Friday, February 21, 2025

To Keep Winning, America First Must Leverage the Power of Information Operations


One of the glorious parts of the campaign that Trump 2.0 is prosecuting against the Deep State is the unprecedented way it exploits the Internet and high technology to take on what’s essentially a mid–20th century government leviathan. After all, it’s come out that the government's flunky retirements are handled on paper in a limestone cavern, and that Treasury is still running some of its systems on COBOL. Now, I’m not a computer geek, having kissed a girl, but I remember COBOL was a thing when I was in college, and when I was in college, A Flock of Seagulls was a thing.

Moreover, the movement is leveraging outside talent, like X folk hero and heroine @oilfield_rando and @datarepublican, who use their knowledge and technology to interrogate and expose the hidden misdeeds of the Deep State. This is great stuff. This has to be encouraged. There are not just a few dozen or hundreds or even thousands of these kinds of savants out there. There are tens of thousands of more people who have the skills to conduct decentralized operations to support the administration’s war on the Institutions that have made war on us. The Democrats flirted with this kind of mobilization of outside assets to do evil – there were groups of psychopaths who made it their point to hunt down innocent Americans for the crime of protesting on January 6, and it’s hilarious that all the efforts have come to nothing thanks to President Trump delivering justice through the pardons.

This is an information battle as much as anything else – knowledge is power, and fast knowledge is superpower. We are trying to do a few things with information. The most important is to find and identify problems. That’s one of the things DOGE is doing with its algorithms – uncovering the hidden problems within the system. But there are other problems out there that aren’t hidden in the code. Tyrannical bureaucrats hassling patriots and defying the president, for example. While we can’t identify and solve every single injustice out there, we can make a systemic impact by publicly highlighting and correcting selected problems. In other words, if we find something going on that’s symbolic, we publicize it, and then we crush the wrongdoer – loudly and unequivocally.

What does this accomplish? It helps the individual patriot, of course, and that’s important. But it also shows other potential resister bureaucrats what happens if the proverbial Eye of Sauron falls upon them. They will realize that there is a non-zero chance that, at worst, they go to jail, or they might lose their pension, or, at best, they might find themselves counting igloos in Nome, Alaska.

But there’s another equally important part of this. Every time the administration comes down like a ton of bricks on some out-of-control pencil pusher out in the field, our side understands that we have won. We put a W on the board. Our morale builds. We see President Trump’s promises being kept. We see that there is hope. We see that there is the potential to improve things. And we see that justice is done. The benefits, like helping the victims and terrifying the government flunkies, are important, but this is really an exercise in morale. It makes people understand that their work reelecting Donald Trump was worth it. He earns their trust.

Now, the administration itself is too busy to sweep the Internet looking for outrageous issues to spotlight. This is a job best done by outsiders. It doesn’t take resources away from the official tasks and gives outside folks a way to make a difference. Plus, leveraging outside support gives the administration a huge combat power advantage. The Internet, combined with technology, allows motivated people to use these assets to maximize the ability of the administration to keep moving fast and to react quickly. As a movement, we should formalize this operation. We should have a formal structure that provides a clearinghouse for information for the administration but outside the administration and not subject to Freedom of Information Act requirements and other regulations. It should be a central point of assembly for information from outsiders who want to help, whether by reporting information or gathering it proactively.

What does this all mean? 

Let’s look at my personal favorite of all the departments, the Department of Defense – at least until we change it back to what it should be, the Department of War. The DOD is the biggest of the departments, and there are other factors that make it perfect for this kind of operation. It has a hierarchical chain of command, which gives leaders enormous powers over subordinates – and where there is enormous power, there’s enormous potential for abusing that power. There’s also the secrecy and confidentiality that tends to surround the military – the first rule of the military is don’t talk about the military. This allows abusers to hide their abuse. And there’s been a lot of abuse. I’ve been inundated with service members who claim to have suffered horrible persecution at the hands of their chain of command – COVID pogroms are just one example. No doubt some claims are exaggerated or even false, and that’s why one of the most important tasks for the working group I’m advocating is to screen those out. But there are plenty of real examples of toxic leadership, racial and sexual bigotry under the DEI banner, gross incompetence, and outright corruption. You probably didn’t hear about the Fat Leonard scandal, but a bunch of admirals were taking a bunch of money and hookers from a contractor. If the investigation wasn’t so unprofessional and incompetent, we might’ve seen some very senior people in striped uniforms turning big rocks into little ones. There is waste with money flushed down the toilet. There is arbitrary and obnoxious hassling of service members for demonstrating traditional values. Did you know that in one command, the leadership refused to give command slots to Christians because Christian values weren’t in line with the DEI party line? 

That happened. It needs to unhappen. We need to spot that garbage and nuke the site from orbit.

Maybe there’s a chaplain at some Air Force Base who can’t mention Jesus because that’s “not inclusive.” Perhaps a soldier is being passed through an elite training course based on race or some other nonsense so the generals can point to a token Green Beret. Maybe $10 million of brand-new generators is just sitting there, rusting. All those are entirely plausible, but we’ll never know about them unless we go looking for them. Once we go looking for them, we’ll find them on chat boards, social media, or even through tips.

That’s just an example of one of the many structures we must build within the America First movement to keep this all going past January 20, 2029. For so long, we invested in institutions that held seminars and wrote white papers, and there’s a place for that. Those institutions were critical in preparing for the Deep State takeover under Trump 2.0. But that’s not all there is. We need to harness the limitless potential and talents of our America First base. Of course, since USAID is getting a stake driven through its shriveled heart, it will not fund itself. We need our America First visionaries with a few bucks to invest in infrastructure that will allow us to keep the fight alive. Now, let’s hope we can find some people to write the checks – I’m not worried about finding people eager to do the job.




And we Know, On the Fringe, and more- Feb 21

 



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The Soul of the Democrats


The Soul of the Democrat Party’s Leadership Lies Solely in its Lust for Power 


As Japan’s defeat during World War II became obvious, many of its soldiers performed harakiri -- a ritual suicide by disembowelment using a sword -- as an honorable alternative to surrendering. Perhaps one of the most notable moments of a U.S. presidential candidate performing political harakiri occurred in March 2004. 

Explaining his vote in support of $87 billion for our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Democrat candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) responded, "I actually voted in favor of the $87 billion before I voted against it." His words famously became reduced to “I was for it before I was against it.” Critics had a field day with this, accusing Kerry of wanting to have it both ways in trying to be everything to everybody. The flip-flop effectively derailed his campaign.

Over the past three decades, the Democrats have quietly shifted their position on two major issues that suggest they were for them before being against them. These issue changes are most telling about where the soul of the Democrat party leadership lies.

First is the issue of illegal immigration. 

In 1995, President Bill Clinton touched on the matter during his State of the Union address, providing his party’s position -- one Democrats enthusiastically supported -- saying: 

“All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. 

The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. 

That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. 

In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workforce as recommended by the Commission headed by former congresswoman Barbara Jordan. 

We are a nation of immigrants but we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years and we must do more to stop.” 

Clinton left little doubt where he stood on the issue. Everything he said about it 30 years ago is still accurate today. Yet, during the past four years, Democrat Party leadership executed a 180-degree turn on this position. They fully supported President Joe Biden’s open border policy -- one that has witnessed the crossover of nearly eleven million illegals. And today, these leaders oppose efforts by President Donald Trump to deport them.

Second is the issue concerning a national audit to identify government waste.

Interestingly, in 1997, the “Creating a Government That Works Better & Costs Less” report was released by Clinton, detailing ways in which Washington could curtail waste. Clinton announced his intentions to act upon its recommendations. And, in 2011, President Barack Obama signed an executive order initiating a campaign to root out wasteful spending, doing so as Congress was proving slow to act.

Both Clinton and Obama promised to do what the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began doing the day after President Donald Trump began his second term in office. There was no opposition by fellow Democrats as to what Clinton and Obama announced they would do; hypocritically, there has been plenty of Democrat opposition to what DOGE is doing.

On February 12th, a hearing called “The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud” was held by the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency “to investigate the hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars wasted annually on improper payments and fraud.” During his remarks, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) showed a video of both Clinton and Obama announcing their cost-cutting measures above. Burlison did this in an effort to drive home the point to Democrats of “what your party believed in.”

The change in policy positions by Democrat party leaders on the two issues above defies logic. Positions they fully supported during the tenure of Democrat party presidencies they do not support during the tenure of a Republican Party president. Like Kerry’s naive statement in 2004 suggesting he voted for a political position before he voted contrarily, the Democrat party leadership is taking a similar position on two major issues.

But it raises the question as to where the soul of the Democrat Party lies? Do Democrats believe their loyalty is owed to their party’s serving president, regardless of his political stance on issues, or that it is owed to the country? The evidence strongly suggests the former.

Another recent example supporting this occurred on a state rather than a national level.

Trump nominated Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to be the U.S. Representative to the United Nations. If confirmed by the Senate, she would vacate her congressional seat, mandating a special election be held to replace her. 

Last year, Stefanik’s district voted her in for a sixth term, the result of winning a wave of independent voters. Knowing Republicans hold a very slight majority in the House and that the district may well go Republican again, New York’s Democrat party leaders introduced a bill to delay the special election. There was no logical reason to do so. Fortunately, state Republican leaders were able to block the bill. But this action by Democrats further evidenced their party’s focus on maintaining power, willing to leave over 700,000 voters in the district without representation.  

The soul of the Democrat party’s leadership lies solely in its lust for power -- not in preserving power for the people.



Vance in Munich and Foreign Policy Realism for the Modern World


Vice President JD Vance's speech Feb. 14 at the Munich Security Conference was not merely the most important speech the precocious young second-in-command has delivered in his political career. It was also a speech that encapsulates an entire geopolitical era -- that of a return to prudence, sobriety and nationalism as the hallmarks of American foreign affairs.

This departure from post-Berlin Wall universalist liberalism has been a long time in the making, and Vance's incisive rebuke of European elites powerfully drove home the point. For the foreseeable future, U.S.-Europe relations will not be the same -- and that is a good thing.

Vance took a blowtorch to delicate European elite sensitivities. He excoriated, among other things, Europe's unfortunate recent turn toward serial censorship of perceived "dissident" speech and its mass importation of third-world Muslims who show no discernible interest in assimilating into their host nations' dominant cultures. The diplomats assembled in Munich were, expectedly, aghast. One German official broke down in actual tears from the lectern. In truth, Vance was giving voice to the many Europeans who have been sending clear signals by voting for nationalist-populist anti-immigration parties everywhere from Britain to the old Iron Curtain.

But more than speaking for those Europeans, Vance was speaking as an American-and as a young American nationalist statesman, in particular. And it is here that we see how U.S.-Europe relations could be reset for a decade or more.

For the previous generation of American leaders, the notion of going into the belly of the European Union and delivering such a stern rebuke to high-ranking European statesmen would have been unthinkable. For Americans who came of political age during the Cold War, it was simply expected that the United States and Western Europe, specifically, would long be allied in lockstep fashion. After all, in contrast to the Soviet Union and other communist regimes, we shared the same values.

Vance's speech underscored the growing chasm in those values. The United States, especially since Jan. 20, prizes free speech; Europeans increasingly do not. The United States, at least since Jan. 20, once again prizes sovereignty and nationhood; European elites increasingly do not.

But the broader Trump-Vance "America First" criticism of European elites goes far beyond a growing "values" chasm. There is also a massive "national interest" chasm. Unless and until Europe comes to appreciate that "MAGA"-style foreign policy realism places the pursuit of the American national interest above everything else, U.S.-Europe relations will continue to be strained.

The Trump foreign policy doctrine, which goes back to his first term and for which Vance has emerged as an articulate spokesman, is predicated on a sober assessment of the 21st-century geopolitical map. We once again live, as we did during the Cold War, in a multipolar world; this time, the power to focus on is Communist China. Accordingly, America's overwhelming imperative is to devote our limited resources -- at least those deployed outside our own hemisphere -- to containing and repelling China. But America does, of course, have other interests in the world; we are threatened by radical Islamism, and we do depend on the freedom of navigation on the seas just as much as any power.

The relevant question for structuring American foreign relations is thus this: How can we best empower and embolden proficient, generally self-sufficient allies to patrol and safeguard their own regions of the world in a way that redounds to the mutual tangible interests of both our regional allies and the United States itself?

The Abraham Accords peace deals, brokered during the final year of Trump's first term, demonstrate how this can work in practice. A quintessential act of foreign policy realism statecraft, the Accords brought together Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in a strategic Iran-containment alliance. (Saudi Arabia, though formally on the sidelines, quietly supports the Accords.) Iran and its myriad proxy militias present a continuing threat to the United States, as we tragically learned at Tower 22 in Jordan last January, and the best bang-for-your-buck, American national interest-securing path to containing the mullahs is to embolden likeminded regional allies to tend to the problem themselves.

There could, in theory, be a similar situation in Europe. The United States, after all, is threatened by Russia -- albeit not nearly as much as is Europe. But European elites too often try to have it both ways with Russia; they are hopelessly addicted to Russian energy, and Germany above all was the leading proponent of the Vladimir Putin-empowering Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. But despite their addiction to Russian energy, they ironically claim to be deathly afraid of Putin's territorial ambitions. While EU energy purchases power Putin's war machine, many of Europe's NATO members still do not meet their defense spending treaty obligations.

There is a genuine "national interest" gulf between the United States and Europe on the pressing question of Russia, including the settlement of the war in Ukraine. If Europeans are so gravely concerned about the precise nature of the redrawn Donbas border in eastern Ukraine, for instance, they can invest more of their own military and diplomatic resources to pursue that settlement themselves. But absent that, Europe should not stand in the way of a U.S.-led resolution to the war in Ukraine.

The post-Berlin Wall unipolar moment is long over. Nationalism and realism are not merely the flavors of the day -- they are the flavors of the century. It would behoove Europe to get with the program. Vance is right.



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As Mitch McConnell Walks Into the Sunset, What Will His Legacy Be and Who Will Fill His Shoes?


by Jennifer Oliver O'Connell for RedState 

As my colleague Bob Hoge announced, former Sen. Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is going gently into that good night. On the day of his 83rd birthday, Addison Mitchell McConnell took to the floor of the body where he has served as its longest-running leader to announce he will not seek reelection. A 40-year-long, four-decade, eight-term Senate career will officially sunset in January of 2027. 

Journalist Mike Coté wrote an homage of sorts to McConnell in 2024, when McConnell made the announcement that he would be stepping down from Senate leadership:

Mitch McConnell is undoubtedly the elder statesman of the Republican Party, serving in the Senate since the 1980s. He has led the Republican Senate caucus since 2007 and is the longest-serving congressional party leader in American history. Unlike our current president, McConnell (82-years-old as of writing) is willingly stepping down from his leadership post at the end of this Congress in January 2025. He will do so as the most important GOP legislator of the past half century at least. It is arguable that he has had the most internal influence from a congressional post in Republican history, going back to the earliest days of the party in the 1850s. (Robert Taft is up there, too, of course.) He was crucial in the Citizens United case, protecting political speech by citizens from an overzealous bipartisan effort to restrict it. 

Love him or hate him, McConnell's greatest legacy will be how he transformed our nation's judiciary. First, in his refusal to bring the nomination of Merrick Garland before the Senate for confirmation hearings, essentially relegating Garland to his role as a much pilloried and now failed Attorney General. Second, in the rapid promotion and confirmation of constitutional judges. Thanks to McConnell's leadership, we have three originalist Supreme Court justices on the bench.

His biggest legacy, however, is in judicial confirmations. McConnell, always a master of the parliamentary rules of the Senate, fundamentally reshaped the American judiciary to fit a more originalist, conservative strain of legal thinking. He was never the first to alter the rules of the Senate, but played aggressively by the rules his opponents chose. His opposite number, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), was the one who eliminated the filibuster for presidential appointments instead of working to find compromise picks; McConnell warned him of this and stated that Democrats would regret the choice. They certainly did a few years later, when Republicans were able to use these new rules to confirm three Justices to the Supreme Court in just four years – as well as blocking Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland in a controversial, but entirely rational and legal maneuver. Those judicial appointments, both at the highest level and in the lower courts, have already begun to tell. In just the past few years, we have seen major victories for the conservative movement: overturning Roe v. Wade, minimizing deference to bureaucratic agencies, protecting freedom of speech and religion, limiting affirmative action, and much more. And this is just the beginning; the courts will lean in the originalist direction for decades to come.

Watching McConnell's rise was quite compelling. In our image-driven society, he lacks the look of a person who wields power, let alone one who wielded it so effectively. The late, great Rush Limbaugh used to refer to McConnell as "The Turtle," and it fit. In 2018, Don Blankenship decided to label McConnell "Cocaine Mitch" in two campaign ads where he accused the senator of being a drug trafficker. The claims were false, but the moniker stuck and it came to embody McConnell's cool and calculated leadership in the Senate. McConnell even fundraised off it in 2020, selling red t-shirts featuring a faceless figure over the name "MITCH," with a sprinkling of cocaine. The campaign netted $70,000 toward his reelection. This velvet-hammer approach, and forging legislative coals into diamonds, were a hallmark of McConnell's tenure. So, to see the decline: first in his bitter moves against President Donald Trump and his physical decline of freezing in public, falling, and being wheeled around in a wheelchair, has not been pretty. 

McConnell's voting record of late has been particularly puzzling, with NO votes against the nominations of the Director on National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. On the converse, perhaps McConnell chose to allow the so-called moderates in the Senate to gain plaudits for their YES votes for the nominees, while he could play the outlier with nothing to lose. Perhaps we'll find out the whys in the coming years, perhaps not. But for the most part, McConnell is leaving with his dignity intact and his head held high. 

There are a number of strong contenders for his Senate seat. Soon after McConnell's announcement, former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced he would run for the seat. Cameron was a strong Trump surrogate in both 2020 and 2024, and despite the shadow of the Breona Taylor case and a failed run for Kentucky governor, Cameron appears to have some political capital to wield. Rep. Thomas Massie's (R-KY) name is being floated. Massie in the House and Rand Paul in the Senate are already Kentucky's staunch advocates for free speech and limited government; so, they could become the dynamic duo that might spearhead an age of government accountability. Other less prominent names who have expressed interest are Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) and entrepreneur Nate Morris. What they lack in name recognition, Morris, in particular, could make up with his own money.

It was a humble farewell that signified a changing of the guard in the Senate, in Republican leadership and the nation. 

WATCH:



Amazon MGM, Taking Control of James Bond, Presents His Biggest Challenge

 Creative control goes to Amazon, which could do to Bond what Specter never failed to do — kill off the superspy in a way that ensures he stays dead.


Connery. Lazenby. Moore. Dalton. Brosnan. Craig

Fiction’s most famous spy, James Bond, is now an agent of Amazon MGM. With full creative control, they’re now free to pursue their goal of modernizing 007, which fans hope isn’t just a euphemism for Hollywood’s ham-fisted politics destroying yet another beloved franchise.

In 1996, a Bond producer, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, bequeathed the spy’s rights to his daughter, Barbara Broccoli, and stepson, Michael Wilson. That changed on Thursday, when the pair sold their controlling interest for “around $1 billion” according to Deadline.

Bond’s keepers long resisted Amazon MGM’s pitches to update the character in line with current politics. Ideas were reported to include a female 007, gay 007, or one without British ancestry. A series showcasing the secretary of the MI6 spy chief, M, Miss Moneypenny, was also rumored.

“These people are fucking idiots,” Ms. Broccoli was quoted as saying of Amazon’s executives in December. She held fast for Bond’s traditional persona: A man women wanted, and men wanted to be, who saved the world from the villains of Spectre.

The source material provides a roadmap and rebukes for both factions. Bond’s creator, Sir Ian Fleming, mentioned five “double-O” agents in his novels; these designations are open to anyone. Hire actors, producers, and writers who’ll honor the Bond legend and the sky is the limit.

In this columnist’s opinion, the British actor of African descent, Irdis Elba, would have been an outstanding Bond. He was, as I wrote for the Sun in July 2023, “turned off to the mantle … after racial tropes and politics emerged.”

On previous occasions, the BBC diversity chief, Miranda Wayland, had called Mr. Elba not “black enough” as the titular star of the series, “Luther.” Being labeled “both too black and too white” shows his “range” and that Amazon MGM won’t be able to please everybody.

In 2021, Daniel Craig retired after five films, objections over the fact that he’s a blond man long forgotten. Fleming had described 007 as having black hair, “dark, rather cruel good looks,” and a scar on his cheek.

Fleming also described Bond as of slim build and refined upbringing. The author objected to the large Scotsman, Sean Connery, as the spy’s first incarnation. He felt the actor’s roots and brogue were lower class; yet Connery is now regarded as 007’s archetype.

The actor Fleming envisioned as Bond, David Niven, starred in 1967’s “Casino Royale,” the lowest rated of the series on Rotten Tomatoes. Three films starring Niven’s fellow Englishman, Roger Moore, follow next. Campy scripts, not the actor’s identities, doomed those movies.

Bond works best when his missions are serious and epic. In 1962, Fleming told the Sunday Times that 007 was “a highly romanticized version of a true spy.” Skills, heart, and loyalty to king and country define him more than any physical characteristics or contemporary politics.

Fleming based Bond on “all the secret agents and commando types” he worked with in the Naval Intelligence Division during World War II. Those men and women “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” the title of the 1969 Bond film, did indeed save the world.

Bond didn’t start out larger than life. In 1958, six years after his debut novel, Flemming told the Manchester Guardian “exotic things would happen to and around him,” but he’d be “an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.”

Hollywood amped up Bond’s charisma and added to the character’s mystique, which Amazon MGM can do, too. Fleming also wanted “the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name.” He knew an American ornithologist, James Bond. In theory, since it’s the spy’s alias, anyone can use it.

The question is if a Hollywood that delights in “deconstructing” male heroes and views masculine virtues as toxic understands what makes 007 a success. Cliched, boring plots and two-dimensional “girl bosses” will fail. Lampooning the Hollywood left’s usual bogeymen can’t substitute for thrilling adventures.

Amazon MGM has a challenge to cast the new Bond and assign his next mission. Do it with respect and they’ll win over doubting fans. Follow Hollywood’s current trend of pursing politics over plot, however, and they may do what Spectre never could: Kill Bond and ensure that he stays dead.

Correction: Fleming is the last name of the author of the Bond novels. An earlier version contained misspellings of the name.

https://www.nysun.com/article/amazon-mgm-taking-control-of-james-bond-presents-his-biggest-challenge

Trump says Starmer and Macron have 'done nothing' to end Ukraine war, ahead of leaders' visits

 US President Donald Trump has said that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have not done anything to end Russia's war with Ukraine.

Speaking on a Fox News podcast, Trump was asked about his upcoming meetings with Starmer and Macron and interrupted the host saying, "They didn't do anything...no meetings with Russia!"

"They haven't done anything," Trumps adds.

"Macron's a friend of mine", he continued, adding that Starmer was "a very nice guy" but that neither of them have done anything on Russia.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cn489e05k09t?post=asset%3A80e4760c-cf0b-43ea-9416-92d8ba79e56e#post

Meanwhile, Any Guesses Who's Buying Guns These Days?


For those of us who follow Second Amendment issues closely, the fact that The New York Times, of all news outlets, on Monday published a mostly positive front-page article about the changing face of who is "leaping into gun ownership" and why came as a bit of a surprise. 

Moreover, the article admitted — even if inadvertently —the old truism that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Although in The Times' case, the "bad guy" is President Donald Trump. I know, try to control your shock and amazement.

First, The Times chose a Harvard study conducted between 2019 and 2021 as its primary source. 

These were the pandemic years when both Presidents Trump and Joe Biden served in office. So contrary to The Times in effect blaming Trump for the "new" development in gun ownership, demographic groups weren’t choosing to purchase firearms because of Trump; they were driven to irrational fear about all things COVID.

 This is not to suggest that irrational fear of Trump doesn't abound in some quarters.

Second, The Times chose five subjects to make its case: a "transgender" (male to female), a Hispanic woman, an Asian man, a Jewish male, and a black Hispanic man who said he had a political rebirth from progressivism to conservatism. 

Here's more from the article "The Tipping Point — America’s newest gun owners are upending preconceptions about who buys a gun and why."

Ken Green’s tipping point came as he watched an angry mob storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

John Alvarado’s came during the pandemic, as he evolved from a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal” to a deeply religious conservative.

A spike in anti-Asian violence in that same period is what motivated John Tsien.

For Victoria Alston, it was living on her own again after separating from her husband.

And for Anna Kolanowski, the tipping point came as she walked to a bar one night to meet friends.

Ms. Kolanowski, a 28-year-old epidemiologist in Iowa, had once believed that no one needed to own a gun. But when she came out as transgender in 2021, and began transitioning from male to female, she had a realization: “I’m a minority now, in a world that is pretty hostile to that minority.” 

In 2022, Ms. Kolanowski bought a Glock 43X handgun and started learning how to use it.

"In hours of conversations with New York Times journalists," the article's authors wrote, continuing (emphasis, mine):

[T]hese five Americans shared deeply individual reasons for their leaps into gun ownership. But there were also common threads: new fears about political violence and hate crimes, and a diminished trust in law enforcement.

Ahh,"hate crimes." I bet you wondered when that would come up here, right?

No doubt shocking to The Times, the article noted that "most said they had been surprised by how much they enjoyed learning to shoot, and improving their skills."

The article continued:

While a majority of gun owners are white, conservative, male and from rural areas, some surveys have detected an uptick in those who are not. One by Harvard researchers found that among people who purchased their first gun between 2019 and 2021, 20 percent were Black, 20 percent were Hispanic and approximately half were women.

Above all, new gun owners said, they are motivated by a need to feel prepared for anything, in a world that feels to them less stable. For some, intensified concerns about personal safety have dispelled a lifelong aversion to guns.

Well I'll be. Who'da thunk it?

I mean, the left-wing, gun-grabbing media pushes the ridiculous notion of "gun violence" — as if it's firearms that commit crimes, not the criminals who use them — at every concocted opportunity, including by The New York Times. 

So why the revelation? 

Perhaps because the evil Orange Man™ is back in charge, and his lemming-like followers ("garbage," according to Biden, and "Nazis," according to whomever) are just as scary as he is.

Liberty Nation News also covered the so-called "gun-buying frenzy" — back in March 2020 — and found:

The highest overall firearm sales increase comes from Black men and women who show a 58.2 percent increase in purchases during the first six months of 2020 versus the same period last year.

Just one problem for The Times: Donald Trump wasn't president at the time.

Here's more:

In November 2024, Gallup noted that “gun ownership rates spiked among Republican women.” Gallup found a 14% increase in gun sales within this demographic between 2007 and 2024. The truth of the matter is that there has been an uptick in gun sales among broadening demographic groups for a while now – it didn’t just begin with Trump’s second term.

Again, oops, NYT.

The Bottom Line

The fact that the overall demographic of first-time gun owners is changing is not mutually inclusive with the alleged fear of Donald Trump and his administration. 

Moreover, I'd go out on a safe limb and bet that first-time firearms ownership dramatically increased in Southern Border towns overrun by illegal aliens during the four disastrous years of the Biden administration — but don't hold your breath waiting for The New York Times to publish a "study" about that. 



If The Drug Cartels Are Terrorist Groups, Mexico Is Their State Sponsor


The naming of the Sinaloa Cartel as a terrorist organization might mean the collapse of the Mexican government.



News broke Wednesday that the State Department has named eight Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, two of the most powerful criminal organizations in the country.

The naming of Sinaloa in particular is important because it implicates the Mexican state at the highest levels. Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his ruling MORENA coalition are closely connected to the Sinaloa Cartel, as is his protégé and successor, President Claudia Sheinbaum. It’s not too much to say that if the Sinaloa Cartel is a terrorist organization, then MORENA and the Sheinbaum administration are its state sponsors.

There is a mountain of evidence for this. The Sinaloa Cartel has long been deeply invested in Mexican national politics, and began bankrolling López Obrador’s political career as early as 2006, when AMLO, as he is called in Mexico, ran for president and narrowly lost to Felipe Calderón, who launched the Mexican drug war by deploying the armed forces against the cartels.

Sinaloa first backed AMLO in exchange for promises that he would facilitate the cartels’ operations — an investment that paid off handsomely in the end. During his stint in office, from 2018 to 2024, AMLO did his utmost to protect the cartel not only from the United States but also from elements of the Mexican military and security establishment. And he didn’t really try to hide it. Not only did AMLO publicly pay his respects to the mother of former Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera on one of his many trips to the Sinaloa headquarters town of Badiraguato, he also ordered the release of one of El Chapo’s sons after Sinaloa armed forces besieged the town of Culiacan, where the kingpin’s son had been detained by Mexican troops executing a U.S. arrest warrant.

In 2020, AMLO demanded the release of Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, a former Mexican defense secretary who was arrested by federal agents in Los Angeles on drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Trump’s Attorney General William Barr foolishly agreed to release Cienfuegos as requested, whereupon Mexican authorities promptly cleared the former flag officer of all wrongdoing.

A cartoonishly corrupt series of events soon followed. AMLO accused the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration of fabricating drug trafficking charges against Cienfuegos, and on AMLO’s orders, Mexican prosecutors released hundreds of pages of files on the retired general they had obtained from their U.S. counterparts. Soon after this, according to a report on the Cienfuegos affair by ProPublica, “Joint operations against drug traffickers came to a standstill. U.S. agents reported being followed by what appeared to be Mexican army surveillance teams.” Mexico removed immunity for DEA agents and restricted their operations. This is more or less where things stand today in terms of U.S.-Mexico cooperation against the cartels.

All of which brings us back to the designation of the Sinaloa Cartel as a terrorist organization. In one of the first statements issued by the Trump White House concerning U.S. tariffs on Mexican goods, the Trump administration declared, “the Mexican drug-trafficking organizations have an intolerable alliance with the government of Mexico.”

This would seem to be a tacit acknowledgement of all that’s outlined above. And if Trump is serious about taking out these cartels, it might well mean the collapse of the Sheinbaum administration and the ruling MORENA coalition, which is closely tied to the Sinaloa Cartel.   

But precisely because of the symbiotic relationship between the Mexican state and the cartels, taking out the latter will not be simply a matter of sending armed drones to carry out precision strikes on targets south of the Rio Grande. Not that Trump is unwilling to pursue direct U.S. military action. Indeed, he floated the idea of striking the cartels in his first term, and more recently Republicans in Congress have introduced legislation for the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against cartels trafficking fentanyl into the United States. But the problem in Mexico is more complicated than that.

Groups like Sinaloa and CJNG are not merely drug trafficking organizations — at least not anymore. Over the past two decades, the largest cartels in Mexico have become quasi-government actors, not just through the bribing of state officials at every level but also in some cases taking on the role of government actors. During the Covid pandemic lockdowns, CJNG gunmen regularly distributed food and other supplies in urban areas under their control — out in the open, in clearly marked CJNG vehicles. The people in these towns came to rely on the cartel during this time. Other cartels enforced curfews, travel restrictions, and various other pandemic protocols in their respective areas. The line between cartel and state became blurred.

With the 2018 election of AMLO, who campaigned on a slogan of “hugs, not bullets” with respect to the cartels, a new era of cooperation between Mexican officialdom and the cartels began. From the outset of his term, AMLO gave the Mexican military greater responsibilities than ever before, creating the Mexican National Guard as a kind of interior security service, tasking the military with major infrastructure projects, and relying on the armed forces for things like the distribution of the Covid vaccine. 

But as the Cienfuegos affair demonstrates, elements of the Mexican military are controlled by the major cartels, including Sinaloa, which kept President Calderón’s own security chief, Genaro García Luna, who is now facing a life sentence in a U.S. federal prison, in its pay for many years.

Naming these eight cartels as terrorist organizations is the right move, but dismantling them will require a combination of military, diplomatic, and economic tactics. Above all, it will require acknowledging how deeply enmeshed the cartels are with the Mexican government and recognizing that we have no partner in the Mexican state when it comes to the fight against the cartels. There’s no question that it’s in the American national interest to have a peaceful and stable southern neighbor. But for now, we must admit the truth: in Mexico, we don’t have a partner or an ally, we have an adversary, and we need to start acting like it.