Category: US Politics

President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign team is reportedly coming up with nicknames for opponents he may face in the presidential race and they appear to have settled on one for former Vice President Joe Biden.

The New York Post reports that “the current favorite for the former veep is ‘Creepy Joe’ — a reference to Biden’s supposed habit of touching and kissing strangers and staffers alike.”

Trump has often used nicknames to brand political opponents — a tactic that has proven to be successful in the past, most notably with “Crooked” Hillary Clinton.

If the campaign decides to use “Creepy Joe” on Biden, the former Vice President may have a hard time shaking the label as even left-wing media outlets have admitted he has a disturbing pattern of touching people:

• The Washington Post: “What are we going to do about Creepy Uncle Joe Biden?”
• Daily Beast: “Dear Lord Would Joe Biden Be a Terrible Candidate for These Times”
• Huffington Post: “Joe Biden 2020 Is A Terrible Idea In A Post-Weinstein America”
• VICE: “Joe Biden Is the Last Person the Democrats Should Run in 2020”

Another issue that Biden will face are allegations that he repeatedly got naked in front of female Secret Service agents who found his behavior to be highly offensive.

Last year, Turning Point USA’s Richard Armande Mills compiled a list of many of the instances where Biden engaged in touching that many have found to be disturbing:

Politico accused President Donald Trump of “cyberbullying” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) with an apparently deliberate typo on Sunday in which he referred to the incoming House Intelligence Committee chair as “little Adam Schiff.”

So funny to see little Adam Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate, but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2018

In covering Trump’s tweet, Politico’s Quint Forgey called the president’s tweet “his crudest nickname yet for a political rival,” and suggested Trump was guilty of “cyberbullying”:

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the president’s misspelling of Schiff’s name was intentional. The office of first lady Melania Trump, who has championed anti-cyberbullying efforts through her “Be Best” initiative, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The “f” key is near the “t” key on a typical QWERTY keyboard, but the president’s errant spelling of Schiff’s surname was almost certainly deliberate.

In his post-midterm election press conference, Trump stressed that he wanted to work with Democrats in the U.S. House, but would fight them if they insisted on crippling his administration through investigations. Trump warned Democrats against a “warlike posture.”

Schiff has insisted for two years that there is “more than circumstantial evidence” of “collusion” between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government, though such evidence has yet to emerge. On Sunday, he objected to the appointment of Matthew Whitaker as Acting Attorney General in place of Jeff Sessions, who resigned earlier this month and had recused himself from the Russia investigation after taking office in 2017.

In response to Trump’s tweet, Schiff responded:

Wow, Mr. President, that’s a good one.

Was that like your answers to Mr. Mueller’s questions, or did you write this one yourself? https://t.co/Yd27sayt7C

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) November 18, 2018

Schiff’s own Twitter feed is full of anti-Trump tweets, including a claim that Trump is the “worst president in modern history.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

President Donald Trump mocked Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who is expected to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in a tweet on Sunday, calling him “little Adam Schitt.”

“So funny to see little Adam Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate, but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate!” Trump tweeted around 1 p.m.

So funny to see little Adam Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate, but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2018

About 30 minutes after the president’s tweet, Schiff tweeted:

Wow, Mr. President, that’s a good one.

Was that like your answers to Mr. Mueller’s questions, or did you write this one yourself? https://t.co/Yd27sayt7C

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) November 18, 2018

Schiff appeared earlier Sunday on ABC’s This Week, vowing to challenge President Trump’s appointment of acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker.

“I think the appointment is unconstitutional. He is clearly a principle officer and the fact that he is a temporary principle officer doesn’t mean that that is any less subject to Senate confirmation,” he said.

The Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 allows for someone to serve in an acting capacity for 210 days as long as that official served in in the same department in a fairly high-ranking position for at least 90 days. Schiff argued there are special rules at the Justice Department to determine who becomes acting attorney general.

He also threatened to “expose” whether Whitaker has had any involvement in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign.

Before joining the Justice Department as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff in 2017, Whitaker wrote op-eds and appeared on TV discussing his views about the investigation. He has said the investigation should not investigate the president’s finances that are unrelated to the question of whether there was collusion with the Russians.

“We will expose any involvement he has in it. He needs to know that if he takes any action to curb what Mr. Mueller does, we’re going to find out about it. We’re going to expose it. And I would certainly call on my colleagues right now to avoid the constitutional crisis, take action now, speak out against this appointment,” Schiff said.

It is not the first time Trump has trolled Schiff with a nickname. He has previously called him “Liddle Adam Schiff.”

At some point, this has to be a sick practical joke, right?

There’s no possible way that the state of Florida can be this bad at voting, is there? For crying out loud, voting is “only” one of the most important practices this country was founded on.

And yet, just when you think Florida couldn’t get any worse when it comes to tallying votes, the Sunshine State finds ways to put a cloud over its  reputation.

It’s no secret that there is extreme incompetence at the top, with Broward County election official Brenda Snipes being a chief example. Whether she’s giving laughably bad interviews or exhibiting borderline malicious incompetence, Snipes represents the very worst of what’s wrong with voting in Florida.

But she’s far from the only problem — and Broward County isn’t the only place in Florida that’s embarrassing itself on the national state.

TRENDING: Trump Points Out the ‘Ironic’ ‘Con’ of the Migrant Caravan

One county to the north of Broward, Palm Beach County’s election supervisor is Susan Bucher, a women who gives Snipes a run for her money in the incompetence sweepstakes.

And Palm Beach is providing the latest troubling example of what happens when incompetence trickles down to election workers, according to a New York Times report from Friday.

The Times reports that Palm Beach County found “dozens of precincts missing a significant number” of votes during the machine recount.

Bucher, apparently immune to any potential wrongdoing, pointed the blame at an “overheated and outdated ballot-scanning machine.”

“its technicians had witnessed Palm Beach County elections workers, apparently worried that one of the machines was running too fast, jam a paper clip into the scanner’s ‘enter’ button in an effort to slow it down. That, in turn, caused a short circuit”https://t.co/yTgfceVkFp

— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) November 17, 2018

Dominion Voting, the manufacturer of that machine, fired back, pointing the finger of blame at Bucher’s oversights.

Having sent technicians over to help address the various technical issues the ballot machines were facing, those technicians reportedly saw some jaw-dropping incompetence from Bucher’s staff.

The technicians reportedly “witnessed Palm Beach County elections workers, apparently worried that one of the machines was running too fast, jam a paper clip into the scanner’s ‘enter’ button in an effort to slow it down.”

That is the kind of solution a 5-year-old child comes up with when his PlayStation controller isn’t working properly. It should not be the go-to response for election workers.

RELATED: Leftists Claim Gillum Lost Florida Because of Racists, Forget Obama Won State Twice

Worse yet, technicians were literally there, seeing as how they witnessed it. So instead of bothering to ask for help from people who are eminently qualified, these election workers chose to jam a paper clip into a voting machine. Utterly unbelievable.

“That, in turn, caused a short circuit that cut off the power” to the voting machine, according to what the company spokeswoman told the Times.

Kay Stimson, Dominion Voting’s vice president for government affiars, summed up the situation in dry terms, according to the Miami Herald:

“Based on what our technicians witnessed on site and reported to the company thus far, there is a strong indication that nonstandard operation of the equipment and human error did more to contribute to the issues than the equipment itself.”

(It’s pretty clear that jamming a paper clip into the “enter” button qualifies as “nonstandard operation of the equipment.” The phrase “human error” is putting it charitably.)

While there is a tinge of humor to the general idiocy of these election workers, it’s a gravely serious matter. The issues from breaking the machine were so serious “that the county was unable to complete its machine recount on time and its results were not included in the state vote totals.”

Those are honest American voters whose voice is being squelched by sheer incompetence. That is not okay, in any way, shape or form.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

 Newly-elected Congressman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is saying that she will back an effort by a new Democratic party organization, Justice Democrats, to make the party more liberal and “diverse.” 

That means that some Democratic congressmen who don’t back the Justice Democrat agenda will be challenged in the primary.

Politico:

“Long story short, I need you to run for office,” Ocasio-Cortez said Saturday on a video conference call hosted by Justice Democrats, as the group launched a campaign dubbed “#OurTime.” Justice Democrats supported Ocasio-Cortez’s primary campaign against powerful Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.).

“All Americans know money in politics is a huge problem, but unfortunately the way that we fix it is by demanding that our incumbents give it up or by running fierce campaigns ourselves,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “That’s really what we need to do to save this country. That’s just what it is.”

It’s an interesting concept; “saving” the country by destroying it.

The incoming congresswoman’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, a co-founder of Justice Democrats, was blunter.

“We need new leaders, period,” he said on the call. “We gotta primary folks.”

The group said they want Democratic members of Congress to be representative of their diverse communities and support liberal policies like Medicare for all, abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department, implementing a “Green New Deal,” and rejecting corporate PAC donations. On the campaign trail, Ocasio-Cortez talked about forming a “corporate-free caucus” as a means to push for reform. That type of group, if it forms, could turn out to be the left’s counterpart to the Freedom Caucus, which pushed Republican leadership to the right.

“I don’t think people who are taking money from oil and gas companies should be drafting climate legislation,” Ocasio-Cortez said on the call.

Ocasio-Cortez will find out the hard way what happens to freshmen members who start trying to throw their weight around. More senior Democrats are very likely to slap her down right quick. Indeed, a frosh member threatening to primary incumbents might very well find herself – and her Justice Democrats – on the outside looking in. 

Any legislation she and her fellow rebels want to have considered by the new Democratic majority will somehow get lost on the way to the floor. In fact, it might not even make it to committee. There’s a way things work on the Hill and, while the occassional new member makes a splash, they almost always operate within the context of party rules. And rule #1 is don’t step out of line by threatening long time members.

Is she naive or just stupid? Given many of her past statements on the issues, I would believe the latter rather than the former.

 Newly-elected Congressman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is saying that she will back an effort by a new Democratic party organization, Justice Democrats, to make the party more liberal and “diverse.” 

That means that some Democratic congressmen who don’t back the Justice Democrat agenda will be challenged in the primary.

Politico:

“Long story short, I need you to run for office,” Ocasio-Cortez said Saturday on a video conference call hosted by Justice Democrats, as the group launched a campaign dubbed “#OurTime.” Justice Democrats supported Ocasio-Cortez’s primary campaign against powerful Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.).

“All Americans know money in politics is a huge problem, but unfortunately the way that we fix it is by demanding that our incumbents give it up or by running fierce campaigns ourselves,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “That’s really what we need to do to save this country. That’s just what it is.”

It’s an interesting concept; “saving” the country by destroying it.

The incoming congresswoman’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, a co-founder of Justice Democrats, was blunter.

“We need new leaders, period,” he said on the call. “We gotta primary folks.”

The group said they want Democratic members of Congress to be representative of their diverse communities and support liberal policies like Medicare for all, abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department, implementing a “Green New Deal,” and rejecting corporate PAC donations. On the campaign trail, Ocasio-Cortez talked about forming a “corporate-free caucus” as a means to push for reform. That type of group, if it forms, could turn out to be the left’s counterpart to the Freedom Caucus, which pushed Republican leadership to the right.

“I don’t think people who are taking money from oil and gas companies should be drafting climate legislation,” Ocasio-Cortez said on the call.

Ocasio-Cortez will find out the hard way what happens to freshmen members who start trying to throw their weight around. More senior Democrats are very likely to slap her down right quick. Indeed, a frosh member threatening to primary incumbents might very well find herself – and her Justice Democrats – on the outside looking in. 

Any legislation she and her fellow rebels want to have considered by the new Democratic majority will somehow get lost on the way to the floor. In fact, it might not even make it to committee. There’s a way things work on the Hill and, while the occassional new member makes a splash, they almost always operate within the context of party rules. And rule #1 is don’t step out of line by threatening long time members.

Is she naive or just stupid? Given many of her past statements on the issues, I would believe the latter rather than the former.

Kyrsten Sinema might not be able to stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shoot someone, and lose no support, but she could and did insult the very voters she was trying to woo and be the next duly-elected senator from the Copper State.

The former Green Party gadfly and 9th Congressional District Representative has at last been declared the winner of Jeff Flake’s departed Senate seat. She’s the first Arizona Democrat to win a Senate election in 30 years.

She’s also the first high-profile politician that I know who spent decades mocking her own constituents as drug-addled nincompoops, only to, in the end, receive their backing. Sinema’s record of contempt for her own people is nonpareil. The way she openly and endlessly complains about the loons in her state is akin to an elderly crank who never stops complaining about the one time the cable company once tried to upcharge him for Showtime.

A big smile conceals a inner sneer? (US House photo [cropped])

On multiple occasions, Sinema has referred to her home state as “crazy,” a “meth lab for democracy,” and an accursed place no good ever emerges from. Not once, it seems, did she ever stop to think how this obloquy reflects on her: an Arizonan, after all. One is reminded of Flaubert’s classic quote: “By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.”

Despite her best attempts to shower voters with disdain, Sinema defeated her opponent, Martha McSally, a decorated war pilot with the distinction of being the first woman to ever fly a U.S. Air Force combat mission. Perhaps the self-loathing Arizonan was right this whole time: Arizonans went with the pink-tutu accoutered Taliban sympathizer over a distinguished veteran. Quite a fine accomplishment for a state previously represented by the late John McCain.

Sinema’s low opinion of Arizona was not hidden. She’s been an elected representative for years. But opposition researchers didn’t disseminate the incriminating clips far and wide until the Senate campaign. Voters knew of their existence. They elected Sinema anyway.

The episode is reminiscent of the scene in “All the King’s Men” where Broderick Crawford’s Willie Stark rants and raves at the crowd, calling them all dirt-poor hicks, but wins their affection anyway. Stark’s shtick works because he, too, is an ignorant hayseed, kept down by otherworldly forces beyond his control.

Sinema is different. Like most liberals, she believes her intellect to be far above the average, her tastes more refined than the crude proclivities of the masses.

Which gets to the paradoxical truth about many left-liberals running for public office: Often times, they despise the very people they’re entrusted with representing. In more extreme cases, they’re hostile to the society in which they assume a leading position.

Sineme isn’t the only Democrat with an abiding disgust for her constituents. London Lamar, who was just elected to the Tennessee State House, had to apologize for calling her state “racist” and Republicans “uneducated” in a Facebook video she posted after winning her uncontested race. There was Barack Obama’s infamous quip about bitter laid-off factory workers clinging to “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” to make up for their failures. And then there’s the supercilious ice queen herself, Hillary Clinton, decrying Trump’s “basket of deplorables.”

The incongruent dynamic — man or woman running for public office with unbridled scorn for the very electorate — is one of the ways in which pure democracy is left failing. What bigger mark of failure is there than a social system that creates the means for its own destruction?

The irony of liberals’ open derision of voters is that it results in the exact electoral outcomes they try to prevent. Donald Trump won the presidency based largely on courting a constituency fed up with condescending urbanites. The United Kingdom voted to leave the Europe Union out of sense of inferiority: too many Brits felt unappreciated by bureaucrats in Brussels.

“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment…and on the love of country,” Alexander Hamilton wrote. Countries don’t survive when their leaders contemn the very citizens who constitute them. And they certainly don’t last long when voters, knowing full well their negative estimation, elect politicians who deplore them anyway.

Kyrsten Sinema might not be able to stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shoot someone, and lose no support, but she could and did insult the very voters she was trying to woo and be the next duly-elected senator from the Copper State.

The former Green Party gadfly and 9th Congressional District Representative has at last been declared the winner of Jeff Flake’s departed Senate seat. She’s the first Arizona Democrat to win a Senate election in 30 years.

She’s also the first high-profile politician that I know who spent decades mocking her own constituents as drug-addled nincompoops, only to, in the end, receive their backing. Sinema’s record of contempt for her own people is nonpareil. The way she openly and endlessly complains about the loons in her state is akin to an elderly crank who never stops complaining about the one time the cable company once tried to upcharge him for Showtime.

A big smile conceals a inner sneer? (US House photo [cropped])

On multiple occasions, Sinema has referred to her home state as “crazy,” a “meth lab for democracy,” and an accursed place no good ever emerges from. Not once, it seems, did she ever stop to think how this obloquy reflects on her: an Arizonan, after all. One is reminded of Flaubert’s classic quote: “By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.”

Despite her best attempts to shower voters with disdain, Sinema defeated her opponent, Martha McSally, a decorated war pilot with the distinction of being the first woman to ever fly a U.S. Air Force combat mission. Perhaps the self-loathing Arizonan was right this whole time: Arizonans went with the pink-tutu accoutered Taliban sympathizer over a distinguished veteran. Quite a fine accomplishment for a state previously represented by the late John McCain.

Sinema’s low opinion of Arizona was not hidden. She’s been an elected representative for years. But opposition researchers didn’t disseminate the incriminating clips far and wide until the Senate campaign. Voters knew of their existence. They elected Sinema anyway.

The episode is reminiscent of the scene in “All the King’s Men” where Broderick Crawford’s Willie Stark rants and raves at the crowd, calling them all dirt-poor hicks, but wins their affection anyway. Stark’s shtick works because he, too, is an ignorant hayseed, kept down by otherworldly forces beyond his control.

Sinema is different. Like most liberals, she believes her intellect to be far above the average, her tastes more refined than the crude proclivities of the masses.

Which gets to the paradoxical truth about many left-liberals running for public office: Often times, they despise the very people they’re entrusted with representing. In more extreme cases, they’re hostile to the society in which they assume a leading position.

Sineme isn’t the only Democrat with an abiding disgust for her constituents. London Lamar, who was just elected to the Tennessee State House, had to apologize for calling her state “racist” and Republicans “uneducated” in a Facebook video she posted after winning her uncontested race. There was Barack Obama’s infamous quip about bitter laid-off factory workers clinging to “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” to make up for their failures. And then there’s the supercilious ice queen herself, Hillary Clinton, decrying Trump’s “basket of deplorables.”

The incongruent dynamic — man or woman running for public office with unbridled scorn for the very electorate — is one of the ways in which pure democracy is left failing. What bigger mark of failure is there than a social system that creates the means for its own destruction?

The irony of liberals’ open derision of voters is that it results in the exact electoral outcomes they try to prevent. Donald Trump won the presidency based largely on courting a constituency fed up with condescending urbanites. The United Kingdom voted to leave the Europe Union out of sense of inferiority: too many Brits felt unappreciated by bureaucrats in Brussels.

“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment…and on the love of country,” Alexander Hamilton wrote. Countries don’t survive when their leaders contemn the very citizens who constitute them. And they certainly don’t last long when voters, knowing full well their negative estimation, elect politicians who deplore them anyway.