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President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign fundraising is reportedly not looking too hot as supporters fail to back the Democrat candidate.
According to a Politico report, Biden’s campaign is worried donors won’t deliver as they had hoped, causing “anxiety,” “concern,” and “nervousness” among his supporters.
Biden aims to raise about $2 billion for the entire cycle to defeat the Republican nominee. However, tickets for the president’s campaign events are struggling to sell. Politico pointed out an email from one fundraiser informing recipients of “limited Reduced Price Tickets” to entice supporters to show up.
“Two people who sent out a flurry of invites for fundraising events in California this week said they received only single-digit responses. One joked that the same two or three dozen Democrats were emailing and calling the same list — guaranteeing the low return rate they saw,” the outlet wrote.
Another Biden campaigner reportedly faced difficulty when trying to sell tickets for an event in Nashville with First Lady Jill Biden, despite tickets being less expensive than they usually would be.
“Biden is a notoriously poor fundraiser, having struggled with it during his prior presidential bids,” Politico stated.
On the contrary, 2024 GOP contender Gov. Ron DeSantis (Fla) raised $8.2 million within 24 hours of announcing his run for the White House. The governor raked in nearly $1 million just an hour after announcing his candidacy.
Former President Trump is also no stranger to campaign donations. His campaign saw a massive surge in contributions, receiving over 541,971 following his candidacy announcement, raising $18.8 million in the first quarter of 2023.
While DeSantis and Trump attract thousands of supporters at events and rallies, Biden barely fills a small auditorium.
Biden’s fundraising levels match his approval rating— underwater with no buoy in sight.
According to an Economist/YouGov poll, Biden’s top Democrat opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., received 54 percent of the support compared to the 80-year-old. It also found the Democrat candidate surpassed Biden, ranking higher in favorability.
CNN senior presidential fact-checker Daniel Dale has disappeared. He was last seen performing his duties as a “presidential fact-checker” on March 30. Since then, he has performed as an opposition fact-checker for the Democratic Party, fact-checking Republicans and leaving the president alone.
Maybe we should put his face on a milk carton.
Is Joe Biden a rarity among politicians? Is everything he says true? Maybe we should give Biden the “Cherry Tree” test and ask him whether he really did cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion or created 12 million jobs. If he says yes, we’ll know that Dale isn’t a “fact checker” as much as he’s a Democratic operative hired by CNN to fact-check Republicans only.
As the Washington Free Beacon reports, Dale has missed just a few Biden fact-checks over the last three months.
Meanwhile, Biden has continued to tell plenty of whoppers.
Washington Post: “Biden’s misleading deficit claim earns him a Bottomless Pinocchio”
New York Times: “Fact-Checking the Kickoff to Biden’s Re-election Campaign”
Washington Free Beacon: “FACT CHECK: Joe Biden Said Republicans Are ‘Banning Books’ Like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Verdict: 4 Clintons.”
Daily Beast: “Joe Biden Strangely Repeats False Claim That His Son Died in Iraq”
Dale, like most partisans in the media, is absolutely obsessed with Donald Trump. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Dale had a picture of Trump on his nightstand that he used to conjure dreams of watching Trump perp-walked into prison.
I’m not much of a fact-checker, but even I know that Donald Trump’s record of telling the truth is, shall we say, spotty.
Even if everything Trump says is a lie, he’s not president anymore. And if Dale doesn’t want to fact-check “the president,” maybe they should find something else for him to do — like become the official CNN Biden a**-kisser.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. Dale promised at the beginning of the Biden administration that he was going to be just as tough, just as rigorous in his fact-checking of Biden as he was with Trump.
Ahead of Biden’s inauguration, Dale stressed that “the same ‘intensity and rigor’ should be applied to the incoming president,” with the only difference being that “Biden doesn’t lie as much as Trump.” And Dale’s Twitter bio continues to advertise that he’s all about “Fact-checking the president.”
But the last time Dale fact-checked Biden was on March 30. For nearly three months now, Dale has exclusively fact-checked Republicans. Eighteen of those 29 fact checks have been of his old bête noire, Trump, who is running for president again.
CNN is in ratings hell. Even before CEO Chris Licht was let go for the sacrilege of trying to get the network to be less relentlessly, tiresomely, in-your-face, radical left-wing, CNN had been bleeding talent and bleeding viewers. You have to wonder if Dale will get a promotion when the dust settles. After all, he’s the most reliable Republican-basher they have.
If the mainstream media is anything, it’s predictable. We can call what they’re going to do just about every time. If Republicans push back against the latest Democrat obsession, the media will call it “pouncing.” If conservatives point out the extremism on the left, you’d better believe that press outlets will complain about bogeymen and made-up enemies.
“Lashing out after his arraignment on federal charges last week, Donald Trump took aim at President Joe Biden and Democrats with language that seemed to evoke another era: He was being persecuted, he said, by ‘Marxists’ and ‘communists,’” writes the AP’s Ali Swenson.
It’s so unfair for Trump and others to compare the left to communists, Swenson asserts, and she explains why.
“Trump has used the labels since he first appeared on the political scene, but it lately has become an omnipresent attack line that also has been deployed by other Republicans,” she continues. “The rhetoric is both inaccurate and potentially dangerous because it attempts to demonize an entire party with a description that has long been associated with America’s enemies.”
Swenson cites “experts” — because we all know that there’s an “expert” to back up anything the left wants to claim is true — including a Canadian professor who said that “red-baiting is as American as apple pie in political communications.” It’s enough to make you feel sorry for the poor babies, isn’t it?
Here’s the thing: overblown rhetoric is a fact of political life and has been for a long time. Sure, these people may not be actual communists, but the Democrats continue to rush headlong toward the far left, which does align them more closely with communists than with anyone on the right.
Ever since Barack Obama brought the concept of “community organizing” into the forefront of politics, the modern left has built much of its modus operandi around Marxist teaching and philosophy. Witness the most egregious grassroots movement on the left these days, which encompasses Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and the domestic terrorists in Atlanta.
The situation in Atlanta, which I’ve covered extensively, involved a group of thugs, most of whom came from privileged families far outside the South, who wreaked havoc on the city for months over a proposed public safety training center. Many of these terrorists actually lived communally, and they advocated for Marxist ideals and policies. Sure, they didn’t have a hand in Trump’s indictment, but they represent the face of the modern activist left.
Another dose of perspective comes when we consider Joe Biden and the Democrats’ rhetoric about anyone who disagrees with them. Remember Biden’s menacing Sep. 2022 speech when he railed against “MAGA Republicans” with staging that called to mind both Nazi propaganda and the First Order? Biden and his handlers sought throughout the pandemic to otherize those who wouldn’t blindly follow along and get the vaccine.
So forgive me if I don’t buy into the AP’s hand-wringing about “conjured up” communist enemies — especially when the left can’t practice enough self-reflection to examine its own rhetoric and actions.
During the height of the pandemic, government officials oftentimes put in place arbitrary rules that everyone besides the sheep realized had no connection to the pandemic whatsoever, giving away the game that it was all about power. Remember, Michiganders were prevented from buying seed and gardening supplies by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, paddleboarders in California were arrested, mom-and-pop shops had to shut their doors unlike the big box stores, and casino lights stayed on while places of worship went dark.
The 15-day lockdown to slow the spread turned into 1,151 days, Rep. Brad Wenstrup pointed out during a Wednesday hearing before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. During that time, Americans witnessed this uneven application of rules, they experienced heavy-handed censorship efforts of differing opinions and suffered under forced health measures that were not backed up by science, all of which fueled distrust in the federal government.
Louisiana Solicitor General Elizabeth Murrill dove into the constitutionality of restrictions on businesses and limitations for in-person gatherings, referencing the legal battle faced by Rev. TonySpell, who was arrested in April 2020 for violating Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards' emergency orders by holding massive, in-person services.
Whether you like him or not, Rev. Spell believed, and rightly so, that the Governor’s executive orders were unconstitutional and that the Governor could not prohibit people from gathering to pray. Rev. Spell was extremely vocal in his opposition to the Governor’s orders, which severely limited the number of people who could gather and worship. He invited people to attend his church anyway, which antagonized the Governor. As a result, Rev. Spell was placed under surveillance and later arrested for violating the Governor’s executive orders. He was issued six misdemeanor citations.
Yet Reverend Spell was correct: these orders could never be criminally enforced as Louisiana law prohibits the Governor from creating any new crimes by executive order, even in a disaster. But what was most shocking is that the Governor’s legal team admitted that Rev. Spell had not been targeted for endangering others but because he was “unrepentant.” On May 13, 2022, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled with the LADOJ in declaring that Governor John Bel Edwards’ mandates closing churches cannot be the basis to prosecute a governor-created crime of letting too many people into church for worship. “In this criminal proceeding,” the court ruled, “we find certain provisions of two executive orders, as applied to defendant, violate his fundamental right to exercise religion, do not survive strict scrutiny, and are thus unconstitutional.” It was a victory for Reverend Spell; but it took two years to achieve this ruling and at great expense.
And similar cases continued to take place in Louisiana and beyond, Murrill explained, citing several more examples.
"As for the constitutionality of these orders, it is clear that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of government became distorted and the Constitution was set aside without any meaningful resistance from the Congress, the legislatures, or even the Judiciary," she said. "That is why our constitutional structure, which is supposed to prevent one branch of government from ever exercising autocratic, tyrannical power over the people, was able to be violated from the top down, causing massive damage at an enormous cost."
Of course, such unconstitutional measures occurred at the federal level, too. As president-elect, for example, Joe Biden took a very different position on vaccine mandates than he did once he took office and eventually announced vaccine mandates that would apply to massive swaths of Americans.
But the attack on Americans' constitutional rights didn't end there, as the pandemic was also used as a pretense for stifling free speech in the name of "misinformation" and "disinformation." Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey argued these censorship efforts were "the biggest violation of the First Amendment in this nation's history."
The hearing wasn't just to rehash how the Constitution was trampled upon during the pandemic. Murrill said she hopes that by evaluating all that occurred, boundaries will be put in place at the state and federal levels to "ensure it never happens again."
President Barack Obama meets with, from left: Kathryn Ruemmler, Lisa Monaco, and Susan E. Rice (White House Flickr photo by Pete Souza)
As Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski has written, prosecutorial misconduct has become “an epidemic.” And evidence has come to light that our president, the nation’s chief law enforcement official, seeks his counsel from the worst.
If ever a picture was worth a thousand words, it is a recently released White House photo of President Obama and his muses—if one only knew the truth behind those muses whispering in the President’s ear as they strategized in the aftermath of the Benghazi tragedy. To understand the (politely-put) “lack of transparency” from the White House, the enormous politicization of the Department of Justice, the release of Taliban leaders from Guantanamo, refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations, the IRS’s harassment of political opponents, and the cover-up of Benghazi, read on.
President Obama’s right-hand woman Kathryn Ruemmler, conveniently seated to his right, was his longest serving White House Counsel and remains one of his closest and most trusted advisors. When Mr. Obama selected Ms. Ruemmler to advise him on the most important legal matters, including the selection of federal judges, responses—actually oppositions—to congressional investigations, assertions of executive privilege and expansive executive orders, Mr. Obama said she “was an outstanding lawyer with impeccable judgment.” The press reported that Jamie Gorelick said Ms. Ruemmler knew “the traditions and values of the administration.”
Upon her recent departure, the President said he “deeply valued her smarts, her wit, her impeccable judgment — but most importantly her uncanny ability to see around the corners that nobody else in the room anticipates.” More aptly put, she had an uncanny and nefarious ability to circumvent the rule of law by cutting those aforementioned corners.
Ms. Ruemmler returned as a Partner to the prominent international law firm Latham & Watkins, where she has sheltered intermittently between stints in the Department and the White House.
If you were feeling some sense of relief that Ms. Ruemmler is no longer in the White House, let that be fleeting. Obama also said that he “will continue to seek her counsel, and most of all, I am proud to call her a close friend.”
Disturbingly, evidence has surfaced that the President Obama’s close friend and senior advisor violated her oath “to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” the rules of legal ethics, not to mention the law. As a senior member of the Enron Task Force, Ms. Ruemmler prosecuted four Merrill Lynch executives and sent them to prison on an indictment that was “fatally flawed.” The conduct the prosecutors alleged was not criminal. At the same time, she deliberately hid exculpatory evidence—that is, evidence she was constitutionally compelled to hand over to the defense. Indeed, the prosecutors not only acknowledge the evidence as exculpatory, they yellow-highlighted it as such—then buried it.
Not only did Ms. Ruemmler hide the evidence she had identified as crucial to the defense, but she signed the false and misleading “disclosure letter” to defense counsel. Ms. Ruemmler then elicited hearsay testimony from witnesses that was directly contradicted by the first-hand evidence she and her Task Force hid. She capitalized on and compounded the injustice, repeatedly telling the court and jury “facts” that were directly refuted by the evidence she hid.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately reversed 12 out of 14 counts of conviction against the executives, acquitting one entirely. All the defendants were released, after having spent up to a year in prison on a sham indictment, while Ms. Ruemmler and her cronies continued both to hide the evidence that defeated the government’s case and to demand that the Merrill executives be prosecuted a second time on the same indictment.
Mr. Obama’s second muse, directly to his left in the photo, is Lisa Monaco—probably just a coincidence that she’s a close, longtime friend of Ms. Ruemmler—who also served on the elite Enron Task Force. Ms. Monaco was implicated in the prosecutorial misconduct that infected the Enron Broadband case prosecution. Houston Judge Vanessa Gilmore was irate with the prosecutors. They elicited false testimony from a government witness, threatened witnesses for the defense with indictment if they testified, and used evidence already ruled inadmissible. The Broadband jury wised up. It hung on some counts and acquitted the defendants on others. Of course, the prosecutors demanded a second trial. Drunk on unlimited taxpayer resources, they continued fighting to keep the evidence hidden and protect the ascension of the cabal.
Obama chose Ms. Monaco to be his Counter-Terrorism advisor. Was that because of Ms. Monaco’s experience with the “terror of a prosecutor” Leslie Caldwell, also from the Enron Task Force, who now heads the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice? Ms. Caldwell spearheaded the destruction of Arthur Andersen LLP and its 85,000 jobs only to be reversed 9-0 by the Supreme Court because of the flawed indictment and the absence of criminal intent.
Or was Ms. Monaco chosen because of her illustrious rise in the Department of Justice following her Task Force stint? And there was also her close connection with the FBI, where she had served as Director Mueller’s chief of staff, apparently while Enron Task Force Director Andrew Weissmann (who helped Caldwell destroy Andersen) also served as special counsel to Mr. Mueller. Mr. Weissmann later became General Counsel for the FBI in 2011 while Ms. Monaco was heading the Department’s national security division.
It leaves one to wonder why the former Enron Task Force cabal dominates the president’s inner circle? All of their trials were tainted with Supreme Court and appellate reversals, outrageous abuses of government power, a plethora of prosecutorial misconduct, and even guilty pleas had to be withdrawn because of their over-reaching.
All the President’s muses could learn something from All the President’s Men: “Nothing’s riding on this except, uh, the first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country.”
The picture is rounded out, shall we say, by the presence of yet another Obama muse: Susan Rice. She was not on the Enron Task Force, but is, as George F. Will politely described it in the Washington Post, “accident-prone.” Individually or combined, their disregard for truth, for individual rights and liberties, their willingness to hide evidence and intimidate witnesses, and their contempt of Congress and for the Rule of Law, is staggering. Bowe Bergdahl, the Taliban leader-release, and the Benghazi cover-up are but a mere sampling of the corruption. Perhaps the President would “rather laugh with the sinners than cry with saints,” perhaps his muses are much more fun, but where does that leave the rest of us?
Attorney General Robert H. Jackson once said, “The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous. . . .While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.” A prosecutor has almost unilateral, unchecked ability to destroy the lives of those he charges. It is beyond troubling that our top law enforcement officer chooses the company of those who repeatedly failed their duty.
