Joe Biden: Guilty Of Foul Deeds

A day of reckoning is coming.

by David Horowitz for American Greatness

"Guilty as Hell, free as a bird. America’s a great country."
— Bill Ayers, Weatherman terrorist and Obama confidant

Last week, the other shoe dropped on the Biden crime family. James Comer, chairman of the committee investigating the most disturbing scandal in the history of the White House, finally received the records from a bank—one of 12—that the Bidens have used to stash their payoffs from China’s Communist dictatorship. Comer had previously been stonewalled for two years by the corrupt and incompetent Biden Treasury head, Janet Yellen.

This first Biden bank record to be surrendered showed three members of the Biden family, including Beau Biden’s widow Hallie and one person identified only as “Biden,” received payments amounting to $1 million from a Chinese Communist State energy company. 

What were the payments for? Forget asking the Bidens, who have a long history of silence and denial on such material questions. When asked, Joe Biden denied he ever discussed Hunter Biden’s Chinese business affairs with him, even though he flew with Hunter on Air Force Two to China and met with his business associates. Never at a loss for brazen lies to extricate himself from difficult circumstances, Biden, without a second thought, denied that the bank records were “true.” 

To date, there hasn’t been one attempt by the Biden camp to try to explain what service the Bidens actually supplied to the Chinese Communists to earn such ample rewards. At the lowest levels of this corruption, Hallie Biden, who is a school counselor, received $25,000 from the Chinese Communist Party. For what?

When you have no answers to such material questions, when you lie continually about the operations themselves (“I never discussed Hunter’s business with my son!”) when you suborn your intelligence services to carry out an elaborate and expensive effort to suppress the story of an incriminating laptop, and do it right before a presidential election, you are in fact telling us that you are guilty of the obvious crime you are covering up. In this case, treason: colluding with an enemy power to hurt your own country.

Consider the simple fact that though pieces of this story have become objects of public concern over the last half dozen years, the Biden camp has constructed no narrative to provide a plausible explanation of these extraordinary payoffs from the Chinese Communist dictatorship; in other words, no effort has been made to provide an alternative explanation to the apparent one of personal greed and national betrayal.

I ask readers to put themselves in the position of the president. You are taking massive payments from a government that deliberately sent millions of its subjects from the Wuhan center of a deadly pandemic to countries around the world to celebrate the Lunar New Year. This criminal action resulted in the deaths of 9 million people globally, including a million Americans. You then backed this same criminal dictatorship’s efforts to cover up the origins of that outbreak in a Chinese Communist military lab which was running “gain of function” research, paid for by your government, on the deadly virus at the heart of said pandemic.

At the same time, the dictatorship from which you were receiving payments making your family rich beyond its wildest dreams was organizing alliances with America’s deadly enemies, Russia and Iran. And thanks to your deliberate destruction of America’s southern border, which effectively put its control in the hands of Mexico’s drug cartels, you created a new mortal threat to the safety of American citizens in the form of a new drug—fentanyl—which is produced by the Chinese Communists and distributed to Americans by the Mexicans. 

The annual death toll from fentanyl poisoning among Americans now equals the annual death toll of American soldiers in World War II. But Biden has made no effort to deter the Chinese from poisoning American citizens by, for example, ending the subsidies we provide to their economy or revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status, or closing all the Confucius Institutes ensconced at our universities and designed to steal our technologies. From the Chinese Communist point of view, this alone would be worth the tens of millions of dollars they have poured into the Bidens’ pockets.

Yet, as a president elected by less than .03 percent of the popular vote, Biden seems to feel no vulnerability on this front—not enough even to cook up a rudimentary alibi. Either Biden is so influenced by the radicals in the Democratic Party who hate America that he—or the people guiding him—are ready to collude in its destruction in the name of a progressive future. Or perhaps he has been so insulated from the consequences of his destructive policies by a corrupt and kept media that he and his influencers have convinced themselves they can get away with anything. Whichever is the case, rest assured that there are limits to how willing Americans may be to remain silent in the face of their destruction. A day of reckoning is coming.

X22, And we Know, and more- March 22

 

The Right Doesn’t Have to Agree on Everything—Only on Fighting the Left

If these two cracks -- internal disagreements about aiding Ukraine and nominating Donald Trump -- grow into fissures, the chances of a conservative/Republican victory in 2024 will be almost nil.

by Dennis Prager for American Greatness

Given the damage the Left and the Left’s political party, the Democrats, are doing to America, you would think conservatives would understand that defeating the Left is by far their most important task. 

The Left’s damage includes, to name but a few examples, doing incalculable damage to America’s children by supporting and advocating mutilating surgeries, prescribing hormone blockers, promoting innocence-robbing “nonbinary” cross-dressing shows and discussions, and having ordered inexcusable school lockdowns; printing trillions of dollars, which in turn has led to devastating inflation, unprecedentedly high national debt, and a weakened dollar; and ruining every institution in the country including, but not limited to, the universities, the military, medicine, the arts, sports, journalism, religion, marriage, and free speech.

Yet, apparently, millions of conservatives, including some leading ones, do not understand that defeating the Left is their most important task. For many conservatives, it appears that whether to aid Ukraine or whether to support former President Donald Trump overshadows defeating the Left.

Let’s begin with Ukraine. 

A prominent conservative recently tweeted that every Republican who supports aiding Ukraine is a RINO (Republican In Name Only). That would mean that conservatives such as Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, and I—not to mention more than 40 percent of all Republicans—are RINOs.

The dismissal of fellow conservatives, interestingly, seems to be primarily in one direction. Conservatives who support aiding Ukraine do not dismiss conservatives who oppose such aid. But many conservative opponents of aid to Ukraine dismiss conservatives who support aid to Ukraine. For example, I continue to regard conservatives such as Tucker Carlson, perhaps the leading conservative critic of aid to Ukraine, as an invaluable asset to the conservative cause and its task of fighting the Left. Though we differ on Ukraine, I continue to regard him as my respected ally.

People should adopt two rules with regard to political allies. 

One is that you will have no allies if your only allies are individuals with whom you agree on every issue; it suffices to agree on most issues. The other rule is that if we agree about who our chief enemy is, we can differ on a lot of other issues. With almost no exceptions, if you understand the existential threat the Left poses to America and to Western civilization, you are my ally.

It seems that some conservative opponents of aiding Ukraine do not believe in these two rules. They are prepared to jettison erstwhile allies who support aiding Ukraine, and they do not regard fighting the American Left as important enough to ignore differences over Ukraine.

That is a recipe for a fatal fracture of the conservative movement and of the Republican Party. If conservative opponents of aiding Ukraine make agreement on Ukraine a make-or-break issue of whom to ally with and whom to support politically, that means the end of the anti-Left coalition.

The other divisive issue that poses a fatal threat to conservatism and the Republican Party — and therefore to America — is whether to support any Republican presidential candidate other than Trump. I hope I am wrong, but it seems that millions of conservatives will not enthusiastically support any Republican presidential nominee other than Trump.

These people might be called “Only Trumpers.” And because of their numbers, they pose an even greater threat to Republican unity than did the “Never Trumpers.” Yet, the two groups are mirror images of one another. They both agree that Donald Trump is more important than defeating the Left (and therefore saving America). For the Never Trumpers, defeating Trump was more important than defeating the Left; and for the Only Trumpers, nominating Trump is more important than defeating the Left.

If these two cracks — internal disagreements about aiding Ukraine and nominating Donald Trump — grow into fissures, the chances of a conservative/Republican victory in 2024 will be almost nil. And if that should happen — i.e., if the Left is allowed to win again – it is difficult to imagine America and its values surviving.

Bragg Hit the Brakes – Manhattan Grand Jury Told to Take Day Off, Delaying Any Indictment of President Trump

The intensely political New York City District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, has told the grand jury in the Trump proceedings not to report today.

This grand jury has been meeting on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, according to Business Insider who was the first to report today’s cancellation.  President Trump responded to the delay via Truth Social:

New York – […] The Manhattan ‘hush-money’ grand jury has been told not to come in on Wednesday, a cancellation that comes on the brink of a possible historic indictment vote of former President Donald Trump, according to two law enforcement officers.

And while nothing beyond Wednesday is set in stone, it is unlikely that the grand jury will meet at all this week, said one of the law enforcement sources, who spoke to Insider on condition of anonymity.

[…] Grand juries convene in secret, and prosecutors are statutorily barred from discussing what they do. The pause comes after unexpected testimony Monday by Robert Costello, who was allowed to address the grand jurors at the defense’s request.  Costello, who previously served as Cohen’s legal advisor, said at a press conference Monday that he attacked his former client’s credibility during his testimony. Cohen had just spent two days of testimony walking grand jurors through the chronology of Trump’s involvement in the payment. (read more) 

The legal merits of the campaign finance case are farcical on their face, as admitted by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), previously litigated via legal precedent (John Edwards case), and even Supreme Court interpretation (VA Gov Bob McDonnell case).  Even Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann didn’t want to touch this approach.

Additionally, even if there was a legal issue, there isn’t, the statute of limitations on the claimed infraction has expired.  Furthermore, and seemingly overlooked by most pundits opining on the issue, the legal issue Bragg is attempting to weaponize is a federal campaign finance issue, out of the jurisdiction of the Manhattan district attorney. So, what gives?

Why would George Soros funded District Attorney Alvin Bragg proceed with a case that was structurally designed to fail on every aspect of the case?  The answer, ‘politics’, pure banana republic politics.

Hillary Clinton was found to have violated campaign finance laws when her campaign used “legal expenses” to pay for the creation of the Christopher Steele dossier; the originating material for the false Trump-Russia conspiracy theory.   Hillary Clinton was fined by the FEC for not accurately identifying the payments to Fusion GPS as campaign expenses; however, she WAS NOT prosecuted by the DOJ for the issue.

Despite the dismissal of the serious issue this case represents, by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a flippant dismissal that is garnering him a great deal of righteous condemnation, the extreme double standard represented in this case against President Trump is what forms the basis for American citizens to be angered about the dual system of justice.   It’s a big deal….  A very big deal.

The U.S. Government Is Building A Vast Surveillance And Speech Suppression Web Around Every American

Our government is preparing to monitor every word Americans say on the internet and censor citizens who don’t toe the party line.

Margot Cleveland reporting for The Federalist

Our government is preparing to monitor every word Americans say on the internet—the speech of journalists, politicians, religious organizations, advocacy groups, and even private citizens. Should those conversations conflict with the government’s viewpoint about what is in the best interests of our country and her citizens, that speech will be silenced.

While the “Twitter Files” offer a glimpse into the government’s efforts to censor disfavored viewpoints, what we have seen is nothing compared to what is planned, as the details of hundreds of federal awards lay bare. Research by The Federalist reveals our tax dollars are funding the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) technology that will allow the government to easily discover “problematic” speech and track Americans reading or partaking in such conversations.

Then, in partnership with Big Tech, Big Business, and media outlets, the government will ensure the speech is censored, under the guise of combatting “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

AI and ML Technology Will Monitor Everything We Say and Read

The federal government has awarded more than 500-plus contracts or grants related to “misinformation” or “disinformation” since 2020. One predominant area of research pushed by the Department of Defense involves the use of AI and ML technology to monitor or listen to internet “conversations.”

Originally used as a marketing tool for businesses to track discussions about their brands and products and to track competitors, the DOD and other federal agencies are now paying for-profit public relations and communications firms to convert their technology into tools for the government to monitor speech on the internet.

The areas of the internet the companies monitor differ somewhat, and each business offers its own unique AI and ML proprietary technology, but the underlying approach and goals remain identical: The technology under development will “mine” large portions of the internet and identify conversations deemed indicative of an emerging harmful narrative, to allow the government to track those “threats” and adopt countermeasures before the messages go viral.

With AI and ML identifying in real-time the origins of supposed influence operations and how the messages spread, the government will have the ability to preempt the amplification of the speech, squelching even true reporting before the general populace has an opportunity to learn the news. To appreciate fully the danger this poses to free speech requires Americans to consider the use of that technology with these seven additional details.

1. Everything Everywhere All At Once

First, the AI and ML technology under development will mine every conceivable mode of conversation for the government. Consider, for example, the databases monitored by just a few of the companies the government is paying to develop this AI and ML technology.

PeakMetrics, the recipient of a $1.5 million award, tracks millions of news sites, blogs, global social platforms, podcasts, TV and radio, and email newsletters.

Omelas Inc., which received more than $1 million in taxpayer money, culls data from “the most influential newspapers, TV channels, government offices, militant groups, and more across a dozen social networks and messaging apps, thousands of websites, and thousands of RSS feeds.”

Alethea Group, which received a Phase I award of nearly $50,000 to develop a “machine learning tool for proactive disinformation/misinformation detection, assessment, and mitigation,” boasts it covers data sources including mainstream and “fringe” social media platforms, peer-to-peer messaging platforms, blogs and forums, state-affiliated media sites, “gray” propaganda sites, and the dark web.

Newsguard, awarded $750,000 by the DOD, offers two databases, including its unreliable reliability ratings database of thousands of news and information websites and a second database of purported hoaxes.

Primer, which scored a $3 million award to develop its technology, offers a database that looks to news and media data sources, publicly captured images, the dark web, cyberattacks shared by the general public, and classified—presumably for government clients—and unclassified data sources. Primer also partners with Flashpoint, which adds “Telegram, Reddit, Discord, and “the deep and dark web” to the databases mined.

2. We’re Talking Americans, Not Just Russian Bots

It is also important to recognize that the AI and ML technology under development will not just mine foreign or state-connected actors, but will monitor everyone’s speech. Both the government grants and the web pages of the monitoring companies confirm this reality.

We also know from the “Twitter Files” that the government and its fellow residents in the Censorship-Industrial Complex view the speech of Americans as related to foreign influence operations merely because the viewpoint matches what they claim is an adversary’s perspective. And we know the government pushed for the censorship of ordinary Americans.

By its nature, AI and ML technology has unlimited potential to flag problematic speech on any imaginable subject. Here, the past is prologue: Speech need not involve terrorism, acts of war, or even our electoral process for our government to consider it within its purview to fact-check. (It also need not be false; see point 4).

The “Twitter Files” and recent events provide Americans a glimpse into the breadth of the topics the government may deem harmful narratives worthy of censor—from elections, to vaccines, to runs on grocery stores. Underlying the government’s obsession with silencing misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information is the “Great Power Competition” perspective of foreign relations, under which China and Russia represent a constant threat to America’s power, influences, and interests.

With the government viewing foreign relations through the Great Power Competition paradigm, speech on any topic, touching even tangentially on America’s “power, influences, and interests,” will be fair game for censorship efforts.

3. The Great Power Competition Renders Everything Fair Game for Censorship

While to convincingly prove this reality requires a deeper exposé—coming soon—on the Great Power Competition’s connection to the government’s focus on misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information, last week Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, showcased the current thinking inspiring our leaders. During a conference call with the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation about the Silicon Valley Bank bailout, Kelly asked whether there was “a way to censor information on social media to prevent a run on the banks.”

Kelly’s question was “couched” “in a concern that foreign actors would be doing this,” Rep. Thomas Massie told Public, but, according to Massie, Kelly “didn’t suggest the censorship should be limited to foreigners or to things that were untrue.”

The move from the censorship of terrorism to the silencing of supposed interference in elections to censoring posts about “bank runs” follows naturally from the shift in foreign relations paradigms from the War on Terror to the Great Powers Competition. The latter views anything affecting American power or influence as fair game. We also saw this shift with the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) proposal to consider “financial misinformation” within its purview.

The government’s censorship efforts won’t stop at supposed “financial misinformation,” however, because anything and everything journalists report and citizens discuss affects America’s “power, influence, and interest.” So, the government’s development of technology to monitor the entirety of the internet foretells a much more dangerous threat than apparent on the surface.

4. The Government Brands True Speech Misinformation

The threat to free speech stemming from the government’s monitoring of the internet is further increased by our overlords’ willingness to brand true speech “misinformation, disinformation, or mal-information” and then seek to censor it. The “Twitter Files” also exposed this reality, with our government and its lackeys seeking the censorship of true facts that might lead to “vaccine hesitancy” or reveal runs on grocery stores.

That our government would seek to silence true speech on such matters gives Americans reason to fear further censorship of true information.

5. Faulty Analysis and Biased Censors

The “Twitter Files” also revealed that censorship demands by the government, think tanks, and academic institutions relied on faulty misinformation analyses, including ones that identified innocent Americans as foreign actors. Also, many of those involved in the disinformation industry maintain left-leaning bias and a penchant for targeting conservatives.

In furthering its plans to monitor the internet for supposedly harmful narratives to silence, the government is continuing to work with biased groups, including ones that pushed faulty analyses, adding to the threat to free speech.

6. The Government’s Partners Are Poised to Censor

The government’s push to develop AI and ML technology to mine the internet is even more terrifying knowing that a Censorship Complex has already been built. The “Twitter Files” revealed the breadth and depth of the complex, with every alphabet-soup federal agency working with the social media giants and an array of think tanks and academic institutions, and with the legacy media providing an assist when censorship requests went ignored.

While Elon Musk may have exited Twitter from the group, the Censorship Complex still stands tall and ready to silence the speech of those who dare dissent. This public-private collaboration makes the government’s move to monitor the internet even more threatening to free speech.

7. Those Who Could Warn the Public or Stop the Plot Are All-In

The threat is further heightened because those with the power to warn the public and demand the government stop silencing Americans’ speech are complicit. The corrupt media’s coverage, or lack thereof, of Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger’s congressional testimony on the Censorship Complex proves this point. So too does the Democrats’ pathetic performance during the hearings, when they exposed themselves as enemies of free speech.

With Democrats, the legacy media, and many Republicans all in on the government’s efforts to censor misinformation and disinformation, it will be extremely difficult for the public to recognize the risks free speech faces—especially since those trying to sound the alarm have already been falsely branded purveyors of disinformation.

A chance remains, though, that enough ordinary Americans will hear the message before it is too late and demand Congress close the Censorship-Industrial Complex.

Brazil's Socialist President Orders Nationwide Gun Grab After Surge in Sales

Ben Kew reporting for RedState 

Brazil’s recently inaugurated leftist President Lula Ignacio Da Silva has initiated a process of taking back guns from citizens after a surge in sales toward the end of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency.

The Wall Street Journal detailed in a report on Tuesday how Lula has already reversed looser gun restrictions from the Bolsonaro era and plans to force owners to register their firearms or face arrest.

“It’s time to put down your weapons, weapons that should never have been wielded,” Lula said after winning last year’s presidential election in contentious circumstances. “Guns kill and we choose life.”

Lula has now given owners an ultimatum of March 31 to bring their guns to their nearest police station for inspection and registration in a national government database.

In April, Lula will order a presidential decree forcing owners to turn over any firearms in excess of the new three-per-person rule, or face arrest and prosecution, Brazil’s justice minister, Flávio Dino, told the Journal. 

“Any gun that is not declared will be considered an illegal weapon…they’ll be committing a crime,” said Dino, adding that a failure to comply could result in two to four years in prison plus an unlimited fine.

According to the Brazilian think tank the Igarapé Institute, around 1.6 million guns were purchased during Bolsonaro’s term in office, representing more than half of the total three million firearms in national circulation.

Federal deputy Paulo Bilynskyj of the country’s center-right Liberal Party was among those criticizing the new rule and denounced it as unconstitutional:

When ordinance 299 created a new crime, the crime of not re-registering your firearm, this ordinance, this new crime, violates the principle of legality, which is the basic principle of criminal law. There is no crime without a previous law that defines it. Now, in Brazil, we have inaugurated a new type of crime. This modality is the crime created by ordinance of the Ministry of Justice. Absolutely unconstitutional.

Shortly after taking office, Lula issued a separate decree suspending any further registration of guns for “hunting and sport.” The decree also prevents gun owners “from transporting loaded weapons, suspends new applications for gun clubs and reduces the number of firearms permitted per individual from six to three.”

The gun-grabbing push comes despite Brazil recording its lowest level of homicides in 15 years by the end of the Bolsonaro presidency, just a few years after the South American country reported more homicides than anywhere in the world in 2017. However, anti-gun campaigners argue that gun murders were already in decline.

Brazil’s gun laws were comparatively liberal until the turn of the 21st century, when Lula took power for the first time. In 2003, the year he took office, Lula passed some of the world’s most aggressive gun control policies that saw millions of people turn in their firearms. Lula claimed the policy was necessary to reduce rising crime rates.

In 2005, the country even held a referendum where 64 percent of Brazilians voted against a ban on firearm sales, although the restrictions remained in place until 2016 when Michel Temer took office.

Progressives Prove Once Again That They Don’t Care About Racism

posted by Jeff Charles at RedStateVIP 

For people who claim to oppose racism in American society, some progressives are having a hard time figuring out how to do it. Indeed, these people have taken the concept of racial bigotry and turned it into a mockery of those who actually fought to diminish the impact of racism on minorities.

I have long contended that most high-profile progressives don’t give a rip about racism or its effects on Americans. They prove it time and time again when they refuse to call it out when it is displayed by people on their own team.

But another way we can tell that these people aren’t as concerned about racism as they would have us believe is in how they apply the label. Just this week, there were at least two stories demonstrating how little these people care about the supposed fight to end bigotry.

For starters, one of these individuals published an unintentionally hilarious article claiming that drinking coffee is racist. I thought it humorous when I first saw it. I was having my morning steaming cup of racism when I first found out I was perpetuating white supremacy.

Near the beginning of the piece, the author claims that white people commonly tell a joke about coffee: “There are three things that are necessary in order to make a cup of coffee, and they are: first, a black man to roast the coffee; second, a yellow man to grind it; and third, a white man to drink it.”

Apparently, blacks and Asians don’t enjoy a good cup of joe. This is something reserved only for racist white folks.

The author goes on to argue that “every facet of the coffee industry, in fact, is rooted in racism” and that when consuming the beverage, “whites have been able to drink the fruits of our labor and our culture with impunity.”

How dare these melanin-challenged individuals think they can have a hot java every now and then?! The unmitigated gall!

Oh, but it gets better.

The author then explains:

Coffee first came to North America and Europe between 1650 and 1700. But coffee was an important, almost religious, part of Black culture going as far back as the 1400s in Ethiopia. After the whites got the first sip of the Black delicacy, they brutally enslaved people of color to keep up with demand, turning a ritualistic drink into another consumer product in the colonial capitalist machine.

Later in the piece, the author suggests that people should boycott the coffee industry due to its problematic history. This article claims that even buying specialty coffee or patronizing a local coffee shop because the former “suggests that some coffee is somehow superior to others” and the latter is the “number one sign of gentrification of Black spaces and Black places.”

The whole thing reads like one of my satire pieces. But I checked, and it does not appear the site is using humor to make a point.

But then we have birds, or specifically, pictures of birds that are also guilty of racial bigotry. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, a columnist put the Audobon Society in his crosshairs, claiming that it too, is racist. RedState’s Brad Slager explained:

John James Audubon was a naturalist who painted birds to create a record and aid in the preservation of threatened creatures. Audubon discovered dozens of new species and his collected work in “The Birds of America” is still regarded as an important source to this day. HOWEVER — Audubon owned slaves, and as such, this means he needs to be erased from the historical record. There has been a call to have the Audubon name stricken from the organization.

Slager further explained that the organization has considered changing its name to something less slaveownery, but for now, it is sticking with its current namesake. Dino Grandoni was not amused by this development. In the piece, he says that this “move comes even as about half a dozen of the organization’s regional chapters have pledged to scrub his name from their titles.”

The columnist also argues that the organization’s decision to keep its name “underscores the challenge of rebuking a racist past while retaining history that has made ‘Audobon’ a household name associated with protecting birds.”

After reading those two stories, I think my IQ dropped by about ten points. You see what I am willing to go through for you, dear reader?

But seriously, these people have taken the concept of racism and used it in a way that would be comical if they were not serious. Next thing you know, these Marxists will be calling for a boycott of cotton because it perpetuates the legacy of slavery.

Here’s the important question: If you were truly serious about dealing with racism’s impact on America, would you be focusing your efforts on coffee and birds? These people have to know they will never persuade people to believe that drinking coffee is racist nor will anyone care about the name of the Audobon Society. Instead, they would focus on areas in which racism actually has a deleterious effect on aspects of the culture.

Perhaps these people have never truly experienced racism, so they don’t understand what it really means. Imagine what the reaction would be if these people told Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. that they were concerned about the racism of coffee and birds?

I think it is possible that both of these leaders might feel that they accomplished their objective. If there are people identifying racism in such silly areas, maybe it’s possible that America has made substantial progress in addressing the issue.

DeSantis Finally Hits Back at Trump in New Interview, Meltdown Commences

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

If you were one of those people hoping that the presidential primary season would hold off a few more months, I regret to inform you that the gloves are good and fully off.

Donald Trump has been savaging Ron DeSantis (up to and including suggesting he’s a pedophile) for months, but up to this point, the Florida governor had held his fire. That is no more after DeSantis did an interview with Fox Nation in which he finally responded to some of Trump’s jabs.

It’s only March, so I’m going to do my best to not get in the weeds yet. There will be a time for choosing eventually, but for now, here’s how the interview went down.

When I asked DeSantis to cite specific differences between him and Trump, he said: “Well I think there’s a few things. The approach to COVID was different. I would have fired somebody like Fauci. I think he got way too big for his britches, and I think he did a lot of damage.”

DeSantis also slammed Trump’s chaotic, self-obsessed, and divisive management style, saying:

“I also think just in terms of my approach to leadership, I get personnel in the Government who have the agenda of the people and share our agenda. You bring your own agenda in you’re gone. We’re just not gonna have that. So, the way we run the Government I think is no daily drama, focus on the big picture and put points on the board and I think that’s something that’s very important.”

I will say this before we continue. I think Piers Morgan is being a bit hyperbolic by describing DeSantis’ answers as “slams.” They are as measured as the governor normally is. That’s his thing. He thinks everything through three times before saying it and doesn’t lash out. Some people like that. Others like a more sharp-edged style, though DeSantis does plenty of rhetorical thrashing of the press when necessary.

When pressed on Trump giving him silly nicknames, here’s what the Florida governor had to say.

“I don’t know how to spell the sanctimonious one. I don’t really know what it means, but I kinda like it, it’s long, it’s got a lot of vowels. We’ll go with that, that’s fine. I mean you can call me whatever you want, just as long as you also call me a winner because that’s what we’ve been able to do in Florida, is put a lot of points on the board and really take this State to the next level.”

Until now, DeSantis has never engaged with any of Trump’s regular attempts to provoke him and he doesn’t intend to make a habit of it.

“To me, it’s just background noise,” he said. “It’s not important for me to be fighting with people on social media. It’s not accomplishing anything for the people I represent. So, we really just focus on knocking out victories, day after day, and if I got involved in all the under tow I would not be able to be an effective Governor. So, I don’t think it’s something that makes sense for me.”

DeSantis and Morgan also got into the “break-up” that happened with Trump, with the former putting the blame on his resounding 2022 election victory. In other words, his popularity became a political threat, and the former president didn’t take too kindly to that.

But what I found most interesting about this DeSantis interview wasn’t the interview itself. Rather, it was the absolute meltdown that happened among Trump’s paid influencers.

Those are the same people who have been spreading lies about DeSantis for months, calling him stupid names and suggesting he’s a globalist RINO cuck who is bought and paid for by George Soros. So forgive me if I don’t think their whining is justified. If you throw punches, expect to get punched back. Crying foul is just weak and pathetic.

Let me make this simple for those losing their minds. This is a presidential primary and one that DeSantis is going to join very soon. The idea that Trump was going to be able to lash out and smear other candidates without any pushback was always farcical. There will be blood. Instead of lamenting that, enjoy the show and know that primary battles are often a good thing for whoever comes out victorious.

There’s no reason to get that upset at this point. Trump is going to keep hitting DeSantis and DeSantis is going to hit him back. Meanwhile, the other has-been candidates will sit in the corner because no one cares what they do.

Ron DeSantis Tells Piers Morgan He Is Willing to Abandon Florida to Pursue His Ambitions for President

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is playing the running-not-running game as hard as he can, given the Florida ‘resign to run‘ law he is intentionally breaking.  Thus, the severity of the self-centered egoism from the man who calls himself the “savior Top Gov of America,” starts to take on context.

According to the DeSantis media operation known as “Florida’s Voice“, the sanctimonious meatball has already scheduled campaign appearances in New Hampshire, Michigan, Ohio and Maryland for April [SEE HERE]. Then, following the instructions of the brand management team in control of him, Ron DeSantis sat down with Rupert Murdoch’s toady, Piers Morgan, for an exclusive interview in both Rupert Murdoch’s publication, The New York Post, and Rupert Murdoch’s broadcast company, Fox News.

Murdoch, who owns Fox News, had previously given Ron DeSantis several million dollars for his personal wealth via a Harper Collins book deal, another Rupert Murdoch company. With full control over the brand image of the DeSantis effort, Fox News has been promoting the meatball for several months.

Timed to coincide with the Trump indictment, DeSantis sits down with Piers Morgan:

(New York Post) – Ron DeSantis knows everyone is waiting for him to say if he’s running for president. But in our interview, airing on Fox Nation’s “Piers Morgan Uncensored” on Thursday, he made it very clear that if he does, he can win.

“If I were to run,” he said confidently, “I’m running against Biden. Like we [him and Trump] are competing for the Republican, potentially, I get that, but ultimately you know the guy I’m gonna focus on is Biden because I think he’s failed the country. I think the country wants a change. I think they want a fresh start and a new direction and so we’ll be very vocal about that.”

“Do you think you could beat Biden?” “I think so,” he replied, unhesitatingly, and emphatically.

“I won with independents by 18 points,” he said, “and so that will be the same formula that we would take, and honestly forget about me, I think anybody should take the formula like that nationally. You can’t win with just Republicans. You’ve gotta win with independents and you need to convince some of these Democrats, which I was able to do in Florida, because they’re not woke, they don’t like some of the nonsense going on. They want their streets safe, and they want quality education. So I think you could appeal to people across the canvas.”

[…] “I haven’t made a final decision on it. I’ve told people that I’ve got a lot to do over the next few months in Florida. We’re gonna put a lot of points on the board. And then we’ll see how the dust settles after that, but I can tell you a lot of people realize the country is not going in the right direction and believe that what we’ve been able to do in Florida, if we can apply that nationally, we can get America back on track and back on our foundations.

[…] “And so, I take that very seriously, it’s humbling that people have come to me and asked me to do it or urged me to do it. So, stay tuned.”

“That sounds like almost a yes . . .”

“It’s a stay tuned!”

Why wouldn’t he go for it?

“Well because I’ve got a young family. I’ve got different obligations and it’s not the easiest thing in the world to go through and I also want to make sure that I have a very clear rationale for doing what I’m doing. All I’m interested in doing is getting things done and accomplishing things. I don’t need a title. I don’t need fanfare. I just want to know that if I put my mind to this, if we ever did that, and we’re successful, what could I do to make a difference and that’s what I have to have.” (read more)