The Patriot Post® · Tuesday: Below the Fold

By Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Nate Jackson ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/111067-tuesday-below-the-fold-2024-10-15

Election Integrity

  • Arizona Dems are trying to rig the election with illegal voting: Given that the upcoming presidential election will be decided by a handful of swing states, it’s important that those swing states conduct honest elections and that only those folks who are eligible to vote are allowed to vote. Someone should tell that to Arizona Democrats. As Townhall’s Sarah Arnold reports: “Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is moving forward with allowing 218,000 people with unconfirmed citizenship to vote in the federal election despite concerns illegal immigrants have been peddled into the U.S. to boost votes for the Democratic candidate.” Arnold adds, “Just one week ago, the number was 97,928.” This is outrageous, and it’s a blatant effort to grease the skids for a Democrat electoral theft. America First Legal is on the case, having filed suit and demanded a voter list, and an Arizona court will hear arguments today. Another factor is the same one facing Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who’s trying to clean up his commonwealth’s voter rolls: namely, the National Voter Registration Act, which forbids removing large numbers of voters from the rolls within 90 days of an election. With just three weeks to go before the election, the desperate Democrats are making clear that they’ll try to win by any means necessary.

  • Poll: Half of voters plan to cast their ballots early — with a stark partisan divide (NBC News)

Politics

  • Slick Willie “helps” hapless Kamala: As desperation sets in for Kamala Harris’s campaign, she’s pulling out all the stops to chart “a new way forward,” and that includes shuttling 81-year-old Joe Biden 78-year-old Bill Clinton to an outdoor setting in Fort Valley, Georgia, slapping a Harris-Walz hunting cap on his grape, and having him do what he does best: retail campaigning. Unfortunately, Bubba is a bit rusty. First, he accidentally told the truth about the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley at the hands of a Venezuelan illegal. “You had a case in Georgia not very long ago, didn’t you?” Clinton asked his audience. “They made an ad about it, a young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yeah, well, if they’d all been properly vetted, that probably wouldn’t have happened.” Translation: Laken Riley’s blood is on border czar Kamala Harris’s hands. This is what we in the industry call a gaffe, as it’s an accidental uttering of an inconvenient truth. And the Big Dog wasn’t done gaffing. Asked by NBC News what will decide the election’s outcome, Clinton suggested that a Trump win might be illegitimate, replying, “Who wants it bad enough and whether we can get an honest, open count.”

  • Is Fox News rooting for Kamala? Donald Trump seems to think so, given the network’s coziness with Kamala Harris campaign surrogates of late, but the network will soon have a chance to put the former president’s concerns at ease. Fox News got a big “get” yesterday when it announced that Harris would sit for an interview Wednesday with the network’s chief political anchor, Brett Baier. It’ll be a singular opportunity to ask Harris the tough questions she’s been avoiding on the cupcake circuit: about the border, her concealment of Biden’s health, her endorsement of soft-on-crime LA District Attorney George Gascon, her support of taxpayer-funded sex-change operations for imprisoned illegal immigrants, and her many flip flops. As Baier noted on Fox News this morning, “We’re doing it pre-tape, but … we are going to run it uninterrupted, unedited all the way, maybe 30 minutes, the first part of Special Report, and then we’ll have a panel discussion about it afterward.” Baier is pitching the interview as “tough but fair,” promising to ask about “the issues that people care about,” including “perhaps some things that haven’t been asked in other interviews.” We shall see.

  • Kamala Harris doubles down on renaming Columbus Day after past comments resurface (New York Post)

  • Chris Rufo refutes New York Times coverage on Kamala Harris plagiarism story: ‘Lied by omission’ (Fox News)

  • Hostility between Biden and Harris: A White House at odds? Tensions between Joe Biden’s staff and Kamala Harris’s team reportedly have been brewing for some time, and as Harris slides in the polls, those tensions are boiling over. According to Axios, some members of Biden’s staff are still bitter over how he was pushed aside for Harris. “They’re too much in their feelings,” one of Harris’s team said in describing Biden’s staff. Lack of communication between the two sides has also given rise to frustration, with the latest example being Biden giving an apparent impromptu White House press conference while Harris was holding a campaign event in Michigan, taking attention away from Harris. Another example was the distinctly different messaging surrounding Florida Governor Ron DeSantis following the hurricanes. As Harris was falsely claiming that DeSantis was politicizing the disaster by ignoring her calls, Biden was praising DeSantis for being “gracious” and “cooperative.” A Harris aide complained, “The White House is lacking someone in the room thinking first and foremost about how things would affect the campaign.” If Harris continues to sink in the polls, expect the internal finger-pointing to only get worse.

  • Newsweek’s Nazi flags flap: In a blatant effort to equate Donald Trump and his supporters with Nazis, Newsweek ran a story with the following headline: “Swastika Flags Flown During Donald Trump Boat Parade in Florida.” That headline was technically true — a boat with five individuals and three wearing masks did indeed fly swastika flags and Trump flags during a pro-Trump boat parade. But the notion that these individuals were welcomed or even remotely representative of the parade goers is false. Indeed, at one point, another boat of Trump supporters intentionally showered water all over the boat of Nazi goons. Some folks in the parade suggested that these guys were actually antifa thugs, given their common practice of masks themselves and sowing discord. The problem is that Newsweek focused on a headline and a story on a group of unwelcome malcontents as if they are representative of the common Trump supporter. Nothing could be further from the truth, and yet Newsweek, the a self-appointed “fact-checking” outfit, is peddling lies.

  • Newsom appointee attends Beijing conference hosted by CCP, which seeks to influence American policy (National Review)

  • Kamala says she’ll be tough on crime, but her record says otherwise: Kamala Harris likes to brag about having been a tough prosecutor and attorney general — she prosecuted “transnational drug gangs” and all that claptrap — but her record belies these claims. As The Federalist’s Beth Brelje writes: “Harris oversaw crime in San Francisco as DA from 2004 to 2010. In her first year, San Francisco saw the violent crime rate increase 19 percent, an upward trend that continued for much of her reign. Her policies, implemented and proposed, drew criticism from longtime law enforcement experts.” Concerning Harris’s routinely poor conviction rates, Brelje adds, “Harris may sound like an airhead without a clue when she speaks, but there is a dangerous, criminal-friendly agenda behind her professed ‘tough on crime’ policies.” Indeed, if anything tells us that Harris will be soft on crime, it’s her endorsement in 2020 of disastrous LA DA George Gascon, in which she called him “a proven leader.” If Harris thinks Gascon is “a proven leader,” then her judgment stinks.

Economy Drives Polls

  • Trump’s economic plans would worsen inflation, experts [laughably] say (Associated Press)

  • Walgreens to close 1,200 stores nationwide, says 1 in 4 locations are unprofitable (New York Post)

  • Trump town hall ends with “musical-fest” while he stands on stage (NPR)

  • Black and Latino voters shifting to the GOP: More normal than you think (Washington Examiner)

Culture & “Science”

  • More girls stand up to boys: A fifth school in the Mountain West Conference has refused to play against San Jose State’s women’s volleyball team due to their inclusion of a “transgender” identifying male on their team. The University of Nevada, Reno, was scheduled to play a game against SJSU on October 26. However, Nevada’s players objected, saying in a statement, “We … forfeit against San Jose State University and stand united in solidarity with the volleyball teams of Southern Utah University, Boise State University, the University of Wyoming and Utah State University.” They added, “We demand that our right to safety and fair competition on the court be upheld. We refuse to participate in any match that advances injustice against female athletes.” The school administration responded that the team’s decision was “made independently” and “does not represent the position of the University.” The school added that none of the team members would be subject to any disciplinary actions. It’s good to see these female athletes standing up against the unfair attempt to force them to compete against gender-bending males as if they were actual women.

  • CA to impose mask mandates on healthcare workers: “Mask mandates are making a comeback in California,” claims Representative Kevin Kiley (R-CA). A number of counties across the Bay Area will soon require healthcare workers to mask up from November 1 through March or April, during the height of the flu season. The rationale is to stop the spread of viruses like COVID-19 and influenza during the colder months when these viruses are more prolific. The trouble is the lack of evidence supporting the notion that masking prevents viral spread. Indeed, masking seems to serve more as a political virtue signal than medically efficacious action. Irrespective of the actual science, California authoritarians view the imposition of their views as paramount to good governing and, therefore, justify the dubious rule. As the San Mateo County order states, “The violation of any provision of this order constitutes an imminent threat and immediate menace to public health, constitutes a public nuisance, and is punishable by fine, imprisonment or both.” Would these officials take the same serious approach to actual criminal behavior?

World

  • Netanyahu tells U.S. that Israel will strike Iranian military, not nuclear or oil, targets (Washington Post)

  • Iran’s illicit oil revenue swells to nearly $200 billion since Biden-Harris took office (Washington Free Beacon)

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