A.F. Branco Cartoon – After almost four years of Democrats trying to shove Marxism down Americans’ throats, We, The People, have given them the blowback they deserve with the results of the 2024 election.
TRIFECTA! Republicans Will Hold The House and Senate, Giving Trump’s Agenda Unprecedented Mandate.
By Ken Kew – The Gateway Pundit – 11/06/2024
Republicans are projected to hold the House of Representatives, according to latest projections.
While not all the races have yet been called, credible sources are now reporting that the GOP has an over 95 percent chance of keeping control of the House of Representatives. The final tally remains unclear, although it currently appears that Republicans will have a slim majority of around a dozen seats under the leadership of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Such developments will give Donald Trump an unprecedented mandate to implement his second-term agenda, paving the way for everything from mass deportations of illegal aliens all the way through to tax cuts and deregulation. READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Former President Donald Trump takes the stage during a campaign rally at the Santander Arena on Nov. 4, 2024, in Reading, Pennsylvania. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Philip Wegmann, a former reporter for The Daily Signal, covers the White House for RealClearNews.
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida—Donald John Trump, the 45th U.S. president, will soon become the 47th president, after he was projected to win not just the 270 Electoral College votes needed to return to the White House but also the national popular vote. His humiliation of the political elite is now complete.
The conservative Fox News channel was first to call the race for Trump while The Associated Press and the legacy television networks held off early Wednesday morning. After Pennsylvania turned red, however, even liberal MSNBC News conceded that the Republican’s lead over Vice President Kamala Harris had become mathematically insurmountable. The AP finally called the race at 5:45 a.m.
Trump is on track to become the first Republican to win a majority of the vote since George W. Bush in 2004, and he will become the first president to serve two nonconsecutive terms since Grover Cleveland in 1892. His triumph represents a wholesale repudiation of the establishment. Big business, Hollywood, the media, and both major political parties treated him as an unwelcome interloper. He delivered his rebuttal on Election Day.
A celebrity known for his starring role on a reality television show, a career in New York real estate, and a knack for showing up in the tabloids, Trump wasn’t even a “citizen politician” when he arrived on the political scene in 2015. He wasn’t a politician at all and had never run for office or been involved in party politics.
Dismissed by the commentariat as unserious, he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and was impeached (but not convicted) for his troubles. Four years later, he was again declared politically unviable after he refused to accept the results of his loss to Joe Biden and his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell condemned him as “practically and morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 riot, but efforts by an increasingly obsolete cohort of GOP were singularly unsuccessful in sidelining the man.
Trump declared his candidacy immediately after the 2022 midterms, marched almost effortlessly through a crowded field of primary challengers, and secured a third consecutive presidential nomination. He did not regain his grasp on the GOP so much as he tightened his grip on that party.
“I think that we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America,” Trump running mate JD Vance said after Tuesday’s election returns rolled in. There was no exaggeration in his words.
The first time Trump won the White House, he did so as the leader of a white working-class coalition, promising those he would call in his inaugural address “the forgotten men and women” to reverse the “American carnage” brought on by deindustrialization, globalization, and unchecked immigration. The former, and now future, president did not moderate. Opponents condemned his calls for mass deportations as “racist” and his vow to root out the ill-defined “enemy within” as “fascist.”
Those denunciations ultimately had little effect. Not only did Trump maintain his support with the white working class, but he also made significant gains with both Hispanic and black voters according to early exit polls. A multiclass, multiethnic coalition returned him to power. One demographic at the center of that electorate: young men.
Tuesday’s results amount to a repudiation, not only of Harris and Biden, but also the old breed of Republicans who made common cause with corporations and harbored a neoconservative foreign policy. The most visible among them, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, threw her support behind the Democrat. Trump’s second victory heralds a shifting political landscape that will continue sorting itself out during the presidential transition and in the four-year term to follow.
Reflecting on the breadth of his support, Trump told a crowded victory party that his winning coalition was drawn “from all quarters—union, non-union, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American.” Surrounded by his family and campaign staff on stage, he added, “We had everybody, and it was beautiful.”
“It was,” Trump added, “a historic realignment.”
The Harris campaign had already headed to bed at that point. “Let’s finish up what we have in front of us tonight, get some sleep,” campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote to her team in an email obtained by RealClearPolitics, “and get ready to close out strong tomorrow.”
The vice president had yet to concede by mid-morning Wednesday. Famous for chiding Republican men when they talked over her— “I’m speaking”—Harris sent her campaign chairman, Cedric Richmond, on stage to tell her supporters at Howard University late Tuesday that they would not hear from her. Many left in tears. Trump World was just beginning to party.
A crowd noticeably younger than the ones Trump attracted in his two previous elections had packed into the Palm Beach Convention Center hours earlier. As their champion monitored data from nearby Mar-a-Lago, they pulled up to any of the six cash bars in the main hall. The most popular beer for the thirsty “America first” voter: Modelo, a lager from Mexico.
The MAGA faithful were prepared for a long night. News networks warned that the results might not be known on Election Day or even the morning after, a message amplified by Democrats. And there was good reason to believe the race might come down to the wire: Trump and Harris were locked in a dead heat for much of the contest as a divided nation evaluated its options. But just as he used social media to sidestep gatekeepers eight years ago, Trump targeted new, younger voters, with a new medium: the Bro Podcast.
He talked about everything from aliens to artificial intelligence with Joe Rogan, host of “The Joe Rogan Experience.” He chopped it up on the Barstool Sports podcast “Bussin’ With the Boys,” hosted by former NFL football players Will Compton and Taylor Lewan. He asked Theo Von if he still uses cocaine (the comedian told the teetotaling president that the white powder “will turn you into a damn owl, homie”).
The conversations did not resemble anything like Frost v. Nixon. Podcasts are certainly much cheaper and less serious. They were instrumental, all the same, in turning out young men who are famously low-propensity voters.
Harris sought to make the race a referendum on Trump. She described him as a threat to democracy generally and an opponent of abortion rights specifically. For his part, he called illegal immigration “the biggest issue” and an inflation-addled economy “the second.”
A senior Trump adviser told RealClearPolitics it was “more like ‘Issue 1A and 1B,’ but immigration is one of them.” Either way, the economic frustrations and security fears were enough to deliver Trump a majority despite the criminal indictments and felony convictions that Democrats had hoped would throttle his candidacy. Those legal challenges made Trump the symbol of conservative martyrdom. It became visceral at the fairground in Butler, Pennsylvania, this summer when an assassin’s bullet clipped his ear. The photo of the bloody Republican pumping his fist in defiance instantly became an image for the ages.
“This is what happens when the machine comes after you,” bellowed Ultimate Fight Championship President Dana White from the main stage here Tuesday night. “He keeps going forward. He doesn’t quit. He’s the most resilient, hardworking man that I’ve ever met in my life.” Referring to Trump’s victory in the face of the challenges, White said, “This is karma.”
Whatever cosmic forces were at play, victory was not guaranteed. While Trump seemed poised to handle Biden, Harris promised to be a tougher challenge after she delivered a shot of adrenaline straight into progressive hearts. She brought in more fundraising dollars, campaigned alongside celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé Knowles, and turned the race into the definition of a dead heat.
Doubt crept into Republican hearts in the final days, especially after The Atlantic magazine reported that morale inside the Republican campaign was cratering. A senior Trump aide texted RealClearPolitics to say the opposite: “Morale is decidedly very high at this current moment.”
According to longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, Democrats have only themselves to blame for what happened in this election.
“If you want to make somebody iconic, try to throw them in jail, try to bankrupt them,” said the infamous political operative. “If you want to make somebody iconic, cook up a fake hoax to justify their removal from the presidency,” he added in reference to once-en-vogue allegations that Trump was a Russian asset. “And if you really want to make somebody iconic, try to kill them.”
Stone was not alone in viewing the political attacks—and the attempts on Trump’s life, which Democrats condemned—in the same category: “All those things failed,” he said. “They just made him bigger and more powerful.”
Trump has now dispensed with three Democratic Party opponents—Clinton in 2016 and both Biden and Harris in 2024. Each opponent had the money advantage and what was billed as a much more sophisticated political apparatus. He was able to do this, some Republicans like to say, because he was on a mission from the Almighty. But despite the personal invectives against enemies and frequent calls for retribution that defined his campaign, in his victory speech the president-elect made little mention of his opponent. He was philosophical the morning of his win.
“Many people have told me God spared my life for a reason,” Trump said, “and that reason was to save our country, and to restore America to greatness, and now we are going to fulfill that mission together.”
Congressional majorities are a handy thing to have in that kind of endeavor.
The GOP picked up three Senate seats to secure the upper chamber, while control of the House of Representatives was still too close to call but within reach. The highest-ranking Republican currently in office, House Speaker Mike Johnson, joined Trump on stage. Perhaps signaling that he didn’t have patience for more intramural infighting, he thanked Johnson by name and told the crowd, “I think he’s doing a terrific job.” More work will follow.
Trump has already remade the Republican Party in his own image, greatly diminishing the interventionist and libertarian wings of the GOP in the process. He now promises sweeping tariffs, a strategic retreat from global conflicts such as the land war in Ukraine, and an incessant focus on domestic challenges—the southern border chief among them. “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” he insisted. The country only needs to follow his prescription to achieve “a golden age.”
Running against him in a third election, Democrats felt they finally knew what to make of Trump. Clinton made light of his many flaws the first time. Biden defeated him during the second election by painting him as a threat to democracy. For her part, Harris attempted to split the difference.
“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she told her fellow Democrats at their Chicago convention to hearty laughter. “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious,” added the vice president—who is slated to soon preside over the certification of his election.
Some of the Republicans who came out to cheer Trump early Wednesday morning saw things similarly, especially the younger ones. They laughed at his unserious moments and listened earnestly to his serious warnings. One example was Caden Caouette, a Florida State University freshman who repurposed a Trump-Pence shirt by covering the name of the former vice president with a piece of masking tape with Vance written in Sharpie letters.
“These last couple of years really speak to it,” he said. “The economy has been bad, and then everybody crossing the border. A lot of work needs to get done, and Trump’s the man to do it.”
A first-time voter, Caouette stood outside the convention center just hours before his morning classes for a chance to cheer on the champion who had once again upended American politics. The podcasts, particularly the one with Rogan last month, he said, served as “a reminder” to vote because it was “not just something I could skip.”
A now certain return to the Oval Office, even for a larger-than-life figure like Trump, once seemed a stretch. In the end, it wasn’t.
Below is my column in Fox.com on the rising rage in this election. This week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul added her voice to the rage and said that anyone voting for Trump is “anti American.” Despite such statements, I found a reason to be hopeful in a brief encounter on my way to New York for the election coverage.
Here is the column:
When President Joe Biden took the podium in his hometown of Scranton, Pa., to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, many expected a return to the “self-professed unifier” Biden from the 2020 election, particularly after his recent comments calling tens of millions of Trump supporters “garbage.” If so, they were disappointed when it turned out to be the “take him behind the Gym” Biden. Speaking through clenched teeth, Biden seethed that he wanted to “smack [Trump] in the ass.” Even with the Harris campaign alarmed over his costly gaffes, Biden clearly could not resist the rage. He is not alone.
This entire election seems to be a type of political roid rage. In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how rage rhetoric and rage politics have long been part of our history. Politicians will often intentionally trigger rage to rally voters not in support of their policies but in opposition to their opponents.
However, Biden’s seeming inability to keep his rage in check is a common feature of this rage politics. As I wrote in the book, “rage is liberating, even addictive. It allows us to say and do things that we would ordinarily avoid, even denounce in others.” It is also contagious. Across the country, people are yelling at neighbors, tearing down signs, and even assaulting each other. What they are unwilling to admit is that they enjoy the rage. They like it.
As someone who has written about rage rhetoric and covered presidential elections for over two decades for different networks, I should be accustomed to these scenes. I am not. From the scenes outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan to the scenes outside of political rallies in Virginia, I find the rage depressing and deflating.
However, in flying to New York this weekend to join the Fox election coverage, I had a moment of real hope. I was driven to the airport by a man who told me that he was just months from his citizenship and how he and his wife were so thankful to soon be U.S. citizens. He came from a MiddleEastern nation where he long admired the United States for its freedoms, particularly the freedom of speech. Indeed, in his home country, he constantly ran into trouble with his government and was warned by his imam that he had to stop acting “like an American” by speaking his mind. He could not shut up, so he decided to become an American instead.
He then told me how confused he and his wife are by this election. They love the United States and cannot understand why people are so hateful and angry. “It is like they do not understand what they have here,” he noted.
Listening to him over the course of our ride, I started to feel something that I had not felt in a while: real hope.
Sometimes, our truest citizens are found among our newest converts. As I discuss in my book, the problem with our democracy is that most citizens grew up in a nation where basic rights like the freedom of speech are guaranteed. They have never known the absence of such rights. This man and his wife have. They were not born here. They had to escape their country at great peril and cost to become U.S. citizens. They chose us and what we stand for.
They follow other great Americans drawn to these shores by something unique about this country. One was Tom Paine. The man who was credited with rallying a nation behind a revolution only landed upon these shores two years before the Declaration of Independence. His rocketing to fame with the publication of Common Sense enraged some, like John Adams, who viewed him as an unkempt, unknown rabble-rouser.
Yet, it was precisely Paine’s immigration that gave his words such clarity and power. He saw this emerging nation as unique for all of humanity, a nation where citizens could live free without the calcified social, economic, and political limits of the Old World. His voice resonated with this nation because it was so genuine and authentic.
I heard that same voice on my way to the airport. Sometimes, it takes the newest among us to remind us of who we are to not only the rest of the world but also to each other.
I do not know what is coming out of that gate on election night. I have been there before. However, half of this country is going to be very, very upset either way this goes. What we need to struggle to remember is that this election does not define us. The rage does not define us. We defined ourselves almost 250 years ago and do so every day that new citizens like my new friend come to these shores. There is hope in who we are . . . even if we forget sometimes.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
The Georgia Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Democrat-run Cobb County cannot accept thousands of absentee ballots that arrive after the Election Day deadline. Cobb County announced on Thursday that as of Oct. 30, “more than 3,000 absentee ballots requested by last Friday’s deadline had not been mailed.”
Cobb County Board of Elections Chairwoman Tori Silas said that the county was “taking every possible step to get these ballots to the voters who requested them” but that the county was “unprepared for the surge in requests and lacked the necessary equipment to process the ballots quickly.” While absentee ballot requests had “been averaging 440 per day … that number surged to 750 per day” during the final week to request an absentee ballot, the county said.
To remedy the issue, the county announced on Thursday that it would overnight the late ballots for a Friday morning (Nov. 1) delivery with “prepaid express return envelopes to ensure voters can return them by Tuesday’s deadline.”
But on Friday, the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a suit arguing that, despite the county taking steps to get the ballots delivered to voters by Friday, voters would be “disenfranchised.”
Cobb County Judge Robert Flournoy bought the bogus argument, ruling on Friday that the 3,000 or so voters who received a late mail-in ballot could return those ballots before 5 p.m. on Nov. 8 — three full days after Election Day — as long as the ballots were postmarked by 7 p.m. on Nov. 5.
The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party appealed the ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court, arguing that state law mandates the return of absentee ballots on Election Day and that since Cobb County paid for express return postage and overnighted the ballots to voters in order to — as Cobb County said — “ensure voters can return [the ballots] by Tuesday’s deadline,” there is no need to extend the date for acceptance.
The appeal also argued that Georgia “does not guarantee a right to vote by mail.” Rather, “Voters still have many options to vote, including by voting in person or delivering their absentee ballots in person.”
The Georgia Supreme Court agreed, granting the RNC and Georgia GOP’s motion to pause the lower court ruling. This means any late-arriving absentee ballots will not be counted. The court also ordered the late-arriving ballots sent in by the 3,000 voters to be segregated until further notice from the court.
Voters who did not receive their mail-in ballot may vote in person on Tuesday.
“Democrat-run Cobb County wanted to accept 3,000 absentee ballots AFTER the Election Day deadline. We took this case to the Georgia Supreme Court. We just got word that we WON the case. Election Day is Election Day — not the week after,” Whatley said.
“We will keep fighting, keep winning, and keep sharing updates.”
For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
Democrats are already starting to play the blame game with less than one week left before the presidential election, reports The Hill. Some have looked to fault President Joe Biden for not stepping down sooner while others say Vice President Kamala Harris has been off message on the economy.
“People are nervous, and they’re trying to cover their a** and get a little ahead of Election Day,” one Democratic told the news outlet. “It’s based on anxiety, stakes, and the unique nature of this cycle.’
“We didn’t have a traditional process for this election. We didn’t have a primary. People just had to fall in line,” the strategist added, saying “it’s not surprising to me” that some of the blame game is happening.
If Harris loses, “there will be a mad dash to assign blame,” the person said.
Another aide told the Hill Harris’ decision to pick Tim Walz as her running mate would also be picked apart should she lose to GOP nominee Donald Trump.
“[Harris] is going to look real silly for not picking [Josh] Shapiro,” one former aide in the Obama White House said.
“I’m not sure Walz got her anything. A lot of people I’m talking to say he seems like a great guy,” a Democrat donor told The Hill.
“Would I want to have a beer with him? Absolutely. But let’s face it, he wasn’t a great choice.”
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
Christina Lewis is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.
As Americans prepare to head to the polls on Nov. 5, some voters are putting their money where their mouth is by placing bets on the election’s outcome. With less than a week left before the election, Polymarket, a betting platform and the world’s largest prediction market, gives former President Donald Trump a two-thirds chance (66.3%) of winning back the presidency. Vice President Kamala Harris has a one-in-three chance (33.8%).
Behind the overall odds of becoming president are Polymarket’s odds for Trump and Harris in the major swing states. Trump, according to Polymarket, is the favorite to win five of the six tracked swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Michigan is currently a dead heat, while Polymarket does not include North Carolina among the swing states on its webpage.
Polymarket users are placing their bets on Trump in the state of Nevada, home to the gambling mecca of Las Vegas. Currently, the betting platform has Trump with a 66% chance of winning the Silver State, while Harris has a 34% chance.
The polls, however, show the race much closer. Real Clear Polling averages show Trump winning by only 0.7 of a percentage point. Why, then, do the betting markets seem fairly confident of a Trump victory there?
For one thing, Nevada is home to one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, at 5.6%. The state’s economy is still reeling from the havoc caused by the COVID-19 lockdowns. Trump is planning to address the housing crisis and inflation when he visits the state for a rally in Henderson on Thursday afternoon.
In Arizona, Trump is seen as having a 74% chance of winning, whereas Harris has just a 26% chance. However, Real Clear Polling averages show Trump winning by 1.3 percentage points. Trump won the state in 2016 by 3.6 points, but lost to Joe Biden in 2020 by 0.3%.
Polymarket shows Trump with a 73% chance of winning Georgia, Harris with a 27% chance.
Shelby Arnette moved to Georgia four years ago and has noticed that she and her husband are receiving different political messaging that seems to be targeted at their respective genders.
“I have seen different signs and things specifically advertising toward women to vote Democrat to have reproductive rights,” Arnette said.
There’s a smaller margin between Trump and Harris in Wisconsin, according to Polymarket, with a 55% chance of a Trump victory there and a 45% chance of Harris winning the state. In 2016, Trump won the state by 0.7% but lost to Biden by 0.7% in 2020.
Polymarket shows a dead heat in Michigan, 50% to 50%. The state is still up for grabs, as Democrats are targeting women on the issue of abortion, while Trump is banking on support from the state’s autoworkers.
Trump invited a group of Arab and Muslim leaders to speak at his rally in Novi, Michigan, on Saturday.
“We as Muslims stand with President Trump because he promises peace, not war,” one speaker at the rally said. “We are supporting Donald Trump because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine. The bloodshed has to stop all over the world, and I think this man can make it happen.”
As all eyes turn to Pennsylvania, seen by many as the most important of the swing states, Polymarket shows Trump with a 62% chance of winning the state, with Harris trailing at a distant 38%. But again, Real Clear Polling averages put Trump in the lead by a much smaller margin—0.4 of a percentage point.
Pennsylvania resident Ruth Howard moved to the Keystone State from Oregon a few years ago. She said that she thinks Pennsylvania will play a pivotal role in the presidential election.
“I knew it was important to vote in [Oregon], but then coming to Pennsylvania, I feel like there’s a little more opportunity that my vote will make a difference, that it could help swing the state or politics in particular,” Howard said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Monday told voters in Pennsylvania that the “little secret” former President Trump mentioned at his Madison Square Garden rally is a get-out-the-vote strategy, not something “diabolical.”
Democrats have been in panic since Trump teased Sunday that his “little secret” with Johnson would help Republicans keep the House of Representatives come Election Day. A New York Times article suggested that in the worst-case scenario, Democrats feared Johnson would work with Trump to steal the election and stop the certification of results on Jan. 6. 2025, should Vice President Harris win.
“It’s nothing scandalous, but we’re having a ball with this. The media, their heads are exploding. ‘What is the secret?’” Johnson said Monday at an event for GOP congressional candidate Ryan Mackenzie, according to The Hill.
“It’s a thing we have about — it’s a get-out-the-vote. It’s one of our tactics on get-out-the-vote,” Johnson said in response to a voter’s question about Trump’s comment.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, speaks during a campaign event with former President Donald Trump, not pictured, at Madison Square Garden in New York on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (Getty Images)
“But they are convinced,” the speaker added, jokingly rubbing his hands together like he had an evil plan.
On Sunday, Trump said his “little secret” with Johnson would help Republicans win congressional elections, but he otherwise kept tight-lipped about it.
“I think with our little secret we’re going to do really well with the House, right?” Trump said, directing his remarks at Johnson. “Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret — we will tell you what it is when the race is over.”
His comments, delivered with a chuckle, set off a reported wave of fear and panic among Democrats who speculated that Trump could have been referring to attempts to steal the election.
Trump waves goodbye after a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27, 2024 in New York City. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., told the Times he took Trump to mean he had a “backup plan” in case Republicans lose the election.
“There’s a lot of ability for a bad actor to mess with the Electoral College if he’s the speaker of the House,” he said. “If I’m wrong, they should say so. Trump has a lot of secrets: His medical records are secret, his taxes are secret, his phone calls with Vladimir Putin are secret. Clearly he hides a lot from the American people. Now he’s openly stated that he’s hiding something from the electorate.”
In comments to The Hill, Johnson called the rampant speculation that he and Trump were planning to break the law after the election “absolute, utter nonsense.”
Johnson said that Trump was joking about a GOP get out the vote strategy when he discussed their “little secret” at a rally at Madison Square Garden. (Getty Images)
“I’m a lifelong constitutional law attorney. We’re going to respect the law. We’re going to follow the constitution to a T,” Johnson told the outlet. “I’ve proven that over and over and over. So all this conjecture is actually hilarious to us, that people are apoplectic about this. It’s a — it’s one of our get out the vote strategies. That’s what we’re talking about. And it’s almost a tongue-in-cheek thing.”
Reached for comment, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital, “President Trump has done countless telerallies reaching millions of Americans across the country in key regions that also helps bolster Republicans in congressional races.”
In Pennsylvania, Johnson said Trump refers to this get-out-the-vote effort as their “secret.”
“It’s not diabolical,” he said, per The Hill. “It’s actually very good. It’s going to help us with the turnout. All this is blowing their minds. They just can’t — They cannot fathom that Trump and Vance have the support that they do around the country like they do from — from new demographics of people.”
Chris Pandolfo is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital. Send tips to chris.pandolfo@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @ChrisCPandolfo.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Mainstream leftist media, along with the Democrats (The Party of the KKK), are trying their best to falsely paint Trump and MAGA as Nazis. Maybe it’s time to remind them of the true horrific past of the Democrat party with this scary costume.
Disgusting Creep Tim Walz Follows Hillary’s Lead and Compares Trump Supporters in Madison Square Garden to Nazis
By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – Oct 27, 2024
Tim Walz joined Hillary Clinton and compared Trump supporters at Madison Square Garden today to see Trump to 1930s Nazis. Tim Walz: Donald Trump has descended into madness over the last few weeks. I think some of you don’t miss on this. Go do your Google on this. Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden. There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden. Don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there. What a nasty dog. They have nothing left in their arsenal, so they’re hurling the Nazi slur. Sick stuff. (READ MORE)
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Below is my column in The Hill on the recent poll of university professors in this election. It speaks volumes about the composition of higher education today. Here is the column: The 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be the single most divisive election in our history. The public is split right down the middle with almost every group splintering between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. There is, however, one group that seems almost unanimous: professors.
A new survey of more than 1,000 professors shows that seventy-eight percent will vote for Harris and only eight percent will vote for Trump. Other than a poll of the Democratic National Committee, there are few groups that are more reliably Democratic or liberal.
For anyone in higher education, the result is hardly surprising. The poll tracks what we already know about the gradual purging of departments around the country of conservative, libertarian, and dissenting professors. Indeed, the lack of political and intellectual diversity may be turning some donors and even applicants from higher education. With failing revenue and applications, universities are starting to re-embrace commitments to neutrality on political issues.
Some, however, are doubling down on advocacy and orthodoxy.
In an op-ed this week, Wesleyan University President Michael Roth called on universities to reject “institutional neutrality” and officially support Kamala Harris. Calling neutrality “a retreat,” Roth compared Trump’s election to the rise of the Nazis and insisted that schools should “give up the popular pastime of criticizing the woke and call out instead the overt racism.”
He added, without a hint of self-awareness or irony, that “we should not be silenced because of fears of appearing partisan.”
That ideological echo chamber is hardly an enticement for many who are facing rising high tuition costs with relatively little hope of being taught by faculty with opposing views.
There are obviously many reasons why faculty may reject Trump specifically, but this poll also tracks more generally the self-identification and contributions of faculty.
A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.
Notably, Roth acknowledged that the current lack of intellectual diversity in higher education had become so extreme that there might be a need for “an affirmative action program for conservatives.” However, he and others continue to saw feverishly on the branch upon which we all sit in higher education in calling for even greater political advocacy.
There is little evidence that faculty members have any interest in changing this culture or creating greater diversity at schools. In places like North Carolina State University a study found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 20 to 1.
Recently, I had a debate at Harvard Law School with Professor Randall Kennedy on whether Harvard protects free speech and intellectual diversity. This year, Harvard found itself in a familiar spot on the annual ranking of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): dead last among 251 universities and colleges. Harvard has long dismissed calls for greater free speech protections or intellectual diversity. It shows. The Harvard Crimson has documented how the school’s departments have virtually eliminated Republicans. In one study of multiple departments last year, they found that more than 75 percent of the faculty self-identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.”
Only 5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
Consider that, according to Gallup, the U.S. population is roughly equally divided among conservatives (36%), moderates (35%), and liberals (26%). So, Harvard has three times the number of liberals as the nation at large and less than three percent identify as “conservative’ rather than 35% nationally.
Among law school faculty who have donated more than $200 to a political party, a breathtaking 91 percent of the Harvard faculty gave to democrats. The student body shows the same bias of selection. Harvard Crimson previously found that only 7 percent of incoming students identified as conservative. For the vast majority of liberal faculty and students, Harvard amplifies rather than stifles their viewpoints.
This does not happen randomly. Indeed, if a business reduced the number of women or minorities to less than 5 percent, a court would likely find de facto discrimination. Yet, Kennedy rejected the notion that the elite school should strive to “look more like America.”
It is not just that schools like Harvard “do not look like America,” it does not even look like liberal Massachusetts, which is almost 30 percent Republican. Our students are being educated by faculty taken from the same liberal elite of just 26 percent of our nation.
Some sites like Above the Law have supported the exclusion of conservative faculty. Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” by arguing that hiring a conservative law professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university.
The result is that law students at schools like Harvard have relatively few faculty to reflect the views of half of the judiciary and the majority of the Supreme Court. Likewise, having a faculty that ranges from the left to the far left further marginalizes the small number of conservative students. The impact of this academic echo chamber is evident in surveys showing that 28 percent of Harvard students engaged in self-censorship — a figure doubling since just 2021.
Given my respect for Professor Kennedy, I was surprised that he dismissed the sharp rise in students saying that they did not feel comfortable speaking in classes. Referring to them as “conservative snowflakes,” he insisted that they simply had to have the courage of their convictions. This ignores that they depend upon professors for recommendations and their challenging the orthodoxy at the school can threaten their standing.
Moreover, Kennedy defended cancel campaigns or “disinvitations” of speakers as a form of free speech. As students see faculty supporting the cancelling of conservative or libertarian or dissenting speakers, it is hardly an invitation to speak freely yourself in class.
There was a hopeful aspect, however, to the debate. Before the debate the large audience voted heavily in favor of Harvard’s position. However, after the debate, they overwhelming voted against Harvard’s position on free speech. It is an example of how exposure to opposing views can change the bias or assumptions in higher education.
There is little likelihood that Harvard or higher education will change. It is like the old joke about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb. The answer is just one, but the bulb really has to want to change.
Academics like Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, have denounced conservative justices as mere “partisan hacks.” Other faculty have joined in claims that Trump and his supporters are “fascists” out to destroy democracy. It is only likely to get worse after the election.
The political polling of professors reflects the near complete cleansing of colleges of conservative faculty. The question is whether donors or applicants will continue to support an echo chamber that has become ideologically deafening.
The Pravda press has asked former President Donald Trump over and over again whether he’ll accept the results of the election if his Democrat opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, wins. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, has heard the question ad nauseam as well.
CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns peppered the former president with the question in late August, as the Democratic National Committee was installing Harris as the party’s nominee following President Joe Biden’s forced exit from his reelection campaign.
“Will you accept the results of this election?” the reporter asked.
“Absolutely. I assume it’s going to be a fair election. If it’s going to be a fair and free election the answer is absolutely I will,” Trump said.
Burns pressed with this ridiculous question. “What does fair mean to you?”
“It means the votes are counted. It means that votes are fair,” Trump said. “It means they don’t cheat on the election, they don’t drop ballots, install new rules and regulations that they don’t have the power to do.”
In other words, if leftist activists and Trump-hating elections officials don’t rig this election like they did the last one.
“They don’t use 51 intelligence agents to give phony reports, which had an effect on the election. They don’t do many of the things that they did in the last election,” he added, referring to the former intelligence officials who signed a letter insisting the Hunter Biden laptop story reported by the New York Post days before the 2020 presidential election was “Russian disinformation.” It was not. It was very real. And the Deep State, assisted by a complicit corporate media, silenced a story that many Americans say could have changed the results of the election.
Do Tell
But the Pravda press has been generally loath to ask Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the same question. The Federalist is asking. We sent email requests to both the Harris campaign and the vice president’s office asking if she will accept the results of the election if she loses next month to Trump. As of publication, crickets.
The Federalist also asked the National Security Leaders for America whether their members will accept the results of the election if the former president wins. NSL4A made headlines and garnered lots of airtime last month when its 700-plus former government, military and national security leaders signed an open letter endorsing Harris. Former CIA Director John Brennan is one of the endorsers. He’s also one of the 51 signers of the letter falsely claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
Again, no response.
A good question voters should be asking is, why aren’t the accomplice media asking whether Harris, the Democrats, the intelligence community and other swamp creatures will be patriotic enough to accept the results of the election if Trump wins?
They Do Not Accept
They’ve been far too busy publishing all kinds of stories asking all kinds of conservatives whether they’ll accept the results of the election if their guy loses — Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.), even Republican voters at large via variouspolls. They’re the same “journalists” who like to gloss over the fact that leading Democrats refused to accept the election results of 2016, when Trump surprised the world and beat bitter shrew Hillary Clinton, Obama’s former secretary of state and the Pravda press’ presidential chosen one.
“I do not see this president-elect as a legitimate president,” the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., told NBC News as Trump was taking office amid Democrats’ cries of “Russian interference.”
“I think there was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians and others that helped him get elected. That’s not right. That’s not fair. That’s not the open democratic process,” he added.
Sour Grapes Hillary said the same and has kept on saying since.
“I believe [Trump] understands that the many varying tactics they used, from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories — he knows that — there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did,” she complained in a 2019 CBS News interview.
During the vice presidential debate between Vance and Walz, moderator Norah O’Donnell demanded Vance answer whether he would “seek to challenge this year’s election results.” She didn’t press Walz on whether he would accept the results of a Trump-Vance win.
Walz was given a moment to deliver a “can’t we all get along” speech, insisting that questioning the results of elections must end.
“When this is over, we need to shake hands, this election, and the winner needs to be the winner,” the leftist said. “This has got to stop. It’s tearing our country apart.”
Vance rightly reminded Walz about the hypocrisy of the Democrat Party.
“…[W]e have to remember that for years in this country Democrats protested the results of elections. Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought like $500,000 of Facebook ads,” Vance said. “This has been going on for a long time. And if we want to say we need to respect the results of the election, I’m on board. But if we want to say, as Tim Walz is saying, that this is just a problem that Republicans have had, I don’t buy that.”
Voters shouldn’t buy it, either. That’s why it’s important to know where the Democrat Party presidential nominee stands less than two weeks before Election Day. So, The Federalist is asking.
Vice President Harris, will you accept the results of the election if you lose?
An official with National Security Leaders for America has provided a comment following the publication of this story. The official, who asked to be identified as an NSL4A “spokesperson” said the following:
“Unlike Mr. Trump, who led a violent insurrection to try to overturn an election he lost, our members–who fought for this nation’s democratic and pluralistic ideals–will respect America’s democratic decision. We hope Mr. Trump, whose own Chief of Staff said Mr.Trump wants to be a dictator, will do the same.”
As has been well documented, Trump’s former chief of staff’s incendiary comments have been debunked by multiple sources, and the assertion that Trump “led a violent insurrection” is widely disputed.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
Kamala Harris speaks during a July 13 campaign event at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. (Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)
As Vice President Kamala Harris slips in the polls, the Democratic National Committee/Harris campaign/mainstream media fusion talking points become even more absurd. Claiming that JD Vance and Donald Trump were “weird” did not work—especially given the genuinely odd behavior of vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz and would-be first gentleman Doug Emhoff.
Nor was the next Harris meme convincing: that the frenetic and nonstop Trump was somehow “exhausted,” “senile,” and “confused.” Voters know the workdays of the younger Harris are usually far shorter—or sometimes not workdays at all.
But Harris also falsely claimed the physically and mentally challenged President Joe Biden was, in her words, “absolutely authoritative” and “very bold and vibrant.”
Now Harris asserts that Trump is a “fascist,” a “dictator,” and “unfit” for office. But this new talking point will also not stop the Harris campaign’s hemorrhaging—and for a variety of reasons.
First, voters see the election as a conflict of two absolutely antithetical visions.
On the one hand is the prior, concrete Trump 2017-20 record: border security, no major wars abroad, calm in the Middle East, a deterred Russia, Iran, and China, low inflation, low interest rates, lower crime, lower taxes, strong deterrent military—and opposition to mandatory electric vehicle mandates, biological males competing in women’s sports, and the woke/DEI agenda.
On the other hand, is the Biden-Harris 2021-2024 record: the unchecked entry of 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and a destroyed border. People still struggle under Biden-Harris’ earlier hyperinflation and high interest rates. The horrific regional wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue. Biden-Harris embraces the unpopular woke/DEI agenda.
Harris herself knows that the Biden-Harris years were a failure. That is why she has shed almost all of the administration’s hard left-wing agendas—policies she has embraced for much of her adult life.
So suddenly, in the last 90 or so days, Harris has completely flipped and flopped.
Now she is for more funding of, not defunding, the police. She pivots for a secure border, not 20 million illegal aliens pouring across it. Harris brags about fossil fuel energy, not banning fracking; she’s for increasing, not cutting, defense.
In fact, several endangered incumbent Democratic senators in swing states are claiming more allegiance to Trump’s issues than identifying with Harris and her unpopular record as vice president.
Voters likely conclude that if Trump doubles down on his record, while even Harris and many senators temporarily piggyback on it, then it must be more effective and popular than Harris’ own.
Second, Harris now claims Trump is a fascist and insurrectionist.
But mouthing “Jan. 6” ad nauseam no longer persuades voters that Trump is a danger to anyone. They recall that Harris bragged of the far more violent demonstrations of 2020—five killed, $2 billion in damage, 1,500 law enforcement officers injured, 14,000 arrested—and said that the unrest would not and “should not” stop, while drumming up support to bail out jailed violent protesters.
Nor does the slur that Trump is a fascist resonate. The Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris administrations weaponized the CIA and FBI to interfere in the 2016 and 2020 elections by peddling the fake “Steele dossier” and suppressing all the embarrassing news about Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop.
Trump certainly didn’t coordinate, as Biden did, with local, state, and federal prosecutors to wage lawfare prosecutions to destroy his political opponents. He didn’t use the FBI to partner with social media to suppress the news.
Neither Trump nor his supporters tried to remove Biden from state ballots.
The House’s Republican majority didn’t impeach Biden twice despite the Biden family’s corruption and Joe Biden’s unlawful, decadeslong removal of classified papers to several insecure private residences.
Trump and the Republicans never coercively removed the party’s primary-winning nominee. They didn’t nullify the will of 14 million primary voters. And in backroom fashion, they didn’t anoint a candidate who had never entered a single primary in her life.
Nor did Trump support packing the Supreme Court. He doesn’t seek unconstitutional means of destroying the Electoral College. He isn’t demanding an end to the Senate filibuster or the creation of two new states to obtain four partisan Senate seats.
Third, as for Trump being “unfit” and lacking “decorum?” It depends on what the Biden-Harris standards were.
Having a trans activist reveal his breasts on camera at a White House “pride party?”
Biden’s reportedly calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a f***ing idiot” and “son of a b**ch?” Bragging about locking Trump up, while waging lawfare against him?
Unleashing son Hunter Biden with impunity to shake down foreign governments?
The Nov. 5 election will not be decided on these empty talking points or fake, media-generated narratives.
Instead, only two criteria matter: Which candidate’s past record and current agenda best appeal to voters? And which candidate seems the most authentic and genuine?
A.F. Branco Cartoon — Harris-Biden’s last four years in office have been a total wreck on the American people, and now that she’s running for another four years, she says that she’ll fix it, but according to the latest polls, fewer voters believe her.
GOING VIRAL: Anderson Cooper Drops Bomb on Kamala Harris: You’ve Been in the White House For 4 Years. Why Haven’t You Done Any of This Already?
Cristina Laila – The Gateway Pundit – Oct 23, 2024
Kamala Harris participated in a CNN town hall for undecided voters on Wednesday night. She completely bombed. Kamala Harris did so bad that even CNN admitted she ‘didn’t close the deal’ with voters. CNN moderator Anderson Cooper pointed out to Harris that there are voters out there who say that day one for her started almost four years ago. Kamala Harris keeps promising to secure the border and bring down the price of groceries. (READ MORE)
A.F. Branco Cartoon — Desperation has consumed the Harris campaign, which has brought out the “Trump is Hitler” card just 12 days before the election. Kamala echoed a debunked comment by Trump’s ex-disgruntled Chief of Staff John Kelly. October surprise?
President Trump Slams ‘Comrade’ Kamala and ‘Low Life’ John Kelly’s Disgusting ‘Hitler’ Allegations as Desperate Election Ploy Just 2 Weeks Before Voting
By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – Oct 24, 2024
With just 12 days left before Election Day, the Democrats and their allies are pulling out all the stops, launching baseless attacks to smear President Trump. On Wednesday, Kamala Harris pushed a tired, debunked hoax published by The Atlantic, being owned by a Kamala’s personal friend Laurene Powell Jobs. Harris seized upon a claim from Trump’s former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, who conveniently “remembered” just in time for the election that Trump allegedly praised Adolf Hitler—an absurd and false claim. This latest smear came as part of a coordinated effort by Harris and the Democrats, desperate to shift the narrative away from their failing policies and lackluster campaign.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – It’s been a lousy week for Kamala and a great week for Trump as he surges ahead in the polls. The mainstream media and the Democrats ridiculed Trump for showing up for a campaign stop at McDonald’s, but it turned out to be an ingenious move politically. No worries, Kamala, I hear McDonald’s is hiring.
War Room Guest Host Dave Bossie Discusses President Trump Dominating the Polls with Rasmussen Pollster Mark Mitchell (VIDEO)
By David Greyson – The Gateway Pundit – Oct 22, 2024
** Please keep our friend and political prisoner Steve Bannon – the founder of The War Room – in your thoughts and prayers during this time. War Room guest host Dave Bossie discussed President Trump dominating in the polls with Rasmussen pollster Mark Mitchell on Tuesday. Mitchell said that President Trump is doing better in the polls now than in 2016. “Instead of taking a bottom-up approach, I would take a top-down approach because Donald Trump is polling better than he did in 2016,” Mitchell said. (READ MORE)
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Alfonso Aguilar is director of Hispanic Engagement at American Principles Project and former chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship in the administration of President George W. Bush. Follow him on X: @amigoaguilar
Hispanic voters are bolting from the Democrats faster than Kamala Harris can say “Latinx.” This is one of the most significant trends in this year’s presidential campaign. The growing discontent is a result of economic frustration as well as a broader cultural clash over values, as many Hispanics reject the Biden-Harris administration’s radical positions on gender ideology and parental rights.
According to the most recent NBC/Telemundo poll, Harris leads former President Donald Trump with Hispanic voters by 14 percentage points. However, that is the smallest margin for a Democrat in over a decade. Every other presidential Democratic candidate since 2012 had an advantage of at least 36 points and, eventually, went on to win the Hispanic vote by similarly significant margins.
The NBC poll is far from an outlier. The latest Quinnipiac University survey shows that Harris’ lead among Hispanics nationally is down to single digits. In the key battleground states of Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, Harris is only slightly ahead. In the border state of Arizona, Trump is actually winning the Hispanic vote. This increased support of Hispanics for Trump and Republicans is driven by several factors.
According to the Pew Research Center, the economy is the top issue for Hispanic voters. Often with larger families and lower median incomes, Hispanics have been disproportionately hurt by crippling inflation and the massive influx of illegal immigrants into their communities. Under Trump, Hispanic unemployment hit a record low of 4% and, contrary to common assumptions, more than half of Hispanic voters support stricter border security measures.
Yet Hispanics are also disgusted by the Biden-Harris administration’s extreme cultural agenda. Two-thirds identify as Catholic or Protestant. And it turns out they aren’t thrilled about the latest “woke” school offerings: teachers chatting about sex with their kids in class and allowing adult men access to girls’ locker rooms.
An American Principles Project survey of Hispanic voters in Arizona and Nevada revealed strong opposition to these progressive positions. Over two-thirds surveyed said schools should stick to teaching the fundamentals and leave “sex and racial issues” to parents. Hispanics are repulsed by the Left’s obsession with “transgender kids” and “transgender girls of color,” and reports that reveal 5,700 minors underwent sex-change surgeries in the United States in the last four years.
Trump is making inroads with Hispanic voters by slamming “transgender insanity” and running ads denouncing Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded sex-change treatments and surgeries.
The blitz against Harris on cultural issues has been so effective that even Democrat strategists had to “concede” to The New York Times that it is “taking a toll in some races.” But wait, the Democrats have an ingenious trick up their sleeve!
The Harris campaign announced the launch of a coalition called “Hombres con Harris”—literally, “Men With Harris.”
The campaign apparently hopes this new group will help stem the party’s losses among Hispanic men. Just like “White Dudes for Harris” has been so helpful for her support among Caucasian males. But in truth, it’s the Democrats’ far-left agenda, not a lack of awkwardly named affinity groups, that is repelling Hispanic voters. Hispanics have historically voted Democrat, but they do believe in common sense and that parents know what is best for their children.
If the Republican Party wants to solidify and expand its gains with Hispanic voters, it must continue to champion commonsense policies that prioritize family values, parental rights, and economic opportunity.
Hispanic voters have had enough of being treated like a checkbox for the Democrats. They’re making their voices heard, and this time, it might just sound like “Adios!”
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
Vice President Kamala Harris has so over-used her talking points about “growing up in a middle-class family” and about her “love of the American people and our “hopes, dreams, ambitions, and aspirations,” that they have become punch lines to jokes. That’s not a good macro-political sign for her presidential campaign. And neither are some of the numbers emerging from the smaller demographics she must have to win. One of those smaller units of the American electorate are the Arab Americans generally, and in Michigan specifically, and the news isn’t great for Team Harris there either.
In early October, the Arab American Institute released its poll of Arab Americans on the upcoming presidential election. The “top line” takeaway was very surprising: “Trump and Harris [are] in a virtual tie with Arab American voters (42-41%), with 12% supporting third-party candidates.”
I asked former President Trump why he was doing this well with this demographic, especially at the same time as his support among Jewish Americans is increasing?
“Because I want to see everything get worked out,” he replied. “I want peace,” he continued. “I don’t want to see people killed. I want peace, and they [Arab Americans] know that. And the Jewish people know that. And both sides like it and know that I can get peace.”
That’s a good answer, and perhaps it does account for a good chunk of some Arab Americans voting Trump, but the same poll revealed that when “asked to rank their top issues, the following were the top three for Arab American voters: jobs and the economy (39%), Gaza (26%) and gun violence (21%).” Turns out that this demographic cares the most about the same issue the entire electorate cares the most about: The economy. There was no cross-tab provided on how the 39% break down between Trump and Harris, but my guess is that, as with the electorate as a whole, Arab Americans who are worried about inflation and their jobs break for Trump.
Then there are the issues that very few pollsters ask about and which this poll didn’t. The first is “transgender rights” which can mean a lot of things to different people. But to at least many millions of voters it means this: Boys who identify as girls playing in girls’ sports and using girls’ locker rooms. The second issue not often polled is “reparations.” This issue was introduced into the campaign just this week when Vice President Harris was asked about reparations by podcaster “Charlamagne tha God” and the Democrat nominee declared the issue “needed to be studied.”
The Harris campaign has distanced itself from the controversy. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
“Americans view the prospect of reparations mostly negatively,” according to a 2021 Pew Research Study. “Three-in-ten U.S. adults say descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should be repaid in some way, such as given land or money,”Pew reported. 77% of Black Americans support reparations while only 39% of Hispanic Americans and 33% of Asian Americans do. (Arab Americans were not broken out in the polling.)
What about the first issue mentioned above? A super-majority of all Americans—69% according to Gallup—believe that “transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender.” But the Biden-Harris Administration has proposed new Title IX rules that have been widely viewed as mandating the right of transgender athletes to compete in the sports reserved for the biological category they identify with. To most voters that probably means “boys who identify as girls playing girls sports.”
While Harris has not spoken to this specific issue, she has adopted the very controversial position of taxpayer payment for prison inmates seeking to transition from one sex to another. (The Trump campaign has made Harris’s on-the-record support for these taxpayer payments part of their ad rotation.)
It is a guess, but a safe one, that conservative family cultures of the sort typical for Arab Americans—Muslim, Christian or agnostic—largely reject both reparations for Blacks and the idea of biological boys playing in girls’ sports.
That’s an informed guess because the Arab American Institute polling demonstrated that Arab Americans are in fact like most Americans on what matters most. Don’t be surprised when the post-election exit polling reveals that Arab Americans ended up supporting Trump in roughly the same percentage as all Americans and that they viewed Vice President Harris as simply too radical to take a chance on.
Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., pictured leaving the Senate chamber July 25, didn’t want noncitizens to vote when he was Virginia’s governor. (Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)
In 2006, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine signed a bipartisan bill requiring the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to provide a list of noncitizens’ names to the state’s Board of Elections for removal from the voter rolls.
Now, less than a month before Election Day, the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department is suing in hopes of restoring 6,303 noncitizens to Virginia’s voter rolls who were removed in August. Subsequent Virginia governors since Kaine, both Republican and Democrat, have overseen the removal of noncitizen voters from the rolls.
In August, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, signed an executive order to do so, in part relying on the 2006 law drafted by then-state Sen. Ken Cuccinelli.
“It passed without much controversy, about 2-1 in the Legislature, and then Tim [Kaine] signed it when he presented himself as a centrist,” Cuccinelli, a Republican who was elected as Virginia’s attorney general in 2009, told The Daily Signal.
“This is pure political timing,” Cuccinelli said of the Biden-Harris administration’s legal action. “These are literally people who self-identified as noncitizens.”
“If the purpose was to generate news, that’s what the DOJ has done,” he said. “They want noncitizens, both legal and illegal, to vote.”
Kaine, who signed the 2006 bill into law, went on to become a U.S. senator representing Virginia as well as Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate in 2016. The Daily Signal sought comment from Kaine’s Senate office as well as his reelection campaign.
Kaine’s campaign referred to a July interview with WJLA-TV (Channel 7), in which a reporter asked: “Should non-U.S. citizens vote in American elections?”
Kaine replied: “No. Voting should be reserved for U.S. citizens.”
The campaign also noted that a Kaine campaign spokesperson told WJLA on Wednesday:
Sen. Kaine believes that noncitizens should not vote in state or federal elections, and that’s why he signed legislation as governor to guard against it. It is illegal for noncitizens to vote and the good news is that there is no evidence that noncitizens have voted or are voting in Virginia.
And just as we want to block noncitizens from voting, we need to keep eligible voters from being purged from voting rolls, particularly just weeks from an election. Sen. Kaine is focused on making sure that every eligible Virginian has the opportunity to vote in this critical election.
The matter likely won’t be resolved in court by Election Day, Cuccinelli said, now the national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative. However, he said, the Justice Department’s lawsuit seems to be intended as a warning for other states not to clean up voter rolls.
The lawsuit alleges that Virginia’s removal of noncitizens from voter rolls violates the National Voter Registration Act, better known as the “motor voter law,” because the removal comes fewer than 90 days before an election. DOJ’s action follows a federal lawsuit filed by the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the League of Women Voters of Virginia in which those organizations make the same arguments.
“These liberal groups sued Virginia and then a few weeks later the Justice Department files the same lawsuit,” Katie Gorka, chair of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Republican Committee, told The Daily Signal.
“This shows they are nervous about Virginia,” Gorka said of leading Democrats. “It used to be a solidly blue state and now has moved to the middle and is a toss-up.”
“They are going for the optics and this is going to backfire. Americans overwhelmingly believe that only Americans should vote,” she said.
The plaintiffs in the private lawsuit in Virginia are represented by Campaign Legal Center, Protect Democracy, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Advancement Project.
Three organizations involved in the litigation—the League of Women Voters, the Advancement Project, and Campaign Legal Center—participated in a White House conference in 2021. That meeting was about implementing President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which directed federal agencies, including the Justice Department, to partner with private interest groups to boost voter registration and turnout.
As The Daily Signal previously reported, the Justice Department last month brought a similar lawsuit against Alabama for removing noncitizens from that state’s voter registration rolls. A similar lawsuit was brought against Alabama by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left organization known for labeling mainstream center-right organizations as “hate groups” similar to neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC also was represented at the White House conference on Biden’s election executive order.
The Justice Department has invoked “presidential privilege” to prevent release of its strategic plan for implementing Biden’s order of March 7, 2021.
Still, Cuccinelli said, he thinks “for sure” the Virginia litigation is tied to the president’s order.
“They are hiding communications all over the place,” the former Virginia attorney general said. “There is no way to treat these as privileged. It is pure collusion and weaponization of government through these outside groups.”
The Daily Signal sought comment from both of the private litigants in the Virginia case: the League of Women Voters and the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights. Neither responded. The Justice Department filed the lawsuit Oct. 11 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
“As the National Voter Registration Act mandates, officials across the country should take heed of the law’s crystal clear and unequivocal restrictions on systematic list maintenance efforts that fall within 90 days of an election,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“By canceling voter registrations within 90 days of Election Day, Virginia places qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls and creates the risk of confusion for the electorate,” Clarke said in the public statement. “Congress adopted the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period restriction to prevent error-prone, eleventh-hour efforts that all too often disenfranchise qualified voters.”
Vice President Kamala Harris confidently declared during her Univision town hall on Thursday night that she deserved the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee title she currently holds. The allegedly undecided voters who watched the Democrat and corporate media collusion to coup President Joe Biden out of power and replace him with Harris, however, aren’t so sure. One voter in the crowd at the Las Vegas event specifically asked the candidate to soothe his concerns that former President Joe Biden “was pushed aside” during Democrats’ 2024 presidential nomination process.
“I am honored to have earned the Democratic nomination. I am honored to have the endorsement of people from every walk of life,” Harris said, before commencing a rant about how former President Donald Trump would “terminate the Constitution of the United States.”
A voter tells Kamala he has big concerns about her shoving Biden aside and taking his place as the nominee without earning a single vote.
Contrary to her claims, Harris did nothing to “earn” her spot as Trump’s opponent in the race for the White House. Instead, she played a large role in the Democrats’ and the corporate media’s successful attempt to coup the flailing Biden out of future office.
When Biden was successfully couped out of the 2024 race, Harris was quickly handed a list of high-profile endorsements, something she made sure to mention in her town hall answer. But not even a good word from theClintons, Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, or NeverTrump Republicans can change Americans’ concerns that the VP and her Democrat allies altered the course of the 2024 election against voters’ wills.
Harris recently admitted during her “60 Minutes” sit down that “no one should be able to take for granted that they can just declare themselves a candidate and automatically receive support.”
“You have to earn it,” she explained.
KAMALA: “No one should be able to take for granted that they can just declare themselves a candidate and automatically receive support. You have to earn it.”
The government thinks people are stupid & can’t research for themselves. Well this woman 👇did! She went to the Federal Register and checked out Executive Orders that Presidents have signed, as well as those they revoked.
Nearly every time she opens her mouth, Harris lies to the people she claims she wants to represent. When she’s not spouting falsehoods that she knows her allies in the corporate media will refuse to fact-check, the VP is insulting voters everywhere by playing politics during devastating natural disasters and attempting to distance herself from the crises she helped create.
This young lady says a white liberal told her the MAGA crowd will never accept her
This is awesome. She says she left the plantation and if you don't like it, kick rocks
Just as the voter who questioned the circumstances surrounding Harris’ nomination suspected, the VP did nothing to “earn” his or any other Americans’ trust or vote. Instead, she’s done everything — including pledging to throw her political opponents in prison and trying to nuke the filibuster — to subdue those Americans’ voices and voting power.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, remained silent Thursday on whether he still supports eliminating the Electoral College, after the Harris campaign insisted his position did not reflect that of the campaign’s.
“I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a national popular vote,” Walz said Tuesday during a campaign fundraiser at the home of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Walz made similar comments at an earlier fundraiser in Seattle, as well.
While running for president in 2019, Harris said she was “open” to the idea of abolishing the Electoral College. However, according to campaign officials pressed on the issue following Walz’s remarks, eliminating the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote is not an official position of Harris’ current campaign.
Fox News Digital reached out to representatives for Walz repeatedly to inquire whether he still supports replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote, particularly after his campaign came out against it. A response was never received, but the Harris-Walz campaign did release a statement to certain news outlets suggesting Walz’s remarks were intended to express support for the Electoral College process.
U.S. Electoral College map shows number of electoral votes by state. (Encyclopaedia Britannica/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“Governor Walz believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College and he is honored to be traveling the country and battleground states working to earn support for the Harris-Walz ticket,” a Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement sent to select media outlets like CNN and USA Today. “He was commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes. And he was thanking them for their support that is helping fund those efforts.”
Debate over whether a national popular vote should replace the Electoral College surged in 2016 when Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote, cementing his victory despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. “I think it needs to be eliminated,”Clinton told CNN after her 2016 loss to Trump. “I’d like to see us move beyond it, yes.” Clinton made similar calls earlier in her career as well.
Just last month, Democratic Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin suggested there could be deadly consequences for Americans if the Electoral College was not done away with. Raskin said a national popular vote was a far better option than the current “convoluted, antique, obsolete system from the 18th century, which these days can get you killed as nearly it did on Jan. 6, 2021.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., criticized the Electoral College as an outdated relic from America’s past. (C-Span)
The Electoral College has been something that both Republicans and Democrats have tried to do away with in the past, but contemporary calls for its abolition surged among Democrats after Clinton’s loss. The process was established by the nation’s Founding Fathers, seen as a compromise between the election of president by vote in Congress and election by a popular vote of qualified citizens. Electoral College votes, of which 270 are needed for any presidential candidate to win, are allocated based on the Census. The process effectively allows voters in states with lower populations to have a similar impact on the election as those voters living in higher population densities. The Electoral College is also thought to be a protective measure against super thin margins and excessive recounts.
In May 2023, as governor, Walz signed a broad ranging election bill that included a provision to allocate the state’s electors based on who receives the most votes nationwide, even if it doesn’t match the outcome in their state. The measure, known as the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” has been supported by 17 states and the District of Columbia, but will only take effect after all the states that have signed on have a total electoral vote count of 270. Right now, those supporting the reform only have 209, according to CBS News.
Former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. (Fox News )
Polling from the Pew Research Center released last month showed a majority of Americans favor moving away from the Electoral College. Since 2016, the sentiment has steadily increased, and, according to Pew, more than 6 in 10 Americans today prefer the national popular vote over the Electoral College.
Jason Snead, executive director of Honest Elections Project Action, a nonprofit that advocates in favor of retaining the Electoral College, argued Walz “said the quiet part out loud” when he insisted the Electoral College should be eliminated.
“Democrat leaders don’t think they should have to campaign in places like Michigan and North Carolina, they want California and New York to decide every election,” Snead argued. “There is a pattern here. Democrats claim to love democracy, then set their sights on any institution that stands between them and political power: the Supreme Court, the Senate filibuster, and the Electoral College.”
Fox News’ Bill Melugin on Kamala Harris’ upcoming Arizona border trip as polls show more voters trust Trump on border policy. Former President Donald Trump holds a razor-thin two-point edge over Vice President Kamala Harris in battleground Arizona, according to a new public opinion poll. Fueling the former president’s margin appears to be support from voters age 50 and over.
Trump stands at 49% among likely voters in Arizona, with Harris at 47%, according to an AARP poll conducted Sept. 24-Oct. 1 and released on Tuesday. According to the survey, Green Party candidate Jill Stein grabs 1% support, with 3% undecided.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall on Thursday in Tucson, Arizona. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
“Among voters 50+, Trump is ahead by 7 points, driven by a 14-point lead among voters 50-64,” the poll’s release highlights.
Harris holds a 4-point advantage among voters under 50, according to the survey, “while the race is a tossup with seniors.”
The poll also points to a gender gap in Arizona which favors Trump. The former president and Republican nominee is up 11-points over the vice president and Democratic nominee among men, but down only 6 points among female voters, the survey indicates.
While on the presidential campaign trail stopping in battleground states, Vice President Kamala Harris walks out into a packed rally in Glendale, Arizona, on Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The survey is the latest to indicate a margin of error race between Harris and Trump in Arizona, a state President Biden narrowly carried over Trump in the 2020 election.
Arizona’s one of seven crucial battlegrounds whose razor-thin margins decided Biden’s White House victory four years ago and are likely to determine if Harris or Trump win the 2024 election.
The survey was released on the eve of the kick-off of early in-person voting in Arizona.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump during their first and likely only presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The major party vice presidential nominees – Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota – each hold campaign events in Arizona on Wednesday. Harris returns to the state on Friday.
Besides being a crucial presidential swing state, Arizona is also holding one of a handful of competitive Senate elections that will decide if the GOP wins back the chamber’s majority. The AARP poll indicates Democratic Senate nominee Rep. Rueben Gallego holding a 51%-44% lead over Republican nominee Kari Lake, a former news anchor who narrowly lost the state’s 2022 gubernatorial election.
The AARP poll was conducted by the bipartisan polling team of Fabrizio Ward (Republican) & Impact Research (Democrat). The firms interviewed 1,358 likely voters in Arizona. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Dick Cheney teams up with Harris to defeat Trump. Just a few months ago, She and the Democrats hated Him, calling him Darth Cheney and labeling him a warmonger. Now they love him.
Disgusting! Warmonger VP Dick Cheney Endorses Kamala Harris, Says Trump Greatest Ever Threat to Republic
By Ken Kew – The Gateway Pundit – 09/7/24
The former vice president and architect of America’s foreign wars, Dick Cheney, has endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. In a statement on Friday, the 83-year-old argued Trump was the greatest ever threat to the American republic. “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” he continued. “He can never be trusted with power again.” READ MORE…
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Over 25 Kamala Harris lies were counted during her debate with Trump. She lied about Trump’s stand on abortion, IVF, his Bloodbath comment (debunked), his “good people on both sides” comment (debunked), and his connection with Project 2025, just to name a few. ABC was quick to fact-check Trump numerous times, even when he was right, but failed to fact-check Harris’s lies not once.
Trump Campaign Fact-Checks Kamala Harris Point by Point After Biased Moderators Fail to Call Out Her Lies During Debate — Here are the Details
By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – Sept 11, 2024
The Trump campaign is taking matters into its own hands after a blatantly biased performance by the debate moderators, who failed to hold Kamala Harris accountable for her numerous lies. Last night’s debate featured Kamala Harris dodging responsibility for her failed policies while a complicit moderator allowed her to escape scrutiny in yet another display of blatant media bias. Despite the stacked odds, President Donald Trump emerged victorious, offering clear solutions while exposing Kamala Harris’s disastrous record and long list of lies. The debate was a glaring example of how far the radical left is willing to go to distort the truth. Kamala Harris, with the full support of a biased moderator, attempted to rewrite history while pushing dangerous, far-left policies. But the facts speak for themselves. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Polling guru Nate Silver and his election prediction model gave Donald Trump a 63.8% chance of winning the Electoral College in an update to his latest election forecast on Sunday, after a NYT-Siena College poll found the former president leading Vice President Kamala Harris by 1 percentage point.
Harris has come out ahead in several national polls and swing state polls since taking over the top of the ticket. However, the results of the new NYT/Siena College poll, according to Silver, show that the results of the poll confirmed his election model’s view that there was a “shift in momentum” in the race.
The NYT/Siena college poll also found more voters said Harris is “too liberal or progressive” on key policy issues than voters who said they considered Trump to be “too conservative.”
According to his model, Harris has just a 36% chance of winning the Electoral College, and overall, leads Trump by 2.5 points in Silver’s national polling average.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump (AP Photos)
“A new New York Times/Siena College poll this morning contained excellent news for Donald Trump, showing him 1 point ahead in a head-to-head matchup against Kamala Harris and 2 points up with minor candidates included. This is one of our highest-rated pollsters, so it has a fair amount of influence on the numbers, reducing Harris’s lead in our national polling average to 2.5 points, which would put her in dangerous territory in the Electoral College,” Silver wrote in the update at 11 a.m. on Sunday.
Silver initially wrote on Wednesday that Trump’s chances of winning the Electoral College have increased from 52.4% to 58.2% since the end of August. Harris’ odds had decreased from 47.3% to 41.6% in that same time frame.
Silver also noted that if Harris performed well in the debate, the NYT poll might not matter.
“The good news for Harris is that there’s a debate on Tuesday, and if she turns in a strong performance, nobody is going to care so much about the Times poll. We’ll have a longer narrative update on the state of the race coming later today,” he wrote.
In addition to Pennsylvania, Michigan has become something of an issue for Harris.
National polls and polls of other swing states mostly decent for Harris, but erosion in PA/MI hurts a lot in the model. pic.twitter.com/100ztjzkRq
Silver also said on Wednesday that Michigan and Pennsylvania, both key swing states, might prove to be a problem for her.
“In PA, our polling averages had Harris +1.8 pre-DNC, but it’s now Harris +1.0. That’s before any convention bounce adjustment, which is implemented at a later stage of the model. In MI, the polling average has fallen from Harris +3.1 pre-DNC to Harris +1.9 now,” he wrote on X.
Former President Trump departs a campaign event at the Central Wisconsin Airport on Sept. 7, 2024, in Mosinee, Wisconsin. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Silver pointed to multiple key portions of the NYT poll in an additional post on Sunday, specifically the fact that 47% of voters see Harris as too liberal.
“I’m not quite sure how Harris is supposed to spin her way out of this perception,” Silver wrote, noting that a high percentage of voters said they don’t know what Harris stands for in the poll, suggesting there was room to improve on those numbers.
“But Harris also blew one big opportunity to tack to the center with her selection of Tim Walz rather than Josh Shapiro: that a tiny minority of progressives objected to Shapiro was an argument in Shapiro’s favor, if anything. I think Walz was a decent enough pick on his own merits, but given an opportunity to offer a tangible signal of the direction her presidency was headed, she reverted to 2019 mode,” Silver wrote.
Jake Tapper speaks on May 15, 2024, in New York City. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Discovery)
News consumers are often unaware of just how friendly the power players in Washington are, and those relationships are often undisclosed. You can tell that Trump haters have a common cause, but it can go much deeper than that. On CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on Sept. 3, the host brought on Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to promote his new book (of old essays) titled “On Heroism: McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump.” These two men are obviously allies. But they’re also good friends.
This made me recall the newest season of the Netflix food show “Somebody Feed Phil,” starring Phil Rosenthal, the creator of the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond.” In an episode touting food spots in Washington, D.C., he had dinner with Goldberg and Tapper at the Indian restaurant Rasika.
The first clue of the friendship is Tapper walking in and tickling the back of Goldberg’s head. Tapper announced, “His kids babysat for my kids.” This doesn’t appear in an on-screen graphic when Goldberg appears on Tapper’s show. Later, he mocked Goldberg when he started talking about his visit to a nuclear bunker. That’s a Washington flex, Tapper said, like saying, “Once I was talking to Fidel Castro over mojitos … ”
Tapper clearly thrilled Goldberg when Rosenthal asked if they were optimistic or pessimistic about the future. Tapper declared: “I’ve just never been in a time where, like, things that I’ve took (sic) for granted—like democracy, and respecting the right of people to vote and all that—were so just, like, nakedly being torn down by major leaders.”
He clearly wouldn’t include Democrats trying to tear Trump’s name off the ballot and forcing Joe Biden out of the race and then trying to keep third-party leftists Jill Stein and Cornel West off the ballot while, at the same time, trying to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name on the ballot after he left the race and endorsed Trump.
In Tapper’s latest Goldberg interview, they discussed John McCain’s son Jim endorsing Kamala Harris. Goldberg implied that’s how McCain would have voted this year. Then they decried Trump visiting Arlington Cemetery with grieving Gold Star families and filming the visit. Neither man acknowledged uncomfortable truths, such as McCain filming a campaign advertisement at Arlington, not to mention the professional photographs Biden had taken there.
All this gave Goldberg the license to repeat his magazine’s most hostile Trump stories: “He obviously, very famously got out of Vietnam. He equally famously has referred to people who get killed on behalf of the country as suckers and losers.” Goldberg mused to Rosenthal that social media is a “vast unregulated experiment,” but no one regulates Goldberg for repeating claims for which he has no evidence—nothing recorded, just claimed. Many people around Trump said it never happened.
Tapper then asked why Trump-hating generals like [Mark] Milley and [James] Mattis won’t openly come out for Harris. “The military is apolitical,” claimed Goldberg without giggling. Because soon he admitted that generals “let it be known, through journalists and through other means, what happened inside the White House in Donald Trump’s first term.”
“The military is apolitical,” except when it leaks to anti-Trump news outlets about how horrible Trump is. Which makes it political, especially the staying-anonymous part. It’s about as apolitical as Goldberg and Tapper.
When the interview was over, Tapper announced Goldberg’s Trump-the-coward book title again and said, “Congratulations. I read them when you first wrote them. And I’ll read them again. This nice little book, good!”
All we were missing was Tapper tickling Goldberg’s head.
Former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard reacts to Kamala Harris’ DNC speech, reports that RFK. Jr. is slated to drop out of the 2024 race and endorse former President Trump and how Trump’s debate prep is going.
This morning, I had the privilege of visiting Arlington Cemetery with President Trump and the Gold Star families of SSG Hoover and SGT Gee, two of the thirteen servicemembers who were killed in the attack at Abbey Gate in Kabul three years ago today.
Being there with President Trump, honoring the lives of those who sacrificed all, I saw firsthand the sorrow he shared with the families left behind, expressing his sincere appreciation the sacrifices made by their loved ones, our brothers and sisters, who paid the ultimate price.
This is personal for me. My first deployment to Iraq was with the Hawaii Army National Guard in 2005 where I served in a medical unit, every day confronted with the high cost of war. We lost so many of our brothers and sisters who never made that long trip home, and others who did come home, only to lose them to suicide.
President Trump understands the grave responsibility that our President and Commander in Chief has for us and our families and values the lives of every one of us — Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors, Marines and Coasties. He knows the cost of war. It’s not just lip service. During his first term as President, he not only didn’t start any new wars, but he also took action to de-escalate tensions and prevent conflict. He understands the cost of war and has shown he will exhaust all measures of diplomacy, having the courage to meet with adversaries, dictators and allies alike in the pursuit of peace, seeing war as a last resort.
The same cannot be said about Kamala Harris. In fact, the opposite is true. The Harris-Biden administration has us embroiled in multiple wars around the world and closer to nuclear war now than ever before. This is one of the main reasons I left the Democrat party, and will do all I can to elect Donald Trump to the presidency where I am confident, he will walk us back from the brink of war and put us on a path toward peace, freedom and prosperity.
We cannot be prosperous unless we are at peace. And we cannot live free, so long as we have a government that retaliates against its political opponents, undermines our civil liberties, and weaponizes the powers of the government against those they deem a threat. Kamala Harris has shown over the last three and a half years that she will not hesitate to abuse her power to go after political opponents, foremost among them being President Trump. I am their most recent target — they recently placed me on a secret domestic terror watch list for exposing the truth about Kamala Harris’s disastrous record.
Tulsi Gabbard attends a live taping of Hannity at Fox News Channel Studios on September 13, 2023 in New York City. (Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)
We must reject this anti-freedom culture of political retaliation. It goes against who we are and the principles our country was founded upon. We cannot allow our country to be destroyed by politicians who put their own power ahead of the interests of the American people and our country.
Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, Independent, if you love our country, and cherish peace and freedom, I urge all Americans to join me in doing all we can to save our country and return President Trump to the White House.
Former Democrat turned independent Tulsi Gabbard represented Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021 in the United States House of Representatives. She was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Gabbard currently serves as a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army Reserve where she commands a Civil Affairs Battalion.
Kamala Harris hasn’t been the presumptive Democrat nominee for even a week, and already the press is desperately trying to insist perfectly valid criticisms of her are illegitimate. If you think the media were complicit in attempting and failing to hide Joe Biden’s senility, the attempt to retcon her political career into something that resembles respectable and competent is even more brazen.
“She was never the border czar.”
“She was never considered the most liberal senator.”
“She was never a DEI hire.”
“She doesn’t owe her political career to her powerful boyfriend.”
The dishonesty surrounding all of these issues is worth highlighting, but let’s focus on that last point involving Harris’ relationship with California’s powerful political boss Wille Brown, for no other reason than The New York Times has provided a terrific example of how the lies are coming in hot.
The Times’ “On Politics” newsletter Wednesday — think of it as political talking points for affluent wine moms, a.k.a. the Democrats’ base — was dedicated to combatting “the sexist and racist rumors that have followed Harris for years” with “the facts behind several conspiracy theories and misleading claims about Harris that have spread widely in recent days.”
Nearly the whole thing is an orgiastic recitation of errant nonsense, starting with the fact that the Times is quoting disgraced “disinformation expert” Nina Jankowicz to make the case that Harris is the victim of a disproportionate amount of online attacks. (Harris’ competitor in the presidential race was shot in the head less than two weeks ago, and, unsurprisingly, there’s been a dearth of media handwringing about the rhetorical climate that may have enabled an actual assassination attempt. That’s because an honest discussion about hateful rhetoric would involve asking basic questions such as, “Why did The New York Times win a Pulitzer for stories based on the false premise that Donald Trump stole an election by treasonously colluding with Russia?”)
But I digress. Again, the real lowlight of the Times article is its discussion of Kamala Harris’ relationship with Willie Brown. One of my favorite things “fact checkers” do is introduce a proposition as false and then try to confirm that falsity by desperately spinning a bunch of inconvenient facts that confirm the proposition is actually true. The entire section on Harris and Willie Brown is a textbook example:
The sexist insinuations point in part to her brief relationship in the 1990s with Willie Brown, who was 60 and the speaker of the California Assembly when Harris was 29 and rising in the Bay Area legal scene. He appointed Harris to two well-paid state board positions and introduced her to his political connections.
When she was campaigning to be San Francisco’s district attorney in 2003, her opponents repeatedly commented on her link to Brown — references that she told The New York Times in 2019 were “frustrating” and “designed to degrade, frankly, the conversation about why we needed a new D.A.”
During the 2003 race, which she won, she told SF Weekly that there was nothing improper about benefiting from her ties to Brown, although she described the relationship as an “albatross hanging around my neck.” She said she “brought a level of life knowledge and common sense” to the board roles, adding that “whether you agree or disagree with the system, I did the work.”
She said that she had “no doubt that I am independent of him” and that “I do not owe him a thing.”
Just so we’re clear, The New York Times is confirming Harris did in fact have a relationship with Willie Brown, who was 31 years older (and, for what it’s worth, still married at the time). Harris herself admits her career benefited significantly from said relationship. Other Democrats shared the perception she did not earn her positions. And Harris, a lawyer who initially failed the bar exam, can only say that she “brought a level of life knowledge and common sense” rather than actual qualifications to the jobs Brown appointed her to. But it’s a sexist insinuation to insist these facts are rather unflattering to Kamala!
And this is just what The New York Times is admitting. In actuality, the details are far worse than the Times is letting on. Peter Schweizer, an investigative journalist who has worked with The New York Times in the past, details quite a bit on the corrupt nature of the Harris/Brown relationship in his book, Profiles in Corruption, which has been out for four and a half years. And the facts as he lays them out are damning.
Brown, who was repeatedly investigated by the FBI for corruption, was far more involved in Harris’ career ascent than appointing her to two board positions. He was a kingmaker in California, and he was heavily involved in helping Harris get elected as San Francisco district attorney. Brown didn’t do this entirely out of the goodness of his heart. Harris was working for the previous district attorney, Terence Hallinan, and quit when she got passed over for the No. 2 position in the DA’s office.
Hallinan found himself as the subject of criticism from other city officials, but others suggested the controversy was manufactured. “This whole thing is about Kamala Harris,” a source close to Brown told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Cross one of Willie’s friends and there will be hell to pay.” Eventually, Harris ran for DA with Brown’s powerful backing — a former Brown aide managed her campaign, and Brown played a key role in her fundraising, which was incredibly successful. After starting the race polling a distant third, she won the election.
Once in office, Harris then dropped or pled out corruption charges against friends of Willie Brown that Hallinan had been pursuing. There were a number of Brown’s friends let off the hook, but most notably this included a sweetheart plea deal for a notorious city contractor caught defrauding the city by using inferior recycled concrete in sensitive projects such as parking garages and the Bay Bridge. This compromised the structural integrity of those projects and endangered lives. But Harris dropped all the fraud charges and accepted a guilty plea on a single count involving an environmental violation.
“Harris’ office had no explanation for why it dropped the concrete case,” reported the Chronicle. A better explanation is that the contractor in question was generous with campaign donations and had previously been popped for making an illegal $2,000 donation to, yup, Willie Brown.
Anyway, there’s a lot more alarming reporting in Schweizer’s book that’s worth revisiting, and it’s not a stretch to say Kamala Harris has engaged in outright corruption in her career. Suffice to say, when The New York Times takes Kamala Harris at her word that her relationship with Willie Brown was not “improper,” they’re erasing the functional difference between lying and profound ignorance. And when she’s credulously quoted saying, “I do not owe him a thing,” it’s journalistic malpractice to believe her.
To say that Kamala Harris had an affair with a man more than twice her age, leveraged his fundraising prowess and connections to launch her political career, and once in office did his corrupt bidding isn’t sexist. It’s well-grounded in fact.
But facts aren’t something The New York Times is much interested in. Kamala Harris’ late entry into the presidential race means they don’t have much time to use what’s left of their institutional clout to try to dishonestly sway a presidential race.
Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @heminator
CNN contributor and former Biden White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said Monday that Democrats need to “turn their fire” on former President Donald Trump to win the election, just days after he survived an assassination attempt. Bedingfield immediately backtracked, but the Freudian slip was another example of the inflammatory rhetoric Democrats and left-wing corporate media deploy against Trump and his candidacy.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper played a recent clip from President Joe Biden’s sit-down interview with NBC’s Lester Holt in which Biden became angry that the media apparently won’t talk about the “18 to 28 lies” Trump told during the debate.
Anderson, noting that Biden’s team is receiving internal polling data suggesting Biden is doing poorly among voters and losing any potential chance of winning, asked Bedingfield how much longer this scenario for Democrats can continue.
“It shouldn’t go on much longer if Democrats want to win this election,” Bedingfield said. “Joe Biden became the nominee by the votes of voters who voted in the Democratic primary. He has said many, many times after having been questioned many times about this, that he’s not stepping down, and he is going to be the nominee.”
“At some point, Democrats have to decide that they want to try to win this election and turn their fire on Donald Trump. I think there is — I shouldn’t have said ‘turn their fire.’ I apologize. That was not the phrase that I meant. They need to turn their focus on Donald Trump,” Bedingfield said.
It has been less than 72 hours since Trump avoided near-certain death by half an inch and a local former fire chief was brutally murdered while shielding his family from gunfire. It’s been less than 48 hours since Biden himself called for people to “lower the temperature” and “cool” “down” the rhetoric following the near assassination. But already, left-wing media and Democrats are returning to the inflammatory language they’ve used to describe Trump for years.
Biden told donors recently, according to Politico, that he’s “done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.” Biden and other Democrats have repeatedly called Trump a “threat” the both “democracy” and “the very soul of this country.”
Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Kamala Harris is polling worse than Biden against Trump, but they may not have a choice if they can find a way to eliminate crooked Joe from the race.
New Poll Finds Trump Does Even Better Against Kamala Harris Than Joe Biden
By Mike LaChance – July 5, 2024
Donald Trump would beat vice President Kamala Harris by an even bigger margin than he would beat Biden, according to new polling from HarrisX. For the last week, panicked Democrats have been trying to figure out how to get Biden out of the race and perhaps replace him with Harris, but this just goes to show that isn’t going to work either. Democrats find themselves in an impossible situation and there is no one riding over the hill to save them. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
A Republican hasn’t carried Minnesota in a presidential election since President Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide re-election, over a half-century ago. But a new poll in Minnesota shows a competitive race between President Biden and former President Trump in their 2024 election rematch.
The president stands at 45% support among likely voters in Minnesota, with Trump at 41% in a poll conducted June 3-5 for the Star Tribune, MPR News and KARE 11.
Former President Trump headlines the Minnesota GOP’s annual Lincoln Reagan fundraising dinner, on May 17, 2024, in St. Paul. (AP)
Democrat turned independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stood at 6% support in the survey, with 2% backing “someone else” if the election were held today.
Trump was narrowly edged in Minnesota in the 2016 election by 1.5 points by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. But four years later, Biden carried the state by seven points as he defeated Trump and won the White House.
“We’re going to win this state,” Trump predicted last month in a speech as he headlined the state GOP’s annual Lincoln Reagan fundraising dinner in St. Paul, Minnesota’s capital city.
The poll pointed to a significant enthusiasm gap, with 63% of Trump supporters saying they were “very enthusiastic” about casting a ballot for their candidate, compared to 31% of voters backing the president.
Eight hundred registered voters in Minnesota were surveyed in the poll, with an overall sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
Seven crucial swing states that decided the 2020 election (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which were narrowly won by Biden, and North Carolina, which Trump carried by a razor-thin margin) will likely once again in the 2024 rematch. But both campaigns see opportunities to expand the map.
At a closed-door Republican National Committee retreat for top-dollar donors earlier this spring at a resort in Palm Beach, Florida, senior Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita and veteran pollster Tony Fabrizio spotlighted internal surveys that suggested both “Minnesota & Virginia are clearly in play.”
“In both states, Donald Trump finds himself in positions to flip key electoral votes in his favor,” the survey, which was shared with Fox News, emphasizes.
And both states have sizable populations of rural White voters without college degrees who disproportionately support the former president.
President Biden delivers remarks at the Kempsville Recreation Center on Feb. 28, 2023, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Biden’s campaign disagrees that either Minnesota or Virginia are up for grabs.
While noting that they are “not taking any state or any vote for granted,” Biden campaign battleground states director Dan Kanninen told reporters last month that “we don’t see polls that are six or seven months out from a general election, head-to-head numbers certainly, as any more predictive than a weather report is six or seven months out.”
Kanninen highlighted that the campaign has teams on the ground in both states engaging voters.
“We feel strongly the Biden-Harris coalition in both Minnesota and Virginia, which has been strong in the midterms and off-year elections, will continue to be strong for us in the fall of 2024,” he added.
And Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt, pointing to the president’s current fundraising dominance and ground-game advantage in the key battlegrounds, argued that “Trump’s team has so little campaign or infrastructure to speak of they’re resorting to leaking memos that say ‘the polls we paid for show us winning.'”
But the latest Fox News poll in Virginia indicated Biden and Trump are deadlocked in Virginia.
(Fox News)
The survey, conducted June 1-4, showed the Democratic president and his Republican predecessor in the White House each with 48% support in a head-to-head match.
In a multi-candidate race, Biden stands at 42% and Trump at 41%, with Democrat-turned-independent Kennedy at 9% and Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent Cornel West each at 2%.
It’s been two decades since a Republican carried Virginia in the race for the White House. You have to go back to President George W. Bush, who won the commonwealth in his 2004 re-election victory.
“Let’s just begin by remembering where we were in 2020 when Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points, and the fact that we’re having this discussion is a huge turn of events,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said last week in a Fox News Digital interview in New Orleans, as he attended a Republican Governors Association (RGA) conference.
Youngkin emphasized that “we’re here in June and there’s still a lot of water to go under the bridge, but Virginia looks like it’s in play and that’s pretty exciting.”
President Biden may not appear on the ballot in Ohio come Election Day, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose warned Tuesday. The Ohio Democratic Party has received weeks of warnings from both LaRose’s office and the state legislature saying that Biden is on track to miss the state’s deadline for filing as a candidate. LaRose, a Republican, says the Democratic Party has yet to offer a solution that fits with existing law.
Biden’s problems arise from Ohio’s requirement that parties certify their presidential candidates at least 90 days before Election Day. The Democratic Party won’t certify Biden until its national convention in Wisconsin, which is scheduled for Aug. 19, just 75 days before the election.
“I’ve said from here to Colorado that it’s in the best interest of voters to have a choice in the race for president. I’m also duty-bound to follow the law as Ohio’s chief elections officer,” LaRose said in a statement Tuesday.
President Biden may not appear on the ballot in Ohio come election day, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose warned Tuesday. (AP Newsroom)
“As it stands today, the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee will not be on the Ohio ballot. That is not my choice. It’s due to a conflict in the law created by the party, and the party has so far offered no legally acceptable remedy,” he continued.
“The Ohio House speaker said today there won’t be a legislative solution, so I’ve sent a letter to Ohio Democrats’ chair seeking (again) a solution that upholds the law and respects the voters. I trust they’ll act quickly,” he finished.
Biden is on track to miss Ohio’s deadline for filing as an official presidential candidate. (Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images)
Ohio Democrats had previously argued that Ohio could accept a “provisional certification” for Biden’s candidacy, but LaRose says state law makes no such allowances.
LaRose said either the state legislature needs to change the law to allow Biden’s certification, or the Democratic Party needs to change its plans. Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens, also a Republican, says lawmakers won’t bail Biden out.
“There’s just not the will to do that from the legislature,” Stephens told reporters.
Ohio Republicans say Biden must be on the ballot in November, but the Democratic Party must act to make it happen. (Michael M. Santiago/PoolAFP via Getty Images)
His Democratic counterpart, Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo, had the same message when speaking to reporters on Tuesday.
“We’ve seen the dysfunction here in this place,” she said. “And I think we’ve seen that folks have not been able to put aside partisanship and hyper-partisanship and infighting.… I think at this point, you’re probably going to see either, you know, some sort of inner party effects or perhaps court action.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, another Republican, assured voters that Biden would be on the ballot come November, arguing that if the legislature doesn’t act, then it’s “going to be done by the court.”
Ohio Democrats have yet to respond to LaRose’s Tuesday letter.
Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to Anders.Hagstrom@Fox.com, or on Twitter: @Hagstrom_Anders.
Joe Biden is running out of excuses. While many Democrats have urged him to end his re-election bid, including friendly columnists like the New York Times’ Ezra Klein and Washington Post’s David Ignatius, it has been the conventional wisdom that Biden could not do so, fearful that an even less popular Kamala Harris would replace him as the 2024 Democratic candidate for president.
That is changing. Vice President Harris has been out on the stump, performing the kind of all-out energetic campaigning that the president cannot manage. She meets almost daily with women’s groups talking about abortion and Black groups talking about racial justice.
She travels incessantly to swing states to hand out money and programs, crediting the Biden-Harris White House – emphasis on Harris – with passing the enormous spending bills at the heart of the administration’s campaign.
She also frequently entertains important Democrats at her home in Washington, getting to know the important power brokers. Quietly, off the radar, even as she is being virtually ignored by Republican analysts and commentators, Harris’ efforts are paying off.
Harris’ overall approval ratings of 38% (net 11% disapproving) on average today are slightly better than those of her boss (net 17% disapproving), and they have improved since the beginning of the year, when her net disapproval was above 17%. Biden’s have not. Importantly, recent surveys show she is more popular with Black voters – where Biden has suffered a serious swoon – than the president.
Harris can make a solid case that she can carry on the Obama/Biden agenda and that she is healthy and fit to serve four more years. If a large portion of Biden’s unpopularity is due to his age, Harris would be a significant upgrade.
Harris’ improved posture comes at a pivotal time in the campaign and for the president. Scheduling the first of two presidential debates on June 27, way earlier than usual in the election calendar, has triggered renewed speculation about Democrats dumping Biden at the convention. Some think that the timing of the face-off with Donald Trump, many weeks ahead of the Aug. 19 gathering in Chicago, is intended to give Democrats some optionality. If the debate is a complete disaster, it is thought, the party will have enough time to regroup and consider an alternative before their convention.
If a large portion of Biden’s unpopularity is due to his age, Harris would be a significant upgrade.
Recent polls showing former President Trump leading in critical swing states promise disaster in November, not only for Biden but possibly for down-ballot candidates as well. Vulnerable Senate candidates in toss-up states like Pennsylvania and Nevada are reportedly distancing themselves from the president, fearful of being dragged down by the top of the ticket.
But what about all those primaries? Is it even possible to ditch Biden? The answer is yes; during the Democratic convention, the party could technically decide to pick another candidate if Biden withdrew from the race or if the majority of delegates was persuaded that the president was not up to the task.
There are some 4,000 delegates who will elect the party’s nominee, and roughly 700 so-called Super Delegates who step in only if there is no apparent winner on the first round of voting. There is no legal obligation for any of those delegates to back Biden. In the event of some calamity – a health problem, for instance, or a humiliating defeat in the debate – the majority could choose someone to replace the president.
Or the party could finally persuade Biden to step aside. Some political analysts have expected him to do so for months, considering his age, infirmity and declining popularity. Despite considerable pressure, Joe has hung on, perhaps knowing he can best protect his son Hunter from the Oval Office, because his wife Jill has encouraged him to run again or maybe because of Harris’ weak standing.
For the first three years of his presidency, Biden outshone Harris, who repeatedly got tangled up in hilarious word salads but more importantly, was tagged with accomplishing little and, especially, doing nothing about the open border.
Though Harris’ approval ratings are still poor, she is arguably more capable than Joe. If Democrat bosses decide to open up the convention to other candidates, in order to keep the party from splitting wide open, Vice President Harris is likely to prevail. That is what happened in 1968.
When Lyndon Johnson announced he was withdrawing from the presidential race on March 31, 1968, his approval rating was about 36%, according to Gallup, only slightly worse than Biden’s today. LBJ knew his chances were dim, given anger about the Vietnam War, and took himself out of contention. At the Democratic convention that year, delegates picked Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, to succeed him as the 1968 candidate, despite many within the party seeking an anti-war candidate.
President Richard M. Nixon dedicates his new administration to the cause of “peace among nations” as former President Lyndon Johnson, left, listens to the inaugural speech Jan. 20, 1969, in Washington. Seated at right is Vice President Spiro Agnew. (AP Photo)
Humphrey was not popular – only 34% of the country supported him on the eve of the convention, compared to 40% backing Richard Nixon and 17% leaning toward the segregationist (former Democrat) George Wallace, who ran as an independent. But, nominating Humphrey was the least contentious of possible outcomes; in the end, Democrat power brokers opted for harmony. The decision did not go well; Humphrey lost that year to Richard Nixon in a tight election.
The reality for Democrats is that if they open up the convention to considering other candidates, Kamala Harris will likely emerge the nominee. She will not leave the game without a fight; and, like Humphrey, the vice president would be the least contentious of alternatives.
For sure, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and others might throw their hats in the ring, but neither has done the coast-to-coast politicking so necessary to build their case. And, Black leaders, who put Joe Biden in the Oval Office, would almost certainly prefer Harris.
Gov. Gavin Newsom talks about the future UCLA Research Park, California’s new global hub for innovation, being built at the former Westside Pavilion in Los Angeles on Jan. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Humphrey lost, but he went from basement-level approval ratings to nearly winning. It’s possible that Harris could do the same. Democrats may have no other choice.
Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio delivered a masterclass Sunday on how Republicans should respond when media partisans ask them to prematurely commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked Rubio if he would “accept the 2024 election results no matter what happens.”
“No matter what happens? No! If it’s an unfair election, I think it’s going to be contested by each side,” Rubio said.
“No matter who wins, Senator? No matter who wins?” Welker asked.
“You’re asking the wrong person! The Democrats are the ones that have opposed every Republican victory since 2000. Every single one. Hillary Clinton…”
“No Democrat has refused to concede,” Welker interjected. “Hillary Clinton conceded. Senator, will you accept the election results?”
“Hillary Clinton said the election was stolen from her, and that Trump was illegitimate. Kamala Harris agreed,” Rubio said. “By the way, there are Democrats serving in Congress today who, in 2004, voted not to certify the Ohio electors because they said those machines had been tampered with. And you have Democrats now saying they won’t certify 2024 because Trump is an insurrectionist and ineligible to hold office. So you need to ask them.”
Rubio then pointed out that having “over 500 illegal dropbox locations” in Wisconsin, for example, is something that legitimately undermines confidence in elections.
Rubio’s answer was excellent because he understands the insidiousness of such a question: Republicans are being goaded to relinquish their right to question problematic election administration. Instead of being bullied into agreeing with Welker’s presuppositions, he immediately went on the offensive.
When will the media start asking democrats if they will accept the outcome of the 2024 election if Trump wins? pic.twitter.com/9kGf9O3sTF
Left-wing corporate media have already smeared Rubio and other conservatives as election “deniers” for refusing to play into the media’s trap. It’s a cheap trick designed to silence legitimate concerns about election administration by painting them as threats to “democracy.”
When Republicans treat the question as anything but a cheap trick, they put themselves immediately on the defensive by assuming the question’s dishonest premises. That’s exactly what South Carolina senator and potential vice-presidential pick Tim Scott did during a recent interview of his own with Welker. When goaded as to whether he would accept the results of the 2020 election, Scott chose to side-step the question.
“At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump,” he said.
When asked again, Scott responded “That is my statement” and “I look forward to President Trump being the 47th president — the American people will make the decision.”
Scott’s answer was abysmal because he was obviously afraid of the question. But no Republican should be afraid to refuse to play along with corporate media partisans’ bad-faith “gotcha” questions. What’s more, there’s nothing wrong with refusing to resoundingly affirm the results of an election that has not yet taken place, especially at a time when Democrats are deploying everything from weaponized lawfare to unconstitutional attempts to federalize elections via “Bidenbucks” to rig elections in their favor.
Besides, as Rubio pointed out, the 2020 election was far from the first to face scrutiny. Democrats called Republican George Bush’s election in 2000 “fraudulent,” said his 2004 victory was “stolen,” and objected to the certification of Trump’s 2016 election while claiming he had colluded with Russia to steal the presidency.
In the 1960 presidential election, some electors declared Richard Nixon the winner of Hawaii’s electoral votes before a recount eventually led to John F. Kennedy’s electors’ votes being certified. Should Kennedy have resigned his right to question the incorrect initial results prior to the election?
Of course not — yet that’s what Republicans are being asked to do now. They should understand the question as the unserious hackery it is and answer accordingly.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
Flyers reportedly posted around a Resource Center Matamoros facility in Mexico encouraged illegal immigrants — who are not eligible to vote in the United States — to vote for President Joe Biden in November, according to The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. One of the organizations operating out of the Resource Center Matamoros (RCM) has ties to Biden’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose articles of impeachment the U.S. House of Representatives delivered to the Senate Tuesday afternoon.
The flyers, which the Oversight Project posted photos of on X, read “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” The Heritage Foundation said the flyers were first discovered by Muckraker but also confirmed to The Federalist that their own team had obtained a copy of one of the flyers “inside the RCM office.”
“The flyer in the X thread is a direct scan of the one our folks obtained on-site inside the RCM office,” a Heritage Foundation representative said. “The flyers were also posted all over the camp in the port-a-potties.”
Nevertheless, others have raised questions about the flyer, including Fox News’ Bill Melugin.
“I am extremely skeptical of this. The flier appears to be a word for word Google Translate copy & paste of a portion of the NGO’s English website, with ‘vote for Biden’ randomly added in at the end, when it does not appear on the site,” Melugin posted on X. “The translation is bad, then you have ‘bienvenidos’ spelled wrong and ‘todos con Biden’ added onto the flier with a Biden logo.”
Another social media user associated with a left-wing immigration group claimed to have spoken with the executive director of RCM and said the posters were “Totally fake” and “Made up by two posers.”
It is unclear whether RCM authorized the posting of the flyers, but the Heritage Foundation told The Federalist that because they found flyers in the RCM office, they have “every reason to believe” the flyer is from the organization. The Federalist reached out to RCM for more information but did not receive a response.
The flyers “appear to be handed out when illegal aliens use the RCM for assistance in coming to the USA,” according to the Oversight Project.
These flyers were discovered by @realmuckraker throughout the Resource Center Matamoras (RCM) location including on the walls of port-a-potties
They also appear to be handed out when illegal aliens use the RCM for assistance in coming to the USA pic.twitter.com/hvlkwOI5Xs
RCM says it is “a humanitarian organization that provides a safe space where refugees at the southern Texas-Mexico border can access legal and social support services.” Its “6-unit office complex” hosts the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which provides “legal assistance and assistance with obtaining formal documents for job search and integration into the city of Matamoros as [migrants] wait to access the asylum process in the US.”
RCM founder and executive director Gaby Zavala previously worked with La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE)– a left-wing organization that is partnered with the Open Society Institute, as pointed out by the Oversight Project. The Open Society Institute is funded by left-wing billionaire and mega-donor George Soros.
RCM also worked alongside Team Brownsville, a left-wing organization, and Angry Tias and Abeulas, which aims to help illegal immigrants cross the border, according to the Oversight Project.
RCM has significant ties to Soros-funded non-profits operating in the United States, including Save the Children, Team Brownsville Texas, and Angry Tias and Abuelas pic.twitter.com/cydCAM4PdE
Mayorkas — whose disastrous handling of the invasion at the southern border earned him impeachment by the House — was formerly on the board of HIAS and in his current role with the Biden administration has met with members of both Angry Tias and Abuelas as well as LUPE, according to Judicial Watch.
While illegal immigrants and other noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections, federal voter registration forms simply require each individual to check a box affirming he is a U.S. citizen. The lack of any requirement that new voters show documentary proof of citizenship prompted former President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday to announce Republican legislation that would demand such documentation from new registrants.
The federal government currently prohibits states from requiring potential voters to provide such proof to register to vote in federal elections. States may require proof of citizenship to register for statewide elections, as Arizona does. But even in Arizona, a voter who attempts to register to vote with the state form but fails to provide proof of citizenship must then be registered to vote on a federal-only form.
During the 2020 presidential election, 11,600 voters voted using a federal-only ballot, AZ Free News reported. President Joe Biden won the state by 10,457 votes.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
Leftists bragged about how they “fortified” the 2020 election against Trump. Now the same “democracy is at stake” shills are flaunting their plans for 2024, and they sound awfully familiar.
Democrats are already sowing seeds of distrust — and perhaps projection — with an unnamed source whispering to Rolling Stone that Biden “has been worried … that Donald Trump is going to try to steal the election.”
“Biden and his inner circle have been drawing up meticulous plans and creating a large legal network focused on wargaming a close election finish,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley, citing undisclosed Democratic operatives who fret about a contested 2024 election. “Team Biden has been conducting war games, crafting complex legal strategies, and devoting extensive resources to prepare for, as one former senior Biden administration official puts it, ‘all-hell-breaks-loose’ scenarios.”
Biden’s legal team is reportedly “preparing legal strategies for scenarios involving recounts that would make, in the words of one Biden official, ‘make Florida in 2000 look like child’s play.’”
Biden’s team has partnered with a “vast network of liberal attorneys and legal groups” that have already drafted pleadings and motions for any kind of election-related fight. Biden’s team is also reportedly working with local law firms to “actively monitor what is happening on the ground” in key swing states like Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania — all of which Biden narrowly won just four years ago, and all of which saw their elections plagued by chaos, scandal, and a lack of transparency in 2020.
A representative for the Democratic National Committee told Rolling Stone the party has also set aside “tens of millions of dollars in a robust voter protection program to safeguard the rights of voters.”
Rolling Stone all but dismisses the possibility that Trump could defeat Biden outright in 2024 — making the bizarre claim that winning would be “almost irrelevant” to the Trump team’s goals — and instead treats a razor-thin Biden victory as the assumed scenario. Noticeably absent from the article is a discussion of what happens if Trump wins narrowly. Would Biden graciously concede? Rolling Stone appears to be telegraphing that he has no plans to.
Campaign Strategy: Bidenbucks and Lawfare
The Biden administration has been working overtime to tilt the balance of the electorate since taking office. One way they’ve done this is by funneling taxpayer dollars into initiatives meant to increase voter turnout — specifically voters who will likely vote blue.
Soon after taking office, Biden issued Executive Order 14019, which directs federal agencies to use taxpayer funds to interfere in elections, including by voter outreach targeted at likely-Democrat voters. The Department of Education, for example, recently released a “toolkit” that gives guidance to K-12 institutions recommending schools “determine if [their] state allows pre-registration for individuals under 18 years old and, if so, identify opportunities for high school students to do so.”
Meanwhile the Department of Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Service began collaborating with left-wing groups like the ACLU and Demos to register new voters, according to a report from The Daily Signal. As my colleague Shawn Fleetwood has noted, “voter registration efforts are almost always a partisan venture.”
Perhaps the cherry on top is Democrats’ use of lawfare to weaponize the justice system against Trump.
Both Trump and Biden have been accused of mishandling classified documents. The former, who can make an argument for having presidential power to declassify documents, has been dragged into court by the Biden Justice Department, which has the goal of putting him in prison at worst and draining his campaign of time and money at best. The latter, who apparently mishandled classified documents while senator and vice president, was allowed to skate after a special counsel declined to prosecute because “It would be difficult to convince a jury” to convict the memory-challenged Biden of “a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Déjà Vu All Over Again
Rolling Stone’s glowing feature of the “superstructure” Biden is amassing to control the 2024 election aftermath should sound familiar. During the months leading up to the 2020 election, corporate media, Democrat lawmakers, and left-wing operatives conspired to influence the election, as Time Magazine’s national political correspondent Molly Ball glowingly acknowledged afterward.
There’s every reason to expect the same, and more, in 2024.
Ball acknowledged that when Trump pointed out the 2020 election was rife with election integrity issues, he “was right” that “there was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes.” She described the collusion as “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” But, as my colleague Joy Pullmann pointed out, Trump was lambasted for raising these exact same points. A smear campaign continues to this day by Democrats who seek to use the nonsense pejorative of “election denier” to forestall Trump’s ability to call out their election rigging.
As Ball approvingly noted, members of the “conspiracy” “got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding” — e.g., hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaire Mark Zuckerberg that were funneled into election offices by left-wing groups. They “recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time,” Ball bragged.
But the mass mail-in balloting scheme was rife with risks that even the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) acknowledged. CISA warned of “major challenges” associated with mail-in voting including the “process of mailing and returning ballots,” “high numbers of improperly completed ballots,” and “the shortage of personnel to process ballots in a prompt manner.”
Then there was Big Tech actively working to stifle negative coverage of Biden, most infamously by censoring the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story just weeks before Election Day. One study found some Democrat voters in key swing states would not have voted for Biden had they had access to the story alleging Biden’s involvement with his son’s corrupt business dealings.
Ball seemed to applaud this effort, writing how the conspiracy “successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.”
Meanwhile Big Tech companies like Meta — the parent company of Facebook — are discussing ways to “protect” the electoral system by manipulating algorithms, newsfeeds, and recommendations to users. In 2020, Facebook throttled circulation of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
In addition to peddling lies about Trump and blacking out the bombshell evidence implicating Biden that was discovered on his son’s laptop, corporate media also played a role by being a conduit for Democrat operatives’ narrative that election results should not be expected on election night. Privately, Biden’s operatives had polling data suggesting mainstream polls were not reflecting Trump’s true support amongst voters — indicating that Trump would be decisively winning on Election Day. A top “conspiracy” leader reportedly warned “everyone he knew that polls were underestimating Trump’s support,” Ball explained.
The unnamed individual reportedly went to corporate media networks and got them to push the narrative that election results should be expected to be delayed, which conveniently laid the groundwork for a “surge” of mail-in ballots counted late at night and after Election Day to push Biden over the edge.
“Election night began with many Democrats despairing,” Ball wrote. “Trump was running ahead of pre-election polling, winning Florida, Ohio and Texas easily and keeping Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania too close to call.”
But Ball said the “conspiracy” leader was unphased about the nail-biter results: “he could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose.”
As Pullmann wrote, “Amazing projection skills, right?”
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
Many Americans believe the country is becoming a virtual dictatorship with a solid majority saying President Joe Biden wants to put former President Donald Trump in jail to stop his electoral chances, a new McLaughlin poll finds.
We should note that Russian President Vladimir Putin just won reelection by 88%. But he did so only after Putin first jailed his leading political opponent, Alexei Navalny, and many of his supporters. (Sadly, Navalny recently died while in prison.)
Now Biden’s playbook against Trump seems eerily similar. At least a majority of American voters think so.
In our new national poll 56% of all voters think Biden really wants to stop Trump from winning by putting him in jail. The national poll of 1,000 likely voters with plus or minus 3.1% at the 95% confidence interval was completed between March 9 and March 14. Only 30% say it’s not true that Biden is trying to jail Trump.
A supermajority of Republicans, 86%, agree that Biden is weaponizing the justice system against Trump. This is also not a partisan issue. Independents agree 50% to 33% that Biden is seeking to jail Trump for political reasons, with moderates agreeing 48% to 32%. Democratic constituencies also have a negative view of Biden’s actions with African Americans at 41%, Hispanics at 53%, and women at 53% agreeing.
Biden and his legal henchmen have truly made Trump a sympathetic victim.
It’s a frightening idea that after 235 years of democracy and peaceful presidential elections, we have devolved to such a point. Here are more findings of our poll of voters:
67% say that politics has played a role in the indictments of Trump.
58% say that Biden has played a role in the indictments of Trump.
56% to 31% say there is a double standard and bias at Biden’s Department of Justice, FBI, and IRS, where they target Trump but Biden and his family get sweetheart deals.
52% to 38% say the indictments against Trump were done because he leads in the polls and they want him stopped.
58% to 34% say that Biden should stop targeting Trump and interfering in the election, letting voters decide the next president.
Regardless, Trump leads Biden 49% to 43% in a head-to-head poll for the presidency — Trump’s largest lead this year. The reasons for Trump’s success and Biden’s weakness are simple. Some 66% of all voters say the country is on the wrong track and 56% disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president.
Facing serious challenges with the economy and crises internationally, the Biden campaign has shifted gears from winning on the issues to winning the Putin way — by putting your opponent in jail. Fortunately, voters are seeing through this dangerous strategy and rejecting it.
John McLaughlin has worked professionally as a strategic consultant and pollster for over 40 years. Jim McLaughlin is a nationally recognized public opinion expert, strategic consultant and political strategist who has helped to elect a U.S. president, prime ministers, a Senate majority leader, and a speaker of the House. Read John and Jim McLaughlin’s Reports — More Here
The Republican National Committee (RNC) replaced its chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Friday with the now-former North Carolina Republican Party (NCGOP) chair Michael Whatley, who was the Trump-backed frontrunner. Ever since Whatley’s name was floated, the corporate media predictably deployed the “election denier” smear they assign to any Republican who has ever shown an interest in protecting the integrity of elections.
Whatley has a track record of emphasizing election integrity — and that’s enough, in the eyes of the corporate press, to paint him as a radical election-denying extremist. But with the high stakes of the 2024 election cycle, some of Whatley’s critics say he needs to amp up his election integrity efforts to another level in his anticipated post at the RNC.
Attacks From the Corporate Media
Whatley, who had served as NCGOP chair since narrowly defeating his opponents Jim Womack and John Lewis in 2019, has been the target of hand-wringing pieces from corporate media ever since he was tapped as former President Trump’s choice to lead the RNC. In an MSNBC column, North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton clutched her pearls about the “danger” Whatley poses.
“It’s clear that Trump is looking for an RNC leader who won’t hesitate to disenfranchise voters, rig elections or dismantle our democracy,” Clayton melodramatically wrote. “[Whatley] has helped lead efforts to defy the will of the people and infringe on North Carolinians’ rights.”
CNN ran a piece entitled “Likely frontrunner for RNC chair parroted Trump’s 2020 election lies.”
Multipleoutlets affiliated with States Newsroom — a network launched by a Democrat dark-money group — shuddered at the thought that Whatley teamed up with organizations like Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network that trains poll watchers, under the headline: “Trump’s pick for RNC chief worked with top election denier’s group.”
Russia hoax lawyer Marc Elias’ Democracy Docket joined in the attacks, saying Trump’s “endorsement of Whatley signals that the party is continuing down its path of pushing false election fraud narratives ahead of the November general election.”
What did Whatley do to be smeared as an election conspiracy theorist? In November 2020, he alleged that there was “massive fraud” in “places like Milwaukee and Detroit and Philadelphia.” Of course, even the Associated Press has admitted the existence of voter fraud in the 2020 election, just simply not enough for their liking to denote it as “widespread.”
As Whatley told CNN, “changes to the 2020 election process … weakened safeguards on absentee and mail-in votes in some states,” which “led to distrust by many across the country.”
Whatley’s Work on Election Integrity
Whatley’s supporters tout major wins for the state’s courts and election integrity efforts under his leadership.
“I think [election integrity] is probably [Whatley’s] greatest strength,” Nash County Republican Party Chair Mark Edwards said. “Coming out of the 2020 election there was a lot of angst and energy among Republicans about election integrity and rather than stoke some of the more outlandish and extreme and outrageous reactions to what happened in 2020, Whatley stood above it and saw that this is where the concerns of the party were.”
“He took it upon himself to grab the election integrity issue by the horns and direct that energy into productive use by setting up the Election Integrity Review Committee within the party,” Edwards added, crediting Whatley with “hiring legal staff to help head up the election integrity efforts of the party, and work very closely with Republican legislators to craft legislation that was drafted, introduced and passed and is now being implemented.”
The NCGOP established the Election Integrity Committee in 2021 to recruit, train and send out attorneys and poll watchers to observe “absentee-by-mail approval meetings, early voting polls, election day polls, county canvasses, recount meetings, and protest hearings.”
In 2022, “Whatley doubled down on his efforts to recruit and train poll observers and lawyers,” said former NCGOP legal counsel Philip Thomas. The NCGOP was unable to provide numbers for how many poll watchers were appointed over the course of Whatley’s tenure. Whatley critic Jay DeLancy, however, said it might be difficult for the NCGOP to obtain that data since individual counties appoint observers and the process is decentralized.
Senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute Cleta Mitchell said Whatley “understands that there is more to winning elections than just turning out votes and voters.”
“He has a sense of the need to focus on the election system itself,” Mitchell added. “While sometimes he has too narrow a focus, such as thinking that volunteer lawyers on Election Day will somehow overcome the billions of dollars that the left has invested in changing the entire voting system in our country, Michael is at least aware that there is more to winning than the historic or traditional ‘If we have a good candidate and good issues and a good campaign, our side will win.’ Those days are long gone and at some level, Michael understands that.”
Whatley also created the Judicial Victory Fund, which states its goal is “raising the resources needed to support … statewide conservative judicial candidates.” NCGOP Communications Director Matt Mercer said the fund is “something that really can’t be overstated enough.”
“Whatley campaigned on ‘Reset in Raleigh’ and overturning a 6-1 Republican deficit on the Supreme Court,” Mercer said. “Whatley has been undefeated [in judicial races] in 2020 and 2022 with the Judicial Victory Fund and the partners at the county and district levels.”
Mercer also credits Whatley with helping get voter ID “past the finish line” by flipping the balance of the court, adding while the NCGOP will miss him, “it’s going to be a benefit for the RNC to have someone of his caliber there.”
The fund was particularly handy during the 2020 election for the North Carolina Supreme Court’s chief justice between Democrat incumbent Cheri Beasley and Republican Associate Justice Paul Newby. Beasley refused to concede after she lost by about 400 votes and attempted to restore thousands of ballots. Of the 2,800 of those ballots analyzed by The News & Observer at the time, 70 percent belonged to Democrats and just nine ballots belonged to Republicans.
Some of the ballots Beasley tried to force election officials to accept were ballots that had already been counted, WRAL News reported. But the NCGOP says her attempts ultimately failed after they used resources from the Judicial Victory Fund to fight back.
Republicans also managed to flip the balance of the state’s Supreme Court in 2022 after Republicans Trey Allen and Richard Dietz won their races, giving Republicans a 5-2 majority.
“If you’re a state party chairman and you don’t have critics, you probably aren’t doing your job,” former chairman of the NCGOP Tom Fetzer told The Federalist. “It’s something that anybody who has ever been a state party chairman accepts and deals with.”
GOP Critics Say Whatley Could Do More
Womack and John Kane, who tried to unseat Whatley in 2022, say he is being given too much credit and should be doing more for election integrity.
“He’s taking credit for [the Judicial Victory Fund] as a great accomplishment, but the credit needs to be shared with … the attorneys that were working on the judicial campaigns, there were different districts that were raising money,” Womack said.
And when it comes to fighting to secure elections, Womack said the real effort comes from the RNC. In October, the NCGOP and RNC intervened in a lawsuit wherein Democrats attacked a state senate bill that “prevents non-citizens from voting, protects bipartisan poll watchers, and eliminates dark money in elections.”
“The RNC is taking the lead on their lawyers so the NCGOP is just saying, ‘Me too,’” Womack told The Federalist. “We do have a general counsel who is pretty good but the RNC is the one floating all these costs for the lawsuits nationwide.” Aside from the RNC’s election integrity efforts, he added, grassroots Republicans have also worked behind the scenes to ensure the state has a fair process.
This criticism was echoed by Executive Director of Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina, Jay DeLancy, who claimed the NCGOP only addressed allegations of dead people voting in the Beasley-Newby race after his organization took the lead and began investigating.
“It wasn’t [the NCGOP] idea, it was ours,” DeLancy said, adding however that he was pleased the NCGOP helped ramp up efforts. DeLancy also argued that while he has “no complaints about [the NCGOP] lawsuits” and said he gives “credit” to the “effective” legal action that was taken, securing elections starts from the bottom up.
“Election integrity takes creativity, you have to think about how the bad guys are doing things and get into the process,” he said. “What we’re more concerned with is day-to-day ground game and where people are cheating, where the rubber meets the road at the polls.”
“When things go south at the polls, we train our poll workers to pull out the law and show the clerk where they’re wrong. [NCGOP] doesn’t, they just say, ‘call us’…and log it unless they feel they can take legal action,” DeLancy added. “I would love to have seen someone who took election integrity seriously as RNC chairman but at the end of the day, all they really care about is get out the vote efforts and they’re not serious about election integrity.”
Mitchell expressed similar thoughts, saying while recruiting volunteer lawyers and poll observers is “absolutely vital,” she hopes Whatley “will be open to hearing about and understanding” that Republicans need to “fight the left on every single issue and every inflection point regarding the election system.”
“We cannot hope to counter their massive funding and organizational advantage that has nothing to do with the DNC or the normal political campaigns,” Mitchell said. “We are in a different world now and hopefully, Michael and the new RNC leadership will want to learn and do something about it. Banking early votes or ballot harvesting as a singular strategy has the left rolling in the aisles laughing at us.”
Womack and Kane also expressed concerns about whether Whatley could actually fundraise for the party.
“The state party would be broke if it weren’t for RNC subsidies,” Womack said. Kane also attributed the state party’s funds to the RNC.
Womack acknowledged, however, that Whatley likely wouldn’t need to worry about doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to fundraising because Trump would be able to drum up most of the support himself.
“Trump’s train has left the station,” Womack said. “I think he’s gonna do well regardless of who the RNC chair is so I’m guessing it really doesn’t matter who leads the RNC.”
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
The Justice Department, run by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is keeping secret its strategic plan to implement President Joe Biden’s executive order on getting out the vote. Pictured: Biden, appearing via teleconference, looks on as Garland attends a meeting Aug. 3, 2022, in the White House complex. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The Biden Justice Department continues to claim presidential privilege to block release of its strategic plan to turn out the vote, although at least two other federal agencies have made their plans public. In defending a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, the Justice Department is keeping under wraps its plans to implement President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order, under which most federal agencies are required to develop a strategic plan for increasing voter participation in elections.
The plaintiff in that case, the Foundation for Government Accountability, contends that privilege claim is undermined by two federal agencies releasing their plans to implement Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which he signed in March 2021. Notably, the U.S. Trade Representative, an agency that is part of the Executive Office of the President, made its plan public through a public records request, as The Daily Signal reported last week. The Railroad Retirement Board also released its strategic plan for boosting voting, The Daily Signal reported.
“Now that at least two agencies have handed out their strategic plans, the Justice Department’s claim [that the plan] is protected by presidential privilege in our case is questionable,” Stewart Whitson, legal director for the Foundation for Government Accountability, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.
The Foundation for Government Accountability first sued the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act in April 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
“The DOJ is supposed to be the arbiter of following the law, and they are doing the opposite,” Whitson said in the interview.
My book “The Myth of Voter Suppression” details how executives at the liberal think tank Demos—one of the private groups working with federal agencies on voter turnout—drafted an executive order in December 2020, the month before Biden took office, suggesting how he should turn government bureaucracies into voter registration agencies.
Possibly more ambiguous is the Defense Department, which said it updated an existing strategic plan to fit Biden’s executive order on voting. The Pentagon’s strategic plan isn’t dated, but appears to have been drafted in 2021 after Biden signed the order that March. The Defense Department, unlike most other federal agencies, consistently has dealt with voting issues for military personnel.
The Justice Department didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s inquiries for this report. Federal agencies frequently decline to comment on ongoing litigation. Publicly, however, the Justice Department said in an October 2022 court filing that releasing documents about its strategic plan to implement Biden’s order could cause “public confusion.”
“To qualify for protection under this privilege, material must be inter- or intra-agency, and both pre-decisional and deliberative,” the Justice Department’s motion in the lawsuit says.
In a March 3 speech, Attorney General Merrick Garland said voter ID and other election reforms were “discriminatory, burdensome and unnecessary,” and that the Justice Department would “fight back” against such measures.
Numerous House and Senate Republicans have sought information about the documents related to Biden’s order telling government agencies to register voters. Critics have said the order could cause federal employees to engage in illegal activity by participating in elective politics. They point to potential violation of the Hatch Act, a law prohibiting partisan political activity using government time or resources, and the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits executive branch agencies from spending money for purposes not designated by Congress.
The Department of Education released a “toolkit” to expand voting among college students and to provide information about voting for students in grades K-12.
Also under Biden’s initiative, the Department of Homeland Security registers new voters during naturalization ceremonies. It’s not clear what else the DHS–which also is charged with stopping illegal immigration–has done to implement Biden’s executive order.
As The Daily Signal previously reported, the Biden administration carved out paid administrative leave to encourage federal bureaucrats—seen as a loyal Democrat constituency—to volunteer as poll workers during elections. The Daily Signal also reported that federal agencies are working to carry out Biden’s order on voting with Demos and other liberal advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 2021, the White House announced that the Justice Department would focus on the Bureau of Prisons to “provide information about voting to individuals in federal custody, facilitate voting by those who remain eligible to do so while in federal custody, and educate individuals before reentry about voting rules and voting rights in their states.”
The Biden administration has made little other information available, however.
Below is my column in the Hill on the real possibility of a federal trial of former president Donald Trump just before or even through the 2024 election. The claim that this schedule is the result of treating Trump like other criminal defendants is increasingly dubious given statements of courts and the Special Counsel.
Here is the column:
“This trial will not yield to the election cycle.” Those words of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan last year made clear that she will not consider that Donald Trump will likely be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee in setting the schedule for his federal trial in Washington, D.C.
Most recently, in the federal prosecution in Florida, Special Counsel Jack Smith declared that he will not consider himself bound by the Justice Department’s longstanding policy of not bringing charges or holding trials of candidates close to an election.
With the Supreme Court reviewing the immunity question (and a decision not expected until June), a nightmare scenario is unfolding in which Trump could be tried not just before the general election, but actually through November’s election.
Chutkan has insisted that her refusal to consider Trump’s candidacy is simply denying special treatment to the former president. But there is nothing typical about how she and others have handled the case. The fact that Chutkan was pushing for a March trial date shows just how extraordinary her handling has been.
In the D.C. courts, with thousands of stacked up cases, that would be a rocket docket for a complex case of this kind. There are roughly 770,000 pending cases in roughly 100 district courts around the country. The backlog of pending criminal cases in the federal court system increased by more than a quarter in the last five years. Even when defendants plead guilty, criminal cases average 10 months. If a trial is needed, it runs on average to two years, absent serious complications over classified or privileged material. Smith indicted Trump less than a year ago.
At every juncture, Smith has tried to expedite and spur the case along. This has included an attempt to cut off standard appellate options for Trump. It seems as if the entire point is to try Trump before the election. Smith has offered no reason, other than that he wants voters to consider the outcome of the trial. It is a rare acknowledgement of a desire for a trial to become a factor in an election.
Judge Chutkan has shown the same determination. The judge was criticized for comments she made before any charges were brought that strongly suggested she thought Trump should be criminally charged. Chutkan told one defendant that he showed “blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” In another case, Chutkan told the defendant that it was unfair that he might go to prison but “the architects of that horrific event will likely never be charged.”
When asked to recuse herself, Chutkan denied the clear implication of her own words. She insisted that she has not expressly stated that “’President Trump should be prosecuted’ and imprisoned… And the defense does not cite any instance of the court ever uttering those words or anything similar.”
Of course, neither the court nor the prosecutors seem willing to apply a similarly deferential view of the meaning of Trump’s words within the context of the case. There, the implications are sufficient for that “one person” described earlier by the court.
Chutkan is now reportedly telling parties in other cases that she will be out of the country in August, and that defendants will have to delay any proceedings in light of her plans…unless she can try Trump. She told lawyers that she will stick with her schedule unless “I’m in trial in another matter that has not yet returned to my calendar.”
Given the apparent motivation of the trial court to try Trump before the election, the only other source of restraint would be the Justice Department itself. Smith, however, has insisted that he will show no such restraint, even if he tries Trump through the election.
In his filings in Florida, Smith insisted that the oft-cited Justice Department policy to avoid such proceedings within 60 days of an election would not be applied in Trump’s case. He insisted that, since everyone knows about the allegations, there would be no harm or foul in holding him for trial for the weeks before the election as his opponent, President Biden, is free to traverse the country campaigning.
Smith’s position was applauded by commentators who had previously invoked the rule to oppose charges that might have helped Trump before prior elections. Take Andrew Weissmann, who served as the controversial top aide to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Now an MSNBC legal analyst, Weissmann assured viewers that there was no problem trying Trump just before the election because this is just “an internal rule. It is not a law.”
He then added “Second, the rule does not apply! For anyone who has been at the Justice Department, this is such a red herring.” He insisted this is only meant to avoid some “covert cases” being tried “because you don’t want to influence the election when that person — the candidate — doesn’t have an opportunity to get to trial.”
However, when the issue was the possibility of Special Counsel John Durham charging figures in the Russia investigation before the 2020 election, Weissmann and Professor Ryan Goodman wrote a column not only invoking the rule but encouraging prosecutors to refuse to assist Durham.
I have previously written about the ambiguity of this rule and the selectivity of its applications. However, Weissmann and Goodman were adamant that such prosecutions would be dangerous. Even though no actual election candidate would have been charged, they invoked this Justice Department “norm” and declared, “The Justice Department should not take action that could distort an election and influence the electorate. If someone is charged immediately before an election, for instance, that person has no time to offer a defense to counter the charges. The closer the election, the greater the risk that the department is impermissibly acting based on political considerations, which is always prohibited.”
It is certainly true that these charges have been known for a while, but Trump may not have an ability to present a complete defense before the election. It is also clear that he will have to choose between campaigning for office and defending his liberty.
Moreover, this is the leading candidate for the presidency, and the opponent to the current incumbent. A 2023 poll found that a 47 percent plurality of Americans already believe the charges are politically motivated. That appearance will only worsen as the election approaches, a recognition that should force a modicum of restraint upon both the court and the prosecution. Finally, Smith is referencing the election as the reason to expedite the trial precisely because it may have an influence on voters.
The Trump trials are troubling precisely because they are being handled differently because of who the defendant is. No one can seriously suggest that Judge Chutkan would be moving other cases or canceling trips in order to shoehorn them into the calendar this year, if it were not for the election and the name of the defendant. Such cases are, after all, notorious for taking years to work out complicated pre-trial matters.
Most citizens already see that reality. State prosecutors in New York and Georgia waited for years to charge Trump, then pushed for expedited schedules in order to try him before the election.
That brings us back to Judge Chutkan’s pledge to “not yield to the election cycle.” Yet the expedited effort of the court seems clearly motivated by the election cycle. She and Smith are depending on the election cycle as they struggle to pull Trump into court at the height of a presidential campaign. It is a schedule conceived for the “one person” described by Chutkan in the earlier cases. As the calendar continues to shrink, claims of blind justice increasingly look like the blind pursuit of a specific person.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. & Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign faces an arduous task uniting his party after Michigan Democrats waged a massive protest vote over his support of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. With 95% of the votes counted, Biden won Tuesday’s primary with 81%, but 13%, or more than 100,000 people, cast “uncommitted” ballots in a state where a large Arab American community and other progressive Democrats vented their anger at Biden’s support of an Israeli offensive in which tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed.
Neither Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris mentioned Gaza or Israel in their statements on Michigan’s results, an omission that drew criticism from organizers of the uncommitted vote effort.
The results showed Biden’s “core group of supporters are still behind him,” a Biden campaign official said on Wednesday.
“This doesn’t mean we will ignore the Arab American and Muslim American population. We will not. We are not taking anyone for granted,” the official said.
The official said the president was working to build lasting peace in the Middle East. “He’s not approaching this issue as a politician but as commander-in-chief.”
Democrats, overall, support Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict by 61%, February polling by Harvard-Harris shows. Just over 101,000 voters cast uncommitted ballots, far more than the 10,000 organizers said they sought and prompting some to speak of plans for a nationwide movement. When Democratic President Barack Obama ran for re-election in 2012, he faced about 21,000 uncommitted voters in Michigan’s primary that year. The votes are enough to send two ‘uncommitted’ delegates to the Democrats’ national convention in August.
“Our delegation plans to hold the Democratic nominee accountable to our community’s anti-war agenda at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago” in August, said Listen to Michigan, one of the groups behind the uncommitted vote.
MICHIGAN THE EPICENTER OF BACKLASH
Biden’s early and strident support of Israel and his refusal to condition military aid on not killing innocent people or destroying infrastructure sparked outrage and a well-organized backlash with Michigan as the epicenter. That anger has grown as deaths climbed in Gaza, famine looms and much of the 2.3 million population became homeless.
Michigan organizers want Biden to push for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and halt aid to Israel. They have signaled they might stay home rather than vote for Biden in November’s general election.
The Biden administration has become more critical of Israel over time. The White House in mid-February proposed a temporary ceasefire resolution at the U.N. Security Council and Biden publicly mentioned the idea, but the administration vetoed another measure calling for a permanent ceasefire.
Late on Monday, Biden said Israel had agreed to halt military activities in Gaza for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan expected to begin on the evening of March 10, as Hamas studied a draft for a truce that includes a prisoner-hostage exchange. Nonetheless, Hamas and Israel appear far apart on a deal.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden remained committed to a hostage deal accompanied by a temporary ceasefire. “The president understands how painful this moment is to many people,” Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday.
Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people and captured 253 on Oct. 7, according to Israeli tallies, triggering Israel’s air and ground assault on Hamas-ruled Gaza. Health authorities in the enclave say nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since.
Michigan Democratic officials vowed to do more to win over voters after Tuesday’s results. Biden won Michigan by less than a 3% margin in 2020, and some opinion polls show the likely Republican candidate Donald Trump ahead in a head-to-head matchup in the state this time. Michigan has some 200,000 Arab American voters, more than Biden’s slim 155,000 margin of victory in 2020.
“Tomorrow is the first day of this general election,” Michigan Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II told volunteers for Biden as results rolled in on Tuesday night.
“We are not afraid of people participating in democracy. We are not afraid of voters. We are not afraid of people who are ready to speak out in good faith, in good conscience because they have good intentions,” he said.
Biden Michigan campaign manager Mike Frosolone told party organizers their efforts would pivot to the general election effort in the state, with door knocking, phone banking and the opening of several offices statewide.
“We know when voters see President Biden and Donald Trump’s record side by side, they’re going to choose President Biden,” he said. He said Biden would lay out this case in his State of the Union address on March 7.
Biden, 81, faces low general approval ratings and concern about his age, as does Trump, 77. If Trump is reelected, he is expected to be a strong supporter of Israel and its right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday found “extremism” is the top worry for American voters going into the 2024 election, besting the economy or immigration, and that most judge Biden better equipped to deal with the issue.
Democratic strategist James Carville advised the media not to treat former President Trump like a regular candidate as campaigning for the presidential election heats up ahead of November.
“This is not a typical election,” Carville said Wednesday on MSNBC.
Carville complained that there is a “massive effort” to normalize Trump’s candidacy for president and then compared the Republican front-runner to Nazi military leader Hermann Goering, one of Adolf Hitler’s closest lieutenants.
Democratic strategist James Carville advised the media not to treat former President Trump like a regular candidate as campaigning for the presidential election heats up ahead of November. (MSNBC screenshot)
“Nothing is normal about this at all,” Carville said of Trump’s treatment by the press. “And if you watch his speech last night, it was completely unhinged.”
“What I am obsessed with is, stop treating him like he is a normal candidate,” Carville said, emphasizing that Trump is not like other Republican politicians or past GOP nominees Bob Dole or Mitt Romney.
“But if you look at this, there is a chance that Trump could win this election,” he continued. “And the way that he wins is he is treated as a normal candidate.”
Multiple polls have found that Trump is leading Biden in multiple key demographics and battleground states, including among young voters by a 13-point margin, per a Fox News poll.
Forty-one percent of respondents under 30 said they’d vote for Trump in the 2024 general election, while 28% said they’d vote for Biden, 14% said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 7% for Jill Stein, and 5% for Cornel West. In that scenario, those under 45 years old also favored Trump, with 41% saying they’d vote for Trump, versus 31% who’d cast their vote for Biden.
Carville has made numerous attacks against Republican leaders in the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election. (Screenshot/HBO)
Carville suggested that The New York Times and other major outlets should give context to Trump by writing that he has been “found to be a rapist by a jury.”
“We’re ill-informing the public of just what a wretched human being this man is,” Carville said. “And there is a giant effort to try to normalize this.”
A federal jury in New York City found last year that Trump was not liable for rape but was liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The former president has been ordered to pay advice columnist E. Jean Carroll $5 million.
Carville, who once served as an adviser to former President Clinton, has made numerous attacks against Republican leaders in the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election.
In December, Carville said that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and other “Christian nationalists” like him are a bigger threat to the country than al-Qaeda.
Carville has repeatedly argued in recent months that Democrats should be concerned about President Biden’s waning popularity with voters and especially with his age. (Getty Images)
But the political strategist has also called attention to vulnerabilities within his own party, notably warning that Biden’s age and unpopularity may cost him the election. Carville has repeatedly argued in recent months that Democrats should be concerned about Biden’s waning popularity with voters and especially with his age. At 81 years old, Biden is the oldest serving president in American history.
“The idea that this should not be aired out and should be discussed in hushed tones is ludicrous,” Carville has said of Biden’s poll numbers. “This needs to be discussed.”
Fox News’ Jamie Joseph and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
Jeffrey Clark is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.
Democrats are marching through various stages of grief as they contemplate President Joe Biden running for reelection in 2024. They have variously been hopeful, worried, frantic … and now they’re getting downright angry.
Far-left columnist Harold Meyerson, editor of the liberal magazine American Prospect, is furious that more Democrats have not jumped into the race. His latest piece asks, “Are the Democrats sleepwalking to disaster?” Disaster, of course, being the election of Donald Trump, who will bring the U.S. – according to Meyerson – to the “brink of authoritarian rule.”
The former Washington Post writer says Biden has been an “excellent president,” but is concerned that he is “the candidate least able to defeat Donald Trump.” Meyerson is certainly not alone; a rising chorus of Democrat voices are urging Biden to step aside, including now, apparently, Barack Obama. The New York Post reports that the former president “knows this is going to be a close race” and “feels that Democrats very well could lose.”
The question is: who might replace Biden? Meyerson lofts Gavin Newsom as a possibility but notes that the California governor “lacks appeal to working-class voters (California has the lowest share of white working-class residents of any state save Hawaii).”
Polls look bad for President Joe Biden’s chances of keeping the White House in 2024. But the Democrat alternatives aren’t much better. FILE: A flag flies atop the White House November 15, 2000. (Photo by Alex Wong/Newsmakers) (Getty Images)
He also throws Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer into the mix but supposes she would “face misogynistic hurdles,” deploying one of Hillary Clinton’s many excuses for losing in 2016. He totally ignores Vice President Kamala Harris, as do most commentators, even though tossing her aside could be risky for Democrats.
Here is the truth: the Democrat bench is terrible.
For months, Newsom has been the favored candidate of elite liberals. He’s reliably progressive, telegenic and has been running a stealth campaign to introduce himself to American voters. Unfortunately for Newsom backers, the governor is slip-sliding towards oblivion. First, he surprisingly performed a major face-plant in his debate with Republican Ron DeSantis on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. Most commentators, including myself, expected the glib Newsom to run rings around the supposedly wooden and inarticulate DeSantis.
Instead, Florida’s governor came armed with facts and figures showing his state beating out California on every major metric important to voters – cost of living, taxes, employment, homelessness and crime. Not only did DeSantis win on points, he also won on style. Newsom was smug, condescending and unlikeable. It was a wipeout.
Second, California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office recently projected the state would run a 2024-25 budget deficit of $68 billion next year, twice as large as recorded in 2023-24. The projected gap is an all-time record, as is the state’s $310 billion spending plan. Commentators in California pounced on the news, with the Mercury News declaring “Newsom owns this mess.” The editorial board reminded Californians that at the beginning of last year, Newsom “was bragging about the state’s $98 billion budget surplus.” Oops.
Newsom was first elected governor in 2019; his proposed budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year called for spending of $209 billion. So, in five years, the budget has skyrocketed nearly 50%; on a per-person basis, it has jumped 56%, because more than one million residents have fled the state’s high taxes and impossible business regulations.
Where has the money gone? More than 50 billion was allocated in the past two budgets for climate change, enormous funds handed to unions like the childcare workers group that is demanding a 25% pay hike and teachers who were given an 8.2% cost-of-living raise; taxpayer money has also funded a 10% increase in welfare payments, and numerous other progressive priorities.
Vice President Kamala Harris would be a logical choice to replace her boss, President Joe Biden. But she’s even less popular than he is. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Newsom’s mismanagement of California’s finances is a blueprint, as DeSantis charged in their debate, for how Democrats will crush the U.S. economy.
If Newsom falls appropriately by the wayside, could Governor Gretchen Whitmer be next up? Unlike Newsom, she represents an important swing state, and her favorability ratings in Michigan are better than the president’s. In addition, she has a following with Black voters, which Newsom lacks. Politico reports that Democrats outside of Michigan have encouraged her to run, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Also, a female candidate could help Democrats next year keep the focus on abortion. Polling shows Whitmer competing against Donald Trump more successfully than Biden, Harris or Newsom. In a month-old Fox News poll, all four Democrats lose to Trump, but Whitmer is down by only 2 points.
Still, the Michigan governor is remembered as the author of ludicrous COVID-19 mandates, such as allowing state residents to shop at hardware stores, but outlawing purchases of seeds or other gardening supplies.
In addition, her state is losing population, like California, though less rapidly. Michigan has also acquired a large Muslim population, which could complicate Whitmer or Biden’s prospects in the state if Democrats continue to support Israel. Further, rivals could go after Michigan’s governor for enacting tougher gun laws but failing to drive down crime in what some have called “America’s most dangerous state.” The state harbors eight of the most crime-ridden cities in the U.S.
Unfortunately for Newsom backers, the governor is slip-sliding towards oblivion. First, he surprisingly performed a major face-plant in his debate with Republican Ron DeSantis on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. Most commentators, including myself, expected the glib Newsom to run rings around the supposedly wooden and inarticulate DeSantis.
Whitmer’s main handicap, however, is that she is not well known nationally. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 31% of respondents said they would like to see the governor run for president, but a whopping 45% were “unsure.” If the selection of a candidate falls to the Democrat convention next summer, Whitmer would have little time to introduce herself.
Harris is the obvious replacement should Biden bow out. But her approval ratings are even worse than the president’s, despite numerous efforts by her team and the White House to gin up support. The Real Clear Politics average approval shows her underwater by 20 points; her boss scores a negative 15 points. She also has worse favorable/unfavorable ratings than Donald Trump.
Newsom, Whitmer and Harris are all likely contenders should Biden withdraw from the race. Given their likely electability, Joe may be forgiven for staying put.
Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley weighs in on President Biden’s upcoming visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., not running for re-election.
A new national poll released Wednesday showed President Biden trailing all three lead GOP presidential candidates: former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.
According to the survey, conducted this month by Marquette Law School, Trump has an advantage of 52% to 48% over Biden among registered voters, while DeSantis holds a 51% to 49% advantage in a head-to-head matchup with the president. And Haley, who also previously served as governor of South Carolina, holds a 55% to 45% edge over Biden, the largest lead among Republican candidates.
The survey showed that Trump’s edge over Biden has grown considerably since July, when Marquette’s poll showed the pair tied at 50%. It further showed DeSantis’ lead over Biden has remained consistent in that same time span.
And while all three of the top Republican candidates lead Biden, Trump is the only one who leads among Independent voters. Haley, meanwhile, has the largest support among Democrat voters compared to Trump and DeSantis.
At the same time, Haley draws the support of 15% of Democrat voters, while Trump gets 11% and DeSantis gets 8%.
In addition, the Marquette poll showed Trump, for the first time this year, has taken a lead among registered voters who report being reluctant to choose either him or Biden. Trump leads Biden in that category by a margin of 53% to 47%, a big shift from Biden’s 55% to 42% lead as recently as September.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley holds a 10-point lead over President Biden, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis holds a two-point lead over the president, the Marquette poll showed. (Getty Images)
The most recent poll comes as the White House continues to claim it is not concerned about polling, which continues to show Biden’s approval rating falling and his 2024 prospects waning.
“I mean, look, I spoke to this yesterday,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters earlier this month. “And what I said is you have to take these polls… with a grain of salt, right? And I talked about 2020… and what we saw in 2020 and what was being reported then. And what we saw is a president that was… able to bring an incredibly strong, diverse coalition to win in 2020. We saw the same thing in 2022.”
“So, look, we don’t put much stock in… polls,” she continued. “The president is going to focus on delivering for the American people. He has an agenda that is incredibly popular, and that matters. And that’s going to be what the president is going to focus on: How do we continue to deliver for the American people? And that’s the focus.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this month that the White House doesn’t “put much stock” in polls. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)
“I want [Biden] to consider what is best in terms of the goal that I know he is committed to, which is defeating Donald Trump,” David Axelrod, a former senior Obama campaign adviser, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Nov. 6.
“And if he believes, based on not just what [is] in his heart but what’s in the data and what he’s being told, that he has the best chance to do it, then he should run. But you know, the thing that irritates me a little bit, Wolf, is this notion that people who are concerned are ‘bedwetters.'”
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
Black voters and activists in Milwaukee are feeling uninspired to vote for President Biden with one year to go before the election, according to a CNN report. Black voters in Milwaukee are feeling uninspired and potentially not motivated to vote for President Biden in advance of 2024, according to a CNN report Friday.
Joanna Brooks, who owns a yoga studio in Glendale, said that the Democratic Party has taken Black voters for granted.
“Black people in general, I think, tend to be pretty loyal to the Democratic Party,” Brooks said. “Sometimes I wonder, just based on how that party has performed thus far for people so far, if they should continue to be.”
Black voters in Milwaukee are feeling uninspired and potentially not motivated to vote for President Biden in advance of 2024, according to a CNN report. (CNN screenshot | Getty Images)
“I hear people saying [that] they’re not gonna vote,” Milwaukee voter Eric Jones said of the 2024 presidential election. “That’s my fear. They see [Biden and former President Donald Trump], and they’re gonna say, ‘Screw it. We’re damned anyways.'”
“When the factories and the manufacturing left, jobs left,” he told CNN. “When jobs leave and opportunities leave, then you have certain things that are domino effects.”
Jones said that the recipe for popularity as a political candidate was simple: “You bring opportunities, you bring jobs, you get votes. Plain and simple.”
When asked who he would choose between Trump and Biden, Devonta Johnson, a canvasser with Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC), admitted that would be a difficult choice to make.
When asked who he would choose between former President Donald Trump and President Biden, Devonta Johnson, a canvasser with Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, admitted that would be a difficult choice to make. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Other community and statewide organizers said that the stakes were high for winning the Black vote in Wisconsin.
“There’s no way to win a statewide election that doesn’t run through the Black community,” BLOC executive director Angela Lang said. “What happens in Milwaukee can impact the rest of the state, which ultimately can impact the rest of the country.”
“I don’t want the world the Democrats are offering.”
Based black man gives you the most real straight talk you’ll ever hear about the way Dems are wrecking big cities and how people are getting FED UPpic.twitter.com/tyiRhOg43n
Some Democrats are worried about Black male voter turnout as they campaign for 2024 and argue the party is “failing” to reach Black males and younger Black voters, The Washington Post reported.
Internal party analysis reportedly showed that Black male turnout and younger Black voter turnout were much lower in certain states in the 2022 midterms.
“The Democratic Party has been failing epically at reaching this demographic of Black men — and that’s sad to say,” W. Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, told the Post. “Black men are your second-most stable base overwhelmingly, and yet you can’t reach them in a way that makes your work easier.”
IM SICK OF THIS BULL Sh****
A lot of people won’t like this video but I’m tired of holding back. Yes I said what I said. Judge me all you want
WE DONT GIVE A FLYING F*** about President @realDonaldTrump being indicted.
For more Culture, Media, Education, Opinion and channel coverage, visit foxnews.com/media
Fox News’ Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
Jeffrey Clark is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley warns: “A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris”, suggesting that re-electing the aged and addled president would almost certainly vault the vice president into the Oval Office within the next four years. The alarm from the GOP candidate is resonating; just about nobody wants Harris to be our next commander in chief. As Haley says, the very thought should “send a chill up every American’s spine.”
Joe Biden’s campaign is taking heed, prompting the White House to roll our yet another effort to reboot Harris’ “image” – by some counts the third such initiative in the past two years.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at Coppin State University in Baltimore on July 14, 2023. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Vice President Harris, for the Biden White House, is both a blessing and a curse. Without Harris in the wings, the president would have faced even louder encouragement to step aside, inspired by his dismal approval ratings, alleged corruption and declining acuity. Some 44% of Democrats do not want Joe to run again, according to a recent Monmouth University poll. But Democrats are wary; if Biden steps out of the race, Harris, who has even worse favorability than the president, steps in. In that same poll, only 13% of her party wishes her to be the candidate.
On the other hand, if more GOP contenders begin to echo Haley, Americans might think twice about voting for doddering Joe.
The White House needs to pump up Kamala Harris… fast. It’s not as though they haven’t tried. Earlier in the administration they even started calling the Second Gentleman Douglas instead of Doug, to make him appear a more serious and appropriate spouse for a woman best known for breaking into hysterical laughter at the oddest moments. True story.
Mostly the makeovers have teetered on assigning Harris to new roles, hoping she might finally get traction. On her initial briefs – acting as U.S. border czar and the point person on overhauling voting rights, she fell flat. Her response to being asked if she would visit the border early on was to break into giggles, a telling moment that, given the gravity of the border crisis, should disqualify Harris from higher office.
Naturally, any redo starts with the help of the liberal media. Predictably, here comes a slew of puffy articles about the vice president. Politico recently ran this intriguing headline: “Why Kamala Harris is a Better VP than You Think.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the Investing in America tour at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 14, 2023. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
It is worth a read. Houdini’s famous contortions pale next to author Julia Azari’s attempts to explain Harris’ face plant in office. In desperation, the political science professor points out that one possible VP role is to speak up for underrepresented groups, but then has to acknowledge that even black people don’t much like Harris.
Azari dismisses criticisms of Harris’ infamous “word salads” (because, you know, George W. Bush also spoke poorly) and her inability to retain staff (women of color have it tougher) but fails to make the case that Harris is a success. In desperation, she closes with, “In the final analysis, her political difficulties, and their causes, are nebulous and hard to pin down. Kind of like the vice presidency itself.”
The New York Times chimes in, writing recently “Kamala Harris Takes on a Forceful New Role in the 2024 Campaign.” The reporter begins: “The vice president is trying to reclaim the momentum that propelled her to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s side as a candidate and into the White House in 2020.”
What is he talking about? Harris flopped as a presidential hopeful early in the 2020 election cycle; a few months before she dropped out, a Quinnipiac poll showed her winning the votes of only 7% of Democrats and only 1% of the black vote. Her career was hanging by threads when Biden narrowed his V.P. choices by promising to tap a woman of color. The list of possible recruits was short; only Harris had any national name recognition.
In a November 2019 piece about the implosion of Harris’ run, the Times reported that Harris “proved to be an uneven campaigner who changes her message and tactics to little effect and has a staff torn into factions.” Also: “there is only one candidate who rocketed to the top tier and then plummeted in early state polls to the low single digits: Ms. Harris.”
Now the Times is extolling her expanding presence on the campaign trail, lauding her attacks on GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis and confronting “rising extremism in the Republican Party…” In particular, Harris slammed the Florida governor’s African American history curriculum, which she claims (along with other civil rights activists) portrays slavery as in some instances beneficial. As William Allen, one of several black authors of the disputed material has argued, the reference is historically accurate and is one line in 216 pages.
In other words, Harris is, characteristically, spewing dishonest talking points instead of engaging in thoughtful or serious debate.
What the Times fails to mention, is that Harris is more visible on the campaign trail mainly because she’s filling a void. Joe Biden has done little campaigning, for good reason. Almost any time he steps to a microphone, his aids steel themselves for the inevitable goof – not knowing where he is, getting facts and dates wrong, or wandering lost from the podium. These are not Republican talking points; these are signs that Biden should not run again.
Kamala Harris is not a failed VP because the tasks are too tough or because she hasn’t been allowed a long leash – excuses the liberal press toss out to explain her abysmal ratings. She has failed because she is not a serious person and did not deserve such an important role. Joe Biden described her as a “work in progress” early in their joint administration; sadly for both, there has not been much progress.
When Americans vote next fall they should heed Haley’s warning; voting for Joe Biden could make Kamala Harris president, an outcome too dire to contemplate.
Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.
News broke Monday that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge overseeing the Jan. 6-related case against Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., set a March 4, 2024, trial date for the former president.
It just so happens that March 4 is the day before Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen states, from California to Texas to Virginia, will hold Republican primary elections. What a coincidence! What this means is that Trump, the Republican front-runner by a wide margin, will not be able to campaign ahead of the most important date on the GOP primary calendar. It also means he’ll likely be tied up in court a week later on March 12, when four more states hold primary elections.
But this isn’t merely election “interference,” it’s a naked attempt to rig the 2024 election. The timing here is important, because not only will Trump be pulled off the campaign trail at a crucial time, he will almost certainly be convicted over the summer. After all, the jury in this case will be drawn from a pool that voted 92 percent for Joe Biden. No matter how outlandish and unconstitutional the charges are, no matter how utterly politicized the process is, a D.C. jury is going to convict Trump.
A summer 2024 conviction sets up the real play here, which is for blue states and counties to remove Trump from the ballot, citing a faulty and blatantly lawless reading of the 14th Amendment. Assuming Trump wins the GOP primary, this will leave Republicans with no candidate on the ballot across vast swaths of the country heading into the fall. Even if the Supreme Court steps in, if Democrats time it just right it will be too late to send out corrected, lawful ballots in time for Election Day.
Whatever one thinks of Trump’s post-2020 election challenges — whether they were legitimate, delusional, or downright treasonous — they were nothing compared to what Democrats are trying to pull here. Consider the timeline alone. How on earth could a case involving millions of documents and hundreds of witnesses be ready for trial by March? And how does Trump already have a trial date set in his Jan. 6-related case when dozens of other Jan. 6 defendants have been rotting away in federal prison for years now?
One lawyer for Jan. 6 defendants explained on Twitter that he had a “relatively simple” Jan. 6 case that was indicted in late March in D.C., and at a recent status hearing dates were discussed for a trial in March or April 2024: “So I get a year between indictment and trial in a one-defendant relatively straight-forward J6 case. And Trump gets 8 months in a case with 12 million pages of discovery and well over 100 witnesses.”
The whole thing is a naked abuse of power — a violation of Trump’s Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, to say nothing of his free speech rights, which DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith is trying to criminalize.
The Obama-appointed Judge Chutkan, who has a penchant for handing down harsher sentences for Jan. 6 cases than what federal prosecutors recommended, has already betrayed her politically motivated bias in this case. Her claim that Trump would get “no more or less deference than any other defendant” is contradicted by her observation that because Trump has “considerable resources” he is “not entitled to unlimited preparation time.”
In other words, because Trump is wealthy, and because the political calendar dictates that Democrats move their election-rigging scheme along quickly, Trump’s trial is getting fast-tracked. There’s no other explanation for why this trial date is being set so soon after the indictment, and why March 4 was chosen as the specific date.
As John Hasson noted on Twitter, two separate courts have now attempted to set March 4 as Trump’s trial date. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis tried to set Trump’s trial date for March 4, but Republican Gov. Brian Kemp shut it down. Now Judge Chutkan has done the same. There’s a reason it keeps coming up, and it has nothing to do with justice or a fair trial.
Dems tried to set a March 4th date for Trump's GA trial, but Brian Kemp shut that down
So now they're setting a March 4th date for Trump's **DC** case
What we’re seeing here is the machinery of the Biden regime’s show trials at work. Remember, the point of a show trial is not to deliver justice, it’s to display power.
Everything about this process — the farcical indictments, the release of the mugshot, the timing of the trial — is designed to convey to ordinary Americans that one side, the left, has consolidated control over the most powerful institutions in our country, and resistance to their rule will be met with overwhelming force.
Democrats are not trying to hide any of this from you. They want you to see this display of power and understand what it means, which is this: You will not under any circumstances be allowed to vote for Donald Trump in 2024. So don’t even think about it — and don’t complain about it either, or you might end up just like him.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, to be published in March 2024. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
2020 candidate Joe Biden sold himself to the fatigued American public as an empathetic, ice-cream-loving grandpa who was going to usher decency and expertise into the White House — but those carefully crafted narratives that helped propel him to the Oval Office are crumbling as the country barrels toward the 2024 election in a time of economic and global instability.
On the 2020 campaign trail, Biden and the media consistently billed him as the candidate to unify the country after four years under former President Donald Trump, who critics blasted as “divisive.” After his election win, Biden declared in a speech that it is “time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again.”
Biden took it one step further after he took office, threatening to fire anyone who didn’t share his views on decency and respect, telling nearly a thousand federal appointees and staff: “I’m not joking when I say this: If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot.”
But Biden’s inconsistency between his actions and his words are coming more to the forefront ahead of what is expected to be an explosive 2024 presidential election.
President Joe Biden’s carefully crafted narratives that helped propel him to the White House are slowly crumbling. (Fox News)
The president’s son, Hunter Biden, settled his child support case in Arkansas in June, ending a years-long paternity dispute over his 4-year-old daughter, Navy Joan Roberts, whom both Biden and first lady Jill Biden refuse to acknowledge as their seventh grandchild.
The New York Times released a damning report last week claiming Biden’s aides have been told to say publicly that he only has six grandchildren. The report said the family dispute is rooted in “money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.”
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked specifically about the report and whether the president considers Roberts his granddaughter, to which she responded, “I don’t have anything to share from here.”
In April, Biden listed six of his grandchildren by name during a “take your child to work day” event at the White House.
“I have six grandchildren, and I’m crazy about them. And I speak to them every single day. Not a joke,” he said at the time.
US President Joe Biden lifts grandson Beau, the son of Hunter Biden, after Biden returned to Washington, DC on June 30, 2022. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden has also put up Christmas stockings at the White House for six of the grandchildren, but has repeatedly left his seventh grandchild out of the annual tradition. But as Biden seeks re-election in 2024 and as the speculation into Hunter’s foreign business dealings ramps up, the president has decided to more publicly embrace his son, Hunter, and grandson, Beau, recently bringing them to Camp David two weekends in a row.
CNN anchor Dana Bash said Monday that it’s “disturbing on so many levels” that Republicans are “using” the Roberts story to criticize Biden, but she acknowledged they’re “able to do that” because of “the brand and the kind of person that we all know and believe Joe Biden to be, because it’s who he says he is, and it’s somebody who is a family man. That’s who we see all of the time.”
Dana Bash claims that Joe Biden shunning his grandkid is "disturbing on so many levels" not because that's what the President is doing, but because "Republicans are using it." She says it goes against "the brand and the kind of person that we all know and believe Joe Biden to be" pic.twitter.com/oM8vsXzUdb
Upon taking office, Biden promised to restore the American story of “decency and dignity” and threatened to fire any staffer who didn’t share that view. However, a new report suggests that the 80-year-old president is prone to yelling at aides behind closed doors and roping them in for “angry interrogations.” Hidden from public view, Biden allegedly has such a “quick-trigger temper” that some White House aides try to avoid meeting him one-on-one, Axios reported Monday.
Biden’s dressing-down of staff often includes profane condemnation, including phrases such as “God dammit, how the f— don’t you know this?!,” “Don’t f—ing bulls— me!” and “Get the f— out of here!”
Speaking with Axios, former Biden campaign and Senate Aide Jeff Connaughton said Biden “hides his sharper edge to promote his folksy Uncle Joe image — which is why, when flashes of anger break through, it seems so out of public character.”
Biden, who is often asked softball questions from sympathetic members of the press, also has a history of responding with anger or sarcasm when faced with tougher questions. In late June, the president berated a reporter who asked if the president was involved in his son Hunter Biden’s business negotiations with a Chinese company. He also called NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell a “pain in the neck” in the Oval Office for a question about a vaccine mandate for Veterans Affairs and once called Fox News’ Peter Doocy a “stupid son of a b—-.”
“Read the polls, Jack. You guys are all the same,” Biden said in 2022 when asked by a reporter what he would say to Democrats who didn’t want him to run for a second term.
In 2021, Biden scolded CNN’s Kaitlan Collins when she suggested he was confident Russian President Vladimir Putin may change his malign behavior, asking her, “What in the hell, what do you do all the time?”
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a State of the Union address at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
‘I don’t discuss business with my son’
President Biden has repeatedly insisted he had no knowledge of son Hunter’s business dealings, but multiple Fox News Digital analyses show that narrative is becoming more difficult to maintain.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden scolded Doocy as he jabbed his finger in his face on the campaign trail in Iowa in 2019. “You should be looking at Trump. Trump’s doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum. … Everybody’s looked at it and said there’s nothing there. Ask the right question.”
“I don’t discuss business with my son,”Biden said again a month later in October 2019.
We have evidence of multiple meetings of Joe Biden w Hunter’s business partners – at least 10 in photographs. Yet Joe said: "I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."pic.twitter.com/X6RreEsi1Y And the @washingtonpost, the paper of Watergate, lies for him. https://t.co/JeIV3ciws9
But records show Biden met with more than a dozen of Hunter’s business associates, and some of those associates and top staffers at Hunter’s now-defunct company Rosemont Seneca Partners visited the White House more than 90 times when Biden was vice president in the Obama administration. Further, nearly a dozen current and former officials serving in the White House and Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, have extensive ties to Hunter.
Hunter, who is accused by Republicans of selling access to his father, dating back over a decade, is expected to make his first court appearance for a tentative probation-only plea agreement on July 26 for two alleged misdemeanor tax violations and a felony gun charge.
Biden has repeatedly said his son did “nothing wrong” and that he will continue to support him.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss, who led the investigation, is facing demands from Republicans probing alleged improper retaliation against whistleblowers who claimed the probe was “influenced by politics” and that Weiss was “hamstrung” when making prosecutorial decisions, which Weiss has denied.
In this handout image provided by the Irish Government, US President Joe Biden departs Dublin Airport on Air Force One with his sister Valerie and son Hunter on April 14, 2023 in Dublin, Ireland. (ulien Behal/Irish Government via Getty Images)
The foreign policy expert
“America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy,” Biden promised allies shortly after his inauguration.
Biden promoted himself as a seasoned foreign policy expert who was going to restore diplomacy on the world stage, but his administration has seen increased aggression by foreign adversaries like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
The Biden administration’s series of missteps during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021, which led to the death of 13 U.S. service members, marked a political turning point for the public’s perception of the president’s competency and ability to lead.
Before what turned out to be a watershed moment in his presidency, Biden was enjoying high approval ratings on issues ranging from the economy to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Biden’s decision to pull troops from Afghanistan faced widespread global backlash after Taliban insurgents retook the country in a matter of days on Aug. 15, 2021, just a month after the president assured Americans that the likelihood of a Taliban takeover was “highly unlikely.”
The military evacuation, which required thousands of additional U.S. troops on the ground and significant cooperation from the Taliban to complete, left behind hundreds of U.S. citizens and tens of thousands of Afghan allies, despite Biden’s promise days earlier to “get them all out.” While Biden admitted that the Taliban’s takeover had caught the U.S. off guard, he has insisted he made the right decision in ending the war and has declined to fire a single official over the pullout.
Biden’s decision to act unilaterally in withdrawing troops without consulting his NATO allies sparked backlash from officials in the U.K., Germany, Italy and France, among others, with foreign officials describing it as a betrayal and damaging to America’s credibility.
President Biden rests his heads in his hands in a moment of frustration during a contentious back and forth with Fox News’ Peter Doocy during a press conference following a terrorist attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, that left 13 service members dead on Aug. 26, 2021. (Getty Images)
The president campaigned in 2020 on his decades of foreign policy experience with promises to repair the U.S. standing on the world stage after four years of the Trump administration. However, critics have often compared the withdrawal to the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War and have said Biden’s foreign policy blunders have given the green light to authoritarian leaders to act aggressively across the globe.
Two months after the Afghanistan withdrawal, Russian President Vladimir Putin renewed a major buildup of troops near the Ukrainian border in October 2021. On Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a bloody and economically devastating war that continues today. Critics have said the Biden administration was too slow to act in imposing economic sanctions against Russia during the months-long military buildup. Experts say Chinese President Xi Jinping has been closely watching the U.S. response to Russia to determine his own potential military action regarding Taiwan. China has long claimed Taiwan as its own territory, despite the island having its own democratic government. In February, as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, nine Chinese aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense zone.
Biden’s multiple foreign policy blunders, starting with Afghanistan, have caught up with him in the polls.
Fox News’ Nikolas Lanum, Anders Hagstrom, Brian Flood, David Rutz and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
Jessica Chasmar is a digital writer on the politics team for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Jessica.Chasmar@fox.com.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump
Now that we know Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is running for president (along with several others whose names I can’t remember), I have a helpful primer on what NOT to do as president.
I base this advice on the conduct of the most inconsequential president in U.S. history, Donald Trump. With the exception of the judiciary — something neither he nor Jared saw a way of monetizing, thank God — Trump’s entire presidency can be summarized as: obnoxious tweets, followed by immediate and complete capitulation.
The problem with the Trump diehards is that they’d read the bad-ass tweets, pump their fists, but then wander off, never bothering to find out what happened next. Here’s what happened: Trump surrendered. Over and over and over again.
There were so many surrenders that The New York Times had to keep coming up with new synonyms for “loser”: “Trump Gives Ground,” “Trump Backs Off,” “Trump Drops,” “Trump Accommodates Democrats,” “Trump Seethes,” “Trump Signals Defeat,” “Trump’s Surprise Retreat,” “Trump Confronted by a Loss,” “The Biggest Surrender of His Presidency,” and so on.
In his first two years in office, Trump had a Republican House and a Republican Senate — he could have done anything! Let’s see how he fulfilled his signature promise to build a wall, as told in tweets and headlines.
FIRST SPENDING FIGHT:
“… (if) the wall is not built, which it will be, the drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be! #BuildTheWall” — Trump tweet, April 24, 2017
“Don’t let the fake media tell you that I have changed my position on the WALL. It will get built and help stop drugs, human trafficking etc.” — Trump tweet, April 25, 2017
New York Times Headline, April 26, 2017: “Wall ‘Will Get Built,’ Trump Insists, as He Drops Funding Demand”
SECOND SPENDING FIGHT:
“If we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall … One way or the other, we’re going to get that wall.” — Trump at Phoenix rally, Aug. 22, 2017
“I think everybody knows this president isn’t somebody who backs down.” — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, Aug. 23, 2017
Months of negotiations and studly tweets (Jan. 4, 2018: “We must BUILD THE WALL, stop illegal immigration,” etc. etc.) led to this:
New York Times headline, March 22, 2018: “Spending Plan Passed by Congress Is a Rebuke to Trump.”
“Rebuke” is putting it mildly: The bill expressly prohibited Trump from building a wall and, for good measure, also blocked the hiring of thousands of new Border Patrol agents.
But Trump bounced back with more masterful tweeting!
“I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill (because) … the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.” — Trump tweet, March 23, 2018
Then, the very next day …
New York Times headline, March 24, 2018: “Trump Seethes, but Signs Bipartisan Spending Plan”
True, Trump had given away the store, but look at what he said while signing the Don’t Even Think About Building a Wall bill:
“I looked very seriously at the veto. I was thinking about doing the veto.”
Not only that, but he vowed, “I will never sign another bill like this again — I’m not going to do it again.”
You’ll never guess what he did again.
THIRD SPENDING FIGHT:
“I want to know, where is the money for Border Security and the WALL in this ridiculous Spending Bill, and where will it come from after the Midterms? Dems are obstructing Law Enforcement and Border Security. REPUBLICANS MUST FINALLY GET TOUGH!” — Trump tweet, Sept. 20, 2018
Months of negotiations finally ended with …
“Trump Signs Bill Reopening Government for 3 Weeks in Surprise Retreat From Wall” — The New York Times, Jan. 25, 2019
Surprise! By then, 41 newly-elected House Democrats had been sworn in and there was no hope of getting a wall or anything else through Congress.
How does a Republican president get buffaloed like this by a Republican Congress? Reagan enacted his entire radical agenda (and won the Cold War) without ever, not once, having a Republican House and Senate.
It wasn’t only Trump’s wall that followed the obnoxious tweet/face plant trajectory. It was everything. Tweeting “LAW & ORDER!” as the country went up in flames; retweeting #FireFauci while never daring to remove King Anthony from his throne; spending months tweeting about “Rocket Man,” then staging a theatrical meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — to accomplish what exactly?
I’ll need another column to even begin to capture the horror of this wasted presidency.
Gov. DeSantis, I’m pretty sure I don’t need to tell you this, but please don’t do any of that.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden
NBC News’ Chuck Todd has been pilloried by Democrats online for daring to confront viewers with the reality of President Joe Biden’s unpopularity. Todd, the host of “Meet the Press,” detailed the findings of a recent NBC News survey of 1,000 adults, conducted April 14-18. The survey found that 54% of respondents disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president, up from 50% in January.
When asked to rank their feelings of Biden, 38% of respondents indicated that they had a “very negative” impression and another 10% said they had a “somewhat negative” impression. Only 17% of respondents said they had a “very positive” feelings about the Democratic president.
NBC POLL, among Democrats:
☝️ "53% of 2020 Biden voters say he shouldn’t run"
☝️ "64% of Democrats who voted for Sanders or Warren in the 2020 primaries think he shouldn’t run"
Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research told NBC News, “President Biden’s numbers are not where they need to be at this stage.”
Todd zeroed in on how 70% of respondents, including 51% of Democrats, said that Biden — the oldest president ever to take office — should not run for re-election in 2024. By way of comparison, 60% of prospective voters, including roughly 33% of Republicans, said that former President Donald Trump should not run again for office. Roughly half of those who don’t want Biden to run again suggested age was a “major” factor behind their reasoning.
In addition to his routine gaffes, missteps, and tumbles, Biden has explicitly invited scrutiny over his waning vitality. Biden told MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show” in October, “I could drop dead tomorrow.”
“In terms of my energy level, in terms of how much I am able to do, I think people should look and say, ‘Is he still have the same passion for what he’s doing?’ And if they think I do and I can do it, then that’s fine,” he said. “If they don’t, they should vote against me.”
The new NBC News poll indicated that many voters might do just that. When asked who they would vote for if Biden ultimately ran for re-election — an announcement expected later this week — 21% of respondents suggested they would “definitely vote for Biden,” 20% said they might vote for Biden, and 47% of respondents indicated they would vote for the Republican candidate.
Todd told NBC’s “Sunday Today” that Biden’s flagging support and apparent undesirability among voters, including Democrats, is “not because of his policies, it’s simply because of questions about his physical ability to do it and his current age.”
The “Meet the Press” host noted that “the thing that is most striking in our poll is how much Republicans are rallying around Donald Trump. … You have 70% of Republican primary voters tell us, basically, that these charges against Donald Trump mean that it’s more important to rally around Donald Trump rather than giving them a choice that says, you know, he was a good president but these could be distractions in defeating Joe Biden. Only one in four Republican primary voters believe that.”
After Todd suggested that America wasn’t keen on maintaining a gerontocracy helmed by one of two relatively unpopular candidates, leftist Twitter directed its collective anger his way.
The Wrap reported that various Biden supporters and other Democrats accused Todd of spreading ageism, Republican propaganda, and fake news. One user tangled up in a thread questioning Todd’s credibility wrote, “Chuck Todd should be fired! I do not believe this poll. I do believe his age might be an issue for some. I think he’s accomplished so much for this country.” For having reported on the survey results, one user called for Todd to be muzzled.
Howard Altman, a Twitter user who peddles foul screeds about Trump, wrote, “Screw you, Chuck Todd, and screw you Me-lennials. The people who vote, the people you deride as ‘the establishment’ I want Biden/Harris, and they will win.”
"There are only 6% of Americans that would like to see both Trump and Biden run." – @ChuckTodd on a new @NBCNews poll. “It looks like both parties are about to nominate two people that the country doesn’t want to have, and there are going to be unintended consequences to that.” pic.twitter.com/PmJLBnlEGt
While immensely unpopular, recent polls suggest Biden remains the Democratic front-runner.
The latest Harvard-Harris poll has Biden up 27 points over Vice President Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders is a distant third, neck-and-neck with Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Elizabeth Warren are even further behind.
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With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis busy running the third-largest state, enacting a magnificently conservative agenda, promoting a new book, and having to respond to endless demands that he run for president (not to mention banning the words “gay” and “slavery” — the man’s a whirlwind of activity!), I thought I’d jot down a few ideas for his presidential announcement speech.
Here are some of the main points I think he should hit.
— “We are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan!” (Donald Trump, 2023 CPAC)
During his first two years in office, Trump had a Republican House and a Republican Senate. He’d just won a stunning upset victory that should have scared the bejesus out of every Republican in Washington. The people had spoken! They wanted a wall, not more tax cuts.
But Ryan wanted to cut taxes, so Trump forgot all about the wall and gave them tax cuts. (In fairness to Trump, challenging Ryan and pushing for wall funding would have required making a phone call.)
HEADLINE: “Ryan gets big — and much-needed — win on tax cuts” — Politico, Nov. 16, 2017
From the article:
“Loathed by the Breitbart wing of the Republican Party — which sees Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as Trump’s biggest obstacle to making America great again — the Wisconsin Republican scored a major victory in Thursday’s 227-205 vote to pass a massive tax-cut package that dramatically alters the U.S. tax code … [T]he biggest legislative win so far for Trump is an issue that Ryan has been working on for virtually his entire career.”
— “Now we have complete chaos [at the border], fentanyl is pouring in and families are being destroyed. There is death everywhere caused by incompetence.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
In fact, drug overdose deaths in America skyrocketed during the No-Wall/Open-Borders policy of the Trump administration, going from an average of about 50,000 a year in Obama’s second term to more than 90,000 in Trump’s last year in office.
Even in his CPAC speech, full of preposterous, fantastical claims about all the great things he did, Trump couldn’t stay focused on the (now) 100,000 Americans who die of drug overdoses every year — something that is 100% attributable to not having a border wall. After briefly mentioning fentanyl, he got right back to something much more important — Syria and Iraq!
Trump said — no ellipses, this is exactly what he said — “Fentanyl is a big problem. In fact with the ISIS caliphate, a certain general said, it can only be done in three years, it probably cannot be done it all, sir. And I did it in three weeks. I went over to Iraq. Met a great general. ‘Sir, I can do it in three weeks.’ You heard that story.”
What on Earth? The man makes Biden look razor sharp.
— “I stood firm against the forces of anarchy and decay. I arrested the Marxists who toppled statues of our great heroes in Washington, D.C. I arrested them. They were knocking down the most beautiful artwork, the most beautiful statues of great heroes. They didn’t even know who they were, they just wanted anarchy.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
Under President Trump, hundreds of national treasures were destroyed, mangled, defaced, thrown into lakes, chopped up, melted down, hidden away or renamed. It was the greatest desecration of our country’s inheritance since the British set fire to the White House during the War of 1812.
Among the casualties were memorials not only to anyone who ever had anything to do with the Confederacy (on the plus side, black SAT scores immediately improved!), but also statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, Francis Scott Key and Christopher Columbus. Also, a statue of an elk in Portland, Oregon.
In DeSantis’ Florida, no monuments or statues were toppled or defaced — not even the Confederate ones. About a dozen park names were changed and statues moved to other locations, but 75 Confederate memorials still stand in the Sunshine State, including an obelisk at Florida’s state capitol.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a president who gave a damn about our country’s heritage and beautiful artwork?
— “Republicans must compete using every lawful means to win. That means swamping the left with mail-in votes, early votes and Election Day votes.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
Before the absolutely vital Senate runoff election in Georgia in January 2021, Trump did everything he could to discourage Republicans from voting.
The AJC reported: “Trump’s message that the election was stolen discouraged voters such as Craig Roland, a 61-year-old Rome resident. Roland said he didn’t believe his vote would count. ‘What good would it have done to vote? They have votes that got changed,’ Roland said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever vote again.’”
— “We will keep men out of women’s sports.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
It was during Trump’s first year in office that biological men competing in women’s events destroyed women’s soccer and track and field in Connecticut, an absurdity that quickly spread to the rest of the country. Trump did nothing about it, unless you count a strongly worded tweet. (Heard of Title IX?)
Gov. DeSantis signed a bill prohibiting biological males (according to their birth certificates) from competing in women’s sports in any interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural or club athletic teams or sports that are sponsored by a public secondary school, high school, public college or university institution in the state of Florida.
— “I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
The entire transgender craze kicked off during the Trump administration, and it continued unabated throughout the Trump administration.
By contrast, acting at the behest of Gov. DeSantis, Florida medical boards have issued rules prohibiting the poisoning and mutilation of youth under 18 years old, one of the first such policies in the nation.
— “[Fox News host] Sean Hannity should get a [Pulitzer] prize … Tucker should get a prize.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
Hmmm. After the election, Hannity was “privately disgusted by Trump … but was scared to lose viewers,” according to Rupert Murdoch. In texts, Tucker Carlson called Trump “a demonic force” and “a destroyer.”
I don’t know if having a tenuous grasp of the obvious warrants a Pulitzer Prize, but if those are Trump’s biggest boosters, he may want to go back to Kanye West and Nick Fuentes.
In a recently published blog post, Twitter announced its plans to “protect” political discourse ahead of the upcoming U.S. midterm elections by reaffirming its commitment to its “Civic Integrity Policy.” Given Silicon Valley’s tendency to suppress conservative speech while emboldening leftist causes, it is all but certain this policy will be used exclusively for right-wing censorship. And considering the impracticality of introducing regulations prior to the 2022 midterms, the Republican Party must make regulating Big Tech a top priority in order to ensure the integrity of the 2024 presidential election.
According to Twitter, its Civic Integrity Policy “covers the most common types of harmful misleading information about elections and civic events” by flagging “misleading content” and, in some cases, outright suppressing content that contains “false or misleading claim[s].” But, with recent history as a guide, we can see that Twitter does not enforce this policy honestly.
In 2020, just weeks before the presidential election, Twitter suppressed discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The company went so far as to prevent users from sharing the New York Post story exposing the scandal with one another, claiming that its circulation violated the company’s policy on spreading information obtained via hacking. Coincidentally, Twitter did nothing to stop the circulation of leaked copies of Donald Trump’s tax filings.
Why does this matter?
Twitter justified its suppression of speech that favored a Republican incumbent by falsely designating it as ill-begotten misinformation while simultaneously doing nothing to crack down on the likely illegally obtained information that damaged the same incumbent’s reputation among the electorate.
It just so happens that by suppressing negative stories about Joe Biden, Big Tech may have handed him the election as 82 percent of Biden voters in seven swing states were unaware of all of the scandals attached to him. Seventeen percent of these voters said that knowledge of these scandals before voting would have caused them to change their vote.
The company’s integrity policy was applied in ways that specifically targeted speech favorable to the Republican Party. By censoring this speech, Twitter played a direct role in Joe Biden’s ascension to the presidency.
Social media’s utility is largely the provision of a digital town square where people can share information with other people. So, ethically, ought companies that monetize user data obtained from speech-centric platforms not protect speech?
But more importantly, considering how often Big Tech platforms such as Twitter act on behalf of the federal government, they must be held accountable for violating the First Amendment rights of American users. Corporations that function as extensions of the government must be compelled to uphold the constitutional protections of American citizens.
In a July 2021 briefing, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki explicitly stated that the Biden administration intended to collaborate with Big Tech to “monitor misinformation more closely” and “proactively address the public’s questions without inadvertently giving a platform to health misinformation that can harm their audiences.” She also acknowledged that the White House intended to reign in counter-regime narratives by “bringing individuals and organizations together to address misinformation.” The White House was so effective at persuading Big Tech to crack down on narratives in opposition to its own that social media companies deplatformed journalists who were too effective at asking questions about Biden’s Covid strategy and Covid vaccine efficacy.
Agents of the government must be subject to the U.S. Constitution and prevented from infringing on the rights of American citizens. And despite what tech executives will say when testifying before Congress, these companies are politically motivated and serve the interests of the political left. Is there any question as to whether Big Tech plans to mobilize in favor of Democrats again in 2024?
It is far too late — and politically impossible — for congressional Republicans to introduce regulatory legislation that would reign in social media platforms like Twitter before the 2022 midterm elections. So, upon reclaiming control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the GOP must act to secure digital free speech ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @Mangold_Lenett.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
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