Tag Archives: donaldjtrump

by

Daily Broadside | The Insurrection Isn’t Coming from the Right. It’s Coming From the Left

Lots of reactions to the Colorado Supreme Court ruling from Tuesday, with Leftists, NeverTrumpers, anti-Americans, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself five-fold) predictably gleeful with the decision, and conservatives, Trump supporters and other patriots condemning the decision as unAmerican and “election interference.”

I don’t know how you can look at it any other way than a partisan effort to disrupt our election process. (This is contra what yesterday I wrote that, “All seven of the Colorado Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democrats, so one can’t plausibly argue that it was a partisan decision.” I read something that I can’t find saying that the majority justices all attended an Ivy League law school [like Harvard or Yale] and the three dissenting votes attended non-Ivy League schools. So I stand corrected).

Trump has never been accused of, tried for, or convicted of being engaged in “insurrection.” There is no way that the Colorado Supreme Court has standing to 1) find that Trump engaged in insurrection and therefore, 2) to disqualify him from the ballot based on that finding.

They’re interpreting an amendment that was written to keep Confederate soldiers and leaders who had taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, but had then literally engaged in insurrection to the point of raising armies and killing other Americans, as applying to Trump.

All Trump did was encourage his followers to “fight” for what they believed in, and that is now “insurrection.” The Colorado Supreme Court stretched that word so far that if it had been Elastigirl, she would’ve dislocated her shoulder.

On closer inspection, the ruling undermines itself, leaving us to wonder what it’s all about.

The majority on Tuesday said every key legal issue came out against Mr. Trump.

“The sum of these parts is this: President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president,” the majority said in an unsigned opinion, saying that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results amounted to engaging in an insurrection and that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, bars insurrectionists from federal office, including the presidency.

They’re unequivocal in stating their conclusion. Trump is disqualfied from holding office and therefore listing him on the Colorado primary ballots would be “a wrongful act” under the Colorado Election Code. One has to wonder how a State usurps federal prerogative to decide if a person engaged in “insurrection” or usurps the candidate’s State’s rights to make that determination.

Or if there is even a way to make that determination apart from a formal charge, trial and conviction.

But this is the interesting part of the Colorado court’s ruling: they issued a stay until January 4th.

The majority added: “We do not reach these conclusions lightly. We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

But the court gave Mr. Trump a provisional escape route. It put its ruling on hold through Jan. 4, and if he seeks review in the U.S. Supreme Court, as he said he will, the state court said his name would remain on the primary ballot.

What they don’t say is that in the ruling, which you can read here, it says,

Therefore, to maintain the status quo pending any review by the U.S. Supreme Court, we stay our ruling until January 4, 2024 (the day before the Secretary’s deadline to certify the content of the presidential primary ballot). If review is sought in the Supreme Court before the stay expires on January 4, 2024, then the stay shall remain in place, and the Secretary will continue to be required to include President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot, until the receipt of any order or mandate from the Supreme Court.

In other words, because they knew Trump will immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, their “stay” will be in force indefinitely. Trump’s name will appear on the ballot no matter what.

So why are they doing this?

I think it’s because being the Leftists they are, they are piling on Trump. They’re part and parcel of the real “insurrection” that is taking place across the United States, with our political, educational, medical, judicial and journalistic institutions all subverting our traditional, historical and legal processes. If they can provoke a reaction from the Right, that would be a bonus. If they can set precedent for the Left in other states, that would be a win for them, too.

And, right on schedule:

In a letter dated Wednesday, California lieutenant governor Eleni Kounalakis (D.) urged California secretary of state Shirley Weber (D.) to “explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot,” given the Colorado supreme court’s decision. On Tuesday, the court voted 4–3 to disqualify Trump from appearing on the Centennial State’s ballot because he allegedly incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021.

“This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of our democracy,” Kounalakis wrote to Weber.

“California must stand on the right side of history,” Kounalakis added. “California is obligated to determine if Trump is ineligible for the California ballot for the same reasons described in [Anderson v. Griswold]. The Colorado decision can be the basis for a similar decision here in our state. The constitution is clear: you must be 35 years old and not be an insurrectionist.”

This isn’t about doing the right thing or being “on the right side of history” (what, exactly, does that mean anyway?). This is about finding semi-judicial means by which to eliminate Trump as a candidate. They start with the premise that Trump must be stopped; then they look for any “legal” means by which they can get that outcome.

Sen. Mike Lee put it this way:

“Lawless thuggery masquerading as jurisprudence.” Exactly.

You get the idea. And if what these Congressman and Senators say is true—that what the four horsemen of the Colorado Supreme Court did was “lawless thuggery”—then the next step is to impeach the four of them and remove them from the court.

Which will never happen of course. Because they’re Democrats.

by - 1 Comment

Daily Broadside | But Muh Democracy! Colorado Supreme Court Rules Trump Ineligible To Be on Ballot For Inciting “Insurrection”

Amazeballs.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot.

However, the court stayed its ruling until Jan. 4, 2024, “pending any review by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to review the issue by Jan. 4, the Colorado Secretary of State will be required to continued to include President Trump on the primary ballot. Otherwise, he will be removed from the primary ballot.

The hysterical and criminal Democrats are using lawfare any way they can to kneecap Trump in his quest to retake the White House in 2024, after stealing “fortifying” the 2020 election.

“We conclude that because President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list President Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot,” reads the majority opinion.

“Section Three” of the 14th Amendment reads,

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The Colorado Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, has disqualified Trump for something he hasn’t been charaged, tried or convicted for. They’ve just decided that he engaged in “insurrection” and have ruled that he can’t be on the Colorado ballot.

Trump responded with his usual biting tone:

Trump Campaign Spokesman Steven Cheung wrote in a statement that an appeal would be filed on Tuesday night.

“Unsurprisingly, the all-Democrat appointed Colorado Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump, supporting a Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden by removing President Trump’s name from the ballot and eliminating the rights of Colorado voters to vote for the candidate of their choice. Democrat Party leaders are in a state of paranoia over the growing, dominant lead President Trump has amassed in the polls. They have lost faith in the failed Biden presidency and are now doing everything they can to stop the American voters from throwing them out of office next November,” Cheung wrote.

“The Colorado Supreme Court issued a completely flawed decision tonight and we will swiftly file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court and a concurrent request for a stay of this deeply undemocratic decision. We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these unAmerican lawsuits,” he added.

This is an escalation of the war on Trump, on his MAGA supporters and on conservatives everywhere. I’ve said before, many times, that the trajectory we’re on will lead to a civil war, and the Left seems to be actively trying to start one.

All seven of the Colorado Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democrats, so one can’t plausibly argue that it was a partisan decision. Further, the Justices recognized that their judgement would be appealed, so they stayed their decision until January 4, 2024 to see what the U.S. Supreme Court says.

I’m sure the majority weren’t influenced at all by their personal ideology. Not a whit!

It’s unlikely that Trump not being on the ballot would change the outcome of the election, since Brandon won Colorado by 13.5 points in 2020. It’s more the seriousness of the ruling, which is novel interpretation of Section Three, orignally written to keep former Confederate soldiers out of the government.

But there’s this:

Similar challenges have been heard or are pending in half the states across the nation, and state courts have thus far ruled that they do not have the jurisdiction to interpret and apply Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for a presidential primary.

Those states that still have pending disqualification lawsuits relating to Trump’s appearance on the ballot include Texas, Nevada and Wisconsin, and you can bet they will be watching how this plays out. It’s all going to boil down to defining an “insurrection” and whether Trump is guilty of engaging in one.

by - 1 Comment

Daily Broadside | An Important Moment Is Coming and You Will Have to Decide What You Will Do

I’m not going to comment on Wednesday’s “debate.” Still too early. Any analysis will only hold for a few days and then it will all be different. Suffice to say that Trump, once again, is doing things his way.

What is important to note is that the structure of the United States is still there. We’ve got the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the three branches of government, the election cycles, the free press, our educational system, our military, and independent states.

But that’s all it is: a structure. It’s been hollowed out and suffers from an infestation of dry rot brought on by a class of termites that no longer honor the law or the freedoms that we are guaranteed by our national charters. We are slowly but surely being choked off from our freedoms; we are being told what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot say, what we can and cannot know.

I’m not the only one who feels this. (HT: JJ Sefton)

A coup d’etat is when a small group of people suddenly try to take power and subjugate a nation by force.

A coup du publique is when a small group of people already in power try to further subjugate an entire population by methodically taking away whatever rights they may have left.

That global sense of unease, that nearly audible universal skincrawl taking place across the planet, that unquestionable deprivation of the right to ask questions, that which is happening right now: that is the coup du publique in action.

In a run-of-the-mill coup d’etat, it is axiomatic that the people staging the coup seize the radio station, usually even before they track down and meat hook the unfortunate Great Leader of the People and Terror of the Nation’s Enemies and President For Life and replace him with some other Grand High Dirtbag.

OK, so we have a name for it: “coup du publique.”

In a sense, a coup is the opposite of a revolution in that it thrives not on the active involvement of the citizenry, but its passive isolation, unlike in popular uprisings and protests.

For example, besides the fact that it was over in time for dinner, that Jan. 6 participants called the next day asking if they could stop by to pick up jackets they left behind, that a significant percentage of the participants were being paid by certain government agencies to be there, that participants stood around taking pictures of statues, and that the police on scene may have allowed a large proportion of the protestors in is why the tragic stupidity of January 6 was not a coup or an insurrection or anything more than a stupid thoughtless gift to the Democrats and their deep state allies.

But what if you flip that script just a tiny bit and make sure that – before any other planning, ally recruiting, etc., is even started – you made sure to quietly, incrementally take control of the information infrastructure first?  A few years ago, that meant radio and television stations and phone company HQ – today that means the internet as it is all three in one.

And if instead of overthrowing a government, you did this to ensure a government’s survival and expansion – the public be damned.  Then you would not have a coup d’etat but a coup du publique.

This explains what we’re experiencing. But it doesn’t tell us what to do about it. For that, we turn to Michael Walsh at The Pipeline.

Perhaps one solution, then, is to abandon primaries altogether and return to the days of the smoke-filled rooms, during which the pros and cons of each candidate can be weighed and judged by party elders and officials; after all, the U.S. was never meant to be a plebiscitary democracy, and a system that produced Lincoln and Grant ought not to have been discarded so lightly, especially when it has since given us Romney and McCain. 

Desperate times demand desperate measures. You can find all four of my Epoch Times columns on this subject linked at the bottom of the last in the series, “What Is to Be Done? Preparing the Information Battlespace,” which include numerous suggestions for fixes and improvements. Remember: principles, not programs. Let’s discuss these ideas in the weeks going forward; please feel free to add your two cents in the comments below. Until this, chew on this:

What does the GOP stand for? The party fought Trump every step of the way, double-crossed him constantly, feebly supported his policy positions, undercut his authority via the media at every opportunity, and otherwise made it clear to the conservative electorate that in the GOP establishment they had an enemy every bit as dangerous as the Democrats.

This is not the place to argue the merits (non-existent, in any case) of the two bogus impeachments. Rather it is to force the GOP to act more like the Leninist/Stalinist Democrats and speak with one voice, in the pursuit of a single objective: winning. In these fraught times, “comity” is luxury only congenital losers can afford, and the sooner the party purges itself the better off both it and the country will be. As Barry Goldwater famously offered: “a choice, not an echo.” Now’s the time to take him up on it.

Or perhaps it’s finally time to start thinking beyond party boundaries and consider a unity ticket that dispenses simultaneously with Trump, Mike Pence, Biden, and Kamala Harris: and changes the equation at one stroke:  DeSantis/Bobby Kennedy, Jr., anybody? No revenge, no “identity” tickets, just two men either of whom could be a plausible presidential leader, even if you don’t agree with both of them in every particular.

I think most voters are beginning to realize that there isn’t a GOP cavalry coming to rescue them. That boat sailed while Paul Ryan was House Speaker.

(2) Parties vs. uniparty

There has been a seismic shift in the way Republican voters see political parties.  After Obama forced government-controlled health care on America, the Tea Party movement began a desperate fight against socialism’s advances.  From the energy of that movement, Republicans eventually took back the House and Senate.  Despite those triumphs, Paul Ryan rubber-stamped Obama’s budgets, while refusing to build Trump’s border wall.  McConnell’s Senate Republicans, who had run on repealing Obamacare, cemented socialized medicine with McCain’s decisive betrayal.

Grassroots voters finally rejected Establishment Republicans and catapulted outsider Donald Trump into office.  In response, Republicans quietly assisted Democrats in their attempt to remove Trump through the Russia hoax.  In the space of a decade, most Republican officeholders were outed as RINOs, before voters properly concluded that they were actually part of a single D.C. Uniparty all along.  

What will you do, indeed?

Have a good weekend.

by - 5 Comments

Daily Broadside | The US Ship of State is Swamped and in Danger of Sinking

I hate to miss posting, but this past week was absolutely packed with activity. One of the little’s is getting married this fall, and there were all kinds of tasks associated with hosting guests and putting on a bridal shower that was a beautiful event for all involved. We’re getting to know the future in-laws and some of their extended family, too. I’m slightly more of an introvert than extrovert so expending that much energy with so many people tends to deplete my reserves and will take some time for me to rebound.

But I couldn’t not post with all that’s going on in this bizarre country called the United States of America. At one time the envy of the world, it has been twisted into a grotesque, unrecognizable parody of itself, claiming all the virtues of a free society but acting like a third-world banana republic.

We’re being led by a doddering, angry, dementia-riddled, imbecilic fabulist whose natural language is lying. He’s bought and owned by the Chinese, the Russians and the Ukranians. He’s done nothing worth remembering in his fifty years in government, but we will remember him because of the immense damage he’s inflicted on the economy, politics and the culture in the two-plus years he’s been in office.

Our political elites have weaponized the Constitution and are conducting open lawfare on the previous president while ignoring the crimes of the current one and his family. Lawfare is even being conducted at the state level against conservative politicians, like Texas AG Ken Paxton.

We’re being swarmed with some 7 million foreigners who have crossed our non-existant border illegally without vetting and are actually shlepped around the country to large “santuary” cities, so much so that even hard-left mayors are complaining that they can’t handle the influx and are now asking citizens to open their homes to the invaders.

The Chinese float spy balloons over mainland US with impunity and are apparently behind an illegal biolab full of diseased mice, pathogens, blood, coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes and other infectious agents that was operating in secret without a permit in California, and an illegal police station in New York City to hunt down Chinese dissidents. We’re dependent on China for our pharmaceuticals. It’s shameful embarrassment to our sovereignty and safety.

The chucklehead in the White House printed $4 trillion and set off the worst inflation in 40 years. Interest rates have tripled and gas prices are doubled.

Our cities, once the envy and destination of the world, are turning into third-world $#!+holes full of crime and drugs, homelessness and death. Stores and businesses are closing because it’s unsafe to operate in those fetid markets.

Americans are fleeing “blue” states to “red” states in an effort to escape the insanity that progressives have unleashed in their states. We’re segregating ourselves into “rational” and “irrational” populations — and it depends on which one you identify with that shapes your definition of “rational.”

Our military is more interested in being woke than in being prepared as evidenced by dismal recruiting that has left us thousands of soldiers short. In addition, we are short on munitions and are far behind China in naval readiness.

As Victor Davis Hanson writes,

We are in the midst of one of the most radical revolutions in American history. It is as far-reaching and dangerous as the turbulent years of the 1850s and 1860s or the 1930s. Every aspect of American life and culture is under assault, including the very processes by which we govern ourselves, and the manner in which we live.

The Revolution began under the Obama administration that sought to divide Americans into oppressed and oppressors, and then substitute race for class victimization. It was empowered by the bicoastal wealth accrued from globalization, and honed during the COVID lockdown, quarantine-fed economic downturn, and the George Floyd riots and their aftermath. The Revolution was boosted by fanatic opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump. And the result is an America that is unrecognizable from what it was a mere decade ago.

There’s little that one person can do to fight the assault on our way of life. It will take a critical mass of citizens who have decided they’ve had enough and are ready to fight — and sacrifice for — the survival of America.

by - 8 Comments

Daily Broadside | ‘Not My Concern’: Pence Tanks His Campaign With Odd Response

When Trump chose Mike Pence as his VP, I thought that Pence was a good choice (and it made a funny “Trumpence” sound). By all accounts he was a seasoned Christian man, he guarded his marriage by not having a meal alone with another woman and, as governor of Indiana, he seemed to have done an adequate job.

But ever since the events of January 6 and its aftermath, when Pence refused to challenge the results of the 2020 election even though there was plenty of evidence of fraud, he has revealed himself to be more of an establishment figure.

One thing we don’t need right now is an establishment figure.

Fortunately, Pence did us all a favor and deep-sixed whatever minimal chance he might have had as a candidate.

But even though Tucker emerged as one of the stars of the evening, the show was not about him but about that clutch of GOP hopefuls. Who among that gang of six won?

It’s probably easier to start with the loser, chief among whom was Mike Pence, who might just as well have used the occasion to perform an act of self-immolation. The key moment came in an exchange about foreign policy, in particular U.S. policy with respect to the war in Ukraine. Pence said he was distressed that we had yet to send Ukraine the promised Abrams tanks or train Ukrainian pilots to fly F16s.

“You are distressed,” said Tucker, “that the Ukrainians don’t have enough American tanks. Every city in the United States has become much worse in the last three years. . . .and yet your concern is that the Ukrainians . . . don’t have enough tanks? Where’s the concern in the United States in that?”

“Well, that’s not my concern. Tucker, I’ve heard that routine from you before, but that’s not my concern.”

“Not my concern.”

Bang. “Not my concern.”

While Mollie Hemingway was generous in her critique of the comment, that phrase is going to haunt Pence for the remainder of his campaign. It was not at all clear what was “not” Pence’s concern, but it sure sounded like it was America and its problems, rather than a proxy war in which we have almost no vested interest.

My take on it is that whether he was referring to our support of the war in Ukraine or he was referring to the sad state of American cities, saying that either is “not my concern” is a rather stunning backhand to the question.

And Carlson is no slouch — he was direct with all the candidates who sat with him in the forum.

Carlson is free to ask difficult questions since he is not working for the establishment media. He lost his evening TV show because his populist questions prompted Fox’s establishment board to shut him down, despite the resulting huge loss of viewers.

By the way, Fox News aired their “new and improved” lineup last night of Ingram, Watters, Hannity and Gutfeld. Do they really think that rearranging the deck chairs is going to save this sinking ship? More to the point, do they even care?

In fact, Carlson has a pocketbook and a ratings incentive to keep the pressure on politicians. Millions of ordinary Americans have given up on the establishment’s media coverage of the establishment’s political priorities. That popularity was made clear the next day when Carlson spoke at the TPUSA Conference in Florida:

[…]

Several of the politicians stared daggers at Carlson — and the leading candidate refused to sit in the hot seat.

That’s what I find refreshing about Carlson — he seems to be fearless and isn’t interested in soft focus interviews. That’s also what I found refreshing about Trump: he didn’t play the game — he disrupted it. That’s what Tucker is doing — disrupting the “normal” routine we’re used to seeing with political figures.

Carlson is doing the American public a favor by exposing the thinking underneath what they say on the surface.

If the participants thought this was going to be another tongue bath, they were certainly surprised. He asked hard questions, and some of their answers exposed their muddled thinking. At least two of them – Asa Hutchinson and Mike Pence — were clear losers and can now be safely considered out of the running.

For what it’s worth, of all the candidates not named Trump, I currently like Ramaswamy and DeSantis.

by - 1 Comment

Daily Broadside | It’s Trump and DeSantis with Ramaswamy Polling Third

We’re 17 months away from the next presidential “election” in 2024. I put scare quotes around the word “election” because I’m no longer confident that event is what we think it is. The current Resident was installed in a 2020 election “fortified” by a cabal of businesses, state legislatures, judicial activists, social media titans and local election organizers. Add to that the dreadful SCOTUS opinion handed dow last week that state legislatures do not ultimately control policies around federal elections—despite the clearly worded clause in Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution—and maybe I should be writing the word like this: “””election”””.

Any poll taken a year-and-a-half prior to any kind of election should be taken with a grain of salt. But it’s still an interesting exercise to see exactly what the populace is thinking with respect to candidates for the 2024 presidential election. We on the Right should take seriously who our nominee will be because, just like the last several national elections (2016, 2018, 2020, 2022), the next is also an existential one.

By 2024, Barack Obama’s Marxist-infused Democrat Party will have held America hostage for 12 out of 16 years.  This nation cannot survive if the Democrats are in control for another 4-8 years with what will become an irreversible stranglehold on the federal bureaucracy and judiciary (including the Supreme Court).  If the Republicans do not win the presidency and Congress in 2024, this nation may well have passed the point of no return.

While I hold some hope that we will weather our national identity crisis, every election is now critical. The Democratic Marxists know it, too, and so do the Deep State and the lapdog media—which is why we can’t count on our future “elections” to be free and fair.

Yet, we must choose a candidate.

Trump, who has dominated U.S. politics since he came down the elevator in 2015 to announce his candidacy, is by far the 2024 presidential candidate to beat.

Former President Donald Trump holds a commanding 34-point lead over his nearest competitor in the Republican primary field, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), according to a Fox News poll. 

Most of the registered voters self-identified GOP primary voters sampled, 56 percent, support Trump for the nomination, while 22 percent back DeSantis. The margin between the pair had grown 19 percentage points since February when Trump led 43 percent to DeSantis’s 28 percent.

Even a key DeSantis advisor admits as much.

A top spokesperson for Ron DeSantis’ super PAC is sounding a decidedly dour note on the Florida governor’s presidential prospects, saying his campaign is facing an “uphill battle” and is trailing badly in the key nominating states.

Steve Cortes, who previously supported Donald Trump, also heaped praise on the former president, calling him a “runaway frontrunner” and “maestro” of the debate.

“Right now in national polling we are way behind, I’ll be the first to admit that,” Cortes said in a Twitter spaces event that was recorded on Sunday night. “I believe in being blunt and honest. It’s an uphill battle but clearly Donald Trump is the runaway frontrunner.”

I’m not sure Trump is a “‘maestro’ of the debate.” His off the cuff bluster and free-wheeling style gets him into a lot of trouble because of his imprecision. But he does know how to shut down his opposition while on stage, which makes him a formidable combatant.

Surprisingly, Vivek Ramaswamy is now in double digits, polling third behind Trump and DeSantis with support at 10 percent.

Similar to other national surveys, the poll finds former President Donald Trump with a strong lead in the primary race at 49 percent support. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis falls 33 points behind with 16 percent support. Ramaswamy comes in a close third place at ten percent support, just six points behind DeSantis, making him the only other candidate to break into double-digit territory.

I like Ramaswamy’s anti-woke message. In particular I like his promise to use the military to secure our southern border. I also like the fact that he’s the son of Indian immigrants, who legally migrated from the subcontinent through our front door. That kind of story will drive the Left nuts.

All other candidates are polling at less than 5%.

The nominee won’t be Pence, Haley, or Christie. The second-tier candidates, for the most part, are running vanity campaigns. They don’t have the support to mount an effective challenge to Trump or DeSantis.

Who do you like at this point in the process?

by - 2 Comments

Daily Broadside | DeSantis To Declare for Republican Presidential Race in 2024

Sorry for the radio silence over the last few days. I traveled this past weekend and didn’t have anyone to cover for me. Anybody got a spare $300k so I can take the next three years to write and build on current readership? Hit the tip jar and email me at info@daveolsson.com.

Okay, barring a miraculous $300k, we’ll just have to keep plodding along with what we can do in our off hours, right? Today you should be looking for Ron DeSantis to announce his 2024 candidacy for president of the United States during a discussion with Elon Musk on Twitter.

I’m intrigued with DeSantis. Unlike Trump, he seems to have a genuine (Catholic) Christian faith. He recently shared the stage with Franklin Graham at the International Christian Media Convention hosted by the National Religious Broadcasters in Orlando, Florida, where he said, “Make no mistake, weaponized government is one faction of society turning the reins of power against those people they don’t like. And the people that are in power now do not like people of faith.”

He’s racking up victories in Florida, including these from this report:

When Walt Disney Co (DIS.N), one of Florida’s biggest employers, opposed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law that limited discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools, DeSantis moved to strip the company of its self-governing status.

Disney has since filed a federal lawsuit against the governor, accusing him of weaponizing state government to retaliate against the company.

When an elected Democratic state attorney said he would not prosecute anyone for defying DeSantis-backed limits on abortion, DeSantis removed him from his position.

He has made crusading against what Republicans call “woke” education policies a centerpiece of his politics while supporting conservative candidates for local school boards.

He backed a legislative measure that prohibits the teaching of “Critical Race Theory” – an academic doctrine that views U.S. history through the lens of oppression – in state public schools despite little evidence it was being taught.

Republican lawmakers in Florida handed DeSantis a bevy of conservative victories in its recent session: They expanded the state’s school voucher program, prohibited the use of public money in sustainable investing, scrapped diversity programs at public universities, allowed for permitless carry of concealed weapons and, perhaps most notably, banned almost all abortions in the state.

DeSantis declared that, “At the end of the day, we’re not going to let this state be overrun by woke ideology,” he said. “We will fight the woke in the businesses, we will fight the woke in government agencies, we will fight the woke in our schools. We will never, ever surrender to the woke agenda. Florida is the state where woke goes to die.”

Perhaps as president DeSantis could make the whole country a giant chemo bath for woke ideology.

He also seems completely unfazed by Trump’s attacks on him, using the nickname “Ron DeSanctimonious.” In fact, when asked about Trump facing arrest over payments to Stormy Daniels, DeSantis said, “Look, I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” a subtle shot at Trump’s alleged crime now being prosecuted by the Soros-bought prosecutor Alvin Bragg. So DeSantis can handle himself just fine when it comes to Trump.

There are some broader questions about how in debt DeSantis is with the GOPe — the establishment Republicans. Is he an independent thinker, or is he beholden to the spineless elites who merely want to hold on to the power and money they control? Rght now I don’t see it, but time will tell.

I welcome him to the race, even though our elections are now shot through with “fortifying” them — in favor of the Democrats. DeSantis is a refreshing choice in as we begin to size up the 2024 election. He seems to have Trump-sized brass without all the self-inflicted wounds that Trump’s lack of verbal discipline costs him.

Truth be told — right now, if either Trump or DeSantis were the Republican nominee, I’d vote for either one of them. Anybody but Brandon or whoever they stick in front of us.

by

Daily Broadside | There’s No Going Back Now, Only Going Forward

Now that we’ve gone full Stalinist (or Maoist; at this point, who’s to say which we resemble more?), we need to be thinking about the ramifications. This has been a long time in coming, developing quite slowly over the last 80 years, accelerating in the last 15, and now hitting full velocity.

Half our population, including the illegal foreigners who now live in the shadows, do not believe in the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, or in America’s greatness. That also includes the Democrats as a party, along with RINOs, NeverTrumpers, and UniParty members. It includes the majority of our institutions, including universities, media, law, politics, entertainment, medicine and, unfortunately, a significant number of churches.

America as founded is gone. The skeleton, the framework, is there. But it’s either demonized as hopelessly racist or colonialist, or thrown over the shoulder as an accessory to convey some kind of status that can neutralize any criticism.

I’ve resisted wanting to admit that this is no longer the country I grew up in. The ground has shifted beneath my feet and moved so far to the Left that I would now be labeled a “right-wing extremist.” I’m nothing of the sort, of course. I’m an evangelical conservative Christian who cherishes our God-given rights and believes in personal responsibility, a moral obligation toward others, earning what you have, and enjoying the fruits of your hard work.

Since we now live under a nascent police state regime that is trying to consolidate its power and has taken the extraordinary step of indicting, arresting and charging a former U.S. president — and DECLARED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE who, by all accounts, is the leading figure of the political opposition — with 34 felonies but with no crimes listed, you can bet that it won’t stop there. If they are brazen enough to do this with Donald J. Trump, what’s to stop them from doing the same to a sitting Senator or Congressman? What’s to stop them from going after high-profile opinion leaders? Or little guys like me?

Or you?

I’ll tell you what will stop them: nothing.

Note the pattern. They spied on Trump as he campaigned. They unmasked members of his team. They accused him of colluding with Russia while he was in office. They accused him of a quid pro quo phone call with his Ukrainian peer. The soulless speaker of the House ripped up his State of the Union speech on national TV. They impeached him, twice. They rioted. They threatened. And now they’ve finally, finally, figured out a way to twist some NDA payments into federal crimes and have arrested and charged the man.

They now have to try him, with his next appearance in court on DECEMBER 4 — eight months from now and just before 2024 primary elections. Think that’s coincidence? If they get a conviction (nothing is impossible in our new state of affairs) Trump becomes the first U.S. president to go to jail. If they don’t get a conviction, the next step in the continuum is … terrible to contemplate, but four past presidents have endured it.

Then they’ll come for you.

Here’s our choice as Robert Spencer sees it:

There has never before been a presidential candidate under indictment, and Democrats appear to be banking on the proposition that most Americans are still unaware that the old republic has passed away, and that the criminal might not be the one who is indicted, but the one doing the indicting. That would explain why Alvin Bragg appears to be cheerfully indifferent to the appearance of conducting a corrupt, politicized prosecution designed to take out the chief opponent of the ruling regime.

Trump himself has often said it: “They’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.” The legal persecution of Donald Trump is a prelude to what this authoritarian regime plans to unleash upon law-abiding Americans if they dare to dissent from its sinister agenda. The feds have already sent this message by sending a SWAT team to arrest a peaceful pro-life activist, Mark Houck. Trump is the big prize, but his arrest is intended primarily to send a new message to the American people: fall in line, or else. And so, for the sake of the flickering light of freedom here and around the world, we must not comply.

_______________________________
A Personal Note
I write five days a week on personal time because it’s one way I can contribute to strengthening the resolve of Christians, conservatives and other like-minded compatriots in the face of unprecedented division in our country. I would like to eventually do more. If you like what you’re reading and think others would benefit from it, please consider regularly sharing and commenting on my posts. Also invite your friends to subscribe. They can do that right on the home page. Thanks for reading! — Dave

by

Daily Broadside | Trump Indicted; Will Somebody Make it Stop?

Yesterday we crossed another Rubicon, this time one that can never be undone. For the first time in 247 years, a U.S. president has been arrested and charged with criminal wrongdoing. No, it wasn’t Joe Biden, who has lied about his financial arrangements involving Ukraine, Russia, China and his son Hunter; neither was it Barack Hussein Obama (currently serving his third term behind the scenes) who was involved in the plot to undermine president Donald J. Trump’s term.

No, the president charged with a crime was Donald J. Trump.

When I saw that photo, I had one of those nauseous “watershed moment” feelings in my gut. This has really happened. A George Soros-backed District Attorney campaigned on a promise to indict Trump, rummaged through the gutters looking for something, anything, that he could use, and landed on 34 felony charges of “falsifying business records related to alleged hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign.”

The indictment‘s charges just repeat the same charge for different checks the Trump Family Revocable Trust wrote to lawyer Michael Cohen from February 2017 to December 2017. They’re saying that the checks were written to Cohen for legal services but were “intended” for something else, i.e. paying off the prostitute.

The indictment will revolve around hush money payments paid at the end of the 2016 election cycle to adult entertainer and Trump fling Stormy Daniels and, possibly, a former Playboy Playmate, Karen McDougal. Bragg revived what was known inside the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as the “zombie investigation” into the hush money payments. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, declined to seek an indictment on this matter. 

The theory of the case goes as follows. Trump made the hush money payments through his fixer, Michael Cohen, and reported the expense as “legal fees.” In fact, Bragg will allege, these were in-kind donations from Trump to his own presidential campaign. This distinction is important because New York state law deems the falsification of business records to be a misdemeanor unless that falsification is meant to conceal another crime. In this case, the documented fraud was perpetrated to conceal a violation of campaign finance law. 

If this is, in fact, Bragg’s case against Trump, then it’s paper-thin. Many campaign finance law experts say it’s unclear whether hush money would be an in-kind contribution to a political campaign, since Trump himself has said he made the payments to spare his family from embarrassment—not to win the 2016 election. 

These trumped up charges are pure political persecution and election interference on the part of Bragg. He’s a tool of the Left.

We would shake our heads and scoff in disbelief when we’d hear about countries where members of the political opposition were arrested under false pretenses. “That would never happen here,” we’d say to ourselves.

With the arrest of Donald Trump, we’ve entered into a new era of country’s history. The kind of corruption we’ve long believed was limited to third-world countries has made it to the Land of the Free. Thanks to Alvin Bragg’s precedent, prosecutors are now emboldened to misuse their power to punish political rivals with fabricated charges. Worse yet, roughly half the country condones it because they care more about punishing Trump than the rule of law or blind justice.

This, even though the statute of limitations has run out; even though the feds knew there was no case to be made (and declined to try); even though it’s dubious that Bragg is authorized to enforce federal laws; even though this is obviously prosecutorial abuse of discretion.

It’s no use wondering how close we are to being a communist third world banana republic. We’re there.

I cite this in order to make this point: In my wildest dreams, I never imagined what I was studying would ever apply to the United States of America, the freest country in world history.

I assumed that communism was, for various reasons, something that happened elsewhere — most obviously, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia and North Korea.

What were those various reasons? One was the absence of freedom in the history of those countries. Another was that all those countries were, with the exception of Cuba, outside of Western civilization.

All these years later, I see that I was wrong. Communism — or if you will, left-wing fascism and totalitarianism — is coming to America and Canada, and (a bit more gradually) to Australia and New Zealand.

Incredibly — or maybe not so incredibly — more than two hundred years of unprecedented and unrivaled liberty and commitment to Judeo-Christian values and reason, and all the unparalleled achievements of Western civilization, have come to mean nothing to about half of the American people and to virtually every one of its major institutions.

Don’t take it from me.

“America is back, baby!” is a farce under Brandon. “America” as founded is dead and will probably never be back.

by - 2 Comments

Daily Broadside | Being Led to the Slaughter Like a Herd of Cattle

I don’t know if it was my irrefutable logic, my stature as an unknown public servant, or my shameless good looks, but my access to Twitter was restored some time over the weekend. No notice, no explanation, no apology. I just clicked over to read something and ᗒ poof! ᗕ there I was, embraced once again in the land of 280 characters.

I had no confidence in being reinstated. Now that I am, I wonder why. My guess: the algorithm that swept Twitter for offending rule breakers took down every tweet it found, and then the Twitter Censorship Bureau went into clean-up mode, taking complaints about locked accounts one at a time. Or, maybe I just lucked out and got a more conservative reviewer.

Whatever the case, I now wonder if I’m on a “watch” list. I’ve been identified as a potential troublemaker, so maybe next time my good looks won’t be enough. In the meantime, it will be easier to write about the lunacy in our country if I can link to and quote Twitter posts.

So the big news this week is Trump’s indictment in Manhattan.

Former President Donald Trump’s unprecedented indictment has surged into the limelight and fueled public debate over whether this case is legitimate and shows no one is above the law or amounts to a political hack job meant to thwart Trump’s chances in the 2024 presidential election.

Expectations are that Trump will be arraigned at some point in the coming week, with a spokesperson for the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg saying in a statement that it’s now coordinating with Trump’s attorneys the former president’s surrender.

The Left’s maniacal obsession with Trump strikes me as Ahab obsessing over Moby Dick for crippling him. Trump interfered with the Left’s destruction of the United States, an unforgiveable sin and, even though they managed to keep him out of office in 2020, he’s still a threat to them and their agenda. The case that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is trying to make is weak on the merits.

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr has criticized the indictment, calling it a “disgrace” and a “political hit job.”

In an interview at the National Review Institute Ideas Summit, Barr said he saw the case against Trump as prosecutorial abuse and as “pathetically weak.”

“Judging from the news reports … it’s the archetypal abuse of the prosecutorial function to engage in a political hit job, and it’s a disgrace,” Barr said when asked to comment on the case.

Barr said that Bragg appears to have ginned up a technical misdemeanor into a felony, adding that this was something that federal prosecutors chose not to prosecute as a campaign violation.

This is lawfare in the service of a political agenda. Not only does “the statute of limitations bar the alleged charges” but “the case is based on a faulty legal theory.”

Trump asks a good question: “How much more are American patriots expected to take?” This is what I alluded to in my post on Friday.

What is happening is that the goons who run the Left are pushing the Right toward desperation. Desperate people will take desperate measures. Let’s hope we have time to turn things around before we get to that point.

I’m not one to advocate for violence or rebellion, but we are now being forced into the cattle race by lawlessness, lies, double standards and persecution, all enabled by the money our government takes from us in the form of “taxes” and uses to turn the instruments of political power against us. The goal is to take total control over us by eliminating as much of our freedom and independence as possible, promising us that if we only trust them, we will be safe and cared for by the government.

There is coming a moment when American patriots will have to make a decision. Will we passively go to the slaughter that’s coming, or will we object? It will have to happen before the head gate closes on our necks. It will be of last resort, when all other options fail.