Category Archives: Republicans

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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 | 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.

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Daily Broadside | Your Driving Will Become Subject to Government Consent

Many of us don’t trust the government because it continues to encroach further and further into our lives. This is no longer a free society, but a surveillance society.

You know where that new rule was embedded? Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill.

An amendment proposed by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to stop the federal government from basically taking over private vehicle ownership in 2026 and beyond has failed, meaning Americans will soon become prisoners in their own cars.

Massie, disappointed in his amendment, known as Part B Amendment No. 60, to H.R. 4820, the “Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024,” tweeted the following after it was shot down, including by 19 House Republicans who voted against it.

Don’t tell me the Republicans are the conservative party when they’re the ones helping the anti-American, pro-tryanny power-grabbing Democrats pass laws like this. And as I wrote last week, the garbage media is all about helping the elite consolidate power to force everyone into compliance with their way, not the highway (no pun intended).

It should be noted that prior to Massie’s amendment, the media was busy denying that there was even a kill switch provision in the Biden infrastructure bill at all.

USA Today, for instance, reported back in January that: “No, there’s no vehicle ‘kill switch’ in Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill.” The article continues to repeat this lie again and again, only to end the piece with an admission that:

“Whether or not the technology will become a part of the infrastructure bill’s final rule remains to be seen …”

It turns out that the infrastructure bill does contain provisions for a kill switch, prompting Massie to send USA Today a copy of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act with the following entry in the “Definitions” section circled:

“The term ‘advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology means a system that … can … passively monitor the performance of the driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired; and … prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected …”

Again, the issue of “safety” is used to take away liberty. It sounds noble, but it is a gateway to further restrictions. What you’re reading there is the government giving itself the power to regulate your driving. Sure, it starts with monitoring for “drunk and impaired driving,” but it ends with “you support Donald J. Trump for president.” And don’t think it won’t.

In other words, new cars in 2026 and beyond will contain not just a breathalyzer ignition interlock but also an embedded kill switch that allows a third party, including the government, to turn off a person’s car, leaving him or her stranded until someone reengages the vehicle.

This has been coming for more than a decade, according to Ammoland. And that suggests to them that there is a pathway through this law for cars that allows them to come for your guns.

Some of us have been raising this warning flag for as long as we’ve been warning people about so-called “smart guns.” From “Things to Come,” a Guns and Ammo article I wrote in 2002:

But perhaps the most immediate and insidious threat we face from technology comes under the guise of “safety— for the children,” so-called “smart guns” under development and soon to be required in a state near you. Because…they’re also lobbying for another technology they developed to be required on cars— a “shutoff switch” that police can activate by remote control, making the rest of us pay for the infinitesimal fraction of drivers who lead them on car chases.

As writer Vin Suprynowicz warns (and I and some others independently predicted), this technology could be used by the police as “an `electronic master key’ to `disable’ any `smart guns’ in the house,” and be used as a pretext to “ban the manufacture of any gun that ISN’T a `smart gun’.”

So police can turn guns fitted with one “off” and incapable of firing—and that could be mandated. Anybody doubt it will be if remote shutoff technology becomes widespread?

Massie lists the 19 Republicans who joined 210 Democrats to defeat his amendment: Gus Bilirakis (FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Mike Carey (OH), Chuck Fleischmann (TN), Andrew Garbarino (NY), Mike Garcia (CA), Garret Graves (LA), John Joyce (PA), Thomas Kean, Jr. (NJ), Kevin Kiley (CA), Young Kim (CA), David Kustoff (TN), Mike Lawler (NY), Nancy Mace (SC), Michael McCaul (TX), Zach Nunn (IA), María Elvira Salazar (FL), Chris Smith (NJ), and Glenn Thompson (PA).

If any of them are your representatives, I suggest you get on the phone and ask them what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks they’re doing.

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Daily Broadside | Trump May Have Historical Precedent Going For Him, But 2020 Is Historical Precedent Now, Too

We’re still 17.5 months away from the next presidential election, enough time for the Resident to do more considerable damage to the nation of which he is the titular head. I won’t say that he “leads” the U.S. because as we all know, he doesn’t have that capacity.

Nevertheless, we can begin fretting about how the political fight among Republicans will shape up and start making some observations. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and conservative radio host Larry Elder have officially declared their candidacies to be the Republican nominee for president.

Of course, the presumptive nominee to beat is president-in-exile Donald J. Trump.

Historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Niall Ferguson, makes a prediction about Trump that has caught the public’s attention. 

Former President Donald Trump is likely to become the next U.S. president, according to Scottish-American historian Niall Ferguson.

“A second Trump act is not just possible. It’s fast becoming my base case,” Ferguson, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, wrote in a May 13 op-ed for The Spectator.

Ferguson explained that there is a “campaign of lawfare against Trump” but the effort “has already started to backfire.”

“It may seem paradoxical that the Democrats are harassing Trump in the courts if they want to run against him. But it makes sense: the prospect of him performing the perp walk attracts media coverage, and media coverage is the free publicity on which Trump has always thrived,” Ferguson wrote.

Ferguson added, “Every column inch or minute of airtime his legal battles earn him is an inch or a minute less for his Republican rivals for the nomination.”

We already know that the DNC, the media, NeverTrumpers and social media giants like Facebook are all in to prevent Trump from becoming president again, and they’ll abuse the law in service to that end if it keeps him out of office.

I’ve said before that the greatest service Trump did for the country, perhaps apart from appointing conservative Supreme Court justices, was to expose the Deep State and their lawless activities, even if he did it inadvertently. Did you see John Durham’s report yesterday? It proves that the FBI knew the Steele dossier was garbage, but they used it as a pretext to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into whether Trump was a Russian stooge. It also proves that Hillary Clinton was in on the scam from the start. Think anyone will go to prison for conducting a psyops campaign during a presidential election, or nah?

Norms status: R E S T O R E D.

If Trump wins the White House again, it will be the same harassment and false charges all over again to hamper any effectiveness he might have.

What about Ron DeSantis?

Ferguson also argued that if it were a two-man race between Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, there would be “a good deal more uncertainty around the outcome,” given that the governor “still looks to be in contention” in head-to-head polling.

“When voters are polled about this crowded field, Trump is the clear frontrunner, leading DeSantis by an average margin of nearly 30 points, 52.1 percent to 22.9,” Ferguson wrote.

Currently, the Florida governor has not indicated when or if he will announce a 2024 White House bid.

I like what I’ve seen of DeSantis, but I also like what I’ve seen of Ramaswamy. As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I’m very mixed on Trump. Although if he’s the nominee, I’d crawl over broken glass and spilled vinegar to pull the lever for him.

Ferguson places the betting odds on Trump.

As for the primaries, Ferguson notes that Republican candidates that have an early lead in the polls, as Trump does, typically end up the nominee. “Early frontrunners have won Republican primaries in six out of eight competitive races since 1972, when the modern system of primaries was introduced,” he notes. “The two exceptions were John McCain in 2008 and Trump himself in 2016.”

If Donald Trump maintains his current average polling numbers throughout the first half of 2023 but fails to become the Republican Party’s choice for the presidential nomination, he would become the highest-polling candidate ever to be unsuccessful in securing the nomination. So the odds are clearly in his favor.

As for the general election. Democrats assume that Trump can’t beat Biden — and that’s probably the only reason they’re tolerating nominating a vegetable for president — particularly in light of the results of the 2022 midterms. Of course, while Joe Biden likes to take credit for that, the abortion issue was a much more significant factor than Joe Biden.

Ferguson goes on to say that the economy will be a huge factor in the 2024 election and that, historically, “The Republican frontrunner usually wins the nomination, and a post-recession incumbent usually loses the presidential election.”

I don’t know that post-2020 we can count on historical precedent. We now know that the government uses its political power to favor Democrats and that organizations like Facebook pump money into regions where they can harvest ballots on behalf of Democrats. We are becoming like the corrupt third-world countries run by tin pot dictators who hold political power by cheating and rigging and influencing the elections. I used to feel sorry for those people who voted in vain.

Now I just feel sorry for us.

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Daily Broadside | Trump To Be Arrested for Being Trump

I’ve written many times about my hate/love relationship with Donald J. Trump. I was not on the “Trump Train” during his first campaign for president. While amusing, I didn’t really like how he insulted his opponents by nicknaming them with all the gravitas of a first-grader. “Crooked Hillary,” “Low Energy Jeb,” and “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” seemed undignified for someone running for high office.

I also didn’t like how he seemed to speak off the cuff with rambling, unfocused, surface-level sounding responses during debates. Didn’t he prepare? Didn’t he have a plan? Why couldn’t he plainly tell us what it was?

And what was with his narcissistic personality? “I’m the only one who can fix our problems … build the wall … beat Hillary.” Really?

But then he got elected. And I saw how effective he was, how he put America first, and the necessity of “punching back twice as hard” as the Deep State emerged to challenge his presidency. Hands down, his most important accomplishment was not just seeing, but revealing the unelected bureaucracy hiding in the alphabet agencies.

I became a Trump fan during his first term because he reminded me of Lincoln’s words about U.S. Grant: “I can’t spare this man; he fights!” The ruling elite in Washington hated Trump and they launched a previously inconceivable and unprecedented series of sustained attacks on him, including the dirty “Russia” hoax developed by Hillary Clinton, the two sham impeachments, the misleading “expertise” of the men and women he trusted to lead us through the Chinese Lung Pox pandemic, with all of it culminating in a rigged election that installed the incompetent bumbling fool currently posing as Resident.

Trump has been out of office for more than two years, but that hasn’t satisfied the establishment. Merrick Garland’s DOJ conducted an unprecedented raid on Trump’s home over official government documents that Trump, as president, had the institutional and constitutional power to declassify. (At least, I think he did. Either way, you’ll notice that our mush-brain Resident hasn’t been treated the same even though many more documents have been discovered at many more places from when he was vice-president and did not enjoy the power of declassifying documents.)

And now, in the latest attempt to smear Trump to prevent his resurrection as president for a second term, comes news that he will be arrested this coming week on charges that he paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, a publicity-seeking prostitute, to buy her silence over their (alleged) liaison.

Trump on Saturday announced his impending arrest himself, writing in all caps on Truth Social:

OUR NATION IS NOW THIRD WORLD & DYING. THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD! THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN [sic] OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND WITH IT, THE HEART OF OUR OUR COUNTRY. AMERICAN PATRIOTS ARE BEING ARRESTED & HELD IN CAPTIVITY LIKE ANIMALS, WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS, KILLING & BURNING WITH NO RETRIBUTION. MILLIONS ARE FLOODING THROUGH OUR OPEN BOARDERS, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS. CRIME & INFLATION ARE DESTROYING OUR VERY WAY OF LIFE…

Page 2: NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!

My go-to “newspaper,” The Epoch Times, writes what is behind the charges.

Trump’s possible indictment stems from the alleged misclassifying of a $130,000 hush payment made to Daniels not to disclose an affair between the two, which Trump has denied. A grand jury was empaneled in the case and expectations have been building for an indictment.

Influential people like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former GOP congressman and Truth Social head Devin Nunes have warned that if Trump is arrested, he’ll be re-elected in a landslide.

“As I’ve said for a very long time now, as the person who led the investigation into the Russia hoax, that we have slipped into a banana republic in this country where you have a two-tiered system of justice, where Democrats run scot-free, and then someone like President Trump, or other Republicans, are held to this ridiculous standard,” Nunes told the outlet.

Nunes, like Musk, believes that a Trump indictment would backfire.

“If they do move forward and indict, it’ll just make it even easier for President Trump to win election because people are going to see this for what it is,” Nunes said. “[It is] just a farce, and another attack on Trump at all costs to stop him from becoming president again.”

Maybe “it’ll just make it even easier for President Trump to win election.” If he’s publicly arrested, or booking photos are published, that might be enough to get people super angry over the double-standard standard now functionally in place across our country. But given the election “irregularities” of 2020 and 2022, do we really think the GOP will be allowed to put another president like Trump in office?

It’s clear to me that we are witnessing a slow build toward some kind of confrontation. We can’t go on like this. Either the cultural Marxists win, or true Americans win. One will be subjected to the other.

The Left’s reaction to Donald Trump’s political career has from the beginning been a classic case of a conviction in search of a crime. Charging their foes with bogus crimes is a venerable and tested Leftist tactic, going back to Stalin’s trials of his former Bolshevik comrades, whom he forced to confess to various fabricated charges of subversion in order to justify his executing them and consolidating his power as an unquestioned autocrat.

In the U.S., the Democrats enjoyed tremendous gains in both houses of Congress and won the presidency on the strength of Watergate, and they’ve never forgotten that lesson; in fact, tarring their opponents as criminals on bogus charges has become a cornerstone of their political strategy. And that is a prelude to treating them like actual criminals, complete with arrests, handcuffs, and perp walks. Whether or not it comes Tuesday, it’s coming.

Right now it’s looking to me like the American commies are in the driver’s seat. Trump calling for protests is intriguing, given the fallout of the J6 hearings that accused him of inciting the crowd to stage the “insurrection.” My question is, will the nation listen?

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Daily Broadside | Lurch Fetterman’s Lump Losing to Dr. Oz in PA Race

Daily Verse | John 11:48
“If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

Tuesday’s Reading: John 13-14

It’s November and one week to Go Time. A week from today will either be a red wave of tsunami-sized proportions or a trickle of red leaking through an overflowing toilet in Arizona. For now, I’m feeling optimistic that we will see a flood of Republican wins washing away Democrats for at least a generation.

There’s a lot going on in these last days of campaigning. Here in Illinois, which always votes Democrat because of Chicago and Springfield, Republican Darren Bailey is 17 points down to Democrat incumbent Gov. Pritzker according to a Civiqs poll (Oct. 24) listed at FiveThirtyEight.com. Over at 270toWin.com Bailey is down by an average of almost 16 percent. He’s unlikely to pull off an upset.

However, things are looking brighter in other races across the U.S.

One of the most high-profile races features Dem Lt. Governor John Fetterman, who is now behind in his Senate race with Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, who surged to the front after the Disastrous Debate Debacle featuring Fetterman’s mental deterioration after his stroke in May. That the media and the Dems (pretty sure I just repeated myself) have conspired to hide his mental state from voters and having repeatedly assured us that he was just fine, is not playing well with undecided voters.

Four polls conducted since the day of the one and only U.S. Senate debate in Pennsylvania have showed Dr. Mehmet Oz leading John Fetterman by two or three points, still within the margin of error, but suggesting Republicans are coming home to their party’s nominee while undecided voters are breaking for Oz over Fetterman. 

Just a word about Fetterman and the Dems hiding his condition. I have sympathy for Fetterman and sincerely hope he heals, physically. But I have zero compunction about noticing his condition and asking questions.

In the world of progressive utopia, we’re not supposed to notice, you know. We’re supposed to be passive and simply clap for Anyone Doing Anything. Noticing Fetterman’s mental difficulties is “ableist” according to Mrs. Fetterman and his performance during the debate should be lauded just because Fetterman and his Lump showed up.

He’d never get my vote anyway because of his hoodie-wearing, blue-collar progressive, anti-freedom ideology. Practically speaking, however, if Fetterman has an auditory processing disorder and can’t function even with compensation such as “closed captioning monitors to follow both the moderator questions and Oz’s remarks” (which, by the way, Oz didn’t have to agree to, yet did, thereby not being “ableist”) — what does that mean for processing debates at the highest levels of government?

I’ll tell you what it means: he can’t and won’t be able to process and will simply be a rubber stamp for the Democrats, albeit a very large rubber stamp. He won’t be able to think independently — but truthfully, he wouldn’t anyway.

All this to say, so called “journalists” and the Democrat party lied about his condition right up until they couldn’t hide it anymore. If anyone is “ableist,” it’s these monsters who enable a mentally deficient half-wit to run for national office.

I’m not the only one who thinks Fetterman isn’t fit for high office. Talk to the centrist Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one of PA’s largest newspapers, which just endorsed Oz.

“We believe Mr. Oz is the better bet for Pennsylvania,” the board wrote, before writing that Fetterman’s health stemming from the stroke he suffered earlier this year was not an issue for them.

We’RE NOt aBLeIST!

“His lack of transparency, however, in refusing to release his medical records is troubling. It suggests an impulse to conceal and a mistrust of the people. All candidates for a major elected office should release their medical records, as did Mr. Oz. If you want privacy, don’t run for public office,” it added.

[…]

The board wrote that Fetterman’s “life experience and maturity” were also concerns because he “lived off his family’s money for much of his life,” and had “little experience in holding real jobs or facing the problems of working people.”

LOL … a lazy do-nothing wants to continue being a slacker, just with more money and prestige.

It also cited Fetterman’s lack of apology over in an incident in which he pulled a shotgun on an unarmed Black jogger after hearing gunshots, and his flip-flop on supporting fracking.

HOw daRE yOu, rAciST!

“Mr. Oz is extraordinarily wealthy, but achieved his worldwide fame and success largely through his own talent and determination,” the board wrote. “Unlike most Republican politicians, candidate Oz spent a lot of time in poor urban neighborhoods, talking to people and, most important, listening and learning.”

Bottom line is that Dr. Oz is up 3 points and holding. Still within the margin of error, but the momentum has shifted to him. I suspect that we’ll see him win that race.