June 12, 2023
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Poll: Trump widens lead in GOP nomination after indictment. Is anyone surprised?
By Robert Romano
“I’ve put everything on the line and I will never yield. I never yield. I will never be deterred. I will never stop fight for you.”
That was former President Donald Trump in Columbus, Ga. on June 10 in his first appearance after being indicted by the U.S. Justice Department on supposed violations of the Espionage Act over documents Trump says he declassified before leaving office, with Trump unsurprisingly using the prosecution to his political advantage in his 2024 election bid to oust President Joe Biden.
Addressing the indictment, Trump stated, “The ridiculous and baseless indictment of me by the Biden administration's weaponized Department of Injustice will go down is among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country. Many people have said that, Democrats have even said it. This vicious persecution is a travesty of justice…”
Trump added, “Biden is trying to jail his leading political opponent an opponent that's beating him by a lot in the polls just like they do in Stalinist Russia or Communist China, no different.”
It’s a simple message and one that could easily resonate with Trump’s base, certainly in the Republican nomination, the first and most important hurdle he has to clear in order to get back on the debate stage with Biden.
Following the indictment, Trump improved his lead on his closest rival, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in the latest CBS News-YouGov poll taken June 7 to June 10, now leading by 61 percent to 23 percent.
The crosstabs are fascinating. Among Republican primary voters, 40 percent said the indictment made them more likely to vote for Trump, compared to 4 percent who said it made them less likely to support him. 60 percent said the indictment made no difference whatsoever, in a poll where he leads by 38 points.
That included a spread of 41 percent of independents who said it made them more likely to support Trump, compared to just 2 percent who said it made them less likely.
This might be a confounding outcome to Trump’s opponents, not just inside the GOP, but also in the White House and among Democrats in Congress. And yet, it’s the predictable outcome for anyone outside of the Washington, D.C. Beltway.
Similar the so-called “Streisand effect” — tabloid journalists took a picture of Barbara Streisand’s house in 2003, and following attempts to suppress it legally, naturally resulted in even greater interest in the photograph — Trump is now benefitting from the latest attempt to cancel him and his movement.
As Trump would say, what’s he got to lose?
Across all demographics, 61 percent of U.S. adults agreed that the indictment was politically motivated, although so far the country is split pretty evenly on whether the charges were legitimate: 38 percent say the documents that the FBI seized from Trump’s Mar-a-lago were a national security risk, 38 percent say it was politically motivated, and 23 percent said both.
As one might expect, 65 percent of Democrats said the charges were legitimate, and 69 percent of Republicans said it was politically motivated. For Democrats, it is a partisan matter of political animus, and for Republicans, a matter of sheer self preservation.
Among independents, 41 percent said it was politically motivated, 37 percent said the documents posed a national security risk and 22 percent said both. So, right off the bat, 63 percent of independents believe there is a political motivation to the prosecution.
That is devastating news, not only to the perception of the Justice Department — which already has severe trust issues among the American people and particularly among Republicans who have seen Trump relentlessly pursued since 2016 with investigation after investigation which began before he ever took office — but to Trump’s rival in the general election, President Joe Biden.
And that might be the floor. Watch for those numbers to shift as Trump expertly utilizes it to build his base.
In the same poll, 59 percent of U.S. adults disapprove of Biden’s handling of his job as President, including 23 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of independents and 88 percent of Republicans. And not a single vote has been cast in the presidential primaries yet, which are still several months away.
It’s so easy to sell it’s like political T-ball. Biden might lose, and so he and his Justice Department sought to imprison his top opponent. What a humiliating way to run a political campaign in a free country. It’s like bribing the referee in a game because your team just can’t win otherwise.
For the American people, that sense of fair play — and the lack of it that has been applied to Trump — might be Trump’s greatest strength going forward as a candidate. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2023/06/poll-trump-widens-lead-in-gop-nomination-after-indictment-is-anyone-surprised/
Video: Trump’s Indictment: How the Justice System is Being Weaponized
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnUV80n-ySg
Video: Biden Seeks to IMPRISON Trump for 100 Years! IMPEACH BIDEN NOW!
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xiew2Mbmsk
Missouri Attorney General drops emergency order protecting children from irreversible ‘gender affirming’ surgeries
By Rick Manning
The question of whether our children will be protected from sick people who seek to redefine whether they are male or female using permanent, life-altering drugs and surgeries has become the hottest political issue in the nation.
Over the past few months, Missouri, state Attorney General Andrew Bailey imposed and then prematurely dropped an emergency order protecting children from those who would manipulate and prey upon them hiding behind a rainbow flag. Rather than pressing the legal fight, he shrank away from it.
It is mind-boggling that opposition to castrating boys and sterilizing girls has become controversial as a deadly combination of mass media, federal government controlled medical and education establishments working with woke corporations have run roughshod over common sense. Parental rights and the legitimate welfare of children have been cast aside in pursuit of something called “gender affirming care.”
According to Healthline.com, gender affirming care refers to, “any combination of social, legal, and medical measures that help people feel happy, healthy, and safe in their gender.”
Under this guise, children across the country are being subjected to permanent life-altering puberty blocking medication, mastectomies, hysterectomies and castration, many times without permission, or even notification, of their parents.
In the state of California, legislation is being pursued to remove children from the custody of parents who refuse to embrace this attack upon the sanity of their kids.
There can be no compromise with this issue. It is a fundamental, objective truth based upon DNA versus a reality denying, opinion-based gender bending lie. A lie which empowers a corrupt system driven by a perverse desire for self-destruction to permanently damage hundreds of thousands of children across America. A lie which is evil at its core.
And incredibly, even in states like Missouri, which have a history of being at the forefront of fighting legal challenges on behalf of life issues and against the federal government’s unholy alliance with big tech companies to censor American free speech rights, the current state Attorney General blinked in the face of trans-rage.
Andrew Bailey became the Attorney General when his predecessor Eric Schmitt was elected to the U.S. Senate and the transgender attack on reality was one of his first big tests.
Early on, he wisely decided to enact an emergency declaration stopping gender affirming care in the state. Unfortunately, when the politically correct backlash was unleashed, Bailey caved in and rescinded the declaration prior to the Governor’s signing of legislation covering the issue.
Rather than standing in the gap to protect the children of Missouri, Bailey decided to abandon the post before his shift was up allowing the media and national special interests and woke corporations to aim directly at the Governor in their attempt to force a veto of legislation that protects children from this abuse.
Fortunately, the special interests failed and the Governor signed the law, but they deserved more from Bailey.
This is all happening at a time when parent groups trying to protect their children from sexual abuse in the schools are being labelled and attacked as hate groups by the radical Southern Poverty Law Center and the Biden administration.
At a time when the Biden-led Justice Department combined to use their power to investigate and intimidate parents who dared to stand up to the trans lobby before schoolboards
At a time when the Roman Catholic Church and other religious institutions have been targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for standing upon biblical principles.
And at this time, Attorney General Andrew Bailey decided to stop fighting before the job was finished.
The wolves did not stop circling the children, the shepherd just stopped trying to keep them at bay.
The wolves teeth are bared. They openly and brazenly attempt to manipulate children and the adults who are supposed to protect them to embrace the acceptance of the alphabet soup gender agenda providing their gender affirming care abuse to the vulnerable who fall into their trap. At a time such as this, there is no room for timidity.
Yet, incredibly, Attorney General Andrew Bailey somehow decided to give up the fight, leaving children defenseless against a lawless, immoral mob bent on their destruction.
Fortunately, last week, the Governor of Missouri signed legislation to protect the children of the state from gender affirming care abuse. Now, it will be up to the same Attorney General to defend that law. The people of the ‘show me state’ better pray that he does so more vigorously than he defended the emergency order.
We live in dangerous times. Times when state Attorney Generals around the country are leading the way on issues that the left are using to redefine the soul of America. It is a time for vigorously leading and fighting for truth and freedom, not timidly succumbing.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2023/06/missouri-attorney-general-drops-emergency-order-protecting-children-from-irreversible-gender-affirming-surgeries/