Kamala Harris could lose the election for a multitude of reasons. For starters, she has alienated a great many
men, Christians, pro-life advocates, and Hispanic voters and has struggled to distinguish herself politically from President Joe Biden.

Axios
suggested on Sunday that what might ultimately cost Harris the White House is her strategic lack of transparency.

The left-leaning publication indicated that Harris and her team have repeatedly dodged questions about her political positions, responding with only, “No comment.”

Harris, dubbed the “‘no comment’ candidate,” has reportedly refused to indicate whether she still supports providing reparations to black Americans; “sanctuary cities”; the restoration of voting rights for all former prison inmates; welcoming multitudes of foreign nationals supposedly displaced by “climate change” to flood into the U.S.; providing taxpayer-funded sex-change mutilations to illegal aliens; ending the detention of illegal aliens; massive restrictions on drilling for oil; giving millions of illegal aliens smuggled into the country a pathway to citizenship; ending the death penalty; forcing automakers to cease building gas-burning vehicles by 2035; decriminalizing prostitution; closing private, for-profit prisons; and abolishing the Senate filibuster.

‘There’s no indication that Harris needs to offer specific, potentially divisive policies on any issue.’

In an apparent effort to appeal to moderates without disenchanting radical leftists, Harris —
reportedly the second-most liberal Democratic to serve in the U.S. Senate in the 21st century — has tried to run out the clock on answering questions about what she actually believes in, responding only with doublespeak and conflicting messages.

For example, when Harris finally sat down for an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash in August after dodging the press for five weeks, the vice president
said, “My values have not changed.” This quote prompted numerous sleuths to dig into what policies Harris previously signaled support for.

After KFile highlighted Harris’ radical responses to a 2019
American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire, CNN’s investigative outfit asked her campaign about whether the vice president’s values had in fact changed — whether she still supported decriminalizing crack nationwide, giving felons taxpayer-funded sex-change operations, and exacerbating the border crisis.

The Harris campaign responded with
a lengthy non-answer about how her “positions have been shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden-Harris administration.”

There were hints earlier on — besides Harris’ refusal to sit down for interviews — that the vice president might be noncommittal policy-wise, short on answers, and keen to prioritize style over substance.

The Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber
noted in August that Harris’ “oddball charm satisfies the content demands of the moment,” suggesting that it mattered less what Harris was saying and more how she said it.

The New Republic
recommended in September that Harris ignore the pressure to commit to specific agenda items and to instead rely on a “vibes- and values-based argument”:

There’s no indication that Harris needs to offer specific, potentially divisive policies on any issue — and all of the early signs suggest that doing so would be a mistake. Harris herself is not a wonk — she flopped in 2020 in part because she struggled to compete in a wonky, policy-heavy primary. And yet, even if she were a policy dork, there’s little reason to believe that it would necessarily boost her chances: In 2016, Hillary Clinton offered more than 200 distinct policy proposals and lost.

It’s left to be seen whether Harris’ refusal to own up to her real views helped or hurt her cause electorally. However, Axios’ Alex Thompson noted that “if she loses, she and her team will be blamed for leaving voters foggy about her true views and self. And President Biden will be blamed for backing a candidate with such a liberal track record.”

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​Chameleon, Kamala harris, Harris, Leftist, No comment, Election, Trump, Policy, Agenda, Politics, Media 

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution clearly outlines the rights of those accused of crimes, including the right to legal counsel. Traditionally, this right has enjoyed universal support across the political spectrum. However, the landscape changed dramatically after the election of President Donald Trump and the left losing its collective mind.

A “legal watchdog group” now discourages lawyers from representing Trump, threatening retribution against those who choose to defend him. This is gangster government stuff.

Efforts to deny legal counsel to those out of favor with those in power set a dangerous precedent. Criminalizing those who provide that counsel is even worse.

To clarify, the warning specifically targets lawyers representing Trump in election fraud challenges. However, the history of attacks on Trump’s attorneys suggests it also serves as a warning to any lawyer who might represent him in future criminal defense cases.

According to the New York Times:

After the 2020 election, legal watchdogs, outraged at some of their colleagues, filed scores of ethics complaints against lawyers who used their skills in questionable ways to help former President Donald J. Trump stay in power.

And in the past few years, the groups have had some notable successes, securing judgments that have led to pro-Trump lawyers like John Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani having their law licenses deactivated.

Eastman and Giuliani lost their law licenses for a very simple reason: They represented Trump. Their disbarment was a warning to any other lawyer who would represent Trump in the future.

The Times story highlights a group called the 65 Project as one taking “a more proactive approach” against any lawyers who would dare help Trump ensure that the presidential election is above board. The group last month began running ads in “legal journals published in swing states, reminding lawyers that they are ethically barred from bringing false claims on behalf of any client.”

“Don’t risk your law license by joining an effort to subvert democracy,” one ad reads. “We — and the public — are watching.”

The 65 Project has issued a specific warning: Any lawyer who counsels Trump in challenging election results will face personal repercussions that could threaten his or her professional livelihood.

But think back to the 2000 “hanging chad” election. Both George W. Bush and Al Gore had legal teams acting on their behalf as Gore attempted to overturn Bush’s Florida victory, which ultimately decided the presidential election. By the logic of the 65 Project, all lawyers who represented Gore could have faced disbarment for attempting to deny Bush his lawful election win.

Notably, while Gore and his team of “election-denying” attorneys sought to “subvert democracy” after the 2000 election, no one on the right argued that Gore’s lawyers should be disbarred for representing him. Today, however, Democrats and the left seek to professionally and financially ruin any lawyer who accepts employment with Donald Trump.

And the threat isn’t limited to lawyers who would represent Trump in election fraud cases. The left also wants to punish those willing to defend Trump against criminal charges.

Attorney Todd Blanche had the audacity to provide defense counsel for Donald Trump in one of the criminal cases Trump is facing. This is clear Sixth Amendment territory — the accused has the right to counsel.

But Democrats and the media have attempted to destroy Blanche for daring to represent Trump, accusing him of “ethical violations” and calling for punishment. And what was Blanche’s offense? He nodded his head in court.

Seriously.

“Todd Blanche nodding his head to Trump’s statement that he can’t testify because of the gag order is a very serious ethical violation in the middle of a criminal trial,” attorney Ron Filipkowski, who edits the left-wing MeidasTouch blog, wrote on X. Judge Juan Merchan “must absolutely grill Blanche and get to the bottom of why he lied to his client about his rights.”

Efforts to deny legal counsel to those out of favor with those in power set a dangerous precedent. Criminalizing those who provide that counsel is even worse. The left should consider the consequences of this precedent carefully, as a two-tier justice system where only one side is entitled to legal counsel cannot exist in this country.

​Donald trump, Lawfare, Lawfare against trump, Sixth amendment, Trump trials, Legal defense, Todd blanche, Crime, 2024 presidential election, Stop the steal, Voter fraud, Election integrity, Opinion & analysis 

New Hampshire 2nd Congressional District candidate Lily Tang Williams delivered a blistering assault on Thursday against her opponent, Maggie Goodlander.

Goodlander is a former Biden administration Department of Justice official. She is married to national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

During a Thursday debate, Goodlander accused Tang Williams of catering to the wealthiest Americans by supporting tax breaks.

‘You pretend you are poor.’

“She believes that we should give a break to the wealthiest and the biggest corporations and hope for the best, hope that the results will trickle down to hardworking people,” Goodlander stated.

“I take a very different approach. I believe that the middle class deserves a tax cut, and I believe that we will do a lot for this country by ensuring that we don’t continue this disastrous tax policy,” she added.

Without missing a beat, Tang Williams fired back, accusing Goodlander of being a multimillionaire herself who is out of touch with the struggles of everyday Americans.

“You are wealthy. You’re worth $20 million to $30 million. How do you know about regular people’s suffering? Do you go shopping? Go to Walmart? Buy food? I talk to those people. And you pretend to be a renter in Nashua a few months ago, move back to run for this open seat with millions of dollars from Washington, D.C., insiders,” Tang Williams told Goodlander.

Goodlander rents an apartment in Nashua. If she wins the election, she has stated she will purchase property in the district, according to the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism.

“I don’t have money to run a TV ad, and you pretend you are poor, complain rent is so high,” Tang Williams continued. “You do not understand regular people’s concerns.”

“Just go back to your $2 million home in Portsmouth,” she remarked. “You do not understand regular people’s concerns.”

Tang Williams’ fiery rebuttal went viral on social media.

According to the Daily Beast and the New York Times, Goodlander and Sullivan purchased a $1.2 million home in Portsmouth in 2018.

Earlier this year, Goodlander was torched for complaining that rent costs are “too damn high” while holding millions of dollars in real estate.

Tang Williams was raised in China during Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution. She came to the United States with only $100 and became a citizen in 1994.

Following the viral debate moment, Tang Williams posted on X, “I have the fire in my belly to fight for the people in #NH02. I will always tell the truth.”

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​Politics, Election 2024, New hampshire, Election, Lily tang williams, Maggie goodlander, Jake sullivan, Economy, News 

Have you ever wondered why reporters don’t seem to hesitate to say and repeat things about Donald Trump that simply aren’t true — as if they have no fear of defamation liability?

This sort of thing happens because the U.S. Supreme Court about 60 years ago invented a First Amendment doctrine that protects the media from defamation liability, at least in lawsuits brought by public figures.

The ‘actual malice’ standard technically allows the media to defame politicians of both parties equally. But they don’t. Not by a mile.

If you’re wondering which words in the First Amendment tell reporters they are free to defame activists, politicians, and other public figures without fear of being sued, you’re on the right track. Nothing in the text, structure, or original public understanding of the First Amendment talks about or even leads logically to an absurd rule insulating the media from defamation liability.

The fact that the Constitution doesn’t support this rule didn’t stop the Supreme Court from deciding in a 1964 case called New York Times v. Sullivan that a defamation action brought by a public figure cannot succeed unless the defendant acted with “actual malice.”

The Supreme Court defined “actual malice” to mean knowledge of the offending statement’s falsity or reckless disregard as to its truthfulness. For obvious reasons, the news media industry loves Sullivan, as it gives reporters and media companies almost a complete pass when it comes to defaming public figures.

But the fact that media companies love the Sullivan case doesn’t change the fact that the Supreme Court invented this doctrine out of thin air.

Even if one thinks immunizing media companies against defamation liability might be a good idea for policy reasons, that doesn’t change the fact that it finds no support in the Constitution. As a practical matter, moreover, it’s become apparent that New York Times v. Sullivan disproportionately — indeed, overwhelmingly — helps Democrats and creates a severe disadvantage for Republicans in the political process.

Think about it: The media are all but immune from defamation liability when speaking about public figures, including politicians, so, given that the media are almost seamlessly aligned with Democrats, they can hit Republicans more or less all they want without fear.

And they do!

In essence, all the media must do to avoid liability when attacking Donald Trump and other Republican politicians is have some thin, arguable basis to show that when they defamed a Republican, they didn’t know they were speaking falsely.

That means they can be negligent when speaking falsely about Republican politicians like Trump.

Of course, reporters will insist “that’s not fair to say New York Times v. Sullivan allows us to single out Republicans. After all, the same standard applies regardless of a politician’s party affiliation.” But that overlooks the overwhelming, increasingly obvious bias within the news industry in America.

So yes, the “actual malice” standard technically allows the media to defame politicians of both parties equally. But they don’t. Not by a mile.

Thus, not only is the Sullivan decision wrong because it isn’t rooted in the Constitution (but claims to be), but it also leaves countless victims of defamation without recourse, encourages lazy journalism, and provides a huge, unfair advantage to Democrats in politics.

Some jurists and legal scholars have noted that it may be time for the Supreme Court to revisit New York Times v. Sullivan and that litigants facing this standard should begin making arguments for overturning that unfortunate precedent.

In any event, it’s wrong for Democrats to enjoy an unfair advantage arising out of a fake constitutional doctrine created out of thin air by the Supreme Court 60 years ago.

Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from a thread that appeared on X (formerly Twitter).

​Libel laws, Libel and defamation, New york times v sullivan, Media bias, Defamation lawsuit, Donald trump, Fake news, Constitution, Supreme court, Opinion & analysis 

Despite the Taylor Swifts, the Beyonces, and the Mark Hamills, the majority of Hollywood is secretly voting for Donald Trump, according to actor Zachary Levi.

And it’s not necessarily because they like him. He’s just their only shot at keeping their job.

“Do you think, Zachary, there are a lot more stars in Hollywood who are now leaning towards voting Trump than would actually admit it?” Piers Morgan asked Levi on an episode of “Piers Morgan Uncensored.”

“I do think there’s a lot of people in Hollywood that would love to vote for a Democratic candidate because they really don’t like Trump … but they’re not just voting for Donald; they’re voting for that entire unity party,” Levi said, pointing to the reality that the country did better under Trump than it has under Biden.

Part of what made it better is that we didn’t fear that AI would be allowed to eliminate our jobs. But that’s been a huge concern under the Biden regime. When did the Hollywood actors’ strike occur after all? Not under a Trump administration.

Now, Levi meets with Blaze Media host Dave Rubin to unpack why Hollywood actors are more likely to vote for Donald Trump.

– YouTube

www.youtube.com

“I really believe that AI is about to disrupt this entire world — every single industry. … When you start putting AI in the robotics that are getting very, very good, you can essentially replace all of the workforce in the world,” says Levi, adding that “it’s going to start in a place like Hollywood” that relies heavily on “audio and video.”

He has a message for the Hollywood actors and actresses who are afraid to voice support for Donald Trump because it might cost them jobs: “There won’t be any jobs” if Kamala Harris wins.

“Anyone in my industry who’s still sitting on your hands and you’re scared … I really believe that this is the moment,” he says. “We are at the precipice of either saving the free world or not.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above.

Want more from Dave Rubin?

To enjoy more honest conversations, free speech, and big ideas with Dave Rubin, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The rubin report, Dave rubin, Blazetv, Blaze media, Zach levi, Zachary levi, Hollywood 

Hillary Clinton’s mentor, Saul Alinsky, preached a cardinal rule of the left: to accuse opponents of precisely what they are doing. The former first lady recently accused Donald Trump of being Adolf Hitler, a charge repeated by leading Democrats, with Kamala Harris defaulting to the boilerplate “fascist.” The reductio ad Hitlerum was once the last rhetorical refuge for someone losing an argument, like a drunk at the end of the bar. Over time, the Hitler slander became politicians’ first resort, serving several valuable purposes.

Demonizing someone as Hitler is a justification for violence against them. On July 13, a 20-year-old with no tactical experience somehow evaded the Secret Service, gained access to a rooftop fewer than 150 yards from the stage where Trump was speaking, and fired eight shots, grazing Trump’s ear, killing rally attendee Corey Comperatore, and wounding two others.

For coincidence theorists, it’s all pure happenstance. In reality, the Trump-as-Hitler jihad signals a convergence going back nearly a century.

Common enemies

Consider the account of British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, author of the magisterial “Chronicles of Wasted Time.” In the early 1930s, Muggeridge visited the Soviet Union as the Moscow correspondent of the London Guardian but planned to remain as a partisan of the communist regime. Joseph Stalin’s forced famine in Ukraine, which claimed millions of lives, changed the journalist’s mind but inspired Hitler. As Muggeridge explained, Soviet communism and German national socialism were essentially Slavic and Germanic versions of the same tyranny. This was confirmed by a distinguished resident of Hitler’s regime.

Hans-Jurgen Massaquoi was born in Hamburg in 1926 to a Liberian father and a German mother. More than half a century later, as a naturalized American citizen, Massaquoi wrote “Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany,” a remarkable account first published in 1999 and now more relevant than ever.

Barred from university, Massaquoi read James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Miguel de Cervantes, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Such authors became an “indispensable survival tool” against “constant racist attacks.” Massaquoi survived because “unlike Jews, blacks were few in number and relegated to low-priority status.”

For supporters of Biden and Harris, people who want the nation to be great are deplorables — the Untermenschen — and this lays the groundwork for violence against them.

The German National Socialists hailed their virtue and blasted communist evil, but Massaquoi found their propaganda “a distortion of facts.” The truth was, “in their many bloody clashes for dominance in Germany, the Nazis and Commies were virtually indistinguishable. Both were totalitarians, ever ready to brutalize to crush resistance to their respective ideologies.”

And they did.

The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact divvied up Europe between the regimes, which both invaded Poland in September 1939, starting World War II. During the Pact, Stalin handed German Jews directly to Hitler’s Gestapo. For details, see “Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler” by Margarete Buber-Neumann. After the war, Stalin swung the people of the USSR back to their habitual anti-Semitism, branding Jews “rootless cosmopolitans.” That was also the case in the communist regimes of Eastern Europe.

Witness the Slansky show trial in Czechoslovakia with its 11 executions. As director Robert Rossen (known for “All the King’s Men”) testified to Congress, the victims “were all hung, in my opinion, for being Jews and nothing else.”

Anti-Semitism remained a component of the left in the 20th century, culminating in its collaboration with Islamic terrorism. For example, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine deployed the “Che Guevara Group Brigade” to hijack an Air France flight in 1976 that wound up taking hostages to Idi Amin’s Uganda. The Che Guevara squad consisted of two Arabs and Germans Wilfried Bose and Brigitte Kuhlmann, who were also members of a leftist group called the Revolutionary Cells. The Baader-Meinhof group, another leftist German terrorist organization, showed similar tendencies.

The late Christopher Hitchens could easily imagine Andreas Baader as “an enthusiastic member of the Brownshirts.” Some members were recruited at the University of Heidelberg’s Socialist Patients Collective. One of them, Ralf Reinders, planned to destroy the Jewish House in Berlin, once gutted by the Brownshirts, “in order to get rid of this thing about the Jews that we’ve all had to have since the Nazi time.” The contemporary left also has a “thing about the Jews.”

In the style of the PFLP and PLO, the left construes the Middle East conflict as colonialism, a doctrine expounded on by Marx and Lenin. October 7, 2023, the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, caused campuses to reverberate with shouts of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” meaning Judenrein, the goal of Nazi Germany. The American left is down with it.

Rainbow supremacy

Ivy League campuses like Harvard couldn’t figure out whether their DEI policies, speech codes, and “woke” measures against bullying applied to calls for genocide against Jews. As Harvard’s then-President Claudine Gay said, it all depends on the “context.”

The Nazis touted their master race theories, and the communists hailed the “new Soviet man.” As it happens, the United States of America is developing its own brand of Übermenschen through the LGBTQ construct, construed as a “community” possessed of extraordinary powers. Consider Sneha Nair, a Biden-Harris appointee at the National Nuclear Security Administration and co-author of “Queering nuclear weapons: How LGBTQ+ inclusion strengthens security and reshapes disarmament.”

Nair claims queer people “make fewer errors, discuss issues more constructively, and better exchange new ideas and knowledge.” Not only that, “queer people have specific skills to offer that are valuable in a policy and diplomacy context.” The alphabet people are just better, but there’s more to the intersectionality now.

Democrats appear to believe that national socialist Germany allowed “Klaus’ Assault Rifles” shops on every corner, calling for citizens to “Get your Sturmgewehr and Schmeisser today!” As Stephen P. Halbrook showed in “Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming Jews and ‘Enemies of the State,’” the German National Socialists ruthlessly suppressed ownership of firearms. They used the registration records of the Weimar Republic to find out who owned guns and barred possession of ammunition. The government crusade against “assault weapons” is more like Nazi policy than people might think. See also Halbrook’s “Gun Control in Nazi Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance.”

California’s Firearms Violence Research Center at UC Davis aims to find out “who owns guns, why they own them, and how they use firearms.” As in National Socialist Germany and its occupied territories, “ve vant zuh names.” The state also requires background checks for ammunition sales and uses them to confiscate guns. These are not the only National Socialist-style measures the people now face.

The groundwork for violence

During the pandemic, government health bosses — white coat supremacists — demanded vaccination papers for entry to various establishments. Dr. Deborah Birx branded the uninfected “non-symptomatic carriers,” suddenly, it was “your papers, please.” NIAID boss Dr. Anthony Fauci promoted vaccines that failed to prevent infection or transmission, even for children — the least vulnerable group. Fauci was commanding a medical experiment on the entire population, but comparisons to Josef Mengele are unfair — to Mengele.

Since then, the United States of America has become more like National Socialist Germany, not less. Witness Joe Biden’s September 1, 2022, speech, which looked like something staged by Leni Riefenstahl. The Delaware Democrat also compares Trump to Hitler and calls Trump’s supporters “garbage.” For supporters of Biden and Harris, people who want the nation to be great are deplorables — the Untermenschen — and this lays the groundwork for state-sponsored violence against them.

Black American Hans-Jurgen Massaquoi, who died in 2013, would be shocked. So would those Americans who actually defeated the Nazis, liberating their captive nations and concentration camps. Fewer than 70,000 of the veterans remain, and they pass the torch to generations since born.

The Ansis — American National Socialists — are coming. Fight them on the internet, in the academy, and fight them at the ballot box. Sooner or later, everybody will have to pick a side.

​2024 presidential election, Reductio ad hitlerum, Adolf hitler, Donald trump, Totalitarianism, Nazi germany, Nazis, Democratic party, Hillary clinton, Anthony fauci, Opinion & analysis 

Like many in the influential yet shrinking elite media bubble, the Atlantic is in a panic over misinformation. In an October 10 article titled “I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is,” Charlie Warzel laments how Americans no longer automatically follow the directives of the establishment or rely on the media-academia-expert complex to think for them. Warzel frames the issue differently, describing it as “nothing less than a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality.”

“It is difficult to capture the nihilism of the current moment,” he writes. “The pandemic saw Americans, distrustful of authority, trying to discredit effective vaccines, spreading conspiracy theories, and attacking public-health officials.”

The media’s lies and disinformation began well before 2020 and continue today.

Warzel contends that things only worsened from there. He describes “journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders” as victims in a “war on truth” because they “must attend to and describe the world as it is,” which, in his view, makes them dangerous to people who resist “the agonizing constraints of reality” or who have financial and political interests in perpetuating misinformation.

Warzel, of course, is not alone. Recently, many have sounded the alarm against the so-called plague of misinformation allegedly affecting society today. Among these voices, the most authoritative have come from a who’s who of Democratic Party leaders.

Hillary Clinton: “I think it’s important to indict the Russians just as Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016. But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda and whether they should be civilly, or even in some cases, criminally charged, is something that would be a better deterrence.”

Tim Walz: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.”

John Kerry: “If people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence. So what we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern, by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.”

And, of course, Kamala Harris: Social media companies “are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and it has to stop.”

Nowhere in Warzel’s article, or in any of these bold pronouncements and threats against dissenting voices, is there the slightest acknowledgment of a simple, undeniable truth: We stopped trusting them because they lost our trust. Science, once a self-correcting pursuit of truth, has become Dr. Fauci’s “the Science” with a capital S — a dogma similar to the one that the church used to stifle Galileo.

Much of the media, formerly our bulwark against state tyranny, now operates as the Democratic Party’s ministry of propaganda. When Donald Trump burst onto the political scene in 2015 and went on to secure the GOP’s nomination a year later, the media decided objectivity was no longer necessary. Instead, their new mission became crusading against Trump at every opportunity. Our loss of trust in these former arbiters of truth was a natural result.

Rather than acknowledging this erosion of trust, these politicking journalists, along with academics and political allies in their bubble, labeled any resistance to their often-false narratives as “misinformation.” Researcher David Rozado has documented a sharp rise in mentions of “misinformation” and “disinformation” in the media and academia, starting in 2016 — the year of Trump’s election.

Seriously, not literally

Warzel and others with a similar viewpoint might argue that the media began addressing misinformation in 2016 because Trump himself started spreading it, thereby inspiring a wave of conspiracies and outlandish claims from his supporters. There is some truth in this. Trump undoubtedly pushed the boundaries of acceptable political discourse and often lacked substantial proof for his claims.

While politicians have always bent the truth, Trump — a salesman from the high-stakes world of real estate rather than a lawyer like most national politicians — didn’t shy away from exaggeration. His go-to phrases — “the best ever,” “the worst ever,” “like no one’s ever seen before” — were part of his rhetorical style of inflation and hyperbole.

I would argue that most people, regardless of education, recognize Trump’s claims for what they are. Trump talks like that braggadocious, big-talking uncle we all know — not like a slippery politician skilled at lying through subtle phrasing and misleading statistics. People understand not to take Trump literally. In fact, unlike most politicians, Trump’s supporters know exactly what he stands for.

Ironically, despite claims from the left that Trump is a shameless liar, many people support him precisely because he speaks openly and directly about things other politicians might only hint at. That transparency, though often crude, appeals to his base. I would agree, however, that Trump has likely lowered the level of our political discourse more than anyone in recent memory. But crudity is not the same as deception. If anything, it’s the opposite of deception.

In any discussion of lies and misinformation in politics, the “Big Lie” attributed to Trump — widespread election fraud in 2020 — looms large. But an undeniable fact remains: The media’s lies and disinformation began well before 2020 and continue today. These distortions cover a wide range of topics and often involve coordination among news outlets, scientists, academics, and others.

Warzel’s alleged defenders of truth against misinformation have committed numerous notable infractions against reality.

Expert alarmism

For years, the media, relying on handpicked “experts,” has bombarded us with alarmist rhetoric about the imminent danger of manmade climate change. They promote a phony 97% consensus among climate scientists while censoring evidence-based alternative views, despite data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that doesn’t fully support such alarmism.

We were falsely told that President Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. This baseless accusation led to years of costly investigations that hamstrung his administration, while the New York Times and the Washington Post received Pulitzer Prizes for their extensive reporting on these unsubstantiated claims.

During the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, which brought American cities to their knees with widespread arson, vandalism, looting, and destruction of small businesses, we were told these events were “mostly peaceful protests.” This disinformation campaign, along with the promotion of critical race theory and anti-law enforcement ideologies, led to lenient or nonexistent prosecutions for those involved. Meanwhile, the media labeled the events of January 6, 2021 — which resulted in far less loss of life and property damage — as an “armed insurrection” and an attempted “coup.”

The media omitted key facts about January 6, including that Trump, the alleged instigator, had warned top advisers days before that many protesters would be coming to the Capitol and requested the National Guard be prepared. They ignored and defied his request. Consequently, those involved in the Capitol breach were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and given disproportionately harsh sentences for what, in many cases, amounted to minor infractions, often limited to acts of trespassing.

On the eve of the 2020 election, the media — including Twitter and Facebook — suppressed the New York Post’s explosive story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, labeling it “Russian disinformation.” This suppression likely influenced the election outcome in Biden’s favor. Only later, when it no longer mattered, did the media reveal that the laptop and the story were real. Anyone who dismisses Trump’s claims of 2020 election interference must first contend with this major flaw in the media’s “Big Lie” narrative.

Accounting for COVID

The COVID-19 era exposed how the media colluded with the government to spread fear, propaganda, and disinformation while silencing evidence-based alternative views. Continued censorship on these issues — including the absurd censorship and deplatforming of respected scientists like Dr. Robert Malone, a pioneer of mRNA technology used in COVID vaccines — limits full and frank discussion.

The handling of the lab-leak theory of COVID’s origin provides a glaring example. Initially dismissed as a “conspiracy theory,” the lab-leak hypothesis now holds wide acceptance, yet the media originally pushed a flawed natural-origin narrative. Acknowledging a lab origin would have implicated Dr. Anthony Fauci, who approved gain-of-function research tied to the virus’ creation.

To discredit the lab-leak theory, scientists coordinated with Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins to publish an influential paper in Nature, arguing for a natural origin. Yet, their contemporaneous communications reveal they did not believe the narrative they promoted. The media amplified this false narrative, labeling dissenters as conspiracy theorists whose claims had been thoroughly “debunked.”

War, dementia, and ‘cheapfakes’

The media uncritically promoted the Biden administration’s false narrative that the Russia-Ukraine war was an “unprovoked” attack by Moscow. While Putin bears responsibility, evidence strongly suggests that the attack was substantially provoked by neoconservatives within the Biden administration. These actions built upon the Obama administration’s support for the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s government in favor of a more anti-Russian regime.

Biden administration officials continued to draw Ukraine foolishly closer to NATO, despite knowing that establishing an enemy alliance on Russia’s border was a red line for Putin — just as it would have been for the United States had Canada joined the former Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact or placed nuclear missiles in Cuba.

The media also colluded with the Biden administration and others close to Joe Biden to hide his cognitive decline and ongoing descent into dementia. They attempted to gaslight the public, dismissing videos of Biden’s apparent incapacity — including moments like talking to a dead politician — as “cheapfakes.” When the June presidential debate made Biden’s condition undeniable, the media feigned shock.

After Biden was ultimately compelled to drop out of the race by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and wealthy donors, the media continued their false narrative. They portrayed his withdrawal not as an action forced on him by party elites despite his objections but as a courageous decision he made to protect democracy against Donald Trump.

Covering for Kamala

Once Democratic Party bosses appointed Kamala Harris to replace Biden, the media launched an unprecedented, coordinated effort to portray her as something she clearly was not: capable, intelligent, informed, inspiring, visionary, eloquent, articulate, honest, principled, and free of responsibility for the Biden administration’s mismanagement of the economy and immigration.

This full-scale media campaign included giving Harris and her running mate a month-long pass on unscripted interviews and press conferences. When they finally faced the media, reporters served up softball questions, allowing them to evade or respond with vapid pabulum or evasive nonanswers without follow-ups.

The presidential and vice-presidential debates further underscored this bias, with moderators framing topics to favor the Democratic ticket and engaging in misleading “fact-checks” exclusively for the Republican candidates. During the vice presidential debate, moderators even conducted fact-checks, despite rules prohibiting them.

The October “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris stood out as a particularly egregious example. Unlike the unaltered footage of Biden’s apparent cognitive struggles, CBS edited out Harris’ incoherent rambling in response to a question about Israel. They skipped directly to a slightly more coherent part of her answer, creating a genuine “cheapfake.” While the Biden clips aimed to reveal his cognitive deficits that his administration and the media sought to hide, the shameful editing stunt at “60 Minutes” blatantly tried to conceal Harris’ cognitive deficits from the public.

Who are you gonna believe?

In the face of this longstanding barrage of lies, propaganda, and disinformation, only two types of people would retain complete trust in the powers-that-be: 1) those deeply embedded in the Democratic Party-aligned information bubble, lacking the motivation, common sense, or drive to seek alternative perspectives; and 2) complete morons.

Most of us, thankfully, fit into neither of those categories — nor the massive overlapping area where the two converge. As a result, we no longer take anything from the media and their allies at face value. This widespread disillusionment, however, has led many to a point where it’s difficult to discern truth from misinformation, struggling to balance healthy skepticism with slipping into loony conspiracy land. Social media further amplifies this predicament, acting as both an escape from the distortions of the mainstream narrative and a potential detour from reality itself.

And yes, it’s a problem. But before the media priests blame us for opting out of their funhouse hall of mirrors, I have a suggestion for them: Take a long, hard look in one of those mirrors, recognize your own complicity, and … well … stop lying to us!

​Media bias, 2024 presidential election, Cheapfake, Kamala harris, Donald trump, Fake news, Fake news media, Misinformation, Covid-19, January 6, Conspiracy theory, Anthony fauci, Robert malone, Francis collins, 60 minutes, Opinion & analysis 

When it comes to early voting, rural voters are turning out in droves, while urban voters’ participation is declining in key battleground states. Given that rural voters tend to lean Republican and urban voters lean Democratic, this trend could be particularly consequential going into the election.

Since 2020, there has been over a six-point increase in rural early voting across the seven battlegrounds, while urban early voting decreased by over seven points, according to data from TargetEarly. Suburban voters only increased by about one point from 2020 across the seven swing states.

With just two days to go until the election, this may turn the tide in former President Trump’s favor.

There is a partisan split between rural and urban voters, which could shift the electoral outcome, and it has only widened over the last two decades.

Suburban voters have been split down the middle for the past two decades, with 50% identifying as Republican or Republican-leaning and 47% identifying as Democratic or Democrat-leaning, according to a Pew Research study from April.

Urban voters have a larger partisan gap, leaning heavily toward Democrats. In 1994, 58% of urban voters identified as Democratic or Democrat-leaning, while 39% identified as Republican or Republican-leaning, according to the study. The partisan gap widened slightly by 2023, with 60% of urban voters identifying as Democratic and 37% identifying as Republican.

The partisan gap among rural voters used to be extremely narrow, with 51% identifying as Republican or Republican-leaning and 45% identifying as Democratic or Democrat-leaning, according to the study. Since then, just 35% identify as Democrats, while 60% identify as Republicans.

While urban voters, who are mostly Democratic, are participating at a lower rate in battleground states compared to 2020, rural voters, who are mostly Republican, have a higher turnout rate. With just two days to go until the election, this may turn the tide in former President Trump’s favor.

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​Politics, Rural voters, Rural american, Suburban voters, Donald trump, Kamala harris, 2024 presidential election, Presidential election, 2024 election, Election, Battleground states, Swing states 

President Donald Trump expressed his displeasure Sunday over the likelihood that it might take officials over a week after Election Day to count votes in certain swing states.

At his
campaign rally Sunday in Lititz, Pennsylvania, Trump discussed various factors that might undermine the integrity of the election and Americans’ confidence in its integrity, including lax or absent voter ID requirements.

“There is only one reason you don’t want voter ID. There’s only one reason, and that’s to cheat,” said Trump. “And they do cheat.”

Trump stressed that the expected failure of officials to count votes in a timely fashion is similarly suspicious.

“They are fighting so hard to steal this damn thing,” said Trump.

“We should have one-day voting and paper ballots. And I just heard that a couple of states may go an extra 12 days. How the hell do you have an election? You know, they spend all of this money on these damn machines — and paper ballots, you’d have the answer by 9 o’clock tonight.”

‘Not every state is created equal, right?’

Pennsylvania, the state with 19 Electoral College votes where Trump
apparently has a slight edge, is expected to take several days to release its final results because it cannot begin processing mail-in ballots until Election Day.

The
official website of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania states:

Hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of mail ballots are cast in every election, and current state law does not permit counties to begin opening these ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. That means county election officials cannot even remove the ballots from the envelopes and prepare them to be scanned until that time — on a day when those same officials are also running more than 9,000 polling places across the state. Then, under the Election Code, counties may not even begin to record and publish mail ballot results until after the polls close at 8 p.m. Election Day.

County election offices can also
continue receiving completed military and overseas absentee ballots until Nov. 12, drawing the process out further.

Election officials anticipate that vote counting in certain larger counties could run into Wednesday or Thursday,
reported Spotlight PA.

Barring a definitive landslide victory by one of the two candidates, it appears that Wisconsin — where Election Day 2020 ended up becoming “Election Week” — will similarly lag behind when reporting results, given that absentee ballots cannot be opened and counted until Nov. 5.

Wisconsin Public Radio
indicated that Milwaukee, for instance, is expecting to process at least 80,000 absentee ballots on Election Day, which is supposedly a time-intensive process. Since the state has same-day voter registration, that number could grow significantly.

“Not every state is created equal, right? So if you’re from Florida, you’re going to get results a little quicker, simply because we have 22 days of pre-processing,” Carolina Lopez, executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, recently
told USA Today. “If you’re in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, by law, they’re not allowed to start until Election Day. So it’s just a quick numbers game. It doesn’t mean that Florida is more efficient or less efficient than some of their counterparts. It just means that the laws are a little different.”

The New York Times
suggested that Arizona and Nevada will likely also take days to finish counting votes.

In Nevada, where the Associated Press waited four days to call the election for Biden in 2020, postmarked ballots are allowed to pour in until Nov. 9.

Things are worse in Arizona, where Maricopa County deputy elections director Jennifer Liewer
indicated at a press conference last month that it could take “between 10 and 13 days to complete tabulation of all the ballots that come in.”

“It’s a damn shame, and I’m the only one that talks about it because everyone’s afraid to damn talk about it,” said Trump. “And then they accuse you of being a ‘conspiracy theorist. He’s a conspiracy theorist.’ And they want to lock you up, and they want to put you in jail.”

Trump suggested that while it’s unclear what will happen this time around, Americans should insist upon voter ID, paper ballots, and same-day results for future elections.

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​President donald trump, Donald trump, Trump, Election fraud, Election 2024, Swing states, Voter fraud, Ballots, Counting, Politics