Monthly Archives: November 2024

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The Broadside | Team MAGA is Being Formed

It’s been a week since America spanked the Democrats and sent Donald J. Trump back to the White House. I feel invigorated and deeply satisfied while still harboring some anxiety about getting him sworn in on January 20.

PTSD from 2020’s stolen election, I’m sure.

Trump has wasted no time in nominating and appointing a strong stable of leaders who will join his administration. Since they have been coming in a few at a time, I thought I’d collect them here for you. As of Tuesday night, Trump had named:

Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla, National Security Adviser: “Waltz, a three-term GOP congressman from east-central Florida, was the first Green Beret elected to the U.S. House, and easily won reelection last week. He has been chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on readiness and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.” *snip* “In a statement last year, Waltz said that as head of the readiness subcommittee: ‘I am ready to get to work to better equip our military and turn our focus away from woke priorities and back to winning wars. Our national security depends on it.'”

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Department of Government Efficiency: “Trump said that the pair will work together to ‘dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.’ It will become, potentially, “The Manhattan Project” of our time,’ the announcement on Tuesday evening said. ‘Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time.’ The president-elect said that Musk and Ramaswamy will provide ‘advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.'”

Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense: A Fox News host? I didn’t see this one coming. “‘Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,’ Trump said. ‘Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our “Peace through Strength” policy.'”

Mike Huckabee, Ambassador to Israel: In a statement Trump said, “I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected former Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, has been nominated to be The United States Ambassador to Israel. Mike has been a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years. He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!” Huckabee is the first evangelical Christian to hold the position.

John Ratcliffe, CIA Director: “Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence for the final months of Trump’s first term, leading American spy agencies during the coronavirus pandemic and as the U.S. government contended with foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. His past experience in intelligence makes him a more traditional pick for the job, which requires Senate confirmation, than some rumored loyalists pushed by some of Trump’s supporters.” *snip* “Ratcliffe was elected to Congress in 2014, but his visibility rose in 2019 as an ardent defender of Trump during the House’s first impeachment proceedings against him.”

SD Gov. Kristi Noem, Department of Homeland Security: “In a statement released on Tuesday night, the Trump transition team said the South Dakota governor has a ‘very strong’ track record on border security. ‘She was the first Governor to send National Guard Soldiers to help Texas fight the Biden Border Crisis, and they were sent a total of eight times,’ the statement reads. ‘She will work closely with “Border Czar” Tom Homan to secure the Border, and will guarantee that our American Homeland is secure from our adversaries.'”

Tom Homan, Border Czar: “The man tapped by Donald Trump to enact his clampdown on rampant illegal immigration in the U.S. said Monday he is ready for Democrats decrying the get-tough action, declaring: ‘I don’t care what people think of me.’ Tom Homan, Trump’s newly-picked ‘border czar,’ said he will make it a priority to ‘secure the border and do this deportation operation.'”

Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Ambassador to the United Nations: “Stefanik joined Congress as a moderate Republican but became one of Trump’s key defenders after his first impeachment and after his 2020 election loss. She joined House leadership in 2021 as chair of the House Republican Conference.” She is the highest-ranking Republican woman in the House.

Lee Zeldin, EPA Administrator: Zeldin is a Jewish former four-term representative from Long Island. “He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet,” Trump said. “He will set new standards on environmental review and maintenance, that will allow the United States to grow in a healthy and well-structured way.”

Susie Wiles, Chief of Staff: “Wiles spent the past two years co-running Trump’s campaign and is well-respected as a political operative. She will become the first woman to serve as a White House chief of staff. Wiles, among the people Trump thanked after his 2024 victory, was largely a behind-the-scenes figure during his run. She has also worked for Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and was a deputy director during former President Reagan’s 1980 campaign.”

Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy: “Miller was the architect of some of Trump’s first-term immigration policies, including family separation and an order to ban travel into the U.S. from several majority-Muslim countries. He will work alongside Susie Wiles, whom Trump last week named as his chief of staff. During the Biden administration, Miller led America First Legal, an organization that launched dozens of lawsuits against Democratic policies.”

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State: Not confirmed, but reported by several major news outlets. “The third Cabinet-level appointment, by far the biggest name so far, is reported to be Florida Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. Rubio has represented Florida’s sizeable Jewish community in the Senate since his election in 2010. The New York Times characterised Rubio as ‘a foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on China and Iran in particular.’ Rubio is also knowledgeable about foreign policy, fluent in all the issues he would have to handle as Secretary. Finally, it’s worth noting that unlike others who could have been named as Trump’s Secretary of State, Rubio is not an isolationist and would immediately reverse Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s intense hostile-to-Israel energy. America’s allies abroad should be cheered by Rubio’s selection.”

Still no word on where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Tulsi Gabbard, two former Democrats who gave strong support to Trump’s campaign, will serve in the administration, although Trump said that Kennedy would be given a lot of latitude to “Make America Healthy Again.” Gabbard was reportedly interested in the Secretary of Defense position, but Pete Hegseth was chosen. Personally, I’d like to see Gabbard involved in some way.

I’m impressed with the team that Trump is pulling together. He’s got four years to make good on his promises, and I’m excited to see what he does with them. His team will make all the difference.

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The Broadside | The Kids Are Not Alright: Lefties Need Copious Amounts of Copium

I’ve been meaning to post about the meltdowns on the Left in the wake of President-Elect Donald J. Trump’s yuuuge win last Tuesday. While I laughed at many of these, I also felt some alarm.

Many of these (mostly) wymyn are what we used to call “adults,” but they’re throwing tantrums like 3-year-olds. Others are threatening violence against anyone who voted for Trump. Others are leaving the country. Others are cutting ties with their families.

These people are not well.

I’ve included videos of women who are shaving their heads in protest as part of the “4B” movement. The “4B” movement started in South Korea where women pledge to not have sex, get married, date, or have children. Wymyn on the Left are adopting the movement as their own as a way to “punish” men who voted for Trump. That would be women on the Left trying to punish men on the Right.

Imagine literally trying to make yourself unattractive for phantom suitors.

Need I tell you how that’s landing?

It’s entertaining, but we need to recognize that they are all products of an educational system and a culture that has taught them to hate their country and to fear (and hate) white men. Now they have to deal with the fact that not only white men, but black and Latino men (and not a few women) have voted for the boogeyman on the right, Donald J. Trump.

In fact, I’d say that the majority of these people are seething masses of uncontrolled rage that are unable to cope. They’re deranged. Most of them are barely coherent but know how to use the F-word quite competently, so you may want to watch them out of earshot of your littles.

Enjoy!

Sound on:

I was told Trump’s election would bring out the terrorists:

Hey family, choke on your turkey:

Devastated:

Shouldn’t be hard:

Another 4B acolyte:

Finally, a voice of reason:

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The Broadside | Trump Increases Popular Vote Total Over 2020 “Loss”

The numbers for Trump’s win keep setting records.

Trump clinches biggest popular vote count by a Republican EVER as president-elect’s historic 2024 election win grows

He won it bigly.

President-elect Donald Trump has nabbed the highest raw count of the popular vote of any Republican presidential hopeful ever, according to projections of the 2024 election.

As of Sunday morning, Trump clinched 74,650,000 popular votes, eclipsing his prior record of 74,224,000 votes in the 2020 election, per the Associated Press.

At the moment, that puts the incoming president ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ 70.9 million votes — though there is still a large swath of votes uncounted, including in California which has an estimated 66% of the vote tabulated.

Other states, including Alaska, Arizona, Maryland, Oregon and Utah still have outstanding votes. Roughly 5 million votes are estimated to be left outstanding.

Since I’m feeling a little pugnacious, I personally think that Trump won the most votes ever for either a Republican OR a Democrat.

That chart was created before the counting was done. But still …

Since I can’t confirm where those numbers came from, I got the voting results from our presidential elections going back to 2000, then created the chart below, which has the most up-to-date numbers from the 2024 election. Right now, Harris has 70.9 million votes. Biden supposedly got 81.2 million votes in the 2020 race.

It begs the question: Where are those 10.3 million Democrat voters who were so enthusiastic for Biden?

They clearly didn’t swing to Trump, who (so far) has improved his vote total over 2020 by less than half a million.

When I questioned the outcome of the 2020 election, pointing to Biden’s basement strategy, cognitive decline and that he couldn’t draw a crowd in the few campaign appearances he did hold, I was told in no uncertain terms in my personal social media interactions that it wasn’t so much that voters were for Biden as much as it was that people were voting against Trump.

That reasoning is even worse now. Trump is still Trump.

There are still five million votes to be counted, and even if we were generous and gave Harris half, she still only gets to 73.4 million.

So where are all these people who didn’t vote for Biden, but voted against Trump?

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The Broadside | It Really Was a Landslide Victory

It’s official: President-elect Donald J. Trump turned in a landslide performance on Tuesday by winning 312 electoral votes, but also winning the popular vote, something that a Republican hasn’t done since George Bush did it in 2004. It’s also the first time Trump won the popular vote out of his three campaigns for president.

Now the Democrats will agree that Trump is a legitimate president because he won both the popular vote and the electoral vote. Every time a Republican has won the presidency but lost the popular vote, Dems go on a tirade about how we should elect a president with the popular vote and respect the “will of the people.” I’m looking at you, Hillary Clinton.

Trump won all seven swing states: Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and the three states making up the so-called “Blue Wall” of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Trump has a mandate and he’s got the Senate. We’re waiting to see if Republicans keep the House —they’re within striking distance of the 218 seats needed.

If Trump runs the trifecta (presidency, Senate, House) then he can pretty quickly enact his agenda without resorting to a bunch of executive orders. We want our changes, like border security, enshrined in law that cannot be easily undone.

Speaking of agendas, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has shared with us what Trump has asked him to do.

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The Broadside | Thank God for Donald Trump

Donald J. Trump is going to be the 47th president of the United States. When Trump won Pennsylvania at 12:20 a.m., it effectively foreclosed any path for Harris to win.

It’s truly astonishing. Here’s a guy who, in his first term, was the victim of several hoaxes, twice impeached (and acquitted) on trivial charges, and subverted by members of his own administration. Since then, he’s been smeared as Hitler and a Nazi fascist, survived two assassination attempts, and has stood up under a barrage of lawfare on 90+ charges no one else would ever have been indicted with.

Some optimists were thinking that Trump would win back the presidency in a landslide. I wasn’t one of them, but I was curious to see if Trump could deliver those kinds of numbers.

He was well on his way to doing just that when I set this post up at 3:00 a.m.

It is undoubtably the greatest political comeback in US history.

It’s also a mandate. Trump helped flip the Senate to a Republican majority, which means he gets his Cabinet appointments, which means he’ll have the team he wants. At the time I wrote this, it looked like the GOP would hold a slim majority in the House, too.

Trump put together a broad coalition that is more diverse than the Democrats. Trump increased his support among blacks and Latinos. He won support from the young, from union and non-union blue-collar workers. He’s got a terrific leadership team made up of former Democrats, libertarians, and conservatives.

The American people have just told the Democrats that they’ve had enough of their destructive “policies” like open borders, sending billions of our dollars to useless wars where it’s laundered and pocketed by our enemies foreign and domestic, and tipping us into an economic depression.

They also told the legacy media what they think of them, too: we no longer listen to you. You’re irrelevant. After all the gaslighting and lying you did, the vicious attacks on Trump and his “garbage” supporters, we no longer need you. It’s a total repudiation of what was once an important institution.

It’s also a major setback for Barack Hussein Obama who has been the guy pulling the strings behind Sleepy Joe’s incompetence. If Harris had won, Barry would’ve had another four years to impose his destructive ideals on America.

Once it became clear that Trump was going to win, the Left immediately started demanding that Trump reach out to the Dems to “unify” the country.

Even Fox News’s Harold Ford Jr., a Democrat, said Republicans should reach out to Dems and show grace. My reaction was: no freakin’ way.

Here’s my take: I think we should pound the political snot out of the Democrat Party and make sure they can’t offer another candidate for the next 25 years.

The party that has demonized half the country wants the winners to be gracious. You know what? It starts with the Democrats respecting the will of the people. They just got their butts handed to them. Maybe they might want to take a minute to figure out why.

To Trump’s credit, in his comments after he locked up the win, he talked about unifying the country. “We’re going to help our country heal.” While I think he can be of good will towards the Dems, he better not concede anything to them.

It’s a wild time to be alive. We’re watching a radical realignment of the political makeup of the political parties. The Republican party has been transformed. It isn’t the party of George Bush and Dick Cheney anymore.

In his comments, Trump said, “Many people think God spared my life for a reason. To save our country. To restore America to greatness. We’re going to fulfill that mission.”

That may be. Whether or not that is what happens, thank God for His mercy in giving us Donald J. Trump to give us four years to turn things around.

Now let’s get him inaugurated—after Kamala certifies his win in January.

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The Broadside | “This is the Last Chance, Man”

Today’s the day. This is it. This is the day we’ve been waiting four years for.

If you haven’t voted, go out and vote today. Like, now. Go.

It goes without saying that we have to go all out to win this. If you can vote early and have not done so, do it today. Now. Don’t wait till tomorrow. Get it done. If you can only vote tomorrow, go vote early. Get it done, get it out of the way. Who knows what surprises lurk in the next few hours? Fire, flood, plague of frogs – nothing is off the table. We are in the Land of the Black Swans.

As inspiration, watch this clip of Elon Musk with Joe Rogan (who endorsed Trump yesterday).

It’s that serious.

All the arguments have been made. You have three choices: vote Trump, vote Harris, or stay home. If you stay home, you don’t get to complain about the state of the country. Same is true if you vote for Harris, except no one (not just you) will be allowed to complain about the state of the country.

I’ll be watching returns tonight and reporting tomorrow morning.

Let’s hope it’s good news.

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The Broadside | The Signs Are Looking Good, But Don’t Relax

It’s the day before perhaps the most consequential presidential election of my life. We’re either going to repudiate the insanity of Obama’s third term or we’re going to march into a thousand years of darkness. OK, that might be overstating it a bit, but if anyone but Trump takes the helm in January, I’m afraid that any chance to resurrect America as founded will be gone for a long time—perhaps for good.

Think of it as the last chance to grab a dead branch sticking out of the riverbank as you’re swept along with the current toward the falls just around the bend up ahead.

While the race is a virtual dead heat, there is some reason for hope.

As for the battleground states, the newest poll has Trump ahead in all seven swing states, including Wisconsin. If that wasn’t good enough news for you, his lead is outside the margin of error in three states: Arizona, North Carolina, and Nevada.

In North Carolina and Georgia, Trump holds modest leads, outpacing Harris by 3.4 and 2.5 percentage points, respectively. His biggest leads are in Arizona and Nevada, where his advantage reaches 6.5 and 5.5 points. In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, the race is closer, but Trump maintains slight leads, with margins ranging from 1.0 to 1.8 points. Overall, while the race remains tight in some states, Trump has managed to secure a consistent edge over Harris throughout these battleground regions.

Then there’s this take:

On top of that, Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist, thinks the pollsters are missing a key dynamic in the race because it has remained so tight over the last couple of months.

I think the pollsters are getting this wrong. We’re all missing something, because they’re giving us the same poll over and over again. There isn’t even statistical variation. You know, 95% confidence level means that 5% of the time you’re going to get a crappy poll. We hardly ever see that.

It’s like they’re telling us we’re watching a basketball game where every play’s a jump ball. Somebody’s missing something. What I think they’re missing is a massive shift in voter registration underneath all of this. 31 states have voter registration by party. 30 of them in the past four years have seen movement toward Republicans. Miami-Dade County is now voting more Republican.

Iowa was +1 Republican. It’s now +10. And yet we’re getting these surveys that I think are off base. Somebody is missing something. I think there’s, I’m not going to call it a wave, but I think there’s a wavelet out there of Republican enthusiasm and registration. If I register to vote Republican, whether I’m switching or new, what am I going to do?

This all bodes well for Trump. But as I’ve said before, I don’t trust the polling, I don’t trust the Democrats, and I won’t feel any relief until Trump takes the oath in January.

If you haven’t voted, get out there tomorrow and vote like Trump is down and your vote is the one that will put him over the top.

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The Broadside | Why Voting Early Is Important

Welcome to November 2024, the month I’ve been waiting for since November 3, 2020. This is the month we finally have the chance to expel the disgrace that is Joe Biden from the White House.

I spoke with a local precinct committee member who has canvassed 200 homes in her district so far this election cycle. She’s been a vocal proponent of voting early, which neither I nor the missus have ever done until this election, with her encouragement.

(I’ve always been a purest, voting on Election Day, where I would go stand in line to cast my vote with others from my community. Although I must say that in the last few elections I’ve voted in, turnout has been disappointingly low, so it’s not the community activity it used to be.)

This precinct committeewoman (PC), who’s been doing this for 25 years, said there are at least three reasons to vote early, and I pass them on to you for consideration.

The first is that when you vote early, you bank your vote early. The reason that’s important is that if your vote is already counted, “they” (those who might be looking for ways to cheat) can’t change the numbers of those who voted early, because they’ve already been counted and are locked in. On election day, there’s more opportunity for bad actors to rig the vote in real time and less chance they’ll be caught. Flood the polls early so that the “banked” numbers are so large it’s “too big to rig.” Democrats have used that tactic to their advantage, and Republicans need to do the same.

The second reason is to promote efficiency and reduce cost. This PC gets a list of registered Republicans who have NOT yet voted and makes a personal visit, going door-to-door in neighborhoods. It can take a long time to make those visits. However, if someone votes early, their name is taken off the list and the canvasser doesn’t have to make a visit, freeing up time to get to others who have yet to vote and reducing the number of visits that need to be made. The PCs can also save money and time by focusing emails, texts, mailers and phone calls on those who really need a nudge to go vote.

The third reason to vote early is that you reduce the risk of disruption on Election Day. You don’t know what could happen: a power outage, bad weather, illness, travel delays, or long lines. If you go early and something happens to keep you from voting, you can try again another day. If you go on Election Day and something happens—you lose your opportunity.

We voted early and it was easy-peasy lemon squeezy. It felt weird, like it was illegal or something, but everybody was friendly and we went through the same process we normally do when we vote. The only difference was that we voted in a different location than where we normally go to cast our ballots. That’s true for a lot of precincts, so check your local .gov site to find out where to go to vote early. Just google “Where to vote early in <your town and state>.”

Here’s a Brit who is intensely interested in our presidential election and understands the power of voting early.

I think this is first election in which I’ve been much more aware of how much of the world watches our elections. Look at Ms. Berg’s final comment: “Everything is at stake.”

Not only are millions of Americans desperately hoping Trump win (by a blowout!), but other people around the globe are counting on Donald Trump winning. We need to keep our foot on the gas — go vote if you haven’t yet.

Have a great weekend.