The first one was his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who had helped him make this year’s presidential campaign more effective.
Then there’s Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador. Personally, I’d rather we leave the UN, but until then, she’s a good choice – although it’s important to make sure that appointments coming from Congress not threaten the GOP’s majorities there. In Stefanik’s case there will be a special election. Her district’s election history can be found here, and from the look of it it seems that beginning in 2016 it became strongly Republican after having been Democrat. Interesting. I hope that holds.
Trump has also announced that he won’t be appointing either Pompeo or Haley to posts in his administration.
Stephen Miller, one of [Trump’s] longest-serving top immigration advisers, [will be] deputy chief of staff for policy in the incoming White House. …
Tom Homan, the former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will become a “border czar” overseeing deportation policy.
This time Trump knows a lot more about DC and about who his friends and enemies are, compared to 2016. He doesn’t know everything, of course. But he’s a great deal more aware of the depth of the swamp.
And then there’s the race to replace McConnell as Senate Majority Leader, which is between Thune, Cornyn, and Scott. There’s a ton of scuttlebutt about it (see this sort of thing, for example). Who knows what’s really going on and more importantly what will be the result, but I think it’s safe to say that at the moment it’s Byzantine. I prefer Scott, but I have a hunch it will be Thune. I’d be happy to be proven wrong about that.
These are happy dilemmas, though, compared to the alternative, an election loss. Then we’d be facing many disastrous prospects, such as the end of the filibuster, and the passage of HR1 and DC statehood and court-packing.
It sounds a little bitty bit like Mitt Romney’s (yes, that Mitt Romney) “self-deportation” plan:
Romney suggested his administration would make it harder for illegal immigrants to get jobs, which would in turn lead them to seek work elsewhere.
More to the point, it has echoes of what Trump was saying during his 2016 campaign. Actually, he said a lot of things back then as a beginner feeling his way towards a policy during the 2016 campaign:
Donald Trump and his top aides have spent the last two weeks sowing confusion about what the status of the country’s 12 million illegal immigrants would be under a Trump administration. Would they all be deported, as Trump argued last year? Or would some have to go while others would be allowed to stay, as Trump has hinted in the “softening” of his position in recent days? …
First, Trump announced that he will aggressively move to deport criminal illegal immigrants — that is, immigrants who have committed crimes beyond the act of entering the country illegally. “We will begin moving them out day one, in joint operations with local, state and federal law enforcement,” Trump said. …
… Trump [also made a] statement that those here illegally would have “one route and only one route” to legal status … Everybody seeking legalization would have to leave and then return.
But then, a few short paragraphs later, Trump said that “in several years,” when tough enforcement measures are fully in place — not contemplated, not in the planning stage, but actually up and running — then “we will be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those who remain.”
So, as an old boyfriend of mine used to say, clear as mud. Then again, I think it was made intentionally unclear, and the same is true today. I’m not even saying that in a critical way. I simply think the problem of illegal immigration is so huge and so complex at this point that it makes sense to do the most important part first and then see if there’s a next step and what it would be. As Vance describes.
I think Trump is more serious about it now and also more aware of the difficulties. And I think the leftist fantasy of an expulsion of 20 million people is just that, a fantasy.
Oh, and back in 2012 – which, granted, was a long time ago – Trump criticized Romney’s “self-deportation” idea:
Donald Trump on Monday said Mitt Romney’s “maniacal” and “crazy” policy of “self-deportation,” alienated Asian and Hispanic voters and helped cost him the election. …
“Republicans didn’t have anything going for them with respect to Latinos and with respect to Asians,” the real estate mogul-turned-reality TV star said.
“The Democrats didn’t have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren’t mean-spirited about it,” Trump added. “They didn’t know what the policy was, but what they were is they were kind.”
I saw this the other day. It’s quite well done, particular by the male dancer:
It’s actually an old trick that appears in many ballets, as well. For example, Coppelia (here she’s pretending to be a doll to fool the elderly dollmaker):
As Europe marks the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Dutch city of Amsterdam gave police emergency powers to prevent further breakout of antisemitic violence. The measures to protect the Netherlands Jewish monitory came after the city on Friday night witnessed an anti-Jewish pogrom as organized Muslim migrant gangs ambushed hundreds of Israeli soccer fans after a match between Israel’s ‘Maccabi Tel Aviv’ and the Dutch team ‘AFC Ajax,’ historically seen as a Jewish club.
“Amsterdam banned demonstrations for three days from Friday after overnight attacks on Israeli soccer supporters by what the mayor called “antisemitic hit-and-run squads,” Reuters reported Saturday.
Everything I’ve read about the violence indicates that it was perpetrated by Muslim gangs and that it was preplanned. It’s an example of what happens when a Western country absorbs huge numbers of unvetted immigrants from Muslim countries and fails to assimilate them.
Amsterdam is, of course, the city where Anne Frank’s family and friends hid for years, protected by brave people such as Miep Gies, but in the end were betrayed and sent to the camps. Because the story of Frank is so well known, I believe most people are unaware that The Netherlands had a terrible record during the Holocaust:
A key aim [of the German occupation] was to separate Dutch Jews from their legal protections and Dutch cultural milieu, extinguishing first their rights and then their lives. One of Rauter’s first initiatives involved consolidating the Dutch police under the Nazi-controlled Ministry of Justice. Rauter positioned the SS and the police to have full authority over the entire Jewish population of the occupied Netherlands. This gave the SS and the police the ability to persecute Jews in the Netherlands, and eventually implement the Final Solution.? Rauter had not only the Dutch police, but 4,700 German police personnel at his disposal. …
Many non-Jewish Netherlanders helped to hide Jews, often individually in exchange for payment. Two of the most active helpers were Corrie Ten Boom and Henriëtte Pimentel, both of whom were eventually arrested and deported themselves. Another notable person was Leendert Overduin, a Dutch Reformed Church pastor who ran Group Overduin that helped about 1,000 Jews to find hiding places. 21 Dutch people have been awarded the Jewish Rescuers Citation by B’nai B’rith for helping to save Jews from deportation.
The onderduikers in turn drove a reward system for “Jew-hunters”—notably the Henneicke Column, originally a group tasked with inventorying abandoned Jewish properties, which became a bounty-hunting operation. The Henneicke Column delivered 8,000-9,000 Jews to Nazi authorities between March and October 1943 alone, earning up to 15 guilders per head.
Of the onderduikers, about a third were caught and deported.
A tale of heroism by some and betrayal by others. Much more at the link.
What on earth is wrong with Arizona? Why does it take what seems like years for a state with a moderate-sized population to count its ballots? There are only about 7.4 million people in the entire state of Arizona. That makes it smaller than New York City. And yet Arizona lumbers on, and we still don’t even know for sure who its senator will be, Gallego or Lake, although Gallego has been consistently in the lead. Luckily, the presidential race is already decided and Arizona isn’t needed.
It’s taking far longer than expected in multiple counties across Arizona to count ballots and report election results.
The delay means numerous congressional, statewide, and local races have yet to be called, including a U.S. Senate contest and races that would help determine the balance of power in the U.S. House. Voter advocates are warning that voters won’t have enough time to fix any problems with their ballots if the counting goes on too long. …
The long, two-page ballot that many counties had in this election was to blame for delays in at least some instances. For example, in Maricopa County and Pima County, it’s taking longer to remove mail ballots from their envelopes and unfold and inspect them.
In other counties, the problems vary. Cochise County is experiencing a mechanical problem with its tabulators that’s causing them to operate slowly …
In both Yavapai and Pinal counties, tabulating polling place results from Election Day took much longer than expected because of unclear voter marks that had to be sorted out before results from the polling place could be reported. …
Yuma County still had 40% of its ballots to count as of Thursday night, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. It’s unclear why. …
A coalition of dozens of voting rights groups are concerned that, because of the delays, voters will not have enough time to respond to counties that flagged a mismatched or missing signature on their mail ballots. Under state law, the deadline for fixing those issues is Sunday, while counties had not yet reviewed hundreds of thousands of voter signatures on ballots across the state as of Thursday night.
Whatever is going on – and it appears to be plenty – it undermines the already low trust in the integrity of the election process in the state.
In Arizona, official tallies were 83% complete by mid-morning on Saturday with Trump leading at 52.7% and Harris at 46%, or about 180,000 votes ahead. But enough ballots remain uncounted – 602,000 as of late Friday night – for the state to remain undeclared. The state sensationally flipped to Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2020.
Indeed. It’s a very good thing that the presidency is no longer in doubt, even without Arizona. But there is that Senate seat, and those House seats. The latter in particular could be highly important.
Also:
In the key US Senate race there between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Ruben Gallego, Lake, who always denied that Biden won the White House fairly in 2020, was trailing the Democrat 48.5% to 49.5%, or by around 33,000 votes, mid-morning on Saturday.
So it’s still up in the air. More [my emphasis]:
The delay in reporting the races falls largely on Maricopa county, the fourth largest in the US, where the state capital, Phoenix, lies. The county on Friday evening reported 351,000 ballots yet to count. Some have not been through the first step of verifying the voter signature on the outside of the envelope. Officials expected ballot counting would continue for 10 to 13 days after election day.
There is no excuse for this – none. But here are the excuses offered:
The long process for counting ballots is in part explained by the lengthy two-page ballot itself with election workers taking nearly double the usual amount of time to separate the two sheets from the mail-in envelope, lay them flat and check for damage, according to Votebeat.
In Cochise county, a mechanical problem with tabulators caused them to work more slowly.
According to the Arizona Republic newspaper, part of the state’s problem is “early-late” votes – early voting ballot papers that were filled in don’t get dropped off to be counted until election day itself.
“We have a substantial number of voters who take their early ballot and they kind of keep it on their kitchen counter for, like, three weeks,” state representative Alexander Kolodin told AZ Central.
Kolodin, a Republican, is considering a proposal that would require early ballots to be returned in advance of election day, giving time for election officials to go through the process of verification.
Ya think?
It’s almost as though Arizona wants to be in this position. And people can be forgiven for being very very suspicious.
So now it’s crystal clear that the entire Kamala Harris campaign and the many-years-long anti-Trump legal crusade were exercises in gaslighting. We knew that the entire time, of course, but still it’s so strange to see it played out.
The court cases? It was all a game to keep Trump from being elected. Although Letitia James is still playing.
Trump the fascist Hitler? Hey, let’s have a smooth transition to give power to the fascist Hitler – although of course they are probably cooking up something behind the scenes despite the smiles. I seem to recall a smooth transition in 2016, on the surface, while the knives were being sharpened.
A discussion of what’s been going on this time:
Thing is, a lot of Democrats believed them and have been in a state of panic for quite some time, and are feeling anguish now. These voters might have a cause of action against the media and Harris and should try to sue them for pain and suffering. That’s a joke, of course, but the feelings are not a joke. Political operatives and politicians might be able to turn it on and then off like a switch. But most people aren’t made that way.
Charlamagne: “Don’t y’all find it strange that now that he’s won, they’re not calling him a threat to democracy? They’re not calling him a fascist … I would think that, if you really believe that, then somebody’s speech would be about how America effed up and how things are… pic.twitter.com/q0KJplqZUO
There’s a lot of analysis of the race going on, and I’m participating. But it really all boils down to the fact that the Democrats and the press couldn’t fool enough people into thinking Kamala Harris was a person they wanted to lead the country. This wasn’t because she’s a woman, or black, or Indian. It’s because she was obviously incompetent and astoundingly incoherent – plus phony and grating. The icing on the cake was that she had nothing of substance to say and no record worth defending.
As I’ve noted before, this race should have gone about 20 to 80 Harris to Trump. I’m very happy that Trump won and won handily, but it’s astonishing that Harris reached the numbers she did. It’s a testament to party loyalty and/or ignorance and/or the extent to which people have taken to heart the relentless propaganda that has painted Trump as nearly demonic.
NOTE: You probably haven’t noticed that, when Harris was chosen as the Democrats’ nominee, I created a tag for posts about her – a tag, but not a category. I did the same thing for Biden when he was nominated in 2020. The hope in each case was that I’d never have to switch to making the tag into a category, because the person would lose the election. Biden, of course, ended up as president, and that meant that “Biden” became a category. For Kamala, I’d be happy if she remains a tag indefinitely and never graduates to “category.”
Turley is one of those lawyers I came to deeply respect years ago. He’s an Independent, as far as I can tell, but more importantly he’s a person who’s not afraid to follow the truth wherever it leads him. Sure, now and then I disagree with him; what else is new? But most of the time I think he’s spot on, as well as informative about the law.
Nearly two years ago, I wrote that Democratic prosecutors’ lawfare campaign against Donald Trump would make the 2024 election the single largest jury decision in history. Now that the verdict is in, the question is whether prosecutors will continue their unrelenting campaign against the president-elect and his companies.
The jury’s decision: acquittal
More [emphasis mine]:
The election reflected a certain gag sensation for a public fed a relentless diet of panic and identity politics for eight years. The 2024 election will come to be viewed as one of the biggest political and cultural shifts in our history. It was the mainstream-media-versus-new media election; the Rogan-versus-Oprah election; the establishment-versus-a-disassociated-electorate election.
It was also a thorough rejection of lawfare. One of the things most frustrating for Trump’s opponents was that every trial or hearing seemed to give Trump a boost in the polls. As cases piled up in Washington, New York, Florida and Georgia, the effort seemed to move more toward political acclamation than isolation.
Now, these cases are now legal versions of the Flying Dutchman — ships destined to sail endlessly but never make port.
If there is a single captain of that hapless crew, it is Special Counsel Jack Smith. For more than a year, Smith sought to secure a verdict in one of his two cases in Washington and Florida before the election. His urgency was seemingly shared by Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, but by few other judges or justices.
Around 2 am, Smith became a lame-duck prosecutor. Trump ran on ending his prosecutions and can cite a political mandate for it. Certainly, had he lost, the other side would be claiming a mandate for these prosecutions.
Trump’s new attorney general could remove Smith and order the termination of his continued prosecution. That is less of a problem in Florida, where a federal judge had already tossed out the prosecution of the classified documents case, which some of us saw as the greatest threat against Trump.
In Washington, Chutkan, who proved both motivated and active in pushing forward the election interference case, could complicate matters. Under federal rules, it is up to Chutkan to order any dismissal. …
In the end, Trump read the jury correctly. Once the lawfare was unleashed, he focused on putting his case to the public and walked away with a clear majority decision. It is unlikely that this will end all of his lawfare battles, but it may effectively end the war.
I don’t think these cases are going anywhere even if one or two sputters on, because there’s always appeal to SCOTUS and I don’t think the Court would let a guilty verdict stand.
Also there’s this, although I don’t know if anything will come of it:
Or will they continue to lie to themselves that Trump’s win was due to sexism and racism, despite the fact that Trump increased his share of votes from all minority groups?
Although Democrats exhibit a few glimmerings here and there of actual understanding, I just don’t think it’s widespread. And besides, because Democrats have built their entire pitch for many years on identity politics and abortion and fear of the right, what alternative pitches do they have? If they faced the bankruptcy of their ideas, it would require an entire overhaul.
Then again, it’s sobering that Harris didn’t lose by sixty points, as she should have. She was that poor a candidate. However, the MSM probably accounted for much of her support, because the way they frame the news still matters to a significant number of people. There’s also habit – it’s hard to vote for a Republican when you’ve only voted for Democrats for your entire life. Take it from me. And Donald Trump is strong stuff for an entry-level vote.
I can’t remember the last time I saw Caroline Glick smile, but there it is. Of course, she’s aware that the road ahead isn’t easy. But she’s allowing herself a few moments of celebration, and for those moments she looks as though a great weight has lifted from her shoulders.
I feel much the same way. Looking back, I never felt this way when Trump was elected in 2016, although I do recall feeling relief that Hillary Clinton would not be president. But I thought Trump was an untried, untested blowhard – which, come to think of it, he was. It only took a few months to start feeling better about his presidency, and somewhere about halfway through I really started enjoying it. But I was aware that it might end after the 2020 election, and when COVID and lockdowns occurred, I became fairly certain that Trump would not be re-elected.
Looking back, I see from this post of mine, written in March of 2020, that I correctly saw what a future Biden presidency would hold:
The near-certainty that the Democratic nominee will be Biden raises the specter of the Democrats coming back and picking up where Obama left off, only worse. We dodged that bullet in 2016. But the question has always been whether that was only a little blip on the long Gramscian march and the Democrats’ hope for permanent takeover of the American electorate. Simply put: will the US inexorably move further and further left?
Biden’s supposed “moderation” is only such compared to Bernie. And I doubt that a single one of my Democrat friends (who are quite typical, politically, of much of the Democratic electorate) would hesitate to vote for either Biden or Sanders or any other sentient (or semi-sentient) being if that person becomes the Democratic nominee. They hate Trump with a white hot passion.
Biden’s running mate will probably be a woman, someone like Klobuchar or Kamala Harris (remember her?). Someone female and young, preferably ethnic although Biden really doesn’t need that since he already has the black vote pretty well sewn up because of his Obama connection.
I believe Biden as president would be more a less a figurehead, and the people in charge would be the same people who were prominent in the Obama administration, doing the same things only more so because they feel the country is ready for more open leftism. The Deep State will really go to town, as well. Legislation, however, depends on who controls Congress. If it’s the Democrats, the sky’s the limit.
I have never for a moment understood why anyone would have seen Biden as a potential moderate, but perception of his supposed middle-of-the-road quality was one of the main reasons he became president. For the next four years, for the most part, blogging consisted of chronicling a series of bad decisions with bad results.
When Trump announced he was running again, I wasn’t happy. I knew that his support in the GOP primaries would be very strong and would be enough to eliminate other and younger contenders such as DeSantis. And Trump came with several steamer trunks of baggage, actually a long caravan. Simply put: I didn’t think he was likely to win the general.
Tuesday night proved me wrong, I’m happy to say. And now I get to enjoy a period in which, like Caroline Glick, I can do a little happy-dance. It’s not that I’m unaware of the enormity of the problems looming. And I certainly don’t think it will be smooth sailing or anything resembling it. But there is a sense of relief and some of the weight has lifted for now.
Qatar has told the political leaders of the Hamas terror group that they were no longer welcome in the Gulf state, Israeli media reported on Friday.
According to the Hebrew-language Kan outlet, the decision was communicated to the Palestinian jihadists “in recent days.”
“Recent days” – how many? Let’s guess.
Another thing about a second Trump term is that he’s more seasoned. Yes, he is also facing the challenges of undoing the damage the Biden administration did. But he knows the ropes, as it were. And I like to think that his four years out of power, his legal struggles, and his survival on July 13, have deepened him in some way. This time around he’s got the help of smart guys such as Vivek and Elon, and the calm of Tulsi Gabbard – plus, well, I’m not 100% sure of RFK but I guess we’ll find out. I have no idea how long this very interesting coalition will last, or what fruit it will bear, but I do find it intensely unusual and potentially very good.
And what of the left? They’ve tried internal sabotage, lawfare, and catastrophizing. Two of their acolytes tried assasination. Now they are rending their garments. But I’m not sure their lies will be as effective this time. And I think they will lose control of the House.
And another bonus: I don’t see Kamala Harris making a political comeback in 2028. Or ever. Biden? He looked happy making his speech the other day, and sounded more coherent than he has in four years. Have a happy retirement, Joe, and keep wearing that MAGA hat. What Obama might be cooking up I really don’t know. But one thing I think we can safely say is that this will not be his fourth term as president.
