The eye of the beholder: Trump appears in Town Hall on CNN last night

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t watch it. I assume Trump was Trump, with the usual pluses and minuses.

Here’s Roger Kimball on the evening’s festivities:

On and on it went. Collins playing Whac-A-Mole, Trump declining to be whapped. There were no moments like Hamlet’s duel with Laertes when Gertrude could exclaim, “A hit! “A palpable hit!” CNN considerately invited only Republicans and independents join in the event. Considered as a point of fair play, that was as it should be. Niccolò Machiavelli would have deprecated the decision. The audience was clearly sympathetic to Trump, its questions uniformly respectful.

Once again, the media industrial complex underestimated the man they love to hate. They feel nothing but disdain and contempt for Donald Trump, and they assume — falsely — that the voters will, too, if only they get to see the man in action.

The tweeter who said that the event guaranteed a landslide victory for Trump in 2024 overstated the case. It by no means guarantees that he will be the Republican candidate, let alone that he would win the general election. But as a measure of political virility, it revealed that, as of May 10, 2023, Donald Trump is by far the most vital and potent candidate on either side of the aisle.

That could change, of course…I suspect that the only thing that is certain in this race so far is what last night’s event meant for CNN. It was, as a column in the Hill put it, “a disaster.”

In response to Kimball’s statement that the people at CNN “feel nothing but disdain and contempt for Donald Trump, and they assume — falsely — that the voters will, too, if only they get to see the man in action,” I think it goes much much further. They also feel secure in their own brilliance and tactical finesse, and they believe that they will be able to trap him and make him look bad. And to a great many voters in America, that is what happens and what happened last night on CNN. Disdain and contempt emerges or does not emerge depending on the eye of the beholder as well as the frame through which he or she looks.

Does the left think Trump acquitted himself well? Not to hear them tell it. Of course, that could be bravado on their part, but they also have enormous faith in their own ability to convince the public of whatever they tell them. And if they label Trump’s appearance a disaster for him, most MSM readers – who, after all, didn’t watch it – will conclude that it was exactly that. And even if they watch it, they do so through the filter of years of Trump-contempt.

For example, the Daily News – which seems to be unwilling to stop sending me links, despite my attempts to unsubscribe – has this headline: “Donald Trump’s ‘disastrous’ CNN town hall elicits strong reactions”:

Donald Trump’s combative CNN town hall elicited strong reactions from viewers, celebrities and political insiders, many of whom were disgusted by the former president reasserting false claims the 2020 election was stolen and hurling insults at abuse accuser E. Jean Carroll…

“The predictably disastrous @cnn town hall was indeed disastrous,” tweeted Mark Lukasiewicz, the dean of Hofstra University’s communications school. “Proving again: Live lying works. A friendly MAGA crowd consistently laughs, claps at Trump’s punch lines — including re sex assault and Jan 6 — and the moderator cannot begin to keep up with the AR-15 pace of lies.”…

Film director Rob Reiner wrote Trump is “a Liar, a Criminal, and is mentally ill.”

“It was disgraceful on every level,” said Joe Scarborough, who co-hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. “I wouldn’t say it’s dangerous for democracy because we passed that a long time ago, but it showed the corrosive effects of Trump-ism over eight years. I’ve got to say, the most shocking part was anaudience who cheered on a president who tried to overturn American democracy. An audience that mocked and ridiculed a woman who a jury of her peers, Donald Trump’s peers, found had been sexually assaulted.”

More in that vein at Time.

After Jordan Neely’s death, no one is going to do much to stop man wielding a cleaver on BART

The New Neo Posted on by

Except what they did do, which is to run away and also alert authorities.

Fortunately, in the case of the BART cleaver-wielder, although the injured man was taken to the hospital his cleaver injuries were not life-threatening. But this was the scene, and if you read my post from yesterday about Neely and the behavior of subway riders who feel threatened, you’ll see the connection:

Temple described a man holding a rectangular butcher cleaver pacing up and down a BART car on an eastbound train in the Transbay Tube. He said he initially saw a passenger at the end of his car “jump out of the way” of the cleaver-wielding man, and then “all kinds of people trying to jump away.”

“Everyone started running through the cars, trying to get as much distance between themselves and this guy as possible,” he said. Temple said people were cowering in their seats, “trying to get as close to the edges of the BART cars as possible” as the man walked back and forth in the aisle.

“I jumped out of the way once, and landed partially on a woman who was sitting,” he added. “I was just trying to get away.”

The passengers then fled between cars to the front of the BART train, where Temple said they congregated in a group.

“When we got to the very front, we ran out of cars to run through.”

At this point, the dozen-plus passengers, communicating with the train operator, were “just asking the operator to go faster, we just wanted to get to West Oakland, we wanted to get out,” Temple said…

“I’m not gonna lie, man, it was pretty scary,” Temple said. “When you actually see someone walking up and down BART with a cleaver — it was scary, and I and everyone just wanted to get as far away from him as possible, which is hard to do on a BART in the middle of the tunnel.”

This was the San Francisco bay area; the Transbay Tube is between San Francisco and Oakland in the East Bay.

I wonder – in a case such as this, where the perp is armed and has already hurt someone and clearly intends to hurt more people, if an armed person had shot and wounded or killed the perp, would the shooter have been arrested? In San Francisco, probably, even though there really was no way to leave the scene and go to safety, since it was on a moving train in a tunnel. Of course, the disposition of my hypothetical case would be likely to rest on the races of those involved.

The Bee Gees’ song “Tragedy” is about anticipation

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been feeling pretty weary lately about the news. So much of it is bad. I don’t know about you, but I need a refresher.

“Tragedy” is an odd title for a refresher. But like so many Bee Gees’ songs, the words can be sad but the tune extremely catchy and seemingly upbeat. “Tragedy” – a song from their so-called disco era – is a good example of this.

The song was written by the Bee Gees in the same afternoon as “Too Much Heaven,” another mega-hit that was more ballad-like. Not bad for a few hours’ work.

In an interview I’ve seen, one of the Bee Gees’ said that a hallmark of their music was an attempt to make the intervals between vocals at least as interesting and compelling as the singing part. I think “Tragedy” is a good example of that, and in a particular way. The instrumental portions feature a driving beat that goes on just a bit longer – or sometimes shorter, because the intervals vary – than the listener might expect. It creates a strangely pleasurable tension in the listener – at least, in this listener, and in a lot of YouTube “reactors” I’ve seen. Plus, there’s the famous “explosion” that also occurs at varied intervals, and was created by Barry sort of spitting into cupped hands in front of the microphone.

It’s one of their wholly-falsetto songs, which was common for them during that period. I happen to really really like their non-falsetto songs, but the falsetto ones are great too – such as “Tragedy,” which non-Bee Gees fans probably really detest but I love (the following video of the song has the audio of the final studio version with video of rehearsals as well as other Bee Gee footage):

Santos arrested, Bidens not arrested

The New Neo Posted on by

George Santos, Republican member of the House from the Third District in the state of New York, is a liar. He’s certainly guilty of that, and he may even be guilty of the things he’s been arrested for today:

The indictment says Santos induced supporters to donate to a company under the false pretense that the money would be used to support his campaign. Instead, it says, he used it for personal expenses, including luxury designer clothes and to pay off his credit cards.

Santos also is accused of lying about his finances on congressional disclosure forms and applying for and receiving unemployment benefits while he was employed as regional director of an investment firm and running for Congress.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said the indictment “seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations.”

More details:

…[Santos was charged with ] seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.

How many members of the House, and other government officials, could be charged with same or similar? Quite a few, I’d wager. One who immediately comes to mind is Ilhan Omar; see this and this. I have little doubt there are more. probably just as crooked as Santos but not as obviously so, and many with “D” after their names, who will not be charged or arrested.

And then we have the Bidens. Ah, the Bidens! Another announcement today, from the House Oversight Committee, went like this:

The House Oversight Committee revealed the nine Biden family members that received over $10 million from foreign nationals. They tried to hide the money in shell companies.

Fancy that. Quelle surprise.

More:

It said Biden family members and business associates “created a web of over 20 companies — most were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.”

After [Joe Biden assumed] the vice presidency in 2009, records reveal Hunter Biden and his business associates formed at least 15 companies,” the memo said. Those companies include Lion Hall Group LLC; Owasco P.C.; Robinson Walker, LLC; Skaneateles, LLC; Seneca Global Advisors, LLC; Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC; Rosemont Seneca Principal Investments LLC; Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC; Hudson West III, LLC; Hudson West V, LLC; CEFC Infrastructure Investment (US) and others.

“Bank records show the Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals’ companies,” the memo said, adding that the committee identified payments to Biden family members from foreign companies “while Joe Biden served as Vice President and after he left public office.”

“[T]he Biden family used business associates’ companies to receive millions of dollars from foreign companies,” the memo said, adding that the Biden family “received incremental payments over time to different bank accounts.”

In some instances, Biden associates would receive significant deposits from foreign sources into their bank accounts and then transfer smaller, incremental payments to Biden bank accounts,” the memo said. “These complicated and seemingly unnecessary financial transactions appear to be a concerted effort to conceal the source and total amount received from the foreign companies.”

It said Chinese nationals and companies “with significant ties to Chinese intelligence and the Chinese Communist Party hid the source of the funds by layering domestic limited liability companies.”

The committee says it is investigating “the opaque corporate structure of particular Biden-affiliated companies, those companies’ complicated connections with each other, whether these companies maintained books and records, and why certain foreign nationals sought to partner with and engage in businesses with specific Biden family members and their companies.”

Well, they are a very talented bunch. Including wives and grandchildren, who also received money from foreign governments.

The White House calls the probe “evidence-free” and “politically-motivated.” Hey, I’ve got an idea – maybe 51 intelligence officers can say it’s all Russian disinformation.

What are the odds of anyone important getting arrested for this? How long has the DOJ and FBI known about it? Probably a long long time. Will some lower-downs get slaps on the wrist, or not?

NOTE: Ace has more to say about the Bidens.

Jordan Neely, the left’s martyr

The New Neo Posted on by

This is an important article about the campaign against Daniel Perry, a man who subdued Jordan Neely on a New York subway, an act that resulted in Neely’s death:

Penny’s fate will, as Peachy Keenan wrote in The Federalist, be a test of whether young American men should dare to act courageously when others are in peril. But there’s even more at stake in this case. With Neely being anointed as the new George Floyd, the questions of whether Penny was right to restrain Neely or if he used inappropriate force to do so are merely sidebars to a broader narrative about American racism.

Floyd’s death became a metaphor for a myth about systemic police racism. Floyd’s actions the night of his death, his criminal record, and the fact that his body was full of what might have been a lethal dose of fentanyl were dismissed as irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was that he was a black man and that the cop who had, in an act of undoubted callous brutality, snuffed out his life was white. In the name of a belief, however mistaken, that Floyd’s death was just one of countless incidents in which blacks were being slaughtered with impunity, millions took to the streets in “mostly peaceful” riots that shook the nation.

More than that, it set off a moral panic in virtually every sector of American life that elevated the woke catechism of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to a new secular religion…

The prosecution of the ex-Marine will not just establish a precedent that there is a “right” of a deranged, drug-addicted person to terrorize others with impunity. It will also, like Floyd’s death or that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, or a dozen other equally dubious cases, be routinely cited from now on as proof of American racism and a reason for doubling down on woke policies that will further divide and racialize the nation…

The freedom for the homeless that has been established in New York [and so many other cities]…means the rights of other citizens to a livable city are abrogated.

Now for a personal note. As many of you know, I grew up in NYC in the 50s and 60s, and I rode the subway frequently by myself even as a child of ten or eleven. As such, I witnessed quite a few people like Jordan Neely – that is, mentally ill people riding the subway and yelling at no one or at the other passengers, sometimes issuing threats. In those days, the line I rode was in fairly seedy areas (I was ordinarily going to and from ballet classes), and although sometimes it was heavily populated, most of the time the cars weren’t loaded. Therefore each passenger was highly spotlighted and visible.

Although I was ten or eleven I looked older; I was pretty much full grown and probably appeared to be in my mid or late teens. I was sometimes a target of the attention of one of these crazies. I remember in particular one day when the train was stopped between stations, as it often did, for an indeterminate time. It was early evening, perhaps seven or eight PM, and there were probably only ten or so people in my car. An agitated black man who was sitting somewhat across from me begin yelling that the train had stopped in order to punish us – in order for him to punish us – which he was going to proceed to do. I don’t remember the details of his rather lengthy speech, except that he was threatening our deaths although he didn’t do anything except yell loudly and look antsy and tense.

I remember doing what I usually did, which was to look away and at the floor and somehow hope I was utterly invisible. I recall that a few people got up and went into the next car, but that drew his attention and he threatened them as they went. Was it safer to stay or leave? What was he actually going to do? The train stayed in that tunnel for what seemed like a long long time, and then it finally moved again.

Did I get off at the next stop and wait for the next train, which on that line wouldn’t have come all that quickly? Which was the riskier move, staying or leaving? This was the sort of calculation everyone riding the subways had to make, even back in those relatively safe-seeming days.

In later decades things got even worse, and then they got a lot better for a while during the Giuliani years. At a certain point I felt safe riding the subways, something I had never felt as a child.

I haven’t been to New York City in a few years, so I haven’t had personal experience with the way it is now. But obviously, it’s not good. And I know quite well what passengers feel when a crazy person starts to threaten them, and the sort of decisions each one has to make. Most of the time, taking the approach I took – look away, keep a very low profile – gets a person through the experience unscathed. But there’s no way of knowing if this time the threatening person will back up threatening words with violent deeds.

Penny apparently thought Neely just might get violent – as he apparently had in the past, although Penny had no way of knowing that unless he had witnessed those previous incidents. The victim of one of them speaks out:

Anne Mitcheltree said she was randomly punched in the head in June 2021 by Jordan Neely inside S.K. Deli Market on 2nd Avenue in the East Village. The attack caused swelling and substantial pain but left no permanent damage.

After police arrested Neely, Mitcheltree, 65, assumed her aggressor would face charges and psychiatric lockup.

“They told me we have him, he’s in custody, we’re going to press charges,” Mitcheltree, a creative arts therapist with New York City Health + Hospitals for over 40 years, told The Post.

“I thought the judge would have forced him to take psychiatric meds, but it seems like he bounced out.”

Law enforcement sources said that Neely had 42 prior arrests on his long rap sheet — most recently for punching a 67-year-old woman in the East Village in November 2021, which landed him in jail for over a year.

An arrest warrant for Neely had been issued on Feb. 23, although details of the ongoing case were not immediately available.

“I don’t know why he didn’t end up in Bronx Psychiatric Center,” Mitcheltree said, adding, “This is a common understanding in psychiatry, that agitated people who are aggressive get themselves killed.”

Or get someone else killed:

Neely’s aggression continued the day before his death, when he allegedly tried to push a straphanger into the subway tracks at the Broadway-Lafayette station in Lower Manhattan.

“This man jumped on me, grabbed my shoulders, and pushed me towards the tracks Sunday night at this very station,” a Reddit user posted Wednesday about the terrifying incident, which they declined to discuss further.

Is that true? Who knows?

Trump vs. Kavanaugh

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m going to highlight some comments made by “Bauxite” about the Carroll jury verdict. I’m not trying to pick on Bauxite, but the comments offer me an opportunity to clarify some points.

From Bauxite:

…[I]f you want to prove that juries are going to reach unjust verdicts because of political bias, this verdict against Trump with Trump’s history and behavior just isn’t going to move the needle to anyone who isn’t already a partisan of the right.

I never said it would, and I’m in complete agreement with Bauxite there.

A question from Bauxite:

Would a NYC jury have found against Kavanaugh on the Kavanaugh facts in your hypothetical? I don’t know. It would have been a very different case. Kavanaugh would likely have taken the stand and wouldn’t have insulted the defendant (and the defendant’s lawyer) with the “not my type” drivel.

The thought that Kavanaugh taking the stand would have helped Kavanaugh flies in the face of the – pardon the word – evidence. Many of you may recall how people not on the right reacted to Kavanaugh’s actual Congressional testimony, which was to feel (or feign) outrage about his spirited and sometimes emotional defense of himself and some of the righteous anger he displayed at being falsely accused. If you don’t remember, you can refresh your memory by looking at a few articles I found by searching for mere seconds, such as this, this, and this. I can also attest that, of quite a few Democrat friends I spoke to at the time, they all reviled Kavanaugh for his testimony and it left them even more convinced that he was guilty.

So no, I doubt Kavanaugh would have said that Carroll (or Ford, had she sued him civilly) was not his type. But whatever he did say would have engendered rage in Democrat listeners and would have increased their feeling that he was guilty. And probably every single person on a New York jury such as the Carroll case jury would be a Democrat.

Bauxite continues:

Kavanaugh had nothing like the Access Hollywood tape.

True, but as demonstrated above, it doesn’t matter. Or perhaps they would have come up with some witness who would testify to something offensive Kavanaugh once said about women or sex.

More:

Mark Judge and Leland Kaiser would have testified that they had no recollection of the party, with Leland Kaiser testifying that she had never met Brett Kavanaugh. Also, Kavanaugh’s representation would have been able to probe all of the other inconsistencies in Ford’s story, such as the purported fear of flying, the reasons for the second front door in her home, and the like…

…Carroll’s story just didn’t have the inconsistencies of Ford’s story.

The only reason there would have been other witnesses to testify was that Ford had come up with a scenario that had possible witnesses. But Ford or someone else could easily have come up with a scenario much like Carroll’s: no possible witnesses, no time, just a place and a story. Impossible to defend againt and no witnesses necessary. Is that really more believable than one in which witnesses – some of whom are friends of Kavanaugh – deny the allegations? I certainly don’t think that such a phantom accusation is believable at all. But the Carroll jury did. I would wager they would find Judge and Keyser’s testimony easy to cast off as well. And inconsistencies? Carroll had plenty of them (see this for some of them). They were ignored.

I want to reiterate that most people have trouble being objective about evidence, and they can find rationalizations to come to conclusions they already are leaning towards. Politics itself – not just Trump, but politics – often is one of those things about which people feel strongly and have strong biases. This is reflected in trials in which politicians are the defendants. Trump elicits very strong feelings, but so did Kavanaugh, a person of very different character and history. Same for Clarence Thomas, who is still considered by every Democrat I know to have been guilty of harassing Anita Hill way back when.

Sexual accusations are among the most powerful tools against politicians, particularly male politicians. I wish juries were more wary of such accusations especially when made after a long passage of time. But I realize that is almost certainly a futile hope.

NOTE: Here’s Alan Dershowitz on the verdict.

A palate refresher

The New Neo Posted on by

Plisetskaya tears up the turf:

I don’t care how high today’s dancers can get their legs or how many turns they do. They play the character; Plisetskaya IS the character. She’s the second dancer in the series in this video (unfortunately, the music for the first one is damaged, but ignore that and keep watching):

Title 42 will be ending on Thursday

The New Neo Posted on by

Get ready. There’s already been a surge, but an even greater increase in border crossings by illegal immigrants is expected:

The number of crossings are expected to skyrocket after Thursday and leaders at the border are taking steps to deal with it.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has activated the state’s National Guard.

Here’s a press release from Governor Abbot’s office:

“With the ending of Title 42 on Thursday, President Biden is laying down the welcome mat to people across the entire world, but Texas is deploying our new Texas Tactical Border Force,” said Governor Abbott. “The Texas National Guard is loading Blackhawk helicopters and C-130s and deploying specially trained soldiers for the Texas Tactical Border Force, who will be deployed to hotspots all along the border to help intercept and repel large groups of migrants trying to enter Texas illegally. The Texas Tactical Border Force will bolster our Operation Lone Star efforts to secure the Texas border amid the chaos caused by President Biden’s elimination of Title 42.”

Also:

This is by purposeful design:

Jury finds Trump guilty in the Carroll civil suit – of course

The New Neo Posted on by

Dog bites man. And the inevitable occurs – the NY jury finds Trump guilty:

The jury decided that Trump was not guilty of rape, but was liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The jury awarded Carroll at least $2 million.

More details on the money award are here:

The jury awarded Carroll a total of $5 million in the lawsuit. Jury members found that Trump did not rape Carroll but sexually abused her, and awarded damages of $2 million in compensatory damages and $20,000 in punitive damages for battery.

The jury awarded $1 million in damages, $1.7 million for reputation repair, and $280,000 in punitive damages.

Why sexual abuse but not rape? Who knows. Perhaps the jurors knew how thin the evidence was and therefore some of them couldn’t go the whole mile to rape, and so some sort of compromise verdict was reached.

John Hinderaker thinks the verdict will have some political repercussions but I’m not at all sure. Opinions about Trump are practically set in stone at this point. The only possible effect I can see is that a few more Republican voters might decide in the primaries that he’s just too toxic to vote for, but perhaps they’ll be balanced by those who might vote for him because they’re angry at what they see as unjust lawfare against him.

Carroll said that Trump had raped her some time back in the mid-90s. She had zero evidence of it other than her own word (and two witnesses who said she’d told them about it way back when) although she never wrote anything or claimed anything publicly at the time. She needed a special law to even be able to civilly sue him in court for battery on such an old charge, but New York obliged by passing a special law allowing it. It was that important to get Trump. And since the standard of proof for civil suits is much lower than for criminal prosecutions, and because this suit was in a venue very friendly to her, Carroll prevailed.

No defense is even possible against charges that have no time frame except a span of a couple of years. Unless Trump had literally not set foot in New York City for the years in question and could prove it, the only thing he could do is deny the charges.

The jury deliberated for three hours. I’m surprised it was that long; perhaps they were schmoozing for part of the time.

I would not be surprised if the floodgates opened in New York on more such suits against Trump and other prominent people on the right in New York. Trump was the best target because of the hatred against him and desire to harm him prior to the 2024 election, as well as the “grab them by the pussy” tape which was played in court (and should not have been, in my opinion, because it was mere bragging words and not action, not about Carroll herself, and occurred around a decade after the alleged rape). But a law like that combined with a civil standard of proof, eager pockets to finance such suits, and juries willing to convict merely on the women’s words, and you have a recipe for destroying people with lies.

This is true even if Carroll is telling the truth. I don’t think she is, but even if she is, a lawsuit beyond the usual statute of limitations should not be allowed, and such vague allegations in time – that cannot be defended against because of vagueness – should not support a guilty verdict. I would say that no matter who is charged, Democrat or Republican.

If you want to read some background about how this lawsuit came to be, please see this by Byron York. And note the influence of George Conway.

[NOTE: By the way, I am so consistent that I have long maintained that the Paula Jones lawsuit against Bill Clinton should not have been allowed to go forward while Clinton was in office (a different legal principle is involved there, to be sure, than in the Carroll case), and that he should not have been questioned about similar conduct with Lewinsky in his deposition for the Jones trial. That latter point is similar to my stance on the Carroll suit; I don’t think similar behavior with other women should be relevant to whether a person was guilty of a particular type of behavior towards this woman, and the evidence about other women should be inadmissible. And yes, that makes the allegations more difficult to prove. Too bad. Justice isn’t always served, but protection against false allegations is very very very important. For everyone.]