DONALD TRUMP: THE SALENA ZITO INTERVIEW. Trump on not letting anything get in the way of unfinished business.

Former President Donald Trump set the tone for the final stretch of the presidential race when he took to the stage here in Butler, turning away from the crowd for the briefest of seconds, just as he did 12 weeks ago, and said, “As I was saying.”

Starting where he left off on July 13 before he was shot.

Those four words told everyone, perhaps even more so than when he raised his fist toward the crowd shouting, “Fight, Fight, Fight,” that he was a man who was not going to be knocked down, and was willing to leave everything on the field to take care of unfinished business in the White House.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner before the rally, Trump was somber in explaining how important it was to him to honor the family of Corey Comperatore, the former volunteer fire chief who was killed during the shooting in July. . . .

Like East Palestine, Ohio, just 30 miles as the crow flies west, the people who live here in Butler are often anywhere from fourth to ninth-generation residents who would not care to live anywhere else. They are also often forgotten by the people in the national media, corporations, government, and academia, who view their sense of place as the “middle of nowhere.”

Trump says it is important to him to show up in places like Butler, but also in East Palestine, as he did a couple of weeks after a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed, causing an environmental disaster.

The former president showed up that day, walking through the entire village through pounding sleet and mud, bringing crates of water bottles and buying hamburgers from the local McDonalds for the workers.

Read the whole thing.

CHANGE:

UPDATE:

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Appalachia has gone dark and criminals are pouring over the border but the Homeland Security chief had time to go luxury shopping.

Mayorkas, who was impeached by the House of Representatives earlier this year for his handling of the border crisis, was spotted by the Washington Free Beacon strolling through the mens section of Sid Mashburn, a high-end menswear store, surrounded by security. He appeared to purchase some items at the store, where suit jackets go for as much as three thousand dollars.

Concurrently, here’s what the acting president was up to: Kamala Harris Interview on ‘Call Her Daddy’ Podcast Raises Eyebrows and Is Completely Clueless.

 

DEATH MAY NOT END CONSCIOUSNESS: Dr. Sam Parnia, a Brit who is Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU, is not a follower of any religion. He is a medical doctor and a scientist researching what happens to human consciousness after death.

And, in this “Closer to Truth” interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Parnia says the evidence is growing that consciousness doesn’t stop when the heart and brain cease functioning.

Kuhn asks Parnia some tough questions, particularly regarding the issue of materiality, and there aren’t answers, yet, for several of the most important but this interview is absolutely fascinating.

HOW IT STARTED:PBS and Israel: A Pattern of Bias.

—CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis), December 16th, 1994.

How it’s going: PBS Platforms Repellent ‘Jim Crow’ Smear of Israel from Leftist Darling Ta-Nehisi Coates.

NewsBusters, yesterday.

Related: Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Journey Ends Exactly Where You Expected It Would. “Yes, it’s certainly interesting to muse idly upon what could lead to an October 7, is it not? Meanwhile, here in the real world, what did lead to October 7 was Hamas, under direct supervision of Iran, having directed all aid money toward a devastating terrorist offensive rather than to bettering the lives of its own citizens in Gaza. Morally, it’s certainly easier to write about the victims you wish existed, rather than the aggressors that actually do, but Coates’s journey to the dark is as contemptible as it is predictable. It’s predictable because I remember what Coates wrote (and was praised for writing) back in 2015, in his reputation-making memoir Between the World and Me, about his reaction to 9/11.”

KAROL MARKOWICZ: I have spent the last year angry at Jews. What if Jews don’t wake up?

Note this comment from Jeffrey Carter, to this weekend’s “Schrodinger’s Election” essay: “I have a lot of 70s something men in my country club, many of them Jewish. They are voting Kamala. The 1960s/70s haven’t left their souls yet. The men in their 60s and lower, voting Trump. It’s an interesting divide.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE DNC-MSM’S “ONE MAN’S TERRORIST IS ANOTHER MAN’S FREEDOM FIGHTER” PLAYBOOK:

“Some dared hope the carnage could, in some way, become a catalyst for peace.” Did Pallywood (or NBC’s own Al Sharpton) write this tweet?

50 YEARS OF PALESTINIAN TERRORISM: Today marks one year since thousands of Hamas terrorists poured over the border from Gaza into Israel and went on a horrendous spree killing, raping, beheading, maiming, and burning more than 1,200 men, women and children, including infants.

The terrorists also took 230 Israelis and people from other nations, including seven from America as hostages. It is estimated that barely 100 of those hostages remain in the hands of the terrorists, but many of those are undoubtedly dead.

Richard Pollock, for his October 7 remembrance column on Substack this morning, has assembled a heart-breaking chronicle of Palestinian/ Islamic Jihadist terrorism committed in the past half-century. As he writes:

“May we understand that October 7 was not a rare occurrence. Terrorism is the main weapon used in the world of Islamic Jihadi revolution.

“Terrorism against innocent civilians has become the prime strategy for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and Iran.

“The long history of terrorism against innocents is outlined below. But the terrorism of October 7 especially stands out for its depravity, immorality and sheer evil.”

Richard and I have worked together on investigative journalism staff for nearly a decade and I consider him one of the best, ever. As he notes in his column, he’s been under the weather for a month, so I hope readers will pause and say a prayer for his complete recovery and return of his strength for many, many more columns.

 

SO SOMEBODY’S HAVING FUN IN THIS ELECTION, AND IT’S NOT KAMALA:

WELL, YOU KNOW, THEY LITERALLY DID. MORE THAN ONCE.

I remember when Joe Walsh wasn’t a lying moron. Or, at least, he wasn’t making it obvious.

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

MEGALOPOLIS: Making Sense of Francis Ford Coppola’s Fever Dreams.

My latest, over at Ed Driscoll.com, after taking one for the team, and seeing Coppola’s new movie in an otherwise empty theater. Shorter version: I can’t say it’s a good film, but I’m glad the Maestro, now 85, is still making movies, and movies that are about ideas, rather than sequels, spaceships and superheroes.