The Patriot Post® · Wednesday: Below the Fold

By Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/109728-wednesday-below-the-fold-2024-08-28

Politics

  • Finally, a Harris interview: Kamala Harris will finally end her media dodging after going nearly 40 days without doing an interview since being handpicked by the DNC to be the party’s presidential nominee. Harris will be interviewed by CNN’s Dana Bash, who clearly favors Democrats, indicating that this interview will not be anything other than a softball affair. Despite a friendly interviewer, Harris will not be fielding questions alone. Nope — she’ll have her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, at her side. The Trump campaign was quick to respond to this interview setup by posting on X, “Kamala will sit for her first formal interview. Joint, since she’s not competent enough to do it on her own. Taped, so her handlers have time to play damage control.” The interview will be prerecorded and is scheduled to air tomorrow at 9:00 PM ET on CNN. When will Harris do a live press conference fielding questions from journalists who are not Democrat Party propagandists?

  • Kamala Harris assembles army of strategists to plot first interview (Washington Free Beacon)

  • Did the anti-democratic Democrats try to bribe Cornel West? For a party that keeps chirping about Donald Trump being such an Existential Threat to Our Democracy™, the Democrats sure seem to be behaving in undemocratic ways. Take the candidacy of fringy leftist academic Cornel West, whom Democrats fear might pull some voters on the hard-Left away from Kamala Harris. As a result, lawyers have been working overtime filing legal challenges to kick West off the ballot, especially in the swing states. But West says it’s even worse than that. He says they’ve tried to bribe him. During a recent “Status Coup” podcast, the host asked West about it, and this was his response: “I mean, a number of them reached out just saying I need to get on the bandwagon — this is a historic moment, especially a black moment. … I told them, I said, ‘You all just talking to the wrong brother. You can offer resources or position or what have you — that’s not what I’m all about. That’s not the game I play.’”

  • The Dems are “saving democracy” in Michigan: Perhaps it makes perfect sense that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson used to be the dean of Wayne State University Law School. Because she sure seems to know how to subvert the state’s election laws. For example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign and is trying to remove his name from the ballot in the battleground states now that he’s endorsed Donald Trump. But Benson isn’t having it. Indeed, she’s trying to force him to stay on the ballot in Michigan even though Democrats were working feverishly to kick him off of it just weeks ago. On top of this, the Republican National Committee has been forced to sue the Democrats for hiring seven times more Democrat poll watchers than Republicans for the 2024 primary election, even though state law requires that every precinct have at least one inspector from each major party, and even though 202 precincts didn’t have a single Republican inspector.

  • Michael Moore drools about the “most progressive” prez in history: Predictably, documentarian Michael Moore is gushing about the candidacy of Kamala Harris. Writing on Substack, he said: “Two months ago, the results of our upcoming 2024 presidential election seemed to be a foregone conclusion, and a second Trump presidency seemed inevitable. But now — just 69 days before the November 5 election — I feel so hopeful that we are going to elect not just our first woman president, but our most progressive.” This comes after the “three long weeks of agony” he endured in the wake of the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the highly successful Republican National Convention, when it appeared that Trump was on a glide path to electoral victory over Joe Biden. Moore probably doesn’t even know that his endorsement of Harris and his endorsement of progressivism are something of a gaffe among independent voters.

  • House Oversight chair threatens subpoenas if White House doesn’t cough up “Bidenbucks” plans (The Federalist)

  • Trump adds RFK Jr., Gabbard to presidential transition team (The Hill)

Security

  • “Totally failed”: Pelosi admitted in secret video she should have sought National Guard for J6 (Just the News)

  • Chinese government hackers targeted U.S. internet providers with zero-day exploit (Tech Crunch)

  • Iran’s supreme leader opens door to negotiations with U.S. over Tehran’s nuclear program (AP)

Economy & Big Tech

  • Biden/Harris cut off more drilling: Prior to Donald Trump leaving office in January 2021, then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed orders opening up some 28 million acres of restricted land in Alaska to public use, including energy development. Upon taking office, the Biden/Harris administration put a hold on that order, and on Tuesday, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland formally revoked it and reinstated the prior land restrictions. The decision follows the Biden/Harris administration’s climate cult agenda of waging war on fossil fuels. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) blasted the action, stating, “The Biden administration has wasted an opportunity to do right by Alaska by refusing to lift a single acre of a single [public land order] anywhere in our state, instead keeping all of these lands in a restricted status.” She added, “This wouldn’t be acceptable in any other state, but this administration is once again treating Alaska differently — and far worse — than states in the Lower 48.”

  • Kamala reverses course on EV mandates despite supporting them for years (PM)

  • Home prices hit another record high in June (Not the Bee)

  • Rumble CEO flees Europe: In the wake of France arresting Pavel Durov, cofounder and CEO of the popular social media platform Telegram, over his refusal to crack down on free speech, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski has fled Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that Durov’s arrest “took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation” and was “in no way a political decision.” Pavlovski isn’t buying it. After reaching an undisclosed free speech-protecting country, he responded, “We had to shut down Rumble in France because you have NO [commitment] to freedom of expression.” Telegram also denied it had violated any European speech regulations, calling accusations of abuse “absurd.” American leftists would love to hold social media platforms criminally liable for users’ speech. As retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who infamously served as a witness in the House Democrats’ first impeachment effort against Donald Trump, posted on X: “There’s a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be nervous.” Evidently, Vindman does not believe in the First Amendment.

Around the Nation

  • MA secretly spent $1B on migrants: Republicans in Massachusetts want to know how the state government secretly spent $1 billion on migrants. The Bay State’s Republican Party is demanding that Democrat Governor Maura Healey’s administration provide records breaking down this spending. “The Healey-Driscoll Administration has shrouded nearly $1 billion spent in secrecy, leaving Massachusetts residents in the dark,” MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale explained. “They have withheld critical information on 600 incidents involving police, fire and EMT. Blocking journalists at every turn, the administration has obstructed the flow of information to the public.” MassGOP filed a Freedom of Information Act request to uncover what Carnevale called a “veil of secrecy and the obstructionist efforts of the Healey-Driscoll Administration and the Democratic supermajority.” She added, “The public deserves transparency. Release the details on the vendors profiting from this crisis and the public safety issues affecting our communities.” An estimated 355,000 illegal immigrants are currently living in the state. Just not on Martha’s Vineyard.

  • Teacher who attended J6 wins wrongful termination lawsuit: On January 6, 2021, Jason Moorehead went to our nation’s capital to watch then-President Donald Trump speak on the day of the “Stop the Steal” rally — an offense for which he was ultimately fired from his job as a social studies teacher in Pennsylvania’s Allentown School District even though he was a mile away from the Capitol when rioters stormed the building. But justice, while delayed, seems to have been served. Moorehead was just awarded $131,500 by a federal jury in his defamation and wrongful termination suit. In this age of massive jury awards, it’s a shame that this settlement amount is so paltry. “It’s a shame that most of you don’t even know who I am,” Moorehead told school board officials at the time of his firing. “You don’t know about the 18 years I spent of giving my life to this Raub community. The after-school programs I’ve done, the amount of summer school activities I’ve done, the sports I’ve done. My best friends are there. I met my wife there. I’ve had thousands of great relationships with students and parents.” None of that mattered because a social studies teacher participated in the “wrong” civics.

  • Michael Sparks, the first Jan. 6 defendant to breach U.S. Capitol, sentenced to 53 months in prison (CBS News)

Culture

  • Anti-Israel activists vandalize pro-life pregnancy center after DNC (Christian Post)

  • Florida can enforce ban on puberty blockers, trans surgeries for kids: appeals court (Christian Post)

  • Nearly 1,000 people attend Christian revival led by college football stars (Daily Wire)

Misc.

  • Ukraine’s Zelensky says incursion into Russia part of plan to end war (Washington Post)

  • Hundreds of IDF soldiers conduct largest W. Bank counterterror operation in several months (Jerusalem Post)

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