RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/15/lawfare-against-trump-is-running-out-of-gas/

We should dispense with the tired narrative that four conscientious state and federal prosecutors—independently and without contact with the Biden White House or the radical Democrats in Congress—all came to the same disinterested conclusions that Donald Trump should be indicted for various crimes and put on trial during the campaign season of 2024.

The prosecutors began accelerating their indictments only once Trump started to lead incumbent Joe Biden by sizable margins in head-to-head polls. Moreover, had Trump not run for the presidency, or had he been of the same party as most of the four prosecutors, he would have never been indicted by any of them.

Yet now they are in a doom loop of discovering that the more they seek to rush to judgment before the election and gag Trump from speaking publicly about these star-chamber proceedings, the more he rises in the polls.

In truth, each succeeding cycle of corrupt leftwing lawfare that ends in failure—the Russian collusion hoax, the weaponized first impeachment, trying ex-president Trump in the Senate as a private citizen, the laptop disinformation set-up, the Alfa bank ping caper, the pathetic attempt to erase Trump from state ballots, and the unfolding Fani Willis moral debacle—does not return things to zero.

Rather, they serve as force multipliers for each other. Each overreach geometrically increases the dangers to democracy, ever more turns the public off, and ironically cascades sympathy and poll numbers for the very target of their paranoias.

Some of the prosecutors have colluded with White House lawyers and congressional liaisons. Some had run for office, offering campaign promises to get Trump convicted for something or other.

Now, after years of delays and deadends, all four are rushing to synchronize their trial dates to ensure that the front-running Trump is on the docket daily and not out on the 2024 campaign trail.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/14/trumps-resurgence-draws-parallels-to-reagans-1980-upset-victory/

It’s hard to recapture the contempt with which Reagan was excoriated by the best and the brightest, but it was just as visceral and widespread as the animus against Trump in 2016 and today.

The 2024 presidential election is still more than 10 months away, but already there is a lot of déjà vu all over again about the festivity.

The smart money—which does not, I hasten to add, mean that it will turn out to be the most accurate money—has been telling us for months that wily Democrats have engineered Trump’s nomination because, clever chaps that they are, they know he cannot possibly win the election.

The main reason adduced is that Trump is not sufficiently popular to win.  How do said pundits know this?  Some point to the polls, though the polls have not been cooperating on that front of late. Trump is ahead in all or nearly all the swing states, and more and more polls put him ahead of Biden in the general election.  Some adduce Trump’s “character,” his behavior after the 2020 election, and the cornucopia of indictments he faces in four separate jurisdictions.  Back in December, Byron York summed up the state of play with this headline: “As Trump lead widens, prosecutors step up pursuit.”

What do you suppose most people think of that? What, I mean, do they think of a situation in which one political candidate is targeted by the opposing political party—which party, it may almost go without saying, totally controls the coercive instruments of state power?  I believe most people don’t like it.  They don’t like it because it reeks of basic unfairness and totalitarian overreach.

But that’s where we are now.  Who knows, perhaps Jack Smith, Fani Willis, or Letitia James will finally nab Trump on one charge or another.  After all, the net designed to capture the former president has been spread far and wide. But I would not be so sure.  Everywhere one looks, the cases against him have come more and more to resemble the House of Usher. Fani Willis put her boyfriend on the payroll and ordered him to get Trump. Unfortunately, that secret intimacy is making headlines everywhere. The news threatens to collapse the case against Trump in Georgia.

Prosecutors in New York and Washington can rely on biased judges and juries. But I suspect that even if Trump is convicted of something in one or both places, he will win on appeal. The cases against him long ago took on the slightly comical aspect of a vendetta.

https://spectator.org/nikki-haley-stands-up-for-the-swamp/

One of the hazards of running for president is making a remark in front of cameras that quickly points out why you’re not the right candidate.

This brings to mind this recent, decidedly telling remark from former Gov./UN Ambassador Nikki Haley in her race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Haley said of former President Donald Trump:

The reality is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him, and we all know that’s true … and we can’t have a country in disarray and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. We won’t survive it.

Translation?

Haley, in a blink, made herself the symbol of what millions of Americans have come to see as exactly what’s wrong with the country. Her comment is a clear representation that she is first and last a supporter of what Americans have come to call “The Swamp.”

What is “The Swamp”? It is Status Quo Washington and the Status Quo Establishment in the country at large.

The Swamp could be corrupt Old Order bureaucrats in the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Justice trying to thwart, first, a presidential election that elects Trump. Then, when that failed in 2016, The Swamp spent four years seeking to disrupt the president and his entire administration.

The legal arm of the Swamp, whether in Washington, New York, or Georgia, has spent endless amounts of time to impeach and/or indict President Trump, deliberately weaponizing and corrupting the legal system to do so.

The Swamp includes a corrupted media that makes it its mission to not report the news that doesn’t fit The Swamp’s objectives. The suppression by Big Tech and Big Government of the 2020 New York Post exclusive about Hunter Biden’s laptop is exactly The Swamp at work. 

On and on — and on and on — goes The Swamp in its obsession with controlling America and all of its different entities. The Swamp wants complete cultural and political control of America. Its players see themselves as having a God-given right to run America, whether they are in the federal bureaucracy, the media, academia, and more.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/01/11/winner_of_the_desantis-haley_debate_150313.html

After two hours of going at each other with hammer and tong, there was a clear winner at the debate between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at Drake University last night sponsored by CNN. But he wasn’t in the building.

Instead, Donald Trump was across town, speaking at a town hall hosted by a different cable network, floating the tantalizing claim that he has already chosen his running mate.

If it seems brazen to make an announcement before the first primary season votes have been cast, there’s a reason: With less than a week before the Iowa caucuses, Trump maintains a sizeable – possibly insurmountable – lead over his nearest rivals. A big victory for Trump next Monday night would put him in a position to run the table of early states and cruise toward the nomination – notwithstanding his mounting legal difficulties.

And, as has been the case so often through the primary process, the bickering and infighting among his main challengers that took place on the debate stage in Des Moines last night only served to help the former president’s campaign.

They didn’t waste any time on niceties, either.

In his opening statement, DeSantis rehashed Haley’s recent remarks in New Hampshire where she seemed to acknowledge Trump’s looming victory in Iowa by telling New Hampshire voters that they can “correct” Iowa’s caucus results.

“We don’t need another mealy-mouthed politician who just tells you what she thinks you want to hear just to try to get your vote, then to get into office and to do her donors’ bidding,” DeSantis said. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/12/will-trumps-rising-support-from-minority-voters-put-him-back-into-the-white-house-ii-tipp-poll/

As 2023 has ended and a new year begun, those looking for a big change in the presidential polls for either major party may be disappointed. The I&I/TIPP Poll taken in early January shows that both President Joe Biden (69% support) and former President Donald Trump (65%) have big leads currently in the primaries for their respective parties.

With little competition so far from others, what about the head-to-head competition between Biden vs. Trump?

I&I/TIPP’s national online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,247 registered voters taken Jan. 3-5 shows that Trump holds a slender 1 percentage-point lead over Biden if the election were held today. The actual numbers are 41% Trump, 40% Biden, a virtual statistical tossup given the poll’s +/-2.8 percentage point margin of error.
However, significant problems lurk for both candidates, but mainly for Biden, the data show.

Biden runs strongly in urban areas, taking 55% of that vote to Trump’s 31%. But the suburbs favor Trump 44% to Biden’s 38%, while Trump’s lead in rural areas is even larger: 49% Trump, 27% Biden. Urban voters in the I&I/TIPP survey make up just about 30% of all voters.

An even larger problem looms for Biden when it comes to minority voters, in particular blacks and Hispanics. In 2020, according to a Roper Survey exit poll of voters, Biden took an estimated 87% of the black vote and 65% of the Hispanic vote running against Trump, who received an estimated 12% of the black vote and 32% of the Hispanic tally.

This time around might be a surprise for the Democrats, who have long held a tight lock on the votes of the country’s two-largest minorities. Current I&I/TIPP data show Trump getting a near-identical level of Hispanic support as in 2020, 31%, but Biden’s backing has plunged from more than 60% to just 53%.

ttps://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/10/one-in-four-americans-now-believe-bidens-election-in-2020-wasnt-legitimate-ii-tipp-poll/

It’s a question that infuriates some, but remains on the minds of many: Was Joe Biden legitimately elected to the presidency in the hotly contested 2020 election? While most say he was, just over one in four U.S. voters believe the answer is no, according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll.

The national online poll, taken January 3-5 from among 1,247 registered voters, asked: “To what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement: Joe Biden was legitimately elected president.”

Of those polled, 65% said that they agreed either “strongly” (50%) or “somewhat” (15%) with that statement. But another 26% said they disagreed either “somewhat” (9%) or “strongly” (17%), while 9% said they were not sure. The poll has a +/-2.8 percentage point margin of error.

But, when it comes to political affiliation, the responses show some of the most skewed results yet in an I&I/TIPP Poll. It’s fair to say that Democrats, Republicans and independents are far apart in their responses.

Among Democrats, 92% believe Biden was elected legitimately, with 80% agreeing “strongly” and 12% “somewhat.” Just 4% disagreed.

For Republicans, the numbers told a different tale.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4389558-joe-bidens-extremist-spending-is-a-danger-to-the-us/

Joe Biden says “Extreme Maga Republicans” want to wreck the economy by cutting federal spending. And yet, it is his administration’s blowout budgets that are extreme. Never in this country’s history, with the exception of two emergencies — World War II and COVID — have we spent taxpayer money so recklessly. 

Consider: in just the past three months, the federal debt of the United States jumped by $1 trillion. The U.S. now owes $34 trillion, up from $33 trillion at the end of September. For reference, it took 198 years of borrowing for the government to rack up its first trillion dollars of debt; that milestone was first reached in 1981.   

Putting that gargantuan figure in context, debt held by the public in 1981 amounted to about 25 percent of GDP; today’s debt amounts to more than 100 percent of GDP. Our debt is bigger than the entire economy of every single country in the world but the U.S. and China. 

The Peterson Foundation further puts our debt in perspective, noting that “$34 trillion is enough to cover a public four-year degree for every graduating high-school student for 106 years.”  

This should worry everyone. There’s a reason that Fitch Ratings downgraded United States’ credit rating from “AAA” to “AA+” last year, several years after S&P made the same decision. The last ratings agency still awarding U.S. debt its platinum rating is Moody’s; last year they lowered the outlook to “negative” from “stable,” citing a drop in “debt affordability.”    

https://www.racket.news/p/note-from-the-campaign-trail

SIOUX CITY, IA — I’ve done this gig so many times I have Pavlovian reactions to certain airports, but having never flown here, I didn’t know Sioux City’s three-letter code is SUX. That’s the name of the car that raged-out ex-councilman Ron Miller demands when he takes the Detroit mayor hostage in Robocop. “I want something with reclining leather seats that goes really fast and gets really shitty gas mileage,” he shouts, Uzi in hand.

“How about a 6000 SUX?” a police captain bullhorns back. Miller likes it, but wants cruise control. “I want a recount!” he yells, stepping over bodies. “And no matter how it turns out, I want my old job back!” So the story connects. Who’d have thought?

Anyway, Sioux City’s cool, just never came this way.

I started covering presidential campaigns in 2004. The problem then was the events were fake. Candidate speeches were market-tested piles of words designed to attract the statistical middle of the middle. In post-event asides, aides pretended to socialize and fed you rehearsed spiels over beers about their candidate’s path to victory. Everything was canned. A memory that stands out is plastic clumps of grass scotch-taped to reporters’ seats on Howard Dean’s “grassroots express” charter. It was hard to divine much, traveling in that mechanized sales hell.

Now things are reversed. Reality is altered before you leave the house. Challengers are censored or deamplified, the incumbent “brushes off” debates, vote counts are shady (what’s with Iowa Democrats waiting until Super Tuesday to announce caucus results?), and even ballots are curated. Coverage of everyone but the President and whoever’s currently pushed as the “viable” Republican alternative to you-know-who (“Could Haley Beat Trump? Big Donors are Daring to Dream,” writes the New York Times) is a desert of lies and hit jobs. Even public reaction is edited. A controversial guest essay by lefty legal scholar Samuel Moyn in the Times arguing the Supreme Court should vote 9-0 to return Trump to the Colorado ballot appears devoid of approving comments. I could buy most disapproving, but it looks more like all. Who can tell, without checking for yourself, where public sentiment is now?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/biden-and-the-polls-hes-fallen-and-he-cant-get-up

BIDEN AND THE POLLS: HE’S FALLEN AND HE CAN’T GET UP. In an interview with the Financial Times, the longtime Washington political analyst Charlie Cook noted that President Joe Biden’s job approval rating has been stuck below 50% for a long time, 2 1/2 years, and shows no signs of rising above 50% anytime soon. “There seems to be virtually no elasticity there,” Cook said. “I wonder whether people have just changed the channel — they’ve just written him off.”

To understand what Cook said about “elasticity,” look at the Gallup Presidential Job Approval Center. Biden started his presidency, in January 2021, with a 57% approval rating. He stayed around that level until the beginning of the summer, and then the slide began. By July 2021, Biden fell below 50% for the first time and has never returned. He fell below 40% in July 2022 and is at 39% today.

For 2 1/2 years, Biden’s job approval has bounced in about an 8-point range between highs in the mid-40s and lows in the high 30s. That’s what Cook meant about lack of elasticity — Biden doesn’t seem to go up and down in relation to his accomplishments or lack of accomplishments. He just sort of sits there, like voters have written him off.

Some Biden supporters like to point out that former President Barack Obama had some tough times in the polls before he won reelection in 2012. Yes and no. Obama began his first term, in January 2009, on a huge high — 67% approval in the Gallup rating. But by November of that year, Obama had fallen below 50%. The difference between Obama and Biden is 1) Obama occasionally rose back to 50% or higher, as he did in February and April of 2010 and January and May of 2011, and 2) although Obama fell to 40% a few times, he never sank below that.

The great hope of Biden partisans is that he will rise in the polls as November’s election approaches, as Obama did in 2012. In late August of 2012, Obama sat at 44%. Then, as the general election campaign moved into high gear, Obama rose to 52% by October. That’s where he was when he defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney and won a second term.

So can Biden replicate that feat? It seems safe to say, although not guaranteed, that his polls will increase in September and October, no matter whom he is facing as a Republican opponent. That just generally happens as Democrats and Republicans dig into their partisan positions with an election approaching. But where will Biden start from? Obama rose from 44% to 52% to win. What if he had started at 34% or even 38%? It would have been a much tougher job.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/30/nikki-haleys-first-real-test-of-2024-00133336

Nikki Haley is finally under the microscope.

After evading attacks for weeks from her Republican rivals, it was a town hall question about the origins of the Civil War that finally seemed to stick.

And it couldn’t have come at a worse time. With weeks to go before voting starts, Haley is now facing the first major test of her ability to withstand a maelstrom in the presidential campaign. It is a significant moment not only for the former South Carolina governor, but for the broader effort among Republicans hoping to stop Donald Trump from steamrolling to the nomination.

“This is Haley’s first time under the bright lights, and she must power through this and tackle Trump now,” said Scott Reed, a veteran GOP strategist. “Or else.”

Haley’s rivals treated her Civil War comments as a lifeline for their own dimming prospects in the race. DeSantis and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie quickly condemned her answer at their own campaign events this week. And Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, spent much of Thursday addressing questions about her remarks, putting her in the position of explaining rather than selling her candidacy.

For nearly a year — from her beginning as a long shot to her recent rise in polls — Haley went relatively unscathed. Her opponents have highlighted, with little effect, her evolving answers on issues like abortion and transgender rights. But they spent less money against her, too. As of Wednesday, Haley had $14 million spent against her in negative advertising, compared with nearly $37 million for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and $19 million for Trump, according to Rob Pyers, a nonpartisan data analyst. Trump has focused his hammer-like attacks on DeSantis, not Haley. And much of the media scrutiny over the past year focused on the Florida governor’s campaign missteps and policy proposals

But that changed Wednesday night in Berlin, New Hampshire. Haley’s halting and convoluted response to a town hall questioner — and her ensuing attempts to clarify her comments, later acknowledging slavery as a cause of the Civil War after first declining to do so — put a harsh spotlight on her, arguably for the first time during the primary. Within hours, news outlets had begun digging into her past remarks on the issue, resurfacing an interview she’d given in 2010 in which she offered similar beliefs about the root causes of the Civil War.