DISPATCHES FROM THE COLD CIVIL WAR: Getting a Home Depot Employee Fired for Calling for Trump’s Assassination Is Still Cancel Culture.

Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the popular Libs of TikTok social media accounts, has complained in the past about the efforts to “cancel and silence” her. It appears she is taking a page from the playbook she supposedly hates.

Raichik’s online operation reposts TikTok videos of left-leaning content creators saying things that often border on the absurd. She has recently upped the ante, amplifying Facebook posts from random people making crass comments about the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, blasting them to her 3.2 million followers on X, and tagging their employers in hopes they are rendered jobless.

In some cases, it has paid off. “To [sic] bad they weren’t a better shooter!!!!!” Darcy Waldron Pinckney posted on Facebook. You probably don’t recognize her name because she is not a public figure. She is not a lawmaker or a bureaucrat or someone in any position of power. She worked at Home Depot.

The past tense here is key. On Sunday, Raichik posted a screenshot of Pinckney’s comment, along with a video of someone confronting her at the store and an admonition to her employer: “Hi @HomeDepot!” Raichik wrote. “Are you aware that you employ people who call for political violence and the ass*ss*nat*on of Presidents? Any comment?” The company promptly terminated her.

Whatever your feelings on the former president, cheering on his assassination attempt is, in fact, wrong. It is also wrong to weaponize your millions of followers to turn a random woman into a national pariah, siccing a mob on her and rendering her unable to support herself—and possibly her family—because she made a tasteless comment on social media. These two things are true at the same time.

Okay, granted. But what if the person wants to be fired from Home Depot…?

DISPATCHES FROM THE BIDENBUNKER: Secluded in Rehoboth, Biden Stews at Allies’ Pressure to Drop Out of the Race.

Sick with Covid and abandoned by allies, President Biden has been fuming at his Delaware beach house, increasingly resentful about what he sees as an orchestrated campaign to drive him out of the race and bitter toward some of those he once considered close, including his onetime running mate Barack Obama.

Mr. Biden has been around politics long enough to assume that the leaks appearing in the media in recent days are being coordinated to raise the pressure on him to step aside, according to people close to him. He considers Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, the main instigator, but is irritated at Mr. Obama as well, seeing him as a puppet master behind the scenes.

The friction between the sitting president and leaders of his own party so close to an election is unlike anything seen in Washington in generations — especially because the Democrats now working to ease him out were some of the allies most critical to his success over the last dozen years. It was Mr. Obama who elevated Mr. Biden from a presidential also-ran to the vice presidency, setting him up to win the White House in 2020, and it was Ms. Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, who pushed through his landmark legislative achievements.

* * * * * * * *

And he certainly noticed that Mr. Obama has not done anything to help him in recent days even as his own former aides publicly have led the way in calling on Mr. Biden to withdraw in what was interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as a message from the former president’s camp. The unseen but clearly felt presence of Mr. Obama in particular has brought a Shakespearean quality to the drama now playing out, given their eight-year partnership.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey comments on another New York Times article: NYT: Feud Opening Between Biden, Harris?

“Not surprisingly, there was no news generated on this call, and instead, it was a pitch for donors to continue to invest in groups on the ground who are working to defeat Donald Trump,” read an email from Corridor Partners, which advises donors focused on climate issues. “The vice president spoke very briefly and encouraged us all to keep working hard to win in November.”

The email, which was viewed by The New York Times, added, “The call was not productive, and we wanted to apologize to each of you who joined for sharing that invitation.”

Burdened by what has been!

Those poll numbers reflect the desperation Democrats feel, especially after the presidential debate and Trump’s defiant stand after an assassin nearly killed him. They face only three choices: The worst president at the top of the ticket, an incompetent VP at the top of the ticket, or an open convention that would tear the party apart along its factional and identitarian lines less than three months before a national election. Harris was part of the leadership that put Democrats in this position — and they know it.

The reporting coming out of several Democratic Party house organs in the past couple of weeks has been pretty astounding to read after their four-year long torpor. Or as Charles Cooke tweets:

Enjoy it for now; normal service will resume from the DNC-MSM the moment that the Biden situation has resolved and his would-be successor is in place.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: Edge of the Abyss.

By December 2023, the Biden campaign’s frequent equation of Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler had caught the attention even of some in the mainstream media. “In most situations, comparing a political opponent to Adolf Hitler might seem like an extraordinary step,” wrote Politico. “For Joe Biden’s campaign, it has become part of the routine of running against Donald Trump.” CNN predicted that the Trump-is-Hitler “attack line” would likely be “central” to the president’s efforts to win reelection. Other outlets contributed their own Trump-Hitler comparisons. The New Republic’s June 2024 issue, a special report on “American Fascism,” showed a blended image of Trump and the Führer on its cover.

It was not even necessary to make an explicit Hitler comparison; the similarities were too obvious. Robert Kagan told the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart that Trump was a “natural dictator.” If you “give him unchecked power in the United States, I think any sensible person would find that a frightening proposition.” Americans are whistling past the graveyard, Kagan warned. All checks on presidential power will be impotent against Trump’s attacks on the Founder’s constitutional order, he declared.

“Existential threats” can seem to demand a different set of rules from those governing ordinary political life. Had the July 20, 1944, assassination plot against Hitler been successful, the plotters would have been greeted across the world as heroes.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, who missed blowing out Donald Trump’s brain by a few inches and who murdered a Trump supporter instead, may have thought of himself as just such a hero-in-waiting.

AOC, who in 2019, issued fiery apocalyptic speeches, wanted to control the entire economy, and identified with Evita Peron, was riding the leftist Mobius Loop last night:

BUT WE'RE GLAD FORMER PRESIDENT NEO NAZI WASN'T KILLLED https://t.co/B4KwlYlErj

— President Dr RollerGator MVIP PhD (@drrollergator) July 19, 2024

HOW IT STARTED:

yeah, fuck @jaketapper for his sanctimony here; he was totally in on Biden's decline coverup with this stutter shaming guilt trip. https://t.co/amSEqlxY9y

— NeverTweet (@LOLNeverTweet) July 20, 2024

How it’s going: Inside the ‘doom loop’ of Joe Biden’s campaign.

—CNN, yesterday.

FAKE BUT ACCURATE:

Related: When Things Go Wrong: The importance of resilience. And cash!

From Glenn, at his Substack.

BLUEANON: Shocking Number Of Democrats Think Trump Shooting Was Fake: Poll.

Even those tweeting from their bathtubs:

MATT MARGOLIS: It Looks Like Kamala’s Call with Democrat Donors Was a Disaster.

According to the New York Times, the call included roughly 300 donors, and “several listeners said they found the meeting overall to be of little value and even, at times, condescending, believing that the message ignored donors’ legitimate concerns about the Biden-led ticket.”

Kamala Harris reportedly spoke for just over five minutes via video, focused on criticizing Donald Trump for his convention speech, and tried to link him to Project 2025. She only briefly mentioned Joe Biden but did not take questions. Harris emphasized that Trump’s speech was a distraction from his record and the significance of the election. While some listeners found her delivery strong, it did little to reassure them.

In fact, some seemed to find the entire call insulting.

After the call, one group that had promoted it in advance apologized to its members for having done so.

“Not surprisingly, there was no news generated on this call, and instead, it was a pitch for donors to continue to invest in groups on the ground who are working to defeat Donald Trump,” read an email from Corridor Partners, which advises donors focused on climate issues. “The vice president spoke very briefly and encouraged us all to keep working hard to win in November.”

The email, which was viewed by The New York Times, added, “The call was not productive, and we wanted to apologize to each of you who joined for sharing that invitation.”

But the Washingtonian is assuring their leftist readers that the transition from Biden to Harris will be surprisingly seamless: Kamala Harris Takes Over Biden’s Favorite Activity: Eating Ice Cream. The VP made a visit to Tyra Banks’s new pop-up in Woodley Park.

The Country is in crisis, the President has COVID and Kamala is in Tyra’s ice cream shop? pic.twitter.com/0emEkLqnXK

— Tom Chestnut (@tom_chestnut) July 19, 2024

BUZZ ALDRIN:

The New York Times’ headline the next day:

MAUREEN DOWD: Lord Almighty, Joe, Let It Go!

Everyone wants Joe Biden gone.

Even the people who don’t want him gone really want him gone.

“Everyone’s waiting for Joe,” said one top Democrat. “And he’s sitting at home, stewing and saying, ‘What if? What if? What if?’ We’re doing things the Democratic way. We’re botching it.”

I have many happy memories of Rehoboth Beach. I went there growing up and have Proustian recollections of crispy French fries with vinegar sold on the Boardwalk. But now my gladdening images have been replaced by a maddening one: President Biden hunkered down in his house there, recovering from Covid, resisting talking to anyone who will tell him the truth, hoarsely yelling, “Get off my beach!” at the growing list of Democratic lawmakers and donors trying to warn him that he is pulling down his party and the country.

It makes me sad that Biden doesn’t see what’s inescapable: If he doesn’t walk away gracefully right now, he will likely go down as a pariah and ruin his legacy.

Translation: Look Joe, a generation of college historians and Democratic Party operatives with bylines turned Harry Truman’s reputation around and taught that he was a tenacious working class hero, despite his leaving office with a 22% job approval rating. And then, according to a 2021 article in New York magazine by law professor and journalist Paul Campos, “Truman was a very rich man on the day he left the White House, and he became a good deal richer in the five and a half years between that day and the passage of the [Former Presidents Act,”] which as Jeff Jacoby writes, “Truman lied shamelessly and repeatedly about the state of his finances in order to guilt-trip Congress into passing.”

If we can puff up Truman’s reputation so much to make him a worthy successor to FDR (and collectively memory hole his seamier side as well), don’t think we won’t do the reverse to yours in the next decades if you stay in and the Bad Orange Man wins in November.

On the other hand, Dowd writes:

As for those D.C. careerists surrounding Biden who a) hid his true condition; b) gaslighted the press for focusing on what they called a nonexistent age issue; c) shielded the president from the truth about his cratering chances of winning; and d) seem to have put their self-interest first?

One way or the other, they’ll probably be out of their jobs soon.

Well, until the next Democratic president takes office, and they all get jobs in his administration, as so many Obama retreads did under the current (p)resident. But left unsaid by Dowd is how did all of the “investigative reporters” at her paper either spend four years being so incurious about Biden’s obviously deteriorating condition or unwilling to report it?

Of course, that answer is obvious: the Times’ business model requires cosseting their overwhelming leftist readers, and not giving them any bad news that would cause subscriptions to drop. Or as David Harsanyi wrote earlier this month, “If You Were Duped On Biden’s Cognitive Decline, You’re Too Dumb To Be A Journalist,” which is true — but Biden’s former stenographers need some excuse to explain to their readers their latest 180 pivot.

Kudos to Dowd for at least bucking that trend, despite being an opinion columnist, regarding Joe’s shameful treatment of his granddaughter. Or at Mediaite noted last year: Critics Attack The New York Times for Daring to Do Journalism on the Biden Granddaughter Story.

UPDATE: NY Times Seems to Hope Everybody’s Forgotten About the ‘Cheap Fakes’ Cover Dems/Media Ran for Biden.

MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Trump vows to axe Biden’s electric car mandate on ‘day one.’

The Power Line Week in Pictures: Slippery Slope Edition.

RIP: Sheila Jackson Lee, long-serving Democratic congresswoman and advocate for Black Americans, dies at 74.

BREAKING: Fire Engulfs Historic Dallas Church Pastored By Trump Supporter Robert Jeffress.

HELTER STELTER:

Flashbacks:

● The Wall Street Journal’s story about Biden’s mental acuity suffers from glaring problems.

—CNN’s Oliver Darcy, June 6^th, 2024.

● Biden’s doctor says there are no new concerns with the president’s health and he remains fit to serve.

—CNN, February 28^th, 2024.

● Biden remains ‘healthy’ and ‘vigorous,’ his physician says.

—CNN, February 16^th, 2023.

● Biden deemed ‘fit to successfully execute the duties of the president’ after first physical in office.

—CNN, November 19^th, 2021.

● Republicans keep trying to make Biden’s mental capacity an issue.

—CNN’s Chris  Cillizza, August 19^th, 2021.

● Joe Biden is ‘healthy, vigorous,’ his doctor says in summary of medical history.

—CNN, December 17^th, 2019.

● Erin Burnett: Trump and Fox News pushing baseless claim about Biden’s health.

—CNN clip at YouTube, June 11^th, 2019.

BUNKERTIME: “Don’t watch cable news:” Biden campaign tries to rally staff.

President Biden’s campaign chair convened an all-staff call Friday and urged staffers to tune out news coverage that has focused on whether Biden will be pushed aside as the Democratic nominee, according to a recording of the call obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: The call is the latest example of Biden campaign leadership working to turn around the low morale among staffers in the aftermath of Biden’s debate.

• “Don’t watch cable news all the time,” chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told staff at the campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

• “That is not the real world. The real world is the voters that are standing with us, the delegates that are with us, and we’re going to weather this because of this organization.”

As with Team Obama, the Biden administration’s whole method of governing has been to survive from one news cycle to the next. It’s entirely built around how it appears on the evening news and the Sunday chat shows. To reach their “don’t watch cable news, that’s not the real world” phase, when creating those falsehoods have been the simulacrum they’ve spent four years trying to program, is a sign of how deeply out of touch Biden’s inner circle has become.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Migrants Decline Newsom’s Offer Of Asylum In CA Since They Just Came From A Collapsing Communist Hellhole With No Electricity.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN ATTACKING THE PARENTS OF AMERICAN-ISRAELI HOSTAGES: Washington Post Deletes Post ‘Mischaracterizing’ American-Israeli Hostage Parents.

The Washington Post took down a social media post which characterized the parents of an American hostage held in Gaza as ignoring the ongoing military operation. The parents of Omer Neutra attended the RNC this week in an effort to bring attention to those being held captive since Oct. 7.

“Omer Neutra has been missing since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. When his parents speak publicly, they don’t talk about Israel’s assault on Gaza that has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, according to local officials. Experts have warned of looming famine,” the original social media post by the newspaper read.

The post immediately received backlash for asserting that Neutra was missing, not being held captive and that his parents should be advocating on behalf of the civilians in Gaza as well.

* * * * * * *

Though the Post deleted the original social media post, the sentiment still remains throughout the story.

“When the Neutras speak publicly, they don’t talk about the ferocity of Israel’s counterattack, which has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians and left nearly 90,000 injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry,” the story reads.

If only the Czar knew what was going on at his newspaper. Flashback to June 23rd (which feels like a hundred years ago in terms of news cycles: “Jeff Bezos may have purchased the Washington Post. On paper he is the owner. But the left-wing activists who are masquerading as journalists are determined to not allow Bezos to run the paper he owns.”

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The Remarkable GOP Convention.

There’s never been a political speech like Donald Trump’s address to the 2024 Republican National Convention. The former president’s narration of the attempt on his life was gripping television. When he kissed the fireman’s helmet of Corey Comperatore, the husband and father who was killed during the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, last weekend, he created an indelible image. The Trump who appeared on stage was humble, gracious, contemplative.

Then, a half hour into the speech, Trump began to improvise. He talked. And talked. He was the Trump we are used to seeing on the campaign trail: garrulous and sarcastic, cracking jokes, championing his record, describing goals for a second term. At length. The speech must have set a record for longest convention address. If Trump wanted to prove he could speak with greater passion and for a longer period of time than President Biden, he did so. He also left this television viewer exhausted.

The Trump who spoke for 91 minutes on Thursday evening was a slightly more subdued version of the man who has been at the center of politics for almost a decade. Yet much of the convention was spent trying to convince Americans that Trump is more than the person they’ve watched on the news since 2015.

* * * * * * * *

By the time the red, white, blue, and gold balloons fell from the rafters of the Fiserv Forum, there was no doubt that Donald Trump has revamped the Republican Party in his image. This united and energetic party believes that it is on the verge of a great victory. It left Milwaukee in a state of excitement. While, in a basement in Delaware, the Democratic Party is in a state of crisis.

As Jim Treacher writes, “Joe Won’t Go:”

He’s been in Washington since before Twitter. Before CNN. Hell, before Watergate! He was lying to reporters when Obama was still popping his zits in Honolulu.

The old man is a damn barnacle. They’re gonna have to scrape him off, and it might just put a hole in the hull.

Joe Biden doesn’t know much anymore, but he still knows how power works. My money’s on the old bastard giving everybody two middle fingers till they close the casket.

Me? I choose to remember the happier times:

Now watch him drop out 10 minutes after I post this. It would serve me right for acting like I know what I’m talking about!

Heh, indeed. That video is a reminder of why Joe won’t go. He’s spent his entire career climbing the greasy pole, then having to suck up to Barry for eight years to get to where he is now. No wonder he’s so reluctant to throw it all away.

A ‘NEW’ TRUMP DELIVERS A SPEECH OF UNITY AND DETERMINATION THAT BLOWS THE LID OFF GOP CONVENTION.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Keith Olbermann calls on CNN to ‘fire this asshole’ Van Jones for criticizing Biden.

You stay classy, Keith:

A-HA!

First campaign ad from the Trump Team since 2015 that I thought was really good. Massive step up from the atrocious Dillhole Borelord vids blasphemously implying Trump is Jesus. https://t.co/9BedcK4ZYq

— FilmLadd (@FilmLadd) July 19, 2024

But isn’t this just a 2019 campaign ad from Trump with “Trump-Vance” tacked on at the end? A-Ha respond to Trump’s ‘Take on Me’ campaign video: ‘Even blind pigs can find truffles.’

—The London Independent, October 2nd, 2019.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Republicans Concerned It’s Going To Be Harder Than Usual To Blow This Election.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Here's @JonTester lying to us in late 2023:

"Joe Biden, when I've been around him … he's absolutely 100% with it. His recall, his cognitive ability … he's fine & he's doing a good job. I think folks are making a bigger deal out of it than it is" #MTSenhttps://t.co/erqm6UYCLt pic.twitter.com/9bmDo75VPX

— Brian Anderson (@AZBrianAnderson) July 19, 2024

Flashbacks:

• Montana Dem Senator Jon Tester Talks Gun, Hunting Rights While Taking Money from Brady PAC.
• Montana Senator Jon Tester Hobnobs With Green Energy Activist Who Helped Kill Keystone Pipeline.
• Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) to 2020 Dems: Don’t Run Away from Trump — ‘Punch Him in the Face.’

¡NO PASARÁN!: The expiscatory Question is, Was the Trump assassination fail procedural (i.e., incompetence) or operational (i.e., a sanctioned kill fail)?

Related: ‘La La Land’: Former Dem Presidential Candidate Slams Democrats for Calling Trump Shooting ‘Staged.’

We’ve descended into some sort of bizarre hell-world in which Cenk Uygur is a voice of sanity.

UPDATE: Known Wolf: Trump shooter Thomas Crooks threatened to ‘shoot up’ his high school and ‘put bombs in the bathrooms’ years before his failed assassination attempt on the former president.

WELCOME BACK, CARTER! Biden’s physician uttered the dreaded M-word in his covid diagnosis last night:

Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the president’s physician, said in a note that Biden, 81, “presented this afternoon with upper respiratory symptoms, to include rhinorhea (runny nose) and non-productive cough, with general malaise.”

At Commentary, John Podhoretz responded:

In the most pregnant turn of phrase in 45 years, his own press office presented us with a letter from Biden’s doctor explaining that the president had taken the test because of his symptoms, which included a feeling of “malaise.”

That word was, of course, the takeaway from the speech that unofficially announced the futility of the Jimmy Carter reelection effort 14 months before Carter faced Ronald Reagan—and Carter never even said “malaise”! It was just what emanated from his discussion of what was ailing the country, which was not his bad leadership but a “crisis of confidence.” Carter’s effort to shift blame to the American people’s own spiritual condition was the marker of his doom. Its use again in 2024 suggests an unseen Straussian hand at work in the levers of the universe, planting esoteric messages about the end of Joe Biden’s career in his own press statements.

Since an economic malaise tends to go hand-in-hand with a leftist in the White House, as I wrote in 2011: Welcome Back My Friends, to the Malaise that Never Ends.

1979 was also the year of Jimmy Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech. As [Steve] Hayward wrote in volume one of The Age of Reagan:

The New Republic [called] the speech “pop sociology stew” filled with “servile flatteries.” “Carter seems to think that teaching us to sing ‘Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella’ can be a substitute for leading us in out of the rain. Fortunately, he utterly lacks the rhetorical skill for such a con job.”This represented a striking turnabout for The New Republic. When Carter first declared the energy crisis to be the “moral equivalent of war” in the spring of 1977, The New Republic editorialized in a vein that anticipated the Carter of July 1979: “To us, whatever contraction of affluence this country may suffer over the next few years appears no more than a byproduct of the contraction of the spirit we are already suffering.” A labor leader who had supported Carter in 1976 complained that “The fault is his, not ours, and asking us to say something nice about America is like Gerald Ford telling us to pin on little lapel buttons and ‘Whip Inflation Now.’” And naturally Carter’s message rubbed Reagan the wrong way: “People who talk about an age of limits,” Reagan said, “are really talking about their own limitations, not America’s.”

To his credit though, last year, an Insta-commenter noted, “Carter didn’t give a speech soon after his (honest) election in front of a national monument back-lit blood red with two Marines flanking either side describing his political opponents as traitors.”

Last night, Biden’s doctor inadvertently channeled Jimmy Carter. Today, one of Biden’s supporters is channeling his opponent:

When you order the Trump campaign on Temu https://t.co/1tCupK4JKf

— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) July 18, 2024

Exit question: Was this the moment when everything went pear-shaped?