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ELECTIONS

Defying the Odds: Trump’s Bronx Speech and Its Impact The man I heard in the Bronx bears scant resemblance to the bumbling yet dangerous ogre that the world has fabricated around the name Trump. Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/26/defying-the-odds-trumps-bronx-speech-and-its-impact/

Donald Trump’s Bronx rally on Thursday was memorable not only for its display of political virility in a foreign—i.e., Democrat—clime but also for the rhetorical excellence of the speech that Trump, in his usual circuitous manner, delivered.

Tweeting (or X-ing) the column I wrote about the event, I dilated on the suppleness of Trump’s speeches. “I know this sounds odd,” I wrote,

but here goes: Donald Trump has delivered some of the very best political speeches in American history.  We’re not supposed to notice that because, well, Trump.  But it is true.  Go back and listen to his 2017 speech in Warsaw.  It is a masterpiece.  Ditto his 2020 speech at Mount Rushmore. Although delivered in a different register, his speech yesterday in The Bronx will, I predict, turn out to be one of the most significant of the 2024 campaign.  Among other things, it will be seen to mark the moment when Trump’s gathering momentum became unstoppable.

Time will tell whether I am right about that concluding observation. While we wait, I thought I would share some reactions to my column—or, rather, to a misreading of something I said in response to a reader. I was asked “Do we know who writes [Trump’s speeches]?” I replied,  “Well, I do!” meaning I, like many people, know who writes Trump’s speeches, not that I write them myself.

A London-based friend whom I have not seen in a while wrote me an anguished, imploring note:  “Please tell me it isn’t true that you are writing Trump’s speeches. Surely it wasn’t you who advised him to say that immigrants were poisoning the blood of America? Straight out of the Mein Kampf playbook.”

Nope, not I. I am pretty sure the remark in question  was fermented and mis en bouteille by Trump himself.  Tout le monde—at least, the world of the elite media—was appalled by the remark just as they had been appalled by Trump’s calling shithole countries like Haiti “shithole countries,” his referring to Nikki Haley as “bird brain,” or many similar exercises in invective. In my view, none of Trump’s remarks bear any similarity to Mein Kampf, nor do I think he is an “authoritarian figure.”  My friend did say that “I wasn’t implying that Trump was actually a Hitler figure, but that his use of those words showed a staggering ignorance of their historical associations. I don’t see him as a fascist but as an ignoramus.” From “Hitler” to “ignoramus” is a slight upgrade, I suppose,  but not exactly the cat’s meow.

My friend and I went back and forth on Trump. In the course of the exchange, she went from comparing him to Hitler to saying that “most alarmingly he seems to be Putin’s useful idiot.” To that charge, I responded that “I know some people say that. I do note that Putin did not invade Ukraine during Trump’s presidency.  And I doubt Putin regarded Trump’s  destruction of hundreds of Russian troops in Syria in 2018 as a gesture of friendship, but who knows?”

My friend then allowed that “Putin annexed Crimea long before he went for the full invasion. What is most alarming is that Trump seems to feel he has Putin under his influence when it is really the other way around.”

What’s The Dems’ Plan B If Lawfare Doesn’t Stop Trump? We Have Some Ideas

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/24/whats-the-dems-plan-b-if-lawfare-doesnt-stop-trump-we-have-some-ideas/

Next Tuesday both sides will present their closing arguments in the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, a case that exists for one reason only: to stop Trump from ever occupying the White House again.  

But what if this doesn’t work? What if there’s a hung jury or, worse yet, an acquittal? What if none of the 88 trumped-up felony charges results in a conviction and voters actually have a chance to elect Trump, should they prefer him over the decrepit failure known as Joe Biden?

What is the Democrats’ Plan B?

They must have one. Democrats are nothing if not always prepared. And they’ve already made it clear that they will do anything to stop Trump. Anything. That is, except run on the issues.

It looks increasingly likely that they will need a plan. Democrats bent and twisted the law into impossible shapes to rack up those felony charges against a political opponent. Now the seams are showing.

After Michael Cohen’s disastrous turn on the stand in the “hush money” trial undermined the bedrock of this case, even CNN is hedging its bets in the outcome.

The case has already failed to live up to its billing as political kryptonite. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that a mere 16% say they’re following the trial closely. Cable news ratings are down. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg whined about how, “when people were asked how the trial made them feel, the most common response was ‘bored’.”

Of course, none of that will matter to the jury, which could very well render a guilty verdict. But even Goldberg admits that this won’t necessarily stop Trump, given that he’s unlikely to be sent to prison before his appeals are heard.

Has America Finally Had It With Joe Biden? A record that remains indefensible. Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/has-america-finally-had-it-with-joe-biden/

Joe Biden’s personal approval rating is at historic lows; almost all his policies do not poll fifty percent. He is behind Trump in almost all the swing states. And now he lies serially even to sympathetic interviewers. In short, finally Biden has been exposed for what he always was and represented.

Senator and Vice President Joe Biden was always sort of a buffoon. He is by nature a grandstander who handsomely profited from his office while posing as good ole Joe from Scranton.

He is a blowhard meddler, one who proverbially has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades (Robert Gates),” from dissenting on the Bin Laden raid to his trisection of Iraq scheme.

He is a fabulist who believes that the more animated he misleads and slurs (“semi-fascists” “fat”, “lying dog-faced pony soldier”, “chumps”, “dregs of society”, etc), the more likely he is to get away with it. He is a confessed plagiarist. And he has also invented much of his biography, from would be star, college-scholarship athlete and brilliant law student to semi-truck driver and jailed civil rights activist. His uncle, we are instructed, was eaten by cannibals. Joe assures us that he was the first in his family to go to college.

And he is a racist with a repertory of racial taunts and smears unrivaled among modern politicians (“junkie”, “boy”, “you ain’t black”, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”, “put y’all back in chains”, the Corn Pop and golden-leg hairs sagas, the “racial jungle” memes, the strange brag about Delaware as a “slave state” (e.g., “You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state.”), and his encomia for the old Democratic racists of the Senate from former Klansman Robert Byrd (Biden’s self-described “mentor” and “guide”) to segregationist James Eastland (“never called me boy”).

Biden has always had a mean streak that explains why for years he lied about the tragic, fatal auto accident of his first wife and child, using it to libel the truck driver, who was neither drunk nor culpable but smeared publicly for years by Biden as intoxicated and guilty. For years he ignored the pleas of the trucker’s family to please stop libeling an innocent driver.

Fed Up With Anti-Israel Demonstrations On College Campuses? 60% Of All Voters Agree: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/22/fed-up-with-anti-israel-demonstrations-on-college-campuses-60-of-all-voters-agree-ii-tipp-poll/

American college campuses have experienced mass demonstrations and occupations by students and outsiders in recent months following Israel’s powerful response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by the Islamist group Hamas. Do Americans support this? No, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Many average Americans expressed shock at the sudden violent, and well-organized, demonstrations and tent cities that sprang up at universities around the nation, largely in support of Hamas and the destruction of Israel.

A solid majority of Americans are not happy with this, according to May’s national online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,435 adults, taken May 1-3. Some 60% of all those said they either disapprove “somewhat” (18%) or “strongly” (42%) with the demonstrations.

The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

A far smaller total of 24% said they either supported the demonstrations “strongly” (9%) or “somewhat” (15%). Another 16% said they were “not sure.”

But the repudiation of the demonstrations is not across the board, at least when it comes to the demographics of the respondents.

Trump vs. Biden, in One Simple Chart By Jim Geraghty

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-vs-biden-in-one-simple-chart/

It’s just a small chart, running alongside an article on page A5 of the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, but it says so much about why Donald Trump — after losing his reelection bid, after January 6, after four indictments — is running ahead of Biden in most of the swing states. One closing paragraph summarizes the numbers:

Though inflation is falling now, it has been higher on average under Biden than Trump. Adjusted for inflation, [household] net worth was up just 0.7 percent through Biden’s first three years, compared with 16 percent through Trump’s first three years.

The numbers are from the Saint Louis Federal Reserve Bank.

And there you go. Americans don’t blame Trump for Covid, so they give him a pass for the fourth year of his presidency and grade him on those first three years. A household net worth increasing 16 percent over three years is pretty good! And staying flat over three years is pretty bad. Sure, wages have increased over the past three years, but the corresponding increase in prices has eaten up almost all of those gains.

Will other issues matter in this election besides the economy? Sure. When Americans are asked open-ended questions about which issue is most important to their vote in the presidential election, immigration and the border consistently rank second. Abortion and the future of democracy get mentioned too, but they’re always a distant third, usually mentioned as most important by about 10 percent of the electorate.

This fall, if Americans feel like their household net worth is increasing, they’re likely to reelect Biden. If they feel like they’re treading water or that everything is harder to afford, they’re likely to reelect Trump. This isn’t the only factor, but it’s the biggest factor.

Liz Peek: Desperate Biden must debate to win — but there are risks

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4670330-biden-trump-debate-cnn-2024-desperate-risks

Kudos to Team Biden for successfully landing the first punch in the presidential free-for-all (aka, the campaign). By challenging Donald Trump to a debate and dictating the terms of play, President Biden left his opponent with two impossible choices: decline the opportunity to face off against Biden on national TV and be declared a coward, or agree to the meet, even knowing the playing field is tilted in favor of the incumbent.  

Will it matter that the Trump campaign got snookered? Almost certainly not. For the same reason that the absurd 14-second video in which the president dares Trump to “make my day” required five “cuts” to get it right, 81-year-old Biden is still likely to lose round 2.   

Not that it’s a slam-dunk for former President Trump. Biden is correct; Trump did lose the 2020 debates. He had apparently been coached to be combative, in hopes that Biden would overreact and reveal his “angry old man” persona. The tactic backfired spectacularly; Trump came across as unlikeable. If Biden or the moderators goad the former president on his January 6 behavior or reference his many legal troubles, Trump could again get angry. That disastrous encounter cost him the election; it could happen again. 

Expectations will be incredibly low for his opponent, as they were for this year’s State of the Union address. After that speech in February, critics described Biden as being hopped up on stimulants; the president spoke in an unnatural, rapid-fire manner that nonetheless got the job done. Worried that Biden will get a similar boost to endure a two-hour debate, some on the right — including Trump — have called for drug testing before the debates; that won’t happen.  

Biden’s handlers are doing everything possible to give the president an edge.

Election 2024: A Political Renaissance for America or the Path to Totalitarianism To ensure the continuation of the American Republic will require not only support for President Trump but also extraordinary vigilance by the American people through the election and its aftermath. By James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/18/election-2024-a-political-renaissance-for-america-or-the-path-to-totalitarianism/

It has been decades in the making, but the country is now on the precipice between its traditional ideology of political liberalism and a path that will lead, far sooner than Americans might think, to totalitarianism. The historical bulwarks of Americanism and the American political system—government of the people, freedom, and liberty—have been deliberately eroded. A citizenry steeped in republican virtue, cognizant of the political ideas and principles that made America a lasting and strong constitutional republic, and knowledgeable about the duties and obligations of American citizenship have been under daily assault for years from the foreign ideology of communism. That odious ideology has operated under synonyms such as “progressivism,” “multiculturalism,” or DEI to make its poison more palatable to American audiences.

The media—the so-called “Fourth Estate”—has been another layer of protection that has been peeled away. Today, they are activists advancing the left’s agenda in all but name. Great newspapers that were lively to read and informative are no longer. One reads them now the same way Soviet citizens used to read Pravda—only by knowing the lies that are printed and surmising what is left out of the story can one come close to knowing the truth. Compare the front page of the New York Times from fifty, forty, or thirty years ago to one today, and the change is telling and sad to see. Rather than a robust culture of free speech, censorship is pervasive by the legacy and social media, Big Tech, and by a ubiquitous and devilish culture of self-censorship.

American universities were once the envy of the world, as lively academies of intellectual debate and devoted to the pursuit of knowledge are now factories of indoctrination. Their law, medical, engineering, and business schools have also been transformed into political instruments that advance the “Party Line.” Unbelievably, thought control in K-12 is even worse. Popular culture fell a long time ago, and most of it is simply a contemporary version of Soviet entertainment where the heroic worker and peasant defeat the evil capitalist and priest. Worse still is the promotion of degeneracy and decadence with gender reassignment led by a teacher’s union that more resembles a Clockwork Orange ensemble than as the protectors of the most vulnerable in our society—our children.

The Biden Reelection Strategy Bidenites believe they can reelect an unhealthy, unpopular, and unsuccessful president by any means necessary. And they may be right. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/16/the-biden-reelection-strategy/

Joe Biden polls at or below 40 percent approval. Historically, such unpopularity has made it almost impossible for a president to be reelected.

His age advances by the hour. His voice falters, his memory fades, and his gait is reduced to short steps, with his arms, winglike and in tandem, offering balance.

Biden is not so much an octogenarian as an unhealthy and prematurely aging 80-year-old. It is America’s irony that he is fit for almost no other job in the country other than President, which apparently allows for a 3-day-a-week ceremonial role while others in the shadows run the country.

So how does Biden become renominated and reelected, as polls show he is behind in almost every critical swing state on nearly every issue?

Answer: not by campaigning, not by championing his record, and especially not by doubling down on his neo-socialist and now unpopular agendas.

Instead, his campaign is focused on four other strategies to beat Donald Trump.

First, left-wing local, state, and federal prosecutors are tying Trump up in court on crimes that have never been seen before and will never be again after the election. All the cases are politically motivated, with many coordinated with the White House.

Even if Trump is not convicted by blue-state prosecutors, in blue-state courtrooms, in front of blue-state juries, he will lose critical campaigning time.

Trump may end up paying out $1 billion in legal fees and fines. At 76, the monotonous days in court are designed to destroy him financially, physically, and mentally.

Biden and his operatives know that, in the long term, they may have fatally damaged the American legal system with such judicial sabotage. But short-term, they hope to destroy Trump before the ballots are cast.

Second, in his fourth year, Biden is suddenly selling government favors to special-interest voting blocs, or hoping to bring short-term relief to voters at the expense of long-term damage to the nation.

For elite college students and graduates, there are now billions of dollars in student-loan cancellations, despite a Supreme Court ruling declaring such targeted contractual amnesties illegal.

Congress Must Act to Stop Noncitizens from Voting Action is long overdue.Rebecca Weber

https://www.frontpagemag.com/congress-must-act-to-stop-noncitizens-from-voting/

With less than six months to go until Election Day, Americans have ample reason to be concerned that a wave of non-citizens casting ballots could undermine the integrity of our elections. Urgent federal action is needed to address this threat before it is too late.

Many in the corporate media and the political establishment have assured Americans that they need not worry because non-citizens voting, or even registering to vote in federal elections is already illegal – and indeed, this is the case. But this prohibition has been effectively neutralized by caveats and special carve-outs in dozens of states’ laws which create ample opportunity to violate federal election law.

One of the biggest glaring weak points in U.S. election law is the voter registration process itself. Under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, every state must use a common voter registration form which only asks applicants to check a box stating that they are an American citizen.

In other words, states must take someone’s word for it that they are eligible to vote in federal elections – effectively eliminating all structural barriers to non-citizens registering to vote.

FT-Michigan Ross poll: Biden’s election hopes fall as prices rise again Persistent inflation means American voters do not see evidence of an improving economy

The recent uptick in US inflation appears to have reversed any progress President Joe Biden has made in convincing voters he can do a better job of managing the economy than Donald Trump. The poll, conducted between May 2 and May 6, finds that — after a slight uplift in April — Biden’s approval ratings on the economy fell back to levels that will make for depressing reading among the White House’s incumbents. That comes after price data showed US inflation might prove stickier than anticipated at the start of the year. The findings add to the sense that the Biden administration’s messaging on the economy — much of which has been focused on gains US workers have seen to their wages — is not convincing voters.