Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Trump’s story is still not over

The triumphant ululations of the almost unanimous Trump-hating media of America and much of the world did not clarify the late election. An unknowable quantity of harvested ballots came from the mass unsolicited mailing to the wildly inaccurate voters’ listings in Democratic-governed swing states, following a plan the Democrats implemented in hundreds of state lawsuits over three years and then hid under the pandemic terror that their allies in the media propagated. This produced miraculous Democratic comebacks from ‘ballot drops’ in the middle of the night after counting had been paused in several selected states, and it quickly became almost impossible to verify these ballots, mixed in with many millions of others.

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Rise of the swamp creatures

It started a few weeks before Election Day. With the polling data almost universally showing that Joe Biden would win the White House and a ‘blue wave’ would sweep Mitch McConnell into the Senate minority, creatures of the Washington swamp started becoming emboldened enough to publicly buck Donald Trump and his team. I don’t mean, of course, the NeverTrumpers who opposed Trump during the primary and general elections in 2016. Those ‘brave’ souls assumed Trump wasn’t going to beat Hillary Clinton so spoke out against him with incredibly judgmental letters and tweets by the dozens, telling voters Trump was unworthy of the presidency, as if Bill Clinton never happened.

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Republicans should make AOC House Speaker

Republicans are currently on track to end up with 214 seats in the House of Representatives in January. As of this writing, they’ve already netted seven gains, are leading in an additional nine races, and will pick up one more with two Republicans in a runoff for Louisiana’s 5th District.If it all holds, it would amount to an astonishing 17-seat gain for the GOP and the Democrats holding the smallest House majority in two decades. Cook Political Report predicted Democrats would expand their 232-seat majority by 10 to 15.

Did Trump just concede?

President Trump said Monday in a tweet that his administration is willing to start the formal transition of power to Joe Biden, even while asserting that he still intends to 'fight' and 'prevail' in his legal challenges against the results of the presidential election. 'I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused — and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA. Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.

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Criminal gangs are making billions from fake medical supplies during COVID

While it’s great news that Pfizer, BioNTech, AstraZeneca and other pharmaceutical companies are developing vaccines to prevent people from getting the coronavirus, we should remember that international criminal entities are taking advantage of the fear, uncertainty and desperation created by the coronavirus pandemic to expand their illicit footprint. Since early June, Customs and Border Protection has seized more than 107,000 FDA-prohibited COVID-19 test kits, 750,000 counterfeit face masks, thousands of EPA-prohibited anti-virus lanyards, 11,000 FDA-prohibited chloroquine tables and more than 67,000 ACCU-CHEK test strips. When demand outstrips supply, it creates an environment in which substandard and counterfeit medical supplies proliferate.

The Powell movement

So much for the Powell doctrine. Only a few days ago President Trump deemed Sidney Powell a vital part of his ‘elite strike force’. No longer. Now Rudy Giuliani’s cold statement dismissing Sidney Powell, who has been the attorney for Michael Flynn, from the Trump legal team is arousing much merriment but I don’t share it. If you can’t peddle a good conspiracy theory from within the confines of the Trump camp, then things have come to a pretty pass indeed. All that will be left for Powell is to fold her termination into a larger conspiracy. Dominion, she will likely claim, has dominion over the Trump campaign itself.

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The mystery of Melania Trump

Melania Trump should be a feminist icon. She is determined and self-assured. Despite being one of the most criticized women alive, she remains defiant. She rejects the notion that she is merely an extension of her husband. The most sacred principle of feminism is choice. Unlike Melania who sought a life of fame and fortune, I made more conventional choices and decided I would find success on a more conventional path. After four years, two degrees, several thousand dollars of debt and an eight-month unpaid internship, I now find myself staring down the barrel of unemployment. Increasingly I am turning to women who achieved the seemingly impossible with much higher odds stacked against them. I need look no further than Melania Trump.

Revenge of the Republicans

The 2020 election has provided fertile ground upon which Republicans can spend the next four years doing to Joe Biden what the Democrats did to Donald Trump and George W. Bush. For four years, Democrats and their media allies trumpeted every claim, no matter how baseless or crazy, that Trump’s 2016 election win was illegitimate and fraudulent. Despite zero evidence that so much as a single vote was interfered with, Democrats peddled the hoax that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to elect Trump. Even after the Mueller investigation exonerated Trump and his campaign from the collusion canard, Democrats, led by the shameless Adam Schiff, continued to allege collusion. Their simple goal was to undermine and delegitimize the Trump presidency.

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Are Trump’s lawyers big enough to back their claims up?

Before the showdown in old Western movies, one character would issue a barbed challenge and his rival would confidently reply, ‘Them’s mighty big words. Are you big enough to back ’em up?’ That’s the question facing President Trump’s lawyers. Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis threw down the challenge at an incendiary press conference on Thursday. Now, they have to back up ‘them big words,’ and do it fast. The stakes couldn’t be higher. It goes beyond who sits in the Oval Office next January 20.

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You don’t have to be crazy to think the election was stolen. But it helps

These days are fraught. On November 3, Donald Trump won 71 million votes. He still lost. Now, the whole 2020 presidential election, taking place as it did during a pandemic, feels weird and wrong. The candidate who generated absolutely no visible enthusiasm got more than 78 million votes, more than any other presidential candidate in history. Do people really hate Trump that much? Maybe they do. But the mechanics of the election process — what happened in those mysterious hours between 3 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Wednesday — invite suspicion. Take those charts, which Trump has been tweeting, showing the late ‘data dumps’ of hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan.

What to expect from a Biden-Harris foreign policy

It’s of course premature to even speculate as to how the new administration will fashion a foreign policy. But enough declarations have been made to give an outline, so let us imagine the policies that might emerge.The Founders never really envisioned foreign relations being a major preoccupation of America when they drew up the US Constitution. ‘Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none,’ Thomas Jefferson famously admonished. In a document that brilliantly balances the government’s power and reach between executive, legislative and judicial branches, the executive is left with virtual control over making foreign policy, for little of that was expected.

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Finally America is realizing that Andrew Cuomo is a putz

In a sane world, Andrew Cuomo would be America's least popular politician, a welcome target for a primary campaign or a robust Republican challenge in 2022. Yet the anti-Cuomo chorus has included precious few voices this year. The New York Post has been unrelenting in its criticism, as have conservatives in publications such as this one. ProPublica and the Associated Press rigorously reported out the nursing home debacle. But Cuomo's performance has been largely been lauded by liberal New Yorkers and pundits in the mainstream media. In July the New York governor was the 'politician of the moment', according to the New York Times.

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There is evidence, actually

Washington DC Call me crazy for taking the man with hair dye dripping down his cheeks seriously, but I think it would be unfair to dismiss Rudy Giuliani. Amusingly shambolic he may be. That doesn’t mean he is wrong. The media has been claiming since the election ended that President Trump’s claims of voter fraud are 'baseless' and 'without evidence’. That just is not true. The President’s lawyer gave examples of it during today’s press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington DC. But everyone is too busy mocking him to pay attention. I tried to listen to what Giuliani actually said and not what he looked like or the characterization of him by the rest of the media.

Gavin Newsom’s dirty French Laundry

Gavin Newsom is not a very good liar. The California governor, who recently issued a coronavirus ruling prohibiting Christmas and Thanksgiving gatherings of more than 10, or members of more than three different households, has broken his own rules. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Newsom attended a birthday party for a lobbyist at the ultra-lux Wine Country restaurant French Laundry. Six couples were present at the maskless, non-socially distant soirée, including functionaries from the California Medical Association, which advises the governor on the pandemic measures.After putting the state on yet another lockdown, a shifty-looking Newsom recorded a video explaining what happened at that $400-a-plate affair.

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Are Republicans really favored in Georgia?

Control of the Senate is going to come down to two January 5 runoffs in Georgia. Sen. David Perdue came a hair’s breadth from winning his race against Jon Ossoff outright, but ultimately fell just short of 50 percent plus one. Sen. Kelly Loeffler will face off against the Rev. Raphael Warnock to complete the term of former Sen. Johnny Isakson (the reward for the winner is running again in two years for the full term). Somewhat surprisingly, articles discussing these races have framed the races to claim that Republicans are favored in both. Politico declares that Democrats begin behind the eight ball, while other pieces casually cast Republicans as 'likely' or 'probable' victors in the Peach State. I’m not sure that is correct.

Rejoining the WHO will be Joe Biden’s first mistake as president

In emails obtained by the Associated Press, the World Health Organization reveals it has recorded 65 cases of coronavirus among staff at its headquarters in Geneva. The WHO had previously and publicly denied any such outbreaks, just two weeks ago. This follows a pattern. The WHO has been been duping the public quite consistently in the past nine months. It has covered up for China on the sources of COVID-19. It has worked with China to limit public information as to when the virus spread to Europe. It has repeated China’s talking points, even rehashing the CCP’s disastrous claim back in February that the novel coronavirus could not be transmitted by humans.

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Sorry Cuomo, we’re doing Thanksgiving

New York governor Andrew Cuomo took the last can of Who-hash by announcing a ban on both indoor and outdoor private gatherings larger than 10 people. It is just the latest flash of insanity from our nation's leaders in trying to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, but it provoked an even larger backlash than usual because it attacks two sacred American institutions: Thanksgiving and the family. Cuomo's order is insulting to our intelligence and is disgustingly authoritarian. COVID science suggests gathering outdoors is relatively safe (it's why so many states have offered restaurants money to winterize their patio dining), yet Cuomo tells families they cannot do it for Turkey Day. What if you live in a rural area and have a large backyard that makes social distancing possible?

Who deserves blame for the Democrats’ lost House seats?

Democratic joy at defeating Donald Trump was partially dulled by the simultaneous diminishment of the party’s House majority. As of Sunday at least 11 Democratic-held House seats have been lost to Republicans (while Democrats have flipped three others). That’s the biggest net loss in a presidential election year by the winning presidential candidate’s party in 60 years. The unexpected divergence in the two results sparked a round of reciprocal recriminations between the House Democratic caucus’ moderate and left-wing factions. Moderates blamed the 'defund the police' sloganeering and 'socialist' branding from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her supporters, which Republicans deployed in swing district attack ads.

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Five head-scratching election results

The 2020 election has already kicked up myriad allegations of fraud. From dead people voting in key states to late Biden ballots magically showing up, recounts and the courts will determine fact from fiction. Along with those issues, there were other five outcomes that should cause reasonable people to scratch their heads.First, Colorado. Just a few years ago, Colorado was considered a purple battleground state. Donald Trump even vocalized a belief he could win there in 2020. But this month's results should end Republican dreams of winning statewide top-of-the-tickets races in Colorado for the foreseeable future. As a former Coloradan who ran a congressional campaign and served as a deputy on Sen.

‘He said, she said’ reports from the MAGA march

It’s all so infantile isn’t it? Antifa jackals harass Donald Trump fans during their ‘Million MAGA March’ on the streets of DC. The ‘protesters’ steal Trump caps and set them on fire. They throw fireworks at people. Skirmishes break out, some people get hurt. There’s a stabbing. Underpaid online reporters stalk the scenes with their iPhones, trying to record the violence and make it go viral. Social media users dutifully share scraps of aggro-porn. President Trump, sounding not unlike a teenager reporting on fisticuffs in high school, tweets: ‘ANTIFA SCUM ran for the hills today when they tried attacking the people at the Trump Rally, because those people aggressively fought back.’ Which hills?

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