LOOK AT THEM GO:

On October 22nd at 6:54AM, Benjamin Glutton claimed it was Republicans making the Trump McDonald's appearance a three-day story. Let's see what's happened *just* since his claim yesterday. 🧵 https://t.co/XhSrvBvTnA

— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) October 23, 2024

LISTEN SUG, DON’T FORGET TO SAY YOUR PRAYERS: The Critical Drinker on Threads (Video).

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: 10 More Images Of Trump That ‘Newsweek’ Is Warning Might Be A.I.-Generated. “Despite what this image may have you believe, Newsweek cannot confirm that Donald Trump is Batman.”

Actually, this is one we can confirm. Trump is indeed Batman:

NO WORD YET IF THEY’RE ALSO UPGRADING TO WINDOWS ME: San Francisco Muni Will Spend $212M to Move Train Control Off of Floppy Disks.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: ‘Frighteningly awful’ Biden struggled to complete sentences for over a year before dropping out, book reveals: ‘Like your senile grandfather.’

Joe Biden struggled to remember basic words or even stand up at campaign fundraisers over a year prior to dropping out of the presidential race, with witnesses describing him as “frighteningly awful and a “senile grandfather” Bob Woodward’s bombshell book “War” reveals.

At a Silicon Valley fundraiser in September 2023 guests were extremely concerned by Biden’s appearance as the then-presidential candidate struggled to remain upright and only took two pre-arranged questions.

“He could not wait to sit down,” a donor at the event, hosted by Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, recounted.

Despite bringing a stack of note cards with pre-written answers, the 81-year-old president struggled to stay on point and frequently meandered in his speech, attendees claimed.

Attendees said “[He was] like your 87-year-old senile grandfather,” and called him “frighteningly awful.”

At a different event at the New York City Four Season in June 2023, Biden could not recall the word for “veteran,” and pleaded with the crowd for help describing a person who has “served in the military,” Woodward writes.

But what did the vice president know, and when did she know it?

GRAY LADY DOWN: Meet the New York Times Source Who Claims Kamala Harris’s Late Mother Told Her That Her Daughter Worked at McDonald’s. She’s a Harris Campaign Surrogate Who’s Visited the White House.

TWO CBS NEWS IN ONE!

Shot: Fake news headlines are going viral. Here’s what to know.

—CBS News headline, yesterday.

Chaser:

RIP: Los Angeles Dodgers legend Fernando Valenzuela dies at age 63.

TV REPORTER STRUCK BY BULLET FRAGMENT AT CAMPAIGN EVENT FOR JOSH HAWLEY’S OPPONENT:

A Kansas City TV news reporter was hit by a piece of shrapnel Tuesday at a campaign event for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Lucas Kunce.

According to NBC affiliate KSHB, reporter Ryan Gamboa was covering the event at a gun range near Kansas City.

Kunce was firing an AR-15 style weapon at the time Gamboa was struck. A piece of shrapnel ricocheted off a metal target and hit the reporter’s arm. Kunce was later seen wrapping a bandage around Gamboa’s injured arm.

* * * * * * * * *

Republican incumbent Josh Hawley responded to the incident with a post on social media platform X, saying “I condemn all acts of violence against reporters and call on Kunce to never shoot another one.”

Great moments in shooting sports:

First Dick Cheney, now Kunce. What is it with Kamala’s endorsements and shooting incidents? Or as Doug Powers joked on Twitter, “This is why they didn’t give Tim Walz a gun that was loaded.”

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, this story is catnip to the London Daily Mail: Democrat accidentally ‘SHOOTS’ reporter with an AR-15 at campaign event.

The last two paragraphs explain Kunce’s sudden need for all of the commando cosplay: “Kunce won’t have any easy time trying to oust Hawley, who is seeking a second term in the U.S. Senate. An Emerson College/The Hill poll from September shows Hawley with 51 percent support to Kunce’s 40 percent.”

MORE: Bullet dodged, perhaps quite literally!

THIS REMAKE OF MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR IS EVEN WORSE THAN THE FIRST VERSION: We Are All on the Bus.

A single usage of “star-studded” was simply not enough to portray the majesty of a Kamala Harris campaign event with Oprah Winfrey, according to a Sept. 20 article in The Washington Post. “A star-studded online rally designed to showcase the enthusiasm and energy behind Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign turned somber as host Oprah Winfrey introduced the mother of a woman who died after waiting for health care in a state that has banned most abortions,” the report began. Several paragraphs later, readers learned that the event kicked off with “a star-studded opening as Winfrey called out other celebrities who were joining virtually—Jennifer Lopez, Bryan Cranston, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Meryl Streep among them.” The average age of the aforementioned stars is 64, once Oprah is factored in.

After leaving the undignifying grind of daily television way back in 2011, Oprah has remained at the rarefied upper summit of senior cultural figures, where she continues to embody national conscience and moral authority. She is the Eleos of the American Olympus, dispenser of compassion and mercy at the steep price of a full and honest public reckoning. Tim Walz, who has repeatedly stretched the truth about his military career and his travels in China, would have been an awesome Oprah guest. The same goes for Walz’s boss, who during her four months as a presidential candidate has carefully evaded any hazardous unscripted moments with the press. In the midst of their breathless coverage of a fake Oprah interview, The Washington Post writers—the article somehow carries the credits of two reporters—were too awestruck or subservient to note its obvious fakeness.

Would it really make that much of a difference if the paper took some other, less fawning approach, or showed even the slightest bit of skepticism about an overly stage-managed Democrat’s internet pageant of Clinton-era celebrities? In The Boys on the Bus, the classic 1972 study of that year’s campaign press, Rolling Stone writer Tim Crouse recounted the media’s powerlessness, and its interrelated lack of self-awareness and basic curiosity, in the face of a Nixon-level image-making operation. Today The Boys on the Bus is often remembered as a nostalgic chronicle of the fading glory days of American journalism. But it is really about the political media’s discovery that it might not really matter that much—that it isn’t a mighty tribune of democratic accountability, but a submissive player in someone else’s drama.

The media of the 1960s and 1970s at least pretended occasionally to have the aura of the penumbra of being objective. Beginning with the 2008 election (and arguably the preceding election), that’s all been entirely abandoned:

GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-ASSESSMENT:

Barack Obama: "I don't understand how we got so toxic and just so divided and so bitter." pic.twitter.com/OWj3uicQ1o

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 22, 2024

Yes, how indeed? As Jon Gabriel explored at the beginning 2017: President Obama’s Disastrous Record on Race.

On Election Day 2008, many Democrats welcomed a new post-racial America. The hideous blight of slavery and Jim Crow could never be forgotten, but our first African-American President would in some small way help atone for those sins and ultimately transcend them. Even Republicans shared the emotions of Grant Park, where thousands crying elderly blacks finally saw that America could elect a person of color.

Despite these bipartisan hopes, the nation is more racially obsessed than it has been in 25 years. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 63 percent of Americans think race relations are “generally bad.” Shortly after Obama took office, that number was 22 percent. In the same time period, those who think race relations are “generally good” plummeted from 66 percent to 32 percent.

Of course, Obama fans assert that this increase in racial division is due to white contempt for a black president. This is illogical since months after he took office, the American people thought racial harmony was higher than it had ever been. So what changed?

Watching Ferguson, MO go up in flames, I ironically remarked, “My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.” Little did I know how many times people would republish that line in the years that followed.

Eric Garner’s death created racial unrest in New York City. Baltimore was racked with days of violence following Freddie Gray’s death. Five officers were murdered by a black separatist in Dallas. Other law enforcement officers were ambushed in Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. The police-involved shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile sparked more violent protests in New York City, Chicago, St. Paul, Baton Rouge, and elsewhere. In each case, the major media misreported the facts, stoked the literal fires, and characterized the rampages as “mostly peaceful.”

* * * * * * * * *

Before getting into politics, Barack Obama was a community organizer. This anodyne term was created by Chicago leftist Saul Alinsky who created the position to “rub raw the sores of discontent.” Many thought Obama’s moderate sounding speeches meant he had tossed Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals in the dustbin. Instead, upon entering the White House, Obama created Organizing for Action, which has trained 5 million Americans in Alinsky tactics.

Occupy Wall Street, Wisconsin’s anti-Walker protests, and Black Lives Matter didn’t arise of their own accord. They were the bitter fruit intentionally cultivated by OfA.

Which is why we now have a nearly annual riots in America. Or as Gabriel wrote in June: Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same.

UPDATE: In accordance with the prophecy:

TULSI GABBARD JOINS GOP:

As Glenn noted when Gabbard headlined CPAC in 2022, “Hey, she got more Democratic delegates than Kamala. And this is more evidence of the political realignment that’s going on.”

‘NEW ANONYMOUS HORSES**T JUST DROPPED:’ Pathetic Atlantic Anti-Trump Hit Piece Gets Absolutely Wrecked.

Related:

On the left: I sent Atlantic a comment saying President Trump “absolutely did not say that,” referring to the alleged comments about Ms. Guillen they printed.

On the right: Atlantic translated that comment to “didn’t hear Trump say it.”

Treat this dishonest piece accordingly. pic.twitter.com/pM1o1c9fEm

— Ben Williamson (@_WilliamsonBen) October 22, 2024

As Ben Shapiro notes:

It's election time again, so that means it's also Jeffrey Goldberg Unverified Trash From Anonymous Sources Time™! Barack Obama's favorite stenographer is nothing if not predictable. pic.twitter.com/VJLxYxUQrR

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 22, 2024

Flashback to 2014, when in order to prop up Obama’s base, Goldberg claimed that a” senior Obama administration official recently described” Benjamin Netanyahu as “chickenshit,” using his patented anonymous sources technique of inventing timely quotes.

UPDATE: Mr. Goldberg’s Profession.

VOTE ACCORDINGLY: Kamala Harris Once Suggested It ‘Would Be Great’ To Ban All Gun Ownership.

Related: Kamala Flip Flops on Fracking Pledge Just Weeks Before Polling Day.

Combine those issues and: Houston? She Has a Problem. “Perhaps we’ll get surprised by the results, but this looks like a very bizarre campaign strategy. Harris is losing where she needs to win and campaigning where she doesn’t as the clock runs out. I’d bet this gets a big mention in the post-mortems after November 5 if the current trends hold up.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE AND THE BANANA REPUBLIC: Biden calls for Trump to be jailed 14 days before 2024 election: ‘We gotta lock him up!’

Retiring President Biden stunned listeners Tuesday by calling for his predecessor Donald Trump to be jailed — 14 days before the presidential election in which Trump is the Republican nominee.

“If I said this 5 years ago, you’d lock me up: we gotta lock him up,” Biden, 81, said during a visit to a Democratic campaign office in New Hampshire.

After a four-second pause during which his audience enthusiastically applauded, Biden added: “politically lock him up — lock him out, that’s what we’ve got to do.”

The president and his aides typically refrain from commenting on the four pending criminal cases against Trump, who contends that a quartet of local and federal indictments last year were politically motivated to aid Biden’s then-re-election campaign.

Biden has tauntingly referenced Trump’s legal woes before, including saying last week, “I think he’s running to stay out of jail.”

All the best people told me during Trump’s first term that wanting to lock your political opponents up is the stuff of fascism:

By trying to have Mrs. Clinton prosecuted, Mr. Trump was following through on a campaign promise. At rallies, he often stood on stage denouncing her as crowds chanted, “Lock her up!”

“This reeks of a typical practice in authoritarian regimes where whoever attains power, they don’t just take over power peacefully, but they punish and jail their opponents,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian and professor at George Washington University.

I eagerly await equally strong condemnations of Biden’s rhetoric as well. (But I won’t be holding my breath in the meantime.)

Simultaneously, I’m eagerly awaiting discussions about the 25th Amendment:

EUROPE CONTINUING TO PARTY LIKE IT’S 1939: Antisemitism has made life in Ireland unbearable, say Israelis.

Israeli people living in Ireland have said their lives here have become “unbearable” in the past year with many afraid to leave their homes and some emigrating to other countries.

According to the 2016 census, 664 Israelis and about 2,500 Jewish people live in Ireland. However, the community claims that Ireland’s pro-Palestine stance has led to an increase in antisemitism that has left many families and their children feeling unsafe.

Bar Clara Mendez McConnon, 33, is originally from the upper Galilee region, which borders Lebanon, but has lived in Dublin on and off since 2012. McConnon is currently in Tel Aviv with her Irish husband and their two young children due to the discrimination they have received.

She said: “For me personally it’s just been heartbreaking. I’ve always been very proud to live in Ireland and was actually deep into my naturalisation process of becoming Irish, but the level of mistrust and isolation got to a point that was just unbearable.

“My eldest son who is seven got bullied at his GAA club a few times by his team-mates and the coach for being Israeli.

“We’ve completely avoided the city centre since October 7 because of the violent graffiti and posters of Hamas terrorists — my son is old enough that he’s able to read them. First he was scared and then he started being ashamed of who he is.

“We had families and friends of years that turned on us. I explained that I can only share the Israeli perspective because that’s my life. My family is being evacuated from the north and one of my childhood friends is one of the hostages that is still there [in Gaza].”

How bad has antisemitism gotten in Ireland? This bad: Bibi banned from Galway.

In a unanimous vote of all 16 councillors present in City Hall last Monday, a motion was carried that the City Council will not welcome any future visits to Galway by Netanyahu, Israel’s president Isaac Herzog, or ministers and ambassadors of the current administration after its military incursions into Lebanon.

The motion, tabled by Councillor Níall McNelis (Lab ), spells out that no senior Israeli officials are welcome here ‘for as long as illegal occupation of Palestine and bordering countries continues, and war crimes are being perpetrated by the Israeli state’. The measure mandates the city council to communicate its ban to President Michael D Higgins, Taoiseach Simon Harris, and minister for foreign affairs, Tánaiste Micheál Martin.

“Look, I know it’s just a motion, and I doubt Israel’s government will pay much heed, but we have to be seen to do something, especially as there are lads from Renmore [Barracks] in Camp Shamrock, and that just brings close to home what this bullying, bully state is doing,” said McNelis after the vote.

Creating no-go zones for Jews in Europe. What could possibly go wrong?

THE ENDGAME: Biden’s quest for a foreign policy legacy.

Like all presidents before him, Joe Biden possesses a high opinion of himself. He believes his half-century record in public life, including his long service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and eight years as vice president, provided him the knowledge, tools and unique ability to get things done on the international stage. His final address to the UN General Assembly in September was motivated in part by a need to elevate what he achieved during his four years. Yet as his tenure comes to a close, he continues to scramble for a foreign policy legacy that will define his presidency. It’s unlikely he’ll get one.

Actually, Biden’s foreign policy legacy has been ensured for quite some time:

TRUMP-ROGAN INTERVIEW SET FOR FRIDAY:

Former President Donald Trump is set to record an interview with podcasting king Joe Rogan on Friday at Rogan’s studio in Austin, Texas.

According to Politico, Rogan — who has over 14 million followers on Spotify, continues to dominate national podcast ratings. Trump’s appearance is expected to help Trump win young male voters — after appearing on such podcasts as “This Week w/ Theo Vaughn” and “Full Send.”

Trump has never appeared on Rogan’s podcast and the two have had a complicated relationship. In August, Trump called out Rogan after the podcaster claimed that politicians on both sides are manipulative except for Robert Kennedy Jr., who at the time was running for president. –Politico

Reactions have been mixed — with some suggesting this is “incredible news,” and others suggesting this might not go well for the former president.

When does Kamala go on Rogan’s show?

WE NEED A COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF CBS NEWS UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT JUST WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE: CBS News producer asked if Jews are ‘human like us.’

Marwan Al-Ghoul, who has long covered the region, was “praised by the network last week for his ‘resolve’ in covering the conflict,” but the CBS Gaza-based producer, “has a troubling social media history,” CAMERA told JNS. “His posts include vile antisemitism—denying the humanity of Jews—open support for terrorism, calls for ‘permanent resistance’ and predictions about the demise of both the United States and Israel.”

“This glaring inconsistency raises serious questions about CBS‘s editorial standards,” stated Jonah Cohen, communications director for CAMERA.

Al-Ghoul “has been praised within CBS for his reporting since Oct. 7. CBS News desk editor Emmet Lyons described him as ‘an incredibly courageous man and a fantastic reporter,’ while senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer said ‘his resolve is simply astonishing,’” CAMERA said. “However, Al-Ghoul’s social media activity reveals deeply troubling views, including blatant antisemitic rhetoric and praise for violence against Israeli civilians.”

More details here:

In addition to Al Ghoul’s social-media posts and the Dokoupil controversy, Bari Weiss of the Free Press recently exposed that the day after the October 7 attack, CBS News cautioned its reporters about using the word “terrorist,” writing that, while the U.S. government considers Hamas a terrorist organization, the term may not always be accurate.

“There are some who believe the attack by Hamas is a justified retaliation to Israeli occupation of their lands,” the internal email said, according to Weiss. “Others believe this to be an unprovoked attack on Israel and, as such, Israel has every right to defend itself.”

Cohen said the Al Ghoul commentary paired with the Dokoupil episode calls into question CBS News’s integrity.

“We have a situation here where CBS’s editorial standards appear deeply flawed,” he said. “You would think the way Dokoupil was treated, those high standards would be applied to Al Ghoul. And by their own standards, he would be seen as someone who really couldn’t represent the truth of the situation.”

“Truth” and CBS News have been increasingly mutual separate terms for quite some time now, alas.

NEIL KINNOCK SMILES: Kamala Harris Plagiarized Pages of Congressional Testimony From a Republican Colleague. Plus, a Fictionalized Story About Human Trafficking.

In a written statement to the House Judiciary Committee, she described how debt-addled prosecutors often decamp to the private sector a few years into the job, lured by the prospect of higher pay that could be used to pay off law school debt. That dynamic had left many district attorneys’ offices short-staffed, she said, forcing them to put rookie attorneys on complex cases.

“There are numerous criminal cases that are particularly difficult because of the dynamics involved,” Harris wrote. “To name just a few—child abuse, elder neglect, domestic violence, identity theft and public corruption. The stakes are simply too high to allow any attorney other than experienced prosecutors to handle these matters.”

By repaying the loans of prosecutors and public defenders, Harris argued, the bill, which had been introduced with bipartisan support, would provide an incentive for lawyers to enter public service, or at least diminish the incentive to leave it.

The statement was simple and pragmatic. But Harris wasn’t the first person to make it.

Virtually her entire testimony about the bill was taken from that of another district attorney, Paul Logli of Winnebago County, Illinois, who had testified in support of the legislation two months earlier before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both statements cite the same surveys, use the same language, and make the same points in the same order, with a paragraph added here or there. They even contain the same typos, such as missing punctuation or mistaken plurals. One error—a “who” that should have been a “whom”—was corrected in Harris’s transposition.

* * * * * * * *

The plagiarism could become a potent symbol of that critique in the last days of a dead heat. In an article about Rufo’s allegations, the New York Times noted that “none of the passages in question took the ideas or thoughts of another writer.” The new examples—in which Harris lifts pages of original material from other lawyers—undermine that defense and suggest that not all the passages were copied in error. Some contain tell-tale signs of intent, such as small tweaks in punctuation and the removal of minor details.

The symbolism could be especially resonant given that Logli, who has been donating to GOP candidates since 1994, is not the only Republican Harris has been accused of parroting. She endured a different sort of plagiarism scandal in August when she promised to eliminate taxes on tips—two months after her rival, Donald Trump, had promised to do the same.

“This was a TRUMP idea,” Trump fumed on Truth Social at the time. “She has no ideas, she can only steal from me.”

Well, not just from Trump, apparently. Oh and regarding the second half of the headline above:

(Classical reference in headline.)

UNEXPECTEDLY: Former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries is arrested for sex trafficking.

Attorneys for the victims of the class action lawsuit said on Tuesday that ‘today’s arrests are monumental for the aspiring male models who were victimized by these individuals.’

‘We look forward to holding Abercrombie and Fitch liable for facilitating this terrible conduct and ensuring that this cannot happen again,’ the statement added.

Abercrombie has previously said it is ‘appalled and disgusted’ by the allegations against Jeffries.

Jeffries, who left Abercrombie in 2014, converted the chain from an struggling retailer of hunting apparel to a seller of must-have teen clothing. But he faced criticism for the company’s sexualized marketing, including billboards and beefy models that alienated potential customers who didn’t fit into its image.

QED, the late William F. Buckley, who famously wrote in November of 2001, in a column titled, “Porn, Pervasive Presence:”

I stopped by at the local Abercrombie & Fitch for sailing wear. I waited, at the counter, for my package and looked down on the A&F Summer Catalogue. You could see the handsome young man on the cover, but the catalogue itself was bound in cellophane. My eyes turned to the card alongside. “To subscribe: Fill out this card and head to the nearest A&F store with a valid photo ID.” With a valid photo ID? I thought that odd and asked the young man behind the counter, who was perhaps 19 years old, why IDs were required for purchasers of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. He said, “Well, uh, it’s kind of porny inside.”

Abercrombie & Fitch has been from time immemorial a sportswear store renowned for its wholesome regard for the outdoor life. I smile still at the story recorded in The New Yorker generations ago. It was of a gardener in Long Island who yearned to buy a genuine A&F barometer and finally saved up the money to do so. He brought the beautiful thing back from Manhattan to his little house on the south shore, tapped it a few times impatiently, and stormed back to Manhattan to complain to the salesman that it was defective, its needle stuck at the mark “Hurricane.” Abercrombie returned his money and the plaintiff returned to Islip to find that his house had been blown away.

Abercrombie’s barometric needle had pointed resolutely at the impending hurricane of 1938, and presumably the company’s current managers are confident that its current clothes line is also pointed surely, though the summer A&F catalogue seems to be suggesting that young men and women are better off wearing no clothes at all.

It is introduced by a 150-word essay under the title, “The Pleasure Principle.” A definition ensues: “In psychoanalysis, the tendency or drive to achieve pleasure and avoid pain is the chief motivating force in behavior.” And then an amplification: “Summer being our favorite time of the year and all, we’ve worked extra hard to bring you our best issue yet by letting the pleasure principle be our guide through the hottest months.”

The lead page gives us a jaunty blonde clutching her hair, wet from the ocean she has just emerged from. If she is wearing anything, it would be below her pelvic joint. Above it, which is all the viewer can see, there are no clothes.

Exit quote from Buckley: “There was never a pitch more nakedly designed than Abercrombie’s to stimulate erotic appetites. The last part of the catalogue actually depicts clothes of one kind or another, but the reader, getting that far, is hotly indignant: What are all those shirts and shorts and pants doing, interrupting my view of the naked kids! I mean, I showed you my ID, didn’t I?”

AND THE ROLE OF PAULINE KAEL WILL BE PLAYED BY…: New Yorker writer admits he’s never met a Trump supporter at work in 15-year media career. ‘So, yes, there is a liberal bias to the news,’ the longtime journalist wrote.

Jay Caspian Kang, a staff writer for The New Yorker, ascribed media bias not to a conspiracy among journalists, but to the fact that the overwhelming majority of journalists are left-leaning.

Kang wrote a piece for The New Yorker, “How Biased Is the Media, Really?” in response to a recent Gallup poll showing that Americans’ trust in mass media remains not only historically low, but consistently abysmal for the third year in a row.

He responded by addressing multiple common critiques from Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, including the accusation that “Every news organization that feigns objectivity is actually heavily slanted toward the left. Not only that; the media is actively working with the Democrats to defeat Donald Trump.”

“The most obvious explanation for this impression is that the press corps is mostly made up of liberals,” he wrote in the piece, adding that “At prestige outlets—many of which do don the armor of impartiality—the imbalance skews a lot further to the left than what many outsiders might imagine.”

He recalled Uri Berliner emerging as a whistleblower against NPR and the rise of progressive identity-politics, but argued the effect of such politics on journalism is ultimately “negligible compared with the effect of the fact that nearly everyone who works [in the media]” are “college-educated Democratic voters from middle- to upper-middle-class families. I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: in the course of a fifteen-year career that has included stints at radio shows, print outlets, digital media and television, I have yet to meet a Trump supporter at work.”

As Pauline Kael, the New Yorker’s film critic was quoted after the 1972 election, “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”

But certainly not in a newsroom, curiously enough.

But then, given the way that the New York Times’ uber-woke young staffers turned on former Weekly Standard assistant editor Adam Rubenstein like the torch and pitchfork-wielding rampaging mob out of a 1930s Universal horror movie for publishing Tom Cotton’s op-ed in 2020, would anyone who’s even Trump-curious admit to such inclinations in a 2024 newspaper newsroom?

GENTLEMEN, YOU CAN’T ASK THE CANDIDATE QUESTIONS, THIS IS A TOWN HALL! Kamala Harris town hall host Maria Shriver says crowd can’t ask questions because they’re ‘predetermined.’

A town hall event with Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday featured a shocking revelation after one voter simply wondered whether she could ask a question.

Former California First Lady Maria Shriver admitted while hosting the event with former Rep. Liz Cheney in Royal Oak, Michigan that she would only include ‘predetermined questions.’

‘Are we going to be able to ask a question?’ asked a woman in the audience.

‘You’re not, unfortunately we have some predetermined questions,’ Shriver replied. ‘And hopefully I’ll be able to ask some of the questions that might be in your head, I hope so.’

Typically, presidential campaigns allow voters at townhall meetings to ask unscripted questions, which lends a level of authenticity to the proceedings and highlights a presidential candidate’s personal touch.
Shriver said she had agreed to moderate the event as a ‘concerned citizen’ but also a ‘journalist.’

‘I want this to be like a kitchen table, like just think that we’re sitting around at the kitchen table and we’re jamming about all kinds of stuff,’ she said.

Shriver is a member of the Kennedy family and was an NBC journalist* who was married to former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger before the couple divorced.

Cheney joked that it felt like a Kennedy family dinner table, noting the number of people in the room.

‘It’s raucous, it’s hot but it’s fun, that’s what it’s going to be like,’ Shriver laughed.

It’s a hot, raucous, but very predetermined bit of fun:

YIKES! Kamala caught staging a sham 'townhall' when audience member tries to ask a question

"You're not [allowed to ask questions.] We have some pre-determined questions." pic.twitter.com/4VXUEUMkth

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 21, 2024

* And still is, according to Shriver’s LinkedIn profile:

UPDATE: Kamala Harris ‘Town Hall’ With Liz Cheney Blows Up on the Launch Pad, and Just Gets Worse From There.

Nothing says “town hall” like pre-determined questions no doubt submitted by the campaign itself. The statement from the moderator that she might “ask some questions that might be in your head” is especially great. Sure, people showed up hoping to actually garner tangible information from Harris, but isn’t hoping that moderator might ask a question somewhat related to something you care about basically the same thing?

Keep in mind that we are still in the middle of a Democrat freak-out over Donald Trump visiting a McDonald’s, with left-wingers letting it be known the event was “staged.” Well, is a “town hall” in which no one can ask questions “staged?” Asking for a friend.

That’s not even the worst part, though. The worst part is trying to make Liz Cheney into a moral arbiter and campaign resource. I’ve seen presidential candidates do some really stupid things over the years, but this might take the cake.

As Varad Mehta notes, “Did the person who wrote this tweet have a reading comprehension problem? Because the first half of it contradicts the second half. You don’t convince anti-abortion voters to vote for a Democrat by telling them the GOP has gone too far on abortion. Did everyone go brain dead?”

And then there’s the enormous popularity of the Cheneys with Muslim-Americans: “No one despises the Cheney family more than Arab-Americans, many of whom see them as the cause of so much death and suffering in the Middle East. Harris needs their votes, and she’s instead pushing them further away just to get some backslaps from a press that is obsessed with lionizing anti-Trump Republicans.”

IT’S COME TO THIS: What if Joe Biden was the better candidate all along?

With the Nov. 5 election just over a fortnight away, here is an intriguing thought experiment.

By most accounts, the election is still a horse race too close to call. But although Vice President Kamala Harris quickly assumed the presidential mantle from Joe Biden and put in place an impressive start-up, October has not been particularly kind to her. Donald Trump has closed the electoral gaps, and some believe he is actually leading.

No matter who wins, we have to ask: Would President Biden have been a better candidate and choice despite suffering from the effects of age and 81 years? Further, suppose that the disastrous June 27 debate with Trump had not taken place, or that Biden had been firing on all cylinders that night. Would Biden have been forced to withdraw? And whether Harris loses or wins, some will ask whether Biden might still have been a better candidate.

In accordance with the prophecy:

TIM WALZ ON THE VIEW: Trump going to work at a McDonald’s was disrespectful to McDonald’s workers.

Also Tim Walz: