Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Let the Reckoning Begin


President-elect (that does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?) Donald Trump delivered a shock and awe election victory on November 5. Those most surprised are the corporate media, Hollywood, and the paid Democrat X-shills, all living in their social media bubbles.

I wasn’t terribly surprised, as I have been tracking the polls on these pages for some time. Aside from the numbers, enthusiasm was on Trump’s side, culminating in four rallies the day before the election, which ended in the wee hours of the morning.

Compare that to Candidate “Joy,” who held small rallies with trashy rapper guests who were as verbally challenged as their favored candidate.

Prognostications of delayed results, electoral theft, false flag operations, and the like never materialized, at least not significantly. Although I admit I was worried sick about a repeat of 2020, I also noted in my writings that Trump is a smart guy and would not run the same campaign as he did in 2020, this time expecting a different result.

That’s the definition of insanity. Trump, for all the claimed faults leveled against him by critics, is quite sane. Not to mention, he is smart, savvy, and determined.

From having scores of ballot watchers and attorneys in swing states, ready to pounce on any electoral irregularities, to having his daughter-in-law running the RNC, to a brilliant media campaign, serving fries at McDonald’s and riding in a garbage truck, this was not a repeat of 2020.

Now Trump must make it through the transition, over two months until the inauguration, when lawfare pit bulls will bare their fangs. They will try to put Trump in jail for his nonsensical criminal charges. I would love to see that.

Trump can take over Rikers Island for his transition team, leaving NYC to figure out what to do with thousands of displaced prisoners. Let NYC deal with the security concerns of business and government leaders visiting the prison daily, clogging up Manhattan traffic.

Imagine President-elect Trump holding court in an orange jumpsuit. This would make the McDonald’s and garbage truck scenes pale in comparison. I doubt this will happen, but wowza if it does!

Trump has a busy agenda ahead of him. Closing the border, disentangling the U.S. from unnecessary wars, and unleashing Elon Musk to perform radical liposuction on the morbidly obese administrative state.

Then there must be a reckoning. Or, as Trump would say, “returning the stolen diamonds.” Where to start?

Spygate over fabricated Trump-Russia collusion, impeachments, and other assorted lawfare, including the Mar-a-Lago raid. Other loose ends include Hillary Clinton’s emails, Anthony Weiner’s laptop, the Biden family’s foreign influence peddling, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the weaponized January 6 protests, investigations, and prosecutions, to name a few.

The easiest place to start, as in low-hanging fruit, is the 51 intelligence officials claiming in writing with their signatures that the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation,” influencing the 2020 election.

Isn’t that an insurrection? Let’s take it apart.

Government officials take an oath of office which, among other things, affirms,

I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

What happens when said officials violate this oath? That’s called “insurrection,” which is defined by US Code partially as,

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States.

For clearer language, let’s turn to Britannica,

Insurrection, an organized and usually violent act of revolt or rebellion against an established government or governing authority of a nation-state or other political entity by a group of its citizens or subjects.

Enough background. Let’s talk about two insurrections, one falsely named and the other one ignored.

According to the corporate media, Democrats, and a handful of Trump-deranged Republicans, January 6 was an “insurrection” on par with the holocaustWorld War 2, or 9/11.

Except that on January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump was the government. Was he trying to overthrow himself when he told his rally audience to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”? How much of this “insurrection” was instigated and carried out by federal agents? What role did Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi play?

So many questions and so little curiosity from the media and the January 6 “committee”. What about another insurrection that is being dutifully ignored? And who are these insurrectionists?

I refer to former Director of National Intelligence under the Obama administration, James Clapper. He, along with associates in the intelligence community, also known as spooks, attempted to subvert the 2016 and 2020 elections, the latter one successfully.

They also attempted successfully to undermine Donald Trump’s candidacy and administration by casting doubt on his legitimacy as president through fabricated ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Paul Sperry, in Real Clear Investigations, does a deep dive into the Clapper insurrection. I will highlight his findings.

Shortly before the 2016 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton,

Clapper issued the unprecedented intelligence advisory with Obama’s personal blessing. It seemed to lend credence to what the Clinton camp was telling the media — that Trump was working with Russian President Vladimir Putin through a secret back channel to steal the election. Sure enough, the Democratic nominee pounced on it to smear Trump at the debate.

Yet there was zero evidence of this, as verified by the Mueller and Durham reports. Fast forward four years to another presidential debate.

In 2020, he was the lead signatory on the “intelligence” statement that discredited the New York Post’s October bombshell exposing emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which documented how Hunter’s corrupt Burisma paymasters had met with Joe Biden when he was vice president. It was released Oct. 19, just three days before Trump and Biden debated each other in Nashville. Fifty other U.S. “Intelligence Community” officials and experts signed the seven-page document, which claimed “the arrival on the U.S. political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

If Hunter’s laptop was disinformation, how could it be introduced by DOJ prosecutors as evidence in his recent felony gun trial? It turns out the FBI knewthe laptop was real and suppressed the story, giving Biden a debate talking point.

The FBI, which had known Hunter Biden’s laptop was authentic since 2019, admitted to Twitter that it was real on the day the New York Post published its reporting on the laptop — but then switched its narrative to “no further comment” and refused to acknowledge the laptop’s veracity to any other Big Tech companies ahead of the 2020 election.

Did Clapper and the 51 spooks change (rig) the 2020 presidential election?

One of the “fact-checkers,” Politifact, acknowledged that 19% of Americans would have changed their vote if they knew the laptop story was real.

Another poll from Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics found: “A whopping 79 percent of Americans suggest President Donald Trump likely would have won reelection if voters had known the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop.”

Another survey from The Polling Company discovered that 45% of Biden voters in swing states said they were “unaware of the financial scandal enveloping Biden and his son” and that full knowledge would have led more than 9% of these Biden voters to not vote for him, flipping all six of the swing states he won to Trump and giving Trump the election.

Paul Sperry summarized the insurrection,

Clapper’s well-timed pseudo-intelligence in 2016 and 2020 helped Clinton and Biden make the case against Trump as a potentially Kremlin-compromised figure, charges that crippled his presidency and later arguably denied him reelection.

In other words, an organized revolt against an established government. An insurrection.

This was a real insurrection or coup against a presidential candidate and sitting president, not someone in a shaman costume strolling with Capitol Police through the US Capitol or grandma strolling the Capitol grounds.

This isn’t simply lawfare involving corrupt local or state prosecutors and judges twisting the law into pretzels to convict and imprison their political opponents. This coup is organized by the highest level of the U.S. government, past directors of intelligence agencies, and promoted by a colluding media.

This is the real insurrection. Where is Congress exercising its constitutional oversight responsibility? Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution?

What do other countries do? Here’s a recent story, “A Bolivian general has been arrested and accused of mounting a coup against the government.”

Where are the American insurrectionists? They have university appointments and cable news gigs and are writing books, tweeting, and doubling down on their actions with no media scrutiny or legal reckoning.

Why aren’t these insurrectionists languishing in jail under horrific conditions, as are so many January 6 protesters? If such election rigging occurred in another country, Jimmy Carter, the UN, and a slew of international election monitors would be apoplectic.

Yet when the American government does this, only crickets.

These 51 intelligence officials should have their security clearances revoked at minimum. But the reckoning should involve more, including indictment and prosecution to the full extent of the law.

Expand the circle further to include all those perpetuating other hoaxes to undermine the Trump administration. Since multiple people colluded and participated, this constitutes a conspiracy, and RICO statutes apply.

The deep state insurrectionists are fearful indeed, as verbalized by CNN, “Trump again suggests he would try to prosecute his political opponents if reelected.” Oh, the horror to have Trump do to them what they have been doing to him since his Trump Tower escalator ride nine years ago.

There must be a reckoning and course correction, or else America is firmly a banana republic dictatorship. As Trump said shortly before the 2016 election, “Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People.”

When Trump takes office on January 20, the reckoning must begin.



X22, And we Know, and more- Nov 12

 




The One Temptation the GOP Must Avoid After Thoroughly Trouncing Kamala


Donald Trump clinched a historic win on Election Day 2024. In the aftermath, Trump has remade the Republican Party into a multiracial, working-class party that, as of now, is going to be very hard for Democrats to beat with their current messaging strategy. But the GOP also needs to avoid this trap amid this epic trouncing of liberal America.  

Let’s recap and celebrate: It was a MAGA landslide. Trump amassed the most significant Electoral College victory for the GOP in 36 years. He won the popular vote, a Republican first in 20 years. We also retained the House and retook the Senate—we got the trifecta, which eluded us by 90,000 votes in 2020. Trump made gains in every state except Washington. Eighty percent of all counties shifted toward the Republican Party, and the wealthiest parts of the country saw the most significant shifts. The reasons were simple: inflation and the economy. 

Democrats thought abortion and the women’s vote would carry them to victory, a shoddy reading of the electorate that cost the party dearly at the polls. They raised $1 billion and are now $20 million in debt. Yet, as we look at the new GOP, one thing has been clear: Donald Trump has transformed the party into one that can win the Rust Belt, that can put states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in play that were long viewed as “no go” zones for the GOP. 

If liberals are looking at the exits and only thinking that racism or misogyny explains Trump’s trouncing of Kamala, then expect GOP wins over the next several election cycles. People are tired of the Democrats’ whining, lecturing, and snobby disposition that’s leading to white people telling blacks how they should vote. It’s nothing new, but the Trump hysterics have driven these people to madness. It presents an extraordinary opportunity for the GOP. With the Democrats leaderless, adrift, and fraught with infighting, the Republican Party has a crease to exploit when the governing begins. Focus on notching legislative wins one at a time. It’s like a professional sports team in-season—don’t think playoffs or championship yet. It’s one game at a time. You push the agenda you ran on, which led to this massive balance in political capital, and it could keep the Trump coalition together. 

That’s the trap. 

There will be a temptation to discuss whether the exits show a permanent political majority, three words I despise. And it’s a concept that gets memory-holed once a party clinches a decisive win. After 2004, Republicans thought they could form one based on national security issues. In 2008, it was the “end of conservatism” with the ushering of the Obama coalition, which has now totally collapsed. Labor unions broke in healthy numbers for Republicans, and young people weren’t as gung-ho about Kamala and the Democrats. It’s over, which isn’t shocking. In the words of pre-Trump George Will, public opinion is shiftable sand, therefore, there are no permanent victories in a system like ours. 

And every time, that consensus gets wrecked. In 2006, there was a blue wave in the midterms. In 2010, the Tea Party arrived. Trump voters aren’t reliably Republican, either; a nice chunk voted for Democrats in 2018. I don’t mind that, as it paints the danger Republicans face if they lollygag on policy initiatives, like the economy and border security, and get bogged down in nonsense once January arrives. 

I don’t think 2024 is some permanent win. It’s a mandate to get things going for the first 18 months. Can the GOP amass a string of victories to make the case and keep the ship steady as she goes in 2026? It’ll be unprecedented. Only 2002 saw the incumbent party gain seats, and that was after we endured a catastrophic terror attack. History can also be a stubborn thing. No incumbent party has ever retained the White House where only 28 percent thought the country's direction was going well. So, let’s not think about the midterms, then. The GOP should focus on getting as much done beforehand, and there could be a surprise. 

Either way, reducing the cost of living, getting the mass deportations lined up, finishing the border wall, rebuilding the military, putting out Joe Biden’s fires aboard, and making Trump’s tax cuts permanent are just the tip of the iceberg. I haven’t even touched on judicial vacancies and the Supreme Court battles that are likely ahead. 

Frankly, there shouldn’t be any talk of permanent majorities from anyone since we simply don’t have the time.



Conservatives, This Is Not The Time To Go Wobbly


It looks as if We the People have won the trifecta – White House, Senate, House. Every state but my stupid state of Washington shifted to the right. Anarchists mostly stayed home, and cities are not peacefully burning. The market is liking Trump’s election. Tensions are softening internationally.

This is a sweet victory not just for President Trump and his MAGA movement but for truth, beauty, and the American way. Americans chose

  • Their God-given individualism over group identity politics
  • The reality of two sexes, regardless of various sexual expressions
  • Prosperity through capitalism instead of totalitarian dogma
  • Law, order, secure borders, and drug-free streets over some squishy compassion for “others”
  • Our children’s well-being contra those who would twist their minds and destroy their bodies
  • Our nation’s welfare before the lies told by profiteering climate alarmists
  • Acting honorably even as our compatriots persistently call us bitter clingers, deplorable, fascists, Nazis, Hitler, white supremacists, garbage, and all kinds of bigots

Conservatives, you armored yourselves against these evils and battled to make life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness available to all Americans. Now stand fast against those evils, amid the continuing battle, and in victory.

We’ve won. Now, it’s time for a nap, a deep breath, and expanding our big tent to include all Americans... Whoa. No. Conservatives must hold steady and not yield to the siren calls for unity and bipartisanship.

What, then, shall we do with the left? Ignore them, for the most part, and enjoy making fun of them for their silly excesses. We do not need to silence others or control a single national narrative as they do. Let them cry, snivel, and scream into the void, wondering at the brass doors of heaven. We have work to do. We do not need to listen or respond to those who would only befoul the gears.

RINOs who denigrated us are now clamoring to be let in, to be seen, to be heard, and to be given power and authority. Just say no.

Quasi-quislings from previous administrations, including Trump’s own, who turned against him even before he was out of office, now want the Good Governance stamp of approval on their ideas and ideals. Just say no.

Leftists will be accusing us of a hundred new sins for not sharing power and position with them. Just say no.

Some members of Congress, smarting from their party’s public humiliation, will demand that conservatives be nice, play fair, and uphold the prime legislative principle of bipartisanship. Just say no. Don’t budge an inch in their direction.

Decades ago, I listened to a talk by New Zealand youth evangelist Winkie Pratney. Winkie was discussing resisting temptation. He spoke about how hard it is to stand fast and how easy to fall. He invited my friend Anne to join him as he talked.

Anne is very strong. She had been a high school athlete and was even stronger then. Winkie is a slight fellow. He had Anne stand on a chair to demonstrate that she was in the more righteous position relative to him. She was to lift him up to be with her. She worked diligently to do so.

He continued to talk, and she continued to pull. Suddenly, Winkie gave a yank, and down off the chair came Anne. It was a stunning illustration that has stayed with me for nearly 50 years.

There will be unity. When those who stood against us recognize the error of their ways, repent, and find reconciliation by standing with us. They must join us rather than demand we meet on some middle ground away from our position of victory. It’s not compassion but is, instead, just plain wrong to compromise with those who labeled us terrorists, threw us in solitary confinement for years, dragged us out of school board meetings, silenced our voice on social media, and forced their bad science on us.

We will never forget what they have said and done. We will forgive them. But we will not welcome them until they change. People do change; JD Vance is an example. Words are not enough. It is not by their fragrant blossoms that we shall know them but by their fully ripened fruit. They must take the time to demonstrate their change of heart.

Let those who want in go out and speak to their followers. Let them change their local and state policies, procedures, and laws to come more in line with the incoming administration’s goals.

Let them rally the country to this new vision for America. Let them make sure the 2026 midterms continue the swell.

Let those in Congress propose legislation in line with bringing America to greatness. Let them abandon the former taxbucks-thieving policies based on very bad science.

Don’t give in to the easy temptations, Conservatives. Stand fast for what you know is right.



Wreck of lost US second world war ship known as ‘the dancing mouse’ found

 Australian navy discovered USS Edsall late last year near Christmas Island, 80 years after its 1942 sinking by Japan  


The wreck of the long-lost US warship USS Edsall, sent to the bottom of the sea during the second world war by the Japanese, has been discovered, US and Australian officials announced on Monday.

The warship was sunk on 1 March 1942, three months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The Edsall was traveling across the Indian Ocean south of Java when it was sunk by Japanese dive bombers.

The Edsall’s formidable display in evading attacks before its demise led the Japanese to dub the ship “the dancing mouse”.

“I am honored to acknowledge the role #AusNavy played in discovering the wreck of @usnavy USS Edsall, a warship that holds a special place in our shared naval histories,” wrote Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Australia, in an Instagram post to commemorate Veterans Day. 


“We will now be able to preserve this important memorial and hope that the families of the heroes who died there will know their loved ones rest in peace,” said Kennedy in an accompanying video.

The second world war ship, only about 300ft in length, was carrying 153 sailors and several dozen army air forces pilots and soldiers. It had sustained damage from an earlier attack and deemed unfit for combat but was deployed to aid another ship when it encountered Japanese naval forces at about 4pm.

Despite its damaged state, the Edsall successfully dodged attacks for over an hour, swerving to avoid the hundreds of fired shells. The Edsall counterattacked with a smokescreen and torpedoes before eventually being overcome by Japanese dive bombers 


Historians say that a few people on board survived the sinking ship but were immediately picked up by enemy forces and later beheaded in a prison camp.

According to the US navy, the wreck was first discovered late last year south of Australia’s remote Christmas Island submerged in 18,000ft of water. The US cooperated with Australian officials to confirm the wreck was in fact the Edsall.

Mark Hammond, chief of the Royal Australian Navy, said in the video that the wreck was found by the MV Stoker, an Australian naval support ship that is normally used for hydrographic surveying.

The wreckage was subsequently examined with underwater robots and sonar. The Australian navy has not disclosed what the Stoker was doing when the Edsall was found, citing “operational security sensitivities”, according to the Washington Post


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/11/uss-edsall-ship-wreck-found

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Donald Trump Made The GOP Cool Again


Donald Trump and J.D. Vance didn’t shy away from the popularity contest run by Kamala Harris. 
They competed and won.



President-Elect Donald Trump and Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance were the cool candidates this election, and everybody knows it.

While Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats followed the tired script of courting Hollywood celebrities to campaign on a deflated brand of masculinity, the Trump-led Republican ticket leaned into the cultural dichotomy that characterized presidential politics to reclaim the popular high ground. Put another way, Trump and Vance didn’t shy away from the popularity contest run by Harris. They competed and won, infuriating leftists along the way who exposed themselves as far too obsessed with identity, far too insulated by machine-driven media, and far too barren of genuine humor. The Democrats’ reaction to Trump’s New York City rally at Madison Square Garden exemplified how the Harris team closed the campaign as all of the above.

On Oct. 27, nine days before Election Day, insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe enraged Democrats with his performance at the Manhattan rally where he made an insulting joke.

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now, Hinchcliffe said. “I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

The comment whipped Democrats and the media into a routine bout of hysteria, and they were outraged that a literal insult comedian would, as the Associated Press put it, make “crude and racist insults” and that his “set also included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people, all key constituencies.”

“Vice President Kamala Harris described Trump’s rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden as ‘more vivid than usual’ and said he ‘fans the fuel of hate’ before she flew to Michigan for a campaign event,” the AP reported.

President Joe Biden would go on to call Trump supporters “garbage” while on a campaign call with Latino activists.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said.

The president’s remark not only reminded voters how the left approaches comedy but also how the left approaches Republicans — with the very contempt Democrats claim to condemn on behalf of minorities they assume are similarly outraged. Trump charismatically responded by rolling into a Wisconsin rally in a garbage truck while dressed as a garbage man.

“How do you like my garbage truck?” Trump asked reporters at the Green Bay venue. “This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”

The episode came shortly after Trump generated even more iconic images during his shift at a McDonald’s drive-through to mock Harris’ authenticity. The Washington Free Beacon reported in August that she likely fabricated her experience as a McDonald’s fry cook when she started campaigning for president in 2019.

While most politicians (like Mitt Romney) would have responded to the news about their opponent by blasting the opponent’s credibility in a news interview, Trump showed up at a McDonald’s instead to work the fryer himself in one of the best displays of retail politics in recent presidential history.

Trump ran with a charisma that was completely absent from the Democrat ticket, which was hellbent on lecturing Americans about racism and sexism. Instead of blindly recruiting a bunch of A-list celebrities to tell Americans how to vote, Republicans instead carefully co-opted a select few to prove a particular point. Whether it was Amber Rose sharing her evolution as a black rapper who used to believe every media smear about Republicans or Hulk Hogan re-appearing at Madison Square Garden to present an alternative to the left’s emasculation of men, team Trump triumphed in the culture war with a multiracial coalition that refused to buy what Democrats were selling.

Trump and Vance, both of whom appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and ultimately earned his endorsement, particularly dominated over Democrats among male voters across the electorate. Trump captured a majority of men aged 18-44, and his historic inroads among black and Hispanic voters were propelled by support among young men. Democrats, however, campaigned as if they were trying to dissuade men from embracing the Harris/Walz ticket. The video below was an actual ad created to court more “dudes for Harris.”

Clearly, young men whose masculinity has been written off as “toxic” by the Democrats were more receptive to messages from Republicans who had drawn the support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is on a crusade to reverse the tide of plummeting testosterone levels. “Normal gays” disillusioned by the left’s transgender hysteria were certainly compelled to vote for Trump following Vance’s testimony on Rogan’s podcast that gay men “just wanted to be left the hell alone.” After all, the Republican platform under Trump formally dropped the party’s explicit endorsement of traditional marriage.

To most Americans, then, the response to Trump’s win among young men and women who are tired of an emasculated dating pool comes as little surprise. By this fall, the stigma associated with voting for Trump that existed in 2016 was completely erased.

Contrast the celebrations of Trump’s victory to the bizarre impulse of leftists to record themselves in unhinged fits of rage flooding tears across the internet, and it’s even more clear who the cool candidates were this cycle.



The Lesson Some Leftists Have Learned From Trump’s Win Should Terrify Americans


Some leftists have concluded that they need to crack down even further on free speech, and Republicans should stay vigilant.



Since Donald Trump’s landslide victory over Kamala Harris last Tuesday, the legacy press has been hosting a public inquest into her demise. Three competing theories soon dominated the discussions — only one of which accepted the reality that Americans rejected the far-left policies and candidate on the merits.

While some Democrats and media outlets took this somber approach to the post-mortem, a second and more vocal segment of the press and Harris voting bloc instead declared that Trump’s election proves a majority of Americans are racist, sexist autocrats. The election of Barack Obama, Harris’ previous victories as a senator and a vice-presidential candidate, coupled with the increase in support Donald Trump garnered from minorities and women, quickly disprove this theory.

After an intense and nerve-wracking election season, these delusional tirades provided the still-sane populace some much needed levity. But Republicans should also note that at least a small segment of the left plans to double down on identity politics and prepare to counter these messages — not merely to protect their electoral victory, but more importantly to return to the pre-DEI unity that reigned supreme in our country until Barack Obama somehow converted his election as the first African-American president into a launchpad for racial divisiveness.

But it is a third theory for Trump’s resounding victory, posited by many on the left, that should cause grave concern to liberty lovers because it forewarns of an acceleration of efforts to control the marketplace of ideas. Here, Harris’ loss was blamed not on the far-left policies and candidate voters rejected or on the supposed racist and sexist beliefs of the electorate, but on voters purportedly being “misinformed” by the right-wing controlled media.

By the end of last week, this theme had flooded the airways and social media. But it was the New Republic’s article, “Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?,” that best capsulated this spin. 

The New Republic’s article from Thursday declared the purported “reason” for Trump’s victory: “It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things, which points to one overpowering answer.” “The answer is the right-wing media,” author Michael Tomasky pontificated, continuing: 

“Today, the right-wing media — Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more — sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.”

This argument was laughable to conservatives and Republicans who, unlike many of their liberal and Democrat contemporaries, do not limit their news intake to coverage from like-minded media outlets. Thus, the right saw what statistics bore out — “that broadcast evening news coverage of the 2024 presidential race has been the most lopsided in history,” with legacy outlets, like ABC, CBS and NBC, providing Harris “78% positive coverage, while these same networks have pummeled former Republican President Donald Trump with 85% negative coverage.” 

The legacy networks also hosted and controlled the presidential and vice-presidential debates, providing even more skewed coverage of the competing candidacies. And these media outlets regularly pushed — or unquestioningly accepted — false and misleading claims about Trump and Vance. 

The repetitive false reporting that Donald Trump had called neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville “very fine people” — a claim even debunked by Snopes — alone proves the point. But ordinary Americans, having lived through the Russia collusion hoax and the false claims that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, and also having witnessed the blatant bias of the networks during the debate, no longer needed solid proof to question the veracity of the legacy outlets. And the populace then turned to alternative media to assess the truth.

Herein, we saw the difference about 2024: It isn’t that the right controls the media or misinforms the populace, but that the left no longer can — at least  not unimpeded. 

The growth of alternative media, apolitical podcasters, and Elon Musk’s refusal to censor conservative speech have created a counterweight. Or, as Axios founder Jim VandeHei acknowledged during an interview on MSNBC, Democrats “need to come to grips that legacy media is just not as important as it thinks it is.”

Make no mistake, though, the American left will not accept this new reality. Nor will the international community, which depends on the superpower of the United States bending to the will of the new world order — something that can be achieved only if the like-minded control information.

In late October, Matt Taibbi and Paul D. Thacker reported that efforts are already underway to destroy the free and fair marketplace of ideas that gained strength after Elon Musk purchased Twitter. In “Election Exclusive: British Advisors to Kamala Harris Hope to ‘Kill Musk’s Twitter,'” the two independent journalists reported that “internal documents from the Center for Countering Digital Hate — whose founder is British political operative Morgan McSweeney, now advising the Kamala Harris campaign — show the group plans in writing to ‘kill Musk’s Twitter.’” 

Those same internal documents, according to Taibbi and Thacker, reveal the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an “activist ally of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party,” planned to “strengthening ties with the Biden/Harris administration and Democrats like Senator Amy Klobuchar, who has introduced multiple bills to regulate online ‘misinformation.’”

With Biden and Harris soon out of office, direct coordination with the next administration won’t happened. Yet, as 2020 proved, the censorship-industrial complex has deep roots in the government, academia, non-profits, and tech companies. So, even with a Trump Administration, Musk supporting free speech on X, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg claiming a change of heart away from censorship, many players remain, including the near entirety of the international community.

Those seeking to control information have many options yet at their disposal, from foreign countries targeting X and other platforms for civil or criminal penalties, to tech companies using algorithms to limit the reach of the new media in search engines. Foreign government and private efforts to deplatform and demonetize podcasts and alternative media also remain a powerful weapon.

So, while last week the conversation centered on what Democrats need to learn from their electoral defeat, Republicans should study the left’s response because it forewarns of a second wave of attacks on free speech.