LGBTQ+ ‘Pride’ Is Totalitarian

That is why the Left chose the word “pride” and not “tolerance”—“pride” is about thought. And totalitarianism controls thought as well as speech.

by Dennis Prager for American Greatness

This past Saturday night, the New York Rangers National Hockey League (NHL) team did something almost unbelievable. Though scheduled to wear LGBTQ “Pride” jerseys during pregame warmups, not one member of the team did so. 

Another recent example of defying LGBTQ+ “Pride” jersey demands in the NHL—which is run by people who are as governed by cowardice as those who run Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association—was a player for the Philadelphia Flyers, Ivan Provorov, who refused to wear a “Pride” jersey 10 days earlier. 

As reported by Fox News:

“Provorov refused to participate in pregame warmups where players wore Pride-themed jerseys and wielded hockey sticks wrapped in rainbow Pride tape. ‘I respect everyone,’ he told reporters after they won the actual game against the Anaheim Ducks. ‘I respect everybody’s choices. My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion.'”

Provorov is Russian Orthodox. (Question: has one Protestant or Catholic NHL player refused to wear a “Pride” jersey?) 

Perhaps the New York Rangers organization was aware of the amount of support Provorov received: “Multiple news outlets including the Post Millennial, OutKick and Washington Examiner have since reported that the Philadelphia Flyers Provorov jerseys have been selling out in multiple stores online.”

The Flyers and, apparently, the Rangers learned the truth about their fans: the vast majority of them—and presumably of Americans and Canadians in general—do not wish to discriminate against those who are LGBTQ+ but they do not want their teams to go on record as expressing “Pride” in those who are LGBTQ+. 

This mirrors society at large. The vast majority of Americans believe in tolerance of LGBTQ+ individuals but not in organizations expressing pride in them. 

Why is this?

Because “Pride” is not about tolerance. “Pride” is totalitarian.

Tolerance is about behavior. “Pride” is about thought.

The proof is that while there are laws governing tolerance, there are no laws governing pride. And if there were, most people would understand that such laws would enter the realm of thought control.

Most people could not articulate the totalitarian nature of LGBTQ+ “Pride.” But they do sense it. That is why Provorov’s jersey became the Flyers’ best-selling jersey. Contrary to the pablum written by virtually every sports writer in North America (there is no more sheeplike group than sports writers), people do not oppose LGBTQ+ jerseys, nights, hockey sticks, illumination and other displays of obsequiousness because they hate gays. They do so because they intuit that this is totalitarian—that they and their teams are being forced into groupthink.

That is why the Left chose the word “pride” and not “tolerance”—”pride” is about thought. Unlike liberalism and conservatism, leftism is totalitarian. And totalitarianism controls thought as well as speech.

The only difference between the American Left and communist totalitarianism is opportunity. All leftists want to control speech and eventually thought. Thus, if you treat gays in your daily life just as you treat heterosexuals, it is not enough. You must go much further. You must express “pride” in gays and lesbians—and not in just gays and lesbians, but in the bisexual, the transgender, the “queer” and the nonbinary. You must not only say, but think, “I am proud of people who consider themselves neither male nor female”—as if such mental illness is an achievement. 

So, too, you must refrain from thinking, let alone saying, that having a mother and father is generally best for a child or that one man married to one woman is best for society. And you must refrain from expressing any reservations about teachers no longer calling their students “boys and girls”; about “drag queen story hours” for 5-year-olds; or about giving hormone blockers to children.

The next time you read about “thought control” in North Korea, understand that North Korea’s thought control differs from “Pride” days and nights at sporting events—and from the rest of the Left—only by degree. The Left in America, like the Left in North Korea, demands your mind, not just your behavior.

Director of ableist HBO show makes a disgusting (yet not that surprising) confession

 

Source: https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-last-of-us-director-says-he-wanted-to-trick-audience-into-watching-gay-love-story

“The Last of Us” director Peter Hoar said he wanted to “trick” his audience into watching a gay love story in an episode of HBO Max’s new apocalyptic drama.

Hoar, who is gay and is known for his work on the British LGBT+ miniseries, “It’s a Sin,” said that he wanted the viewers to see that it was the “same love” as straight people, but just between two guys, Independent UK reported.

“Sometimes you have to sort of trick the rest of the world into watching these things before they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, it was two guys. I just realized,'” Hoar told Inverse magazine ahead the release of the zombie series’ third episode.

“I think then they might understand that it’s all real,” he added. “It’s just the same love.”

 

In the first two episodes of the series adapted from the popular video game, the show focused on fighting zombies. However, the third one veered off course with a self-contained romance between two surviving men Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) who hadn’t been infected with the virus.

Reading through reviews on”Rotten Tomatoes,” the third episode didn’t sit well with many who suggested skipping it, as most of the episode consisted of the romance between the two men.

“If episode 3 was about a heterosexual couple, fans would still be bored and disappointed,” one person wrote. “Most fans are watching for the adaptation of a video game about fighting zombies, not a full episode about romance. We all know why the episode is receiving high praise, let’s calm down.”

“They didn’t respect the existing story in the game with this episode 3, terrible!” another wrote.

One shared, “Episode 3 was an hour of my life I will never get back. Just watch episodes 1 & 2 and wait until episode 4 comes out.”

And on “Common Sense Media” a reviewer slammed the site for only showing “reviews based on first/early episodes.”

“There is a sex scene between two men in episode 3 not mentioned anywhere,” the person wrote. “For new/current series, there should be a weekly update from the review team. I wrote a similar review to the Terminal List series and as of today, it is still not updated. Very irresponsible to parents/guradians who use this site. Especially those who subscribe monthly. Please fix!!!”

-------------------------------------

My Take: That's right, ladies and gentlemen. So called Gay activists will go so far as to trash the disabled community and basically promote assisted suicide to trick dummies into loving a disgusting story!! (one half of this so called relationship became disabled and demanded to be suicided, and he was by his dumb 'partner'. SUCH AN INSPIRING AND BEAUTIFUL STORY, IS IT NOT??!! 🤬🤬).

Just goes to prove 2 things: 1, The ones the left claim to be 'anti gay' actually care more about the weirdos and freaks then the ones who claim to rightfully support them (because we don't want to endlessly exploit and sexualize their lifestyle for political gain and we'd rather just see their sinful exploits be behind closed doors only instead of advocate for it all to be public and online). 

And 2: Every episode of South Park that rips on Canada is undeniably the best! (this disgusting episode was filmed in Canada, the country that is actively promoting assisted suicide.)

X22, And we Know, and more- Feb 1st

 

Fact-Check: Mass Shootings Actually Increased During Federal ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

A widely cited study used to push for more state ‘assault weapons’ bans is flawed and does not show that the 1994 federal ban saved lives.

by E. Gregory Wallace & George A. Mocsary for The Federalist

Assault weapons” ban proponents say that such bans will save lives. A recent opinion column published in the Chicago Sun-Times claims that the risk of dying in a mass shooting was 70 percent lower during the 1994-2004 federal assault weapons ban. The column was published while the Illinois state legislature was debating a state-wide assault weapons ban, which passed a few weeks ago.

The study on which that claim was based is flawed and its conclusions unreliable. Yet gun-control advocates such as the Giffords Law Center, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Sandy Hook Promise continue to use the study as they push for more assault weapons bans like the one in Illinois. Legislators, media reports, and opinion writers have cited the study, and the column published in the Chicago Sun-Times has appeared in several media outlets.

The study was produced by Charles DiMaggio, lead author; Michael Klein, the opinion column’s author; and seven other medical professionals. It examined data from three open-source mass shooting databases. The study identified 44 mass shootings from 1981 through 2017 in which four or more fatalities were reported (not including the shooter), resulting in 501 fatalities. It determined that 34 of these shootings were committed with so-called assault weapons, which accounted for 430 (86 percent) of the fatalities.

The study found that mass shooting deaths decreased during the years the federal ban was in effect. It claimed that had the federal ban been in effect for the entire period from 1981 through 2017, it might have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the non-ban years.

Defining ‘Assault Weapons’

Measuring the effect of the federal assault weapons ban requires distinguishing mass shootings with assault weapons from mass shootings with non-banned weapons, such as handguns. After all, the point of an assault weapons ban is to reduce mass shootings with the banned firearms.

There is no consistent legal definition of “assault weapon,” so one must look to how each law banning such firearms defines them. An “assault weapon” under the 1994 federal ban included both specific firearms by name and any semiautomatic firearm capable of accepting a detachable magazine and having two or more features such as a folding or telescoping stock, pistol grip, barrel shroud, flash hider, or threaded barrel. Subsequently enacted state and local bans typically require only one such additional feature.

To identify whether a mass shooting occurred with an assault weapon, the DiMaggio study’s authors made no attempt to determine whether the weapons used actually met the 1994 ban’s definition of “assault weapon.” Instead, they simply searched the databases’ text for “AK,” “AR,” “MCX,” “assault,” and “semiautomatic.” (Klein claimed in his column that the authors “chose to use the strict federal definition of an assault weapon,” but this methodology belies that statement.)

Although all assault weapons are semiautomatic, not all semiautomatics are assault weapons. A semiautomatic firearm fires only one round with each pull of the trigger and automatically loads the next round after firing. The federal ban did not apply to all semiautomatic firearms, as the study’s authors assumed, but only to those with detachable magazines and two or more of the specified features. The vast majority of semiautomatic handguns do not have the additional features required by the federal ban.

Study Includes Non-Banned, Common Handguns in Statistics

Using “semiautomatic” as a search identifier vastly overstated the number of mass shootings committed with so-called assault weapons. The study’s weapon data set for the 34 incidents shows that in at least 20 (almost 60 percent) of the shootings, non-banned semiautomatic handguns — in 9mm, .45, and other popular calibers — were wrongly identified as assault weapons. This obviously skewed the study’s results.

Common semiautomatic handguns should never be confused with “assault weapons.” No federal or state assault weapons ban has ever included such handguns.

Perhaps the study’s authors were confused about what constituted an “assault weapon.” This is unsurprising. The term “assault weapon” was popularized in the late 1980s not to address a particular problem, but to enliven a waning gun-control movement by confusing and scaring the public about firearms. A report from gun-control advocacy group The Violence Policy Center explains: 

Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

The study’s misidentification error was pointed out in a public letter to column writer Klein and his study co-authors by University of Massachusetts Professor Louis Klarevas, a well-known academic expert on mass shootings and author of “Rampage Nation: Securing America from Mass Shootings.” After reviewing the study’s data set, Klarevas challenged the study’s conclusions based on this “large number of misclassifications.”

The authors responded: “We make no claim to have retroactively determined whether these guns would have been illegal under the original statutory language.” But both their study and Klein’s column are about the effectiveness of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban.

Ignoring the need for fidelity to what the statute actually banned in determining whether that statute was effective, they claimed that assault weapon definitions don’t really matter, but only the “main message” of the study, which is that “fewer people died in mass shooting incidents during the ban period.”

Data Show More Mass Shootings During Ban

The Violence Project publishes the most comprehensive mass-shooting database. The federal ban became effective on Sept. 24, 1994. In the preceding decade, the Violence Project database shows that 25 mass shootings resulted in 156 total fatalities. Assault weapons were used in six of those shootings with 36 fatalities. During the ban, 33 mass shootings resulted in 173 total fatalities. Assault weapons were used in seven shootings with 42 fatalities. In the post-ban decade, 46 mass shootings resulted in 328 fatalities. Assault weapons were used in eight shootings with 70 fatalities.

The Violence Project database also shows that there were more mass shooting fatalities in the decade during the federal ban (173) than in the decade before the ban (156), which contradicts the DiMaggio study’s “main message.”

Mass shootings with assault weapons also did not spike once the ban expired. Such shootings increased from six (pre-ban) to seven (during the ban) to eight (post-ban) during this 30-year period. The post-ban increase is the continuation of an existing trend.

Mass shootings and fatalities did increase in the decade following the federal ban’s expiration, but that increase is mostly from incidents involving non–assault weapons. Pre-ban, 19 mass shootings with non-assault weapons resulted in 120 fatalities. During the ban, 26 such shootings resulted in 131 fatalities. Post-ban, 38 non-assault-weapon shootings resulted in 258 fatalities.

This all suggests that banning “assault weapons” does not affect mass shootings.

Bans Are Not the Answer

Mass shootings are unspeakable tragedies that take innocent lives, shatter families, and traumatize communities. Nobody wants guns in the hands of mass murderers. But the perception that the problem is with the firearm rather than the shooter obscures the complexities surrounding the actual causes of mass shootings and diverts policymakers from effective prevention measures.

One thing is clear: The search for meaningful solutions is not advanced by studying apples but making claims about oranges.

 

Head of Kyiv tax authority accused of multimillion-dollar fraud

One of unnamed woman’s four homes raided along with home of former Zelenskiy ally amid president’s crackdown on corruption

Members of Ukraine’s state bureau of investigation raided the unnamed woman’s home. Photograph: Ukrainian state bureau of investigation

Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s crackdown on corruption has continued as the woman leading the Kyiv tax authority was accused of massive fraud after a raid of one of her four homes, and a series of national officials were forced from office.

The residence of the businessman Igor Kolomoisky, a former political ally of Ukraine’s president, was also raided as part of an investigation into the suspected evasion of customs duties linked to the Ukrainian oil producer Ukrnafta and refiner Ukrtatnafta.

The media empire owned by Kolomoisky, who is already under US sanctions for his alleged involvement in “significant corruption”, helped popularise Zelenskiy as an entertainer and then supported his political career. Kolomoisky has denied any wrongdoing.

Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the country’s SBU security service, said “dozens” of actions had taken place on Wednesday, targeting what he described as corrupt officials, Russian agents and those undermining the nation’s security.

“We don’t plan to stop,” he said in a statement on Telegram. “Every criminal who has the audacity to harm Ukraine, especially under war conditions, must understand clearly that we will put him in handcuffs.”

The developments came as Ukraine’s president prepared for an EU summit on Friday in Kyiv to discuss the country’s potential accession to the bloc of 27 member states.

According to a leaked draft statement, the EU will encourage Ukraine to meet the European Commission’s demands – which include dealing with corruption – to allow membership negotiations to start. “The EU will decide on further steps once all conditions specified in the Commission’s opinion are fully met,” the bloc is expected to say.  

A number of Ukrainian officials had been forced to resign last week amid allegations of corruption as Zelenskiy pledged that practices that were widespread before the war in Ukraine would not be allowed to continue.

The crackdown was in full swing on Wednesday. Ukraine’s state bureau of investigation (SBI) said in a statement that the acting head of Kyiv’s tax inspectorate, who was not named, had abused her “power and official position” along with other members of the authority.  

During a raid on the woman’s home, investigators found $158,000 (about £128,000), 530,000 Ukrainian hrynvia (£11,000), €2,200 (£1,900) in cash, and an array of expensive jewellery, designer-branded clothing and luxury gold watches. The SBI published photographs of what it described as the haul.

Investigators claimed the woman’s lifestyle did not fit her declared income as head of the capital’s main tax office. She is said to own three flats in the city with a total value of $1m (£811,640), a house near Kyiv worth about $200,000 and two cars together worth about $150,000.

Her driver was also found to have a $100,000 car registered in his name, although the man’s “income in recent years was no more than $8,000”, the SBI claimed    

The Guardian was unable to contact the official. Kyiv’s tax office did not respond to a request for comment.

Investigators allege that the woman had used her position to reduce the tax bills of some individuals and companies.   

It also emerged that the acting heads of the national customs and tax services had been fired. Last month a series of alleged corruption schemes were unravelled in regional customs offices.

Zelenskiy had said he would make changes after last week’s arrest and dismissal of Vasyl Lozinskyi, an infrastructure minister, in relation to accusations of inflating the price of winter equipment, including generators, and allegedly siphoning off $400,000. About $38,000 in cash was reportedly found in his office. He has not commented.

The deputy defence minister, Vyacheslav Shapovalov, had also “asked to be fired” after reports that soldiers’ rations were being bought for inflated prices, raising concerns of potential kickbacks. He has denied any wrongdoing.

According to Transparency International’s 2021 index, Ukraine is the second most corrupt country in Europe behind Russia. With Ukraine taking its first steps on what could be a long path to EU accession, the government is under pressure to show that it has cleaned up its act.

Zelenskiy is expected to take part in a summit in Kyiv with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and her European Council counterpart, Charles Michel, on Friday to discuss progress. It is not yet known whether EU leaders will also attend.

Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said he hopes the country will become an EU member state within two years. The EU granted Ukraine formal candidate status in record time but there is no prospect of it joining the bloc on such an accelerated timetable. Turkey has had candidate status since 1999.  

Despite the lukewarm language of the draft EU statement, there was some positive news on Wednesday as US auditors who met senior Ukrainian ministers this week said they had found no evidence of the misuse of US financial aid to Ukraine. A number of senior Republicans have raised concerns about potential fraud.   

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/01/ukraine-head-of-kyiv-tax-authority-accused-of-multi-million-dollar     

Biden’s China Spy Scandal

It’s even worse than his classified documents scandal.

by Lloyd Billingsley for American Greatness

Joe Biden is taking heat for the classified documents he stashed at his home and garage. Though well worthy of attention, as Victor Davis Hanson notes, the documents scandal has overshadowed Biden’s indulgence of Chinese spies, on full display in a recent case. 

“Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have dropped their case against a New York Police Department officer who had been accused of acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the Chinese regime,” The Epoch Times reports.

Baimadajie Angwang, 33, an ethnic Tibetan and naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested in 2020 for acting as an agent of Beijing, for wire fraud, making false statements, and obstructing an official proceeding. Prosecutors charge that Angwang reported on Chinese citizens, cultivated intelligence sources, and connected Chinese officials with senior contacts in the New York Police Department. 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York recently filed a motion asking federal Judge Eric R. Komitee, a Trump nominee, to dismiss the indictment due to “additional information.” The Eastern District did not reveal the information or explain its relevance to the case. The move illuminates official Biden policy toward Chinese espionage in the United States. 

“The Justice Department is ending a controversial program, launched under the Trump administration, to hunt down Chinese spies,” CBS News reported last year. President Trump’s “China Initiative” targeted China’s theft of trade secrets and intellectual property. 

As federal prosecutors charged in 2017, MIT professor Gang Chen failed to disclose ties to China and failed to disclose a foreign bank account on a tax document. Prosecutors dropped the case against Chen, but it wasn’t clear what motivated them to act. This was hardly the only proceeding against Chinese agents the Justice Department chose to abandon. 

In 2020, federal officials changed that Chinese national Tang Juan lied about ties to the Chinese military in order to gain access to the University of California at Davis. The FBI found an April 14, 2019 article on a Xi’an, China, healthcare forum that showed Tang in a military uniform bearing the insignia of the Civilian Cadres of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The FBI also found two other articles listing Tang’s employer as the People’s Liberation Army’s Air Force Medical University (AFMU), also known as the Fourth Military Medical University (FMMU). 

According to court documents, Tang was part of a PLA operation to send military scientists to the United States with false covers or false statements about their true employment. Military superiors in China tasked the spies to copy and steal information from American institutions.

Tang Juan also emerged in the visa fraud case of Song Chen. According to July 20, 2020, court documents, “an active duty People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military scientist who lied to get into the United States, attempted to destroy evidence, and lied extensively to the FBI when interviewed.”

The documents also cite Wang Xin, a visiting researcher at the University of California at San Francisco arrested on charges of visa fraud. Wang was “in fact an active duty member in the PLA, at a level that roughly corresponded with the level of major in the United States.” Wang had “emailed UCSF research to his PLA laboratory,” and his supervisor in China tasked Wang “to observe and document the layout of the UCSF lab to replicate it when he returned to China.”

The court documents refer to Tang Juan, also in the United States on a J-1 visa. So was a Chinese national identified as “LT,” who gained access to Duke University despite affiliations with “the PLA General Hospital and PLA Medical Academy.” Americans have cause to wonder why the visas were granted in the first place.

A simple internet search turned up PLA and CCP ties for Tang Juan and others now facing charges. The court documents do not reveal which U.S. government officials granted the visas, and what they knew when they approved Chinese nationals with PLA and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ties.

In July 2021, federal prosecutors suddenly dropped the charges against Tang Juan and five Chinese nationals. The Justice Department did not reveal any exculpatory information in Tang’s case, or any mistakes by the FBI in tying her to China’s military. This special treatment for Chinese spies traces back to the time Joe Biden “got China.”

Vice President Biden gained command of China policy through the efforts of longtime supporter Tom Donilon, who would serve as national security adviser under President Obama. Donilon sees no conflict between a “rising power and an established power” and contends that “a deeper U.S.-China military-to-military dialogue is central to addressing many of the sources of insecurity and potential competition between us.” (Emphasis added.)

In 2020, Biden went on record that the Chinese are “not bad folks” and not even competition for the United States. The Delaware Democrat thus provided more evidence that China “got Biden.”

President Trump set out to stop Chinese espionage but Trump Derangement Syndrome bars retention of any Trump policy, however successful. The Biden Justice Department drops the cases of Chinese spies, with little if any exculpatory evidence. As the people should know, the Delaware Democrat is hardly the only collaborator with China’s Communist regime.

Chinese spy Christine Fang, dubbed “Poonfang” by Rush Limbaugh, raised money for the 2014 election campaign of California Democrat Eric Swalwell. He faithfully parroted Chinese propaganda and was romantically involved with the Chinese agent who aided his campaign. Even so, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kept Swalwell on the intelligence committee.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)  maintained a Chinese spy on her staff for 20 years. Billed as her “driver,” the Chinese agent served in Feinstein’s San Francisco office as a liaison to the Asian American community, and even attended Chinese Consulate functions for the senator. Many questions remain.

What information, exactly, did the spy pass on to China? Why did Feinstein allow the spy to “retire” rather than fire him? Why were no charges filed against an agent of a hostile foreign power working for a U.S. senator? Did Feinstein and her husband profit from policies the senator supported? And so on.

In April 2020, Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit charging that Chinese Communist officials were responsible for “enormous death, suffering and economic losses” from the COVID pandemic. Sen. Feinstein took China’s side, branding the lawsuit “very very dangerous” and “a huge mistake.”

The California Democrat also praised China as a trading partner and “a country that has pulled tens of millions of people out of poverty in a short period of time.” China was “growing into a respectable nation among other nations,” Feinstein said, “and I deeply believe that.”

The FBI conducted no sudden raids on the residences of Feinstein and Swalwell, and the Justice Department has not launched an investigation into their ties with agents of China’s Communist regime. When the FBI does manage to catch Chinese spies, the Biden Justice Department dismisses their cases and the Biden IRS lends a hand on other fronts. 

The Confucius Institutes are a CCP front group present on many U.S. college campuses. President Trump demanded that the institutes register as a foreign mission. The Biden Junta allows them to function as a registered 501(c)(3)nonprofit with the IRS. High-ranking members of the U.S. military also betray a cooperative side.

Joint Chiefs boss General Mark Milley is willing to tip off China about what’s coming down. The people have to wonder how Milley would respond in the face of actual hostile action from China, which already has key assets already deployed stateside. 

China’s Communist regime operates police stations in New York, Los Angeles, and other American cities. And as Baimadajie Angwang shows, Chinese agents function within American police departments. This is a clear breach of American territorial and judicial sovereignty, far beyond anything the Soviet Union was able to achieve. Joe Biden is fine with all of it. 

As he made clear in his September 1 hate speech, Biden sees the greatest threat from people who want America to be great, not from a genocidal Communist dictatorship. So no surprise that the Chinese Communists act like they own the place. 

The Biden Junta is shaping up as a Chinese Occupied Government (COG) with Joe Biden the chief cog. If anybody thought that was more serious than the classified documents scandal it would be hard to blame them. 

The DeSantis Strategy

opinion by Kurt Schlichter at TownhallVIP

Ron D Is Running By Not Running

Donald Trump rekindled his bumpy campaign with a number of moves that make one scratch his head. His minions went to the Republican National Committee meeting and whipped votes for Ronna McDaniel – I watched it happen – even though he was formally neutral in the race. People took notice. And they also took notice when he went to South Carolina to talk about draining the Swamp with Lindsey Graham by his side. 

And he launched more attacks on Ron DeSantis. He insists Ron DeSantis owes him his election and that the Florida governor is disloyal for considering running. I find the idea of demanding loyalty baffling. It looks weak.

Trump’s attacks on DeSantis (supported by his Twitter minions) for being some sort of pandemic fanatic – though the media was calling him “DeathSantis” for not being enough of a fanatic – are kind of bizarre since Trump is all-in on the vaxx. His fans need a vaccine for cognitive dissonance. 

And what does DeSantis do? Ignores it and kicks booty in Florida. 

His strategy is clearly to let Donald Trump flail at him while he notches achievement after achievement on concealed carry, CRT busting, academia reform and the rest. What this does is encourage Trump’s worst instincts – his inability to be quiet. Now we are seeing his Truth Social posts sounding positively unhinged and coming fast and furious. In one, he labeled DeStantis a “globalist” and also took credit for his career, which is not the own he thinks it is. 

It's no longer 2016, and it remains to be seen whether people are still interested in the same kind of smashmouth social media stuff he used to do effectively seven years ago. The problem for him is that this was the stuff many people hated from Trump. He’s reminding people of what they don’t like. And now he has a track record to defend. Some of it is great, but some of it – like his personnel choices – stinks. That’s a problem, too.

Why should DeSantis jump in the ring now? He shouldn’t. He can build his record as Trump punches himself out. Anyone else who gets in is going to get pummeled by Trump, but none have DeSantis’s record, so that’s a fringe benefit of waiting.

And Ron saying nothing is only going to spin Don up. This primary season is going to be lit.

Idaho

I visited the Stelter homeland last weekend. It was cold but nice. Too many Californians, though. They have a small wine country, and the wine was often good, putting the lie to the classic Muppet Movie line from Steve Martin. Good food too.

It’s a red state, but apparently, it has the red state problem that causes red state GOP organizations to be soft. There’s no real Democrat competition, so everyone calls himself a Republican. But a portion of them should be Democrats. The lack of competition allows squishes to survive and thrive. You see it a lot. Texas, for instance, is known as deep red, but it’s hardly super-conservative. Florida, which was recently purple, is much harder-core. If you have to fight, you toughen up. Just an observation!