May 17, 2023
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
The Mainstream ‘Label and Dismiss’ Strategy with Kennedy is Exactly What they Did to Trump – will it Work?
By Manzanita Miller
With headlines like, “His name is Kennedy, His campaign is pure Trump” and “R.F.K and DeSantis Embolden Anti-Vaccine Movement” from the likes of the Washington Post and Time magazine respectively, it is clear what the playbook to discredit Kennedy and other alt-left challengers of President Biden will be: label and discredit.
This is a familiar strategy on the left because it was utilized to its fullest extent two presidential election cycles ago, when then-candidate Trump entered the political arena to an avalanche of name calling and vitriol from the establishment political class on both sides.
Much like Trump, Kennedy is already being appended with an array of loaded political labels, the sole purpose of which are to make it crystal clear to the political elite that Kennedy is, ‘not one of us.’
The political dynasty and environmental lawyer is rarely referred to as anything other than an “anti-vaccine activist”, despite also being vocally anti-war and highly critical of crony corporatism and environmental neglect.
When Kennedy announced his run for office, he did not mention vaccines, but has been clear in interviews that if asked, he’ll share his views. He has also stated that vaccines are not the central focus of his campaign, but the establishment is attempting to ‘other’ Kennedy on the vaccine issue to dissuade voters who might agree with him on other issues.
Eight years ago, when Trump announced his run for President of the United States under the Republican Party banner, he was similarly ‘othered’ and attacked from both sides of the aisle and from the mainstream media. Trump was labeled ‘a populist, ‘a racist’, ‘just a TV celebrity’, and ‘not a real Republican’ despite espousing a set of political principles that held at least some appeal to a broad swathe of the American people as evidenced by his success in the Republican primaries and later in the general election.
The American public simply did not care which label the mainstream pinned onto Trump, largely because they agreed with his America First philosophy, as upsetting as that may still be to some inside the beltway who never understood Trump’s appeal.
The way the mainstream is treating Kennedy now is a near-replica of the way they treated Trump. Rather than addressing the core of the issue: that Americans are mistrustful of big government corporatism and nation-building, particularly in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic and Ukraine war, the corporate-left are labeling Kennedy an ‘other’ and hoping that is enough to discredit him.
The reason this is the strategy, is that much like with Hillary Clinton in 2016, the political establishment are aware that any argument for their candidate falls flat. The only alternative is to label and discredit the opponent. Biden may not be as ill-liked as an individual as Clinton was, but Americans are largely in agreement that he is unfit to continue serving as president.
Biden’s approval rating now hovers in the low 40’s, a place occupied by former presidents who lost their reelection bids, and he has lost support by double-digits with women, young people, and independents. Unsurprisingly, Kennedy does well in polls with all these groups.
Around 70% of Democrats say they want someone other than Joe Biden to become the party nominee in 2024, and these numbers are even higher with young people and independents.
Not only are Biden’s numbers down across the board, but Americans are increasingly seeking a president who will keep the U.S. out of foreign conflicts and reject a neoconservative nation-building agenda abroad.
Public support for continuing to supply Ukraine with weapons dropped 12 percentage points from 60% in May 2022 to under half (48%) in March 2023, and just 37% of Americans now believe the U.S. should continue sending funds to Ukraine, down from a lukewarm 44% in May 2022. What is more, almost three-quarters of Americans say the U.S. should have either a minor role (49%) or no role at all (24%) in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, while just 26% say the U.S. should have a major role.
In the wake of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Americans had a particularly bleak view of the 20-year war, with a full 77% of Americans saying the U.S. and other Western allies did not win the war, and just 6% saying the U.S. won.
Americans are war-weary, and want to turn their attention back to domestic issues – namely healthcare, the economy, and restoring personal and economic freedoms that were suspended during the covid-19 pandemic.
Kennedy’s rise in popularity is no surprise, considering the vast majority of Democrats want to see someone other than Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket next election, and considering most Americans are weary of U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts and the unholy alliance between political and corporate power.
Americans care more about electing a president and administration capable of shepherding the country back to economic prosperity, ejecting the United States from our engagement in foreign disputes, and restoring the freedoms that were largely suspended during the covid-19 pandemic than they do about political labels. Call it populism, but most Americans don’t care.
Rather than address Kennedy on the issues, the Democratic Party has stated there will be no primary debates between Biden and Kennedy or other challengers, and are attempting to discredit alternative candidates by ‘othering’ them.
There is a very good chance the establishment will fail to quell the public uprising against Biden if they continue use the same ‘label and discredit’ playbook they used against Trump in 2015. ‘He’s just an inexperienced celebrity’, ‘he’s not a real Republican’, and ‘he’s a populist’ – all fell utterly flat when flung against Trump, because frankly, no one cared.
Manzanita Miller is an associate analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2023/05/the-mainstream-label-and-dismiss-strategy-with-kennedy-is-exactly-what-they-did-to-trump-will-it-work/
Video: Tucker Carlson TRIGGERS Fake News Media By Announcing Twitter Show
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJSO_h_ai6I
Video: UNFAIR: How Woke Politics Betray Mentally Ill Men Like Jordan Neely
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B98OHo18Ays
Michael Goodwin: The Deep State stabbed Donald Trump in the back during the 2016 election
By Michael Goodwin
You don’t have to read all of special counsel John Durham’s report to get to the heart of the matter: On the third page of the executive summary, he writes: “The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.”
There you have it, the final verdict on the 2016 presidential election: A corrupt FBI tried to rig the outcome by favoring one candidate over the other.
Thank God it failed, but not before Republican Donald Trump and others on his team got smeared in a vicious probe while Democrat Hillary Clinton and her team got free passes on several issues that potentially involved criminal conduct.
That’s the bottom line and everything else is detail.
Damning report
Durham’s damning conclusion must never be forgotten.
We now know, without doubt, that President Barack Obama’s Justice Department and officials from other parts of the government meddled in the election and tried to pick the president regardless of the wishes of 130 million voters.
Obama knew what was going on and so did his vice president, Joe Biden.
That, too, is now settled forever.
It is to Durham’s credit that he lays all this out without emotion.
In a Joe Friday tone of “Just the facts, ma’am,” he delivers breathtaking statements, writing that the FBI and Department of Justice “failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law.”
On another issue, he says that, despite worrisome reports about improper use of the Clinton Foundation, “both senior FBI and Department officials placed restrictions on how those matters were to be handled such that essentially no investigative activities occurred for months leading up to the election.”
The 306-page report would make for satisfying reading if it were a matter of long-ago history. But it’s too fresh and relevant to gather dust.
Consider all that followed: a bloodlust to get Trump’s head on a platter from the left-wing media, which, feasting on FBI leaks, led to Robert Mueller’s two-year, $40 million probe.
Despite finding no clear evidence that Trump or anyone in his campaign colluded with Russia, Mueller held his report until after Democrats won the House in the 2018 midterms, which begat a Democratic victory, which led to the phony Trump impeachment over the Ukraine phone call.
And even that list of disgraceful events doesn’t capture the complete catastrophe that dirty cops James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and others at the FBI created.
The agency is no longer trusted by tens of millions of Americans, and with good reason: The attempt to throw the election wasn’t a one-off.
Instead, it now looks like the opening act of an era when government power is routinely used to comfort the incumbent party and afflict the opposition party.
This is the poison still circulating through the political bloodstream.
Until it’s cleansed, there is little incentive for others not to abuse their power. After all, Clinton never paid a penalty for funding and spreading the Steele dossier, a farrago of fiction that the FBI willingly swallowed and used to spy on Trump associates.
As Durham shows, and as Obama knew, Clinton pushed it to draw attention away from her wrongdoing in having classified documents on a private server.
She carried out the dirtiest dirty trick in American politics, and still has the gall to claim Trump stole the election! America is lucky her deviousness was superseded by her incompetence.
The Comey crowd got fat book and TV contracts instead of prison. Crime — or at least corrupting justice — pays well if you’re of the right political persuasion.
DOJ still politicized
Sadly, a new generation of power-hungry bureaucrats has picked up where they left off. On the day Durham’s report was made public, we learned the Justice Department allegedly ordered that the entire IRS team probing Hunter Biden be removed.
The move smells like retaliation for one member of the team becoming a whistleblower and telling Congress that the president’s son was getting favored treatment.
The timing of the removal is either tone-deaf clumsy — or a brazen declaration of war from Attorney General Merrick Garland, who apparently believes he is above the law and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, including the Republicans who control the House.
Consider also that the FBI has had Hunter’s laptop for more than four years and still hasn’t cleared him or filed charges. Nor has it followed the money and the evidence showing Joe Biden was part of the family racket.
Trump’s feeble and foolish efforts to politicize the DOJ are child’s play next to what Biden, Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray are doing.
Both the former president and current one were sloppy with classified documents, but only one of them has an aggressive prosecutor, his home raided and his case before a grand jury. Naturally, leaks to favored media flow like water down a hill.
Meanwhile, the current president is blessed with a prosecutor who is as sleepy as he is. Not a peep of activity about his case is heard.
There’s another trickle-down effect of 2016, too, with state prosecutors, especially in New York, turning Trump’s life and business into a morality play and giving themselves the role of avengers. New York state Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg both made campaign promises to prosecute Trump, and they have kept those promises.
Never mind that violent criminals run amok. Trump is their white whale.
Of all the divisions and polarization in American life, this is the one that worries me most. The unscrupulous use of law enforcement to win and keep power can destroy the system of checks and balances the Founders built into our grand experiment in self-government.
In that sense, the downplaying of Durham’s findings by the left, especially in the media, is dispiriting. They’ve been exposed, but not deterred. They twisted the truth to push their agenda yesterday and today and they’ll do it tomorrow.
How do we stop them without becoming like them?
NY Times a lyin’ king
Reader Jack Weinberg is puzzled that so many people are so easily fooled, writing: “I don’t understand how the New York Times, with its history of egregiously false reporting about many national and international figures and events, is still able to maintain an aura of truthful reporting.
“Times reporters lied to cover up atrocities by Hitler, Stalin, Castro and others, and now are covering up for Joe Biden, one of the most brazenly dishonest politicians in modern times.”
To view online: https://nypost.com/2023/05/16/the-deep-state-stabbed-donald-trump-in-the-back-during-the-2016-election/