Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

Reading Matt Taibbi’s summary how the Democrats weaponized the government against Donald Trump, starting before the election of 2016 and proceeding right up to the present moment, I am reminded once again that the issue is not democracy but “Our Democracy™.”

That is, the Democrats and their deep-state allies in the media and the myriad bureaucracies that actually run the country believe that democracy means “rule by Democrats.”  As Taibbi puts it, “To ‘protect democracy,’ democracy is already being canceled. We just haven’t admitted the implications of this to ourselves yet.”

This is true. Hence the plethora of handwringing articles warning that Donald Trump is a “dictator”-in-waiting, a new Hitler, a refurbished Mussolini who, should he be reelected, will mobilize the military to impose his will on a hapless American populace. Taibbi quotes from a December 2023 “strategy memo” in which Biden’s puppeteers describe Trump as “an existential threat to democracy.”

It sounds absurd.  It is absurd.  But, as I and many others have pointed out, that is the story we are being asked to swallow. This is the logic:

Trump is a “threat to democracy.”

Ergo, we must use “any means necessary” to keep him off the ballot.

Otherwise, people might vote for him, and that would be “bad for democracy.”

The arrogance of this gambit is breathtaking. It assumes, with Liz Cheneyesque smugness, that ordinary people cannot be entrusted with so important a task as electing their leaders. Only anointed saviors like Liz Cheney can do that. But alongside the arrogance of the we-have-to-destroy-democracy-in-order-to-save-it mindset is the chilling revelation of the extremes to which the people in power are willing to go in order to preserve their prerogatives. They will, for example, censor any opinion they do not like as “malinformation,” i.e., an opinion that might be true but is not consistent with The Narrative. It all adds up to what I have called “the Sovietization of America.”

What, as Lenin famously asked, is to be done?

I am not sure anything can be done.  There is a good chance that Michael Anton is right. “They Can’t Let Him Back In,” he wrote in July 2022. “The people who really run the United States of America,” he noted, “have made it clear that they can’t and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again.”

Anton and Taibbi both outline some of the many things “they”—the agents of the deep state—will do, are in fact doing right now, to prevent this most awful of eventualities.

My crystal ball is cloudy. I do not know what is going to happen in November 2024. But let’s indulge in what Einstein calls a Gedankenexperiment. Let’s say Trump wins in November. Let’s say further that he somehow manages to evade his enemies and actually take office at noon on January 20, 2025.  What should he do then?

Here is an incomplete list.

The overriding imperative, as I have argued before, must be to do everything possible to reduce the place of Washington in the metabolism of American political life. To this end, Trump should endeavor as far as possible to govern the country from outside of Washington. The first symbolic act should be to hold the inauguration someplace other than Washington. I do not insist that it be held in Mar-a-Lago, but why not?

As to specifics, on the first minute of the first day in office, Trump should take a page from Bill Clinton. He should fire every Democratic prosecutor. All of them. With immediate effect.

One of the first things the Clintons did was to fire the head of the IRS and put their own man in place. Trump should do the same. Ditto for the FBI. In 2017, Trump left Sally Yates, a left-wing Democrat, in effective charge of the DOJ. She was a disaster.

There are thousands of political appointments in the gift of the president.  All Democrats and pajama-boy Republicans should be purged on day one by 12:02. All of them.

Washington is the headquarters of the enemy camp. It is not simply that it is overwhelmingly Democrat, though it is that. More important is the fact that it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Party State.  What do I mean by the Party State?  I mean that hypertrophied faction that has gained control of the government of the country. It has a monopoly on virtually all the levers of power, cultural as well as political. It presides over a two-tier system of injustice in which its opponents are harassed, indicted, prosecuted, bankrupted, and jailed, even as malefactors in the protected party are quietly sent on their way with muted warnings or a gentle slap on the wrist.

In The Federalist, James Madison warned about the evils of faction. For most of its history, the United States escaped the worst abuses of that most toxic of political evils. Beginning perhaps with the advent of the ironically named “Great Society” in the mid-1960s, as Christopher Caldwell noted in his steely-eyed book The Age of Entitlement: America Since the 1960s, we have been living under a dual system. There is the Constitution, to which lip service is paid. Then there is what Caldwell calls the “rival” to the Constitution, the apparatus of entitlement. The Constitution aimed to limit the power and reach of government; its rival aims to make government triumph everywhere.

It took a while for this totalitarian system to mature and achieve full penetration.  With initiatives like DEI, ceaseless, omnivorous surveillance, and the machinery of universal censorship, the Party State has come of age. It finally happened under the aegis of Barack Obama and is consolidating its hold on power further even now.

I read that thousands upon thousands of truckers, squadrons of police, and national and state guards from 27 states are headed to Texas to challenge the open border proclaimed by the Party State. Will that challenge loosen its grip on power? Would the reelection of Donald Trump? The former, after a little drama, will most likely be absorbed into the paralysis of bureaucratic non-action. Trump’s victory, assuming it comes about, will be Pyrrhic unless he battles the Leviathan head-on. To the extent that he remains a creature of Washington, however, he will fail.

Earlier in the day the Financial Times’ Ukraine correspondent highlighted the unconfirmed reports widely circulating that Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny has been fired by President Zelensky. “I’ve also heard from sources it’s ‘true’ he’s fired & ‘not yet.’ Ukrainian media claims a decree dismissing him but not yet published. MoD tells media ‘not true’, wrote FT’s Christopher Miller. 

Another Ukraine war watcher noted the significance of the timing of the persistent rumors: “Rumors suggest that Zelensky will now fire General Valery Zaluzhny – Zelensky is in a very difficult position as Ukrainian lines are about to collapse, and he needs more loyal people around him.”

Still others said that despite this still being on the level of rumor and unconfirmed, the scope of the ‘leak’ seems broad, suggesting big news is indeed likely around the corner. If it happens it could mark a huge shift in the nearly 2-year long conflict, as Zelensky would likely transition toward finding a scapegoat on which to blame losing the war, and then perhaps negotiations toward ceasefire could finally begin.

Below is reporting in the Kyiv Independent, as speculation runs rampant:

Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhny may have been dismissed on Jan. 29, according to sources of the Kyiv Independent and several other Ukrainian media.

No official decree has been published on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s website yet.

A Kyiv Independent source in the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces confirmed that Zaluzhnyi was fired. The source wasn’t authorized to speak to the press.

Neither Zaluzhnyi nor Zelensky have made any public comments yet.

As far as sourcing, the Ukrainian media report explains, “The news was first reported in the early evening of Jan. 29 by a group of anonymous Telegram channels, including some that have reported insider information coming from the Presidential Office of Ukraine before. At the same time, Telegram channels have been known to report misleading stories and spread misinformation.”

The Ukrainian government has denied reports of Zaluzhny’s firing…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s spokesperson Serhii Nikiforov and other Ukrainian sources denied reports that Zelensky was consulting with Western partners about — and maybe already signed — an order dismissing military chief Valery Zaluzhny.

Is it pure rumor and falsehood? Or are we now witnessing Zelensky officials scrambling to get back out in front of the leak? 

In December, as a dispute over broader strategy between Zelensky and Zaluzhnyi became more public, Zelensky awkwardly said at a press conference, “He and the General Staff (of Ukraine’s Armed Forces) are responsible for the situation on the battlefield. There are many issues to address there.”

Zelensky’s spokesman has joined the Ukrainian MOD in denying the rumors about Zaluzhny’s firing. It does, however, seem that there is a shakeup in the works. But I’m doubtful it will happen tonight. And this chaos could impact whether it happens at all. Let’s see how it plays out

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) January 29, 2024

Back in November Gen. Zaluzhny riled the Zelensky administration and external allies by being the first top official to paint a very negative picture of how Ukraine’s military was fairing on the battlefield. He made the remarks to The Economist and the admission quickly caught the eye of other major publications, most notably The New York Times, which underscored “His comments marked the first time a top Ukrainian commander said the fighting had reached an impasse…”.

Additionally, the NYT described that “It is the most candid assessment so far by a leading Ukrainian official of the military’s stalled counteroffensive.”

Monday’s rumor mill started with a message from a foreign correspondent with The Economist…

*Ukr ministry of defence has denied this is happening. That does not mean it won’t. As I say, we await confirmation.

— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) January 29, 2024

Gen. Zaluzhny had bluntly asserted in the initial interview, “Just like in the First World War we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.” He then emphasized: “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.” He is said to have been at odds with Zelensky ever since, but firing the head of Ukraine’s armed forces would be seen as a major ‘win’ for Moscow.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of Oilprice.com

Canada’s western provinces have been hit by the worst drought in years and provincial utilities are getting into losses as their hydropower generating capacities are lower amid low reservoir levels.

In British Columbia, drought in the past year has forced BC Hydro to draw water for hydropower generation from the least affected areas and to import electricity, executives have told Bloomberg.

British Columbia’s utility corporation has been importing more electricity from neighboring Alberta and from some western U.S. states. No blackouts are expected but electricity imports have increased in recent months.

“These are steps we will continue to take in the coming months,” BC Hydro spokesman Kyle Donaldson told Bloomberg, describing the drought conditions as “historic”.

Last year, BC Hydro said in October that it “prepares year-round and has stepped up its vegetation management program in recent years given the drought and weather-related challenges.”

“Although BC Hydro’s smaller plants on the South Coast have recovered, its larger facilities in the north and southeast of the province are still at lower-than-normal reservoir water levels for this time of year,” the company said at the time.

“BC Hydro is taking steps to actively manage the drought, including conserving water by drawing on less impacted regions and importing more power – a common activity during low water years.”

During the record peak hourly electricity demand in the cold snap in the middle of January 2024, BC Hydro said that “Though the historic drought has impacted some of BC Hydro’s largest reservoirs – the source of water for the clean power it generates – in the north and southeast of the province, its team has been planning in real-time for over a year to manage these conditions.”

According to data from the federal government, Canada is the second-largest producer of hydroelectricity in the world. Hydropower generation has typically accounted for around 60% of the country’s electricity supply, with British Columbia and Manitoba the key hydropower-generating provinces.  

As the Biden administration risks European energy security with a ‘pause‘ on LNG exports, US foreign trade policy has allies wondering just ‘what the hell’ is going on.

In short, turns out Biden did not reverse a slew of Trump-era pro-America trade barriers in place, excluded European companies from subsidies designed to help US manufacturers, and poked the panda with restrictions on Chinese access to American technology.

Many Europeans fear that Trump, seemingly en route to the Republican nomination, might abandon Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as inject chaos into global trade. They have nonetheless come to believe that regardless of the winner of the expected Biden-Trump rematch, U.S. economic policies have tilted from their favor. “The honeymoon is over,” one European diplomat said. –Wall Street Journal

Now, European diplomats and officials are wondering if the bloc can even rely on the US to continue backing the rules-based trading system – or if economic conflict that seemed a certainty under Trump is in the cards no matter what.

“We are an old couple, and we have our issues,” said French trade minister, Oliver Brecht, to US trade rep Katherine Tai last month during a visit to Washington. “But we should be careful to manage our trade differences.”

The more things change…

In 2019, the tone at a 70th anniversary NATO party was somber, according to Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA), who was present at the London party. Attendees suggested that the alliance might not survive Donald Trump.

“The joke that kept getting repeated, and this was gallows humor, was, ‘Well, let’s enjoy this party because there’s a real question of whether we’ll have a 75th anniversary party,’” said Boyle.

A sigh of relief at Biden’s election has quickly turned to worry, however. Despite the US president cheering NATO’s expansion after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO members were blindsided by Biden upholding some of Trump’s worldview – casting unfettered global trade as a national-security threat, and warning that the hollowed-out US industrial base has harmed American workers and given China room to expand, dominating several industries.

Very Trumpian, no?

For starters, while Biden virtue signaled by suspending Trump-era tariffs on European steel and aluminum, it wasn’t permanent, and European metal exporters were hit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars last year.

European leaders sought repeatedly to persuade Biden to kill the tariffs. In October, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, European Council President Charles Michel and other EU officials arrived in Washington for a summit, where they had hoped to put the issue to bed.

In talks ahead of the summit, U.S. officials had pushed for the EU to impose tariffs on Chinese metals as part of a deal, a step some Europeans worried might violate World Trade Organization rules. The night before the White House meetings, EU diplomats reviewed a proposed joint statement, which was the product of last-minute negotiations between the U.S. and the bloc’s executive arm. After review, some of the diplomats said the statement sounded like the bloc would be willing to back those tariffs as part of an eventual deal. -WSJ

“There was just a barrage of member states going, ‘What the hell?’” said one European diplomat.

Ahead of that October summit, the US tried to temper EU anger over Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which showered tax breaks on clean-energy industries in an effort to lure foreign companies to open US-based factories and source local materials. In short, a Trump tactic.

While European leaders of course praised the climate-alarmism, from an economic perspective they were pissed – as the law would undoubtedly disadvantage their own clean-energy rackets, luring investment dollars away from the EU.

“You’re hurting my country,” French President Emmanuel Macron told Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) – who wrote much of that law, at a White House dinner a few months after the IRA was signed into law.

Europe has further bristled at conditions for a $7500 US tax credit for buying a new EV which stipulates that the car must be assembled in North America, and that its batteries must include minerals and parts from the US or one of its free-trade partners, in an attempt to weaken China’s grip over the materials industry.

Of note, Europe doesn’t have a free-trade agreement with the US – which Manchin says he didn’t know when he wrote the law.

Early last year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz complained to Manchin that the U.S. subsidies hurt the German auto industry. Manchin was dismissive. On his phone, he presented a search result to the German leader that showed EU auto tariffs were higher than U.S. levies, according to a person familiar with the exchange. A German government spokesman declined to comment on the content of the conversation. -WSJ

Meanwhile, discussions between the Biden administration and European firms on a new trade deal to help European battery producers has been ‘bogged down,’ according to the report.

They think they’re hot shit?

According to White House climate adviser John Podesta, the naysayers are wrong.

“Yeah, there’s a certain amount of bitching, but I think in reality what it’s done is spurred action,” he said in October.

On Tuesday, US and EU officials will once again meet in Washington – this time for a gathering of the Trade and Technology Council, set up during the Biden administration in order to coordinate on trade, economy, and technology. The agenda includes clean energy and artificial intelligence, however no action is expected according to an EU official.

The Biden administration can’t decide on what to do in Venezuela, though as we’ve noted the priority has clearly thus far been about dropping the pretense that the US actually cares for democracy in pursuit of finding a favorable price at which to stabilize oil during an election year.

The White House now says it plans to restore sanctions on Venezuela’s energy sector, but only if the Maduro government upholds the ban on prominent opposition candidate María Corina Machado. Buying more time, kicking that can a bit further…

Just days ago on Friday, the country’s supreme court upheld a ruling that previously saw her banned from the ballot, which was a reaction by authorities to her open support of US sanctions against Caracas and for allegations of corruption. In a sense, she’s the Juan Guaidó back-up plan.

Going into this year’s Venezuelan presidential election, expected for the latter half of 2024, Maduro officials have accused Machado of doing the bidding of enemy intelligence agencies, namely the CIA. 

What is clear is that she has indeed long been part of the political opposition which has worked closely with US government groups. She has even made statements calling for the overthrow of the Maduro government such as, “I am saying very clearly that this regime is only going to leave when faced with the real, severe, and imminent threat of an international coalition with humanitarian goals.”

As for Biden’s ‘playbook’ and options when it comes to potentially seeing through the “deal” it struck with Maduro (Biden’s easing of oil sanctions was supposed to be based on President Nicolás Maduro agreeing to significant democratic reform and an even playing field in the 2024 election), Bloomberg newly reports on Monday:

The US will allow a six-month suspension on sanctions to expire in April if opposition candidate María Corina Machado is barred from running, and is also considering additional measures, according to the officials, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.

To some degree, we see the remnant blowback effects of past US policy (and widely known intelligence support for the Venezuelan opposition) on current policy, and Biden’s needing to salvage this deal based on accessing Venezuelan oil…

As of October, the US had already granted Caracas a license authorizing oil and gas sector transactions as a “good will gesture” but with the key caveat being that Maduro would stick to an agreed-up reform roadmap. 

However, “The US Treasury Department said at the time that the license would be renewed only if Maduro’s government stuck to an agreed electoral roadmap and met other commitments regarding people who were wrongfully detained.” But so far he doesn’t seem so willing to be “brought in from the cold”. 

For now, Bloomberg notes the game plan is just about buying time, and yet the Maduro side seems to be in the driver’s seat. “Waiting until April to restore the sanctions would give time for the US to negotiate with the Maduro regime and the opposition to find a way to get Machado on the ballot,” the report says.

Another day in the clown admin

How it started

How it’s going pic.twitter.com/leQ2sUMtuK

— Stalingrad & Poorski (@Stalingrad_Poor) January 29, 2024

Biden admin hypocrisy (and US foreign policy hypocrisy in general) is increasingly being exposed for all to see as he is stuck between a rock of supporting an authoritarian dictator supposedly hell-bent on destroying democracy and a hard-place of rising oil prices (if sanctions are reinstated 200-300k less barrels of supply) and rising gasoline prices – none of which of course is an election winner.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

The oil and gas industry is expected to spend more than $1 trillion on natural gas supply, driven by demand for gas in Europe, climate campaign group Global Witness said on Monday in a new analysis of Rystad Energy data. 

The industry is set to invest $223 billion of the projected spending in the supply of natural gas for Europe by 2033, according to Global Witness’s analysis.

Europe’s gas demand is likely on a structural decline, but the continent needs supply to replace Russian pipeline gas, which was its top source until 2022. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the slashed Russian deliveries of gas, Europe has turned to LNG and increased pipeline supply from Norway and Africa to meet its demand.  

“Despite climate and energy experts’ warnings that any new fossil fuel production will push the world beyond 1.5°C heating, $223 billion of this trillion dollar sum is set to go on developing and operating new gas extraction sites to supply Europe,” Global Witness says.

The supermajors ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies, Equinor, and Eni will be the top spenders of that sum—together, these five companies are on track to spend a combined $144 billion into gas supply for Europe over the next decade, according to Global Witness.

“The numbers are stark – Europe is hurtling down a dangerous path by doubling down on fossil gas, and needs to pull out all the stops to end the age of fossil fuels,” Dominic Eagleton, senior fossil fuels campaigner at Global Witness, said in a statement.

“The European Commission must seize its chance to quicken Europe’s exit from gas and set 2035 as a target date to phase out this costly, crisis-ridden and climate-boiling fossil fuel.”

Just last week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that lower prices and higher demand this winter are set to drive a return to strong growth in global natural gas consumption in 2024.

This year, natural gas demand is set for 2.5% growth, following a meager 0.5% increase in 2023, the IEA said in its latest Gas Market Report for Q1 2024.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Donald Trump gave one of his best and most conciliatory speeches of his political career after his win in the recent Iowa primaries—that might explain why the media would not cover it.

Later, to answer an ad hoc ambush reporter’s question whether he would hold grudges, he emphatically said he did not.

Yet after his win in New Hampshire, Trump went ballistic at Nikki Haley’s earlier charges that he, rather than Joe Biden, was cognitively challenged, past his prime, and a perennial loser of popular votes.

In response, Trump shed his short-lived Iowa temperance. He went wholehog after Haley’s dress and her affectations and trashed her character. He tweeted that she was a “birdbrain,” and on and on.

For six years, observers have noted the disconnect between Trump’s stellar record of governance, his occasional sense of humor and even self-criticism—and his ad hominem venom that often turns off the 3-7 percent of the electorate in the suburbs who otherwise might vote for him.

Reasonable calls to tone it down by pundits, aides, and friends do not work with Trump, and perhaps for several understandable reasons.

One, Trump is reactive in his “they started it, I finish it” mode. His theory of deterrence is to be disproportionate in retort to eliminate future preemptive attacks. Almost all of Trump’s crudeness was in disproportionate response, sometimes even to minor offenses.

In such a world of Trump deterrence, if you do not relish a crude Trump, then don’t first talk about cutting off his head, blowing him up, stabbing him, shooting him, or lighting him on fire, or don’t spread lies like “Russian collusion,” “laptop disinformation,” or that the influence-selling Biden consortium was innocent of shaking down foreign interests for millions of dollars that were routed into the clan’s coffers.

To put it another way, remember how Barack Obama went ballistic over the yarns, often fueled by Trump himself, that he was born in Kenya (a mythos he himself fueled by allowing his book to be plugged as the work of a Kenyan-born, exotic-named author, e.g., “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”).

But what would a prickly Obama have done had right-wing prosecutors, mirror images of a Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, or Jack Smith, indicted him over his garnering and intentionally not reporting the names of major contributors in 2008 (rather than the federal election commission taking five years to fine Obama $375,000 for what was essentially campaign fraud).

What would Obama have said or done had a federal prosecutor indicted him for bribery, extortion, or tax fraud over the illegal Tony Rezko lot deal? What would have been his reaction to his “wingman.” Eric Holder’s, being jailed for his refusal to obey a congressional subpoena (such a transgression may well earn both Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro jail sentences).

Trump was pilloried for the Russian collusion farce. But the reality was that the 2015-17 Russian collusion conspiracy farce was discussed and greenlighted in the West Wing by a lame-duck but knowledgeable Obama, who unleashed his FBI, CIA, and DOJ to do whatever, legal or not, it took to stop Donald Trump.

Currently, Donald Trump was just fined $83.3 by a left-wing New York jury presided over by a left-wing judge in a suit filed by a left-wing writer who was funded by a left-wing Silicon Valley billionaire—all possible because a left-wing state legislator had recently lifted the statute of limitations on allegations of sexual assault to allow three-decade-old charges like E. Jean Carroll’s to be refiled.

So Trump blew up and charged out of the courtroom, lost his cool in the courtroom, and hurt any slight chance he had to escape such an outrageous and politicized fine.

But again, note the surreal nature of the suit. Carrol cannot remember even the year in which she and Trump, she claims, ended up in a department store dressing room.

She was mistaken about the dress she wore on the day of the assault.

Long after the alleged assault, she praised Trump’s Apprentice as her favorite TV show.

She created an app game called Damn Love, described as:

“You’re shown two people who are madly in love. Your object is to break them up. Shown a pair of options, you choose the ones more likely to stir up shit, given each person’s personality and proclivities, and the quicker you can make them split, the more you increase your evilness and rise through the ranks.”

Carroll’s narrative about being sexually assaulted in a department store dressing room is eerily almost the identical narrative of a 2012 “Law & Order: SVU” episode that focused on an alleged sexual assault in the lingerie dressing room of the very same Bergdorf Goodman department store. Coincidence or inspiration?

And thus, to refute all the above, Trump was criminalized as a defamer and fined $83 million.

Under such rules of evidence and damages, what would Joe Biden have had to pay when his former senatorial aide, Tara Reade, accused him of a sexual assault, only to be widely defamed by legions of Biden’s left-wing flacks?

So much of Trump’s rage is an understandable reaction to the sustained, unhinged venom of the media and left.

Two, Trump’s base, unlike his other supporters, does not differentiate between Trump’s solid governance and his volatile character.

They see what he does and says not as antithetical but complementary. Trump, in the base’s view, gets things done precisely because he displays open, unfiltered contempt for the swamp, the bipartisan political class, the globalists, and the media.

His 24/7 bellicosity, MAGA diehards feel, ensures he will always be hated by the media and establishment—and thus not compromised even if he wished to be. In other words, for MAGA, whom a president is despised by is more important than by whom he is liked. For the base, the role of a mercurial and disruptive Clinton Eastwood gunslinger is preferable to that of a jolly Roy Rodgers crooner.

Three, Trump is seen as the MAGA rabid pit bull, who, from time to time, is to be unleashed and pointed in the proper direction.

For those who were smeared collectively and nonstop by Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or a late John McCain variously as clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, racists, sexists, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, chumps, dregs, semi-fascists, hobbits, bizarros, and crazies—and as smelly and toothless by the media—Trump is their payback.

Has a Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, or Adam Schiff ever apologized to the nation for daily lying to the American people that the Biden family was never compromised by or profited from Hunter Biden’s skullduggery, that Christopher Steele’s dossier was authentic, that Hunter’s laptop was cooked up in Moscow, or that COVID sprung from a bat or pangolin?

So for the Trump voter, those nightly, serial lies had more deleterious consequences for the nation than a leaked Trump private conversation in which he supposedly said Haiti was a “sh-thole” country.

All of the above may explain, though not defend, what appears to the bicoastal elite and even many Trump supporters as irrational, if not self-destructive, behavior.

However, why Trump does what he does still does not address the central question of 2024—what is now in Trump’s own self-interest—and the country’s?

Before answering that question, most would object that it does not matter. Trump cannot help himself even if he tried, as if Heraclitus was right that a man’s nature is his fate (ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων, often loosely translated as “character is destiny”).

Yet there are reasons to suggest that Trump, in fact, could scale back the ad hominem invective.

One, in the past, he has been magnanimous and certainly did not go after enemies or subvert the levers of government in the manner of the Obama administration that weaponized the DOJ and had West Wing meetings, where the Steele dossier and Hillary Clinton’s subterfuge were openly condoned, if not abetted.

Two, the 2024 election is different from both 2016 and 2020. There is no longer a COVID ruse to change voting laws or conduct a surrogate campaign.

Instead, the left is open now about its intentions to put Biden on ice in his basement, outsource the campaign to handlers and the media, count on billions from big tech and finance to ensure 70 percent of swing state balloting is not on Election Day, and blast Trump as a January 6 insurrectionary and murderer of women in need of abortions.

They will seek to keep him off the ballot in dozens of states and coordinate four prosecutions to jail him during the campaign season. The near billion dollars infused into the election to alter voting laws in 2020 will be seen as child’s play in 2024.

More importantly, the country is imploding in 2024 in a way it was not in 2020, when there was still a border, deterrence abroad, coherent energy policies, deterrent police, and a semblance of the rule of law.

Now there is simply no margin of error.

To be elected, Trump will have to win the popular vote by at least 4-5 percent. What’s more, the error/rejection rate on mail-in/early balloting in most states will be a fraction of what it had been pre-COVID. 2020 taught us that the more purple states are flooded with massive non-election ballots under 2020 altered ballot rules, the more the normal rejection percent of unsubstantiated or illegal ballots declines.

Trump has an enormous responsibility in 2024 to stay calm, reach out, and get even rather than mad.

Why?

For millions, he is now seen as the last and only obstacle to what more than half of America believes is the sustained, left-wing attempt to turn the nation into something unrecognizable—an imploding country of open borders, with two million illegal entries per year, racial separatism and tribal chauvinism, the end of deterrence abroad, soaring crime and homelessness, $35 trillion in debt with $2 trillion annual deficits, wars on natural gas and oil, and warping of the administrative state and the law to punish enemies and reward friends.

In sum, Trump should ignore Haley and his old vulture critics in the media and on the left as much as he can.

He must concentrate on the disaster of the Biden administration and reiterate nonstop the agendas of 2025 that will save us from tottering on the brink.

That forbearance demands that he speak and campaign in the only way that can win the election: unite the Republican Party, the conservative movement, the MAGA base, independents, disaffected Democrats, minorities, and even Never Trumpers into an eleventh-hour coalition to stop the revolution in our midst before it consumes us all.

A majority of Generation Z recently said in a Gallup and Walton Family Foundation-State of American Youth Survey that higher education is “very important” or “fairly important.” However, many of these youngsters are coming to age in an era of failed ‘Bidenomics‘ – have taken to social media and complained about poverty life shortly after graduating college. 

For the intelligent GenZers who have already figured out that many college degrees are worthless, plus $100,000 in student debt can delay home purchases and starting a family, a new report from The Wall Street Journal reveals one job that can pay upwards of $400,000 per year with no college degree: Walmart store manager.

WSJ said store managers will soon be able to earn upwards of $20,000 in annual stock grants and an up-to-200% bonus each year. With a base pay of $128,000, managers at superstores without a college degree can now earn up to $400,000 per year. 

Many of these managers start on the ground floor and could take years to achieve the store manager position. These folks oversee 350 workers and over $100 million in annual revenue. It’s about time Walmart invested in staff while politicians have condemned the mega-retailer for prioritizing billions of dollars of stock buys over workers. 

John Furner, Walmart’s US chief executive, explained that the store manager’s job has become more complex in the last several years because of e-commerce orders.

He said the automatic stock grant allows managers to “act like owners because they are.” 

The job might not be pretty, but it’s better than attempting to be an aspiring social media influencer or degrading yourself on OnlyFans. 

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Minnesota farmer is suing the state over an agricultural grant program that discriminates on the basis of race and sex.

The program, called the Down Payment Assistance Grant Program, provides up to $15,000 in funding to help “emerging” farmers purchase farmland. It is administered by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Rural Finance Authority.

Applicants must be Minnesota residents who have never owned a farm, earn less than $250,000 annually in gross agricultural sales, will farm the land for at least five years, and who will provide most of the labor and management of the farm.

According to the department, to be eligible, applicants must be women, veterans, disabled, American Indian or Alaskan Native, 35 or younger, urban, “members of a community of color,” individuals who are “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or asexual (LGBTQIA+),” or “any other emerging farmers as determined by the commissioner.”

The plaintiff, Lance Nistler of Kelliher, Minnesota, is a white man who wants to purchase 40 acres of farmland in Beltrami County, Minnesota, for growing soybeans, oats, and wheat. He currently works on his relatives’ farm.

He complied with all eligibility requirements when he sought the grant. Out of 176 applicants, Lance was selected ninth in the grant lottery, but he was placed at the end of the list. Unknown to him at the time, the program put a premium on “emerging” farmers—as the department defines them—when awarding funds, regardless of lottery results, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF). The foundation, a Sacramento, California-based national public interest law firm that fights government abuses, is representing Mr. Nistler.

The state prioritizes grants to these emerging farmers, and any funding that remains may be awarded to non-emerging farmer applicants in the order of their lottery placement.

The legal complaint (pdf) in Nistler v. Walz was filed on Jan. 24 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.

The defendants are Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Thom Peterson, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Both men are being sued in their official capacities.

PLF attorney Andrew Quinio weighed in on the case.

“Minnesota believes Lance Nistler is less deserving of a farm because he has the wrong skin color and sex.

“It is unfair for the government to advantage or disadvantage anyone for benefits based on immutable characteristics like race and sex. Lance Nistler seeks to be treated equally with any other prospective farmer,” the lawyer said.

In an interview, Mr. Quinio said, “this is an egregious case of discrimination against a hard-working farmer who wanted the opportunity to buy his own farm through this down payment assistance grant.

“I think what makes this so egregious is the grant was within my client’s reach. Mr. Nistler was the ninth applicant drawn in the lottery. And then, because of the discriminatory criteria that the state implemented, basically rigging the system against him, his application was reshuffled to the back of the line because he’s not an emerging farmer … that is a racial minority, LGBTQ, [or] a woman farmer.”

He said the program, according to media outlets, was created “to address past discrimination,” but applicants “were never asked if they’ve been discriminated against in the past.”

“So we don’t know if anyone who’s actually been discriminated against has gotten grant funds,” he told The Epoch Times.

“The state’s just stereotyping people based on their skin color. And so they assume, because Mr. Nistler is a white male, that he’s less deserving of this grant money,” he said.

Mr. Quinio said he was optimistic about the lawsuit’s chances.

The grant program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, he said.

“The state just does not have a compelling interest to use race, nor does it have an exceedingly persuasive justification to use sex or gender. And I think that the case will bear that out,” he said.

The attorney was referring to the strict scrutiny test that courts use when reviewing legislative or executive branch enactments that have a bearing on constitutional rights. A government interest is deemed compelling when it is essential or necessary, as opposed to a matter of preference, choice, or discretion.

“I think we have a very good chance of prevailing given the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard,” Mr. Quinio said.

The Harvard case concerned the use of racially discriminatory admissions policies in the nation’s colleges.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that for too long, universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin.”

“Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice,” he wrote. Harvard’s admissions programs “cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Mr. Quinio said the Supreme Court’s decision “could not be any clearer,” and Mr. Nistler’s case is “a clear case of discrimination.”

“Whether it is college admissions or grants for farmers, the government cannot discriminate,” he added.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the offices of the Minnesota governor and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture but had not received any replies as of press time.

Days after a New York jury ordered Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million on top of the $5 million he was previously ordered to pay to sexual assault accuser E. Jean Carroll, the former president and 2024 GOP frontrunner now faces $370 million in penalties for allegedly committing years of financial fraud.

And instead of a jury deliberating, Judge Arthur Engoron, who hates Trump, has sole discretion over the penalty after anti-Trump New York Attorney General Letitia James (who called him an “Illegitimate president” during her run for AG) made the request for $370 million after originally seeking $250 million.

Engoron, who said earlier this month that he will try to issue a ruling in the case by Jan. 31, has already ruled that Trump committed years of fraud by inflating his wealth and assets in order to obtain preferential terms from banks. And because Trump waived his right to a trial by jury, Engoron will be the sole arbiter when it comes to claims and penalties.

James filed the civil lawsuit in 2022, accusing Trump and family members of financial fraud – inflating his net worth by as much as $3.6 billion for over a decade. James also says that Trump and his employees made false entries in business records, falsified financial statements, and committed insurance fraud.

The judge has already removed various business certificates from Trump, two of his sons, and the Trump Organization.

Trump took the stand in the case last November, but skipped a second testimony on Dec.11, saying on Truth Social: “I have already testified to everything & have nothing more to say other than that this is a complete & total election interference.”

As Axios notes, three of Trump’s children have testified in the case:

• Donald Trump Jr. denied having any role in preparing financial statements for the Trump Organization, saying during his testimony that accountants prepared them. The statements are at the center of the lawsuit.

• Eric Trump, meanwhile, sought to differentiate between general financial records created for the Trump Organization and statements of financial condition. He also claimed that he and his siblings are “collateral damage” of the case against their father.

• Ivanka Trump, who was dismissed from the lawsuit, testified she was not involved in preparing her father’s financial statements. The prosecution rested its case after her testimony.

Trump took the stand for nearly four hours in November, in which he and Engoron verbally jousted throughout.

Trump was slapped with a gag order in the case and fined twice, after he made comments disparaging Engoron’s staff. After it was temporarily lifted, a New York appeals court reinstated it after Trump made a post on his Truth Social account about the clerk.