Biden

The uncomfortable truth about Trump’s Anti-Weaponization Fund

President Trump has faced relentless, extraordinary efforts to destroy him outside of heretofore normal political combat. The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago over alleged mishandling of classified materials despite its own agents' doubts about probable cause. Officials in Colorado, Maine and Illinois sought to remove him from the 2024 ballot using a Civil War-era constitutional clause, before the Supreme Court unanimously reversed them. Trump’s infamous mugshot is the result of Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis booking him on a racketeering indictment that subsequently collapsed. And a civil case brought by writer E.

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Is something rotten in Fulton County?

“I suspect that the FBI is going to find things missing.” As a member of the Georgia State Election Board, Salleigh Grubbs is an authority on the alleged 2020 election fraud that led to an FBI raid on an election center in Fulton County. “It could be ballots, it could be reconciliations, it could be poll tapes, it could be any number of things,” she told The Spectator. “They have been fighting to prevent anyone looking at this evidence and preventing investigations. If you don't have anything to hide, why do you care?” Fulton officials finally admitted in December – after being subpoenaed by the State Election Board – they had broken state regulations by failing to sign 2020 election tabulator tapes and that they had misplaced other tabulator tapes.

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Trump flips off Ford worker – and boasts about revving the US economy

“This is the easiest speech to make,” President Trump was saying. “We have great people. And all I’m doing is spewing off what the hell we’ve done.”No speech is particularly hard to make for this President. He loves speaking. He would speak to an empty room, a kindergarten class, or a blank wall. In this case, he was speaking to the Detroit Economic Club after a nice tour of a Ford F-150 plant. During the tour, a Ford worker – who almost certainly no longer has a job – yelled "pedophile protector" at Trump, who yelled back "f--- you" twice and flipped the guy the bird.  After that, Trump, who, after all, is just like us, headed off to talk to the swells. "Isn't it nice to have a President who can go off teleprompter?

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Health report reveals Trump’s thin skin

For years, Joe Biden’s handlers did their best to hide the fact from us that their boss was a senile, cancer-ridden mummy. This isn’t the case with Donald Trump, an equally aged President. We know everything, within reason, about Trump’s every bodily function. As a New Year’s gift to us, the Wall Street Journal called Trump to ask him about his health. Somewhat to the surprise of the reporters, Trump picked up the phone and gave them a full report. The President doesn’t sleep. He often bothers aides with calls at 2 a.m. According to the Journal, “aside from golf, Trump doesn’t get regular exercise, and he is known to consume a diet heavy on salty and fatty foods, such as hamburgers and french fries.

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Kamala Harris is living in dreamland

Toward the end of 107 Days, Kamala Harris appears on something called The Checkup podcast. Though she was meant to be having a short interview about RFK Jr., the host suddenly asks if the then vice-president could talk on the hoof a bit about some of her star issues: healthcare costs, women’s health, and healthy meals for children. Alarmed, Harris fumbles for her “briefing sheet.” For any media appearance Harris requires one of these sheets, listing the questions to be asked and the answers to each of them. It isn’t there. After the interview she yells at her staff. The ancients used to warn that democracy would lead to the rule of silver-tongued demagogues who would promise the mob anything. In fact, it has been a good deal worse than that.

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A trio of scandals

“Who will guard the guardians?” That question, posed two millennia ago by the Roman poet, Juvenal, is just as relevant today. It recurs every time we learn of a new political scandal – or suspect one is being hidden from us.

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It’s time to bid adieu to Obamacare

Fifteen years ago, when Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), Vice President Biden, at that time a man with full verbal faculties, indecorously stated to President Obama, “this is a big fuckin’ deal.” So it was, or so it seemed. Today however, Obamacare has become yet another reckless source of federal spending, significantly contributing to the inefficiencies and corporatist structure of American healthcare.Obamacare’s reinforcement of the healthcare status quo should lead us to think more deeply about what we want healthcare to be like in America. Should we not strive for the alignment of healthcare with the fundamental principles of democratic capitalism, ensuring that freedom and accountability for patients – i.e.

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We’re finally allowed to say Biden was senile!

So, Joe Biden spent a great deal of his term in office suffering from what might politely be called senile dementia, and those who enabled him led the Democrats to one of their most humiliating electoral defeats off the back of this subterfuge. This cannot in all honesty be called a revelation.When I first read the breathless headlines that came about from the publication of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s exposé of the Biden regime, Original Sin, I was reminded of Horatio’s words in Hamlet: “There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave, to tell us this.” And although Biden himself may not be in the grave, the (suspiciously timed) announcement of his late-stage prostate cancer may mean that this book functions as an epitaph of sorts for him.

Original Sin

How the lawfare campaign against Trump backfired

The effort to bankrupt, disgrace and banish Donald J. Trump to a jail cell in Riker’s Island has instead helped pave his road right back to the Oval Office. The unprecedented abuse of the American legal system fueled plenty of cable news coverage, but it also alienated the electorate. As with President Joe Biden’s mental decline, voters trusted their own eyes over the tale being told on their screens and delivered a decisive verdict against an eight-year politically-motivated lawfare campaign — exit polls showed that Trump voters were more likely to say democracy was under threat.

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Black Sunday: reckoning with October 7 a year later

October 7 was the bloodiest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. Some refer to it as Israel’s 9/11, though proportionally it was like fifteen 9/11s. However, numbers rarely tell the full story and here they fall devastatingly short. I was awake when it started. I’ve always been a night owl but staying up until six in the morning is unusual for me. On that bright fall morning I heard sounds like a thunderstorm and went outside to see what was going on. I live on a hill overlooking Gush Dan, the informal megalopolis that’s home for almost half the population of this stamp-sized country. When something big happens I can often see it.

October 7

The Democrats’ coming winter of discontent

Kamala Harris is enjoying her honeymoon phase as the “Not Donald Trump” candidate. She has been rewarded with a polling surge after meeting what seems to be the Democratic base’s bar: proving she is, in fact, alive. The party has curiously decided to celebrate in true 2020 fashion with a series of Zoom calls — nationwide rallies of overpaid professionals eager to be subdivided into identitarian roles and open up their wallets: Deadheads for Kamala, White Dudes for Kamala, Munchausen Wine Moms for Kamala. Victoria’s Secret frontwoman Megan Rapinoe and Mayor Pete have been leading the charge of goosing the ActBlue numbers, which Bridget Phetasy explores on p.33. The candidate herself has been absent from these multi-hour rallies cum struggle sessions.

Kamala
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What did Kamala actually do to address the ‘root causes’ of migration?

Nearly two decades ago, District Attorney Kamala Harris of San Francisco launched a criminal justice reform program called “Back on Track” that attempted to keep low-level drug dealers out of prison. San Francisco resident Amanda Kiefer learned the hard way that the program was open to illegal aliens: she suffered a fractured skull during a purse theft by a man released from lock-up under Harris’s program. Kiefer describes herself as a liberal turned Trump supporter: “When a policy negatively affects you, you wake up,” she told ABC News in July. Harris claimed in 2009 that the inclusion of illegal aliens in the “Back on Track” program was a “flaw in the design.” She has not commented on it since.

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How Silicon Valley fell for Trump

Just weeks after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump radically shifted the election calculus yet again. Amid the intense, fast-moving news cycle, one event that would ordinarily have garnered wall-to-wall coverage went nearly unnoticed. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Elon Musk posted to X on the day of the assassination attempt. In recent weeks, a legion of tech giants from the deep-blue stronghold of Silicon Valley have broken ranks and openly pledged support for the MAGA leader. With each new backer comes a slew of mega-donations to his campaign.

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How — and why — the Democrats ignored the will of the people… again

See the wheels come off the Democratic machine as the party leader (who is also the current US president) displays to all the world his verbal and cognitive breakdown. See the party barons’ absurd race to circle the wagons with rationalizations as implausible as their praise for their boss’s historic “accomplishments.” See the media scramble to hide its complicity in the long-term cover-up of the president’s faltering tenure.

Letters

Letters from Spectator readers, September 2024

The cunning of the Democrats’ lawfare Wow! A tour de force of snark! But wonderful for it. My late father-in-law would have said that instead of brushing his teeth in the morning, the author gets a file and sharpens his tongue. As depressing as this article is, it is likely an accurate assessment of what’s going on. Particularly the image of Trump and Biden essentially playing the roles of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the Grumpy Old Men movies. Carry on, America. Down Under, we have our own problems, as well as being affected by yours, same as every other country. — David Gerber Tellingly prescient. The 800-pound gorilla the next generation will be forced to address will be unsustainable entitlement transfer payments.

Safetyism and the 2024 election

"My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” So spoke the nation’s first vice president. Of all the indignities that come with the office, the most insulting is being forced to stump for a beleaguered party mate in what was once safe territory. No one plays “Hail to the (Almost) Chief” as the 4,092nd most powerful leader in the free world — sandwiched between the prime minister of Nauru and the 2006 American League batting champion — enters the local rec center or middle school gymnasium.

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The Biden-Trump rematch is a nationwide exercise in denial

Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden is the other guy. This, we are frequently reminded, is their principal advantage in the eyes of many. It may be the only advantage Biden has left after decomposing in real time on the debate stage. Ironically, though, not being each other is one of the few important things these two men have in common. In 2024, a sizable portion of the electorate — maybe the majority — will vote not for a presidential candidate but against his opponent. It’s enough to make you wonder whether the whole affair is an apotropaic exercise, a mass effort to stave off something worse. Maybe we are scared — not just of Biden, or of Trump, but of what the alternatives might be. We have chosen to stick with the devils we know.

Biden

If Trump or Biden actually cared about America, they would step aside

I’ve written ad nauseam about how much I hate this election, about how Trump-Biden 2.0 is even more demoralizing than the first season of our never-ending reality show, Electile Dysfunction: America Has Gone Soft. “For me, the prospect of a Trump-Biden rerun makes me so disillusioned about politics that I find myself wanting to sit this election cycle out completely,” I wrote last October. Those feelings have only intensified since. Trump is now a Convicted Felon™, with more cases pending. He will likely be in court for the rest of his life. Hunter Biden, who has no problem with ED despite the heaps of cocaine he was on, is also a Convicted Felon™. Biden is, well, Biden. We are ruled by criminals and Olds.

Biden

Joe Biden, naked emperor

Sometimes, a fairytale provides the best description of a real-world crisis. That’s true of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. The best description, sadly, is the tale of the naked emperor, who parades through his kingdom without clothes but is never called out until a child cries out the truth. Once the child speaks, the crowd joins in. For Joe Biden, the yelling child was the split screen that kept his face on camera throughout his late June debate with Donald Trump. Observers could finally see — and call out — what the Biden team and the mainstream press knew for months but refused to say. In fact, the Biden communications team is still refusing to acknowledge the obvious. How can they and still claim Joe is fit to serve as president for another four-plus years?

Biden