Month: February 2024

By Retired Colonel John Mills on Substack

An October 6, 2016, Dinner, there was only one reason this retired, very senior FBI Official was in London: To coordinate the Russia Hoax with CIA Chief of Station at the request of James Comey

Excerpt from “The Nation Will Follow” Chapter 4 “A Dinner in London”:

“What I did know was that many of the faces I saw were Hillary supporters. I was one of a very small number of Trump supporters in the room. And I was okay with that. I am not above having dinner with the opposition, and I try not to judge people by their political affiliation. We all have reasons for supporting who we support, as long as they are the right reason: for the benefit of the nation.

So, we broke the ice and introduced ourselves. These were only meant to be quick introductions, there were over fifty people in the room, but it seemed my “friend,” the man I traveled with, did not get the memo.

He stood, introduced himself, and like a Hollywood characterization of what a senior law enforcement official should be like, he ranted to the room.

“Trump is a traitor! He is a Russian asset, is being groomed by Putin for a position at the top and represents the greatest threat to national security the United States has ever seen. And we’re going to prove it!” I stiffened in my chair, taken aback by this outburst. Never, at any stage in our journey, did he give any indication that this was his plan. But in that moment, it clicked in my mind as to why he never revealed to me his reason for traveling. I guess I had found it.

As he dove into his highly unusual tirade, I was shocked to see several people lean forward into their chairs, for the first time in the evening paying rapt attention to what was being said.

The thing about this guy is that he is engaging. He adopted a character that was over-the-top and completely unlike his usual face and used it. Maybe I was seeing him with the mask off, a mask that he had clearly worn for years as he hid his true allegiances. “

© 2024 UAEC LLC All viewpoints are personal and do not reflect the viewpoints of any organization.

The post John Mills: Suddenly, a Notebook is Discussed that Connects Gina Haspel with the Coup Against Trump appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Alexandra Berzon is a self-proclaimed “election denier movement” reporter for the New York Times.

Unfortunately, Ms. Berzon appears to be singularly focused on infiltrating and demonizing election integrity groups who find Democrat-funded groups committing voter fraud or Democrat election officials making it easy to cheat in Michigan.

MI Democrat SOS Jocelyn Benson pictured next to a voter application sent to a foreign exchange student who was never a resident of Michigan or citizen of the US.

 

On November 7, 2022, Ms. Berzon published her first hit piece on election integrity volunteers in Michigan.

From the NYTs article:

Republican activists, lawyers and elected officials in Michigan who call the results of the 2020 election fraudulent would unite with a single focus: “to provide ongoing citizen oversight, transparency, and accountability” in elections. They adopted the name Michigan Fair Elections and the simple slogan, “Choose Freedom.”

Over the next months, the participants got to work trying to remake democracy in the nation’s 10th largest state under the banner of integrity.

They recruited and trained challengers to spot and document minute ballot irregularities; filed lawsuits to undermine protections for the vote-counting process; and debated the merits of calling 911 on poll workers deemed to be violating rules. In weekly Zoom meetings, they discussed friendly insiders positioned on Michigan canvassing boards, which certify results; repeated debunked conspiracy theories about election machines, ballot “mules” and widespread voter fraud; and obsessed over the idea that Democrats “cheat” to win elections.

What Ms. Berzon calls an obsession, most Americans would call one of the most precious rights we have in America, the right to free and fair elections. If evidence pointed to Republicans cheating to win elections, Michigan-based MFE, a non-partisan election integrity group, would be first to investigate it, but unfortunately, to date, voter fraud in Michigan has almost solely been funded by Democrats and implemented by dishonest Democrat leadership like SOS Jocelyn Benson. For instance, in 2020, without permission, SOS Benson mailed 7.7 million unsolicited absentee ballot applications; she told clerks across Michigan to ignore signature matching on absentee ballots.

We spoke with Pure Integrity Michigan Elections (PIME) and Michigan Fair Elections (MFE) founder Patrice Johnson, who explained that it is her understanding that Alexandra Berzon somehow gained access to their Zoom calls.  According to Patrice Johnson, despite a clear disclaimer that MFE reads before every meeting that states they do not allow the press to attend their meetings or that attendees are prohibited from recording the meetings, Ms Berzon claims she was able to gain access to “20 hours of recordings of Michigan Fair Elections” meetings.

In her article on MFE, Ms. Berzon wrote: Someone with access to video and audio recordings of the calls shared them with The Times. Several participants confirmed the material’s authenticity.

Is this the same New York Times that regularly mocks James O’Keefe for his style of reporting, which includes undercover recording of individuals in states where it’s legal or where there isn’t a disclaimer telling him that taping is prohibited?

In her attempted smear of MFE, the most respected election integrity group in Michigan, the self-proclaimed “election denier movement” reporter Alexandra Berzon blames President Trump for the majority of Americans who, after 2020, no longer trust elections. “Election officials and governance experts say that if there is an erosion of trust in elections, Mr. Trump and his supporters are causing it,” she wrote.

Last week, Ms. Berzon reached out to Jane Iyer, Livingston County Republican Party Secretary, and Genesee County lead for CMV (Check My Vote), where she oversees the voter roll cleanup.

Here is a series of email exchanges between the New York Times reporter and Jane Iyer:

Subject: New York Times reporter trying to urgently reach Janine

Hi Janine, I’m working on a story about voter challenges in Michigan and other states and was hoping to talk to you about your work with Michigan Fair Elections and doing training on Check My Vote/ Soles to the Rolls and submitting challenge requests to Genoa County.

I’m hoping to talk for a story I’m working on that may mention this work. Can you please give me a call back as we may mention in the story some of your comments from training sessions as well as some details around the Genoa challenges. I would love to fact check/run this by you and also seek any and all comment or clarification before the story runs. My number is ———. Thanks so much. Best,
Alexandra

Alexandra Berzon
Reporter – New York Times

Hello Alexandra,

Thank you for your interest in our work (Check My Vote & Soles to the Rolls) and for reaching out. It was great chatting with you.

Reflecting on your questions about Check My Vote & Soles to the Rolls, I want to be clear that

1) Our goal is an accurate, qualified voter file, not at all to “disenfranchise” voters. Please make that clear in your article. Michigan law is written such that it is virtually impossible to disenfranchise voters, for instance, same-day registration & voting.

2) Our efforts are bipartisan. We don’t “target” any specific areas – volunteers work within their own jurisdictions, wherever that is.

3) We are following Michigan law, providing affidavits signed by residents of the registration address attesting to the fact that a registrant at the address with active voter status does not live there. The vast majority of residents (~90%) are willing to attest to the facts. The people also want accuracy of the voter rolls.

Michigan residents saw loads of ballots show up without chain of custody behind the TCF Center more than 7 hours after close of the polls. Ask why would loads of ballots show up 7 hours after close of polls when the furthest precinct from TCF is under an hour’s drive.

Ask why Republican poll challengers were not allowed back into the TCF Center after they went to lunch or to the bathroom and why cardboard was put up against the glass windows to prevent these poll challengers from seeing what was going on inside TCF Center AVCB processing center.

The scene at Detroit’s absentee ballot counting center is growing more heated. The windows now being covered up. Allegations of violations. Sec. of State says she welcomes challenges. pic.twitter.com/oUL4A0h3Ku

— Matt Finn (@MattFinnFNC) November 4, 2020

Michigan residents have asked and did not receive any answers. That’s why some residents have undertaken these efforts. And when we talk to neighbors, most thank us for what we are doing.

You mentioned that the Genoa Twp clerk stated that it costs $8 per certified mail, and that makes following the law cost-prohibitive. I think you should fact-check that with USPS. When we have challenged registrations in other jurisdictions, they readily sent out a notice of challenge post card without objecting about the cost.

Compare the cost of sending 120 certified challenge postcards to sending 5000-7000 absentee ballots through the mail and compare that to preparing, staffing and providing election materials for 9 days of early voting. All three actions are currently required of clerks by Michigan election law. Certainly, sending the 120 certified postcards is the least costly, so why object to that and not the other requirements? In fact, the new MI law of holding a minimum of nine (9) days of early voting costs is the costliest by orders of magnitude (staffing 4-5 election inspectors for 10-hour days for nine days, materials for each early voting day, etc.).

You also said that the Genoa clerk stated that the meeting to present the challenged registration was contentious. I think she is mixing that meeting with another meeting, an election commission meeting, when individuals NOT involved in our Soles to the Rolls effort were in attendance and were the contentious ones. Please review our clerk’s reply to the ACLU FOIA, and you’ll read that our clerk stated that she appreciated our help in identifying registrations of residents who have permanently moved out of our township.

4) We do respectfully ask the clerks to follow the law by following through on the information we present to them. However, it is also up to them as to what they do with it and how they follow up. They are answerable to state and federal law, as well as to their constituents when they’re up for re-election. Clerks in my county generally follow through on a registration challenge by changing the registration status from an Active to a Challenge or Verify status until he/she hears back from the registrant within 30 days per MI law. However, this may come as a shocker to you, but not all clerks are conscientious and follow through. We, as canvassers, do not hold the authority to make changes to the Qualified Voter File. Only the local clerks and the SOS Bureau of Elections have that authority. The volunteer citizens do the field investigation and bring the resulting information to the local clerk. What is done with it is in the clerk’s hands.

Another point I would like to make: Putting a registration on Challenge or Verify doesn’t “disenfranchise” the voter; the voter need only show the full address on their current driver’s license or other residential proof or sign an affidavit to proceed to vote, per Michigan law.

I did reach out to Tim and Phani about calling you. (Janine is referring to CMV co-founders Tim Vetter and Phani Matravadi.) They are not interested due to the bias often reflected in the NYT. I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt until they prove me wrong, and that’s why I answered your questions. I do not wish our efforts to be misrepresented by you, so I have clearly stated here the reasons and intentions behind our efforts.

Thanks again,

Janine

CMV Developer and Designer Phani Mantravadi agreed to answer the questions given to Janine Iyer by Alexandra Berzon. In addition to questions asked by the New York Times reporter, she also clarifies that she “may” include certain statements in her article. We’re unsure if she’s seeking approval or clarification or if she’s warning she is about to publish information that may or may not be accurate.

Here is how Phani responded to the questions for the article that Ms. Berzon has not yet published:

NYT: We may report that Michigan Fair Elections has been working with Check My Vote and the Michigan GOP

Phani: CMV works with MIGOP and MFE Soles to Rolls project. MFE does not work with MIGOP. I’m not sure on the details of the first connection with MIGOP.

TGP commentary: MFE is a non-partisan group. Ms. Berzon surely knows this, but appears to be setting a trap for the Check My Vote co-founders, hoping they will say that the MFE group works in violation of their non-partisan status with the Michigan GOP.

NYT: Our understanding is that you are a manufacturing equipment engineer for auto plants from Grand Rapids- is that correct or is there any clarification – would it be correct to just say you are an engineer?

TGP commentary: No response was given to this question, which has nothing to do with Phani’s volunteer work with CMV. The only purpose for asking this question is to doxx him.

NYT: We may report on presentations you have given where you’ve explained that your program looks for addresses that have an unusually high number of registered voters and for small discrepancies like missing apartment or trailer park numbers.

Phani: The CMV website provides the data on all MI registrations. It can report how many registrations at each registration address and these can be sorted high to low and low to high. It doesn’t “look for” high numbers, per se. As far as missing apartment numbers and trailer park lot numbers, MCL 168.495 (b) identifies such registrations as incomplete, not a “small discrepancy.”

Consider the case in which a registrant requests an absentee ballot. How will the mail carrier know which mailbox to deliver the ballot if the apartment number is not included in the registration? This is a chain of custody issue and an important detail. CVM identifies these incomplete registrations–I think it’s a great service.

An example of a non-existent address found by CMV that has multiple fake apartment numbers, fake suite numbers, and fake unit numbers mixed in with numbers with the # prefix. This single non-existent address had 19 registered voters, of which eight individuals voted in the 2020 and 2022 elections.

NYT: We also may report on training sessions where you’ve noted that the software often flags dense areas like Detroit and that a key area of focus should be Washtenaw County. Is there any comment or clarification?

Phani: Yes, this is a complete misunderstanding on your part. Let me explain:

The software (website) DOES NOT flag anything. Only users with personal knowledge of the situation flags registrations. Tim’s reports are merely OBSERVATIONS that, for example, Detroit and other cities have the most registration addresses with 5 or more registrants per address (compare this to census information that the average number of occupants per address is 2.4 persons).

NYT: We have spoken to some elections officials who say that this way of identifying false registrations is not useful and could lead to targeting lower income people, immigrants and students. What is your response to this critique?

Phani: We are not “targeting” anyone. Tim has merely MADE OBSERVATIONS. No one volunteering for the Soles to the Rolls project, to my knowledge, has done any work in Detroit or Washtenaw County.

TGP commentary: Why would the New York Times reporter equate cleaning up the voter rolls by removing illegitimate, dead, or moved voters to “targeting” lower-income people, [illegal]immigrants and students?” Is she suggesting that volunteers using criteria like multiple votes cast by one individual voter with a unique voter ID, or 36 people living at one residential address or 19 individuals registered to vote at a non-existent address, or people over the age of 100 who haven’t voted in 20 years, but suddenly voted in 2020 and 2022, are being unfairly flagged? Is she suggesting that the status of the “voters” is only being investigated by CMV because of their socioeconomic status, citizenship status, or age?

NYT: The Times has identified four cities or towns that have received challenges from activists tied to Check My Vote: Genoa, Waterford, Portage and Dewitt – can you please let me know if there is any comment or clarification? In the spirit of transparency can you list the other jurisdictions where Check My Vote/Soles to the Rolls has challenged voters and/or how many? Do you know how many voters have been challenged and how many removed or marked verify/challenged?

TGP commentary: Is the New York Times reporter asking questions about specific areas where CMV is currently investigating illegitimate voters to help Dem SOS Jocelyn Benson remove names of “registered” voters before discrepancies like the 19 voters registered at one address in Holland, MI, are discovered and reported? Shortly after the Holland Police Department turned over their investigation into the fake address in Holland, where eight voters voted in the 2020 and 2022 elections, the fake address, along with all 19 names, were removed from the voter rolls with no public comment from the MI SOS or BOE (Board of Elections)offices.

NYT: What level of verification do you/Check My Vote believe is needed in order to make valid challenges – we found that in at least one jurisdiction a resident was relying primarily on the National Change of Address form, which elections officials say on its own is not enough to remove someone from the rolls since they could be away temporarily. How do you account for that risk of disenfranchising or making it harder for legitimate voters to vote?

My recommendation to all Soles to the Rolls volunteers is (and my training reflects this) to personally verify with a physical visit any registration one is bringing to the clerk for a challenge. The level of verification should be PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE by visiting the registration address. I’m not completely familiar with how the Waterford volunteer decided on his list of challenges. I have alerted volunteers in my presentations as well as during internal online meetings that if you are going to use NCOA data to make sure by looking at the raw data that the NCOA moves are all categorized as permanent moves.

Our understanding based on internal Michigan Fair Election meetings is that Tim has said the Check My Vote system will flag the voters and then track and send alerts if they wind up voting. Do you have any comment or clarification on how this will work and what its purpose is?

Again, the CMV website DOES NOT flag ANYTHING. Users with personal knowledge of the registration do the flagging. It’s only on these registrations that any tracking is done.

TGP commentary: Did Ms. Berzon really ask the purpose of flagging and then sending alerts when voters who’ve been identified as living out of state, living in prison, living at fake or non-existent addresses, already voted absentee and then voted again on Election Day, voters over the age of 100, or voters who are not American citizens?)

Thanks very much. Best,
Alexandra

In a follow-up email, Alexandra appears to have realized her question, which appears to be designed to trap the CMV volunteers into falsely claiming the non-partisan MFE is working with the MI GOP, was not very cleverly disguised and re-asked the question:

NYT: apologies – allow me to correct one thing and then I have a few additional things. For the first point, I meant to write:

We may report that Check My Vote has been working with the Michigan GOP and Michigan Fair Elections on its Soles to the Rolls project. Any comment or clarification on how you are working with these groups?

Additional:

NYT: We understand that Check My Vote has shared data with the Trump team and was cited in the recent election integrity report that President Trump promoted. Can you tell us who you shared this information with and was it the legal team or the campaign team? Any other comment or clarification.

TGP commentary: Why in the world should anyone at CMV have to disclose to the Trump-hating NYTs who, if anyone, at the Trump legal team or campaign they’ve shared their work with? 

NYT: We understand that Check My Vote was developed with help and mentorship from Patrick Colbeck, one of Mike Lindell’s top officials on election work and gets some of its underlying data (the National Change of Address lists) from Mr. Lindell’s elections operation. Is there any comment or clarification on this?

TGP commentary: It’s a cute little attempt to tie Mike Lindell, who the NYTs loves to discredit, to the incredible work CCMV is doing to clean up the voter rolls in MI—work that taxpayers in the State of MI are paying the ridiculous leftist ERIC group to do.

NYT: Our understanding is that Check My Vote has been recently expanding its data analysis to New York, New Mexico and Ohio. Are you working with local groups in those places? Are there other states you plan to expand to?

TGP commentary: Does Ms. Berzon ask George Soros in which states he plans to invest millions to ensure advocates of mail-in-ballots for all, like Democrat Secretaries of State Jocelyn Benson (whose candidacy he supported), are in place when the largest election heist in American history is pulled off during lockdowns over a man-made Chinese virus?  

Speaking of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson—Ms. Berzon has one last (she hopes) question before she publishes her story:

NYT: and one last one (I hope)

The Secretary of State’s office has sent a letter to clerks telling them that removing voters from the rolls in response to these challenges could be a violation of federal law that requires that voters who are suspected of having moved be placed on a count-down list for two federal election cycles before they are removed from the rolls in order to make sure people aren’t wrongly removed by mistake. Do you have any comment on this guidance?

TGP commentary: This final statement, of course, sounds like more of a warning to CMV and local clerks that they better not remove any voters identified by the NOCA (National Change of Address) before the next election because if they do, they will likely be facing federal charges.

From Alexandra Berzon’s New York Times profile:

Since joining The Times in 2022, I’ve largely covered the election denial movement and its influence on American politics.

What, exactly, is an “election denial movement”?

My reporting also revealed sexual misconduct allegations against the casino mogul Steve Wynn, which led to him resigning from the company he founded. I contributed to The Journal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of secret payments by Donald Trump to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

Steve Wynn is a billionaire and a major political donor to Donald J. Trump’s campaign.

I don’t participate in political activism or make political donations. I am always guided by the facts and strive for absolute accuracy and thoroughness in my reporting.

We looked at Ms. Berzon’s Twitter account, hoping to discover how non-partisan she is. While she is passionate about exposing child labor, for which we applaud her efforts, it’s fairly clear the disdain she has for Republicans, based on her obsession with re-tweeting bad news about them, especially when it comes to President Trump.

Alexandra retweeted a post mocking President Trump for urging Republicans to vote early after he was against the practice of early voting in 2020.

With a world on fire and the media begging for “President” Biden to make a statement while he fights with his brain to put together a coherent sentence, this seems like a pretty important retweet.

Alexandra also retweeted an article by fellow NYTs hack reporter Maggie Haberman, who claims President Trump and his allies are planning to maximize presidential power in his second term.

Maybe Alexandra missed the news about Joe Biden’s college loan forgiveness program, which he had no authority to implement.

Alexandra also retweeted an article about the lawfare being used against 16 alternate GOP electors in Michigan, who are mostly senior citizens. These elderly men and women, who are victims of partisan hack Democrat AG Dana Nessel, could spend the rest of their lives in prison if convicted of all eight felonies they have been charged with.

The self-proclaimed “election denier movement” reporter also tweeted a post about how the WSJ is calling the bombshell movie “2000 Mules” “total horseshit.”

Funny, Ms. Berzon never asked The Gateway Pundit about the videos we released of multiple individuals in Detroit, including USPS workers dropping off stacks of ballots into drop boxes, that according to MI election law, can only be dropped off by the voter or members of their immediate family.

The post Michigan Check My Vote Election Integrity Group Publishes Blistering Response to NY Times Hack Reporter’s Attack on Their Work Before Times Piece Goes to Print appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Amidst the current political climate, one name has been making headlines and causing waves of controversy: Hunter Biden. The son of former Vice President Joe Biden has once again found himself in the spotlight, this time for his alleged involvement with a Chinese energy company while under the influence. As a conservative, it is imperative to shed light on this issue from our perspective and uncover the alarming truth behind this scandal.

First and foremost, it is important to address the source of this information – the Daily Mail. As a reputable conservative news source, the credibility of their reporting cannot be denied. Unlike mainstream media, the Daily Mail is not afraid to report on the uncomfortable truths that other outlets often ignore. With that being said, let us delve into the details of this shocking revelation.

Today, there was significant obfuscation from Hunter.

This calls into question how forthcoming he was.

There’s no real reason why he was so critical to raising all of this global capital except for the fact that his last name is Biden–he couldn’t come to a clear answer either. pic.twitter.com/wL8ZoyuWSf

— Byron Donalds (@ByronDonalds) February 29, 2024

According to the Daily Mail’s exclusive report, Hunter Biden was caught on camera in a compromising position during a business trip to Beijing in 2017. The footage shows him seemingly intoxicated and engaging in lewd acts with an unknown woman, believed to be linked to the Chinese energy company. This raises serious questions about the extent of his involvement with the company and whether it influenced his father’s political decisions.

As conservatives, we have always been wary of the close ties between the Biden family and China. This recent development only confirms our suspicions and raises concerns about the potential impact on national security. It is no secret that China has been vying for power and influence on the global stage, and with Hunter Biden’s questionable connections, it is alarming to think of the potential consequences.

REPORTER TO HUNTER: “Mr. Biden was the cocaine at the White House yours?” pic.twitter.com/P3ss33k3ML

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 28, 2024

The fact that this incident took place during a business trip also brings into question Hunter Biden’s work ethic and professionalism. As an individual with a history of substance abuse, it is concerning to see him representing a company and potentially influencing business deals while under the influence. It reflects poorly not only on himself but also on the integrity of his father’s political image.

Furthermore, this scandal sheds light on the double standards and hypocrisy within the liberal community. If this were the son of a conservative politician, the outrage and condemnation would be deafening. But because it involves the son of a prominent Democrat, it is being brushed aside and downplayed. This highlights the bias and selective outrage of the left, who only seem to care about morality and accountability when it benefits their agenda.

In conclusion, the Daily Mail’s exposé on Hunter Biden’s alleged drunken escapades with a Chinese energy company has once again brought the Biden family’s questionable ethics and connections to the forefront.

As conservatives, it is our duty to demand transparency and hold those in power accountable. This scandal is a wake-up call for the American people to question the integrity and judgement of those who seek to lead our country. We must not turn a blind eye to this issue and demand answers from the Biden family. The truth must prevail and justice must be served.

 

The post EXPOSING the Shocking Truth: Hunter Biden’s Drunken Debauchery with Chinese Energy Company appeared first on The Conservative Brief.

Terrence Bradley drips in sweat on the witness stand – February 27

Fani Willis lied! Nathan Wade lied! Terrence Bradley lied! We don’t know what the hell Fani Willis’s father was talking about! And Robin Yearti told the truth!

The Gateway Pundit has obtained a copy of a text exchange between Nathan Wade’s divorce attorney and former law partner, Terrence Bradley, and Trump co-defendant Michael Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, that was admitted as evidence in the Fani Willis disqualification hearing.

The two were texting back and forth as early as September 14, 2023, and as late as February 6, 2024, according to the text receipts.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis “financially benefited” from a romantic relationship with top Trump prosecutor Nathan Wade.

Earlier this month, Fani Willis and Nathan Wade were subpoenaed to testify at an evidentiary hearing thanks to a lawsuit filed by Trump’s RICO co-defendant Michael Roman.

Judge Scott McAfee previously said Fani Willis may be disqualified from Trump’s RICO case over her improper relationship with top Trump prosecutor Nathan Wade.

The Gateway Pundit reported extensively on the testimony in the previous hearings by Nathan Wade, Fani Willis, and Fani’s ex-Black Panther daddy.

Terrence Bradley was back on the stand on Tuesday after previously refusing to answer questions and hiding behind attorney-client privilege. However, Judge Scott McAfee ruled he was not protected by attorney-client privilege and ordered him to testify Tuesday morning.

The post REVEALED: Nathan Wade Attorney’s Text Messages to Trump Co-Defendant’s Attorney Reveal He LIED in Court and Fani Willis Started Dating Nathan Wade Before Taking Office! (FULL TEXT CHAIN INCLUDED) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

President Joe Biden joked on Wednesday that doctors told him he looked “too young” after he underwent an annual physical earlier in the morning.

Biden, 81, cracked the joke amid speculation about what doctors could have discovered while evaluating him earlier that morning as questions mount as to whether he is mentally or physically fit to serve another term in the White House.

While he spoke to reporters, he was asked about his physical and what his doctors had to say.

“They think I look too young,” he said.

Joe Biden on possible health concerns following his annual physical: “They think I look too young!”pic.twitter.com/gYvHrcTOem

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 28, 2024

Biden added “Everything’s great” regarding his health and concluded, “There is nothing different than last year.”

According to NBC News, Biden underwent a routine physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland and was pronounced “fit for duty.”

White House physician Kevin C. O’Connor wrote in a summary of the exam that Biden “fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations.”

As The New York Post noted, Biden did not alert the public of the doctor’s visit ahead of time and the appointment was not on his schedule.

The visit was only learned about Wednesday morning when Biden was departing the White House and shouted at reporters.

“I’m going to Walter Reed to get my physical,” he said.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Biden’s physical during her daily media briefing on Wednesday afternoon.

She was evasive when pressed on the matter of Biden’s health and whether he should take a cognitive test, NBC News reported.

When asked why Biden was not making his personal physician available to the media, Jean-Pierre referred to his brief comments on the visit to Walter Reed.

COVERUP? Karine Jean-Pierre claims they’re “trying to get back to the norm” by preventing Biden’s physician from briefing the press on Biden’s physical and cognitive health pic.twitter.com/75RIHcCb64

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 28, 2024

“The president said that they thought that he was too young,” she said. “You heard from the president, he talked about this when he was asked.”

Biden’s age and fitness have been the source of questions for years.

The president’s health finally received widespread media coverage last month, when Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur said he did not charge Biden in his classified documents case because of his age and mental state.

A report from Hur stated Biden had severe memory issues when interviewed and that had he been charged and tried for mishandling sensitive information, sympathetic jurors might have viewed him as a forgetful old man.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Biden Says Doctors Told Him He Looks ‘Too Young’ After Physical appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Image:Wikimedia

This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire

By Matthew Turpin
Real Clear Wire

The reports out of China arrived just before Thanksgiving. A surge in respiratory infections among children in the northern part of the country triggered a sense of foreboding — and Deja-vu. Meetings between the World Health Organization and Chinese officials quickly followed.

The WHO’s conclusions brought some relief. The surge was caused by an “immunity gap” in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, wherein children had few defenses against influenza and other respiratory infections after years of quarantine.

This episode should be a wake-up call for the U.S. national security establishment. We remain reliant on other nations, including countries of concern, like China, for critical intelligence needed to defend against biological dangers — whether naturally occurring, mistakenly released, or purposefully engineered.

That needs to change. It starts with expanded investment in the technological infrastructure that can monitor for and detect dangerous pathogens that could devastate our nation and economy.

Since COVID-19, we’ve all become familiar with the risk posed by novel infectious diseases with pandemic potential. Just 30,000 base pairs of RNA — roughly one one-hundred-thousandth as many as the human genome contains — managed to shut down our planet.

And, as we know from our experience with the last pandemic, time is essential to stopping the spread and minimizing danger to people. We need a strategy for the rapid identification and understanding of emerging threats, as well as timely countermeasures once a threat has been intercepted.

A sophisticated bio surveillance or “bio radar” network would include collection points where pathogens are most at risk of emerging or being identified as threats — including airports, borders, conflict zones, labs, and farms. Once bio radar systems leveraging DNA sequencing have detected a threat, we can create a digital fingerprint of the suspect pathogen’s genetic material and begin analyzing the level of risk and mitigation options. This creates true bio intelligence, or BIOINT.

Artificial intelligence tuned to biological information like this can quickly begin analyzing the data collected from bio radar systems. And by learning to “speak DNA” the way chatbots can speak English, AI has the potential to identify anomalies and quickly inform development of genomic-informed countermeasures.

Today, nodes in this bio radar network are already at work. We just need to connect the dots of this biosecurity infrastructure and expand its scale.

Take the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance program, which swabs international travelers arriving at various international airports. In August 2023, the Dulles International Airport location outside Washington D.C. flagged a sample from a U.S. resident returning from a multi-week trip to Japan. Analysis revealed that the traveler was carrying a new SARS-CoV-2 variant. After sequencing the variant, American authorities notified their counterparts in Japan.

This same program identified the Omicron variant when it first arrived in the United States 43 days before it showed up in a clinical setting.

In other words, existing bio surveillance tools can find dangerous or novel pathogens before we would otherwise know they exist.

Acting on that information in a timely fashion could help save lives — or even eliminate outbreaks or biological threats. Despite the lag in receiving information on SARS-CoV-2 from China, it didn’t take long for scientists to develop mRNA vaccine candidates against COVID-19 that proved effective.

In its 2023 Biodefense Posture Review, the U.S. Department of Defense singles out four nations — North Korea, Russia, Iran, and the People’s Republic of China — as either having active offensive bioweapons programs or developing concerning dual-use capabilities in this area.

We should assume that countries the United States considers adversaries are already at work on genetically engineered pathogens and other violations of the Biological Weapons Convention.

And yet, public health experts have consistently downplayed biothreats. The United Nations characterizes COVID-19 as a “once-in-a-lifetime pandemic”and the New England Journal of Medicine labels it a “once-in-a-century” event.

Biothreats are a much more immediate danger. They’re potentially more catastrophic than most other risks. We build early-warning systems for hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. We build them for missile launches and the transport of nuclear material. The public and private sectors spend billions each year on cybersecurity. Why isn’t there a similar urgency about biosecurity?

There’s no time to waste in addressing this truly neglected dimension of global security. We should be building a sophisticated bio radar, bio intelligence, and biosecurity system now before the next pandemic — engineered or otherwise — is at our doorstep.

Matthew Turpin is a senior counselor at Palantir Technologies and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution specializing in U.S. policy towards the People’s Republic of China. From 2018 to 2019, Turpin served as the U.S. National Security Council’s Director for China and the Senior Advisor on China to the Secretary of Commerce.

The post Why Are We Still Reliant on China for Our Biosecurity? appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Last March, Utah passed the Social Media Regulation Act and became the gold standard for protecting kids online. At the final hour, however, the state is preparing to do precisely what it said it wouldn’t do: back down. 

Facing pressure from Big Tech lawsuits, the Utah State Legislature is currently advancing a pair of bills, H.B. 464 and S.B. 194, that cede ground to Big Tech and roll back protections for kids on social media. Governor Spencer Cox, for his part, seems poised to sign both bills, despite his promise to not “back down from a potential legal challenge when these companies are killing our kids.” 

Among the Social Media Regulation Act’s most important provisions are three basic requirements. First, social media platforms must verify the age of new and existing users. Second, if a user is under 18, platforms must obtain verifiable parental consent for their child to use the service. And third, platforms must give parents access to all posts and messages sent and received by their child. 

Now, Utah is on the cusp of repealing and replacing its groundbreaking kids’ safety law. I recently testified before the Utah State Legislature, on behalf of the Heritage Foundation, regarding the specific policy shortfalls of one of the two replacement bills—H.B. 464. As I stated in my testimony, and as a joint letter from Heritage Action and other experts makes clear, the changes in both H.B. 464 and S.B. 194 are a major step back for Utah’s kids and parents. 

For one, the two replacement bills weaken the requirement for platforms to have parents give the okay before their kids are allowed on social media. S.B. 194 would require platforms to obtain parental consent only if a child attempts to change certain privacy settings. This disempowers parents—rendering them less effective in the fight for their children’s welfare online. 

The replacement bills also do away with substantive parental controls in favor of half measures. Whereas the existing law requires social media platforms to allow parents to view their children’s posts and private messages—the new changes remove this requirement. In addition, platforms would not be required to enable parental controls unless the minor agrees. This gives kids a de facto veto over their own parents—reducing parents to backseat drivers when it comes to protecting their own children from the worst dangers of social media. 

On top of this, the bills repeal the existing ban on social media’s addictive design features and practices. Social media companies are known to use disruptive visual cues, alerts, algorithms, and engagement features, to hook kids on their services. Part 4 of the original law would broadly prohibit these tricks. But the new bills appear to only require platforms to disable autoplay and infinite scroll functions for minor accounts. 

Proponents of these compromises seem to think that they will give Utah a leg up in court against a powerful and well-funded tech lobby. But as Heritage Action’s letter to lawmakers points out, this is unlikely. The same groups who opposed Utah’s Social Media Regulation Act in 2023 publicly oppose these bills, too. Big tech lobbyists will continue to sue to block the law regardless of what Utah lawmakers do.

More to the point, courts face a completely different set of facts today than they did over 20 years ago. When the Supreme Court rejected Congress’s attempt to shield minors from obscenity online in Ashcroft v. ACLU, the internet was still in its infancy. Only a fraction of kids had access to the internet, let alone smartphones. And the harms of social media were not known to the degree they are today. That makes Ashcroft and other cases precedent worth testing, and Utah’s original law does that.

Instead of keeping the burden on giant social media companies—as the current law does—Utah legislators are watering down protections without any promise of relief. Even worse, this sets the stage for companies to employ the same strategy in other states to lower the bar for kids’ online safety. 

States like Utah are laboratories of democracy and are our best hope for holding these companies accountable for the harm they inflict on our families and communities. But the changes being considered signal that under pressure, states will bend to powerful tech interests. If the threat of litigation from giant social media platforms is sufficient to weaken commonsense safeguards, Big Tech has already won. 

Utah needs to resist that temptation and continue to lead the nation in the fight to protect kids. The health, safety, and well-being of our children demand it.

The post Utah Is About to Roll Over on Kids’ Online Safety appeared first on The American Conservative.

Ukraine appears to be losing its war with Russia. It is America’s fault, according to many of Kiev’s advocates. If only the U.S. had tossed caution and prudence aside in backing the Zelensky government, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his barbaric hordes would have been put to flight. The lion would have lain down with the lamb.

Two years ago, Ukraine surprised even its friends by rebuffing much of Russia’s initial invasion. Many of Kiev’s backers convinced themselves that Ukraine could win the war. Fantastic schemes were proposed for Kiev to reclaim the Donbass and Crimea, and perhaps even oust Putin and break up the Russian Federation.

These hopes have gone dark after Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and Moscow’s recent battlefield gains. The Ukrainian people are paying a terrible price. President Volodymyr Zelensky recently offered a number for his nation’s dead, 31,000, that no serious analyst believes. Apparently, U.S. officials privately estimate 70,000. Recent experience, as well as the admission of others in the Kiev government, indicate far more casualties, perhaps a half million dead and seriously wounded overall. 

While it would be foolish to presume a Russian military victory—Putin’s authoritarian rule offers the opposite of inspired leadership—Kiev faces a daunting path forward. It is resource poor, with its economy under siege, and its defense industrial base enfeebled. The Ukrainian army has been impressing middle-aged civilians off the street and tossing ill-trained conscripts into battle. Internal political and military divisions have widened dramatically.

Moreover, the American and European peoples are growing more reluctant to continue their governments’ open-ended financial and military commitment to Ukraine. This very hesitation, contend Kiev’s propaganda stalwarts, is placing the otherwise inevitable Ukrainian victory in doubt. Indeed, if only Washington had not been so hesitant to join the European murderfest, Zelensky might even now have been enjoying a victory parade through his capital’s Independence Square. 

Wrote the Financial Times’ Martin Sandbu: Ukraine’s “concrete shortcomings are the result of western leaders’ early denial of Kyiv’s appeal for fighter jets or their failure to match a promise of ammunition with the urgent action needed to produce it.” He accused “Ukraine’s Western friends” of maintaining “a timidity that all the support and contributions they have extended are insufficient to hide.” Indeed, he insisted, “more decisive action two years ago would have left Ukraine, and the west, in a much better position today.” So too with sanctions: “Earlier enforcement would have been better.” Finally, Russian financial reserves should have been confiscated and sent to Kiev.

Western timidity. That’s the problem! Wrote Sanbu, “The lesson on both the military and the economic side is the danger of believing in the virtue of caution when that in practice means delay.” It’s time for bold action! Don’t look before you leap! “Evil benefits, too, when good people are too cautious. Don’t keep making that mistake.” Forward, march, irrespective of the consequences!

Passion on Ukraine’s behalf is understandable. Although the allies did much to trigger the current conflict—recklessly expanding NATO to Russia’s border despite a multitude of warnings against doing so—Putin’s aggressive war is monstrous morally and horrendous practically. Ukrainians are entitled to choose their own future.

Nevertheless, neither the devastation nor the injustice of the Russo-Ukraine war is unique. The Saudis and Emiratis spent years killing tens or hundreds of thousands of Yemeni civilians, with U.S. assistance. The Western world ignored years of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which may have killed more than 5 million people. Washington’s own illegal invasion of Iraq based on false WMD claims resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. American attempts to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al Assad aided radical jihadists of various stripes, while current sanctions policy impoverishes the Syrian people for no good reason. There’s a lot of villainy to go around, often worsened by Western—and especially American—action as well as inaction.

Moreover, no war should be casually fought. The list of expected quick victories that turned into lengthy catastrophes is long. All the major powers expected the First World War to be short, “over by Christmas.” Both North and South thought the Civil War would be settled by a quick decisive battle or two. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq planned to make short work of Iran’s revolutionary regime. America’s invasion of Iraq was to be a cakewalk. The allies’ Afghan campaign was “won” in a few weeks. The list goes on. 

Ukraine is far more dangerous. None of these other campaigns were waged against a nuclear power. Today, Washington is leading the Europeans in a brutal proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. The fight could get worse—much worse. Moscow views Kiev’s status as a vital interest, one obviously important enough to justify war. Indeed, over the last two decades numerous American officials, including then-ambassador William Burns, current head of the CIA, warned successive administrations that turning Ukraine into a NATO outpost could lead to war. 

With so many nations stirring the geopolitical pot, a broader war could result from accident, carelessness, or design. For instance, the Putin government might expand or escalate. Tens or hundreds of thousands of Russians are believed to have died so far. American and allied weapons, meaning the U.S. and European governments, are responsible for many of these deaths. Moscow would be fully entitled to retaliate against the West for making the conflict its own. Remember how Russia’s domestic critics, led by presidential candidate Joe Biden, demanded a response to what turned out to be the false claim that Moscow was paying the Taliban to kill U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan? Russians probably want to exact a much greater price.

So long as Moscow believes that it is winning, it has reason not to act on threats to strike NATO members or use nuclear weapons. Should momentum shift, however, so might the former’s policy, especially if Russian territory is threatened. Moreover, Ukraine wants America and European nations in. Zelensky desperately attempted to lie NATO into the war by claiming that a Ukrainian missile strike on Poland came from Russia. Western officials collectively held their breath until Kiev’s responsibility was established.

Yet Sandbu dismisses Western “timidity” before jumping into the Ukrainian imbroglio.

Although the Biden administration has foolishly enmeshed America in a conflict not its own, its relative caution, at least, in escalating that involvement deserves credit, not censure. It is easy for ivory tower warriors, especially those living in Europe, to demand decisive action against Moscow. Even some government officials, such as France’s President Emmanuel Macron, casually talk about sending troops to Ukraine. If events went badly, those same people would besiege Washington, wailing about the horror of it all and demanding that America race to their rescue. The contretemps over Donald Trump’s recent crack about delinquent European governments caused Washington’s allies to admit how far behind they were. Everyone knows who would be expected to battle Russia.

Sandbu and other war advocates are careless with the money and lives of others. Perhaps they should join their respective armed forces. Then they could at least share the consequences they would have others risk suffering.

Ukraine has preserved its sovereignty and independence. Yet the war is destroying that nation’s future. Of course, Ukrainians are free to fight on, forever if they desire. But they are not entitled to American support to do so. Washington has spent two years funding war. It is time for Washington to emphasize establishing peace.

The post Ukraine Propagandists Demand U.S. Abandon Caution, Go All in on War appeared first on The American Conservative.

From time to time, you still get surprised. In a Tuesday hearing, the Democrats of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—prominent among them Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the committee’s chairman, and Tim Kaine of Virginia, the future vice president of yesteryear—noticed that the U.S. is raining down various sorts of expensive hellfire on the Houthis in Yemen in a half-cocked, not entirely kosher way.

“The Constitution requires Congress to authorize acts of war. Period. Stop. We swore an oath to follow the Constitution. If we believe this is a just military action—and I do—then we should authorize it,” Murphy said in his prepared introductory statement. “But we also need to acknowledge that there is a real risk of escalation in the Red Sea, especially since Iran is unquestionably aiding the actions of the Houthis. Thus, an authorization is important to legalize the existing operations but also to guard against an unauthorized mission creep.”

“I believe that a tailored, time-bound congressional authorization is not just nice to have—it is required—to both authorize and limit the current military operation,” he added. “I will be in discussions with my colleagues in the coming days to introduce such an authorization.”

Amid discussion of American “strategy” in the Red Sea—we insist on quotes because “strategy” seems like a strong word for what we’re up to over there—Murphy returned to his bete noir. “This looks to me like war in every bit of the constitutional sense: We have engaged in multiple rounds of strikes, we have a limited number of boots on the ground, we have taken casualties, we have prisoners,” he said. “I’m having a hard time understanding why this does not require a traditional congressional war authorization.”

Kaine went further, attacking the argument that American actions in the Red Sea are “self-defense” that does not require explicit military authorization. “This is hostilities, there’s no congressional authorization for them. To claim that this is covered by Article 2 self-defense, Article 2 self-defense means you can defend U.S. personnel, you can defend U.S. military assets, you probably can defend U.S. commercial ships, but the defense of other nations’ commercial ships in no way and it’s not even close,” he said. “That’s not self-defense under Article 2 of the Constitution, and a president can’t make it self-defense by calling another nation a partner. If you’re defending the commercial ships of other nations, it is in my view laughable to call that self-defense.”

This is of a piece with bigger problems. You can argue that we should go to war or we should not. For that matter, you can argue that we should have green regulations, or subsidies for microchip manufacturers, or a draft, or whatever. You can also argue that we should not. Yet so long as these things are handled by the executive’s administrative machine, you can’t argue about them. It annihilates every Anglo-American development in government and law pretty much from Runnymede on down. “No taxation without representation” doesn’t mean you’re always going to love what’s happening with your tax dollars; it just means that you’re going to get to gripe about it and try to change the law. You should get a say. 

I, personally, think going to war in Yemen is a dumb idea for the United States. (At the same time, I understand the calculus is different for Saudi, or Oman, or Ethiopia, or even China or Russia.) Our chums, the Saudis, have been lobbing missiles and artillery shells at the Houthis since 2015; we’ve been lobbing the missiles ourselves for about two months, give or take a week. You can’t say it’s been very effective. The Houthis are still there; by the most reckonings, they’re still controlling something in the ballpark of 50,000 square miles of Yemeni territory, including the country’s putative capital, Sanaa. Efforts to dislodge them have generated mass human suffering, including a pretty impressive on-again-off-again famine.

The Houthis are wildly unpleasant people but, in truth, most of the wielders of power in that part of the world are. The unified Yemeni republic is a fairly recent invention. As in every Middle Eastern civil war, each “side” is a headache-inducing coalition of more or less frightening people who all hate each other nearly as much as they hate the other “side.” The effects on American shipping, as the good senator from Virginia points out, have not made a persuasive casus belli, and other nations’ shipping interests have had to be yoked in to make good the lack. This, to me, has the makings of a classic dumb American adventure in the sand.

Sometimes democracies have dumb wars; it has been that way since an Athenian armada sailed westward on a clear spring day 25 centuries ago to wage a cheeky war against the despot of Syracuse. I can grin and bear it and carry on the fight against it—so long as I get a say. Since the retaliations began, the U.S. has struck 230 targets in Yemen. That isn’t just 230 strikes against the Houthis or the Iranians or whomever we’re trying to cut down to size over there. It’s 230 strikes against your rights as a citizen, against the idea that your duly elected public servant gets a say in matters of peace and war. 

The question, of course, is what Congress can do to reel in the executive—without real action, one suspects that Kaine and Murphy are using fair words to cover foul buck-passing. One thought: I hear it’s budget season (again). Perhaps Pentagon funds could be tied to obeying the Constitution our military allegedly swears its oath to uphold?

The post Shouldn’t You Get a Say on the Yemen War? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Tucker Carlson recently did an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman.

Their discussion covered a wide range of topics and is worth watching in full, but Tucker’s comments on the 2020 election are especially interesting.

Tucker said the election was ‘100 percent stolen’ citing the last minute changes made to voting procedures with regards to Covid.

PJ Media reported:

“You said to some degree the election was rigged,” Fridman began. “Was it stolen?”

“It was 100% stolen,” Carlson replied. “Are you joking?”

“Like, it was rigged to that large—”

“They completely change the way people vote right before the election on the basis of COVID—which had nothing to do with—”

“So, in that way, it was rigged?” Fridman asked.

Carlson replied:

One hundred percent. And then you censor the information people are allowed to get. Anyone who complains about COVID, which was like — by the way, it might have hurt Trump. But I mean, it’s like whatever… I mean, you could play it many different ways. You can’t have censorship in a democracy by definition; here’s how it works. The people rule, they vote for representatives to carry their agenda to the capital city and get it enacted; that’s how they’re in charge. And every few years they get to reassess the performance of those people in an election. In order to do that, they need access, unfettered access to information. And no one, particularly not people who are already in power, is allowed to tell them what information they can have. They have to have all the information that they want. Whether the people in charge want it or don’t want it or think it’s true or think it’s false doesn’t matter.

This video is cued to start at the right moment. Just press play:

Millions of Trump voters have been saying this for three years. Tucker’s point about the 2024 election hits hard as well.

The post Tucker Carlson on the 2020 Election: ‘It Was 100 Percent Stolen’ (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.