Vic:"It's cold. It's supposed to be in the winter." (opens in separate window)

the twilight of twilight
friday, january 10th, 2024
Ihope that the first lesson of the Bourbon Street massacre is not lost on you: There is no end of opportunity now for Jihadis and other maniacs to attack soft targets across the land. Americans are sitting ducks. And there is no shortage of jihadis and maniacs at large in our land, thanks to “Joe Biden” and Alejandro Mayorkas.
Do you have any idea how much carnage can be created with what are called small arms, meaning, light weapons, guns, rifles, grenades, and improvised explosives used tactically in public places by enemies of our country? It looks like we are going to find out. And just regular motor vehicles, too, as in New Orleans and Las Vegas. Among the millions of foreign vagabonds ushered across the border illegally are perhaps tens of thousands fanatically avid for mayhem, many of them surely organized into cadres trained to carry out atrocities, just hanging back with their US government-issued debit cards, enjoying DoorDash deliveries in their government supplied hotel rooms, waiting for the signal to activate themselves. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, in 2024, agreed to play out their roles as uncontactable zombies, baying for the blood of Americans at the altar of a dying Moloch.
Do you think we can harden the millions of targets out there, make them secure? Forget about it. Many of these are plain old streets in the cities, countless bridges and tunnels, endless runs of railroad track and highway, hundreds of airports, not to mention malls, schools, big box stores, office buildings, restaurants, sports venues, cruise ships, skating rinks, theaters, churches. It would only take a couple-three more episodes like the New Orleans incident to paralyze public life in America just as badly as the Covid-19 op did. Are tourists rushing back to Bourbon Street now? Will they return for Mardi Gras on March 4?
And now, of course, the matter of drones has been brought to your attention. How many thousands (millions?) of these ingenious toys have been sold over recent years. You can walk into Best Buy today and get one, ranging from a couple of hundred bucks to models with advanced guidance electronics at several thousand bucks. Timers are cheap. C-4 and Semtex plastic explosives are easy to purloin from military bases, or just traded on black markets. Drones can be launched from anywhere, including out of windows anywhere. They can be launched in swarms.
You must also imagine that these Jihadis and other maniacs are primed to let loose on the imminently incoming Trump admin. The “Joe Biden” regime years were just the set-up period. Why open up with terror ops and show your hand prematurely while “JB” offered so much free and easy assistance in preparing the battlefield? And anyway, since so much of what “Joe Biden” was up to on his own initiative was obviously damaging to the USA in three dimensions — economically, strategically, and psychologically — then why interrupt all that serendipitous mishchief? You can’t fix stupid, but you can stun it with a tire iron.
In the twilight of his twilight presidency, “Joe Biden” makes his final moves — that is, the people in the shadows behind “Joe Biden” make their moves — to fortify the progress he made working to destroy his own country, really anything that might hamper Mr. Trump’s ability to correct the deliberate desecration of our national life. And, of course, to shelter any of those persons responsible from a legal reckoning in the future.
In a most garish example, “JB” awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to former Rep. Liz Cheney for her role on Congress’s J-6 committee. This, you understand, was done in defiance of what is already known and alleged about the treasonous misconduct of that body — withholding and destruction of evidence, tampering with evidence, coaching witnesses, lying to the media about testimony received, and obstruction of justice. You might lay a conspiracy charge over all those misdeeds, since they involved the formal agreement, discussion, and knowledge of it all among committee members. That is, it was done clearly in concert. This is how The New York Times put it:
The plea there is transparently and obviously mendacious, yet The Times, being the mouthpiece of the nervous DC blob, can’t resist laying out the game: how can you prosecute somebody for acts they’ve been given a presidential award for committing? Of course, a pardon will signal that Liz Cheney is, ipso facto, a criminal. And would “Joe Biden” then have to pardon every member of the J-6 Committee — since, being a conspiracy, are they not all culpable for the same crimes? But then, the J-6 Committee crimes against the people of America comprise only a small portion, a side dish, to the many other crimes committed by the officials working under “Joe Biden.” If he pardons Liz Cheney, won’t this president also have to pardon hundreds of other officials from Mayorkas, Wray, Garland, Fauci, Walensky, Austin, Blinken, Sullivan on down?
“Joe Biden” will no doubt wait until the morning of January 20 to issue those pardons, if he dares to, and he might well include himself in the package as having committed bribery and treason. Since his dementia is not total, he probably has enough brain left to reason fallaciously that the country will be too distracted by the Trump inaugural to notice what he did. He will think that he has acquired magic powers of invisibility. Not to history, of course. And history will resume at noon on January 20. From that moment on, “Joe Biden” is certified as the most odious villain in our nation’s history.
Another rousing novella to amuse you in the drear winter twilight. It is the summer of 1963 and Camp Timahoe in Lost Indian, Vermont, is mysteriously going under. People and things keep disappearing.
JHK’s Roman a Clef overlooked novel about a heroine who is a media goddess of hearth-and-home, living the high life in Connecticut. Anyone come to mind? Yes, that’s right: her. Only in this story, her life is falling apart and her epic struggle to paste it back together ensues. A comedy of manners for our time!
© 1.03.2024 by James Howard Kunstler, "ClusterFuck Nation".
A Day In The Life.

Up at 7:30a on Friday, I went thru my finger stick to check my BSL (Blood Sugar Level) and recorded it on my Diabetes 2 chart, made coffee, skipped the two 50mg Tramadol and a 300mg Gabapentin for various pains, but took half a Bayer 500mg Aspirin, fired-up the Win-7 Pentium HP Desktop to let 32 million lines of code load, had a couple smokes in the garage and checked the day's errand list. Winter Storm "Blair" is coming on Monday, so I need a few things at the local convenience store to get thru it. Some light snow is coming this afternoon. Hey, it's Winter!
Yes, I saw "it" last night, too, after uploading the 3 pages to my server's website: the uploaded-to-server pages for the new 2025 "Journal" had ***EXPLODED***, and looked nothing like what I saw in my computer's off-line HTML Editor, TopStyle v3.5, and I tried for 2hrs to "fix" them, but gave up at 1:30a. This morning -- and all day if need be -- I'll be working on them to find the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Shit, that's going to be a mess. Work, work, work... I went out for an errand, and to get some fresh air, came back, unpacked and I FIXED THE HTML PROBLEM WITH THE WEBSITE! Hoo-Haa, that's done!
Snow flurries started after 12:30p, and won';t stick, since it's 35°F right now (1:15P), but everyone's freaking out, cancelling afternoon school, business and grabbing milk/white bread/TP in the convenience stores and supermarkets. I Gotta Get the Bread and Milk!!! Hilarious; I've seen it for decades. Anyway, as the snow intensified, I decided to take a ride east to Flinchbaugh's Orchard & Farm Market -- should have checked their website first -- but they were closed all week, though the drive in the heavy snow was delightful, I stopped at Rutter's Convenience Store on the way home, and got two 6-packs of Rolling Rock Beer. Haven't had a beer in many, many months (don't like carbonation), but WTH
By 4:15, the snow squalls had pretty much passed thru the York area, and everything was coated with a white frosting. I've been closely following the upcoming Winter Storm "Blair", for the past 2-3 days, and it looks like a real bad one, from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic, from Sunday thru Monday, with bitter cold temps following the storm/blizzard, for 4-5 days afterward. I'm well supplied, as usual, and can help out any Family, friends and neighbors, if needed. But I'm staying inside and so is the Jeep. My usual Monday trip down south is postponed, until further notice. As I write this, the potentially deadly storm is just making land on the Left Coast, and will rapidly move eastward. Hey, it's Winter.
After dinner, I watched the evening news, Discovery's "Gold Rush" and the Weather Channel's "Weather Gone Viral" until 1:30a, and unplugged.
Up at 8:15a on Saturday, a sunny, bitter cold 26°, very windy start to the morning, with the rest of the day forecast to not get any better. Tomorrow and Sunday are another story, as the Winter Storm "Blair" continues building, and heads our way. I'll be closely watching The Weather Channel (TWC) on TV, and following AccuWeather.com's Maps until it's over. Many ***WINTER STORM ADVISORY*** notices were posted everywhere.
★★★ WINTER STORM ADVISORY! ★★★
• WHAT: WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM LATE SUNDAY NIGHT THROUGH MONDAY EVENING -- Heavy snow possible. Total snow accumulations 5-18" or more, possible. Ice accumulation from 0.24 to 1.00" is possible and dangerous.
• WHEN: From late Sunday night through Monday evening.
• WHERE: Adams, Franklin, Lancaster, and York Counties.
• IMPACTS: Travel could be very difficult. The hazardous conditions could impact the Monday morning and evening commutes. Best idea: stay off the roads and at home.
• PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS: Monitor the latest forecasts for updates on this situation.
I upped the heat, made coffee, had a couple smokes, and planned to move the Jeep into the garage tomorrow afternoon -- or sooner, depending how quickly the storm approaches this region -- although it'll be crowded, the snowplow/shovel crews for the condo assn, will have to get the outdoor work done, and I don't want it in the way. I'm well-stocked, and the new snowfall, on top of the 1-2" we got Friday afternoon, will be nice to see. Power outages are a concern, but the major ice accumulation is forecast for 50-75 miles south. I tuned into TWC and planned to leave the 82" wall-hung Samsung there for the near future.
I called both Sis and Sherry to chat, and offered to get them anything they needed before the storms hits, tomorrow evening. They're both OK. I'll be postponing my usual Monday trip, for a couple of days, or until the roads are back to normal. I had dinner around 6p, watched the news and weather, and settled on Motor Trend's "Chasing Classic Cars" until 10:45p. Lights out.
Up at 8:30a on Sunday, a bright, sunny, bitter cold 21° morning. After upping the heat, making coffee, and a smoke in the not-so-cold garage, I checked both www.AccuWeather.com and www.accuweather.com for the Winter Storm "Blair" progress. 27 states are forecast for some serious shit. "The first significant winter storm of the year is endangering a 2,100-mile swath of the country from the Northwest and Plains through the mid-Atlantic and East Coast, bringing a multitude of life-threatening hazards across major metropolitan areas, including heavy snow, near-blizzard conditions and crippling ice accretions that could lead to extended power outages." (Fox Weather). Yikes, the rest of this week is gonna suck for many, many millions. 3-6" for the York area, hopefully no ice.
I canceled my subscriptions to F1-TV and to Peacock-TV -- that saved $24/mo -- and will renew them in the Spring (early April) when the F1 season restarts. I went upstairs, got ready for the day, and did some minor chores, and had French Toast for a late breakfast. Mmmmmm. The Weather Channel TV had the coming snow/ice storm's coverage, so I didn't watch either "Homestead Rescue" or "Ancient Aliens" until later in the afternoon. After doing a load of laundry and a load of dishes, I over-fed the squirrels and bluejays, several times, so they'd have something for tomorrow.
Snow beginning after 12 midnight, TWC forecasts, with 4-6" predicted, but at least no ice. BFD, I'm not going out tomorrow.
After dinner, I watched the SyFy Channel's "Bladerunner" -- my favorite Sci-Fi movie -- and Discovery's "Homestead Rescue" until 12:45a, and unplugged for the day.
Up at 7:15a on Monday, a cloudy, snowy, 21° morning, with a lot more snow on the way from the west. As dark as it is, with the clouds and falling snow, it looks like 2-3" so far, of very fine, fluffy snow. And it's still snowing. Hey, today is the "12th Day of Christmas". I upped the heat, made the usual Kona Coffee and tuned into the weather and news, on my HP Desktop. We've gotten off easy, but the rest of the country got seriously hammered by ice and snow. More is coming this way, later today.
I made a 2nd carafe in the Chemex® Ottomatic® brewer, kept scanning the various news sites, tuned into the "CP Show LIVE" at 9, and opened the garage to feed the gray squirrels and bluejays. Looks like 4-5", so far, and still snowing and more is coming. After Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup (I eat a lot of those) for lunch, I grabbed 2hrs on the LR couch, had dinner and watched the news. While scanning channels, I ran across SyFy Channel's Bladerunner 2049 (#2 sequel to original 1982 Bladerunne 2049 (remake of original movie), so I watched it for 3½hrs, and bagged it for the night.
Up at 7:15a on Tuesday, a bright, sunny, 40-50mpoh winds, bitter cold 19° morning. I fired-up the furnace from 70° to 75°, made coffee, had a couple smokes in the not-that-cold garage, tuned into the "CS Show LIVE", and planned out the day, based on the just passed ice/snow storm.
JoAnne, my friend and condo cleaner, isn't coming today, since she's not feeling well; and I sure don't need to get sick with whatever she's got, so I'll take care of things until she's feeling better. I lounged around all morning, and left at 11:45a, for Red Lion and Dallastown around 12noon, my usual Monday morning but rescheduled trip, south of York. The blowing and drifting snow was everywhere. I did 4 of 6 errands, and will do the other two tomorrow, after the DR's app't, since they're both in close proximity. Back by 1:45, I unpacked, had some lunch, and got a nice, 90min nap on the LR couch.
Temps dropped quickly into the teens as darkness arrived, I closed the condo, had dinner, watched the news and switched to History's "Curse of Oak Island" until 11p; lights out.
Colder than a witch's teat, in a brass bra, in January.Up at 6a on Wednesday, a ZERO DARK THIRTY, bitter cold 17°, still very windy, headed for a high of only 30°. JoAnne called and isn't coming today. I made a 2nd carafe of Kona, kept scanning the news and marvelled at the many "LA Burning" articles, with the dumbassed sambette mayor AWOL in Africa and the tranny/dyke Fire Chief idiot unable to do anything: empty reservoirs, dry hydrants, inoperable equipment, understaffed fire depts, surplus fire fighting equipment donated to Ukraine, massive budget cuts to all local depts, to help criminal, illegal alien invaders, junkies, abortion providers, and homeless, and much more stupidity. But they sure are "diverse, equitable and inclusive", out there, aren't they? LOL.
After remotely warming-up the Jeep for 5mins, I left at 10:50a for my nearby Dr's app't, at 11:15. It went well. I had 2 errands to run and did those on the way home. Sherry called to chat and reschedule our Thursday together to Friday, as I was just leaving Rite Aid, and I got home to a 10-bag grocery delivery from Weis Market, in Enola, PA. They sure do a VERY NICE job picking items, bagging and delivering.
After unpacking, I had a Fried Egg Sandwich, Rice Pudding and did some paperwork, while listening to the news on FNC, in the background. By 3p, I was ready for a 90min nap, and had a nice one. As temps dropped quickly into the low-20s, and it got dark, I closed the condo, upped the heat and had some PA Dutch Chicken Pot Pie for dinner. I watched the news, then switched to History's "American Pickers" until 12 midnight, and unplugged.
Up at 8:15a on Thursday, another brutally-cold 17°, bright, sunny, very windy morning, I fired-up the furnace to 75°, made coffee and checked the news and weather on my HP Desktop. After a simple English Muffin for breakfast, I tuned into the "CP Show LIVE" from 9-12. I had a Y-U-G-E lunch, tuned into the "RC Show LIVE" and hit the couch for a 2hr nap. I finished-off the morning's coffee to wake-up, checked the news headlines and weather -- some snow coming tomorrow and Saturday -- just to catch up.
I closed the condo, as temps dropped into the teens, dark set-in, and had some dinner. Fox News, NEWSMAX etc were all about the CA fires, and it got much worse today. They sure got 'what they voted for', didn't they? So sad. I watched Discovery's "Homestead Rescue" until 11p, and unplugged for the night.
Tomorrow starts a new week here in the "Journal", and it's clear for me, all week. I'll get some errands done, dwindling paperwork pile finished-up and spend some time with Sherry. Life is good.
The COVID Coverup Showed How a Treasonous Shadow Gov Controlled Biden.
Over 1 million Americans were killed by a Chinese biological weapon. That same biological attack also elected a president whose administration took the lead in covering up the attack.
And that COVID coverup also showed how an unelected and treasonous shadow government had taken control of the Biden administration and of the United States of America.
The pandemic was the most devastating attack on America since Pearl Harbor and 9/11, and determining responsibility for it was the most crucial question of the day. Early efforts to assign responsibility to Communist China had been countered with propaganda and censorship.
But by the time that the Biden administration took office, the ‘lab leak’ theory arguing that Chinese tampering in a laboratory had created the pandemic could no longer be suppressed.
The National Intelligence Council was tasked with conducting a “90-day sprint” to determine the origins of COVID-19 as allegations grew that it had come out of a Chinese Communist biolab. The head of Global Health Security for the National Intelligence Council was a former World Health Organization (WHO) consultant: a group that had been accused of being compromised by China and which had vocally denied any possibility that the virus had come from a lab.
The report was completed and Biden was briefed on the “official conclusion” that the virus was a natural phenomenon. In reality, as the Wall Street Journal report revealed, figures on the Council deliberately withheld and suppressed materials from analysts at the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency who believed that a ‘lab leak’ was the most likely explanation.
Biden was not allowed to hear any of that information. And that really meant that he wasn’t allowed to make a meaningful decision about one of the most critical issues facing him.
What was at stake in the debate over the origins of the COVID pandemic was the president’s responsibility to confront and address the worst episode of biological warfare against the United States since WWI. Not only was Biden mentally unable to deal with it, but a shadow government had been put into place to control his actions by denying him the information needed to reach a decision. Rather than Biden being in charge, it was his gatekeepers who were calling the shots.
The treasonous outcome of that shadow government decision was that America never confronted the complicity of China, or the American and international organizations like WHO, in the pandemic. And since it was that pandemic, more than anything else, that brought Biden and his political palace guard to power, the China cover-up may be no coincidence.
If the pandemic had been natural in origin, then so was Biden’s presidency, but if the pandemic had come out of a Chinese bio-lab, then Biden’s presidency had also come out of that same lab.
And figures in the shadow government surrounding Biden appeared determined to cover it up.
As the Biden administration’s final days wind down, more figures from the administrations have described how the man officially serving as president was actually inside a political cocoon, out of contact with his Senate-confirmed cabinet members, with all interactions controlled by a small group of staffers who were the ones who appeared to be making all of the decisions.
A previous Wall Street Journal article described “relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted” interactions with Cabinet members. Cabinet members were discouraged from requesting calls with the president and instead received “decisions” that they were expected to carry out.
The usual protocol was for cabinet members to meet with “a member of the president’s senior staff” who would then, allegedly, “bring the issue to the president and report back”.
Whether or not the issues were ever even brought to Biden is unknown, but the occupant of the Oval Office had declined so badly that he needed note cards and prompts to tell him where to go and what questions to answer, and his ‘decisions’ were being scripted on both ends.
For four years, cabinet members, high-ranking members of Congress and key figures in the government, had little to no contact with the president, but were tasked with implementing decisions that were being delivered to them by staffers and advisers engaged in a palace coup.
It was these staffers and advisers who were the ones actually running the country. Much like President Woodrow Wilson’s wife Edith, during his incapacity, they controlled what the president heard, what he knew and what he said. With Biden relying heavily on note cards and prompts, this treasonous shadow government made him a prisoner of the White House.
And there is every reason to believe that they are still the ones making all the decisions.
This ‘sanctuary insurrection’ seized control of the White House and the executive branch of the United States government by impostors who used the president’s power in his absence.
And none have dared call it what it is… treason.
The usurpation of presidential powers by a palace coup was an attack on constitutional government. Instead of employing the 25th Amendment to report Biden’s mental incapacity, an inner circle of staffers and advisers set up a shadow government whose purpose was to prevent anyone on the outside from learning about his incapacity while allowing them to run the country.
Beyond COVID, we do not know how all of the administration’s specific policies were impacted by this shadow government, but it should be assumed that every presidential policy went through this same funnel process and that America has been run by this treasonous palace coup.
The next step must be to identify the members and participants in the palace coup, to subpoena members of the administration, establish the point at which Biden became incapacitated and the shadow government assumed power, invalidate all decisions made from that point on, and indict the participants in the shadow government who treasonously usurped the powers of the president. And by usurping presidential powers, they also usurped representative government.
The palace coup was carried out not just against one failing man, but against the American people. Biden may leave office, but that alone will not repair the damage that has been done.
Americans do not elect staffers, they elect candidates. In the physical or mental absence of a legislator or president, his or her staffers have no constitutional authority to run the government. Biden’s mental incapacity was one man’s failure, but by covering it up, it became systemic treason. Even though the media lied about Biden’s mental state, most Americans could see that he was incapable. And they lost trust in a government that was no longer representative.
America had no president for four years. The next administration will be tasked with not only fixing the economy and national defense, but with restoring a constitutional government.
© 1.02.2025 by Daniel Greenfield, "Front Page Magazine".
What's Worse Than Wokeism? Greg Gutfeld Explains.
When you look back on recent history, you might conclude that wokeism was the most destructive movement of the last decade, and that would be a spot-on guess. When you think about how woke ideology has impacted popular culture and has made people on the left hypersenstive to pretty much anything and everything, it seems rather obvious. However, Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld recently shared his perspective on what he believes to be the most destructive movement of the past decade, and it isn’t what you might expect.
Gutfeld argues that a greater menace lies in “the media’s lockstep anti-Trumpism.” In his view, the media’s unwavering opposition to former President Donald Trump has had far-reaching and devastating consequences, shaping public discourse and policy in ways that have deeply harmed the country.
In a lengthy post on X, Gutfeld explains that anti-Trumpism wasn’t merely about opposing the former president’s policies; it created a climate of mass delusion, where critical issues were downplayed, ignored, or twisted to avoid aligning with Trump’s views. He contends that this media-driven narrative led to some of the nation’s most damaging decisions during pivotal moments.
He gives four examples to prove his point.
The first is the rise in crime. He argued (correctly) that the media refused to acknowledge the negative impact of leftist policies on public safety, stating, “If you admitted that progressive policies energized criminality and cost many innocent lives, that would put you on the side of Trump. So you can’t do that, decides the media. So theft and violence became routine. Recidivism exploded.” The result, he argues, is a society where criminal behavior has been normalized, with disastrous consequences for communities.
Immigration is another area where Gutfeld believes the media’s anti-Trump stance had dire consequences. He explains, “If you admitted that unfettered illegal immigration stressed all our country’s systems, as well as introducing more violent crime, that would put you on the side of Trump. You can’t do that, decides the media. So it kept going, and people died.” This refusal to address the realities of immigration policy has led to avoidable tragedies and a strain on national resources.
The third example is COVID. He recalls the media’s role in distorting truth for the sake of opposing Trump. Boy, is he correct here. Gutfeld cites the reluctance to explore the lab leak theory as a plausible origin of the virus, remarking, “If you admitted that COVID came from China, likely a lab leak, then you were on the side of Trump. So you can’t do that either—that would be racist, said the media. Instead, we embraced absurd notions about bat soup.” Last year I wrote a lengthy post on how anti-Trumpism made the pandemic worse, and one of the biggest examples was the media war on hydroxychloroquine, which Trump had promoted as a possible therapeutic. The media promptly trashed Trump for suggesting it, and pushed the narrative that hydroxychloroquine was dangerous. Studies have since shown the antimalarial drug reduced the Covid fatality rate by roughly 50%.
For our VIPs: How Anti-Trumpism Made the COVID Pandemic Worse
Finally, Gutfeld turns his attention to President Joe Biden, claiming that the media’s protective stance has contributed to a lack of honest scrutiny. He pointed out that “if you admitted he was unfit for office and reported on it honestly, you were siding with Trump. So you can’t do that. In fact, you must say that Joe is better than ever, and those who disagree are cruel, ending up with a rudderless country sinking in chaos.” For Gutfeld, this represents the culmination of the media’s refusal to prioritize truth over ideology.
Gutfeld concluded that “a mass delusion driven by bitterness, ego, and an emotional infantilism brought this country to the brink.” He urges his audience to reject the media’s alarmist tendencies, stating, “So when the media starts hitting the panic button, laugh at them. They caused this mess. We’ll clean it up. They no longer matter.”
© 1.01.2025 by Matt Margolis, "PJ Media".
Conspiracies Too Awful to Imagine?
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Over the decade of Donald Trump’s political career, the left—as exemplified by Democratic politicos, the media, academics, the Washington military hierarchy, and the permeant bureaucratic state—illustrated a level of furor, venom, and near madness unprecedented in modern American history.
Yet stranger still about such visceral, indeed lunatic hatred, despite Trump’s eccentricities and lack of a traditional political resume, his administration between 2017-21 was successful by traditional economic, military, security, and diplomatic standards. It was certainly not characterized by weaponizing the DOJ, Pentagon, CIA, or FBI, get-even vendettas, the use of lawfare, corruption, optional wars, open borders, hyperinflation, or a war on the environment—as predicted and alleged. Nevertheless, the idea of Trump as president justified to the left the greatest assault on our civil liberties, justice system, and free expression in modern history.
A decade of unprecedented fury at Trump saw his opponents undermine civil liberties, weaponize institutions, and set precedents that risk eroding the republic.Indeed, at times the frenzy has ranged the gamut of an unprecedented two impeachments, a first Senate impeachment trial of a private citizen ex-president, and a coordinated effort to deplatform the major Republican presidential candidate from state ballots.
But at other times, the efforts were more sinister—and conspiratorial—to the point that the attempt to destroy the purported threat of candidate, president, and two-time candidate Trump apparently justified any means necessary.
In retrospect, what is the legacy of these unmatched efforts? They have established precedents, if ever again followed, will destroy the republic as we have known it.
1. “Russian collusion.” There was never any evidence that a 2016 Trump candidacy sought to “steal” the election through the intervention of the Putin Russian government. But a paranoid Clinton campaign, through the deliberate paywalls and agency of the DNC, Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS consulting firm, hired a retread ex-British spy, Christopher Steele—who was also FBI Director James Comey’s paid informant—to fabricate a “dossier” of invented scandals and salacious sex detail to smear Trump and ensure his defeat.
That effort required sowing the dossier throughout the government, partnering with traditional and social media, warping the FISA courts, forging an FBI-submitted document, and ambushing and destroying the National Security Advisor designate Gen. Michael Flynn.
Two years later, the self-congratulatory Robert Mueller’s “dream team” and “all-stars” of liberal beltway lawyers evaporated after finding no such Trump-Russian collusion—after a wasted nearly two years and $40 million. Meanwhile, revelations emerged of all sorts of covert FBI skullduggery—from erasing incriminating cell phone records, the revelations of the Strzok-Page text exchanges indicating an apparent FBI “insurance policy” effort to preclude a winning Trump candidacy, to the meltdown of Director Comey himself, who lied to the president that he was not a target of an investigation and then leaked confidential records of a private one-on-one presidential conversation to the media.
2. Indeed, during the Trump administration, we witnessed once more undreamed-of efforts to sabotage a presidency:
a) A former Pentagon lawyer publishing a call for either immediate Trump impeachment, 25th Amendment removal, or a military coup.
b) A planning session of the Deputy Attorney General and Interim FBI Director to discuss stealthily recording the President of the United States in hopes of finding enough off-the-record embarrassing conversations to justify a 25th Amendment removal.
c) A later 2020 campaign effort jumpstarted by the current Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the former interim CIA Director Mike Morrell, with help from former CIA Directors John Brennan and Leon Panetta, along with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, to round up 51 “former” (but actually many enjoying then-current CIA contractor status) “intelligence authorities” to publicly mislead the public by signing a letter that the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop (then in the hands of and authenticated as genuine by the FBI) was once again a Russian effort to throw the election to Trump. It was an obvious scripted lie, but timely scheduled before the last debate to arm Biden with plausible denials and thus to help swing the election to him. And it likely did.
d) There was, in addition, an effort by the heads of the NIH, Francis Collins, and NIAID, Anthony Fauci, deliberately to obfuscate, and allegedly in the case of Fauci, to lie under oath, about the efforts of American health authorities 1) to evade U.S. prohibitions on gain-in-function viral research, by funding the third-party EcoHealth Alliance to facilitate the transference of American money, instrumentation, and consulting to partner with the Chinese communist Wuhan virology lab; 2) to obfuscate the truth that the lab had somehow leaked the lethal, manmade virus—birthed with the help of U.S. expertise—that was killing millions worldwide; 3) to promulgate a false scenario of a bat/pangolin origin; 4) to deny under oath the American government’s role in the birth of the virus; 5) to suppress dissident scientific voices; and 6) to advise radical quarantine policies that would virtually destroy the U.S. economy along with the Trump 2020 reelection effort, and then shift blame from their own culpability to a false narrative that Trump was the chief driver of a disastrous national shutdown that had ruined the economy and yet was supposedly nearly criminally lax in controlling the outbreak.
e) The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, took it upon himself to 1) violate his own legal prerogatives as an advisory military official by unlawfully interrupting the chain of command when ordering theater commanders to report directly to him rather than as legally required to the Secretary of Defense in times of national crises, and 2) without presidential or Pentagon written authority, contacted his Chinese communist counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army. His stated aim apparently was to reassure the Chinese military that in Milley’s own view, if he should diagnose Trump, his own commander-in-chief, as unbalanced and intending to escalate tensions to the threshold of a possible nuclear war, Milley again would first contact General Zuocheng to reassure him that an erratic Trump would then be not in full command of American strategic forces. Then he, Milley, with others, would seek to de-escalate tensions and preclude a conflict.
Milley denied any impropriety. But he could not negate that he had no such authority to act on the part of the executive branch and was doing so in direct opposition to the President of the United States. Milley was also de facto creating a dangerous precedent for any future ambitious, freelancing chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, both to interrupt the chain of command and to self-diagnose their commander-in-chief to justify excluding him from exercising his responsibilities entailed in his oath of office.
f) In the 2020 election cycle, left-wing-funded legal teams systematically and under the guise of the COVID lockdown sued in favorable courts to overturn or modify state balloting laws to ensure the most radical and abrupt changes in U.S. voting procedures in history.
The net result was that in many key states, traditional Election Day balloting that had accounted for 60-80 percent of the cast votes was made a mere construct. Instead, some 60-70 percent of voters in many key states cast early- or mail-in ballots, even as the traditional rejection rate of such ballots drastically fell—again, as the numbers to be counted soared.
g) During this same 2020 election, according to liberal journalist Molly Ball, writing triumphantly post facto in Time magazine, a named “cabal” and “conspiracy” of billionaire leftist grandees, Silicon Valley monopolists, Chamber of Commerce, corporate entities, labor, and street activists sought to change balloting laws, street modulate demonstrations, enlist social media to censor and shape the news, partner with the FBI, and provide hundreds of millions of dollars to absorb the work of state registrars by supplying their own adjutant employees and voting materials. This was a holistic effort, Ball proudly wrote, that helped guarantee a Biden victory.
h) During 2021-2024, there were 91 local, state, and federal felony indictments launched against the ex-president and then-current front-running Republican candidate and opponent of the sitting president Biden. The charges were so blatantly political, and the principals in direct or indirect contact with either the White House counsel, the Department of Justice, or each other, that the multifaceted effort could be rightly termed a conspiracy to warp the legal system by destroying a political opponent. The charges would never have been brought against any other political candidate or against Trump himself—had he not publicly announced his intention to run a third time for president.
3. Never in recent election history had a presidential candidate in the midst of the final stretch of the campaign been the target of two assassination attempts—in part enabled by a climate of widespread and acceptable vituperation that equated Trump with a vile Hitler, fascist, Nazi, and dictator and thus encouraged unhinged would-be killers to delude themselves into believing they would forever be enshrined as heroes. And never would social media influencers, columnists, and celebrities voice near approval of such attempts on the leading presidential candidate’s life.
The first would-be assassin was an amateur shooter, who easily evaded Secret Service scrutiny to post himself in sight of bystanders, as he enjoyed a direct line of fire at Trump. Meanwhile, local law enforcement was desperately trying, in vain, to warn the lax Secret Service of the immediate danger to the president. The second wannabe assassin approached with impunity the most recognizably vulnerable spot on a local golf course, staked out a shooting position, and would have, if not spotted, been within minutes of having an uninterrupted shot at the president.
4. Finally, not since the Woodrow Wilson scandal of 1919-1920, have the media and the Democratic left conspired to hide the morbidities of a president that left him unfit mentally and physically to carry out the duties of the office.
That current and still ongoing covert effort put the nation at great risk, as evidenced by the catastrophic humiliation in Kabul, the successful Russian gamble that the U.S. would not or could not deter Putin from invading Ukraine, the unsteady and anemic reaction to the theater-wide wars in the Middle East, the hyperinflation of 2021-2, the erasure of the southern border, the deliberate greenlighting of some 12 million illegal aliens into the United States, and the weaponization of the FBI, CIA, and DOJ.
The final irony?
Those who were perpetrators of these illicit, unethical, and unprecedented efforts were themselves the first and most prominent to project Trump as the promulgator of conspiracies to debilitate the very institutions that they had already undermined and disgraced.
© 1.06.2025 by Vict6or Davis Hanson, "American Greatness".
