“Trump talks often about using the DOJ to target his political adversaries and people he views as foes. An NPR report on October 22 found that Trump “made more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish perceived enemies.” That includes a threat to, in Trump’s words, “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”
Trump also accused former Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic of the incoming president, of “TREASON” and threatened “TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.” (Which, if they were to actually happen, would presumably take place in the Defense Department’s legal structure, but could involve some DOJ personnel.)
Trump’s decision to name Gaetz, a staunch loyalist, to lead the Justice Department created considerable alarm. Historically, the White House has obeyed strong norms against interfering with Justice Department prosecutorial decisions, but these norms have no legal force. A Trump loyalist like Gaetz could have torn down this barrier altogether. (If someone like him is confirmed atop the Justice Department, that barrier could still go.)
Trump’s decision to appoint his personal lawyers to top DOJ jobs is equally concerning. Federal lawyers are supposed to represent the interests of the United States, not of any particular politician, while they work for the government. But Trump has selected three people who aren’t simply accustomed to representing his personal interests, but who have also likely collected considerable legal fees from him.
Blanche, Sauer, and Bove’s conventional résumés also mean that, if they use their DOJ posts to pursue Trump’s personal campaign of vengeance, they are likely to be fairly effective in doing so.”
“These experiences have given Patel a worldview that I think is best defined as paranoid.
Patel believes that foreign enemies — ranging from China to Iran to drug cartels — are doing their best to infiltrate the United States and wreak havoc on its homeland. Only Trump has the strength and the fortitude to stand up against these enemies and defend American allies like Israel.
The Democrats, he believes, do not just disagree with Trump on how to handle these threats: They are actively aligned with America’s enemies.
In one War Room segment, for example, Patel hosted a discredited China “expert” named Gordon Chang to warn that China was “planning an attack on our facilities on our soil.” But it’s worse than that, Chang argued: China had installed Joe Biden as the president of the United States.
“They were actually able to cast the decisive vote in 2020,” Chang told Patel, claiming without evidence that China “poured money into Joe Biden’s campaign” through the Democratic crowdfunding platform ActBlue. Patel’s response was not skepticism but credulity: “I hope people are paying attention.”
But Democrats are not merely unwitting cat’s paws of foreign powers, per Patel: They are nefarious actors aiming to tear down American democracy.
One of Patel’s favorite phrases, one that he uses again and again on Bannon’s show, is “two-tiered system of justice.” In his mind, federal law enforcement employs two distinct standards — one for “the deep state’s” friends and another for its enemies. Its allies, like the Bidens, receive only limited and superficial scrutiny, while its enemies are constantly harassed and persecuted. The four prosecutions of Trump, for Patel, are not legitimate inquiries into wrongdoing and abuses of power, but rather agents of a corrupt system lashing out at the one man who threatens their grip on America.
For this reason, Patel has an enemies list — literally. His book Government Gangsters, which he is constantly hawking on War Room, contains an appendix listing dozens of names that comprise the “executive branch deep state.””
…
“he is constantly proposing schemes — like Congress arresting Garland — that amount to efforts to criminalize political disagreements. This includes proposals to investigate prominent Democrats and even prosecute journalists.
“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” he said in a guest appearance on War Room last year.
“Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.””
“South Korea is in the grip of a political crisis after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Tuesday — a shocking move that sparked mass protests and drew sharp rebuke from the country’s parliament.
Though Yoon has said he will reverse his declaration, that’s unlikely to end South Korea’s political problems, which go beyond Tuesday’s emergency.
Yoon first made the declaration during a televised announcement on Tuesday night local time, claiming that the opposition party to his government was in the midst of an “insurgency” and “trying to overthrow the free democracy,” likely in reference to the political deadlock between himself and the parliament that has prevented him from enacting his agenda. Despite that ongoing gridlock, the move to declare martial law took Yoon’s political opponents, allies, the South Korean public — and the world — by surprise.
Shortly after Yoon’s declaration, South Korea’s parliament, known as the National Assembly, met to unanimously vote down the martial law decree.
“There is no reason to declare martial law. We cannot let the military rule this country,” opposition leader Lee Jae-myung said Tuesday. “President Yoon Suk Yeol has betrayed the people. President Yoon’s illegal declaration of emergency martial law is null and void.” Martial law typically involves the suspension of civilian government and rule by military decree in a major emergency, such as intense armed conflict.
Despite Yoon’s pledge to lift his declaration, the country is still in limbo; on Wednesday, opposition parties in the National Assembly submitted a motion for Yoon’s impeachment, and a vote could come as soon as Friday. What comes next is unclear.”
“France’s government collapsed Wednesday following a vote of no confidence in the country’s prime minister, pushing the country’s political future into chaos and exacerbating its budgetary and looming economic crises.
The successful vote means center-right Prime Minister Michel Barnier will be out of a job, and that French President Emmanuel Macron will need to find someone to replace him. That’s not expected to be an easy task: While the president nominates prime ministers in France, his picks can be ousted at any time by no confidence votes, like Barnier was. And the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s parliament, is almost evenly divided between the far right, a loosely united and contentious left wing, and centrists including Macron’s allies. Few candidates will please all three factions.
Disagreement about who should be prime minister following surprise elections this past summer led to Barnier’s rise. He was seen as a capable, if not popular, choice for the job, and won enough approval to win the prime minister’s post. But he faced a significant challenge of trying to govern without a majority. His recent attempt to push through a 2025 national budget without a vote in the lower house of parliament infuriated lawmakers on both the right and left. As a result, France’s far-right party and its left-wing alliance each put forward no-confidence motions.
Now, France is stuck. Without a prime minister, the government’s ability to pass laws is hampered. In the long term, Barnier’s removal could deepen France’s ongoing budget crisis and is a reflection of an unprecedented polarization in French politics, for which a solution seems far out of reach.”
“a broader analysis of global trends shows that Harris was fighting against some pretty strong headwinds and that any Democratic victory or overperformance would have turned out to be quite the global anomaly.
By the time 2024 is done, more voters will have gone to the polls than in any other year in history. And among the half of the world’s population living in a country with a national election this year, a clear and consistent picture has emerged: Voters are extremely upset with their governments.
Among democracies* that held elections this year, over 80 percent saw the incumbent party lose seats or vote share from the last election. That includes democracies of all kinds and in all corners of the globe.”
Venezuela was almost removed from power, but he survived and then was able to sell more oil thanks to the Americans wanting more oil on the market to counter the scarcity caused by the Ukraine war.
“The United Nations (U.N.) has accused Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuelan government of committing “gross human rights violations” in the wake of July’s disputed presidential election. According to a report.., the regime’s security forces were responsible for killings, forced disappearances, and physical, psychological, and sexual torture.”
“Donald Trump’s opponents were hoping for more bombshells in Jack Smith’s final document dump before the election. On Friday, those hopes fizzled.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed portions of four large volumes of the special counsel’s evidence against Trump — but most of the materials remained redacted from public view. And the small number of materials that were released on the court docket consisted almost entirely of previously public documents.”
The Democrats, universities, and media have their faults and have been too woke, but the lies, bullshit, propaganda, and poor error-correction instincts of Trump, RFK Jr, Tucker Carlson, and others is not a better alternative.