Trump's America
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“And I think the reason why is because the moment that Trump came out and said that he is behind his pick, we did see a number of Trump allies kind of green lighting to the MAGA base, all right, start calling senators who are a little bit worried on Hegseth. Start — start to threaten, actually, a number of senators, including Sen. Joni Ernst, that she could get primaried. This is something that Elon Musk has also said publicly that he will use his super PACs to not just find candidates to go against any senator who may vote against a nominee, but also fund those campaigns.”
The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood broke the news that Ernst was waging an “aggressive” campaign against Hegseth’s nomination in the hope she might be appointed defense secretary. Her past support for pushing transgender ideology on the military was also highlighted. The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson explained the stakes of the nomination battle in his piece, “Pete Hegseth’s Nomination Is A Hill Trump Should Die On.”
Associated Press executive editor Julie Pace also agreed that Republican voters had apparently figured out how to remind senators that they mattered at least as much as their beltway friends.
“I think Marianna has it right, there was this sort of pivot point where you could see, particularly, I think, when the pressure campaign against Ernst really started to mount, that I think that took over and became the dominant focus of a lot of these senators as opposed to some of the allegations and some of the questions around Hegseth,” Pace said.
Democrat strategist Donna Brazile said controllers had unleashed “MAGA” on senators who were “waffling” on the nominees.
Priebus pushed back on the claim. “[T]hey didn’t unleash MAGA. America unleashed MAGA. I mean the point — the whole point of Trump’s victory is, how did the traditional picks that we used to always put in place, how did that work for us? The American people rejected it. And they accepted what Donald Trump’s been selling in this country for the last couple years. So, I mean, he won with Muslim voters in Dearborn. He won with Puerto Ricans in Florida. He won a majority of male Hispanic voters. He won every state across the country better except for I think Washington and Oregon,” Priebus said. “MAGA is here because MAGA has been accepted by the American people, and so that’s why we’re here. We’ve got to be reminded of this all the time.”
The four panelists more or less helped explain how to fight the constant information operations deployed by the media and other Democrats in order to get weak Republicans to assist in the sabotage of Republican policy goals. Republicans should show strength and conviction in the face of obvious media campaigns against their nominees or policy ideas. And Republicans need to remind weak elected officials that they should fear their voters far more.
These simple steps enable Republicans to neuter, blow up, and render impotent the awful playbook that the media, Democrats, and the permanent D.C. class use to get their way.
A bit of fortitude and a reminder that there are consequences to assisting the opposing party with its goals helps the GOP start rolling down the highway at 85 MPH on cruise control, as Priebus put it. And the strategy can be repeated over and over because Trump’s Republican agenda is supported by a majority of the American people.
thefederalist.com
The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood broke the news that Ernst was waging an “aggressive” campaign against Hegseth’s nomination in the hope she might be appointed defense secretary. Her past support for pushing transgender ideology on the military was also highlighted. The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson explained the stakes of the nomination battle in his piece, “Pete Hegseth’s Nomination Is A Hill Trump Should Die On.”
Associated Press executive editor Julie Pace also agreed that Republican voters had apparently figured out how to remind senators that they mattered at least as much as their beltway friends.
“I think Marianna has it right, there was this sort of pivot point where you could see, particularly, I think, when the pressure campaign against Ernst really started to mount, that I think that took over and became the dominant focus of a lot of these senators as opposed to some of the allegations and some of the questions around Hegseth,” Pace said.
Democrat strategist Donna Brazile said controllers had unleashed “MAGA” on senators who were “waffling” on the nominees.
Priebus pushed back on the claim. “[T]hey didn’t unleash MAGA. America unleashed MAGA. I mean the point — the whole point of Trump’s victory is, how did the traditional picks that we used to always put in place, how did that work for us? The American people rejected it. And they accepted what Donald Trump’s been selling in this country for the last couple years. So, I mean, he won with Muslim voters in Dearborn. He won with Puerto Ricans in Florida. He won a majority of male Hispanic voters. He won every state across the country better except for I think Washington and Oregon,” Priebus said. “MAGA is here because MAGA has been accepted by the American people, and so that’s why we’re here. We’ve got to be reminded of this all the time.”
The four panelists more or less helped explain how to fight the constant information operations deployed by the media and other Democrats in order to get weak Republicans to assist in the sabotage of Republican policy goals. Republicans should show strength and conviction in the face of obvious media campaigns against their nominees or policy ideas. And Republicans need to remind weak elected officials that they should fear their voters far more.
These simple steps enable Republicans to neuter, blow up, and render impotent the awful playbook that the media, Democrats, and the permanent D.C. class use to get their way.
A bit of fortitude and a reminder that there are consequences to assisting the opposing party with its goals helps the GOP start rolling down the highway at 85 MPH on cruise control, as Priebus put it. And the strategy can be repeated over and over because Trump’s Republican agenda is supported by a majority of the American people.
Hegseth Battle Shows Republicans An Easy Way To Stop Losing
The battle over Pete Hegseth's nomination has revealed the strategy Republicans can use to stop losing and counter the left's playbook.
thefederalist.com
3/4 of American Voters Want Pro-2nd Amendment Judges Nominated at Federal Level
The poll asked, “How important is it to you to get judges confirmed and nominated to the federal courts who make it a priority to try their best to strictly follow the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?”
Seventy-six percent of respondents said it is “important.”
Another question asked, “How important is it to you that our political leaders in Washington, D.C. protect and defend the 2nd Amendment Rights in the U.S. Constitution of law-abiding gun owners?”
Seventy-seven percent of respondents said this is “important” as well.
When asked, “Do you think that President Donald Trump will make it a priority to protect and defend the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners,” 63 percent of respondents said “yes.”
Jim McLaughlin commented on the poll’s results, saying,
Yesterday, the third time was the charm. The New York Times reported the story under the headline, “Congress Approves Spending Extension, Ending Shutdown Crisis.” Say what you will about the bill, but after outraged Democrats protest-voted against a clean CR on Thursday, yesterday Trump and Speaker Johnson passed a pared-down, 120-page continuing resolution with massive bipartisan support (366-34 in the House, and 85-11 in the Senate). The Republicans used “two simple tricks” to pass a bill.
Over the last 72 hours, the budget battle shrank from a 1,600-page porkulous to a trim, 120-page, “mostly clean” continuing resolution in two quick maneuvers, thereby avoiding the dreaded “government shutdown” non-shutdown. The GOP’s maneuvers included one strategic move plus one major concession.
Some will find this controversial, but by every ordinary metric, it was a smashing success for Speaker Johnson whose job, after all, is to pass good bills with as much support as possible. Democrats, who are claiming victory on social media this morning, actually lost. They got whipsawed into voting for basically the same bill they’d literally just rejected because Republicans “broke our deal.”
The GOP’s brilliant strategy emerged after “round two,” which saw 30 debt-hawk Republicans joining all Democrats in a mass protest vote against a clean resolution that mainly funded the government, raised the debt limit, and provided disaster and “farm relief.”
After that bill went down in flames, working with debt hawks, Speaker Johnson then began to prepare separate bills for everything in the CR, so that Representatives and Senators would be forced to vote separately on each and every piece, one-by-one.
Passing the individual parts of a continuing resolution would have been perfectly lawful and probably more rational, but it would have shattered so-called “legislative norms.” Meaning, they’ve always done it the other way. The benefit to passing it all at once is nobody has to take credit for individual slices of legislative bacon. Had Johnson followed through, Republicans would have successfully kept the government running, and mulish Democrats, not Republicans, would have voted to shut it down.
So it is unsurprising that, after receiving back-channel assurances from Democrats, Speaker Johnson proposed a still smaller bill, a third college try, which sailed through both chambers with nary a peep. In fact, I think every Democrat voted in favor. The largest group voting against were the GOP debt hawks.
The other piece was the big concession. One of the few things removed between Bill 2 and Bill 3 was a provision that Trump wanted that would have lifted the federal debt limit. Because of that omission, corporate media ran headlines this morning like NBC’s: “Congress avoids a shutdown but leaves 'a big mess' for Trump and Republicans in 2025.” The sub-headline added, “Trump tried to push Congress to take the debt ceiling off his plate but failed.”
The Times’s article explained that, to get Trump on board, unnamed “House leaders” worked a deal to do exactly what Trump wanted to avoid, which was to put off extending the debt limit until Trump’s first few months in office. There will be a smaller Republican majority, and it sure looks like putting off till tomorrow what could have been done today. Here’s how the Times described the deal:
Both President Trump and Elon Musk have so far been silent on yesterday’s successful vote, except Musk re-tweeted two posts calling the deal a “massive win.”
The passed bill included much-needed disaster relief, canceled Congressional pay raises, wrung out the woke word replacements, and purged the new pandemic policies. It did not even touch the debt limit. Still, that was insufficient to placate some conservatives, who would probably complain if they were hung with a new rope. E.g.:
I’ll just touch on the bridge funding, since that one seems to be a repeating theme among conservatives unhappy with the budget bill. Generally speaking, they angrily demand to know why the federal government should pay to replace the broken bridge, not only but especially since there’s insurance and a shipping company to sue.
Nobody is saying it, but the answer seems obvious, and regular readers will surely recall.
C&C was all over this story at the time it happened. The short version is that the Francis Scott Key bridge was likely a Proxy War military casualty. It’s destruction was probably payback for helping Ukraine harry Russia’s Crimean Bridge. Zelensky is literally obsessed with that bridge. It haunts his dreams. Just when he’s falling asleep, he’ll suddenly remember the bridge and thrash around on his pillow like a gaffed salmon.
Remember all the mystery fires plaguing power stations and chicken farms during 2022-2023? That’s your Proxy War.
Thus, the dramatic and fabulously expensive collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge wasn’t Maryland’s fault. It was Joe Biden’s fault. And the legal side would have gotten ugly. I’d bet Nancy Pelosi’s stock portfolio that the bridge’s insurance policy almost certainly had an “acts of war or terrorism” exclusion. Neither is the shipper liable for Acts of G—d, which include acts of war or terrorism.
It is only fair the federal government should replace that bridge. It also wants to. The government preserves “strategic ambiguity” by avoiding a court showdown and discovery, with the insurer trying to prove the ‘accident’ was not negligent sailing but a deliberate attack.
☕️ NORMATIVE ☙ Saturday, December 21, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
Budget battle ends in a whimper, but who won?; disappearing Cabbages; Trump angers progressives by deep-state draining; another pro-jab anchor fades away; progress in the Defense Authorization; more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
Yesterday, the New York Times ran a surprisingly helpful story predicting the current Congressional crisis and attendant drama, headlined “Trump Tossed a Debt Limit Grenade Into Spending Talks. Here’s Why.” The article helpfully explained yesterday’s surprising failure of House Republicans to pass the much improved ‘clean’ continuing resolution. The new deal failed when 30 Republicans voted against it, and probably not for the reason you think.
Amidst the hot takes on social media, keep these two deadlines in mind: Today, Friday, is the last day of federal funding under the last continuing resolution. Lawmakers have all day to convince the thirty holdout Republicans to come around, otherwise the federal government “shuts down,” which those of us who’ve been through this before know really means “keeps going,” except that a bunch of federal workers will get an extra paid vacation conveniently right around the holidays.
Second, and much more significant, the debt limit expires on January 1st. As ever in U.S. politics, the name is deceptive and backwards. It’s not so much of a debt limit as it is an automatic borrowing authorization up to a point. Since the Constitution requires Congress to approve any borrowing, without this automatic approval mechanism, the Treasury Department (an Executive branch agency) cannot sell bonds or incur debt to fund the government without asking Congress for permission every single time, constantly interrupting Congress and preventing them from debating really important bills, like funding studies of the sexual habits of Nigerian head lice.
So you can see how if the expiring debt limit problem is not addressed, it could lead to a real crisis in the form of a real shutdown, not the pretend kind. Treasury can muddle along under emergency powers for a few months, but a reckoning would be right around the corner holding a two-by-four.
Therefore, the expiring debt limit cannot be ignored and must be addressed. It can either happen now or after the Inauguration. Trump is intimately familiar with this conundrum. This very crisis hamstrung him during his first term. He lost almost a year fighting over the debt limit, and was finally forced to make a deal with Democrats to bypass mulish Republican debt hawks in the House.
Trump does not want to go through that again:
The deal in 2017 was lose-lose-lose. True, Trump lifted the debt limit, but it was really a loss, since he expended vast amounts of political capital on what to him was a non-priority political obstacle. Republicans lost, because Trump’s deal gave Democrats significant progressive wins while Republicans saw their legislative priorities ignored (since they refused to play). We citizens lost, because it set the Trump agenda back a year and cost about as much as ten Ukraine Proxy Wars.
Yesterday, a small group of debt-hawkish Republicans (around 30) vowed never to raise the debt limit at all and voted against the clean CR. They want spending cuts, and they skeptically view any debt increase as a band-aid. Yesterday’s pared-down bill actually included $500 billion in legitimate spending cuts, but because it also lifted the debt ceiling by $5 trillion dollars, they balked. No dice.
For his part, Trump wants to avoid spending his first year in office fighting about debt. Trump actually doesn’t care about the debt limit at all, because he sees it for what it is: a fake fig leaf that never actually limits anything, much less spending. All the debt limit does is, every few years, create a Congressional fight club that somehow always produces another massive spending spree in the deal to get the damned thing passed.
Republicans are as guilty at playing budget games as anyone, maybe more so. Democrats have long called for the fake debt limit to be abolished. Just now, of course, Democrats say it’s more American than motherhood (sorry, womb-bearer-hood):
Mucking things up even more, the inevitable increase in the debt limit will be historically huge. It will somehow have to swallow around $5 trillion dollars of Biden’s profligate emergency spending. Trump knows that, and that if this unavoidable increase happens during his presidency, he’ll be blamed for mushrooming the debt even though it was really Biden’s fault.
So Trump wants the Republicans to clean up Biden’s mess before he takes office.
This is only a guess; I have no special connections or sources. But if I had to guess, I suspect that first monstrosity of a bill, a Porkulus of a Festivus gift to Democrats, was negotiated to handle this problem. I suspect Trump negotiated with Democrats —like he was forced to do in 2017— and the deal included a secret provision that they would help him increase the debt limit before the end of Biden’s term.
But this time, Democrats got too greedy, and the bill blew up on social media’s launchpad yesterday. At some point in the late morning, Trump saw which way the winds were blowing, threw in with the MAGA base, and the deal with outraged Democrats collapsed. That is why they keep saying “we had a deal.”
Now it’s Plan B. Republicans are trying to do it the hard way: passing a clean, transparent deal with only Republicans, which means they will somehow have to both increase the structural debt limit and also appease the Republican debt hawks in the House. They’ll need most of them, because zero Democrats will help this time.
This at least gives you a sense of the complex issues in play. The Christmas drama in Congress will almost certainly continue all day today.
☕️ ODORS OF MENDACITY ☙ Friday, December 20, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
More Congressional drama as Republicans reject clean bill they asked for; media retconning Biden cabbage brain; Fani Willis sinks under appeal; Alex Berenson teases mRNA-killer study; more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
Trump is Responding to Biden's 'Abhorrent' Pardons
Early Monday morning President Joe Biden, or someone on his staff, announced he is wiping away the death penalty for 37 federal inmates currently on death row. They include child rapists and murderers, but Biden framed the decision as just.
"Today, President Biden announced that he is commuting the sentences of 37 individuals on federal death row. Those individuals will have their sentences reclassified from execution to life without the possibility of parole," the White House released in a statement. "The President has issued more commutations at this point in his presidency than any of his recent predecessors at the same point in their first terms. Earlier this month, the President announced clemency for approximately 1,500 Americans – the most ever in a single day."
Biden also took a shot at Trump.
"I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted," Biden said.
Team Trump is disgusted and has released a response on behalf of the President-elect.
Wipe Away As Much of Joe Biden’s Legacy As Possible
In April, Reason Magazine wrote “Nearly $100 billion of money allocated to help state and local governments through the COVID-19 pandemic remains unspent.” That’s a damn good place to start.
That was April, so surely a bunch of it was Hoovered up by locals since then, and since the election they have likely gone into Hunter Biden mode – snorting up even more, as quickly as possible. The Trump administration should make it known that these state and local government should stop, right now, and leave that money where it is. If they do not, anything they take, as well as all funds taken since the pandemic ended, will be clawed back by reducing the amount of federal money they get, no matter who much they would have otherwise qualified for. Hell, maybe add in a 10 percent punishment for anything taken during the lame duck period.
It's time to get serious.
How many billions of the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” have yet to be spent? Hell, trillions. Stop anything left. In fact, repeal the whole damn thing. There are literally trillions in “green” subsidies that monstrosity obligates the federal government to spend over the coming year, according to the Cato Institute. Kill it, kill it now.
Kill the government’s power grab into health care for seniors, where they will cost-shift prescription drug co-pay savings (which sound great) to increased premium costs for everyone (which is horrible) for prescription drug coverage, a 21.5 percent increase, according to The Hill. Know any senior citizens ready and able to absorb a hit like that for the drugs they need to stay healthy?
For reasons that only makes sense in Washington, DC, these were both part of the “Inflation Reduction Act.” Why? Because Democrats wanted these things and inflation, or allegedly “reducing” it, was the cover they needed to get them. You didn’t think that bill had anything to do with reducing inflation, did you?
Last week, the New York Times ran what may be one of the most accidentally encouraging stories of the month, hand-wringingly headlined “A Famed Iowa Pollster’s Career Ends With a ‘Spectacular Miss’ and a Trump Lawsuit.” The sub-headline added, “Known for her ‘gold standard’ polls of Iowans, J. Ann Selzer is facing retribution from Donald Trump after her final 2024 survey showed a surprising, and ultimately wrong, winner.” Accidentally.
Two days before the election, the uncannily accurate, “gold standard” Iowa pollster Ann Selzer published the poll that pulled the plug on her long and storied polling career. Her election-eve poll shockingly showed Trump clearly losing Iowa —which even in 2020 he’d easily won by +8 points. Literally within minutes of publication of Selzer’s poll, all the corporate media outlets laser focused on this one poll, and the talking heads chattered nonstop till the election about how Selzer’s poll proved Trump had already lost the election.
Specifically, mockingbird media’s talking heads instantaneously analyzed Selzer’s data and gushed that it evidenced a last-minute avalanche of support from America’s angry women that would inexorably clinch the election for cackling VP Kamala Harris.
Conservatives immediately smelled a rat. Selzer’s poll was an outlier. A big outlier. Like the other polls were in sitting in a Des Moines Starbucks and Selzer’s poll was trying to dock with the International Space Station. Corporate media’s instantaneous and homogenous narrative smacked of coordination. And get this: Selzer retired right after the election — a professional move she now calls “long-planned” but one which she’d never publicly mentioned even a single time.
As it turned out, Selzer’s poll was wrong. Not just a little wrong. She was way off, by double digits. Two weeks ago, she published a humiliating op-ed sort of apologizing for her ‘mistake.’ But not really apologizing. More like shrugging. These things happen sometimes. That’s science.
Selzer’s explanation answered nothing. If anything, it was insulting and infuriated her critics. Then last week, President Trump sued Selzer in Iowa. The suit also named Selzer’s employer, the far-left Des Moines Register, and the Register’s owner, Gannett News. Trump’s legal claims include consumer fraud and election interference, which the Democrats have taught us is literally a million times worse than whatever Benedict Arnold did.
In the 2016 and 2020 electoral cycles, Democrats enthusiastically demanded criminal investigations into largely-imagined Russian bot farms, silly Facebook memes by college students, and housewives’ tweets of election denialism. “Election interference” became a progressive rallying cry from the View ladies to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. A sort of manic, progressive Big Bang inflated the concept of “election interference” from a dusty, rarely-used label reserved for shadowy foreign agents, bribery rings, gun thugs guarding ballot boxes, and ballot box tampering, to include nearly everything Democrats didn’t like right down to a single retweeted meme.But especially misinformation.
Last year, far-left progressives giddily celebrated Douglass Mackey’s conviction. In 2021, Biden’s DOJ raided, arrested, and prosecuted the young man, who in 2016 had posted a sarcastic meme encouraging Hillary supporters to vote by text. His case is currently on appeal, but Mackey could be sentenced to up to ten years in federal prison for election interference via disinformation under a statute called “conspiracy against rights” (18 U.S.C. § 241).
Significantly, DOJ lawyers successfully argued that the effect of Mackey’s tweet didn’t matter. In other words, it was irrelevant whether anyone was actually stupid enough to try voting by text message. Mackey’s intent to ‘trick’ at least some voters was enough.
At the time, conservatives warned that Mackey’s conviction was a slippery slope to ever more “creative” claims of election interference, such as claims directed at campaign strategists, political activists, media outlets (like Gannett), and even pollsters (like Selzer).
In other words, Democrats laid down the election interference Slip-n-Slide and then poured vegetable oil all over it. Now they’re whining about being all greasy.
Before 2016, “election interference” only involved direct or physical vote manipulation. But thanks to Democrat linguistic terrorism, the term now lacks any solid definition. Trying to define election interference is like jello wrestling. Now, anybody can freely claim that election interference includes altogether new or “soft” forms of influence; if you can describe it, it can be interference.
Trump’s lawsuit leverages the Democrats’ spongy non-definition, where “election interference” can be anything that misleads or manipulates voters, including intentionally fraudulent polls. Trump’s lawyers have alleged that Selzer’s poll fraudulently influenced the election by creating a false narrative of inevitability for Kamala Harris.
In other words, Selzer’s fake poll was just as bad as, if not worse than, Mackey’s meme.
To be clear, the main legal thrust of Trump’s lawsuit is his claim under Iowa’s consumer protection law. But the definition of the alleged ‘fraud’ that occurred arises directly from the rhetorical Wild West of “election interference.”
Sooner or later, Democrats and their sold-out corporate media allies may learn to regret having re-defined “election interference.”
🎄 CHRISTMAS IS BACK ☙ Tuesday, December 24, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🎄
Europe cancels Christmas while America restores it; Houthis vs F-18 fighter jet; media malfeasance on display; Trump game-changing pollster lawsuit; election interference; ABC settlement; more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com