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There are two more increasingly popular Spectator TV videos to view, brilliantly presented by Andrew Neil.
Each of the episodes below is one hour long, but it is unlikely that those seeking real news and analysis will be bored.
As a supporter of President Trump, I was somewhat less impressed with Episode 3, from September 17, which downplayed his chances for re-election as well as his foreign policy, as many of us consider it a peacetime triumph:
Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell was the first to be interviewed about his nation’s handling of coronavirus. As we know, they had no lockdown.
Tegnell regretted not having controlled the many deaths in care homes — similar to those in other Western nations. There were also other lives that could not be saved because of co-morbidities. He said that a lockdown would not have saved them.
The problem in the care homes related to their separation from a national health care system, again, not dissimilar to the tragic result seen in other nations, particularly the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
He indicated that Sweden wanted to ensure that care home fatalities were resolved going forward as well as those among minority populations. He said that an EU commission was looking into those challenges.
Neil asked why Sweden was one of the few countries that ignored the projections from Imperial College London earlier this year. Tegnell replied that Imperial’s models were ‘quite extreme’ and ‘doubtful’. He added that models are not made ‘for prognosis’ because ‘you don’t really know’ what is going to happen.
He said, ‘This is not a competition’ and expressed his desire for more international collaboration and discussion to find a common pathway towards fighting the a second wave of the pandemic as well as agreement on testing.
He said that Sweden had been conducting 80,000 tests a week with no recent deaths.
Good for Sweden. They did well considering they bucked all the odds.
In case the interview is difficult to listen to because Tegnell is on a train, here is another transmission:
Episode 4 of Spectator TV, from Thursday, September 24, covered a multitude of health, economic and political topics:
Kate Andrews talked about the broadcast that Dr Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance made about coronavirus last week. Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave a statement last week on a winter economic programme. It focussed on a change from furlough, which expires in October, to a jobs subsidy for viable employment. She said that there is no doubt that unemployment will rise in the UK in the coming months.
James Forsyth echoed that and said that Rishi Sunak’s plan is to retain as many current jobs as possible but also to create many more.
On that note, Katy Balls said that there is some tension between 10 and 11 Downing Street. Boris errs on the side of health and personal safety. Rishi is more focussed on the economic numbers in order to keep Britain afloat.
With regard to coronavirus, Dr Flavio Toxvaerd, an economic epidemiologist from Cambridge University, said that epidemiologists do not have a good estimation of human behaviour. He did not believe that we were likely to see the latest coronavirus predictions from Whitty and Vallance’s graphs come true. That said, there is a delicate balance to be struck between health and the economy in dealing with COVID-19. Both are critical at this time. Neither can be viewed in isolation.
With regard to his eponymous amendment anticipated to be brought before the House of Commons, Sir Graham Brady said he felt confident that any future coronavirus-related statutory instruments would have to be brought before the House of Commons for debate and a vote prior to implementation.
Questions have been raised as to Boris Johnson’s future as Prime Minister. Katy Balls and James Forsyth both thought that he would not be gone by the end of the year, as many have predicted over the past several days. Leaving the EU, they predicted, will put fuel in the tank for 2021, so to speak.
Turning to the upcoming US elections, Dominic Green said that a Biden administration would favour the EU more than the United Kingdom emerging from Brexit. Again, this assumes that Joe Biden will win the election. Green rightly warned that polls are unreliable. (We saw the same situation four years ago with the polls and the ‘Trump can’t win’ theme. We are seeing it again now.)
Thousands of us are grateful to the NatWest Group for sponsoring these useful broadcasts.
Last Monday, I wrote about the debut of Spectator TV, from The Spectator‘s editors and writers, presented by Andrew Neil.
A lot of viewers loved it:
It’s now on YouTube:
If you missed the first episode …
Episode 2 came out on Thursday, September 10:
Enjoy:
The most interesting parts were with Dr Elisabetta Groppelli, a virologist from the University of London, who has been participating in a coronavirus vaccine trial and explains the complications with said trials.
She said that the UK has pre-ordered the Astra Zeneca vaccine, depending on its success. She added that the UK also has interests in other vaccines that are being tested. She said that she thought that it will be unlikely that any of the successful vaccines will be mandatory but that there will be ‘discussions’ to persuade people to have them.
Katy Balls expressed the Government’s concern about university students socialising and possibly spreading coronavirus with partying, even with the ‘rule of six’ people to any one gathering.
Freddy Gray was as pessimistic as he was in 2016 about a Trump win. He was wrong then. Will he be wrong now? We shall see. He thinks the election result, as the Democrats said at their party conference, will be delayed.
With regard to Brexit, James Forsyth says that the biggest problem we will face is around fish. The French will not want to see a drop in their catch. He also thinks that Angela Merkel will step in at a time that suits her interests.
The questions in the second episode were mostly fronted by Andrew Neil, with a large degree of anonymity.
I enjoyed the first Spectator TV episode more than the first, however, viewers will find much to digest in both.
Once again, well done.
Yesterday, I saw the following tweet on Guido Fawkes, Britain’s top website for all things political.
He rarely tweets about President Trump or MAGA, so I was intrigued:
Naturally, I went to read Guido’s post, which simply featured this 3:37-minute long video:
Ricky Rebel and his team of talent, including The Deplorable Choir, defused hostility and turned it into a rousing dance party in the streets:
On AUG 22, 2020, a violent #BlackLivesMatter mob swarmed the Trump Unity Bridge in Beverly Hills. The Trump Unity Bridge responded to #BLM with a DANCE OFF to their unifying theme song MAGA / YMCA!
They rewrote the lyrics to the Village People’s YMCA to fit the positive unity of Trump supporters. The lyrics are in the video. Stay tuned until the end to read the clever credits, which are also in the YouTube description.
This is great fun to watch — and gutsy.
That’s the way to do it. Well done!
Recently, The Atlantic published an anti-Trump article saying he has no regard for military veterans.
The article also has other falsehoods in it about President Trump’s time in the White House, supplied by anonymous sources:
First Lady Melania Trump tweeted:
The Atlantic wants to help Joe Biden win, of course:
President Trump is angry with Fox News for pressing on with the lies. This Twitter user says that the reporter in question is married to another journalist who works for NPR, which is pro-Democrat:
I’ll get to that story tomorrow.
Trump’s former press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is angry about The Atlantic‘s article:
Former ambassador John Bolton, who has written an anti-Trump book, also says that The Atlantic‘s article is wrong. The American president did not show up at a military cemetery in France in 2018 for a memorial ceremony because his security detail would not allow it. Breitbart carried the story:
Bolton, who has emerged as an adversary of the president since leaving the administration last fall, wrote in his tell-all book about Trump that the visit to the cemetery by helicopter had been canceled because of weather. Driving, Bolton wrote, was not an option because of the “unacceptable risk” of being stuck in traffic if an emergency arose. He criticized the media for falsely reporting that Trump skipped his visit because he was “afraid of the rain.”
He also denied the accusations about the president’s words:
On Friday, Bolton confirmed his account in an interview with the Times, and added that he never heard Trump say “losers” or “suckers”:
He got support from an unlikely source on Friday when John R. Bolton, his former national security adviser who has broken with him and called him unfit for office, said he was on the trip in question and never heard Mr. Trump make those remarks. “I didn’t hear that,” Mr. Bolton said in an interview. “I’m not saying he didn’t say them later in the day or another time but I was there for that discussion.”
History tells us that the Democrats used the same tactic with Abraham Lincoln, who was also a Republican:
Let us fast-forward to 2007 to Donald Trump, real estate mogul and proprietor of the golf club at Mar-a-Lago. He welcomed veterans every Monday and said that their wives were in tears:
Veterans have been on to Obama’s vice president Biden for some time, as this video from March shows. Biden had no Secret Service detail earlier this year because he was not the official nominee at the time:
Fast forward to the present day. These three disabled veterans say that President Trump has done more for minorities and the military than any other US president. The retired Marine says that he was a staunch Democrat, but no longer because of what the Democrats have been doing over the past several years and because President Trump has cleaned up the Department of Veterans Affairs, enabling them to get the health care they need:
This US Army veteran says that Joe Biden doesn’t care about American troops and would cut military funding. He says that President Trump has always been there for all the armed forces:
This man is a retired paratrooper and tells of all the reforms President Trump has put into the Department of Veterans Affairs and the military, making both stronger than ever. He says that The Atlantic is ‘a disgrace to journalism’ and ‘fake news’:
This veteran says that Joe Biden and the Democrats want to ‘burn down’ America and turn it into ‘a socialist crap-hole’, but ‘we’re not going to let that happen’. He staunchly supports President Trump:
This veteran is also pro-Trump. Contrary to what the Democrats and their water-carrying buddies in the media said in 2016, Trump has started no wars and is trying to get troops out of Afghanistan:
This veteran also supports Trump for the same reason:
I hope these tweets help put to rest the lies that have been circulating about President Trump.
Hats off to OAN’s Jack Posobiec, a Navy veteran, for starting the #VetsBackTrump trend on Twitter.
The 2020 Republican National Convention is the best television I’ve ever watched outside of certain food show competitions.
I have so many tweets to share that I have linked to several in addition to posting them below.
Changes had to be made to the format because of coronavirus restrictions. At the weekend, I had doubts as to how interesting it would be. I am pleased to say that I was wrong.
There were no comperes (MCs) introducing each speaker at the Andrew W Mellon Auditorium, just speakers walking out in a dignified manner on the stage and addressing Americans at home with powerful messages, some of which were very personal.
There were no music acts outside of the outstanding renditions of The Star-Spangled Banner on Days 1 and 3 as well as a closing act on Day 4. Good.
I thought I’d miss the crowd of delegates and other attendees, but it was enough to see the former at the roll call on Day 1.
The Andrew W Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC, is magnificent. I’d not seen it before, but it made the perfect setting for the dozens of speakers who told their personal stories.
And the flags that served as the backdrop in the auditorium were beautiful, made from the finest fabric. They added greatly to an already spectacular atmosphere.
I watched proceedings on C-SPAN, which has a video for each day. Below that are lists of individual speakers and their videos. This enables the viewer to watch either in full or in part. There are also tabs at the top of the page for each individual day’s videos.
Because of the time difference, I haven’t been able to watch Day 4 in its entirety but have covered it here for the sake of completion.
Highlights follow.
That said, every speech was excellent.
Background
The Democratic National Convention was held last week in Joe Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, as well as other locations, because of coronavirus restrictions.
BBC Parliament broadcast the last day of the convention on Sunday, August 23. I watched it while doing other things.
Wow. I have never seen a more boring and a more stilted political convention. It sounded as if everything had been scripted at the last minute and no one had time to rehearse their lines. Even a Teleprompter could not help. Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld fame presented. Her scripted jokes fell flat and her delivery was dreadful. Mike Bloomberg’s speech also had jokes in it; his delivery was equally dire.
The theme, as one would expect from Democrats, was, once again, Change. I thought that eight years of Obama was supposed to be the ‘change Americans can believe in’. Apparently not. Democrats say that President Trump built on his predecessor’s success. Okay. In that case, we don’t need further change, right?
Not exactly.
Joe Biden said in his acceptance speech that he wants to ‘change’ America ‘for decades to come’. Hmm. Interesting.
He wants to raise taxes of all Americans to the tune of $3 trillion. That’s a lot of change right there.
He wants every American to wear a mask until October ‘at least’ to curb coronavirus. Imagine if this guy gets in. What a disaster. I have a lot of Biden material to share with you. That will come in the latter stages of the presidential campaign, all being well.
Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, said that the ongoing protests, which have been running for nearly 100 days now, ‘are not going to stop, nor should they’. What? Even if she and Biden win the election? She must know they will lose in November:
This is what the protesters want. As I said in 2016, they want a revolution. They’re Bolsheviks:
Hillary says that Joe Biden should not concede the election, even if he loses. She, too, must think he doesn’t have a chance, even though it’s only August.
Note Hillary’s appearance. It seems to change. Weird. I’ve included a tweet with other photos of her:
Joe Biden did not get the usual post-convention bounce in the polls, which is telling:
Day 1 — Monday, August 24
Every day opened with a convocation prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, including the words ‘under God’, which the Democrats omitted last week.
This is the only day where there is a morning session. It was held in Charlotte, North Carolina. Only delegates and party officials were in attendance. Ronna Romney McDaniel (Mitt’s niece) presided, as Chair of the Republican National Committee. She did an excellent job.
It was a sea change from the 2016 convention, which was riven on the morning of the first day by never-Trumpers who did not want him nominated.
This year, every state’s delegates unanimously voted for President Trump’s renomination.
Ronna McDaniel proceeded with the roll call, as voted for by the delegates, but stopped after Minnesota, concluding with remarks from former governor Scott Walker for Wisconsin. She formally announced the nomination of President Trump, who then gave a speech:
He spoke for 52 minutes, during which time he expressed his deep concern about postal votes. He is right to be concerned. It has produced fraudulent results in the past. There is no reason to think it won’t happen again this year.
He is also mostly right in saying that this is the most important election in American history. I might just modify that to ‘since 1860’, when coincidentally, the first Republican — Abraham Lincoln — was elected:
That evening, speeches began from the unbelievably stately Andrew W Mellon Auditorium in Washington.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan delivered his opening prayer from New York City with the Statue of Liberty in the background:
Cancer survivor Natalie Harp talked about the film It’s a Wonderful Life where James Stewart’s character George Bailey did so much good by saving Bedford Falls from becoming Pottersville. She said Pottersville would have been what would have happened to the US under Hillary. There are similarities between George Bailey and Donald Trump. I have often thought about that over the past four years and was delighted that she brought it up:
Maximo Alvarez, the founder and president of Sunshine Gasoline Distributors in Florida, warned that Americans must not allow their country to move towards communism. He said that his father emigrated from Spain to Cuba, then from Cuba to the United States. His father told him that America was the last possible refuge for people who love freedom. If America is destroyed, there is no other place to go:
Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina closed the evening with a measured speech on race relations and the current protests. He said that he was elected to represent a majority-white district where, he said, paraphrasing Dr Martin Luther King, voters judged him on his character, not the colour of his skin. He eloquently dismantled all the Democrats’ radical arguments:
The Federalist‘s Sean Davis, a Trump supporter, tweeted:
Democrats rang C-SPAN afterwards to give their views.
Rick from Lorain, Ohio, said he was switching from the Democrats to Republicans, because the Republicans focussed on God whereas the Democrats left God out of their convention:
More Democrats rang in during the subsequent days to say they had switched parties.
C-SPAN’s ratings for the RNC were much higher than for the DNC. The New York Post has more on the story.
Day 2 — Tuesday, August 25
The theme of Day 2 was Land of Opportunity.
The Revd Norma Urrabazo gave a stirring opening prayer:
Myron Lizer, Navajo Nation Vice President, was the first to speak. He spoke from Shiprock, New Mexico. He said that President Trump has done more than previous administrations to listen to and act on the needs of Native Americans:
Next was the story of the president’s pardon of Jon Ponder, who founded an organisation, Hope for Prisoners, with rehabilitation programmes for former prisoners:
It’s an amazing story. Ponder, a committed Christian, is best friends with the FBI agent who arrested him.
Cris Peterson, a dairy farmer from Wisconsin, explained how fewer government regulations and more help to farmers enabled her family’s Four Cubs Farm to purchase state of the art milking equipment. Fascinating video:
The Democrat mayor of Eveleth, Minnesota, said he is supporting President Trump this year. He says that the Democrats have become too radical and that their ecological policies would ruin the prosperity of his town:
Nick Sandmann, who was accosted in 2019 at the Lincoln Memorial, spoke of that day and how he refuses to be cancelled. His lawyer Lin Wood won a huge payout for him against the Washington Post. Nick plans to go on to law school after finishing university:
Some of the stories came from President Lincoln’s boyhood home in Spencer County, Indiana. Mike Pence narrated this sequence:
There was a naturalisation ceremony, filmed earlier, which President Trump attended:
There were many more outstanding speeches, including those from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Eric Trump and Tiffany Trump.
The evening ended with a long speech at the White House from Melania Trump, who was dressed in quasi-military designer attire:
These are the YouTube ratings for Day 2:
Day 3 — Wednesday, August 26
The theme of Day 3 was Land of Heroes and included people from various walks of life, from the military to first responders to lorry drivers keeping goods on the move during the coronavirus pandemic.
This rabbi’s prayer was perfect, as was his delivery:
A disabled veteran movingly recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
Governor Kristi Noem from South Dakota was the first to speak. She spoke of her state’s success during the pandemic — no lockdown and very low case/death figures:
Noem rightly criticised the unchecked lawlessness going on in Democrat-run American cities:
MSNBC was none too happy, but it’s the truth:
President Trump’s newish press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, a young wife and mother, told her moving story of breast cancer and subsequent breast reconstruction. She also spoke of the admiration she has for Trump’s pro-life stance:
Madison Cawthorne is a disabled man (injured in a car accident) who is running for US Congress in North Carolina. He gave a spirited speech about America’s Founding Fathers, especially James Madison:
When he finished his speech, two friends came on stage to help him stand up. At 6’3″, he said he misses being able to stand up and see over the crowd.
A PBS journalist was unimpressed by his standing up. WHY? Look at the idiotic reasoning:
My favourite speech of the week came from Sister Deirdre Byrne, MD, of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts, a medically-oriented religious order for women.
Sister Deirdre entered the order in 2002. Prior to that, she had a career as a physician and is a retired US Army Colonel!
She spoke of her admiration of President Trump’s love of the unborn. She said that a Biden presidency would put an end to the safeguards of the unborn. The Biden-Harris ticket approves of abortion at the point of birth, essentially, infanticide:
Lara Trump, Eric’s wife, spoke.
Eric passed make-up brushes to her as she was getting ready:
In her speech, she said that one mustn’t believe all one reads in the media and that this applied very much to the Trump family. She wasn’t sure what her future in-laws would be like when Eric first introduced them to her. She said that she was given a very warm welcome from the start. She says she admires their values of hard work and determination, with which she was also raised:
Clarence Henderson told about his experiences as a young man growing up in the segregated South. He recited the pro-voting and pro-civil rights amendments, all of which Republicans were responsible for passing, not Democrats. Well worth a listen. This man knows of what he speaks:
Former Acting Director of Intelligence Richard Grenell spoke. I hope his words lead to something big:
President Trump watched from the sidelines:
Mike Pence rounded off the evening with a long speech from Fort McHenry in Baltimore. The Star-Spangled Banner tells the story of the battle between America and the British in 1814 which took place there:
Well said:
Afterwards, ex-Democrat Helen from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, rang C-SPAN to say that she had switched parties and that she loved Melania Trump’s speech. She also deeply admires President Trump and will be voting for him this year:
Carol from Charleston, South Carolina, called to say that she finds Melania Trump ‘classy’ and ‘so intelligent’. Carol said she was a Hillary voter four years ago but has been surprised by what President Trump has accomplished since his election. She says she will ‘trust’ Melania and will vote for Trump:
Here are the ratings:
Day 4 — Thursday, August 27
Earlier in the day, NASA announced that the first black, female astronaut is scheduled to be on next year’s mission to the International Space Station:
C-SPAN posted their Day 4 video on YouTube:
The theme was A Land of Greatness.
The final night is, of course, the biggest one of the convention. Although President Trump spoke at length on Day 1 after receiving a unanimous vote from the delegates, Day 4 was when he gave what is considered his formal — and second (final) — acceptance speech.
These proceedings are about an hour longer than those from the previous days.
The Revd Franklin Graham (Billy’s son) gave a heartfelt prayer, asking for help for those affected by tropical storm Laura, for healing with regard to the protests, for protection of the Trumps and the Pences as well as continued guidance:
A young brother and sister from a military family recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Beautiful.
Ja’Ron Smith, Deputy Assistant to the President, spoke of his working class upbringing, his parents’ American values and of President Trump. He said that, growing up, he believed all the anti-Republican clichés. As he got to know more Republicans, he changed his mind. He never dreamt that he would be working for a president. He says that no one has done more for black interests than President Trump:
The people interviewed below head up their respective housing associations in New York City. They do not like Mayor Bill de Blasio’s policy of putting illegal immigrants into public housing before native New Yorkers, some of whom have been on waiting lists for ten years. They greatly appreciate what Dr Ben Carson has been doing as head of HUD (Housing and Urban Development), which has helped identify and fix anomalies in public housing:
Alice Johnson spoke of her gratitude for President Trump’s First Step Act from 2018, which has to do with prison reform. That year, Trump commuted Johnson’s life sentence for a first-time, non-violent drugs offence and granted her a full pardon today (Friday):
Ivanka Trump spoke of her father’s commitment to the American people:
President Trump spoke of the greatness of America and her people …
… while emphasising that the United States has clear internal enemies:
I fully agree with this:
The programme of events ended with a magnificent fireworks display, which was much better than the Democrats’ in Wilmington the Thursday before:
Unfortunately, as the guests left the White House, protesters awaited them:
Congressman Brian Mast, below, who is black, even got harassed by protesters. He politely answered their questions. They did not like his answers about pursuing ‘due process’ where necessary:
I can’t help but admire a husband who carries his wife’s shoes!
On the downside, when that couple reached their hotel, The Willard, the doors were locked. Even an employee outside couldn’t help them. They had to walk all the way around to the parking garage entrance and get in from there. All the while, they were harassed by protesters, who addressed the man as ‘Mr Anger’. The couple remained resolute and silent, with neutral expressions on their faces. I bet those were two of the longest minutes in their lives.
But that was nothing compared to the treatment that Brandon Straka, the ex-Democrat who founded the #WalkAway movement, received. Terrible.
Remember, the group attacking him is for gay rights. Maybe that doesn’t matter when a gay supports President Trump:
At least the police were nearby for Senator Rand Paul (Ron’s son) and his wife:
This morning (Friday), Rand Paul told Fox News what a traumatic several minutes that was for him and his wife, even with the police. He said the mob kept on growing. He also said that they had picked the wrong man, because he was one of the senators who supported the abolition of no-knock police raids, one of which was responsible for the death of Brionna Taylor. He said ‘the irony of that was lost’ on the protesters:
Meanwhile, this is what Joe Biden thought of the president’s speech:
I am not sure what planet Joe is on to say that, but it might not matter too much because he’s collapsed in the polls:
If you hear the media once again say that the Republicans’ message was ‘dark’, as they did in 2016, don’t believe them for a moment.
This was the finest convention I’ve ever seen, even better than 2016’s.
Kudos to everyone who organised it and who spoke. A lot of hard work went into those four days, spread across four locations as well as some people’s homes.
I’ve never seen such a professional production with so much sincerity and hope.
In 2016, President Trump made promises. From his election to now, he has fulfilled those promises. Promises made. Promises kept.
Onwards and upwards! MAGA 2020!
Last week, the actor James Woods tweeted a video about the history of the Democratic Party:
Dr Carol Swain, Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University, guides us through the Democrats’ murky past in this short video, which is just under six minutes long:
Discover who prevented blacks from improving their lives, whether after Reconstruction (post-Civil War), in the early 20th century (KKK) or in the 1960s, when Lyndon Baines Johnson created the welfare state to encourage blacks to vote for Democrats ‘for the next 200 years’.
Democrats also did not want to give black Americans the right to vote. Republicans had to encourage them. Those voting rights came in 1965.
Yes, now is the time for all of us to become more interested in politics.
This is an election year. Be aware of history. Be better informed.
This is the Democrat Victory Plan for 2020 (h/t with thanks):
Historically, this is known as the Algerian Strategy, used in the Algerian Civil War.
I do not think it will work, but expect the chaos to continue.
CPAC — the Conservative Political Action Conference — was held during the last few days of February 2020 at the National Harbor resort just outside of Washington, DC.
The American Conservative Union has hosted the event every year since 1974.
CPAC is particularly useful not only as an event with speeches and panel discussions but also as a bellwether to gauge conservative trends and, in years such as this one, political candidates’ viability for the presidency.
Interestingly, CPAC 2016 did not turn out well for then-candidate Donald Trump. Not only did he not attend, his name was not even mentioned. The straw poll conducted that year put Ted Cruz on top of the preferred candidates’ list, with Marco Rubio in second place.
Since he has been president, Trump has addressed the conference every year since 2017.
CPAC isn’t just about well-dressed Republicans. It gets its share of less conventional conservatives, too.
The New York Post featured a report complete with photos on February 29, which said (emphases mine):
In the cavernous convention center, Trump superfans in 10-gallon hats mingled with student rabble-rousers and an army of wonks from the swamp’s countless conservative think tanks.
“What brings me here is my love of America and my inspiration and enthusiasm for President Trump,” declared a strapping 6-foot drag queen who identified herself only as Lady Maga. “I would like to defy the narratives that all conservatives and Trump supporters are bigoted, homophobic people.”
There was also a 12-year-old boy who was allowed to cover along with journalists:
Joining journos once again in the media filing center were 12-year-old Phoenix Legg and his chauffeur/dad, Matt. Now on his fourth CPAC, Legg was in town after hitting a prayer breakfast in South Carolina. As in years past, he was decked in his trademark gray suit and matching fedora.
“I like giving the news through the eyes of a kid and since I’m a kid sometimes people are more willing to talk to me,” said Legg, who has become a mini-legend with the confab’s crowd.
Now and again, CPAC withdraws certain invitations, i.e. one for Mitt Romney. This is because the senator from Utah voted to remove President Trump from office during the Senate impeachment trial. His name was also booed during the conference:
Not surprisingly, Ivanka Trump was among the speakers. As Chair of the American Conservative Union, Matt Schlapp organises the event:
Virginia resident and mega-MAGA Trump supporter Scott Presler made his debut. He was thrilled to bits:
His parents were in the audience:
Scott enjoys meeting people, especially fellow conservatives:
He has also run neighbourhood clean-up campaigns in Baltimore and San Francisco. Residents of Baltimore really appreciated his and his volunteers’ efforts. Unfortunately, it was quite the opposite in San Francisco. Nonetheless, he met someone who saw the abuse he took from rabid leftists and decided to leave the Democrats behind:
CPAC is attracting increasing numbers of minority attendees and speakers.
The New England Patriots’ Benjamin Watson, a married father of seven, spoke about the importance of family (watch his speech in full):
He also showed a preview of his forthcoming documentary, Divided Hearts of America, which is about abortion, and signed copies of his books:
Townhall journalist Julio Rosas seemed to be everywhere at CPAC:
What a great place to spend one’s birthday:
Scott Presler was on his panel:
Brandon Straka, the ex-Democrat who founded the #WalkAway movement, spoke:
He made more new friends …
… and met up with people he already knew:
He also gave interviews:
John James, who is running for the US Senate in Michigan, made a forceful speech about American opportunity:
Louisiana’s US Senator Steve Scalise, hospitalised for months after a horrific attack by a rabid leftist in 2017, spoke about American healthcare:
Vice President Mike Pence spoke:
But, as expected, President Trump stole the show:
He spoke about Mitt Romney (this was where the boos came in) and successful anti-terror operations in Iran:
He talked about the new deal he made with Afghanistan to end America’s longest running war.
He took verbal swipes at the media and New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer:
He then had a go at the Democrat presidential candidates:
Greta Thunberg didn’t escape his notice, either:
He closed on a serious note, however, and received a standing ovation:
Contrary to 2016, this year I am thrilled about President Trump’s prospects. It’s not over until it’s over, of course, but his campaign manager Brad Parscale is as close to perfect as is humanly possible in his field. Here he is with Lara Trump (Eric’s wife):
I wish the president and his campaign team every success.
The 2020 Nevada caucus took place on Saturday, February 22.
The results were clear for President Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Republican caucus
On Friday, February 21, President Trump ended a whirlwind tour of Western states with a noonday rally in Las Vegas:
Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale has been tabulating the demographic make-up of those attending the president’s 2020 rallies. These were the results for the Nevada rally, attendance at which was not limited to Nevada residents. Out of state Trump supporters also attended:
The next day, the result was overwhelming for the incumbent:
According to these tweets, Parscale will continue to examine and target Nevada’s demographics in the run-up to November:
Democrat caucus
Bernie Sanders’s victory brought out naysayers on the Left, two of whom suggested that their much-despised — by them — incumbent would be a better choice than the socialist from Vermont. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said, ‘Perhaps Trump would be better’:
Let’s remind ourselves that President Trump is not a natural Republican:
But, I digress.
Sanders’s win was declared on Saturday evening, when it was still a projection:
As with the Iowa caucus, final results emerged two days later, because of the same issues that beset the Democrats in Iowa:
Sanders won 40.5% of the final (second round) Nevada caucus votes, with Joe Biden on 18.9% and Pete Buttigieg on 17.3%. Bernie walked away with 24 Nevada delegates, Biden nine and Buttigieg three.
Former Democrat US Senator Harry Reid now thinks the state should have a primary rather than a caucus:
Interestingly, before the caucus, Reid said he would not endorse the winner:
Another interesting development was a drop in the number of minorities taking part:
Is Sanders a viable candidate?
It’s hard to say at the moment whether Bernie Sanders is a viable candidate in the long run.
The United States has 47 primaries to follow. (The New Hampshire primary was held after the Iowa caucus.) Super Tuesday, when a number of states will conduct their primaries on March 3, should prove decisive for Democrats who are struggling to secure delegates. One-third of delegates will be in play that day.
Sanders wasted no time after his time in Nevada to push forward his admiration of socialism, namely that of Fidel Castro.
Obama, along with other prominent Democrats, has condemned Sanders’s brand of left-wing politics. This is somewhat hypocritical.
Remember this?
Their condemnation comes because Sanders’s vision for America is theirs, but, contrary to him, they want to progress more slowly, e.g. according to the boiling frog analogy. They want Americans to sleepwalk into it, by which time it would be too late to extract themselves from it.
Sanders is unlikely to win many delegates in South Carolina (seen to be Biden country) or Florida (resolutely anti-Castro). However, more urban- and university-focussed states could see him continue his success.
As President Trump said on Sunday, February 23:
Well, I think it was a great win for Bernie Sanders. We’ll see how it all turns out. They’ve got a lot of winning to do. I hope they treat him fairly. Frankly, I don’t care who I run against. I just hope they treat him fairly. I hope it’s not going to be a rigged deal because there’s a lot of bad things going on. And I hope it’s not going to be one of those. So we’ll see what happens.
But I congratulate Bernie Sanders. And if it’s going to be him, he certainly has a substantial lead. We’ll see what happens.
Indeed. The Democratic National Convention this summer will be telling. Will Sanders be denied once again, as he was in 2016?
The Iowa caucuses, both Republican and Democrat, took place on Monday, February 3, 2020.
They truly were a tale of two parties.
The Iowa caucus is the first presidential candidate — and delegate — selection during a general election year in the US.
On the eve of the Nevada caucus on Saturday, February 22, it’s worth revisiting.
Republican caucus
Not all of the Republican Iowa caucuses have gone smoothly in recent years.
This year’s did, and so did 2008‘s.
However, 2012‘s was very tight between Rick Santorum who finished narrowly in first place with 24.6% of the vote and Mitt Romney, in second with a nail-biting 24.5%.
In 2016, Ted Cruz was still at the top of his game, finishing first with 27.6%, and Donald Trump in second on 24.3%. Yet, that was the year that Cruz’s campaign workers spread false rumours to Ben Carson’s supporters that the good doctor had dropped out of the race. A lie! However, Carson’s paltry 9.7% ensured that he did drop out soon afterwards. Terrible!
That was how Donald Trump was able to attach the word ‘Lying’ to ‘Ted’ in a tweet with photos of both their wives. The Telegraph has more on the story.
Trump never let up on Cruz, either. Cruz folded in tears a couple of months later. Marco Rubio dropped out a day or two later, leaving candidate Trump the last man standing.
This year, Trump, the incumbent, had two minor rivals and ‘other’. William ‘Bill’ Weld, a former Massachusetts governor, garnered 1.3% of the vote and one delegate. Joe Walsh, a former Congressman for Illinois, came in third place with 1.1% of the vote and no delegates.
President Trump received 31,464 votes and 39 delegates.
There was a record turnout for an incumbent president, breaking Obama’s record of 25,000:
It was like a mini-rally in places:
Democrat caucus
The Democrat caucus resulted in confusion, much like 2016’s.
The 2016 caucus was held on February 1 that year. The Des Moines Register asked, ‘Iowa’s nightmare revisited: Was correct winner called?’
‘Nightmare revisited’ refers to the Republican result in 2012. As the newspaper reported in 2016:
This time it’s the Democrats, not the Republicans.
Four years ago, the top Democrat candidates were Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (emphases mine):
Even as Hillary Clinton trumpeted her Iowa win in New Hampshire on Tuesday, aides for Bernie Sanders said the eyelash-thin margin raised questions and called for a review. The chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party rejected that notion, saying the results are final …
At 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire announced that Clinton had eked out a slim victory, based on results from 1,682 of 1,683 precincts.
Voters from the final missing Democratic precinct tracked down party officials Tuesday morning to report their results. Sanders won that precinct, Des Moines precinct No. 42, by two delegate equivalents over Clinton.
The Iowa Democratic Party said the updated final tally of delegate equivalents for all the precincts statewide was:
Clinton: 700.59
Sanders: 696.82.
That’s a 3.77-count margin between Clinton, the powerful establishment favorite who early on in the Democratic race was expected to win in a virtual coronation, and Sanders, a democratic socialist who few in Iowa knew much about a year ago.
Incredible.
In 2020, the result was also contested. Bernie Sanders came in a very close second to Pete Buttigieg:
– Bernie won the popular vote: 45,831 to 43,273, or 26.5% to 25.1%;
– State delegate equivalents were as close as they were four years previously. Mayor Pete ended up with 563.2 and Bernie with 563.1.
Good grief.
Turnout was also low:
So, why, then, was it so difficult for the media to get the results?
This is what happened at CNN:
Bernie, understandably, was not best pleased as Buttigieg announced victory:
Two theories abound as to what happened this year.
One blames the fiasco on a new app that the Democrats were using. Another pins it on incompetence.
Here is a good summary of both:
The new app
Those who blame it on the new app point out that some high-profile people working on the campaign of Mayor Pete — dubbed Mayor Cheat after the caucus — knew the developers:
Questions also arose over ACRONYM:
Here’s more on that:
Shadow’s app looks as if it is/was set to be used in Nevada, too:
One hopes the bugs get ironed out by tomorrow, the 22nd, otherwise, it could look like another case of:
Incompetence
A week later, Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi wrote an excellent article about what he saw: ‘The Iowa Caucus Was Waterloo for Democrats’.
If you enjoy politics, you’ll want to read about his experience and about the Democrats he met on and before February 3.
Taibbi discounts the app as having been a factor in the caucus vote meltdown. He adopts the British philosophy of ‘cock-up before conspiracy’.
Excerpts follow.
There were problems with unauthorised precinct captains. The night before the caucus:
… a 36-year-old Minnesotan named Chris Storey called a number he’d been given, for a woman who was chair of the Waukee 4 district. Thanks to a new rule allowing out-of-state volunteers to be precinct captains, he was set to represent the Sanders campaign there.
“We got along, it was great,” he recalls. “She told me she was looking forward to seeing me the next day.”
The next day, caucus day, Storey showed up at Shuler Elementary School in Clive, Iowa. The same official he’d spoken with the night before met him at the door. “It was like two different people,” he recalls. “I was told there was a written directive from the county chair that nonresidents could not be precinct captains.”
Sanders had to get a last-minute replacement captain in Waukee 4, someone not formally aligned with the campaign. He fell short of viability there by five votes. County chair Bryce Smith, who made the decision, said he was responding to a late directive from the Iowa Democratic Party that said they would allow one nonresident captain per campaign, per precinct, but “the discretion of the chair is what goes,” i.e., this ultimately was a judgment call for county chairs. Smith said he didn’t like the change to the long-standing rule — “What’s stopping a campaign from hiring professional persuaders and high-profile people?” he asked — and decided to bar nonresident captains. The IDP has not yet commented.
As a result, some would-be captains from multiple different campaigns in Dallas County were pulled off the job (Smith said he got “five, six, eight” calls to complain). Meanwhile, in other districts, nonresident captains were common.
There were other issues:
Caucus participants later in the week would offer an eyebrow-raising number of other issues: bad head counts, misreported results, misreads of rules, wrong numbers, telecommunications errors, and other problems.
Taibbi says this should have been a straightforward caucus:
The basics of the caucus aren’t hard. You enter a building that is poorly ventilated, too small, and surrounded by mud puddles — usually a school gym. You join other people who plan on voting your way, gathering around the “precinct captain” for your candidate. If your pile of people comprises 15% of the room or more on the first count, your candidate is deemed “viable” and you must stay in that group. If your group doesn’t reach 15%, you must move to a new group or declare yourself undecided. There is a second count, and it should be done.
The caucus results, such as they were, continued to cause confusion the rest of the week:
What happened over the five days after the caucus was a mind-boggling display of fecklessness and ineptitude. Delay after inexplicable delay halted the process, to the point where it began to feel like the caucus had not really taken place. Results were released in chunks, turning what should have been a single news story into many, often with Buttigieg “in the lead.”
He explains that, although it looked as if Sanders actually won on paper, there was cause to call the win for Buttigieg:
Though Sanders won the popular vote by a fair margin, both in terms of initial preference (6,000 votes) and final preference (2,000), for most of the week Mayor Pete’s lead with “state delegate equivalents” — the number used to calculate how many national delegates are sent to the Democratic convention — made him the technical winner in the eyes of most. By the end of the week, however, Sanders had regained so much ground, to within 1.5 state delegate equivalents, that news organizations like the AP were despairing at calling a winner.
This wasn’t necessarily incorrect. The awarding of delegates in a state like Iowa is inherently somewhat random. If there’s a tie in votes in a district awarding five delegates, a preposterous system of coin flips is used to break the odd number. The geographical calculation for state delegate equivalents is also uneven, weighted toward the rural. A wide popular-vote winner can surely lose.
Returning to the aforementioned Chris Storey from Minnesota, who was ultimately turned down as precinct chairman:
“Is it incompetence or corruption? That’s the big question,” asked Storey. “I’m not sure it matters. It could be both.”
Conclusion
Whatever went wrong with the Democrat caucus, President Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale had this to say:
Democrats should hope for a more carefully conducted caucus in Nevada on Saturday.
