Category Archives: Politics

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The Broadside | Trump Delivers a Side-Winder and Exposes the True Conflict Between Left and Right

I watched Trump’s first joint address to Congress since retaking the White House and it was one for the history books. Here’s some highlights along with one simple observation I have.

This was a new one: Churlish Rep. Al Green gets booted after disrupting Trump’s speech and refusing to sit or to quiet down. “Remove this gentleman from the chamber.” I haven’t seen that before.

Trump on the border: “All we needed was a new president.” Trump calls out the lies that the Dems have told for the last four years while letting foreign invaders overrun our southern border.

Trump asked, presumably rhetorically, how many want to see the war in Ukraine go for another five years. Some Democrats applauded and Trump specifically called out Elizabeth Warren, using her preferred name, Pocahontas, who continued to applaud for FIVE MORE YEARS OF WAR while the cameras were on her.

Like a clapping seal that doesn’t know why it’s applauding. It just does because it’s been trained to.

Here’s the investments Trump has secured less than two months into his presidency:

In total, President Trump has secured nearly $2 trillion in new U.S. investments.

  • TSMC announced an unprecedented $100 billion investment in U.S.-based semiconductor chip manufacturing.
  • Apple announced a historic $500 billion investment that will create 20,000 new U.S.-based jobs.
  • President Trump announced the largest artificial intelligence infrastructure project in history, securing $500 billion in planned private sector investment — with major CEOs agreeing it would not have been possible without President Trump’s leadership.
  • President Trump secured a $20 billion investment by DAMAC Properties to build new U.S.-based data centers.
  • Wisconsin-based Clarios, a leader in low-voltage energy storage, announced a $6 billion plan to expand its U.S.-based manufacturing.
  • Eli Lilly and Company announced a $27 billion investment in its U.S.-based manufacturing.
  • Saudi Arabia declared its intention to invest $600 billion in the United States over the next four years.
  • Taiwan pledged to boost its investment in the United States.
  • Electronics giants Samsung and LG “are considering moving their plants in Mexico to the U.S.” now that President Trump is back in office.

Needless to say, the Democrats sat on their hands for the vast majority of speech. Trump even addressed the obvious.

Full Text: “I look at the Democrats in front of me – I realize, there’s nothing I can say to make them happy, stand, or smile or applaud. I could find a cure to the most devastating disease…or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history, or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever. And these people – sitting RIGHT HERE – will not clap, stand or cheer for these achievements. They won’t, no matter what. 5 times I’ve been up here.”

The Democrats are reflexively, automatically, predisposed to oppose anything and everything that Trump represents, and nowhere was it more obvious than in the joint session of Congress tonight, as enthusiastic Republicans cheered and chanted USA! USA! USA! while the childish Democrats sat on their hands or held up their virtue signaling signs. The contrast between the two groups couldn’t have been clearer.

We used to be a country that agreed on what was important. What we disagreed on was how to address those issues. Democrats (generally) wanted bigger government intervention; Republicans (generally) wanted less.

Now, we can’t even agree on the issues. We’ve got one party who left the impression last night that they support taxes on tips, taxes on overtime, taxes on Social Security, the war in Ukraine, men participating in women’s sports; that they hate the popular vote, cutting waste, eliminating Social Security fraud; and that they couldn’t care less about every one of Trump’s special guests, including the mothers and sisters of children murdered by illegal aliens, a steel worker who has fostered more than 40 children, and a child battling brain cancer his whole life who was deputized as a Secret Service agent. The party of “joy” they’re not.

The Democrat party isn’t dead—yet, but they made it clear last night that it’s really not a fight between good ideas (left v. right), but a fight between good and evil.

Pick a side.

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The Broadside | Another Indication That Trump is Taking Us Back to Foundational America

The previous administration was led by a “very devout” Roman Catholic who supported gay marriage, transgenderism, abortion, and who lit up the White House with the rainbow colors of the LGBTQ+ mafia. The current administration is led by a man who has been divorced twice, punctuates his speeches with swear words, boasts about his accomplishments and, yet, appears to have some awareness and reverence for a God whom he thinks spared his life for a reason.

In a scene that seemed strangely foreign, but shouldn’t, President Trump asked HUD secretary Scott Turner to open his first full cabinet meeting with prayer.

Click image above to see video

Father, we thank you for this awesome privilege, Father, to be in your presence. We all thank you that you’ve allowed us to see this day. The Bible says that your mercies are new every morning, and Father God we give you the glory and honor. Thank you, God, for president Trump, Father, for appointing us, Father God, for anointing us to do this job.

Father, we pray that you’ll give the president, the vice president, wisdom, Father God, as they lead. Father, I pray for all of my colleagues that are here around the table and in this room.

Lord God, we pray that we would lead with a righteous clarity. Father God, as we serve the people of this country, every job that we have, Father, we would humble ourselves before you, and we would lead in a manner that you’ve called us to lead and to serve.

Father, the Bible says that The Bible says “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” But Father, we today honor you, and in your rightful place, Father, thank you for giving us this opportunity to restore faith in this country and be a blessing to the people of America.

And Lord God, today in our meeting, we pray that you would be glorified in our conversation.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Trump isn’t ready to pray himself, but it was a strong indication that even in matters of faith, the president is taking us back to our roots as Americans, where our founders acknowledged God even in matters of politics. It was refreshing to have someone open a meeting in prayer “in Jesus’ name.”

The Epoch Times catalogued five key takeaways from the meeting.

Government-Shrinking Efforts
Elon Musk, whose government efficiency efforts have sparked a media frenzy, was also at the Cabinet meeting to discuss his work.
“We do need to move quickly,” Musk told Cabinet members and reporters.

Achieving a trillion-dollar debt reduction in 2026, he said, requires saving $4 billion per day from now until the end of September.

“We can do it, and we will do it,” he said.

No Security Guarantees for Ukraine
Trump confirmed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit the White House on Feb. 28 to sign a deal that would allow the United States access to the Eastern European country’s rare earth minerals.
While the deal could provide a financial boost to Ukraine as it looks to fend off Russia’s invasion, there are no security guarantees in the deal, according to Trump, despite the Ukrainians’ seeking them.

“I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much,” Trump said. “We’re going to have Europe do that.”

Taiwan Question
Trump was asked by a reporter whether it was his policy that communist China would never take Taiwan by force as long as he was president.

“I never comment on that. I don’t comment on any because I don’t ever put myself in that position,” Trump replied. “If I said it, I certainly wouldn’t be saying it to you. I’d be saying it to other people, maybe people around this table.”

Gold Card Visa Could ‘Sell Like Crazy’
During the Cabinet meeting, Trump shed more light on his new proposal to address the country’s mounting debt.

He recently proposed selling “Gold Card” visas to wealthy immigrants in exchange for a $5 million investment in the United States.

“I don’t know, maybe it will sell like crazy,” Trump told reporters.

‘I’m Not Stopping the Tariffs’
Trump said he would continue with his plan to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico despite a recent decline in border crossings.
“I’m not stopping the tariffs,” Trump said. “Millions of people have died because of the fentanyl that comes over the border.”

Soon after taking office, Trump announced broad 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, citing illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking. His administration paused those tariffs for 30 days after the countries’ leaders announced separate plans to combat both issues.

Trump said the drop in border crossings was good but attributed that to policy changes with the Department of Homeland Security.

“That’s also due to us, mostly due to us,” he said.

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The Broadside | The Senate Was Full of Surprises on Thursday

With Trump in the White House, every day is like Christmas.

WASHINGTON—The Senate on Feb. 20 confirmed Kash Patel as director of the FBI.

Senators voted 51–49 to confirm Patel, who gained prominence for exposing alleged FBI and Justice Department malfeasance during the Crossfire Hurricane probe into the Trump campaign. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) crossed the aisle to join Democrats in voting against Patel’s nomination.

In a post on social media platform X, his first post as FBI director, Patel called it an honor to lead the agency and said change is coming.

Murkowski and Collins need to be primaried because they’re basically Democrats. They can go join the other squish Republican, Mitch McConnell, who finally announced he would not seek reelection.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will not run for re-election in 2026 and will instead retire, the longtime senator announced Thursday.

McConnell has served in the Senate for decades, including as Senate majority leader under President Donald Trump’s first administration. McConnell is the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, and he announced his retirement on his 83rd birthday.

“Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell said in prepared remarks to the Senate floor. “Every day in between, I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”

He’s made a career out of being a senator and has made the case for term limits. He’s been in the Senate for 40 years. I will allow that McConnell was responsible for setting Trump up to create a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court by not allowing Merrick Garland’s nomination to gain traction. (And we thank God for that, given the disaster that Garland proved to be as head of the DOJ during the last administration. Can you imagine him with a lifetime appointment on SCOTUS? Me, either!)

But McConnell also voted against the confirmations of Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary. Frankly, I’m surprised he voted to confirm Patel. He also called January 6 a “violent insurrection,” which it certainly was not. And don’t forget that in 2022, McConnell shifted money away from important Senate races to help Murkowski defeat her Republican challenger Kelly Tshibaka, while Republican Senatorial candidate Blake Masters, who was outspent 5-to-1 by Sen. Mark Kelly, got no help at all from McConnell.

It’s been a mixed bag with McConnell. I’m glad he’s out of leadership, and I’m glad he’s retiring.

Have a good weekend.

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The Broadside | Trump Is Quickly Remaking American International Policy

Starting a third week of Team Trump that’s firing on all eight cylinders—let’s take a look at his international disruptions.

Trump slapped 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and 10% on China over the weekend (to take effect Tuesday) with threats to increase the rates if the targeted countries don’t reel in illegal immigration and the deadly drug, fentanyl, which is sourced in China.

In the executive order, Trump said that the tariffs stem from an “extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl, [that] constitutes a national emergency.”

The tariffs have invited international criticism from leaders and citizens alike in Canada and Mexico. During his exchange with reporters on Sunday evening, Trump accused Canada of being “abusive” toward the U.S. in terms of trade.

He was particularly blunt about Canada.

“Canada has been very abusive of the United States for many years. They don’t allow our banks,” Trump claimed. “And you know that Canada does not allow banks to go in, if you think about it. That’s pretty amazing. If we have a U.S. bank, they don’t allow them to go in.”

“Canada has been very tough for oil on energy. They don’t allow our farm products in, essentially. They don’t allow a lot of things in. And we allow everything to come in as being a one-way street.”

Trump also claimed that the U.S. subsidizes Canada “by the tune of about $200 billion a year.”

“And for what? What do we get out of it? We don’t get anything out of it,” he added. “I love the people of Canada. I disagree with the leadership of Canada and something is going to happen there.”

He’s got a point. Why do we subsidize our northern neighbor who simply takes advantage of the U.S. relationship? Why should U.S. taxpayers be supporting Canada without some benefit? Plus, Canada relies on the U.S. military for their protection. Okay, then, pony up, eh?

Trump also threatened the EU.

The Republican leader also said that he will “definitely” impose tariffs against the European Union, which he said the U.S. has a $300 billion trade deficit with.

“They don’t take our cars, they don’t take our farm products, they take almost nothing,” Trump said. “And we take everything from them. Millions of cars, tremendous amounts of food and farm products. So the UK is way out of line and we’ll see the UK, but the European Union is really out of line.”

Interestingly, he also said he was cutting off American money to South Africa, in a post on Truth Social.

In this article, we learn that “the United States obligated nearly $440 million in assistance to South Africa in 2023, the most recent US government data showed.”

During his first administration, Trump said the US would investigate unproven large-scale killings of white farmers in South Africa and violent takeovers of land. Pretoria at the time said Trump was misinformed. It is unclear whether the Trump administration carried out an investigation.

I don’t believe South Africa is aligned with our interests, so why do we send welfare checks to them?

Then there’s Greenland. Trump initially raised the idea of acquiring the island during his first term and is being loud about it in his second.

Veep JD Vance on Sunday refrained from setting expectations too high about President Trump’s chances of usurping Greenland from Denmark, although he still called it “possible” and dismissed European opposition.

Trump, 78, had set his sights on acquiring the icy island since his first administration and has rekindled those aspirations in recent weeks. Vance, 40, stressed Sunday that the territory is important for US security.

“I think it’s possible,” Vance added to Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” when asked about whether the US will acquire Greenland.

“It’s really important to our national security. There are sea lanes there that the Chinese use, that the Russians use,” Vance said. “Frankly, Denmark, which controls Greenland, [is] not doing its job, and it’s not being a good ally.”

Trump is also adamant about reclaiming the Panama Canal. From the same article above:

The vice president also defended Trump’s objectives of reclaiming the Panama Canal.

“They have violated a core tenet of the agreement,” Vance said, referring to Panama. “When we gave over the Panama Canal to the country of Panama, what we said is, you have to make sure that this canal respects American sovereignty and that you don’t give special benefits to the Chinese.”

The US agreed to give the canal zone to Panama in the 1970s under late former President Jimmy Carter in exchange for the South American country agreeing to keep the key waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans neutral.

Trump has long decried Cater’s decision to relinquish control of the canal, the construction for which was largely funded by the US.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio trekked over to Panama and met with Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, saying he “made clear that this status quo is unacceptable,” according to a readout from the US.

There’s another reason why we need to control the Panama Canal.

The situation in the Panama Canal is worse than we thought. Not only does a Chinese company control container ports at each end of the waterway, but a Chinese construction battalion is slowly building a bridge right across the middle.

How slowly? Well, the bridge won’t be completed until 2027 and Sen. Ted Cruz thinks he knows why.

As Cruz, who is chairman of the Commerce Committee, noted at a hearing this week, “the partially-completed bridge gives China the ability to block the canal without warning…This situation poses acute risks to US national security.”

What kind of risks?

Imagine that China announces a blockade of Taiwan and that we want to surge forces from the Atlantic into the Pacific to counter it.

A US aircraft carrier is midway through the canal, passing under China’s bridge when, without warning, the unfinished bridge collapses, crushing the ship.

China pretends it’s an accident, offering its condolences to the families of the thousands of US sailors who lost their lives. Unable to break the blockade on its own, the island of Taiwan capitulates two months later, and the largest chip-manufacturing factory in the world falls into China’s hands.

Finally, as if he didn’t kick up enough dust yet, Trump weighed in on the conflict in Gaza and Israel with a stunning idea.

President Donald Trump recently floated a fantastic idea: Arab nations, he said, should accept large numbers of Gazans as refugees, a move that “could be temporary or long term.”

The accommodation would allow Israel to eliminate the remnants of Hamas, which, in turn, would allow the international community to rebuild Gaza.

Not only would such a policy enhance the prospects of peace, but it’s also humane.

Neither Jordan nor Egypt want the Palestinians in Gaza. But there is a compelling reason for Jordan to take them.

“Our rejection of the displacement of Palestinians is firm and will not change. Jordan is for Jordanians, and Palestine is for Palestinians,” the nation’s foreign minister said after Trump’s comments.

Well, the biggest problem with the statement is that it reminds us that Jordan is “Palestine.”

Jordan, with a population of over 70% Palestinians, sits principally on land set aside during the British Palestine Mandate to create a new Arab state that was to sit next to the Jewish one.

We already have a two-state solution. We just choose to ignore it.

What’s amazing is that no one else in recent memory has floated any of these ideas. Trump has not only promoted them, but has done so with an edge of belligerence. Who else has thought about our national security from the standpoint of the Arctic and China’s delcaration that they are esablishing a presence there? Who else has looked strategically at the Panama Canal and realized that China has set itself as a threat there, too? Who’s looking at our trade imbalances and doing something about it? Who has put American interests first?

Nobody. Nobody but Trump, that is.

Henry Kissinger once noted that Donald Trump, though he may not do it knowingly, was “one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretenses.”

And it is undeniable that many of Trump’s declarations, perhaps because they are unfettered by the norms of policy debate, end up changing the dynamics of policy.

Greenland. Panama. Canada. South Africa. Israel. Gaza. The EU. Mexico. China.

Trump is remaking American policy while we watch. It’s fascinating.

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Daily Broadside | Democrats Taking Out Republican Lawyers Through Lawfare

Welcome back, me!

Have you ever traveled with Amtrak? I have, several times, but will never take the train again. After a disatrous trip earlier this year (iced-over switches, stalled for hours on the tracks as other trains got preference, arrived six hours late), this trip was late, too, and then we got stopped for an hour on the local rails trying to get home.

Better to drive and be in control of the situation than leaving it to someone else. Costs about the same.

So we know that the Deep StateTM is using lawfare against president-in-exile Donald J. Trump, trying to overwhelm him with bogus charges that wouldn’t stand scrutiny in any other situation. They’ve also ganged up on others close to Trump including Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and Steve Bannon.

But you know who else they’re ganging up on? Republican lawyers.

Democrats have aggressively targeted over 400 Republican lawyers and politicians with criminal charges, civil lawsuits, and disbarment proceedings ahead of the upcoming presidential election. They have successfully jailed Peter Navarro, with Steve Bannon expected to join him shortly. In multiple states, Democrats have pursued criminal charges against dozens of Republican lawyers and politicians, including:

  • Georgia: 19 Republicans arrested and charged
  • Arizona: 18 Republicans arrested and charged
  • Michigan: 16 Republicans arrested and charged
  • Nevada: 6 Republicans arrested and charged
  • Pennsylvania & Wisconsin: Are still conducting criminal investigations into as many as 30 Republicans who have yet to be charged

In addition to these criminal trials, Democrats are pursuing numerous efforts to have Republican lawyers disbarred. The Soros-backed 65 Project has filed disbarment proceedings against more than 100 Republican lawyers, which prevent many of these lawyers from working until the proceedings are concluded. In almost every case, the charges lack merit, but they have three primary impacts: a chilling effect that discourages other Republican lawyers and politicians from helping Trump, a financial drain on the resources of Republicans who might otherwise use their funds to help elect Trump, and a time drain that physically keeps them busy during the campaign.

If these criminal charges stick because of corrupt judges and DAs, who will be available when we need to challenge the results of the 2024 election, which will undoubtably be just as corrupt as the 2020 election?

Make no mistake, the Democrats are conducting a well-funded, well-organized effort to remove as many Republicans as possible from the November election process. Their goal is to prevent Republicans from ensuring the integrity of the election and protecting the sanctity of your vote. This is a war on the 6th Amendment—everyone, including President Trump and Republican candidates, deserves the right to legal representation. Democrats are working overtime to ensure that doesn’t happen in November.

I encourage you to read the rest of the post at the link. The author lists dozens of lawyers who have been targeted and also features a video of Christina Bobb, a lawyer who is being charged.

We are living in a third-world dictatorship led by the Democrats and their cronies in the Deep State.TM I am more convinced than ever that the Democrat Party should be outlawed, since that is what they are: outlaws.

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Daily Broadside | Trump’s 2020 Lawyer Is Suspended But Won’t Back Down

John Eastman represented president Donald Trump in the wake of the 2020 election, challenging the election’s integrity. It’s wound up costing him personally, and The Epoch Times just published a feature about his experience. (If you have a subscription, you can read it here; otherwise I think it’s paywalled.)

Last summer, the State Bar charged Mr. Eastman, the former Dean of Chapman University Law School, with 11 counts of misconduct related to his role in representing former President Donald Trump after the 2020 presidential election.

But, Mr. Eastman told The Epoch Times in an exclusive interview on April 5, he has no regrets about representing President Trump nor for alleging fraud and questioning the election results.

“No. Absolutely not,” he said bluntly. “What I saw at the time raised real serious questions in my mind about the validity of the election.”

Since then, Mr. Eastman said his investigation has confirmed his suspicions “tenfold.”

Funny how, given enough time, anyone who looks at the evidence with an open mind comes away convinced that there are serious questions about how Brandon won that election.

Mr. Eastman, who was accused of not having the evidence to back up those allegations, said he will appeal Judge Yvette Roland’s March 27 ruling recommending disbarment, but in the meantime his law license has been suspended on “involuntary inactive enrollment,” which means he can’t practice law in California.

[…]

Democrat-appointed Judge Roland ruled that Mr. Eastman broke ethics rules by advancing President Trump’s challenges to the integrity of the 2020 election.

The judge stated in her ruling that “despite compelling evidence against him … Eastman remains defiant, refusing to acknowledge any impropriety whatsoever in his actions surrounding his efforts to dispute the 2020 presidential election results.”

“His lack of insight into the wrongfulness of his misconduct is deeply troubling,” she wrote.

“Eastman continues to hold the view that his statements were factually and legally justified. He demonstrated disdain for these proceedings by characterizing them as a political persecution, claiming that the disciplinary charges against him contained false and misleading statements, and that those who brought them should themselves be disbarred,” Judge Roland wrote in her ruling.

His “complete denial of wrongdoing, coupled with his attempts to discredit legitimate disciplinary proceedings are concerning,” she wrote.

We don’t live in a free society anymore. The Marxists are going after the professional classes who represent the opposition. When they’re either jailed, disbarred or otherwise removed, they can more easily go after the armchair opinionists (like me).

Did Eastman have any compelling evidence?

Mr. Eastman drew from evidence provided by Garland Favorito, a retired information technology professional and founder of VoterGA, a nonpartisan, nonprofit election integrity group.

Mr. Favorito, is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed on Dec. 23, 2020, that challenged the authenticity of 147,000 absentee ballots cast in Georgia’s Fulton County.

“He’s an independent, and he is an expert on election integrity issues, who discovered “thousands of ballots that were duplicated and counted multiple times,” in deep blue areas of Atlanta in violation of state law, Mr. Eastman said.

“We also had Michael Gableman, former Supreme Court justice of Wisconsin … who was retained by the legislature to conduct an investigation, and they discovered hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots,” he said.

Mr. Gableman uncovered alleged nursing home fraud, which Mr. Eastman said accounts for much more than the 20,000-vote margin of victory for Joe Biden, and voter turnout rates in nursing homes went from 20 to 30 percent historically to nearly 100 percent, including from within memory care wings.

“Many of the ballots are in the same handwriting, so the illegality opened the door for fraud, which Gableman proved … and it affected way more than 20,000 ballots,” he said.

“There’s no question Wisconsin was stolen. To this day, there are 120,000 more ballots than voters in Pennsylvania, a state where the margin was 80,000.”

Americans used to go to a local polling place such as a neighborhood community room at the library or the local church to vote, but in 2020 mail-in ballots were counted in much larger facilities in big cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, and Philadelphia where it would be “much easier to sneak in a pallet of ballots,” he said.

I believe that the 2020 election was stolen and that Joe Biden’s “presidency” is fraudulent. It’s the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people, even beyond the presidency of B. Hussein Obama.

It will take all of us hanging together in refusing to concede that the election was stolen. The evidence is there—you’re just not allowed to see that it is. Noticing is verboten.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | Time to Dump Mike Johnson

I’m calling your attention to a rather long article because when Mike Johnson was selected as House Speaker after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster last year, I was impressed and thought he looked like a good (though surprising!) choice.

In retrospect, I got taken. We all did.

Johnson professes to be a conservative Christian whose worldview is based on the Bible (i.e. Judeo-Christian values), he used to work for the Alliance Defending Freedom (lots of work on freedom of religion cases), and one of the first things he did was ask the Republican caucus to pray with him.

All encouraging, but in the time he’s been Speaker he’s been indistinguishable from a Democrat when it comes to political will. He’s proven to be a major disappointment to conservatives and like-minded Republicans (and some Democrats) and, frankly, I’m embarrassed that I was so easily lured by his Christian credentials and my dutiful assumption they would translate into a wise and Christ-centered use of power.

I had to learn (again!) that it may look like a duck, talk like a duck and walk like a duck, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to govern like a duck.

Now Johnson is being told he should resign before he’s forced out, as reported in this exclusive Breitbart story.

Exclusive – MTG on Mike Johnson Speakership: ‘It’s Over – He’s Just the Only One Who Hasn’t Acknowledged It’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Breitbart News exclusively that she is prepared to force House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) out of his position with a vote to vacate the chair if the Speaker does not willingly resign the position.

“Yes, I am willing to force it,” Greene told Breitbart News in a lengthy exclusive interview on Tuesday afternoon where she explained her plan to remove Johnson and get a real Republican Speaker in his place. “The reality for Mike Johnson that he just is not accepting or refusing to accept, publicly at least, is whether it happens two weeks from now, two months from now, or in the next majority, he will not be Speaker. He just will not be. There may be only two of us public right now. But he does not have the support of the conference at all. There may be people who might not vote to vacate him right now, but they will never vote for him to be Speaker next Congress. There are two large factions in the conference against his speakership.”

Lots of people see MTG as a nuisance, a political gadfly. She’s a huge Trump supporter and supported Kevin McLuntz before he was removed as Speaker. But I’m with her on this one.

A major development on Tuesday was that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), an influential conservative who sits on the powerful House Rules Committee, publicly joined Greene’s effort, saying he is cosponsoring her motion to vacate the chair. During a closed-door Republican conference meeting, Massie told Johnson to his face — in front of the entire House GOP conference — that he must resign or face the same fate his predecessor, now former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, did last year with a motion to vacate vote. Massie told Johnson, and later told reporters, that if Johnson does not agree to resign willingly he will likely lose even more votes than McCarthy did if and when the motion to vacate is called. Johnson responded to Massie in conference, and then later at a press conference, saying he will not resign — echoing what his spokesman Raj Shah told Breitbart News late last week when pressure began severely ramping up after Johnson was the deciding vote to kill an amendment to the renewal of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would have required the federal government obtain a warrant to engage in surveillance of American citizens. Johnson’s FISA ploy did provide such warrant protections only for members of Congress — protections that Johnson did not deem necessary for hundreds of millions of Americans not currently serving in the United States Congress.

I can’t reproduce the entire article for you, so I encourage you to go read the whole thing. Here’s what I’ll leave you with:

“From what I understand people were kind of down about it, or just ‘uh, not again’ because that three-and-a-half weeks was so painful for our conference and a lot of these Republicans don’t ever want to rock the boat or change the status quo,” Greene said. “That’s the whole problem. That’s why the Democrats keep winning and the Republicans keep losing, because Republicans never fight, because it’s uncomfortable, and Republicans never want to rock the boat. They just want to show up here in Washington and do their committee hearings and pass their legislation that they can hopefully get signed into law and hang it on their wall and then go back to their district and do whatever they do. But no one is ever taking the important and strategic steps to save our country. I’ll give you some examples. Out on social media today, there was an explosive report about an NGO that is passing out flyers to illegals encouraging them to vote for Joe Biden in the election. Everyone here, at the NRCC, our Republican conference, and many others, they’re busy practically measuring the drapes for the White House right now and totally convinced that Trump is going to win the election and ‘Marjorie, that’s when we’ll fix everything. We’ll do it then.’ But I’m going to tell you right now, I think that’s the worst possible mindset to be in. The Democrats are going to do everything possible to try to stop President Trump. They’re trying to put him in jail for the rest of his life right now. They’re going to do anything they can to make sure he does not win. So why in the world would our side just go along assuming that we’re going to win the White House and that’s when we’re going to stop all the millions of people invading our country and the terrorists coming across and the cartels bringing drugs and murdering our people and Americans being raped and murdered and killed, and the list goes on, and Americans being spied on through FISA? How do we sit there and look at ourselves in the mirror if we go ‘oh we’ll fix it when Trump comes back’? I don’t even think we deserve Republican voters voting for us if that’s our attitude. Here’s my biggest argument: If this is the state of mind of Republicans and Republican leaders, excluding President Trump, President Trump’s only on the ballot one more time — in November. Whether he wins or loses, what will the state of the Republican Party be after Trump? I’m going to argue strongly that Republicans in Congress and Republican leaders have not done anything to earn Republican votes for us to ever control the Republican majority ever again in the future. The only reason people will be voting for Republicans going forward is because they’re voting against Democrats. That is a very bad position to be in in the future.”

She’s right.

Time to dump Johnson.

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Daily Broadside | Per Curiam, Baby! U.S. Supreme Court Unanimously Slaps Colorado Silly

SCOTUS rules 9-0 that Colorado can’t remove Trump from their ballot, no matter what Colorado’s Supreme Court says.

The Supreme Court ruled on March 4 that former President Donald Trump can’t be removed from the ballot by individual states, overturning the Colorado Supreme Court decision that found him ineligible as a candidate and disqualified from the state ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

“Responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States. The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand,” the per curiam order reads. “All nine Members of the Court agree with that result.”

This was not a “partisan” Supreme Court decision, with the liberal justices taking one side and the other justices taking the other. All nine of them agreed that Colorado doesn’t have the authority to remove Trump from the ballot based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.”

Ed Morrisey at Hot Air says the nine justices wanted to make this stick, and quotes Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s separate concurrence that makes that point:

She emphasizes, however, that the real story here is their unanimity in regard to state action on Section 3:

Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up. For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.

So Trump remains on the ballot in all 50 states and that is important particularly today — Super Tuesday. Trump won the North Dakota Republican caucus last night. Today’s contests cross these states: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and American Samoa.

New polls show that Trump is outperforming Biden. Fox News shows Trump leading Biden “in a potential rematch, the survey finds Trump receives 49% support while Biden gets 47%.  That’s pretty much where it’s been since September.  Trump’s advantage is within the margin of sampling error.”

At National Review, Rich Lowry asks a rhetorical question: “How is this survivable [for Biden]?”

That’s a rhetorical question. There are ways it could be survivable, but this finding in the new Fox News poll has to be the most disturbing result from the new bout of general-election polling. Besides the public’s belief that Biden is too old to serve again, 48 percent said that Biden’s policies are hurting them and their families, and only 25 percent said they are helping — whereas 45 percent said Trump’s policies helped and 32 percent said they hurt.

The latest CBS News / YouGov poll agrees:

As Super Tuesday makes an historic rematch all but official, voters are comparing not just two presidents, but two presidencies. 

And right now former President Donald Trump emerges from that comparison as the frontrunner. He leads President Biden by four points nationally, his largest lead to date. Here’s why:

Voters recall the economy under Trump more fondly than they rate the economy now. 

While neither gets great marks, voters today look back on Trump’s presidency with relatively better retrospective ratings than they’d rate Joe Biden’s presidency so far. 

And in a New York Times/Siena College poll, Trump leads Haley “77%-20% among registered GOP primary voters when asked which candidate they’d be most likely to vote for if the election for the Republican nominee for president were held today. The former president also has a strong lead over Haley – 76.9%-14.5% – in FiveThirtyEight’s Republican primary polling average as of March 4. Biden, meanwhile, was down 43%-48% against Trump with regard to the likely November matchup, according to the Times/Siena poll.”

This is the same feel I got watching Trump in 2020; the momentum was there, the energy was there, the voters were there. But our domestic enemies were “fortifying the election” and if you don’t think they’re making plans for November, you haven’t been paying attention, because their plans include all of the election interference we’re watching as ridiculous lawfare suits are slapped on Trump and his associates.

That’s why the SCOTUS decision yesterday was a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, Coney Barrett’s entreaty to turn down the national temperature will go unheeded by the Left.

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Daily Broadside | Nikki Gets Her Clock Cleaned in South Carolina, Threatens to Keep Running

President-in-Exile Donald J. Trump thrashed Nikki Haley in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary on Saturday, with 60 percent of the vote and 47 delegates. This in a state where she served two terms as governor.

Major media outlets called the race for President Trump within seconds after the polls closed. The former president, in a message to supporters, declared the result a “complete and total victory.”

Indeed, at about 60 percent of the vote as of 9:35 p.m. local time on Feb. 24, his share of the total was the highest of the three primaries in which he has faced opposition.

President Trump won the Iowa caucuses with 51 percent of the vote, beating three principal challengers, including Ms. Haley, who collected 19 percent of the vote.

In New Hampshire, President Trump bested Ms. Haley by 54 to 43 percent.

In the Nevada caucuses, President Trump ran unopposed, garnering 99 percent of the vote.

Given the growing momentum of the Trump campaign and Ms. Haley’s inability to achieve a breakout result, the former president appears set to claim the nomination within weeks.

Failing to get the message, Haley promised to continue her campaign until at least the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5.

“I said earlier this week that no matter what happens in South Carolina, I would continue to run for president. I’m a woman of my word.”

Yeh, maybe. Remember this?

“I would not run if President Trump ran, and I would talk to him about it,”

I hope she at least “talked to him about it” before breaking her word as a woman.

Anyway, there’s a fine line between proceeding on principle and being a fool.

The prudent see danger and take refuge,
    but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.
Proverbs 22:3

Dealing a further blow to whatever momentum she has left, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), funded by the not-so-conservative billionaire Koch Brothers, has pulled funding from her campaign.

AFP Action, the conservative wing of the powerful and influential conservative Americans for Prosperity, funded by the billionaire Koch Brothers, has pulled funding for the presidential campaign of Nikki Haley. 

In an email to staffers obtained by Fox News, AFP Action senior adviser Emily Seidel said the group did not believe that “any outside group can make a material difference to widen [Haley’s] path to victory.” 

“And so while we will continue to endorse her, we will focus our resources where we can make the difference. And that’s the U.S. Senate and House,” Seidel wrote.

The GOP is Trump’s. His candidacy is inevitable. It’s going to be Trump versus Brandon, unless the panicky Democrats swap him out for Michelle Obama, which is only far-fetched if she decides she can’t front for her husband’s fourth term.

Haley will last through the Super Tuesday primaries, then drop her bid as a Republican candidate. There are some murmurings that she will then pivot and run as a third-party candidate to try and spoil Trump’s run, siphoning off Independents who don’t like either Biden or Trump.

I’d like her to just drop out, period.

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Daily Broadside | So Claims of Cheating Were Right: Trump Actually Won in 2020

In the run-up to the presidential election of 2016, I was NOT a fan of Donald J. Trump. I didn’t like him because he was loud, abrasive, mean, and had a habit of running his stream-of-consciousness mouth off and boasting about all the winning we would do and how he’d get Mexico to pay for his big, beautiful wall without explaining any of it.

But I also had some private admiration for the man. He had the cojones to raise his hand when Bret Baier asked if any of the Republican candidates for president wouldn’t commit to supporting the eventual nominee. Remember that?

Like him or not, Trump was his own man and completely shook up the establishment in 2016.

After watching him for four years and waking up to the deep state and the vile Obiden team, I enthusiastically voted for Trump, only to watch the election be stolen from me and the other millions of Americans who voted for him.

I’ll never forget the comment that someone wrote at me (yes, “at me”) when I expressed my disbelief that our current administration had legitimately won with “81 million” votes for a guy that campaigned from his basement while Trump was hosting packed stadiums.

She wrote, “That many people hated Trump so much that they voted for Biden.”

No way. No way am I believing that. There were so many credible reports of fraud, not to mention all those votes counted after polling closed as reams of ballots were pulled out from under tables and fed into tabulation machines.

I watched as courts, which should have known better, refuse to hear the lawsuits filed as evidence piled up. I was told that “even judges appointed by Republicans” were refusing to take the cases, as if a judge appointed by a Republican was somehow an unimpeachable fact.

I write all that as prologue because now comes a report that basically proves what I and millions of others have claimed all along: that the 2020 election was stolen and Joe Biden is a fraudulent “president.”

With the 2024 election season in full swing, and a Trump-Biden rematch appearing likely, Americans deserve to know that mail-in voting fraud likely changed the outcome of the 2020 election. In recent years, mail-in voting has become more commonplace. However, in 2020, mail-in voting reached an all-time record due to pandemic policies encouraging mail-in voting.

These abrupt and capricious changes to voting procedures in the months before the 2020 election occurred despite the fact that ample evidence showed that mass mail-in voting, unsecure ballot drop boxes, ballot harvesting, and lack of signature verification would result in a flood of fraudulent ballots that would undermine the accuracy of the election results.

A groundbreaking poll conducted by The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports in November/December 2023 attempted to assess the degree of fraudulent voting that may have taken place. The results were stunning. Some of the most important findings from the poll include:

  • 21% of mail-in voters admitted that in 2020 they voted in a state where they are “no longer a permanent resident.”
  • 21% of mail-in voters admitted that they filled out a ballot for a friend or family member
  • 17% of mail-in voters said they signed a ballot for a friend or family member “with or without his or her permission.”
  • 19% of mail-in voters said that a friend or family member filled out their ballot, in part or in full, on their behalf.

Cleanest, fairest, most transparent election in history!

After examining the raw survey data provided by Rasmussen, we found that 28.2% of all mail-in respondents admitted to committing at least one of the four types of fraud asked in the survey, meaning that more than one-in-four ballots cast by mail in 2020 were likely cast fraudulently, and thus should not have been counted.

This policy study takes the results of the Heartland/Rasmussen survey and applies them directly to the six swing states that Biden won by razor-thin margins in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Because Biden voters cast mail-in ballots at a much higher rate than Trump voters, any level of fraud almost certainly benefited Biden to a significantly greater degree than Trump.

In addition to the 28.2% fraud scenario, the study analyzes the electoral results for every fraud integer from 27% down to 1%. In every instance except the 3%, 2%, and 1% fraud scenarios, our results indicate that Trump would have won the Electoral College in the 2020 U.S. presidential election had fraudulent mail-in ballots not been counted. Hence, even if the level of fraud detected in the Heartland/Rasmussen survey (28.2% of all mail-in ballots) substantially overstated voter fraud by multiple orders of magnitude, Trump would likely still have won the 2020 election. 

Ultimately, our study clearly shows that if the 2020 election had been as free, fair, and secure as past elections have been, Donald Trump would almost certainly have been re-elected to a second term. As the country braces for a Trump-Biden rematch, it is imperative that state legislatures do all that they can to ensure the next election is as secure as possible, primarily by severely limiting mail-in voting and instituting other commonsense policies to prevent mail-in voter fraud. If state lawmakers do not pass measures to thwart the possibility of extensive voter fraud occurring again, more Americans will question the legitimacy of  future elections, further eroding the American people’s trust in our nation’s democratic institutions.

Trump had been riding a wave of a great economy, no new wars, peace agreements in the Middle East, low gas prices because we were drilling our own oil, and illegal aliens had been brought under some sort of control. And we’re supposed to think that Handsy Joe, patriarch of the Biden Crime Family, ginned up enough energy among the people to get the most votes ever recorded?

As if.

Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist testifies before Congress about the harm being done by the types of election “interference” that cost Republicans the 2020 election and threaten the 2024 election.

So…Trump won in 2020, as we all knew he did. And it will be the same in 2024 if the spineless GOP doesn’t start playing hardball with state legislatures. Fortunately, fake conservative Mitt Romney’s niece, Ronna McDaniel, who was appointed by Trump, is finally stepping down as chair of the RNC, which has consistently lost elections under her “leadership”—all while grifting off the unsuspecting, well-intentioned, good conservatives who expect Republicans to be fighting for us.

It’s not much, but it’s a start.