Who Is Donald Trump?

My VIP for this week is President Donald Trump. It is good for us to ask, who is this man who leads the United States? He has survived three assassination attempts with one of the shots coming within one-quarter of an inch of killing him. In addition, he has the Midas touch in that he has so many successes – so much winning. His latest “win” is his announcement of a peace deal with Iran to end a conflict in the Middle East. Victor Davis Hanson shared his thoughts about the agreement in a video at the Daily Signal. 

There’s a lot of confusion, controversy, and disagreement about the latest phase of the Iran war. Remember, we bombed kinetically 38 to 40 days, then we had 60 days of negotiation, then here we are in mid-June, in which [President] Donald Trump has announced yet another time there is going to be a peace deal coming with a 60-day period for all the elements of the deal to be enacted.

A lot of people are upset. They feel that Iran was on the ropes, they’re going broke, and that had we continued, or if we were to continue now, we could put them out of commission and then dictate a non-conditional surrender to them.

That’s absolutely true, but what this deal then hinges on – because there’s no history of Iran ever keeping their word or following any agreement, explicit or implicit – is the willingness to keep maybe one carrier group in the region to ensure that the strait stays open, that the missiles are not launched against our allies, and of course, the enriched uranium is turned over.

And if we’re willing to do that and hit them hard every time they break it, then it might eventually work.

There’s a lot of misconceptions, though, about the deal and the war in general. I’d like to address just a few of them. A lot of critics of this administration are saying, I think [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries said that not long ago, “Well, the strait was open and now it’s closed, so the deal didn’t accomplish anything. In fact, it made it worse.”

Well, the strait was open because Iran had no reason, as it did now, to close it. And the reason they didn’t have any reason to close it was the seven prior presidents, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden didn’t want to disarm Iran. They didn’t want to go in there and try to stop their proliferation agenda. Donald Trump did. Anybody who did was going to be confronted with a desperate effort of Iran to close the strait. Now we’ll open the strait. But the idea that we made things worse is ridiculous.

And then second, people are saying, “Well, it’s just like the Obama deal. Why did Trump get out of the Obama deal?” Well, they enriched uranium all through the Obama deal. We know that. They wouldn’t let inspectors in. During Joe Biden’s presidency, he begged them to go back into the Iran deal. They didn’t wanna do it.

Why? Because we now know they had pretty much already enriched to the point, 60 or more percent, that they could make a bomb in a month should they want to.

But here’s the big difference. In the Obama, atmosphere of that deal of 2015-16, Iran was ascendant. Everybody was scared of it. Its military was heavily equipped with Chinese and Russian weaponry. People were afraid of it. Israel didn’t want to attack it. The Gulf States didn’t want to attack it.

Europe was advising caution. It was an appeasing deal because nobody wants to use force. Now, whatever your disagreement is with the current war, most people, and we don’t have boots on the ground, we don’t have journalists on the ground, but they agree that the Iranian military and its economy are devastated through forty days of intense bombing with probably a thousand planes in the air at any one time.

So we’re dealing with a much-diminished Iran that we can hit again and again because they have no air defenses. Obama was dealing with an ascendant Iran that he was scared to even mention the use of force to make them comply.

There’s a third misconception. People say, “Well, now we’re isolated. We’re all isolated. We have no allies. China and Russia are ascendant.” Nothing could be further from the truth. This is the first time in all of our lifetimes that the Gulf Council, for all their double-dealing over the years, basically are more attuned to an alliance, maybe unspoken, with Israel than they are with Iran.

We know now that some of the 600 combat aircraft based in the Gulf were stealthily flying missions, and that meant alongside the Israelis.

We know that there are Israeli technicians in the Gulf helping them with missile defense. We know the Gulf states and most of the moderate Arab countries believe that Iran, not Israel, is the existential threat.

In other words, we’ve never had a closer relationship with the Gulf states vis-à-vis America, nor has Israel.

As far as Russia and China, they’re both shut out of the Middle East. They have lost their client in Syria. They have lost, and they’re going to lose their client in Iran. They have lost their client in Venezuela. They have an enormous problem. Russia cannot sell weapons to Iran anymore. They may smuggle some in, and China can’t get discounted oil anymore.

There’s another misconception, that is the apostate right, that is the Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens right, has said that they were going to fracture the party, and maybe their influence will turn the MAGA movement against Donald Trump.

Well, first of all, on all the other issues, maybe except the Iran war, most of the conservative[s], if not all, agree with Donald Trump….

But on this question of the war, the MAGA and Republican parties still overwhelmingly, 75%, support Donald Trump.

And the reason they do is they don’t feel this is a forever endless war, as the apostate right do. They believe that we have not used ground troops, and we have lost fewer soldiers than the accident rate that the military suffers daily over that period of 38 to 40 days of kinetic operations.

Finally, everybody says we’ve lost the midterms.

The midterms are four and a half months away. If the strait is open, suddenly you’re going to have a traffic jam of two things. One, tankers leaving, trying to get out full of oil, and tankers waiting to get in.

But there may be 200 or 250 tankers full of a million to 2 million barrels at a time when the United States and Russia and the Middle East and Venezuela are upping production.

So, there could be a substantial drop in prices.

And if you do get a deal the Left is going to be sort of flummoxed because they said that we had lost the war and we didn’t achieve our objectives. But if you do get a deal and the deal is enforced by military action on the part of the United States, it wouldn’t hurt Trump, it could help him.

And then there’s a larger context of redistricting. In this redistricting war, it turns out that so far the Republican legislatures will outdo the Democratic legislatures, and the Republicans may pick up anywhere from three to four to five seats.

And the Supreme Court that said it is a racial obsession, a fixation to create congressional districts on the basis of race, and you can’t do it, may lend the Republicans anther four to five.

I’m not suggesting that Donald Trump can overturn historical precedent. Remember that of the last 40 presidents, 95% lost their first midterm election. So, his history is on the wrong side, but he will not lose the Senate. And it doesn’t really matter, to tell you the truth, if they lose the House.

It would be nice to get legislation through, but most of his legislation has already been through. He can still use executive orders, but most importantly, they can’t… They may impeach him as a performance art act, but the Senate will never convict him.

Should Obama and His Intelligence Leaders Be Investigated for Russiagate?

Russiagate is claimed to be much larger than Watergate, and it might be. Watergate was about President Richard Nixon covering up for a botched burglary at the Democrat Party headquarters. Russiagate is allegedly about President Barack Obama and his intelligence community surveilling presidential candidate Donald Trump and then trying to usurp the power of President Donald Trump.

Several weeks ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified material “related to the reputed conspiracy to tie Donald Trump to Russia before and after the 2016 election” and made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ confirmed two weeks ago that it had received the criminal referral. Now we learn that “Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the DOJ to open a grand jury investigation into the matter.” In her article published at The Daily Signal, Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell made the following statements. 

In a letter first reported by Fox News Digital, Bondi ordered an unidentified federal prosecutor to initiate legal proceedings. The prosecutor is expected to present department evidence to a grand jury to secure a potential indictment.

Two weeks ago, the DOJ confirmed it received a criminal referral from Gabbard, which included a memo titled “Intelligence Community suppression of intelligence showing ‘Russian and criminal actors did not impact’ the 2016 presidential election via cyberattacks on infrastructure.”

At a July press briefing, Gabbard asserted that former President Barack Obama was involved in the “manufacturing” of an intelligence assessment relating to reputed Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Gabbard confirmed she is asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to “investigate the criminal implications” of new evidence around “Russiagate,” including referring Obama for investigation.

“The evidence that we have found, and that we have released, directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment,” she said. “There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact.” …

Under President Donald Trump’s direction, Gabbard announced the declassified House Intelligence Committee report “that exposes how the Obama administration manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false, promoting the LIE that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped President Trump win the 2016 election.”

The newly released document, dated Sept. 18, 2020, details intelligence findings that Russia had little to no influence over the results of the 2016 presidential election.

Who Is Donald Trump?

My VIP for this week is President Donald Trump because he has three nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, which will be announced in October according to Olivia Pero at The Daily Signal. 

After Trump helped to bring the Cambodia-Thailand border conflict to a ceasefire agreement, Cambodia announced on Friday that it will nominate Trump. Trump warned Cambodia and Thailand last week that the U.S. would not offer a trade agreement to either of them if they were still fighting.

In June, two other nations nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize: Israel and Pakistan. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while in the White House, handed Trump a copy of a letter which “he said he sent to the Norwegian Nobel Committee praising Trump’s work to end the Middle Eastern conflicts.”

The third nomination came from Pakistan for Trump’s assistance in May in bringing about a “ceasefire between India and Pakistan after the two nuclear powers and long-time rivals spent four days fighting.”

According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, “It’s well past time that President Turmp was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” Trump has arranged an average of “one peace deal or ceasefire per month since returning to office.”

I, for one, will believe it when I see it. Since Trump has so many powerful enemies, I will be surprised if he actually receives the Nobel Peace Prize. He is definitely more worthy of it than Barack Obama who had not even been inaugurated and had done nothing to bring about peace anywhere. Trump is brokering peace in areas that most of us did not even realize were at war. An example is the Cambodia-Thailand conflict.

Should Donald Trump Receive the Nobel Peace Prize?

Pakistan officials said that Donald Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) said that she has nominated him for the prize two separate times. She wrote on social media platform X: “No modern leader has done more for World Peace than President Trump, and it’s long past time he receives recognition.”

During Trump’s first administration, he brokered the Abraham Accords, which Tenney called “the first new Arab-Israeli peace agreements in nearly 30 years … shattering the myth that peace in the Middle East required endless concessions to terrorists.”

According to an article written by Lorenzo Prieto and published at The Daily Signal, Tenney nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in January 2024 and again in December 2024. She said that she would nominate him again when the nomination portal reopens in Fall 2025 if he does not receive a much-deserved Nobel Peace Prize. 2 Lawmakers Nominate Trump for Nobel Peace Prize

In addition to Tenney, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA.) said that he also nominated Trump this week for the Nobel Peace Prize “in recognition of his historic role in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Iran and preventing the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism from obtaining the most lethal weapon on the planet.”

However, Trump posted on Truth Social earlier in June that he doubted that the Nobel Peace Prize would be given to him despite his success at bringing peace to various parts of the world.

I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between Serbia and Kosovo, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for keeping Peace between Egypt and Ethiopia (A massive Ethiopian built dam, stupidly financed by the United States of America, substantially reduces the water flowing into The Nile River), and I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for doing the Abraham Accords in the Middle East which, if all goes well, will be loaded to the brim with additional Countries signing on, and will unify the Middle East for the first time in ‘The Ages!’

No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!

Should Trump Be Compared to Reagan or Churchill?

My VIP for this week is obviously Donald Trump, the newly inaugurated 47^th President of the United States. Numerous people have compared Donald Trump to Ronald Reagan. However, Carrie Sheffield compares him to someone else. She claims that Trump’s “path bears striking resemblance to former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the British bulldog who triumphed over existential threats of World War II.” Sheffield’s article in The Daily Signal continued as follows: 

And like Churchill, Trump, the American lion, is uniquely equipped and battle-tested for his enormous tasks at hand.

Most obviously, both men were entrusted with their nation’s top elected role, failed to assume a second term, but came roaring back years later for a triumphal return to office.

Both men dodged physical bullets and displayed strong conservative instincts, though not in lockstep to conservative, partisan litmus tests. They both in some ways zigged and zagged right, left, then right again….

Perhaps because of their independent streaks, they were both hated by establishment forces seeking to marginalize their rise to power. Yet both men prevailed, in part by bucking Western orthodoxies that refused to wisely assess the world’s greatest geopolitical risks….

Both men came from wealthy families and both were raised by immigrant mothers. Churchill’s mother was a wealthy American, and Trump’s mother an impoverished Scottish immigrant who worked as a domestic servant for three years prior to marrying Fred Trump.

Both men suffered significant career setbacks before taking the highest office….

Both men displayed legendary showmanship skills, with a knack for driving a news cycle and whipping up public intrigue. Both used politically incorrect, unvarnished language….

Both men were staunchly pro-Jewish interests, yet both forged peaceful solutions in the Middle East that also considered Arab nations.

In some ways, both men grew more conservative with age as “modern” culture shifted left….

Both men unabashedly embraced Western values that laid the foundation for unprecedented peace and prosperity. Both were flawed human beings – as we all are – but ultimately heroes. As such, we owe Churchill and Trump debts of gratitude.

  

Why Is Trump Concerned About the Panama Canal?

The Panama Canal is in the current news cycle due to comments made by President-elect Donald Trump. However, the canal has a long history that “dates back to 1513, when the Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa first crossed ethe Isthmus of Panama.” 

Europeans considered “the possibility to dig a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across this narrow land bridge between North and South America.” Several proposals were considered between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

France was the first nation to attempt to build a canal. Ferdinand de Lesseps built the Suez Canal (1859-1869) and led the first attempt (1880-1889) “to build a sea-level canal.”

… A concession to build the canal was obtained from the Colombian government, at that time the possessor of the Panama Isthmus. The canal was only partly completed, as a result of the severe underestimation of the difficulties in excavating the rugged terrain, heavy personnel losses to tropical diseases, and increasing difficulties in raising finances. The collapse of the French canal company (1889) was followed by a political scandal surrounding alleged corruption in the French government.

Interest in a U.S.-led canal effort developed in the late 1890s, and was considered a priority by President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). Despite a longstanding preference in Congress and amongst the public for the Nicaragua route, Roosevelt was able to swing Congressional support to buy the French canal concession and equipment. After encountering resistance from the Colombian government to what they considered unfair terms, Roosevelt gave his support to a revolution in Panama and signed a treaty enabling the project with the new Panamanian government.

The Americans’ success hinged on two factors. First was converting the original French sea-level plan to a more realistic lock-controlled canal. The second was controlling the diseases which had decimated workers and management alike under the original French attempt…. [They recognized that mosquitoes played a role in the spread of diseases and focused on controlling them.]

On 7 January 1914, the French crane boat Alexandre La Valley became the first to traverse the entire length of the canal, and on 1 April 1914 the construction was officially completed with the hand-over of the project from the construction company to the Panama Canal Zone government. The outbreak of World War I caused the cancellation of any official “grand opening” celebration, but the canal officially opened to commercial traffic on 15 August 1914 with the transit of the SS Ancon.

During World War II, the canal proved vital to American military strategy, allowing ships to transfer easily between the Atlantic and Pacific. Politically, the canal remained a territory of the United States until 1977, when the Torrijos-Carter Treaties began the process of transferring territorial control of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama, a process which was finally completed on 31 December 1999.

The Panama Canal continues to be a viable commercial venture and a vital link in world shipping, and is periodically upgraded. A Panama Canal expansion project started construction in 2007 and began commercial operation on 26 June 2016. The new locks allow the transit of larger Post-Panamax and New Panamax ships, which have greater cargo capacity than the original locks could accommodate.

Debates about giving the Panama Canal to the Panamanian government took place in the 1970s. Ronald Reagan take on the idea was “We built it. We paid for it. It’s ours.” His actual words were: “We cannot abdicate our responsibility for the operations of the canal and the security of the Western Hemisphere.”

Congress narrowly voted with Jimmy Carter rather than Ronald Reagan. The U.S. Senate narrowly ratified two treaties – signed by then-President Jimmy Carter – with the Central American nation in 1977. However, Reagan won the 1980 election in a landslide because many Americans “were fed up with seemingly endless foreign-policy retreats and failures.”

Carter presided over a failed administration much like that of Joe Biden, so it is understandable that Reagan disagreed with his policies in much the same way that Donald Trump disagrees with the policies of Biden. Trump has already revived the issue of the Panama Canal, and Jarrett Stepman at The Heritage Foundation says that he is right to do it. Trump Is Right About Control of the Panama Canal

“The Panama Canal is considered a VITAL National Asset for the United States, due to its critical role to America’s Economy and National Security,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Dec. 21. “A secure Panama Canal is crucial for U.S. Commerce, and rapid deployment of the Navy, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and drastically cuts shipping times to U.S. ports.”

Trump then wrote that by the terms of a 1977 treaty, the canal was to be operated by Panama alone and not a foreign power, such as China. He then blasted the fees they’ve been charging, which he called “ridiculous.”

Of course, Democrats oppose Trump’s comments on the Panama Canal, and the President of Panama insists that China is not involved in running it. Like President Theodore Roosevelt, President Trump understands the importance of the Panama Canal to the United States. It is important for commercial and security reasons to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The canal is also important to the United States because thousands of Americans died of disease during the construction of the canal. Besides, “Panama exists as a country because of the United States.”

When the U.S. gave up the rights to the canal in the 1970s, it did so for several reasons and with some notable stipulations. Americans didn’t want to be perceived as a colonial power and were wary of, for instance, when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 and triggered a war with Israel, France, and Great Britain….

On top of that, the treaties signed with Panama obligated the country to run the canal neutrally and without discriminatory pricing. The United States could intervene if that neutrality was ever broken.

While the canal has operated smoothly for the most part since the 1970s, things haven’t always gone smoothly. President George H. W. Bush launched a short and successful invasion of Panama in 1989 to depose Gen. Manuel Noriega, who had seized control of the country, refused to hold a fair election, turned Panama into a narco state, and was getting cozy with the Soviet Union.

More important for the modern state of Panama, a Hong King company purchased the Atlantic and Pacific ports of entry in 1996.

As Paul du Quenoy of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute wrote for the New York Post, the purchase appeared to violate the terms of the 1977 treaties, but they weren’t enforced. That’s likely because at the time Hong Kong was still a part of the British Empire and on friendly terms with the U.S.

That’s since changed.

“In 1997, Hong Kong reverted to Chinese communist rule – and despite its promise to preserve the former colony’s distinct political system for 50 years, Beijing has taken complete control there, du Quenoy wrote. “The Chinese Communist Party can exercise direct and possibly unlimited influence over any of Hong Kong’s companies, anywhere in the world.”

Panama renewed its deal with the Hong Kong company in 2021 and thus, du Quenoy wrote, “preserves de facto Chinese control over one of the world’s most vital conduits of maritime traffic.”

Not only that, but China also has made enormous investments in Panama, and many of its companies operate there. So, the operation of the Panama Canal is threatened in a way that it hasn’t been since the U.S. ceded control more than 40 years ago.

Theodore Roosevelt saw the value of a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. Reagan warned about giving the Panama Canal away. Now Trump is bringing up the issue and making a big deal of it. Through his comments, “Trump clearly intends to move the focus of American foreign policy back toward the country’s interests in the Western Hemisphere.” Is he reviving a new kind of Monroe Doctrine?

Stepman noted that “Trump, and some of his more notable Cabinet picks, have signaled that they intend to focus on containing the rising power of communist China in Asia and the Pacific.” He also observed that China would present “a grave threat to the United States” if it could exert control over the Panama Canal.

When the Panama Canal experiences traffic jams and other slowdowns, it can cause significant damage to global supply chains. It certainly did last September.

Worse, imagine if there was a war that required U.S. and allied ships to cross form the Atlantic to the Pacific or vice versa and suddenly they were impeded from doing so?

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether Panama’s president is angry or if The New York Times is aghast at Trump upsetting the international community. Trump understands that foreign relations is a lot more transactional and a good deal less theoretical than a college classroom discussion.

By putting the issue of the Panama Canal back in the news, he’s simply signaling that the U.S. is returning to the business of looking out for American interests first, and that those will always come before the feelings of foreign leaders or media critics.

Why Does Marc Andreessen Support Donald Trump?

 According to Michael Barone, Marc Andreessen – the person who invested the first web browser for the internet – switched from supporting Democrats to supporting Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Andreessen explained his view in an interview with The Free Press co-founder Bari Weiss. 

“My concern is that the censorship and political control of AI is a thousand times more dangerous than censorship and political control of social media – maybe a million times more dangerous,” Andreessen, a prime innovator of artificial intelligence, told Weiss.

“The thing with AI is, I think AI is going to be the control layer for everything in the future – how the health care system works, how the education system works, how the government works,” he said. “So that if AI is woke, biased, censored, politically controlled, you are in a hyper-Orwellian, China-style, social credit system nightmare.”

Like fellow tech titan Elon Musk, Andreessen has come to see the Democrats as “the ones who are trying to silence free speech.” …

Andreessen is concerned less about transitory partisan finagling and more about possibly permanent suppressions of truth. The claim that “the COVID lab leak hypothesis was ‘misinformation’ and broadly censored on social media” is one such example, he says.

I have written often about the lab leak hypothesis and how denigration of it was concocted by former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.

Starting February 2020, Fauci and Collins conspired to get colleagues who considered the lab leak likely to write a paper disparaging that theory and endorsing the idea that the virus came from a live animal market.

No evidence of such transmission has been found, and presumably, Fauci and Collins’ control over millions of dollars in research funding helped persuade the authors to change their minds. After publication, Fauci airily referred the article to the press as if he had nothing to do with it.

Establishment press outfits were happy to play along, characterizing the lab leak theory as “already debunked” (The Washington Post) or a “fringe theory” (The New York Times). The latter outlet’s lead COVID-19 reporter offhandedly referred to its “racist roots.”

Facebook and pre-Musk Twitter, now X, followed the cues and suppressed the lab leak theory even as they suppressed criticism of masking protocols and school closures.

By March 2023, the Energy Department joined the FBI in concluding that the virus likely resulted from a lab leak in China. They were bolstered by multiple articles by former Times science writer Nicholas Wade, and by Matt Ridley and Alina Chan’s book “Viral.”

Finally, this month, a detailed report by the House Oversight Committee not only endorses the lab leak theory as the most likely explanation of the virus but also, as Ridley wrote in The Telegraph, “lays out in gobsmacking detail just how much senior officials allegedly have schemed to prevent information emerging.”

What they were covering up, it becomes plain now, is that Fauci was commissioning China’s Wuhan laboratory to conduct gain-of-function research, making the virus more contagious to humans, presumably to develop means of defense.

The report explains in painstaking detail how Fauci, in testimony before Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., used a misleading definition when he vehemently denied authorizing gain-of-function research.

One can argue the attempted coverup by Fauci and others ultimately failed….

However, one must also add that the scientists who led the coverup retained the capacity to shape pandemic policy, pressing successfully for measures that proved to be harmful or unnecessary, such as school closures, masking for children, and vaccine requirements for those with natural immunity from previous infection.

Another thing one must add: The press and social media billionaires who went along with the scientists’ speech suppression acted on the assumption that they were frustrating the intentions of Trump and his supporters, whom they continued – and continue – to regard as something like Hitler and Nazis.

Any evidence in favor of things the Trump side was for, the media outlets felt an obligation to suppress….

The Barone article shows that Andreessen is interested in protecting free speech. Americans should support all people who are willing to work to protect free speech in our nation.

Will Donald Trump Become Another George Washington?

            My VIP for this week is President-elect Donald Trump, the Time Magazine Person of the Year. He was honored this week by being asked to ring the bell to open the Stock Exchange. According to Steve McKee at The Daily Signal, George Washington may have been our greatest president. 

The reason? His [Washington’s] rejection of the predations of power. At the end of the Revolutionary War, Washington had the leverage and prestige to anoint himself America’s monarch, but refused to do so. When Washington resigned his military commission, King George III called him “the greatest man in the world.”

And as the only president twice unanimously elected by the Electoral College, Washington could have served for life. He instead chose to step down after two terms and return to Virginia and his beloved Mount Vernon.

McKee believes that Trump “has the unique opportunity to emulate” Washington. His reason: the fact that Trump knows the job of being President of the United States and is not a true “lame duck” who will “lac the political power to get much done.”

Having already served one term as president, however, Trump is getting off to a running start. And having once again earned the imprimatur of the American people who understand who he is and what he intends to accomplish, he has his mandate. Unable to run again, he can think in historical terms.

Washington could be Trump’s model as he exercises the duly elected powers of the executive branch to dismantle its unconstitutional elements and unwind the administrative state.

There’s much that can be done. Twenty-five years ago, noted economist Milton Friedman matter-of-factly outlined 11 Cabinet-level departments that should go: Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs. (There was no Department of Homeland Security at the time, but we can guess what Friedman would have said about that.)

To be fair, Friedman argued that some functions of these eliminated government departments, such as stewarding the nuclear stockpile and taking care of veterans should be maintained.

Beyond that, we know that expensive entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid can’t just be “undone.” But they can, and must, be reformed.

The idea of putting some two-thirds of the executive branch on the chopping block sounds shocking to those of us who’ve grown up in the era of Big Government. And some would say we can’t possibly go that far – these departments are too big, too deeply ingrained in our way of life, and employ too many people to be unraveled.

I say that’s why they must be unraveled, to tame the federal Leviathan that has become as dangerous to liberty as it is economically unproductive.

That’s not to say the new Trump administration should be cavalier about how it goes about the task, which is why, for example, generous severance packages are being mentioned for employees displaced by the work of Trump’s advisory commission – the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Nor should the second Trump administration be unrealistic about the unanticipated consequences resulting from a dramatic reduction in the size and scope of the federal government.

But there’s nothing that says problems such as poverty, policing, and public health must be handled at the federal level. In fact, the Constitution reserves those powers to the states or the people.

To be sure, any unwinding of this giant ball of yarn must be handled wisely and deliberately, and there’s room for plenty of debate regarding what stays and what goes.

But the more the federal government can be returned to the limits the Founders intended (and the American people ratified), the more we will return self-governance to the states, to the cities, and to the people, where it belongs.

Progressivism has gotten into quite a mess over the past hundred years, and it’s likely to require a decade or more of conservative victories to return us anywhere close to first things.

However, if our new president emulates the example of George Washington and seeks a similar legacy, he can retire to his beloved Mar-a-Lago when his work is done – knowing that America will thrive for another 250 years.

Will You Vote for a Convicted Felon or Lying Fraud?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns the 2024 presidential election contest between incumbent President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Ben Shapiro called the two men described the two contestants in the title of a recent article “Of ‘Convicted Felons’ and ‘Lying Frauds.’” I will allow you to decide which is which. 

Shapiro reminded his readers that Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts by a jury in New York City due to the coordination between Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Judge Juan Merchan. The conviction has to do with falsification of business records or maybe election fraud or possibly tax issue or something that no one knows for sure! In fact, Merchan instructed the jury that they did not have to agree on the crime in order for them to declare Trump guilty.

Shapiro declared that none of the details matter. Despite Trump’s conviction and possible jail time, he remains “either tied or within two points either way” with Biden. Most people question how a convicted felon can “be running even with the incumbent president?” Shapiro wrote that the answer is twofold and explained the two reasons as follows.

… First, Biden is a truly awful president; second, Biden has no ground to stand on in labeling Trump a threat to law and order.

First, Biden’s terrible record. Americans have been slammed by inflation for three years. Our social fabric has continued to decay as Biden openly seeks “equity” – meaning discriminatory legal regimens designed at rectifying group disparities – in every area of the federal government. On the foreign front, Biden has hamstrung Ukraine in its defense against Russia, and openly manipulated on behalf of Iran and Hamas in Israel’s war against the terror group that performed Oct. 7. It is difficult to see an area of the world that is markedly better off since Biden took the White House.

Second, Biden’s hypocrisy. In the aftermath of the Trump conviction, Trump naturally condemned the justice system that targeted him. Biden then responded by doubling down on his narrative that Trump’s pushback represents a threat to our democracy and our institutions: Last week, Biden staggered out to the podium to claim that “the American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed.” He added that it was “dangerous” and “irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”

The problem is this: Biden as defender of our democracy and our institutions just doesn’t play. This is the same president who tried to use his Occupational Safety and Health Administration to illegally cram down vaccines on 80 million Americans; who attempted, in defiance of law, to relieve student loan debt – and then bragged about defying the Supreme Court; whose Justice Department even let him off the hook for mishandling of classified material by calling him a dotard. Biden’s party has spent years tut-tutting massive riots, appeasing pro-terrorist student trespassers, and calling for an end to parental autonomy. There isn’t an institution in the country Biden hasn’t weakened.

To hear Biden rail against Trump for undermining institutions, then, simply won’t play. But Biden doesn’t have much left in the playbook.

All of which means that Trump still – still – has the upper hand. Ironically, Trump being sent to jail might actually help him, given that most Americans will correctly see the jailing of Biden’s chief political opponent as an act of vicious partisanship unworthy of the most powerful republic in world history.

Shapira concluded that things are different in 2024 than they were in 2020. Biden ran in 2020 “on the platform of stability and normalcy” but exploded both. He has nothing left except warnings about Trump. This may not be enough when voters make out their ballots “if gas prices are high, groceries cost too much, and the world remains aflame.”

 

What Does the New Hampshire Primary Mean for Trump?

New Hampshire held its Primary today. Fred Lucas reported that 89 percent of precincts had reported, and Donald Trump had 54.8% of the vote with Nikki Haley with 43.7% (162,664 votes to 129,693). Joe Biden won the Primary for the Democrats even though his name was not on the ballot and had to be written in. 

Trump not only becomes the first candidate to win three presidential primaries in New Hampshire but the first to win both Iowa and New Hampshire since 1976, when President Gerald Ford, a fellow Republican, did it.

Yet Haley surpassed expectations in New Hampshire, as the most recent polls showed Trump with a lead of 58% to Haley’s 36% in the Real Clear Politics average. About 4,000 Democrats switched party affiliation to Republican or undeclared by an October deadline in order to vote in the GOP primary, NPR reported.

About those Democrats who switched party affiliation to vote for Nikki: 4,000 is 3.1% of 129,693. If we took that 3.1 percent from Nikki and added it to Trump’s total, Nikki’s percentage would be 40.6 percent and Trump would increase to 57.9. Right now, it looks that there will be another Trump-Biden match up. Do you expect Biden to receive another 81,000,000 votes?

Is Donald Trump in Danger of Assassination?

Last week conservative commentator Tucker Carlson released an interview that he had done previously with former President Donald Trump. The video dropped on X just minutes before the first GOP presidential debate started on FOX. The video has since been viewed more than 250 million times. I watched it in its entirety on the night that it dropped.

Carlson asked a question that I have been thinking for a few years because I was seeing the same happenings that Carlson saw. The question was something about the possibility of Trump being assassinated. Trump ignored the question the first time that Carlson asked it, but he answered it the second time. He admitted that he has enemies that would like to see him destroyed.

I lived through the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. I was a young adult and was not yet interested in politics, but I understood that something evil had happened. Later, President Ronald Reagan and the Pope survived assassination attempts. Again, there was that feeling of something evil happening.

Today, our nation has the same consuming evil of hate, and fifty percent of Americans hate Donald Trump without knowing much about him. Democrats lie about him, and the media fans the flames of hate by spreading the lies. Even though I have lived through reports of assassinations and attempted assassinations of presidents and presidential candidates, I have never seen anything like what is happening in America now.

According to Alex Nitzberg at The Blaze, Carlson suggested that Trump could be the target for assassination when he was interviewed by Adam Carolla earlier this week. Nitzberg reported that Carlson “noted that Trump has been the subject of criticism, protests, impeachments, and indictments.” 

“We’re speeding toward assassination, obviously, “Carlson said, adding that “permanent Washington, both parties, have decided that there’s something about Trump” which is “so threatening” toward them that they cannot have him in office.

“It’s hard to overstate how bad this is,” Carlson said. “I don’t know where it’s going. But there’s a collision that’s clearly imminent.”

Carlson also described President Joe Biden as “senile, in a way that’s impossible to deny,” claiming that he is “not running the government.”

“I’ve never been this worried about anything as I am about where this is going,” Carlson said….

Despite all of the attacks that have been lobbed against Trump, the former president remains immensely popular, so much so that he appears to be on track to trounce the entire GOP presidential primary pack vying for the party’s 2024 presidential nod.

I agree with Carlson that Trump is in a very dangerous position. Democrats and the Leftists liked Donald Trump until he announced that he was running for President. They did not think that he could win the election because they believed that Hillary Clinton was the anointed one. When they realized that Trump would win they began their efforts to destroy him.

The New York Times announced on the same day that Trump was inaugurated that his impeachment was starting. He had not yet done anything as President, and the Left was ready to impeach him! Democrats impeached Trump over a telephone call asking about Biden corruption in Ukraine. Now, Biden is close to be impeached for his corruption in Ukraine! Trump was impeached for the riot at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. Now, evidence is coming out that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declined the use of the National Guard to protect the building.

The Left thought that they had stopped Donald Trump and the America First movement when they rigged the 2020 presidential election. They took no action for January 6^th or any questions about the election UNTIL Trump announced that he was running for President once again.

Now Trump has been indicted for nothing four different times. With each indictment, Trump’s support grows because Americans can see what is really happening. After Trump got fingerprinted and mugshot in Georgia, even Black men began to accept him at a higher rate. They could see that “The Man” (the government) was after Trump just like they were after Black men. The “Hood” announced that they now have Trump’s back.

There are secret combinations controlling the American government – Trump calls them the Deep State. Secret combinations have been on earth since the time that Cain killed Abel, and they are inspired by Satan, who hates freedom and agency. Trump threatens to destroy the power of the secret combinations, and they will do anything to stop him! 

I hope and pray that Carlson’s recognition of the possible assassination will open the eyes of many more Americans as to the evil that is running wild in America. Please join me in praying for God to bless America. Maybe – just maybe – God raised up Trump for such a time as this.

Was Donald Trump Born for Such a Time as This?

My VIP for this week is Donald Trump, former President of the United States and 2024 candidate for President. My long-time readers understand that I believe that Trump will go down in history as one of the great Presidents for the United States. I believe that Trump has been raised up to save the Constitution. This belief has only grown stronger over the years because Trump reminds me of other great people in history who were instruments in God’s hands for the good of the people.

The first person is Esther who was a beautiful Jewish maiden who became queen of Persia. When the lives of all the Jews in the kingdom were threatened, Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, sent a message to her that she should approach the king to tell him of the terrible decree to kill all the Jews. Esther reminded Mordecai that she was not allowed to approach the king unless he bade her come. Otherwise, she would be killed. In his next message,

Mordecai reminded her that if she stayed quiet and the Jews were delivered in another way, Esther and her “father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther agreed to do as Mordecai said, but she requested that Mordecai send a message to all the Jews to pray for her for three days. Esther and her maidens also prayed, and Esther approached the king. He bade her come to him and granted her wish. Thus, Esther was instrumental in saving her people. (See the book of Esther.)

The second person is Cyrus, another king of Persia. The Lord inspired Cyrus to send a message throughout his kingdom. Cyrus believed that God had told him to send Jews back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. He also sent back to Jerusalem all the gold and silver objects stolen from the old temple by Nebuchadnezzar. Any Jews that chose to return to Judah were allowed to go, and they were allowed to take whatever they would need to rebuild the temple. (See Ezra 1-10.) The Jews in modern Israel compare Trump with Cyrus and made a temple coin with Cyrus and Trump side by side to honor the move of the capital of Israel to Jerusalem.

I recently gained understanding of two other men to whom Trump can be compared. We honor George Washington for his efforts and sacrifices to lead the colonial army for eight years until the American won the Revolutionary War. We also honor him for his integrity in writing the new Constitution and then for being our first President of the United States. Washington led Americans through years of dark days and deserves the respect and honor that he receives.

The other man is Abraham Lincoln who was instrumental in keeping the United States together despite the Civil War. He came from a poor family who had nothing and rose to be elected President of the United States. He also led Americans through many dark years.

Today Americans are more divided that at any time since the Civil War. The Prophet Joseph Smith prophesied that the day would come that the Constitution would “hang by a thread” but would be saved by good men and women who love the Constitution and America. I believe that Donald Trump was raised up by God to lead the patriots who will be instrumental in preserving the Constitution.

I believe that numerous secret combinations are working together to destroy the Constitution and the freedoms of Americans. Some of those combinations are the globalists who want to create a one world order. Others have developed climate change to be their religion. Communists are also part of the combinations.

I believe that Donald Trump was raised up by God to save our Constitution. He is a national leader who loves America and sees many of the dangers that Americans face. I have never seen a man or woman who has been hit with so many problems but remains standing and moving forward. Just as Washington could not be killed in the Revolutionary War, none of the attacks from the Leftists seem to bring Trump down. I believe that Trump was raised up by God for “such a time as this.”

Will the Real Donald Trump Stand Up?

 My VIP for this week is former President Donald Trump. The Democrat Party, the Marxists, and the intelligence agencies of the United States have hounded him since 2015 – the year that he first announced that he was running for President of the United States.

Trump was impeached twice – the first impeachment was for questioning Biden corruption in Ukraine that is now coming to light. The second impeachment was to remove him from office – after he was already voted out of office.

Trump could have lived a quiet life and enjoyed his wealth if he were not running for President of the United States once again. Since announcing his campaign, Trump’s home at Mar-a-Laga was raided, a rogue New York state attorney general indicted him, and the Department of Justice indicted him twice – plus adding counts to one of the indictments. Rumors are that he will be indicted soon by the Georgia attorney general.

Most people would have been broken by the attacks that Trump has experienced. Yet, he is still standing tall and holding his head high. He claims that he is fighting for the rights of Americans: “They are coming after me because I am standing in their way to get to you.” However, Trump is currently fighting for a freedom for himself that is guaranteed to all Americans – the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Despite all Trump’s legal problems, he sits squarely at the top of a recent poll. Harris X recently conducted a national poll of 935 registered voters nationwide. One polling question was: Does the President of the United States have the responsibility to provide moral leadership to the people they represent? The vast majority – 94% -- of respondents from across the political spectrum answered yes. 

Respondents were given a list of presidential candidates and then asked this question: “Would the following candidates do a good or poor job of providing moral leadership to the country as president?” Here are the results:

                                                                                                            Don’t Know/

                                                            Good Job        Poor Job         Unsure

Donald Trump                                     40%                 48%                 11%

Joe Biden                                            38%                 50%                 11%

Kamala Harris                                     38%                 46%                 15%

Mike Pence                                         36%                 35%                 29%

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.                         35%                 25%                 40%    

Ron DeSantis                                      32%                 34%                 34%

Vivek Ramaswamy                             27%                 17%                 56%

Nikki Haley                                         26%                 23%                 51%

Tim Scott                                             25%                 19%                 56%

Marianne Williamson                          12%                 21%                 67%

 

I found this survey to be interesting because numerous people told me that they could never vote for Trump on moral grounds. Of course, the big question about the vote is two-fold: What does moral leadership for the president mean to you? How does it apply to individual candidates? The answers also depend on political identity. More Republicans gave Trump high marks, while more Democrats gave Biden high marks.

To me, it comes down to something much more important: Does the candidate love America enough to put the country ahead of personal wealth and wellbeing? Trump lost money while serving as POTUS, leaving office with less wealth than when he was elected. On the other hand, Biden allegedly sold America to her enemies to enrich his family while serving as Senator, Vice President, and President.