Cross-Examination

• Fulton County Circus update: Testimony resumes at 2 p.m. today in the misconduct hearing of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose office is responsible for prosecuting Donald Trump but whose personal misconduct has overshadowed the ridiculous racketeering charges she’s brought against the former president. The star witness today is expected to be Nathan Wade’s former law partner, Terrence Bradley, who is expected to challenge the full-of-holes timeline and testimony of Willis and Wade as to when their romantic relationship began and thereby prove that the duo lied under oath about it. If he does so, it’ll likely be game-set-match for the romantic duo. In this case, it’s the digital fingerprints that are most damning. As The Blaze reports: “The two claimed they had begun their relationship in early 2022, right after Wade was hired — but witnesses have also claimed otherwise, saying they were together as early as 2019. According to the phone records, the two have exchanged over 2,000 voice calls and just under 12,000 text messages.” It’ll be interesting to see how vigorously the defense tries to deny this digital record and whether the mainstream media will run interference for them. In other Fulton County developments, it appears that Team Biden planted a Democrat operative, Jeff DiSantis, inside Willis’s office specifically to get Trump. “‘DiSantis did this,’ one source told Breitbart News about the Trump case. ‘He’s the one. He is the one pulling all the strings. He was the one that walled her [Willis] off. He was in every important meeting. He is the brainchild behind this. That is the connection to the White House.’”

• Trump courts black voters: Democrats are freaking out about Donald Trump’s outreach to black Americans — a voting bloc that has traditionally gone 9-to-1 for Democrats over Republicans but appears increasingly disgusted by Bidenomics and especially this president’s resource-sucking, job-killing, wage-suppressing, open-borders policy. As The Hill reports, black leaders are in high dudgeon over Trump’s comments about black voters at the Black Conservative Federation annual gala in South Carolina on Friday, calling the comments “racist.” What did Trump say that was so awful? Mainly that blacks can relate to his legal woes. “I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing,” he told the crowd. “And a lot of people said that’s why the black people like me — because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing, but possibly, maybe, there’s something there.” Possibly, maybe. We’ll see in November.

• Biden makes “surprise” appearance on late-night “comedy” show: It wasn’t a surprise, it wasn’t recorded late at night, and it wasn’t comedic, but other than that, the reporting was accurate. Joe Biden, desperate to reconnect with a voter demographic — young people — that’s been running away from him at an alarming rate, just happened to drop in on late-night also-ran Seth Meyers. It was scripted to the max, of course, as evidenced by Biden just happening to don the “Dark Brandon” sunglasses as soon as Meyer mentioned that semi-popular meme. For a sense of Biden’s youth vote leakage, get a load of these numbers: In 2020, voters aged 18-29 went for Biden over Trump by a 61%-36% margin. And now? Those numbers are just 52%-48% in favor of Scranton Joe. When Meyers noted that Biden is 81, Biden replied with a scripted: “Who the hell told you that? That’s classified.” And then he tried to draw a false equivalence between his own age and that of Donald Trump: “He’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name,” adding, “It’s about how old your ideas are.” You know, ideas like open borders and abortion on demand and unchecked spending and affirmative action and no-cash bail and defunding the cops. Jon Favreau, the speechwriter who used to put those stirring words into Barack Obama’s mouth, said Biden “sounds more frail than he used to, even in 2019 and 2020.” Welcome to the party, pal. As Fox News funnyman Jimmy Failla quipped: “You’ve got to appreciate the historic significance of Biden and Seth Meyers. It’s not every night that the lowest-rated president goes on the lowest-rated show.” As a reminder, 86% of Americans, according to the latest NBC poll, are concerned about Biden’s age. Which, of course, causes sentient beings to wonder: What on earth is with that other 14%?

• Vile victim-blaming from the AP on Laken Riley murder: Just when we think we’ve seen the worst of the mainstream media, they saunter on over and prove us wrong. In the wake of the murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley, an Augusta University nursing student who was out for a jog on the University of Georgia campus when she was set upon and bludgeoned to death by a 26-year-old illegal immigrant from Venezuela, the Associated Press couched Riley’s murder in terms of females going for jogs by themselves — rather than open borders, unchecked illegal immigration, and the soft-on-crime laws of Democrat-run sanctuary cities. “Riley’s death has once again put the spotlight on the dangers female runners face,” the article read. “Previously, the 2018 death of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts while out jogging prompted an outpouring from other women who shared their tales of being harassed and followed.” And we thought the media was above despicable victim-blaming. Meanwhile, according to CNN, “There is little evidence indicating a connection between immigration and crime.” That is appallingly wrong. “If the border was secure,” said a noticeably downcast Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, “this individual never would’ve been in the country illegally and never would’ve committed another crime.” Said a friend at a memorial service for Riley on campus yesterday: “She exuded devotion with each and every thing that she did. A devoted Christian, sister, student, daughter, and friend … and we have no doubt that she would’ve been an incredible nurse.”

• Schumer the ChiCom: This past weekend, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was in New York City to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year Parade. During the event, he appeared on a stage with a number of NYC leaders, including Mayor Eric Adams. At one point during the event, while the Chinese Communist Party national anthem was being played, Schumer briefly put his hand over his heart and then proceeded to wave a small Chinese communist flag in one hand and a U.S. flag in the other. The disconnect from Schumer regarding America’s biggest geopolitical threat is telling. As FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned Congress, China poses a growing threat to American security. Wray noted that the ChiComs have already “built economic espionage and theft of personal and corporate data as a kind of a bedrock of their economic strategy,” but they “are eagerly pursuing AI advancements to try to accelerate that process.” He also observed that China “has a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined.” It is so large, he said, that “if each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intelligence analysts focused exclusively on the China threat, China’s hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1.” Yet there was Schumer celebrating the Chinese communists.

• Guilty verdict in “transgender” hate crime trial: In a historic first, a South Carolina jury delivered a guilty verdict in a federal hate crime trial of Daqua Lameek Ritter, who was accused of killing a man who identified as a “transgender” woman. Prosecutors contended that Ritter was motivated to murder his victim due to his embarrassment over the revelation that he had been engaged in a same-sex relationship with the gender-bending individual. According to the government, “[Ritter’s] crime was motivated by his anger at being mocked for having a sexual relationship with a transgender woman.” The motive for the federal government to prosecute this as a hate crime was to reinforce the leftist political narrative that the lack of broad cultural acceptance of “transgender” identity is dangerous. As federal attorney Brook Andrews stated, “This case stands as a testament to our committed effort to fight violence that is targeted against those who may identify as a member of the opposite sex, for their sexual orientation or for any other protected characteristics.”

• Ecoterrorism degrees: The anti-American radicalism being fomented on American college campuses is revealed by some of the courses available to students. In at least 16 schools across the country, the book How to Blow Up a Pipeline is required reading. Published in 2021, Swedish professor Andreas Malm’s book is effectively a communist manual that promotes using ecoterrorism as a tool for overthrowing capitalism. Malm effectively admits that engaging in such terrorism will result in people being killed: “Demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed.” Unsurprisingly, these courses that support using ecoterrorism serve to encourage the radicalization of students to favor other terrorist organizations such as Hamas. Effectively, they are justifying violence in the name of a radical ideological cause — in this case, the climate cult. The West and the U.S. in particular are villainized as the climate-destroying “oppressors” and therefore are deserving of a violent response in order to be stopped or overthrown.

• Mary Poppins gets a PG rating: The long-beloved Disney classic “Mary Poppins” has recently been given a new age rating of “PG” by the British Board of Film Classifications (BBFC). The 1964 film previously had a “U” rating, which is equivalent to America’s “G” rating, meaning the film contained “no material likely to offend or harm.” Well, it’s 2024, and we’re living in the era of wokeness, so the BBFC has now found a reason for offense. You see, the term “Hottentots” was used twice in the movie, and the woke language police now consider that word to be “discriminatory language.” According to the BBFC, “Hottentot” is offensive because it was historically used by the British and Dutch to refer to a South African indigenous nomadic tribe, which today is known as the Khoekhoe. The term is now considered offensive. To apply Mary Poppins’s line to wokeness itself, the sound of it is something quite atrocious.

Headlines

• Illegal immigrant suspect in Laken Riley murder accused of “disfiguring her skull” (Daily Wire)

• Biden to finally visit southern border, going on same day as Trump (Daily Wire)

• Venezuela’s “violent death” rate has hit a two-decade low because all the criminals are migrating to a town near you (Not the Bee)

• Supreme Court torn over Florida, Texas laws regulating social media companies (Reuters)

• Sweden clears final obstacle to NATO admission, will become newest member (National Review)

• SAG-AFTRA secures CBS reporter’s files (National Review)

• Harvard anti-Semitism task force co-chair resigns over doubts about university commitment (National Review)

• Economic freedom in U.S. falls to lowest level in 30 years (Daily Signal)

• Consumers are increasingly pushing back against price increases — and winning (AP)

• Mercedes-Benz abandons 2030 electric-only production target (Blaze Media)

• Instagram employees knew they were facilitating child exploitation and were fine with it (Hot Air)

• California requires pharmacists to undergo DEI training bashing straight, white, Christian males for license renewal (PM)

• Vermont Christian school barred from competing in girls’ basketball tourneys after forfeiting game against team with 6'1" trans player (Not the Bee)

• “Satire”: Facing low approval, Biden promises to start pretending to care about the border (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.