PAULA BOLYARD: Jerry Falwell Comes Out Swinging at Pastor Who Prayed for Trump — with a Crude Tweet.

TYLER O’NEIL: Mainstream Conservative Leaders Are Gunning for David French.

ON THE FLIP SIDE: National Review is Obsessed With Itself. “National Review and David French owe Trump, his base, and the broader conservative movement an apology. Or their resignation letters.”

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Joe Biden Isn’t Alone in Support for Hyde Amendment. “The 2020 Democratic presidential field has largely jumped on the bandwagon of bashing Joe Biden for his support of the Hyde Amendment – following a flip flop over the past two weeks. However, many of them have also repeatedly voted in favor of the amendment themselves.”

REPEAT AFTER ME: “There is no border crisis.”

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Celebrate Toxic Masculinity on 75th Anniversary of D-Day. “Lee [Smith] asks the question, ‘What’s the difference between the Julian Assange and The New York Times, Washington Post or CNN?’ It’s a good question because all of those media outlets have published or broadcast highly classified material as Assange has been accused of doing. The media characters got Pulitzers, Assange got jail.”

THE PURGE GOES ON: “Within minutes of @YouTube’s announcement of a new purge it appears they caught my outlet, which documents activism and extremism, in the crossfire. I was just notified my entire channel has been demonetized. I am a journalist whose work there is used in dozens of documentaries.”

That’s just the start of a long and informative — and for YouTube, quite damning — Twitter thread from Ford Fischer.

FLIP, MEET FLOP: Biden Supported the Hyde Amendment Before He Opposed It (After Catching Flak From Other Candidates, Activists).

To be fair, Biden has been in politics for so many decades now that there might not be an issue left he hasn’t been on both sides of.

#RESIST: Commerce City Becomes Second Amendment Sanctuary City.

Two months after Gov. Jared Polis signed the state’s “red flag” gun bill into law, another Colorado community has declared itself a Second Amendment sanctuary city. Five members on the Commerce City Council voted for the resolution Tuesday night, two voted against and two abstained from the vote.

More than half of Colorado’s counties have adopted similar language which refuses to enforce the law that takes effect in January 2020, but most of those counties are in rural parts of the state that are Republican strongholds. Commerce City is the first city in the Denver metro area to adopt Second Amendment sanctuary status.

Commerce City is just playing by the Left’s rules.

READINESS: B-1 Lancer readiness is in the toilet, here’s why.

The state of the U.S. Air Force’s B-1B Lancer fleet is bad — really bad — and lawmakers on the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee want the service to come up with a plan to fix the problem.

The United States’ long-range strike capabilities “may be placed at increased risk by aging structural problems with the B-1,” according to the panel’s markup of HR 2500, the House’s version of the fiscal 2020 defense policy bill, released Monday. The Lancer isn’t getting the resources and attention necessary to improve its mission-capable rates.

The situation has gotten so bad, according to the subcommittee, that the number of B-1 aircraft that are fully mission-capable is now only in the single digits. What’s more, B-1 aircrew are being rerouted from flying the bomber to other aircraft, because there aren’t enough Lancers for their necessary training.

The last B-1 rolled off the assembly line in 1988.

THE MOST LOGISTICALLY AMBITIOUS UNDERTAKING IN HUMAN HISTORY: D-Day By the Numbers, By the Men.

VIDEO: Cory Booker Can’t Say Which Gun Laws Would Have Stopped VA Beach Shooting.

POSTMODERN PROBLEMS: How do you sell cannabis vape devices you’re not allowed to show the customer? Turns out it’s hard.

VIDEO: Joe diGenova Reacts to Christopher Steele’s Decision to Meet with DOJ: ‘The Walls Are Closing in on FBI Fraudsters.’

HE’S TOO KIND: Trump Has a New Name for Bette Midler after She Attributed a Fake Quote to Him.

LAST NIGHT ED LINKED TO THIS STORY… House Dems mull censure as alternative to impeachment… and headlined it “EXIT RAMP.”

An easy prediction is that if the House does censure, the media will salivate over it as something unprecedented, staggering in its implications, the Democrats taking back the moral high ground, etc, rather than as the embarrassing walk-back from impeachment that it actually would be.

CHARLES LIPSON: Mueller’s Sinking Reputation.

His entire investigation was based on two fragile pillars, which Mueller never questioned. If they collapse, Mueller is buried in the rubble. The first pillar is the FBI’s dubious “origin story.” The bureau states, and Mueller explicitly accepts, that its Trump investigation began in late-July 2016 after a low-level campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos, spoke about Russia to an Australian diplomat in a London bar. Apparently, Papadopoulos also made exculpatory comments, which were not included (as legally required) in a subsequent search-warrant application.

But there is mounting evidence that Papadopoulos was not the first target and July 2016 was not the real starting date. Counter-intelligence investigations of Trump and his associates apparently began earlier and were never disclosed. Neither was widespread illegal spying on Americans by intelligence agencies and their private contractors. Still more surveillance was outsourced to friendly foreign intelligence agencies, which relayed their findings to Washington. Mueller never mentioned these problems — and possible crimes.

These omissions matter. They illustrate bias against Trump and suggest the report’s evidence may be tainted by omission and commission. They show Mueller’s extraordinary efforts to protect the law-enforcement institutions where he served for so many years. That protective shield is a problem because misconduct at DoJ and FBI is central to the inquiry.

Heckuva job, Bobby.

HE SEEMS NICE: Record Co. Founder’s Tweet Inciting Violence Toward 7-Year-Old Raising Border Wall Ca$h.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: D-Day By the Numbers, By the Men.

I want you to imagine picking up every resident of a medium-sized city, everything they’ll need to eat and drink and rest for a few days, any vehicles they might need, gasoline of course, plus lots of guns and ammo — did I mention this was a hunting trip? — and then moving them all in a few short hours a distance of anywhere from 30 to 125 miles or so.

Now imagine you have to move all those people and all that stuff partly by air, but mostly across heavy seas in foul weather.

Under enemy fire.

You might want to read the whole thing.

OUCH: Venezuela’s oil exports drop 17% in May as sanctions kick in.

Of course, that’s still nothing compared to the damage done to the country’s oil industry by its socialists government.

LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS:

As it turns out, Pothoven was allowed by her family to starve herself to death, which is hardly a good thing. But she was not, as the English-language media reported, put to death under Dutch law.

That’s a huge, inexcusable miss for the press.

BLUE ON BLUE: UK Lesbians Protest Against Transgender Activism. Police Ask Them If They’re a ‘Hate Group.’

I rather enjoyed the “lesbians don’t have penises” protest sign, which you would think would be a given and uncontroversial. But these are, after all, Heinlein’s Crazy Years.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, “DESPITE?”: Trump Talks Up U.K. Trade Deal Despite Brexit Impasse.

President Trump promised Britain a broad free-trade accord once it leaves the European Union, an offer that would require the U.K. to secure the decisive break with the bloc advocated by prominent Brexit backers in the race to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May.

Such an agreement, though, could take years to materialize even after an abrupt split and would face multiple political hurdles in the U.K. and the U.S.

At a press conference with Mrs. May on the second day of a three-day state visit, Mr. Trump talked up close economic links between the U.S. and its ally and said a free-trade pact had “tremendous potential” to boost trade between the two countries.

“As the U.K. makes preparations to exit the European Union, the United States is committed to a phenomenal trade deal between the U.S. and the U.K.,” he said.

As I’ve said before, Brexit wasn’t about reducing trade, but about regaining British sovereignty from Brussels. Since Brussels isn’t willing to give up the UK as it satrap, Hard Brexit is the only way out, followed by that “phenomenal trade deal.”

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: 2020 Democrats Are Literally Begging For $1 On Facebook: “Can You Chip In?”

FLASHBACK: “If [DNC’s total-number-of-donors rule for getting on the debate stage] incentivizes candidates into going after any fringe Democrat voter with a few dollars to spare, the results shouldn’t fail to amuse.”

I am amused.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Nadler Refuses Negotiation with DoJ, Barr. “As you may know, the statute for the special counsel only requires that the special counsel turn over a report to the Attorney General. That’s done. Over. Finished. The Attorney General can decide to release some or all of the report and Barr has gone above and beyond what is required of him. Fat Jerry is like that drunk guy at the neighborhood dive bar who just wants to get in a fight, and if a nice lady goes over to the juke box and puts on Jimi Hendrix’s ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ he is going to walk over and smash his Rolling Rock beer bottle on her head. It doesn’t matter what Barr offers, Nadler is going to smash his Rolling Rock bottle on Barr’s head.”

HMM: Charting China, the (Not Always) Super Power. “Measuring Beijing’s influence shows mixed results for all the supposed diplomatic sway and billions spent on media.”

China now leads in four of the eight core measures of power in the Index: economic resources, future resources, diplomatic influence and economic relationships. That’s up one compared to its lead in only three measures last year. China has overtaken the U.S. in economic resources: despite a slowing growth rate its GDP grew by the size of Australia’s entire economy in 2018, speaking to the sheer scale.

Yet, taking a view below the headline power findings, the picture becomes more mixed.
…
The results show that despite investing billions into its international media influence, China has some way to go in determining the fonts of information in Asia. The United States remains the dominant source of media across Asia after domestic media are discounted.

Lots of data at the link. Here’s my short version.

Beijing has a lot of dollars to spend, which can buy the friendship of a lot of people whose friendship is up for sale. But in the cultural battle for hearts and minds, Chinese Communists suffer the same handicap the Soviets labored under: Commies are just no damn fun.