Trump, Not the Left, Embodies Unity Message and Looks to Build Strong Middle-Class Coalition

Just days after surviving a near-deadly assassination attempt, former President Donald Trump kicked off the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Monday night by selecting a vice president who was once a vocal critic of his in 2016 and extending an invitation to a union chief to speak at the convention.

The devastating events of last Saturday are still reverberating through the nation, as Americans grapple with the chilling reality that less than an inch of space prevented former President Trump from death or grave injury over the weekend. Thankfully, Trump emerged from the horrific shooting unscathed except for a grazed ear and kicked off the Republican National Convention less than 48 hours after surviving the attack.

While prominent Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have used Saturday’s assassination attempt to do everything from attack the Second Amendment to blame Trump himself for the attempt on his life, Trump appears to be focused on unifying Americans regardless of identity politics, something the left is failing miserably to do.

In a grave example of misinformation, President Joe Biden appeared to double down on at least partially blaming Trump for Saturday’s horrific shooting in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. Biden appeared to blame Trump for incendiary rhetoric, bringing up an utterly out of context statement Trump made about a “bloodbath” for the auto-industry if he lost the election. Trump did in fact use the word “bloodbath” at a March rally to describe the situation if he loses in November, but Trump was speaking about the U.S. auto industry becoming a “bloodbath” if he loses, nothing else. Biden however, apparently had either not been briefed and corrected on the bloodbath statement or did not care that it was out of context because he told Lester Holt that Trump, “talks about bloodbath if he loses”.

While the left is busy blaming Trump for finding himself in the crosshairs of an assassin, Trump appears to be forging ahead, focused on building a strong coalition of working-class voters this November and embodying a unity message the left is not.

First, Trump announced Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate from a shortlist that included Florida Senator Marco Rubio and others. Vance, a 39-year-old self-made man from a modest background and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” was highly critical of Trump eight years ago during the 2016 election. However, Vance now says Trump ended up being a great president and he believes his judgement was partially clouded by the mainstream media’s attacks on Trump back in 2016.

In a Fox News interview after being announced, Vance responded to Sean Hannity’s probing questions about negative statements he made about Trump back in 2016. “I don’t hide from that, I was certainly skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016”, Vance told Hannity. “But president Trump was a great president, and he changed my mind. I think he changed the minds of a lot of Americans, because again he delivered that peace and prosperity.” While left-wing pundits like to claim Trump relentlessly criticizes or punishes those who disagree with him, Trump bypassed other vice-presidential picks in favor of a man whose opinion of the former president changed significantly over the past eight years. That’s not the move of someone with a fragile ego, in fact it is quite the opposite.

Then there was Monday’s closing speech at the Republican National Convention, which came from an unlikely source in the form of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien. O’Brien seized on the opportunity to rail against big business and declared that the Teamsters are, “here to say we are not beholden to anyone or any party”.

In his address to the RNC, the first to come from a Teamsters president in the organization’s history, O’Brien declared, “we will create an agenda and work with a bipartisan coalition, ready to accomplish something real for the American worker. And I don’t care about getting criticized.”

While not endorsing Trump, O’Brien congratulated Trump for being willing to listen to other points of view. “President Trump is a candidate who is not afraid of hearing from new, loud and often critical voices”, O’Brien said. “And I think we all can agree, whether people like him or they don’t like him, in light of what happened to him on Saturday, he has proven to be one tough S.O.B.”

For years now, a series of worrying polls have put Democrats on notice that Trump is making significant inroads with groups Democrats have long depended upon, including independents working-class whites, minorities and young people. Days after surviving a vile attack on his life, Trump is embodying unity in a way that goes far beyond words. Through his actions – nominating a vice president who was once highly critical of him, inviting the Teamsters to speak at the RNC, and consistently reaching out to groups Democrats believe belong to them alone – Trump is standing up for a unified middle-class, regardless of labels.

https://dailytorch.com/2024/07/trump-not-the-left-embodies-unity-message-and-looks-to-build-strong-middle-class-coalition/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=9ac162f2-2899-4a91-a9f1-d1f004777899

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‘Fight!’ Poll shows 74 percent say Trump acted with bravery and defiance after assassination attempt

That was former President Donald Trump’s immediate statement to his supporters at the tragic Butler, Pa. campaign rally on July 13 that claimed the life of Corey Comperatore as he shielded his family and injured Trump and two others, letting everyone know that he and America were going to be okay following the assassination attempt.

And it did not go unnoticed. 74 percent of registered voters said Trump acted with bravery and defiance, including 94 percent of Republicans, 56 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of independents. 68 percent say he has urged unity and calm, including 88 percent of Republicans, 49 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of independents.

As for causative factors 64 percent agreed that “[T]he core message of Biden campaign and the Democratic party that Trump is a threat to democracy and freedom and a dictator has gone too far,” including 80 percent of Republicans, 52 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents.

https://dailytorch.com/2024/07/fight-poll-shows-74-percent-say-trump-acted-with-bravery-and-defiance-after-assassination-attempt/

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Navarro released from prison, to make return to Republican National Convention tonight

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to former White House advisor Peter Navarro being released from federal prison:

"The political prosecution and imprisonment of Peter Navarro for having the audacity to claim executive privilege in response to a Congressional subpoena has come to an end. It is astonishing that the Biden administration would choose to prosecute a political opponent with all of the inherent risks to our nation that it entails in order to put someone in jail for four months. This same Justice Department, which prosecuted both Navarro and former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon, for failing to testify to Congress, over their executive privilege claims, at the same time, is led by an Attorney General claiming executive privilege in defiance of a Congressional subpoena and found in contempt of Congress. Naturally, Biden's DOJ is refusing to prosecute itself for violating the very same law, exemplifying the current two-tiered justice system. Thankfully, Peter Navarro survived his prison sentence and will be making a triumphant return as a political martyr to the public stage at the Republican National Convention tonight."

https://getliberty.org/2024/07/navarro-released-from-prison-to-make-return-to-republican-national-convention-tonight/

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Trump and I Have Proved Conservative Policies Work, Virginia’s Governor Says

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said both he and former President Donald Trump have shown that “commonsense conservative leadership works.”

Youngkin, a onetime businessman elected in 2021, said Monday night at the Republican National Convention that under President Joe Biden’s administration, Americans are facing 7.5% mortgage rates, while their raises can’t keep up with 30% increases in grocery prices and a 40% jump in the prices at the gas pump.

“Tonight, America—the land of opportunity—just doesn’t feel like that any more,” Youngkin said. “But eight years ago, there was an outsider, a businessman who stepped out of his career to rebuild a great nation, with the strongest economy, the mightiest military, energy independence, unlimited opportunity, lifting up every American. That outsider businessman was Donald J. Trump, and he will do it again.”

Youngkin said that the 2024 election “could not be more simple” and cast it as a contest of strength versus weakness and common sense versus chaos.

He also promoted his own record in Virginia, where he was the first Republican governor elected in 12 years.

“President Trump proved that commonsense conservative leadership works. It works for America,” Youngkin said. “We are proving it in Virginia, too, with $5 billion in tax relief, backing the blue, slashing red tape, declaring loudly that ‘yes, parents matter,’ and creating lots and lots of jobs. We were just named America’s top state to do business.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/15/youngkin-says-he-trump-proved-conservative-policies-work/

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Trump looks to appeal to Reagan Democrats and independents with Vance pick


Vance

Former President Donald Trump wants to engineer a landslide in 2024. In 1972, 1980, 1984 and 1988, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush won monumental 49-state, 44-state, 49-state and 40-state landslides in their respective re-election and election bids.

Eventually earning the moniker, Reagan Democrats, the appeal was to working class Americans who were underrepresented by elites in both political parties. It was critical to Trump’s narrow win in 2016, picking up the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and in 1992, it was a great deal of the reason why Bush lost with Ross Perot in the general election and Patrick Buchanan in the primary eating a great deal of those voters who were not being adequately represented by the Republican administration.

In 2020, those voters did not fully turn out for Trump, who although he improved on his 2016 showing, could not overcome the economy temporarily jettisoning 25 million jobs during Covid lockdowns, and Trump went on to lose Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and also losing Georgia and Arizona in President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win.

To restore and broaden the Trump coalition, he is going back to his 2016 playbook in selecting his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and with a selection of convention speakers who were once adversarial to Trump, whether model Amber Rose or Teamsters boss Sean O’Brien (who didn’t endorse but whose appearance also green lights members to vote for Trump), but also in his determination to campaign in New York, New Jersey, Virginia and other blue states that have not supported a Republican candidate for president in a long time.

Vance agrees with Trump’s positions on trade, illegal immigration and foreign policy, supporting tariffs on Chinese goods, closing the U.S. southern border and opposing U.S. intervention in Ukraine. He also comes from humble origins in a working-class family, and whose personal story of self-determination and serving his country in the Marines and now the Senate, plus his youth — he’s only 39-years-old — makes him an able-bodied heir of the Trump legacy.

As for the convention, instead of putting on nothing but supporters, Trump has opted for at least a few speakers who looked at Trump and discovered he wasn’t who or what his opponents and media said. Vance, who was once highly critical of Trump, also fits this mold.

Trump is making a play for blue states. If the broader strategy works, it will do so by winning the so-called Reagan Democrats who Reagan’s successors took for granted, and could be a landslide and also prove pivotal to helping Republicans get elected in Congress. Trump will need larger majorities to get anything done.

It’s a higher risk strategy — some Republicans and conservatives were offended by the Rose and O’Brien appearances at the convention, for example — but also one that can produce a higher reward when voters get to the ballot box.

https://dailytorch.com/2024/07/trump-looks-to-appeal-to-reagan-democrats-and-independents-with-vance-pick-convention-speakers/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Another deletion

Google have deleted another of my posts here -- dated 16 June. It is still available on that date here:

http://jonjayray.com/covjun24.html

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Physically unfit, under-qualified agents with a diversity-obsessed boss chosen by Dr Jill Biden!

Consider what happened when Donald Trump was shot on Saturday night.

The initial response was by the book. Brave agents piled on him to protect him from further bullets. They kept him down until they were told the shooter had been killed.

But they had no idea if others shooters were involved and, as they escorted him off the podium, they left him badly exposed, partly because some of the agents were not tall enough to give him proper cover.

If there had been a second shooter they would have had a clear line of sight as Trump fist-pumped the air.

There was even more chaos by the time they reached Trump's SUV. Far from the efficient, speedy exit all those years ago outside the Washington Hilton for Ronald Reagan, it took too long to get him in the vehicle and even longer for it to depart.

Agents were darting about, some running in circles, clearly not sure what to do. One, overweight and looking panicked, pointed her gun all over the place. Another had trouble holstering her pistol. A third found time to put on her sunglasses and straighten her jacket.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence – but when Trump entered the Republican National Convention hall in Milwaukee on Monday night, his security detail was made up almost exclusively of tall, chunky men.

The Secret Service endlessly game-plans and practises evacuations. 'Get him and go' is the simple guidance. The Secret Service likes to regard itself as the global gold standard for the protection of public figures. Not after Saturday night.

But what happened after Trump was shot is the least of its problems.

How the shooter ever managed to get any shots off in the first place has the makings of the biggest crisis of modern times for the Secret Service.

Security experts are still baffled that a roof top overlooking the presidential podium, just over a football-field away and with an elevated, unobstructed view of Trump, could have been left unguarded so that the shooter could make it on to the roof and then, unhindered, position himself for his assassination attempt.

The Secret Service has yet to offer a credible explanation for this. Instead its director, Kimberly Cheatle, incredibly appeared to tell ACB News on Tuesday that health and safety protocol was to blame.

'That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there's a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn't want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,' she said.

Cheatle and her acolytes have also been busy throwing local law enforcement under the bus.

The warehouse on top of which the shooter clambered (we still don't know exactly how) was outside the Secret Service's perimeter of responsibility, she claims. It was the job of local police to secure it — and it's true that local law enforcement has some questions to answer.

It's been revealed that a local police counter-sniper team was stationed inside the warehouse. They were using it as a 'watch post' to scan for threats.

Pity nobody thought of having a look at the roof of the building they were occupying since its location and view overlooking the rally made it the most obvious threat. Perhaps the Keystone Cops were on duty at the weekend.

Local police also failed to react to people on the ground around the warehouse shouting that there was somebody, possibly with a rifle, on the roof, a few minutes before he started firing. Several videos provide convincing evidence to confirm this — and of the police's lackadaisical response.

'Look, they're all pointing,' one man is heard saying as he pans his smart phone from the stage to the roof of the warehouse, where a figure is seen crawling. 'Yeah someone's on top of the roof — look!'

The police don't seem to react, though there are reports that one local cop climbed a ladder leaning against the warehouse wall (used by the shooter?). He saw the would-be assassin when his head reached roof level — and quickly ducked back down the ladder when the shooter trained his AR-15 on him, before he then turned back unimpeded to take his shots at Trump.

Another report extraordinarily claims that local police noticed the shooter on the roof 26 minutes before he opened fire, and even took a picture of him.

Clearly, the police incompetence on depressing display during the Uvalde school massacre shooting in Texas two years ago was not a one-off.

But the Secret Service cannot be allowed to pile the blame on a police force in rural Pennsylvania with no expertise or experience in protecting high-profile targets.

It is the job of the Secret Service to devise and give final approval for the security blueprint covering events like Saturday's rally. It is the responsibility of the Secret Service to ensure all vulnerable points are covered, inside and outside their specific perimeter, even when local police provide the manpower.

Above all, it was incumbent on the Secret Service to ensure that such an obvious security weakness as the warehouse was properly policed. One drone with infrared sensors would quickly have spotted the shooter, probably before he even made it to the roof. If that drone had been equipped with offensive capabilities, the shooter could have been taken out long before he ever managed to pull his trigger.

But we understand no drones were deployed. Why not?

It would seem the Secret Service under Director Cheatle has had other priorities. A former Secret Service agent told me privately that she quit because field agents were understaffed (working 60 consecutive days with no time off).

Money has instead been diverted to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). Investment in new technology, including state-of-the-art drones, was also sacrificed at the altar of DEI.

Director Cheatle was appointed two years ago by President Biden with the blessing (perhaps even active support) of his wife Jill.

Cheatle had been on the Biden family's security detail when Joe Biden was Vice President. Jill Biden is obsessed with DEI, like most leftwing pseudo-academics. Cheatle talks more about reaching 30 percent female agents by 2030 than she does about protecting those under her agency's tender care. Her ambition is all over the Secret Service website.

When I was a White House correspondent in the 1980s, the Secret Service was part of the US Treasury Department, a hard taskmaster.

Now it is part of Homeland Security, whose boss, the hapless Alejandro Mayorkas, is also 'passionate' about DEI. He also assures us the Southern border with Mexico is secure.

The standards and governance of the Secret Service are clearly less rigorous than they once were. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump at the weekend has made that painfully obvious for all to see.

No doubt its shortcomings will be revealed in agonizing detail by the numerous congressional committees about to investigate it. I'd be surprised if Cheatle survives the scrutiny.

She could always return to be head of 'global security' at PepsiCo, from whence she came. They're big on DEI there too — but the consequences are less profound for American democracy.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13640193/unfit-Secret-Service-botched-Trump-shooting-Andrew-Neil.html

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Thomas Matthew Crooks' lonely world: Donald Trump shooter went from popular 10-year-old to secretive loner

Today, through a trove of pictures and the accounts of family friends, Dailymail.com can give the first real glimpse into the childhood of the boy who would grow up to try to kill a president.

He went from the 'normal little boy' who liked to play soldiers and miniature golf, to the increasingly disturbed young man who grew his hair long, isolated himself from friends and became plagued by mental health disturbances that led some to believe he was either bi-polar or schizophrenic.

It was a journey that ended catastrophically at Trump's campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday when Crooks, 20, took aim at the former president hitting him in the ear, killing one member of the crowd and seriously injuring two others.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one person who knows the family well said, 'He was a cute kid, maybe a little bit off, maybe a little bit of a loner.

'But in the past couple of years he started suffering what we all suspected was mental health issues.'

From the 'normal little boy' who liked to play soldiers and miniature golf, to the increasingly disturbed young man who grew his hair long and isolated himself from friends

The friend, who has known the family throughout Crooks's childhood, continued, 'We never knew for sure if he had been diagnosed or if he was being medicated but he started growing his hair long, he withdrew.

'There was nothing super alarming but looking back of course you question what was missed? His father was a psychologist.

'I'm not blaming the parents but did he suppress something? Was there some denial there? Was there anything hidden?'

Crooks, known as Tom to his family, grew up in the Bethel Park suburb where his family still live with his parents and older sister, Katherine, 22.

He attended Abraham Lincoln Elementary School from 2009 to 2014, before moving on to Neil Armstrong Middle School 2015 to 2016, then Independence Middle School 2017 to 2018, and ultimately Bethel Park High School from which he graduated in 2022.

Seen in pictures across the years it is impossible to look at the face of the little boy who poses in yearbook picture after yearbook picture in his polo shirt and glasses without straining to see some foreshadowing of the change that, friends say, overtook him in the end.

In one, under the banner of 'Follow your Dreams' he is dressed in combat gear, the innocent costume of so many little boys now cast in a more sinister light by the act he would ultimately commit.

But as a child, he was, friends say, if not exactly outgoing then certainly apparently 'normal.'

One said, 'He was definitely very intelligent that's something that was always clear. He was in the math club; I think that was the only club he was part of other than the gun club later, and he won quite a big scholarship for math.'

In early photographs he is surrounded by friends, on costume days or mini-golf outings.

Later he is at the edge, peaking round a bandstand pillar or kneeling at the end of a line with a basketball and his peers.

Contrary to what one 'friend' has publicly claimed in recent days those who spoke with DailyMail.com insist he did not dress in hunting or camouflage gear but instead was always smartly turned out in a polo shirt and pants or shorts.

A source said, 'He was always smartly dressed. He came from a good family – his mother is a very nice woman, and his father is actually very accomplished. I believe at one point he was earning between $300,000 and $500,000 a year.'

Today the modest family home, a small brick bungalow in a quiet suburban neighborhood sits under the watchful eyes of law enforcement and the world media.

It gives little indication of its owners having any significant wealth.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13640369/trump-shooter-thomas-matthew-crooks-friends-combat-gear.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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ALG Praises Trump Choice Of J.D. Vance As Running Mate

Good to see the skepticism about Ukraine. American aid is just prolonging the war. Putin is ready for an armistice. It's time for Zelensky to to come to the party. The bloodshed has got to stop. And Trump is the one to stop it

I am myself very pro-Indian (been there 3 times) so I am pleased to see that Vance is married to a very accomplished Indian lady. I have also known impressive Indian ladies

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising former President Donald Trump’s choice of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his Vice Presidential running mate:

“President Donald Trump’s choice of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his Vice Presidential running mate demonstrates the President’s commitment to growing the Make America Great Again movement for decades to come. J.D. Vance is a warrior for the forgotten middle-class. Vance is in alignment with President Trump’s willingness to change our international trade policies to meet the needs of American workers, and has demonstrated a healthy skepticism over how U.S. taxpayer dollars have been spent in Ukraine. Americans for Limited Government strongly supports the ticket of President Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance.”

https://getliberty.org/2024/07/alg-praises-trump-choice-of-j-d-vance-as-running-mate/

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Tucker Carlson: All the Right People in Washington ‘Against’ Trump’s VP Pick

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson told Republicans gathering in Milwaukee on Monday that Americans should “be thrilled” by Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick.

Earlier in the day, as the Republican National Convention opened, Trump posted on social media that he had chosen Sen. JD Vance, an Ohio Republican, as his running mate in the Nov. 5 election.

“So now JD Vance is the VP pick, and I think every person who pays close attention has got to be thrilled by that,” Carlson said in a speech to convention delegates.

“And if you don’t know much about JD Vance, I’m not even going to make a case for [him],” the former Fox News host said.

Vance, 39, became a celebrity after writing the bestselling autobiography “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis,” published in 2016. A venture capitalist, he won election to the Senate in 2022.

“I’m going to tell you what I just saw, which is that every bad person I’ve ever met in a lifetime in Washington was aligned against JD Vance,” Carlson quipped to the convention audience, referring to recent speculation by liberal media outlets and others that Trump would pick the conservative Ohio senator.

Carlson said Vance’s enemies are establishment politicians who support U.S. involvement in “pointless wars.”

“Every single one of those people, in a line that would extend from Milwaukee to Chicago, was lined up over the last week to knife JD Vance,” Carlson told the RNC audience. “Not on personal grounds. I mean, he’s a perfectly nice guy. He’s like one of the only members of the Senate with a happy marriage.”

The criticism of Vance came “because they thought he would be harder to manipulate and slightly less enthusiastic about killing people,” Carlson said. “That’s it. That he would be an impediment to their exercising power.”

“And boy, they went after him in a way I’ve just kind of never seen,” Carlson said.

Carlson went on to describe what he sees as a “spiritual battle” America faces in light of the attempted assassination of Trump at a campaign rally Saturday evening in Pennsylvania. The gunfire wounded the former president in the right ear, narrowly missing his brain, seriously wounded two attendees, and killed a third.

“There is no logical way to understand what we’re seeing now in temporal terms,” Carlson told the crowd. “You just can’t.”

“These are not political divides. There are forces, and they’re very obvious now, … whose only goal is chaos, violence, destruction,” he said. “And there are the rest of us who … are not always certain we’re right, but we know that that’s bad. And we’re against that.”

Carlson predicted that voters in November will return Trump to the White House because the former president showed “strength” Saturday night when he raised his fist and mouthed the word “fight” repeatedly after being shot as Secret Service agents sought to carry him offstage.

“Trump’s going to be president because he’s brave,” Carlson said. “Period.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/15/tucker-carlson-all-the-right-people-in-washington-against-trumps-vp-pick/

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Trump classified documents case dismissed

Washington: Donald Trump will no longer face trial for mishandling classified documents after a federal judge he appointed threw out the case, ruling that the prosecutor overseeing the charges was improperly appointed.

In a major win for the former US president days after his attempted assassination, Judge Aileen Cannon – who was appointed under Trump’s administration – filed a court ruling on Monday dismissing the charges.

The move is the second significant legal victory for Trump in as many weeks, following the US Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents and ex-presidents substantial immunity from being prosecuted for official acts that took place while in office.

Conversely, it is a major blow for Special Counsel Jack Smith, the former war crimes prosecutor who charged Trump last year after highly sensitive documents were found at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Those documents included information relating to nuclear programs and military vulnerabilities, and to intelligence that should have only been shared with the “Five Eyes” countries, including Australia.

“Upon careful study of the foundational challenges raised in the motion, the court is convinced that Special Counsel’s Smith’s prosecution of this action breaches two structural cornerstones of our constitutional scheme – the role of Congress in the appointment of constitutional officers, and the role of Congress in authorising expenditures by law,” Cannon concluded in her 93-page order.

Smith’s office said it would appeal Cannon’s decision, which legal experts have slammed. The Trump-appointed judge has long been criticised for making rulings that appear to favour the former president. She has also been accused of unnecessarily delaying the case with long, drawn-out proceedings.

In response to the decision, Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor and president of Citizens for Responsible Ethics said: “This is a lawless, outlier decision with no basis in statute or case law. It is deeply dangerous for accountability and checks and balances going forward. This decision should and assuredly will be appealed immediately.”

But the ruling was welcomed by Trump and the many Republicans descending in Milwaukee this week for the party’s national convention.

Trump will be formally appointed as the Republican presidential nominee at the event on Thursday, but his vice presidential running mate was expected to be announced as soon as Monday (local time).

“As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts,” Trump posted on social media.

The classified documents case is one of four trials the former president was due to face. He has also been charged over election interference in Georgia and Washington DC – but both cases have been delayed – and he was recently convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal ahead of the 2016 election.

However, his legal team has long considered the classified documents case to be the strongest one, partly because it related to acts that took place after he left office.

The documents in question were taken after Trump left the White House in 2021 and were stored in boxes all over his Mar-a-Lago resort, including “in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room”.

Trump has long maintained his innocence.

US President Joe Biden has also been investigated by a separate special counsel over his own handling of classified documents. However, that case was dismissed and the special counsel noted in his findings that Biden’s age and hazy memory would make it challenging to secure a conviction.

“At trial, Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury as he did during our interview of him: as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” he wrote in his 388-page Justice Department report released in February.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/classified-documents-case-against-trump-dismissed-20240716-p5jtxn.html

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Jack Smith’s Other Big Trump Case Could Go Down In Flames After Judge Finds His Appointment ‘Unconstitutional’

A judge’s Monday decision finding special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment “unconstitutional” will almost inevitably end up before the Supreme Court, potentially dooming Trump’s Jan. 6 case along with his classified documents case.

Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that Attorney General Merrick Garland did not have the authority to appoint Smith, a private citizen who was also never appointed by the president nor confirmed by the Senate, to prosecute the case against Trump. Cannon’s decision to dismiss the classified documents case — which comes just weeks after the Supreme Court agreed that former presidents have immunity for official acts committed in office — is good news for Trump that will not be limited to the prosecution in Florida but will likely impact Smith’s other prosecution of Trump in Washington, D.C.

“The Mar-a-Lago documents case has long been considered the strongest one against Trump,” former federal prosecutor Joseph Moreno told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “With this decision, it is now indefinitely prolonged and may even fall away.”

Smith will appeal the ruling, his office said Monday. Smith could appeal Cannon’s ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will take time and will likely result in a circuit split that would make a Supreme Court review almost certain.

“Although Judge Cannon will, no doubt, be attacked by the Left as a political hack who is doing Trump’s bidding, this would be a grossly unfair characterization,” John Malcolm, vice president for the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government and former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Criminal Division, told the DCNF.

Malcolm said Cannon’s 93-page ruling “should be judged on its merits, not on whether someone likes or dislikes the outcome of this particular case.”

“Indeed, the appointment of special prosecutors vested with almost unlimited authority and without any input from the legislature was one of the grievances cited against King George III in the Declaration of Independence and is the reason why the Constitution’s Appointments Clause was crafted to give Congress a role in the appointment of special prosecutors,” he told the DCNF. “Cannon’s opinion points out precisely why Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith violates the Constitution, since Congress never passed a statute giving Garland such authority.”

Trump’s case brought by Smith in Washington, D.C., where Trump was indicted on four counts for alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, will likely be impacted by Cannon’s decision.

“Technically [District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan] is not bound by Cannon’s decision, and based on her hostility to Trump in the past she likely will not follow it,” Moreno told the DCNF. “But this allows Trump to raise the same issue and, again, knowing that the Supreme Court will ultimately back him.”

The D.C. Circuit previously rejected the argument Cannon accepted when it ruled on a challenge to special counsel Bob Mueller’s appointment in February 2019. This means Cannon’s ruling likely won’t have an immediate effect on Trump’s other case, Malcolm told the DCNF.

“That is the law in the D.C. Circuit, where the Jan. 6 case is pending,” he said.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/07/15/judges-jack-smiths-appointment-shakes-up-trump-federal-cases/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Leftist rage on display after attack on Trump

They are just full of hate. Video here:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13633431/liberals-meltdown-donald-trump-shooter-misses-rally.html

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Of Course Trump Got Shot — It Just Took One Nutjob Taking Democrats Seriously

Many of the individuals you will see condemn the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in the coming days will be outing themselves as liars.

Most of them, we’d hope, are not lying with their condemnations. Everyone should agree that such an egregious act of violence, aimed at destabilizing the entire American political system, is heinous and indefensible.

They will, though, be exposing that they’ve been lying for years about what they believe Donald Trump is.

“Threats to democracy” in this country are countered with murderous violence. The United States was founded when our ancestors launched a full-scale war against the British Empire for denying colonists representation. When slaveholders sought to continue dehumanizing an entire race of people, pro-freedom Americans solved that by killing hundreds of thousands of men. When Islamic terrorists flew planes into buildings and killed thousands of Americans, it triggered a decades-long series of bombing campaigns, invasions and proxy wars.

So, if Donald Trump really is a threat to the entire existence of America, of course someone would try to shoot him. Just last week, the influential left-wing magazine “The New Republic” published a cover that portrays Trump as Hitler. Nobody would bat an eye at the suggestion of assassinating Hitler before he committed the Holocaust. In fact, individuals who tried to assassinate Hitler are lionized as courageous heroes.

Obviously, Trump is not Hitler, or an existential threat to the republic — and the vast majority of the talking heads and politicians who have been selling that for years know it. They have been lying, and each person who earnestly believes their lies and has the means to commit violence has the potential to be a threat like the shooter today.

All it takes is one person to buy what those talking heads have been selling. Just one crazy person out there taking them literally, and America comes face to face with ultimate tragedy.

If the people screaming “threat to democracy” believed their own hype, they wouldn’t be condemning this shooting. They’d consider it an appropriate response to a country-threatening force of evil. That’s how you know they were lying.

If they believed their own hype, they also wouldn’t be running a half-witted octogenarian slated to lose every single swing state as their only opposition.

When the news around this vicious act begins to die down in a few weeks, pay close attention to which Democrats start trotting out the “threat to democracy” line again. It will absolutely happen, and they will again be lying. When they do, they will be asking for another tragedy like what happened today in Pennsylvania. They already primed the pump for this one.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/07/13/donald-trump-assassination-attempt-pennsylvania-democracy/

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Our Brezhnev, Our Pravda, Our Soviet Union…

Leonid Brezhnev led the former Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party until 1982. But like most Russian apparatchiks who excessively smoked, drank, and gained weight, he aged prematurely. Also like them, his disabilities never led to his abdication.

By Brezhnev’s late 60s and early 70s, he was too ill to travel abroad or make public appearances. Indeed, his debility left the Soviet Union without a real leader for the final six or seven years of his tenure.

Brezhnev got away with it because the Soviet state-controlled media doctored photos and videos to attest to his supposedly vigorous health and constant hands-on involvement.

“Journalists” sent out false communiques. They spun narratives that Brezhnev was robust, hale, and working long hours on behalf of the Russian people. Any dissenting journalists who sought to report the true, sad state of affairs were in danger of losing their jobs, freedom — or even their lives.

Instead, the “reporters” of Pravda (“Truth”), the official print megaphone of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, wrote lies about Brezhnev’s busy workdays. Pravda’s handlers spun fables about the respect (and fear) the rest of the world held for such a dynamic leader — even as Brezhnev became an ill virtual recluse.

The cynical Russian people shrugged because they had long been accustomed to their lying media and the falsehoods they peddled. And besides, Brezhnev was a doctrinaire Stalinist communist. So his job was not to rock the boat or upset the Russian communist hierarchy.

Instead, he reigned over the penultimate Soviet “era of stagnation,” while an ossified communism increasingly destroyed all incentives and hope, leaving the Russian people poor, cynical, and helpless.

Something similar has happened to a calcified America under President Joe Biden. Like the late-stage Brezhnev, Biden is now a president in name only. He has outsourced his administration to a vestigial hard-left apparat from the Obama years.

Now, Biden can no longer even perform his assigned ceremonial tasks of putting a moderate veneer on radical, nihilist agendas that are stagnating the country.

Yet our Pravda journalists have sworn to the American people that, in private, the reclusive, three-day-a-week Biden outpaces the energy and drive of those half his age. Obsequious staffers plant stories in the Soviet-like ears of reporters about Biden’s singular dynamism.

Any dissenters are publicly demonized as peddlers of “cheap fakes.”

When Biden’s reclusiveness prompts too much gossip that he is near senile, he is wheeled out for a staged interview that must be edited before release. Or he answers questions secretly shown to him in advance.

On sporadic occasions where the state media and the Biden nomenklatura cannot control events — such as rare presidential debates or international summits — our Pravda media go into overdrive to convince the public that what they see and hear is not real.

In the end, Brezhnev could not even hobble to the May Day dais to celebrate communism’s national holiday.

He soon reached the point that his debilities were so manifest that even his hirelings and the media could not hide them. He then vanished from public view, leaving the Russian people with no idea as to who was running their communist nation.

Then one day, Soviet propagandists announced suddenly but matter-of-factly that the dynamic Brezhnev had died and that his successor, Yuri Andropov, was now brilliantly running the Soviet Union.

Biden, too, is at that point of stasis. He cannot do press conferences, town halls, debates, or real interviews. To do so would confirm to the public the truth: that Biden is too cognitively challenged to continue his presidency.

And yet the cloistered Biden can no longer hide during a campaign season with his accustomed three-day workweek.

The media has done its best to continue its Orwellian ruse. They claim that Trump interrupted Biden (he did not) in the recent debate and that he lied (if so, not as much as did Biden). Sometimes, the press corps just blurts out that an inert, left-wing Biden is still preferable to a dynamic, conservative Trump.

What is next for our increasingly Soviet state?

We will continue to be lectured on the vigor of Biden — until one day we aren’t, when Biden either steps down — or worse.

Then, our Pravda will likely present the new official narrative. They will convince us that his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, is an underappreciated genius whose past portfolios led to solving the border crisis and renewing American dominance in space.

One day, the same reporters who swore Biden was a virtual Socrates behind closed doors and then suddenly just confessed he was not when their lies were no longer operative will sing the praises of our new comrade leader — the brilliant, accomplished, eloquent, and articulate Harris.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/108442-our-brezhnev-our-pravda-our-soviet-union-dot-dot-dot-2024-07-12

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Eerie Parallels: Trump’s Shooting Echoes Teddy Roosevelt’s in 1912

The former president with a larger-than-life personality—out of office for four years and with a long list of enemies—campaigns for another term and has a close call with a would-be assassin.

The former president, despite visible bleeding, not only survives the attempt on his life, but exhibits a strong show of strength, rallying his supporters. But the inflammatory rhetoric aimed at the candidate was even blamed for inspiring “vicious minds” to engage in political violence.

It was just after 8 p.m. on Oct. 14, 1912, when former President Teddy Roosevelt—seeking a nonconsecutive third term—was exiting the Gilpatrick Hotel to go deliver a speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium. Then, a former saloonkeeper, John Schrank, pulled a Colt .38 revolver just about five feet away and shot Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet was blunted by a folded-up 50-page speech and a thick eyeglasses case.

While the failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump late Saturday afternoon occurred north of Pittsburgh in Butler, Pennsylvania, the 45th president will deliver a speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination this week at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee—the same city where Roosevelt went on to speak for 84 minutes after taking a bullet.

In the case of Trump, the bullet grazed his ear, and the would-be assassin was fatally shot by Secret Service agents at the scene.

When Roosevelt was shot, his supporters called for killing the shooter. Several leapt on him and landed several punches. Roosevelt said, “Don’t hurt him. Bring him here. I want to see him.”

The attempted assassin was brought face-to-face with his target, and Roosevelt asked Schrank, “What did you do it for?” Schrank didn’t answer, so Roosevelt said, “Oh, what’s the use? Turn him over to the police.”

Roosevelt initially didn’t see any blood and presumed the bullet didn’t penetrate. A nearby doctor told the driver to get the former president to a hospital, but the former president said, “You get me to that speech.”

At the Milwaukee Auditorium, Roosevelt told the stunned audience, who in the absence of TV or social media would hear the news for the first time, “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”

In a line perhaps comparable to Trump’s pumping his fist to reassure his Pennsylvania audience on Saturday, Roosevelt gained a rousing ovation from the Wisconsin crowd affirming, “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose.”

Earlier in 1912, Roosevelt—a former Republican president, who served from 1901 to 1909—lost his bid for the GOP nomination when he challenged his successor, President William Howard Taft. Roosevelt ran as the candidate of the Progressive Party, which was nicknamed the Bull Moose Party.

The two assassination attempts have many parallels, but many differences as well. Perhaps most evident is that the Roosevelt shooting was at close range and with a revolver. The Trump shooting was at long range with an AR-style rifle.

The nature of the wounds were also different. A bullet fragment was lodged between Roosevelt’s ribs not far from his heart, but doctors determined it was best not to remove it. The bullet on Saturday grazed Trump’s right ear, and left a bloody face. Roosevelt was shot just before his political rally, while Trump was shot during his rally.

After the Trump assassination attempt on Saturday, much of the anti-Trump rhetoric has come to the forefront, as Democrats and many media outlets have claimed that he’s an “existential” threat to democracy, and even compared him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Political opponents and many newspapers of the era said Roosevelt was a power-hungry traitor to his country for breaking the tradition of serving two terms, according to History.com.

In his Milwaukee speech with a blood-soaked shirt, Roosevelt said: “It is a very natural thing, that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers.”

The assertion was somewhat borne out by Schrank’s diary, which said afterward: “I did not intend to kill the citizen Roosevelt. I intended to kill Theodore Roosevelt, the third termer.”

It was Roosevelt’s final presidential campaign. A former vice president, he had ascended to the presidency after the assassination of President William McKinley. He served out most of what would have been McKinley’s second term, and was elected in his own right in 1904.

Roosevelt lost the 1912 election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, but his third-party candidacy finished in second place, outpolling incumbent Republican Taft.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/14/parallels-abound-between-assassination-attempts-on-donald-trump-teddy-roosevelt/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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So many of us are thankful that President Trump was not seriously harmed by the attempt on his life

The horrible divisions that the insane Left have created among Americans bear their evil fruit

The shot went so close to killing him that many will see a protective hand behind his survival

Any Christians who were skeptical of Trump's candidacy will be unlikely to be skeptical now

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UK: Yes. Labour will go Woke

Now that Labour has won an enormous majority the dogs of woke be released. As if on cue, Prime Minister Keir Starmer used his maiden speech to boast about his party’s world-leading share of LGBT MPs and praise race grievance-monger Diane Abbott. He also appointed the woke one-two punch of Bridget Phillipson as Education Secretary and Anneliese Dodds as Equalities Minister.

Both have incurred the ire of J.K. Rowling because they prioritise the rights of biological males who think they are ladies over the right of women to female-only spaces. This foreshadows the surreptitious manner in which, for the the next five years, Labour will push what I call ‘left-liberal extremism’ —walk softly (talk about ‘centrist’, ‘country over party’, ‘bringing people together’) but carry a big woke stick.

As Matt Goodwin has commented, the woke belief system is not just a sideshow. It threatens the very foundations of Western civilisation. Starmer, as Goodwin notes, is likely to toss red meat to Labour’s radical woke interest groups because he lacks the budgetary headroom to drive growth, boost public spending and increase pay.

His large majority also means he will have to contend with querulous progressive backbench MPs who include Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) such as Nadia Whittome - who has vowed to push gender self-identification ‘no ifs ands or buts’, and described open debate as ‘an effective rollback of assumed equality.’

This doesn’t mean Starmer is suddenly going to start saying ‘transwomen are women’ or Britain is ‘systemically racist’. He knows the British people are not woke. In my own surveys, two-thirds oppose woke policies while we have already seen, in Scotland, how a large majority break against woke policies when they become aware of them.

Instead, Keir Starmer’s stated aim is to shoot down the opponents of this cultural revolution as ‘divisive’, thus running interference for woke left activists in the civil service, schools, universities, public sector bodies, galleries and other institutions.

Already, in her opening speech to civil servants, Lisa Nandy, new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has made clear she will drop a ban on rainbow lanyards and other political messaging because ‘the era of culture wars are over’ and ‘[our] entire focus is on the work of delivering change – not lanyards’ (read: green light for culture war activists).

This will be paired with discreet (‘walk softly, big stick’) measures, such as appointing woke ministers to key redoubts in the culture war (such as Dodds and Phillipson), while suggesting that similarly self-identified ‘woke’ activists and supporters of Black Lives Matter take control of Labour’s efforts to curtail illegal immigration.

While the Conservatives did little to combat woke, the differences with Labour are important. The Tories mounted a weak and unfocused effort to rid schools, the civil service, and the NHS of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology, failing to stop to these ideas in the wider Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) agenda.

While 2019 Tory MPs such as Caroline Noakes, Crispin Blunt, Theresa May and Dehenna Davison were openly woke, many of their peers were not and some, such as Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman and Oliver Dowden, were willing to combat this poisonous belief system.

The knowledge that the government was at least somewhat opposed to this agenda meant woke activists in the public sector could not fully let rip. But that leash came off when Labour won its enormous majority at the general election, on July 4.

What is woke? Don’t let the left fool you by arguing it is an empty epithet, that it is just about “being nice” or “tolerant”. In fact, it is an analytically and empirically robust concept —a distinctive political tradition or ideology in its own right.

As I explain in my new online course on Woke, and my new book Taboo, woke refers to the making sacred of historically marginalised race, gender and sexual identity groups.

It is a belief system that results in a prioritising of equal outcomes and protecting minorities from emotional harm. Its supporters claim this is about ‘being kind’ but the reality is that, today, kindness to one group, such as biological males who identify as female, entails being unkind to another, such as biological women who want to protect women’s sport and spaces.

Likewise, assailing ‘whiteness’ in the name of making minorities feel welcome is an attack on the identity of the ethnic majority. Punishing people for politically incorrect speech or chilling their freedom of expression might make a few sensitive minorities feel better, but will embarrass and annoy more confident minorities while stifling the majority group’s traditions and free speech.

These are conflicts of group interest in a democracy, not open-and-shut ‘rights’ issues – which is the way the woke media class and elite institutions frame it.

The view of minorities as sacred began with the anti-racism taboo in mid-1960s America, which was the ‘big bang’ of today’s moral order. Then, over time, the magic was borrowed by feminists, gays, and later trans activists to create new taboos in our society around sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, and more.

While proportionate norms against racism and prejudice are important, taboos are tripwires that activate our disgust reflex, reducing complexity in our society to binary and simplistic debates in which those who deviate from the new, stifling orthodoxy are silenced or stigmatised as racist, sexist, homophobic, and so on.

These stigmas are the ‘North Star’ around which today’s moral system revolves. Until we undo that, cancel culture, gender ideology, critical race theory, and routine attacks on the history and collective memory of Western societies like Britain will not just continue; they will accelerate and intensify.

As African-American writer Shelby Steele, who lived through the civil rights struggle, recalls, in the 1950s African Americans in the South had to kowtow to whites, who at that time held the cultural power.

But from the 1960s whites had to genuflect to African Americans, who had acquired cultural power because whites had confessed to having mistreated African Americans. This was an unavoidable response to the dismantling of racial segregation.

In order to recover moral authority, Steele writes that white people and American institutions had to virtue signal they were ‘good whites’ by praising minorities, denigrating their fellow white Americans, or adopting policies like affirmative action, which arguably do more harm than good to African Americans.

We see this, for example, in studies which shown how white liberal progressives in America dumb down their speech when speaking to African Americans, tiptoeing around groups they revere as sacred rather than treating them as equals.

The power of identity stigmas, like kryptonite, can be used to disable opponents, rending them radioactive to others. The political left, whether radical or liberal, drew on newly sacralised minority groups like African-Americans as a source of meaning and direction for their politics.

But this also meant they could borrow cultural power from minorities and use it against the right. In other words, the moral revolution brought about by the race taboo did not just involve a transfer of power from white to black; it also involved a shift of moral authority from right to left.

When a party is in government they make the laws, and when an ideology has cultural power it makes the norms. The new cultural order gave the left the authority to use epithets like racist, sexist or transphobe to shut down democratic debate in numerous policy areas. Immigration, crime, education, health or any other sphere of policy that could plausibly be associated with race or sex thereby came to slant left.

The fear of being irradiated by the kryptonite of the race taboo – and thus socially ostracised – could even turn conservative politicians into useful idiots, such as when Theresa May called the Conservatives the ‘nasty party’ and pushed the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agenda as a way of deflecting the charge of racism levelled at her government by progressive media because of its efforts to cut immigration.

In this way, as I argue in Taboo, the political left’s strategy across the West has been to launder its illiberal ideas by badging them as liberal. Who could possibly be opposed to ‘anti-racism’, ‘inclusion’, ‘diversity’, or ‘trans rights’, they ask?

Those who try to argue against such policies are smeared as racists, Islamophobes, transphobes, or simply ‘hateful’ figures. We saw this, tragically, with the grooming gangs scandal, where public officials routinely failed to act against Pakistani Muslim gangs that preyed on young, white, working-class girls for fear of being seen as ‘racist’.

In fact, the cultural left deploys a ‘radioactive velvet glove’, involving both a carrot and a stick. The carrot is that you get to think of yourself as a good person if you agree with this new moral order; the stick is you are cancelled if you are dare disagree

https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/yes-labour-will-go-woke

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The Tory elite class is in CLOUD CUCKOO LAND

Ever since their historic defeat at the general election, more than a few members of the Tory elite class have decided to leave reality for Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Despite Nigel Farage and Reform having just fired a bazooka at the Conservative Party’s electorate, winning over millions of disillusioned conservatives, one member of the Tory elite class after another has since lined up to warn their party that any association with Faragism would be the final kiss of death.

Writing in The Times, former Conservative Party leader William Hague, who never won an election himself, warns his party against “appeasing populist rhetoric”, “simplistic and nationalistic solutions”, and brands Faragism “a dead end”.

Andy Street, who just lost the West Midlands mayoralty to Labour, likewise warns the Conservative Party it would be “very, very foolish” to adopt a “Reform-light agenda”, which would only push them “down an electoral cul-de-sac”.

And then there’s former leader Theresa May who, after squandering the biggest electoral opportunity in modern times, in 2017, has proclaimed Nigel Farage “is not a Conservative” and should never have any role in the Tory party.

Are these people for real? Are they serious? Do they not realise what just happened to their party?

Or are they simply more interested in signalling their elite values to other members of the Tory elite rather speaking to their wider party and the country?

I say all this because I think they need a reality check. So here it is. Nigel Farage and Reform just completely blew apart the only electoral coalition the Tories have managed to assemble since Thatcher that was capable of delivering a big majority.

And Farage did this —as I warned for years he would— by reaching out to all those disillusioned and disgruntled 2019 Tories who took a punt on the Conservatives five years ago but now wish they never had. Just look at the data.

Farage and Reform, according to Lord Ashcroft’s post-election polling, poached nearly twice as many 2019 Conservative voters as Keir Starmer and Labour. He cannibalised close to one-quarter of the entire Conservative Party electorate.

YouGov’s polling is even more striking. Fully one-quarter of the Conservative Party’s 2019 electorate defected to Reform while just one-tenth switched to Labour.

Put another way, while one in ten 2019 Tories switched to Labour, one in four went to Reform.

The blunt reality is that more 2019 Conservatives switched to Reform than the number who switched to Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined.

Yet if you read recent commentary by the Tory elite class —endorsed by pro-Labour analysts who rather like the idea of the Tories becoming indistinguishable from the Labour Party—then you’d think that the very opposite is true.

You'd think the Tories must do all they can to avoid Faragism and focus instead on winning back all those Labour and Liberal Democrat voters in the big cities and leafy shires who, we are led to believe, might actually consider voting Tory in 2029. Are these people out of their minds?

It is Nigel Farage, nobody else, who presents the greatest threat to the survival of the Conservative Party. And, as we learned last week, he is now also hitting the Tories in other ways, too.

By tearing off the biggest chunk of the Tory vote, Farage just indirectly cost the Conservatives 150 seats while leapfrogging ahead of them to become the main opposition in nearly 100 seats.

He not only displaced the Tories across northern England, which really matters given Labour has re-emerged as the dominant force in Scotland, but has done so while becoming far more competitive in Wales, picking up seven in ten former Brexit Party voters, one in three Tory Leavers, nearly three in ten of all Brexit voters, one-fifth of the working-class, and nearly as many middle-aged men as the Tories.

https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/the-tory-elite-class-is-in-cloud

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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The great coverup

The Democrats are rallying around Joe Biden while the rest of the country wonders out loud about the extent of his degeneration and decline. Biden’s mental health has become the talking point in the US, if not the whole the world. That other “d” word, dementia, is trotted out routinely. In political terms, it’s worth remembering dread and doom also start with “d”.

It’s an almost perfect mix of denial and derision. The DNC has tried to rally the troops. Big and powerful Democrats have come out, hand on heart, declaring Biden a man untroubled by the ravages of age, while other senior colleagues who urge Biden to withdraw his candidacy receive calls politely and then not so politely telling them to please stop talking about Biden’s neurological shortcomings.

It’s not working.

Questions were asked directly of Biden as to his state of cognitive function on Sunday in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on America’s ABC network.

Had the President undergone “specific cognitive tests and have you had a neurologist, a specialist, do an examination?”

“No one said I had to,” Biden replied. “No one said … No. I’m good.”

It wasn’t reassuring. Biden’s descent into geriatrics could not have been more marked if Joe and Jill were seen patiently waiting outside Arby’s for the early bird specials to kick in.

When directly asked if he would undertake cognitive testing and release the results publicly, Biden baulked and claimed that, as President, he does a neurology test everyday. No, Joe. That’s the lunch menu.

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham went a step further in calling for mandatory presidential cognitive testing of a type he probably does not know exists but is a standard, quick diagnosis tool in gerontological medicine around the world, known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test (MoCA).

“All nominees for president going into future should have neurological exams as part of an overall physical exam … Let’s test Trump. Let’s test Biden. Let’s test the line of succession”, the 68-year-old Graham told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, local time.

“This is a wake-up call for the country,” he added. “We need to make sure that the people who are going to be in the line of succession are capable of being commander-in-chief under dire circumstances.”

Graham believed Biden was in denial and posed all manner of perils for the smooth functioning of the executive branch, saying: “This is a dangerous time for the American people to have somebody … leading the ship of state who seems to be compromised.”

Asked if Trump, 78, should have the test, too, Graham said: “Yes, yes, I think both.”

But Trump did have a version or a form of the MoCA in 2018 and we know this because in the Donald’s own words, he “aced” it.

The precise results? We don’t know if the 30-minute MoCA test ran from go to whoa or was truncated in some way. What we can safely conclude from Trump’s test is that the baseline for determining a POTUS’s neurological health or otherwise is now set at him or her remembering five unrelated nouns in a passage of speech read out for a minute containing around 60 nouns. If you can remember five of the 60, congratulations, you can be president of the United States.

Trump proudly repeated his noun mantra for the camera four times to a startled Fox News journalist: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”

“It’s actually not that easy,” Trump said. “But for me it was easy.”

Telling the story later, Trump got the doctor’s name wrong. But at least he did it. Biden is refusing.

One wonders how Biden would handle a MoCA. I don’t want to be unkind but if the leader of the free world can’t perform the same basic memory functions I’d expect of your average adult Labrador, then it might be time for a long lie down. But that’s where we are now. Pass the Adderall and the Penny Pads.

Biden’s speech celebrating the 75th anniversary of NATO in DC on Tuesday was said to be a great opportunity for him to recover after the debate. The general view after the speech was that Biden had been “strong” and “confident”. The talk earlier from some Democrat sources had been that Biden’s NATO speech was his last chance at a recovery from the disaster of the first presidential debate. That race has been run. Shutting the gate now after the horse has not only bolted but fled, galloping wildly, only to appear as a dot on the horizon briefly before vanishing altogether three weeks ago is a fool’s errand.

It does raise the delicious though unlikely event that the presidential debate could be scrapped in favour of televised cognitive testing where Presidents Biden and Trump line up and work through a series of exhaustive word association tests, mnemonic exercises and building things with blocks before a live television audience.

Then it’s onto the physical trials. Jenga at 20 paces. Hungry, Hungry Hippos moderated by Sean Hannity. And as the two men quibbled over Biden’s golf handicap at the first debate, Bingo Bango Bongo over 18 gruelling holes at the local pitch and putt. Winner takes the White House.

It could lead to the resurrection of free-to-air television if handled properly. Or it could end up in a fully blown civil war in the US. Either way, circling the wagons around Biden, with or without cognitive testing, should be shouting, if not screaming, to all senior Democrats, including Joe and his wife Jill, that when questions of the President’s mental decline are being asked directly during a softball interview, it is a sign time is up. Or to quote a line from Joseph Heller’s parody of US government and academia, Good As Gold: “Don’t force anything mechanical, never kick anything inanimate, and don’t fart around with the inevitable.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/five-simple-nouns-isthat-all-it-takes-to-lead-the-free-world/news-story/53baab29bb2189208485f837300547d3

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Biden administration agrees to ship 500-pound bombs to Israel

The US will soon begin shipping to Israel the 500-pound bombs the Biden administration had previously suspended, ending a two-month pause it had imposed in a bid to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, US officials said.

The decision came as the Israeli army said overnight on Wednesday it had completed its mission in Shujaiya, a neighbourhood in the east of Gaza that had been the scene of violent fighting for two weeks.

The bombs “are in the process of being shipped”, and are expected to arrive in Israel in coming weeks, an administration official said. Heavier 2000-pound bombs meant to be part of the same shipment were still on hold, the official added. The US announced in May it had held up one shipment that included 2000-pound bombs and 500-pound bombs. Israel sent a ship to Charleston, South Carolina, to pick up the shipment before the decision was made.

President Joe Biden’s decision to hold delivery of certain types of bombs marked an escalation of tensions between his administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Mr Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza, where more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed since last October, according to Palestinian officials. The figure doesn’t specify how many were combatants.

The US suspension came in response to Israel’s plans to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah without what the Biden administration regarded as a credible plan to protect civilians. More than one million people had taken shelter there, fleeing fighting in other parts of Gaza.

Mr Biden had described a major operation in Rafah as a “red line”, but not one that would lead to a total cut-off of US arms supplies.

“Our main concern had been and remains the potential use of 2000-pound bombs in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza,” a US official said. “Because our concern was not about the 500-pound bombs, those are moving forward as part of the usual process.”

The Israelis had argued they needed heavy bombs to destroy tunnels. US officials said that was outweighed by US concerns about potential civilian deaths when such large bombs are used in densely populated areas.

Axios reported last month that the 500-pound bombs would be shipped soon. During its Rafah operation, Israel seized control of the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, achieving one aim of the war by cutting off what it said was a key route for smuggling weapons. The operation forced a majority of the displaced Gazans in Rafah to flee the city.

At least 46 Palestinians were killed on May 26 during an Israeli airstrike in Tal al-Sultan, a refugee camp in Rafah. The White House said the strike didn’t cross the “red line” the President had drawn in March during his MSNBC interview.

“This is an example of the administration folding their hand. They were called out on their bluff of Rafah and now they’re relenting,” said Seth Binder, director of advocacy for the Middle East Democracy Centre, a policy institute in Washington.

A State Department spokesman said on Monday it believes the Rafah operation caused fewer civilian casualties than previous phases of the war. Israeli officials have in recent weeks signalled a shift to a lower-intensity phase of the war. Some security analysts said the perceived reduction in civilian deaths could be because of a slower pace of strikes in recent weeks, rather than a change in Israel’s approach to targeting.

“There’s not much evidence of that, but certainly some evidence the operational tempo is lower,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department official and now a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group.

Reducing civilian casualties continues to be a challenge for the Israeli military in Gaza. An Aair strike on Tuesday in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, near the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killed at least 25 people and wounded 50 others in a school where thousands of displaced people were sheltering, Palestinian health officials said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/biden-administration-agrees-to-ship-500pound-bombs-to-israel/news-story/ebe099a243874796504bc9019619c979

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ALG Urges Yes Vote on SAVE Act

July 10, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging the House to pass H.R. 8281, the Safeguard American Voting Eligibility (SAVE) Act:

“There is no excuse not to pass the Safeguard American Voting Eligibility Act. The sacred right to vote by citizens which so many have fought for from Selma, Alabama to remote corners of the world where freedom has continued to be won, is under attack. Rep. Chip Roy is right when he says, ‘Federal law currently PROHIBITS states from verifying citizenship status during registration for federal elections. The SAVE Act requires proof of citizenship to register and would remove non-citizens from voter rolls. What are Democrats fearful of?’

“The answer is simple. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrat members of Congress oppose democracy by seeking to destroy the one-person, one-vote constitutional principle, through annihilating chain of custody of live ballots and engaging in a deliberate campaign to register illegal aliens to vote as they enter the country and sign up for free stuff from the government.

“Joe Biden has stated many times that this election is a battle for the soul of America. He is right and protecting the fundamental principle that American citizens have a unique franchise to determine the direction of the country is essential to maintaining our freedom and liberty.

“Americans for Limited Government strongly urges a Yes vote on the SAVE Act.”

https://getliberty.org/2024/07/alg-urges-yes-vote-on-save-act/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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All change: Britain's general election produced a result no less seismic for being predicted

MELANIE PHILLIPS

King Charles invites Sir Keir Starmer to form a government
Here are my initial thoughts on the results of Britain’s general election.

The most significant results are: Labour 412 (up by 211), Conservative 121 (down by 250), Liberal Democrats 71 (up by 63), Scottish National Party 9 (down by 38), Independent 6 (up from zero), Reform 4 (up from zero), Green 4 (up by 3).

Labour’s enormous overall majority of 170 seats means that it can broadly do whatever it wants because it faces a fractured and weak opposition.

However, the country did not express any enthusiasm for Labour. The party achieved less than one third of the popular vote — the lowest of any governing party in modern history, and even less than the 40 per cent secured by the hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2017. Yesterday’s Labour share of the vote had hardly changed from the last general election in 2019.

The country remains wary and suspicious of Labour and the new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer. What voters were determined to do was get rid of the Conservative party, whose share of the popular vote accordingly imploded. Some 11 Cabinet ministers were swept away along with swathes of other former MPs, leaving a pitiably small rump of Tories in parliament to face the jubilant and crowded Labour benches. The Conservative party — previously known as Britain’s “natural party of government” — is now in the wilderness for the forseeable future.

The Reform party led by Nigel Farage achieved extraordinary success from a standing start. Despite the high bar against third parties set by the British electoral system — and despite some deeply questionable candidates, the result of a campaign thrown together at a moment’s notice with next to no organisation or party discipline — Reform won four seats, putting Farage himself into parliament for the first time.

The significance of this achievement, however, goes much deeper than the number of seats the party actually won. Reform did enormous damage to the Conservatives (and more than a little to Labour too) by the high numbers voting for it, costing the Tories no fewer than 180 seats. Reform is now a serious insurgency on the pattern of “populist” insurgencies against a monolithic political establishment that we have seen developing in Europe.

A deeply ominous development is the emergence of an Islamic sectarian vote, with four previously Labour-held seats lost to independent candidates whose pitch — in a British general election concerning British national interests — was about Gaza and “Palestine”.

Although even Labour “moderates” generally side with the international “human rights” and “humanitarian” establishment which is virulently hostile to Israel, British Muslims are angry that Starmer supported Israel’s defence against Hamas after the October 7 pogrom. As a result, Labour candidates have been harassed and intimidated by Muslims and other anti-Israel types and lost votes in yesterday’s election.

In the Birmingham Yardley constituency Labour’s Jess Phillips, who only narrowly kept her seat under pressure from this “Gaza” lobby, was met with boos and jeers as she made an angry acceptance speech in which she denounced the “aggression and violence” in “the worst election I have ever stood in”. All this is entirely foreign to British democratic traditions and does not bode well.

So what is likely to be the outcome of this election?

This is a deeply paradoxical result. Starmer has an unassailable majority in parliament, but must now govern a country that has not embraced his agenda. To his credit, he detoxified the Labour party to make people feel it was safe enough to give it their vote — which they needed to do to achieve their principal objective to get the other lot out. But now he has to win hearts and minds. This will be a tough call.

He inherits a country with severe structural economic, social and cultural problems. He has made promises which he won’t have the money to deliver. Crises with which Rishi Sunak unsuccessfully struggled, such as stopping the migrant boats in the English Channel, collapsing public services and rising lawlessness and anarchy on the streets, all now land in Starmer’s lap.

He also inherits an appalling epidemic of Jew-hatred, which will undoubtedly worry him greatly — not least because he has Jewish family members, and because he is a decent man. However, dealing properly with antisemitism will mean acknowledging the symbiotic link between the Palestinian cause and Jew-hatred — which, as a man of the left, he has never done — and standing up to both the Muslim community and the far left, constituencies which are represented within his own party.

Buoyed by the success of the “Gaza” election campaigns and by the refusal of the authorities to stop the pro-Hamas intimidation and disorder on the streets, Islamic sectarianism is now likely to increase. A Muslim bloc has emerged which is likely to demand not just policies hostile to Israel but measures to adapt aspects of British society to Islamic requirements.

Starmer will be less hostile towards Israel than the far-left or the Muslim bloc are demanding; but since his instincts remain those of the radical human rights lawyer he originally was, he is unlikely to stop the demonisation of Israel that oozes from every pore of the liberal establishment (including the Foreign Office) and which is fuelling the harassment of Britain’s Jews.

Moreover, while he will be economically cautious he’ll let rip on the “culture wars”. The result will be more transgender abuses of children and women and more demonisation of white people and British “colonialism”. He’s also likely to outlaw “Islamophobia” — which could have an even greater chilling effect on necessary discussion of Muslim antisemitism or Islamic terrorism than is currently the case. The rumour that the veteran “human rights” ideologue Harriet Harman is to become head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission in place of Baroness Falkner, who has bravely tried to counter the transgender lunacy, chills the bone.

Starmer is also committed to an insane acceleration of the already ruinous Net Zero target, and to developing “ever closer” ties with the EU which will further stifle the entrepreneurial freedoms that Brexit enabled but the Tory government never delivered.

With this agenda, the Labour government will be as one with the entire administrative state and the entire cultural and intellectual establishment — precisely the dogmatic cultural tyranny against which millions of Europeans and Americans are in revolt.

And so what of the Tories? They will now descend into civil war. Indeed, it’s already started, with different factions accusing each other of having lost the country.

The fact is that for decades the Conservative party has failed to articulate basic conservative values — conserving what was best and most valuable in British and western culture. Ricocheting between liberal universalists and free market ideologues, the Tories persisted in the lie that the welfare state could coexist with reduced public spending; they broke their promise of controlling mass immigration; they failed to break the grip of the administrative state to take advantage of Brexit; they were largely supine in the face of the transgender lunacy and anti-white racism; they were paralysed in the face of widespread anarchy on the streets; and they failed to protect Britain’s Jewish community against attack.

So when it comes to opposing Labour’s agenda, the Tories will have nothing to say because they helped enable much of it.

Meanwhile Nigel Farage, who has now achieved what he set out to do in pulverising the Conservative party, will be moving onto the next part of his agenda — taking the fight to the Labour government in order to bring about the reconfiguration of British politics, by reconnecting it with the British mainstream and recovering the true centre ground, that he has long envisaged.

Farage — the true and only begetter of Brexit — is the most consequential politician of the post-Thatcher period. He has his own flaws. His free market principles line him up with the wing of the Tory party that disappeared inside its economic tunnel vision. And his tendency towards international isolationism and indifference towards defence are alarming.

But he speaks for millions by his promotion of the independence of the nation within borders that are properly policed and with immigration kept to manageable levels, and his defence of a culture based on its own history and traditions enshrining fairness, social order and a grounding in reality that people can recognise as a shared national endeavour and that they can call home.

Unless the Tories acknowledge that this is the ground they have so disastrously abandoned — and unless they become committed to promote and defend it — they’re finished.

On the steps of Number Ten, Starmer said he would govern “unburdened by doctrine”. A disillusioned and sceptical nation is about to see just what he thinks that means.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/all-change?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

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Haley Releases Delegates, Urges Them to Back Trump Ahead of RNC Convention

She was very popular so this is good. Aiming for Veep?

Former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley announced on July 9 that she is releasing her 97 delegates and urging them to support former President Donald Trump.

The move comes days before the Republican National Convention when the 45th president is set to be nominated as the party’s 2024 presidential candidate.

“The nominating convention is a time for Republican unity,” said Ms. Haley in a statement.

“We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt, and get our economy back on track,” said the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Ms. Haley went on to call on her delegates to back former President Trump at the Republican National Convention, which will be held July 15–18 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Politico first reported the news.

The former candidate will not be attending the convention.

“She was not invited, and she’s fine with that,” Ms. Haley’s spokesperson, Chaney Denton, told The Epoch Times.

“Trump deserves the convention he wants,” Ms. Denton said. “She’s made it clear she’s voting for him and wishes him the best.”

In May, a few months after suspending her presidential campaign, Ms. Haley announced she will be voting for former President Trump.

She said that she wants a “president who would support capitalism and freedom. A president who understands we need less debt, not more debt.” While former President Trump “has not been perfect on these policies,” she said, he is preferable to President Joe Biden.

Ms. Haley also urged the GOP frontrunner to “reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they’re just going to be with him.”

After dropping out of the race in March, Ms. Haley continued to receive a notable share of votes in Republican primaries around the country. She notched 20 percent of the vote in the primaries in Maryland, 18 percent in Nebraska, and 22 percent in Indiana.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/haley-to-release-delegates-to-trump-ahead-of-rnc-convention-5682895

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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