Trump’s Wide World

October 28, 2024

AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, THE WIDE WORLD OF TRUMP. New York — If you wanted to see living, breathing proof of former President Donald Trump‘s success in broadening the appeal of the Republican Party, you just had to look around his mega-rally in Madison Square Garden Sunday night. No, Trump did not draw hordes of fans from the deep-blue blocks of Manhattan surrounding the arena. Nearly everyone I talked to came in from Long Island, New Jersey, or the outer boroughs of the city, in particular the most outer of the outer boroughs, Staten Island. But if you were looking specifically for, say, Trump’s growing appeal to Latino voters, all you had to do was look around.

An extensive poll done last month by NBC News and Telemundo showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 54% to 40% among Hispanic voters. That 40%, should Trump actually achieve it, would equal the best Republican performance among Latino voters ever by President George W. Bush in 2004. (Remember that Trump won about 28% of the Latino vote in 2016 and about 32% in 2020. Both figures were significantly better than Mitt Romney and John McCain in the two elections before Trump.) The NBC-Telemundo poll showed Trump doing particularly well among male Latino voters, with whom Trump and Harris were tied, 47% to 47%.

These are extraordinary numbers, and they are particularly worrisome to strategists who have seen Harris’s support decline in some key areas of the Democratic Party coalition. They would find no solace at the Madison Square Garden rally.

Among the first people I met inside the Garden, as everyone waited for the program to begin, were Marc Vazquez and Engel Paulino, two friends from Brick Township, New Jersey. Vazquez’s family came to the New York area from Puerto Rico, while Paulino’s came from the Dominican Republic. Both are active in their local Republican Party.

Vazquez, who is 30 years old and works in marketing, explained that when he was younger, “I always believed I was a Democrat because that’s what my family identified as.” Republicans, he believed, were rich, out of touch, and didn’t care about people like him. Then, in 2014, around the time he turned 20, he started a business — it dealt with repairing phones and tablets — and found himself dealing with quite a few conservatives. They said all sorts of things critical of then-President Barack Obama. Vazquez found that frustrating and started doing some reading. “I realized they were right,” he said.

Trump joined the presidential race the next year. Vazquez was originally skeptical — initial skepticism is a common element of many rallygoers’ stories — but he was also intrigued by how much the media seemed to hate Trump. That is another common element of the stories. A lot of Trump supporters say they were originally struck by what they saw as a hostile media overreaction to Trump — in Vazquez’s case, it was over the issue of illegal immigration — and that it spurred them to take a closer look at Trump.

Vazquez found that he agreed with Trump on immigration. “It wasn’t about hate. It was about putting America first, making sure our laws were respected, and ensuring our communities were safe,” he said. Vazquez also found himself supporting Trump’s tax cuts, energy policies, deregulation, and more. He thought Trump “was focused on creating real opportunities, particularly for communities like mine, which had been overlooked by politicians for years.” In 2019, five years after he showed his first interest in politics, Vazquez joined the Brick Township Republican Party, in which he is now on the board. That’s how he ended up wearing a MAGA hat on the floor of Madison Square Garden, waiting for the biggest political rally in decades.

Engel Paulino wore a MAGA hat, too, a baseball cap turned backward, plus a “NEVER SURRENDER” T-shirt featuring the famous photo of Trump raising his fist after he was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania. (As an aside, I’ve covered a lot of Trump rallies, and I’ve never seen as much MAGA merchandise as I did Sunday night.) Paulino described living as a small child in the Dominican Republic, where his father had a furniture business. “A hurricane came by and destroyed the business, and my dad had a choice — either rebuild or listen to my mother and start a new life in the U.S.,” Paulino said. They came to New Jersey.

In New Jersey, Paulino recalled, “I watched my dad, as a truck driver, work 13-hour days. He would be gone for days at a time. He had a bed in his truck. And I watched him achieve the American dream. He went from a small one-bedroom apartment to a four-bedroom house in a matter of five to seven years.” His father is now a Pentecostal minister in Asbury Park.

Seeing his father’s work pay off had a deep effect on Paulino. He developed an interest in real estate and is now a realtor. He did not pay much attention to politics until Trump won the presidency in 2016. Like Vazquez, he was fascinated by the strong media antipathy to Trump. “I always wondered, ‘Why do they hate him so much?’” he said. He started paying more attention to politics and found that he agreed with what Trump was doing. He did some reading on the basic tenets of the Republican Party. “And most of those things I resonated with,” he said. “I believe in keeping the family together. I believe in having the opportunity to start your own business and grow. And I’m a Christian. I believe in protecting our religious views.” In 2020, Paulino voted for the first time, for Donald Trump.

Finally, Paulino said he strongly supports closing the U.S.-Mexico border. He also strongly opposes illegal immigrants receiving government benefits. “Americans should come first,” he declared. But he went on to add: “In my dad’s church, it’s a Hispanic church, there are a lot of illegals, there are a lot of immigrants. So, I feel for that community as well. I’m not ‘deport them all and get rid of them.’ I understand also from their perspective, especially the Dreamers, the ones who were brought to this country as a child, went to school here, and all they know is the U.S. I wish Trump was a little more lenient about that.”

As we talked, I heard a commotion behind me, and Paulino looked over my shoulder and said, “Oh, my gosh — I love her.” It was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), making her way through the crowd.

We parted ways, and the program began. Something happened early in the proceedings that would become the object of hugely negative news coverage. Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian and podcaster booked by the Trump campaign, did a kind of insult comic/roast routine that fell mostly flat with the audience. “There’s a lot going on,” Hinchcliffe said. “Like, I don’t know if you guys know this, but there is literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” The line did not get many laughs and quite a few groans, but it exploded on X. Trump detractors quickly denounced the rally as a “hatefest.”

It was a crude joke that led many to think: Why would the campaign book an insult comic for this event? It wasn’t a roast on cable TV. But there Hinchcliffe was, and the Trump adversaries who were ready to denounce the rally quickly made it Exhibit A in the night’s case against Trump. I texted Vazquez, with roots in Puerto Rico, and Paulino, with roots in the Dominican Republic, to see what they thought. Vazquez replied that he didn’t like what Hinchcliffe said but that “comedians often use exaggeration and sarcasm, and while this particular remark may have been harsh, it was intended as a joke rather than a factual statement.” As for whether it should be blowing up the internet, he noted that all of us encounter a wide range of material on the net, “and it’s up to individuals to decide whether to engage or simply scroll past content they find distasteful. We should be careful not to overreact to every comment, especially those intended to be a joke.”

As for Paulino, he wrote back later that night to say he is a comedy fan and knows Hinchcliffe’s style. “He’s known to be edgy — if you ever check out his show Kill Tony, you’ll see.” Paulino said when the comic made the “garbage” remark, he looked over at Vazquez and made a shocked face, and they both laughed. “Never thought about it again once he moved on to other jokes,” Paulino continued. “I honestly had no idea it would make headline news. It wasn’t until later I went on X and saw that AOC and Tim Walz were freaking out over it.” He saw the episode as something being blown out of proportion by anti-Trump media. “I have many Puerto Rican friends that will be voting for Trump,” he said. “I think it’s safe to assume Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke isn’t going to change that. No one at all is even talking about it in person. I’m still on the train with a lot of supporters. But for some reason, the internet can’t get over it.” The Trump campaign quickly issued a statement saying, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

There were other vulgar moments in the five-plus hour rally. The New York radio personality Sid Rosenberg was pretty unpleasant, as was a businessman named Grant Cardone. But the striking thing about the episode was the way in which media coverage blotted out the vast majority of what was said during the evening — the talk about Trump’s record on the economy, on the border, on national security, and the criticisms of the Biden-Harris record on those same issues and more. Surely that would merit some discussion, wouldn’t it? Without ignoring what Hinchcliffe and a few others said, couldn’t the reporting have given a more complete account of a very long event?

Look at the headlines. The New York Times topped its main article with “Trump at the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism.” The Washington Post headline was “Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico ‘island of garbage.’” Resistance programming like Morning Joe did what it always does in such situations. It all meshed well with the Harris campaign’s messaging on the rally.

The New York Times report had one thing right: “It was all a surreal scene.” Indeed, it was. Looking at the list of speakers, there was the name Scott LoBaido, described as a “live painter.” Sure enough, LoBaido, an artist originally from Staten Island with a lot of resentment against the Manhattan art world — he gave them the finger at the end of his routine — came onstage with a blank canvas and painted a picture of the American flag and Trump, all in the time it took to play a recording of “America the Beautiful.” Later, wrestler Hulk Hogan reprised his act from the Republican National Convention. Then, a man billed as a childhood friend of Trump, David Rem, pulled a crucifix out of his pocket and waved it as he praised Trump, criticized New York Mayor Eric Adams, and offered to campaign in Spanish for Trump in the swing states.

It was all evidence of the fact that, in his 78 years as a New Yorker, Trump has collected a colorful cast of characters around him. And, of course, he’s one, too. That’s one of the things that makes him interesting and has sometimes made it hard for him to fill the conventional role of president of the United States. The Madison Square Garden rally, a sprawling, audacious political achievement by a Republican candidate in one of the deepest blue places in the country, was also an achievement in showmanship because that’s just who Donald Trump is.

Is America Back in the Fight?

OPINION
The Sun
Saturday, February 3, 2024

Is America Back in the Fight?

President Biden’s insistence that America seeks no war with Iran’s leaders is a green light for the Islamic Republic maintaining its war on us and on our allies.

BENNY AVNI
Saturday, February 3, 2024
10:43:37 am

“Welcome back to the fight”: This was Victor Laszlo’s reaction to Rick Blaine’s hopping off the fence in the pre-World War II world of “Casablanca.” It’s too early to assess whether America’s Friday night bombing of multiple targets on the Syrian-Iraqi border deserves such a welcome. Forgive the Islamic Republic’s leaders if they conclude that President Biden’s insistence that America seeks no war with them is a green light for maintaining their war on us and on our allies.

Borrowing an Iraq War-era term, the Economist described Friday’s B-1 bomber attack on 85 targets “shock and awe.” Yet are the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps awed? According to reports from Iran, one air attack a day earlier, in which a top IRGC commander, Saeed Alidadi, was killed, garnered more shock and anger at Tehran than the deaths of an estimated 40 unknown persons in the American multi-target strike.

While Israel did not acknowledge responsibility — it rarely does — its Thursday strike was likely more effective than the much-advertised and much-discussed American one. In fact, since the start of 2024, six countries conducted air attacks in Syria, including Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Significantly, the Jordanian air force joined America on Friday. Israel consistently, and quietly, targets IRGC bigwigs and arms deliveries to Lebanon from Iran.

If Syrian, and Iranians, saw the extensive American assault as just another Friday, was it significant? Since the start of his presidency, Mr. Biden attempted to sweet-talk the mullahs, so, sure, it is significant that he now realizes that perhaps diplomacy with Iran is no longer the only option on the table. A somber trip to Dover, Delaware, on Friday to receive the caskets of William Jerome Rivers, Kennedy Ladon Sanders, and Breonna Alexsondria Moffett will do such a thing.

That is especially true for a president who often signs off speeches with the line, “May God protect our troops.” Yet, as the White House’s most effective spokesman, John Kirby, put it Friday, the goal is to get attacks on our troops to stop, but “we’re not looking for a war with Iran.” That message is so ubiquitous by now that any half-wit IRGC operative knows how to slip out and empty warehouses long before the B-1 bombers hover overhead.

Indeed, the endless leaks since Sunday of where America was going to strike and to what end minimized the damage to Iran and proxies. If the president really wants to join the fight, he should concentrate on reviving his predecessor’s “maximum pressure” policies that dwindled Iranian foreign currency reserves, halted its oil sales, and killed the IRGC’s Qasem Soleimani. Only then we could be assured, as Laszlo was, that “this time our side will win.”

BENNY AVNI
Benny Avni is a columnist who has published in the New York Post, WSJOpinion, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, Israel Radio, Ha’Aretz, and others. Once New York Sun, always New York Sun.

What is Palestine


What is Palestine?

AUTHOR Allen West
DATE October 10, 2023

I condemn the actions of Hamas, send a warning to Hezbollah, and desire that our policies change towards the top sponsor of Islamic terrorism, Iran.
ALLEN WEST
OCT 10

Once again, attention is being drawn to a region I am quite familiar with, the Middle East. Once again, it has to do with an Islamic terrorist organization and their savage brutality. I find it extremely unconscionable to have useful idiots and mindless lemmings who are siding with these depraved monsters. Once again, they scream “Free Palestine” and disturbingly advance an idea that these terrorists are some misunderstood freedom fighters seeking relief from an “apartheid” type of persecution. Hmm, is that why we are seeing images of little Jewish children in cages? Anyone with a semblance of a moral compass can recognize who the perpetrators of evil are, and always have been.
However, perhaps it is time for the ol’ Colonel to give a little history lesson and expose the utter absurdity of this delusion of Palestine, and Palestinians.
Let’s take a trip back to the 2nd century, the years 132-135 AD to what was known then as Judea. First, let’s understand that the Nation of Israel has been in existence some 5,775 years, if my memory serves me correctly. But it was during this time period that the Romans controlled the region and subjugated the Jewish people, and nation. It was then that a man named Simon bar Kohkba embarked upon what is known as the Bar Kohkba or Second Jewish revolution, against the Roman empire. Initially, the Jewish people were successful against a numerically superior, and dominant, Roman army, but that did not deter Rome. The resolve of the Roman empire was well known at that time in history and their commitment to crush the Jewish people was intense.
The end result of the bar Kohkba revolt was that Rome unleashed hell upon the region of Judea, and the Jewish people. Roman Emperor Hadrian believed that the root cause of the revolt was Judaism, the Jewish faith. The objective was to erase the Jewish people and their faith from existence. Scrolls were burned, rabbis were executed, temples were once again destroyed, and the Jewish people fled, the first diaspora. To add greater insult, Emperor Hadrian decreed that Jerusalem would be renamed Aeolia/Aelia Capitolina and the region would no longer be called Judea, but rather Syriac/Syria Palaestina. Yes, the first introduction of the word “Palestine” was as punishment to the Jewish people, by the Romans, for revolting against their rule.
Now, the interesting thing about the word “Palaestina” is that the root word, or derivative, comes from the word “Philistia.” This goes back to the ancient Philistines — you know, Goliath — and scholars believe the Philistines originated from Greece or the islands in the Aegean Sea. Now, fast forward to just after World War I, when the region fell under the control of the British upon the defeat of the Ottoman Turk Empire. The passports issued to those residing in the region were Palestine. But do not forget, the region was also referred to as the Levant and even the terrorist organization used this reference as ISIL. But we do not hear of any references to Levantinians?
My point? There has never been a nation called Palestine, it is just a region. The introduction of the word is based upon the destruction and dispersion of the Jewish nation 132-135 AD, as a decree from Roman Emperor Hadrian. There has never been a separate Palestinian language, culture, currency, anything. Much differently, the Kurdish people, the world’s largest ethnic group without a homeland, have a distinctive language, culture, and history, which is why I support an independent Kurdistan.
People talk about a two-state solution, well, the world made that decision, it was Israel and Jordan. That was not good enough for a militant Islamist, an Arab, named Yasser Arafat, who established the original Islamic terrorist organization, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). Just what were they intending to liberate? Their goal was the same as subsequent Islamic terrorist organizations — Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad — to eradicate, eliminate, and erase the Jewish nation, and its people. Hmm, was that not the same goal and objective of Roman Emperor Hadrian? Or for that matter Adolf Hitler as well as Yasser Arafat’s uncle, the so-called Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who blended Naziism with Arab Nationalism. Oh, didn’t Yasser Arafat receive the Nobel Peace Prize?
This whole Palestine thing is just a big ruse and a hoax, that is if you accept history and fact. Otherwise, you are, as mentioned earlier, a useful idiot and mindless lemming who has been duped. The entire purpose of Hamas and Hezbollah is the eradication of Israel, just as with Roman Emperor Hadrian. There is no, and never has been a nation called Palestine or a people called Palestinians. Heck, it would be the same in declaring “Free Appalachia!” They’re American, speak English, and it is a region, not a nation.
In order to Live Free, you can’t be stupid and a pawn of leftist and Islamic terrorist propaganda. As the Executive Director of the American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU), I condemn the actions of Hamas, send a warning to Hezbollah, and desire that our policies change toward the top sponsor of Islamic terrorism, Iran. Israel is a sovereign Nation-State, our closest ally in the Middle East, and has the right to exist and defend itself against this barbaric incursion which claimed the lives of nine Americans as part of the nearly 1,000 Jewish citizens who were killed, with three times that number wounded.
If you wish to “Free Palestine,” based on history, it means returning Judea to the Jewish people, and I would also include Samaria. There has never been any such thing as a West Bank until the smoke screen of Islamists forced it into existence, after losing a war to Israel because of their attack.
Islamic terrorists who control Gaza invaded a sovereign nation, as non-state, non-uniformed belligerents they are not protected under the Geneva Convention. America should be on alert as we have allowed millions of single military-age males entry into our nation, some known, many unknown, and thousands from countries on the terrorist watch list.
The tolerance for this abhorrent behavior has run out. No amount of ranting from progressive socialists and their media accomplices will deter the inevitable: the destruction of Islamic terrorism. I am all in with that.

Steadfast and Loyal.
Allen West

Trump Indictment Is a Mockery of Common Sense

Trump Indictment Is a Mockery of Common Sense
Attempting to criminalize Trump’s dispute of the election could stunt healthy political dissent
By Christopher Roach

August 7, 2023
At the end of the classic independent film Reservoir Dogs, the characters end up in a Mexican standoff. The criminal gang’s ringleader, Joe, insists that Mr. Orange is working with the police, even though he is dying on the floor, having been shot during a failed jewelry store heist. Mr. White – the crooks use aliases – insists that Joe is wrong. Guns get drawn. Mr. White demands some proof for Joe’s claim about Mr. Orange. Joe angrily responds, “You don’t need proof when you have instinct!” You can watch the (admittedly brutal) scene here.
This illustrates something we all experience: People disagree about many things for many reasons. Sometimes they have different sources of information. Often, they have different intuitions about shared information. Sometimes, their views are clouded by self-interest. And, frequently, people disagree because a pattern of facts matches their experience, even though they do not have rigorous proof.
Much of politics has this quality. Politics arise from disagreements. People disagree about their values and opinions, about who should rule and how, and sometimes they disagree about facts, particularly complex ones. What caused a recession? Who started a war? What is the best way to reduce crime? These are factual questions of a sort, but beliefs about these kinds of facts are inseparable from one’s values and loyalties.
A Stretch of an Indictment
For Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has now brought a second indictment against former President Trump, the world is much simpler: There is only truth and fraud. There are no honest disagreements, misunderstandings or debates.
Thus, most of the indictment consists of ridiculous constructs: The election was not stolen, and we know because Jack Smith told us so. Someone told Trump this, but Trump disagreed. Because Trump didn’t embrace the conventional wisdom, he is now a liar committing criminal fraud.
In one typical passage, the indictment alleges: “On November 13, 2020, the Defendant had a conversation with his Campaign Manager, who informed him that a claim that had been circulating, that a substantial number of non-citizens had voted in Arizona, was false.”
Let us set aside the fact that contesting elections has never been criminal before. Since when does someone have to believe everything they’re told? Millions of Americans have concluded the election was stolen or, at the very least, rigged. Are we all criminal coconspirators too?
Information, Misinformation and Disinformation
One of the more corrosive developments of recent years is what I would call the “Results-Oriented Epistemology of the National Security State.” For the bloated national security regime, everything is an information operation. There is no truth as such, only what advances the mission or the party line. After it’s dressed up with the trappings of science, or the intelligence community’s consensus, or NPR’s imprimatur, otherwise unproven beliefs become gospel truth. Indeed, their opposites do as well when the party line changes.
The whole thing reeks of insecurity because outside of this official “truth,” there is very little room for disagreement or debate. Any deviance is given a sinister and value-laden label: disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theory and hate speech. It is of minor importance that the government-dictated truth is not, in fact, always true.
Under this view of truth and falsehood, the fact/opinion distinction collapses too. Things that were always considered opinions or mixed assertions of fact and opinion – questions like “Who is the most beautiful woman?” or “Who has the best football team?” – now become undebatable axioms, for which there is only one correct view when they involve analogous political questions, like whether an election was fair or what are our foreign policy interests.
This way of thinking really took shape during the Russian Collusion hoax. The media, the FBI and Robert Mueller transformed a handful of Russian-funded memes into dangerous “election interference” and “disinformation,” a threat to our sacred democracy. They repeatedly connected Trump to these hackneyed efforts with a vague charge of “collusion,” even though it was actually his callow opponent, Hillary Clinton, who funded a completely false “dossier” on Trump and colluded with foreign nationals to do so.
Donald Trump pointedly said in a recent opinion piece, “As the Twitter Files have proven, the Radical Left establishment also used the Russia Hoax to attack freedom of speech. They built a sprawling domestic censorship regime under the guise of combatting so-called ‘Russian disinformation’ – which they quickly defined to include any content they did not like.” Having achieved some results this way, our ruling class applied the same approach to complex matters like COVID, mRNA vaccines and the recent transexual mania.
This understanding of truth empowers the government to prosecute Trump for contesting the 2020 election. Trump has done nothing novel here. Candidates have previously contested elections both in court and in the court of public opinion. Remember Stacy Abrams and Al Gore.
Is Political Disagreement Still Allowed?
Until recently, Americans always understood that politics could be rough and tumble, that people have different beliefs about both facts and values and that some things cannot be known with 100% certainty.
The competitive election process was supposed to air out both sides. Voters knew politicians exaggerated the facts a little bit (or a lot). Even so, there used to be a certain amount of trust in the common sense of voters to navigate through the fog and arrive at a reasonable decision. After all, if we do not trust voters to sift through competing accounts of reality and judge proposed policies, why so much praise from our overlords about Our Democracy?
With the Deep State and donor class now united on most items, everyone running for office is supposed to endorse a single, narrow party line or else. We have seen this before.
The indictment alleges Trump fought like hell over the 2020 election, even though he secretly knew he lost. This is ridiculous. Trump, I’ll admit, likely didn’t do extensive regression analysis; it’s not his style. But he smelled a rat with Biden’s avoidance of campaigning, extensive mail-in voting, the prolonged vote-counting process, and the various mid-game rule changes in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Trump is being persecuted for noticing.
Returning to the opening vignette from Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Orange really was an undercover cop. Joe was right. Like he said, “You don’t need proof when you have instinct!”
Christopher Roach is an adjunct fellow of the Center for American Greatness and an attorney in private practice based in Florida. He is a double graduate of the University of Chicago and has previously been published by The Federalist, Takimag, Chronicles, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Marine Corps Gazette, and the Orlando Sentinel. The views presented are solely his own.
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Moms for Liberty

DeSantis, Trump and Other 2024 GOP Campaigns Take Notice of Moms for Liberty
Members are shaping a new Republican Party platform on education
By Eliza Collins | Photographs by Madeline Gray for The Wall Street JournalMay 30, 2023 12:01 am ET

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.—In recent weeks, Tara Wood has introduced Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a gathering of conservative activists, brought people to South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s campaign launch and is talking to the Trump campaign about meeting with the former president.
Wood is president of the Charleston County, S.C., chapter of Moms for Liberty, a nationwide organization that has become an influential force in the GOP presidential primary. The group, which didn’t exist during the 2020 race, has become the loudest voice advocating for greater parental involvement in schools. Members are helping shape a new education platform for the Republican Partyin 2024.
“The moms in this country, they’re going to save America,” said Wood, who has a 14-year-old daughter and a 28-year-old stepson. She quit her job as a real-estate agent to focus full time on her efforts to change what students are taught in schools.
Moms for Liberty is technically nonpartisan but largely attracts conservative women. What started as a grassroots entity of moms working to change their local school boards’ votes on corona virus restrictions and curriculums has morphed into a nationwide network with more than 100,000members and 275 chapters. Members are pushing to revamp the U.S. education system with policies aimed at limiting teachings on gender, race and sex in schools; banning books they deem inappropriate;and placing limits on transgender students in school sports.
GOP presidential candidates are trying to tap into Moms for Liberty’s powerful networks to gain an edge in states that hold early nominating contests, including South Carolina, which is third behind Iowa and New Hampshire. Candidates have courted the group’s leaders and members, inviting them to key campaign events and holding listening sessions over pizza and barbecue. And, after intensive lobbying efforts by the group, some top Republican hopefuls have reflected their proposals in campaign platforms or legislative efforts.
The group pushed Donald Trump to embrace their issues more than he did in 2016 and 2020, and his campaign platform reads like it is from the group’s website, including a pledge to cut federal funding from any school pushing so-called critical race theory and what he deems other inappropriate sexual and political content. Its members lobbied DeSantis, an early advocate for restrictions on curriculum, to sign a slate of education measures that Moms for Liberty touts as the gold standard. Members also backed bills that the GOP-majority House of Representatives passed to put restrictions on school curriculums and ban transgender girls and women from competing in female event categories in school sports.
Critics say these moms have inappropriately inserted conservative beliefs into school systems and are impeding necessary conversations about the history of racism in America. They say that limiting conversations about gender and banning transgendered people from competing in sports is harmful for students.
President Biden and Democrats see the issue as boosting their chances in a general election where they hope voters will view such moves as excessive government control and censorship. Biden, who is expected to get his party’s nomination, cited book bans in his campaign launch. One progressive organization, MoveOn, is fundraising with the goal of filling a bus with books banned in Florida schools to hand out.
Women have had higher turnout than men in midterm and presidential elections since 1982, census data show. One-third of women identify as conservative. Republican women vote for the GOP candidate nearly all of the time, according to analysis from Gallup and AP Votecast.
Moms for Liberty doesn’t plan to endorse in the GOP primary. Candidates will have to court its members individually or in small groups, like the one gathered over coffee on a recent spring day outside of Charleston. These members of the Berkeley County South Carolina chapter of Moms for Liberty described in interviews why no candidate is their clear favorite.
Those who want Trump back in the White House say it is because they view him as the strongest fighter, and they believe he would get their education priorities implemented if elected. Those lining up behind DeSantis say he has the record—including signing a bill restricting teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity in public school—and has a better chance at winning a general election.
“Trump is the only one who has the chutzpah to be able to do away with that bureaucracy,” said grandmother Peggy Lassanske, 76, referring to the education department and government. Lassansk evoted for Trump twice, put out yard signs and made phone calls for him in 2020. She has not committed to any candidate and wants someone to earn her vote.
April Coleman, 49, with three teenagers, said she has a “Trump girl” hat and Trump flags she can pull back out if he is the nominee. But she is going to support either DeSantis or Scott because she worries the former president is too divisive in a general election. “I just want to win,” she said.
Christi Dixon, 54, a mom of four kids between ages 14 and 31, chairs the Berkeley County chapter and is undecided on whom to support, though she has been heartened to see candidates “recognize that the movement for parental rights has gained traction and it’s gonna be important in the next election.”
Moms for Liberty is a nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors, and founders say it is funded by donations and merchandise sales. Two political-action committees run from the group are focused on school board and superintendent races.
Schools rely on only about 10% of federal funding, and funding decisions must first be approved by Congress, giving the executive branch less power than presidential candidates often campaign on, said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.
DeSantis has held listening sessions over pizza and barbeque with Moms for Liberty members in the general election battleground states of Michigan and Georgia. Earlier this year, he met with Moms for Liberty founders to discuss endorsements for school-board candidates and spoke at their summit last year. Trump’s team offered a chance for members of Iowa chapters to take a photo with him and reserved special seating for them at an event.
Scott’s team reached out to Wood and Dixon ahead of his campaign launch and asked them to bring friends, the two said. A Scott-aligned group donated to a fundraiser held by the Charleston chapter, and he frequently talks during appearances about education and his push to expand school choice.
Vivek Ramaswamy, founder of a biopharmaceutical company, has held town-hall gatherings with Moms for Liberty members in Iowa and South Carolina. Ramaswamy said he signed the group’s parent pledge, a promise to push the issue, “to provide empowerment to parents and to moms in particular across the country who are concerned about their kids’ education.”
The concept of changing what kids are taught in schools has had mixed success in a general election. Tiffany Justice, a Moms for Liberty cofounder, said roughly half of 270 candidates endorsed by her group won their seats in the 2022 midterms.
An April Wall Street Journal poll found that 59% of GOP primary voters favored withholding federal funding from schools that teach concepts related to systemic racism, while 33% of the general electorate backed such a move.

Aaron Zitner and Ben Chapman contributed to this article.
Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com—
Appeared in the May 31, 2023, print edition as ‘Moms for Liberty Is Force in GOP’.

The Bigotry That Proudly Speaks Its Name

The Bigotry That Proudly Speaks Its Name
From Dodger Stadium to Washington, indulging anti-Catholic sentiment is an elite pastime.

By Gerard Baker

When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he felt compelled, memorably, to make a declaration ofpolitical independence from the authorities of his Catholic faith.
His opponents had notoriously exploited anti-Catholic sentiment in key states to suggest that somehowa papist in the Oval Office would owe principal loyalty to the Vatican and would take instruction fromthe pope on critical questions of the presidency.
The issue had dogged him through Democratic primaries and threatened him in a close generalelection, so in remarks to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September, Mr. Kennedysought to lay the calumny to rest: “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the DemocraticParty’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church onpublic matters, and the church does not speak for me.”Sixty years on, Joe Biden, the second Catholic president, hasn’t had to make a similar declaration. It would be nice to think that is because America is a more tolerant place than it was in 1960. But with each day of his presidency it seems the opposite is true. Anti-Catholic bigotry is entrenched among the left-wing elites who control the Democratic Party, and they have no fear that Mr. Biden in office would lift a finger to restrain it. Far from being a secret agent for the Vatican, the president seems content to be a very public agent for the continuous denigration of those who hold to traditional Catholic doctrine.
The grip this bigotry holds on our cultural life was on display last week in a revealing surrender by the Los Angeles Dodgers. As they planned for their annual Pride Night festivities next month, the Dodgers, the leading baseball franchise in a city that is one-third Catholic, initially thought it prudent to withdraw a plan to give an award to a famously ribald group whose signature is the mockery and vilification of traditional Catholic teaching on sexual mores.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence describe themselves facetiously as a “leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns.” They do community-service work but are most visible for their performative acts— frequently involving lewd depictions of sacred Catholic rituals that crudely lampoon the church’s precepts on homosexuality and transgenderism.
After an outcry over the disinvitation, the Dodgers reversed course and reinvited them last Monday. There is a wider political and cultural significance to the Dodgers’ craven genuflection to the powerful crowd who dominate our cultural conversation. The White House declined to comment on the matter, its press spokeswoman saying she wasn’t “going to get in the middle of who a sports team is going to honor or should honor or should not honor.” You don’t need a vivid imagination to ponder what the administration might have said if a sports team had invited an anti-trans or pro-life group to receive plaudits at a game.

The Bigotry That Proudly Speaks Its Name

The Bigotry That Proudly Speaks Its Name
From Dodger Stadium to Washington, indulging anti-Catholic sentiment is an elite pastime.

By Gerard Baker

When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he felt compelled, memorably, to make a declaration ofpolitical independence from the authorities of his Catholic faith.
His opponents had notoriously exploited anti-Catholic sentiment in key states to suggest that somehowa papist in the Oval Office would owe principal loyalty to the Vatican and would take instruction fromthe pope on critical questions of the presidency.
The issue had dogged him through Democratic primaries and threatened him in a close generalelection, so in remarks to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September, Mr. Kennedysought to lay the calumny to rest: “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the DemocraticParty’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church onpublic matters, and the church does not speak for me.”Sixty years on, Joe Biden, the second Catholic president, hasn’t had to make a similar declaration. It would be nice to think that is because America is a more tolerant place than it was in 1960. But with each day of his presidency it seems the opposite is true. Anti-Catholic bigotry is entrenched among the left-wing elites who control the Democratic Party, and they have no fear that Mr. Biden in office would lift a finger to restrain it. Far from being a secret agent for the Vatican, the president seems content to be a very public agent for the continuous denigration of those who hold to traditional Catholic doctrine.
The grip this bigotry holds on our cultural life was on display last week in a revealing surrender by the Los Angeles Dodgers. As they planned for their annual Pride Night festivities next month, the Dodgers, the leading baseball franchise in a city that is one-third Catholic, initially thought it prudent to withdraw a plan to give an award to a famously ribald group whose signature is the mockery and vilification of traditional Catholic teaching on sexual mores.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence describe themselves facetiously as a “leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns.” They do community-service work but are most visible for their performative acts— frequently involving lewd depictions of sacred Catholic rituals that crudely lampoon the church’s precepts on homosexuality and transgenderism.
After an outcry over the disinvitation, the Dodgers reversed course and reinvited them last Monday. There is a wider political and cultural significance to the Dodgers’ craven genuflection to the powerful crowd who dominate our cultural conversation. The White House declined to comment on the matter, its press spokeswoman saying she wasn’t “going to get in the middle of who a sports team is going to honor or should honor or should not honor.” You don’t need a vivid imagination to ponder what the administration might have said if a sports team had invited an anti-trans or pro-life group to receive plaudits at a game.

Objectivity is the Objective

Fundamentally Transformed

By: Judd Garrett

Objectivity is the Objective

April 2, 2023 American Greatness

In 2008, Barack Obama promised that he was going to “fundamentally transform” the United States of America. This past week’s unprecedented indictment of a former President and frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election on trumped-up process crimes is a clear sign that Obama has succeeded. The United States of America has been fundamentally transformed. The foundation of America which had made us the greatest country on the planet has been destroyed. All that is left is a corrupt shell of our past greatness.

This has been building over the last 15 years. It started in 2010 when Lois Lerner weaponized the IRS to target Barack Obama’s and the Democrats’ political opponents – The Tea Party. In 2016, the Obama DOJ falsified FISA warrants to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign, his transition team, and eventually his Presidency. Hillary Clinton paid a foreign spy to create a false dossier that the DOJ used to launch a 2½ year fraudulent Russia collusion investigation against Trump which hamstrung his presidency. In 2022, the FBI raided Donald Trump’s private home looking for “classified”documents, something that many former White House officials had also done, but were not raided. Since 2016, 11 associates of Donald Trump have been arrested and charged with crimes, most of which are process crimes. And now, Donald Trump has been indicted for bookkeeping errors.

The DOJ and the legal system have been weaponized against the one candidate and the one President who made it his goal to destroy the deep state. The two impeachments, the spying, the fraudulent investigations, the arrests of his associates, the sham January 6 hearing, the FBI raid, and now this indictment, are all proof that the deep state actually exists and will go to great lengths to protect itself. The deep state is trying to stop Trump from becoming President not because he is a threat to our democracy but because he is a threat to their corruption of our democracy. Each attack against Trump is proof that he is clearly over the target, and they are scared to death.

All of this malfeasance against Trump is further evidence that the 2020 election was rigged because if they will go to these extremes to prevent Donald Trump from being President now, they would not have balked at stuffing the ballot boxes with fraudulent mail-in ballots then, especially after we substantially changed the election security laws which made our elections extremely vulnerable to fraud. If Joe Biden legitimately beat Donald Trump by over 7 million votes in 2020, the Democrats would be salivating at the chance of a potential rematch between Biden and Trump. It should be a cakewalk for Biden, yet they are going to unprecedented lengths to take Trump out of the race because they know the last election was fraudulent.

The Twitter files showed that the FBI and Democrats colluded with big tech during the 2020 election cycle to censor the Republicans’ political speech and also to ban damaging stories about Joe Biden on social media which influenced the result of the election, but no one is going to jail for that. When polled, 15% of Biden voters said they would not have voted for Biden if they knew about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which means Biden would have only received 68 million votes instead of 81 million, and would have lost the election to Trump’s 74 million votes. The Democrat censorship of social media produced a 13 million vote swing that they fear they will not be able to reproduce in 2024, with censorship again.

The weaponization of our intelligence agencies and DOJ has created a two-tiered justice system. Donald Trump was impeached for a false charge of “quid pro quo” in Ukraine while Joe Biden admitted on video that as Vice President, he used $1 billion of military aid in a “quid pro quo” with Ukraine to keep his son from being prosecuted, and no one batted an eye. Thousands of Republican protestors who breached the United States Capital on January 6th, 2021, were arrested and have spent over a year in jail without having their cases adjudicated while very few Democrat protestors who breached the Wisconsin capital, the Tennessee capital, the Oklahoma capital, the Florida capital, and even the United States capital have been arrested, and the ones who were, had their charges dropped or reduced to nothing fairly quickly. Donald Trump is indicted for financial process crimes while Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell have been selling political influence to our geo-political enemies such as China to enrich themselves for years, and nothing happens to them.

Parents who speak out against the woke curriculum being taught in public schools at school board meetings are placed on the FBI’s Terror Watch list, while members of BLM and Antifa who conducted over 500 riots in 2020 and burned parts of our major cities to the ground, and firebombed Federal courthouses and police stations, were never placed on the Terror Watch list.

In 2016, Trump supporter, Douglas Mackey, tweeted a joke, “Avoid the line. Vote from home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,” and he has been convicted of election interference and is facing 10 years in prison; while Clinton supporter, Kristina Wong tweeted a very similar joke, “Trump Supporters! Skip poll lines at #Election2016 and TEXT in your vote! Text votes are legit,” and she has not even been arrested or charged with anything.

Democrats have been warning about threats to our democracy. They claim that if you didn’t want to take a vaccine that you don’t need and doesn’t work, then you are a threat to our democracy. If you don’t support giving Ukraine $100 billion to fight the Russians for us, then you are a threat to our democracy. If you support voter ID or are against universal mail-in bailouts, then you are a threat to our democracy. But we are witnessing the true threat to our Democracy with the indictment of a leading political candidate.

Those who are cheering this indictment, or who are indifferent to it because they don’t like Trump, do not realize what the left is doing to our country. If it is now okay for a partisan prosecutor to arrest a political opponent on trumped-up charges, we are opening the door for this to become commonplace. They are doing this knowingly because they do not believe in the rule of law. They want to destroy the rule of law. That’s the way they get supreme power. The rule of law and the constitution stand in the way of them attaining absolute power, so they must be destroyed, and indicting a former president is a major step in the destruction of our system. People are claiming that this is the type of thing that only happens in a banana republic, but in reality, this is the stuff of totalitarian states.

As further proof that the people in power no longer believe that we are living in a constitutional system, Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence.” In our former constitutional system, the burden is not on the defendant to prove his innocence, the burden is on the prosecutor to prove guilt. We are innocent until proven guilty. In a totalitarian system, we are guilty until we can prove our innocence, and that’s what people like Nancy Pelosi want. But this inverted statement of our judicial philosophy is coming from a career politician who made millions of dollars from her husband engaging in insider trading using the privileged information she gave him. She also tweeted, “No one is above the law,”while knowing full well that she is above the law

What are Vladimir Putin, President Xi, and Miguel Díaz-Canel thinking, as they witness the party in power in the United States locking up their political opponent? The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, tweeted: “Sadly, it’ll be very hard for US Foreign Policy to use arguments such as ‘democracy’ and ‘free and fair elections’ or try to condemn ‘political prosecution’ in other countries, from now on. ” As all of this is going on, China and Russia have aligned. China and Iraq are aligning. The biggest threat to our democracy and democracy around the free world is totalitarian China, yet one of the very few politicians willing to stand up against China, Donald Trump, is the politician who Joe Biden – the president who has been selling out our country to China for years – wants to lock up.

This should scare the hell out of every American. By coming after Trump, they are coming after you and me, and they will use every power at their disposal to keep us under their heel. The 87,000 new IRS agents were not hired to go after the billionaires. The tax code is already set up to favor them. The 87,000 IRS agents were hired to go after you. They were hired to go after me. They were hired to go after anybody who has the temerity to question the administration.

I’ve always believed that the United States of America is the greatest country the world has ever seen. But with this indictment of a former President and the weaponization of the judicial system, it is hard to say where we are unique anymore, and that is what Obama wanted to transform us into all along. 250 years ago, John Adams said, we are a “nation of laws, not of men. ” This fundamental transformation of the United States of America has flipped that on its head. We have become a nation of men, and not of the laws. And the irony is that the law is being twisted and perverted and weaponized to destroy political opponents, just like the kings and the despots did centuries ago.

The transformation of America over the last 15 years has brought the American experiment to its end. And maybe the American experiment was a fool’s errand all along. Maybe human beings are not capable of the ideals set forth by our founders – freedom, individual rights, and self-government. Maybe we are no better than all of those Third World Middle Eastern countries that we tried to import democracy and constitutionalism into but failed miserably. I never understood why the people in those countries did not fight more for freedom, individual rights, and democracy. Why did they allow their country to implode back into totalitarianism so quickly? But now, looking at what is happening to our country today, I better understand.

Maybe the ideals of our founding are incompatible with the human race altogether. There are always people who want to be despots, who want total rule over others, and there will always be people who want to be ruled. That is the natural bent of humanity, As the Jews were wandering in the desert for 40 years after being freed from the enslavement of Egypt, many of them longed for Egypt, they longed for the security of their slavery. The insecurity, the not knowing of being free in the desert was too scary for them, so many of the Jews wanted to go back to Egypt, they wanted the security of being a slave, again. Too many people in this country are all too willing to exchange their freedom for a false sense of security that never comes, and when we all eventually succumb to it, we will have fundamentally transformed America into Obama’s totalitarianism.

China rallies countries against dollar as US bickers over gender

https://frontline.news/post/china-rallies-countries-against-dollar-as-us-bickers-over-gender

Posted by Yudi Sherman Yudi Sherman

Shining a spotlight on media and government disinformation.

4/1/23, 8:28 AM China rallies countries against dollar as US bickers over gender | Frontline Newshttps://frontline.news/post/china-rallies-countries-against-dollar-as-us-bickers-over-gender 1/5 China rallies countries against dollar as US bickers over gender 

China, France conduct first energy transaction in Chinese yuanYSMarch 31, 2023 | 09:02 AMPosted by Yudi ShermanAs the US bickers over the gender of the latest mass shooter, China is nearing dominion over the United States by playing peacemaker amongthe world’s most powerful countries and rallying them against the dollar.China made attempts this month to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, much as Israel did last year. Both times, the US ledWestern countries in shutting down any proposal of peace, though this time the Biden administration did not wait for negotiations to begin before declaring peace between the countries “unacceptable”.“What we have said before, and we’ll say it again today, that if coming out of this meeting [between China and Russia], there’s some sort of callfor a ceasefire, well, that’s just going to be unacceptable because all that’s going to do . . . is ratify Russia’s conquest to date,” National SecurityCouncil spokesman John Kirby said in an interview on Fox News. “All that’s going to do is give Mr. Putin more time to re-fit ,retrain, re-man and try to plan for renewed offensives at a time of his choosing.” And, true to form, Ukraine and its Western allies declined the Kremlin’s China-brokered proposal for a ceasefire because it did not include the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Donbas region. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that it would “simply freeze” the conflict 
Just days earlier, China President Xi Jinping had brokered an historic peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia after paying a visit to Riyadh inDecember and hosting Iran President Ebrahim Raisi in Beijing. The two oil-rich countries, who have been feuding bitterly for seven years in adeeply religious conflict, signed an agreement in Beijing this month to reestablish diplomatic relations.On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia joined China’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security, political and trade alliance led by the ChineseCommunist Party and involving Russia, India, Pakistan, Qatar and Turkey, with Iran counted among the four observer states. CNBC describesthe move by Riyadh as “a further step away from U.S. interests”. On Wednesday, Watcher Guru reported that for the first time, China and France conducted a liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade in Chinese yuan,thereby ending reliance on the US dollar for energy trades. The trade involved 65,000 tons of LNG from the United Arab Emirates.China this week also reached an agreement with Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, to exclude the US dollar from their transactions.Instead, China and Brazil will transact in yuan and reals, respectively. China is Brazil’s largest trading partner with a record high $150.5 billion in bilateral trades last year, and Russia’s top trading partner witha record high $190 billion in trades last year.At the same time, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa make up the BRICS economic alliance that is also alienating the United States,who is imposing sanctions on Russia. BRICS, which represents 42% of the world population, launched the New Development Bank in 2014 asan alternative to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. At the urging of financial experts, BRICS is currently considering offering membership to other countries, in part to untie its members from the US dollar.    
         

BIDEN AND HARRIS BOTH WEAK GOING INTO 2024. BYRON YORK

BIDEN AND HARRIS BOTH WEAK GOING INTO 2024.

President Joe Biden’s job approval rating has fallen to 38% in a new poll from the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center — close to his lowest rating ever in that poll. Just last month, Biden’s rating was 45%, which was as high as it has been since his rating began a long slide a few months after he took office.
What’s going on? The economy. In the month since Biden’s previous, higher rating, people have become deeply concerned about the safety of the banking system. They have renewed worries about inflation. They are concerned about some difficult-to-understand maladies affecting world economic stability. They are, in short, worried about the economy, and when voters are worried about the economy, they are less inclined to view the president of the United States positively.
You can see it in some of the poll’s measurements. When respondents were asked, “Generally speaking, would you say things in this country are headed in the right direction or the wrong direction?” — the oldest question in the polling book — just 21% said the country is headed in the right direction, versus 78% who said wrong direction. The right direction number fell 7 points from just last month, and the wrong direction number rose 7 points.

The pollsters gave respondents several ways to describe the economy. Would you say it is very good, somewhat good, or leans toward good? Or would you say it is very poor, somewhat poor, or leans toward poor? The number of people who said it is good, or even just leans toward good, was 25%, versus 75% who said it is some version of poor. The good number was down 7 points from last month, and the bad number was up 7 points — a perfect reflection of the right direction/wrong direction measure.
The pollsters then asked respondents to describe their own financial situation the same way — very good, somewhat good, leans toward good, very poor, somewhat poor, or leans toward poor. The number who called their situation some version of good fell 4 points to 53% — the lowest it has been in Biden’s presidency. The number who called their situation some version of poor rose 4 points to 47% — the highest it has been in Biden’s presidency.
Finally, Biden’s rating specifically on his handling of the economy fell to 31% — the lowest of his time in office. Put it all together, and you see how vulnerable a president’s job approval rating is to the state of the economy.

As he considers a reelection race, Biden has problems he can fix, problems he can do a little about, and problems he cannot do anything about.
You have seen him try to move toward the center on two of his biggest vulnerabilities — the border and crime. Maybe he can do something about them and increase his approval in those areas.
Then there is the economy. Biden has already done a lot to damage the economy, mostly by pushing federal spending to unheard-of heights, which helped drive up the inflation rate that made making ends meet far more difficult for millions of people. Now, he could help by trying to reverse some of those policies, but he’s not going to do it because that would put him at odds with much of his Democratic base.
And then there are the things — the thing, actually — that Biden can do absolutely nothing about. He is 80 years old. He would be 82 at the start of a second term and 86 at the end. That is something that is always an underlying concern of voters, and Biden can’t change it.
One more thing. He apparently cannot, or will not, change his vice presidential running mate, either. And that could be another big problem for Biden 2024. A new report from Reuters said Biden is increasingly frustrated with the performance and attitude of Vice President Kamala Harris. Presidents look to vice presidents to take on difficult or unrewarding jobs, and Biden doesn’t see Harris doing that. “A point of tension in their relationship is that I don’t think that the president sees her as somebody who takes anything off his plate,” a former White House official told Reuters. The reason? Harris has a “fear of messing up,” the former official said. Another former White House official said Biden worries whether Harris is capable of “consistently rising to the occasion.”
Of course, the vice president already has low job approval ratings. It is fair to say she has not caught on with the public during her time in office. And beyond that, she does not fix any weakness that Biden has — that is, the two are not a complementary mix.
In the past, presidential candidates have picked running mates to make up for some of their own deficiencies. George W. Bush was thought to be callow, so he picked a government heavyweight, Dick Cheney, to be his running mate. Barack Obama was thought to be inexperienced, so he picked an experienced senator, Joe Biden, to be his running mate. Cheney and Biden lent heft to the ticket that the presidential candidate did not possess.
Now Biden is president himself, and with his decades of experience in government, his needs are different than those of Bush or Obama. As an 82-year-old candidate, he needs a vice president who voters believe could instantly assume the presidency and be able to do the job. Harris has not made that impression on voters. Her weakness heightens, rather than reduces, Biden’s weakness.
So that is Biden’s situation now as he plans to announce his 2024 candidacy. Voters worry about his advanced age. His job approval is low, extremely vulnerable to variations in the economy. And his vice president offers him no help. Not a good platform for the launch of a new campaign.
For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found.

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