February 6, 2025

OUT ON A LIMB: If Presidents Can’t Control Executive Agencies, Elections Are Fake.

If the executive cannot control his own personnel, agencies, and funding lawfully given to him by a duly elected Congress, elections mean nothing. If the executive is not actually an executor, then the entire bureaucracy is an autocratic, self-licking ice cream cone. It runs the country, not any elected official. And Congress is complicit, because it allows the distribution of opium funds to Afghanistan and queer “safe spaces” in Kenya without ever having to take a public vote on any of this garbage, so long as these taxpayer-provided slush funds slather their retirements and relatives with “nonprofit” and “contractor” lard.

Whatever you want to call unelected bureaucrats and “nonprofit” grifters distributing funds obtained from American citizens against our consent as expressed in elections and line-item votes, it is not a republic, nor a democracy. If Trump can’t fire his own employees and redistribute public funds the executive branch has been given by law, he’s not really the president, and elections are fake.

All this means Trump isn’t “weaponizing” or “politicizing” these agencies. He’s fighting their inherent weaponization. Firing and investigating people who abuse public power, and ending the theft of American labor to fund evil international patronage schemes — that isn’t retribution, it’s justice.

Nervous employees of the Ministry of Truth tell state-run media that their current state is an “Orwellian nightmare!”

UPDATE: Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein on the Crazy USAID Spending Being Uncovered.

 

Posted at 2:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

HEH, INDEED: Pictured: The golden pager symbolizing Israel’s renewed friendship with the US.

Benjamin Netanyahu gave Donald Trump a golden pager in a symbolic reference to the covert operation that turned Hezbollah devices into lethal explosives in an attack last year.

Text on the pager, placed in the middle of a dissected tree trunk, reads: “Press with both hands.”

A small placard on the bottom of the trophy-like gift, says: “To President Donald J. Trump, our greatest friend and greatest ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

A source familiar with the gift told The Telegraph that Mr Trump replied on receiving it: “That was a great operation.”

Mr Trump then gave the Israeli prime minister a photo of the two of them from the latter’s US visit, inscribed: “To Bibi, a great leader.”

The US president used the meeting a the White House to announce his ambitions to resettle Palestinians from Gaza and take the Strip into US ownership.

Yes, the golden pager will look awesome in the lobby of the Gaza Trump Tower.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

NEW FRONTIERS IN PAYOLA:

Posted at 2:05 pm by Ed Driscoll

JK ROWLING: “This ‘why do you care about a tiny fraction of the population?’ line is, and always was, utterly ridiculous.”

Ed posted Rowling’s entire tweet earlier, but this part needs breaking out: “Gender ideology has undermined freedom of speech, scientific truth, gay rights, and women’s and girls’ safety, privacy and dignity. It’s also caused irreparable physical damage to vulnerable kids.”

The Left transmogrified a mental health issue into a civil rights issue precisely because doing so “undermined freedom of speech, scientific truth, gay rights, and women’s and girls’ safety, privacy and dignity.”

Any means to increase their power, fair or foul.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green

CONFIRMED: CBS LIED to Voters About No ‘Deceitful’ Editing for Kamala.

After being compelled by the Federal Communications Commission to turn over the unedited transcript and video of their infamous interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris for 60 Minutes, the FCC released it to the public.

After reviewing the video (clip from the raw video below), NewsBusters can confirm that what appeared on 60 Minutes was highly edited. Not only did they edit what appeared on 60 Minutes, they also edited what appeared on Face the Nation, including cutting out a hard hitting question that called out the Biden-Harris administration for looking weak on the world stage.

Below is the transcript of the exchange in question between CBS’s Bill Whitaker and Harris. Note that in Harris’s answer for 60 Minutes, they pulled out a fragment of one sentence of a much, much larger answer which appeared on Face the Nation (FTN):

[BOTH 60 MINUTES AND FTN] BILL WHITAKER: We supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet, Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden administration The Biden Harris administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire. He’s resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon. He went in anyway. He has promised to make Iran pay for the missile attack, and that has the potential of expanding the war. Does the US have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu?

[ONLY ON FTN] KAMALA HARRIS: Well, let’s start with this, um, on this subject. The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles. That were just meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And I think that is the most recent example of why what we do to assist in their defense around military aid is important. And when we think about the threat that Hamas, Hezbollah presents, Iran, um, I think that it is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. Now

[60 MINUTES ANSWER STARTS HERE] HARRIS: the work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles

[ONLY ON FTN] HARRIS: which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for. This war to end the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and and and create a ceasefire and we’re not gonna stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and and in the region including with other leaders in the region including Arab leaders.
It’s also worth noting that Harris’s first sentence in her answer didn’t make it into either airing of the interview.

The things you learn from CBS — I had no idea that Harris was the first Vulcan-American woman running for the White House:

UPDATE: Kamala flubbed the “why do you want to be president” layup question even worse than Ted Kennedy in 1980:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

NO COMMON SENSE ON THE LEFT: When President Donald Trump promised during his inaugural address that he would spark a “Revolution of Common Sense,” most Americans likely reacted with something along the lines “It’s about frigging time.”

As Issues & Insights (I&I) points out today, though, common sense may be the hardest commodity to find on the Left of the American political spectrum these days. And for that reason, leaders over there are out-doing themselves with displays of utter political nonsense.

“When Trump figured out how to email every federal employee at once – something businesses have been able to do since email was invented – federal workers sued. When he offered buy-outs to workers, the left screamed that this was illegal. When he paused grants, nonprofits cried that they couldn’t pay their rent. On and on it goes,” I&I observes.

Odds are good we will be seeing these displays for at least the next four years.

Posted at 12:46 pm by Mark Tapscott

YES: 19 Years Is Enough, President Trump: Push Disney and ABC to Re-Broadcast ‘The Path to 9/11’ While Releasing the DVD. “After reminding us of the ‘length to which ABC, its news division, and its parent company (Disney) have gone to protect and curry favor with the Clintons’ — ‘in 1996, ABC News hired George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton campaign and White House official’ and said ‘symbol of ABC News has an ongoing relationship (involving large sums of money) with Bill and Hillary Clinton, a relationship that he and ABC News attempted to cover up from viewers’ — John Nolte gets to the gist of the matter and reminds us of what befell the mini-series after it was broadcast 19 years ago.”

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: District Court Judge Rules Ban on Machinegun Ownership Unconstitutional Under Bruen. “The United States had charged Justin Brown with possession of an unregistered machinegun. Mr. Brown objected to the charge based on the fact that he’s a lawful firearm owner and claimed that the ban on machinegun ownership is unconstitutional. In his ruling, Judge Carlton Reeves, an Obama appointee, made no bones at all about the fact that he hated what he was doing, but under Bruen — of which he is also not a fan — the law is very clear.”

Posted at 12:32 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CNN DATA GURU HARRY ENTEN LANDS COUP DE GRACE ON DEMOCRATS AFTER TRUMP SIGNS EO PROTECTING WOMEN’S SPORTS:

This was always a stupid, non-sensical hill for Democrats to pick to die on from a political standpoint. I mean, they really thought they were on the “winning” side by catering to the fringe elements in their party on co-called transgender “women” while at the same time trying to have it both ways by falsely claiming they were protectors and defenders of women.

Just like “Defund the Police” hurt Democrats in prior elections, coddling the extremists in the Alphabet Mafia had consequences for them in 2024. And the even worse news for them (and the even better news for Republicans) is that the opposition to men in women’s sports has, as Enten noted, only strengthened over the years across all party lines.

Exit quote:

Related:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHAT’S THIS, A TEEN REVIVAL? New data from Barna finds more than three-quarters of teenagers surveyed are either very or somewhat interested in learning more about Jesus Christ. That’s quite a contrast to the extensive media coverage in recent years of the growth of the “Nones.”

Posted at 12:20 pm by Mark Tapscott

KRUISER: My Three-Letter Response to the Dems’ Caterwauling About ‘Unelected Officials’: EPA. “After listening to them scream about threats to ‘democracy’ for over a year, we’re all aware that the Democrats don’t know much, if anything, about the Constitution of the United States or how the government works, especially here in the era of hyper-regulation. One could say that congressional Dems are being deliberately obtuse when battling the Trump 47 administration, but I’m comfortable with saying that they’re stupid.”

Posted at 11:12 am by Stephen Green