Cross-Examination

• Trump in court: Donald Trump took to the witness stand yesterday in a New York trial in which he and his sons are accused of inflating the value of their assets to gain favorable loans and insurance deals. Heavens to Mergatroyd. The judge, a cartoon character named Arthur Engoron, ruled even before the trial began five weeks ago that Trump was liable for fraud. As The New York Times reports, we learned three things: first, that Trump is “treading carefully” about his financial valuations; second, that a witness box “can’t contain” Trump despite the Left’s efforts to gag him; and third, that corrupt New York Attorney General Letitia James is “Trump’s chief target.” Elsewhere, among the Trump-averse editorial board members of The Wall Street Journal, the complaints seemed to focus more on what we might call reverse election interference, by which Trump is running away from the Republican primary field. As the Journal’s editors opined: “The four-course meal to follow is the criminal process, after Mr. Trump’s state indictment in New York, two charge sheets from the feds, and then another in Georgia. Yet despite it all — or more accurately, because of it all — Mr. Trump is dominating the Republican primary polling.” Indeed, Trump is dominating the polling, but to hear them tell it, it’s only because the Democrats have made a martyr out of him. It’s as if these McConnell Republicans have forgotten — or perhaps simply can’t come to grips with — the fact that Trump got 13 million more votes than any Republican candidate in history, and he got them before a single one of these politically motivated indictments had come down.

• “MAGA Mike” still under attack: It almost seems as if the Democrats and their mainstream media brethren are kicking House Speaker Mike Johnson’s tires to see if he’d be a suitable villain once Donald Trump has departed the scene. No sense waiting until the last minute, right? While two human beings could hardly be less similar than The Mike and The Donald, that doesn’t mean the Left can’t find both of them deplorable. But, as Matt Walsh writes at The Daily Wire, the MSM is likely setting itself up for failure: “When Republicans selected their new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, I was critical of the pick because of some of the stances Johnson has taken in the past. Primarily, I was concerned with his past support of the BLM narrative, and his expressions of outrage over the — to use his word — ‘murder’ of George Floyd. But since then, despite these serious qualms, the media have been doing everything in their power to make me like Speaker Johnson. They’re not doing this on purpose, of course. They are trying to make him look bad. But, as we know, nothing makes a person look better than when the media tries to make them look bad.” Yesterday, they complained that Johnson wasn’t wealthy enough. Today, these sickos are reporting that Johnson and his 17-year-old son “monitor each other’s porn intake.” It’s a vile smear. The truth, as Walsh notes, “is that Mike Johnson monitors his child’s internet usage to make sure that his child is not accessing harmful and objectionable material,” and that the app he uses allows his son to do the same thing. Sounds like smart and healthy childrearing — along with media Christophobia — to us.

• American troops in the crosshairs: Our troops are certainly lucky to have Joe Biden as their commander-in-chief. Otherwise, our forces abroad might lack deterrence and might therefore come under repeated attack from rogue regimes who once feared us but now fart in our general direction. Oh, wait. As National Review reports, “At least 45 Americans claim to have been injured in recent attacks in Iraq and Syria, more than twice as many as the Pentagon previously disclosed, according to a new report.” NBC News reports that at least 38 separate attacks on our bases in Syria and Iraq since October 17 were mainly conducted by drones, mortars, and rockets. But that injury number, 45, seems a bit higher than earlier reports. And, as it turns out, it is higher. NR continues: “The Pentagon initially claimed that 21 service members suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of two drone attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, but an additional 24 troops have since reported such injuries, NBC reported Monday, bringing the total number of injured troops to 45. That number may rise as more troops come forward.” Last we checked, traumatic brain injuries were serious matters. If Joe Biden can’t protect our troops, we might perhaps consider electing a commander-in-chief who can.

• WaPo elevates Hamas: It isn’t much of a logical leap to assume that if the Gaza Strip is run by Hamas, then the Gaza Ministry of Health might also be run by Hamas. Remember: These are the same trustworthy folks who told Rashida Tlaib and the rest of us that “Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that.” Almost immediately, we learned that it wasn’t an airstrike, it didn’t hit a hospital, it didn’t kill hundreds, and Israel didn’t do it. But other than that, the reporting from the Gaza Health Ministry, and Tlaib, and the mainstream media was accurate. And yet, as if the lesson weren’t obvious enough, here we have The Washington Post, repeatedly taking the word of the GMH that the death toll there has now passed 10,000. “When we’re reporting on issues such as the death toll in the Israel-Gaza war, we use information provided from the Gaza Health Ministry (an agency of the Hamas-controlled government), the Israeli government, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the U.S. State Department and other international agencies,” the Post’s disclaimer reads in part. NPR is similarly gullible. Alas, some folks never learn. We have no idea what the death toll in Gaza might be. But we do know this: Any other source is likely to be far more accurate than the Hamas Health Ministry.

• Germany renaming Anne Frank kindergarten: One of the most famous victims of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews was 15-year-old Anne Frank. Thanks to her diary, the world was given a record of her family’s harrowing experience hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam, Netherlands, until they were arrested by the Gestapo in the summer of 1944 and sent to concentration camps where she and her sister would die months later. Fast-forward to 2023, and a German kindergarten that had been named in her honor has now dropped her name over woke concerns of wanting to be “more diverse.” As the kindergarten’s director, Linda Schichor, explained, “We wanted a name without a political background.” Political how — not wanting to upset neo-Nazis? Schichor further justified the decision by noting that immigrant families had “often never heard of her.” All the more reason to keep the name. Not recognizing history because some folks don’t know it is pretty much the antithesis of school. Indeed, there may be no better time than now to highlight Anne Frank, as anti-Semitism is rising across Europe thanks in large part to mass migration from the Middle East.

• Axelrod suggests Biden should exit race: With the latest polling numbers showing Joe Biden effectively in a free fall and Donald Trump overtaking him in both national polling and, more significantly, in five battleground states, former Obama adviser David Axelrod called on Biden to exit the race. In a post on X, Axelrod wrote: “Only @JoeBiden can make this decision. If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?” Axelrod included in his post a link to New York Times polling showing Trump with that battleground lead. While admitting that “it’s very late to change horses,” Axelrod added “a lot will happen in the next year that no one can predict & Biden’s team says his resolve to run is firm.” Contending that Biden’s “biggest liability” is his old age, Axelrod called for Biden to just be “proud of his accomplishments.” And warning that Trump is a “dangerous, unhinged demagogue,” he asserted that “the stakes of miscalculation here are too dramatic to ignore.”

• Good news: victory over Rainbow Mafia: The state of Virginia agreed to a settlement in a lawsuit that had been raised by Christian wedding photographer Bob Updegrove over the state’s passage back in 2020 of a law requiring businesses to effectively celebrate same-sex marriage. Passed in the Commonwealth when Democrats controlled the statehouse and the governor’s mansion, the Virginia Values Act forbids businesses from discriminating against individuals based on their sexual orientation. Updegrove, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, successfully argued that Virginia’s law violated the Constitution. “Free speech is for everyone,” stated ADF counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse. “As the Supreme Court recently affirmed in 303 Creative, the government can’t force Americans to say things they don’t believe.” The lawsuit pointed out that Virginia was effectively seeking to “regulate Bob’s views — that marriage should be between a man and a woman — out of existence.”

• Climate cultists attack another famous work of art: A couple of Just Stop Oil climate cultists attacked another piece of museum art, this time using hammers to smash the glass protecting a painting by 17th-century artist Diego Velazquez known as the “Rokeby Venus.” The painting is estimated to be worth £72.5 million. The climate cultists then stood by, yelling: “Women did not get the vote by voting; it is time for deeds not words. It is time to Just Stop Oil.” They continued their rant by saying: “Politics is failing us. Politics failed women in 1914.” They then ridiculously and falsely asserted: “Millions will die due to new oil and gas licenses. Millions! If we love history, if we love art, and if we love our families, we must just stop oil.” The reality is that if these climate cultists actually got their way, and oil was just stopped, millions of people would die as a result.

• Biden’s flippant flag flapping: One month ago today, 33 Americans were murdered in Israel by terrorists, but Joe Biden did not order flags to half-staff. Why?

Headlines

• Here’s what to expect in key races across the country on Election Day 2023 (New York Post)

• Five candidates qualify for third RNC debate tomorrow (Just the News)

• Nashville shooter decried “crackers” and “white privilege,” leaked manifesto pages reveal (Daily Wire) | Nashville mayor furious over leak of manifesto, demands investigation (RedState) | The story about the Nashville shooter’s manifesto is being censored on Facebook and Google (Not the Bee)

• White House won’t release evidence that Biden family payments were for loans (Washington Examiner) | James Comer teases “around two dozen subpoenas” for Biden family investigation (Daily Caller)

• Israel to maintain security control in Gaza “indefinitely” after war, Netanyahu says (Times of Israel)

• Elderly Jewish man dies after confrontation with pro-Palestinian protester at California rally (Fox News)

• Indianapolis police: Arab woman deliberately crashed car into “Jewish school” that actually belongs to anti-Semitic hate group (Not the Bee)

• GOP attorneys general sue FDA over approval of “risky, untested” mail-order abortion pills (National Review)

• California has spent over $4 million in taxpayer dollars on gender surgeries for prisoners (Daily Wire)

• Policy: How would China take over Taiwan? One of these five strategies (AEI)

• Satire: Rashida Tlaib says “Heil Hitler” was just an aspirational call for freedom (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.