People Realize

‘This was a horrible thing to experience. Poll workers conveyed a shocking lack of competence — it actually looked like willful incompetence,’ a Maricopa poll observer said.

by Shawn Fleetwood reporting for The Federalist

After it trained upwards of 50,000 poll watchers, poll workers, and other roles for ongoing citizen engagement in the election process over the year leading up to the 2022 midterms, the Election Integrity Network sent out a survey to its on-the-ground volunteers following Election Day to gauge how things went.

The responses from election workers in key battleground districts and states around the country showed a mostly calm election cycle compared to 2020, with one massive and overwhelming exception. In Maricopa County, Arizona, election workers were appalled and aghast at how things had been run there.

“As soon as we sent the survey out, we were flooded with responses showing that they had no confidence in how the election had been run there,” Executive Director of the Election Integrity Network Marshall Yates told The Federalist.

According to Yates, unlike the rest of the country, where survey respondents espoused general confidence in their respective elections, the responses from Arizona were overwhelming, with Maricopa poll watchers and poll workers saying they had “zero” confidence in the election.

Maricopa, which is home to almost 62 percent of Arizona’s 7.2 million people, was already in the news on Election Day for its hours-long lines and broken machines. After its close and contentious 2020 election, Maricopa County officials refused to cooperate with an audit of the election by state senators and dismissed concerns about how it conducts elections. This year, it took the county just under two full weeks to count ballots.

Election Day workers flooded the survey response team with stories of incompetence, chaos, and mismanagement that resulted in the disenfranchisement of voters.

“The printers were not properly calibrated so the tabulators did not read the ballots and were rejected. Many voters left because of the delays and either did not vote or had to go to other vote centers to vote,” one Maricopa poll observer reported. “Some voters did not want to place rejected ballot into misreads box. Some voting centers may have mixed tabulated ballots with misreads.”

“This was a horrible thing to experience. Poll workers conveyed a shocking lack of competence — it actually looked like willful incompetence,” another said.

Unfortunately, these accounts are among many reported incidents of failed election administration seen throughout Maricopa on Election Day and in the days following. From finicky ballot tabulator machines to probable violations of state law, the seemingly endless slew of problems witnessed by Maricopa residents was a clearcut example of how not to run an election.

A County Filled with Chaos

Unlike most states, where citizens vote at their local neighborhood-based precinct, Arizona allows for its counties to adopt a vote center model, where voters are permitted to cast their ballots at any center within their voting jurisdiction, regardless of their address. Upon arriving at one of these centers, Maricopa voters check in by providing their state-approved ID, at which point a ballot-on-demand printer produces a ballot that is filled out by the voter and run through a vote tabulation machine.

As county election officials have admitted, however, this is not the process experienced by thousands of Maricopa voters on Election Day, when printers with misconfigured settings in at least 70 of Maricopa’s 223 voting locations printed ballots that were rejected by many of the center’s vote tabulator machines.

“The vote center model failed most spectacularly because it relies on this ballot-on-demand printer model, and you can’t pre-order paper ballots and have them ready for voters ahead of time,” Gina Swoboda, executive director of the Voter Reference Foundation, told The Federalist. “It’s just a bad system. It does not function well in Maricopa County and leads us to be exposed to a complete failure of the system on Election Day.”

While Maricopa Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates told voters experiencing difficulties that they were permitted to leave and cast their ballot at a different voting center, the unfamiliarity among voters and election workers with the official “check out” procedures led to more pandemonium. According to the Arizona attorney general’s office, many of the voters who left their original vote center without properly checking out were told upon arriving at another location that the county’s e-Pollbook system had marked them as having already voted.

Maricopa voters were furthermore told by Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer that they had the option of placing their non-tabulated ballot in a bin called “Door 3,” which would be taken to the county’s central counting center after polls closed to be processed. Maricopa election officials, however, allegedly botched segregating, transporting, and tabulating the ballots, leading to a potential violation of state law and some of the estimated 17,000 “Door 3” ballots getting mixed with ballots already tabulated.

How Are Republicans Responding?

On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee (RNC), along with GOP attorney general candidate Abraham Hamadeh, whose close race is headed to a recount, filed a lawsuit in Maricopa’s Superior Court against his Democrat opponent Kris Mayes, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, and the county recorders and board of supervisors of Arizona’s 15 counties, alleging that “erroneous” vote counts and misconduct by Maricopa election officials resulted in the disenfranchisement of Arizona voters.

“The [2022] election … was afflicted with certain errors and inaccuracies in the management of some polling place operations, and in the processing and tabulation of some ballots. The cumulative effect of these mistakes is material to the race for Arizona Attorney General, where the candidates are separated by just 510 votes,” the suit reads. “Immediate judicial intervention is necessary to secure the accuracy of the results of the November 8, 2022 general election.”

In their filing, Hamadeh and the RNC asked the court to order Maricopa to “process and tabulate all provisional ballots and early ballots submitted by qualified electors who had ‘checked in’ at a voting center but did not cast a regular ballot” on Election Day. Moreover, the plaintiffs requested that an injunction be issued to prohibit or nullify any attempts to certify the results of the attorney general race.

While speaking with The Federalist, an RNC representative said the group is continuing to work with Hamadeh’s campaign in gathering affidavits and other facts required to hold Maricopa election officials accountable for their mismanagement of the 2022 general election.

The lawsuit comes days after Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright sent a letter to Maricopa election officials demanding they submit a full report answering for their incompetent election administration on or before Nov. 28, when counties must send their official canvass to the secretary of state for certification. The request has since prompted Cochise and Mohave Counties to delay their respective election certifications until the 28th.

Arizona Senate Republicans have requested similar information, with state Sen. Kelly Townsend issuing a subpoena to Maricopa’s board of supervisors on Tuesday, seeking records and explanations over the county’s handling of the 2022 general election.

AZ Election Results Deserve Scrutiny

Coupled with the tendency among Republican voters to cast their ballots on Election Day, the incredible mismanagement by Maricopa election officials potentially disenfranchised enough voters to swing the results of some of Arizona’s most contested elections.

In addition to the attorney general’s race, the gubernatorial contest between Hobbs — who oversaw the conduction of her own election — and Republican Kari Lake was also relatively close, with Hobbs beating Lake by roughly 17,000 votes.

Try as they might to downplay their administrative failures, Gates and Richer can’t hide the effect Maricopa’s abysmal voting problems had on the state’s elections. Even 84 percent of surveyed Maricopa election observers and workers reported they are “not at all confident” that Arizona’s election results are “completely accurate and honest.”

“Printer problems, tabulation errors, three-hour-long lines and even longer, and confusing instructions given by election officials made this Election Day the most chaotic in Arizona’s history,” said Lake in a video recently posted to Twitter. “The 2022 general election in Arizona was botched and broken beyond repair. … This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats. This is about our sacred right to vote; a right that many voters were sadly deprived of on November 8th.”

“I will continue fighting until we restore confidence and faith in our elections,” she added.

Elon Blows Apart Liberal Myth on Ferguson, Makes It Even Better With Big Vow for Twitter

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

I wrote about how Elon Musk discovered “Stay Woke” t-shirts in a Twitter closet as he continues to sort out things at the headquarters. That says so much about the liberal nature of the platform before Musk.

Musk also noted that the shirts go back to the time of the shooting of Michael Brown and the protests/riots in Ferguson. He also linked to the report of the Obama DOJ, noting that the shooting was in self-defense.

That set off people on the left even more because they had to deal with the reality that their beliefs that they may have held about that shooting for years were fiction. That couldn’t be, so it had to be that Elon was a racist person from South Africa, even if the Obama DOJ agreed with him. You still had some in media like Gizmodo write purulent garbage. Even the tweet to their article had a potentially misleading picture.

But one of the rallying cries from the movement, “hands up don’t shoot,” was picked apart incessantly by right-wing pundits who sought to exonerate the police officer, much like Musk is still doing today. Witnesses to the shooting claimed Brown had his hands up, though the U.S. Department of Justice investigators didn’t find this credible. Wilson, who shot Brown at least six times, claimed that Brown had charged at him and the shooting was in self-defense.

Gizmodo isn’t going to relitigate what happened in 2014. But we do find it notable that Musk wants to reopen the wounds of that summer, either to stoke more controversy on his social media platform with the hopes that it generates attention for a site that’s hemorrhaging advertisers, or simply because Musk wants to signal to his right-wing fans that he’s well and truly one of them. Whatever his goal, Musk succeeded at proving he desperately wants approval from the absolute worst people on the planet.

How dare Musk post the truth! That fiend! The cop didn’t just claim it was in self-defense, the evidence and the investigations supported that it was. Gizmodo knows that, but they still want to pump the anger, rather than the truth.

But liberals don’t want the truth and that’s what Musk has truly been showing with his takeover of Twitter.

Musk made another comment about how much the world’s conversation had been distorted by Twitter which shows he truly gets it. This is why the left is so mad, that they could spread all the radical narrative across the world when they had control but now they can’t. And Elon vowed he’s going to stop that “thumb on the scale.”

That’s exactly what we want — not a tilt to the right, but an actual open playing field that doesn’t suppress the truth. Musk making that commitment is terrific and was welcomed with open arms. With this, you may be seeing the beginning of the breaking of that leftist hold, to greater openness and sanity for the benefit of our country. And that can only benefit us all, which is why all this is so exciting to see.

Housing Sales to Institutional Investors Dropped 30% in Third Quarter

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

There is a significant lag in all data within the housing market.  That said, the third quarter (July, Aug, Sept) data reflects a significant drop in institutional investment within the housing market.

If you look closely at the timing (keep in mind the data reporting lag) what you will notice is that financial institutions began a big surge in purchasing hard assets, specifically real estate, as soon as Joe Biden took office (Jan ’21), and the economic policy became evident.   Intangible financial instruments became an immediate risk as the professional financial control groups recognized energy policy would drive inflation (supply side) and devalued money would fuel it (demand side).

As an offset to predictable inflationary policy (the insiders’ game), institutional money (Blackrock, Vanguard etc) was moved into hard assets with tangible value.  This shift in asset allocation, institutional sales, helped fuel a false surge in home prices and their valuations.  CTH was writing about this in 2021, and sounding alarms as it took place.  25% of all real estate purchases were being made by institutional investors.

The dynamic was predictable.  The Biden administration economic policy, energy policy and monetary policy, was going to cause massive inflation.  CTH was shouting about it in early 2021 and warning everyone to prepare for waves of price increases that would naturally surface first on high-turn consumable goods, and then embed into longer-term durable goods.

Despite claims to the contrary, this 2021 inflationary explosion had nothing to do with the pandemic or supply chain shortages.  It is entirely self-created by western governmental policy; the collective ‘Build Back Better’ agenda.  You can see now from the background moves within the financial sectors, they too knew the reality and their money shifts reflected that despite their ‘transitory’ pretending they were mitigating their own exposure.

We the People were yet again going to be victims of specifically intended monetary, regulatory, energy and economic policy.

The investment class rulers of the WEF assembly shifted assets to avoid the pain that we would feel.   We “would own nothing and be happy,” and their shifts would position them to own everything and be in control.

Overall govt spending and regulatory controls drove inflation for these past two years.  The ‘demand side’ was blamed, despite the lack of demand. I will be proven right when history is concluded with this.  Interest rates were raised by central banks in an effort to support the policies that are driving ‘supply side’ inflation, not demand side.

Energy policy was/is crushing the consumer by driving up the cost of all goods and services.  To support the overall goal of changing global energy resource and development (a false and controlled global operation), central banks raised interest rates.  Various western economies, including our own, have been pushed deeper into a state of contraction by central banks crushing consumer demand, and eliminating investment via increased borrowing costs.

In short, the goal was/is to lower energy consumption by shrinking the economic activity.  This, according to the BBB plan, was needed at the same time as energy development was reduced.  These economic outcomes are not organic, they are all being controlled by collective western government agreement.

Within this control dynamic, there was always going to be a point where the reaction of the people to their economic reality means the financial control elements need to shift direction.  They will always maximize profit and minimized risk, while knowing what the larger objective remains.

Just like every other durable good, housing demand contracts as prices and costs become unaffordable.  The loss of equity within your home is damaging to your own value or ability to borrow against it.  From the perspective of an institutional asset, that same equity drop is an investment loss.  Thus, just as a consumer would exit the housing market, so too will institutional investment groups now control the slow dumping of the asset to remove the equity they pumped into it.

Much of the investment housing will be retained as rental housing, with the monthly rents being part of the returns on the investments.    However, as this dynamic unfolds further purchases of houses stop, because the asset overall is declining in value.

(Via Wall Street Journal) – Investor buying of homes tumbled 30% in the third quarter, a sign that the rise in borrowing rates and high home prices that pushed traditional buyers to the sidelines are causing these firms to pull back, too.

Companies bought around 66,000 homes in the 40 markets tracked by real-estate brokerage Redfin during the third quarter, compared with 94,000 homes during the same quarter a year ago. The percentage decline in investor purchases was the largest in a quarter since the subprime crisis, save for the second quarter of 2020 when the pandemic shut down most home buying.

The investor pullback represents a turnaround from months ago when their purchases were still rising fast. These firms bought homes in record numbers last year and earlier this year, helping to supercharge the housing market.

Now, investors are reducing their buying activity in line with the decline in overall home sales, which have slumped with mortgage rates rising fast. (more)

At a macro level, if you bought a home in the last 18 months, or refinanced your home to pull out equity, you still have significant downside exposure.   Home prices will continue dropping until they plateau on the downside at the price that existed in roughly June of 2021.

The drop in value is directly related to the regional purchases by the institutions.  In areas where higher percentages of overall home sales were made by institutional investors, the subsequent drop in value will be larger (see chart above).  In areas where actual people purchased homes to live in, the drop in value will be less significant.

I keep getting this buying question, so with the above in mind I will answer it in the most brutally honest way I can present…..

At a macro level, if you are going to purchase a home on this downslope, look at the historic valuation of that property (or a comparable property) in/around approximately the spring of 2021. Start there, and put your offer in that vicinity, then hold firm without any emotional attachment to it.   Do not purchase another groups loss.