Archive for 2024

July 13, 2024

TRUMP RELEASES STATEMENT FROM HOSPITAL.

Meanwhile, from a friend: “I’m thinking the folks sponsoring the bill to take away Trump’s secret service protection need a little talking to. . . . On a more somber note, I have a sinking feeling that was very nearly our Ft. Sumter. It may still be.”

UPDATE: “There was a minute there where we didn’t know if he had been killed or was dying, and we were in great distress. The relief when he stood up was insane.”

Plus: “Biden needs to make a statement.” No can do, it’s after 4 pm.

And: “I’m seeing a lot of criticism of the press, especially the CNN headlines ‘Trump speech interrupted by Secret Service’ and ‘Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.’ And don’t tell me that’s a just-the-facts approach, because it’s easy to see in the video that Trump did not fall, he crouched. The NYT headline at the moment is: ‘Trump Rushed Off Stage After Chaos at Rally.'”

UPDATE:

Posted at 7:47 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 13th, 2024

SO NOW THE HATERS TRY TO KILL PRESIDENT TRUMP: Remember June 2017? A Bernie Bro launched a terror attack, trying to kill congressional Republicans en masse. James T. Hodgkinson. Don’t hear much about him. We should. I wrote this for The Spectator: The Left-Wing Terrorist’s Capitol Hill Coup d’Etat

UPDATE: I just saw Glenn’s recollection. James T. Hodgkinson won’t be erased.

Posted at 7:44 pm by Austin Bay on Jul 13th, 2024

DONALD TRUMP IS NOT AMUSED, NOR IS HE COWED;

Posted at 7:23 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 13th, 2024

THIS IS CNN: Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.

UPDATE:

Here’s AP’s initial take:

Here’s the WaPo:

This was the Post at the start of the day:

Here’s NBC:

Posted at 7:18 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jul 13th, 2024

BREAKING: APPARENT SHOTS FIRED AT TRUMP RALLY IN PENNSYLVANIA

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Last week: N.Y. Times Columnist Wants Trump Dead — Seriously.

A friend emails: “Biden can’t finish a fucking sentence. Trump is defiant in the face of an assassin. If Americans can’t figure out who Putin and Ji would be more afraid of, they deserve what we have.”

Related: “Secret Service surrounded him and hustled him off the stage, The President was walking and defiant – fist pumping in the air – even as they hustled him into the vehicle.”

So if he was hit in the ear, he was only an inch or two from taking a bullet to the brain. It would have been a very hot summer if Trump were assassinated. But, like Teddy Roosevelt, he was shot but defiant.

Posted at 6:41 pm by Charlie Martin on Jul 13th, 2024

(LIKELY) GUNSHOTS AT TRUMP RALLY IN BUTLER, PA – TRUMP ALIVE BUT RUSHED OFFSTAGE WITH BLOOD ON HIS FACE.

UPDATE: Seems to have been grazed in the right ear. After a series of “pops,” he grabbed his right ear and then dove for the stage. At one point you hear someone yell “shooter down.” Here’s a jackleg stream of Fox News.

On the way out:

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ok, take this with an ENORMOUS grain of salt, but Wall Street Silver on X claims to have the name of the would-be assassin, and talks of a YouTube video of him saying “justice is coming.” Again, could be TOTALLY WRONG. Fox just reported that AP says the shooter is dead right after I hit “post,” so who knows. <– This tweet has been taken down, so I am guessing it was a fake or wrong.

MORE: Supposed video of the alleged shooter, lying dead(?) on top of some kind of structure at the rally.

7:42 PM ET: Horribly, Fox is now reporting that a rally-goer is dead and another is in critical condition.

STILL MORE (FROM GLENN): A former student sends the pic above and adds: “And the people who think they matter want us to believe this selfish rich man doesn’t love America??”

Posted at 6:22 pm by Robert Shibley on Jul 13th, 2024

WATCH: Climate Radicals Vandalize Tesla Electric Car Center.

Far-left climate change activists doused a Tesla Cybertruck electric vehicle exhibit in Germany on Saturday in a protest against “how the super-rich deal with global warming”.

In a further demonstration of dubious standards by green agenda radicals, members of the Letzte Generation (Last Generation) youth climate militant collective covered a Cybertruck in orange paint in Hamburg.

“The SUV has been touring Germany as an exhibit and symbolizes how the super-rich deal with global warming: armoured in a luxury vehicle, off to climate hell,” the group wrote on X, owned by Telsa chief Elon Musk.

Protester Hendrik Fauer added: “The truck perfectly illustrates where the anti-social policies of the last decades have led us: A few rich people drive well-armoured into the catastrophe – and take everyone with them.”

The Last Generation also accused Tesla founder Elon Musk of “endangering the health of thousands of people in other ways” citing the supposed dangers posed by Tesla’s Giga Factory in Grünheide.

I guess because of Tesla having another “Gigafactory” in Austin, I’ve seen a surprising number of Tesla Cybertrucks on the road lately around my corner of Texas. I wouldn’t recommend that the latest production of “Springtime for Greta” try this here:

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jul 13th, 2024

MESSAGE: I TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE:

As the late Charles Krauthammer wrote in 2012:

George H. W. Bush, Romney-like in aloofness, was once famously handed a staff cue card that read: “Message: I care.” That was supposed to be speech guidance. Bush read the card. Out loud.

Not surprisingly, he lost to Bill Clinton, a man who lives to care, who feels your pain better than you do — or at least makes you think so. In politics, that’s a trivial distinction.

Watching George H.W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 1992, there were many moments where it seemed like Papa Bush was just phoning it in; that he didn’t even want to be out on the hustings, let alone win a second term as president. But that failed reelection bid was a well-oiled machine compared to where the (p)resident is at today. Or as Ed Morrissey writes: ‘It’s Over’: Dem Panic Over 2024 Curdles Into Despair.

Left unsaid: It might get worse if they try to replace Biden, too. He all but endorsed Kamala Harris at the press conference on Thursday as his successor, and Democrats know all too well that she’d be a disaster as the nominee. A three-week campaign among convention delegates would be just enough time to rip open the rifts between factions within the party and not nearly enough time to heal them in the race for power. Like it or not, Biden’s the only available-if-imperfect figure of unity in this cycle.

The time to have that debate was during the primaries, but … Democrats thought they could gaslight voters and avoid it. FAFO. And so …

Inside the Capitol, Democrats who fear Biden can’t win make up a majority of the party and a growing number are willing to say so publicly.

“It’s over,” one aide to a battleground Democrat said of the fight to flip the House. “It doesn’t matter if they’re outperforming him by 35 fucking points. The math doesn’t work.”

The jig is up, that’s for sure. But if Biden refuses to leave, expect the gaslighting to resume, this time as a comeback narrative that will last until the next aphasiac performance or “President Putin” gaffe. Just don’t expect voters to buy it.

Still though, think of the upside after Biden’s latest Ron Burgundy-esque moment!

Posted at 5:26 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jul 13th, 2024

HOLLYWOOD IN TOTO: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Does the (Near) Impossible.

“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” survives an iffy opening sequence, which offers some auto smash-ups and the first of many nods to the franchise (both “The Heat is On” and “Shakedown” are featured early) but doesn’t seem to be above the laid-back silliness of “Beverly Hills Cop III” (1994).

Once this becomes an ensemble piece, we not only harken back to what made the first one so great, but the sharp casting choices sell it.

Murphy is in good form, funny and enthusiastic but willing to play into Foley’s flaws; he’s aided by Paige, the standout from “Zola” (2020) whose unsentimental, no-nonsense take on what could be the film’s most maudlin character is a nice surprise.

So is Levitt, terrific and playful in what could have been just another sidekick. Once we get a look at Kevin Bacon playing Captain Grant, we have an obvious idea who the villain is, but Bacon plays him in shades that suggest a complex, compromised social climber (Foley notes his shoes as a giveaway) and not a mustache-twirling heavy.

It’s fun to see Reinhold and Bronson Pinchot again (though it’s even more forced here than it was in “Beverly Hills Cop III” how Serge is plugged into the story) but the biggest pleasure is the dramatic heft John Ashton still gives as Taggart, filling in for his movie mentor Ronny Cox.

The cast makes this such a pleasure, I didn’t mind that, for all the wild action and good laughs, this is a dialogue-heavy character study as much as it is a legacy sequel (in fact, it’s more satisfying as the former than the latter).

Axel F is no Top Gun: Maverick, but Murphy is great, and if you’ve already got a Netflix subscription, it’s a breezy and fun two hours, with a pretty good supporting cast, and a ton of memberberries from the first two movies. In terms of streaming options in 2024, you could do far worse.

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jul 13th, 2024

NEW REMAKE OF MEAN GIRLS NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME: Jill Biden’s grudge against Kamala Harris REVEALED: Power-hungry first lady’s grudge is so deep that the only thing worse than Joe stepping down is the VP replacing him.

When Kamala Harris took to the stage during a Democratic primary debate before the 2020 election and implied that Joe Biden was racist, his wife, Jill’s, response was crystal clear.

‘Go f**k yourself,’ the then-future first lady vented, as she allegedly admitted during a conference call with supporters.

And the relationship between the two women – that began badly enough during that contentious battle for the presidential nomination – has only gone downhill from there.

Now, political insiders have told DailyMail.com that Democratic advisors are struggling to push past the powerful role that Jill Biden‘s loathing of Harris, 59, is playing in Joe‘s resistance to pass the mantle to his VP as pressure ratchets up for him to step down as presidential candidate and allow another Democrat tackle Donald Trump.

According to one former Democrat operative in Jill’s circle, the women’s long-seated animosity is ‘one hundred per cent’ part of Jill’s resistance to having her 81-year-old husband step aside.

Because the truth, according to a source who knows the First Couple well, is that Jill’s is now the only voice to which the 46th president listens.

And as far as Jill, 73, is concerned, the only thing worse than her husband stepping down would be Kamala stepping up to replace him.

To be fair, she’s far from the only person thinking that right now. But didn’t anybody in Team Biden wargame how this would play out, particularly when Biden was still feigning that he would be a one-term president?

Speaking of which, as Jim Geraghty asks: What If Kamala Harris Genuinely Doesn’t Want to Be the 2024 Nominee?

What if she can read a poll as well as anyone else, and thinks that there’s a good chance she would lose to Trump? If Biden loses to Trump in November, her reputation is intact — she did all she could, but the ticket couldn’t overcome the liabilities of an octogenarian nominee who bombed (at least) the first debate.

But if in November, Kamala Harris lost to Trump — after January 6, after Trump’s indictments, after Trump’s convictions — her reputation would be ruined, and she would never be the Democratic nominee again.

And if Harris lost to Trump in 2024, after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, would that mean that Democrats would be hesitant to nominate another woman for a long time to come?

For Democrats, the consequences of a Trump victory over Biden are dire. But the consequences of a Trump victory over Harris are even more catastrophic. If Biden can hang on, hold onto to the “blue wall” states, and hold on against a famously erratic Republican who has demonstrated he has a hard ceiling of support, Democrats are home free. Harris can take over on the afternoon of January 20, 2025, if the Bidens are amenable.

Stay tuned.

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jul 13th, 2024
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