Tag Archives: donald-trump

Angels at the podium?

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Political candidates aren’t always seen by 19,000 people in big sexy arenas like Madison Square Garden.

They also play the rubber chicken circuit at little outdoor makeshift venues of a few hundred or a thousand people in rural America. These are places you would never visit unless you were looking for votes. Think “County Fair.”

So it was for Donald Trump one ordinary day last summer. He was on an outdoor plywood stage in rural Pennsylvania looking for votes from plain folk.

He was just a few minutes into his stump speech, or his stump speech du jour. Trump is not a polished speaker but he speaks from his heart and with his hands. He often strays from the strictures of his teleprompter, sometimes to the point where you wish he wouldn’t.

What happened next was initially trivialized by Associated Press, apparently to avoid martyring or heroizing the man. They reported:

“Loud noises rang through the crowd.”

One of those loud noises instantly kills a man standing behind Trump. Another loud noise wounds another person. And another wounds another. Altogether, eight loud noises come from the shooter and two from the Secret Service to neutralize him.

One loud noise goes through Trump’s ear, missing his cranium by half an inch. His hand instinctively goes to his shredded ear even before he is conscious of the pain there. He pulls his hand away to look at it, and sees the blood. It was only then that he knew he’d been shot.

Involuntarily, Trump does what anybody – and any body – would do. He falls to the floor behind the podium. The Secret Service keep him there for about two minutes as people around him are screaming and scrambling.

Imagine what goes through Trump’s mind in those chaotic two minutes. He’s not altogether sure what just happened. He doesn’t know if the ear wound is just the ear or the head too. He’s still not sure if he’s been shot anywhere else.

Agents try to assess his condition visually and verbally. They decide to get him to the relative safety of a nearby vehicle.

At the time, there was no way of knowing whether the shooter who’d been neutralized was a loner or one of many. Raising the President from the floor and out from behind the podium could make him a sitting duck. But leaving him there risked another barrage of bullets – and perhaps explosives as well.

Trump was smart enough to know all that.

Most men would have chosen to cower under the podium. It was a lousy shield against explosives and AR-15 bullets but at least it offered a bit of concealment.

But Donald Trump is not like most men.

The Secret Service agents wanted to carry him off in a stretcher, but he refused. Instead, with their help he got to his feet and came out from the podium, ear torn and face bloodied.

Then he did something unforgettable. Let him describe it:

I wanted to do something to let ’em know I was ok. I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting and started shouting, Fight! Fight! Fight!

Since that day, Trump has said he believes God saved him, that he might save America.

Strong words. Presumptuous even. Some people would say arrogant. But those people have never had rifle bullets from a would-be assassin tear through their ear and kill a man right behind them.

Trump seems different now. Calmer. More thoughtful. Serene. Settled. Dedicated. Workmanlike. Mission-driven.

I don’t pretend to know if God saved Trump so that he could save America. Most of my communications with the Guy Upstairs are from me to Him, not the other way around.

But I know Trump himself believes that. Something happened to him in the eternity of those two bloody minutes as he wondered if they were his last.

Trump brilliantly baited Biden into admitting the guilt of the Biden-ites

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In one of his very final acts as the putative President, literally minutes before Donald Trump was re-inaugurated, the Big Guy issued a pardon to all his siblings and their spouses.

Joe’s five pardons together with his earlier pardon of his son Hunter for tax evasion and gun-running convictions (and all other crimes known and unknown over a period of ten years) bring Joe’s pardons of family members to a total of six. 

In case you’re wondering what crimes these six family members could possibly have committed that required a presidential pardon, let’s just say it was a family business. It was a lucrative one that raked in tens of millions of dollars in exchange for unidentified work. According to emails from Hunter, 10% was earmarked for the guy issuing the pardon – that very same Big Guy.

These Sordid Six thus join the 1,499 rapists, murderers and molesters whose sentences Joe commuted last week. It wouldn’t surprise me if the 1,499 feel insulted to be lumped in with these particular six.

Altogether, Joe issued 8,064 pardons and commutations – far more than any President in history and dwarfing the 237 by President Trump in his first term or even the 1927 by President Obama in two terms.

But I’m OK with the pardoning of the Sordid Six, despite the obvious self-dealing and miscarriage of justice. Here’s why.

Because it labels them guilty.

It’s true that, as a technical legal matter, a pardon does not necessarily mean a person is guilty. (On the other hand, an old Supreme court case suggests that accepting a pardon is, indeed, an admission of guilt.) And it’s true that Joe included some self-serving happy talk about how his fam’ is really, truly not guilty of the crimes for which he pardoned them.

Like Hunter, the other five did “nothing wrong,” Joe tells us.  He’s just concerned that overzealous prosecutors might make their lives hell for political purposes. You see, using the justice system to make a person’s life hell is something Joe is familiar with.

(There is the possibility that the pardons open the door to Congress or enterprising prosecutors calling these people to testify under oath against Joe or others – testimony they would be obligated to give since they won’t be able to invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against incriminating themselves of crimes for which they’ve been pardoned. On the other hand, they haven’t been pardoned for state crimes, since the presidential pardon power does not go that far. Therefore, there’s the possibility of being prosecuted for, say, criminally evading state income taxes, and so they might still have a Fifth Amendment privilege. I’ll let lawyers better than I sort this out.)

Leave aside the legalisms. At this stage, the court that matters most is the court of public opinion, and a subsidiary court that could be called the court of historians. In those courts, Joe’s pardon of all three of his siblings, their spouses, and his son, will be seen through common sense eyes, especially in view of highly incriminating hard evidence that has already been uncovered (such as the Big Guy emails mentioned above).

And so, common sense and public opinion says the seven Biden family members are guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, and guilty.

In a matter of weeks, Donald Trump and his fusillades were able to get guilty verdicts on Joe Biden’s entire family that Joe and his army of prosecutors were not able to get on Trump, alone, over the course of four years.

Remind me never to play poker – or geopolitics – against President Donald J. Trump.

Joe Biden’s presidency: “Hold my beer and watch this!”

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Question: What do the following have in common?

  • Stupid pet tricks
  • Bungee cord jumping
  • Abolishing the borders that define a country
  • Making oneself a human cannonball
  • Commuting the duly imposed death sentences of convicted murderers and rapists
  • Setting oneself on fire
  • Surrendering Afghanistan to barbarians from the 11th century
  • Jumping Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered motorcycle
  • Closing all the schools to prevent transmission of a disease that barely affects children.

Answer: What these have in common is that all are stunts. They are designed to attract attention, and they succeed in doing so. But that’s all they do.

If you tell me you’ve taught a poodle to mix a martini and serve it to a parakeet, I’ll probably watch. Then I’ll say, “Wow, that’s something!”

And it is indeed something, in the sense that it’s unusual. It gets attention. But it’s not consequential, other than to make a spectacle of two otherwise dignified animals.

If you tell me you plan to tie a bungee cord to your ankle and jump off a high bridge such that the bungee cord stretches almost to the breaking point as it catches you a few feet above the ground, I’ll probably watch. Then I’ll say, “Huh, that’s something you don’t see every day.”

But, as in stupid pet tricks, it’s inconsequential, other than to demonstrate a certain daredevilry. There are good reasons not to issue dares to the devil for the mere purpose of getting clicks on YouTube.

To understand Joe Biden, you have to understand a few immutable traits about the man. First, he’s not very bright. A person who finishes near the bottom of his class at a fourth-rate law school is not very bright.

Second, he knows it. A person who plagiarizes five full pages of a law review article, “borrows” the family story of another politician, invents fabulations about standing up to a bully named Cornpop, and claims he finished in the top half of that law school class where he actually finished near the bottom, is aware that his real story comes up a bit short.

Third, there’s his relationship with his boss. Barack Obama was widely worshipped by liberals. Although Joe stood next in line for the presidency upon the completion of Barack’s papacy in 2016, Barack spurned him in favor of another candidate, was ambivalent about him running in 2020, and finally pushed him to the curb altogether in 2024 – for being too old and stupid.

Ouch. “Old” doesn’t hurt so much even though this is a guy who went to the trouble of hair plugs and tooth caps, but “stupid” hits close to home.

Joe has gone through life feeling that he had a lot to prove about himself. He was right about that. What he was wrong about was the way he went about that proof.

He decided to prove he was a greater leader than his intellectual superior, Barack. But why stop there? He then set his sights on proving he was the greatest Democrat since FDR, or since, I dunno, maybe Abraham Lincoln. (Half of Democrats think Lincoln was a Democrat. No joke!)

The problem is, Joe has never really thought enough about philosophy, government, religion, or the human condition (I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Joe hasn’t thought about) to have a coherent platform from which to govern.

He had no bold policies; he had only boldness.

Much like Evel Knievel. History has largely forgotten that Evel’s rocket-powered motorcycle jump of the Snake River Canyon landed not on the other side of the canyon, but at the canyon bottom. But they do remember the stunt and the name.

Early in Joe’s term, he decided to pull out of Afghanistan. Never mind that the pullout left a strategic crossroads utterly unguarded. Never mind that we squandered a 20-year investment of time and thousands of American lives. Never mind that we left behind billions in high-tech weaponry for the barbarians. Never mind that we could have instead pulled out in an organized manner, as Joe’s generals urged.

What was important to Joe was that he make a bold statement. And he did. Just like Evel Knievel.

It was a bold “Hold my beer, and watch this!” stunt.

The world did watch Joe’s bold stunt. They were impressed with his boldness. With his common sense, not so much.

But Joe didn’t care if they thought badly of his common sense. In the world of stuntmen and carnival barkers, all publicity is good publicity.

It’s like setting oneself on fire. It might not be productive, but it’ll get you plenty of clicks on YouTube. Probably more clicks than Barack gets, at least on that particular day.

When the conflagration is over, proclaim through charred lips that it was an “extraordinary success.” That’ll get even more clicks.  

That was the pattern of Joe Biden’s presidency. He didn’t so much try to destroy America. He’s too stupid to accomplish that, and too self-centered to try.

Joe’s defiance of the Supreme Court, his commuting of the death sentences of rightly convicted murderers, his transference of college loan debts onto the backs of blue-collar Americans, his takedown of the southern border, his inflation-inducing handouts – they were all designed not so much with policy in mind. Joe’s mind is too small for policy to live there.  

No, Joe’s stunts were designed simply to draw attention to Joe. He succeeded. Joe’s stunts did draw attention to Joe.

But not in the way Joe expected. We’re now seeing his anger in learning that attention does not equal achievement, that infamy does not equal fame, that notoriety does not equal greatness.

Increase legal immigration

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Guess what these people have in common:

  • Albert Einstein
  • Enrico Fermi
  • John Audubon
  • John Muir
  • Elon Musk
  • Nikola Tesla
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • Irving Berlin
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger
  • Levi Strauss
  • Dikembe Mutombo
  • Liz Claiborne
  • Mariano Rivera
  • Melania Trump
  • Andrew Carnegie
  • Audrey Hepburn
  • Yo-Yo Ma
  • Ayn Rand
  • Elie Weisel
  • Sergey Brin
  • Bob Marley
  • Sammy Sosa
  • Carlos Santana
  • Henry Kissinger
  • Rupert Murdoch
  • Alexander Hamilton

You’ve probably guessed it – each was born outside the United States, and immigrated here. Most became full, legal American citizens after undergoing the citizenship process, including passing history, civics and English language tests that most American college graduates would flunk.

The list could go on for thousands of pages, but you probably get the drift.

And by the way, you can add to the list a full quarter of the American winners of scientific Nobel Prizes. American technological prowess owes a lot to immigration.

Legal immigration is a strength of America, and always has been. America has been the most attractive place on earth for immigrants for a long time – due in part to the role of immigrants in making it so.

Do build the wall. Do secure the Mexican border. Do deport at least the illegal aliens who are criminals. Do require businesses to check the immigration status of employees, and do impose substantial fines on those who hire illegal ones.

Illegal immigration over the last generation became a tool of the anti-American left. Leftists intent on destroying Western Civilization used it to import the tools of destruction. Only slightly less bad are Democrats who used it to recruit a Democrat constituency.

The rest of America has finally seen the destruction wrought. And ironically, the leftists misread the political sentiments of the only immigrants who can vote legally – the legal ones. Those immigrants who worked tirelessly to come here legally – and vote legally – tend not to sympathize with illegal ones who want to cut the line, and tend not to vote for leftists or Democrats who want to help them do so.

One of the most racist assumptions of the Democrats was that legal Hispanics favor illegal immigration simply because many of the illegal immigrants have brown skin.

OK, the Democrats overplayed their hand. But let’s not overplay ours. We would be foolish to turn away the brave, the entrepreneurial, the smart, the industrious, the legal.

Trump’s powerful America will produce a safer world

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Henry Kissinger argued that geopolitical negotiations are successful only if they are backed by an implicit or explicit threat of force. In that argument, he echoed Teddy
Roosevelt’s quip a century earlier that America should “speak softly and carry a big stick.”

The contention that adversarial negotiations are successful only if you have some leverage to exert is an obvious truism. But American leaders need to re-learn this truism every so often. They naively – and sometimes malevolently – come to believe that the way to get along with the bad guys is to kowtow to them.

Our latest example began with Barack Obama. He was asked whether he believed in American exceptionalism – a basic American tenet which goes back to Thomas Jefferson’s empire of liberty, Abraham Lincoln’s almost-chosen people, and Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill. Obama answered,

“Yes, there’s American exceptionalism, but I suspect the Brits also believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

In other words, Americans are exceptional in the same way that everybody else is – which is to say they are not exceptional at all. Moreover, implicit in his answer is that the only true exceptionalism in American is their conceit in believing in it.

Poisoned by his distaste for American civilization, Obama went about his stated task of “fundamentally transforming” it. His first act in this transforming was to go around the world apologizing for American misdeeds of the preceding two centuries.

Forget about America winning the Cold War; helping to win two World Wars; delivering billions in gifts to countries around the world; taking the world’s tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free; rebuilding Japan and Germany from totalitarian ashes; putting a man on the moon; spending a trillion dollars to create a well-intentioned but failed Great Society to pull up its underclass; and inventing Silicon Valley.

Forget all that. It is time, Obama preached, for America to apologize to the world.

And so, he did. For eight years, he did what he could – and that was a lot – to reduce American power and prestige in the world. He thought a smaller, weaker, apologetic America would result in world peace.

Barack Obama is nothing if not insincere. I suspect his peace-through-weakness approach was not designed so much to achieve peace, but to achieve his fundamental transformation of America. His vision had less to do with Liberty Gleaming, and more to do with Workers Uniting.

Obama’s reign of pusillanimity – his war on America – continued for eight years before briefly yielding to a four-year interruption. But the interruption was too brief, too chaotic and too sabotaged. Obama then returned in the form of his hand-picked puppet and eff-up in chief, Joe Biden.

Joe was too shallow to grasp Obama’s scheme of fundamental transformation, but he certainly knew what side his bread was buttered on, and he knew who knew about the skeletons in his closet.

Joe did what he was told, willingly and even eagerly. By golly, the man from Scranton was determined to outdo his teacher. With that eagerness, combined with a degree of plain incompetence that bordered on its own kind of exceptionalism, Joe took another step toward the fundamental transformation of America.

And the world. From Afghanistan to Ukraine to Gaza to the Mexican border and to everywhere else, Joe succeeded in projecting American pusillanimity and incompetence to produce worldwide chaos, violence and death.

Joe was the anti-Midas; everything he touched turned to shit. Sometimes, as in the border, it was on purpose.

Now there’s a new boss in town who’s not the same as the old boss. He was elected a month ago, and won’t assume office for another month, but already he’s making waves, and not the pusillanimous kind.

In response to his threat to impose steep tariffs that would decimate their economies, Mexico and Canada have already promised to clamp down on illegal immigration from their borders into the United States.

In response to his candid support of Israel and his no-nonsense threats against barbaric terrorists, a fragile truce has emerged in that forever conflict. Jefferson, who forcibly subdued the Barbary pirates, would nod.

Nearby, in response to his tough stance against Russian imperialism, rebels in Syria were emboldened to reclaim their country from years of a Russian-sponsored dictatorship.

In response to his muscular defense posture but unwillingness to write blank checks forever in an unwinnable war of attrition, Ukraine and Russia are quietly negotiating peace. Kissinger would approve.

In response to his indefatigable populism, the people of France are once again inspired by the people of America. Those people yearning to be free are demanding a government that represents . . .  wait for it . . . people yearning to be free.

Those people of France begged him to attend the re-opening of their Lady of Paris – the Notre Dame – while Joe Biden mumbles and stumbles around in the swamps of Brazil.

His enemies in America say this guy who supports the Jewish nation of Israel is just like Hitler. Other enemies say he’s too volatile to be in charge. Still others say he has surrounded himself with stupid yes-men (like Elon Musk?). But his American enemies mostly disbelieve their own rhetoric – they’re just bad sports and sore losers.

In the rest of the world, his enemies are lying low like rats in the basement. They’ll stay there – but only for so long as they see America as an unabashed empire of liberty, a strong and chosen people, a shining city on a hill.

Donald Trump and his progeny have an opportunity unseen in two generations. They’re off to a good start.

Here’s why Trump will win – it’s pretty simple

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Political pundits have too much data, and they overanalyze it. There’s a lot of data available, a lot of pundits to analyze it, and a lot of clicks to corral.

But the disengaged American middle doesn’t pay attention to nuances like last month’s job figures or the latest inflation report. They couldn’t find South America on a map even if you showed them where North America is.

To the American middle, abortions are something other people get – and they’re usually a different kind of people. Less than a quarter of Americans are biologically eligible for an abortion, and I’m guessing that more of them are trying to start a pregnancy than end one.

In any event, the votes of those people who are fixated on terminating pregnancies are not up for grabs. They’ll always vote for Democrats.

More important to the undecided American middle is the personality of the candidates. Many candidly admit this. They choose candidates based on whether they like them personally. That category of voters is the worst.

“Trump is not as nice as me,” they sniff self-satisfyingly to themselves. It’s like they’re voting for Homecoming Queen and the ballot reads something like:

  • __Donald J. Trump
  • __You

So, put aside the Nate Silvers of the world (though Nate is very good), their hard drives of mostly accurate data, their algorithms, and their punditry. Here are the basic reasons why Trump will win.

He’s not Joe Biden, and Kamala is

As the sitting Vice President, Kamala is tied to Joe Biden. (Don’t try to picture that.) She’s done nothing to untie herself, for fear of alienating her hard-left base who thought Biden was just swell – in his policies if not his persona.

The only time in modern history that a sitting Vice President ascended to the Presidency was when George H. W. Bush did it after the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Joe Biden is no Ronald Reagan, and Kamala Harris is no George H. W. Bush.

Reagan left office with an approval rating at 63%. Biden’s has been in the 30s. (In a final humiliation, it’s now crept up to 40% as people have decided to approve of him going away.)

Bush had been a naval aviator, war hero, Yale graduate, Ambassador to the United Nations, and Director of the then-respected Central Intelligence Agency. Kamala has been . . . not.

Trump is almost a Cool Kid

Trump is much more “popular” in comparison to his opponent than he was in both 2020 and 2016. He still won’t win that Homecoming Queen crown, and people who decided long ago that they hate him for his vulgarity, his hair, and his tendency to say things in public that Bill Clinton did in private, are not likely to change their minds. But the disengaged American middle is seeing a more likeable guy than before.

Surviving endless “lawfare” and two assassination attempts doesn’t hurt him either.  

The Border

The left almost succeeded in branding Americans who wanted American borders as “racist.”

But they didn’t quite succeed. The indefensible chaos at our undefended border spreading to our police-defunded cities defies common sense.

Indeed, it goes beyond nonsense. Americans – including and perhaps especially the disengaged middle – see this as pure insanity.

Blacks don’t see Kamala as Black

Let me preface the following discussion with stating that I discuss “Blackness” only because the leftists have demanded that we not be colorblind. So here goes.

Black America is uninspired by Kamala, and it shows in both the polls and in early voting. This is despite her promises to send them free money.

As for why she’s unable to buy the Black vote, a comparison is instructive.

Barack Obama was our first Black president (unless you count aforementioned Bill Clinton). Obama was actually born of a white woman, and his private school upbringing in Hawaii was not exactly life in the ghetto.

But he was married to a woman who was clearly Black and he himself looked pretty Black. He had hair that was both black and Black.

Kamala, too, was born of a mother who is not Black (she is Asian Indian) and grew up in a relatively privileged setting (both Kamala’s parents were professionals).

But unlike Obama, she doesn’t really look Black. Her skin tone is lighter than Obama’s. Her hair is black but not Black. She has not perfected the Black accent that flowed from Obama when he condescended to audiences that were Black.

And here’s Kamala’s biggest liability in being Black. She’s married to a lily-white corporate lawyer who had a fling with his nanny in his previous marriage.

From Detroit to Baltimore to Chicago to East St. Louis, they shrieked:

“Wait a minute! Who has a nanny ?!?!?”  

Sorry, Democrats. Blacks think black Kamala ain’t Black.

Prices are much higher

Prices are nearly a third higher than when Biden took office. People don’t need to wade through the dense detritus of Politico or RealClearPolitics to know that. They’re reminded of it several times a week when they go to the grocery store.

The fact that inflation has almost returned to normal levels around 2-3% a year does not resonate with many people. In fact, many disbelieve those figures because they erroneously believe that declining inflation must mean declining prices.

There you have it. I’m guessing the election will be called for Trump by Wednesday morning.

Bonus prediction: Republicans will pick up two to four seats to re-take the Senate. The eminent Justice Clarence Thomas will retire from the Supreme Court next year to enable Trump and the Republican Senate to replace him.

That won’t change the political composition of the Court much, since Justice Thomas is a conservative. But the follow-up departure of Justice Sonia Sotomayor will.

This has been corrected to make clear that the fling with the nanny was when Kamala’s husband was married to his first wife, not to Kamala.

Is it too late in the game for the Democrats to replace their substitution?

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Poster on Philly streetcorner falsely suggesting that the Eagles have endorsed Kamala Harris

Ordinary people who don’t closely follow the game of politics never knew that Kamala Harris runs only to the left. As a Senator, she ran further to the left than Bernie Sanders, according to non-partisan statistics.

She wanted an unprotected border. She proposed taxpayer-funded “gender affirmation” surgery for male convicts so that they could play in women’s prisons. She favored abortions performed anytime, anywhere, and by anyone, up to at least birth. She rooted for the Philadelphia Eagles to win the World Series (OK, I make up that last one.)

There’s more, much more, but you get the drift. Until recently, most Americans knew none of Kamala’s playbook.

What they did know was her laugh, and they didn’t like it. Back in 2020, that annoying laugh sacked her from the Democratic primaries before making a single First Down or winning a single delegate.

That’s important. It was not Kamala’s left-of-Bernie policy positions that blitzed her out of 2020 campaign. Those left-of-Bernie policies were, and are, within the accepted playbook of today’s Democratic Party, and well within the accepted playbook of the rabid fans who comprise Democratic primary voters.

Indeed, it was Bernie himself who was favored to win those 2020 primaries until the owners of the Democratic Party decided he was un-coachable and unelectable. But that’s a column for another day.

If only the rabid Democratic primary fans in 2020 had gotten past Kamala’s annoying laugh, and witnessed her whacky left-of-Bernie circus catches (but mostly drops) they’d have loved her!

Fast forward to this year’s season. Kamala missed the preseason, and missed the regular season too, but here she is in the playoffs. The Finals even. It’s all courtesy of a second Democratic trick play that dumped the Democrat’s hard-left, but unplayable, starting quarterback out of the lineup, out of the stadium, and onto the street corner like an empty 81-year-old beer bottle.  

Note that in a classic case of psychological projection, or maybe just dishonest hypocrisy, it’s the Democrats who chant that Republicans are a “threat to democracy” even as the Democrats themselves disregard the preferences of their own Democratic fans in both 2020 and 2024.

Anyway, here we are with Kamala as the Democratic starter. She . . . could . . . go . . . all . . . the . . . wayyyy!

Not.

I have to admit that she’s a more attractive player after finally securing that fumbling laugh, mostly.

As for her policies that always ran to the left, she says she’s changed them – now that she has to appeal to a broader group of fans in the general election than the hard-left fans in Democratic primaries. She suggests that she runs up the middle now, sort of. She assures us, however, that she hasn’t changed her “values.”

She avoids specifying either the changed policies or the unchanged values. They’re well-kept secrets.

Like all secrets, however, they have a way of leaking out, or, in Kamala’s case, blurting out. Here’s an interview in a friendly forum:

Question: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

Kamala: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

The rightwing media – all three of us – had a field day with that answer.

A few hours later, another friendly interviewer gave her a chance to improve on the words and substance of that botched play. The interviewer posed the same question about how her policies differed from Biden’s policies. She refused to backtrack from her answer earlier in the day, and this time refused to even take the ball. She instead said, “I’m not Joe Biden,” followed by a word salad of platitudes.

Even the liberal media saw it as a dodge.  

Granted, there was some shiftiness in saying, “I’m not Joe Biden.” Kamala’s game has amounted to shouting “I’M NOT TRUMP” but also whispering “I’m not Biden either.” It goes something like this:

I’M NOT TRUMP!

I’m not Biden, either.

I’M NOT TRUMP!

I’m not Biden either.

You get the idea.

OK, the people knew she was not Trump. Who is? And they knew she was not Biden. (I’ve seen the two of them together. It’s not a pretty sight.)

What the people didn’t know, for sure, was whether her policies – her plays – are any different from Biden’s. In her second interview on the subject, she never answered that question when it was put directly to her a second time; she simply ran out the clock.

Of course, it’s a bit difficult for her to say credibly that her plays are different than Biden’s, given that they played together for three and a half years and she boasts that she was the last person on the field with him on each major play. (Maybe not that away game in Afghanistan, or the one in Gaza. Or the one in Ukraine. Or the one at the Mexican border.)

Moreover, she’s reluctant to alienate her hard-left fans by stating that her policies differ from those of her hard-left teammate and boss.

To summarize: Kamala’s plays as a Senator ran left-of-Bernie. In an interview last week, she said no differences come to mind between her plays and Biden’s hard-left plays. And in a subsequent interview, she refused to give a single example of any such differences. Her favorite play is Student Body Left, every single time.

The American people have seen those hard-left Biden/Kamala/Bernie plays. They’ve seen them fail. They want new a new playbook, new play-calling, and a new play-maker.

Kamala knows this, and that’s why she has refused to open her playbook – it’s the same as Biden’s failed playbook. Now, at last, the American people know it too. And so, Kamala is falling faster than a third-string quarterback in the sights of Ray Lewis.

To the extent he comprehends what is happening, that dethroned, deposed, disposed of, soon-to-be-departed Joe Biden must be smiling in his box seat. Or his beach lounger.  

Kamala is not Biden and she’s not Trump, but she’s still probably Harris

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I predicted Trump would win the 2016 election. On the day of the election, the betting odds on that were 12%. Had I been a betting man, I’d have made YUGE money.  

In 2020, I again predicted Trump would win. On the day of that election, the odds of that happening were 35%.

Trump lost that time, but, given the odds, I would not have lost nearly as much as I would have made four years earlier in 2016. I’d still be way ahead.

My point is that even though I missed the call in 2020, nailing the near-impossible call back in 2016 makes me a frigging prophet.

So, listen to me. Trump will win this year.

Kamala’s campaign had a strategy from the outset. Before talking about it, bear in mind that the “outset” for her was not in 2022 or even 2023 when other Democratic candidates were slogging through the snows of Iowa to visit rural coffee shops and giving interviews to local radio schmucks in New Hampshire and North Carolina.

No, the “outset” for Kamala was a couple of weeks before the Democratic convention last summer when nameless party poohbahs snatched her out of the obscurity of a failed Vice Presidency in the service of a frail, failed Presidency.

They installed her as the Democratic candidate, even though she has never won a single primary delegate, despite – or because of – her best efforts. (By the way, one might wonder exactly what’s in it for the poohbahs.)

Anyway, here’s their strategy. It’s to rest on the fact that (1) Kamala is not that frail, failed President and (2) she’s not Trump either.

That has been almost enough. But not quite.

Although they’ve succeeded in convincing voters that Kamala is not Biden and not Trump, they’ve failed to convince them that she’s not Harris.

They did try. Kamala disavowed her earlier open border policy, sort of. She retracted her position that guns owned by people not named Kamala should be confiscated, kind of. She no longer favors defunding the police, apparently. She seems not to think Joe Biden is sharp as a tack, anymore. She has not advocated taxpayer funding for “gender affirmation” surgery for rapists so they can move into women’s prisons, lately. She doesn’t advocate men competing in women’s sports, for now.

It’s a little hard to state Kamala’s current position on these things definitively. That’s because she herself does not state her position on these things definitively.

She reminds me of the lawyer who is asked “What is two plus two?” The lawyer answers “What do you want it to be?”

Kamala is more shrewd than that lawyer, however. She simply refuses to take the question. She refused all summer to sit for interviews or stand for press conferences after the previous two years when she had no campaign appearances at all because she ostensibly was not campaigning.

Once she did start campaigning in the wake of the poohbah coup, years after everyone else started, she campaigned not with press conferences or position papers or interviews – even with friendly interviewers – and pretended not to hear questions shouted to her. She instead campaigned on “Joy.”

There’s something disconcerting about anonymous poohbahs pulling a behind-the-scenes palace coup, installing a figurehead of their choosing, and instructing her not to give interviews but instead to campaign on “Joy.”

To the poohbahs’ credit, Kamala is definite about a few things. For example, she’s definite that she favors peace in the Mideast.

To their discredit, however, she’s not very definite about how to achieve it. Defeating the bad guys is evidently not on the table. In fact, identifying them is not even on the table.

All this joyous indefiniteness worked for a while. Despite Kamala’s absence at interviews and press conferences and her missing position papers, voters still believed she was definitely not Biden and definitely not Trump.

But as noted, they came to believe she might still be Harris.

As Kamala’s polling numbers have slipped, the poohbahs have evidently finally decided in desperation to put her in front of the media to state definitively that she’s not only not Biden and not only not Trump, but also not Harris.

The voters are saying, “OK, maybe. But then just exactly who are you?”

“Disinformation” is not the same as falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater

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Here’s how the First Amendment debate over governmental prohibitions on free speech has been framed:

  • The Democrats want the government to prohibit people from spreading “disinformation” that they don’t like.
  • The Republicans correctly point out that the First Amendment, in general, prohibits such a prohibition.
  • The Democrats then respond that the First Amendment does not apply because disinformation is like falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater – people’s safety is at risk.
  • Republicans then point out that the analogy between political speech and falsely “shouting FIRE in a crowded theater” is rooted in a Supreme Court case dating back to WWI. In that case, the Court upheld a restriction on speech in opposition to the wartime draft. The Court decided that political speech opposing the draft was like falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater, in that it could cause America to lose the war. It was a stretch, but that was the Court’s analogy.
  • But, say the Republicans, that Supreme Court case was later rejected during the Vietnam War in 1969 (a much less popular war than WWI) and was essentially overruled. Political speech today clearly is protected by the First Amendment – even if it’s highly unpopular or even untrue.

So far, so good. But many Republicans have gone on to imply that the Supreme Court’s overruling of the “shouting fire in a crowded theater” analogy means that the First Amendment gives people the right to falsely shout FIRE in a crowded theater.

This was a mistake for two reasons. The first is strategic and the second is legal.

The strategic reason is that contending the First Amendment gives people the right to say things to cause an immediate, panicked mayhem violates common sense and tends to discredit the First Amendment. Casual thinkers start to casually think, “Gee, if the First Amendment gives people the right to cause dozens of trampling deaths in minutes, just to watch people get trampled, then maybe the First Amendment is not such a good thing.”

The legal reason it’s a mistake to imply that the Supreme Court ultimately decided falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater is protected by the First Amendment, is that the Supreme Court never did.  

Rather, what the Court held in that later case was that political speech is simply not the same as falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater. The latter is false and may produce immediate maiming and death, while the former is a political statement which might be false (or might not be) but is not likely to produce immediate maiming and death.

If the Supreme Court is ever confronted with a case where someone is prosecuted for causing immediate maiming and death by falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not decide that his grotesque mischief is protected by the First Amendment.

But, you say, isn’t the First Amendment absolute?

No, it is not. For example, there is no First Amendment right to tell material lies in the sale of a product – to engage in false advertising. The First Amendment does not give a business the right to falsely state that their snake oil has cured cancer in 29,385 people if it hasn’t, or falsely state that customers can return goods for a cash refund if they can’t.

There is no First Amendment right to state falsehoods on your tax return. You can’t tell the IRS that you earned X dollars when you really earned X + Y dollars, as Hunter Biden has learned to his dismay (along with thousands of other citizens over the years, notoriously including Al Capone).

There is no First Amendment right to lie under oath. That’s perjury, and it’s a crime – and it’s not protected by the First Amendment.

There is no First Amendment right to defame a person, as several media outlets learned when they falsely characterized a teenager as racist because it suited their narrative. 

There is no First Amendment right to make or distribute child pornography.

But most other speech is indeed protected by the First Amendment, particularly political speech. Saying that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians, or that Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin is running the White House, or that the 9/11 attack was orchestrated by the CIA or by aliens, or that your uncle was eaten by cannibals, is all generally protected as political speech – whether it’s true or not.

Such political speech is not the same as shouting FIRE in a crowded theater to cause an immediate mob scene of trampled human bodies.

Whether there’s a political price to be paid for false speech is, of course, a separate issue. Sometimes there is, and oftentimes there’s not. Either way, that’s not a legal matter, but a political matter.

Our nation stands nearly alone in the protections of the First Amendment. In most of Europe, you can be sent to jail for “hate speech” that a judge finds offensive. And many people have been. That is not the law in America, yet.

The Republicans have by far the better of this First Amendment debate, but they’ve expressed their argument poorly by implying that you can indeed shout FIRE in a crowded theater.

The proper argument is: Granted, you can’t falsely shout FIRE in a crowded theater, but political speech is nothing of the sort.

Glenn K. Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Hey, this election is not about your precious feelings!

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The choices in this election are evidently Donald Trump and Not-Donald Trump. Nobody is voting for Trump’s chimeric, charlatanic opponent, but many are voting against Trump.

Those Against-Trump voters fall into three camps.

Camp 1 comprises people who genuinely disagree with Trump on the issues. I think these voters are mostly wrong, but I grudgingly respect them. At least they’re analyzing the issues, even though they’re coming to the wrong conclusion.

So, OK . . .

  • If they think Trump is wrong to tighten up the southern border;
  • If they think Trump is wrong to extend the tax cuts (which disproportionately benefited middle- and low-income Americans);
  • If they think Trump is wrong to keep nukes out of the hands of the Ayatollahs;
  • If they think Trump is wrong to encourage oil and gas production at home at reasonable prices and under stringent environmental safeguards rather than in places like Russia and Venezuela where they produce it dirtily and then sell it to us expensively;
  • If they think Trump’s economy of 1.4% inflation and low unemployment was bad compared to much higher inflation and unemployment under his successor;
  • If they think Trump is wrong to oppose racial discrimination in hiring and in college admissions; and
  • If they think Trump is wrong in his desire to slim down the Federal government;

. . . then I think they’re mistaken. But if they believe those things, then they’re probably right to vote against Trump. I say “probably” because it’s hard to be certain that Trump’s opponent is in their camp, since she waffles daily and hides her positions (with the aid of a complicit, biased media).

Camp 2 of Against-Trump voters are those who sincerely believe he’s a “threat to democracy.” I have a bit less respect for those voters because I think they’re being melodramatic rather than analytic.

Some of them are at least sincere and are voting the way they think serves the country. Others, however, are just parroting the “threat to democracy” line to rationalize their true reasons for being against Trump, namely that they are in Camp 1 or 3.

As for the threat Trump poses to democracy, Camp 2 points to Trump’s action and inaction on Jan. 6, 2021. Indeed, it was not his finest hour.

But the notion that we almost lost the Republic that day – to a hooligan in a buffalo-horn hat and his unarmed sidekicks who made a ruckus and swiped some souvenirs from the Capitol Building – is overblown, at best. Note that the Supreme Court ultimately decided that the gross offenders were grossly overcharged by the Democrat prosecutors, and the Court threw out the most serious charges.

This Camp 2 also points to Trump’s personality. Bellicose is perhaps a word to describe it. In a prior life, the guy had fun with a reality TV show where his punch line was “You’re fired!” In a more serious vein, Trump has bragged that he fired people right and left in his first administration.

Sometimes people do need to be fired. But good bosses don’t relish firing people. Moreover, a boss who frequently fires people should be looking a bit at his own failings in hiring and supervising such people to begin with.

But none of that makes Trump a “threat to democracy.” If you want to talk seriously about a threat to democracy, then talk about an administration that:

  • Refuses to physically protect to its political opponents;
  • Routinely characterizes its opponents as “threats” to the nation;
  • Calls for a “bullseye” to be put on its opponents;
  • Pressures media outlets to censor news and opinions they don’t like;
  • Hides the encroaching senility of the Democrat President, acknowledges it only when they get caught, and then replaces him behind the scenes with a woman who helped hide his senility to begin with and has never won a Democrat delegate in her life – while they still keep the senile President in the office of “Leader of the Free World” even as they acknowledge that he’s too senile to run for that office;
  • Seeks to put skin color ahead of merit in hiring and college admissions;
  • Frequently compares their opponents to Nazis:
  • Repeatedly overreaches in legal matters to the point that their court record on challenges is abysmal;
  • Refuses to follow Supreme Court rulings, and slams the Court as “illegitimate.”

In other words, talk about the Democrats.

That brings us to Camp 3. These are the voters I respect least, even though they’re the most amiable on the surface. These are the voters who mostly agree with Trump on the issues, but they simply don’t like his personality.

Trump is certainly not a slickster. He didn’t even graduate at the bottom of his law school class like the current Delaware beach bum and sometimes Oval Office occupant. In fact, he never went to law school at all. I doubt he even knows how to say “Pass the sweet-and-sour shrimp.”

But despite, or perhaps because of, all those things, I have a hunch that I might like the guy in person.

On the other hand, if I wouldn’t, so what? We’re not electing Homecoming Queen. We’re electing someone to preserve and enhance the interests of America and the world.

The left knows that. That’s why they hate Trump. It’s because he protects the interests of the country and culture they hate: America and Western Civilization. (If they lived in Africa or Southeast Asia, they’d hate them too, but that’s another column.)

If you’ve read this far, you’re not a leftist. But maybe it makes you feel good to join the left in voting against a person you find tacky and bellicose – someone you deem beneath you in social graces, polish, and good hair – even though he protects American and Western interests. Well, fine.

But actually, not fine at all. The price for your personal feel-goodery is to put our people, our nation, our civilization, and our world, at risk. This election is about something bigger than your feelings.

As for those who will vote neither for nor against Trump, my question is this: Do you really think Trump and his opponent are exactly equally bad at protecting our country and culture? Are you seriously contending that you graded them out on the issues and each of them came to a grade of, say, 73.41?

C’mon, man. You know which came out higher. Your refusal to vote for him is an exercise in virtue-signaling to yourself and others.

But this isn’t about you and your virtue and your signals. Get over yourself, and do the smart thing. The world is at stake.