The Patriot Post® · Smiles & Fires

By Gary Bauer ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/112012-smiles-and-fires-2024-11-15

The photo of Presidents Trump and Biden sitting together and smiling in the Oval Office with a roaring fire behind them is very nice and also a bit of history. In that picture, you can see the 45th president, the 46th president, and the 47th president! It would be interesting to know what both men were thinking.
 
But I know what was going through my mind as I looked at the raging fire. I wondered how many documents the Biden White House desperately doesn’t want the incoming president to see were in that fire and in fires all throughout Washington, D.C.
 
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the number of Deep State bureaucrats wetting their pants right now. I guarantee they are doing everything they can to obstruct justice.
 
The appointments President Trump has announced in recent days are sending a clear message to powerful men and women embedded in the CIA, FBI, NSA, Justice Department, Homeland Security, and the Pentagon.
 
Every appointment Trump has made dealing with that part of the government has been an “in your face” appointment. He’s signaling that he is coming after the people who interfered in the 2016 election, the 2020 election, and who tried to destroy him and his presidency.
 
And Trump is right to do so. It’s not “revenge,” as Democrats and their media allies will claim. It’s cleaning out corruption.
 
 
 
Personnel Is Policy
 
As we have noted many times before, in Washington, D.C., personnel is policy. The people appointed to key positions can either advance the president’s goals or sabotage them. Here’s why Trump’s appointments are so critical.
 
Pete Hegseth — The Defense Department, under secretaries Trump appointed, resisted efforts to send troops to protect the border. They’ll send our sons and daughters all over the world to secure the borders of countries the vast majority of Americans couldn’t name. But they’re not interested in protecting the borders of places named “Arizona,” “New Mexico,” and “Texas.” And as I noted yesterday, Hegseth wrote a book about the urgent need to reform our woke military.
 
John Ratcliffe — Before Ratcliffe was elected to Congress, he was a federal prosecutor. He knows illegal activity when he sees it, and he will clean up the CIA, which spied on Trump’s campaign. Trump appointed Ratcliffe to a top intelligence position in his first administration, and he did his best to push back against the Deep State’s lies that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.”
 
Tulsi Gabbard — Gabbard served our country in uniform. She knows the costs and sacrifices of war. She was also a victim of the Deep State’s vindictiveness. She was put on a TSA watchlist after criticizing the Biden/Harris administration. As director of National Intelligence, she will get our intelligence community to refocus its attention on America’s foreign enemies, not American citizens with conservative opinions.
 
Matt Gaetz — His announcement as attorney general took Washington by surprise, and he is already facing resistance. We’ll see how it plays out. But in various committee hearings, he has gone after the Deep State and corruption at the Justice Department more aggressively than most Republicans. (Here, here, and here.) Trump knows that because he saw it.
 
No matter how congenial everything appeared to be at Wednesday’s White House meeting, I have no doubt that the same cabal that cooked up the Russia collusion hoax is doing everything it can right now to do it again.
 
Don’t forget that Joe Biden was in that infamous January 2017 Oval Office meeting when Barack Obama, Susan Rice, James Comey, and others plotted how to pursue the Russia collusion investigation against the incoming Trump administration. They all knew it was a total sham, but they were determined to undermine Trump any way they could.
 
And some forces on the right are resisting Trump, too. A right-leaning publication is warning that Gabbard cannot be trusted with top secret information. Why? It’s the same Deep State narrative — she’s a threat because she doesn’t share their globalist worldview.
 
Donald Trump deserves to have people in key positions who he can trust to enact his agenda. And so do the voters who elected him.
 
 
 
Aiding & Abetting
 
One reason why we’re not talking about the incoming “Harris administration” is on display this week in Athens, Georgia, where the trial of Jose Ibarra is getting underway. Ibarra is the illegal alien from Venezuela who brutally murdered nursing student Laken Riley.
 
The murderers, rapists, human traffickers, and violent gangs that Biden and Harris essentially welcomed into America are a big reason why Biden and Harris are on their way out of office.
 
But virtually every day, another elected Democrat announces they will defy all efforts by Donald Trump to deport millions of illegal aliens. And yet Democrats are puzzled about why they lost the presidency and the Senate.
 
Let me give them a hint: Their impulse to protect illegal aliens who are hurting American citizens has not changed one bit. They are aiding and abetting horrific and completely preventable crimes, and voters don’t like it. (Here and here.)
 
Sadly, cowardly Republicans are already making excuses for why removing millions of illegal aliens can’t be done. It can. Start by removing one criminal alien and just keep at it. There are even ways to get people to voluntarily leave or self-deport.
 
Any politician on the left who continues aiding and abetting illegal immigration should be defeated in the next election. Any politician on the right who stands in the way of Trump’s efforts to get illegal aliens out of the country should be primaried and kicked out of office.
 
 
 
Not Over Yet
 
Pennsylvania election officials announced Wednesday that they will begin a statewide recount of votes in the tight Senate contest between Republican challenger Dave McCormick, who is leading, and incumbent Democrat Bob Casey, who refuses to concede.
 
Counties must report the results of the recount by November 27th. In other words, Democrats have 12 days to steal this Senate seat. And that’s why notorious Clinton lawyer Marc Elias is in court demanding that illegal votes be counted. Yes, you read that right — illegal votes.
 
Democrats are demanding that undated mail-in ballots be counted.
 
They are demanding that unsigned mail-in ballots be counted.
 
They are demanding that ballots cast by voters in counties where they don’t live be counted.
 
They are even demanding that ballots cast by non-registered voters be counted.
 
Too many Republicans keep thinking it’s 1950 instead of 2024. They keep saying, “Casey has no path to victory.” Oh, yes, he does! He may not have a legal path, but his left-wing allies will definitely find an illegal path.
 
This is the corrupt system that Democrats are fighting to force on the entire nation. The overwhelming majority of states that Kamala Harris won do not require a voter ID. Wow! What a coincidence. [Sarcasm alert.]
 
We have strongly opposed Democrat efforts to nationalize election laws. As a matter of principle, I believe that opposition is the correct position. But when we get power, we can’t just pretend like there is no problem with our elections and do nothing.
 
The Constitution requires that only citizens be allowed to vote. Eight states voted on ballot measures requiring citizenship to vote. All eight passed by an average vote of 73%.
 
This is a winning issue. Republicans should pass a national law requiring proof of citizenship when you register to vote and voter ID when you vote. 
 
Anyone who thinks this would give the left an excuse to pass their own national election laws doesn’t get it. They don’t need an excuse!
 
Just as a reminder, Democrats forced Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to keep his name on general election ballots in some states while they worked to kick Green Party candidate Jill Stein off the ballot in other states.
 
No one on the left was the least bit worried about the gross inconsistency of their argument. They did whatever they could to maintain power.
 
 
 
Culture War & Spiritual War
 
We have written extensively about the escalating culture war in America. It wasn’t that long ago when we were debating the meaning of marriage. Having lost that battle, we’re now being forced to debate what a “woman” is and whether men can get pregnant!
 
But if anyone doubts that we are also in a spiritual war that, in my view, literally involves demons, this story out of Seattle, Washington, should end that debate.
 
A woman “married” to a “transwoman” (a man pretending to be a woman) got into an argument with her 67 year-old father, who was celebrating the election returns. His daughter, however, was crushed by Trump’s victory.
 
So, she got an ice pickax and stabbed her father, strangled him, bit him, and beat him with the handle. After she finished killing him, she wiped his blood all over her face and then broke all the windows in the house.
 
When the police arrived, they found her outside celebrating because “she was so happy.” She said her murderous rampage was an “act of liberation” and meant to “help people change their attachment to their parents.”
 
Don’t tell me this is not demonic.