53percenter's Blog

Jerry Falwell, Jr. is one of Donald Trump’s most vocal evangelical supporters.  He did something foolish, posting a tasteless photo on Instagram.  Now he will take an indefinite leave of absence from his presidency and chancellor’s position at Liberty University.  The original announcement by Liberty University has been taken down, but a screen shot exists on Twitter.

Controversy has mounted for over a year.  On September 9, 2019, Politico published an article by gay Catholic writer Brandon Ambrosino, casting Falwell in a negative light.  In the aftermath, many people, including Liberty deputies, noticed “‘an attempted coup’ that sought to unseat President Falwell and seize control of the school.”

Ambrosino’s friends include pro-gay Jesuit priest James Martin and bespectacled professor Karen Swallow Prior.  Prior, a pro-LGBT feminist, claims sometimes to be a conservative Baptist.  She roused thousands of Baptist women in the successful ouster of Paige Patterson two years ago.  She also launched memorable salvos against Trump, Roy Moore, Eric Metaxas, and a Republican prayer breakfast attended by Falwell (her boss).

Earlier attempts to unseat Falwell failed.  Finally came Falwell’s kryptonite: a salacious photo of himself with unbuckled pants standing next to a woman who was not his wife.  He struts on a yacht at a trailer park–themed party holding a dark-colored drink.  Apparently, Falwell posted the pic on Instagram and then took it down.  A screenshot fell in the hands of a man named Robert Downen.  Downen tweeted the photo on Sunday, August 2.  This set off the events leading to Falwell’s suspension the following Friday.

The Left’s “Cancel” Playbook for Christians

What looks like a case of “caught with his pants down” also looks like another setup by the anti-Trump Deep State.  Let’s break down the playbook.  The best place to start is the “tweet heard round the world” from Robert Downen.

Who is Downen?  A Houston Chronicle reporter.  He made a name for himself by exposing abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention.  He also made my “Twenty Biggest Virtue Signalers of 2019” list.  I gave him the #16 spot because his reportage kept sidestepping key scandals about the way the Convention dealt with sex abuse.

He somehow missed the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention sank the resolution on sex abuse and whistleblowers just as Downen’s story on sex abuse in the SBC was hotly trending.

The killing of that resolution will allow untold numbers of abuse cases to stay covered up. The resolution was killed by the “woke” SBC resolutions committee appointed by [SBC president] JD Greear, not macho wildlife hunters tied to Paige Patterson. Downen also showed no interest in reporting on the new Southwestern firing a full professor for writing about same-sex sex abuse.

So Many Hit Jobs, So Few Backbones

I had watched many hit jobs against conservative figures: Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, Roy Moore, Paige Patterson, to name a few.  In all these cases, leftists saw a right-wing enemy gaining traction.  They “degraded” their target by discrediting him publicly and removing him from power.  The playbook was so familiar that I tweeted out their step-by-step cancel method.  See the whole thread below.  (Please click on it and ask Twitter to show you the whole “thread.”)

Was the photo a dumb move on Falwell’s part?  Yes.  Should he be removed from office?  No.  I’ve seen the conservative Christian world from corner to corner.  Like all men, our leaders have feet of clay.  They commit errors, sometimes unforced.  The ones who don’t leave traces are no better than the ones who do.  Admonish, exhort, and move on.  Don’t turn your keys over to your enemies in a fit of indignant outrage.

Falwell’s “indefinite” leave may result in a return to power, but that appears unlikely.  More probable: he’ll be succeeded by someone far worse.

Update: The “Acting President” Announced

Liberty University recently announced that the troublemaking Jerry Falwell, Jr. will take an indefinite leave of absence.  Now, moving at nearly warp speed, the university has announced an “interim” president.  As reported on CNN:

Chairman Dr. Jerry Prevo will now serve as acting president effective immediately, the university announced Monday. He has served on the Liberty University Board of Trustees since 1996 and has been the Board Chairman since 2003, and he recently retired as the Senior Pastor of Anchorage Baptist Temple in Anchorage, Alaska, after serving there for 47 years.

Liberty’s press office filled its announcement with a lot of winsome verbiage.  It sounded warm and conciliatory.  For conservatives outraged over the photograph of Falwell’s partial undress, this may sound comforting.  It looks as though an experienced Alaskan pastor will calm the waters after a scandal.

Don’t sleep!

Before you think this will have a happy ending for conservatives, consider history.  In a similar shakeup at Southwestern Baptist Seminary two years ago, a colorful president got fired.  A hurricane of snark and pompous outrage had leveled the school’s morale.  Amid the turmoil, Jeff Bingham was appointed interim president.  Bingham was well liked and politically mild.  He had come from Wheaton College.  He worked on campus, and people knew him.  After the firestorm that ousted Paige Patterson, he felt like a calming option.

But he was only an “interim” president.  At Southwestern, this “interim” served to lull the campus into a false sense of security for eight months.  Things seemed relatively calm while a “search committee” appointed by the Southwestern trustees worked quietly on finding the next president.  Most of us thought Bingham would be picked and would stay as long-term president.  We did not even think about the search committee.

Then the search committee announced their pick for president: Adam Greenway.  He seemed to come out of nowhere.  His assumption of the presidency in February 2019 began a reign of terror described at length here.

The Falwell scandal looks increasingly like part of a pattern.  The pattern is stealth takeovers of conservative institutions by shadowy leftists through dissimulation, plotting, and Machiavellian stagecraft.

Takeover culture is more insidious than cancel culture

Unlike FDR liberals, today’s leftists don’t like to build.  It’s too much work.  It’s not even that they want to destroy, either.  True demolition of the opposition would be twice the work.  They would have to build their side up after destroying their opponents’ infrastructure.

By infiltration, the left gets a double-jackpot.  Right-wing institutions have assets, personnel, and money.  Leftists steal valuable resources from the right to use for their own agenda.  Their conservative enemies lose access to their own resources, leaving them with no supplies for their political battles.

“Takeovers” are a win-win for the left.

Subversion of the right’s home base looks like general cancel culture, but with a twist.  The left needs to preserve the operational integrity of the conservative institution.  Leftists must hide how much they’re changing its mission.  They can’t attack constituents who donate their time and money to it.  Instead of arguing ideology, they use personal vendettas to smear an executive and create a leadership vacuum.  That way, they can nonchalantly install leadership beholden to them.

To do this, they must mount a personal attack against a key leader: Mr. Target.

While the masses discuss the terrible things Mr. Target has done, key deputies are fired.  Often non-disclosure agreements get signed in exchange for severance buyouts.  Middle management and/or oversight boards are stealthily transformed.  Such feints allow the cancelers to evade public scrutiny even as they loudly condemn such ill practices in others.  Stephen Baskerville explains some of this process in New English Review.

New deputies come in under the radar and quietly purge strong conservative voices.  Sudden hiring sprees or internal promotions shift power into the hands of (1) “down-low” woke people who feign outward conservatism or (2) skittish conservatives who won’t speak out.

Such takeovers require startup money.  Funds from corruptible sources like George Soros, Paul Singer, and the Koch Brothers poured into the right wing during the 2010s.  The goal was usually to move staunch rightist groups toward:

(1) a leftward or libertarian position;

(2) a hybrid position consisting of staunch anti-socialism mixed with softened positions on social issues; or

(3) a mole/double-agent position, publicly supporting conservatism while secretly sabotaging it.

The election of Trump in 2016 gave anti-conservative funders added urgency.  Liberal media like the New York Times realized that Trump’s conservative Christian base had helped him win.  The subversion tactics that were already in motion became accelerated.

Some takeovers are blatant, like the ones in Southern Baptist institutions.  Discretion leaves others impossible to verify as takeovers.

Note a partial timeline of right-wing organizations that changed management since 2012:

• In 2012, Jim Daly assumed leadership of Focus on the Family, which had formerly been run by James Dobson.
• In 2013, Russell Moore took over the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Also rising in the ERLC was Joe Carter, who had ties as well to the Gospel Coalition.
• In 2013, Exodus International disbanded.  Soon plans for “Revoice” took shape.
• In 2015, the Chuck Colson Center announced a new leader, John Stonestreet.
• In 2016, the NeverTrumps appeared.
• In 2017, Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option counseled Christians to withdraw from politics.
• In 2017, Michael P. Farris became the new leader of the Alliance Defending Freedom.  Farris is chancellor of Patrick Henry College, from which conservative author Stephen Baskerville vanished last year.
• In 2017, the Heritage Foundation “ousted” Jim DeMint as its leader.  Half a year later, Kay Cole James replaced him.
• In 2017, upon Phyllis Schlafly’s death, a battle broke out over who would lead the  Eagle Forum.
• In 2017, the Museum of the Bible opened with a succession of leaders until settling on the current Harry Hargrave.
• In 2018, the Southern Baptist Convention shifted with the election of J.D. Greear as a president with ties to 9 Marks and Acts 29.  Critics such as Tom Littleton say these groups gerrymander the Convention with politically progressive church plants.
• In 2019, Oliver North had to resign from the National Rifle Association after longtime leader Wayne LaPierre accused him of plotting an ouster based on threats amounting to blackmail.
• In 2020, Tom Littleton says the Singer-funded Alliance for Lasting Liberty launched, bringing into its orbit the Mormons; the Seventh Day Adventists; the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities; and, it appears, the National Association of Evangelicals.
• In 2020, Janet Parshall resigned from the chairmanship of the National Religious Broadcasters, one year after Jerry Johnson resigned as president and CEO.

We would need multiple articles to detail similar shake-ups of pro-life groups, Catholic organizations, veterans’ organizations, supposedly right-wing media, Tea Party groups, campus conservatism, and of course the entire GOP.

Because of non-disclosure agreements, “discretion,” and general secrecy, we cannot know what all these changes entailed.  Some might have been harmless, others malicious.  What we can say with certainty is this: Christians have noticed all their trusted organizations becoming less stable and more liberal.  They wonder why.  It occurs piecemeal, one takeover at a time.  Each institution has its particular constituency and requires a tailored overthrow.

The upheaval at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary serves as the classic example of the takeover pattern.  In smaller doses and with minor timeline adjustments, we see this strategy across the right.  The takeover artists have patience and endurance, things that conservatives often lack.  The only way to reverse the trend is to become vocal, vigilant, and shrewd.  And don’t sleep.

Robert Oscar Lopez can be followed at bobbylopez.me, on Twitter, or at his podcast, Big Brown Gadly.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

Jerry Falwell, Jr. is one of Donald Trump’s most vocal evangelical supporters.  He did something foolish, posting a tasteless photo on Instagram.  Now he will take an indefinite leave of absence from his presidency and chancellor’s position at Liberty University.  The original announcement by Liberty University has been taken down, but a screen shot exists on Twitter.

Controversy has mounted for over a year.  On September 9, 2019, Politico published an article by gay Catholic writer Brandon Ambrosino, casting Falwell in a negative light.  In the aftermath, many people, including Liberty deputies, noticed “‘an attempted coup’ that sought to unseat President Falwell and seize control of the school.”

Ambrosino’s friends include pro-gay Jesuit priest James Martin and bespectacled professor Karen Swallow Prior.  Prior, a pro-LGBT feminist, claims sometimes to be a conservative Baptist.  She roused thousands of Baptist women in the successful ouster of Paige Patterson two years ago.  She also launched memorable salvos against Trump, Roy Moore, Eric Metaxas, and a Republican prayer breakfast attended by Falwell (her boss).

Earlier attempts to unseat Falwell failed.  Finally came Falwell’s kryptonite: a salacious photo of himself with unbuckled pants standing next to a woman who was not his wife.  He struts on a yacht at a trailer park–themed party holding a dark-colored drink.  Apparently, Falwell posted the pic on Instagram and then took it down.  A screenshot fell in the hands of a man named Robert Downen.  Downen tweeted the photo on Sunday, August 2.  This set off the events leading to Falwell’s suspension the following Friday.

The Left’s “Cancel” Playbook for Christians

What looks like a case of “caught with his pants down” also looks like another setup by the anti-Trump Deep State.  Let’s break down the playbook.  The best place to start is the “tweet heard round the world” from Robert Downen.

Who is Downen?  A Houston Chronicle reporter.  He made a name for himself by exposing abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention.  He also made my “Twenty Biggest Virtue Signalers of 2019” list.  I gave him the #16 spot because his reportage kept sidestepping key scandals about the way the Convention dealt with sex abuse.

He somehow missed the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention sank the resolution on sex abuse and whistleblowers just as Downen’s story on sex abuse in the SBC was hotly trending.

The killing of that resolution will allow untold numbers of abuse cases to stay covered up. The resolution was killed by the “woke” SBC resolutions committee appointed by [SBC president] JD Greear, not macho wildlife hunters tied to Paige Patterson. Downen also showed no interest in reporting on the new Southwestern firing a full professor for writing about same-sex sex abuse.

So Many Hit Jobs, So Few Backbones

I had watched many hit jobs against conservative figures: Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, Roy Moore, Paige Patterson, to name a few.  In all these cases, leftists saw a right-wing enemy gaining traction.  They “degraded” their target by discrediting him publicly and removing him from power.  The playbook was so familiar that I tweeted out their step-by-step cancel method.  See the whole thread below.  (Please click on it and ask Twitter to show you the whole “thread.”)

Was the photo a dumb move on Falwell’s part?  Yes.  Should he be removed from office?  No.  I’ve seen the conservative Christian world from corner to corner.  Like all men, our leaders have feet of clay.  They commit errors, sometimes unforced.  The ones who don’t leave traces are no better than the ones who do.  Admonish, exhort, and move on.  Don’t turn your keys over to your enemies in a fit of indignant outrage.

Falwell’s “indefinite” leave may result in a return to power, but that appears unlikely.  More probable: he’ll be succeeded by someone far worse.

Update: The “Acting President” Announced

Liberty University recently announced that the troublemaking Jerry Falwell, Jr. will take an indefinite leave of absence.  Now, moving at nearly warp speed, the university has announced an “interim” president.  As reported on CNN:

Chairman Dr. Jerry Prevo will now serve as acting president effective immediately, the university announced Monday. He has served on the Liberty University Board of Trustees since 1996 and has been the Board Chairman since 2003, and he recently retired as the Senior Pastor of Anchorage Baptist Temple in Anchorage, Alaska, after serving there for 47 years.

Liberty’s press office filled its announcement with a lot of winsome verbiage.  It sounded warm and conciliatory.  For conservatives outraged over the photograph of Falwell’s partial undress, this may sound comforting.  It looks as though an experienced Alaskan pastor will calm the waters after a scandal.

Don’t sleep!

Before you think this will have a happy ending for conservatives, consider history.  In a similar shakeup at Southwestern Baptist Seminary two years ago, a colorful president got fired.  A hurricane of snark and pompous outrage had leveled the school’s morale.  Amid the turmoil, Jeff Bingham was appointed interim president.  Bingham was well liked and politically mild.  He had come from Wheaton College.  He worked on campus, and people knew him.  After the firestorm that ousted Paige Patterson, he felt like a calming option.

But he was only an “interim” president.  At Southwestern, this “interim” served to lull the campus into a false sense of security for eight months.  Things seemed relatively calm while a “search committee” appointed by the Southwestern trustees worked quietly on finding the next president.  Most of us thought Bingham would be picked and would stay as long-term president.  We did not even think about the search committee.

Then the search committee announced their pick for president: Adam Greenway.  He seemed to come out of nowhere.  His assumption of the presidency in February 2019 began a reign of terror described at length here.

The Falwell scandal looks increasingly like part of a pattern.  The pattern is stealth takeovers of conservative institutions by shadowy leftists through dissimulation, plotting, and Machiavellian stagecraft.

Takeover culture is more insidious than cancel culture

Unlike FDR liberals, today’s leftists don’t like to build.  It’s too much work.  It’s not even that they want to destroy, either.  True demolition of the opposition would be twice the work.  They would have to build their side up after destroying their opponents’ infrastructure.

By infiltration, the left gets a double-jackpot.  Right-wing institutions have assets, personnel, and money.  Leftists steal valuable resources from the right to use for their own agenda.  Their conservative enemies lose access to their own resources, leaving them with no supplies for their political battles.

“Takeovers” are a win-win for the left.

Subversion of the right’s home base looks like general cancel culture, but with a twist.  The left needs to preserve the operational integrity of the conservative institution.  Leftists must hide how much they’re changing its mission.  They can’t attack constituents who donate their time and money to it.  Instead of arguing ideology, they use personal vendettas to smear an executive and create a leadership vacuum.  That way, they can nonchalantly install leadership beholden to them.

To do this, they must mount a personal attack against a key leader: Mr. Target.

While the masses discuss the terrible things Mr. Target has done, key deputies are fired.  Often non-disclosure agreements get signed in exchange for severance buyouts.  Middle management and/or oversight boards are stealthily transformed.  Such feints allow the cancelers to evade public scrutiny even as they loudly condemn such ill practices in others.  Stephen Baskerville explains some of this process in New English Review.

New deputies come in under the radar and quietly purge strong conservative voices.  Sudden hiring sprees or internal promotions shift power into the hands of (1) “down-low” woke people who feign outward conservatism or (2) skittish conservatives who won’t speak out.

Such takeovers require startup money.  Funds from corruptible sources like George Soros, Paul Singer, and the Koch Brothers poured into the right wing during the 2010s.  The goal was usually to move staunch rightist groups toward:

(1) a leftward or libertarian position;

(2) a hybrid position consisting of staunch anti-socialism mixed with softened positions on social issues; or

(3) a mole/double-agent position, publicly supporting conservatism while secretly sabotaging it.

The election of Trump in 2016 gave anti-conservative funders added urgency.  Liberal media like the New York Times realized that Trump’s conservative Christian base had helped him win.  The subversion tactics that were already in motion became accelerated.

Some takeovers are blatant, like the ones in Southern Baptist institutions.  Discretion leaves others impossible to verify as takeovers.

Note a partial timeline of right-wing organizations that changed management since 2012:

• In 2012, Jim Daly assumed leadership of Focus on the Family, which had formerly been run by James Dobson.
• In 2013, Russell Moore took over the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Also rising in the ERLC was Joe Carter, who had ties as well to the Gospel Coalition.
• In 2013, Exodus International disbanded.  Soon plans for “Revoice” took shape.
• In 2015, the Chuck Colson Center announced a new leader, John Stonestreet.
• In 2016, the NeverTrumps appeared.
• In 2017, Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option counseled Christians to withdraw from politics.
• In 2017, Michael P. Farris became the new leader of the Alliance Defending Freedom.  Farris is chancellor of Patrick Henry College, from which conservative author Stephen Baskerville vanished last year.
• In 2017, the Heritage Foundation “ousted” Jim DeMint as its leader.  Half a year later, Kay Cole James replaced him.
• In 2017, upon Phyllis Schlafly’s death, a battle broke out over who would lead the  Eagle Forum.
• In 2017, the Museum of the Bible opened with a succession of leaders until settling on the current Harry Hargrave.
• In 2018, the Southern Baptist Convention shifted with the election of J.D. Greear as a president with ties to 9 Marks and Acts 29.  Critics such as Tom Littleton say these groups gerrymander the Convention with politically progressive church plants.
• In 2019, Oliver North had to resign from the National Rifle Association after longtime leader Wayne LaPierre accused him of plotting an ouster based on threats amounting to blackmail.
• In 2020, Tom Littleton says the Singer-funded Alliance for Lasting Liberty launched, bringing into its orbit the Mormons; the Seventh Day Adventists; the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities; and, it appears, the National Association of Evangelicals.
• In 2020, Janet Parshall resigned from the chairmanship of the National Religious Broadcasters, one year after Jerry Johnson resigned as president and CEO.

We would need multiple articles to detail similar shake-ups of pro-life groups, Catholic organizations, veterans’ organizations, supposedly right-wing media, Tea Party groups, campus conservatism, and of course the entire GOP.

Because of non-disclosure agreements, “discretion,” and general secrecy, we cannot know what all these changes entailed.  Some might have been harmless, others malicious.  What we can say with certainty is this: Christians have noticed all their trusted organizations becoming less stable and more liberal.  They wonder why.  It occurs piecemeal, one takeover at a time.  Each institution has its particular constituency and requires a tailored overthrow.

The upheaval at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary serves as the classic example of the takeover pattern.  In smaller doses and with minor timeline adjustments, we see this strategy across the right.  The takeover artists have patience and endurance, things that conservatives often lack.  The only way to reverse the trend is to become vocal, vigilant, and shrewd.  And don’t sleep.

Robert Oscar Lopez can be followed at bobbylopez.me, on Twitter, or at his podcast, Big Brown Gadly.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

In reading George Will’s recent column (“The Difference between Trumpism and fascism”), I was struck by a few things: his elitist anti-Trump tone, his denigration of the President’s supporters and his lack of understanding of Donald Trump’s appeal. The thing which struck me most, however, was not a failure to know the past, but his inability to apply the lessons of history to the present. He recites the basics of the history of fascism while completely missing how that history applies to the current situation.

What is it about Donald Trump that so offends George Will? Does the President fail Will’s ideological purity test? Is it the tweeting? Is it that most of Donald Trump’s supporters probably never subscribed to National Review? Or is it something as petty as the recognition that most of the President’s supporters are not members of the elites? They don’t belong to the country clubs that so-called Republicans like George Will belong to, and probably prefer it that way.

It is interesting that in his recitation of the history of fascism, Mr. Will fails to see the obvious: that the historical circumstances that shaped it and the ideological theories which Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and others believed in, apply not to Donald Trump and his followers but to the very people who are trying to defeat the President and lead this country down a destructive path of rigid intellectual, economic, and social control.

One difference between the 20^th century fascists and that of today is that the left has bypassed the brownshirt phase and gone straight to black. You don’t see Trump supporters attacking the police. You don’t see them burning down precinct houses or churches. Trump rallies are festivals of optimism and love of country. Their opponents, Antifa and BLM, by contrast, are the blackshirted shock troops of the counterrevolution. The leaders of the Democrat party have chosen to use these shock troops as tools to regain the power they lost when Donald Trump was elected President. The violence and destruction unleashed in this country is of no consequence to them in their quest to regain that power.

Many of the fascist leaders were scarred by war and steeped in the socialist rhetoric of the time. They were disillusioned by the weakness of the European systems and affected by the ravages of a worldwide depression. Some were communists who easily migrated to the national socialist movement. Some were just thugs who saw an opportunity for power. Their followers believed in the fascist promises of renewed greatness and the paranoid delusions that they had been the victims of treachery. They had been ‘stabbed in the back,’ and so they rationalized their loss of freedom as the price of recovery and, potentially, supremacy.

President Trump and his supporters do not consider themselves victims. They assert an optimistic belief in the free market system and in the greatness of the United States of America. His supporters recognize in the president a man                                 George Skidmore, CC   

who understands their  concerns and has made great progress in addressing those concerns. Donald Trump is not scarred by war or economic uncertainty. Rather, he is proud of our country and absolutely convinced that his agenda is benefitting all Americans. He has instituted policies which aid the economy and create economic freedom for more Americans by cutting taxes and regulations and incentivizing the creation of new businesses and new jobs.

Will compares the fascist leaders to Donald Trump, describing them as strongarm bullies without intellectual weight or nuanced arguments. But the image that Benito Mussolini projected, for instance, was a carefully crafted façade. Donald Trump, by comparison, is a mature leader, a successful businessman who felt compelled to provide the leadership he believed his country needed. Will describes the President as “an envious acolyte of today’s various strongmen”. Here one wonders if Will can possibly be witnessing the real world. An “acolyte of…strongmen”? On the contrary, from Kim Jong-un to Vladimir Putin, all these ‘strongmen’ look small and insignificant when standing next to Donald Trump.

And Donald Trump, while standing up to the ‘deep state’ and defying conventional wisdom, has a real connection to and rapport with the average Americans who support him. This connection is deep. It cannot be contrived or imitated. Will writes of ‘Trumpism’ as “an entertainment genre based on contempt for its bellowing audiences.” And there you have it: a classic example of projection. Will’s own obvious contempt for the “bellowing audiences” is on full display. Will concludes his piece with the snide comment that (compared to Trumpism), “Fascism was and is more interesting.” Really, more interesting? What exactly was the interesting part of fascism, George? Was it anti-Semitism? Was it Kristallnacht or the concentration camps? The Final Solution? World War II?

George Will is so blinded by hatred or elitism or delusions of ideological superiority that he cannot see the real dangers facing this country. Marxist mobs are desecrating monuments, attacking innocent people and the police while destroying businesses and livelihoods. Children are being murdered in the streets, but George Will thinks Donald Trump is the problem. Leftist academics are destroying education in this country, but Donald Trump is the problem. Intellectual lightweights like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and socialists like Bernie Sanders determine the platform of the Democrat party, but Donald Trump is the problem.

While mobs rule the streets, George Will is safely ensconced in his ivory tower, warm and cozy in his blanket of self-righteousness and moral superiority. Perhaps Will should remember the truism that the mob always eats its own. The ivory tower and the blanket of moral superiority will not protect you if that happens, George. Prepare your epitaph in advance: “Here lies George Will. He knelt to the mob, but never to Donald Trump.” I, for one, will remain standing throughout.

In reading George Will’s recent column (“The Difference between Trumpism and fascism”), I was struck by a few things: his elitist anti-Trump tone, his denigration of the President’s supporters and his lack of understanding of Donald Trump’s appeal. The thing which struck me most, however, was not a failure to know the past, but his inability to apply the lessons of history to the present. He recites the basics of the history of fascism while completely missing how that history applies to the current situation.

What is it about Donald Trump that so offends George Will? Does the President fail Will’s ideological purity test? Is it the tweeting? Is it that most of Donald Trump’s supporters probably never subscribed to National Review? Or is it something as petty as the recognition that most of the President’s supporters are not members of the elites? They don’t belong to the country clubs that so-called Republicans like George Will belong to, and probably prefer it that way.

It is interesting that in his recitation of the history of fascism, Mr. Will fails to see the obvious: that the historical circumstances that shaped it and the ideological theories which Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and others believed in, apply not to Donald Trump and his followers but to the very people who are trying to defeat the President and lead this country down a destructive path of rigid intellectual, economic, and social control.

One difference between the 20^th century fascists and that of today is that the left has bypassed the brownshirt phase and gone straight to black. You don’t see Trump supporters attacking the police. You don’t see them burning down precinct houses or churches. Trump rallies are festivals of optimism and love of country. Their opponents, Antifa and BLM, by contrast, are the blackshirted shock troops of the counterrevolution. The leaders of the Democrat party have chosen to use these shock troops as tools to regain the power they lost when Donald Trump was elected President. The violence and destruction unleashed in this country is of no consequence to them in their quest to regain that power.

Many of the fascist leaders were scarred by war and steeped in the socialist rhetoric of the time. They were disillusioned by the weakness of the European systems and affected by the ravages of a worldwide depression. Some were communists who easily migrated to the national socialist movement. Some were just thugs who saw an opportunity for power. Their followers believed in the fascist promises of renewed greatness and the paranoid delusions that they had been the victims of treachery. They had been ‘stabbed in the back,’ and so they rationalized their loss of freedom as the price of recovery and, potentially, supremacy.

President Trump and his supporters do not consider themselves victims. They assert an optimistic belief in the free market system and in the greatness of the United States of America. His supporters recognize in the president a man                                 George Skidmore, CC   

who understands their  concerns and has made great progress in addressing those concerns. Donald Trump is not scarred by war or economic uncertainty. Rather, he is proud of our country and absolutely convinced that his agenda is benefitting all Americans. He has instituted policies which aid the economy and create economic freedom for more Americans by cutting taxes and regulations and incentivizing the creation of new businesses and new jobs.

Will compares the fascist leaders to Donald Trump, describing them as strongarm bullies without intellectual weight or nuanced arguments. But the image that Benito Mussolini projected, for instance, was a carefully crafted façade. Donald Trump, by comparison, is a mature leader, a successful businessman who felt compelled to provide the leadership he believed his country needed. Will describes the President as “an envious acolyte of today’s various strongmen”. Here one wonders if Will can possibly be witnessing the real world. An “acolyte of…strongmen”? On the contrary, from Kim Jong-un to Vladimir Putin, all these ‘strongmen’ look small and insignificant when standing next to Donald Trump.

And Donald Trump, while standing up to the ‘deep state’ and defying conventional wisdom, has a real connection to and rapport with the average Americans who support him. This connection is deep. It cannot be contrived or imitated. Will writes of ‘Trumpism’ as “an entertainment genre based on contempt for its bellowing audiences.” And there you have it: a classic example of projection. Will’s own obvious contempt for the “bellowing audiences” is on full display. Will concludes his piece with the snide comment that (compared to Trumpism), “Fascism was and is more interesting.” Really, more interesting? What exactly was the interesting part of fascism, George? Was it anti-Semitism? Was it Kristallnacht or the concentration camps? The Final Solution? World War II?

George Will is so blinded by hatred or elitism or delusions of ideological superiority that he cannot see the real dangers facing this country. Marxist mobs are desecrating monuments, attacking innocent people and the police while destroying businesses and livelihoods. Children are being murdered in the streets, but George Will thinks Donald Trump is the problem. Leftist academics are destroying education in this country, but Donald Trump is the problem. Intellectual lightweights like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and socialists like Bernie Sanders determine the platform of the Democrat party, but Donald Trump is the problem.

While mobs rule the streets, George Will is safely ensconced in his ivory tower, warm and cozy in his blanket of self-righteousness and moral superiority. Perhaps Will should remember the truism that the mob always eats its own. The ivory tower and the blanket of moral superiority will not protect you if that happens, George. Prepare your epitaph in advance: “Here lies George Will. He knelt to the mob, but never to Donald Trump.” I, for one, will remain standing throughout.

So Joe Biden has picked the runt of the litter, an also-ran loser in the Democratic primaries who never one a primary, barely escaped sitting at the kiddies table, whom the voters didn’t think was qualified to be president, yet whom Biden wanted to be a heartbeat away.  Or maybe his puppet masters, the voices in his earpiece, and the voices in his head picked her from a list loaded with more baggage than an airport carousel.

Biden picked a running mate who labeled him a racist opponent of school busing who cavorted and collaborated with segregationist Democrat colleagues in the Senate where Biden supported legislation leading to the incarceration of young black males. Of course, Harris did her part in incarcerating young black males with a vengeance as states attorney in San Francisco and attorney general of California.   

Kamala Harris also believes Biden is a sexual predator, saying we should believe his accusers, even staffer Tara Reade, who has credibly accused him of sexual assault. Reade certainly brings more evidence to the table than Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, whom Harris viciously attacked in one of the most unhinged attempts at character assassination we have ever seen.

The Hill reported:

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that she believes women who say they felt uncomfortable after receiving unwanted touching from former Vice President Joe Biden.

“I believe them and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it,” Harris said during a presidential campaign event in Nevada in April 2019 before Biden had officially entered the race.

As PJ Media reports:

And then there’s Tara Reade, in 2019, she said that Biden used to touch her inappropriately while she was a staffer in his Senate office in 1993. “He used to put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck,” Reade said. “I would just kind of freeze and wait for him to stop doing that.” She later expanded on those allegations, claiming in March 2020 that Biden sexually assaulted her by pushing her up against the wall, kissing her and sliding his hand up her shirt and up her skirt. Reade says attempted to file a claim, but Biden was ultimately protected by loyalists on his staff. The credibility of her claims was boosted by the release of a clip of the Larry King Live show during which her mother called in anonymously asking the panel for advice on how to handle a situation with her daughter and a prominent U.S. senator. Kamala Harris may have believed Tara Reade before Joe Biden jumped in the race, but when Biden was the frontrunner and then presumptive nominee, she ignored Reade’s sexual assault allegations when they resurfaced in 2020.

All Trump  has to do is take clips from their debate exchanges and attacks on Biden from Kamala’s interviews and append the tag line, “I’m Donald J. Trump and I approve her message.”

Harris’ well-rehearsed attack on Joe Biden that nearly derailed his candidacy during the clown-car Democratic presidential debates should have come as no surprise to those who have watched her rise to political prominence. Never mind its relevance or accuracy. For Harris, the ends always justify the means.

For a time it looked as if Harris wasn’t even on the short list, consistently failing to make the top tier in the Democratic presidential primary debates, after being ignored in either another Biden brain cramp or deliberate snub in which he called former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun the only African-American woman to serve in the Senate, and after a heated attack from Harris during a debate regarding Biden’s record on school busing:

The debate-stage skirmish was one of the seminal moments of the Democratic primary. Harris, who is Black, said Biden made “very hurtful” comments about his past work with segregationist senators before she slammed his opposition to busing as schools began to integrate.

“There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was me.”

At the time, Biden called her comments “a mischaracterization of my position.”

Biden’s pick of Harris fulfills Biden’s identity-politics decision to pick a “woman of color” although Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the fake Cherokee Indian, could have qualified. Harris is glib, if not articulate, a stark contrast to a Biden who can’t complete a sentence or remember where he is. It comes as Biden steadily slips among minority voters.

More great news for the Trump campaign.  Blacks and Minority voters are at record highs for President Trump.

Rasmussen Reports released their latest polling of likely black voters of President Trump’s job approval is now over 40%:

If Trump gets just 20% of the African-American, vote it is curtains for the Democrats and a landslide for Trump.  Biden’s patronizing of African-Americans is typified by his arguably racist and demeaning remark that if blacks do not vote for him, they are not in fact black.

For eight years Obama-Biden did nothing while Kamala Harris, as a former California state attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, did measurable harm to the community she claims to be a leader of.

She is counting on strong support from African Americans. But many black voters are wary of her 27 years as a prosecutor enforcing laws that sent African Americans to prison…

Still, her home state’s high rate of incarcerating people of color goes a long way in explaining the trouble she has had selling her candidacy to black voters nationwide. In California and many other states, racial disparities in imprisonment have intensified resentments of what many see as deeply ingrained discrimination in America’s criminal justice system…

But the prisons remain emblematic of chronic racial inequities in the justice system. African Americans make up less than 6% of California’s population but 29% of its inmates, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Latinos are 39% of the population but 43% of the inmates.

Tucker Carlson of Fox News calls Harris a corrupt and dangerous fraud who sees laws and powers only as means to punish her enemies, pursue her agenda, and get elected. As Carlson noted:

Carlson, who called Biden’s vice presidential pick the “most consequential” choice in U.S. history, disputed Sen. Kamala Harris’s authenticity on her progressive positions, saying the “front-runner” only stands by issues she knows will get her ahead in the polls. He cited the California Democrat’s low polling numbers at the time that she ended her own bid for the presidency and dropped out of the Democratic primary race.

“The wrap on Harris in exit polls is that she’s a fraud,” Carlson said. “She doesn’t really believe in anything, she’ll say whatever it takes. Of course, that is also Harris’s primary strength.”

Kamala Harris, like Biden, support Planned Parenthood’s crimes against the unborn and takes money and endorsements from the abortion industry. One remembers her resorting to lies, falsehoods and innuendo in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Biden is dangerous because he will let others control him and run the show. Harris is worse. She will know what she’s doing and will do it with astounding relish and ruthlessness,

As Sen. Cory Booker’s “Spartacus moment” fizzled, Harris knew an “Elmer Gantry moment” when she saw one. As Jonathan S. Tobin noted in National Review:

She first earned notoriety in the Senate last year by demonstrating open incivility bordering on bullying when she interrogated Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the national-intelligence chiefs. Bullying witnesses and cutting them off before they have a chance to answer is her modus operandi during hearings…

The same qualities were on display during her questioning of Kavanaugh. But while, like the other Democrats, she never succeeding in outsmarting the judge, she was the only one to momentarily flummox him by bringing up the Mueller investigation.

She started with an impossibly general and specious query about whether he had ever discussed the Mueller probe with “anyone.”…by asserting, even by implication, that Kavanaugh might somehow be part of the Russia-collusion discussion, Harris gave liberal Democrats exactly the kind of red meat they crave.

Along with her snide and disrespectful prosecutorial tone, that made her the winner of the first day of the Kavanaugh primary.

But Harris did more than badger, mislead, and imply in her attempt to slander Kavanaugh. Harris circulated a deceptively edited video designed to further her narrative that far from being an originalist that would apply the law fairly on any case, including those involving abortion, Kavanaugh was an active participant in the campaign to repeal Roe V. Wade. As Ashe Schow noted in the Daily Wire:

Harris’ Twitter account put out a clip that appeared to show Kavanaugh referring to birth control blanketly as “abortion-inducing drugs.”

This is clearly deceptive, as it’s obvious this was not the beginning of one of Kavanaugh’s answers. Kavanaugh’s full sentence, which would have only required one or two extra seconds had Harris’ team started at the beginning, made it clear he was summarizing what a party in a Supreme Court case said.

Kavanaugh said, “In that case, they said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objected to.” (Emphasis added.)

Harris was willing to falsify evidence to slander Kavanaugh and push the false narrative that Kavanaugh was just another pro-lifer waging a war on women. As she tweeted:

Kavanaugh chooses his words very carefully, and this is a dog whistle for going after birth control. He was nominated for the purpose of taking away a woman’s constitutionally protected right to make her own health care decisions. Make no mistake – this is about punishing women.

Make no mistake — her abuse of Kavanaugh and Biden was about advancing the career of Kamala Harris.  Ironically, she owes  her advancement to her association with former Democratic Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown. As the Washington Examiner noted:

Kamala Harris’ first significant political role was an appointment by her powerful then-boyfriend Willie Brown, three decades her senior, to a California medical board that has been criticized as a landing spot for patronage jobs and kickbacks.

Then 30, Harris was dating 60-year-old Willie Brown, at the time the Democratic speaker of the California State Assembly, when he placed her on the California Medical Assistance Commission in 1994. The position paid over $70,000 per year, $120,700 in current money, and Harris served on the board until 1998. 

The medical commission met twice a month, and Harris, a United States senator for California since 2017 and now a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, missed about 20% of the meetings each year…

Hey, politics makes strange bedfellows, as they say. Can we count her as a hardcore feminist then?  Conservative  Twitter icon James Wood has dubbed her #HeelsUpHarris, Kamala Harris is a dangerous and malevolent political opportunist who doesn’t belong in the same zip code as the White House — and the Lincoln Bedroom.

Photo credit: YouTube screen grab (cropped).

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.               

So Joe Biden has picked the runt of the litter, an also-ran loser in the Democratic primaries who never one a primary, barely escaped sitting at the kiddies table, whom the voters didn’t think was qualified to be president, yet whom Biden wanted to be a heartbeat away.  Or maybe his puppet masters, the voices in his earpiece, and the voices in his head picked her from a list loaded with more baggage than an airport carousel.

Biden picked a running mate who labeled him a racist opponent of school busing who cavorted and collaborated with segregationist Democrat colleagues in the Senate where Biden supported legislation leading to the incarceration of young black males. Of course, Harris did her part in incarcerating young black males with a vengeance as states attorney in San Francisco and attorney general of California.   

Kamala Harris also believes Biden is a sexual predator, saying we should believe his accusers, even staffer Tara Reade, who has credibly accused him of sexual assault. Reade certainly brings more evidence to the table than Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, whom Harris viciously attacked in one of the most unhinged attempts at character assassination we have ever seen.

The Hill reported:

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that she believes women who say they felt uncomfortable after receiving unwanted touching from former Vice President Joe Biden.

“I believe them and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it,” Harris said during a presidential campaign event in Nevada in April 2019 before Biden had officially entered the race.

As PJ Media reports:

And then there’s Tara Reade, in 2019, she said that Biden used to touch her inappropriately while she was a staffer in his Senate office in 1993. “He used to put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck,” Reade said. “I would just kind of freeze and wait for him to stop doing that.” She later expanded on those allegations, claiming in March 2020 that Biden sexually assaulted her by pushing her up against the wall, kissing her and sliding his hand up her shirt and up her skirt. Reade says attempted to file a claim, but Biden was ultimately protected by loyalists on his staff. The credibility of her claims was boosted by the release of a clip of the Larry King Live show during which her mother called in anonymously asking the panel for advice on how to handle a situation with her daughter and a prominent U.S. senator. Kamala Harris may have believed Tara Reade before Joe Biden jumped in the race, but when Biden was the frontrunner and then presumptive nominee, she ignored Reade’s sexual assault allegations when they resurfaced in 2020.

All Trump  has to do is take clips from their debate exchanges and attacks on Biden from Kamala’s interviews and append the tag line, “I’m Donald J. Trump and I approve her message.”

Harris’ well-rehearsed attack on Joe Biden that nearly derailed his candidacy during the clown-car Democratic presidential debates should have come as no surprise to those who have watched her rise to political prominence. Never mind its relevance or accuracy. For Harris, the ends always justify the means.

For a time it looked as if Harris wasn’t even on the short list, consistently failing to make the top tier in the Democratic presidential primary debates, after being ignored in either another Biden brain cramp or deliberate snub in which he called former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun the only African-American woman to serve in the Senate, and after a heated attack from Harris during a debate regarding Biden’s record on school busing:

The debate-stage skirmish was one of the seminal moments of the Democratic primary. Harris, who is Black, said Biden made “very hurtful” comments about his past work with segregationist senators before she slammed his opposition to busing as schools began to integrate.

“There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was me.”

At the time, Biden called her comments “a mischaracterization of my position.”

Biden’s pick of Harris fulfills Biden’s identity-politics decision to pick a “woman of color” although Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the fake Cherokee Indian, could have qualified. Harris is glib, if not articulate, a stark contrast to a Biden who can’t complete a sentence or remember where he is. It comes as Biden steadily slips among minority voters.

More great news for the Trump campaign.  Blacks and Minority voters are at record highs for President Trump.

Rasmussen Reports released their latest polling of likely black voters of President Trump’s job approval is now over 40%:

If Trump gets just 20% of the African-American, vote it is curtains for the Democrats and a landslide for Trump.  Biden’s patronizing of African-Americans is typified by his arguably racist and demeaning remark that if blacks do not vote for him, they are not in fact black.

For eight years Obama-Biden did nothing while Kamala Harris, as a former California state attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, did measurable harm to the community she claims to be a leader of.

She is counting on strong support from African Americans. But many black voters are wary of her 27 years as a prosecutor enforcing laws that sent African Americans to prison…

Still, her home state’s high rate of incarcerating people of color goes a long way in explaining the trouble she has had selling her candidacy to black voters nationwide. In California and many other states, racial disparities in imprisonment have intensified resentments of what many see as deeply ingrained discrimination in America’s criminal justice system…

But the prisons remain emblematic of chronic racial inequities in the justice system. African Americans make up less than 6% of California’s population but 29% of its inmates, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Latinos are 39% of the population but 43% of the inmates.

Tucker Carlson of Fox News calls Harris a corrupt and dangerous fraud who sees laws and powers only as means to punish her enemies, pursue her agenda, and get elected. As Carlson noted:

Carlson, who called Biden’s vice presidential pick the “most consequential” choice in U.S. history, disputed Sen. Kamala Harris’s authenticity on her progressive positions, saying the “front-runner” only stands by issues she knows will get her ahead in the polls. He cited the California Democrat’s low polling numbers at the time that she ended her own bid for the presidency and dropped out of the Democratic primary race.

“The wrap on Harris in exit polls is that she’s a fraud,” Carlson said. “She doesn’t really believe in anything, she’ll say whatever it takes. Of course, that is also Harris’s primary strength.”

Kamala Harris, like Biden, support Planned Parenthood’s crimes against the unborn and takes money and endorsements from the abortion industry. One remembers her resorting to lies, falsehoods and innuendo in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Biden is dangerous because he will let others control him and run the show. Harris is worse. She will know what she’s doing and will do it with astounding relish and ruthlessness,

As Sen. Cory Booker’s “Spartacus moment” fizzled, Harris knew an “Elmer Gantry moment” when she saw one. As Jonathan S. Tobin noted in National Review:

She first earned notoriety in the Senate last year by demonstrating open incivility bordering on bullying when she interrogated Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the national-intelligence chiefs. Bullying witnesses and cutting them off before they have a chance to answer is her modus operandi during hearings…

The same qualities were on display during her questioning of Kavanaugh. But while, like the other Democrats, she never succeeding in outsmarting the judge, she was the only one to momentarily flummox him by bringing up the Mueller investigation.

She started with an impossibly general and specious query about whether he had ever discussed the Mueller probe with “anyone.”…by asserting, even by implication, that Kavanaugh might somehow be part of the Russia-collusion discussion, Harris gave liberal Democrats exactly the kind of red meat they crave.

Along with her snide and disrespectful prosecutorial tone, that made her the winner of the first day of the Kavanaugh primary.

But Harris did more than badger, mislead, and imply in her attempt to slander Kavanaugh. Harris circulated a deceptively edited video designed to further her narrative that far from being an originalist that would apply the law fairly on any case, including those involving abortion, Kavanaugh was an active participant in the campaign to repeal Roe V. Wade. As Ashe Schow noted in the Daily Wire:

Harris’ Twitter account put out a clip that appeared to show Kavanaugh referring to birth control blanketly as “abortion-inducing drugs.”

This is clearly deceptive, as it’s obvious this was not the beginning of one of Kavanaugh’s answers. Kavanaugh’s full sentence, which would have only required one or two extra seconds had Harris’ team started at the beginning, made it clear he was summarizing what a party in a Supreme Court case said.

Kavanaugh said, “In that case, they said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objected to.” (Emphasis added.)

Harris was willing to falsify evidence to slander Kavanaugh and push the false narrative that Kavanaugh was just another pro-lifer waging a war on women. As she tweeted:

Kavanaugh chooses his words very carefully, and this is a dog whistle for going after birth control. He was nominated for the purpose of taking away a woman’s constitutionally protected right to make her own health care decisions. Make no mistake – this is about punishing women.

Make no mistake — her abuse of Kavanaugh and Biden was about advancing the career of Kamala Harris.  Ironically, she owes  her advancement to her association with former Democratic Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown. As the Washington Examiner noted:

Kamala Harris’ first significant political role was an appointment by her powerful then-boyfriend Willie Brown, three decades her senior, to a California medical board that has been criticized as a landing spot for patronage jobs and kickbacks.

Then 30, Harris was dating 60-year-old Willie Brown, at the time the Democratic speaker of the California State Assembly, when he placed her on the California Medical Assistance Commission in 1994. The position paid over $70,000 per year, $120,700 in current money, and Harris served on the board until 1998. 

The medical commission met twice a month, and Harris, a United States senator for California since 2017 and now a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, missed about 20% of the meetings each year…

Hey, politics makes strange bedfellows, as they say. Can we count her as a hardcore feminist then?  Conservative  Twitter icon James Wood has dubbed her #HeelsUpHarris, Kamala Harris is a dangerous and malevolent political opportunist who doesn’t belong in the same zip code as the White House — and the Lincoln Bedroom.

Photo credit: YouTube screen grab (cropped).

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.               

Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) failed presidential campaign received contributions from a law firm used by deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, according to July 2019 report.

The Associated Press reported:

Kamala Harris bemoaned the influence of the powerful and connected elite last Tuesday when she called on top Justice Department officials to recuse themselves from any matter related to Jeffrey Epstein. She said their former law firm’s work on behalf of the financier accused of sexual abuse “calls into question the integrity of our legal system.” Yet the same day, Harris’ husband headlined a Chicago fundraiser for her presidential campaign that was hosted by six partners of that firm — Kirkland and Ellis, according to an invitation obtained by The Associated Press.

[…]

Harris, a California senator and Democratic presidential candidate, was one of several White House hopefuls to blast the handling of Epstein’s case in Florida a decade ago, when his lawyers negotiated a deal with federal prosecutors that allowed him to avoid the possibility of years in prison.

In 2008, former Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta met with Kirkland and Ellis lawyers in his capacity as U.S. attorney in Miami and cut an agreement that let Epstein only serve 13 months in prison.

Despite the connection to Epstein, then-Harris spokesman Ian Sams dismissed concerns about taking money from law firm partners that were uninvolved with Epstein’s plea deal.

“The people involved in that case have not supported her campaign, and she wouldn’t want that support anyway,” Sams argued to the AP at the time.

However, one attorney believes any campaign connection to the firm is unacceptable.

“If any connection with Kirkland and Ellis is a stain on (senior Justice Department officials), why isn’t a connection with the law firm for the receipt of campaign contributions a stain on her own campaign?” said Common Cause lawyer Paul Ryan.

In August 2019, Epstein was found dead in his New York City jail cell where he was being held on sex trafficking and abuse charges. His alleged madam — British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell — was arrested in early July on charges of enticing minors to engage in sexual activities.

An Air Force helicopter was forced to land and get medical attention for a crew member after it was shot at over Virginia.

McClatchy reports that a “UH-1N Huey helicopter is assigned to the 1st Helicopter Squadron at Joint Base Andrews” was targeted while performing a training mission.

The Manassas Regional Airport was alerted around 12:20 p.m. that the helicopter was coming in and that medics would be meeting it. The wounded crew member was taken to a hospital, treated, and released.

U.S. News spoke with an Air Force spokesman who reported the helicopter was “struck by a bullet.”

The helicopter is part of the 1st Helicopter Squadron, which “supports the movement of the president and other senior government officials to and from Andrews.”

The Washington Times reported a statement from the FBI which said, “The FBI Washington Field Office is working jointly with our law enforcement partners, including the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, to determine the circumstances surrounding the incident.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.