Government & Politics

• Biden addresses nation after Trump’s historic win, promises smooth transition (NY Post)

• George W. Bush congratulates Trump: On Wednesday, following Donald Trump’s sweeping election victory, George W. Bush congratulated the president-elect in a statement posted on social media: “The strong turnout in this election is a sign of the health of our republic and the strength of our democratic institutions.” That was a perfect repudiation of the Democrats’ false narrative of Trump being a “threat to democracy.” Bush concluded his statement by writing, “We join our fellow citizens in praying for the success of our new leaders at all levels of government. May God continue to bless our great country.” Bush declined to offer an endorsement of either candidate. For the most part, since leaving office, he has abstained from weighing in on politics.

• Bernie Sanders unleashes blistering takedown of Dem Party after Harris’s loss (NY Post)

• Now that Trump has won, here’s who may come to the White House with him (Just the News)

• A remarkable Latino win for Trump: Two days ago, Donald Trump won the White House with a multicolor coalition. In addition to his success with blue-collar whites, he won historic margins with black and Latino voters, and with Jews and Muslims. A case in point would be Trump’s electoral win in the Texas county with the highest percentage of Latinos anywhere in the U.S. As the Washington Examiner reports: “Latinos make up 97.7% of Starr County, which is situated on the Texas-Mexico border. The county voted Democrat in every presidential election since 1892, usually voting 80%-90% for Democrats. Previously, the only outliers were Richard Nixon’s landslide in 1972 and the 2020 election, when the Democratic share was only in the 50% range. On Tuesday, Trump finally flipped the county with 57.7% of the vote compared to Vice President Kamala Harris’s 41.8%.” With all this wildly successful outreach toward people of color, one begins to wonder whether Trump is really the fascist Nazi that Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats kept saying he is. If so, he sure has a crappy way of showing it.

• Humor: Kamala calls for peaceful transfer of power to Adolf Hitler (Babylon Bee)

• Trump’s win causes a New York Times conniption: It was a dark and stormy piece of analysis, but Trump-hating columnist Lisa Lerer couldn’t help herself. After all, as Kamala Harris told us, Donald Trump is a fascist and an Existential Threat to Our Democracy™. “This was a conquering of the nation not by force but with a permission slip,” Lerer writes. “Now, America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history.” The hyperbole is first-rate, but is it really possible to conquer a thing by first asking it for permission? Lerer seems to think so, and she can’t understand how some 73 million Americans could actually consent to a bloodthirsty tyrant who told them precisely what he was going to do. She continues: “He would use military force against his political opponents [sic]. He would fire thousands of career public servants [woo hoo]. He would deport millions of immigrants in military-style roundups [If only]. He would crush the independence of the Department of Justice [LOL], use government to push [sic] public health conspiracies and abandon America’s allies [sic] abroad.” If this is how the Times’s scribes intend to occupy themselves for the next four years, that “news” room is going to need plenty of Xanax.

• James and the Giant Honeypot: What would we do without whistleblowers? It’s a rhetorical question, but it bears consideration, given how much these unsung patriots have told us in the past four years about the inner workings of the deep state, as well as the corruption within the FBI and across the alphabet agencies. Lurch-like former FBI Director James Comey, for example, is back in the spotlight even though he’s been out of a government job for more than seven years. The Washington Times reports, “The House Judiciary Committee is examining a whistleblower report … [about] an off-the-books operation ordered by FBI Director James B. Comey that predated the Crossfire Hurricane operation.” But this wasn’t just meant to probe specific wrongdoing by Trump and his associates; instead, it was described by agents as “a fishing expedition.” As the Times continues: “The whistleblower disclosure said two female FBI undercover agents infiltrated Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign at high levels and were directed to act as ‘honeypots’ while traveling with Mr. Trump and his campaign staff on the trail.” Perhaps Trump should reconsider his “retribution” agenda, if only for the purpose of bringing smarmy James Comey to justice.

• Biden to energy consumers: screw you: The way to lower high energy costs is to, as the Trump campaign puts it, “drill, baby, drill.” But that fossil fuel-based answer flies in the face of Joe Biden’s anti-fossil fuel agenda. Therefore, following Donald Trump’s election victory, Biden decided to stick it to consumers by making it even harder for the country to drill. On Wednesday, Biden narrowed the scope of exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, where oil and gas lease sales were mandated under the 2017 tax bill. After Biden took office in 2021, he suspended and canceled leases in this region under the guise of “insufficient analysis” of the environmental impact of drilling. Now, on his way out the door, Biden is doing everything he can to prevent Trump from following through on his commitment to get America’s energy industry back into high gear. The result will be that prices at the pump will take longer to drop. Effectively, Biden is drilling working-class Americans for putting Trump back in office.

Economy

• Adios, Bidenomics: Americans have resoundingly repudiated the Leftmedia talkingheads who insisted that the economy under the Biden-Harris administration was doing great. These same talkingheads seemed perplexed that the 40-year-high inflation crushing Americans thanks to the Biden-Harris administration’s massive overspending is still a problem. That’s because Bidenomics rested on the flawed notion that the best way out of the pandemic-induced economic downturn was to print and spend gobs of money. Yet that did little other than send inflation through the roof, making everyone poorer, especially people living paycheck to paycheck. Trump’s victory sent the markets jumping, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 3.6% and the Russel 2000 index up 5.8%. Big businesses and small businesses alike are now brimming with optimism over the prospect of Trump’s deregulation and low-tax agenda. The threat of continued Bidenomics is now gone, a soon-to-be relic of bad economic policy destined for the history books.

• Boeing strike concludes: Boeing workers, who had been on strike since September 13, voted to end the strike and accept the latest offer from the airplane maker. The machinists agreed to a deal that will increase their pay by 38% over the next four years, give them a $12,000 bonus, and boost the company’s 401(k) match. The union’s message to its members stated, “In every negotiation and strike, there is a point where we have extracted everything that we can in bargaining and by withholding our labor. We are at that point now and risk a regressive or lesser offer in the future.” Boeing has steadily bled value over the last few months as production of its 737, 767, and 777 passenger jets has been on pause.

Around the Nation

• New York passes radical ballot amendment to enshrine male participation in women’s sports, protect illegal immigrants (National Review)

• Arizona passes ballot measure authorizing arrest, deportation of illegal immigrants (National Review)

• Massachusetts becomes first state to allow Uber, Lyft drivers to unionize (NY Post)

• Washington voters ban natural gas restrictions, reject other conservative initiatives (National Review) | Voters reject initiative to repeal Washington State’s Climate Commitment Act (Center Square)

Misc.

• Trump’s victory sends Hollywood into tailspin (Fox News)

• Military judge revives plea deal for 9/11 masterminds, despite Lloyd Austin’s objections (Just the News)

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fires Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (Fox News)

• Germany’s Scholz fires his finance minister as his coalition collapses (AP)

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