Democrat Strategy Avoids Short-Term Pain but Guarantees Long-Term Agony

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

You might be excused for thinking that the Democrats are flat-out insane in clinging as tightly as their girlish arms can to the dismal side of a raft of 80% v. 20% hot-button issues and ostentatiously obstructing the ability of the winners of the last election to govern, but there’s a method to their mendacity. The total war strategy by the party that mostly can’t do a push-up – the recent spate of embarrassing consultant-driven videos of congressweenies pumping aluminum notwithstanding – is a bluff, a fake, a front. Democrats are not fighting Republicans – they really can’t since we just ran the table on all three branches. They are fighting each other, with the Loony Left terrified of the Even Loonier Left. 

All this stuff, from Cory Booker’s Spartacus monologues performed for an empty Senate to packs of Dem reps being dissed and dismissed by GS-5s at the doors of ICE jails to the endless cringerrific vids they litter our X timelines with, is them not trying to win the battle against the GOP. They can’t. It’s an attempt to prove their Bolshevik bona fides to the kooks to their left who are eyeing their seats. It’s performance art and, like all performance art, it’s a painful combination of stupid and ridiculous that appeals only to a select group of goofs. Unfortunately for Team Donkey, it’s those goofs who are currently ascendant.

There are so many examples of them attempting to avoid the crocodiles by hiding in the minefield. The border issue comes to mind. Even their reptile brains understand that they can’t very well scream because Trump slammed shut the border doors that President Eggplant and Vice President Down-the-Hatch threw open. That’s why they are stuck complaining incessantly about Trump kicking the Third World invaders out. But they can’t just complain that we’re being a little harsh – we’re not being anywhere near harsh enough, of course. No, they have to shriek in the defense of perverts, thugs, gangbangers, murderers, wife beaters, and other assorted scumbags. Every single time they offer up some examples of ICE’s perfidy in the regime media, a deeper dive reveals this guy’s got a record that makes Jeffrey Dahmer look like Mother Teresa. When you’re to the point that you’re so afraid of your own left wing that you fly down to El Salvador to have margaritas with a dude who beats on his wife like a French president’s wife beats on him – I take no position on the question of whether or not Brigitte Macron has a penis – you know you’ve crossed the line into insanity.

The Democrats choose to die on the hill of DEI, although DEI is as popular as an STD. They are still pushing the insanity not only of allowing hairy sasquatch boys to wander commando through girls’ locker rooms, and are all in favor of allowing Munchausen mommies to carve up their kids to conform to their delusions. They won’t lock up criminals because that’s racist, and they won’t let you rebuild your house when it’s been burned down through Democrat incompetence, presumably because doing so is racist, too.

Just look at Israel. The Democrats used to have a lock on the American Jewish vote. Now, it’s all from the river to the sea. Regular Democrats are siding with the psychopathic murderers because Democrat activists are siding with the psychopathic murderers. It’s a suicide pact, and Democrats are entering into it, figuring that they can pull out before they have to pull the trigger. But all it does is put off the inevitable. At some point, they’re going to have to confront these sociopaths. The problem is that regular Democrats— the ones who are just leftist lunatics instead of leftist ultra-lunatics— don’t have the energy in this fight. The last time the merely leftist lunatic Democrats pulled off a win was when they managed to stuff Droolin’ Joe Biden into the presidency ahead of an ultra-leftist lunatic. That worked terribly for them, though not as terribly as it would’ve if the ultra-leftist lunatics had won. They’re really in a bad place, and you have to laugh at them, except for the fact that in a two-party system, both parties have at least some chance of victory, which means there is a non-zero chance that the ultra-leftist lunatics might take power down the road.

But that’s down the road, fortunately. The polling for the Democrats has never been worse among normal people. That’s not their audience for these antics. They’ve got to take out the short-term target before they start thinking about the target waiting two or three terrain features ahead— that is, they’ve got to deal with the ultra-leftist lunatics before starting to appeal to normal people again. Standing right in front of them are the Zohran Mamdanis with switchblades, looking to cut their figurative throats. Or not-so-figurative throats, should he and his Marxist/jihadi axis of evil get real power, but again, that’s down the road. 

Short-term pain is what Democrats seek to avoid, and the short-term pain comes from the insane super leftists gunning for them. This means they’ve got a focus on survival, not being smart. The smart play is to appeal to relatively normal people by being relatively normal. Keep in mind that relatively normal people don’t like acrimonious politics. They don’t like screaming and yelling. They want to be able to cede politics to the professionals and go about their lives, raising their families, having good jobs, and generally doing anything else but politics. The Democrat Party could do that, and boost its standing considerably, by rejecting reflexive hyper opposition and obstructionism, and working with Trump and the Republicans to provide bipartisan victories. That way, they do not look insane. But that’s impossible. Their left wing won’t tolerate it. It has to be total war, except the kind without guns, only because they don’t have any. 

They have backed themselves into a corner. They can’t do a U-turn and stop being obnoxiously obstructive because they’ve already designated Trump and everyone who voted for him as literally Hitler. There’s nowhere to go from there. You can’t reason or work with literally Hitler. To do so admits that the other side is not literally Hitler, and you’re kind of a jerk for lying about it. They certainly aren’t going to be able to do that, at least not until they get their butts kicked in a few more election cycles. While history is on their side for 2026, the economy is getting better, and if the economy is rocking, they are doomed. And then what will they do?

Well, if recent history is any indication, they’ll double down on dumb.

And we Know, On the Fringe, and more- August 7

 

Mel Gibson’s ‘The Resurrection Of The Christ’ Split Into Two Movies; Release Dates Set For Both

 

Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

By Matt Grobar   |   August 5, 2025   |   DEADLINE

Mel Gibson‘s film The Resurrection of the Christ, following up his 2004 hit The Passion of the Christ, will release in two parts through Lionsgate in 2027, the studio said Tuesday. In keeping with the film’s religious themes, Part One will release on Good Friday, March 26, 2027, with Part Two slated to open 40 days later on Ascension Day, Thursday, May 6, 2027.

Currently, only an untitled Warner Bros event film is slated for release the weekend of March 26 in 2027. The Resurrection‘s second installment, meanwhile, is set to go up against Sony’s video game adaptation The Legend of Zelda.

Plot details for The Resurrection of the Christ are under wraps. Gibson’s original film, starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus, was a landmark title that up until last year held the record as the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time domestically. The film, portraying the last 12 hours of Christ’s life, debuted to an opening weekend of $83 million on its way to taking in $370 million in North American theaters and more than $610 million globally off a $30 million production budget. It also garnered three Oscar nominations in the categories of Makeup, Cinematography and Original Score.

Gibson directed The Passion from his own script written with Benedict Fitzgerald and also produced. Maia Morgenstern played the Blessed Virgin Mary, with Monica Bellucci appearing in the role of Mary Magdalene.

Both installments of Gibson’s latest will be produced by Gibson and his Icon Productions partner Bruce Davey, as previously announced. Caviezel is expected to return, as is Bellucci. Although Newmarket Films released The Passion, Gibson announced Lionsgate as his partner on The Resurrection of the Christ in May.

The deal continues Gibson’s long association with Lionsgate, where he made his two most recent films: his Oscar-nominated WWII drama Hacksaw Ridge, starring Andrew Garfield, and the thriller Flight Risk starring Mark Wahlberg. The studio is also the distributor for the Icon library including The Passion of the Christ.

A Civilization Devouring Itself

American  Thinker 

Euston Station, opening in 1837, was the first inter-city railway station in London. It embodied the grandeur of the railway age, with the monumental Euston Arch acting as a neoclassical gateway to the north. Its demolition in 1962 to replace it with a modernist building has been widely condemned as a cultural tragedy, motivated by bureaucratic expedience rather than architectural necessity.

America has its own tragedy to tell. In an era, when steel and ambition reshaped the skyline, Pennsylvania Station asserted itself as an incomparable example of civic art. Completed in 1910 by the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, it was a triumph of Beaux-Arts design — an architectural philosophy holding that grandeur should be accessible to all. Modeled after the Baths of Caracalla in ancient Rome, Penn Station rose above a mere terminal; it was a democratic palace, a monument to the public, inviting ordinary people to move through vast halls and beneath coffered ceilings once reserved for emperors. A tribute to classical beauty, the edifice was intended as a shared experience.

The design of Penn Station made a bold cultural statement: that a train station — a space of routine comings and goings — could be worthy of reverence. As travelers stepped off trains from Philadelphia, Chicago, or St. Louis, they emerged into a city that announced its importance through space, light, and symmetry. The breathtaking experience transcended the functional; it was spiritual in nature.

The vast main waiting room, modeled on Roman baths, was flooded with light from soaring skylights 150 feet above. The main concourse, with its steel-trussed arches and glass ceiling, blurred the line between basilica and machine. It was the embodiment of, what the architectural historian Lewis Mumford once called “the drama of democracy”, where public space was noble, intentional, and affirming.

By the mid-20th century, the ideals giving birth to Penn Station had eroded. The rise of the automobile, the construction of the interstate highway system, and the allure of air travel diminished the centrality of railroads. The Pennsylvania Railroad, once the largest corporation in the world, entered financial decline. The shift in experience — from transcendental to transactional — captures the broader story of America’s postwar cities: a retreat from the public realm, a surrender to the car, and a dismissal of beauty as elitist or impractical.

Facing insolvency, the railroad sold the air rights above the station to developers. The plan was radical: demolish the monumental station, bury the train tracks underground, and construct Madison Square Garden, two office towers, and a shopping concourse in its place. The decision, couched in the language of economic adventurism, was a disastrous case of cultural amnesia. It demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice beauty for profitability — and to treat irreplaceable heritage as expendable.

Upsetting to watch up close, demolition began in October 1963, continuing into 1966. Enormous Corinthian columns were jackhammered, bronze eagles discarded, skylights shattered, and stone archways hauled away. Much of the granite and marble was dumped unceremoniously in the Meadowlands of New Jersey. (Incidentally, Euston Arch fragments remain as fill in the Prescott Channel.)

What replaced Penn Station was uninspired and cannibalistic-sacrificing. The new station, buried beneath Madison Square Garden (designed by Charles Luckman), became a claustrophobic warren of corridors, low ceilings, and flickering lights. Where once there had been columns and sunlight, there were now concrete walls and flickering signage. The station became a space of anxiety, unfit for the millions who passed through it. It was, in the words of architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, “a dungeon unworthy of a city that calls itself great.”

The aesthetic insult was psychological by implication. The grandeur of the old station affirmed your importance; the new one blankly denied it. The architectural theorist Juhani Pallasmaa has argued that architecture must engage the senses — it must dignify the body’s movement through space. Penn Station did the opposite: it diminished, disoriented, and degraded. It became an emblem not only of poor design, but of urban failure. Vincent Scully’s iconic lament still echoes: “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.”

Yet in its death, leaving a terrible void, Penn Station provided the impetus for preservation initiatives. The public backlash sparked by its demolition galvanized beauty-loving citizens. In 1965, New York established the Landmarks Preservation Commission. This agency would go on to save dozens of valuable buildings, including Grand Central Terminal, which narrowly escaped a similar fate in the 1970s.

Although tragic, the fate of Penn Station marks partly the end of a story and partly the beginning of a historical consciousness. Citizens came to understand that the built environment is thoroughly symbol-laden. Buildings are cultural artifacts; they shape memory, behavior, and identity. And once they are lost, they cannot be replaced with glass and steel alone.

The death of Penn Station went far beyond the destruction of a building. It was the erasure of memory, an act of cultural severance and civilizational self-cannibalism. The station represented continuity with classical ideals, civic pride, and another age when infrastructure was art. Its replacement signaled a new paradigm, with meaning being trumped by utility, subjecting civic spaces to the logic of short-term capital.

Urban theorist Jane Jacobs, reflecting on current trends, warned of the dangers of cities designed by “abstract metrics” rather than “lived experience”. Penn Station’s demolition is a case in point: a place designed to welcome people now merely “processes” them. It lacks the human scale, emotional resonance, and spatial dignity that make cities feel alive. Accordingly, commuters rush through Penn Station with their heads down. Nobody lingers. Nobody remembers.

And yet, the ghost of Penn Station has never truly left. It haunts books, documentaries, and political debates. It lives in the bronze eagles salvaged and scattered across the Northeast. It survives in Moynihan Train Hall, the long-awaited expansion completed in 2021 within the former James A. Farley Post Office building — itself designed by McKim, Mead & White. Moynihan is bright and spacious, echoing some of the lost station’s grandeur. However, it is only a partial redemption. The heart of Penn remains broken, buried beneath a basketball arena.

Recent proposals to relocate Madison Square Garden and build a new, “world-class” station above the tracks have gained momentum, backed by urban planners, civic leaders, and public advocacy groups. Unable to restore the lost beauty, architectural projects are nevertheless construed as efforts at cultural repair. Interestingly, they ask whether New York is willing to reclaim its place as a city that builds with boldness, vision, and respect for its own history.

Potentially, the story of Penn Station could be a lesson in loss, awakening, and possibility. It is a reminder that sublimity is never guaranteed — it must be cultivated, protected, and sometimes fought for. The old station was destroyed by developers. However, the public was complicit in the vandalism, having ceased to believe in grandeur and beauty.

However, the memory lingers. In a time when cities around the world confront similar choices — between preservation and progress, commerce and culture, speed and meaning — Penn Station remains a powerful symbol. It reminds us that architecture is not merely functional. It is emotional, political, and moral. It tells us who we are and what we value.

Outrage at civilization’s self-cannibalistic demolition of beloved railway stations in London and New York anticipated a broader public disillusionment with modernist architecture. While eager to promise functionality, efficiency, and honesty in materials, modernism ultimately delivered buildings perceived as inhospitable, austere, and alienating. The architectural replacements lacked the symbolic power and human scale of their predecessors, contributing to feelings of urban alienation and cultural dislocation. In a truly revolutionary spirit, the 1960s urban renewal agenda treated cities as blank slates — contemptuous of the time-proven and beautiful.

Unfortunately, we cannot bring Penn Station back in stone. In a better world, however, learning from our mistakes, we could revive the spirit that built it — a belief in public dignity, urban beauty, and the moral responsibility of cities to inspire their citizens. Vindicating the spirit of the old masters should not be confounded with nostalgia. Rather, building properly would be a return to our highest civic self.

“Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.” — New York Times, October 30, 1963.

Can Western Nations Be Saved?

American  Thinker 

A spate of massive anti-illegal-immigration protests has broken out across the United Kingdom.  Indeed, one might say that the kingdom is increasingly united about one thing: Britain belongs to the British.  Waving Union Jack flags and carrying “Britain First” signs, thousands of protesters walk down city streets sporting patriotic clothing and repeating patriotic cheers.  A stranger who knew no better might mistake the mass euphoria for a post-war victory parade celebrating the prospect of peace.  

Americans have seen these kinds of festive gatherings before.  In spirit and enthusiasm, they resemble the “Make America Great Again” rallies that President Trump has headlined since 2015.  It is quite common, in fact, to see “Make Britain Great Again” signs in the crowds and to hear the phrase shouted energetically among those gathered.  What a dramatic shift in social consciousness a decade brings!  Ten years ago, most Brits thought little of Donald Trump and expected him to wind up an odd historical footnote to Hillary Clinton’s inevitable coronation.  Now much of the U.K. is desperate to ditch Britain’s rotten Establishment and taking inspiration from President Trump’s political revolution on the other side of the Atlantic.

This is hardly surprising.  For decades, mass illegal immigration into the U.K. has been a growing problem that Establishment politicians have been unwilling to address.  For decades, regular Brits have been told that there is nothing the government can do.  Closing the borders to foreign nationals intent on breaking the U.K.’s immigration laws was apparently too difficult of a task for the once mighty kingdom to undertake.  Across Europe, North America, and Australasia, Establishment governments have told their citizens much the same thing.

Then President Trump returned to the White House and finished a job that he started in his first term: sealing the border from foreign invasion.  After four years of open borders during Biden’s lawless presidency, what the Trump administration has managed to accomplish is nothing short of amazing.  The United States has now had several months in which zero illegal aliens were released into the country, and 2025 might end with net-negative immigration on the whole — a feat that most Americans have never witnessed.  

All of a sudden, the common government excuse in the U.K. and across continental Europe — that nothing can be done to stem the tide of mass illegal immigration — has been exposed as a risible lie.  That lie was common in the United States, too.  It was told for more than forty years.  In six months’ time, President Trump has proved that secure borders require but one thing: leaders willing to enforce them.  It has become much more difficult for politicians in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the U.K. to claim that limits on illegal immigration are impossible when President Trump is demonstrating in real time the hollowness of that lie in the United States.

Establishment news media are doing their best to protect the Establishment politicians.  Just as corporate “reporters” in the United States fill the public’s airwaves with sob stories about “asylum seekers” and “undocumented migrants” willing to do the jobs that Americans are supposedly unwilling to do, corporate “reporters” on the other side of the Atlantic speak of illegal aliens as if they all have hearts of gold.  Meanwhile, “honor” killings, child rapes, rampant misogyny, organized crime, terror attacks, and serial stabbings increase in direct proportion to the influx of foreign nationals — or what the Orwellian press across the West prefers to euphemistically call “newcomers.”

This nearly century-long project to destroy the West by flooding the West with foreigners who despise the West is finally coming to a head.  Perhaps it is too late to rectify the damage caused by generations of unelected bureaucrats and Marxist globalists who have done more to undermine their own countries by erasing national borders than any foreign enemy ever could.  We will soon find out whether Great Britain may survive as an island that natives will find safe enough to call home, or whether the United Kingdom will surrender what is left of its sovereignty to those who wish to conquer it in the name of foreign gods, anodyne “multiculturalism,” and totemic worship of “diversity.”

If the West’s survival were not such a serious issue, the outrageous lengths to which its leaders have gone to arrange its suicide would almost be comical.  Central banks have depreciated the value of common currencies to such a degree that Westerners’ cost of living continues to rise, while suitable jobs are steadily exported overseas.  The rate of homeownership is in a free fall.  Fewer Westerners can afford to have a single child, much less financially support large families.  Even if Westerners could support large families, the West’s cultural vanguard has spent the last hundred years encouraging women to kill their babies, choose careers over families, and regard men as evil foot soldiers of the dreaded “patriarchy.”

In their quixotic project to control the means of economic production by branding valuable hydrocarbon energies “pollutants,” the “global warming” climate hoaxers continue to drive up the cost of electricity.  Reliance on wind and solar power has made electrical grids unreliable.  Because higher energy costs increase industrial and manufacturing costs, Westerners are less self-sufficient than ever before.  Meanwhile, globalists have convinced Western populations that they will magically maintain their standard of living by making nothing of value and subsisting on government welfare.  

European countries fortunate enough to survive Nazi Germany’s pursuit of a European empire have chosen to commemorate their victory by forming a European Union managed principally by the Germans.  Those European countries fortunate enough to survive the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain have chosen to safeguard their independence by destroying their own energy sectors, investing in “green” unicorns, and rendering their industries dependent upon Russian natural gas.  Those European countries that witnessed firsthand how vulnerable unarmed civilians are to foreign belligerents have chosen to disarm their citizens, dismantle their militaries, and pin their hopes for survival on American national security guarantees.

Historically Christian Western nations go out of their way to welcome foreign religions to their lands while mindlessly condemning Christian natives as bigots.  Western leaders do little when Christian churches are ransacked or burned to the ground.  Western schools banish Christian teachings from class curricula.  As committed as Western nations are to embracing foreign cultures, they are commensurately hostile to the Christian foundations of Western civilization.  

How else could one describe this century-long assault on the West than to acknowledge it as deliberate suicide?  Nations that denounce their own cultures, traditions, histories, and religions are not nations for long.  Nations that treat foreigners better than native citizens soon become foreign nations.  Nations that do not produce children, goods, or art eventually disappear.  Diversity and multiculturalism do not sustain civilizations; they end them.

It is all the more curious, then, that so many Western nations are today beating the drums of war — particularly with regards to potential conflict with Russia.  European and American proponents of World War III insist that “democracy” is under attack.  Yet Western “democracy,” such as it is, has had no greater enemy than the multigenerational collection of political elites who have worked so hard to euthanize it.  It is difficult to ask Western citizens to fight and die for a civilization in the grips of suicide.  Nobody, it turns out, is interested in running onto a bloody battlefield waving a nondescript flag for generic multiculturalism.  Choosing to sacrifice oneself for a nation requires a nation worthy of being saved.

Before the U.K. government decides to arrest anti-illegal-immigration protesters for violating “hate speech” laws, perhaps it should take a moment to consider who will one day defend the British Isles from foreign invasion.  With patriots imprisoned, what country will remain?

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Lawsuit: The Regulation Of Untaxed Firearms Under Federal Law Is Unconstitutional

The  Federalist 

Several Second Amendment advocacy groups, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), have filed a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA).

President Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill erased the NFA’s $200 stamp tax on short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, any firearm classified by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) as “other,” and suppressors starting Jan. 1, 2026. However, “the firearms are still required to be registered and are subject to” regulations designed to enforce the “now-extinct” tax, the lawsuit says. This “regulatory regime” no longer comports with Congress’ constitutional authority, plaintiffs claim. The lawsuit also argues that “the NFA’s regulation of suppressors and short-barreled rifles violates the Second Amendment.”

“The National Firearms Act’s registration scheme only exists to ensure that the tax on NFA firearms was paid,” Adam Kraut, the Second Amendment Foundation’s (SAF) executive director, said in a press release. “With Congress removing the tax on silencers, short-barreled firearms, and ‘any other weapons,’ the continued inclusion of these items in the NFA serves no purpose, except continuing to retain an impermissible hurdle to the exercise of one’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”

The lawsuit, Brown v. ATF, was filed on August 1 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The plaintiffs are the NRA, the American Suppressor Association (ASA), SAF, the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), Prime Protection STL Tactical Boutique, and two individual members of these organizations. They are suing both the ATF and the DOJ. The lawsuit asks the court to declare NFA regulations “relating to making, transferring, receiving, possessing, or otherwise using” the untaxed firearms and suppressors unlawful and to block anyone from enforcing the challenged portions of the law.

According to the NRA, an earlier version of the Big, Beautiful Bill included language that would have removed the $200 “federal excise tax, registry, and paperwork currently imposed on suppressors,” short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and “any other weapons” under the NFA. However, this language was removed from the legislation after the Senate parliamentarian advised it violated the Byrd rule. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported, the parliamentarian’s role is “purely advisory.” The Senate chair can ignore her recommendations, and “60 senators … could overrule the chair if he sides with the parliamentarian.” What’s more, a “simple majority could add the language back to the bill as an amendment.”

The final version of the Big Beautiful Bill cut the tax from $200 to zero but, as the lawsuit details, still allows for “burdensome” registration requirements. 

The NFA was originally introduced, by the ATF’s admission, with an “underlying purpose” to “curtail, if not prohibit, transactions in NFA firearms.” It was signed into law by FDR under the age-old pretense of preventing violence. At the time, the $200 tax was closer to $5,000 in today’s dollars. The law was later revised because of concerns about its constitutionality, but the tax and registration requirement remained.

“Congress took a major step by eliminating the NFA tax on suppressors and short-barreled firearms through the OBBB, and we’re proud to work alongside other leading Second Amendment organizations to finish the job,” said John Commerford, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action.

Democrats’ Sudden Obsession With Jeffrey Epstein Is An Opportunistic Ploy To Bash Trump

There’s no damning link between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, but Democrats have decided to weaponize a serious investigation for political gain.

The  Federalist 

Matt Taibbi recently flagged this choice tidbit from a New York Times story attempting to downplay damning new revelations about the Russiagate hoax from Trump’s first term: “The administration is trying to distract supporters who are angry about its broken promise to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.”

There’s no evidence whatsoever this is the reason why the Trump administration is trying to hold people accountable for falsely accusing the president of colluding with Russia. Trump is rightly angered that his first term was derailed by manufactured accusations of treasonous collusion. His current FBI director, Kash Patel, was involved in unraveling the bogus Russia claims as they were being made and has been warning of a conspiracy against Trump emanating from the FBI and CIA for years — and nearly all of Patel’s warnings have been subsequently validated.

Even without digging through the particulars of the latest Russiagate revelations, since when has it been a respectable journalistic practice to make unsupported assertions that are little more than Democrat Party talking points? Well, major media organizations have been behaving this way ever since I can remember, but the point about it being bad journalism still stands.

Fair or not, it’s hard not to concede that the Trump White House brought this attack on itself. A month ago, Trump’s DOJ issued a memo bluntly refuting the existence of an Epstein “client list,” downplaying conspiracies surrounding Epstein’s death in jail and the blackmailing of wealthy powerbrokers, and announcing that, due to privacy concerns and the court-ordered sealing of documents, the release of more Epstein files wasn’t forthcoming. These might be reasonable conclusions based on the evidence, but the Trump admin had swept into office all but guaranteeing dramatic Epstein revelations. This was overpromising and underachieving on a fairly grand scale, and lots of Trump supporters weren’t happy about it.

It’s worth noting that the recent round of Russiagate revelations began on July 2 when CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued a report on the faulty Intelligence Community Assessment process in 2016. That was five days before the DOJ memo on Epstein that spurred the recent controversy; if anything, the facts support the notion Democrats are seizing on the Epstein memo to distract from very serious new allegations that implicate President Obama in weaponizing the CIA to go after a political rival. On that point, Lee Smith has a lot of eye-opening things to say about how the sudden Democrat interest Epstein is an attempt to obscure the new Russia revelations.

However, it’s not all strategic. At a base level, Democrats are simply trying to exploit a rift in Trump’s base to drag his approval down by tarring him with Epstein. This why you now have even the most milquetoast figures in the Democrat Party — Quick, what’s the name of the senator from Arizona again? Wasn’t he an astronaut or something? — gleefully intimating Trump is covering up and/or implicated in a dark pedophile conspiracy.

If they were so alarmed by this pedophile conspiracy and convinced it implicated Trump, you’d think they would have done something about this last year when Democrats controlled the DOJ and Trump was running for president. You’d think releasing concrete evidence of his unsavory involvement with Epstein would have put a damper on his reelection chances. After all, it has been reported that Trump’s name pops up numerous times in the Epstein files.

The problem is that, as we’ve noted, Trump has already been victim of a major conspiracy emanating from the Justice Department. Even Trump’s tax returns were leaked. New York state combed through his real estate docs to invent a charge against him and fine him $400 million for the crime of receiving a loan and paying it back with interest. It’s entirely possible Trump’s name appearing in the Epstein files is a reason why they haven’t been released; but it strains credibility to think that Democrats controlled the DOJ the last four years and didn’t bother splashing damaging information about Trump from those same files all over The New York Times.

What we do know is this: Trump and Epstein were friends throughout the 90s, but that the pair had a major falling out around 2004 when Trump supposedly banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. The source of the feud is not clear, but one of Epstein’s most outspoken victims, Virginia Giuffre, had been working at Mar-a-Lago’s spa, and Epstein reportedly “stole” her from Trump’s employment. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said, “The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club for being a creep to his female employees.” The investigation into Epstein was opened a year later in 2005.

These facts, combined with the total lack of leaks of damaging info from a hostile DOJ, are pretty thin gruel. And yet, the media and Democrats, but I repeat myself ad nauseum, are really flooding the zone here.

The question is whether or not this might backfire, because Trump wasn’t Epstein’s only powerful friend. If Republicans really wanted to flip the script on Epstein, they might, say, subpoena the Clintons to testify about their involvement with the, uh, New York financier. And as of yesterday, that’s exactly what House Oversight committee has done. Giuffre alleged in a 2016 deposition that Clinton visited Epstein’s infamous island twice, where other young girls were present. Clinton strongly denies her allegations, but any way you look at it, the association between Clinton and Epstein is a lot more suspect than the Epstein-Trump relationship. And the same Democrats who are very suddenly pretending to be incensed by Trump’s mere alleged appearance in the Epstein files were cheering when Bill Clinton spoke in primetime at their convention last summer and urged everyone to vote against Trump.

Similarly, LinkedIn billionaire and Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman has emerged as one of the most influential figures in the party; a Wall Street Journal report from 2023 confirmed that Hoffman visited Epstein’s island and was scheduled to stay at Epstein’s house in Manhattan — allegations Hoffman did not deny. Further, Hoffman was associating with Epstein long after his sex crimes were publicly known.

Given this fact and Hoffman’s lack of moral scruples in politics, it’s not really debatable whether his relationship with Epstein is more problematic than Trump’s. Hoffman has personally bankrolled E. Jean Carroll’s suspect sexual assault lawsuit against Trump; donated heavily to the legal defense fund for Fusion GPS, the outfit that created the bogus Steele Dossier Democrats and the intel agencies used to smear Trump; and he has apologized for funding “fake news” modeled after Russian propaganda to influence a senate election.

Democrats’ sudden interest in Epstein and Trump’s relationship is in no way sincere. If it was, they’d publicly denounce Hoffman and stop cashing his checks, as well as stop inviting Clinton to headline events. Putting the relationships of Epstein and prominent Democrats under the microscope may not work out well for Democrats, and this might be what the House Oversight committee is counting on.

Still, reducing the investigation into Epstein’s horrifying crimes to back and forth partisan accusations is counterproductive. The way to kill the Epstein conspiracies for good is to be as transparent as possible. (The DOJ does have a point about issues involving the privacy of underage victims and child pornography wrapped up in the case.) Transparency is what the American people are owed, and it’s the Trump administration’s responsibility to do what’s necessary to make the American people feel confident that any conspiracies surrounding Jeffrey Epstein aren’t true or have been dragged into the light and those involved face consequences.

Perhaps the Trump administration should take some political lumps until they start acting transparently, and the Trump administration, to its credit, is scrambling to do more here. But the lack of transparency is no excuse for what Democrats have been doing this last month. Crafting narratives divorced from the facts for political gain only makes transparency harder, when the expectation is that any new information will be immediately lied about and recontextualized to help one political party win elections. Whether it’s Russiagate or the Epstein files, this has been the Democrats’ playbook since 2016. It’s doubtful a credulous media will stop helping them, but it’s important for the rest of us to recognize what’s happening and condemn it loudly.

Why Raining Justice On The Russia Hoaxers Is So Tricky — And So Important

Absent justice for the Russia hoax, the lesson to the conspirators is that they should go even bigger next time.

The  Federalist 

How do the American people get justice for arguably the greatest political scandal in U.S. history? This question looms over the Trump administration as Russiagate — or Obamagate, as it perhaps should be known — continues unraveling.

At least nine years after this sordid scandal began, it has become ever clearer that, at the direction of President Barack Obama, the leaders of his national security and intelligence apparatus used and abused their awesome powers to baselessly frame Donald Trump as a traitor. They did this in seeming coordination with foreign governments, the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, and regime media.

This domestic regime change operation — or domestic regime preservation operation — aimed to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in any meaningful sense, delegitimize and destroy Donald Trump and his first presidency, and protect the ruling class status quo. All the while, it disenfranchised the tens of millions of Americans who had rejected that status quo by way of electing Trump.

Absent justice for Obamagate, the lesson to the conspirators is that they should go even bigger next time. This would be catastrophic.

Theoretically, justice would consist of several parts. The starting point would be providing total transparency into the investigations, and investigations into the investigations, into Trump. This is necessary to expose the full scope of the fraud, corruption, and criminality foisted upon our republic and the associated cover-ups. Next, those complicit in the conspiracy would face justice to the maximum extent possible. Then, as a further deterrent, our leaders would restructure the institutions party to the conspiracy and implement dramatic changes to personnel and policy, including imposing severe criminal penalties for acts akin to those undertaken in Obamagate. Lastly, those whose lives were upended, reputations destroyed, and rights violated in the commission of the conspiracy would receive restitution. 

Practically, achieving justice is a much thornier proposition. The Trump administration has begun lifting the veil on Obamagate with its recent disclosures regarding the fraudulence of the hoax’s origins. The revelations have been resisted at every turn by the hoax’s perpetrators, who have also had a years-long head start in burying evidence and covering their tracks. What’s more, acolytes of John Brennan, James Clapper, and James Comey are likely still burrowed in the primary agencies behind Obamagate today — some in perhaps significantly more senior positions. 

The Trump administration has put reform-minded leaders in charge of many of these agencies. But it remains to be seen whether they will be able to fundamentally transform them — and if they can be fundamentally transformed at all. 

As for making the aggrieved whole, the Mike Flynns, Carter Pages, and countless other nameless and faceless individuals who were targeted for destruction and incurred incalculable personal, professional, and financial damage have received no recompense.

Perhaps the most consequential acts of justice, however, concern the pending prosecutions of the Obamagate ringleaders. Reports indicate CIA Director John Ratcliffe has criminally referred the likes of John Brennan and James Comey to the Justice Department. For top deep state figures like these to be prosecuted, let alone convicted, would prove an incredibly powerful act. It would show that truly no one is above the law, just as Donald Trump should not have been treated as below the law. It would show that authorities are serious about rooting out deep state rot at the highest level. And it would show that our ruling regime-in-exile will face real costs for its tyrannical acts, perhaps the only thing that will cause it to cease such acts in the future.

But when you dig deeper into what prosecution entails, the picture becomes considerably more fraught.

First, it is unclear what charges might be brought. There certainly seem to be grounds for perjury. For example, consider the inclusion and criticality of the Steele dossier to the January 2017 so-called Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which Obama’s top spooks denied was integral. Would the Justice Department also level charges and be able to persuasively make the case that there was a conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Donald Trump and others? Or a conspiracy to defraud the United States, hoisting Trump’s foes on their own petard? 

Second, even if there is sufficient evidence to bring such charges, the question of statutes of limitation remains.

Third is the issue of venue. If the Justice Department were to bring prosecutions in Washington, D.C., it is almost unimaginable that a jury pool would convict.

The process of forcing the Obamagate conspirators to defend their conduct would serve as a form of punishment. But it would be devastating to lose any such cases. Losses would vindicate the conspirators, demoralize millions of Americans, and again likely fuel more brazen and surreptitious acts in the future.

But let’s stipulate that the Justice Department has Obamagate’s orchestrators dead to rights on the law, can satisfy the relevant statute of limitations, and can successfully bring suit in jurisdictions where the plaintiffs can get a fair shake. Imagine if the Trump DOJ could secure convictions and send top deep-staters to jail. The regime would almost certainly blanket the airwaves with the most aggressive possible propaganda, unleash a massive wave of violent street agitation, and likely engage in insurrection-level action from within the federal government. The regime would likely achieve new heights of hysteria and extremism and inflict new levels of damage on our country.

Would the response to any such legal victories make them pyrrhic, given the political blowback, the potential electoral consequences, and the hell the regime would rain down should it return to power?

These potential downsides to seeking justice illustrate the perilous position of the nation. That is all the more reason the regime must be roundly defeated.

During a recent White House press briefing, I asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt what President Trump believed justice for Russiagate ought to entail.

She indicated that “the president wants to see justice served, and he trusts the attorney general and the Department of Justice to implement that justice and hold these people accountable.”

Just days later, The Federalist’s Sean Davis reported that the Justice Department had requested a trove of documents from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence pertaining to ODNI’s criminal referral regarding the manufacturing of the aforementioned 2017 ICA, which proved core to the Obamagate conspiracy. Davis’ reporting emerged amid the news that the DOJ was preparing to commence a grand jury probe of Obamagate. Presumably, the feds would not be taking such action if they did not intend to go all the way — to indict conspirators and prosecute them.

Let us pray the administration has the courage to seek justice and the wisdom, judgment, and strength to ensure it can do so while maintaining peace in the face of the regime’s arsonists.

How the Pro-Russian Collusion Spooks Are Pushing Back After Hoax Got Exposed By DNI Gabbard

Townhall 

We don’t care, kids. Whoever thought that this article in The Washington Post would derail the unraveling of the Russian collusion hoax is grossly mistaken. The legacy media are powerless, mocked, and disregarded. Also, the intelligence chiefs who pushed this narrative are liars. 

We’ve known they’re liars, but now, thanks to the document disclosures by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, we have evidence to that effect. And the panic porn threaded in this piece, that Gabbard’s disclosures exposed top-secret sources and spy techniques, is, frankly, unbelievable. John Brennan, someone who could be facing perjury charges over his May 2017 testimony about the Steele dossier, and his clown crew cannot be trusted. You collusion bros are panicking that the hoax is collapsing, criminal referrals have been issued, and indictments are likely. But remember, the process is the punishment, and it should be put on max (via WaPo): 

The Trump administration pushed to unveil a highly classified document on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election after an intense behind-the-scenes struggle over secrecy, which ended in late July when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a minimally redacted version of the report, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. 

Gabbard, with the blessing of President Donald Trump, overrode arguments from the CIA and other intelligence agencies that more of the document should remain classified to obscure U.S. spy agencies’ sources and methods, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others interviewed for this report, because of the matter’s sensitivity. 

Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Attorney General Pam Bondi have released a slew of intelligence and law enforcement reports over the last month that they claim prove that spy agencies’ finding that Moscow intervened in the 2016 presidential contest to help Trump was a “hoax” concocted by the Obama administration. 

[…] 

Multiple independent reviews, including an exhaustive bipartisan probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee, have found that Putin intervened in part to help Trump. Two former CIA officials who led the intelligence agencies’ assessment told The Washington Post they stood by their sourcing and analysis. 

Okay, you can stop reading there. The star witness for that SSCI report, Lisa Monaco, was an Obama partisan, who sat in on the December 9, 2016, meeting where Barack ordered a new intelligence assessment, the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which forced the Steele dossier into the report since that knowingly false report was the only file that could back up the Democrats’ delusional claims of collusion. The intelligence community elevated a piece of fiction to credible status, on the order of Obama, James Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper, leaked it to the media, and the collusion hoax spread like COVID.  

The point of the 2017 ICA was that the initial intelligence consensus was that Russia's 2016 antics had no impact on the race. We know Putin had no favorite, but thought Hillary would win. And there was no blackmail file on Trump, but Moscow did have dirt on Clinton. 

So, excuse me if I don’t believe that this was some reckless disclosure. It exposed traitors, and justice is coming. Let the process ruin them. 

Get 'em, Mollie: