RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/03/04/donald-trump-supreme-court-colorado-ballot-us-election/

“Scarcely any question arises in the United States which does not become, sooner or later, a subject of judicial debate.” So Tocqueville wrote 200 years ago in what is still the greatest book about both America and democracy. His observation remains as true today as it was in the 1830s. It applies to the likely nominees of both political parties.

Most of attention has been devoted, quite rightly, to the mountain of legal problems facing former President Trump. But it is worth noting that the current occupant of the White House faces legal problems of his own. 

Joe Biden has been shown to possess classified documents without authorization and store them in insecure places, like his garage. The allegations were laid out in detail by Special Counsel Robert Hur, who declined to prosecute because President Biden was “elderly” and “forgetful” : hardly the sort of descriptors a presidental candidate would want to promote. 

Troubling as President Biden’s cognitive problems are, his legal issues are dwarfed by those facing former President Trump. The former president’s supporters and many independent voters see them a “lawfare,” the tendentious use of the legal system for political gain. His opponents see them as the even-handed rule of law.

What is striking about the cases pending against Trump is how they all came together in the midst of a presidential campaign. Surprise, surprise. Of course, the alleged crimes and civil violations occurred years ago.

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/joe-biden-old-ny-times/2024/03/03/id/1155760/

A shocking new Siena College poll released by The New York Times revealed an overwhelming majority — 73% — of Americans say Biden is “too old to be an effective president” and that included even 61% of his 2020 voters.

The Times’ glaring headline warned the polling results were a “grave threat” for his reelection. Former President Donald Trump trolled the Times and Biden for the results in his Saturday night campaign rally in Richmond, Virginia.

“I’m running for president and leading big in all the polls,” Trump told his rally, which aired live and in its entirety on Newsmax. “I mean, when The New York Times has this front page story tomorrow — you’ll see, it just came out — Trump is killing this guy.

“They’re not happy. I guess, maybe they are happy. I mean, frankly, they did the best they’ve ever done four years of Trump. They were doing much better than they do right now.”

But Biden is not doing better even with his voters, the Times noted Sunday morning as Trump predicted.

“The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him,” according to the Times analysis. “A striking 61% said they thought he was ‘just too old’ to be an effective president.”

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/04/gearing-up-for-biden-versus-trump-not-if-but-when-and-how-to-replace-biden/

President Joe Biden is declining at a geometric, not an arithmetic, rate. His cognitive challenges are multifaceted.

His gait is shaky. His daily use of stairs now risks the chance of a tenure-ending fall. Even when he sticks to the teleprompter, he so slurs his speech, mispronounces words, and glides his syntax that at times he becomes as incomprehensible at the podium as he is unsteady in his step.

He now speaks a strange language foreign and untranslatable to most Americans. White House transcribers leave hiatuses in their written texts of his remarks to reflect that they either have no idea what he said, do not wish to publicize their guesses at what he said, or do not wish the public to know what he was trying to say.

Despite the circling-the-wagons media and the passive-aggressive sycophants like the opportunistic Gov. Gavin Newsom in waiting, the left understands that Biden will be lucky to get to the August convention. This spring and early summer, he will not campaign as a normal presidential candidate, and this time around, there is no pretense of the COVID epidemic to excuse his absence.

The people have already polled numerous times that their president is unfit to serve now and, in the future, should not run. So the 2020 Faustian bargain is in shambles. Remember its quid pro quos: all the major Democratic presidential candidates of 2020 nearly simultaneously pulled out the primaries to coronate Biden—but only on the condition that Biden would play to the hilt his “ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton” schtick that would offer a veneer to the otherwise unpopular hard left agenda of the new Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/the Obamas/Squad Democratic Party.

The people voted for a “return to normalcy,” all while the left destroyed the southern border, unleashed a critical legal theory/George-Soros crime wave, dismantled hard-won deterrence abroad, and printed money to spur hyperinflation.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/03/election-countdown-trump-surges-in-swing-states-amid-legal-turmoil/

When is Jack Smith’s birthday?  Someone should give him a copy of the Justice Department’s manual with a bookmark in Section 9-85.500 “Actions that may have an impact on Election.” He and his boss, Attorney General Merrick Garland, can open their office reading group by having someone read the beginning of that passage aloud: “Federal prosecutors and agents may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

But, of course, that is exactly what Jack Smith intended to do with his case against Donald Trump in Washington, DC.  Trump was set to go on trial March 4, the day before Super Tuesday, in what is one of the most Democratic cities in the country, in a court presided over by Tanya Chutkan, an ostentatiously Trump-hostile judge.  As Byron York noted, “Democrats envisioned a weekslong trial tying Trump down in a federal courtroom, followed by a guilty verdict from a deep-blue Washington, D.C., jury, followed by a long sentence imposed by Chutkan, followed by a move by Smith to imprison Trump pending appeal. Bingo! Trump would be behind bars by Labor Day, and Biden would cruise to victory.”

A few days ago, the Supreme Court wrecked this envisioned party by agreeing to hear Trump’s case that, as president on January 6, 2021, he enjoyed immunity from criminal prosecution.  SCOTUS agreed to expedite the case, but no one expects them to finish before the election in November.

Of course, Trump is being besieged on many other fronts.  There’s the $450 million Judge Arthur Engoron says he must pay because… because why? Oh, right, because he defrauded banks by overvaluing his assets when he made loan applications.  The banks did their own arithmetic, made the loans, and were pleased that Trump paid them back on time and in full.  So it was a fraud in which no one was defrauded, but Trump still must be fined into possible bankruptcy.  While we’re shopping for our legal friends, someone should get Engoron a large-type version of the 8th Amendment, which is brief and to the point: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/11/unhinged-progressives-are-a-gift-to-trump/

In 1931, the slogan of the German Communist Party became: ‘After Hitler, our turn.’ This kind of wishful thinking is making a comeback in contemporary America. Prominent Democrats and the ‘progressive’ apparat of the Biden administration see the nomination of Donald Trump – their version of Hitler – as the best way to mobilise their shaky coalition and to keep hold of power.

Biden’s supporters believe Trump is so odious that the American people will accept anyone – even someone as obviously mediocre as Joe Biden – to keep him out of power. This worked back in 2020, when Trump’s bungling of Covid-19, his chaotic management style and his consistently vile – though clearly not fascist – persona allowed Biden to gain the White House.

This assumption also proved correct in the 2022 Midterms. Democrats bankrolled numerous unelectable Trumpistas in congressional and state races, a cynical gambit they are repeating again this year. This helped them dodge a potential wipeout at the polls. The seemingly inevitable nomination of Trump by the Republicans looks perfectly suited to a repeat performance in the 2024 presidential election.

Yet as the German Communists learned in 1933, sometimes getting what you want does not always work out so well. Biden might be heralded as the second coming of FDR in the mainstream press, but most Americans have clearly had enough of him. A recent poll puts him at a dismal 37 per cent. As things stand, he is now slated to lose to Trump, particularly in key swing states. Some surveys suggest Trump is even gaining among independents and is pulling some suburban professionals back into his camp. As former presidential candidate Andrew Yang puts it, Biden’s shaky performance could be about to deliver ‘Trump, the sequel’.

So why is Biden so unpopular? This is partly down to inflation – undoubtedly made worse by Biden’s economic agenda. But it is also due to his pandering to the so-called progressives on just about everything – from the border and climate change to LGBT issues. According to longtime Democratic analyst Ruy Teixeira, Biden seems incapable of shifting to where the voters are. For Democratic senator Joe Manchin, much of the problem stems from the fact that the president has surrounded himself with ‘far, far-left liberals’.

https://townhall.com/columnists/johnullyot/2024/02/13/obama-poised-to-pull-the-plug-on-biden-n2635143

Special counsel Robert Hur did a great service to America last week in two ways that fundamentally and irreversibly transform the Presidential race. As a result, just like in Hillary Clinton’s ‘3 a.m. phone call’ television ad in the 2008 contest, the iPhone is buzzing in Barack Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard compound, and he had better answer it.

Number one, by declining to charge President Biden for “willfully retain[ing]” classified materials, Hur blew up any pretense of fairness when it comes to how Biden’s Department of Justice treats its own boss, while it throws the book at President Trump.

 Not only did Hur decline to prosecute Biden, he made clear that the facts surrounding Biden’s retention of documents were far worse – not even in the same solar system – compared with President Trump’s case.

To review the bidding:

– As a former President, Trump was covered by the Presidential Records Act that allows the chief executive to retain some personal records from his time in office, as it did with former President Bill Clinton in the infamous “socks case,” as well as “broad authority to formally declassify most documents that are not statutorily protected, while they are in office,” according to the American Bar Association. As a former senator and vice president, Biden was not covered by the Presidential Records Act, and has no case whatsoever for retaining classified personal materials from his time in either office.

– Biden had no protection whatsoever over his custody of the classified documents he possessed illegally, many of which he squirreled away in his unlocked garage next to a non-electric Corvette. President Trump’s documents were kept under lock and key at his Mar-a-Lago estate that even some in the media acknowledge is “built like a fortress,” and guarded around-the-clock by Secret Service officers.

– Hur’s report noted that Biden’s documents were recovered by FBI agents “from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home,” and at the Penn Biden Center, Biden’s lucrative Washington perch after leaving office in 2017. (This latter facility is otherwise known as the “Penn China Center,” because the University of Pennsylvania mysteriously received at least $30 million from anonymous Chinese donors within weeks of establishing the center for Biden and his former aides the year he left office, including future Secretary of State Antony Blinken.)

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/02/14/whats-with-these-dems-are-stuck-with-biden-stories-appearing-in-the-press/

In the span of two days, articles started appearing making the exact same argument: That Joe Biden will definitely, no questions asked, be the nominee come November.

So, naturally, we are left wondering what Democrats have up their sleeve to get the flailing president off the ballot.

On Monday, Vox.com published a lengthy article titled “Yes, Democrats, It’s Biden or Bust.”  The next day, Politico ran a lengthy piece titled “Get Used to It: Biden Isn’t Going Anywhere.” New York Magazine ran a piece with a slightly different take: “Yes, Democrats Can Still Replace Biden (But They Won’t).” The National Interest ran a piece yesterday titled “Democrats are Stuck with Joe Biden.”

We are not suggesting there was plagiarism here, but mainstream journalists aren’t the most independent thinkers on the planet, which suggests that they are getting their information from the same sources.

Let’s focus on the Vox and Politico articles.

Both point out that it’s too late for a challenger to get enough delegates to secure the nomination.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-ride-special-counsels-report-way-white-house-avoids-potholes

Former President Donald Trump can ride Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Joe Biden’s “diminished faculties” all the way to the White House if he does these three things:

1. Leans into voters’ concerns about the disastrous border crisis – and tells them how he’ll fix it.

2. Talks up his plan to keep the economy humming through deregulation, keeping taxes low and also by pushing his “Drill Baby Drill” plan to expand America’s energy stockpile and independence, and…        

3. Shuts up about everything else. Don’t feed Democrat narratives with threats to abandon NATO or impose 60% tariffs on China. Stop whining about the 2020 election, stop denigrating rival and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s husband and wardrobe, and lay off President Joe Biden. The president is destroying his reelection hopes all by himself; he doesn’t need any help. 

Also, talk less about what a great job you did before and more about how you’ll do it again, even better. Voters want to know and they want optimism. 

There’s been a lot of chatter about what Joe Biden should do to confront the terrible blow delivered by Special Counsel Hur. There has been less commentary about how the presumed GOP nominee should navigate this gift from the blue. My view – don’t interrupt Biden’s decline and fall.  

Odds makers have Donald Trump in the lead, with one site giving him a 52% chance of winning in November, against 27% for Biden. Shockingly, Michelle Obama is next most likely to become president, with a 15% chance. That says everything. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/contemplating-the-unthinkable-harris-2024/

EXCERPT:

Kamala Harris’s Chances

Late last week, after President Biden’s disastrous prime-time press conference, our Phil Klein delivered an assessment that sounded insane . . . and yet, in light of recent events, deserves serious consideration: “Democrats would be better off facing Donald Trump with [Kamala] Harris as their presidential nominee than taking their chances with a rapidly declining [Joe] Biden.”

I can hear readers now: Harris is a joke, a liability, a walking disaster who is so self-evidently a weak candidate and leader that not a single prominent Democrat has called upon Biden to announce he’s serving just one term.

But as these past few days have made abundantly clear, Biden’s age is the single biggest problem jeopardizing the Democrats’ chances of keeping the White House. Never mind that a super-majority of Americans thinks Biden is too old to serve another term; a super-majority of Democrats thinks Biden is too old to serve another term, according to the latest polling from ABC News:

According to the poll, conducted using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, 86 percent of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president. That figure includes 59 percent of Americans who think both he and former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, are too old and 27 percent who think only Biden is too old. . . .

73 percent of Democrats think Biden is too old to serve.

This is a problem that cannot be fixed. Biden cannot get younger. There’s something a little sad about Democrats who think that the problem can be solved if the White House and Biden campaign staff just put the president in front of the cameras more:

Top party operatives are warning Biden aides that the president cannot retreat in response to the special counsel report that fueled concerns over his age and mental faculties. They say President Joe Biden, having largely shied away from interviews and press conferences, needs to be out in public far more.

They want to see him engage with the press and voters in the off-script and punchy exchanges he’s been known for in the past, which they believe will help chip away at concerns about the president’s mental acuity. They say that it’s worth the risk of potential slip-ups that could reinforce the image that he’s declining.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/here-is-how-the-dems-could-replace-biden-through-an-internal-coup/

I spent years telling skeptical conservatives that, yes Biden was going to run for reelection. Many didn’t believe it until he filed, became the automatic frontrunner, and had no opponents to speak of.

And while public perceptions of his state keep dropping, the Democrats have few options.

Sure, rank and file Dems could shift their support to Rep. Dean Philips, who is in possession of his full faculties and actually campaigning, but there’s zero sign of that happening. Instead, New Hampshire Dems wrote in Biden after he refused to even compete in their state in order to score a big hand-delivered win in South Carolina. (With 4% turnout.)

But here are the four scenarios ranked in order of probability.

1. Biden is the nominee – barring a serious medical breakdown, the frontrunner becomes the party nominee. – Most likely

2. Biden resigns – significant pressure is brought to bear on Biden, his aides and family members to get him to drop out – second most likely

3. Philips beats Biden – panicked by Biden’s poor polls and deteriorating condition, Democrats ignore the party and switch to Philips – least likely

4. DNC removes Biden  – that’s the interesting ‘X’ scenario.- third most likely

Even if Biden does drop out, the results will be messy. It’s too late for anyone else to file to run. The only other candidate on the ballot is Rep. Dean Philips who has few allies and the Dem establishment is not about to let a dark horse whom they piled on win. They’d rather have Trump than Philips. (If you’re skeptical, think of all the Republicans who would rather have had Hillary than Trump.)

But what if Biden doesn’t drop out?

Let’s go back for a moment to Hillary Clinton’s fainting incident which was publicly dismissed, but privately was taken very seriously.

Then-Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile considered replacing Hillary Clinton at the top of the party’s ticket last year after the presidential nominee appeared unsteady and stumbled following a September 11 memorial service in New York, Brazile writes in her new book.

As rumors swirled about Clinton’s health and the future of her presidential campaign, representatives of Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley contacted Brazile, she writes, apparently to offer their services.

“Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about?” Brazile writes about Biden.

Brazile writes that she considered several potential replacements for Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the vice presidential nominee, and concluded Biden and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., would be the strongest combination to beat Donald Trump in November.

Brazile, who was abruptly brought on to replace former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz during the party’s convention last summer, did not have the power to unilaterally remove Clinton and Kaine.

But DNC rules give the party’s chairman the authority to set the ball in motion.