Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
The travesty of a political show-trial against Donald Trump has finally been submitted to the jury of five men, five women and two lawyers in ultra-blue Manhattan.
A conviction takes unanimity. So does an acquittal. A hung jury takes only at least one dissenter.
Expect them to decide that they can’t decide. It’ll be a hung jury. Stage-rants produced by White House staff-kids (remember Biden’s weird State of the Union shout-fest?) and delivered by eighty-year-old Robert DeNiro outside the courtroom won’t change that.
The jury has already asked to hear certain testimony again. Such a request is consistent with a hung jury, not a hanging jury. One juror is saying “So and so said such and such” while another is saying “No, he didn’t!” That’s the recipe for a hung jury.
Here’s the interesting question.
The Democrats foolishly thought their persecution/prosecution of Trump would taint him. But it instead tainted them. Since the trial began, Trump’s polling numbers have gone up, not down. They’ve managed to make Donald Trump into a martyr – no small feat.
What now? If the jury is hung, Trump will appear vindicated – by a Democrat jury in a Democrat jurisdiction. If, instead, the jury hangs him, Trump’s martyr role will be solidified.
Even if it’s the latter – the jury convicts – Trump will probably receive a probation sentence and he certainly won’t be imprisoned on these ridiculous charges before the election.
On appeal, the case is likely to be thrown out, thereby achieving both results favorable to Trump – he will be a martyr for being prosecuted/persecuted and will be vindicated on appeal.
The left always overreaches. They can’t help themselves. At the core, they’re totalitarians. They don’t want to achieve policy goals. They simply want to impose their will on the rest of us.
A 19th century Dane named Hans Christian Andersen (a fine fellow despite his hateful middle name) published a story about an emperor who was conned into buying “new clothes.”
He was told by the con men that the “new clothes” could be seen only by people who were not stupid. The reason the con men told the emperor that was because these “new clothes” he’d paid for were nonexistent.
Not willing to reveal his stupidity, the emperor pretended to see the “new clothes” presented to him. He pantomimed putting on the nonexistent “new clothes,” and then paraded about the city in them. Because the “new clothes” did not actually exist, the emperor was simply naked.
The people got conned, too. Like the emperor, they had been advised that these “new clothes” were not visible to stupid people. Therefore, they too pretended to see an emperor in new clothes, not an emperor in the buff. Like the obsequious subjects they were, they even pretended to like these “new clothes.” Maybe in their self-deceptive minds’ eyes, they did see fine new clothes.
Finally, a child wandered by. Not sophisticated in the sham, the con, the self-deception or the obsequiousness, he saw the naked emperor and exclaimed “The emperor has no clothes!”
That child’s shriek of truth broke the spell on the people who had been enthralled, entranced or enslaved into believing that the emperor had new clothes.
The emperor’s poll numbers cratered.
The emperor himself, however, was prouder than ever. He took the people’s rejection as proof that they were too stupid to see his splendiferous new clothes. And besides, he told himself, these stupid people hadn’t really turned on him – polls are always wrong.
Stupid people love me, he reassured himself.
A couple centuries later, we have another emperor. He imperiously flaunts the law, makes up self-aggrandizing stories, abolishes the nation’s border (as well as its guardrails), slurs his words, forgets how to get off the stage (literally and figuratively), refers to “insurrectionists” as “erectionists” (Soviet jewelry, anyone?), and boasts of defying Supreme Court orders (George Wallace, anyone?).
He sells political influence to foreigners to enrich his grifty family headed by a non-physician wife who wants to be called “doctor” and whose relationship with him began while she was married to someone else, brags that Bidenomics reduced inflation from 9% when he took office (while in fact it was then 1.4%), and sniffs the hair of little girls he’s never met while whispering that he has a puppy in his van to show them.
Like that other emperor, this emperor, his crooked entourage and his delusional followers are unable or unwilling to see the true state of the man. They all imagine that his deficiencies, decrepitude and dishonesty are fine and beautiful. He, because he enjoys being emperor, and they, because this “emperor” does what they tell him to, and even does his feeble best to speak what they write.
Anyone not able to “see” this beauty of a man is a threat to democracy and must be stopped – by any means necessary, including undemocratic ones. Never mind that democracy is long dead in the realm.
We need a child to shriek “He has no clothes!” How about that carrot-topped kid?
Joe Biden sank to a new low last week. He was the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony for a Black college called Morehouse College. (Consider the irony of a serial plagiarist, story-telling fabulist, and academic cheat being a graduation speaker.)
Rather than presenting a message of hope and change, as Barack Obama did at a Morehouse graduation ceremony some years ago, Biden did a race-baiting imitation of Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. Here’s a sampling:
“You started college just as George Floyd was murdered and there was a reckoning on race. It’s natural to wonder if democracy you hear about actually works for you.
“What is democracy if black men are being killed in the street?
“What is democracy if you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot?
I understand that Biden is running for reelection, and is badly behind – about 6-8 points behind where he was in the polls at this time in 2020 when he ultimately won by a sliver (at most).
And I understand that Biden didn’t write this speech – and he may have read it for the first time as he was reading it off the teleprompter at the ceremony.
And I understand that politicians take liberties with the truth, and Biden takes more than most because he’s been a politician for longer than most.
And I understand that, especially in election years, politicians pander to various constituencies. For example, Biden has pandered to kids who took out six-figure loans to pay for worthless degrees.
He has pandered to potheads with a promise to re-classify pot as something other than a dangerous drug even as evidence mounts that it causes schizophrenia and other permanent cognitive impairments.
He has pandered to a few terrorist sympathizers in Michigan to keep them voting Democrat – at the expense of Israelis striving to keep their country alive against those same terrorists who threaten to re-enact Oct. 7 again and again and again until Israel is wiped off the map.
Bad as all that is – and it’s plenty bad, despicable even – this Morehead speech is a new low. For the pandering purpose of hauling some wandering Blacks back to the Democrat plantation, Biden has slandered the American people.
Blacks have to be “ten-times” better to get a fair shot? Tell that to the Asians who need a SAT score 400 points higher than Blacks to get into Harvard.
Black men are being killed in the street? Well, yes, that one is factual. But nearly all of those Black men getting killed in the street are being killed by other Black men.
To be sure, there is regrettably still some racism in America. Some of it is Black racism against whites, and some of it is white racism against Blacks. All of it is wrong.
But to tar all of white America with a false accusation of racism is unfair, unproductive, untrue, and uncivil.
Biden will do anything to win this election. Anything.
Biden’s slander of white America is matched by his contempt for Black America. He apparently thinks Black America will believe his slander of America. Recall that Biden once said of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, of all people, “They’re going to put y’all back in chains!”
Most Blacks won’t believe this latest lie. Unlike Joe Biden, they’ve lived real lives in America. Their experience is contrary to Biden’s hate-mongering portrayal of a dystopian America.
A few Blacks will rise to the bait of Biden’s race-bait because victimhood makes a person feel noble. But most are too smart for that. Most will see it for the destructive pandering that it is.
Please go away, Mr. President. I’d take Kamala over this stupid, hateful clown.
Failing in his efforts to bribe or dope people into voting for him, and falling even further behind in the battleground states, a desperate Joe Biden has agreed to a high-risk gambit that must give his handlers nightmares.
He has agreed to debate Donald Trump.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Biden actually will. His word is worth nothing, as people around the country and the world will tell you – most recently the Israelis. It’s quite possible that he’ll find an excuse to back out, and it’s possible that he already has the excuse pre-planned. But the dates for the debates have been set, and the first is only six weeks away.
Biden will be energized for the debates, just as he was for his State of the Union address a few months ago. And I do mean “just as.”
The SOTU address showed semi-somnolent Joe shouting at the teleprompter like an old man shouting at a cloud. He veered off-script once and had to backtrack for days within his own party.
That was when he accidentally called illegal aliens “illegals.” There were two things bad about that. The first is that “illegals” is a term that his party has deemed offensive (even though “illegal alien” is used in many federal laws and regulations) because it accurately describes the immigration status of the person referenced.
The second thing bad about Biden’s reference is that he used “illegals” in making the point that the murder of a young woman by an illegal wasn’t such a big deal because, after all, people get murdered all the time by legal citizens too.
I’m sure that made the woman’s parents feel better.
The shouting, the gaffe and the sick trivialization of a young woman’s murder suggested to me that Biden had been drugged up. That wasn’t Joe Biden, it was Amphetamine Joe. It was Speedy Joe. It was Juiced Up Joe.
Donald Trump should condition his participation in the debates on the following.
At the conclusion of the debate, the candidates remain on stage while a simple blood draw is taken from each. The blood draw then is treated as evidence. A chain of custody is established and each candidate can have an aide accompany local law enforcement to deliver the blood draws to a local testing company. There, they can be tested for the presence of mood-altering drugs.
The people have a right to know whether the president needs drug stimulants to perform the duties of the presidency.
I expect Biden’s team to decline this condition, undoubtedly with an indignant huff. (I can imagine Biden’s press secretary with her patented “How dare you!” that she must practice in front of a mirror for those frequent occasions when a reporter dares to ask a question she doesn’t like.)
But apart from that press secretary, most Americans will see this as a reasonable condition. Biden does, indeed, behave like a man in need of drug stimulants, and at the SOTU he looked like that need had been fulfilled.
If Biden refuses the condition, as I expect he will, the people can rightly draw what the lawyers call “an adverse inference” from that refusal. A fair inference will be that he needs drug stimulants to function, and he doesn’t want us to know it.
This piece was suggested to me by an alert reader. I’ve also noticed that Jesse Watters made a passing reference to drug testing Joe Biden as part of the debates.
Joe Biden is doing poorly with Blacks, Hispanics, men (at least the ones with balls), and young people.
This is unusual. Democrats have long suffered from a gender gap where they are unable to get their proportionate share of male votes, but Biden is doing much worse than usual with Blacks, Hispanics and young people. Polls show his support with each is down double digits from recent years.
With young people, it’s worse than that – it appears likely that a majority of 18–30-year-olds may vote against him. He’s not exactly an inspirational figure with the aviator glasses, sneakers, hair plugs, stumbling gait, bumbling words, and luminescent teeth caps.
His failure to light their fire might also have to do with their ability to do arithmetic. Even a product of the nation’s failing schools can calculate that when his next term is up, Biden will be 86 – about quadruple their age.
Most Americans at age 86 are either in physical decline, emotional instability, reduced cognition, or death. Biden exhibits at least three of those conditions.
Biden – through his campaign staff, since Biden himself seems barely conscious of such things these days – has strategies for managing the youngsters. They decided some time ago to purchase their votes by forgiving their student loans. More precisely, their loans would be transferred away from the former students and onto the American taxpayers.
In effect, Biden offered to bribe a particular constituency with money taken from the rest of us. Just call him Joe Bribe-‘em.
The Supreme Court said Biden didn’t have the authority to do that. In response, Biden boasted that he plans to do it, anyway. “The Rule of Law” is apparently more a guide than a rule, at least for Democrats in an election year.
But even cash has not pulled the wayward youngsters back into the Democrat tent. Biden’s handlers are now teeing up Plan B.
Plan B is to re-classify marijuana as a less-dangerous drug. If he can’t bribe young people into voting for him, Biden will dope them into it.
The Biden campaign figures there are votes to be gotten here. A recent survey showed that nearly a third of Americans 19-30 had used marijuana in the previous 30 days. That’s triple the number that had used cigarettes.
Re-classifying marijuana gets their vote, the Biden campaign theorizes, because it endorses their lifestyle. It panders to them.
It also encourages others to adopt that same lifestyle. What better way to make people forget about the Afghanistan surrender, illegal immigration, inflation, housing costs, and the Biden Family Business, than to get them high?
This move to endorse pot comes at a time when the dangers of pot are increasingly apparent to scientists. About 30% of pot users have a “use disorder.” That compares to about 13% of alcohol drinkers.
That’s not surprising. People use pot for the specific purpose of getting high, while people more often use alcohol because they like the taste of wine and liquor.
The effect of a pot high is much different than the effect of an alcohol buzz. Alcohol is metabolized and eliminated from the body within a few hours, while the active ingredient in pot gets concentrated for days or longer in the white fat cells of the brain.
It does damage there. An article in the Wall Street Journal last week explains that a recent Danish study concluded that 30% of schizophrenia is caused by pot. Frequent pot use is associated with violence, birth defects, ADHD, and cognitive dysfunction.
Biden’s campaign is of course aware of this. But they are willing to compromise the health of people if that’s what’s necessary to get their votes.
It almost makes me miss the old days when the Dems earned votes fair and square by letting the voters first die of natural causes.
For months, “mostly peaceful” protesters have harassed and harangued Jewish students at what used to be our best universities, all on the grounds that, this time, Jews on the other side of the world are defending themselves against barbarians right out of the 11th century.
The protesters’ mini-pogroms are not retribution for the Jewish students’ support of Israel – the protesters have no idea of whether those Jewish students support Israel or not – but are retribution for Jews being Jewish. This has happened before.
The protesters set up tents in the university commons, with all the deliberate connotations of military encampments. I remember when tents were set up in the woods, but now tents are a symbol and reality of anti-Americanism. You got a gripe? Get a tent. Put it up in the park and poop in the gutter.
That’ll convince everyone that you’re right. Or it will at least convince yourself that you’re a victim, which in today’s so-called society is better than being right.
When not pooping in the gutter, the dirty miscreant quasi-military university tent campers chanted antisemitic slogans at Jews as they made their way to class, and anyone else unfortunate enough to happen by.
Meanwhile, they demanded that the universities make meaningless gestures amounting to a statement that when light-skinned people defend themselves against dark-skinned terrorists, or any other circumstance involving light-skinned people and dark-skinned people, the former are oppressors and the latter are oppressed.
The faculty were not exactly the grown-ups in the tent. Some joined the terrorists sympathizers and became terrorists sympathizers themselves. Others expressed sympathy for the terrorist sympathizers. Sympathy is almost as good as victimhood nowadays, and requires just as little effort.
Some of the terrorism majors demanded room service – breakfast in bed in their tents. They complained that it was inhumane for the university to deny them food and drink during their trespass. They opined that it might even be a breach of contract. After all, they or their dark money sponsors had paid good money for a dormitory meal plan, right?
They expressly compared themselves to the protesters at Kent State. Being denied breakfast in your tent bed isn’t exactly like being shot, but it’s a start – and a lot less painful.
The Democrats initially applauded all this as an exercise of “free speech,” which is what Democrats call an insurrection when it’s committed by Democrats. President-ish Joe Biden had a “fine-people-on-both-sides” moment where he mumbled that both sides were right or perhaps both sides were wrong and in any event there are fine voters of both sides . . . and . . . look, a squirrel!
Then he fell down.
OK, he didn’t fall down that time but his poll numbers did. In all the battleground states, he’s now trailing a guy who’s been indicted 847 times, most recently for paying off a blackmailing slut but failing to use campaign money to do so.
The terrorist sympathizers and their terrorist sympathizer sympathizers not only got away with all this, but seemed to be having a splendid time of it until those election polls woke up the “woke” Democrats and the barbarians burst the gate at the Columbia Dean’s Office. Setting up tents in the commons to threaten the extermination of the Jews while simultaneously accusing them of genocide is one thing, but setting up a tent in the Dean’s Office and driving down the approval ratings of a Democrat president in an election year is something altogether worse.
So, Columbia finally sent in the newly un-defunded cops. It took the cops just a few minutes to clear the grounds, reclaim the Dean’s Office for the absent Dean, and replace the Palestinian flag with Old Glory.
The usual suspects have already announced that in five years the terrorists, their terrorist sympathizers and the terrorist sympathizer sympathizers will be seen as courageous and sympathetic heroes. Whenever the left loses an argument, you see, they revert to boasting that they’re nonetheless on the right side of history.
Uh huh. Sort of like the Soviet Union in 1917. Or Fidel Castro in 1959. Or Pol Pot in 1976. Or the BLM riots of 2020. Or the defunding of police departments in 2021. Or Oregon’s legalization of hard drugs in 2022. Or genital mutilation of children and cross-dressing men competing as women in 2023.
On the other hand, bear in mind that history is written by historians – mainly university professors. It is indeed possible that history as written by those historians will heroize the terrorist sympathizers, even if the rest of us see them for the spoiled, foreign-funded, violent, antisemitic and anti-American anarchists that they are.
They probably won’t be awarded honorary PhDs, but I wouldn’t rule it out. That’s a measure of how far the left has taken America down.
the Aspen beat 