Trump Plays the Long Game

posted by Douglas Schwartz at American Thinker 

Only two presidents sought to downsize government. Trump follows Reagan’s lead. William F. Buckley Jr. described Reagan as essentially an anarchist in his opposition to bureaucracy. Reagan declared “the best view of government is in the rear view mirror.” “A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.” Buckley’s 1980 Reagan interview highlights Reagan’s dedication to constitutionalism, federalism, and minimal government.

The government Reagan opposed differs from that of today. After 20 years of the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations, the nation (and the civilization it commands) is confronted with an existential crisis due to unsustainable debt, alongside enemies foreign and domestic collaborating, e.g., China funding Hamas protests, Qatar bankrolling American universities, or Iran directing the October 7 attack on our regional proxy. Or the COVID coalition: globalist oligarchs, WHO, WEF, CCP, and the pharmaceutical-industrial-intelligence-media complex.

May 25 witnessed the unprecedented appearance of a president before the Libertarian National Convention. Jeers and cheers greeted Trump. Those booing highlighted the cultlike irrationality of many libertarians, in contrast to the minimalist government focus of America’s founders. Cultist libertarians reside in an adolescent fantasyland, losing relevance annually. Especially this year, when they nominated a wokester, gay activist, 2012 Obama fundraiser, Gaza genocide protester, open borders advocate favoring closing all overseas military bases. Trump mentioned his 91 indictments to underscore his libertarian street cred. By the end of his speech, many attendees seemed supportive. He is the first nominee of one party to seek another’s nomination, continuing assembling his diverse coalition.

In 2018 leftists complained that Trump’s “Secretary of Energy is someone who once campaigned to get rid of the Energy Department; the Secretary of Education has advocated against the public schools system; the Environmental Protection Agency director has a record of repeatedly suing the EPA.” Trump promised libertarians he would eradicate the Department of Education. Fiscal considerations now leave little other option. Interest on the debt is driving policy. Soliciting libertarian voters was an appeal to the broad American center. That center is fleeing failed Uniparty/oligarchic policies of the past, toward a fusion of populism and free markets.

Trump represents Reagan 2.0 but in a nation which has shifted more socialist. Reagan was a strict conservative populist. Trump tilts more liberal while retaining Reagan’s aversion to bureaucracy. Reagan opposed inflation, reckless debt, and overbearing government. Trump reflects an electorate corrupted by subsequent decades of hyperinflation and government overreach. Democracies rarely reward budget curtailments. Trump might appear a budget hawk compared to Biden’s reckless spending, but is no Reagan. Our times permit no other possibility. Market forces will soon ensure a great deflation sweeping away a century’s debt excesses -- along with the accompanying corruption.

We are witnessing the rapid ending of politics. The Democrats’ captive audience of minorities, unions, Jews, and cisgenderists are fleeing to MAGA sanity. GOP RINOs are systematically being purged. Neocon warhawks, who fled the Democrats when they became too dovish, have scurried back to the Uniparty to advocate incessant wars. Trump is crafting a new political landscape from the smoldering ruins of three political parties. Demand for competent governance replaces partisanship.

As Roger Simon noted, Trump ended identity politics -- something long overdue thanks to inevitable contradictions. We are exhausted from infighting and seek comity, a truce between factions. Political labels and parties have lost any relevance or meaning.

Strange bedfellows occupy Trump’s king-size bed. Ranging from frat boys to Silicon Valley tech titans, South Bronx residents, soccer moms, evangelicals, white males, rappers, female athletes, Jersey shore deplorables, farmers, and union members -- along with libertarians -- they represent a political realignment destined to endure for decades. Realignments occur when societies stray too close to an existential cliff. New York City was bankrupt, crime-ridden, and deserted by anyone able to flee. Guiliani arrived in 1994, proving a Republican was electable and the city reformable.

History has witnessed wholesale reformations numerous times, once during each civilization's evolution. Societies begin from tribes and warlords, proceed through feudalism, monarchies, and contending nations. They eventually consolidate into an empire uniting great cities once widespread warfare concludes. Oligarchic control and corruption then become endemic, triggering a crisis. A populist leader arises, instituting a constitutional reformation.

Optimates and populares vied for power during Rome’s republic. When the republic descended into civil war, Augustus vanquished the corrupt oligarchs and founded the empire. The emperor was the only one who mattered for the duration of Rome’s tenure. Partisanship ceased. Trump’s analog appears at the same point in each civilization. Augustus made Rome great again, crafting a framework enabling it to flourish additional centuries under imperial administration rather than avaricious infighting. Trump’s historical destiny is identical.

A century ago, German historian Oswald Spengler foresaw our current predicament and realized an unstoppable populist force would arise. A final battle would develop between populists and the “dictatorship of money,” fascism/corporatism by another name. Money’s forces would array against patriots defending the rule of law. Vastly outnumbered, Money would be vanquished. America resulted from tyranny, especially the economic variety. MAGAism opposes a tyrannical plutocracy.

Patriotism -- survival of the entire nation -- is the only power sufficient to vanquish oligarchic avarice. This battle occurs in every civilization once corruption approaches existential levels. Reform only occurs when the existential envelope’s limits are tested. A fission precedes creation of sufficient political critical mass to produce the necessary fusion. The old regime and its media janitors have collapsed under the weight of their corruption. Everyone now knows the score. Glasnost precedes perestroika.

When Trump descended the escalator in 2015, you would have been institutionalized if predicting that Bill Ackman, Roseanne Barr, Tucker Carlson (“I hate him passionately.” A “demonic force” and a “destroyer.”), 50 Cent, Ice Cube, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, Professor Snoop Dogg, Larry Ellison, Dr. Waka Flocka Flame, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, Tim Pool, Dennis Quaid, Kid Rock, Joe Rogan, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, Mike Tyson, Goya Foods CEO Bob Unanue, Dr. Jefferson Van Drew, and Lil Wayne would support him. Original rabid NeverTrumper Ben Shapiro now fundraises for Trump. Imagine how many secretly support Trump.

2,500 years ago, Heraclitus maintained “war is the father of all and king of all.” Wars now drive events. Our Ukraine proxy war splits the Right, while Iran’s proxy Hamas’ attack on Israel splits the Left, as does our border invasion. We’ll see if China attacks Taiwan during Biden’s regency. None of these wars would have occurred under Trump. The worse conditions become, the greater his landslide. Desperate lawfare against him and his supporters, open borders, increasing crime, and intractable inflation now propel events.

Democrats never fully recovered after firing on Fort Sumter. Attacking Trump was their final act before the political graveyard. Alvin Bragg and Juan Merchan (the eye liner model) set GOP fundraising records. $400 million and counting. A peaceful revolution coalesces as the world’s most senescent political party prepares to sink beneath history’s waves. Stadiums can no longer contain Trump’s rallies. The outer-borough born emperor enters the arena, triumphant.

X22, And we Know, and more- June 9

 

NATO’s Hairline Fissures Part 2: The Use of Western Weapons Inside Russia?

When America and other NATO members allow their weapons to be used on Russian soil, what happens?

by Thaddeus G. McCotter for American Greatness

[Last week, we looked at NATO’s divisive debate over Ukraine’s membership. This week, we look at NATO’s disagreement over the use of Western weaponry on targets inside Russia.]

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded after World War II to defend the United States and our Western European allies against the Soviet Union’s and now the Russian Federation’s aggression. Presently, this mission includes collectively agreeing to defend non-member Ukraine against the revanchist Russian Federation’s invasion and occupation.

On his part, Mr. Putin’s chief tactic is to exploit the political divisions within NATO to stem its support for Ukraine and, ultimately, to splinter the alliance into impotence and irrelevance. To wit: NATO members’ debate over Ukraine’s use of NATO weapons on enemy targets in Russia.

The fiction in any proxy war is that while the direct participants are killing each other, a nation or nations supplying the belligerents are securely one step removed and, ergo, not engaged in direct conflict with them. One need not be a foreign policy or national security savant to realize the continuing erosion of the central fiction in this proxy war inches the world ever closer to a prospective use—and likely—exchange of nuclear weapons between Russia and NATO.

For example, if the U.S. and Canada engaged in direct conflict with Russia supplying weaponry to Canada to kill U.S. service personnel only on Canadian soil, most Americans would nevertheless deem Russia our enemy and demand it be militarily engaged by our armed forces as well. Such demands by the American public for retaliation would increase if Russia allowed its weaponry to be used by Canadian forces to kill U.S. forces on American soil.

Initially, in a rare, fleeting moment of strategic sanity, the Biden administration opposed the use of American weapons to kill Russian troops within Russia. As The Telegraph reported, “Joe Biden was left isolated in his refusal to allow US weapons to be fired into Russia by Ukraine after France and Germany relaxed their rules.”

Other NATO allies disagreed. Channeling the ghost of Charles De Gaulle in (of all places) a state visit to Germany, French President Emmanuel Macron theatrically held up a “map showing Russian bases being used to attack Ukraine in the latest offensives” to buttress his argument:

We must allow [the Ukrainians] to neutralise the military sites from which the missiles are fired, the military sites from which Ukraine is attacked. But we must not allow other targets in Russia to be hit, and obviously civilian capabilities. What has changed is that Russia has adapted its practices somewhat. If we say [to the Ukrainians], ‘you don’t have the right to reach the point from which the missiles are fired,’ in fact, we’re telling them ‘we’re delivering you weapons, but you can’t defend yourselves’.

Why NATO “must” or “must not” is assumed, not explained. That these weapons can be used on Ukrainian soil to kill Russian troops on occupied Ukrainian soil is beyond question: “Kyiv’s military has repeatedly used Western weapons such as the US-supplied Himars rocket launchers to hit groupings of Russian soldiers on occupied territory.” Nevertheless, Macron is not alone in his determination to expand NATO’s role in the war.

For example, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed the international legality of Western weaponry use: “Ukraine has every opportunity to do so under international law. We have to say it clearly: it is under attack and can defend itself.”

So, too, NATO’s Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, argued that present limitations “tie the hands of Ukrainians behind their backs.”

Initially, the Biden administration has rightly tried to slow the brakes on expanding NATO’s participation: “‘Our position has not changed at this stage. We neither encourage nor permit the use of US-supplied weapons to strike Russian soil,’ said White House national security spokesman John Kirby, after the Franco-German announcement.’”

Other NATO allies and European nations agreed with the U.S. The European Union is “also deeply divided on the subject,” according to Josep Borrell, its top diplomat. The chief reason for the opposition is the fear of provoking the world’s second-most nuclear-armed nation—Russia—into using them.

Nonetheless, it did not take long for the Biden administration to revert to feckless form and cravenly capitulate to allowing American and other Western weapons to be used on Russian soil. Per Breitbart’s John Hayward: “The decision to let Ukraine strike back with long-range American weapons seems to have been made abruptly. As recently as Thursday afternoon [May 30th], Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh insisted there would be “no change in our policy.”

Less than a day later, that policy had changed. Mr. Hayward cited a “senior American official who had spoken to Fox News:

The president recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use U.S.-supplied weapons for counter-fire purposes in the Kharkiv region, so Ukraine can hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them. Our policy with respect to prohibiting the use of ATACMS [Army Tactical Missile System] or long-range strikes inside of Russia has not changed.

Mr. Putin and his kleptocratic cronies seem unassuaged by the administration’s lawyerly distinction between which U.S. weapons may now be used to kill Russians in Russia. This is after Russia had previously refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons if NATO continued to escalate its military support for Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, is quoted as warning:

Ukraine and its NATO allies will receive such a devastating response that the alliance won’t be able to avoid entering the conflict… Russia regards all long-range weapons used by Ukraine as already being directly controlled by servicemen from NATO countries. This is no military assistance, this is participation in a war against us – and such actions could well become a casus belli.

Vlad “The Vozhd” Putin threatened “serious consequences [tactical nuclear weapons],” ones that if they “occur in Europe, how will the United States behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons? It’s hard to say—do they want a global conflict?”

What the Biden administration wanted was to mend the hairline fissures between itself and key NATO partners like France and Germany. As had been done earlier by delaying the question of NATO membership for Ukraine, the Biden administration hoped this half-measure of allowing some, but not all, American weaponry to be used in Russia to kill Russian troops would forestall a growing divide within the alliance.

That the second most heavily nuclear-armed nation run by a warmongering former KGB Lt. Colonel with a Napoleon complex and delusion of being Ivan the Terrible 2.0 would be irate pales in comparison to the Biden team’s desire to lead from behind and appease its NATO allies France and, to a lesser extent, Germany and others.

Of course, while Russia was infuriated, Ukraine was elated, with President Volodymyr Zelensky calling the U.S. decision to liberalize its rules of engagement “a step forward.” Perhaps, but into what? More than anyone, Ukrainians are sadly already aware their nation is in dire straits, for the illegal Russian invasion and occupation have shown no signs of abating. Given the stakes and grave prognostications made by the leaders of NATO’s allied nations, one should be rightfully concerned about how far NATO can and will go to repel the Russian invaders and to perpetuate the unanimity of the alliance’s approach to Ukraine.

When a NATO member allows their weapons to be used on Russian soil, what happens if Russia directly attacks that alliance member with conventional and/or nuclear weapons? What happens if Russia retaliates against them? There will be little time to say “I told you so” before Article 5 is invoked for all members, regardless of their prior restraint and restrictions employed in the war. If it is invoked, it is quite possible some nations, especially those who did not allow their weapons to be used against targets inside Russia, may refuse to honor their treaty commitment and/or seek to withdraw from NATO. What if such a country initially decides to remain and become a collective belligerent, but a subsequent election turns out that government and installs one promising to exit the conflict and, likely, NATO?

There are scores of other scenarios where the splintering of the NATO alliance is more than a remote theoretical possibility. And all the while, Mr. Putin is doing all he can to exacerbate these divisions and rupture the alliance that is the primary obstacle to Russian hegemony in Europe.

Inexplicably, what abets Mr. Putin’s undermining of NATO is a misconception: as Ukraine is not a member of NATO, there is no mandatory need for unanimity of the alliance’s approach. If France, Germany and others wish to have their weapons fired by Ukraine into Russia, such is their ability as sovereign nations to do so (unlike their treaty obligations to pay their fair share of NATO dues). The U.S. has no treaty obligation to do so in the instance of Ukraine, which France and other NATO members realize. Why their insistence that we follow their lead?

It is hard to see France or Germany “going it alone” in allowing their weapons to be used on targets inside Russia. If they did and the Ukraine conflict escalated into their countries being attacked, the U.S. could plausibly refuse to declare war on Russia because our sage advice went unheeded. It certainly would guard against the U.S. being attacked by Russia with conventional and/or nuclear weapons. Alternately, however, if the U.S. is also allowing our weapons to be used inside Russia, it will ensure we have no option but to defend our NATO allies and open ourselves up to a Russian conventional and/or nuclear attack.

America remains western Europe’s security blanket—literally—and the Biden administration has allowed them to use us as a shield against the potential consequences of their saber rattling against Russia, against whom they have shown no desire to do what is necessary to adequately defend themselves. Still, what else can one expect from a Biden administration whose own recklessness and incompetence have manifested itself in the crisis in Ukraine?

Some will argue that preserving the unanimity of NATO’s approach to the defense of non-member Ukraine is worth the risk of widening the conflict into a global war, one that includes the specter of nuclear weapons. And it is true NATO remains a critical bulwark against Russian revanchism. Further, history also reveals how hairline fissures between friends can ultimately undo even the most successful of human endeavors. Indeed, in Part 1, we warned that if NATO’s cohesion is undone by internal political dissension, it will create the very weakness and disunity President John F. Kennedy warned would, above all others, pave the path to war.

Tragically, however, in allowing American and other NATO allies weapons to be used inside Russia to kill Russians, NATO and the world may painfully learn that the same path to war can also be walked with the heedless unanimity of lemmings leaping into the nuclear abyss.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

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When the Liberal Media Is Doing This, You Know They're Losing

Matt Vespa reporting for Townhall 

President Joe Biden had an awkward moment during a D-Day ceremony this week, where the aging Delaware liberal appears to be having an accident or waiting to sit. The invisible chair allegation has been debunked because The Associated Press was there. Thank goodness for that. I’m not sure he would have ever recovered from this incident. It still doesn’t make the clip any less bizarre, and when you have major publications doing fact-checks about these moments, you know the liberal media is losing:

So, the basis is that Joe Biden is mentally sound, right? And they only dug up the turkey pardoning as an example of how clips are edited to attack Biden. Really? Have we forgotten about this moment the White House Press Corps captured in May? It’s the same thing:

The president also wore a hard hat backwards while meeting with Wisconsin union workers in January. Snopes fact-checked that, but they had to issue a retraction for this apparent reason: there’s a photo of Biden wearing the hard hat improperly.

 The overall point is that even if there was a chair, not that I care because it’s clear the president had a mental malfunction before sitting, it doesn’t negate the many times Biden has looked aloof or stumbled in public. Like Snopes, the Associated Press is trying to sell the ‘don’t believe your lying eyes’ snake oil on this one. Eighty-six percent of Americans think Biden is too old to run again for president. That’s an ABC News/Washington Post poll. You don’t get that near-unanimous consensus without people seeing Biden’s age impacting his work.  

Bragg Agrees to Testify Before House Judiciary Committee—but Will He Actually Show Up?

 Bob Hoge reporting for RedState 

In a surprise move to some, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has agreed to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan's demand that he appear before Congress to answer questions about whether his successful prosecution of former President Donald Trump on business fraud charges was politically motivated.

Trump was convicted on 34 counts on May 30. 

Now it could be Bragg’s turn to be the star witness:

Bragg’s response comes after House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) demanded in a letter last month that Bragg and Matthew Colangelo, another prosecutor in the case, testify at a June 13 hearing on “the unprecedented political prosecution of President Trump.” Now, the prosecutors responded Friday saying the office was “committed to voluntary cooperation,” the district attorney’s counsel Leslie Dubeck said in a letter obtained by The Hill. 

As we reported, Jordan had sent a letter on May 31 “requesting” Bragg’s appearance. He summed up the point of the hearing in the document:

This hearing will examine actions by state and local prosecutors to engage politically motivated prosecutions of federal officials, in particular the recent political prosecution of President Donald Trump by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

---

Dear Alvin Bragg: Jim Jordan and the Select Subcommittee on Weaponization Would Like a Word

---

The committee also sent a virtually identical letter to Matthew Colangelo (the former "number three" Biden Justice Department official, who stepped down from that role to serve as a lead prosecutor on the Trump prosecution team in Bragg's office). It’s unclear from Bragg’s response whether Colangelo will also appear.

In the [Bragg] letter, they also said Colangelo’s testimony was not out of the picture, but they wanted to “evaluate the propriety” considering the active status of the prosecution. 

They also sounded pretty cagey about exactly when Bragg would appear and fell back on that old standby, “scheduling conflicts.”

“The trial court and reviewing appellate courts have issued numerous orders for the purpose of protecting the fair administration of justice in People v. Trump, and to participate in a public hearing at this time would be potentially detrimental to those efforts,” they wrote in the letter. 

Dubeck also asked Jordan’s office for more information about “the scope and purpose of the proposed hearing” and a chance to negotiate a different date.

In other words, they will draw this thing out as long as humanly possible—potentially until after the November presidential election, if they get their way. 

If Bragg does indeed show up, it would make for a fiery hearing. Many leading pundits and politicians on both sides of the political aisle thought the case was highly questionable and a clear weaponization of the New York justice system. Jordan called the outcome of the case a “travesty of justice” and has threatened to hold back funding from the Justice Department that had been designated for Trump investigations. Expect the Ohio congressman to Iight into Bragg and attempt to shred his motivations for going after the former president on such ludicrous charges.

If he gets the chance.

Indictment Of Texas Doctor Who Exposed Kids’ Transing Proves No One Is Safe From Biden’s Weaponized DOJ

Wrongthinkers like Haim will be punished beyond the bounds of the law to send a message: your dissidence will not be tolerated here.

Jordan Boyd reporting for The Federalist

Texas-based general surgeon who exposed his Houston children’s hospital for secretly continuing a child transgender mutilation program faces four felony counts from President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice for speaking out.

Shortly after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered his state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate the transing of children as abuse in 2022, Texas Children’s Hospital — the largest children’s hospital in the U.S. — claimed that it would no longer offer chemical castration and other body-butchering services to pediatric patients.

As 33-year-old whistleblower Dr. Eithan Haim soon discovered, however, at least three Texas Children’s physicians continued to castrate children as young as 11 years old after the program was allegedly halted. The hospital also promoted procedures to cut off the breasts and genitals of physically healthy people.

A report, which Haim claims to have sourced, from the City Journal’s Christopher Rufo detailed these findings. Around that same time in May 2023, the Texas legislature passed a law banning gender experimentation on minors.

One month after that, federal agents made a “highly atypical, unexpected, and aggressive show of force” at Haim’s apartment door. They announced in a letter signed by U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari of the Southern District of Texas that he was being investigated over his presumed role in the leak of “medical records.”

In a letter to House Republicans, Haim’s lawyers detailed a long list of misconduct Ansari exercised during the investigation, including failing to review evidence before assisting the Biden administration’s attempt to charge the surgeon.

Ansari, undeterred, moved ahead with her plans to sic the feds on Haim. Most recently, the surgeon learned after a visit from U.S. marshals that he is expected in court next week to answer for a four-felony count indictment for “violating HIPAA.”

Haim said in his Give Send Go that he does not regret making Texas Children’s actions public but admitted it has cost him “the entirety of our retirement, investments, savings, and almost all of our disposable income to pay the legal bills to keep the case alive.”

“I knew that speaking out would necessarily put myself and my family at great risk, but after experiencing the extent of the corruption first-hand, it became clear that silence would never be an option,” he wrote.

Punishable by Political Prosecution

Time and time again, Biden’s DOJ has weaponized itself against pro-lifers, parents, and election integrity supporters. It staunchly refused to protect Republican-nominated Supreme Court justices from coordinated influence campaigns and has tried to punish Republican states for protecting born and unborn children.

The transing of children, confirmed by a doctor targeted for trying to protect the most vulnerable from irreversible damage, is no exception.

If a Texas surgeon who rightfully blew the whistle on a child-mutilation program his state outlawed can face politically charged persecution laden with misconduct simply because the Biden administration wants to make a point about people who oppose its radical transgender agenda, no one is safe.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra confirmed this too when he admitted during a congressional hearing last month that the Biden administration planned to defund hospitals with religious objections to transgender mutilation.

“If a health care facility is violating the law and not providing the service they are required to, they are not entitled to federal funding,” Becerra said.

When Republican Rep. Mary Miller asked Becerra if that applied to doctors, Becerra ignored the Biden administration’s war on conscience protections to claim that providers are shielded and “not required” to execute any transing procedures.

For Biden, the buck doesn’t stop at former President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, or any other person who might stand in the way of his reelection. The weaponization of the DOJ by this administration was designed to wipe out wrongthinkers like you and me across the board.

Don’t you dare try to pray in front of an abortion facility because you believe babies in the womb deserve a chance at life or run over the perversion of a symbol created by God or tell your local school board that parents get the final say in what their child hears, sees, reads, and studies or insist there are only two sexes and they aren’t interchangeable by even the cruelest, mutilative means.

People like Haim who dare to indulge in such anti-regime thoughts and actions can and will be punished beyond the bounds of the law to send a message: your dissidence will not be tolerated here.

Facebook Post Sparks Debate Over Possible Mistrial in Trump Case

 The house always wins. That’s what matters—fairness, impartiality, the very idea of a non-partisan application of the law be damned. Welcome to the end of the republic.

think that it was the great Miranda Devine, she of the “laptop from hell” fame, who first called the world’s attention to the latest wrinkle in the long-running “Get Trump” extravaganza in New York.  Anyway, I first heard about it from her post on X Friday. “If this is legit,” she wrote, commenting on a letter purportedly from Acting Justice Juan Merchan to Donald Trump’s Counsel and the Manhattan DA’s office,  “it should wipe out Trump’s conviction.”

Eh, what?

At issue was someone who (again, purportedly) posted on the Court’s public Facebook page a message from one “Michael Anderson,”  a self-described “professional shitposter,” who claimed to have inside information that Trump was about to be convicted. “My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted. Thank you folks for all your hard work!” The comment, Merchan wrote, was posted on May 29, a day before Trump’s guilty verdict rolled off the tongues of Merchan’s jury.

For a brief moment, the internet was ablaze with speculative comment, elated or anguished depending on the ideological coloration of the poster.  If it turned out that a juror had disobeyed his orders and spilled the beans about the verdict to someone who then posted the bulletin on Facebook, would that constitute grounds for a mistrial?  After all, “prejudice to the defendant” is one of the stipulated grounds for a mistrial. CPL § 280.10 of the statute says, in part, that “the court must declare a mistrial”   “upon motion of the defendant, when there occurs during the trial an error or legal defect in the proceedings, or conduct inside or outside the courtroom, which is prejudicial to the defendant and deprives him of a fair trial.”

Is that what we have here?  It’s hard to say.  The original Facebook post was removed.  As far as I know, the juror in question has not been identified—and that’s assuming that a juror did inform “Michael Anderson” of the verdict. Did the post result in “substantial and irreparable prejudice to the defendant’s case?”

And leaving that question to one side, who would it be who would declare the mistrial even if such prejudice were irrefragable? Why, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, Acting Justice, New York Supreme Court, that’s who. Has there ever, outside the annals of Tammany Hall, been in American history a more conflicted jurist than Merchan? He is certainly up towards the top of that rogues’ gallery.

If you’re a judge, you are forbidden from making political contributions. But Merchan, who was “randomly selected” to preside over three Trump-related cases, has made contributions to several Democrat causes and politicians, including Joe Biden. The contributions are all small.  But as Andy McCarthy pointed out, you don’t make small-dollar contributions to affect an election. You do it to show that “you’re on the team.”

If you are a judge, you are supposed to take special care to avoid conflicts of interest and even the “appearance of impropriety.” But Merchan’s daughter Loren, president of the Chicago-based progressive consulting firm “Authentic Campaigns,” has raised millions for such Democratic figures as Adam Schiff, who took the lead in bringing articles of impeachment against Donald Trump. Rep. Elise Stefanik brought an ethics complaint against Merchan but that, predictably, has gone exactly nowhere.

Why do I say “predictably?” Because in Democratic redoubts such as New York and Washington, D.C., the fix is always in. They are, as a friend pointed out to me, run like casinos.  In the long run, the house always wins.  The whole-of-government judicial assault against Donald Trump has abrogated several of his Constitutional rights, not least those outlined in the Sixth Amendment. “In all criminal proceedings,” that brief Amendment reads, in part, “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State . . . and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.” But Judge Merchan declined to tell Trump (or the jury) exactly what crime he was accused of and forbade his counsel from bringing several favorable witnesses to testify.

The travesty that was New York v. Trump has been subject to reams of expert analysis and microscopic dissection, as much by public-spirited anti-Trump commentators as by those on the pro-Trump side of the docket.

Judge Merchan will simply skate over this embarrassing Facebook post, just as he skated over the rights of the defendant, Donald J. Trump.  The house always wins in the end. Applied to the rule of law, that means that the regime party’s interests always take precedence over the rule of law.

Rather, the “rule of law,” just as Lenin taught us, is simply whatever the party demands. For the dedicated communist (or Democrat progressive), the very idea of “impartiality” is a bourgeois construct, a MAGA (or ultra-MAGA) fiction, and therefore eminently dispensable. Juan Merchan and his alter-ego District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, have just earned themselves a footnote in the dismal annals of legal depravity.  Do not, however, expect any smidgeon of remorse to trouble their consciences. Those presiding over the house accounts do not have time for such sentimentalities.  Ideological conformity and the power and perquisites such conformity brings are their heart’s desires, their existential cynosures.

The house always wins. That’s what matters—fairness, impartiality, and the very idea of a non-partisan application of the law be damned.

Welcome to the end of the republic.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/06/09/260077/