The Craziest Thing Being Said on TV Today

Maxine Waters and Bobby Rush, two members of Congress, have gone on national television to claim President Trump’s actions in Oregon are a trial run for him attempting to hold on to power if he loses in November. They are arguing he is using a military coup against our constitutional system.

John Heileman on MSNBC said the same thing. Heileman actually argued that what the Portland actions amount to is an “attempt through intimidation and potentially through force to try to steal this election.”

Whoopi Goldberg on The View argued, “This feels different. This feels like a planned attack against the American people. It is very specific and it is very targeted.”

Eric Holder, on MSNBC, got in on the act claiming, “If he loses, and I expect that he will, then we have to be prepared for what he is going to do in the immediate aftermath of such a loss, and what he will do for the time period between the election and the inauguration of the next president. We have to be prepared for things that this nation has never faced before. And unfortunately, that could involve the use of, you know, these forces. Who knows what he will do and the people who are in, as part of his administration, will support him in doing.”

Bobby Rush said on television, “I just know that that's what Trump's game plan is. Trump wants to instigate a race war. He wants to have black folk fighting white folk so that he can rise up and say, ‘I’m the real Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and I’m the President. Reelect me!’”

Maxine Waters’ quote was, “As a matter of fact, it has been suggested that this is a trial run of the president of the United States who may be organizing to not accept what happens when we have the election if he’s not elected. Is he going to pull out? His military? Is he going to encage us? He has already alluded to there may be a civil war if he’s re-elected. This is dangerous. About who are these people, where did they come from and why is it being done in secret?”

There’s a clear talking point in the water and, with the exception of Goldberg, they’re all uttering it on MSNBC. It is a testament to both how obsessed the rest of the media is with Fox News and how little influence MSNBC has that all these people, from politicians to news analysts, could say such bat poop crazy stuff and everyone else ignores it.

But Brian Stelter at CNN, who’d be losing his mind if this happened on Fox, hasn’t said anything. The op-ed page at the New York Times is silent. In large part, it is probably because they agree, which says more about them than the President.

These people are broken and a media that will only highlight the hyperbolic, irresponsible rhetoric if it happens on Fox is also broken. It also completely misses what is happening.

This is not a trial run for a coup or a way to intimidate voters in November. This is about showing just what is happening in American citizens because the left cannot help themselves but respond violently.

Polling suggests the American people side with the President overwhelmingly on law and order issues, but that they also do not view law and order issues as a big deal. By sending federal agents to help in cities dealing with violence, the media is going to go cover it and the rioters and Antifa types are going to respond to the limelight by being more violent.

The President then will be able to bring the American public’s caricature of the angry left to live on the television screen for everyone to see. He is, yet again, playing the media perfectly on this. By sending federal forces to Chicago, St. Louis, and elsewhere, the media will follow as will Antifa. Antifa will get violent for the TV cameras. The American public will see it and, just perhaps, their concern about law and order will start to move up in their list of concerns and potentially overshadow their concerns about the virus.

Couple that effort with the President’s renewed focus on daily briefings that are just the facts and what they’re doing and you see a President who is both engaged in handling the virus and engaged in fighting out of control crime.

Yes, sending the federal authorities is heavily political. Yes, having the daily briefings is heavily political. But they’re both things the President can do and they are both things the media won’t be able to resist covering. Both potentially show a President in control, the left out of control, and could help him in November.

It has nothing to do with a coup or using paramilitary forces to stop people from voting or anything like that. It is genuinely irresponsible rhetoric and, guess what? It potentially emboldens even more vicious far left attacks, which plays into Trump’s hands.

You do have to give it to the man. His singular superpower is getting other people to behave exactly as they claim he behaves. He is using that power now.

China ❤️ the American Press

He is also getting an assist from the New York Times. The newspaper has run an op-ed from a Chinese communist who is attacking our handling of the virus and bragging about China’s handling.

The man, Yi Rao, renounced his American citizenship due to his “moral obligation to China,” and has been blacklisted by the United States. He also bullied colleagues for suggesting Taiwan was its own nation. The man has a disturbing history the Times chose not to highlight.

This comes on the heels of a New York Times reporter defending TikTok, an app used by kids, but that is actually a Chinese espionage tool. The parent company of TikTok is controlled by the Chinese military and the head of the company has pledged his transcendent loyalty to the cause of the Chinese regime.

The United States and other nations are considering banning TikTok based on intelligence reports and the New York Times is defending it.

I have gotten a lot of heat from people in the press for suggesting China has American journalists on their payroll, but though I have no evidence of it I am convinced of it. Increasingly, however, I don’t think China has to pay any journalists to take up for them. A number of American journalists are clearly sympathetic to that regime and are willing to run Chinese communist propaganda and downplay problems with China.

It’s not just the press. Look at Mark Cuban of the Dallas Maovericks. The man has refused to even question the videos of ethnic Chinese minorities being blindfolded, rounded up, and put on trains. Even the NBA store, for a time, blocked people from making jerseys with “Free Hong Kong” written on them.

The Chinese are throwing their money around and buying the silence and complacence of American journalists, billionaires, athletes, Hollywood studios, and more.

The supposed “paper of record,” which melted down over running an op-ed by a sitting United States Senator calling for the President to do exactly what he is now doing, i.e. sending troops to American cities, is running an op-ed by a man who gave up his US citizenship and is blacklisted by this country just so the man can criticize this country from a communist perspective.

That’s pretty telling.

Now Let Me Double Down On This

By sending federal troops to Portland, OR, the President is allowing Portland not just escape from their own democratic choices, but also allowing them a scapegoat to take the blame. Portland can blame Trump instead of its residents. They can blame Washington instead of their mayor.

In Portland, the accounts of what is happening diverge. The President and his supporters claim he is just protecting federal property and rounding up rioters who have vandalized the property. The media and Democrats claim the presence of these troops is unsettling the city, provoking protestors, and arresting more than just those who vandalize property.

Yesterday, the President and Attorney General announced the President will send more federal authorities to cities like Chicago to help local law enforcement with out of control crime. This is part of the President’s “law and order” messaging that he has been tweeting regularly. Some will conclude the President is using federal employees to inflame tensions and then set those employees on protestors to try to bolster his claim of out of control cities.

Others, myself included, would note these cities have been out of control whether the President campaigned on the issue or not. But, at some point, we must allow people to live with their choices and make it easy for those who want to escape to actually move. If we allow Portland, Chicago, St. Louis, and other cities to fester as they want, they will either figure out they must change, or live with the consequences.

When people move out, the tax base collapses, and crime goes up, the people will either change their behavior or be democratically marginalized in their voting power. If life goes on as normal or more people move in to embrace what is happening, then they’ve chosen it or the problems have been exaggerated by conservatives, as they claim. Let the market decision by letting the actions of a free people control their fate.

The President should withdraw from Oregon and not send supplemental help to these other cities. Instead, he can campaign on their descent to chaos at the hands of Democrat mayors.

A President sending in a police force to a city is a dangerous precedent that will be expanded upon by future presidents even though they lack a general police power. A city allowed to chose its own fate is a positive precedent from which we can all draw lessons.

Let Portland burn or not. Let the other cities descend into violence or not. But let the cities decide without intervention from Washington.

I should also note two more things. First, we should all be disturbed to see the Department of Homeland Security has such a police force when the police power resides with states, not Washington. This is a bridge too far and, frankly, these teams of troops, soldiers, or police in the gear they are wearing does convey a military image, not a civilian police force image.

Second, we should note that despite all the bellyaching from all the Democrats about the situation, not a single Democrat leader has advanced a measure to defund these people or cut the budget of the Department of Homeland Security. They could, but they have not even tried.