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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

Daily Broadside | Trump Indictment, Tennessee Insurrection, Twitter Censorship and Double Standards

Right off the bat is the news that for the first time in U.S. history, a former president is facing criminal charges. Donald J. Trump has been indicted by a grand jury on charges related to hush-money paid to Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign.

A Manhattan grand jury indicted Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.

On Thursday evening, after news of the charges had been widely reported, the district attorney’s office confirmed that Mr. Trump had been indicted and that prosecutors had contacted Mr. Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to authorities in Manhattan.

The Democrats, the MSM, the RINOs and the NeverTrumpers (a quartet of repetition, I say) have been persecuting Trump for years, ever since he rode down the elevator in 2015 and announced that he was running for president, and especially during his time in office. There has never been so much hatred and animosity standing opposed to such great love and loyalty to a president as there has been with Trump. The persecution of Trump has been one of the most degrading and embarrassing eras in our history.

I’m not going to defend Trump’s behavior, especially since it seems like the “hush money” was paid and nobody disputes it. What is disputed is whether he actually had an affair with Daniels, and whether the money was an inappropriate use of campaign funds or is considered a contribution to his campaign that was improperly accounted for. What gets me is the absolute double-standard the Democrats and their allies have. They have used our institutions to prosecute a relentless war on Trump, searching for a crime with which they can take him out of the presidential race.

This brazen misuse of our laws and the disregard for our history and norms is pushing us closer to the unmentionable. Did you all see the “insurrectiony” takeover of the Tennessee Capitol yesterday? Did you see the police trying to prevent protesters from entering, but failing, and the protestors disrupting the People’s Business?

(It’s here that I’d link to a Twitter video, but I apparently hate women who shoot 9-year-olds and the Twitter Nazis have locked up my account.)

Do you think Merrick Garland and the DOJ and FBI will be rounding up protestors and holding them indefinitely in solitary confinement? Or nah? Did I mention the double-standards that the Democrats and their allies have?

Also, speaking of my locked Twitter account, I learned that it wasn’t just me. Apparently, many conservative opinion leaders found themselves locked out of their accounts. Here’s what Sean Davis, CEO and the co-founder of The Federalist, wrote:

I had high hopes for Twitter under Elon Musk’s watch. After all, how could the tech giant get any worse after banning the New York Post, which was founded by Alexander Hamilton himself, for the crime of reporting on possible corruption of the family of a leading presidential candidate in the middle of a close election?

We now have an answer: by banning conservative Christians for reporting on the horrific mass shooting perpetrated by an apparent “trans” person who hated conservative Christians so much she stormed a Christian school in Nashville, opened fire, and murdered three 9-year-old children and three adult staff.

[…]

Well, it happened on Monday at a quiet Christian school atop a hill in the middle of Nashville. And by Wednesday afternoon I was banned by Twitter from accessing my account for reporting on the shooting, for reporting on the Trans Day of Vengeance which may well have inspired the cold-blooded murderer, and for sharing a link to a news story from The Daily Wire, another conservative news outlet based in Nashville.

Twitter claimed my reporting violated Twitter’s terms of service and that I had personally threatened, incited, glorified, or expressed a desire for violence. Such a claim isn’t just false; it’s defamatory. Twitter published a notice on my feed (which I can no longer even access) stating I violated its rules. Again, such a claim is false and defamatory. Twitter has a right to ban me for whatever reason it wants, but it doesn’t have a right to viciously lie about me.

Here’s his diagnosis of what Twitter is doing:

What the people behind this censorship are truly worried about is the prospect of the American people understanding the true evil underlying transgender ideology and the danger it poses to the country and its survival. They don’t want you to understand how every major institution of power in this country bends its knee to the radical trans movement, tells its adherents they are victims, and tells them that anyone who utters the verboten truth that boys cannot become girls and girls cannot become boys wishes to commit genocide against the so-called trans community.

What do you think is the logical conclusion of telling delusional, mentally ill people being surgically mutilated and pumped full of hormones that Christians and conservatives want to commit “genocide” against them? That’s the question you’re not allowed to ask because they know how you’ll answer it because you watched with your own eyes what happened in Nashville on Monday.

Finally,

When a rage-filled and mentally ill “trans” person shoots up a school, the media blame Republicans, or the NRA, or gun makers, or anyone other than the shooter and her warped ideology. They turn the victims into villains, and they turn the murderer into a martyr.

Twitter responded no differently. It didn’t ban us and lock us out of our accounts for lying, but for telling the truth. Why? Because the facts of Monday’s mass murder are fatal to the left-wing narrative, and the only thing the left wing and its myriad institutions in government, business, and media care about is the narrative. The narrative must be protected at all costs, even if it means lying about the facts and those of us who report them.

He’s right, you know. We are now, without question, living in a country that censors free speech. It doesn’t matter if Twitter or YouTube or Google are private companies. They are being allowed to censor political, ideological and moral thought on their platforms under the guise of “safety.”

We’re living out Benjamin Franklin’s famous quotation: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

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.

If the Democrats didn’t have double-standards, they’d have no standards at all.

Have a good weekend.

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 problemsbuild the wallbeat 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?

Daily Broadside | Bumbling Pete Shows Up A Day After Trump and 20 Days After Disaster

One of the big stories of the last weeks has been the massive train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which spewed toxic chemicals into the air and water. The current administration not only refused to send help via the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), but neither the Resident or Transportation Secretary Mayor Pete bothered to show up as a matter of leadership or good will.

Instead, Brandon showed up in Ukraine to hug-a-thug and Mayor Pete went missing until spotted by a lone Daily Caller reporter who asked him about his non-response to the disaster — at which point Booty-Judge refused to answer because he was on “personal time” and then stopped to take a photo of the pestering reporter.

Why the photo? Probably to add to the straight-shooting FBI’s growing list of white-wing terrorists who, as we all know, are the greatest threat to our precious democracy (*spit*). Creep.

In the meantime, President Trump visited the traumatized town and brought with him pallets of bottled water and food for the residents, then bought McDonald’s for the entire fire department and police department, and all diners inside the restaurant.

When a reporter shouted a question to Trump just before he left, he gave an obvious answer that underscored the difference between a man of and for the people, and a man of and for himself.

“Get over here.”

From there, President Trump headed to the East Palestine Fire Department, where he delivered an uplifting message to the community.

“We’re here today in East Palestine to show our love and support for our fellow Americans in this hour of need,” Trump said at the fire station.

“To the people of East Palestine and to the nearby communities in Ohio and Pennsylvania, we have heard you loud and clear. You are not forgotten,” the former president continued. “You are not forgotten.”

“We stand with you. We pray for you. And we will stay with you in your fight to help answer and get the accountability that you deserve,” Trump added.

Once Trump announced his visit, FEMA suddenly revealed that, by golly, assistance was available after all. And once Trump actually visited on Wednesday, Mayor Pete showed up the next day (yesterday) — nearly three weeks later and after taking his “me” time.

It was an opportunity for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who nearly three weeks after the derailment visited East Palestine on Thursday, to claim responsibility and demonstrate his ability to reinstate safety and security. Instead, he laughs about his failures, blames the Trump administration and gives speeches about racism in transportation rather than adequately addressing immediate concerns.

Mayor Pete tried to explain his lame and late response to the disaster.

‘What I tried to do is balance two things: My desire to be involved and engaged and on the ground — which is how I’m generally wired to act — and my desire to follow the norm of Transportation secretaries, allowing NTSB to really lead the initial stages of the public-facing work. I’ll do some thinking about whether I got that balance right, but I think the most important thing is first of all making sure the residents here have what they need,’ said the Transportation secretary.  

In the face of mounting criticism, Buttigieg also blamed the Trump administration and rail companies for undermining safety regulations he says led to the crash. 

‘One thing he [Trump] can do is express support for reversing the deregulation that happened on his watch. I heard him say he had nothing to do with it, even though it was in his administration.’

Why do these woke incompetents constantly fail upwards?

Brandon doesn’t care and won’t visit. Given that Mayor Pete showed up 20 days after the fact, he might as well have just stayed home and took “personal time” for all the good it did.

Have a good weekend.