March 28, 2023

 

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

The Zealous Efforts to “Get Trump” Continue Unabated

Friends,

Much of the media has been obsessed recently about a putative legal action which may be brought by New York DA, Alvin Bragg, against President Donald Trump. The possible decision by a convened grand jury would be an outrageous and politically-motivated perversion of the American justice system. In a real and horrifying sense, it would represent a culmination of the movement in our collective history when the legal and court apparatus of the nation has been suborned ideologically and made a weaponized arm of one political party—the party now in power—to suppress, proscribe, and eventually imprison the titular leader of the other political party and his supporters

In short, it would represent the replication of one of the worst and most onerous characteristics of the former Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. It would be, effectively, the end of the constitutionally-prescribed separation of powers that has served as a major component in our “regime of liberty,” so carefully—and tenuously—established by the Framers.

“A republic, if you can keep it,” Ben Franklin supposedly said of the new American federation, a federation in which executive, judicial, and representative powers were balanced, and liberty thus safeguarded. In recent times, overreach by the Executive and its insidious and increasing control of the Judiciary, while the Representative branch seems largely asleep-at-the-switch (or often cooperating) has meant the severe and ineluctable decline in that fragile balance.

The object of this usurpation and overturning of nearly all constitutional safeguards has been President Donald J. Trump: to prevent him at all costs from coming back into office as president, including engineering the final destruction of what remains of the old American republic to stop him. Trump’s election in 2016 and the fact that, unlike all other previous presidents for the last century, he was not part of the Washington DC Deep State “swamp,” that he was unpredictable, and that he essentially could not be bought off (after all he was already a millionaire many times over and did not need the money), meant that the elites of the Managerial State—to use James Burnham’s terminology—felt profoundly threatened.

Trump threatened not just the multiplicity of domestic programs and agencies, but, perhaps more importantly, the consensual globalist foreign policy of the US and its dutiful minions in Europe. The internationalist hegemony so desired by Washington and Brussels, with its thuggish assortment of prostituted “allies,” aka, NATO and such groups as the EU and the World Economic Forum, was, they believed, placed in peril—even if Trump, himself, was somewhat unaware of the forces he was unleashing.  His return to power must never be permitted to happen.

Thus, the various frenzied efforts, as Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz describes them in a recently published volume, to “Get Trump.” Trump did not play by their rules, even if as a political neophyte he occasionally took extremely bad advice, especially in some of his thoroughly awful appointments (e.g., John Bolton, Nikki Haley, General Jim Mattis, etc.), naming denizens of the Deep State to his government. Or, tried to unite an irretrievably split GOP.

A short catalog of attempts to defenestrate him is instructive. The accompanying venom and hysteria of a Deep State-compliant media (including Fox News and the Murdoch empire), which has sworn eternal vengeance is much like the wild, screaming rabble of Madame Dufarge awaiting the next beheading in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (1859): “We will not rest until we see Trump’s blood flowing in the streets!” they sneer as they supposedly report the news. In fact, they project their own scarcely-veiled vile and violent desires upon him and his supporters. Even formerly rational conservatives, like Carter Wrenn in North Carolina, who once aided Jesse Helms, have now joined the howling, irrational Never Trump mob.

Since his election in 2016 Donald Trump has been forced to confront:

1) Two major and utterly frivolous, politically-inspired impeachment efforts against him, charging that he was a “Russian agent” of Vladimir Putin and/or that his election was facilitated by the Russkies; with a totally bogus Mueller Report, which after millions of taxpayer dollars and the frenzied work of a dozen high-powered Democratic attorneys, finally came up with—nothing. “Russiagate” was an immense and costly fraud perpetuated on the American nation.

2) The creation of a partisan “star-chamber” congressional January 6 committee, populated by fanatical enemies of the president, zealously dedicated to shaping a very specific narrative on “the insurrection against our democracy,” using carefully-edited (mis)quotes and mired in vicious partisan malice. And then using it not only as an attempt “to get” the president  but to unleash a thoroughly politicized and weaponized FBI (and other intel agencies) to “root out domestic terrorists,” that is, any Trump supporter who would dare raise alarms about what is occurring, traditional Catholics, white middle class voters, Southerners and those who have the misfortune of living in what Jewish author Philip Roth once called “fly-over” country—basically any traditional American who worked a  forty hour week and paid taxes, had a traditional family, went to church, and lived outside the insane asylum known as California or the Socialist Republic of New England.

3) The infamous Mar-A-Lago raid, another “Aha!” moment, which has turned out to be a bust. President Trump supposedly had taken top secret documents to his home, against the law. The FBI made a highly-publicized, early-in-the-morning raid, with  accompanying media coverage by those Paul Craig Roberts has appropriately called “presstitutes.” Only to discover that Trump had already been in negotiations with the National Archives (NARA) about documents that perhaps needed to be transferred there, and that the president had, before leaving office, declassified others. Then, the whole issue collapsed with a colossal thud as hundreds of top secret documents were also found at Joe Biden’s home (from his tenure as vice-president when he had NO power to declassify) and in his garage, where the China-compromised Hunter Biden could have accessed them at any time. Suddenly, the “Mar-A-Lago” assault subsided from public view; the media seemed to bury any mention of it.

4) And the latest attempt has been the potential New York legal action, once again moored in hysterical hatred for Trump and his supporters. And the cast of actors in that unreal travesty makes the most absurd vocalists in any comic opera by Gilbert & Sullivan look like characters in a Shakespeare tragedy. One could not possibly dream up such insanity.

First, there is Stormy Daniels who has claimed that Donald Trump had an affair with her way back in 2006. Trump, then, supposedly had his former attorney, Michael Cohen, funnel $130,000 to Daniels to obtain her silence. Yet, in a sworn affidavit from January 2018, Daniels denied having such an affair, and Trump has consistently and strongly denied it.

Then, there is attorney Cohen, an inveterate liar who has been disbarred for malpractice. Although he has conveniently altered his story since then, on February 8, 2018, Cohen’s attorney Stephen Ryan wrote to the Federal Elections Commission that: “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford [AKA Daniels], and neither reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment directly or indirectly.” Cohen “used his own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford,” aka Daniels, to supposedly keep her quiet about the dubious 2006 affair. Yet, six months later he pled guilty to a laundry list of Federal charges, including supposedly “making an excessive campaign contribution to Trump… by paying Daniels to keep quiet about her alleged affair….”

Lastly, there is New York DA Alvin Bragg, a “woke” Democrat George Soros-supported protégé, whose ideological zeal and venom reveal far more about his “get Trump” motives than any niceties of legal and judicial procedure. At first Bragg was “encouraged” by the frenzied Left to prosecute the president whatever the cost, but more recently some prominent Democrats wonder if such a patently absurd prosecution might redound to Trump’s advantage. Even stalwart progressives like Andrew Cuomo have demurred: “I think it’s all politics and that’s what I think the people of this country are saying. It just feeds that anger and that cynicism and the partisanship. It’s a coincidence that Bragg goes after Trump and Tish James goes after Trump and Georgia goes after Trump? That’s all a coincidence? I think it feeds the cynicism and that’s the cancer in our body politic right now." And, of course, Cuomo has received fierce push back from more radical Leftists.

One of the more equanimous and measured analyses of the potential New York case is by Jonathan Turley, Professor of Public Interest Law at The George Washington University.

I transcribe it below:

“The moment that we are waiting for, we made it to the finale together” — those familiar words from “America’s Got Talent” — could well be the opening line for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg next week, when he is expected to unveil an indictment of former President Trump. With Trump’s reported announcement that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday, it would be a fitting curtain raiser for a case that has developed more like a television production than a criminal prosecution. Indeed, this indictment was repeatedly rejected only to be brought back by popular demand.

Trump faces serious legal threats in the ongoing Mar-a-Lago investigation. But the New York case would be easily dismissed outside of a jurisdiction like New York, where Bragg can count on highly motivated judges and jurors.

Although it may be politically popular, the case is legally pathetic. Bragg is struggling to twist state laws to effectively prosecute a federal case long ago rejected by the Justice Department against Trump over his supposed payment of “hush money” to former stripper Stormy Daniels. In 2018 (yes, that is how long this theory has been around), I wrote how difficult such a federal case would be under existing election laws. Now, six years later, the same theory may be shoehorned into a state claim.

It is extremely difficult to show that paying money to cover up an embarrassing affair was done for election purposes as opposed to an array of obvious other reasons, from protecting a celebrity’s reputation to preserving a marriage. That was demonstrated by the failed federal prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards on a much stronger charge of using campaign funds to cover up an affair.

In this case, Trump reportedly paid Daniels $130,000 in the fall of 2016 to cut off or at least reduce any public scandal [which denies, and she denied in 2018]. The Southern District of New York’s U.S. Attorney’s office had no love lost for Trump, pursuing him and his associates in myriad investigations, but it ultimately rejected a prosecution based on the election law violations. It was not alone: The Federal Election Commission chair also expressed doubts about the theory.

Prosecutors working under Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., also reportedly rejected the viability of using a New York law to effectively charge a federal offense.

More importantly, Bragg himself previously expressed doubts about the case, effectively shutting it down soon after he took office. The two lead prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, resigned in protest. Pomerantz launched a very public campaign against Bragg’s decision, including commenting on a still-pending investigation. He made it clear that Trump was guilty in his mind, even though his former office was still undecided and the grand jury investigation was ongoing.

Pomerantz then did something that shocked many of us as highly unprofessional and improper: Over Bragg’s objection that he was undermining any possible prosecution, Pomerantz published a book detailing the case against an individual who was not charged, let alone convicted.

He was, of course, an instant success in the media that have spent years highlighting a dozen different criminal theories that were never charged against Trump. Pomerantz followed the time-tested combination for success — link Trump to any alleged crime and convey absolute certainty of guilt. For cable TV shows, it was like a heroin hit for an audience in a long agonizing withdrawal.

And the campaign worked. Bragg caved, and “America’s Got Trump” apparently will air after all.

However, before 12 jurors can vote, Bragg still has to get beyond a series of glaring problems which could raise serious appellate challenges later.

While we still do not know the specific state charges in the anticipated indictment, the most-discussed would fall under Section 175 for falsifying business records, based on the claim that Trump used legal expenses to conceal the alleged hush-payments that were supposedly used to violate federal election laws. While some legal experts have insisted such concealment is clearly a criminal matter that must be charged, they were conspicuously silent when Hillary Clinton faced a not-dissimilar campaign-finance allegation.

Last year, the Federal Election Commission fined the Clinton campaign for funding the Steele dossier as a legal expense. The campaign had previously denied funding the dossier, which was used to push false Russia collusion claims against Trump in 2016, and it buried the funding in the campaign’s legal budget. Yet, there was no hue and cry for this type of prosecution in Washington or New York.

A Section 175 charge would normally be a misdemeanor. The only way to convert it into a Class E felony requires a showing that the “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” That other crime would appear to be the federal election violations which the Justice Department previously declined to charge.

The linkage to a federal offense is critical for another reason: Bragg’s office ran out of time to prosecute this as a misdemeanor years ago; the statute of limitations is two years. Even if he shows this is a viable felony charge, the longer five-year limitation could be hard to establish.

Of course, none of these legalistic problems will be relevant in the coming frenzy. It will be a case that is nothing if not entertaining, one to which you can bring your popcorn — so long as you leave your principles behind.

Indeed, some will view it as poetic justice for this former reality-TV host to be tried like a televised talent show. However, the damage to the legal system is immense whenever political pressure overwhelms prosecutorial judgment. The criminal justice system can be a terrible weapon when used for political purposes, an all-too-familiar spectacle in countries where political foes can be targeted by the party in power.

…we seem to be on the verge of watching a prosecution by plebiscite in this case. The season opener of “America’s Got Trump” might be a guaranteed hit with its New York audience — but it should be a flop as a prosecution.

This is what the American nation and its political and justice systems, so hopefully established in Philadelphia in 1787, have devolved into. We are one short step away from full totalitarianism.

The remedy does not lie in what Neoconservative Piers Morgan glowingly prescribed after a recent, blatantly soft-ball “interview” with Ron DeSantis on Fox News. To the fulsome applause of Neocon Brian Kilmeade, Morgan pronounced that DeSantis was “very organized…doesn’t like drama, likes things planned out.” In other words, the Florida governor would be the path back to GOP “normalcy”…and Karl Rove and the Bushies back in the White House. As for Trump, Morgan despectively derided him: he “thrives on chaos and drama and unpredictability, and being spontaneous and outrageous.”

Exactly! That’s the very thing that scares the dickens out of the frantic Left and the establishment Republican elites, all part of the Uniparty Deep State globalist swamp. And that is why the traditionalist populist MAGA voters elected Trump 2016: because the only way to stage any kind of counter-revolution against the rot in today’s broken America is to be spontaneous, uncontrolled, occasionally outrageous, and willing to say and do things that your father’s GOP honchos would never say or do.

That brings the filthy swamp denizens out of their fetid lairs and forces them to lower their masks of respectability. And what is revealed are faces of sheer satanic evil. A return to “normalcy” is a course which leads to continued perversion and destruction. Trump sends the Left shrieking in horror and may well provoke a real and final battle for our decaying republic. It may be our last opportunity.

Can we afford another “normal” presidency while Evil grows impregnable?

                                              March 19, 2023

 

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

Pedro Gonzalez’s Failed Attacks on Donald Trump

Friends,

Chronicles magazine is, by far, my favorite print journal. Over the many years I have subscribed, it has been on many occasions a life line, an excellent purveyor of solid, well-reasoned and expressed opinion and fact, often quite unique in that role. It is the leading voice of what some call “paleoconservatism,” or traditional conservatism. Now under its editor, Dr. Paul Gottfried, it continues and enhances that tradition of excellence.

One of its writers is Pedro L. Gonzalez, who serves as the journal’s political editor. Over the past couple of years I have read with interest and enthusiasm his columns, and delighted in seeing him interviewed by Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon (via Real America’s Voice). His commentaries are usually on target and convincing.

Which makes what I am about to write all the more difficult.

For Pedro Gonzalez also writes a column for Substack, called simply “Contra.”  And the other day, March 16, he authored a piece titled, “The Trump Trap,” which was nothing less than an attack on the former president, essentially accusing him of misleading his many supporters and doing it for personal gain.

It wasn’t the first time that he had taken a swipe at Trump, but it was by far the most virulent and, to be completely frank, fallacious…to the point that one has to wonder if such specious arguments could have been uttered seriously.

Please understand, I deeply appreciate the many contributions Pedro has made to conservative opinion. His appearances on the Carlson program and his essays in Chronicles have been stellar and admirable. But this full-out attack on President Trump seems out of character and disingenuous.

His general premise is that Donald Trump is asking his supporters “to go to the mat” for him, again, that is, to “protest” his potentially impending indictment by a frenzied Leftist Democrat New York DA, Alvin Bragg, on accusations regarding hush money supposedly paid to Stormy Daniels prior to the 2020 election as somehow violating election law.

Here is what Trump wrote on Truth Social which drew Gonzalez’s wrath:

“Now illegal leaks from a corrupt & highly political Manhattan district attorneys office, which has allowed new records to be set in violent crime & whose leader is funded by George Soros, indicate that, with no crime being able to be proven, & and based on an old & fully debunked (by numerous other prosecutors) fairy tale, the far & away leading Republican candidate & former President of the United State of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week [March 21]. Protest, take our nation back!.... It’s time!! We are a nation in steep decline, being led into World War III by a crooked politician who doesn’t even know he’s alive, but who is surrounded by evil & sinister people who, based on their actions on defunding the police, destroying our military, open borders, no voter I.D, inflation, raising taxes, & much more, can only hate our now failing USA. We just can’t allow this anymore. They’re killing our nation as we sit back & watch. We must save our America!! Protest, protest!!!” [Trump used all caps for these quotes]

Although Gonzalez does not openly express his opinion on the case, it seems pretty obvious that he believes Trump committed some sort of criminality. And he suggests that for Trump supporters to “protest” the actions of the Soros-supported Democrat activist who moonlights as a DA would be an “unforced error” on their part, just like January 6: “The stage has thus been set for another Jan. 6 scenario—the last trap Trump walked his base into.”

But in his eagerness to besmirch Trump he fails to mention the background and the context of the New York case, and the undeniable fact that it is, indeed, an obvious partisan “witch hunt,” one more attempt to “get” the former president, following on the various impeachment charades and the disgraceful Congressional January 6 Committee.

As respected legal scholar Jonathan Turley has written:

“Although it may be politically popular [among Democrats and leftists], the case is legally pathetic. Bragg is struggling to twist state laws to effectively prosecute a federal case long ago rejected by the Justice Department against Trump over his payment of “hush money” to former stripper Stormy Daniels…. The Southern District of New York’s U.S. Attorney’s office had no love lost for Trump, pursuing him and his associates in myriad investigations, but it ultimately rejected a prosecution based on the election law violations. It was not alone: The Federal Election Commission chair also expressed doubts about the theory…. the damage to the legal system is immense whenever political pressure overwhelms prosecutorial judgment. The criminal justice system can be a terrible weapon when used for political purposes, an all-too-familiar spectacle in countries where political foes can be targeted by the party in power….we seem to be on the verge of watching a prosecution by plebiscite in this case.” [my Italics]

Gonzalez first attempts to discredit President Trump’s contention that “the election had been stolen,” and he cites a report by a group specifically hired in the late weeks of 2020 by the Trump campaign to prove that. To acquire, then, what he details about the findings, he cites what “four people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post”—certainly a disinterested and scrupulously fair source!—that although there were “voting anomalies, irregularities in voting patterns, and instance of potential breaking or skirting the law,” they did not find enough things—enough votes—to swing the election.

Gonzalez admits that “the Democratic Party did play dirty, as Time admitted in a story about the ‘shadow effort’ on ‘an unprecedented scale’ to do just enough ‘fortifying’ during the 2020 election to defeat Trump. But that is just to say they cheated, fair and square.” (How is it possible to cheat “fair and square”?)

But he neglects to follow up on that admission. Yes, the “number of votes” counted for Joe Biden was considerably more than the impressive total tallied for Donald Trump (consider the huge Biden margin in California, for instance). But it is not just the vote totals, but how the election was set up and managed, and how during the months of the pandemic shutdown leftist Democrats loosened election laws, relaxed voter requirements, and extended times for absentee ballots in specifically six key states to actually enable a Biden victory. Among several authors, Mollie Hemingway has gone into minute detail on these actions by Democratic activists in the months prior to the 2020 election in her book, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections (October, 2021).

The correct approach for conservatives and Republicans for 2024 would be to either get voting laws back to where they were before 2020 or, at the very least, to match the well-oiled Democrat election apparatus. About this very legitimate complaint Gonzalez is mum.

Gonzalez insists that Trump’s call for protests over his potential indictment, and his call for protests on January 6 are very similar: “Indeed, the parallels are striking,” he declares.

Here is how he describes it:

“Trump would lead his base to Washington, encouraging them to march on the Capitol and into a trap set by his enemies. Though his team has worked hard to memory-hole the facts, Trump called the National Guard quicker on his own supporters than he did George Floyd rioters in 2020. He excoriated them the following day in a statement:

The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.

      Those “demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol” were only in D.C. because of him…”

Which, he states, is exactly what Trump wants them to do again, that is, “cross the Rubicon,” while he actually does nothing on their behalf.

Unfortunately, Pedro engages in some rather ungainly legerdemain in making this point.

At his rally at the other end of the Capitol Mall on January 6 President Trump urged the thousands of supporters who had assembled to “march to the Capitol and make their voices peacefully known.” I emphasis the world “peacefully.”

For it was that day that Trump had hoped that Vice-President Mike Pence would follow through on a highly debatable constitutional proposal enunciated by law Professor John Eastman, based on an interpretation of Article II, 1, cl. 2 of the US Constitution “which assigns to the legislatures of the states the plenary power to determine the manner of choosing electors.” Eastman’s Memo summarized in six pages how this might change the election outcome, noting that “important state election laws were altered or dispensed with altogether in key swing states and/or cities and counties. When the laws at issue were specifically designed to reduce the risk of fraud in absentee voting, those violations are particularly troubling,” and that constitutionally under the 12^th Amendment, with slates of contending electors, Pence could certify Trump’s election.

Of course, Pence did not follow the constitutional prescriptions of Professor Eastman. But on January 6 Trump still hoped that that untested legal theory might offer a favorable result. And, as a show of support he asked the assembled thousands to march down the Mall and make their views known…peacefully.

As we know almost certainly, among the large crowd and among the hundreds who did enter the Capitol building, there were agents provocateurs, Federal agents inserted into the crowd as Trump supporters whose job it was to actually provoke violence. Indeed, reporting by both Carlson and Bannon essentially confirms that, most notably the role of the mysterious Ray Epps.

When violence did break out caused by a few, Trump was criticized for not immediately condemning it. But he waited to acquire more details. And his statement, cited above by Gonzalez, is very specific: To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay. I emphasize here his words, “acts of violence and destruction.”  And recall, again, that on January 6 Trump urged his supporters to protest peacefully.

The argument here by Pedro is just plain disingenuous, and any person carefully reading both statements should be able to see the different and very specific wording. It cannot be clearer, and one is left with the impression that rationality and logic in his argument have taken a distant back seat to a visceral animus toward the Donald.

Then there is the issue of a possible mass presidential pardon by Trump of the January 6 protesters.  According to Gonzalez: “Politico and other outlets reported that Trump considered a blanket pardon for them while still in office. A White House staffer told me that one proposed model would have been based on President Jimmy Carter’s pardon for hundreds of thousands of draft dodgers. But Trump didn’t pull the trigger….”

The Politico article goes into far more detail. Trump indeed looked earnestly for a way to pardon those who entered the capitol. It recounts the serious debate among his legal staff in the waning days of the Trump presidency about the president’s ability to pardon potentially thousands of nameless people who were as yet uncharged with any crime (that came with Merrick Garland’s DOJ). Even in the case of Carter’s pardon for thousands of draft dodgers there had to be at least the name of a draft dodger so that the pardon could be applied legally “nominatim.” Between January 6 and January 20, the last days of Trump’s first presidency, the supposed offenses and names of those who would be persecuted by the Biden administration were not known. It has taken two years of research and charges are still being unveiled by Garland’s Gestapo.

As a result Trump’s attempts were unsuccessful. He has promised that one of the first acts he will do if elected is to pardon those imprisoned. Surely, Gonzalez must have realized that to pardon, even a mass of people, a president needs to narrow down the recipients by name. And in those waning days of January 2021 they were not available to the president.

For Gonzalez, then, both Trump’s actions relating to the January 6 event and his call for protests over the potential New York indictment, are intentional deceptions of his supporters, “a fundraising gimmick,” and he really could care less about his supporters.

A final arguments employed by Pedro goes as follows:

“…part of the right has hitched its wagon to Trump not because he is effective, loyal, or ruthless—but because he makes the left so angry, and, therefore, that must be good. But that is a terrible rationale. Trump is like a bullfighter who drapes the muleta over the head of an adoring grandma only to step out of the way and let the beast bore her, then demand the audience throw roses at his feet. Maybe he gets nicked. But it is his fans who get the horns.”

The object of Pedro’s ultimate attack is one that I have made in several published pieces in the past.

Here is a portion of what I wrote on November 4, 2022 (published on MY CORNER, my blog site, and also at The Unz Review, among other venues):

“Nationally, Trump again in the White House might well cause a major upheaval in Washington. I can visualize the possibility of members of Congress immediately demanding his removal; perhaps massive demonstrations organized by the Left would occur in Washington and other cities. Very likely violence would break out on a scale unequaled in American history. Possibly certain armed forces generals would refuse to take orders, while others did.

“Most of our larger cities are governed by Leftist insaniacs. The total breakdown in law and order, riots by crazed Leftist minions, would force the mayors of those “blue” cities to decide. Certainly, depending on how widespread and grave the anarchy was and how lackadaisical the government response was, locally-organized citizens’ militia could be organized to protect homes and businesses. In “red” states there would perhaps be more of a willingness to use the National Guard….

“No country—no nation—can withstand for any length of time disorder, chaos and internal violence on such a scale. Either order must triumph, or the country, the society, must disintegrate. We have seen that far too often in history.

“This is my reasoning for desiring a Trump victory in 2024. For he would undoubtedly provoke and release even more the frenzied, fanatical demons, those vile militants of a counter-reality who bid well to extinguish all which we hold to be good, wholesome, and true—to rupture our connections and linkage to our past and to history and to memory—and to replace them with Evil Incarnate. And just perhaps a previously somnolent populace would be forced to take action.

“This could give us perhaps the one and only real opportunity we might have to reverse the abject descent into the Inferno which we now experience….

“Far too many American conservatives, in the face of such evil, have yet to realize the depth of our predicament….

“I say bring it on, and sooner is probably better than later, for each succeeding month, each passing year, yields more power to Evil and less to the defenders of our civilization.”

Gonzalez misses (or ignores) the major point here. It’s not about just enraging the Left—which Trump’s re-election would surely do; it is more than that. It’s about carrying forth the counter-revolution that was begun in 2016; it’s about finally forcing the “progries” and the other miscreants out from the fetid swamp where they lurk, which Trump’s re-election might well produce; it’s about forcibly awakening the latent and remaining MAGA populists in “fly-over” country; it’s about, yes, protests and more; and, lastly, it’s about the realization that our enemies are highly organized and disciplined, and out for blood—OUR blood—and that we must counter them or perish. And that we probably have a limited time in which to accomplish that; each month, each year which passes puts us further on the path of progressivist tyranny.

We no longer live in a society where, as in Congress, the Uniparty of Democrats and Republicans can engage in polite contretemps, then go out and have a beer together, essentially celebrating how they have continued to pull the wool over the eyes of their hapless constituents. A return to “Republican normalcy” is unacceptable if we wish for the survival of anything resembling the America many of us grew up in.

Pedro Gonzalez’s attacks are fallacious and not based on the kind of solid logic we are accustomed to read by him. Using his arguments he has placed himself in dubious company. Per Newsweek, he finds himself in the midst of a rogue’s gallery such as:

Philip Lewis, a senior HuffPost editor;

Jon Cooper, co-founder of anti-Trump Super PAC The Democratic Coalition;

Grant Stern, executive editor of the left-wing group Occupy Democrats;

 

New York Times national correspondent Trip Gabriel;

 

Washington Post national columnist Philip Bump;

Ahmed Baba, president of ranttmedia, which claims to combat "authoritarianism"; and

The Atlantic columnist David Frum;

And not to forget, Representative Maxine Waters.

I cannot believe Pedro welcomes such company. 

Certainly, Donald Trump should not be immune from valid criticism. Indeed, for my part, in the past I have criticized, for example, some of his disastrous appointments (e.g., John Bolton, Nikki Haley, General Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis, Mike Pompeo, etc.) whom I believed contradicted and undercut his “America First” policies, at home and especially, abroad. He was trying, apparently, to unite the GOP, but that desire floundered and was—and is—impossible. On occasion we must cast a critical eye at measures and decrees emanating from a Trump White House and at the people responsible for them.

My earnest desire is that Pedro forego his transparently faulty arguments and return to the topics which have given him an approving readership.

                                          March 10, 2023

 

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

Tucker Carlson and the Uniparty: The New American Civil War is NOW

Friends,

The week of March 6-10, 2013, has been a pivotal time in the American political landscape. Beginning on Monday the 6^th, popular television personality Tucker Carlson, in his highly rated 8 p.m. primetime program, Tucker Carlson Tonight, initiated an unraveling of the contents of thousands of security videos which carefully record what actually occurred on January 6, 2021 at the US Capitol.

As Carlson detailed those tapes do not show an “insurrection.” Although there are a few isolated instances of minor property destruction at the Capitol (none of the demonstrators were armed), those isolated moments are far overshadowed by extensive film of dozens of pro-Trump supporters peacefully entering the building, and actually being assisted and guided around by Capitol police who open doors for them as if they were curious tourists.

Indeed, without doubt we know that DOJ/FBI agents provocateurs were planted in the crowd (replete with MAGA caps) and were responsible for attempting to incite violence.

On Monday evening, with lesser coverage following on Tuesday and Wednesday, Carlson patiently recounted the sequence of events and the multiple layers of lies and disinformation regurgitated by the infamous “House January 6 Committee.” What clearly comes through—and was illustrated amply by the film segments screened by Carlson—is that the J6 committee engaged in a giant coverup, massive lying, compounded by close media coordination, and, perhaps most egregiously, the totalitarian ukase from the Department of Justice that any opposition to Biden and the Uniparty which governs this nation is, ipso facto, “treason against our democracy.”

And, thus, hundreds of peaceful demonstrators from January 6, and countless others apparently on the Biden/Garland/DOJ “enemies list,” now find themselves jailed (without bond or proper recourse to legal counsel) or under close government scrutiny.  Those engaged in email communications, articles, texting, podcasting, etc. which oppose the DC Behemoth controlling our destiny are considered far more dangerous than any ISIS bomber or jihadist. Even “traditional Catholics” are designated by the FBI as “potential domestic terrorists.”

Carlson, alone among Fox News opinion broadcasters, highlighted this reality. Yet, as Steve Bannon via his informative “War Room” telecast on RealAmerica’sVoice (available now via the DISH satellite network, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV Plus, and several other platforms) queried: “It appeared from his comments on Monday that Carlson had more footage to air…but for some reason his coverage on succeeding nights, although revelatory, didn’t match his initial promise. What happened?”

Bannon, rightly, and several of his guests, including Darren Beattie of Revolver News, wondered out loud if Carlson had been recipient of pressure from the Murdochs, who now seem to be hueing a strictly neoconservative political line, as evidenced by the full-throated endorsements of Ron DeSantis and thinly-veiled attacks on Trump by his media empire (e.g., New York Post, Wall Street Journal), and the fact that Donald Trump has not appeared on Fox  since he declared his presidential candidacy for 2024, while Nikki Haley and DeSantis have appeared multiple times.

Be that as it may, the coverage over March 6-8 was sufficient to cause a firestorm among the mainstream media and prominent members of the Uniparty in Washington. Of course, Mitch McConnell and a number of GOP senators joined their bedfellow Chuck Schumer in harshly condemning Carlson, demanding at a minimum censorship, or, at worse, his removal from Fox. The utterly loathsome Senator Thom Tillis (Republican-NC) went so far as to call Carlson’s factual coverage “Bulls—t!”

Carlson’s response to the Uniparty apparatchiks  (The Independent, March 7) was telling:

“We should also tell you that Chuck Schumer, Senate majority leader, was joined in this outrage by the Senate minority leader and that would be a Republican, Mitch McConnell. And they were joined by a cascade of other Republicans, Thom Tillis from North Carolina. Mitt Romney from Utah all sharing the same outrage. And from this, we learn two things: One, you’re getting close to what they really care about. And you have to ask yourself why? Why is it so important that they would degrade themselves by telling such obvious lies and calling for censorship?

“The second thing we learned from this is that they’re on the same side ... so it’s actually not about left and right. It’s not about Republican and Democrat. Here you have people with shared interests. The open borders people ... the people like Mitch McConnell who are living in splendor on Chinese money. The people that underneath it all have everything in common are all aligned against everyone else—and that would include almost all news organizations in this country as well.”

The fury—the unleashed frenzied anger and hysteria—of the Uniparty, the Deep State globalist elites, knows no limit. It is at war, even violent war, with those it supposedly represents. It despises the hoi polloi, the average hard-working citizens who pay most of the taxes supporting the gargantuan and monstrous edifice centered in Washington (and Brussels) that increasingly treats us as serfs or slaves. “Legal” niceties and constitutional protections be damned—they are seen only as impediments to the ultimate control by the globalists.

After viewing Carlson’s reporting, President Trump suggested that members of the J6 committee and probably many others were guilty of felonies, possibly treason. That’s not an inflated or exaggerated accusation. For those elites who now dominate and oppress us, that explains their frenetic hatred of Donald Trump and what they despectively call “Trumpism,” which they correctly associate as inextricably joined at the hip with the 45^th president of the United States. Journalist and political theorist Darren Beattie (interviewed by Bannon) is correct about that: at present it is impossible to separate Trump from the MAGA populist rebellion. The Uniparty establishment understands this, even if some so-called “conservatives” do not and search for a “tame,” more genteel replacement for the Donald.

The sooner that rational, sensible Americans (and their cousins in Europe) realize this existing state of war, the better. It may be too late to reverse course; but that still does not relieve us of the obligation under God to oppose what is happening, and in every way and manner available to us.

*****

A video of the Carlson program from Monday, March 6, may be accessed at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjBOCuaiOnc

Transcripts of his opening monologues from March 7 and 8 are as follows:

The January 6 videos touch a nerve because they threaten Dems' lies

TUCKER CARLSON: The January 6 videos touch a nerve because they threaten Dems' lies (msn.com)

Opinion by Tucker Carlson • March 7, 2023

Last night, we aired video from surveillance cameras on Capitol Hill. That video was recorded 26 months to the day before January 6, 2021, and for 26 months, that footage was held from the American public. The January 6 Committee made certain. Now, the Justice Department also kept a lid on that video footage and in fact, in some cases, DOJ did not share it with criminal defendants who had been charged on January 6 in violation of their constitutional rights. 

We felt it was a public service to bring what we could to you. There was no justification for keeping the secret any longer and a powerful argument to be made that sunlight is always and everywhere the best disinfectant and in fact, because it was video evidence, it is to some extent self-explanatory.  

Anyone could look at the tape and decide what he or she thinks of it. The tape we showed last night indicated very clearly that Capitol Hill police in some cases escorted protesters through the Capitol as if they were giving a tour. They did that with Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman. At one point, they even tried to open locked doors on Chansley’s behalf. 

Chansley was sentenced to four years in prison for his crimes in the Capitol on January 6 and the video we showed you last night raises the obvious question: Why? On what grounds? The video we showed you last night also showed that Officer Brian Sicknick was not beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by protesters on January 6 as the media and Liz Cheney so often claimed. The video shows Sicknick walking around the building, apparently in good health, after he was supposedly killed. We showed you that video. You can make of it what you will. We also showed you video that proves Ray Epps, the mysterious protester who encouraged others to breach the Capitol, lied to the January 6 Committee about where he was on that day, but for some reason, the committee protected him anyway. He was not considered an insurrectionist. He was their ally. 

So, once again, you can draw whatever conclusions you like from that video. We have ours and we shared them with you, but it's really beyond debate that it is good for this country for Americans to be able to see it. The media and politicians, the people in charge, have talked about January 6 every day since it happened for 26 months and so at some point, the evidence should be presented to the public. In free countries, governments do not lie about protests as a pretext to gain more power for themselves. They don't selectively edit videos for propaganda services and then lie about them and fake hearings and show trials, but that's exactly what happened and every member of Congress should ask why that happened, but Democrats in the Senate, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, is not asking why. Instead, Chuck Schumer went on the Senate floor today to explode and to say that showing that video evidence of wrongdoing by the federal government, including the security forces, the police department, that Nancy Pelosi personally controlled, letting the public see any of that is a threat to democracy. 

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: Last night, millions of Americans tuned in to one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on cable television. Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment last night arguing the January 6 Capitol attack was not a violent insurrection. I don't think I've ever seen a primetime cable news anchor manipulate his viewers the way Mr. Carlson did last night. I don't think I've ever seen an anchor treat the American people and American democracy with such disdain.  

"There's nothing that shameful that has ever appeared on American television in the history of the media," and so on the basis of that, the self-evident outrage of showing the public video that it paid for and has a right to see, Chuck Schumer called for the censorship of that video — any information, and he did not dispute that it was accurate — the damage is a storyline his party constructed and used must be squelched. And Schumer's explicit on that point. Because that video contradicted lies told by the Democratic Party — Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Chuck Schumer demanded that our bosses pull this show off the air. 

SCHUMER: He's going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch — tell Carlson not to run a second segment of lies. I urge Fox News to order Carlson to cease propagating the big lie on his network and to level with their viewers about the truth — the truth behind the efforts to mislead the public. Conduct like theirs is just asking for another January 6 to happen.  

"It's a threat to democracy. Pull him off the air." A couple of obvious observations: You don't often see the Senate majority leader openly call for censorship on the floor of the Senate as if that was totally normal and didn't contradict the spirit and the letter of the First Amendment, but of course it does, but what's really happening here? What you're seeing is hysteria, the overstatement, the crazed hyperbole, the red-in-the-face anger. What is that? Well, it's not outrage, of course. It's fear. It's panic.  

Those videos, which we did not retouch, which we brought to you after running everyone by the Capitol Police to make certain that we didn't imperil anybody, and we told you that last night, those videos touch a nerve because they're a threat to the lies that Chuck Schumer has been telling for the last 26 months, and not just Chuck Schumer. We should also tell you that Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, was joined in this outrage by the Senate minority leader and that would be a Republican, Mitch McConnell, and they were joined by a cascade of other Republicans — Thom Tillis from North Carolina, Mitt Romney from Utah — all sharing the same outrage, and from this, we learn two things. 

One: You're getting close to what they really care about, and you have to ask yourself why? Why is it so important that they would degrade themselves by telling such obvious lies and calling for censorship? Why? What are they trying to protect? That might be worth exploring, and we plan to, and the second thing that we learn from this is that they're on the same side. The Senate majority leader joins the Senate minority leader — Thom Tillis, Mitt Romney. They're all on the same side. So, it's actually not about left and right. It's not about Republican and Democrat. Here you have people with shared interests, the open borders people, the people like Mitch McConnell, who are living in splendor on Chinese money, the people who underneath it all have everything in common are all aligned against everyone else, and that would include almost all news organizations in this country as well. 

So, if you're watching, this might be kind of interesting to keep a list, because one thing we learned today is that they're all in agreement with each other. They kind of outed themselves. They sort of showed their membership cards and whatever club this is to the public, so keep a list. If you want to know who's actually aligned, despite the illusion of partisanship, we found out today. We have a little more tape for you tonight. If you take three steps back, you may notice that the one person really who was never blamed for anything that happened on January 6 was the very same person who was in charge of the police force, the Capitol Hill police, that was charged with securing safety on January 6, and that person was Nancy Pelosi.  

If there was a security failure on January 6, and demonstrably there was, it was probably Nancy Pelosi's fault, and after looking at thousands of hours of footage, we came to the conclusion that many others have reached, which is the Capitol Police were not prepared for what happened, and that's fascinating when you think about it, because there was ample warning. The federal intel and law enforcement agencies knew perfectly well there could be a massive disturbance at the Capitol, but the frontline officers on duty that day didn't know and yet the people who kept that information from the frontline officers were overwhelmed by thousands of people milling around the Capitol building? The people who fell down on the job, who didn't do their job, they were not punished. They were rewarded, and you have to ask yourself, why is that? 

We knew there was a reason leaders hid the January 6 tapes

TUCKER CARLSON: We knew there was a reason leaders hid the January 6 tapes (msn.com)

Opinion by Tucker Carlson • March 8, 2023

One of the hallmarks of people who are telling the truth, in case you were wondering how to tell the difference, is that people who are telling the truth are calm. You don't wave their hands around and make wild accusations. They don't need to do that. It's enough to say what they know and if honest people turn out to be wrong about something they have claimed, they'll admit it. They don't double down on false. They made a mistake and that's okay. It's not like they're claiming to be God. 

Liars behave differently. Liars are touchy, sometimes to the point of hysteria. They're hiding something. That's the whole point of lying and they're worried you're going to find out what it is. Liars are fragile because over time, lying makes you weak and afraid and has the same effect on countries by the way. 

We're living through one of those clarifying moments. Actually, we're thankful for it, where we're learning exactly who the liars are. On Monday, we showed you unreleased videotape from January 6. It proved, that tape proved, that three of the most important claims our leaders have made about that day were untrue. Their claims were lies. We were not shocked to discover that. We knew there was a reason that congressional leaders had been hiding the tape and that reporters in Washington weren't demanding to see it. They were lying to us obviously. That's why you hide things.

But what was actually surprising, what we can't quite get over even now, is how they responded when they were caught lying. They didn't seem embarrassed. They didn't apologize. They weren't even curious to learn more about what actually happened on January 6. Let's see the tape. No, they don't want to see it. They exploded in rage. And then as liars tend to do, they doubled down.  

They told the same lies they'd been caught telling, but with even greater aggression this time. Shut up. It's midnight, they said, as the sun rose behind them. Who acts like that? Well, sociopaths do and in this case, the sociopaths turned out to be both Democrats and Republicans. The commitment to lying in Washington is far deeper and more bipartisan even than we realize, and we follow this stuff for a living. 

Now, you sometimes hear people say that the whole partisan system is an illusion and that underneath the manufactured debates, the leaders on both sides are, in fact, secretly united in a common love of money and power and the deception required to get them. And honestly, we can never really bring ourselves to believe that. It's just too dark. But now we do believe it because we have seen it. 

Consider the death of police officer Brian Sicknick. Now, we still don't know exactly how Officer Sicknick died. We're not certain that anyone does know. No one has explained it, but after reviewing the previously withheld video evidence, we can tell you with certainty that Officer Sicknick was not beaten to death by Trump voters at the Capitol.  

The tape shows very clearly Brian Sicknick walking through the building in apparent health after the media told us for two years that he had been murdered. So, they were wrong about that. Ok. They got caught. Here's the interesting thing. They won't admit it. Liz Cheney's tweet is still on Twitter tonight. "Officer Sicknick was killed defending our Capitol from the violent mob on January 6." No correction. Anderson Cooper of CNN still has not apologized "Officer Brian Sicknick died after being hit the head with a fire extinguisher during the fight," he told us. Those are lies. Why not just admit it and move on? They won't. 

In fact, this week, the White House trotted out both the press secretary and Joe Biden's attorney general, the attorney general of the United States, to claim not just that Brian Sicknick was actually murdered by Republicans at the Capitol, but that other officers were murdered, too. It's almost beyond belief. Watch this.  

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: The wide range of bipartisan lawmakers, you heard them all yesterday, you guys reported on it, who have condemned this false depiction of the unprecedented violent attack on upon our Constitution and the rule of law, which cost police officers their lives.  

MERRICK GARLAND: It was a violent attack on a fundamental tenet of American democracy, that power is peacefully transferred from one administration to another. Over 100 officers were assaulted on that day. Five officers died.  

"Five officers died on that day." Now, that's just not some guy on Twitter. That's the attorney general of the United States. That's a man whose honesty is central to his job. If you had a choice between IQ and integrity in an attorney general, of course you go with integrity because it's essential, but Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, is a liar. He just lied about something that is provably false. Who are these five officers who were "killed that day"?

Notice he didn't tell you. No one ever tells you. No one ever shows you their autopsies. They don't want any detail. They just want the slogan. Now they're counting Brian Sicknick. That's a lie. But who are the other four? Well, those are four officers who killed themselves after January 6, in some cases long after January 6. But their suicides, we know for a fact, were the result of the Republican mob at the Capitol. But that's just false, and it's not some esoteric fact.  

That fact is available to anyone who has internet access. No police officers died that day on January 6, none, not one. Some were assaulted. That is true and their assaults are indefensible. How many were assaulted? Garland said over 100. The Government Accountability Office says the number is 114, and we're just going to roll with that. We don't know if it's true, but we'll take it at face value and that is bad. We are opposed to assaulting police officers in any context. We said that on January 6, 2021. We'll say it again. We're against that.

But is January 6 the worst assault on the U.S. government since the Civil War? That's insane. It's not even close. How about March of 1954, when Puerto Rican separatists shot five congressmen in the Capitol building – five members of Congress shot in the building. It's all bad, but the worst since the Civil War? You’re just a flat-out liar if you're saying that.  

More recently, this is an event we all remember, Antifa descended on Washington, D.C to force the sitting president from office. But it was Trump, so that's cool, and why they were there. They set a historic Christian church on fire, St. John’s in Lafayette Square. Do you remember that? You should, because it happened Labor Day weekend less than three years ago and when that happened, the left-wing mayor of Washington, D.C. refused to allow her police department, the MPD, to assist Secret Service agents while they were under siege and getting beaten. No, she made her cops stand back and watch it happen, and they were very upset about it at the time. You may have forgotten that. Here's what it looks like. 

REPORTER: I believe there are several fires raging now down this street and this is what you hate to see. There are people throwing fireworks and who knows what else. They just set fire to St. John's Church. 

Burning a church across from the White House. Those are the George Floyd riots. What was the toll there? Now, we're not going to guess. We're going to go again right to the government, according to a recently released jail report last month. During those attacks, the 2020 attack on the White House by left wing mobs, "Federal Protective Services, the Secret Service and the Park Police reported that at least 180 officers were injured during the demonstrations, including concussions, lacerations, exposure to chemical gas and severe burning." 

So, while stipulating that all riots are bad because precision matters, facts matter, the truth matters, here's the truth: More cops were injured by Kamala Harris's favorite mob, BLM, at the White House than were injured by Trump voters at the Capitol on January 6, a lot more. So, again, to be clear, both events are bad, but here's the key. We only remember one of them. Why? Because the people in charge of history are liars - liars, And lying is bad and on a national scale, it's deadly. It's corrosive of everything that is good in the country, including trust and your grasp on reality itself and that's what they try to make. 

You lie. Men can become women. Climate change is an existential threat, or whatever the lie is they're making you tell, they don't believe it. They know you don't believe it, but by forcing you to repeatedly degrade and control you, they make you less of a person. They also hurt individuals. We told you Monday about Navy veteran Jacob Chansley. He was tried by the media, convicted of being a domestic terrorist and sentenced to four years in prison. What exactly was Jacob Chansley's crime? Well, no one's ever very precise about that. Here's what the media told you.  

ABC: It was in his horned helmet, fur pelts and face paint, Jacob Chansley became known as the QAnon shaman, but prosecutors called him the most prominent symbol of a violent insurrection.  

CNN: He's been in jail since January and he's trying to get out, but prosecutors say he is still too dangerous to release.  

MSNBC: Make no mistake, Chansley is a stone-cold thug. 

CBS: Oh, he kept saying, you know, "I'm not violent, I'm peaceful, I'm a shaman," but then you put those images, what you were just talking about, you put those images together, and that isn't an image of, you know, of peace. This is the new face of extremism. 

"It's the new face of extremism. Jacob Chansley is the new face of extreme extremism. He's a stone-cold thug. Prosecutors say he is too dangerous to release." And most people believe that because why wouldn't they? They were told it and there was no evidence to the contrary and now there is evidence to the contrary. We brought it here, Monday. The video that we reviewed at great length over three weeks showed with precision what Jacob Chansley actually did inside the Capitol and here's what it looks like once again.  

TUCKER CARLSON: Here's video of Chansley in the Senate chamber. Capitol police officers take him to multiple entrances and even try to open locked doors for him. We counted at least nine officers who were within touching distance of unarmed Jacob Chansley. Not one of them even tried to slow him down. Chansley understood that Capitol Police were his allies. Video shows him giving thanks for them in a prayer on the floor of the Senate. Watch.  

JACOB CHANSLEY, "QANON SHAMAN": Thank you, Heavenly Father for taking the inspiration needed to these police officers to let us into the building.  

Contrast the reality of what Jacob Chansley did in the Capitol building on January 6, the indisputable facts recorded on video, some of which has never before been seen, with the depiction of Jacob Chansley that you've seen in the media for more than two years. He's a terrorist, they said, he should be killed.  

STEVE SCHMIDT [a former George Bush advisor!]: Shoot him. Shoot him. Like is it you burst into the United States, if he was dressed like bin Laden, would they have shot him?  

CARLSON: "Shoot him, Shoot him." It makes you wonder who are the violent extremists here? So, as you saw and again, details matter because this is a man, this is an American citizen, a Navy veteran. This is a human being and so what he actually did should be of deep concern to every American because he's in jail tonight. What Jacob Chansley actually did was wander peacefully through the Capitol, shepherded by Capitol police officers who literally opened doors for him. When one was locked, they went to another. 

Dozens of officers stood and watched him. All of them had guns. Jacob Chansley did not. They never told Jacob Chansley to get out. The head of the Capitol Police today said we he was just trying to calm the situation. It was already calm. He was the only protester in the frame. They could have let him outside. They didn't. They helped him. We're not going to speculate as to why. We don't know why. All we know is what we see on the tape and no one disputes it. We didn't cherry-pick it. We didn't make it up. 

Once inside the Senate chamber, as we told you, Chansley said a prayer, thanking God for the kindness of Capitol Hill police and good for him. They were kind. This was not a domestic terrorist and that matters, but what matters even more is the videos that we showed you after 26 months were not shown to Jacob Chansley's attorneys. That's a violation of the Constitution. and he's in jail because of it, because the liars on the January 6 Committee and the prosecutors who did their bidding and that means Bennie Thompson and that means Adam Schiff. It means Liz Cheney. These people have this man's life on their hands.  

They helped withhold these videos from Jacob Chansley's attorneys and that means the judge who sentenced Jacob Chansley, Royce Lamberth, never saw them either and therefore...Judge Lamberth was able to say that what Chansley did was "horrific." He apparently had no idea that Chansley was wandering around with the cops, walking through doors they opened and saying prayers for them. We're quoting: "you made yourself the center of the riot," said the judge. Really? He accused Chansley of "obstructing the functioning of government." 

That's not at all what was happening. He was ambling through the Capitol, flanked at all times, by armed cops were directing his movement. Meanwhile, prosecutors of the DOJ, the real villains here, falsely, they lied in court and said that Chansley was "leading the charge into the Capitol on January 6." They said he was, "the flag bearer for the mob," apparently because he had a flag. He was alone and of course, the media picked up on this and amplified it as the DOJ intended. 

Fortune Magazine disgraced itself by comparing the man you just saw to ISIS. They said Chansley had "the zeal to possibly kidnap or kill officials." These aren't just lies. These are lies that destroyed a man. So, no matter who you voted for in the last election, you could probably agree that sending someone to prison for four years on the basis of fabricated evidence is the most serious threat to civil liberties we could possibly face.

And yet, here's the thing: Leaders in both parties, the party that Chansley voted against and the party he voted for, have said nothing, not one word about the implications of this videotape, the implications not just for Chansley, but for our Constitution and our country going forward.  

Instead, oh, how dare you show this? What is clearly exculpatory evidence! Again, it's not just Chuck Schumer, it's Republican senators Kevin Cramer, Mike Rounds, Chuck Grassley, John Thune, Lindsey Graham, of course, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, needless to say, Kelly Armstrong, all went after us. We're not whining about that. We don't care, actually, but it just tells you everything about the way things actually work. They're not loyal to their voters. They are loyal to each other, and they're willing to lie, really lie and crush people. Mitch McConnell, Thom Tillis and BLM superfan Mitt Romney, all weak men – and like all weak men, vicious men – were especially angry. Watch.  

MITCH MCCONNELL: It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that's completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here in the capital thinks.  

THOM TILLIS: I think it's bull----. When you see police barricades breached, when you see police officers assaulted, all of that, or you had to be in close proximity to it, if you were just a tourist, you should have probably lined up at the visitor center and came in on an orderly basis. I just don't think it's helpful.  

MITT ROMNEY: It's really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails that bad. The American people saw what happened on January 6. They've seen the people that got injured. They saw the damage to the building. You can't hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes and saying this is what went on. It's so absurd. 

Weak men are vicious men, and these are weak men whose attitudes towards an individual whose life has been destroyed on the basis of false and withheld evidence is vicious. Oh, we cherrypicked? Really? What they're saying, ironically, what they're describing, ironically, is exactly what the January 6 Committee and the prosecutors in these cases did for two years. They selectively picked small segments of tape to convince Americans that January 6 was something that it wasn't. 

It was awful. We would not defend that. We hate vandalism. We hate assault. Was it a violent insurrection? It was not. Was it a killing of five officers in the Capitol? It was not. Those are lies, and they buried tape that contradicted and revealed those lies.  

So, all we did was play the tape that they had been hiding for 26 months and show that there were American citizens, Jacob Chansley specifically, and others who civil liberties were annihilated, and you can make your own rational judgments about what that means. Do you want to live in a country where that's possible? They don't care. Neither party in Washington cares. 

In fact, the leader of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, just joined the leader of the Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell, in calling for this show to be pulled off the air. Now, that's not an argument based on logic. It's based on hysteria and the shame you feel as a weak and terrified person when your lies are exposed. Here's Chuck Schumer claiming for the first time that, like Sandy Cortez, he himself nearly died on January 6. 

CHUCK SCHUMER: Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment last night arguing the January 6 Capitol attack was not, not, a violent insurrection, an attempt to rewrite history and erode the very foundation of our precious and sometimes fragile democracy. So, yes, this morning I am furious. Millions of Americans are furious. I was here on January 6. Many of you saw the footage as I ran for my life coming within a few feet of these criminals. 

We invited Schumer on, McConnell, anybody is always welcome to come on our show. If we got something wrong, tell us how. If you think we altered the tape in some way, tell us how.

But they won't, nor will they answer the most basic question, which is: why should a non, demonstrably nonviolent man, who literally said a prayer of Thanksgiving for police officers on the Senate floor, how was that man ISIS? How was he a domestic terrorist? How is he a threat to the republic? Why is he in jail for four years? Shut up. Pull that show off the air. 

They won't answer any questions, but we have a question, which is: How, in a free country guided by the Constitution, were these people allowed to withhold evidence from Jacob Chansley's lawyer? How could that happen?