Here are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.
THE LEFT-LEANING WALL STREET JOURNAL? – We frequently hear about the differences between the news and editorial side of the Journal. Some have pointed to the news side drifting left. Now, I’m wondering about the editorial side.
The Journal has been the newspaper many conservatives turn to for business news and the kind of editorial page commentary that we conservatives have come to expect from its editorial board and popular columnists.
Recognizing the strife raised among staffers at the New York Times when it permitted the publishing of an op-ed by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, the enemy on the right, my complaint with the Journal may seem similar. It isn’t.
In two successive days, the Journal published editorial page columns devoted to far-fetched scenarios concerning President Trump’s future.
In “The Next Pandemic: Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Joseph Epstein takes the reader through his five stages of TDS, each one painting a ridiculously anti-Trump picture.
It is in his Stage Four that we are treated to the claim that, should he lose the forthcoming election, it is believed “he is unlikely to depart the White House willingly and is not beyond using military force to keep himself in power. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao – for people with Stage Four derangement syndrome Donald Trump is clearly a figure in their line,” Epstein writes.
HE CONCLUDES – “In Stage Five TDS, one is weighted down with all the symptoms of the first four stages, but brings to them an added choleric intensity of anger,” he writes. “At the mere mention of the name Donald Trump, unprintable expletives issue out of one’s foam-flecked lips. One’s skin flushes, veins appear on one’s forehead, one’s hands tremble, one loses all powers of speech.”
What was the Journal thinking, allowing such drivel? It’s what you would expect in The Atlantic or Rolling Stone.
BUT THERE’S MORE – The next day, under a five-column banner headline across the top of the page, “Will Democrats Accept Another Trump Victory?” the author, Barton Swaim is a Journal editorial page writer. It’s hard to believe that he, too, would consider that President Trump would refuse to leave the White House in the event he would lose.
To make matters worse, he pegged his column on a story conjured up by Joe Biden, who said he was “absolutely convinced” that if such a thing happens, military personnel will “escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”
While Swaim gives credence to the Biden comment by giving it more ink, he at least asks, “What will Democrats do if Mr. Biden loses? What idiotic conspiracy theory will they concoct to explain their defeat?”
Using Biden’s words, Swaim says, “I am absolutely convinced that Democrats won’t accept the result if the Republican wins,” as he recounts past Democrat losses.
In his conclusion, Swaim claims “The president now seems likely to lose,” but offers his theory should Trump win. He believes that “A Trump victory in November … will have everything to do with Democrats’ foul behavior over the previous four years, born of the conviction that they can’t possibly lose an election fair and square.”
THE ROGER STONE COMMUTATION – Yes, he lied to Congress and worse, he refused to take the stand against President Trump, but three years in jail at 67 years of age?
WEAPONS DRAWN TO CAPTURE STONE (Courtesy Tea Party Org.)
What about those Deep Staters, McCabe, Clapper, Brennan, Comey and others, who also lied to Congress? And FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith’s lying on the FISA warrant involving Carter Page.
Stone is a wannabe, a gadfly, who had his ear to the ground for the president, but was hardly a senior advisor in real terms. Stone got caught up in the endless, farcical collusion investigation of the Trump campaign and administration, the witch hunt.
Robert Mueller, and his band of prosecutors with Hillary connections, drew a blank on Russia, so they had to grab some headlines to make up for their failed attempt to nail the president.
Using more than a dozen FBI agents, armed with automatic weapons and wearing tactical gear, they converged on Stone’s home with armored vehicles and an amphibious unit in a pre-dawn raid to arrest him. And just by coincidence, CNN cameras were present to make sure the world knew that this desperado had been captured.
With his commutation by the president, Mueller seemingly felt that he had to justify his decision to charge Stone and “wrote” and op-ed in the Washington Post.
AND NOW, an activist Judge Emmet Sullivan is playing with Michael Flynn, refusing the DOJ’s direction to dismiss the case. Flynn, it is said lied to the FBI, though the agents who interviewed him indicated that they didn’t believe he was lying.
THE LEFT AND RINO MITT ROMNEY have taken the opportunity of the Stone commutation to criticize the Trump presidency, forgetting that Barack Obama commuted or pardoned some 1,700 individuals, many with charges more serious than lying to Congress. It’s all part of the 100-day pre-election day Trump pile-on.
MORE ON THE DEM SCHEME to sour voter interest in reelecting Donald Trump.
“The unrelenting, monolithic wall of noise that has been crashing against Donald Trump since election day 2016 has gotten louder and louder, more cacophonous, more furious, more irrational,” writes Roger Kimball in American Greatness.
”The one thing that takes precedence over everything is defeating Trump, which means defeating not only Trump himself, but what he stands for – those 63 million voters who put him in office, for starters,” Kimball adds.
I’ve been telling you that the left is going after Trump supporters as much as they want him defeated. The elites paint you as rubes.
The hatred of Trump still runs deep on the left, and in some Republican circles. It sometimes seems that everyone is against the president, but of course, that isn’t true. Do not overlook the significance of the silent majority.
Those 63 million who voted for Trump in 2016 could be 66 or 68 million this time, according to Kimball. “They’re sitting at home watching their cities burn, watching monuments to Columbus, Washington and Jefferson be defaced or toppled. They see that, and they hear a nonstop litany telling them how racist they are and how evil American is,“ comments Kimball.
The fundamental choice on November 3, is not just Trump or Biden. It is civilization and America on one side, anarchy and woke tyranny on the other.
THE MEDIA is altering its evening programming in an effort to regain viewing audiences lost to the stable of Fox News Channel shows. MSNBC is moving Joy Reid from her “AM Joy” program to “The ReidOut,” that will premiere in Chris Mathews’ old slot, at 7 p.m. on July 20, 2020. CNBC has hired Shepherd Smith, formerly of Fox, for an early evening slot.
MONEY TALKS – As I alluded to recently, the money behind FedEx and Nike will force Washington Redskin owner Dan Snyder to cave on his promise to never change the team’s name. While I suggested the Washington “Swamp Creatures” would be appropriate, one can imagine the other creative names that will now surface.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
