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SANTA MONICA, California — Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams looks thoughtful in in the lobby of a beachfront hotel on a sunny Thursday afternoon as he tells me that the phrase “jobs not mobs,” which he suggested on Twitter six days before, would be catchy — though he adds that Republicans had not yet used it.

Literally minutes later, President Donald Trump tells a rally in Montana: “Democrats produce mobs. Republicans produce jobs.” The president tweets soon afterwards: “#JobsNotMobs.”

#JobsNotMobs!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2018

It is a measure of Adams’ astonishing influence on popular and political culture, as he has emerged from the world of humor, publishing, and business advice in the past three years to become one of the most insightful political commentators on the planet.

Adams is in Southern California to promote the paperback version of his New York Times bestselling book, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter. (Read Breitbart News’ review here.) The softcover will be launched on October 30 and is already available for pre-order at Amazon.com.

Win Bigly is not just a review of the 2016 presidential election, but an argument for a new way of looking at the world, through the “persuasion” filter.

Adams predicted in August 2015 that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination for president, based on his analysis of Trump’s persuasion skills. He also suggested that Trump had a chance of defeating Hillary Clinton.

At the time, few others agreed, but Adams was correct — and has made several other successful predictions since. His Twitter feed and his morning Periscopes have become essential reading and viewing — and are evidently followed closely by the White House.

He told Breitbart News it is too difficult to predict which party will win the November midterm elections, because there are too many local variations in state-by-state and district-by-district battles, “too many variables bigger than persuasion.”

But he predicts that we will see “the greatest turnout by Republicans, maybe ever.”

His explanation:

My hypothesis is that humans are primed by whatever they’ve already seen. So if they’ve seen a pattern, they’ve already fallen into it. And one of the patterns Republicans enjoyed in 2016 was having the other side be surprised. And they really enjoyed it — I’m talking about the kind of joy you can talk about over the course of your lifetime. And the Republican personality — I realize this is a gross generalization — is that it’s not always about the talk, it’s about the showing up. Republicans are going to show up. And they’re driven by all the things people are talking about, but you cannot underestimate the fun, either. I’ll tell you this: if the Republicans pull out the House [win] — I’m still thinking it’s unlikely, only because other people say so and I don’t know any different — it’s because there’s a shitload of Republicans who are saying to themselves, “They’re gonna be surprised.” It’s predictable from the fact that they have felt that pattern and that payoff before. They see the same thing happening again, and are reminded of it.

Asked whether Democrats or Republicans have the more persuasive message heading into the final two weeks of the midterm elections, Dilbert notes that Democrats’ claim that Republicans want to take away people’s health care was undone with a single tweet earlier Thursday, in which the president promised to sort out any Republicans who dared propose denying coverage for pre-existing conditions — a move Adams called “magically good.”

All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!

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

Republicans, he suggests, have a stronger message, in pointing to the “mobs” that the left have mobilized in protest around the country over the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other issues. Fear is the most powerful persuasive force, he argues. That — and the sheer fun of winning bigly — could drive GOP voters to the polls.

Adams is a fan of the president, but is not reluctant to be critical, where he disagrees. He tells me that he  is “disappointed” that the president has not achieved more on health care — though he notes that Trump still could, given more time. Nothing seems impossible anymore.

One reason health care has become a salient issue for Democrats in the closing weeks, Adams argues, is simply that Trump has already succeeded in so many other ways.

He adds — in case Democrats are paying attention: “If I were going to recommend an argument against Trump in 2020, it would be that he did a good job on the things he’s good at — but that we don’t yet have health care, good race relations, or immigration reform.”

Trump’s fight against the opioid epidemic recently hit home — hard. Three weeks ago, Adams lost his 18-year-old stepson to what he believes is an overdose of fentanyl. He now says that the U.S. must step up the fight against Chinese manufacturers who create and ship the deadly drug to Americans — encouraging the Chinese government to apply the death penalty for “mass murder.”

He tells me — from painful, personal observation — that the addiction is a “zombie apocalypse,” since, for victims, “the drug is their brain … the person is no longer there.” He suggests the only answer may be to create isolated “rehab cities” in which the supply of opioids is completely cut off.

In the meantime, he wants to “raise awareness,” and suggests the opioid crisis is one for which society should “try as many different approaches as we can” until something works — testing small, in cities or states, before scaling up to the nation as a whole.

If anyone can help solve the crisis, it is Adams, who clearly has the ear of people in high places.

He is already working on his next book — one he hopes will “re-wire America,” helping people program themselves to succeed.

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.

One in five adults in England and Wales experienced crime last year whilst London has hit its highest ever level of knife crime, according to statistics.

For the year ending June 2018, homicide has risen by 14 percent, violent crime involving blades or knives by 12 percent, sexual offences by 18 percent, and robbery by 22 percent, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Thursday.

In addition, there were rises in theft (eight percent), burglary (two percent), and vehicle-related theft (seven percent) while there was a 30 percent increase in police-recorded public order offences.

Of what the ONS describes as “low-volume” violent crime, only recorded firearms crime saw a decrease (five percent).

While there were increases in individual crime types, the average of crime overall was brought down —  largely by a 30 percent decrease in “computer misuse offences”.

London’s Khan Accused of ‘Lying’ About Violent Crime Wave https://t.co/vgU3YdoLrx

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 9, 2018

“We saw rises in some types of theft and in some lower-volume but higher-harm types of violence, balanced by a fall in the high-volume offence of computer misuse. There was no change in other high-volume offences such as overall violence, criminal damage and fraud,”  Joe Traynor, ONS Centre for Crime and Justice said.

“To put today’s crime survey figures into context, only 2 out of 10 adults [one in five] experienced crime in the latest year,” he added.

The ONS also revealed that “offences involving a knife or a sharp instrument are at the highest level recorded (39,332 offences) since comparable data began to be collected in April 2010”, with offences “concentrated in London and other metropolitan areas”.

London specifically experienced record high knife crime, increasing by 15 percent to a total of 14,987 blade offences — representing 38 percent of all knife crimes across England and Wales and averaging 41 knife crimes a day.

Drilling down, these figures include 5,570 knife crimes that resulted in injury or intent to inflict injury, 8,363 robberies at knife-point, 170 knife-point sexual assaults and rapes, and 91 homicides.

President Trump Highlights Deadly Knife Crime Epidemic in Khan’s London: ‘It’s Like a War Zone’ https://t.co/nuwlP1HVK1

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 5, 2018

“While knife crime remains a rare crime, today’s figures show knife crime recorded by the police in London is at the highest level since data started to be collected for the year ending March 2009,” the ONS said.

Overall, the capital accounted for 17 percent of all recorded crimes in England and Wales, notably 46 percent of all thefts from a person and 42 percent of robberies.

These figures will make for difficult reading for London’s Labour Party Mayor Sadiq Khan and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, who have both been heavily criticised for their reaction to serious and violent crime in the nation’s capital — Ms Dick, the Met’s first female commissioner, having been accused of hiding the extent of violent crime in London behind misleading figures.

Khan has devoted resources to fighting online hate crime and £34 million for green projects while blaming central government for spending cuts; but the mayor’s most recent response to rising crime under his watch has been to launch a programme that aims to treat crime as a “public health” issue.

Of all the close races in the upcoming midterm elections, one of the tightest is the one for the Arizona Senate seat soon to be vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Jeff Flake.

Running to fill that seat are Republican Arizona Rep. Martha McSally and Democrat Rep. Kyrsten Sinema. While Sinema’s campaign has hit some deservedly rocky points in recent days, the race is decidedly close.

According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, McSally holds a slim 0.3 percent lead over Sinema. That average was derived from three recent polls on the race — an ABC poll that had McSally up by 6 points and CBS and Fox News polls that placed Sinema in the lead by 3 and 2 points, respectively.

To be sure, those polls were conducted early in the month of October, prior to the release of six separate videos showing Sinema trashing her own states and the voters who live there in speeches delivered to Democrat groups and organizations in years past, meaning the numbers could very well have shifted more in McSally’s favor since then.

McSally is a former combat pilot, a war hero, who retired from the United States Air Force as a full colonel. Sinema has done nothing in her life but disparage the country and its citizens. Nothing, in other words, to excite the admiration of sane American voters.

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Regardless, as a reminder for Arizona voters — not to mention voters facing tight Senate races in their own states — here is a report from the Washington Examiner that details just one of Sinema’s attacks on her own would-be constituents.

BREAKING: LEAKED VIDEO: in a 2011 speech in TX, Democratic Senate candidate @kyrstensinema mocks Arizonans as “Crazy” and calls Arizona the “crazy” state. pic.twitter.com/fArBGddn16

— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) October 11, 2018

Speaking to the gay- and lesbian-focused Texas Stonewall Democratic Caucus in 2011, Sinema warned the left-leaning Texans of “Arizona, coming to a state near you.” She then suggested that people had told her of Arizonans, “Damn, those people are crazy,” and then joked that nothing was wrong with their water and it was just fine, having been stolen from Colorado (a separate issue in and of itself), and suggested the crazy people “are called Republicans.”

She then proceeded to tell the group how to “Stop your state from becoming Arizona,” and regaled the audience of a song she had learned as a child about the “five C’s” of Arizona — cattle, copper, citrus, cotton and climate — before she added on a sixth “C” to describe her state — “crazy.”

Were that the only disparaging remark she had made about fellow Arizonans, the incident may have been dismissed as a one-off joke that didn’t go over particularly well. But a separate report from the Washington Examiner made clear that the clip was but the first of several instances where she had riffed hard on her own state and potential future constituents.

In a second video clip, Sinema spoke of the old quote that the various states are “laboratories of democracy,” in that states are free to try different things, but asserted that Arizona was the “meth lab of democracy.” A third video showed her telling a crowd of Democrats that the state of Arizona should “serve as a warning symbol for each of you.”

A fourth video had her lamenting that her state was “not famous in a good way … we’re famous in a Lindsey Lohan kind of way. Not good.” Again the insinuation was that Arizonans are crazy. Indeed, a fifth video to emerge from 2011 showed Sinema reiterating her “sixth C” remarks to once again call Arizonans “crazy.”

Now a sixth video has emerged, this one from 2010, in which Sinema was speaking about immigration and said, “Think about what your community is doing about immigrants and immigrant populations. And be careful, because if you’re laying down on the job, your state could turn into Arizona pretty quickly.”

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Sinema has also trashed her own state on social media over the years, apologizing to the rest of the nation and world on behalf of her “crazy” state, or bemoaning that her state was never in the news for “something good,” at least in her opinion.

There are plenty of other things that Sinema has said and done over the years that should render her electorally toxic in a state like Arizona, yet she somehow has persisted and remains close in the race, albeit based on older polls that were conducted prior to the release of these videos.

Suffice it to say, conservative and Republican voters in Arizona — and every other state, for that matter — should take nothing for granted, should largely ignore the polls that suggest their candidate either holds a comfortable lead or has fallen too far behind, and simply make every effort to get to the voting booth on Election Day — if not voting early — to ensure that the Democrats who hate their own fellow citizens, like Sinema, don’t get elected to represent the very same people they despise.

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

After accusations of the State Department being a “pale male club,” statistics show the current State Department under President Donald Trump is among the most diverse in history.

While liberals have been falsely calling Trump a racist since he decided to run for office, recent accusations have been specifically pointed at the Trump administration’s State Department and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

In September, Politico published an article with the headline: “Trump Is Making American Diplomacy White Again.”

The author, Uzreya Zeya, implied that the State Department has excluded minorities and it’s because Trump won’t “champion those who don’t resemble him,” essentially calling him a racist.

“No one should harbor illusions, however, that a president who relies on ‘central casting’ to make hiring decisions and routinely disparages African-Americans, Muslims, women and immigrants would champion those who don’t resemble him,” wrote Zeya, a woman who served the State Department as charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission and is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

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However, statistics show that diverse State Department hires have been increasing under Trump.

For example, nearly 22 percent of all Foreign Service Officer hires were African-American in 2017, according to hiring information reported by The Washington Free Beacon. That’s an increase of 9.6 percent from the previous fiscal year — which ended on Sept. 30, 2016, the last full year of former President Barack Obama’s tenure.

In addition, 11.4 percent of FSO hires were Hispanic, an increase of 8.8 percent from the previous year.

Female hires also increased to 47.7 percent up from 43.9 percent.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert explained the department’s hiring practices in a series of tweets when the accusations popped up last month.

“The assertion that (the State Department) is ‘racist’ is disgusting and false—a brazen attempt to create division for domestic political gain. State is among the most diverse of government agencies, employing a workforce from every part of America and every region of the globe,” Nauert said.

The assertion that @StateDept is “racist” is disgusting and false—a brazen attempt to create division for domestic political gain. State is among the most diverse of government agencies, employing a workforce from every part of America and every region of the globe.

— Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) September 16, 2018

Nauert also added that the State Department “hires and empowers those who represent diversity of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, sexual orientation and opinion to advance US Foreign Policy.”

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.@StateDept hires and empowers those who represent diversity of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, sexual orientation and opinion to advance US Foreign Policy.

— Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) September 16, 2018

Hiring information shows that she was right. The State Department has had more diverse hires under Trump than it did under Obama.

But numbers can’t tell the whole story, according to Kiron Skinner, a senior policy adviser to Pompeo and director of policy planning.

“Numbers do matter. But no matter what the political climate is like and the divisions in Washington and the rhetoric and noise, people of all stripes are selected into the diplomatic corps in the United States and the State Department is the place to be,” Skinner told The Free Beacon.

While the media has tried to paint Trump as racist, the State Department hires show that nothing of the kind is true.

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

A crazed man had a meltdown on Monday when he began tearing up several yard signs for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in Texas on Monday, according a video making the rounds on Facebook.

The viral video, which has gained more than 671,000 views on Facebook as of Thursday afternoon, shows an unidentified man uprooting Cruz for Senate yard signs in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston and tearing them apart before yelling how he hated the Texas Republican.

The encounter began when homeowner Alfred Ramos, who filmed the video, noticed the man reaching for one of his yard signs.

“It is your property? Okay,” the man said, leaving the sign alone, before going across the street and asking if that sign was also on Ramos’ property.

“That’s my neighbor’s property. He’s a gun owner,” Ramos replied.

“Oh, I’m a gun owner too…if you guys shoot me over that, that would be great,” the man said sarcastically while ripping out a few of the yard signs. “That would be really, like, you know, an appropriate response.”

The man then began ripping up the signs he had in his hand before turning around and yelling at the camera.

“I hate Ted Cruz! I hate Ted Cruz!” the man yelled in a demonic sounding voice.

Ramos then followed the man, who continued to rant about Cruz while heading to a local coffee shop. Ramos then proceeded to tell the customers gathered outside that the man had “gone nuts.”

This is not the only instance where left-wing protesters have torn up yard signs for GOP candidates and organizations.

One Wednesday evening tweet showed two unidentified individuals caught on surveillance footage stealing Cruz signs in a Texas park, and a professor at UNC Asheville who allegedly stole a political sign for a local conservative political action committee was arrested this month and charged with a misdemeanor.

A Texas mom chased down her 14-year-old son after he absconded with her brand-new BMW. When she caught up with the boy, she pulled him over and proceeded to spank him with a belt.

A joyride in his mom’s brand-new BMW came to an abrupt end after 14-year-old Aaron Martinez carried out an elaborate scheme to take the car for a spin in the neighborhood. With the help of other moms in the neighborhood, Martinez’s mother tracked him down, pulled him over, and proceeded to spank him with a belt. Martinez’s sister, Liza Campero captured the key moments on her cell phone and shared them with the world, KTRK ABC13 reported.

Martinez’s scheme began with shutting down their home WiFi router to stop his mother from being able to see his plan unfold. He then grabbed the keys and took off in her new car to pick up a friend.

The mom received a tip about the BMW boost from Martinez’s friend’s mom. She quickly called Campero, who lives next door. Campero ran to her mom’s house and verified the car was missing.

“She told me she was on her way home and to grab her belt,” Campero told the local reporter.

A quick phone investigation involving Martinez’s girlfriend and other friends led the now-enraged mother to her son’s location.

“Pull over now!” she yelled out her window as she honked her horn. She then turns to Campero and says, “Give me the belt.”

The sister captured the scene on video as mom jerks the car door open and proceeds to spank her joyriding son with the belt.

Campero said her brother learned his lesson. He admitted it was a crazy stunt.

Friends in school are calling Martinez “El Paso Ferris Bueller” after seeing the viral video and tweets from Compero. She said her brother has been relieved of all of his electronics, including a PlayStation 4. The parents removed his bedroom door and he is now only allowed to be in school or with his mom.

The sister says he is “grounded until further notice.”

President Donald Trump has Central American countries desperately scrambling to stop a caravan of illegal immigrants moving steadily toward the United States after Trump threatened to stop giving them aid if they refuse to stop it.

On Tuesday, Trump explained on Twitter that El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where the caravan originated, would lose payments from the United States if they refused to take action on their borders.

“We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP,” Trump wrote.

We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP (END)!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2018

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Trump is referring to the huge caravan of immigrants heading toward Mexico and the United States.

By Wednesday, the “caravan” had grown to the size of 4,000 people, according to NBC.

But Trump’s statement was apparently enough to get the Central American countries’ attention, as it looks like Guatemalan and Honduran police have been sending people back.

Not only that, but Guatemalan police took one of the organizers of the caravan, Bartolo Fuentes, into custody along with three associates, according to Reuters.

Honduran riot police were deployed to the Guatemala border to stop more people joining a caravan of migrants and asylum seekers. They are headed to the U.S.-Mexico border to escape inequality and violence in Honduras, where 66% of people live in poverty. pic.twitter.com/cleR2movqs

— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 17, 2018

The bad news is that the officers on the Honduran border with Guatemala have been unsuccessful in stopping everyone.

“We can’t attend to people en masse. People are going through one by one,” Honduran police spokesman Alex Madrid said.

The Mexican government is even trying to chip in by sending 500 Mexican federal police to its border with Guatemala, according to NBC.

On Thursday morning, Trump issued a Twitter post to make his position even clearer.

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President @realDonaldTrump threatens to call U.S. military to close southern border as 4,000-strong migrant caravan pushes north https://t.co/ySkL71vpbQ pic.twitter.com/YVDvAzUCfU

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 18, 2018

Amid the tension, the illegal immigrants have been trying to justify illegally entering foreign countries.

“These people are fleeing. These people are not tourists,” the arrested organizer, Fuentes, said.

Nobody ever thought they were tourists, Fuentes. Everybody recognizes the caravan for what it is. It’s a giant group of thousands of people who want to break the laws of the United States by entering the country illegally. That’s the definition of starting off on the wrong foot.

If the illegal immigrants are seeking employment and benefits, they will likely have to break the law again by using fraudulent documents.

However, a lot of this may be avoided with Trump’s tough stance on illegal immigration and Central American governments scrambling to stop the caravan.

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

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told a gathering at the 92nd Street Y in New York on Sunday that there may have to be “collateral damage” to those Americans who do not agree with the Democratic Party agenda.

Pelosi was being interviewed onstage by Paul Krugman, the left-wing New York Times columnist and Nobel economic laureate who predicted, the day Donald Trump won the presidency, that Trump would trigger “a global recession, with no end in sight.”

In a long, rambling monologue, during which she stumbled on her words and appeared to lose her train of thought, Pelosi said:

We have to have total clarity about what we do, when it comes to everything — a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage … whether it’s about immigration, whether it’s about gun safety, whether it’s about climate … I think that we owe the American people to be there for them, for their financial security, respecting the dignity and worth of every person in our country, and if there’s some collateral damage for some others who do not share our view, well, so be it, but it shouldn’t be our original purpose.

It is not clear what Pelosi meant by “collateral damage,” though Democrats have advocated ostracizing and even prosecuting those who do not share their views on climate change.

Democrats like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), have also targeted Trump administration officials for harassment, and Republicans around the country have complained of intimidation and assault on the campaign trail in the run-up to the midterm elections.

On Monday, Pelosi told an audience at Harvard that Democrats would win the election, and the only question was whether it would be a “wave” or a “tsunami.”

Pelosi would likely return as speaker of the House if her party wins a majority.

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.