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"We’re locking in the political structures that benefit Trump.... We are in the middle of a cultural/economic/partisan/identity war between more progressive people in the metro areas and more conservative people everywhere else. To lead the right in this war, Trump doesn’t have to be honest, moral or competent; he just has to be seen taking the fight to the 'elites.'... Trumpists tell themselves that America is being threatened by a radical left putsch that is out to take over the government and undermine the culture. The core challenge now is to show by word and deed that this is a gross exaggeration. Can Trump win again? Absolutely. I’m a DeSantis doubter.... And then once Trump is nominated, he has some chance of winning, because nobody is executing an effective strategy against him."
The needed "effective strategy" against Trump is "to show by word and deed" that it's "a gross exaggeration" to think that "a radical left putsch... is out to take over the government and undermine the culture." I'm not even persuaded that Brooks believes it's all that much of an exaggeration to think there's a "radical left putsch... out to take over the government and undermine the culture." He just wants Trump defeated and hopes anti-Trumpsters execute a good strategy to take him out.
What would work on these "conservative people" who live everywhere but where everyone who needs to think up the strategy lives? Brooks doesn't know! He doesn't even know why all these millions of people love Trump. Does he think it's because they haven't yet been cajoled out of believing the "gross exaggeration"? If they haven't abandoned this belief yet, why would it happen now or in the next 2 years?
I saw that Brooks column yesterday and passed on it, but I gave it another look this morning after Meade texted it to me, which he did because I'd posed the question, in real life here at Meadhouse, "Do you think Trump will run and win?" Meade said the column answered my question. I take it that means the answer is yes.
ADDED: The fact that Brooks talks about a "gross exaggeration" reveals that he thinks there is something true. If there weren't something true, you'd call it a lie, not an exaggeration.
Most of President Trump's supporters, including myself, agreed with Mark Levin that the raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago home was "the worst attack on this Republic in modern history. Period."
That is one reason I joined thousands of like-minded people in Wilkes-Barre, PA this past Saturday to show support for the man who has been so unrelentingly demonized by the left that it has begun to feel like an attack on every single one of us. President Biden's speech last Thursday night only validated that feeling.
Stalwart supporters came not only from around the Commonwealth, but from across the country. It was exactly because of current events that so many of us felt overwhelmingly drawn there — and I soon realized that it would be one of the greatest, most meaningful experiences of my life.
It was like a family reunion with 12,000 strangers. We were there to merge our shared pasts, to bear our current struggles, and to advocate for a leader who is the loudest and clearest voice defending our hopes for the future.
"These are the people they are mocking," I thought. Good, hardworking people who would give you the shirt off their backs or risk their own lives to pull you out of a burning car. Yet they are hated because they won't apologize for adhering to the social norms that have held the fabric of our country together.
These are the folks that have maintained "the permanent things" against all odds. This T.S. Eliot phrase, popularized by Russell Kirk, kept swirling through my mind as I waited with the huddled masses. These are the people with strong convictions of justice and honor and enduring moral order that Kirk wrote about:
A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society —whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society — no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.
Many of them might not know Russell Kirk from Russell Brand, but that's okay. If there is one thing a lifetime of reading has taught me, it is that a great many fancy words are wasted trying to describe a way of life that can be simply lived and innately felt.
Still, many of them readily talked of such favorite sources of information as American Thinker, The Federalist, and The Gateway Pundit.
The older man who sat next to me said he only knew of the conservative website The Federalist and no others because he had spent his life as a registered independent who voted Democrat...until Trump came along. "I'm still learning," he said with a smile. A quiet man with gray hair who had driven alone, he too had felt overwhelmingly drawn here. Still bearing the Puerto Rican accent he came here with decades ago, he read medical protocols on his tablet as he waited for Trump to speak. This doctor from New Jersey was here for his second Trump rally, and he believed that it was an important one:
I am here because I want him to run! I believe he's going to do even better this time around. Now he's experienced; more polished. ... All the things that came against him, it will be harder to make a dent against him. ... They must see that everything he said has been proven true?! So many things. Look at Ukraine! And the Abraham Accords, what an accomplishment! Now we're talking WWIII and such things. In a year and a half, the Democrats have turned the world upside-down!
When Trump came out on stage, the tablet went down, and the man's face lit up as he listened in rapt attention for nearly two hours. At one point, he leaned over and whispered, "If you haven't already, you must read Mollie Hemingway's book: Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized our Elections."
Another passionate pair I bumped into at a restaurant the night before the rally were Joe and his wife Ale from Putnam County, N.Y. Brazilians by birth and holding dual citizenship, they have lived in America for a long time. They were fans of Wendy Bell Radio, and Joe was particularly heartened to hear Trump's recent comments regarding planned pardons for the persecuted January 6 demonstrators. "I can't believe this is happening in America," he said. "I mean this kind of thing happens in Brazil. The Supreme Court in Brazil is putting the right wing in jail for almost nothing. For talking on WhatsApp!" He then equated President Trump with Brazilian president Bolsonaro, saying Bolsonaro's hands are tied now like how Trump's were when he wanted to prosecute Hillary Clinton:
[Trump] wanted to use the proper channels to put her in jail, but they wouldn't do it. The FBI and DOJ and others were so corrupt! If he tried to do something more they would have called him a dictator...and try to get a subpoena or do an impeachment...but they had nothing on Trump and still went after him!
Joe and Ale loved Dinesh D'Souza's movie 2000 Mules and were disappointed that neither their favorite broadcaster, Tucker Carlson, nor their favorite network, Newsmax, would cover the movie and its findings.
I met many more of these first-generation Americans, some with shirts that read, "Latinos for Trump" and even a car that proclaimed, "Vietnamese for Trump!"
Folks expressed themselves with T-shirts, others with hats, flags, or buttons.
Among some of the best T-shirts were these:
"I used to be a Deplorable, but now I've been promoted to Ultra MAGA"
"Mean Tweets and Cheap Gas 2024"
"Trump was right — about everything"
I saw many Trump-supporters who'd had enough of the messiah/disciple attacks, as were launched on websites like Psychology Today, Christianity Today, The American Conservative, and a myriad of other places. Their answer came in simple shirts that read, "Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president."
(Trump's Christian supporters do not consider themselves as living in a "post-Christian" world. They are still here, thank you very much, and they don't intend to leave quietly to pray in cloistered fear of the current ruling elite. They say they will continue to support Trump because he is not afraid to speak bluntly and fight the good fight. Those who mock as hypocrites Trump's Christian advocates should remember that there is no white smoke that comes from a chimney when an American president is elected.)
I was struck by the fact that with everything they've already launched against him, including the intimate violation of raiding his home; and still anticipating the medieval siege weapons they have yet to drag through the moat in hot pursuit, Trump could still take to the stage as focused, motivated, and inspiring as he was. While the raid on Mar-a-Lago was unprecedented, Trump's bold response in Wilkes-Barre the other night was also a pivotal moment in history.
Maybe it's because now more than ever, it's clear to him — and to all of us — that he is fighting to protect every one of our own little Mar-a-Lagos.
If one listens to mainstream media and Democrat narratives, President Joe Biden is on a comeback of sorts after several successive months of plummeting poll numbers and the rampant Democrat infighting that spilled over into the public sphere over the last year or so ostensibly due in part to policy disagreements between Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and Biden.
The reasons cited for Biden’s supposedly impressive “comeback” (which amounts to a roughly five point approval rating rise in recent weeks, which now puts him in the low 40s on average), are the CNN-described “string of wins” he scored over the summer including the passing – and signing – of the bogusly named “Inflation Reduction Act.” Gas prices are also inching down, and the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is being credited with a supposed “surge” in Democrat enthusiasm ahead of the fall midterm elections.
Underneath it all, however, is the elephant in the room in the form of independent voters, who have been abandoning Biden in droves since the Afghanistan debacle and who haven’t reversed course even in the midst of Biden’s so-called summer “victories.”
As further evidence, take a look at the latest YouGov poll, which shows Biden’s support with the crucial independent voting bloc continuing to crater, hitting new lows down the home stretch:
And to think this poll was taken *before* Biden’s grotesque “Dark Brandon” speech from last Thursday.
In addition to that, in mid-August the GOP was already bouncing back after general polling numbers showed a slight uptick for Democrats including Biden. A late August Reuters poll also put Biden back at their “near low” for polling.
Because Biden and the DNC have been panicking about the possibility that Democrats won’t show up in the numbers they need to blunt Republican momentum, they’ve tried to use the Dobbs decision to their advantage with their rabid base of voters and then moved to shore up support with Biden’s illegal, unilateral, politically-convenient move on student loan forgiveness, the latter of which has caused a mutiny of sorts in his own party.
Unfortunately for Basement Biden, his legislative “wins,” the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, and his dictatorial student debt relief plan have not moved the needle with the independent voters he and his party desperately need to put them over the top come November in order to avoid the GOP retaking the House and possibly the Senate as well.
And in light of Biden’s offensive, hate-filled “Dark Brandon” speech, I anticipate his numbers will only get worse in the weeks to come because Biden is showing no signs of letting up on his “MAGA Republican” diatribes, and if there’s one thing independent voters have been consistent about over the years it is a major disdain for purported “party leaders” using their offices and vast political power to ruthlessly demonize an entire swath of the electorate.
Over the weekend, I was in Tampa, Florida, enjoying the Student Action Summit put on by Turning Point USA. One thing was made pretty clear by attendees. They love former President Donald Trump, and what’s more, they didn’t even have to say it.
They wore shirts, hats, pins, and more with his name and/or image emblazoned upon it. Going into the merchandise booths, Trump was everywhere. There were even life-sized poster board cutouts of him you could take pictures with. You’d think he’s still president.
Very few politicians throughout history get to see this kind of loyalty from a voting base. Even die-hard Republicans will often find themselves drifting away from candidates after their time in office is over. Given enough time, you’ll even watch the memory of them begin to sour as their decisions come under new scrutiny.
But not Trump. If anything, Trump has only grown more popular over time. So popular, in fact, that the only man who could possibly challenge him is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and according to an SAS straw poll, DeSantis trails behind Trump in a theoretical presidential race held today by a massive percentage. It’s not even close.
Given, TPUSA’s audience is very pro-Trump but it needs to be noted that DeSantis is still in office and making moves. Trump isn’t, but he has enduring popularity. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen this kind of fervor for the man either. Other conservative gatherings maintain that same kind of energy.
After SAS it was pretty clear to me that Trump wasn’t just a popular politician, he was his own walking, talking culture.
Let’s put aside the idea that Trump is the only person in the spotlight and zoom out for a moment. Trump culture is one that comprises many different characters. Like a show with the main character, and then secondary, and tertiary characters.
For instance, a secondary character within Trump culture would, of course, be Donald Trump Jr., a man who is wildly popular in his own right. His book “Triggered” (a solid read) was a best seller and didn’t just give us a look into his life but the life and character of his father. His own fight against the left is an extension of his dad’s, and every time he posts something on the internet, it’s an invitation to the world to further take part in the fight from within or without Trump’s camp.
Melania and Ivanka are simultaneously a part of this as well, albeit from a more feminine and elegant part of this culture. Don’t be mistaken, the feminine aspect further informs this culture, allowing women to feel invited into the fold as well. It’s necessary as the masculine part of it is oftentimes rough, loud, and on offense. To be sure, the women can be just as anxious for the fray as the men, but Melania and Ivanka are the perfect representatives for the part of the culture that loves to have its hair, makeup, nails, and clothing on point.
Stepping outside of his family, Trump’s culture is also found in his political allies. Reps. Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, with more likely to be added to the roster in the oncoming midterms. These lawmakers do so with an energy that is fully reminiscent of Trump’s. They’re unapologetic and not afraid to troll. What’s more, they don’t make it any mystery that they are in Trump’s camp.
Then there are the tertiary characters that help him build his brand. You can see them on Fox News, YouTube channels, live streams, radio shows, magazine articles, TikToks, and more. Influencers on influencers who add to the community in their own ways.
While this all adds to Trump culture, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the largest contributor to it; the left.
The biggest joke on the left and the Democrat Party is that if they had just stopped talking about Trump the moment he was out of office, Trump would likely not be as popular as he is today. However, like a stage-five clinger in the throes of her rage, the Democrat Party cannot stop obsessing over him. Leftists have made more money and achieved political office strictly off of being anti-Trump. Even now, the left’s strategy for midterms is to push this idea that Trumpism is tearing this nation apart and only they can heal it.
They might as well be spamming in the inboxes of every person in America with the message “he really hurt us and we’re afraid of him.” They are actively encouraging Republicans to love him even more. If Trump sat back and did nothing until 2024, his campaign would still have a high chance of victory because the left wouldn’t be able to stop campaigning for him.
All of this compiles and takes Trump from being a politician or public figure and well into being a sub-culture of his own. He’s the leader of, not just a party, but a tribe. Trump culture is the cradle that gave birth to a new kind of Republican Party that actually wins fights both political and social, and with each victory comes a new reason to jump on board.
There’s still a lot of football left to play until 2024 and there’s no telling what the political landscape will look like when that time comes around, but if Trump is still going just as strong as the culture created around him, he’ll be the favorite to win the Republican primary and the shoo-in for the general.
TikTok just unveiled an “Elections Center” that will put detailed voter profiles in the hands of a company based in Beijing, stocked with party members and state employees, subject to laws that allow the Chinese government data access. Given the Chinese Communist Party’s influence over ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, China could exercise enormous control over the midterm elections with this data. What’s worse is that American institutions are actively encouraging TikTok to do this.
By law, ByteDance is required to give China access to its data upon request. TikTok claims such requests would be rejected, but there is no way to know whether that’s true. We do, however, know that members of the CCP actually work for ByteDance. We also know TikTok’s data has been accessed in China, despite the company’s claims. Finally, we know TikTok is currently the most popular social network in America.
Last week, TikTok boasted in a press release about the creation of its new Elections Center. The center will influence American elections on two fronts: by providing voter information and countering “misinformation.” The first front means TikTok will have voting profiles on all American users who click through the Elections Center, and the second front means a Chinese company will be policing our political discourse on the single most popular social network.
Data
According to TikTok, the center will “connect people who engage with election content to authoritative information and sources in more than 45 languages.” That may sound lovely, but it means when users select their state and click “register to vote,” TikTok can now cross-reference their location and interest in voting with their age, political leanings, and other attributes that can be gleaned from its vast trove of data.
Why does that matter? Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology and “The Social Dilemma” joined “The Federalist Radio Hour” last week to outline the threats posed by TikTok. With the app’s data, Harris explained, China “can look at all the voting districts in the swing states and … can basically look at people’s sentiments with an AI that calculates what people’s opinions are in all the key voting areas.
Then, added Harris, China “can strategically up-regulate everybody who starts to say, you know, China’s really not so bad.”
“If China were to invade Taiwan tomorrow, they could up-regulate all the American voices who are saying that Taiwan was always a part of China,” Harris noted. (Listen to Elbridge Colby’s recent appearance on “The Federalist Radio Hour” to get a sense of how fragile this relationship really is.) That could be done on a local, state, or national scale on a variety of issues.
This is a hypothetical, to be sure, but it’s a tool we’re simply hoping a hostile foreign power will not utilize. Imagine China knows there are a handful of likely Mark Kelly voters in a certain area of Arizona. TikTok could feed them content that could, in turn, encourage more Democrat-leaning users to vote against Blake Masters or feed likely voters who consume conservative content videos that might depress turnout for Masters.
Perhaps there are disincentives for the CCP to actually weaponize TikTok data: It could leak and escalate conflict outside the party’s control; it could harm the bottom line of one of their most powerful companies; it could jeopardize the long-term control China has over the American public’s social and individual health through the app.
There is no guarantee China will weaponize this data now or in the future, but there is absolutely no reason for us to willingly forfeit it either. The risk is not remotely worth whatever reward American consumers think they’re getting.
‘Misinformation’
On the “misinformation” front, it’s obviously bad enough that Big Tech companies based in America or China now believe it’s their duty to police the public discourse. But it’s also in China’s interest to foment cultural discord and hamper politicians who might undercut their geopolitical aspirations. Controlling the rhetoric Americans are allowed to post and see on one of the most popular sources of discussion and information is a major advantage for China.
Would the CCP hand marching orders to ByteDance and TikTok? Maybe, but they also wouldn’t have to be explicit. The overwhelming ideology of censors is one that favors leftism and opposes everything else. The information that gets powerfully suppressed almost always counters the political establishment, whether it’s on transgenderism, race, election integrity, Covid policies, or China.
It’s bad enough a major corporation exerts this much control over the discourse at all, let alone in an election cycle, let alone one owned by China. Whether based in America or overseas, social media makes us less happy and less healthy basically across the board. That we’ve forfeited this much control to a hostile foreign power is one of the most mind-boggling, slow-motion political blunders in modern history.
American Partners
Instead of collective opposition to this transparent data suck, American institutions actually helped and endorsed TikTok’s creation of the Elections Center. TikTok partnered with the National Association of Secretaries of State, Ballotpedia, the Campus Vote Project, and the Federal Voting Assistance Program, among other organizations, to “provide information” on the hub.
The Federal Voting Assistance Program, for example, is a taxpayer-funded government group that “works to ensure Service members, their eligible family members, and overseas citizens are aware of their right to vote and have the tools and resources to successfully do so — from anywhere in the world.” This is a wonderful mission, but whoever authorized the TikTok partnership at FVAP made a bad decision, one that could ultimately help China draw us into a military conflict and gain the upper hand when it comes to influencing public opinion.
It should be an embarrassment for any of these groups to affiliate with TikTok at all, particularly on this effort.
The Threat
Around the time TikTok announced the Elections Center, Forbes reported that “three hundred current employees at TikTok and its parent company ByteDance previously worked for Chinese state media publications, according to public employee LinkedIn profiles.”
Forbes found that 50 of those profiles “specifically mentioned work on TikTok, in areas including policy, strategy, operations, monetization, user experience and localization.” Last month, TikTok confirmed an explosive Buzzfeed report that found U.S. user data had been accessed in China. In 2020, the Department of Justice found that 130 members of the CCP worked for ByteDance in Beijing.
TikTok is furiously working on “Project Texas,” an internal mission to emphasize its independence from Beijing. In the same week TikTok unveiled the Elections Center, Axios reported that Oracle started “vetting TikTok’s algorithms and content moderation models to ensure they aren’t manipulated by Chinese authorities,” now that its data had been routed into Oracle’s cloud.
This still puts valuable data and public influence in the hands of yet another private entity, which may not even be able to detect algorithm manipulation that benefits China when it’s less overtly political and more subtle, like the promotion of trans ideology, anti-Americanism, and more. It also doesn’t ensure Oracle would catch short-term election interference before damage is done.
Earlier this summer, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tried to turn Rep. Val Demings’, D-Fla., use of TikTok into a political liability by running an ad on her use of the app. In a sane society, that argument would be a layup. Unfortunately, in a country with tens of millions of daily TikTok users and an elite class of clapping seals more interested in suppressing the unwashed masses than countering China, it probably is not. Shortly after taking office, President Joe Biden actually rescinded former President Donald Trump’s attempted ban on TikTok, despite his party’s incessant posturing about election integrity.
Social media is a public health crisis. Every person who uses TikTok and every organization that partners with it or sends advertising money onto the platform is boosting authoritarian China’s control over our individual well-being, our society, and our world. The company’s new Elections Center underscores the urgency of this threat, putting detailed voter profiles and algorithmic control of a massive platform at the fingertips of a company staffed with loyalists to a hostile foreign government.
The New York Times reports that the FBI has executed a search warrant on Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
Former President Donald J. Trump said on Monday that the F.B.I. had searched his Palm Beach, Fla., home and had broken open a safe — an account that, if accurate, would be a dramatic escalation in the various investigations into the former president.
The FBI has openly become an arm of the Democratic Party. This will not serve the Bureau well in years to come. But what was the pretext for the raid?
The search, according to two people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, after he left the White House. Those boxes contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents.
Mr. Trump delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, only doing so when there became a threat of action being taken to retrieve them.
That is classic NYT “news” reporting. The Times cites the fact that Trump took a while to send documents to the National Archives–which he did some time ago–as justification for today’s raid.
“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Mr. Trump said, maintaining it was an effort to stop him from running for president in 2024. “Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries.”
“They even broke into my safe!” he wrote. “What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.”
Good question, although, to be fair, the FBI had a search warrant issued by a compliant authority. But anyone who wonders whether the FBI’s leaders should be identified as Democrats hasn’t been paying attention.
Trump is certainly correct that all of this–the absurd “January 6” committee hearings, threats of criminal prosecution, and now this raid on his Florida home–is driven by the 2024 election. The Democrats impeached Trump twice, but that didn’t work. He leads Joe Biden in every 2024 presidential preference poll I have seen. So now they want to up the ante by arresting or indicting him on some trumped-up charge. That this is 100% about presidential politics, no one doubts.
I think this is unfortunate not only because it betrays our status as a banana republic, as Trump said, but also because it increases the likelihood that Republicans will rally behind Trump and he will be the Republican nominee in 2024. Given the disaster of the Biden administration, many think the Republican nominee will be a shoo-in in 2024, no matter who he or she might be. I disagree. I think that Trump might drag behind him so much baggage that he could be the only Republican likely to lose in 2024–not to Joe Biden, obviously, but to whomever the Dems nominate.
If I thought the Democrats were this well-organized, I would suspect that today’s raid was part of their plot to ensure that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024.
UPDATE: Crowds of Trump supporters are gathering at Mar-a-Lago:
I don’t know whether the Democrats are trying to provoke a civil war, but they apparently intend to send President Trump to prison. That might do it.
When the FBI raided Donald Trump’s home on Monday, a key aspect of what made the United States of America great and free has been lost, and likely cannot be recovered. … [B]itter political opponents throughout the history of the republic have never before used the government’s own mechanisms of justice to do injustice to their foes. Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and their henchmen have brought America to a new phase of its history, and it is not likely to be one that is marked by respect for the rule of law or defense of the rights of individual citizens. Instead, we are entering an ugly age of authoritarianism, in which the brute force of the state is used to bend the people to the will of the tyrant. *** The FBI that was heavily involved in trying to frame and destroy Trump in the Russian Collusion hoax is now trying once again to destroy him, apparently by claiming that he improperly took classified material from the White House. They never cared when Hillary Clinton misused classified material on a grand scale; what is the difference? … *** Merrick Garland recently signaled that something like this was in the offing, when he emphasized that no one was above the law and anyone could be prosecuted. No one is above that law, that is, except Hillary Clinton, and Hunter Biden, and all the FBI officials who have been implicated in the Russian Collusion hoax, and all the other Leftists who have escaped and will continue to escape prosecution because they hold what the elites consider to be acceptable political opinions. *** The lesson is clear: in America today, in the corrupt kleptocracy of Joe Biden, you have to have the right opinions. Then all doors will open for you and you can even break laws with impunity, and have no fear of prosecution. But if you dare to dissent from the opinions of the elites, prepare to be hounded by the new super-IRS and the weaponized FBI, and you’ll face raids, and prison, and who knows what else is coming.
Sad but true.
MORE: Kevin McCarthy puts Merrick Garland and the FBI on notice:
