Month: May 2024

French President Emmanuel Macron is heading to the chaos-ridden Pacific territory of New Caledonia in a bid to keep the last remnants of post-colonial power intact after getting kicked out of the African Sahel region in a major geopolitical blow for Paris.

For once, Macron will be busy with his own considerable problems instead of going around the world war-mongering or pontificating on themes like his climate alarmism obsession.

It’s been a week after riots erupted in the French overseas territory, killing six.

Australia and New Zealand have started evacuating tourists from the island away from the looted shops, torched cars and road barricades.

Reuters reported:

“The protests were sparked by anger among indigenous Kanak people over constitutional reform approved in Paris that would change who is allowed to take part in elections. Local leaders fear the change will dilute the Kanak vote.

Macron will meet elected officials and local representatives on Thursday for a day of talks focused on politics and on the reconstruction of the island, aides said.

Macron ‘will discuss with all the forces in New Caledonia’, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said. ‘The objective is to … prepare and anticipate reconstruction’.”

Can Macron jeep New Caledonia from breaking away from France?

To re-establish dialogue in the island will not be an easy task, since pro-independence leaders blame the riots on Macron and his insistence on pushing through the electoral reform despite local opposition.

“‘Here comes the fireman after he set the fire!’ Jimmy Naouna, from the Front de Liberation Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS) of New Caledonia, wrote on X in response to news of Macron’s visit.

France annexed New Caledonia in 1853 and gave the colony the status of overseas territory in 1946. New Caledonia is the world’s No. 3 nickel miner but the sector is in crisis and one-in-five residents live below the poverty threshold.”

12 thousand miles away from France, New Caledonia is dealing with long-established by pro-independence movements, but past week’s violence has been the worst there in 40 years.

Now, more than 1,000 gendarmes and police from France were on patrol and another 600 would soon be added, France’s High Commission said.

But while Macron is flying in, just about everybody that can fly out is doing so.

Associated Press reported:

“The Australian military has flown 115 passengers on two flights from the restive French Pacific territory of New Caledonia and a French government flight was expected to evacuate another 100 stranded passengers on Wednesday, an Australian government minister said.”

The unrest is raising new questions about Macron’s handling of France’s colonial legacy.

“’We’ve prioritized the elderly, the pregnant and the most vulnerable’, Conroy told Nine Network television. ‘We’ll continue to work with the French government to make sure we get every Australian out of New Caledonia who does want to leave’.”

Conroy said France was planning more flights to Brisbane on Wednesday.

“’The French have indicated they intend to continue repatriating foreign nationals, particularly tourists so the primary plan is more French flights but … we do have contingency plans and we do have planes on standby should there be an issue with that course of action’, Conroy later told Australian Broadcasting Corp. ‘A French plane is expected to leave for Brisbane this afternoon or this evening and we expect around 100 Australians to be on it’.”

Read more:

Peter Sweden: IT’S SPREADING – Massive Farmers Protest in Germany (Video)

The post As French Post-Colonial Power Crumbles, Macron Flies To Chaotic New Caledonia Territory – Pro-Independence Leaders Blame Him for Electoral Reform That Triggered Riots appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The good news is that Julian Assange’s lawyers blocked his extradition to the United States, where he would face a kangaroo court hearing and life in prison.

The bad news is that Assange remains locked up in Britain’s Belmarsh maximum security prison. “Punishment by process” is the term that his wife, Stella Assange, uses to describe his plight. Almost five years ago, Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, concluded after examining Assange that he showed all the signs of prolonged psychological torture.

Two judges on Britain’s High Court ruled on Monday that Assange can file a full appeal against the U.S. government’s attempts to extradite him. He is accused of violating the Espionage Act via his 2010 Wikileaks disclosures of American military war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The ruling largely hinged on whether Assange would be permitted to invoke the First Amendment in his defense. The Justice Department lawyer James Lewis told the British court that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to anyone “in relation to publication of illegally obtained national defense information giving the names of innocent sources to their grave and imminent risk of harm.” As I noted in a March 28 piece in The American Conservative, the U.S. government has never proven that Assange’s leaks led to anyone’s death. 

“National defense information” is a blight that increasingly destroys any home for democracy in foreign policy. Each year, the federal government creates the equivalent of 20 million filing cabinets full of new secret documents. Any document that is classified is treated like a holy relic, unable to be exposed without damning the nation.

Biden officials and members of Congress clamoring for Assange’s legal impalement have offered no fix for a political-bureaucratic foreign policy that is practically designed for maximum deceit of the American people. Three years ago, Washingtonians were shocked when Afghanistan’s government collapsed like a house of cards under the Taliban’s assault, despite endless U.S. aid and bureaucratic boasts of progress. Eighteen months before that collapse, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, slammed the institutionalized cover-up: “It turns out that everything that is bad news has been classified for the last few years.” Sopko testified to Congress that there was “an odor of mendacity throughout the Afghanistan issue…. The problem is there is a disincentive, really, to tell the truth. We have created an incentive to almost require people to lie.”

Sopko’s courageous condemnation rolled off the Washington establishment like water off a duck’s back. The Biden administration’s claims of success in Ukraine are probably at least as deceptive, if not depraved, as the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations’ claims about Afghanistan. 

The best antidote to systemic lies is freedom of the press. As Assange famously said, “If wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth.” But, at the moment, there is scant support inside the Beltway for either peace or truth. 

Assange supporters are divided on whether the ruling is a victory or merely a reprieve. 

Thomas Fazi noted in Unherd, “Assange has now been subjected to relentless legal persecution by some of the world’s most powerful governments, primarily the U.S. and UK, for 14 years.” Those states “have had no qualms about disregarding fundamental principles of due process in their effort to crush Assange.” The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs scoffed, “It is difficult to qualify the ongoing persecution of Julian Assange as a decision in his favour.” A spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared on Tuesday that the Assange case reveals “American-style freedom of the press”: “Exposing other countries should be rewarded, while exposing the U.S. leads to punishment…. To the U.S., freedom of the press, like democratic human rights, is just a tool the U.S. uses to suppress dissidents and maintain its own hegemony.”

Assange’s lawyers are prudent to fight vociferously to prevent their client from facing trial in the U.S. John Kiriakou was the only CIA official sent to prison for the Bush-era torture scandal. His crime? Disclosing the waterboarding. Kiriakou warns, “Julian Assange will not receive a fair trial if extradited to the U.S. The so-called ‘espionage court’ is rigged.” As the Washington Post noted, Assange’s lawyers believe he would be denied a fair trial in part because jurors on his case “would be chosen from a pool filled with government employees, including people who work at the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.” Biden administration prosecutors have relied on similar jury pools to score convictions of practically any Trump supporter accused of being within a mile of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

Assange is Australian and his countrymen are increasingly rallying to his cause. Emma Shortis, senior researcher at the Australia Institute, commented on Monday’s verdict: “Assange’s case is a political one—he continues to be punished for embarrassing the United States by drawing attention to possible war crimes by its military forces. Australia, in contrast, has acknowledged war crimes perpetrated by its soldiers.”  On Tuesday, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese again called for the end of the prosecution, declaring that there was “nothing to be served” by Assange’s “ongoing incarceration.” The Australian parliament also passed a resolution calling for Assange’s release. 

Media outlets are finally consistently coming to Assange’s defense—belatedly recognizing that their fate could be tied to his. The Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins declared that perpetuating Assange’s case “merely prolongs the tedium. Washington should consider Assange’s more than a decade on the run to be penalty enough for his past sins. It should not want to see its own record in Afghanistan and Iraq revived before the court of world opinion.” Amnesty International’s Simon Crowther declared, “The USA’s ongoing attempt to prosecute Assange puts media freedom at risk worldwide. It ridicules the USA’s obligations under international law.” 

Since Biden’s reelection campaign is seeking to portray Trump as the sole threat to political decency, maybe Biden will drop the Assange case so that Uncle Joe seems less of an anti-freedom ogre. When a reporter asked Biden last month about Australia’s request to end the Assange prosecution, Biden replied, “We’re considering it.” Assange supporters were buoyed by that comment. But it would be imprudent to vest hopes in Biden’s attention span for anything beyond ice cream flavors. 

The post Assange Wins Delay, but ‘Punishment by Process’ Continues appeared first on The American Conservative.

It’s extremely early, but the former President Donald Trump is polling well enough to contemplate what his administration would look like in a second term. The answer is definitely different from what it was during his first stint in the White House, and probably different from what it would have been if he had been reelected in 2020 and were still in office right now.

Personnel was a problem in the first Trump term for several reasons. First, Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton came as a surprise to people inside his own orbit, perhaps even the candidate himself. The transition process was not so smooth or far along as it could have been.

Second, Trump did not at the time understand the adage that personnel is policy. In business, your subordinates’ opinions might matter, but they are not necessarily determinative. In government, these things matter quite a lot. If you want to avoid new wars and start wrapping up old ones, hiring John Bolton is not the best way to get it done.

Third, Trump often valued the wrong things in his hires. Being able to defend the president on television is nice. But not every job in the federal government entails the same set of responsibilities as the White House press secretary or Kellyanne Conway. There were also too many z-list celebrities around.

Fourth, most administrations are staffed by taking people from the previous administration of that party and bumping everyone up a rung or two. Trump had important differences with George W. Bush, especially on immigration and foreign policy, two issues that were critical to his 2016 election. Many Bushies actively opposed Trump in the primaries and beyond, all the way to the present day. They were not always viable Trump administration officials, and forcing the square pegs into round holes seldom worked well. But, like an earlier generation of Bushies in Ronald Reagan’s White House, they often won important bureaucratic battles.

Fifth, there was the Javanka factor. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump often got more grief than they deserved from the MAGA true believers. Sometimes they were correct to smooth the father (in-law)’s rough edges. The Abraham accords were a real accomplishment, and Ivanka’s paid family leave push could fit in with what many social conservatives increasingly wanted.

But these two Trump family members were not broadly aligned with the president on policy or political philosophy, even conceding the limited degree to which Trump the elder was driven by either. They seemed to be around as much to protect the family brand as anything else, and were ultimately unsuccessful on that front: The Trump name is now more associated with low-brow conservative politics than glitz and glamor. 

So what’s changed? Javanka isn’t reenlisting in MAGA 2.0. The conservative Trump family members, particularly Donald Trump Jr. (who no less than Jared and Ivanka tried to dissuade his father from the folly of January 6) and the Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, will play a bigger role. It’s possible Kushner will reemerge if his father-in-law wins, though his beard suggests a few weeks more of winter. Ivanka looks done with the new family business.

The former president appears to have learned that alignment is important. Whether he conflates that too much with personal loyalty remains to be seen. An economic agenda for his working-class supporters or a foreign policy worthy of the “America First” label would do considerably more good than a permanent relitigation of the 2020 election.

Trump’s choice of running mate may be a good indication of where things stand. The widely acknowledged veep shortlist is a combination of serious people and interesting MAGA Hail Marys. A couple options plausibly check both boxes. Just look at the top three senators reportedly under consideration: a committed populist (J.D. Vance), a convincing stand-in for Mike Pence who might also help make inroads with black men (Tim Scott), and a Hispanic convert from semi-Never Trump to semi-Trumper, albeit less plausibly so on foreign policy (Marco Rubio). 

The fact that Trump is polling better than he ever has in his political career means it won’t be a major shock if he wins. There are many people in his orbit laying the groundwork for a second term, though not always in coordination or agreement with each other. 

Two big questions remain: How many grifters will worm their way into a second Trump White House? And how much will Trump miss the sober-minded movement conservatives who were out of step with populism but nevertheless relatively effective in their jobs and at times curbed his worst excesses? The answers to both might be related.

Even with all the drama of the original Trump White House, it is underestimated how many ambitious people will find themselves drawn to the sequel, knowing he will be ineligible to run in 2028, while they will be.

The post It’s Time to Start Thinking About Trump 2.0 appeared first on The American Conservative.

Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative, Glenn Loury, Norton, 448 pages

The genre of “race memoir” is a dull and barren one, but Glenn Loury has transcended it to produce a great book. The difference is that most authors of race memoirs have not yet done enough interesting things with their lives to make a memoir worth reading—Ta-Nehisi Coates, Afua Hirsch, or, ahem, the up-to-then unaccomplished author of Dreams from My Father. Loury has smoked crack and taught at Harvard, sometimes on the same day, and that is only one snapshot from his singular life.

Glenn Loury was raised on the South Side of Chicago by a single mother and an array of colorful relatives. His uncle Adlert was a lawyer—rare for a black man born in the 1920s—who eventually drank himself to death after being disbarred for a shady business scheme. His other uncle, Alfred, fathered 22 children by four different mothers. Glenn’s parents divorced soon after his mother gave birth to a daughter who was clearly not her husband’s child, although Everett Loury always insisted on treating the girl as his own even after the divorce. This steadfastness was not replicated by Glenn when he became a teenage father; he abandoned his pregnant girlfriend and did not lay eyes on his eldest son until the latter was a grown man.

Loury’s precocious intellect was recognized early when his elementary school teachers recommended him for the University of Chicago’s famous Laboratory School. Strangely, his parents chose to withdraw from the application process. They feared that going to a mostly white selective school would “transform me into someone they would no longer recognize.” This meant that Loury’s path to an academic career took longer than it might have otherwise. An abortive first try at college ended in his dropping out, and he later made it to Northwestern only as a community college transfer student.

On the other hand, avoiding the selective school in Hyde Park and going to a public school on the South Side meant that success, when it came, would not sever Loury’s connection to his roots. He would not be one of those black leaders who had to cultivate an image of authenticity to make up for their alienation from the community, a category that, in Loury’s opinion, includes Barack Obama. “If you took his Kenyan father (who he never really knew) out of the equation, I could see nothing of the African American experience in his life,” he writes.

Loury chose to get his economics PhD at MIT because he thought the many Jewish superstars on its faculty would sympathize with his dilemmas as a minority and hold him to the same standard as everyone else, respecting his desire to be “an outstanding economist-who-happened-to-be-black.” Race could not be entirely excised from his career, however, and after a rapid ascent he was granted tenure at Harvard at age 33, before he was quite mature enough to handle it. The stress of being elevated too fast was one reason he fell into drug use and other criminal behavior in the 1980s. After he was arrested for assaulting his 23-year-old mistress, he spun out and was eventually institutionalized for addiction and spent time in a halfway house before giving up most of his vices in the 1990s, apart from philandering.

Alongside this tumultuous personal journey, Late Admissions also describes Loury’s intellectual journey, which has been no less lively. He started out as a neoconservative during that movement’s heyday in domestic policy, the era of Irving Kristol and the Public Interest, before veering to the left in the 1990s when his research took on the issue of criminal justice reform. After Obama was elected, he veered back to the right.

The book describes in rare detail exactly how social pressure works in enforcing ideological conformity among black intellectuals. In 1984, Loury gave a black female economist at MIT a draft copy of an essay he was working on for the New Republic; alarmed by its conservative thesis (essentially that black progress was being held back more by social pathologies than white racism), she arranged for Loury to attend a private meeting of civil rights leaders and read his paper to them; when he did so, Coretta Scott King, sitting in the front row, burst into tears. “There is no word that could describe my emotions as I watch Coretta Scott King cry,” he writes. Obviously the situation had been deliberately contrived.

Later, in 1999, when he delivered a conference paper rejecting colorblindness, a black economist from Howard University shouted from the audience, “Welcome home, Glenn!” He reflects, “I didn’t mind hearing that. Not at all.” Only Loury’s inborn contrariness allowed him to reject the psychological comforts of being allowed back into the fold and to stake out the place he currently occupies—a public commentator sympathetic to the right, including Donald Trump, but loyal to neither party.

Defenders of campus free speech should read Loury’s memoir for a more compelling defense of their position than is usually offered. Most defenses of academic free speech are based on some Millian ideal of open discussion. Not so for Loury. For him, it is about honor. Being able to defend your position or attack someone else’s is what allows an academic to hold his head high. One of the many things Loury apologizes for in his memoir is an obituary he wrote of James Q. Wilson that attacked him as a racist, despite the fact that Wilson had always been personally kind to him at Harvard. He had savaged friends in print before, as in his review of Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom’s America in Black and White in 1997, and he felt no qualms about that. The difference was that Abby Thernstrom “was more than capable of defending herself. Jim Wilson was dead; he couldn’t speak up for himself.” 

In the first chapter, Loury describes snooping around his father’s bachelor apartment and finding “the most organized sock drawer that has ever existed, with brown socks to one side, then white, then black, then navy, all of them folded in uniform fashion, nestled like eggs in a carton.” This neatness was remarkable because nobody, apart from his children and his girlfriend, ever visited the apartment. “My father’s rigorous arrangement of his most intimate possessions is not done for show or in case someone checks or because his wife insists on it. His sense of order, his discipline, goes all the way down.” 

“To explain how important my sense of honor is to me, would require introducing them to my father, and telling them my entire life story,” Loury writes. That is what he has done in this book. The same self-discipline and self-respect that produced that sock drawer inspired Loury to live up to his obligation as an academic to speak his mind no matter how unpopular it makes him. It is this emphasis on character, not an abstract commitment to free speech, that makes dissent possible.

The post A Black Economist Goes Right, Left, and Back Again appeared first on The American Conservative.

Joe Biden has a major problem with Independent voters and as we have noted previously, this alone could easily cost Joe the election. We often focus on the right and the left, but elections are usually decided by people who fall somewhere in the middle.

Former trump adviser Kellyanne Conway recently appeared on the Laura Ingraham show and pinpointed what she sees as the moment Biden lost independents.

According to Conway, it was the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. She correctly notes that Biden’s poll numbers with Independents have never recovered after that moment in time. She also cites the dismal Biden economy as a driving force.

Transcript via Happyscribe:

For a while, Laura, actually, Joe Biden lost independence [independents] after that chaotic, inexcusable withdrawal from Afghanistan and has never won them back in anyone’s polling. He’s never been on top approval versus disapproval among independents. But when you listen to folks who actually voted for Biden say they’re going to vote for Trump, they’re very clear-headed and concise as to why that is. The New York Times report showed it has an awful lot to do with the economy, inflation. Just the cost of everyday life has become increasingly unaffordable.

They blame the guy in charge for that. When Kareem [Karine] Jean-Pierre says, Gas is down 15 cents, groceries are down 2%, people are saying, Excuse me, housing costs and the CPI, core inflation, when we are trying to feed ourselves, close [clothe] ourselves, put a roof over our heads. That’s up close to 20%. The Wall Street Journal had an unbelievable set of graphs today everybody should look at demonstrating this.

The flip side, the Biden voters, the hard core Biden voters who are going to vote for him again. According to the New York Times, they tend to be white. They tend to be abortion voters. They tend to be against Trump, not for Biden.

This video is cued to start at the 1:22 mark. Just press play:

It will be fascinating to see what kind of role Kellyanne plays in the Trump campaign and hopefully, cabinet, going forward.

The post Kellyanne Conway Explains How Joe Biden Lost Independent Voters (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Biden just keeps sinking. His approval rating took another hit in May, bringing it to its lowest level in almost two years.

It’s hardly a surprise given the state of the economy, the border, national security, etc.

Breitbart News reports:

Biden’s Approval Rating, 36%, Drops to Lowest Mark Since July 2022

President Joe Biden’s approval rating in May fell to its lowest level in almost two years, Reuters/Ipsos poll found Tuesday, deepening reelection concerns.

Presidents historically need an approval rating around 50 percent to win reelection.

Only 36% approve of Biden, down two points since April. It matches his lowest-ever approval rating in July 2022.

Biden’s sluggish economy for main street was the top issue (23 percent) for Americans, while 21 percent of respondents said political extremism was the top issue, followed by the open border (13 percent).

On the question of who managed the economy better, Trump soared ten points above Biden (40-30 percent).

To make matters worse for Biden, he is now trailing Trump in fundraising numbers.

Hot Air reported:

Biden Campaign Falls Behind in Fundraising for the First Time

This can’t be good news for team Biden. While the president’s poll numbers have remained in the mud he could at least celebrate that his campaign fundraising was going well, beating out the Trump team each month. But things took a turn in April.

President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign’s fundraising in April lagged rival Donald Trump’s for the first time, after the former president ramped up his joint operation with the Republican National Committee and headlined high-dollar fundraisers.

The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised more than $51 million in April, the campaign said, lower than the $90 million they raised in March and less than $76 million Donald Trump and the Republican Party reported taking in for the month.

There is something in the air right now.

The 2024 election already does not feel like the 2020 election.

The post Biden’s Approval Rating Drops Again – Also Falls Behind Trump in Fundraising for First Time appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A deranged leftist violently lunged at Team Trump volunteers on Tuesday outside of Kamala Harris’ event in Philadelphia.

Kamala Harris traveled to Philadelphia to deliver a keynote speech to workers at the SEIU Quadrennial Convention in Center City.

Team Trump set up shop outside of the event and the leftists were not happy.

One leftist lunged at Team Trump volunteers.

WATCH:

WATCH: Deranged Leftist violently lunges at Team Trump volunteers outside @KamalaHarris’ event in Pennsylvania today.

This comes as reports expose Biden’s FBI authorized use of DEADLY FORCE against President Trump in the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid.#BidenAttacksDemocracy pic.twitter.com/ltqXpukVhm

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) May 21, 2024

Leftists got violent and flipped over Team Trump’s tables outside of the venue hosting Kamala Harris.

Outside Kamala’s event in Pennsylvania, Far Left activists resorted to violence against Team Trump volunteers and flipped over tables outside the venue.@JoeBiden & @KamalaHarris must denounce this. pic.twitter.com/1Yyvo79VoS

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) May 21, 2024

Later Tuesday Kamala Harris visited Jim’s West Original Steaks & Hoagies in Philly.

“I want a cheesesteak, you okay if I do it with provolone?” Harris said as she cackled. “I think that’s okay right? I can still walk out of here with respect.”

At Jim’s West Original Steaks & Hoagies in Philadelphia, @VP Harris order cheesesteak with provolone and fried onions and hot peppers. Orders one for her husband, too, with Cooper and whiz. pic.twitter.com/F52TLovqKO

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) May 21, 2024

The post Deranged Leftists Attack Team Trump Volunteers, Flip Over Tables Outside Kamala Harris’ Event in Pennsylvania (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Three of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s top staffers have abruptly resigned.

Brittan Specht, Jason Yaworske, and Preston Hill will depart Mike Johnson’s office at the end of May.

PunchBowl News reported:

Three leading members of Speaker Mike Johnson’s policy team are leaving his office by the end of May, robbing the House’s top Republican of a critical core of experienced aides.

Brittan Specht, Jason Yaworske and Preston Hill — all of whom also worked for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy — are heading to Michael Best Strategies, a lobbying firm with offices in D.C. and around the country.

The departure, which is striking in size and in experience, strips Johnson of a significant amount of expertise in his domestic policy shop. Specht was McCarthy’s policy director and was key in crafting the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which raised the debt limit and set budget levels for two years.

Yaworske is a well-respected adviser to the speaker on the appropriations and budget matters. As the House Appropriations Committee begins marking up the FY2025 spending bills, Yaworske’s expertise on government spending is in demand.

And Hill, a longtime figure in GOP leadership, was in charge of overseeing House Republican policy in burgeoning policy areas such as cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence as well as Education and the Workforce and Financial Services.

The resignations come shortly after GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) moved to oust Speaker Mike Johnson.

MTG last month filed her motion to vacate against Speaker Johnson. She brought the resolution to the House floor a couple of weeks ago.

The House speedily squashed MTG’s motion, however, Mike Johnson is facing strong headwinds after he lost support from members of his own caucus.

Not only did Mike Johnson fund Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan without committing funding to protect the US border, he also promised to protect hired gun Jack Smith.

This is after Jack Smith admitted he lied to the court and tampered with evidence related to his classified docs case against Trump.

The post NEW: Three of Mike Johnson’s Top Staffers Abruptly Resign appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Newsweek has been busted for running a fake news story about Tucker Carlson, saying that he has made a deal with Russia State TV.

Their tweet is still up.

Tucker Carlson launches show on Russian state TV https://t.co/5hvYjqcvuj pic.twitter.com/6nZwE6K5ce

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) May 21, 2024

Twitchy grabbed this part of the original story:

Conservative TV host Tucker Carlson has launched his own show on a Russian state television channel.

The former Fox News anchor is presenting the program Tucker on the rolling news channel Russia 24, with the first episode now available online, Russian state newspaper Rossiskya Gazyeta reported.

The paper said that the show is part of a joint project with Carlson TV, in which he will interview figures and politicians who have “alternative views to the mainstream.”

In February, Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.

Newsweek has since been forced to update the story.

Newsweek has now updated their headline and added an editor’s note stating that Tucker did not in fact launch a show on Russian TV after Tucker Carlson Network CEO @NeilPatelTDC rejected their claim and said Newsweek didn’t even reach out to them for comment before publishing it.… https://t.co/rJQQmaqMDa pic.twitter.com/cRKO27dudy

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) May 21, 2024

Tucker’s business partner Neil Patel posted a response.

The Tucker Carlson Network has not done any deals with state media in any country. Whoever is currently pretending to be the old Newsweek brand would know that if they had checked with us before printing like news companies are supposed to do. https://t.co/xbukz58F88

— Neil Patel (@NeilPatelTDC) May 21, 2024

Newsweek busted for publishing fake news… again. https://t.co/oJ94BBayjX

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 21, 2024

It looks like this was the source:

Seems the source for this bogus story was *literally* the Ukrainian version of Pravda. https://t.co/DT3L4nx0OL pic.twitter.com/BqpaHZheOR

— Jack Montgomery (@JackBMontgomery) May 21, 2024

This is the liberal media that wants you to be deeply concerned about disinformation.

Once again, one can’t help but notice that these kinds of mistakes always seem to go in only one direction.

The post Newsweek Pushes FAKE NEWS Story About Tucker Carlson and… RUSSIA! appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Bill Maher is obviously making the media rounds to promote a new book and he is talking to all sorts of people on the right. One night this week, he appeared on the Greg Gutfeld Show.

Then he appeared on the Megyn Kelly podcast. In one interesting exchange, Megyn gave Bill an education about Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election denialism.

Bill insisted that Hillary conceded the race that night, as if that excuses everything that followed. Megyn correctly points out that Hillary then spent four years calling Trump an ‘illegitimate’ president. She even showed the clips to Maher.

Mediaite has the exchange:

As the two continued sparring on Trump’s claims of election fraud, the two clashed again on Hillary Clinton and comments she made about the 2016 presidential election. In 2019, she referred to Trump as an “illegitimate president” years after conceding her loss.

Maher objected after Kelly referred to Clinton as an “election denier.”

“She absolutely was the OG election denier,” Kelly declared.

“First of all, she came out before the sun had risen to concede the election to Trump,” Maher said.

“And then spent the next four years saying he was illegitimate, he was an illegitimate president,” Kelly added.

Maher appeared to not know the “illegitimate” quote, but he argued she conceded the election, making the point moot.

“Whether you’re interpreting her disappointment at losing it as the same thing as Trump not conceding it… it’s a tremendous false equivalency,” he said.

Here’s the clip:

Megyn Kelly triggers Bill Maher by calling Hillary Clinton the ‘original election denier’:
MK: “Hillary Clinton of course is the original election denier.”
BM: “She’s not an election denier.”
MK: “Then spent the next 4 years saying he was an illegitimate president.”
BM: “She… pic.twitter.com/Bn9ArDnf9A

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) May 22, 2024

Try as he might, Bill Maher seems unable to let go of his leftist leanings. It’s good that he is trying to talk to people outside the liberal bubble, but he still has a way to go.

If you have any interest in watching more of their exchange, the full episode is below:

The post Megyn Kelly Schools Bill Maher on Hillary Clinton’s Election Denialism (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.