Friday, February 16, 2024

The Tide Turns in Trump’s Favor


Biden is an old, unpopular incumbent whose weaknesses can no longer be hidden and whose best hope of winning a second term is to jail his political opponent, an increasingly elusive contingency.


Everything seems to be going wrong for Joe Biden. It can’t be a good sign for him that he no longer trusts one of his most loyal henchmen. Merrick Garland has gone to extraordinary lengths to pursue Biden’s electoral opponent, but Biden, feeling power slip through his fingers, is fuming that the attorney general did not move quicker. According to Politico, the White House fears that Garland took Biden’s bogus pledge of Justice Department “independence” a little too literally, and now Biden may have to win re-election the normal way by convincing the public that he actually deserves a second term.

For Democrats, Biden is automatically redeemed by Donald Trump’s supposedly self-evident and uniquely odious criminality. But some Democrats are beginning to sense that the rest of the country does not share their urgency or their zealous certainty of Trump’s turpitude. Unlike Biden’s mental decline, which is obvious to everyone, it is far from self-evident that Trump is an “insurrectionist,” and it is far from clear that America is willing to go to the extremes that Democrats want to take us to get rid of him.

The unhinged effort to remove Trump from the ballot received a stinging rebuke last week from the Supreme Court, which soberly rejected the tendentious narrative that Trump is complicit in an attack on democracy. As the mild-mannered John Roberts put it, “insurrection is a broad, broad term.” Even the liberal justices showed concern about the “bedlam,” as Trump put it, that Democrats would unleash on the nation.

The liberal narrative about Trump’s character took another powerful hit with the release of Robert Hur’s report, which found that Biden “willfully detained” top secret information, shared it with his ghostwriter, and stored it in boxes in his garage. The Hur report landed like a thunderbolt, but its basic conclusions were hardly shocking. Biden, like Trump, Hillary Clinton, and countless others in politics, has a tendency to treat classified information like personal property, but only Trump has been singled out for charges.

The thing about Hur’s report that upset Democrats the most were his comments about Biden’s deteriorating mental health. Simply by pointing out the elephant in the room, Hur stirred Democrats into a frenzy.

In sharp contrast with the sheltered Biden, no president in modern history has sustained more scrutiny than Trump. In addition to a ruthless and concerted lawfare campaign, Trump has to contend with a daily avalanche of propaganda painting him as the next Hitler and acquitting Biden of his failures. But the best efforts of the media machine can no longer hide Biden’s sharp mental decline or the total breakdown of law and order across the nation.

In the past month alone, there have been two highly publicized attacks by asylum seekers in New York City. With the collapse of Biden’s cynical “border bill,” he cannot avoid blame for the mess he made by undoing Trump’s immigration policies. Biden has pledged to try, but no one is going to care about a stillborn piece of legislation months from now.

The 2024 election will be close, no matter what. But the fatalism of the Taylor Swift conspiracy that has swept the right belies political reality. Biden is an old, unpopular incumbent whose weaknesses can no longer be hidden and whose best, perhaps only, hope of winning a second term is to jail his political opponent, an increasingly elusive contingency. The Supreme Court has already shown it will not rubber stamp partisan lawfare against a former, and potentially future, president, and even if the court rejects Trump’s immunity argument, which it seems likely to do, a careful review of the weighty questions at hand could help Trump avoid a trial before the election.

In times of chaos, people yearn for strong leadership. If the left cannot control its anxiety, the panic over Biden’s weakness and Trump’s aspirations of “dictatorship” could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.



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X22, On the Fringe, and more- February 16

 



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Donald Trump Is Blessed With the Very Best Enemies


On the one hand, Donald Trump, the former and perhaps future president of the United States, seems uniquely hapless. He lost an election unlike any other before -- one in which insecure mail-in balloting proliferated, many states made constitutionally dubious changes to their voting procedures, and Big Tech put a decisive and perhaps outcome-altering thumb on the scale. Even worse, Trump last year became the first former president to be criminally indicted -- four separate times.

Tough luck, for sure. But on the other hand, there is one thing that should provide no small amount of solace to Trump and his many supporters. As we are seeing unfold across the country in real time, Trump is truly blessed with the best enemies. For all of Trump's bad luck, he is also aided right now by some very, very good luck.

Consider some of the current biggest enemies of Trump, as he marches through the Republican presidential primary and looks toward a general election rematch with President Joe Biden.

First, there is Biden himself. The nominal president of the United States is an indescribable embarrassment to the nation -- physically corpse-like, palpably senile, chronically misinformed, utterly lacking in judgment and generally clueless as to where he is and what words emanate from his mouth. He is a disgrace to his office, and it is a shocking public disservice that his wife and handlers even permit him to seek reelection in such a debilitated state. Special counsel Robert Hur's report filed last week, in which he explained that one reason he is not recommending criminal charges against Biden is because he is mentally unfit to stand trial, is an astonishing open admission of the harrowing reality Democratic Party elites have frantically tried to hide.

Second, there is former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump's final competitor in the Republican presidential primary. Haley is the very embodiment of all that was wrong with the pre-Trump GOP: She is a laissez-faire fundamentalist out of touch with Republican voters' concerns and priorities, a strident neoconservative personally corrupted by the military-industrial complex (viz., Boeing), an enthusiast for mass immigration who is guided not by voters' clearly expressed desire to close the border but by corporations' desire to keep it open, and a coward when it comes to the righteous prosecution of the culture war against the forces of civilizational arson. Haley's caricaturable nature makes her a perfect foil for Trump.

Third, there is Alvin Bragg, the Soros-funded lawyer in New York City now prosecuting Trump on the laughable grounds that "hush money" payments ex-Trump fixer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election amounted to falsified business records in furtherance of ... well, something. Bragg's indictment never actually stipulates what the records were falsified in furtherance of -- and Bragg needs an additional crime in order to 1) overcome the falsified recording crime's three-year statute of limitations and to 2) enhance to a felony what would otherwise be a mere misdemeanor. Bragg's is a remarkably frivolous case, and the fact that this is how he expends prosecutorial resources in a metropolis now in the throes of a generational crime epidemic makes him another ideal foe for Trump.

Finally, there is Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, whose courtroom meltdown this week, and the likelihood that she lied in court about the timing of her extramarital affair with her own appointed special prosecutor, has crystallized what already seemed likely: The Georgia prosecution, which once seemed the most dangerous of Trump's four criminal cases, is imploding. Willis came across as highly unprofessional during Thursday's hearing on her possible disqualification from the case. She snapped at Trump's attorneys, and she was warned numerous times by the presiding judge. At this point, Trump's Georgia case is not reaching a verdict before the election; the only questions are whether a trial commences at all and whether Willis ends up being the one to go to jail instead of Trump or his codefendants.

It is often said that it is better to be lucky than good. Donald Trump could still be derailed by special counsel Jack Smith's federal probe in Washington, D.C, and he is about to get smacked by an unjust verdict in New York Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud case. But everywhere else Trump looks, Lady Luck seems to be shining.



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NYT's Charles Blow Laments That America Has Forgotten the 'Trauma' of the Trump Administration


You can always count on the aptly-named New York Times columnist Charles Blow to completely miss the point.

In a recent op-ed titled, “The Trauma of the Trump Years Is Being Rewritten,” Blow states that America is somehow in danger because the public is forgetting the threat that the Orange Man What Is Bad™ poses to the future of the nation. In the piece, he makes the case to his readers that they must reacquaint themselves with the hysteria they felt when former President Donald Trump was in office.

However, his arguments don’t hold even a Dixie cup full of water.

In the piece, Blow discusses how American attitudes toward presidents tend to soften after they leave office.

This is because our political memories aren’t fixed, but are constantly being adjusted. Politicians’ negatives are often diminished and their positives inflated. As Gallup noted in 2013, “Americans tend to be more charitable in their evaluations of past presidents than they are when the presidents are in office.”

While he acknowledges that this phenomenon is normal, he asserts that “the difference is that other presidents’ shortcomings pale in comparison to his and his benefit isn’t passive: He’s seeking the office again and, as part of that, working to rewrite the history of his presidency.”

Without a doubt, Donald Trump benefits from this phenomenon. The difference is that other presidents’ shortcomings pale in comparison to his and his benefit isn’t passive: He’s seeking the office again and, as part of that, working to rewrite the history of his presidency. His desperate attempts, first to cling to power, then to regain it, include denying the 2020 election results and embracing the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that his denials helped fuel.

The author goes on to state that the “revisionism has worked remarkably well,” highlighting a poll showing that Republican voters “are now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were ‘mostly violent’” and “less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack.”

He also points out that “43 percent of Americans and 80 percent of 2020 Trump voters said they believe that the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol was an event that the country needed to move on from.”

But he doesn’t stop there. Blow then quotes a psychologist who discussed how Americans recall political events.

In 2021, a study was published about how we remember political events, specifically examining recollections about two watershed moments, one being Trump’s election in 2016. The study’s lead author, Linda J. Levine, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, wrote, “People exaggerated when remembering how angry they had felt about the political events but underestimated their feelings of happiness and fear.”

This is part of what she describes as “memory reconstruction,” the updating of our memories of the past to reflect our current feelings and beliefs. And what it says to me is that many of us have a clearer recollection of our indignation from 2016, but have developed a hazier recollection of the sense of foreboding that hung in the air during the years that followed.

So, basically, America has forgotten how evil Trump was when he occupied the White House, and this is why they no longer check under their beds before going to sleep to make sure the Orange Monster isn’t lurking down there to get them.

While this phenomenon might apply to Trump as well as other presidents, there are certainly other factors at play here. For starters, Blow brings up some of the issues leftists obsessed over when Trump was president.

I’m not sure that people are remembering the family separation policy, the “very fine people” refrain or the tossing of rolls of paper towels in Puerto Rico after a hurricane ravaged the island.

For starters, it’s hard for America to be upset about the family separation policy when President Joe Biden has been doing the exact same thing. Moreover, thanks to honest journalists and commentators, many more Americans know that Trump did not call Nazis and white supremacists “fine people.” Lastly, nobody actually cared about the paper towels in the first place.

The bottom line is that much of the hysteria fostered by Democrats and their close friends and allies in the activist media has been shown to be wildly deceptive and overblown. Trump was not a perfect president, but he was nowhere near as horrific as the left wanted everyone to think. Indeed, now that the nation has gotten more than a taste of Biden in office, it is not surprising that many might have a softer view of the former president. After all, the nation wasn’t living under oppressive inflation and other economic woes while Trump was in office, were they?

The notion that people simply forgot how awful Trump was is the type of simplistic claptrap that folks like Blow have to push to their audiences because it ignores factors that he would rather people not consider. Still, polling shows that Blow’s effort to remind them about Trump’s supposed evils is going to fall on deaf ears.



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Did Our Intelligence Agencies Suggest The Russia Hoax To Hillary Clinton’s Campaign?

Evidence suggests our intelligence agencies launched the Russia-collusion hoax months before the Clinton campaign joined in full force.



Tuesday’s explosive news — that long before the FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016, the U.S. intelligence community had asked foreign intel agencies to surveil 26 people connected to Donald Trump — raises the question of whether our intelligence community colluded with the Clinton campaign in these efforts. After all, it was then-Biden campaign adviser and now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken who “set in motion the events that led to” 51 former intel officials issuing the public statement that falsely framed the Hunter Biden’s laptop story as Russian disinformation. 

If a Biden campaign adviser conspired with some of the biggest names in the intelligence community a month before the 2020 election to bury the damaging scandal, it is no stretch to think the Hillary Clinton campaign might have sought an assist from the same folks to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

We’ve also long known the Clinton campaign funded the Steele dossier, the primary evidence used by the FBI to obtain four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act wiretap orders against a Trump campaign associate. The Clinton campaign’s efforts to peddle the Russia-collusion hoax to the FBI and the media are likewise well-established. 

But did the Clinton campaign’s plot to portray Trump as a Russian asset also involve the intelligence community, and if so, when did those efforts start?

Open-source material suggests the Clinton campaign’s efforts to push the Russia angle against Trump began in June 2016, when the Democrat law firm Perkins Coie contracted with Fusion GPS, which in turn retained Christopher Steele to investigate Trump’s connections to Russia. While there are several connections between the Clinton campaign and members of the intelligence community beginning in July, there is a dearth of evidence suggesting coordination between the two before then. 

That does not mean there was none, or that the Obama administration’s intelligence community wasn’t seeking to help Clinton by enlisting its foreign Five Eyes allies — the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia — to target Trump. The evidence to date, however, and specifically sources’ recent statements to journalists Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag, suggest our intelligence agencies launched the Russia-collusion hoax months before the Clinton campaign joined in full force.

Revisiting the timeline, however, suggests something further: that members of the intelligence community may have hinted that the Clinton campaign should advance a Russia-collusion narrative premised on the same sort of intel coming from the foreign intelligence services. 

Here, we have two key data points. First, declassified handwritten notes from former CIA Director John Brennan memorialized him briefing then-President Obama on intelligence that Clinton, on July 26, 2016, had approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

Second, two weeks earlier, then-Clinton campaign foreign policy adviser and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke at the “2016 Race to Change the World” conference in Cambridge on July 11-12, 2016. Albright’s fellow speakers included, among others, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former defense and foreign secretary. Also in attendance was Stefan Halper, who would later serve as a confidential human source for the FBI during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Halper had also reportedly served as a source for the CIA. 

The organizer of that conference, Steven Schrage, has publicly claimed that during the various events, Halper ignored Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page until after Dearlove arrived. Halper then “seemed desperately interested in isolating, cornering, and ingratiating himself to Page and promoting himself to the Trump campaign,” according to Schrage.

Page would soon be the Democrats’ poster boy representing Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia. It isn’t that Page was present at that conference that should catch people’s eyes, however, but that Albright, Dearlove, and Halper were. Because according to Brennan, two weeks later, on July 26, 2016, one of Hillary’s foreign policy advisers pitched the Russia-collusion hoax.

The crumbs all lead to Albright, who fits the description and had just returned from Cambridge, where she had conversed with individuals connected to foreign intel agencies, including one of the Five Eyes that Brennan had tasked with connecting Trump associates to Russia. If so, that would mean individuals connected to the foreign intelligence communities were not merely gathering intel on Trump and his associates to share with U.S. intelligence agencies but that they also conspired with the Clinton campaign to further the Russia-collusion hoax. 

There’s an irony here, however, as Brennan also gathered evidence on Clinton and her campaign’s plot to paint Trump as a Russian stooge to distract from her own scandals. 

So it seems our intelligence community spies on everyone. But it only puts its knowledge to use when it wants to get back at someone — and then it has six ways from Sunday to do so.



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CBP and ICE Agents Describe DHS Sec. Mayorkas As 'Dumpster Fire,' Applaud His Impeachment


The Biden administration has spent the last three years blaming Donald Trump for the nightmare at the U.S. southern border when in reality, Joe Biden inherited one of the most secure borders in modern history. But while Joe Biden is busy blaming Donald Trump for his mess, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, the people on the front lines every day dealing with the invasion at the southern border, are well aware that it is Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who are at fault, and it appears that — Valentine's Day notwithstanding — there is no love lost for either among some rank and file agents, who stated anonymously, that they support Mayorkas' impeachment. 


On Tuesday, the House voted 214-213 to impeach Mayorkas, and several Border Patrol and ICE agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not hold back when talking about the southern border under Mayorkas' leadership. One ICE agent stated,

“We have laws in place that are not being enforced due to Mayorkas’ leadership. If agents and officers were authorized to enforce the laws enacted by Congress this influx would not have occurred, but instead he pushes for agents and officers to process and release individuals as quickly as possible. Individuals are released into the United States with minimal background checks and minimal follow up.”

He added, “This most likely won’t change anything BUT it is a symbolic win and one heck of a statement to make in an election year." Another agent stated,

 “Mayorkas was a total dumpster fire who never owned up to the crisis he created with his disastrous policies. But I don’t think the Senate is gonna remove him which sucks."

One Border Patrol agent said, “It’s definitely a step in the right direction. It’s just embarrassing that it took 9 million+ illegal aliens invading our country…before he was finally held accountable." Another Border Patrol agent was supportive of the move but skeptical saying, “A pleasant surprise for sure. But I don’t know if it’s gonna change anything." But the best response may have come from a Border Patrol agent who was short, sweet, and to the point, saying, Ff**k that puto." ("Puto" is the masculine version of a Spanish slur that means "prostitute.") 


As you might expect, it is not just Alejandro Mayorkas that Border Patrol and ICE hold accountable for the border crisis. One ICE agent wanted to know why "Border Czar" and Vice President Kamala Harris still had a job saying,

“Too little, too late honestly. Should have been done three years ago if they truly wanted to change […] the border situation. And why wasn’t Kamala [been] impeached as well since she was considered and appointed the ‘Border Czar’ by the President? It’s just a political stunt to show the republicans are tough on the border after they voted to pass the terrible border security bill.”

Still, another agent placed the blame where it belongs, at the feet of Joe Biden. He said,

“That’s fantastic. If we can get him out, that’s three of the four asshat clowns gone. We just need to get Sleepy Joe out and hopefully we can start securing the homeland again like our department title says we’re supposed to be doing,”

The numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border don't lie. Under Alejandro Mayorkas, in fiscal year (FY) 2022, Border Patrol reported over 2.2 million encounters of illegals crossing the border. In FY 2023, that number was again over two million encounters. As late as May of 2023, when Title 42 was lifted, Mayorkas was insisting that "Our borders are not open." But suddenly, in an election year, when immigration is the top issue for voters, Mayorkas has discovered that there is a crisis at the southern border, and not only dodges responsibility for it but lays the blame on Congress and insists that only Congress can fix it. If this weren't enough, there is the fact that immigration has become one of the main reasons Americans do not want Joe Biden reelected.

Another one of the agents seemed to sum up the fact that Mayorkas is merely a symptom of the Biden administration's border policy agenda.

“Impeaching the Secretary will not disrupt the administration’s goal of allowing millions of illegal aliens into the country. As long as this administration remains in place, the chaos at the border will continue. Policy changes need to be implemented immediately." 






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Illegal Alien Invasion Now Tops List of Reasons Voters Want Biden Gone


Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

Yes, millions of hardworking Americans continue to struggle to make ends meet due to Bidenomics and Bidenflation. Also yes: Despite three years of Joe Biden's policies continuing to take a bite out of their wallets, a majority of Biden critics who responded to a new survey named the continuing illegal alien invasion as the number-one reason they want him gone, come January 20, 2025 — if not sooner.

And yes, what was once Biden's border crisis has deteriorated into an all-out invasion.

According to Gallup poll results released on Wednesday, Biden's handling of the economy grabbed the number-two slot, followed by inflation at number three. It should be noted that the poll was conducted before the release of the Hur Report on February 8.

The findings were part of an overall survey on Biden and the 2024 presidential election that also found the embattled president's approval rating at just 41 percent — the lowest of all presidents at this stage of their first term.

As the illegal alien invasion of America continues with no end in sight, Gallup's findings are hardly shocking. 

As my colleague Susie Moore reported, serial-lying Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached in a 214-213 vote Tuesday evening, marking the first time that the House of Representatives voted to impeach a member of a president's cabinet in nearly 150 years. 

The Senate trial of Mayorkas is expected to begin later in February. The Constitution requires a two-thirds vote to convict, and the penalty for an impeached official upon conviction is removal from office. The chances of the embattled DHS head being convicted hover somewhere near minus-zero percent. 

Following the impeachment of Mayorkas, Biden (his handlers) said in a bizarre White House statement (emphasis, mine):

History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games.

Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, a Cuban immigrant who came to the United States with his family as political refugees, has spent more than two decades serving America with integrity in a decorated career in law enforcement and public service.  

From his time in the Justice Department as a U.S. Attorney to his service as Deputy Secretary and now Secretary of Homeland Security, he has upheld the rule of law faithfully and has demonstrated a deep commitment to the values that make our nation great. 

Hang on. 

So I'm not a constitutional scholar — but neither is Biden. Since when has partisanship been unconstitutional? Moreover, it is constitutionally within the purview of the House to impeach Mayorkas.

As for upholding the rule of law, the claim is a demonstrable lie. 

Mayorkas and Biden have brazenly circumvented existing U.S. immigration law from the beginning. While the "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" is likely clueless to the fact, we can be certain that Mayorkas is not.

The Bottom Line

While the list of reasons Joe Biden needs to be kicked to the curb in November, if not sooner, is long, there is no reason more critical than that this president and his administration remain an existential threat to the security of this country. 



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Reactions From Fani Willis’ Meltdown on the Stand



Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis took the stand in her misconduct hearing after allegations claimed she had an “improper” relationship with special counsel Nathan Wade.

Willis’s Thursday testimony stands between her continuing her political persecution of former President Trump and it being squashed to pieces as it should be. 

Republicans flooded social media to criticize Willis after cross-examination did bode well in her favor. 


Former President Trump called Willis's testimony a "disgrace," telling Fox News Digital that "There's no way they can have a case. The whole thing was a scam to get money for the boyfriend."

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Teary-Eyed Fani Willis Testifies in Humiliating Hearing Mia Cathell

"This all comes out of the White House. Don’t forget Wade, the lover, he spent hours at the White House," Trump said. "This is all a weaponization of politics. It’s all about trying to stop somebody who is killing them in the polls, and it is a sad thing to watch for our country."

"This is a total breakdown of law and order and a total breakdown of justice — it is weaponization at a level that nobody’s seen before. Nobody’s seen anything like this," Trump continued. 



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