Authored by Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann via American Greatness,

So many of us watched in horror last Saturday when a 20-year-old assassin aimed at Donald Trump’s head just after he started his remarks at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. How and why did this happen? Did the mainstream and social media enable a radical to commit murder?

The June issue of the far-left publication The New Republic featured on its cover a vile photo of the faces of Trump and Adolf Hitler merged together. At the time it was released, we had no idea of what would transpire on July 13, 2024, when Thomas Matthew Crooks, using an AR-15 from 400 feet away, attempted, at the highest level, to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.

But should we be surprised? Hardly.

It’s been an open secret among leftist elites that regime-approved violence falls somewhere between “it’s okay to punch a Nazi” and “your speech is violence, while our violence is speech.” Media outlets like The Intercept’s Prem Thakker claim that Crooks was a registered Republican but he also made a small donation to Act Blue, a far-left PAC.

Regardless of party affiliation, the 20-year-old shooter was shockingly motivated to commit murder. Did it come to him in a dream? Was he personally harmed and looking for justice? Did he conclude that this was a logical and necessary act for the protection of society at large?

No. His motivation was driven by a firehose of personal hatred and outrageous propaganda promulgated by media platforms (and Democrats) that utilize Hitler imagery and Nazi narratives that are embedded in our minds as murderous, dangerous, and anti-human, all the while tying them to Donald Trump. If anyone thinks that the concept is outlandish, one only has to look at the past decade and see how this imagery and narrative have been pushed to influence the weak minds and radicals among us.

In reverse chronological order, let us examine three of the most egregious examples of the left using Trump-Hitler iconography to spew their disgusting narrative.

The New Republic (June 2024)

For its June 2024 issue, Owner and Editor-in-Chief Win McCormack and Editor Michael Tomasky were rightfully savaged on X/Twitter for the cover merging the faces of Trump and Hitler together. On X/Twitter, this was their rationalization and justification.

“We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face.

“Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, “He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.

“We unreservedly choose the latter course. And so we have assembled herein some of our leading intellectual historians of fascism; a member of the fourth estate who learned firsthand what the Trump lash feels like; a leading expert on civil-military relations; a great Guatemalan American novelist with a deep understanding of immigrants’ lives; one of our most incisive cultural critics; and a man with all-too-real experience in living under a notorious authoritarian regime. The scenarios they describe are certainly grim. We dare you to say, after reading these pieces, that they are impossible.”

It should be noted that The New Republic is barely profitable. One can hope that, because of its lack of editorial integrity, even left-wing elite intellectuals will abandon it before the 2028 presidential election so that it will go bankrupt and sink below the waves into historical irrelevance.

The Washington Post (December 20, 2023)

Back in December, author and attorney Mike Godwin opened his WaPo op-ed Opinion: “Yes, it’s okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don’t let me stop you,” with a side profile graphic of Trump and Hitler back-to-back.

“My very minor status as an authority on Adolf Hitler comparisons stems from having coined ‘Godwin’s Law’ about three decades ago. I originally framed this “law” as a pseudoscientific postulate: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.’ (That is, its likelihood approaches 100 percent.)”

Godwin continues, “But when people draw parallels between Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy and Hitler’s progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy.”

This plays directly into the ongoing progressive left narrative that Trump presents an existential threat to American democracy. If elected, Trump will be a dictator, and the 2024 election will be the last to be held in America. It goes back to the words of Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels’ law of propaganda, who once said, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” We’ve seen the media become sheep, often repeating the exact same talking point simultaneously, like for the last couple of years that Joe Biden is “sharp as a tack” and “runs circles around staffers that are half his age,” and that he “would never ban gas stoves.” We could go on.

Many on the progressive left, including influencers like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, serve up this pablum for the masses on almost every broadcast. Worst of all, their low-information audiences tend to accept and believe it, repeating it at cocktail parties inside the DC Beltway. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy to them.

The Daily Beast (January 13, 2018)

The Trump-as-Hitler narrative didn’t happen overnight. The villification started the moment Trump announced his candidacy when he rode down the golden escalator with his wife Melania back on June 16, 2015. But it certainly accelerated when he dispatched his primary opponents, was nominated, and defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Once in office, the attacks intensified, with no editorial guardrails to be seen. The mainstream media had the green light to engage in any attack, no matter how insane it might seem. The editors at the left-wing website, The Daily Beast, opined on January 13, 2018, just a year into the Trump Presidency, with the op-ed Trump’s War on the Press Follows the Mussolini and Hitler Playbook. Not only did they compare the evil Orange Man to Hitler but to Mussolini as well. The graphic? A color image of Trump superimposed over a historic black-and-white photo of Hitler and Mussolini standing side-by-side. It stated:

“The abasement of language by Donald Trump and his assorted flacks began long before, but this concept was so naked, so novel and so unblinkingly forthright that it established the rules for the assault to come, just as the first salvo of an artillery barrage signals the creation of a new battlefield where there will be many casualties.”

But it didn’t stop there.

“Trump has spent two years vilifying the “dishonest” media (including The Daily Beast), even invoking the Nazi chant of ‘enemies of the people.’ Aided by the alt-right zealots at Breitbart, he has successfully persuaded millions of Americans that The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC are seditious forces bent on denigrating and destroying the man they elected.”

Funny how, more than six years on, we have watched how all the media outlets cited above have turned out to be nothing more than stenographers for the Democrat Party, and since January 2021, for the most authoritarian presidency in our 245 years, the Biden administration until his dismal debate performance two weeks ago.

The Basic Difference Between Right- and Left-Wing Media

There are very few right-leaning popular culture magazines to find anything comparable to The New Republic, newspapers like the Washington Post, or web platforms like The Daily Beast that would merge an image of Joe Biden with Forrest Gump to return the favor. You won’t see mainstream conservative websites with a large following like The Blaze or Brietbart (or American Greatness) publish anything like that. With the exception of Fox News and all the major broadcast and cable networks. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and especially MSNBC, lean left.

It’s not because the imagery and political pushback are not deserved. It’s because this is not a “both sides” issue. The violence here is solidly footed on the left. Antifa, BLM, Occupy Democrats, Just Stop Oil…all left-wing organizations. And they are organized, not nutty individuals with their own ideas at work. Violence is a common tool in the left’s arsenal, and they are not hesitant to use it.

Most likely, we will find that the 20-year-old who shot Trump is among that group. He was probably marinating in hate his entire young life. It likely began at home, where parenting has nearly collapsed, and was extended in the public school system, where kids are taught the absolutist Marxist notion of “oppressors versus the oppressed,” villains versus heroes, Good versus Evil. He would have been a fine candidate for the KKK back in the 1950s and 1960s.

A media and political party that ties a man to Hitler, to a petty dictator, to an authoritarian, and to someone who needs to be defeated “by any means necessary” is complicit in this murder attempt. Democrats and the legacy media completely understand that they can still influence weak-minded, radical people to do their bidding and hide their complicity under the veneer of plausible deniability.

Of course, there will be no real media accountability here aside from sharply declining readership and viewership. The media will just move on, unapologetically changing the subject and hoping nobody will notice or remember the slanders.

Politicians, however, push these extreme narratives at their own peril. They are creating an underclass of radicals that cannot be controlled, and once these murderers-in-training are set loose, the leftist politicians who made them will need to hide, for they could be the next target.

The US military has sent two B-52 bombers over northern Finland on Sunday in a historic first and in a clear strong message aimed at Russia. Finland entered the NATO alliance in April of 2023 and this marks the first big act of military cooperation with NATO and the US over its territory.

The bombers entered Finland from Norway’s northern region, linking up with Finnish fighter jets for the rest of the flight. “Today, Finland has implemented cooperation with the strategic bombers of the United States in the territory of Finland,” Finnish defense minister Antti Häkkänen announced.

“It is a normal cooperation carried out in the territory of a NATO member country and it demonstrate the basic pillar of common defense and deterrence,” Häkkänen said.

But as the Barents Observer underscores, this flight was an unprecedented first: “But two B-52 strategic bombers over northern Finland is far from normal,” the publication writes. “It has never happened before and shows the fundamental change in geopolitics following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.”

Separately, the Kremlin said that Russian forces scrambled Mig-29 and MiG-31 fighter jets as the bombers made their way north of Finland, over the Barents Sea.

“As the Russian fighters approached, the U.S. strategic bombers turned away from the State Border of the Russian Federation,” the Kremlin stated.

The Russian warplanes “safely returned to their base airfields,” it added. “The flight of the Russian fighters was carried out in strict accordance with international rules for the use of airspace over neutral waters, observing safety measures.”

Last week NATO announced that as an initial step and development in military cooperation, the alliance’s two newest members have been integrated into NATO air policing of the Baltic Sea.

.@FinnishAirForce flew a training mission with two 🇺🇸 B-52 bombers today.
🇫🇮 F/A-18 Hornet multirole fighters flew with the 🇺🇸bombers from Lapland to Gulf of Finland where the bombers continued their mission with 🇩🇪 Eurofighters involved in Nato’s BAP mission. #StrongerTogether pic.twitter.com/uIvAKYTHZn

— Puolustusvoimat (@Puolustusvoimat) July 21, 2024

Already this involves the two (previously and historically neutral) Nordic countries ‘confronting’ Russia. According to a NATO statement from July 16, “NATO’s Combined Air Operation Centre at Uedem, Germany, reported two Russian fighter aircraft flying over international waters in the Baltic Sea from Kaliningrad to mainland Russia on July 15.”

It added, “The aircraft were also tracked by Finnish and Swedish air operation centers, and both Allies launched their quick reaction alert (QRA) forces to intercept the Russian military aircraft.”

Authored by “Dr. R P” via DailySceptic.org,

The perils of over-reliance on digital systems have been once again highlighted by the crashing of computer systems around the world due to an update to the Falcon antivirus and security product from CrowdStrike affecting its interaction with Windows operating systems. The update has caused chaos for banking, retail, railways, airports, healthcare and for a wide range of other businesses and infrastructure where the Falcon software runs on Windows systems. Advice for bringing affected computers back into working order has been published but the exact mechanism by which the update caused “Blue Screen of Death” errors does not appear to have yet been reported.

It appears that in many cases, whilst the update was distributed automatically over the internet to systems, the workaround to fix the problem requires the machines to be rebooted in Windows’ safe mode, which usually requires physical access. The person at the keyboard then needs to know the password for the computer’s administrator account, and use this level of access to delete a file within a subdirectory of Windows’ System32. This process can be more complicated where Microsoft’s BitLocker encryption is in use. In many organisations the recovery keys for BitLocker have themselves been stored on a computer unable to start properly due to the CrowdStrike update. The quote “Men go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one”, originally from Charles Mackay in 1841, seems applicable now to computers too. They crash en masse, then require individual attention before they will work again.

It should be noted that while the perils of centralisation with a physical single point of failure are obvious to all but technocratic politicians and civil servants, this massive outage shows another way in which a “single point” of failure can occur. The single point in this case is not a particular server in one building somewhere on the planet; but rather a change within a single piece of software, that change then being rolled out to many individual systems around the globe. These systems then entered a state euphemistically described as Total Inability To Support Usual Performance (acronym intentional) among the tech community. There was a reason that NASA put a fifth backup flight computer in the space shuttle, running software written entirely independently of the software on its primary four computers. A single point of failure where software is concerned doesn’t have to happen at only a single point in space.

There is a very clear lesson to be learned here.

Systems which can collapse at scale, even when they are not centralised in the physical sense, eventually will collapse in such a fashion.

Advocates of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and Digital ID systems should consider these lessons.

This update ‘only’ knocked out an estimated 8.5 million computers, belonging to over 24,000 organisations subscribed to CrowdStrike’s Falcon software.

A country reliant on a CBDC instead of cash would see an end to all transactions as a consequence of a similar failure affecting a component within whatever software stack was being used to operate CBDC infrastructure. That could mean a fault within the software on physically centralised or partly centralised servers logging transactions and holding records; or a fault within the software running on masses of devices operating as payment terminals in a wide variety of locations.

In that dystopian CBDC-dependent nation, one would be looking at electric vehicles (already a bad idea simply on account of the abysmal energy density of batteries compared to chemical fuels) stranded at charging stations, unable to make payments to initiate the charging procedure. Consider that the World Economic Forum once advertised with slogans on the theme of “what if extreme weather froze your bank account”, right at the time when Justin Trudeau was freezing bank accounts on account of his extreme intolerance for peaceful protest. The reality is that in the centralised totalitarian model of society the WEF hungers for, this scenario becomes more probable, not less. That is to say, that as well as increasing the opportunities for censorship-obsessed elites to deliberately interfere in people’s lives, centralisation also increases the vulnerability of a society to accidental errors. Where Governments dream of requiring digital ID or age verification for internet access, or client-side scanning to look for objectionable opinions and only allow messages to be sent when approved as sufficiently “double plus good”, one could even imagine a situation where direct messages and online posts attempting to report a fault in the software stack running the verification or approval algorithms would be blocked from being sent. This wouldn’t need to be a matter of a deliberate attempt to cover up the fault, but instead the inability to report the fault would be a natural consequence of the fault itself. A censorship apparatus built on a principle of scanning everything before it can be shared ends up censoring absolutely everything if it is unable to perform scans.

Where old systems, like cash, just work, the alternatives which Big Tech and Big Government claim are more convenient can collapse. Where computer systems you actually own and have true control of just work, systems which can be remotely updated can crash catastrophically. When Big Government pushes for things to be more “secure”, it usually has in mind intrusive projects to stop “bad people” from using “SMART” systems, rather than measures to actually make systems more resilient in the event of crises. Government, after all, tries to whip up anger against truly secure encryption by describing it as warrant-proof, though in an age where lawfare is becoming common and courts allow the monitoring of vast numbers of innocent people it is hard to see how such a level of protection is undesirable. Meanwhile Big Tech companies seek to create an “experience” for users, which in practice comes to mean an ever more interlinked web of dependencies, often centred around a server to which the devices regularly phone-home to check that the user has the company’s permission to use the things they have bought. Concerningly, even farming has now become a field in which equipment manufacturers are displaying this ‘Big Tech’ attitude. This risks farmers’ livelihoods and entire nations’ food security in the event of software crashes. And that could include software crashes within Digital Rights Management subsystems of software which aren’t even there for the benefit of the user in the first place.

Humans, when acting like machines and believing that adherence to procedure, policy, legislation or guidance is more important than common sense and morality, make the perils of centralisation still worse. If one adds a human element with a sufficiently jobsworth disposition and an absolute confidence in the infallibility of their systems to the toxic mix of centralisation and control freakery enabled by excessive digitisation, it results in horrific scenarios like those surrounding the Post Office’s Horizon software. I shall enter a little further into speculation here when suggesting that a correlation between people having problematic dispositions and a desire for centralisation may exist, perhaps best demonstrated by the ways in which I have seen the supporters and opponents of cash behaving during previous payment infrastructure outages. Contrast: the elderly woman who deposited exact change on the counter in a card-only cafe. She calmly claimed it was legal tender, whether that is an entirely applicable argument or not, and walked off with two packaged sandwiches. With: the student who upon being told, in broken English by the very polite man behind the fried-chicken shop counter, that VISA was down that day, raised his voice to a bellow. Such bellowing was perhaps difficult from behind the blue paper muzzle he was wearing in 2022. He then proceeded to accuse the owner of tax evasion in a lecture which lasted until everyone waiting around for their orders was glaring at him, and which contained expletives even someone fluent in English could be surprised by. Whilst it is not my place to comment upon whether what the woman did was entirely legal, she gave the impression of someone who would start knitting socks for neighbours in a prolonged power-cut. The student gave the impression of someone who’d batter on doors in search of a USB powerbank with which to buy himself a while longer on TikTok. The types of people who cheer for centralisation do not appear to be the types who can foresee – much less aid in recovering society from – the consequences of centralisation-enabled failures.

Keeping to the theme of trendy people and trendy attitudes, it is also worth noting that whilst the update which led to the ongoing chaos may well have been intended as a security patch or as a bug fix for a rare software fault condition (and ended up creating a widespread one), many updates which have been responsible for widespread system failures in the past are updates to provide software with new ‘features’. Unfortunately, in keeping with trying to be fashionable brands, a lot more programming hours are dedicated to “oh, look, shiny” than to simply keeping abreast of actual functionality and security flaws which may require patching. With software controlled systems embedded in ever more places (and not all of this increase in the ubiquity of computing necessarily has to be bad so long as the systems are properly under a user’s control and are not cloud dependent), it would seem a wise time for the practice of software development to start prioritising reliability, resilience and stability. It would be wise to prioritise these above the aim of innovating in ways nobody asked for, which then disrupt people’s workflows within products they are already using. Whilst consumer technology is particularly affected by this fashion-based philosophy, business software is not immune. This is particularly the case when buzzwords are used in efforts to market solutions to problems they might not have to bosses of limited technical expertise. Look at all the hype around AI, with its latest eruption coming in the form of Large Language Models. A world with software around every corner is a world which can’t afford that software to be updated, with the potential for introducing serious errors to it every time a corporate executive falls for a fad. The way in which smaller open source software projects operate may provide an inspiration here, particularly where the project consists of a standalone tool for a particular task. In many such projects, there are only two scenarios in which a developer typically posts an update. Firstly, he may post one in response to user reports of errors being thrown in specific circumstances. Secondly there may be a need for a new version of the tool when changes are needed to maintain compatibility with changes that have been applied to other software, such as new releases of an operating system under which the tool may be run.

As an overall picture, centralisation makes it all too easy for governments and corporations to feed their addiction to exercising control. And the further their reach spreads, the closer to the state comes to being a black hole that sucks in the entirety of society and human experience, the more damage their anti-Midas touch causes. And then, in its aftermath, the solution they always push for is more centralisation, more opportunities to make things worse whether by intention or by accident. Escaping the headlong rush in to a new Soviet Union where nothing works and officialdom absolutely refuses to acknowledge the fact must be at the forefront of our minds when looking to the future, but today’s news itself can be summarised in a much shorter fashion. Whilst one can feel sorry for those whose travel was disrupted, it is a wonderful feeling to jump to the front of a queue in a shop and pay a satisfied cashier with cash, whilst a seething mass of trendy woke-folk, who consider cash and even freedom itself to be outdated concepts, look on.

The Secret Service has been caught in a lie.

Last Sunday, one day after the Trump assassination attempt, Secret Service spox Anthony Guglielmi insisted that it was an “untrue assertion” that Trump’s campaign was denied additional security resources, calling it “absolutely false.”

“In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo,” he continued in a post on X.

Theres an untrue assertion that a member of the former President’s team requested additional security resources & that those were rebuffed. This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo

— Anthony Guglielmi (@SecretSvcSpox) July 14, 2024

Guglielmi doubled down three hours later, telling RealClearPolitics‘ White House correspondent Susan Crabtree that her report on diverted resources was “very wrong.“

What’s more, “Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who has been under pressure to resign over security lapses at the rally, repeated that denial in a meeting with Trump campaign leadership in Wisconsin on Monday,” according to the Washington Post.

Fast forward to Saturday, and the Washington Post reveals that they lied.

Suspected. Now proven. More forthcoming

— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) July 20, 2024

According to the new report, “Top officials at the U.S. Secret Service repeatedly denied requests for additional resources and personnel sought by Donald Trump’s security detail in the two years leading up to his attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania last Saturday, according to four people familiar with the requests.”

Agents charged with protecting the former president requested magnetometers and more agents to screen attendees at sporting events and other large public gatherings Trump attended, as well as additional snipers and specialty teams at other outdoor events, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive security discussions. The requests, which have not been previously reported, were sometimes denied by senior officials at the agency, who cited various reasons, including a lack of resources at an agency that has long struggled with staffing shortages, they said.

Those rejections — in response to requests that were several times made in writing — led to long-standing tensions that pitted Trump, his top aides and his security detail against Secret Service leadership, as Trump advisers privately fretted that the vaunted security agency was not doing enough to protect the former president.

The Secret Service, after initially denying turning down requests for additional security, is now acknowledging some may have been rejected. The revelation comes as agency veterans say the organization has been forced to make difficult decisions amid competing demands, a growing list of protectees and limited funding. -WaPo

After WaPo confronted Guglielmi, he said that the agency ‘had learned new information indicating the agency’s headquarters may have in fact denied some requests for additional security from Trump’s detail,” something he should have probably checked before be lied.

Liar. https://t.co/lgZT0wgmQV pic.twitter.com/zJnXOmOiVA

— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) July 21, 2024

NYT: Secret Service did not assign anyone to watch the warehouses just 140 yards north of where Trump was speaking.

Then as Trump spoke, the Secret Service became “frantic” — aware that something was wrong at those warehouses — but left Trump on stage. pic.twitter.com/1g3l9U9cVe

— Gregg Re (@gregg_re) July 21, 2024

Meanwhile, the Secret Service tried to block a Trump team request for metal detectors at his son Barron’s high school graduation, according to the NY Times.

According to the WaPo report, a Secret Service official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the agency has finite resources, and has to juggle competing demands – particularly for countersnipers, counterassault teams, and teams of uniformed division officers.

So – it appears they gave Trump the Temu team because they were spread too thin.

The Left attacked @dbongino for telling us in real time that the Secret Service spokesman was lying.

Turns out the Secret Service spokesman was lying.https://t.co/NNun0hw9Bw https://t.co/3yjUwcrtfy

— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) July 21, 2024

Butler Township calls BS

In response to the Secret Service trying to pin the blame on local PD, Butler Township commissioner Edward Natali said that the Butler Township Pollice Department had no security responsibility at the event – and that there were just seven officers, all assigned to traffic detail.

My god ….

With law enforcement focused elsewhere, a would-be assassin roamed freely outside the perimeter. The only officers who got close to him were ones who left their designated posts to do so.

Their job had been to direct traffic

— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) July 20, 2024

On Sunday, Pennsylvania congressman Brendan Boyle (D) called on Kimberly Cheatle to resign in light of the WaPo report.

Director Cheatle must resign immediately.

My statement calling for the resignation of United States Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle: pic.twitter.com/q0ONU8PlAF

— Rep. Brendan Boyle (@CongBoyle) July 21, 2024

As The Conservative Treehouse points out, the silence here is deafening…

The biggest question inside the investigation of the Trump assassination attempt, is the thing no one has mentioned.  Why have there been no daily press briefings?

• Where are the official 10:00am press briefing updates every day on the investigation?

• Where are the official press conferences from the Secret Service, FBI and law enforcement answering questions and providing information from the prior days investigative results?

• Where are the organized and official updates to let the American people know what has been found out about the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump?

Continued…

The absence of official press briefings has been the dog that didn’t bark.

Instead, the Secret Service, FBI and Law Enforcement have been selectively leaking details, testing what would be and would not be accepted, and we have only seen controlled snippets of information.

Much of the information within those leaks has been lies, sometimes absurd in their construct, pushed through a generally incurious media.

Smart people have noted the absence of the official public information process indicates something very sketchy in the background. [ie. the dog that didn’t bark]

The attempted assassination of President Trump is a big deal; perhaps one of the biggest events in recent history. There is massive public interest.

If ordinary procedures and protocols were being followed, we would have official daily updates at scheduled press conferences, and the media would be able to present questions based on presented information.  The absence of these press briefings told us something that is not good.  But perhaps today, we find out why.

And what’s this now?

Maria Bartiromo says a man in a grey suit climbed the ladder while police were taking pics of Thomas Crooks’ body & gave them a number to send the pics to

Police thought the man was Secret Service, but he wasn’t

This story keeps getting more unbelievable pic.twitter.com/1GMT2REJbp

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) July 21, 2024

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Here’s a bit of good news for Republicans, courtesy of Elizabeth Warren. If Biden drops out, Harris is likely the worst candidate Democrats could reasonably field.

Big Swift Kick in the Pants

My mom frequently stated so-and-so “needs a big swift kick in the pants”. She added the words “big swift”.

I looked up the phrase “kick in the pants” but cannot find the origin. I found discussion of kick in the pants and swift kick in the pants but not big swift kick in the pants.

A Really Big Decision Says Elizabeth Warren

The Wall Street Journal reports Warren Signals Support for Harris if Biden Drops Out

Harris is ready to “step up” and “unite the party to take on Donald Trump,” Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, said Saturday on MSNBC. Warren vouched for Harris as a crusader against big banks and heralded her efforts to protect abortion rights. 

“Look if you’re running against a convicted felon, then a prosecutor like Kamala is really a good person to make that case,” Warren said, referring to Harris’s previous roles as California’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney.

Warren’s remarks—along with the other comments from Democrats backing Harris—offer a public glimpse into the extent to which party leaders are already positioning for the possibility of Biden stepping aside. It remains an open question whether Biden would push for Harris to replace him or favor a more open contest that some Democrats worry could become a nasty free-for-all.

In her Saturday remarks, Warren said for the first time that Biden “has a really big decision to make” about his candidacy, a phrase that has become something of a calling card for Democrats looking to gently nudge Biden out of the race.

Big Donors Appalled

It appears Warren prefers the “gentle nudge” tactic over the “big swift kick” theory.

Mom would not approve. Nor do big Democrat donors who are appalled by any loyalist enthusiasm for either Biden or Harris.

I commented on donors earlier in Kamala Hangs Up on Donors, 12 More Democrats Ask Biden Drop Out

A growing tide of Democrats including Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio ask Biden to step aside. Kamala Harris huddles with donors on a phone call then hangs up on them.

Also Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris defended Biden during a contentious call with Democratic donors at a time when wealthy financiers feel misled by the president and are vowing to not give money to his campaign. The call abruptly ended before Harris would field any donor questions.

On the Friday donor call, Harris and others tried to tamp down a growing revolt. Harris didn’t take questions. When donors tried to speak, the organizer quickly ended the call.

Here are some additional amusing details on that donor call from the New York Times.

Call With Harris Fails to Reassure Donors

Please consider Call With Harris Struggles to Reassure Major Democratic Donors

Vice President Kamala Harris tried to buck up the Democratic Party’s biggest donors on Friday, telling about 300 of them that there was little to worry about in President Biden’s campaign.

“I will start by sharing something with all of you,” Ms. Harris told the donors, according to a listener on the call who described her remarks on the condition of anonymity, “something I believe in my heart of hearts. It is something I feel strongly you should all hear and should take with you when you leave. And tell your friends, too. We are going to win this election.”

“Not surprisingly, there was no news generated on this call, and instead, it was a pitch for donors to continue to invest in groups on the ground who are working to defeat Donald Trump,” read an email from Corridor Partners, which advises donors focused on climate issues.

The email, which was viewed by The New York Times, added, “The call was not productive, and we wanted to apologize to each of you who joined for sharing that invitation.”

After Ms. Harris stopped speaking, according to three listeners, one participant who was unmuted could be overheard calling the entire call “ludicrous.”

Epic Infighting

Infighting among democrats has reached epic levels to the point backers are labeling a pep talk by Harris as ludicrous. What a hoot.

The democrats cannot unite against Trump as long as they are hopelessly split into two major factions.

Two Factions

• Progressive Loyalists: This faction includes President Biden, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, and the Congressional Black Caucus. The loyalists are further split into two camps. Those who are openly loyal to Biden and those who support a gentle nudge but only to Harris.

• Open Conventionists: This faction is led by donors plus a growing number of Congressional Democrats who prefer an open convention and a better shot at winning than going down with the loyalist ship.

Democrat Clown Show

Many Congressional cowards are standing in the middle of this sinking ship unwilling to take a stand until they see which way the ship rolls over.

The liberal media also wants to push out Biden. That is something the Democrats have never before witnessed.

Adding to the comedy, Republicans are hoping the Biden loyalists win because either Biden or Harris would be easier to defeat than some potential candidates if there were to be an open convention.

Nate Silver Blasts the 538 Election Forecast, His Previous Site

I discussed other candidates including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Nate Silver Blasts the 538 Election Forecast, His Previous Site

I caution, this election is not over.

75 percent ≠ 100 percent. Few seem to understand the importance of that mathematical fact.

The best chances for Republicans are if Biden can hang on until until the bitter end, and second, if Biden is replaced by Harris. Regarding the latter, the later the better.

An open convention would give Democrats the best shot. Ironically, the DNC seems hell bent on preventing that outcome.

Meanwhile, the comedy show proceeds.

Authored by Robert Spencer via PJMedia.com,

It’s looking increasingly as if Old Joe Biden is coming to the end of his disastrous reign as the figurehead of the most America-Last, authoritarian administration this country has ever suffered, but even as speculation mounts that we have entered the last period of Biden misrule, there is no clarity about what will happen or if anything will happen at all. The increasingly dementia-ridden kleptocrat has four options. Which one he will choose, however, or which will be chosen for him, is anybody’s guess.

The writing was on the wall for Old Joe when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Smirnoff), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Grillmaster), and finally the patron saint of the Democrat Party, Barack Hussein Obama himself, told Biden that it was time for him to shuffle haltingly off the stage. This brought to mind the storied final days of the presidency of the only man to resign the office, Richard M. Nixon. 

On Aug. 7, 1974, U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), the pioneering conservative who was ten years removed from his shellacking in the 1964 presidential election and who had become a respected figure among even Republicans who had abhorred his presidential candidacy, went up to see the besieged Nixon in the White House. With Goldwater were House Minority Leader John Rhodes (R-Ariz.) and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R-Pa.).

This trio had bad news for the man who had carried 49 states in 1972 but since then had faced increasingly shrill and damaging accusations regarding the break-in of Democrat headquarters at Washington’s Watergate hotel during the 1972 campaign, and the subsequent cover-up of the break-in. Goldwater, Rhodes, and Scott told Nixon that his congressional support had diminished to the point that impeachment was certain and conviction and removal from office likely.

Nixon took them seriously. On the evening of Aug. 8, he announced that he would resign the presidency, effective at noon the next day.

That’s one possibility: Pelosi, Schumer, and Obama are this generation’s Goldwater, Rhodes and Scott, and Old Joe will resign the presidency. Biden, however, unlike Nixon, does not face impeachment proceedings and the possibility of removal from office after a conviction.

That means that despite his obvious inability to perform the duties of his office, Biden may be allowed to stay on as president until Jan. 20, 2025, and simply announce that he is not running for reelection.

That option may allow the world’s most famous dementia sufferer to save face, but it is risky. It would mean that Biden would continue to display his cognitive decline to a watching world all through the presidential campaign, regularly reminding the electorate that the political and media elites gaslighted us for over three years about Biden’s condition. That’s a bad look for a party that faces a challenge from a man who just got shot in the head and jumped up and told his followers to fight.

And so Old Joe, if he digs in his heels, could be forced out of office by means of the 25th Amendment. There are signs that the Democrats have planned for this possibility for a long time. Back in Oct. 2020, remember, Pelosi promoted a bill that would have created a bipartisan commission to determine, along with the vice president, that the president was unfit to serve. When Trump protested, Pelosi insisted that the measure was “not about President Trump,” but about some hypothetical future president. Were the Democrats planning to have a mechanism in place in order to get rid of Old Joe, who wasn’t exactly sharp as a tack even in 2020?

In any case, the 25th Amendment has never been invoked. Doing so would draw a good deal of attention away from the Democrats’ shiny new nominee. Party apparatchiks would much rather that Old Joe leave quietly, something he has vehemently refused to do up until recently. That is the old liar’s fourth option: he could refuse all entreaties and insist on staying on as president even at the risk of taking the Democrat party down in flames with him in November. 

It is by no means clear, however, that such a choice is even his to make.

Throughout his presidency, Biden has made it clear that he is not his own man: he has spoken more than once about “getting in trouble” with unnamed people if he departs from the prepared script.

Is he in trouble with those people now?

Will they force him out of the presidency?

The world waits.   

With more than half of German welfare payments going to foreign migrants, the state of Saxony-Anhalt has cut the benefits of asylum seekers who refused to pick up debris following heavy flooding in east Germany.

The Daily Mail reports that 64 migrants had been written to by local authorities demanding they help clear rubbish and erect dykes after devastating floods in the area at the end of last year which saw hundreds of residents in parts of Germany forced to evacuate.

39 people agreed to help, while the rest, who are said to be from Syria, Afghanistan, Niger, Mali and Albania, failed to turn up.

The district council has now declared that the 15 asylum seekers who had no excuse to take part in the clean-up will have their asylum benefits cut in half to €232 (£195) a month for three months.

According to the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act in Germany, if community service is refused without reason, the right to benefits is limited.

This comes just a week after Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said he was in favor of cutting social benefits for asylum seekers who enter Germany via another EU country.

“The Dublin system applies, according to which the EU state in which a refugee entered the EU is responsible for him. But many still come to Germany,” he said.

Asylum seekers are already entitled to support in the country when they first enter.

“They cannot expect to live off the solidarity of people here if they do not want to return,” he stressed.

“That is certainly controversial, but we must continue to address these pull factors that are currently attracting too many people to us irregularly,” he added. 

This comes as Germany struggles to manage the massive wave of so-called asylum seekers (as we previously highlighted, statistics also show that around 6 out of 10 violent crimes in Germany are committed by foreign migrants) while also appeasing a growing proportion of voters who recognize that perhaps ‘diversity is not our strength’ after all, driving support for the AfD party (and its anti-immigrant policies).

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

Hundreds of Kenyan soldiers deployed to Haiti have begun patrolling the streets around key government installations. Gunfire was heard during the operation and an American armored vehicle broke down. 

This week, Kenyan soldiers in American MRAP vehicles patrolled the streets of Port au Prince near the National Palace. The troops are in Haiti on a UN Security Council-endorsed mission to take control of the capital city from armed groups. 

In recent years, gangs have seized, from the government, a growing portion of Port au Prince. The situation worsened after the US-backed Ariel Henry’s ascension to power following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021. Henry recently agreed to hand over control of Haiti at the White House’s urging. Gangs currently control 80% of Port au Prince. 

For the Kenyan soldiers, the first patrols in Port au Prince were not uneventful. Scores of gunshots were reported, and Haitian journalist Windy Phele posted a video on X showing one of the armored vehicles getting towed. 

After months of delays, hundreds of Kenyan soldiers arrived in Haiti during recent weeks. The Kenyan operations in Haiti – dubbed a policing mission – are supported and funded by the US.  

The new US-backed government in Haiti, led by Prime Minister Garry Conille, issued a series of decrees empowering the Kenyan soldiers to target the armed Haitian groups.

Un des véhicules blindés d’infanterie Maxx Pro, livré par les USA à Haïti pour la MMSS, utilisé pour la première fois par les soldats kényans dans le cadre d’un exercice, est tombé en panne en pleine opération ce mercredi dans la capitale haïtienne. pic.twitter.com/GgroJHVtqv

— Windy Phele (@windyphele) July 17, 2024

This “will allow the government to have the necessary tools and instruments to act, confront the bandits and restore the authority of the state.”

He added, “The final objective is to take back all the areas that are controlled by the gangs, house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, and city by city.”

Major Democratic donors who joined a conference call starring Vice President Kamala Harris say the event’s sloppy organization and scolding tone left them feeling unimpressed and insulted, NBC News has reported. 

“It was a total failure. It was damaging. It was poor planning,” said one. Another called it “ludicrous.” It was also described as “mismanaged and rushed.” 

The Friday call with about 300 heavy-hitter donors kicked off with reports from field organizers, who used their time to vent anger over the intra-party battle over whether Biden should be replaced atop the ticket, owing to plunging confidence in his mental health.  

One participant described how organizers stalled to buy time while everyone waited for Harris to join the call 20 minutes after it started. During that stretch, the donors were “admonished” against agitating to replace Biden, and were instructed to “lock in and get behind” the faltering and frail 81-year-old. 

According to a transcript obtained by NBC, Melissa Morales, the founder of Somos Votantes, a voter outreach group targeting Latinos, was one of those instructing donors to fall in line: 

“It’s time to stop the leaks and the rampant rumors. Your message has been heard and received. But every day that we continue this publicly chaotic conversation, we come closer to a loss — no matter who the nominee is.”

As you can imagine, that kind of tone didn’t set well with many in the audience who’ve committed big money to the campaign and the party. “These are donors who are not used to getting admonished and told what to do,” said one of NBC’s sources who’d heard the call. 

Many of those donors went into the call expecting to receive insider insights on how the party was going to recover from the devastating impact of Biden’s June 27 debate performance and the ongoing, damaging battle over the looming nomination. They instead received the “bad-cop/good-cop” treatment — first scolded for their lack of faith in Biden and then given a pep talk from Harris: 

“We know which candidate in this election puts the American people first: Our President, Joe Biden. With every decision he makes in the Oval Office, he thinks about how it will impact working Americans. And I witness it every day.”

“Something I believe in my heart of hearts. It is something I feel strongly you should all hear and should take with you when you leave. And tell your friends too. We are going to win this election. We are going to win.”

Her rah-rah remarks came on the same day that saw a record number of federal lawmakers — 11 — step forward to join others who’d already urged Biden to abandon his re-election bid. One of them was Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. The chair of the Senate Finance Committee, he’s the highest-ranking member of Congress to publicly tell Biden to give up. Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have privately encouraged Biden to quit, as has former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  

Trump in Michigan vs Biden in Michigan: pic.twitter.com/rxjBTcFI3j

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 21, 2024

Given the reviews, the call seems unlikely to jostle new money out of donors who’ve grown increasingly reluctant to throw money at what appears to be a doomed campaign. Some are withholding money not only from the presidential campaign, but from congressional candidates too, whose prospects are diminished by having Biden as the standard-bearer.  The Biden-Harris hoped to rake in $50 million from big donors in July, but is only on pace to hit half that, Reuters reported Friday. 

With no faith in either half of the Biden-Harris ticket, major donors are taking matters into their own hands. One group is bankrolling — independent of the Democratic National Committee — a process to start vetting potential successors to Biden, according to Washington Post sources. Among the names being bounced around: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.

Meanwhile, as he completes his allegedly Covid-triggered convalescence in Delaware, Biden’s campaign is reportedly considering rushing him back on the campaign trail, with trips to Georgia and Texas under consideration. Get ready for another string of video “highlights” demonstrating that he’s neither fit to run nor govern.  

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Newly reappointed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen just announced that “it is now time to build a veritable union of defense”, which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said represents a marked change in priorities that’ll intersect with NATO’s interests. The EU’s planned transformation into a military union is being sold to the public as a response to the protracted Ukrainian Conflict, but it’s really a federalist power play that’s designed to forever entrench German hegemony over the bloc.

That country has sought to federalize the EU for years already, and despite some notable successes in getting member states to surrender significant parts of their sovereignty to Brussels, it’s thus far failed to yield the expected results. This plan might also become more difficult to implement as two new groups have emerged in the European Parliament since the latest elections: the AfD-led “Europe of Sovereign Nations” and the Hungarian-led “Patriots for Europe”, both of which are fiercely against federalization.

The only possible way to push through this agenda in the face of such growing opposition is to double down on anti-Russian fearmongering in the hopes that member states’ ruling liberal–globalist elites will agree to federalize under the pretext of defending against a supposedly impending invasion. It’s not directly stated, but the subtext is that NATO’s American leader couldn’t be relied upon to defend its allies in that event despite repeatedly reaffirming its commitment to Article 5’s mutual defense obligations.

The abovementioned fears can’t be voiced aloud since the prior expression of such concerns was earlier smeared by the Mainstream Media as so-called “Russian propaganda”, but they might become more strongly implied as the US’ upcoming presidential elections approach. Trump’s reported plan for NATO, which readers can learn more about in detail here, calls for coercing members into raising their defense spending and assuming more responsibility for their immediate security interests vis-à-vis Russia.

The preceding hyperlinked analysis argues that it’s already being partially implemented by the Biden Administration as proven by Germany’s “Fortress Europe” concept, which amounts to it becoming the continent’s military powerhouse with full US support so as to facilitate America’s “Pivot (back) to Asia”. Late January’s “military Schengen”, last month’s “EU defense line”, and this month’s agreement to assume partial responsibility for Poland’s border security are the most significant developments thus far.

The next step is to consolidate Germany’s military-strategic gains over the past half-year through von der Leyen’s call for a military union, which would see German-controlled Brussels organizing the bloc’s military-industrial needs across its 27 members, thus moving them closer to de facto federalization. Upon surrendering sovereignty over military policymaking, which some of them have proudly protected up until now, every other aspect of federalization would quickly fall into place shortly afterwards.

That’s why it’s incumbent on the European Parliament’s two newly formed conservative-nationalist groups to do their utmost within that body and inside their members’ home countries to prevent their ruling liberal-globalist elites from going along with von der Leyen’s military union plans.

Their countries’ futures are on the line and they’ll either retain some of their sovereignty, however imperfect and partial it presently is, or lose it all and end up as a nondescript state in a German-led European Federation.