Senators Should Side With Trump, Not Pocahontas
Also: Lefty Taiwan clueless about MAGA Plus: tariffs have been great for America, beginning with George Washington's administration.
"Would I be right in thinking you're on some sort of morality crusade, Bruce?” asks fictional British Prime Minister Francis Urqhart in the 1993 UK version of “House of Cards.”
The publisher of whom he asks the question, Bruce Bullerby, replies, "In a sense, yes. Opening a debate about morality in public and private life — why not?”
Urquhart pushes, "Is everyone's private life a legitimate subject for scrutiny?,” to which Bullerby responds, "Well, if it's all right for the royals, why not for the rest of us?”
Urquard responds, “Who could argue with that?” and then pulls out pictures of Bullerby in varoius states of undress with an estranged member of the royal family known as the Fat Princess.
While technically blackmail, the scene serves as an inspiring reminder that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Might there be a lesson in here for members of the U.S. Senate currently preening about the supposed unaccepability of some of President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominees?
Not to suggest that senators are engaged in extracurricular romance. Given the composition and average age of the Senate, that is gross to think about. Furthermore, many of the black marks on senatorial misconduct are in plain sight.
Let’s start with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who said that Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, is "aggressively, affirmatively disqualified.” She didn’t say why, seeming to think her argument was self-evident. She also opined of Pete Hegseth, the veteran whom Trump intends to nominate for Secretary of Defense, that "A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense.”
Let’s “unpack” this, to use modern parlance.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose entire personal and professional identities are based on fraud, is purporting to authoritatively judge Trump nominees? This is, after all, the woman Trump named “Pocahontas” when it became known that she claimed to be a Native American, first to land her professorship at Harvard, and then to launch her political career. When she was shamed into taking a genetic test, it showed she was just 1/1024 Native American, which is to say none at all.
If Pocahontas were a Republican, the media would have tracked down the real Native Amerian who ended up with a professorship at, say, SUNY Binghamton, because Pocahontas took her job from her through fraud.
A Republican Pocahontas would also face criminal charges. Look at what happned to George Santos, the Republican House representative from Long Island who lied about his background. He was thrown out of Congress by his dumb Republican colleagues before any conviction and charged by the Feds with numerous felonies. When Pocahontas applied for and secured jobs and professional adancement claiming to be Indian, was she not committing wire or mail fraud?
Of course, by the rules of modern lawfare, such laws do not apply to Democrat senators. The question is why any senators, especially some Republicans, want to be on the side of her passing judgment on anyone.
How about the rest of the Senate? Any skeletons on bright display before anyone need even open a closet for a look?
There’s Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. Before becoming a senator, he was the state’s attorney general, accusing and prosecuting hundreds for fraud. Yet a major part of Blumenthal’s biogrpahy, according to him, was serving in the Vietnam War. The only problem: “Da Nang Dick,” as Trump called him, never went to Vietnam. He is a fraud who is guilty of stolen valor.
Da Nang Dick thought it was appropriate to judge Trump’s choice of Gaetz, calling him “totally lacking” in qualifications. Maybe Gaetz should have invented a war record too.
Are these two congential liars and hypocrites exceptions in the Senate? Let’s consider the newly elected Adam Schiff, just elevated to the Senate from his perch atop the Intelligence Committee in the House. It was from there that Schiff repeatedly lied to the American public claiming that the government possessed information that Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign colluded with the Russians—a fiction that Schiff knew was a lie as he peddled it to the public. Schiff’s lies were refuted by the Mueller report. Undaunted and unapologetic, Schiff said of Gaetz, “He is really disqualified.”
Have these people no shame or self-awareness? Silly question—of course they don’t. Some of their predecessors in the Democrat Senate Caucus include luminaries like Ted Kennedy, who left a woman to drown after crashing his car while drunk. There was also Robert Byrd, once the Democrat Majority Leader after a previous stint in the leadership of the Ku Klux Klan when it served as the terror wing of the Democrat Party.
And that’s just the stuff on the surface. Dig deeper and who knows what one will find among the Congress whose approval rating with the public according to RealClear Politics lies at 24 percent.
Compare this lamentable situation to that of Trump, who just received a strong mandate from the American people. He also led Senate Republicans out of the wilderness and into the majority with a 53-47 balance of power in the new Congress that will consider Trump nominees. One would think they would be grateful.
Yet, Republican squish senators are already pining to lose. Texas Republican John Cornyn, the last of the Bush-era country club Republicans from that state, has expressed doubt. He has called for the release of a House Ethics Committee report on Gaetz.
How would that help anyone aside from the Democrats? The House Ethics Committee is a joke and, by definition, a purely political vehicle. Sordid allegations against Gaetz related to sex and drugs were already investigated by a Justice Department that hates him and it failed to find or manufacture enough evidence to even bring charges.
Another Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, has said that the nomination of Gaetz is “not serious.” Except it is—the leader of her party has decided he is the man to fix a badly ailing agency that has been politicized and attacked people ranging from Trump himself to parents going to school board meetings. It seems more likely that Murkowski herself is “not serious,” but should think seriously about her political future since Alaskans just voted to end the smoke and mirrors of ranked-choice voting that has allowed the squish senator to represent a non-squish state.
Ultimately these Republicans need to decide whether they are with Trump and the people who just elected him president or with liars and frauds like Pocahontas. In the longer term, Senate Republicans will need Trump more than he will need them. They ought to act accordingly.
Recent Articles from Capitalist Notes
Tariffs Are Excellent: From George Washington to Donald Trump
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Speaking of Tariffs
Speaking of tariffs, Mauricio Claver-Carone, a top Trump appointee and ally, is arguing that goods from anywhere shipped through Chinese ports across Latin America should face the same 60% tariffs as those Trump has promised on imports from China itself. The catalyst is a new Chinese-owned port in Chancay, Peru, that was inaugurated last week by President Xi Jinping and his Peruvian counterpart. Bloomberg article: link.
Parting Shot
Aside from Ukraine, is there any country that depends on the USA that has done less to understand and open channels of communication with the MAGA movement than Taiwan? Its new president didn’t even bother trying to congratulate Trump on his election, even though his predecessor did to great fanfare in 2016. Its left-leaning government ballyhooed one of its Olympic athletes—a biological male who competed in women's boxing and brought home a gold medal in domestic abuse. And then there is stuff like this:
The year 2008 called. It wants its cause célèbre and state religion back. That was the year when a victorious Barack Obama declared that “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
Today, prompted in part by Trump’s election, climate change alarmism and pagan sun god worship are losing their luster even among bureaucrats who attend climate conferences. After the last one wrapped up, some globalists wrote, “It is now clear that the [Conference of Parties (COP)] is no longer fit for purpose. We need a shift from negotiation to implementation.”
Or just go home. All the way back in 2004, after the COP had been around for 10 years, my boss at the time, Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky, advised the annual gathering: “The United States believes that the best way to address climate change is through economic growth that at the same time preserves the environment for future generations… to be effective, climate change policies must be compatible with economic growth, not impede growth.”
Too bad they didn’t listen to the USA.
As for Taiwan, an Asia watcher friend recently wrote me:
When you’re trying to be a bunch of pussies, you end up being a bunch of pussies.
That sums it sup.
Ten years ago, I don't believe would you have stated "a biological male who competed." You would have said "a male who competed." Please don't let Newspeak creep into your work with something along the same lines as a security expert and "writing journalist." I'm on a mission to obliterate 1984 come to life. Those "qualified" politicians have only watched as our interest payments grew, the need for a social safety net grew, fanned fires around the globe and have acted paralyzed in the face of woke, I'm very willing to look at new types of qualifications.
Your point about the relative “qualifications” of the senators and nominees is the one that needs to be hammered home over the coming weeks, as well as a comparison between current or previous cabinet members and future ones.
And I would hate to see China take Taiwan along with the island’s wonderful and special organic green and oolong teas, but the small consolation would be that the tiny nation would be quickly and effectively de-woked.