Here are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.

THE TRUMP REELECTION CAMPAIGN – While reading David Drucker’s view of President Trump’s reelection campaign in his piece, “An Election Diet of Red Meat,” in the Washington Examiner magazine, I recalled an article I had stashed away in my “pile of stuff” for future reference.

When I found it, I remembered why I saved it.  The headline on Elizabeth Vaughn’s piece for Red State screams out at you, “Mind-Blowing,” as she writes “58 percent of attendees at Trump’s Wisconsin rally were not Republicans.”

That is mind-blowing.  She recalls hearing the 43 percent of attendees at his Toledo, Ohio rally identified as either Democrat or Independent, and described that figure as “stunning.”

What’s even more impressive is the fact that of the 20,395 voters who attended the Wisconsin rally, 4,657 were from neighboring states.  Similarly, in Ohio, 4,717 of the 22,927 voters in attendance came from outside of the state.

You just have to believe that the do-nothing passel of Democrats in Washington, who have nothing but “impeachment” on their agenda have Democrats and Independents thinking Trump.  The handful of candidates on the left have failed to energize them.

More than three million people have registered to attend a Trump rally in his first term.  He has held 258 of them.  Eighty percent of them live in battleground states, according to Brad Pascale, Trump’s creative campaign manager, who knows that 396,000 of the attendees did not vote for Trump in 2016.

“No president, including Trump, has ever captured the White House, or held it, on the strength of core-supporters alone,” according to Drucker.  Trump needs to hold on to his base, while attracting Democrats and Independent to his side. He reminds them they really don’t have a choice.

Although Trump outpaced Clinton in the suburbs in 2016, there has been concern that his popularity there has dwindled, but it has the attention of Pascale, who is scheduling smaller venues with speakers like Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, who has come a long way since 2016.

SERIOUSLY, THERE IS NO MATCH ON THE LEFT – Try to imagine anyone of them – Sanders, Warren, Biden or Buttigieg – debating President Trump.  Talk about red meat.

If you haven’t watched a Trump rally recently, you should.  He has another one scheduled for New Jersey on January 29, 2020.   Yes, he repeats much of his material from state to state, but he comes across as authentic, because he is. He speaks in a language understood by the “forgotten.”  He hit home with the Wisconsin audience with a colorful discussion of toilets, showers and washing machines of all things, making the point of how Obama era regulations have affected their lives.

Some people are disturbed by his occasional off-color language, but they tend to give him a pass on that when they look at what he has promised and accomplished.

For example, during his remarks to the members of the LSU Tiger football team he invited to the White House, he asked if they would like to see the Oval Office.  Speaking of the Resolute Desk, he said it was used by some “good” presidents and some “not so good” presidents. “They’ve got a good one now and they want to impeach the son-of-a-bitch, can you believe that?” he said.  Maybe a bit cringe worthy, but the team loved it.

MEDIA DISHONESTY and fake news continue unabated at CNN and MSNBC. Viewers of the last Democrat debate (there were some) probably didn’t pick up on it because they have become accustomed to their slanted journalism.

However, it didn’t go unnoticed by Bernie Sanders.  After clearly denying that he said a woman could not be president, CNN reporter Abby Phillip turned to Warren, and asked, “Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”  Sanders shook his head in disbelief … he had just told Phillip he denied saying it.

IT REMINDED ME of a piece written for The Federalist earlier this month by Casey Chalk of the American Conservative, “Washington Post Writer Can’t figure Out Why Trump Supporters Won’t Talk to Her.”

Writing about Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak, who visited a “Women for Trump” rally in Washington, he writes of her trying to figure out why the women support Trump, and experienced that women in attendance were hesitant to speak with her, particularly when she identified herself as a Washington Post employee.

It’s really no mystery, women and men are equally distrustful of the leftist media. Female columnists in particular “offer such blatantly critical and condescending perspectives on conservative Americans and their values,” wrote Chalk.

IF TRUMP’S DECISION to take out Qasem Soleimani did anything it sent a message to Iran.  “It was a sucker punch which has scrambled their understanding of how the Americans might react in the future,” wrote Tom McTague, quoting Michael Stephens, a Royal United Services Institute fellow, in The Atlantic.

You may recall my earlier reporting that Obama’s failure to respond when Syria crossed his red line told Soleimani that Obama wasn’t a concern.

“The air strike that killed Qasem Soleimani was a reminder that the U.S. remains the one indispensable global superpower.  Iran, or indeed anyone else, simply cannot respond in kind,” wrote McTague.

Writing that Trump has “turned the tables on Iran in a way few thought possible, the strike has exposed the gaping irrelevance of Europe’s leading powers – Britain, France and Germany – in this whole crisis,” McTague comments that the three nations were finally forced to admit the apparently terminal collapse of the Obama-era nuclear deal.

While doubting Trump has a foreign-policy strategy, McTague suggests that “The president’s erratic behavior might be doing something else as well, something even more fundamental.  Through a combination of instinct, temperament, and capriciousness, Trump may be reminding the world of the reality of international relations – raw military and economic power still matter more than anything else, so long as those who old them are prepared to use them.”

It’s unfortunate that our Congress cannot see the success Trump has had in foreign relations and want to tie his hands for fear he’s going to do something rash.

The 96-year-old Henry Kissinger, who recently marveled at Trump’s ability to sign a trade deal with China, told the Financial Times: “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era to force it to give up its old pretenses.”

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT – Nancy Pelosi misquoted from President Trump’s telephone transcript with Ukraine president Zelensky twice saying, “I want you to do me a favor.”  President Trump actually said, “I want you to do us a favor.”  Democrats want you to believe he was seeking information for personal political gain.

LAUGH-OF-THE-DAY:  Rep. Adam Schiff, the pencil-neck geek.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.