Tag Archives: Trump

Joe and Jill are goners who won’t go

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Joe Biden just delivered the worst televised debate performance in history.

It started in his opening remarks when he hurriedly regurgitated a canned speech like a nervous 11th grader in speech class, it continued into the early stages when he repeatedly suffered brain freezes in describing, for example, how he “beat Medicare,” and finally ended mercifully with a forgettable conclusion.

Even – especially – Democrats were stunned by his awkward, rambling incoherency and open-mouthed, vacant stares into space.

If this were a fight, a TKO would have been called in the first round. If this were softball, the Ten-Run Rule would have been invoked in the first inning.

The senility clips of the last few months which the White House defensively labelled “cheap fakes” as late as last week have now grown into a full 90-minute TV reality show. If you’re a Democrat, it’s like a bloody car wreck — it’s impossible to ignore and impossible to watch.  It was moderated by Biden’s hand-picked partisans at Democrat-friendly CNN, but the night was owned by an emcee named Donald Trump.

The editorial board of The New York Times – The New York friggin’ Times! – called on Biden to withdraw from the race. This is after he corralled 90-some percent of the Democratic delegates and is assured of a first vote win at the convention. Another Democrat pundit called him “toast.” Another said his performance was “painful.” Democrat organ Politico summed it up with “Democrats freak out.”

But Biden won’t withdraw. The very next day he was being escorted around by “doctor” Jill to badly read poor speeches off cheap teleprompters. We have no reports yet whether he read such parenthetical words as “pause for applause” from the teleprompter. Such gaffes are so common by him now that they’re barely reported anymore.

He won’t drop out because the “doctor” and her patient are addicted to the perks of the office of the Presidency of the United States. The digs are nice, the food is exquisite, the butt-kissing is sublime, and the airplane travel is first class (provided he doesn’t fall down or up the shortened stairs of Airforce One).

It’s the zombie presidency. The un-dead presidency. It’s dead but still twitches a destructive Executive Order or two spoon-fed to them by squirrely adolescent staffers until the Supreme Court throws it out. Even then they boast that they’ll do it again, the Supreme Court be damned. They’re the walking dead.

So, they plan to hang around. Screw the party, screw the country, screw the world. Something about them reminds me of the cheap, chiseling couple running the restaurant in Les Misérables. The illegitimate masters of the White House. But they’re not masters, they’re squatters. You want them out? You’ll have to vote them out. And even then you might have to evict them with the aid of the 82nd Airborne.

The only surprise from the debate was that the Democrats were surprised. Inexplicably, they were surprised that Biden delivered a performance consistent with his public performance over the last three years.

Where have these Dems been?

I predicted beforehand that Biden would do a little better than Republicans expected. He would not drool, not fall down and not sniff Trump’s hair, as many Republicans expected.

My prediction was correct. (I also predicted that Trump would do better than expected. I was right about that too. This guy is teachable, even if he sometimes goes out of his way to deny it.)

Democrats, however, apparently expected much better from Biden. They expected him to perform as if he was reading a teleprompter – despite the hard fact that over the last three years he’s shown little ability to do that.

It was a case of Democrats engaging in wishful thinking, or perhaps just coming to believe their own propaganda. In any case, their surprise at Biden’s poor performance was surprising to me.

The result was a Democrat piling-on. I wonder if the piling-on was designed to cover for their willful blindness over the past three years. Nobody’s saying “I’m with Joe” anymore, and instead they’re busy deleting the tweets where they said that just a few months ago.

It bodes badly for Biden and for a Democrat White House. The next set of polls will show Biden down by 6-8 points – at a stage in the election where he was ahead by 10 points in the close one of 2020.

It’s apt to get worse from there. Biden is entering laughing stock territory – Dan Quayle and Kamala Harris territory.

It’s hard to recover from being a laughing stock. People don’t vote for a laughing stock.

Only Biden himself – with a teleprompter-enabled speech from the Oval Office graciously announcing his withdrawal – can rescue the Democrats from themselves and probably only “doctor” Jill can rescue Biden from himself. But that would take a lot more courage, acumen and selflessness than either has ever shown.

There’s a reason they won’t release Joe’s cognitive test

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I’m almost young enough to be Joe Biden’s son. (But I’m not.)

When I see the doctor for my annual physical, she typically tells me at the outset that she wants me to remember three arbitrary words – something like “elephant, ice and automobile” – and intends to ask me what the three words are at the end of my examination.

I always see it as a challenge. At the end, I’ll remind her impishly, “Didn’t you intend to ask me what the three words are?”

“Oh, right,” she’ll reply.

That’s my cue: “The words are ‘elephant, automobile and ice’ except you asked me to remember them in the order ‘elephant, ice and automobile.’ By the way, did you know that elephants are closely related to mammoths, and that mammoths survived almost into recorded history? It’s thought that humans coming to the New World were responsible in part for their extinction – they hunted the mammoths to extinction. Those native Americans weren’t living in such harmony with nature after all.”

She’ll roll her eyes, convinced that I’m not senile but might well be something worse.

I report this because Joe Biden has doctors too. As an 81-year-old, he’s undoubtedly given at least informal cognitive tests by those doctors, similar to the one my doctor gives me. In view of his significant seniority over me, and the apparent diminution in his cognition, he’s probably given tests more formal than mine. It would be medical malpractice not to give him such tests.

Donald Trump appropriately noted in the debate that he himself has taken and aced such tests, and released them to the public during his presidency. That is true.

But Trump uncharacteristically understated his case in challenging Biden to take such tests too.

The fact is, almost certainly, that Biden has indeed taken such tests. The fact that he hasn’t released the results tells you volumes. As if you need to be told anything more after his performance last night.

The death of Europe is greatly exaggerated

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You hear that Europe is:

*Overrun with jihading Muslims;

*Running out of energy;

*Violent; and

*Dysfunctional.

I spent the last month hiking and trekking in France, Austria and Germany. This was the latest of my many escapades off the beaten track – and on the Beaton track – for my favorite activity that’s done standing up. Namely, walking. (See, e.g. HERE)

I concluded in a non-scientific sort of way that the death of Europe has been greatly exaggerated. It’s something like the Notre Dame. It caught fire, and might have been a goner, but it’s still with us and will be for a very long time.

More specifically:

French women are very friendly but not very hot. German women are very hot but not very friendly. (Those respective attributes and liabilities make sense when you think about it.) Scottish women are neither.

German men are large.

Europeans don’t refrigerate eggs. We don’t have to refrigerate them either, and grocery stores know that, but American consumers don’t.

Muslims are certainly in Europe. In France in particular, it’s common to see Muslim women. You know they are Muslim because they want you to know. They are in long dresses and scarves. They tend to be overweight. A great many are pushing baby carriages.

I assume that for each Muslim woman there is a Muslim man, but they are not easily identifiable because they apparently don’t wear any particular identifying clothing.

The Muslim women are nothing extraordinary apart from their distinctive garb, their girth, and their baby carriages. To this untrained eye, they behave much like other French women.

If Muslims are invading Europe, they’re pretty sneaky about it for the most part. The invasion of the United States from our southern border is much more apparent.

As for energy, the Europeans keep the indoors warmer in the summer and cooler in the winter. Sometimes, uncomfortably so. I assume this is because energy is more expensive in Europe. Translated into gallons and dollars, gasoline is a little shy of $10/gallon.

One result is that they use mass transit more than we do. The train system is very good in most of Europe – not just because gas is expensive but also because the distances are more manageable. And they have smaller cars. It’s extremely rare to see an American-style monster pickup truck, for example.

They have funny small cars we’ve never heard of, especially in France. In Germany you often see BMWs, Mercedes and Audis, of course, and they look just like the ones we buy. But on close inspection, you see that they are equipped with much smaller engines than ours and evidently get much better gas mileage. They still go plenty fast on the autobahn.

You see wind mills or, more accurately, wind turbines for generating electricity. They apparently work, but are inefficient once you factor in the cost of manufacturing and installing them and their limited life span.

I saw no one beheaded. In fact, I saw no violence and never felt threatened. I felt much safer in downtown Munich than in downtown Denver.

You never see vagrants camping on the streets, sidewalks or parks. That’s not because Europeans are rich; the average German has less money than the average Mississippian. It’s because they prohibit vagrants from camping in public spaces. I saw no reports that the consequence of that prohibition was the freezing or starving to death of vagrants.

On a government building in the old part of Munich, I saw several flags displayed, including the Israeli flag. This was 20 miles from Dachau.

As for the dysfunctionality of Europe, I suppose it depends on how you define it. The trains run on time. The garbage gets picked up.

Their politics, like ours, are volatile. But their conflict tends to drive things toward the center rather than toward the extremes.

I attribute that to their parliamentarian systems. In America, the candidates get chosen in primaries where the people who bother to vote tend to be the extremists on the right and left. The result is more extremity in the general elections – a hard right candidate chosen by the hard right primary voters versus a hard left candidate chosen by the hard left primary voters.

One wins. Then Congress is comprised of a bunch of hard rightist and hard leftists who spend an inordinate amount of energy battling one another rather than solving problems.

In parliamentary systems, the candidates are chosen more by the party apparatchiks. They tend to disfavor ideologues and favor electability. The chosen candidates are thus more moderate.

Moreover, the presidents and prime ministers are chosen not by the people but by their elected representatives. Those elected representatives tend to be pragmatic in their choices. They want leaders who can hold things together.

The multiple parties that are common in Europe mean that it is often the case that no one party can command a majority. When that happens, the parties must form coalitions – they have no choice but to compromise in order to maintain control of the government.

In Europe, they call that process of compromise and coalition-building “governance” and label the people who engage in it “leaders.” In America, we call that process “traitorous” and we label the people who engage in it “RINOs.”

Imagine if the alternatives for President of the United States were, say, Mitt Romney and Joe Manchin. My tribe will say they hate Mitt Romney. Fine, I get that. But wouldn’t it be better to win with Mitt Romney than to lose with Donald Trump? And wouldn’t it be better to lose to Joe Manchin than to lose to Barack Obama?

Expect both candidates to do better than you expect

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The debates will be interesting this time, because both candidates have the opportunity to change some minds. Joe Biden could change some minds that have decided he’s too old to be president. Donald Trump could change some minds that have decided he’s too much a jerk.

Will they succeed?

Probably, to some extent. In Biden’s case, it’s because expectations are extraordinarily low. Even Democrats think he’s too old. Republicans think he’s so old that he’s likely to forget where he is (as he appears to do from time to time), fall down (as he has done several times on camera), and perhaps sniff Trump’s hair.

Biden will exceed those expectations.

I’m not saying he’ll deliver great lines, such as “You’re no Jack Kennedy” or “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” That failure won’t be because he will not have been fed such lines by his debate coaches; he will have been. Rather, it will be because he lacks the stage presence of Ronald Reagan and Lloyd Bentsen, and he lacks the memory to even remember the lines he will have been fed.

But he won’t fall down, he won’t forget where he is, and he won’t sniff anyone’s hair. In fact, he’ll be so pumped up with pharmaceuticals – as he apparently was at the State of the Union Address a few months ago – that he won’t appear sleepy at all. He’ll be preternaturally charged up.

It’ll be spooky. Think Energizer Bunny with hair plugs and tooth caps.

Despite Biden’s meme that he’s running again because he’s the only one who can beat Trump, his handlers know the truth. He’s about the only Democrat who can lose to Trump – mainly due to concern among even Democrats and certainly Independents that he’s too old and too far gone.

The handler’s efforts this week will focus on dispelling that concern. With the aid of pharmaceuticals and low expectations, they’ll succeed to some small degree.

As for Trump, most Republicans tend not to have much personal affection for the man. If Dan Quayle was no Jack Kennedy, Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan.

Democrats loath (and fear) Trump to the point they think he will appear on horseback with three other riders, or perhaps with a chain saw in-hand, or might spin his head 360 degrees on his shoulders and vomit at the camera.

I predict Trump will not do any of that.

The man seems to have changed a bit. If Biden appears chemically stimulated, Trump appears slightly sedated in comparison to the Trump of the past. Moreover, even the experts are surprised at the quality of his campaign. He’s getting good advice, and seems to be taking that advice.

The 2016 election was a lark for Trump. He surprised everyone – including himself – by winning. Unfortunately, what he learned from that was to ignore the advice of seasoned politicos in the 2020 election – and so he lost (probably).  

Some of the advice that Trump is taking this time is about his debating style. In the 2016 and 2020 debates with Hillary and then Biden, he misapprehended the nature of a debate. He thought a debate was an argument. He repeatedly cut off Biden even as Biden was stumbling and mumbling. The effect was to save Biden from himself.

This time, Trump appreciates that a debate is not a personal argument with his wife. It’s a moderated show with a television audience.

Trump at heart is a showman, perhaps the best in politics since that professional showman Ronald Reagan. This time, he knows to keep quiet to let the stumbling and mumbling Biden continue stumbling and mumbling. Moreover, under the rules of this particular debate, Trump will not be able to interject even if he wants to because each candidate’s microphone will be muted during the other’s response to moderator questions.

It could be painful to watch, if you’re a Democrat. At least until the moderators interject to save Biden. Trump’s microphone will be muted during Biden’s stumbling and mumbling routine, but the moderators’ will not be.

Here’s another thing Trump will do, as any seasoned performer would. He’ll use a little self-deprecation. He’ll use it well, because people won’t expect it from him. If Trump pokes a bit of fun at himself, it might be the most memorable moment. It will either be a hit or, without a live audience, it could fall flat. If it falls flat, don’t expect the moderators to bail him out Ed McMahon style.

So . . . next week we’ll have a new race. The senile incumbent will have a bit of a pulse and the a-hole challenger will seem not quite so bad. America might survive another four years.

The emperor has no clothes – and no pulse

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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?

Trump should insist that both candidates take a post-debate drug test

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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. 

Will the terrorist sympathizers be awarded honorary PhDs?

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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 Manhattan case against Trump is a travesty

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“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”

– Lavrentiy Beria, Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief

The facts of the case starting this week are simple. It’s the legal theories that are convoluted.

Donald Trump paid a porn star named Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about their affair. (Leave aside for a moment whether it’s possible to have an “affair” with a porn star, and leave aside whether Stormy blackmailed him into making the payment.)

Despite the opprobrious term “hush money,” this type of payoff is perfectly legal and happens all the time. In fact, it’s the most frequent outcome of a sexual harassment case, where it’s politely termed a “confidential settlement agreement.”

You might think the objection is that Trump used campaign money from donors to make the payment. But it’s undisputed that he didn’t. Trump instead used his own money through his lawyer to whom he paid monthly retainers. (Imagine the outcry if he had used campaign money.)

As businesses often do in these circumstances, Trump characterized the payments as an expense in his business records. The prosecution says that characterization was incorrect.  

Maybe, and maybe not. But even if so, such a mischaracterization is only a misdemeanor, at most, for which the penalty would be a simple and small fine.

The Democrats want more than that. They want Trump in jail.

Enter the new District Attorney for Manhattan, a place that went 85-15 against Trump in the 2020 election. The DA explicitly campaigned on a promise to put Trump in jail, without ever telling the voters what crime he had committed. He must have concluded, apparently correctly, that the voters didn’t care what crime Trump committed so long as he was punished with a jail term.

But even in deep blue Manhattan they don’t send people to serve jail time without charging and convicting them of crimes. So, the DA ginned up a crime.

It goes like this. The DA says Trump’s campaign benefited from his personal payment to Stormy. Because Trump made the payment personally for this benefit to his campaign, he should have reported it as a campaign contribution under the federal campaign finance laws.

Consider the irony. The DA says Trump violated federal campaign finance laws because he didn’t use campaign money from donors for this payment, but instead did use his personal money.

The lesson is, if you’re running for office and pay someone to keep quiet about your affair, be sure to use campaign money from donors to make the payment.

As to whether this payment by Trump benefitted the campaign, I suppose it did in a sense. Whatever expenditures a candidate makes with his own money to make himself more palatable as a candidate, benefits his campaign.

A campaign is benefited when a candidate uses his own money to get a nice haircut or make a publicity-generating charitable donation. (The DA has taken no position yet on nice haircuts or publicity-generating charitable donations, because Trump didn’t commit those “violations.”)

But such expenditures have never been considered reportable campaign contributions. Nancy Pelosi’s face lifts to make her more palatable (maybe) as a candidate were never reported as campaign contributions.

Ah, but Trump is a special case. Sui generis. Orange Man Bad. Trump Derangement Syndrome. He’s such a threat to democracy that there is no alternative but to jail him for . . . whatever.  

Ah but there’s another problem with the creative DA’s case, for which he has yet another solution. The problem is that the DA is a state prosecutor with no jurisdiction over federal campaign finance laws. Several of the Feds, who do have jurisdiction over the campaign finance laws, unanimously declined to bring charges.

The DA’s novel solution to that problem is as follows. Although he has no jurisdiction to bring a charge for violation of the federal campaign finance laws, he says that the trivial state law misreporting violation was a scheme to violate those federal laws.

That, he says, serves to elevate the state law violation from a misdemeanor to a felony that . . . [drum roll] . . . puts Trump in jail!

To succeed with these theories, the prosecutor must prove the federal campaign violation. That’s a violation he has not charged Trump with since he has no jurisdiction over it, and a violation that prosecutors who do have jurisdiction have declined to charge Trump with.

Unsurprisingly, the DA’s own predecessor expressly declined to pursue the current DA’s theories.  

Speaking of putting Trump in jail, the judge’s daughter is a Democrat activist who once published a photoshopped picture of Trump behind bars. Her father has slapped a gag order on Trump for the duration of the trial.

In summary: An arguable small-time misdemeanor is inflated into a jail-time felony on the prosecutor’s theory – rejected by the prosecutor’s predecessor – that the alleged misdemeanor was for the purpose of committing a federal offense over which the prosecutor has no jurisdiction and which the feds explicitly declined to prosecute. The trial will be to a jury in deep blue Manhattan presided over by a judge who has gagged-ordered Trump and whose daughter is a Democrat activist who has published a fake picture of Trump in jail.

Whether you love or hate Trump, the politicization of our legal system is a travesty.

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

Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission gets schooled on the First Amendment in the wedding website case

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Remember the wedding website case that came out of Colorado and went all the way to the Supreme Court? It’s finally over, and it ended beautifully. Bigly beautifully.

I’ll let the district court describe the facts:

“Plaintiff Lorie Smith . . . offers a variety of creative services, including website design, to the public. Ms. Smith intends to expand the scope of [her] services to include the design, creation, and publication of wedding websites. However, [Smith] will decline any request to design, create, or promote content that promotes any conception of marriage other than marriage between one man and one woman. [Smith has] designed an addition to [her] website that includes a statement that [she] will not create websites “celebrating same sex marriages or any other marriage that contradicts God’s design for marriage.”

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission decided that Smith’s exercise of her First Amendment right to decline to perform services in violation of her religious beliefs, and that her words so stating, were, ironically, in violation of the First Amendment. The Commission said (1) Smith was required to design websites celebrating marriages other than between a man and a woman, and (2) she was prohibited from stating that she wouldn’t.

Smith sued the Commission in Federal Court. It was a smart move to go to Federal Court because state court would have ensnarled her for years in the swamp of the Democrat-controlled Colorado state judiciary – the one where the state supreme court tossed Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot only to be unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court last winter.

The district court dismissed her case on procedural grounds. She appealed to the federal appellate court. They overturned the dismissal on procedural grounds, but, worse, dismissed her case on substantive grounds.

She appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held 6-3 last year that both dismissals were wrong. They held that the Commission’s insistence that she perform services in violation of her religious beliefs, and insistence that she refrain from stating that she wouldn’t, were in violation of her First Amendment rights.

In short, she won.

The case was then remanded back to the lower courts to work out the details. It came back to a different district court judge. (The first judge, a former bankruptcy judge, had taken “Senior” status while the case was on appeal. That’s a gravy train for federal judges where they get full pay, the same plush courtrooms and chambers, a full complement of law clerks to kiss the back of their robes, and invitations to the right (er, left) cocktail parties. But they work just part-time by taking on only the particular cases they want. No, this “job” is not available for you.)

The details remaining to be worked out on remand to the district court were the exact language of the court’s order, and the payment of attorney fees. The Commission wanted a cramped order with little precedential significance and minimal further embarrassment to them. Smith of course wanted a broader order protecting her against infringements on her First Amendment right to exercise and state her religious beliefs.

This week, the new judge sided with Smith. The court’s order states:

“ORDERED that the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause prohibits Colorado from [compelling Smith] to create custom websites celebrating or depicting same-sex weddings or otherwise create or depict original, expressive, graphic or website designs inconsistent with her beliefs regarding same sex marriage.”

Then there was the attorney fees issue. The civil rights laws provide for an award of attorney fees and costs to a prevailing plaintiff. Smith was the prevailing plaintiff, though she had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to become one.

The Commission argued that she was actually only a partially prevailing plaintiff because she didn’t win on every single claim she made. Accordingly, the Commission contended, attorney fees should be prorated.

The district court rejected the Commission’s argument, and instead correctly held that “prevailing” in this context simply means the side that basically won, even if they didn’t win on every single claim. Attorney’s typically throw in lots of claims of dubious merit in a lawsuit. The fact that some get thrown out along the way doesn’t mean their client isn’t the prevailing party at the end of the day when they are awarded the remedy they seek.

The judge concluded with an invitation to Smith’s attorneys to file a motion for their costs and attorney fees.

Those costs and fees are likely to be into seven figures, since they include the original district court proceedings, the appeal to the appellate court, the appeal to the Supreme Court, and the current remand to the district court.

That is all good news. Smith is now playing with the house’s money. The bad news is that the “house” is, at the end of the day, the taxpayers of the State of Colorado.

Mind you, my objection here is not to gays getting married. I’m OK with that, though it took me a few years to get there. My objection is to the government telling everyone that they’re required to think it’s OK. Many people have sincere religious or other beliefs objecting to gay marriage. It’s wrong — and a violation of the First Amendment — to force them to abandon their beliefs.

As a matter of strategy, I also think it’s a grave mistake for gays to force this issue. People tend to get entrenched when their religion is attacked. But very often, when the left can choose between effective persuasion and ineffective coercion, they choose the latter. Because, at heart, they want to boss people around. They’re totalitarians.

I wish there were a way to hold these totalitarian bureaucrats personally liable in cases like this. A million-dollar judgment against them personally, and a seizure or their residences, might make them think twice next time. How about an $83 million judgment and $92 million bond? Better yet, how about a $464 million judgment secured with a $175 million bond?

Glenn Beaton practiced law in the Federal Courts, including the Supreme Court.

Paul Krugman is angry at farmers

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Former Enron advisor and current New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is angry at farmers. What’s earned his wrath is that they vote for Donald Trump. He says they vote for Trump because they’re afflicted with “white rural rage.”

Let’s examine the components of Krugman’s catchy phrase “white rural rage.”

As for rural, it is certainly true that Trump does better in rural areas than in, say, downtown Chicago or Baltimore. Then again, everybody does better – wherever they are – than they would in the toilets of downtown Chicago or Baltimore.

It’s not obvious that the politics of these rural folk are dictated by their Green Acres. Plenty of suburbanites vote for Trump too. After all, farmers comprise fewer than six million people in the U.S., while Trump won over 74 million votes last time. If every single farmer voted for Trump, that would still leave him more than 68 million short of the votes he actually received.

So, are the suburbanites and urbanites angry too? Maybe.

As for white, it’s true that Trump does better with white people than with BLack people. But there’s a couple hundred million white people in America, and Trump got only those aforementioned 74 million votes.

OK, maybe more, but let’s not go there today. In any event, Trump clearly isn’t getting all the white vote.

Compared to most Republicans, Trump is doing quite well with racial minorities. Millions of the people who voted for him are Black or Hispanic or Asian. His supporters are – dare I say it? – diverse. Is this entire multicolored constituency full of rage?

Maybe.

Which brings us to the last of Krugman’s angry accusations about Trump voters – that they’re full of rage. That, he says, is because they’re losers in a changing economy and changing world. They’re deplorable. They’re bitterly clinging.

Indeed, many Trump voters are angry, but not for the reasons that Krugman suggests. They’re angry that their country’s borders are left undefended; they’re angry that the military is well woke but can’t even lose a war gracefully, much less win one; they’re angry that Biden runs up trillion dollar deficits and double-digit inflation to pay for “free” stuff for his favored constituencies; they’re angry that the whole Biden family sells political influence to foreign governments for millions; they’re angry that Biden wants to throw the Israelis into the oven in order to bribe a few terrorist sympathizers in Michigan to vote for him; they’re angry that Joe himself is obviously non compos mentis while his caretakers gaslight us with preposterous stories that he’s sharp as a tack as soon as the cameras are turned off.

Yes, it’s fair to say that many Trump voters are angry.

But note this, Mr. Krugman. You’ve probably never met a farmer, but they deal with their anger straight up. If they’re angry, they’ll express that anger by voting against Biden and for Trump.

What they won’t do is invent pop psychology to demonize those who disagree with them. None of these voters you diagnose as afflicted with “white rural rage” will diagnose you as being afflicted with “Jewish urban anger.”

They’re smart and decent enough to know that your religion, your place of residence, and your emotional state are not particularly relevant to their political disagreement with you. To them this is not a cafeteria food fight and not a jihad.

You could learn something about manners, Mr. Krugman, from these farmers you look down upon. Keep Manhattan, just give us this countryside.