July 23, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Biden Candidate and Supreme Court Protection Teams Incompetent or Worse
By Rick Manning
The Secret Service allowed a deranged assassin to wander unimpeded and scope out former President Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally location for hours prior to his attack resulting in one death, two critical injuries and a wounded President Trump.
Unfortunately, this is part of a larger story of how the Biden administration, particularly Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, has deliberately created peril for its political opponents.
The horrible sight of President John F. Kennedy slumped, dead in the backseat of his limo in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 is an image which has to be ingrained in every public official responsible for overseeing the Secret Service.
Mayorkas may also remember JFK’s brother Robert Kennedy being assassinated by an angry Palestinian terrorist at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California on June 6, 1968 following his victory speech after winning the California presidential primary.
The response to the Robert Kennedy assassination caused the Secret Service to provide protection to candidates for the presidency rather than just to current and former officeholders. Yet, Mayorkas repeatedly denied Robert Kennedy, Jr. the benefit of Secret Service protection in spite of his significant independent candidacy and reportedly several serious threats to Kennedy’s life.
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt on President Trump, the former president urged Biden to provide protection to Kennedy as did Americans for Limited Government. Within a few hours, Mayorkas announced that protection would be extended to Kennedy.
It has also been reported that Mayorkas rejected multiple requests from President Trump’s campaign for additional protection due to extreme threats that he has received. Including a specific threat from the Iranian government in the ultimate attempt at election interference. Yet, somehow, the nation witnessed a clown car worth of protection errors in Butler, Pennsylvania, which almost resulted in a national catastrophe. The failure cost a family their father and husband, with other families praying constantly for the recovery of their loved ones.
If this were the only instance of Homeland Security’s negligence in providing appropriate security for government officials, it would be enough to demand a full investigation into whether political motives drove these decisions. An unthinkable possibility a few years ago now appears possible given the Biden-Harris’ harsh campaign rhetoric that Trump is a threat to democracy itself. Yet, the continual denials of appropriate and competent protection for this administration’s political opponents is hard to explain.
We also know that so-called protesters have been harassing GOP president appointed Supreme Court Justices at their homes for more than a year with Justice Brett Kavanaugh having an assassin show up at his home with plans to kill him and his family.
What did the Biden-Harris security team do?
Virtually nothing. The Biden-Harris Department of Justice assigned a single U.S. Marshal to protection duty for each Justice, with no orders to arrest those attempting to impede judicial proceedings due to their attempt to intimidate the Court’s more conservative members.
As Biden has talked about cooling the rhetoric since the Trump assassination attempt, the White House is ratcheting up attacks on the conservative members of the Supreme Court. After all, it is not like a crazed socialist didn’t attack Republican members of Congress while they practiced for the Congressional baseball game just a few short years ago. Majority Leader Steve Scalise nearly lost his life in that political attack, and if his security detail had not been there, the terrorist would have been using GOP Members of Congress for target practice.
Every one of these attacks is the responsibility of those who commit them. But it is at best malpractice to not provide adequate protection for those in Biden’s “bullseye.”
It is my hope and prayer that these decisions to deny appropriate protection security for opposing candidates and Supreme Court Justices have been made out of gross incompetence and not malice. Unfortunately, the consistent failure to provide adequate security to Biden-Harris’ political and ideological opponents could lead some to conclude that this is a campaign of planned intimidation.
Imagine if the assassination attempt on Trump had succeeded, the discussion we would be having right now with the same set of facts about the security lapses.
The deployment of the Secret Service and the U.S. Marshall’s Service for protection details is serious business, which cannot be politically tainted. This is something which every American should be able to agree upon.
And it doesn’t help when the Director of the Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle, who has now resigned, stonewalls basic questions from Congress about failings associated with the July 13 assassination attempt on President Trump a full nine days after the near disastrous failures.
The Director’s failure to answer got so absurd that far-left Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez called her testimony that she has to wait sixty days to get a report on what went wrong, “unacceptable.”
In Congress’ investigation of the failures of the Biden appointee led Secret Service leading to President Trump being an inch away from death, they must also look at the decision to not provide any protection for Robert Kennedy, Jr, or adequate protection for Supreme Court Justices to assure America that the Biden-Harris team is simply incompetent and not something much, much worse.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
Trump remains ahead as Harris enters the race in Biden’s stead after leading 85 percent of polls against her through election cycle
By Robert Romano
Be careful what you wish for.
That might be the lesson to be gleaned as former President Donald Trump remains ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in national polls, 48.5 percent to 46.6 percent, after President Joe Biden left the 2024 presidential race on July 21 amid growing concerns over his cognition and as he was recovering from a bout of Covid, according to the latest average of national polls compiled by RealClearPolling.com.
That includes a July 21 to July 22 Morning Consult poll conducted after Biden left the race, showing Trump leading Harris 47 percent to 45 percent. While slightly better than Biden’s showing in the July 15 to July 17 Morning Consult poll against Biden, where Trump led 46 percent to 42 percent, it shows that the incumbent Democrats still have an uphill battle on their hands to keep the White House.
In fact, Trump has been leading the national average of polls since Sept. 2023 and had led more than half of the polls against Biden taken the entire election cycle.
Now, when pitted against Harris, which was not polled as much prior to Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump, of the 47 polls taken, Trump has led 40 of them, or 85 percent of them. Many of these were hypothetical polls anticipating that Biden might drop out of the race given his age at 81, which he ultimately did.
The rollout of Harris on the campaign trail comes as she was already upside down in approval, with the July 19 to July 21 Forbes-HarrisX poll showing that 54 percent of registered voters disapproved of her job as Vice President, with only 38 percent approving.
That includes 59 percent of independents and 18 percent of Democrats disapproving of Harris, and an unsurprising 87 percent of Republicans disapproving, and 28 percent of Blacks, 46 percent of Hispanics and 60 percent of Whites disapproving.
On age, Harris was even upside down among 18-34-year-olds, with 44 percent disapproving and 42 percent approving. Among 35-years-old-and-olders, 57 percent disapprove versus 37 percent who approve.
These are the factory default settings that Harris will either improve upon, or not, as the campaign unfolds.
This offers Harris very little time with which to turn around public perceptions of not just herself, but the Biden administration as a whole, which President Biden reportedly will continue serving as the head of. Everything that happens with Biden has immediate impact upon her.
Even if Biden were to resign, situating Harris as the President, she would still be married to the circumstances of Biden’s presidency, whether the sticky inflation, lagging incomes, international anarchy with escalating wars and the flood of millions of illegal aliens plaguing the southern border she was tasked to get a handle on.
What’s worse, Harris has been a first-hand witness to Biden’s mental decline as Vice President. She has a duty to inform the American people if she still believes Biden is fit to serve the remainder of his term as president. As she has already acquiesced to him remaining in office while she devotes her entire time to running for president, she would be compelled to say that Biden is fit to serve.
That even though in the aftermath of the June 27 debate, 72 percent of registered voters in a June 28 to June 29 CBS News-YouGov poll said Biden no longer had the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, including 41 percent of Democrats. Even headed into the debate, 65 percent said he did not have the mental and cognitive capacity to serve, including 29 percent of Democrats.
But the White House is not a nursing home.
So why is Biden still president? Apparently, so that Harris can campaign without having to worry about running the country, which is apparently up to Biden’s handlers anyway.
Still, it will be a question that dogs Harris on the campaign trail as she is called to task for what did she know about Biden’s condition and when did she know it. How Harris answers, and whether she views Biden as fit when most except for the most loyal Democrat say unfit, might very well determine how she fares in the November election.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
Harris should have to answer to Biden competency question
July 22, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’ awareness of President Joe Biden’s declining mental state:
“The very first question Kamala Harris should have to answer is whether she believes Joe Biden is still fit to serve as president. President Biden was pushed out of this race because for months before, during and after his June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump, Biden has experienced several mental lapses in public that led to immediate calls for him to leave the race. So, if he is unfit run, how is he fit to serve? What did Harris know, and when did she know it? As Vice President, Harris is one of the people closest to Biden, she owes it to the American people to either tell the truth or just lie to our faces. The upheaval around the world and challenges to America make this one of the most dangerous times since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the knowledge by foreign leaders both friends and adversaries that President Biden is not fully capable makes the world even less safe.”
To viw online: https://getliberty.org/2024/07/harris-should-have-to-answer-to-biden-competency-question/