Trump’s Resilience And The Inevitable Endpoint of Democrat Politics

First published on July 19th...

Forty years ago, after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan I remember watching ABC anchor Frank Renyolds violently slam his fist on the desk when he was given some conflicting information about the president’s fate.  The ABC brass quickly marched Sam Donaldson out to co-host, hoping to keep Renyolds calm. The country was shocked and somber.  While the left disliked Reagan, there wasn’t a hint of joy (that I remember) expressed that he had been shot or that it was unfortunate that he survived.

Fast forward 43 years and we have another maverick Republican president (albeit not in office at the time) who’s wounded by a would be assassin’s bullet.  This time, while most of the country was shocked and appalled, there’s a significant element of the press and the left who argue that the president was responsible for the shooting, as others openly wish the shooter hadn’t missed. 

What’s interesting is that as every day goes by we find out more about the utter absurd, incompetence or worse that put Trump at risk.  We discover that the DEI clown running the Secret Service diverted Trump’s usual detail to protect her patron, Jill Biden and left Trump with the practice squad.  What’s worse, we discover that the building upon which the would be assassin set himself didn’t have a sniper on it because the roof was sloped – and a SS sniper might fall off – and that authorities knew the killer was there for more than 20 minutes before the first shot rang out. They were even in the building itself!  The most charitable assessment is that those in charge are utterly incompetent imbeciles.  A less charitable assessment would conclude that they were somehow complicit in the attack. 

But of course this is just the latest attempt to destroy Trump. The Democrats conspired to sabotage him from before he was president and never gave up.  There have been lies about Russia, kids in cages, “Good people on both sides,” suckers and losers, and of course Trump encouraging the drinking of bleach. He was impeached for talking with Ukraine, investigated for allegedly trying to coerce Georgia’s Secretary of State of Georgia to create votes after the 2020 election and impeached for incitement of the January 6^th “Insurrection” despite the fact that no such insurrection occurred.  And the countless manufactured court cases were just more of the same. 

All the while Democrats and their mouthpieces in the Propaganda Ministry have been telling Americans that Trump is a threat to the nation, calling him Hitler and suggesting that if he gets into office he’ll never leave. 

Donald Trump has been on the defensive for the last eight years.  What’s more, his supporters have been abused, harassed, thrown in jail and in the case of Ashli Babbitt on January 6^th and Corey Comperatore on Saturday, killed.

All of this presents a picture of America that is much different than the one that the Democrats and their fellow travelers in the swamp and the media want you to think exists, and last night Joe Biden inadvertently highlighted it.  He told the NAACP “And when you peacefully protested George Floyd’s murder, Donald Trump called for the National Guard to go after you.” 

Democrats tell us it is the Republicans who are violent and dangerous.  That’s gaslighting.  Contra Biden’s assertion, I don’t remember the Floyd riots being particularly peaceful.  There were riots across the country, more than a dozen people died and that entire summer was full of violence.  Nor do I remember the protests after the death of Michael Brown or Freddie Gray being particularly peaceful. Thinking back even further, I don’t remember Seattle’s WTO protests in 1999 being peaceful nor the World Bank protests in Washington the next year. And the Democratic National Convention in 1968 wasn’t marked by peaceful protest either.  And more recently we’ve seen the Hamas supporting thug wing of the Democrat party unleash violence and chaos across the country. 

During that Floyd inspired “Summer of love” Democrats were calling for and supporting violence against the fiction of “systemic racism”. And now, while claiming they never encourage violence, they’ve been telling their sheeple for years that Trump is the new Hitler, a threat to freedom and a threat to “our democracy”.  They and their cronies have suggested that if he gets back into office he’ll likely never leave.

One wonders, given the left’s extraordinary propensity for violence, what might have happened if rather than Trump being shot, it was the sainted Barack Obama in the crosshairs when he was a candidate?  And what if the attempt had been successful?  I can only imagine that the resulting cataclysm would have made the “Summer of Love” look like a Boy Scout camp fire.

But it wasn’t Barack Obama and there weren’t any riots.  As a matter of fact, there weren’t any protest marches, there weren’t any threats of violence, there was… nothing.  And that’s the difference between Republicans and Democrats. One seeks to govern and advance its agenda through debate, legislation and the ballot box while the other seeks to use slander, intimidation and violence to achieve its means.

The last time Republicans were given a proverbial punch in the face – the stolen 2020 election – what did they do?  They protested in Washington, and almost all of the them doing so peacefully, as Trump had implored them to.  Unfortunately, Democrats conspired to leave the capital largely unguarded and decried the GOP when the predictable chaos ensued after police and agents incited a riot by firing stun grenades and rubber bullets into the peaceful crowd. This of course was labeled an “insurrection” but it was nothing of the sort. Whatever it was, it was not equivalent to the Democrat’s Summer of Love with burning cities, widespread violence and murders of innocent people.  That’s simply not the Republican way.

The bottom line is, Democrats think we live in a democracy while Republicans – for the most part – understand we live in a republic.  The former is the hallmark of tyranny of men while the latter defines a nation based on freedom and rights guaranteed by a constitution.   

So that is where we stand today.  We’re not at a hot war, but then we’re not far from it.  The Democrats and their comrades in the media along with their Antifa, BLM and pro Hamas stormtroopers have made it clear that a GOP victory in November will essentially put America where Germany was in the early 1930s.  That logic, taken to its logical conclusion, asks if you could go back in time and kill Hitler, would you?  Many of us might say yes. Well Democrats are telling us that we’re facing the same threat now in the form of Donald Trump. Given the level of gullibility and mental illness that characterizes the left, how many of them will not choose to become martyrs for the cause, or at a minimum, foot soldiers?  Let’s hope this attempted assassination has a silver lining, that the rhetoric on the left is dialed down a few notches and a few Democrats start listening to sources outside their silo.  If Amber Rose can do it, maybe a few million others could too and there just might be hope that Trump’s coming victory won’t trigger a leftist cataclysm.

The Real Tragedy of the George Floyd and Daunte Wright Stories

America is on the verge of anarchy. Every time a black man is killed by police the community finds itself on the edge and the nation wonders if an inferno is about to erupt. This reality dovetailed with a meme I saw a few days ago: “The Biggest Change Since Rodney King is the Video Quality”. While video quality has improved, one thing that hasn’t changed is negative outcomes from resisting arrest. Some of the names Americans know that demonstrate that include: George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Rayshard Brooks and Michael Brown. If the media were being honest they would characterize these encounters as what they were, black men killed while resisting arrest.

In every one of these cases and many others, the men who ended up dead resisted arrest, sometimes violently. According to policeviolencereport.org there were 268 black males killed by police in the United States in 2019 (the last normal year prior to Covid). Of that number, 212 or 79% were armed (allegedly) while 182 or 68% were attacking the police (allegedly). Of the 32% who were not actively attacking the police, most were carrying on other actions such as resisting arrest, holding weapons they wouldn’t drop or attacking other people. For comparison, during that same year the numbers for white males was 415 killed with 298 or 68% armed and 281 or 68% attacking the police. An interesting note about that comparison is the percentage of black males killed who were “unarmed”, 21%, is actually significantly lower than that for white males, 32%.

It’s difficult to get a complete picture of what’s going on in America by simply looking at numbers. Luckily we also have videos, including many of the death of George Floyd. While there is much going on in those videos, one thing that is clear from them is that Floyd was resisting arrest. One can make the argument that the police were too physical for too long, but the fact is, he was on the ground as a direct result of his actions. Similarly, Dauante Wright lunged back into his car.  

Many people say that Floyd was subdued or that Wright wasn’t a threat, but the fact is no one knows. As the case of Rayshard Brooks demonstrates, things can go from calm, even collegial to confrontational in a split second. Just last week in New Mexico a suspect was conversing with a cop one moment and killing him the next.

The circumstance that America finds itself in today is the result of a purposeful manipulation of American citizens. The facts are that while black men are killed by police at a higher rate than their proportion of the population, they are killed by police at a lower rate than their proportion of perpetrators of violent crime.

The truth is, 700,000 police officers interact with Americans approximately 75 million times a year. Of those 75 million interactions, typically about 1,000 citizens are killed by police. That is a death rate below 0.002% per encounter, which means that 99.998% of police encounters pass without a death. Put another way, out of 1,000,000 Americans, 3 will die each year at the hands of the police. Compare that to 18 from texting while driving, 121 from suicide, 757 medical mistakes, and 2,000 from heart disease. At the hands of police: 3, and most of those were armed and attacking the police!

One of the things that gets lost in all of this propaganda is the job that the police do. They interact with citizens 75 million times a year. Someone stealing from a store, passing counterfeit bills or assaulting someone. There are domestic disturbances, auto accidents, speed stops, bar fights etc. In all of those circumstances and myriad others, police willingly walk into a situation with the goal of everyone exiting the encounter alive. They put their lives at risk every day for people who in most cases they don’t even know. Of course that’s the job they signed up for so it’s not a surprise, but that doesn’t make it any less courageous.

They of course don’t always get everything right. Police are human and make mistakes and there are bad cops and racists too. We've probably seen videos of cops behaving badly, but the fact is, overall, cops do an outstanding job. If they didn’t, 99.998% of encounters wouldn’t end with everyone emerging alive. There’s almost nothing in human existence that’s that successful, and that number is made that much more extraordinary because a significant number of those encounters include citizens who are armed, violent, callous and perhaps on drugs.

In the face of this widespread assault on them, the police are still expected to do their jobs, and do them perfectly. In going into situations where tensions are already elevated, where bystanders may be distracting or even interfering and where everyone seems to be filming, police are expected to comport themselves flawlessly despite elevated adrenaline and likely experiencing some combination of anger, confusion, fear, disorientation, exhaustion and more. All of this while a subject may be striking them, pointing a weapon at them, reaching into car or simply resisting arrest. Yet they are still supposed to respond perfectly every time. They don’t of course, but overall they do a pretty good job. How many of us when faced with citizens calling us “Pigs” spitting on us or striking us, or even shooting at us would be able to rein in all those emotions and perform perfectly in every instance? My guess is that most of us would fall far short of the performance most police demonstrate.

And the rarely mentioned secret (but easily observed common sense fact) is that the very communities where leftists are calling for the defunding, reimagining or disbanding the police are the very communities who benefit most from their presence. The police pullback has a cost. Murders are up in Portland 255% over the last year in Portland. Chicago 65%, New York 58%, Louisville 87%, Minneapolis 64% and LA 51%. And who exactly have been the victims of that increased murder rate? Black Americans, the very people BLM, Antifa, Democrats and the media ostensibly are seeking to protect.

The truth of the matter is that Floyd, Wright, and Brown would likely be alive today had they not resisted arrest. But that’s not the story that Democrats want to tell. Because telling young black men, or anyone, that respecting the police and not resisting arrest doesn’t make news headlines, doesn’t galvanize citizens and most importantly, doesn’t drive voters to pull the levers for Democrats.

And that’s the key. The reality is, Democrats don’t care about black Americans. They seek power and are willing to sacrifice black Americans to get it. By creating the fiction that black Americans are in the crosshairs of the police they have done an extraordinary disservice to America. The real lesson to be learned by the Floyd and Brown incidents is not that police are shooting black men with abandon but rather resisting arrest or engaging in a violent confrontation with police leads to bad outcomes. The challenges of urban America are legion, from terrible schools, limited job opportunities, and violent crime, and the fiction proffered by the left addresses none of those. What’s worse, it takes any energy that might be available to address those real problems and focuses it on addressing a fictional issue. And that’s the real tragedy here.

Vietnam War Playbook Repeats Itself In American Cities...

Sometimes it’s difficult to recognize that history is being written while you are in the middle of it actually taking place. Such is I think the situation we are in the middle of today with the riots associated with the murder of George Floyd.

Probably no sentient person in the country would have condoned what we saw on that video as the breath was literally pressed out of Mr. Floyd. On the contrary, almost every single person who responded, black, white, police, civilian, politician or guy on the street expressed revulsion for the officer’s conduct. Thankfully, from the moment that video was shared, the wheels of justice were indeed turning, with all four officers being fired immediately and culminating in the primary officer being arrested within days.

Despite this, protests began, followed by looting and then riots. None of those things are surprising given the media’s glee at any opportunity to use anecdotal evidence to try and convince blacks that they are victims and that the police are out to get them.  It's all in furtherance of media / Democrat’s default narrative that America is a racist nation. Mix Black Lives Matter with the Bernie Bros of Antifa and you have a rather predictable combustible setting. Anytime you have large groups of young people who feel the government is their enemy, it's difficult to keep the Molotov Cocktails in their bottles.

None of that is new… but what is new is police chiefs and officers and mayors kneeling with and embracing protesters, as if the idea of “If we just understand their pain” will turn everything down to simmer and will bring about peaceful coexistence. I doubt it. This is a moment in time not unlike the watershed event of the capitulation of the administration of Columbia Univ. in 1968 which ushered in students taking over universities and turning American colleges into progressive propaganda factories.

If the chiefs et al think that embracing the protesters is going to bring about harmony, they will soon be disabused of such notions. While the media continues to proffer the fiction that the protests have been mostly peaceful, the reality is obviously different. For an entire week Americans have been watching blue cities across the country go up in flames, seen bottles and bricks thrown, police cars set ablaze and businesses big and small get looted and destroyed. Just last night, exactly one week since Mr. Floyd’s death, a police officer is shot in the head in Las Vegas, four officers were shot in St Louis, a car rammed into officers in Buffalo in the Bronx a cop was beaten while onlookers videotaped and egged the assailants on.

The people causing this mayhem have no interest in being heard or understood. Their goal is not a better neighborhood, city or America. They want to loot, they want to destroy, they want to cause chaos, and fundamentally, they want to start a revolution because they have no vested interest in things like private property, rule of law, capitalism and freedom.

Given the decades long endless undermining of such ideas from the media, from Democrats, and the education machinery at all levels, it’s no surprise that millions of young Americans, both black and white are happy to not only stand by and watch as their cities and the country burn, but more, they want to participate in it. This all reminds me of something I read 25 years ago in a biography by Peter G. MacDonald of North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap. In reference to the Vietnam War in general and the Tet Offensive in particular Giap said something to the effect that “We didn’t have to win the war on the ground, we only had to win over the American media and they would do the rest.” Probably not an exact quote - it's been a quarter century after all! - but the truth of his sentiments can be seen in the widespread notion at the time that the United States was defeated in the Tet Offensive. Completely wrong. After the initial surprise the North Vietnamese were not only repelled, but their army was so badly destroyed that Giap considered surrendering. But he didn’t because he didn’t have to... The American media did their job and the tide eventually turned against the war.

Today on a much different playing field the leftist media and their Democrat partners are playing the same role and but it’s not on some far off field where Americans are dying, it’s here in the United States and the enemy of freedom the media and Democrats are supporting is not some foreign army, but rather the looters and anarchists who seek to burn the place to the ground and start a real revolution. By lying about the peaceful nature of the protests, by lying about the prevalence of police brutality, by lying about America being a racist and fundamentally unjust society, they are tearing at the frayed threads that already keep young people connected to the nation and its values.  In doing so they are encouraging the destruction you see across the country today.

As Rudy Giuliani demonstrated when he saved literally thousands of black lives by simply enforcing the law, the only way to stop this chaos is to actually enforce the law and arrest or shoot if necessary the rioters who are destroying American cities and threatening the lives of police and civilians alike. Unless governors and mayors step up and decide to win this war for America's soul rather than hold hands with and tolerate the terrorists, 2020 looks like it might just be another long hot summer.