Politics

• Day 2 of Hunter’s trial: “He didn’t know he was lying; it was the drugs.” That is effectively the argument Hunter Biden’s defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, presented to the jury on Tuesday, the second day of the first son’s trial over an illegal firearm purchase. Lowell claimed that federal prosecutors “left out the word ‘knowingly’” when they laid out the charges against Hunter, accusing him of having lied about not using illegal drugs on the gun purchasing form. Lowell claims that due to Hunter’s drug addiction, he was in such a “deep state of denial” that he did not “knowingly” lie on the form. Lowell also noted that Hunter never loaded the Colt Cobra .38 Special he purchased, and he never used it. Meanwhile, federal prosecutor Derek Hines argued, “Hunter Biden chose to illegally own a firearm. He was a user of crack and a drug addict. He chose to lie.” Furthermore, Hines noted that “Because he lied, Mr. Biden was able to walk out with a revolver, speed loader, and ammunition." Jill Biden has been in attendance for both days of the trial.

• Humor: Democrats call for removal of Nelson Mandela statue in DC after learning he was a convicted felon (Babylon Bee)

• Biden in France to commemorate 80th anniversary of D-Day: Early this morning, Joe Biden landed in France, there to join other world leaders in commemorating tomorrow’s 80th anniversary of D-Day at Normandy, the site of the largest amphibious invasion in history. Whatever pharmaceutical cocktail it is that this president’s handlers now administer to him to buy a couple of hours of lucidity, they’d better make it a good one. The moment is too important, and the comparison to Ronald Reagan’s two magnificent addresses there 40 years ago — one at Omaha Beach and one at Pointe du Hoc — will be too glaring. "The men of Normandy,” Reagan said at Pointe du Hoc on June 6, 1984, “had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next.” Who knows what sort of woke, disgraceful, politically tinged nonsense Biden’s handlers will put before him tomorrow? The struggling Washington Post called it “a visit in which he plans to evoke the memory of allies united against tyranny to highlight the stakes of his election campaign and draw a pointed comparison with Donald Trump,” but if Biden dares sully this singular moment with even a hint of politics, may history judge him harshly.

• Biden pretty much accuses Israel of war crimes: With “friends” like Joe Biden, who needs a proctologist? Perhaps that sort of sentiment is on the minds of more than a handful of Israeli citizens these days in the wake of Biden’s answer to a tendentious Time magazine question about whether Israeli forces in Gaza “have committed war crimes.” Biden’s weak and disgraceful answer: “It’s uncertain.” Conservative talker Hugh Hewitt was slack-jawed: “My God,” he said. “Joe Biden gave an interview to Time (of all people) and despite softball after softball, he did a faceplant among his ramblings. Asked if Israel had committed war crimes, the POTUS replied: ‘The answer is it’s uncertain and has been investigated by the Israelis themselves.’ Disgraceful refusal to state the obvious: The conduct of the IDF has set a new standard for the concern for civilians in this war.”

• The transcript from Biden’s interview with TIME is a mess (Townhall)

• Biden got $64M in anonymous donations: During the 2020 election, Joe Biden’s election efforts were boosted by a massive $64 million donation from Impetus Fund, a nonprofit organization. Who exactly was behind that donation is still unknown thanks to laws that don’t require nonprofit organizations to disclose their donors. Impetus Fund donated to Biden’s super PAC, Future Forward USA Action. Effectively, Impetus Fund is a “dark money” bundler, where the identity of donors is protected from the public. Hypocritically, the biggest users/abusers of this dark-money system are the very Democrat Party apparatchiks who are constantly pounding the podium calling for campaign finance regulations. Democrats, far more than Republicans, have used this system to cover up where the money is coming from and who these massive donors are. Expect Biden’s super PAC to see gobs more in dark-money donations coming in as Election Day nears.

National Security

• FBI Director Wray wants $661 million more: It’s the oldest trick in the budgeting book: crying “Wolf!” to get the funding you want. And that’s exactly what FBI Director Christopher Wray did yesterday when he appeared before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee and, as Fox News reports, told its members that there’s “an increasing concern of a potential coordinated attack in the U.S., similar to the Islamic State in Khorasan Province attack in March at a concert hall in Russia.” Why the scaremongering? Because Wray was trying to “make his case on the department’s request of $11.3 billion for FY25, or $661 million more than last year.” This isn’t to say that the terrorist threat our nation faces isn’t elevated these days. How could it not be, given Joe Biden’s wide-open (until yesterday) southern border? But we have to ask: Where the heck has Director Wray been for the past three and a half years? Certainly not calling for Biden to close our borders and enforce our nation’s immigration laws.

• Terror threat on U.S. soil “increased enormously” since October 7, Garland testifies (National Review)

• Lebanese forces fend off attack on U.S. embassy in Beirut (Daily Wire)

• Biden denies responsibility for record surge of illegal immigration during his presidency (Daily Wire)

Economy

• OPEC once again tells Biden to pound sand: It’s election season, so Joe Biden must be emptying our Strategic Petroleum Reserves and holding out his tin cup toward the OPEC nations for a better deal on crude, right? Check, and check. And how did that work out? After all, Scranton Joe has tried this tactic before. Not so good, as it turns out. As The Wall Street Journal reports: “OPEC+ on Sunday agreed to extend all production curbs into next year, a deal that likely signals oil prices will remain elevated through the U.S. presidential election. The agreement comes on the same day the group’s kingpin, Saudi Arabia, launched a giant sale of shares in its national oil champion that will yield billions to help fund the kingdom’s economic transformation.” According to Reuters, the cartel is prolonging its existing production cuts “of 3.66 million barrels per day through the end of 2025 and extending its ongoing cuts of 2.2 million barrels per day through September 2024.” Ouch. Perhaps Biden will have to win reelection the hard way, the honest way, without buying folks’ votes at the gas pump. Yeah, right.

• More restaurants close in CA: A Mexican fast-food chain in California, Rubio’s Coastal Grill, announced that it will be closing 48 of its locations due to the “rising cost of doing business.” This is directly tied to the state’s adoption of a $20 per hour minimum wage for fast-food workers that went into effect in April. Since the new minimum wage took effect, some 9,500 workers have lost their jobs, and California’s overall number of fast-food workers has decreased by 1.3% since September. John Kabateck, director of the National Federation of Independent Business California, blamed the state government, contending, “We now have a crazy quilt of minimum-wage laws that make it impossible to hire with any certainty sales will match expenses, paid leave proposals making the retention of employees more and more difficult, and higher unemployment insurance taxes, all of which make throwing in the towel more appealing than trying to stay open for business.” Meanwhile, California now leads the nation in terms of unemployment rate, now at 5.3%.

• Citadel and BlackRock back project to start a national stock exchange in Texas (CNBC)

• Two more Boeing whistleblowers go public over plane safety (NY Post)

Rainbow Mafia

• Trans dude whines about “sportsmanship”: A 16-year-old boy who identifies as a girl and competes on the girls’ track team at East Valley High School near Spokane, Washington, recently won the state championship for the girls’ 400-meter dash. When he accepted the gold medal while standing on the podium, he noticed that his female competitors did not applaud but simply stood with their hands behind their backs. Seeing the lack of celebration for his victory in the girls’ event, he whined to the local paper that he was “somewhat hurt.” “I guess maybe I expected sportsmanship because I was cheering the rest of them on when they were called,” he complained. “So I guess I expected to get that reciprocated. But I didn’t get that.” He then added, “I’m just a teenager. I wish people would remember that.” Well, he is also a boy pretending to be a girl, competing against and beating them. Where is the sportsmanship in lying about the very fundamental physical reality of one’s sex and then complaining when others refuse to celebrate the lie? The pathological narcissism displayed by these gender-benders demonstrates why they are engaged in this lie in the first place.

• Scholastic urges teachers to give kids LGBT books in 2024 guide (Daily Wire)

• Vermont blocked Christian families from fostering over gender ideology, lawsuit alleges (Daily Signal)

• Louisiana set to pass bill giving judges option to order surgical castration for sex offenders (RedState)

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