The Patriot Post® · Monday: Below the Fold

By Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/111174-monday-below-the-fold-2024-10-21

Election

  • Obama-appointed judge interferes in 2024 election: Tanya Chutkan, the judge in the Trump-Biden election-interference case, has herself interfered in the Trump-Harris election by unsealing and releasing a mountain of court documents just 18 days before the election. At issue are nearly 1,900 pages of Trump-deranged “special counsel” Jack Smith’s case against the former president, much of it highly redacted, but still providing a window into Smith’s case. Chutkan insisted, “If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute — or appear to be — election interference.” But a May 25, 2022, memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland to all DOJ employees says this: “As Department employees … we must be particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department’s reputation for fairness, neutrality, and non-partisanship. Simply put, partisan politics must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges.” So why is he allowing a federal judge — a Trump-hating, Obama-appointed judge, no less — to vomit up a trove of heretofore sealed documents regarding a major party presidential candidate?

  • Endangered Dem senators embrace Trump: In a sure sign that Democrats are increasingly worried that Donald Trump is heading to an election victory, several vulnerable Democrat lawmakers are siding with him in a desperate bid to stave off defeat. Senators Bob Casey (PA) and Tammy Baldwin (WI) have both ran ads featuring Trump, and not in a negative light. Casey’s ad states that he “bucked Biden to protect fracking, and he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China to stop them from cheating.” Baldwin’s ad narrator says that she “got President Trump to sign her Made in America bill.” In Montana, Democrat Senator Jon Tester has sidled up to Trump, while in Ohio, Senator Sherrod Brown ran an ad touting that he “wrote a bill that Donald Trump signed to crack down on drugs at the border.” The blatant hypocrisy here is that all of these Democrat senators voted in favor of impeaching Trump twice.

  • Wolverine State Dems set the stage for a steal: On Sunday, in the crucial swing state of Michigan, which Donald Trump won narrowly in 2016 but “lost” narrowly in 2020 amid a cloud of election night controversy in Detroit, Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said that she expects to have election results “by end of the day Wednesday” — the day after the election. “Well, you know, in 2020, we had the results of our highest turnout election in Michigan history within 24 hours of the polls closing. The unofficial results were completed by 8 p.m. on Wednesday. So we’re tracking that again this year.” Great. We need to be patient. That gives the Democrats plenty of time to find the necessary votes. In 2020, Florida showed how a large state could tally its votes and report them on election night. Why can’t Democrat-run swing states follow the Sunshine State’s lead? The answer, sadly, is obvious: Because it would limit their options.

  • Christian students in Wisconsin speak out after Kamala Harris told them they were at the “wrong rally” (NY Post) | Satire: Harris begins melting after rallygoer says “Jesus is Lord” (Babylon Bee)

Leftmedia

  • CBS objects to Trump’s accusation: CBS has again been caught interfering in an election. Just as with the Dan Rather Network’s “fake but accurate” smear of Republican President George W. Bush prior to the 2004 election, “60 Minutes” released a preview of its interview with Kamala Harris featuring an incoherent word salad about Israel, which was widely ridiculed, and which the network subsequently cut from the version it aired on TV. After more than a week of criticism, including calls to release the full transcript of the interview, CBS issued a statement: “Former President Donald Trump is accusing ‘60 Minutes’ of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false,” the statement begins. “‘60 Minutes’ gave an excerpt of our interview to ‘Face the Nation’ that used a longer section of her answer than that on ‘60 Minutes.’ Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response. … The portion of her answer on ‘60 Minutes’ was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide-ranging 21-minute-long segment.” Uh-huh.

Policy

  • Biden expands abortion drug mandate: In a move designed to gin up support for Harris’s flagging campaign, the White House announced it will expand Joe Biden’s over-the-counter contraceptive mandate. Democrats have made abortion a central issue since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The new rule from the Department of Health and Human Services will require all health insurance providers to cover the cost of all birth control, including the use of over-the-counter abortion drugs. The obvious objection to this rule is that it infringes on religious liberty as well as states’ rights. Since this last-minute rule change will generate a legal response, its purpose is primarily aimed at the November elections.

  • Harris wants the world’s highest death tax: Trump has accused Harris of being a Marxist, generating consternation from the Leftmedia and their cohort of “fact-checkers,” who assert that Trump is lying because she has never said she’s a communist. Well, one doesn’t need to self-identify as a Marxist to be one, as Harris’s views on equity demonstrate. Her views on taxes are equally troublesome, revealing she doesn’t believe that wealth should remain in a family. Part of the Republican tax cut under Trump expanded to $13.6 million the amount of inheritance exempted from the estate tax, or death tax. This will revert to the pre-2018 level of just $5 million if lawmakers don’t make the change permanent. Even worse, Harris wants to reduce the exemption to roughly $3.5 million. She also wants to increase the estate tax rate from 40% to 55% or even 65%. Effectively, Harris wants the government to take two-thirds of someone’s property upon their death. If one is advocating for the government to own nearly everything, is that not Marxism in a nutshell?

Culture

  • Jury selection in Penny trial begins: Retired U.S. Marine and New York City subway hero Daniel Penny is on trial this week in Manhattan for having protected his fellow passengers from a deranged and dangerous subway rider who’d been threatening them. Jury selection begins today, and it will be drawn from a pool of Penny’s “peers” who voted 9-to-1 for Joe Biden four years ago. Get a load of this vile characterization of Penny by the AP: “To some New Yorkers, he’s the white vigilante who choked an innocent Black man to death on the subway. To others, he’s the U.S. Marine Corps veteran whose attempt to subdue a mentally ill man ended in tragedy.” Whoa. “An innocent Black man”? Are these people kidding? Sadly, the AP can’t even get past the headline without lying. “Man charged in NYC subway chokehold death set to stand trial,” it reads. But Penny applied a carotid restraint to the would-be assailant, 30-year-old Jordan Neely, not a chokehold. “I acted in a way that would protect the other passengers, protect myself, and protect Mr. Neely,” Penny said last year. Let’s hope and pray at least one juror believes him.

Security

  • Israel vows retaliation over attempted Netanyahu assassination: On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea was the target of an attack by a drone launched from Lebanon by Hezbollah. Netanyahu was not at his residence at the time, and no one was injured. Hezbollah is a terrorist proxy organization funded and directed by Iran. Following the attack, Netanyahu didn’t parse words, stating, “The Iranian agents who tried to assassinate me and my wife today made a bitter mistake. This will not deter me or the State of Israel from continuing the war of revival against our enemies to ensure our security for generations.” He vowed, “We will continue to eliminate your terrorists. We will return our hostages held in Gaza. We will return our residents to the North. We will achieve all the war objectives that we set. And we will change the security reality in our region for generations.”

  • U.S. demands Israel allow humanitarian aid into Gaza or risk losing military support (AMN)

  • U.S. intel docs showing Israel preparations for airstrike in Iran leaked online (NY Post)

  • Blocked at UN, U.S. allies create new body to monitor North Korea violations (Washington Times)

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