RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/100-days-failure-bruce-thornton/

The Biden administration took over the government with the wind at its back thanks to Donald Trump. With the COVID vaccines reining in the pandemic and things getting back to normal, all Biden had to do was not get in the way of success. But a lingering Trump Derangement Syndrome, and a leftwing, noisy base eager to complete Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of the U.S., have led at home and abroad to actions and policies seemingly calculated to compromise our interests and security and erode our political freedom.

We can start with our southern border. Trump’s initiatives such as building a wall, stepping-up deportations, and striking a deal that kept asylum seekers in Mexico had slowed considerably the number of illegal crossings, leading to a reduction in violence from gangsters like MS-13 that flourished in so-called sanctuary cities; the end of the catch-and-release policy that dumped unvetted aliens into the country’s interior; and limiting the cruel deaths of children on the trek north.

But these successful policies interfered with the bipartisan need for de facto open borders to provide cheap labor for Wall Street, and more voters for the DNC. More important, no matter how successful, such polices were tainted by the “wicked” Donald Trump, the populist bull that wrecked the political establishment’s remunerative china shop. So they had to go.

The result has been a return to the Obama era’s spectacle of children and teens packed into squalid holding pens, increased infestations of cartel traffickers in people and drugs, and two consecutive months of about 175,000 apprehensions of border-crossers each month––the highest in two decades. All reports from those on the ground––from border patrol agents to residents to local government agencies––indicate a serious crisis that will insidiously spread across the country. But president Joe Biden is instructed to say that such influxes happen every year at this time, that Donald Trump left a “Godawful mess,” and that “We’ve now got control” over the ongoing stampede of border-crossers.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chicago-mayor-refusing-to-accept-interview-requests-from-white-journalists/

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is only accepting interview requests from “black and brown journalists” as a matter of policy, according to a spokesman.

“As @chicagosmayor reaches her two year midway point as mayor, her spokeswoman says Lightfoot is granting 1 on 1 interviews-only to Black or Brown journalists,” local political journalist Mary Ann Ahern tweeted.

On Twitter, Lightfoot defended the policy, writing that she “ran [for mayor] to break up the status quo that was failing so many. That isn’t just in City Hall. It’s a shame that in 2021, the City Hall press corps is overwhelmingly White in a city where more than half of the city identifies as Black, Latino, AAPI or Native American.”

“This is exactly why I’m being intentional about prioritizing media requests from POC reporters on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of my inauguration as mayor of this great city” Lightfoot added, before noting that “we must be intentional about doing better.”

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Most Republicans do not want to denigrate President Trump, but neither do they want to elevate him. Benign neglect is the preferred path. The good of what he did – freeing up the economy from restrictive regulations and confining taxes, repatriating more than a trillion dollars in corporate cash, raising wages for the lowest income workers, and creating the most jobs ever for Black and Hispanic; taking real steps to resolve the border crisis; addressing the bureaucratic morass in Washington; calling out international governmental bodies for their undemocratic ways; getting NATO nations to pay a greater share of their defense; confronting enemies of freedom like Communist China, Russia and North Korea; signing the Abraham Accords and instigating Operation Warp Speed to get a COVOD-19 vaccine out in record time – was overshadowed by a supersized ego and mean-spirited, feckless Tweets.

Democrats, on the other hand, would like to keep the spirit of Donald Trump front and center. While it is true that his ardent Republican supporters do not want to give up on him, neither do Democrat leaders who see him as someone around whom they can rally their troops. Trump Derangement Syndrome helped Mr. Trump with the public when he was President because complaints about him were so outrageous. But it hurts the Republican Party and their chances today when anti-Trump opinions are voiced by other Republicans. “Prudent Republicans,” wrote Andrew McCarthy in the May 15th issue of National Review, “perceive that the best way to move on from Trump is to stop talking about him.” I agree.

If Republicans want to take control of the House and Senate in 2022, they will have to focus on issues, not on the personality of the former President. Single issue politicians detract from legitimate policy debates. In refusing to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump has done no more than what Al Gore did in 2000 and Hillary Clinton did in 2016. In all three cases (2000, 2016, 2020), there were certainly electoral irregularities, but there always have been. However, from what we now know, none of those elections would have been reversed. “If questioning the results of a particular election were a crime, as many have asserted in the wake of the controversial 2020 election and its aftermath,” writes Mollie Hemingway in her forthcoming book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, “nearly the entire Democratic Party and media establishment would have been incarcerated following the 2016 election.” It is not that Mr. Trump’s character should be ignored, but that it must be kept in perspective.