Brilliant Mask Dropping – Kevin McCarthy Proves Republicans Only Love Money

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Before watching this short statement by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy {Direct Rumble Link}, let me remind everyone of the baseline truth.

Democrats want power; Republicans want money.  Threaten Democrats power, they get vicious.  Threaten Republicans money, they get vicious.  Democrats use money to get power; Republicans use power to get money.  The ideology of the democrats drives their donor activity.  The donor activity drives the republican ideology. 

This is the core and essential difference between both wings of the DC UniParty, two wings of the same vulture.  This is the truth of the thing. Underline it, put it on Post-It notes, remind yourself of this baseline in all review of both parties.  This is the core motive behind everything!

To hammer this point home, listen to this soundbite from Kevin McCarthy speaking at Oxford University, U.K. WATCH:

Why does Kevin McCarthy only see rich white republicans? Because Kevin McCarthy only sees rich, white republicans.

Get it?

The MAGA base is invisible to Republicans.

The MAGA base is the most diverse coalition in U.S. political history. MAGA cuts across all races, national origin, color and creed definitions. MAGA is a massive cross section of every American segment. MAGA is pure American! The republican party cannot see it, because the republican party cannot see it.

In many ways, We The People are in an abusive relationship with government.

If you do not agree with the agenda as it is controlled by a small a powerful self-described elitist class, then we become the problem.

The division is not determined by our definitions, the conniving and corrupt administrators of the system are the ones creating the division we are accused of perpetrating.   However, there is no division in a social context as clear as the division between the working class and the investment class rulers who consider themselves above such arbitrary labels.

When you peel the issues down to their essential core, what you will always find, always find, is the money of the thing.

The created system of control is maintained through economics, and any America-First policy that threatens to close the divide between the ‘haves and have-nots’ is viewed against their interests.  This is the essential core of the opposition we face.

A thriving middle class is a powerful political balance. But a working class struggling for scraps doesn’t have the time to deliver accountability.  This division of wealth is what the Washington DC UniParty exploits.  Despite their pontificating lies to the contrary, all of the DC systems are created to take advantage of the wealth gap.

The social structures which create and maintain society are easier to control with a divided nation.

President Trump and the coalition of MAGA represents a true existential threat to this perpetuated system of division.  The America-First economic agenda created exclusively by Donald Trump is the main problem at the heart of all MAGA opposition.

Quite simply the America First agenda puts *their* money at stake, and collectively that amounts to trillions of dollars in multinational globalist financial control.  The scale of the money behind the MAGA opposition is really the biggest challenge; it is almost unfathomable, and that scale is represented within the size of the war chest they assembled for Ron DeSantis.

The top of this financial pyramid holds a grip on political power that is threatened by the worldview, outlook and economic nationalist policy of Donald Trump.  The top this system will not ‘lose’ with America-First Trump; however, they will gain at a slower rate.  This group will not leave their throne, they only see a slower assembling within their vaults.

The Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street and World Economic Forum crews will follow the America-First policy and invest in America, they will just hate doing it.  They will hate the best-play of slower gains because the returns are not as lucrative, expedient or fraught with the simple indulgences of their custom.

However, underneath that top-tier, there are many layers of vested financial interests at lesser but more generational risk. The Cornwallis crowd will see a much more difficult time advancing their influence and affluence with America-First in place.  For this tier of powdered wigs, a loss for them could really change things.  This reality is why you see demographic polling showing the more affluent the respondent, the less supportive of MAGA their responses.

It’s not a class war, per se’, it is something far deeper within the psyche and outlook of people. The need for control is a reaction to fear.  Losing influence and affluence is the fear behind the division.  If we make the totalitarians a better sandwich, if we reach across the aisle and afford benefit of high-minded doubt, maybe our professional abusers will permit us to keep a little more…  Ultimately, the chase for scraps.

This sensibility, this triggering of selfish fear, is a powerful tool.  This is exactly what is being intentionally and purposefully triggered by those who are professionally political, and they are doing it for their own benefit.  It is not necessarily about creating a class war; it is more akin to controlling the wealth of a nation and then forcing groups to position themselves for what remains.

The ‘us -vs- them‘ scenario is not Republicans -vs- Democrats, it’s We The People, represented by MAGA, -vs- the totalitarian rulers in both parties.

WATCH:

We will win….

It is not a question of if, it is only a matter of how!

X22, Red Pill News, and more- December 9

 

The Government’s Historic Failure to Limit Firearms

posted by Michael Ange at American Thinker 

As we watch another case on firearms go to the U.S. Supreme Court, this one with ancillary political pressure, it is interesting to look at the pace of recent cases versus the dearth of Second Amendment cases historically.  One would think such a hotly debated topic would be rife with judicial interventions on a routine basis, but that is just not the case.

It is instructive to look at history in terms of both numbers and results.  This list is fairly exhaustive but notably excludes discussion of cases relying on the commerce clause of the Constitution and some cases where Second Amendment protections were mentioned in decisions on other issues of law but did not directly address the right to bear arms.

Beginning in the post-1860s turmoil of the Civil War, we see the first significant case, U.S. v. Cruikshank, 1875, which was technically a civil rights case, where the Court ruled that the Constitution bars the actions of Congress, not the actions of private citizens, in depriving freed slaves of their civil rights.  This is an unconscionable decision today, but apparently, it was in keeping with the times.  While not addressing gun rights specifically, it was the refusal of the KKK to allow freed slaves to be armed that brought the case before the Court.  Subsequent legislation would nullify this ruling, but that legislation would not and does not address the action of politicians as a criminal violation.

Dred Scott is notable in this same vein.  A case that denied the citizenship rights of “free negroes” also addressed the 2nd Amendment, by noting it as a right of all free men: “and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

In Presser v. Illinois, 1886, SCOTUS ruled that the 2nd Amendment is a right of individuals, not the right of militias.  The case addressed whether there is a constitutional right of citizens to form private or community military organizations, and the Court ruled that there is not.  This is the first ruling where the 2nd Amendment is recognized as a personal individual right, although the Court gets to it through a back door.  Regardless of the Court’s intent, the ruling clearly sets a precedent that had not previously been set, at least not by the High Court.

The Court would stand moot on this issue for the next 50 years.  Then, influenced by its previous ruling in Presser, it produced a ruling in support of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA).  U.S. v. Miller is the most interesting ruling in Second Amendment history.  Miller was charged with owning a shotgun with a barrel shorter than eighteen inches and without paying the requisite tax on that firearm, a violation of the 1934 NFA.  Miller relied upon the 2nd Amendment, but the Court ruled that there was no history of short-barreled shotguns being used in military service, and that type of firearm therefore is not covered by the 2nd Amendment. The resulting test indicates that guns that are commonly used or at least suitable for use in military service are covered by the 2nd Amendment, whereas others are not.  In the common era of chants for bans, this decision protecting only weapons of war is rarely discussed.

It is interesting that the NFA was the nation’s first legislative attempt to restrict gun ownership for all citizens and residents of the U.S., and it has stood for 90 years without being specifically addressed by the Court, aside from this one case.  Nor has the Court addressed the legality of taxing a constitutional right, essentially making that right more protected for higher socio-economic classes than the common man.

It is nearly 70 years before we see another significant Supreme Court ruling directly addressing the 2nd Amendment: D.C. v. Heller, 2008, where the Court essentially upheld its 1886 ruling that keeping arms is an individual right.

Only two years later, in McDonald v. Chicago, 2010, the Court ruled that the 14th Amendment incorporates the 2nd Amendment in its protections and that the States are prohibited from infringing the 2nd Amendment, just as Congress is.  In 2020, we have a footnote, where the City of New York attempted similar infringement but repealed its law before the Courts could rule on its constitutionality, effectively depriving the citizens of what would have almost certainly been another ruling that barred government from violating individual rights.

This brings us to the most recent case, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, where the Court ruled in 2022 that N.Y. could not assume that the right to bear arms applies only to the home.  The Court stopped just short of finding actions by the States to permit a constitutional violation but essentially disallowed all permitting not based on “shall issue” premise.  In short, permitting schemes using any criteria other than a background check are not allowed by the new ruling.  This seems straightforward, but the language of the Court has fueled angst for certain judges.  The dilemma seems to be linked to a “new standard” for judicial review of firearm laws that requires that modern laws be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” 

It is of interest that what is one of the most hotly assaulted civil rights as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution has been before SCOTUS only six times, and half of those were within the last 15 years, with the seventh case being heard on November 7, U.S. v. Rahimi.

The NFA itself has yet to be challenged at the SCOTUS level, nor has any modification in the bill been challenged.  The 1986 machine gun ban has been tested in the lower courts, but it has been upheld only under provisions of the commerce clause of the United States Constitution.  In fact, in 1991, the U.S. District Court for Central Illinois ruled in U.S. v. Rock Island Armory that the possession of a machine gun cannot be prosecuted under the provisions of the National Firearms Act but allowed a conviction to stand under the commerce clause.  Although not an appellate precedent, the decision was not challenged, probably to avoid a precedent that certain factions would find contrary to efforts to disarm the population.

Now the Biden administration brings the case of Rahimi, a domestic abuser, because he is an attractive person to deny constitutional rights, given his history of alleged abuse and an active restraining order, which the administration obviously feels provides an opportunity to obtain a precedent for restricting rights.  The question, however, is whether a conviction is required to meet the burden of denying rights.  Perhaps of more interest is that, although not relevant to the actual case, Rahimi is accompanied by pressure from the left to relieve the Judiciary of the burden of stare decisisand the “confusion” ensuing from the Bruen decision.

The Second Amendment is clearly written, in eighth-grade English, and the only perceived uncertainty is the reference to militias, which is actually an argument of syntax.  Even if that issue had merit, it has been resolved with crystal-clear precedent since Presser in 1886.  It is puzzling, then, how Bruen, directing the Judiciary to reference such a clear line of precedent, has created such a dilemma for certain members of the Judiciary.  In fact, consistency in the application and interpretation of law is perhaps the most required of philosophical tenets in the validation of Western jurisprudence.

The Courts do not randomly change positions on law.  Murder is illegal; it has always been illegal.  While procedural issues on admissibility and validity of evidence, the rules of the courts regarding process, or even the penalties may change, the law making the taking of a human life with malice aforethought illegal remains consistent throughout the history of the nation and even before the U.S. was a nation.  Likewise, the elements of a valid contract are essentially unchanged since the nation’s founding, so this reliance on historical decision is not new, or, as some have claimed, “out of left field.”  In fact, the premise is so well ingrained that lawyers even have a name for it, stare decisis, which legaldictionary.com defines as “let the decision stand.”  The “doctrine of precedent” is indeed the heart of the entire common law system.  Yet we have cries to single out this issue and not apply precedent because it creates uncertainty and a need for research.

If we look at the body of law and the decisions of SCOTUS, what we see is a clear line of precedent, where SCOTUS has repeatedly pushed the states and the Congress back into line.  Unlike many constitutional issues, including the First Amendment, the Court has never waffled on this issue at all.  None of these decisions, with perhaps the exception of Miller, has served to limit the rights of Americans; they have all served to limit the right of government to infringe that which the Second Amendment says may not be infringed.  After decades of letting sleeping and somewhat rabid dogs lie, it seems the Court is actively engaged in its primary job of protecting citizens from government overreach on this issue.

Perhaps the time is right to see a decision on the constitutionality of the NFA, as many of the firearms, like short-barreled rifles, do in fact have military application in 2023 and, as such, meet the test prescribed in Miller.  One can persuasively argue that fully automatic weapons, so called machine guns, have always met the Miller test and should never have been banned in 1986 or taxed in 1934, as the courts did in Rock Island Armory.

The Court carefully and perhaps judiciously avoided a direct ruling on the assault weapons ban of 1994 by simply ignoring questions related to the ban in the several cases brought before it.  This era of avoidance seemed to terminate with Heller, so perhaps a ruling will be forthcoming as multiple states attempt to ban “assault weapons.”  At the time of this writing and since Bruen, bans have been both upheld and overruled by the federal courts, have received similar mixed results in the appellate courts and seem destined for SCOTUS.

Given the 150-year history of Second Amendment decisions, the most prudent move for the anti-gun movement might be to avoid further decisions from this Court.  Any expectation that the same Court will reverse a position it reached only two years ago seems unlikely in the extreme.

The Liberal Media’s Desperate New ‘Trump Will be a Dictator’ Narrative

by Fred Fleitz for American Greatness 

The leftwing media recently got its orders from the Biden campaign on a new narrative to smear Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential campaign. Because their previous narrative of Trump colluding with Russia and Vladimir Putin has been discredited, they are promoting a

new one: if Donald Trump wins the November 2024 presidential election, he will become a dictator similar to Hitler or Napoleon.

This fear-mongering theme appeared in similar articles within days of each other in The Washington Post and The New York Times. The Atlantic is promoting the theme in a January/February special issue with 16 essays where liberal elite authors warn how a dictatorial Trump presidency in 2025 would threaten America and the world on issues ranging from abortion, NATO, climate, the courts, immigration, etc. The Atlantic has posted online 16 of these anti-Trump essays and plans to add more.

The most prominent of these Trump-will-be-a-dictator essays was written for the Washington Post by Robert Kagan, a Never Trumper and neoconservative who advised John McCain and Mitt Romney and now works for the liberal Brookings Institution. Kagan’s article was published in full hysteria mode with an image of Caeser’s head morphing into Trump, a Napoleon hat with Trump’s face superimposed on red streaks resembling blood, and references to Hitler and McCarthyism.

Kagan led his article off by warning that there is a good chance Trump will win the 2024 presidential election. He blames this on dysfunction in Washington and President Biden carrying the world’s problems “like an albatross around his neck.” Kagan also made the bizarre claim that Trump has “unusual advantages” for a presidential candidate because he has Fox News and the Speaker of the House “in his pocket.”

Kagan made these arguments to sidestep the main reasons why Donald Trump’s candidacy is surging and Biden’s is in trouble: Joe Biden is one of the weakest U.S. presidents in history, and the vast majority of Americans believe they are worse off today than when Trump was president.

As a result, there’s no reference in Kagan’s article about the U.S. economic downturn, steeply increased inflation, the rise of crime in U.S. cities, or the flood of illegal migrants during the Biden presidency.

Kagan also doesn’t say a word about the serious deterioration in global security on Biden’s watch, including the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, increased Chinese military provocations against Taiwan, the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, and the surge in Iran’s nuclear weapons program to produce uranium just below weapons-grade.

And Kagan, of course, omits growing concerns in the U.S. and abroad about Joe Biden’s mental decline and fitness for office.

No one believes Kagan really thinks that Trump has a media advantage because Fox News is behind him (which I dispute) when the mainstream media establishment and social media are still dominant in this country and prepared to do whatever it takes to defeat Trump and elect Biden.

Kagan and the other anti-Trump essayists realize our country is in trouble and that Donald Trump’s solutions will be attractive to many voters. They know most Americans believe Trump will take quick action to reverse the damage done to the U.S. economy by “Bidenomics” and high energy costs. Kagan realizes many Americans are angry about Biden’s failure to secure the U.S. southern border and stop the surge in crime in our cities and are willing to look to Trump to fix these problems.

Kagan is also aware that most Americans know the U.S. was more secure under Trump because he was a strong and decisive president. They remember that despite Democratic warnings in 2016 that it would be dangerous to elect Donald Trump as president because he would get the U.S. into new wars, Trump was the first president in decades to not begin a new overseas military campaign and used diplomacy and economic sanctions to create four years of relative peace.

Kagan understands that most Americans believe that if Trump is reelected, he will not get the United States into another war.

The dictator talk by Kagan and his fellow liberal writers is an attempt to scare Americans not just to distract them from the failures and weakness of the Biden Administration but because of something they are even more afraid of: that a second Trump administration will be far more successful in implementing its agenda and undoing progressive policies and programs than the first.

Kagan knows President Trump and his close advisers learned from the first Trump term on how to govern effectively. They know what they did wrong the first time in staffing the federal government and dealing with the federal bureaucracy. Kagan admitted this when he lamented that President Trump probably will not name officials to his second administration with an “unstated intention of refusing to carry out his wishes.”

Most alarming to Kagan is the possibility that a second Trump presidency will get control of the federal bureaucracy. The permanent federal bureaucracy, also referred to as the administrative state or the deep state, is a bastion of liberal power and influence. These bureaucrats overwhelmingly vote Democratic, and many go out of their way to advance the policies of Democratic presidents and obstruct Republican presidents.

Kagan, of course, views the federal bureaucracy differently, calling it “another traditional check on a president” that is “generally in the business of limiting any president’s options.” Kagan and other liberal writers are worried that a second Trump Administration will force the federal bureaucracy to do what it was created to do: implement the policies of the elected president.

Kagan is right that Trump will name loyal officials to get control of the federal bureaucracy and that some careerists will quit or be replaced. But despite his frantic claims that such efforts would be dictatorial or similar to the work of “Hitler’s local gauleiters,” reforming the federal bureaucracy to better implement presidential policy is consistent with Article II of the U.S. Constitution that makes the president responsible for the execution and enforcement of the laws created by Congress.

I would like Robert Kagan to show me where the U.S. Constitution says the federal bureaucracy was created to act as a check on the president.

On the other hand, President Biden’s frequent use of the federal bureaucracy to evade Congress by imposing unpopular policies on the American people through regulations instead of laws are actual abuses of power and violations of the Constitution. These include regulations to ban gasoline-powered cars and force Americans to buy electric vehicles, regulations removing federal lands and waters from oil and gas exploration, and regulations allowing “woke” investing by retirement funds and investment firms.

Finally, Kagan, other liberal essayists, and several Republican Trump opponents like Liz Cheney, have stitched together another argument that Trump will be a dictator if reelected because they claim he will ignore the courts, use his office to retaliate against his enemies, and could even refuse to give up the presidency at the end of his term.

It is rich to see Kagan’s apoplectic warning that Trump might take revenge against his enemies if reelected after the bogus 90+ charges brought against Trump by Democratic and career prosecutors over the last two years and numerous lawsuits by liberal groups to keep Trump off the 2024 ballot. These are all blatantly anti-democratic efforts to prevent Americans from voting for a presidential candidate that the Left fears it cannot defeat at the ballot box.

I know Donald Trump will form an expert and ethical second administration that will not persecute anyone and will spend its time rebuilding this country and promoting global stability. It will be subject to the rule of law and the courts. That’s why former Trump officials like myself who worked most of our careers in the federal bureaucracy would be honored to work for a second Trump presidency.

That is not to say there will not be some much-needed and legitimate investigations and house cleanings of rogue agencies like the FBI. I expect there will be investigations of the Biden family’s corruption, its ties to China, and the Hunter Biden laptop debacle. Such investigations would not be revenge or abuses of power – they would be queries into possible serious corruption that may have compromised U.S. national security. As congressional Democrats love to say about President Trump, “No man is above the law.” That includes Joe Biden.

The Left hated Donald Trump as president because he was a disrupter who ignored convention and conventional wisdom and refused to defer to the administrative state and liberal elites. Using this approach, he had many significant accomplishments, like making America energy independent, removing over 25,000 pages of job-destroying regulations, pulling the U.S. out of bad international agreements, moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and initiating the historic Abraham Accords peace agreement. Trump and his team achieved these and many other major accomplishments despite many mistakes they made in staffing the federal government and handling the federal bureaucracy.

Kagan is making his “Trump will be a dictator” argument because he knows a second Trump Administration will be different. Not only will it likely be much more efficient in promoting Donald Trump’s primary objectives of energy security, securing the southern border, and reasserting U.S. global leadership, Kagan is terrified that Trump will successfully undo Joe Biden’s massive misuse of power to use regulations to ram through deeply unpopular far-left priorities, like injecting diversity, equity, and inclusion policies into every aspect of society and the federal government (including the U.S. military), requiring schools to let biological males participate in women’s sports, forcing Americans to buy electric cars, phasing out gas-powered stoves, etc.

Although Robert Kagan and others on the Left will try to portray a possible second Trump Administration as dictatorial, a threat to democracy, the return of Hitler and Napoleon, etc., most Americans will dismiss this prediction as over-the-top fearmongering. They will see this claim for what it is: a desperate attempt to distract them from the damage done to this country by Joe Biden’s incompetence and from his likely 2024 election opponent who is offering leadership and compelling policies to restore our country.

If trying to frighten Americans about a second Trump presidency with predictions of a dictatorship, references to Hitler, and images of Napoleon hats is the best Biden’s media allies can do, Biden’s reelection is in serious jeopardy.

Media Fearmonger About A ‘Trump Dictatorship’ Because Biden Told Them To

Three weeks ago, the Biden campaign told the media to stir up fear about a second Trump term. And boy did they deliver!

by John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist

So what’s with the coordinated media campaign this week claiming a second Trump term will usher in the end of the republic and the rise of a fascist dictatorship?

Well, three weeks ago, President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign scolded the press for not attacking Donald Trump hard enough, specifically calling out The New York Times, saying “it’s time to meet the moment and responsibly inform the electorate of what their lives might look like if the leading GOP candidate for president is allowed back in the WH.”

As my colleague David Harsanyi noted at the time, the Biden camp wasn’t working the refs, it was demanding obedience. “And the fact that the White House can brazenly petition a supposedly free press to join his campaign effort tells us a lot about how little the contemporary Democrat cares for a free press.”

This is like when the Biden White House complains that Americans think the economy is bad because the media don’t do enough to explain how great the economy is, and a few days later, we’re inundated with stories about how the economy is doing great, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

In any case, message received! Three weeks after Biden’s campaign made their demands of the press, nearly every major corporate media outlet in America rolled out some version of the campaign’s talking point about how dangerous a second Trump term will be.

The New York Times, always eager to deliver for a Democrat in power, didn’t disappoint. On Monday, the paper ran a triple-bylined piece arguing that a second Trump term would be “more radical” than the first. Why? Because Trump would “use the Justice Department to wreak vengeance against his adversaries,” and “get prosecutors to go after his enemies.” In other words, he might do what President Biden is doing right now in plain sight. (As I said earlier this week, Democrats are afraid Trump will do to them what they’re doing to him.)

The Washington Post ran its own versions of the same argument. Robert Kagan penned a column about how to stop the “Trump dictatorship.” The always-absurd Jennifer Rubin used her column at the Post to heap praise on Liz Cheney, who went on the Sunday shows to warn that if Trump is elected, it will be the last election we ever have, and that we’re “sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States.”

It’s fair to call this kind of rhetoric “assassination prep,” because of course if this will really be the last election, if we’re really facing a fascist dictatorship in Trump’s second term, well then drastic measures are necessary, are they not? That’s the tacit argument being advanced in these pieces. And it’s not some fringe thing on the left. The entire January/February issue of The Atlantic is nothing but hysterical essays warning that the next Trump presidency “will be worse.”

But the left-wing corporate press isn’t one for circumspection or restraint when it comes to overheated rhetoric — or hypocrisy. The Washington Post published a half-dozen articles this week comparing Trump to Hitler after the former president and GOP front-runner called his opponents “vermin.”

But as Matt Orfalea noted on X, corporate journalists, including some at the Post, have no problem calling Trump and his supporters vermin all the time. All through Trump’s presidency, reporters and columnists for the Post repeatedly described Trump as a rat and his officials and supporters as rats or vermin.

“Don’t blame the rats abandoning the USS Trump,” went a December 2018 headline from Dana Milbank — a phrase and image that comes up over and over in the Post’s Trump coverage going back to before the 2016 election (no surprise, but Rubin was especially fond of the phrase). During Trump’s first year in office, the Post reported on an outsized balloon depicting Trump as a rat and included multiple images of Trump as a rat. In 2019, Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes drew dozens of disgusting red-eyed vermin under the title “Trump’s Republican rats.”

But if Trump calls his opponents “vermin”? He’s just like Hitler.

One thing to understand about this hyperbolic and hypocritical media campaign against Trump is that they’re getting desperate. You can only run so many pieces about how inflation isn’t real before people stop taking you seriously. And talking about President Biden will only hurt his chances at reelection. So the last move of the corrupt establishment press is to do what the Biden campaign asked it to do and churn out pieces designed to scare people into not voting for Trump.

I don’t think it’s going to work. It might convince people who already hate Trump and would vote for anyone, even a dementia-addled Biden, before voting for Trump. But ordinary Americans who remember what the economy was like during the Trump years aren’t going to be fooled — no matter how many bylines the Times adds to its 3,000-word think pieces about the coming dictatorship of Trump. They can chatter all they want, but fewer and fewer people are listening. 

In fact, the fact that they’ve been reduced to this desperate tactic already, before the first primaries, means they know they’re in trouble. I’d compare them to rats on a sinking ship, but then I suppose I’d be just like Hitler — or Trump.

RNC Never Sanctioned Iowa and New Hampshire Debates That CNN Announced – But It Gets Weirder

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

When CNN announced they were hosting two debates for the GOPe candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, the supposition was that the RNC had given two debates to the network.  The assumption was because the RNC, and the four remaining first-loser candidates, had previously held an agreement that only RNC sanctioned debates would be permitted, and the candidates would only attend RNC sanctioned debates.

However, it turns out that fake news CNN went rogue in organizing the unsanctioned debates.

There are multiple facets worth considering, and considerable ramifications within the entire construct.

First, the RNC didn’t even know about the plans of CNN.  “The respective debates, set for Jan. 10 in Des Moines and Jan. 21 just outside Manchester, aren’t sanctioned by the RNC, which has organized the first four debates, including Wednesday night’s broadcast in Alabama,” according to Politico.  Additionally, “campaigns have continuously complained about current RNC rules, which say a candidate who participates in an unsanctioned debate is barred from future RNC-approved gatherings. But the RNC’s debate committee is expected to meet Friday to discuss officially removing that rule, according to three people with knowledge of the group’s plans.”

Fake News CNN lived up to their nickname by not even informing the debate venues of their plan prior to yesterday’s announcement.  It’s all very weird and curious:

(New York Times) – […]  With great fanfare this week, CNN announced it would host the network’s first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, gathering the Republican candidates for a marquee event on Jan. 21 at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.

There was only one problem: Saint Anselm had no idea what CNN was talking about.

“We were surprised to be included on a press release by a network about a debate which we had not planned or booked,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm, said in a statement on Friday.

The chairman of New Hampshire’s Republican Party, Chris Ager, went a little further.  “The CNN thing came out and everybody’s like, ‘What the heck?’” Mr. Ager said in an interview. “I’m still scratching my head. And I still haven’t been contacted by CNN at all.” (more)

By midday on Friday, CNN was being battered with questions from Republicans, candidates and other media outlets.  It’s all just seemingly bizarre.

The RNC made an official statement today saying the RNC is no longer hosting debates for the 2024 GOP primary.   This is a little funny considering that Donald Trump never participated, and the candidates who aligned with the RNC debates have lower support numbers now than before the debate series began.

WASHINGTON – The Republican National Committee is pausing its participation in 2024 GOP primary debates, the organization decided Friday.

The RNC’s decision, made by a 16-member internal body, means that any forthcoming debates will be hosted by networks independently of the committee. Two outlets — ABC and CNN — have announced plans to host future debates in Iowa and New Hampshire ahead of early state voting. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis already said he will attend CNN’s planned Iowa debate before next month’s caucuses and ABC’s planned New Hampshire debate.

“We have held four successful debates across the country with the most conservative partners in the history of a Republican primary. We have no RNC debates scheduled in January and any debates currently scheduled are not affiliated with the RNC,” the RNC’s Committee on Presidential Debates said in a statement. “It is now time for Republican primary voters to decide who will be our next President and candidates are free to use any forum or format to communicate to voters as they see fit.” (more)

Essentially, it all boils down to this.  The RNC initially thought they could stop Trump; however, the RNC debate series intended to generate that narrative has failed miserably.  Donald Trump is supported more now than he was when the field of first-loser candidates assembled against him.  Having failed, the RNC backs away slowly.

The CNN announcement, and the gleeful almost immediate acceptance by DeSantis et al, reflects a general desperation.  The effort to stop Trump now falls on the leftist corporate media, who are aligned with the remaining four GOP candidates: DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy and Christie.

The agreement and alignment between the remaining candidates, and the corrupt media apparatus, only highlights the fraudulent reason those candidates were assembled in the first place.  The ‘stop Trump’ effort was/is the purpose of their candidacy; actually, winning the GOP nomination was/is irrelevant.   This non-pretending reality exposes the strings on the four remaining marionettes.

It is serendipitous the events rolled out the way they did.  Fraudulent men had plans, but God has a sense of humor.  The implosion of a heavily controlled GOP field is only spotlighted more by the few remaining candidates continuing to compete for first-loser status.

Why would any Republican agree to a CNN debate knowing the nature of the lies and fraud CNN has pushed for the past several years.  Any normally minded Republican candidate would never agree or participate, and therein lies the point.  These are not normally minded politicians; their agenda is something else entirely.

President Donald Trump is unlikely to participate in any debate.  The premise of the debates themselves is silly, and the only reason the candidates are agreeing to more debates is that the corporate and billionaire donors to them are demanding every effort be exhausted.  At this point it is pathetic.