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Did everyone know that, while President Trump was working at the White House the weekend of January 12 and 13, 2019, 30 Democrats were in Puerto Rico on a party junket?
Here’s the headline from the Drudge Report (click on photo to see full image):
That’s Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), no stranger to the opposite sex.
As Big League Politics explains:
Perhaps Menendez should be more careful about signing himself up for lavish overseas trips. (Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States located in the Caribbean Sea.) The Senator was charged with accepting bribes in the form of gifts, most notably trips to the nearby Dominican Republic, where it’s alleged he was provided underaged prostitutes by a doctor named Salomon Melgen. Despite being charged by prosecutors in regards to the trips themselves, Menendez got off easy in a ‘not guilty’ ruling that left many anti-corruption advocates shaking their heads.
Hopefully Menendez will be inclined to act in a more responsible manner on this trip on account of being surrounded by his Democratic colleagues and corporate lobbyist handlers.
The article has more on the weekend frolics. Note the corporate sponsors (lobbyist list here, emphasis mine):
At least 30 Democrats from the House and Senate are said to be kicking back on the island in a trip sponsored by lobbyists from companies like Facebook, Amazon, Comcast and Verizon. They’ll have a chance to view a showing of the hit musical Hamilton, and get acquainted with the show’s cast.
BOLD PAC, a political component of the ethnic-lobby House Hispanic Caucus, is said to have chartered a Boeing 737 to transport visitors to the Caribbean island, still said to be recovering from the effects of Hurricane Maria.
Hmm.
Anyone responding with a ‘So what?’ might consider this:
Back on the mainland, Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) had this to say:
Federal workers and contractors can ring two numbers to assuage their suffering:
President Trump would agree:
He called time on the Dems:
Things could be shifting on the D side:
Because:
Especially as:
Although this looks as it it is a Democrat standoff with Trump, there is a much larger issue here:
One day, all will be revealed. In the meantime, everyone in the West would do well to pay less attention to the spin from the usual media outlets.
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David A Clarke, Jr, the most famous retired sheriff of Milwaukee, has an outstanding Twitter feed.
He tells it like it is.
A selection of his recent tweets follows.
On the December 26 murder of the on-duty police officer, Corporal Ronil Singh, in California:
On the Wall:
On Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who spent her Christmas holiday in Hawaii (while President Trump worked in the Oval Office):
On feminism:
On self-defence:
On voter fraud:
On police killed in the line of duty and policing policy:
On Obama:
On the media:
On Mitt Romney:
On the Democrats’ hypocrisy:
If you enjoyed those, there is more at his website:
Sheriff Clarke has views on a wide range of topics. His site is definitely worth visiting.
On Tuesday evening, January 8, 2019, President Trump made a 10-minute nationally broadcast announcement about the southern US border:
These are some of the top points he made:
Also:
And:
Trump refrained from declaring a national emergency:
His address was largely framed as humanitarian. He also stated that, at the urging of the Democrats, the ‘wall’ will be made of steel rather than concrete. This offers several advantages to border patrol officers, as they can see through the slats.
Ultimately:
The White House site has more.
To those who cannot understand the need for a barrier along the southern border, he said:
Therefore:
Afterwards, the Democrats gave their rebuttal to Trump’s announcement. There is no obligation to rebut, but the Democrats have been doing this since Reagan was president. Here we have the bi-coastal duo of Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California):
So, if a barrier between the US and Mexico is unnecessary, why did the US finance one in … Jordan?
Meanwhile, the shutdown continues. Most Americans will not notice the difference, because Social Security and welfare benefits continue to reach people, but the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, is unhappy. Priorities, priorities:
Democrats forget that their stalling on resolving on the border situation with President Trump, who spent all of Christmas and New Year — as well as the present — working at the White House, also has a negative impact on Mexico:
Barriers help to keep undesirables out …
… such as this man, employed at an elite Catholic school:
Breitbart reports that the man (emphases mine):
used a fake name — going by Mario Arguetta — and a fraudulent Social Security Number to obtain employment.
Perez, who had been living in San Pablo, now faces three felony counts of child pornography.
Due to California’s sanctuary state law, illegal aliens — even those who are convicted felons — are shielded from deportation and arrest by federal immigration officials.
Returning to the tweet above about San Diego, this is how well their barrier, which has been operational since the 1990s, works. What had been a crime-ridden border area is now home to shops and restaurants. People can cross by foot along a gated area from Tijuana to reach a pleasant commercial district. Worth watching:
There is a real problem at the border. President Trump is doing what he can to solve it.
But — he needs the Democrats’ help, too.
Over Christmas, I received one message from a loved one worried that President Trump will lead the US into war.
It was a bit surprising, as he had already laid out his policy to withdraw from Syria and would begin a troop draw-down in Afghanistan. That said, my loved one is a faithful MSNBC viewer. I have tried but cannot persuade her to get news from other sources.
As the American president noted yesterday:
As Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of Turning Point USA — an organisation for university-aged Trump supporters — says, President Trump had a very successful 2018 despite his opponents’ best efforts to thwart him:
As an article in today’s Tennessee Star (initially posted on ConservativeHQ.com) pointed out:
President Trump’s been remarkably successful in a short time — through legitimate means. Democrats and the media relentlessly peck at him for his brash personal style and reflexive tendency to punch back via tweet, but if the success of a president is measured in actions performed, Trump rates extremely high.
It’s important to look back at Donald Trump’s personal history through his outstanding career in real estate. He knew anybody who was anybody. He went to all sorts of parties and receptions. People told him all manner of secrets in conversation.
The important thing to remember here is that Donald Trump does not drink. Nor has he ever used drugs. So, he remembers all sorts of details about what people — his friends, at the time — told him.
Shortly before the election on November 8, 2016, he held one of his many campaign rallies. At this particular one, he explained why his notional friends hated him for running for president:
He won the election he was not supposed to win. He became the leader of the free world, in traditional parlance.
It was more than just the media who had it in for him. A coup of sorts has been going on ever since he was elected, so please read the text inside the box:
At some point, however, one has to question the abject hatred. Is it just about President Trump — or is it about something more?
Because it’s about more than Trump.
This visceral hatred from the Left — media included — is also aimed at half of the US population:
President Trump spent all of Christmas and New Year at the White House:
All of the legislators have been on holiday, except for one, a Republican.
President Trump — and this Republican legislator — were hoping for an early return of senators and congressional representatives in order to press ahead with urgent legislation regarding the southern US border. But to no avail. Here is the Speaker-Designate of the House of Representatives:
Meanwhile, the First Lady hosted the Trumps’ New Year party on her own:
So, when the Democrats rail against President Trump come January 3, remember why the media and political elite — including his own Republicans — are doing so. They are being duplicitous in their rants.
Regardless, 2019 promises to be a ‘fantastic’ one for the United States, and, by extension, the world!
Perhaps less so for the president’s detractors.
If we want peace in the world, we need to continue to pray for President Trump’s safety and well-being.
Many thanks to Martin Geddes for coming out with two very important graphics explaining the Democrats and the media.
I am unfamiliar with Mr Geddes but appreciate the time he put into them. (Click on each one to enlarge.)
Outside of The Daily Caller, Gateway Pundit and Breitbart, most of the heavy lifting for President Trump and his MAGA agenda is done by citizen journalists, everyday people like you and me, whereas the Democrats have most of Big Media at their beck and call:
Note the colour codes. Twitter gives everyone in Big Media a pass. Citizen investigative journalists, not so much.
And it’s not just citizen journalists who are banned. On November 26, 2018, The Daily Caller reported that Twitter permanently banned an American veteran who had a radio show (emphases mine):
Conservative veteran and radio host Jesse Kelly was permanently banned from Twitter on Sunday for allegedly committing multiple violations of the Twitter terms of service.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller’s Amber Athey, Kelly said Twitter informed him that he was banned with no warning and no explanation of what rules he allegedly broke.
That day, Kelly appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight (Fox News):
The article says that Twitter banned a feminist, too:
Last week, the tech giant banned feminist Meghan Murphy for questioning the ideology behind the transgender movement.
The good news is that Kelly’s Twitter account appears to have been reinstated. Result! Thanks go to the senators who support freedom of speech:
Despite that success and a few others, Twitter can and does stifle those who do not support the leftist agenda. On July 29, The Daily Caller reported that Republican legislators also fell foul of the social media giant:
Twitter’s censorship problem looks like it’s here to stay.
The company faced a sharp backlash last week after a Vice News investigation revealed that Twitter was hiding several prominent Republicans from its search bar.
Those affected included four House Republicans: Rep. Devin Nunes of California, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina. All four are members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Democrats weren’t affected in the same way, Vice found.
Interesting, especially when the four who were censored are relatively young supporters of President Trump and MAGA. It’s as if Twitter doesn’t want Americans to know that younger legislators support the president. Why, that might influence others in that same age bracket to jump aboard the Trump Train.
The article says that Twitter claims their shadowbanning — hiding the congressmen’s accounts from the search bar — wasn’t to do with anything the congressmen tweeted, but rather their followers. Does the following sound totalitarian?
At the center of the company’s censorship problem is its decision to penalize “bad-faith actors,” who aren’t actually in violation of any rules but still threaten “healthy conversation.”
Much the sorting between good and bad actors on Twitter is done by an algorithm which takes into account criteria like whom you follow and tweet at, and who follows and tweets at you.
Twitter didn’t penalize the congressmen because of anything they said, but because the “wrong” accounts were engaging with their tweets, two Twitter executives conceded in a blog post Thursday. The Republicans were guilty of being followed by the wrong people.
Twitter has since restored the congressmen’s visibility on Twitter, but the underlying issue remains.
The company is still burying accounts it deems “bad-faith actors,” while remaining opaque about who does or doesn’t fit that classification — and which accounts follow or retweet you are still part of the criteria.
The Daily Caller attempted to find out more from Twitter, but the company did not reply.
Remember back in the old days, not so many years ago:
Twitter … once described itself as the “free speech wing of the free speech party” …
Earlier this year, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey:
sparked controversy in April when he endorsed an article calling for a total Democratic victory the “new civil war.” He similarly raised eyebrows in June by apologizing for the sin of eating at Chick-Fil-A.
Moving along, the next graphic from Martin Geddes outlines the fundamental differences between the Democrats and Trump supporters:
Most people following my site will know that Q is a person or small group of people who probably work for President Trump. For over a year now, Q has asked readers via the Socratic method to analyse what has actually been happening in the United States behind the scenes over the past few decades.
Q’s slogan is ‘Where We Go One, We Go All’: WWG1WGA. In other words, we’re all in this together!
By contrast, the characteristics of the Democratic Party are all too destructive, corrupt — and, sadly, real. Please read them carefully.
The MAGA agenda welcomes everyone, regardless of race, colour or creed.
MAGA is a bit old school — a compliment — in that regard. We believe in freedom, duty, sacrifice and the ideals upon which America was founded. We remember and appreciate our history, good and bad. We like tradition and beauty.
Unlike the Dems, we’re not out to destroy. We’re out to conserve and, where necessary, rebuild with care and attention, in the way the Founding Fathers would have wanted.
It never ceases to amaze me how many leftists who support abortion then invoke Holy Scripture to advance other talking points.
Last week, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who received an endorsement from NARAL Pro-Choice America, discussed the illegals coming into the United States from Latin America via Mexico. He cited Matthew 25 as a defence.
On Friday, November 16, Tucker Carlson had left-wing radio host Chris Hahn on his Fox News show. Carlson is a churchgoing Episcopalian. The Daily Caller, which Carlson founded, has more about the segment and Sherrod Brown’s use of Jesus’s words (emphases mine):
“So, Chris … Sherrod Brown from Ohio, who’s been endorsed by NARAL by the way, is lecturing us on Jesus. Do you think Sherrod Brown’s a little bit closer to Jesus than, say, I am?” Carlson began.
“Well, Matthew 25 applies here, don’t you think? That’s what he was quoting. We have people who are fleeing for their lives who are in desperate need, who want to come to this country and seek asylum legally, by presenting themselves at the border,” Hahn responded.
“Before you roll right into your talking point … before you get to the script, you didn’t address my question though. Is that the new standard? Do you think it’s a fair standard? This is not something that I have introduced into this. This is Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Is lecturing us about how he’s on Jesus’s team and we’re not, is that a fair form of political discourse?” Carlson asked.
Hahn responded by saying the Republicans are hypocritical in quoting the Bible, implying that they are hard-hearted people. He told Carlson that they:
ignore the teachings of Christ. Matthew 25 clearly directs us to help those in need.
Carlson asked for specific examples of such people.
Hahn came back with Vice President Mike Pence:
“How about Mike Pence? Every single day, everything he does, every time Mike Pence talks he invokes Christ, every single time,” Hahn followed up. “You’re aware of it but I don’t know that you believe it. That’s what it says, Tucker. And that’s what Mike Pence pretends to acknowledge, but he doesn’t.”
Tucker admitted he found Hahn’s take offensive:
I’m trying not to end this interview right now because I’m getting offended.
Tucker then went on to explain that, whatever side of the aisle one is on, we just can’t inject Scripture into every political conversation:
Introducing religious faith, appropriating someone else’s religious faith, by the way, into a conversation about public policy. Do you think that’s a wise thing to do? Do you think if Mike Pence got up and said, ‘I’m for building a wall and I’m quoting this scripture to justify it,’ I know for a fact that I would say, ‘Whoa, settle down. It’s a public policy question. It’s a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country. Don’t start doing that, it’s not a theocracy.’ But you’re saying now that that’s okay.
It’s always okay when the Left — Democrats and the media — do it.
The hypocrisy with pro-abortion people picking and choosing Scripture to suit their political needs is mind-boggling.
The Democrats are hypocrites. They want more illegals only so that they can tip the balance at the ballot box.
In some American states, the mid-term vote discrepancies seem to have been a dress rehearsal for 2020, President Trump’s re-election year.
So many strange things have been happening since Tuesday, November 6, 2018, especially in Florida, where a state-wide recount took place.
Here is a partial summary of vote discrepancies.
South Carolina
Katie Arrington (R) ended up losing narrowly to Joe Cunningham (D) in a bid to represent South Carolina’s 1st District in Congress.
On election night, The State reported (emphases mine):
COLUMBIA, SC
11 p.m.
With 52 percent of results now in from the slow-moving 1st District race, Arrington maintains her lead of 53 percent to 47 percent for Cunningham.
The next morning, The State reported that Cunningham had won in a surprise upset:
COLUMBIA, SC — In a stunning upset, a Democrat has won South Carolina’s coastal 1st District for the first time in 40 years.
Political newcomer Joe Cunningham narrowly defeated Republican state Rep. Katie Arrington Tuesday, flipping from red to blue a district that Republican President Donald Trump won by 13 points just two years ago. The Associated Press called the tight race at 2 a.m. Wednesday …
Cunningham will replace U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, the Charleston Republican whom Arrington beat in the June GOP primary after highlighting the two-time congressman’s criticisms of Trump and pledging to support the president’s agenda in Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, all five of South Carolina’s incumbent congressmen kept their seats in landslide victories.
TheLastRefuge — Sundance of The Conservative Treehouse — tweeted:
Hmm.
New Mexico
New Mexico discovered several thousand Democrat votes after a Republican candidate gave her victory speech:
Curious.
Minnesota
Keith Ellison won his bid for Minnesota attorney general, despite being investigated for domestic abuse against his former partner:
It’s not just fraud. Add to that voter stupidity.
Ellison had represented Minnesota’s fifth Congressional district since 2007 and was appointed as Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee last year, so he certainly had name recognition.
Wisconsin
One Wisconsin voter, Bev, was furious:
Her message is an important one, even though it is all one paragraph. It explains how the Dems know how many fraudulent votes to manufacture.
Arizona
Arizona’s Senate race was controversial. Military veteran Martha McSally (R) lost to Kyrsten Senema (D), raising eyebrows in a state where a Republican — i.e. the late John McCain — was Senator for many years:
By November 10, votes were still being counted — continuing in Sinema’s favour:
That day, The Epoch Times stated:
On Friday night, the lead was about one percentage point of the two million ballots tallied, with Sinema at 991,433 votes and McSally at 971,331 votes. Some 80,000 ballots were submitted to the state from Maricopa County, tilting towards Sinema by more than 11,500, reported 12 News. More than 400,000 remain to be counted statewide, most from Maricopa.
Sinema for Arizona campaign manager Andrew Piatt said in a statement that Sinema will win. “Kyrsten will steadily build her advantage and be elected to the U.S. Senate. She will win this race,” he said.
And, lo, she had.
On November 12, Ricochet said that McSally had been too cautious a candidate and was unprepared for a determined Democrat GOTV (Get Out The Vote) campaign:
The Pima County Republican is very cautious. Very cautious. Instead of barnstorming the map and mixing it up with all comers, she carefully issues press releases and attends controlled events. She wouldn’t even agree to a debate with Sinema for months and then only participated in one …
McSally hails from Pima County, home to Tucson, while Sinema is from Maricopa County, home to Phoenix. More than half the state’s population lives in the latter, so they didn’t know much about the Tucson-based candidate. She needed to spend a lot more time defining herself since Sinema was already defined to a big chunk of Arizonans …
If the GOP wants to win in the Grand Canyon State, they can’t rest on their party registration advantage and old trends. Instead, great candidates need to run great campaigns and, at the very least, keep up with Democratic GOTV innovations.
Larry Schweikart, who watched the mid-terms closely, has this analysis:
Sinema is, at heart, a radical. However, she was careful not to expose that side to the public.
I still maintain there were suspect votes in that count. So does the president:
Florida
As I write, the final recount totals appear to be in for Florida.
The initial count was still going on for two days after the election:
Senator Marco Rubio (R) pointed out that counties hit by Hurricane Michael were capable of getting their vote totals in on time:
That day, Rubio went further. Fox News reported:
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio on Thursday charged that two Democrat-controlled counties in the state, in possible violation of election law, have been reporting a “slow drip” of tens of thousands of additional ballots favorable to several Democratic candidates for statewide office, including incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson.
Liberal lawyers, Rubio said in an extraordinary series of tweets that alleged incompetence if not outright complicity by Florida officials, are “descending on” the state in a calculated attempt to “change the results” and “try and steal” races for Senate and agriculture commissioner.
Some former Floridians now living out of state received Florida ballots. Interesting:
President Trump was aware of the situation in the Palm Beach – Fort Lauderdale area:
Gateway Pundit discussed what was going on in Broward County (Fort Lauderdale) on November 8:
The US Senate candidates in Florida received 24,000 fewer votes than the Gubernatorial candidates.
How is this possible? (We know the answer already) …
Breaking update: Governor Rick Scott & the NRSC are filing a public records lawsuit against Broward election supervisor Brenda Snipes for failing to provide them with information about outstanding ballots that have yet to be tabulated
The lawsuit comes as Scott’s margins are shrinking v. Sen Nelson …
That same day, Gateway Pundit carried an eye-witness report on ballots in Broward County (emphasis in the original):
Florida voter JoAnn Knox captured Broward County Election Officials Transferring Ballots in Rented Truck on Election Night!
The article includes her full statement from Facebook, which makes for shocking reading.
Former Independent candidate Tim Canova tweeted this video:
More reports emerged:
On November 9, it looked as if Mike Caldwell (R) had lost his bid for Florida’s agricultural commissioner to Nikki Fried (D). The News-Press reported (emphases mine):
Caldwell thought he had edged out a victory in the agricultural commissioner race Tuesday night when he had about a 40,000 vote lead over Democratic candidate Nikki Fried.
But the latest vote count shows Caldwell losing by 3,120 votes to Fried. The difference between the candidates is .04 percent, signaling an automatic recount, and a likely manual recount.
“Over the course of the last two and half days, the Broward supervisor has continued to magically find boxes of ballots that have potentially altered the course of the race,” Caldwell said in an interview Friday. “And after all that time, we still cannot get a straight answer as to where they came from, when they were cast. We just heard there is another magical box of 2,100 ballots they supposedly found here (Friday).”
He said what is happening in Broward County is unacceptable.
Fried, he said, is from Broward County. Fried’s campaign team had no comment to make to News-Press at that time.
Florida’s congressman Matt Gaetz (R) had this to say about Florida’s election count in Broward:
In Palm Beach County, Democrats wanted non-citizens’ votes counted:
It seems as if Rick Scott (R) won his Senate seat by a narrow margin. Here’s the GOP chairwoman offering her congratulations. Incidentally, she is Mitt Romney’s niece:
Nelson was hanging tough, though:
It also looks as if Ron DeSantis (R) won the governorship over Andrew Gillum (D), again by a slim margin.
President Trump said:
This is how many votes Broward County’s election commissioner managed to find:
On Sunday, November 11, a criminal investigation was launched into voting in Broward and Palm Beach counties. According to the Gateway Pundit, all Florida counties met a deadline for final vote tallies on November 10.
Even so, on November 11, investigative journalist Laura Loomer who was in Fort Lauderdale at the time, reported a ‘bomb threat’ was declared at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Another box of ‘provisional votes’ had been spotted in a rental car last driven by a Broward County employee (this man, perhaps?). Laura Loomer has more on her website. Here is a brief video of an interview of a Republican Party lawyer. Here is another video of hers explaining what the sheriff’s office had to say. She alleges that some of his law enforcement officers are embarrassed.
She also managed to obtain a frank statement from a Democrat attorney on destroying votes:
Indeed, because as someone else explained, quick destruction means no trail:
Other states
On November 12, the Gateway Pundit reported that vote count irregularities had also occurred in Georgia and California:
Democrats have mysteriously found thousands of new votes in Georgia on Saturday after losing the governor’s seat on Tuesday.
And now several California Republican candidates who led their races by significant margins on election night days later are losing their seats as Democrats produce new votes several days later.
Conclusion
President Trump had set up an election commission to address fraud in 2017. However, because so many blue states refused to co-operate, it had to be abandoned in January 2018.
It’s apparent that something concrete and effective must be done before 2020 about vote fraud, which, contrary to what Democrats and their water carriers in the media say, does exist.
Enforcing the laws would be a start. Getting rid of early voting weeks before an election would be another. Stipulating that absentee votes must arrive on or by election day would be another. Non-citizens must be prohibited from voting (the Motor Voter programme registers nearly everyone applying for a driver’s licence). At least Texas governor Greg Abbott will investigate that in his state.
Until then, by golly, what a dress rehearsal by the Dems for 2020.
Last week, Jeff Sessions resigned as attorney general.
He left the Department of Justice (DoJ) on Wednesday, November 7, 2018.
Asking Sessions to resign was President Trump’s first action after the mid-terms on November 6.
Finally!
Now, maybe, justice can be done!
The acting attorney general (AG) was formerly Sessions’s chief of staff. His name is Matt Whitaker.
Trump was clever and did not promote Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general, to the post. Because Sessions had recused himself, Rosey had been overseeing the Mueller probe. Now that Whitaker has been given the responsibility of overseeing Mueller, the Left — Democrats and the media — have said that the United States is experiencing a ‘constitutional crisis’.
Fox News’s Howard Kurtz explains why (emphases mine):
Whitaker is a former prosecutor, as well as a conservative activist, but he is obscure. He is a Trump loyalist, once described as the president’s “eyes and ears” at DOJ.
What’s more, as a CNN contributor and at other times, he has trashed the Mueller investigation that he will now be overseeing. He’s suggesting that Justice could curtail the special counsel’s probe by cutting his funding.
“The truth is there was no collusion with the Russians and the Trump campaign,” Whitaker once said. As for the left, “the last thing they want right now is for the truth to come out, and for the fact that there’s not a single piece of evidence that demonstrates that the Trump campaign had any illegal or any improper relationships with the Russians. It’s that simple.”
So Whitaker has, to put it mildly, a rather dim view of the investigation. And his associates are telling reporters he has no intention of recusing himself. Of course not — that’s why Trump wants him.
So it’s a big deal that oversight of the Russia probe is moving from Rosenstein, who likes the job Mueller is doing, to a man who’s been so critical of the investigation. And criticism from House Democrats who’ll soon be in a position to scrutinize these matters is fueling the story.
Rumour has it that Robert Mueller might be wrapping up his investigation soon, possibly next week. If true, whether that is related to Sessions’s resignation is unclear.
As acting AG, Whitaker can stay in that position for up to 210 days. Whitaker was appointed to his former chief of staff role in 2017, therefore, he requires no Senate confirmation.
Whitaker quickly protected his Twitter account, which was all about sports, although you can see a photo of him lifting weights. He’s no pencil-necked geek. He’s a big man with a shaved head (similar to Mr Clean). One of Whitaker’s tweets featured a similar photo with the caption:
What I do in my free time. #powerclean #CrossFit…
VA Online News has an interesting article about Whitaker and how he got the AAG job. The article purports that White House aides thought Rod Rosenstein’s resignation was imminent, so they went about finding a replacement:
Convinced that the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, was ready to resign after the revelation that he suggested President Trump was unfit for the job, senior White House aides got to work last weekend installing a replacement.
Whitaker received a phone call on Saturday, November 3:
Matthew G. Whitaker, the chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, would become the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department, his White House counterpart, John F. Kelly, told him over the phone on Saturday morning, according to two people briefed on the call. To the White House, he was an obvious choice: a confident former college football player and United States attorney whom Mr. Kelly has privately described as the West Wing’s “eyes and ears” in a department the president has long considered at war with him.
By Monday, Rosenstein had decided to stay at the DoJ for the time being, therefore, Whitaker could not be moved into his slot.
Interestingly, had Whitaker become DAG, replacing Rosenstein, he would not have been able to supervise the Mueller probe:
thanks to complex department rules, Mr. Whitaker would not assume control of the inquiry if he ever replaces Mr. Rosenstein.
Some think that Whitaker could become the permanent AG if he performs well as AAG. Even if he doesn’t, there are other roles open to him:
Administration officials have also mentioned Mr. Whitaker as a possible successor to Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel who plans to leave in the fall.
Justice Department and White House spokespeople declined to comment. The back-and-forth between the White House and Justice Department were described by more than a half-dozen administration officials and others briefed on the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.
President Trump is said to have an easy rapport with Whitaker, who disapproves of Mueller potentially probing the Trump family finances.
In 2016, he was critical of Hillary Clinton’s server situation:
A reasonable prosecutor may ask, if on numerous occasions, an unknown State Department employee had taken top secret information from a secured system, emailed that information on a Gmail account, and stored the information on a personal server for years, would that individual be prosecuted? I believe they would.
Eighteen US AGs have demanded that Whitaker recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller probe. On Friday, November 9, Fox News reported:
More than a dozen U.S. state attorneys general signed a document Thursday calling for Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, a role he assumed following his temporary appointment following the resignation of Jeff Sessions …
As part of Whitaker’s new role as the head official at the Justice Department, he will oversee the Russia probe and the agency’s other federal investigations, including the New York prosecutors’ look into the finances of Trump and his former aides.
In an op-ed Whitaker wrote last year, he argued that “any investigation into President Trump’s finances or the finances of his family would require Mueller to return to Rod Rosenstein for additional authority under Mueller’s appointment as special counsel.”
“It is time for Rosenstein … to order Mueller to limit the scope of his investigation to the four corners of the order appointing him special counsel,” Whitaker wrote. “If he doesn’t, then Mueller’s investigation will eventually start to look like a political fishing expedition. This would not only be out of character for a respected figure like Mueller, but also could be damaging to the President of the United States and his family — and by extension, to the country.”
And separately, in July 2017, Whitaker told CNN, “I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment, and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt.”
Whitaker is adamant about refusing to recuse.
The Left — Democrats and the media — are in a right tizz at the moment.
Whitaker’s DoJ could look at all types of left-wing scandals from the past several years.
He could get a lot done in 210 days, especially as he has the little-known but brilliant Ezra Cohen-Watnick, 32, working at the DoJ. Cohen-Watnick formerly worked for HR McMaster, who fired him from the National Security Council. Trump fired McMaster earlier this year.
Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner think highly of Cohen-Watnick, who has an intelligence background. In April 2018, Trump personally told the DoJ he wanted Cohen-Watnick to work with Jeff Sessions. That did not sit well with the Left, either, because it was rumoured he had shown Rep. Devin Nunes classified documents relating to Nunes’s FISA investigation of the 2016 election.
With Whitaker and Cohen-Watnick working together, who knows what the near future might hold? We could well see some sunlight disinfecting the Swamp.
Politically and culturally, the whole of this year in the US has been a build-up to the mid-term elections.
I barely scratched the surface of everything I wanted to cover in this regard, so I might use that material to analyse the results in the days to come.
Two things are clear.
One: this is a referendum on Donald Trump’s presidency.
Two: the Democrat Party is dying. (I refuse to write ‘Democratic’, because they do not live up to it.)
That said, it is incumbent on independents and Republicans to go out and vote on Tuesday, November 6. Here are Cuban immigrants’ views:
The US needs another monster Republican vote to overcome voter fraud.
What follows are my final thoughts before Election Day, written at the end of October.
Trump and young black conservatives
By the time you read this, President Trump will have welcomed a large group of young black conservatives to the White House:
On October 23, the New York Post reported that the first ever Young Black Leadership Summit is sponsored by Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a conservative student organisation founded by Charlie Kirk (see tweets throughout this post). Candace Owens is TPUSA’s Director of Communications and has been pivotal in getting Kanye West to speak out about his support for President Trump.
The Post‘s article says, in part (emphases mine):
Owens, who was gaining traction as a black YouTube star with right political leanings, wanted to hold a forum for young black Americans who were “conservative curious,” as she once was, from day one.
“So my mission was always really clear when Charlie and I met. One of the first things he asked me was, ‘What do you want to do?’ And I said, really, in plain words, ‘I’d like to lead the black revolution against the Democrat Party,’” Owens told The Post.
While Owens joined the group in November, the plan to hold a conference for young black people got a shot of dragon energy in April.
Just days before he would put on the MAGA hat and pronounce his love for Trump, rapper Kanye West tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks,” the first online suggestion that he was more Republican-leaning.
Kirk said that West’s tweet made both Owens and Turning Point more prominent.
“And kind of gave more reinforcement to the idea of a black leadership summit because during that moment we saw hundreds of blacks across the country come out and say to Candace, ‘Oh my goodness, this is an amazing thing that you’re doing, we love you, we’re afraid to voice our mind,” Kirk explained to The Post. “Candace and I wondered, ‘I wonder how many there really are?’”
Turns out there are at least 350 to 400 young black people interested in hearing Trump speak.
Kanye was not at the conference and by Monday, October 29, had pulled away from the Turning Point organisation over a disagreement about Blexit (black exit) merchandise marketing.
That said, the crowd attending President Trump’s address to them was highly enthusiastic:
This is news bad for the Dems:
Border security
ICE have a tough job, especially as they are under-manned patrolling the southern border. That said, they rack up some incredible accomplishments, as TPUSA’s Charlie Kirk tweets:
Think about that, especially when Democrats, the media and other leftists plea for us to ‘think about the children!’
When it comes to illegal entry, there are a lot of bad, exploitative people crossing the border. When I think of the children among them, I think of the human and sex trafficking victims, exploited people.
Obama, when he was a senator, also said that the rule of law must be respected with regard to crossing the border:
The ‘caravan’
While the world still believes the Trump campaign is guilty of colluding with Russia two years ago at this time, there is little news associating the human caravan in Mexico — happening right before the election — with foreign interests.
Vice President Pence said it is being ‘financed by Venezuela’ which is a nuanced way of saying that foreign powers that own and influence the impoverished nation are behind it. The Conservative Treehouse (CTH) explains:
Announcing the migrant caravan is “financed by Venezuela” is a direct notification the Central American invasion force is being funded by Russia and China. Venezuela doesn’t have any money to sustain its own operational government – let alone a 10,000 person convoy. Venezuela is entirely reliant upon massive investment from Russia and China.
In fact China owns 49% of Venezuela’s state run PDVSA energy production. A collateral system where Beijing takes oil as payment for prior loans the Maduro regime cannot pay back. With the crippling treasury department sanctions President Trump put on Venezuela last year, Trump has punched Maduro and Xi-Jinping hard.
With Mike Pence pointing a finger at Venezuela the politics behind the invasion force begin to make much more sense. The invasion objective takes on a geopolitical angle directly targeting a series of U.S. policies that are against the interests of Russia and China.
The post goes on to say that Trump and Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin have sanctioned Venezuela and limited their ability to expand state oil revenue. China cannot trade directly with Venezuela at the risk of losing access to the US banking system. China continues lending to Venezuela, which will have little chance of repaying the loans.
Furthermore, the US has withdrawn $900m in aid from Pakistan in an effort to stop them enabling extremism in Afghanistan. As China is Pakistan’s main trading partner, Pakistan looks to them to fill the aid gap, unless the World Bank decides to bail them out.
Russia is being squeezed as the US increases its influence in the energy markets in Europe. European nations that were getting their energy supplies from Russia are increasingly turning towards the US for LNG, oil and coal.
The CTH post has more details, but, from this, we see that it is entirely plausible for Vice President Pence to conclude that ‘Venezuela’ is behind the human caravan just before the mid-terms. If so, this constitutes election meddling by a foreign power.
On that note, the Gateway Pundit reported that tens of thousands of migrants are already pouring across the southern border into the United States — including Chinese citizens:
Thousands of illegal aliens are swarming the Texas border this month in advance of the migrant caravan marching through Mexico, prompting Chief Patrol Agent Manuel Padilla, Jr., the Customs and Border Patrol Sector Chief of the Rio Grande Valley, to beg for help dealing with the onslaught of illegal aliens, gang members and drug cartel smugglers. Just on Saturday over 700 illegal aliens were caught, with over 12,000 caught in the past three weeks. In addition, safe houses have been busted and drug smugglers intercepted by the overstretched CBP in the Rio Grande Valley.
16,000 “family units” were reported caught in the last month in the RGV sector by CBP. All these illegals take manpower and resources to detain, process, house, clothe, feed, and give medical treatment.
Padilla sent out several tweets this weekend with the message, “We need #personnel #technology #infrastructure“, in conjunction with video reports by on scene Fox News Channel reporter Griff Jenkins …
In his interview Sunday with Jenkins about the migrant caravan marching through Mexico, Padilla said that just the day before his sector reported 700 illegal aliens caught at the border, 8 human smuggling cases, one dead body recovered, a potential river drowning (body not surfaced yet), over 700 pounds of marijuana and 68 pounds of peyote seized–all on Saturday.
In a separate report, Jenkins noted a group of illegal aliens from China were caught.
This migration is being orchestrated. It is not a spontaneous ‘humanitarian’ movement. It is designed to provoke Trump into taking violent action before November 6.
Nationalism
Nationalism has been a dirty word for nearly 20 years, unless a Democrat uses it favourably. Then it’s okay:
At a recent campaign rally, President Trump described himself as a ‘nationalist’ in the MAGA sense. On October 23, CNN’s Jim Acosta, the son of immigrants, took him to task for it in the Oval Office. Trump replied that he is tired of seeing the US pay more than its fair share when it comes to NATO and trade. Trump’s answer is excellent and measured, especially to a journo who should have had his White House press privileges revoked last year:
Selected state races
Here is an update on a few state races.
North Dakota
On October 17, I wrote about the deleterious effect the Dems’ antics during the Kavanaugh hearings had on American voters. I mentioned North Dakota, where Heidi Heitkamp is running for re-election against Kevin Cramer. Up until the Kavanaugh hearings, she looked comfortable. Now, not so much. She also had to suspend campaigning after her team released an ad which identified victims of sexual assault:
Worse was to come. That day, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released an expose of her and her campaign team. Her campaign workers say that, if the Democrats win a majority, her political stance will move further to the left. Currently, she tries to present herself as a centrist, even refusing an appearance from Obama, so as not to offend Trump Democrats who might vote for her. However, it’s all for show:
Michigan
Another Democrat senator running for re-election is Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow. Her GOP opponent is a young veteran and West Point graduate, John James. Unfortunately, only lately has James’s campaign been getting much traction. That’s because he is a political outsider:
Here’s a short, honest advert from James. I hope he wins:
Florida
Andrew Gillum is the Democrat candidate running for governor in Florida.
He has influential money behind him, as the Tampa Bay Times reported on July 23, which was during primary season:
Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer’s group NextGen America made waves last month when it announced it is backing Democrat Andrew Gillum in the Florida governor’s race.
This week, the group is putting some more money where its mouth is.
NextGen America is making a six-figure digital ad buy in support of Gillum, pushing two new ads on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other online platforms, according to a release obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.
“We know that young voters are online, and a strong and smart digital campaign will be key to pushing Andrew Gillum across the finish line on August 28th,” Steyer, the president of NextGen America, said in the release.
Gillum won the Dem nomination, but questions arose soon afterwards:
Gillum admits the following is true and that he has a ’15-year relationship’ with another influential donor:
On September 3, this appeared:
In that interview, the show’s host Chuck Todd summarised Gillum’s platform:
You ran as an unabashed progressive Democrat. You’re for Medicare for all, you talk about getting rid of ICE …
No wonder those two billionaires are supporting him. That’s exactly what they want.
On October 14, online host Bill Mitchell did a little social media stumping for Gillum’s Republican opponent:
Meanwhile, Breitbart was digging into Gillum’s background. On October 17, they gave us more information about the Soros connection (bold emphasis in the original, the one in purple mine):
Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum graduated from an Oakland, California-based training school for progressive revolutionaries that has spawned a list of activists who have gone on to become the who’s who of the far-left leadership world, with many taking senior positions at organizations financed by billionaire George Soros.
In scores of cases, graduates of the Rockwood Leadership Institute founded or directed notorious Soros-financed activist groups, such as Black Lives Matter, Media Matters for America, MoveOn.org and the Tides Foundation, one of the nation’s largest funders of progressive groups.
Soros’s own Open Society Foundations sent top staff to Rockwood for training. Notorious radicals Van Jones and Linda Sarsour are among the many famous names listed as alums.
Gillum graduated from Rockwood in 2012, yet he told independent journalist Joe Biggs (see above tweet), that he has a ’15-year relationship’ with Soros. Interesting.
Breitbart‘s article describes how Soros donates to Gillum’s campaign (emphases mine):
Soros, meanwhile, has directly donated to organizations seeking to get Gillum elected. Days before Gillum’s Aug. 28 primary, Soros joined with billionaire Tom Steyer to lead a group of donors making a $650,000 infusion into Gillum’s coffers.
Soros also contributed to The Collective, a little-known but increasingly influential political organization that says it is seeking to build a “black political power” movement. The Collective reportedly injected nearly $2 million into Gillum’s campaign, funding television and radio ads, get-out-the-vote drives, and playing a key role in helping Gillum defeat his Democratic opponents, some of whom were better-funded and had more statewide name recognition. The group announced plans to continue backing Gillum during the current general election campaign.
On October 20, Breitbart reported voting irregularities among Gillum’s siblings:
Leon County voting records show Marcus Gillum voted by absentee in the 2012 general election, absentee in the 2014 primary election, and early voted in the 2016 general election.
But the trouble is, months before he cast that 2016 ballot in Florida, Marcus Gillum, in an affidavit for an unrelated court case, swore under oath he was a resident of Chicago.
Also, according to records, Marcus Gillum is still currently registered to vote in Leon County at a home that his brother, gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, sold over three years ago. The Leon County Property Appraiser indicates that Andrew Gillum sold 5325 St. Ives Lane on February 27th, 2015.
Furthermore, Florida Department of Motor Vehicle records show that Marcus Gillum has not had a valid Florida drivers license since 2011 …
This information was presented to Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley. “Based on this information I will initiate an investigation into potential voter ineligibility,” Earley said.
Earley also added that fraudulent voting is actually very difficult to prevent.
“It could be that (ineligible voters) consider Leon County to be their place of residence,” Earley said. “But the reality is until they notify us that it isn’t their residence, or we are notified by a different jurisdiction we have nothing to go on to remove them as an active voter.”
But voting irregularities involving Andrew Gillum’s siblings may not be confined to his brother Marcus. Voter records indicate that Monique Gillum, Andrew Gillum’s sister, voted in Florida despite questions about residency.
Monique Gillum voted absentee in the 2012 general election, absentee in 2014 primary election, early voted in the 2016 general election, and voted in the 2018 primary election.
However, like her brother Marcus, voting records also show that Monique Gillum is still currently registered to vote at the St. Ives address. However, the mailing address she provided to the Leon County Supervisor of Elections is a P.O Box in New York City.
Public records show Monique Gillum does have a current Florida drivers license with a Tallahassee address. However, the address is different from the two provided to the Leon County Supervisor of Elections.
Also, other records, including work she did as a registered lobbyist for the Southern Poverty Law Center, indicate that Monique resided in Montgomery, Alabama from 2014 to 2016 …
Hmm.
On October 23, news emerged that Gillum’s ticket to the musical Hamilton came from an undercover FBI agent:
The Miami Herald broke the story, which also involves Gillum’s aforementioned brother Marcus:
Undercover FBI agents paid for Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum’s hotel room and his ticket to the Broadway musical “Hamilton” during a 2016 trip to New York City, according to a bombshell trove of records that raises new questions two weeks before the Nov. 6 election for Florida governor.
Among the records released Tuesday: photos, a video and dozens of text messages between Gillum, who is the Democratic nominee for governor, former lobbyist Adam Corey and an undercover FBI agent. They appear to contradict Gillum’s explanation for the expenses, which have been made a major issue by his Republican rival, Ron DeSantis.
Gillum’s campaign has maintained — and continued to do so Tuesday after the records were released — that Gillum’s brother, Marcus, handed him the ticket the night of the show.
But text messages at the time of the trip show Gillum was told the tickets came from “Mike Miller,” an FBI agent looking into city corruption who was posing as a developer …
The campaign has not said how Marcus Gillum, who lives in Chicago, came by such a sought-after Broadway ticket, or whether Andrew Gillum asked his brother about it.
“These messages only confirm what we have said all along,”Andrew Gillum said on Facebook Live on Tuesday. “We did go to see ‘Hamilton.’ I did get my ticket to ‘Hamilton’ from my brother. At the time, we believed that they were reserved by friends of Adam’s, Mike Miller.
“And when I got there after work, got my ticket, we went in there and saw it, assumed my brother paid for it, and so far as I know, that was the deal” …
Once a close friend of Gillum’s, Corey is at the center of the FBI’s long-running probe into corruption in Tallahassee. No one has been charged, and Gillum has said that agents assured him he was neither a target nor a focus of the probe.
Gillum has repeatedly given vague answers to questions about who paid for the New York City trip. His avoidance of a direct answer became pronounced during a Sunday debate on CNN between DeSantis and Gillum.
“Did you pay for the ‘Hamilton’ tickets?” DeSantis asked.
But there’s more. The new information raises a question over how the trip to New York was financed:
They show that undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen were working for months to get an out-of-state meeting with Gillum, and that Gillum appeared willing to oblige them.
In June 2016, Corey texted Miller, the undercover agent, telling him that he would discuss options with Gillum.
“I just want to make it a good trip and Sweets and B will be booked on something else if we don’t lock something down,” Miller replied.
“Mike Sweets” and “Brian Butler” were the two other undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen …
… they met in New York, while Gillum was attending a conference on behalf of the People for the American Way Foundation, a liberal advocacy group that employed him.
Text messages show Miller paid for the airfare and hotel room for Gillum’s brother, Marcus.
“Send me the mayor and his brother’s information and I will have my girl book their flights,” Miller wrote.
Corey replied that Gillum had already booked his flight, but he would send his brother’s information “ASAP.”
“Just tell them to let me know what their flights cost and I will cover it,” Miller said.
The ethics complaint was filed against Gillum in June this year, and Gillum met with investigators in early September …
Tuesday’s document dump was the type of event Democrats feared when Gillum won the party’s nomination in August but hoped would never come. Though supporters generally dismissed the significance of the texts and emails between Gillum and Corey, one Democratic consultant acknowledged that anyone on the fence about Gillum could be deflated.
The timing of the release — exactly two weeks before Election Day and on the second day of early voting — comes during a key period for the Democratic Party, when voters typically begin showing up to the polls in large numbers and making up the advantage Republicans build during absentee voting …
On October 31, Project Veritas issued a damning video of Gillum’s campaign and a written summary. Gillum is left wing, not just left-of-centre. Omar Smith, the main campaign worker interviewed, said Gillum promises things he will not be able to accomplish. Be prepared for untoward remarks about Floridians:
James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, went to follow up. Omar Smith, the main speaker in the video, has asked that these videos not be circulated. This is bad news for Gillum:
From 1968 …
In closing, this 50-year-old poster about voting helped Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew win an election in a highly turbulent year in the US (Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination, Bobby Kennedy’s assassination and the riots by radicals during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago). It’s no surprise that Republicans won that year:
It has the same message that Republicans are trying to get out today, especially taking other people along so that they, too, can vote.
Fifty years on, here is the unofficial, but no less powerful, Republican slogan circulating online:
President Trump has tweeted #JobsNotMobs several times recently, including in the tweet below with a short video from his Houston rally, promising what Republicans will continue to do to shore up the US:
PROMISES MADE. PROMISES KEPT.
