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In our modern political dumpster fire, there has never been an art so refined and illustrious as pointless pearl-clutching.
In this, the ninth year of 2016, most everyone is fairly desensitized to the political drama emanating from the Left’s ardent claims that any conservative policy or protest is an appeal to fascism as their own organizations and protesters set fire to cities (and sometimes themselves).
Republicans pass a bill banning sexually explicit content in public schools from kindergarten to third grade? Florida Democrats and media labeled it fascism.
A U.S. Supreme Court justice’s wife flies a Revolutionary War flag commissioned by George Washington? Salon’s senior writer described Justice Samuel Alito and his wife as “extremely invested in the semiotics of American fascism.”
The New Republic, The Guardian, taxpayer-funded PBS—any time a Republican so much as upholds parliamentary procedure, defends former President Donald Trump, or questions the surge of gang and cartel members amid waves of illegal immigrants—these outlets are ready in the wings to call any to the right of Chairman Mao a fascist.
The latest banner of fascism to be shouted down in a “Two Minutes Hate” session out of George Orwell’s “1984”: flying the flag of the United States upside down. The horror!
As ridiculous as it might sound—the group that has spent the past eight years defending those who burn, shred, and desecrate the U.S. flag is suddenly outraged over many in the nation who have flown the U.S. flag upside down in a symbol of distress over Trump’s political prosecution and conviction.
Many on the Left and precious few on the Right have taken to social media to lambast those who would fly the U.S. flag upside down as “disrespectful,” “treasonous,” and “idol-worshipers.”
Is this the case? Are those who reacted to Trump’s felony convictions in New York City simply bowing at his feet in a brutal backstabbing of the United States? Is this heinous, unspeakable act the very hallmark of fascism and the alleged “cult of personality” that the Left has predicted for almost a century?
Of course not, and you know that.
We needn’t walk down the halls of easily accessible history to discern how this wrist-shattering pearl clutch is both hypocritical and ignorant. But we’ll do so, not out of necessity but because heaping good data en masse against poorly constructed arguments is entertaining.
First and foremost: Flying the flag of the United States upside down is not disrespectful, illegal, treasonous, or even unprecedented.
Although 4 U.S. Code § 8, commonly referred to as the “Flag Code,” isn’t legally enforceable (because U.S. citizens retain First Amendment rights to do with their own flags whatever they wish), flying the flag upside down under appropriate circumstances wouldn’t violate the law.
The law clearly states: “The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.” (The “union” refers to the patch of blue with 50 stars.)
Thousands in the U.S. have flown our flag upside down to express their “dire distress” in such instances over the past century.
Leftists consistently flew the U.S. flag upside down throughout Trump’s presidency to signal their deep disquiet and fear, from Washington state to Louisiana. Democrats in New Jersey resolutely flew the flag upside down in protest of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. Some Republicans flew their flags upside down when Barack Obama was reelected in 2012.
The American flag has been flown upside down as “a tribute to veterans’ sacrifice,” and was one of the many symbols of protest against the Vietnam War used by leftist demonstrators in the 1960s.
The Flag Code doesn’t specify what “extreme danger to life or property” entails, nor does it restrict such interpretation to a physical danger or a political one. Might there be a situation today in which many Americans feel in deep distress over a perceived danger to the life and property of their republic?
Never before in American history has a former president, much less one running for office again, been charged and convicted in such a kangaroo-court fashion that even his political adversaries note the insanity of the circumstances.
In an extremely heated presidential election campaign, indicting one of the two frontrunners would be considered enough of an anathema—but the case of New York v. Trump was more than precarious, it was a circus.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, ran on the promise of doing anything he could to find something to indict Trump with. Outside his jurisdiction, Bragg used a federal election statute—which the Federal Election Commission already had stated Trump didn’t violate—as a convoluted lever to turn 34 counts of “falsifying business records,” misdemeanors that by this point were outside New York’s statute of limitations, into felonies.
As if that weren’t enough, Judge Juan Merchan refused to allow a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission to testify, refused to allow the defense to speak to the jury before deliberation, and informed jurors that to convict they didn’t have to reach a unanimous decision on what crime was committed.
Such actions by Merchan set a nation on fire even as trust in institutions already was wavering.
Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor, wrote for New York magazine, an extremely liberal publication: “Prosecutors got Trump—but they contorted the law.” Honig pointed out that never before in U.S. history has there been a state prosecution using federal election law.
You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned Trump’s sex life, his character, or his business decisions—in fact, many of those expressing extreme distress at this forded Rubicon aren’t being protective of Trump like he was some kind of nonsensical religious idol.
Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, and Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who have spent the past few years as Trump’s chief opposition within the GOP, both called this case and conviction despicable.
When a reporter asks President Joe Biden whether he used this case to politically persecute Trump and he casts a wicked grin in her direction, how is the nation supposed to respond?
Reporter: "President Trump refers to himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What's your response to that, sir?"
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) May 31, 2024
Biden: *smiles*pic.twitter.com/CZY8JUMvKO
Why is the left side of the aisle afforded the right to ride through towns and cities shouting about the impending doom of the republic like some bastardized caricature of Paul Revere, and the right side isn’t allowed to call out the very sham John Adams unpopularly fought in court to prevent?
Spare me your clutched pearls, neoconservatives. Your faux dignity and condescension at the concerns of Americans whose carcass of a justice system is paraded openly don’t move me.
I don’t have to defend Trump’s personal life and sign onto a “cult of personality” to recognize that each of us has a right to be free from political persecution and election interference.
Commentator Alyssa Farah’s silly claims that flying the flag upside down signals “selling out” are as pathetic and hypocritical as the rest of the cast of “The View” with whom she clucks and quacks about abortion rights, gun confiscation, and anti-Catholicism.
Whistling past the graveyard and sending a “strongly worded letter” have only mired us further in the muck of Third World antics.
I reserve the right to fly my flag upside down to signal my extreme distress at this danger to the life and property of the republic I love, and I’ll do so whenever I find it appropriate.
The post To the Condescending Cranks Faking Outrage Over Upside-Down Flags appeared first on The Daily Signal.
When the elected Democrat district attorney of Manhattan and his 12 (likely Democrat) Manhattan jurors convicted Donald Trump on artificially inflated felony counts of business accounting, you could count on leftist journalists to try to make it the Most Historic Event Ever.
We’re not even sure it won’t all be reversed on appeal. But “historic” is their word of choice … when they like the result.
In 1999, when Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about sex with an intern named Monica Lewinsky, Geraldo Rivera was furious on the “Today” show: “It was a spiteful action, an action that they performed absolutely in violation of the framers’ intent. It was a legislative coup d’etat.”
Impeaching Trump twice was never a “coup” to NBC News. But the worst part of that spectacle was leftist activists like Rivera trying to speak for the framers of the Constitution. He was implying it wasn’t just a revolting result but revolting in the eyes of James Madison and the rest. The Left reveres nothing about the Founders, routinely denouncing them as a racist, sexist, capitalist patriarchy.
This regrettable citation of the Founding Fathers happened again with the Trump trial, and again in this case, the American revolutionaries were placed on the side of the Democrats.
George Stephanopoulos began his commentary on “This Week” with the second president: “In 1774, John Adams said representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty. Two hundred and fifty years later, the heart and lungs of liberty are facing what may be the ultimate stress test.” It’s John Adams vs. Trump.
The front page of the June 3 New York Times was topped with an editorial—labeled “News Analysis”—from its White House correspondent Peter Baker. He picked Patrick Henry as the Trump opponent.
“The revolutionary hero Patrick Henry knew this day would come,” Baker began. Henry “feared that eventually a criminal might occupy the presidency and use his powers to thwart anyone who sought to hold him accountable.” In Henry’s words, “Away with your president, we will have a king.”
Never mind that historians pointed out Henry was inveighing against the Constitution before it was ratified. Baker channeled the Democrat line: “The notion that 34 felonies is not automatically disqualifying and a convicted criminal can be a viable candidate for commander in chief upends two and a half centuries of assumptions about American democracy.”
Inside the paper, the headline over Baker’s essay was “If a Felon Becomes President, Can Anyone Limit His Power?” The text box underlined the theme again: “Revival of a long-ago fear that a U.S. leader could try to be a king.” All that followed was the argument ad infinitum that Trump’s second term would result in “unfettered abuses of authority.”
What Baker and Stephanopoulos refused to understand was that this rhetoric of a president abusing authority can also be applied to President Joe Biden. On CNN, Scott Jennings mocked Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., on how Biden ruthlessly ignored the courts and the Congress in offering $165 billion in student loan “forgiveness” to win younger voters.
“You’re a member of Congress,” Jennings told Auchincloss. “Does it not offend you that the president of the United States is usurping your authority?” The eventual answer was no.
The Democrats and their media enablers use “history” to establish how there is a “right side,” and that is their leftist agenda. Undercutting democratic norms and coequal branches of government is admirable when the ends justify the means. The Founding Fathers are just yellowed paper puppets in their relentless power games.
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The post Beware When Leftist Journalists Use Founders to Attack Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Traditional media outlets are failing—badly. Whether it’s the lack of public trust in their ability to report the news accurately and fairly or their reactionary approach to world events, the American people deserve something better.
Ten years ago today, we launched The Daily Signal as an alternative to the establishment press. We believed then that major news outlets and broadcast networks were leaving a massive audience of conservatives and independent-minded Americans unserved. We set out on June 3, 2014, to inject competition into the market.
Our hypothesis was correct. Outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR were shocked by Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. They never saw it coming because they never paid attention to the populist movement that propelled Trump to the White House.
Sadly, despite some promises to reform their ways, many media outlets have resorted to even worse behavior today. They have further alienated millions of Americans.
A recent I&I/TIPP poll, which measures trust in media, found that a mere 34% of Americans trust traditional media outlets.
With the future of America at stake, this is a warning sign—but also an opportunity.
That’s why we’re announcing an exciting new era for The Daily Signal. We view the public’s crumbling faith in media as a moment to put rocket boosters on our scrappy news outlet.
As of today, The Daily Signal is officially an independent media organization with our own leadership team and board of directors. Over the next month, we will complete the process of separating from The Heritage Foundation, although we will continue to adhere to the same conservative principles that have guided our journalists for the past 10 years.
>>> Meet The Daily Signal’s Team of Journalists
Importantly, this change will allow us to publish a wider range of content than we have in the past, including coverage of political news in this critical election year. We’ve given our website a fresh look and we’re also adding a new Journalism Fellowship Program with the goal of training the next generation of conservative journalists, two of whom start today.
What does this mean for you?
You can expect the same insightful reporting and thoughtful commentary we’ve produced for the past 10 years. Just as our name implies, we will continue be your signal that cuts through the noise to transmit the news quickly and simply.
We will always tell you the TRUTH.
That’s our promise.
If we’re serious about saving America and creating a better future for the next generation, it requires an informed public.
Our nation’s leaders, and the people who elect them, need clearheaded, truthful information to make wise decisions—the intel to understand what’s really going on in centers of influence.
In the coming days, weeks, and months, you can expect The Daily Signal to make investments in three areas where we see traditional media lacking:
Over the past decade, our small but hardworking team has consistently delivered fair, accurate, and trustworthy journalism to a loyal audience that reaches tens of millions of people each year. As we’ve embraced new forms of storytelling, including short-form documentaries and bite-sized videos, that audience has grown exponentially.
>>> A Look Back at The Daily Signal’s First Decade
We won’t ever be content with the status quo. Innovation is part of our culture. And there’s really no other option with the radical Left determined to alter America in ways that will make this country unrecognizable for our children and grandchildren.
To all the patriotic Americans and supporters of our work, thank you for making the past 10 years possible. When we launched in 2014, I embraced the words of a mentor, Andrew Breitbart, who believed we needed more voices, not fewer. And it’s with that same spirit today that we embark on this new era for The Daily Signal.
By focusing on quality journalism, the unmatched knowledge of our contributors, and insider intel thanks to our access policymakers, we’re ready to take The Daily Signal to the next level.
Thanks for making us your trusted source for news. And if you’re not already a subscriber, please sign up for our newsletters.
The post Independent and Ambitious: A New Era for The Daily Signal appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Ten years after its creation, The Daily Signal enters a new era Monday as its own independent organization.
Today, its dedicated team of reporters and editors serve an audience of millions of Americans who rely on The Daily Signal to produce high-quality news stories and publish insightful commentary and analysis.
The team consists of 12 full-time staff, two fellows, two interns, and many contributors. Learn more about them below and see other Daily Signal authors.
Senior News Producer and Podcast Host
After interning at The Heritage Foundation in the spring of 2018, Allen began her career as a communications department administrative assistant. After two years, she moved into a position with The Daily Signal in spring of 2020. Allen says she will never forget the experiences she has had reporting from the U.S. southern border. She deeply respects NewsNation reporter Ali Bradley for her bold and honest coverage of the southern border situation. Allen’s goal for The Daily Signal in 2024 is to increase podcast quality with even stronger coverage of the daily news and major policy issues facing the nation.
President and Executive Editor
As the founding editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal, Bluey always dreamed of building a news outlet at Heritage from the moment he started his job in 2007. Having previously covered Congress as a reporter, he saw an opportunity to marry Heritage’s policy expertise with rich storytelling. He models his own approach to journalism on the work of the now-deceased syndicated columnist Robert Novak. He has big hopes for The Daily Signal’s future by putting a stronger emphasis on video, pursuing investigative reporting, and expanding its Capitol Hill coverage and political commentary.
News Intern
Crozier was selected to be a summer 2024 intern at The Daily Signal. He continues to build his writing portfolio and learn from The Daily Signal’s talented, experienced staff as he advances his own budding journalism career. One of his biggest inspirations in conservative media is The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan for her fearless reporting on important cultural issues. Crozier hopes to become a more productive writer and reporter through the internship.
Senior Editor and Writing Adviser
After working as the official writer for Heritage’s previous president, Gottstein became a writing adviser. In that role, he helps policy analysts to write more compelling op-eds geared toward educating policymakers and the general public. The role also includes editing for The Daily Signal and managing the other editors. Gottstein enjoys the entertaining and useful writings of John Stossel. This year, Gottstein wants to help grow The Daily Signal audience significantly because he thinks Americans often cannot get the unique news, commentary, policy analysis, and solutions to some of America’s biggest issues anywhere else.
News Producer
Kennedy recently moved to The Daily Signal from digital production at Heritage to help improve video content while furthering the outlet’s investigative ambitions. Previously, he oversaw the day-to-day production of digital content. Kennedy is proud of his work with colleagues Virginia Allen and Christian Lasval to report exclusively on illegal aliens driving unlicensed mopeds and motorcycles in Washington, D.C. His favorite memory on the job is traveling to Maui to cover Hawaii’s wildfires. Kennedy admires Dutch historian Frank Dikötter’s books that document the now-deceased Chinese communist dictator Mao Zedong’s reign of terror. This year, he wants to see The Daily Signal’s social channels reach No. 1 in Forbes’ annual social media ranking of free-market organizations.
Investigative Columnist
Since Heritage’s Lindsey Burke recruited Kinnett for investigative column writing in 2022, he has written The Daily Signal’s most-read article of 2023, “California Bill Would Charge Any Parent Who Doesn’t Affirm Transgenderism With ‘Child Abuse.’” It resulted in backlash so intense that California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the legislation. Flying to Maui to cover the wildfires with Tim Kennedy is Kinnett’s favorite memory at The Daily Signal. This year, he hopes to help create The Daily Signal’s first Instagram video with more than 5 million views or to syndicate his radio show to three stations. His top two media role models are Ben Shapiro and Chris Rufo.
Chief News Correspondent
Lucas is an accomplished journalist, veteran White House correspondent, and author with extensive experience in political reporting. As The Daily Signal’s chief news correspondent, he covers a wide range of topics and uses his investigative skills to uncover the truth. He has a keen ability to distill complex issues into clear, compelling stories. He is also the author of several books, including “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections” and “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Lucas previously reported from state capitals in Kentucky and Connecticut and is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Digital Fellow
McCue was a Daily Signal intern during the summer 2023 session. She is proud of the breadth of topics she covered during her internship. One of McCue’s favorite memories at The Daily Signal was joining the staff at a Turning Point USA conference in Florida to promote the outlet. Emily Jashinsky, director of the National Journalism Center, is McCue’s journalism role model because she has made a name for herself by speaking boldly and unapologetically while still practicing thoughtful journalism. As the digital media fellow, McCue hopes to help make The Daily Signal a household name for conservative news.
Senior Editor
Along with Rob Bluey and Katrina Trinko, McIntyre helped found The Daily Signal in 2014. At the time, he was in his seventh year as an editor in Heritage’s communications department following a 30-year career as a reporter and editor at weekly and daily newspapers. McIntyre is proud of his work helping Daily Signal reporters and other contributors to capture the importance and consequences of public policy challenges and solutions in their news stories and commentaries. During his time with The Daily Signal, his favorite memory is when he helped interview, hire, and develop The Daily Signal’s first three full-time reporters.
Mooney came to work at The Daily Signal after reporting for the State Policy Network, a nonprofit organization, on how the IRS was targeting tea party activists during the Obama administration. The Daily Signal became the ideal platform for Mooney to expand on that coverage when a Virginia farmer, in a long-standing legal dispute with environmental activists, became caught up in the IRS controversy. Mooney admires the work Ken McIntyre and Peter Parisi do as editors on his articles. He aims to investigate new topics this year, such as election integrity, the border crisis, and cultural disputes involving radical public school curriculums.
Managing Editor
O’Neil came to The Daily Signal after working as a Fox News Digital editor and as a PJ Media editor. His passion for conservative journalism and the truth led O’Neil to write his book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.” O’Neil loves bringing his family to Capitol Hill events and connecting with people at The Daily Signal. In journalism, he most looks up to G.K. Chesterton. O’Neil hopes to increase The Daily Signal’s website traffic, get himself and his colleagues on TV more often, and help develop the original and exclusive reporting that drives conversation.
Senior Reporter
Olohan came to work at The Daily Signal after working at the Daily Caller News Foundation. Her most influential Daily Signal project to date was coverage of high school girls in Vermont who pushed back against a boy identifying as a girl who was using their locker room. One of Olohan’s favorite memories at The Daily Signal was going to the Big Board, a bar in Washington, D.C., to report on the stripping of its liquor license for refusal to enforce COVID-19 mask mandates. This year, she would like to identify the leaker of the Supreme Court draft opinion for Roe v. Wade. Olohan’s journalism role model is Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist.
Editor
Parisi joined The Daily Signal after responding to a posting on a journalism jobs board. He had previously worked at The Washington Times for 10 years with Ken McIntyre. Parisi enjoys sharing the benefit of his many years of writing and editing experience with interns, adding that getting thank-you notes from departing interns after each semester makes it all worthwhile. He relishes the challenge of compiling and editing policy analysts’ and reporters’ analyses of presidential State of the Union addresses and presidential candidates’ debates under intense deadline pressure. His journalistic role models include the now-deceased talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh and current talk-radio host Chris Plante. This year, Parisi hopes to write a column that makes the top 10 in that month’s tally of The Daily Signal’s most-read pieces.
News Intern
Pero is a summer 2024 Daily Signal intern. A rising senior at Hillsdale College, she is a staff member of the college’s newspaper, The Collegian. Having interned with The Daily Caller’s video production department in the summer of 2023, Pero is eager to develop her writing and reporting skills this summer. She looks up to the journalistic work of John J. Miller, director of the journalism program at Hillsdale. During her time at The Daily Signal, Pero hopes to become a sharper thinker and stronger writer, and one day to decide on a beat topic to specialize in.
Sleem has worked at The Daily Signal since graduating from Christopher Newport University in 2014. Her greatest accomplishment with the outlet has been taking on various roles and working with people who have helped her to sharpen her journalism skills. Sleem’s favorite memory at The Daily Signal is covering the 2016 election results with the team. Everyone worked together very quickly to get information out to the public. One of her favorite journalists is Virginia Allen, who she says is a natural at reporting and interviewing. Sleem hopes to help The Daily Signal team out in whatever way she can this year in order to keep people informed about what’s going on in Washington, D.C., and how it affects them.
Columnist
Stepman previously worked at Human Events and Breitbart News. He describes his book “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past” as his top accomplishment. A memory that sticks out to Stepman is when he covered a socialist conference in Chicago that foreshadowed the Left’s embrace of transgenderism. As a columnist, he looks up to Victor Davis Hanson for combining clear, concise thought with factual depth and history. Stepman plans to have a second book in the works by the end of the year.
Editor-in-Chief
Trinko joined The Daily Signal in 2014 to help develop the strategy for a new news outlet focused on quality reporting of issues that interest conservatives. She is grateful to lead a team that has fearlessly reported on hot-button topics, such as detransitioners, Obamacare, the border, and more. Trinko fondly remembers fast-paced nights when the team worked on election coverage, brainstorming and reacting together in real time, pizza in hand, while working to provide the best journalism it could for The Daily Signal’s audience.
Reporting Fellow
Troutman joins The Daily Signal as a reporting fellow after interning at the media outlet in the spring of 2023. As an intern, she covered Tucker Carlson’s speech at Heritage’s 50th Anniversary Gala. The article blew up a few days after the announcement that Carlson was no longer with Fox News. Troutman’s journalism role model is Mary Margaret Olohan, because she admires Olohan’s bravery in covering controversial stories, her drive, and her constant ability to get amazing news scoops. With this being Troutman’s first full-time job in journalism, she hopes to write a lot and break many untold stories.
The post Meet The Daily Signal’s Team of Journalists appeared first on The Daily Signal.
New polling from Scott Rasmussen reveals that America’s elite 1%—those with high incomes, urban residences, and postgraduate degrees—are significantly out of step with the rest of the country on a range of issues.
It’s a troubling trend for America, and it doesn’t bode well for our future considering the elite 1% occupy many of the leadership roles in our cultural, educational, and government institutions.
There’s perhaps no statistic more shocking than the 69% of politically obsessed elites who think it would be better if only people with college degrees could vote. By comparison, just 15% of all voters hold that view. (Rasmussen defines “politically obsessed” as elites who talk about politics every day.)
Rasmussen’s latest survey, conducted by RMG Research, asked other questions ranging from government censorship to gun ownership. On nearly every issue, there’s a wide gulf between the ruling class and everyday Americans.
You can learn more about work on the elite 1% by tuning into “The Scott Rasmussen Show,” which airs Sunday at 10 a.m. ET on Merit Street Media.
In the meantime, listen to our full interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast” or read an edited transcript below.
Rob Bluey: What are the headlines coming out of your latest research?
Scott Rasmussen: As a reminder, the last time we talked about how the politically obsessed elites think the American people have too much individual freedom and people in this elite world really trust the federal government.
What we did this time is began to ask some of these same groups, the elite 1 % and the politically obsessed, what do they think America looks like?
Perhaps the funniest finding of all is we ask the question, “Do most Americans agree with you on most important issues?” Now, if we ask voters, about half say, “Yeah, I think most people agree with me.” Among the politically obsessed elites, 82% of that group thinks that most Americans agree with them on most issues. It’s not even close to true, but they’re looking in a mirror. They see what they want to see.
What’s scary about that, if you think about it in context of the administrative state, if these people believe that their views are representative of America, it justifies them cheating a little bit or bending the rules because they can say, “We’re fighting for the American people.” In fact, they’re fighting against the American people.
Bluey: Are there particular policy issues where you see that playing out more so than others? For instance, one that comes to mind is climate change.
Rasmussen: It’s actually harder to find places where the American people are with the elite. You mentioned climate change. About 2 out of 3 of this politically obsessed elite think that most voters are willing to pay $250 a year or more to fight climate change.
When we do polling to ask people how much they’re willing to pay—in terms of taxes or higher prices—about half say they’re not willing to pay anything, and 72% say nothing more than $100.
If you think about that in a policy sense, these influencers believe the American people are willing to pay something they’re not, and that’s why they can support some different policy ideas.
But look, it’s starts with a very basic thing: 71% of the politically obsessed elites think most Americans trust the federal government most of the time. That has not been true for 50 years. It’s been a half century since people tended to trust the government that much. Today, only 22% of voters voiced that much trust in government.
That is one of the core distinctions. If you trust the federal government, you trust the regulatory apparatus a lot more. You trust other rules and regulations, and voters just aren’t there.
Bluey: Another area that you polled had to do with social media. What did you find when you surveyed the elite 1% on that particular topic?
Rasmussen: Everybody, whether you’re in the elite or not, has some concern about disinformation and fake news. Where the difference comes is what to do about it.
Among most voters, they say that having the government decide what is misinformation and fake news is a bigger threat than the fake news itself. Among the elites, they say just the opposite.
Should the federal government be allowed to censor social media posts? Among all voters, 16% say yes. Among the politically obsessed elites, just over 50 % say, “Of course, we should have the right to censor social media.” Fundamentally different views.
The views of the elite 1% amount to a rejection of America’s founding ideals. Even on something as simple as, “Does the federal government listen too much or not enough to the American people?” Overwhelmingly, voters say the government is not listening to us and the elites are saying it’s listening too much.
Bluey: There seems to be a wide discrepancy of views when it comes to who should vote and who should have a say in our country’s future. That number to me was one that stood out and was quite alarming.
Rasmussen: Absolutely alarming.
We asked a question that seemed to me to be absurd, Would it be better if only people with a college degree were allowed to vote?”
Appropriately, most Americans just soundly reject that idea. But among the elites, they heavily believe this country would be better off if all those deplorables who didn’t go to college weren’t allowed to vote.
Bluey: And one issue where there’s also quite a big disparity is gun ownership. How do the elite view guns?
Rasmussen: Consistently for decades, voters say they want to live in a community where guns are allowed. Sometimes it’s in the low 60s, sometimes after a horrific shooting event, it moves down to the low 50s, but consistently a majority of Americans can support that.
Among the elite 1 % that politically obsessed portion of it, about 70% of them say, “No, we want to live where guns are outlawed.” And 76% of them want to ban the private ownership of guns.
If you are in that politically obsessed elite and you believe strongly that we should ban guns, and if you believe that most American people want to live in a community where guns are outlawed, then you take an almost religious fervor to the fight to ban guns because you can convince yourself that you’re fighting on behalf of the public. And once again, you’re actually fighting against what the American people are looking for.
Bluey: Do you feel that the elite 1 % are more out of touch in 2024 than maybe they were in past generations?
Rasmussen: First, I don’t have data from past generations, so I can’t make a clear assessment on that. But I think it’s probably a little bit different.
There have always been elites. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were clearly elites of their era, but they also had a commitment to something larger than themselves. Thomas Jefferson, in writing the Declaration of Independence, said he was just articulating what the American people were feeling. At the same time, Alexander Hamilton said, “We need to establish a monarchy.” If you actually read his plan, it’s horrific.
So there have always been some people and elites who kind of rejected the founding ideals, who rejected the concepts of the Declaration of Independence.
>>> ‘Most Terrifying Poll Result I’ve Ever Seen’: Scott Rasmussen Surveys America’s Elite 1%
What’s changed in the last couple of generations are two things.
No. 1, we’re a little bit more sorted geographically. Members of the elite aren’t encountering non-elites on a regular basis. It’s not just that we live in gated communities or separate areas. Public transportation has been replaced by Uber. There’s not a lot of contact with people who aren’t like you.
The second part is there has been the rise of what a lot of people view as the global elite, where people begin to see others from other countries as more like them than they do their own countrymen.
Bluey: The use of pronouns has become quite pronounced in a lot of corporate settings, even in our federal government. There are some departments and agencies that now include them in email signatures and things of that nature. Is there a difference of how elites view pronouns vs. the rest of America?
Rasmussen: Let’s start with the fact that most Americans don’t even know what you’re talking about when you’re expressing your preferred pronouns. Only about 1 out of 10 voters has ever introduced themselves in that manner.
When they hear talk of it, it seems very foreign. But among the politically obsessed elite, about 60%, have introduced themselves expressing their preferred pronouns. And it’s hard to overstate the cultural difference at that point.
If you’re in this elite world—if you’re in the elite schools or many agencies of the federal government—it is absolutely normal and an everyday occurrence that you meet somebody and they tell you not only their name and their position, but their preferred pronouns. In the rest of America, that just doesn’t happen.
When you get into discussions about misgendering somebody, there are regulations being pushed right now that would require employers to punish somebody for misgendering—for not using somebody’s preferred pronouns. Only 9% of voters think that’s a fireable offense, but even more than that, they don’t even know what the discussion is about.
This is where that glaring gap between the elites and most Americans is quite visible. It is the cultural world they’re in, whether we’re talking about guns, or climate change policies, or preferred pronouns, or even the topic of should biological males be allowed to play in women’s sports.
Among the politically obsessed elite, 41% say they should. Now, that’s not a majority, but essentially, the politically obsessed elite is evenly divided on this question, whereas to most Americans, it’s ridiculous. Of course, biological males have a physical advantage. Of course, it is dangerous to let biological males into the women’s locker room. But the elite is having a discussion about it. That is out of step with the country. It is dangerous.
It’s fine to have different views. We all live on our own bubbles. Your bubble is a little different than mine, but probably has some overlap. But you have to be able to look outside your bubble and see what the rest of the country is doing.
If you’re in this elite world, you have enormous influence and you think your views are reflecting the public at large, that’s a really dangerous combination.
Bluey: One of the most notable examples of the last decade is when Donald Trump was elected president. It seemed that the elites were in shock. What might happen if Trump is victorious in November and how might they react?
Rasmussen: On Election Day 2016, most of the conversation was Hillary Clinton is up by three in the polls, but there’s a margin of error, she’ll probably win by six. There was a shock. They couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t imagine what was happening. And because in their mind, Hillary Clinton was the ideally prepared person.
Looking ahead to this year, first thing I will tell you is if the election is at all close, the way the last nine elections have been in, whichever team loses, they’ll believe the election was stolen. If Donald Trump wins, we will hear an awful lot about how he stole the election from these elites.
But something else is happening that’s playing a part in the election. It’s a distorted view of the public.
When we see the campus protests about the Palestinian situation, 62% of the elites have a favorable opinion. They think it’s great what these protesters are doing. Most voters don’t. Only 24% of voters support the protesters.
That leaves the pundits to misread the way a situation has played out. In fact, since the campus protest started, support for Israel has gone up—not what some of the protesters might have hoped for.
A lot of the elites are misreading the dynamics going on right now. About 80 % of the elite 1% approve of the way Joe Biden is doing his job.
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President Joe Biden made a well-publicized commencement address on May 19 at Morehouse College in Atlanta, a historically black college. The networks touted the speech but didn’t put any “fact-checkers” on it. It contained at least four fibs.
In an echo of his 1987 lies that crumbled in his first presidential campaign, Biden claimed, “I was the first Biden to ever graduate from college.” A newspaper obituary for his maternal grandfather Ambrose Finnegan noted he graduated college.
He repeated his story that his son Beau died of a brain tumor after he spent “a year in Iraq as a major—he won the Bronze Star—living next to a burn pit.” In 2019, FactCheck.org noted the science on cancer from exposure to burn pits in Iraq was “insufficient,” but Biden tells that story often.
Then Biden uncorked his typical race-baiting: “Today in Georgia, they won’t allow water to be available to you while you wait in line to vote in an election.” Georgia’s Legislature passed a bill in 2021 that said no person should “give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink” within 150 feet of a polling place. It doesn’t mean you can’t have water!
Biden also claimed, “there’s a national effort to ban books—not to write history, but to erase history. They don’t see you in the future of America.” The leftists all said that “erasing history” bunk about Florida’s education standards, when it was crystal clear that black history was mandated, not erased.
None of these fact-check moments made the front-page New York Times story gushing over the Morehouse speech. It mentioned Biden spoke of deaths in his family and left out the “burn pits” part.
Biden’s recent lie that inflation was at 9% when he became president was so blatant that most of the liberal “fact-checkers” called it out: AP, CNN, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, Snopes, and The Washington Post. (Lead Stories and Reuters did not.) We’ll see if these latest Biden falsehoods get checked (again).
They could also check Biden’s four whoppers in remarks the day before at a campaign fundraiser in Atlanta.
The president told his backers, “I wasn’t going to run again after my son died because of being in Iraq for a year in those burn pits.” He said, “We were supposed to lose in 2020.” He claimed Donald Trump told Time magazine, “States should monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate the abortion bans.” Trump did not say that. Biden also claimed Trump said there were “really good people on both sides” in Charlottesville protests, implying he praised neo-Nazis. That’s an ongoing hoax.
At a Sunday afternoon campaign event in Detroit, the president again dragged out the line, “I’m the first in my family ever to go to college.”
A Sunday night speech at the NAACP brought more of the tired-brain gaffes. Biden claimed he was vice president “during the pandemic.” He said Obamacare was “saving millions of families $800,000—$8,000 a year in premiums.” The White House transcript adjusted it down to $800.
Then he returned to “folks wanting to ban books” and “erase black history, literally.”
He misquoted Trump as saying, “I’ll be a dictator on Day One” and “just inject bleach” to cure COVID-19. He bungled in claiming Trump said if he lost, there will be “bloodshed.” Trump implied an economic “bloodbath.”
The more Biden mangles the facts, the more you can be sure that national TV coverage is going to edit out the embarrassing parts. Call it “erasing history as it unfolds.”
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The following is an updated version of a column originally published in December 2022.
One of the bestselling books of the 1970s was “The Peter Principle,” a business management book by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull.
The book’s premise was that employees get promoted based on their performance in their previous jobs until they are ultimately elevated to a position in which they’re incompetent, since skills and success in one position don’t necessarily ensure success in the next. “In a hierarchy,” Peter explained, “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
If “The Peter Principle” were published today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would be a case study in the phenomenon, now called “failing upward.” In Jean-Pierre’s case, that’s reflected in her work for the short-lived Democratic presidential campaigns of John Edwards in 2004 and Martin O’Malley in 2016, and now as the chief spokeswoman for the Biden administration. On Monday, she will mark her second anniversary in that role.
In recent weeks, however, with the 2024 election campaign shifting into high gear, there have been well-sourced reports that high-ranking figures in the Biden administration are not-so-subtly seeking to push Jean-Pierre out of the role—for which she was never qualified to begin with. Many of the same administration figures reportedly behind those efforts to oust her are, not surprisingly, denying the accuracy of the reports.
The New York Post quoted a source as saying the high-ranking administration figures “‘were trying to find Karine a graceful exit’ because of the ugly optics of removing her against her will,” especially because she thinks she’s doing a good job. (One face-saving exit strategy was to offer her the presidency of EMILY’s List, an abortion rights group.)
But as a textbook example of an affirmative-action hire, Jean-Pierre appears not to be going anywhere. An administration so thoroughly wedded to so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion is, in this case, now finding it difficult to divorce itself from DEI. (More on that below.)
The most glaring evidence that Jean-Pierre, 49, has been promoted to her level of incompetence as White House press secretary is her near-total dependence on a binder full of administration talking points, which she often reads from directly at her daily news briefings to the White House press corps.
It’s so bad that Fox News commentator Jesse Watters has taken to referring to her derisively as “Binder,” and it’s so, well, cringeworthy that other critics deliberately mispronounce “Karine” as “Cringe.”
Just as an aside, recall how 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was ridiculed mercilessly in the liberal media for saying during the second presidential debate that he had “binders full of women.” That was his awkward way of referring to files of résumés of women he would consider for staffing his administration were he to win the election. Many of the talking heads’ “binder” jokes snarkily suggested that the squeaky-clean Romney was engaged in some form of BDSM with those women.
It’s standard operating procedure for a press secretary to have notes for ready reference. It’s quite another thing to stare down at them and read those notes all but verbatim.
As far as we know, none of the talking heads who ridiculed Romney has ever mentioned—much less made fun of—Jean-Pierre’s near-complete dependence on her press-briefing binders. Nor have they satirized her oft-repeated deflection—“I don’t have anything”—when she doesn’t have answers to questions for which she’s unprepared.
Nor have the liberal media (or the late-night TV comics) noted, much less lampooned, how Jean-Pierre has mispronounced or mangled words and phrases in the course of her press briefings.
On Dec. 13, 2022, Jean-Pierre touted “bicarmel” support in Congress for the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. “Bicarmel, bipartisan support was had for this piece of legislation,” she said.
But this was no one-off slip of the tongue: She used the term “bicarmel” three times to describe it in the course of the half-hour press briefing. It should have been “bicameral,” of course; meaning, support in both chambers of Congress.
The official White House transcript of the briefing was dishonestly corrected in all three instances to “bicameral” with no indication that it was not an accurate reflection of what was actually said.
On Nov. 28, 2022, in congratulating three Americans who had won Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics, and economics, she mispronounced “Nobel” five times in 40 seconds as “noble.”
Two months to the day earlier, on Sept. 28, Jean-Pierre said that as part of Vice President Kamala Harris’ then-pending trip to South Korea, the veep would visit the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas. Jean-Pierre helpfully noted that it had been “nearly 70 years since the Korean ‘armtis’”—not to be confused with the Korean armistice.
Three weeks before that, on Sept. 6, Jean-Pierre conflated a Russian natural gas pipeline with an upscale American department store chain. She accused Russia of causing an energy crisis in Europe by shutting down its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which she referred to as the “Nordstrom 1” pipeline.
One can only imagine how former President Donald Trump’s press secretaries, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and later Kayleigh McEnany, would have been pilloried by the liberal White House press corps had they made those sorts of repeated verbal gaffes.
One reason Jean-Pierre still has the high-visibility press secretary’s job, to which she was elevated on May 13, 2022, despite all of the gaffes, is because President Joe Biden is legendary for his own innumerable flubs and miscues.
“White House communications staff has had to correct President Joe Biden’s public remarks at least 148 times since the beginning of 2024, a review of official White House transcripts shows,” the Daily Caller reported April 29. Biden couldn’t very well hold Jean-Pierre to a higher standard, could he?
But the real reason Jean-Pierre remains in her post today is because of the identity politics to which the Biden administration and the Democratic Party have sworn undying allegiance. She is immune from criticism—and from reassignment to a less high-profile post—only because she checks all of the boxes of identity-politics “intersectionality” as the first black, first LGBTQ, and first immigrant White House press secretary.
In the Biden administration, Jean-Pierre demonstrates daily that meritocracy is an afterthought—if it’s thought of at all. The moral of this story: Live by DEI, die by it.
The post Biden Admin in a DEI Bind(er) of Its Own Making, Stuck With Incompetent Jean-Pierre appeared first on The Daily Signal.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden took the very unusual step of submitting to an interviewer who was an actual journalist (not like Howard Stern or Drew Barrymore). It wouldn’t be long before he started mangling his record—and Donald Trump’s.
CNN reporter Erin Burnett began with how Trump’s promises of new jobs in Wisconsin didn’t come true: “Why should people here believe that you will succeed at creating jobs where Trump failed?” Biden bragged: “He’s never succeeded in creating jobs, and I have never failed. I have created over 15 million jobs since I have been president.” He did it all by himself! He claimed that other than Herbert Hoover, Trump’s “the only other president who lost more jobs than created in his four-year term.”
There’s a massive asterisk; namely, the global COVID-19 pandemic. Trump’s employment record in the first three years of his presidency was strong. The raw number of employed Americans reached records. In October 2018, it had reached more than 156.6 million. The unemployment rate hit record lows across demographics—for women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and youth.
Obviously, the severe lockdowns during the pandemic—most aggressively pushed by the Democrats and their media allies—drove massive job losses. Nonfarm payroll employment in the United States declined by 9.4 million in 2020. So, Democrats blame that on Trump, and when the pandemic was over, they took credit for the economy climbing out of that hole.
But that wasn’t Biden’s worst mangle. He claimed to CNN that “no president’s had the run we have had, in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation. It was 9% when I came to office, 9%.”
That’s ridiculous! It’s a baldfaced lie. Inflation was 1.4%, again, due to the pandemic. Burnett didn’t check his facts, during or after the interview. She pushed him to acknowledge inflation was bad, but she didn’t suggest he was lying.
Fox News contributor Joe Concha tweeted: “And of course, CNN makes sure its pious fact-checker is nowhere to be found afterward.”
And of course, CNN makes sure its pious fact-checker is nowhere to be found afterward… https://t.co/1lgapFWYgp
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) May 9, 2024
That would be Daniel Dale, who’s almost entirely deployed on TV to “fact-check” Trump. Since Trump’s Manhattan trial began in mid-April, Dale has appeared nine times to “check” him. He has not appeared to check anyone else. On April 18, Jake Tapper said, “He’s handy to have around at times like this.”
Some of these fact checks are “brag checks.” Trump will say he’s ahead in all the polls, when he’s ahead in most polls. But Dale sounds most exasperated when Trump blames Biden for his legal troubles. On April 18, Dale decried “his false conspiracy theory that essentially that Joe Biden is behind this case, which was brought by a locally elected district attorney.”
Dale can’t even disclose that District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a Democrat. He acknowledged Trump’s lead prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, was a Biden Justice Department official, and then joined Bragg’s team. A “conspiracy theory” between Democrat lawyers looks obvious here and declaring it “false” is a lame spin.
On Tuesday, Dale threw a penalty flag at Trump for saying Bragg is a “Soros-backed” prosecutor—and Trump didn’t say that in the remarks they’d just aired. Dale turned on the spin machine by saying leftist billionaire George Soros is “a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories” and then claimed “at best” the money was indirect: Soros donated to the Color of Change PAC, and then the PAC backed Bragg.
If a conservative DA received big money from a pro-Trump PAC, CNN would call him or her “Trump-backed” without hesitation. CNN deploys Dale not as a “fact-checker” as much as a spin spoiler.
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You can tell when the PolitiFact website is going to negotiate around the facts. On May 7, its top headline on the homepage asked: “Are ‘outside agitators’ co-opting campus protests?”
This isn’t quite the right question. The media have presented these events as “student” protests, so if half the participants aren’t college students, how would they describe the nonstudents? PolitiFact writers Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu and Loreben Tuquero offered this summary:
—Police, city and university officials nationwide have blamed ‘outside agitators’ for campus protests but have provided little evidence for their claims.
—Law enforcement experts say police often consider ‘outside agitators’ to be people who move from city to city and are paid to be agitators.
—Historians say government and law officials commonly use the ‘outside agitator’ narrative to delegitimize protesters and their demands.
First, the “little evidence” is a weird claim, when PolitiFact’s article acknowledges facts like the New York Police Department reported that “32 out of 112 people arrested at Columbia’s private campus were unaffiliated with the university. At nearby City College, 102 out of 170 people arrested were not students.” Add it up, and 134 out of 282 protesters were not students. So, when Mayor Eric Adams complains about “outside agitators,” he’s not in need of a “fact check.”
They even scolded leftist Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Hank Johnson, D-Ga., over their “agitator” concerns.
They did not mention the recent story of an outside agitator named James Carlson, who was part of the army that briefly occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University. He’s a 40-year-old trust fund heir who owns a townhouse in Brooklyn worth $3.4 million.
PolitiFact typically seeks out “experts” to match the narratives it wants to underline. It doesn’t like people suggesting these protesters aren’t local and they might be paid to protest. It found William & Mary law professor Timothy Zick to define the outside agitator spin: “It was used as sort of a phrase that would link protesters, no matter how peaceful they were, to Communists and other infiltrators who were causing disruption.” The term is used to cast doubt on protester “sincerity.”
Angus Johnston, “historian of student activism” at Hostos Community College in New York, explained, “The idea behind the concept of the outside agitator is that dissent can never be coming from the people who are expressing that dissent.” It also turned to Johnston to underline, “Some experts have been quick to note the main goal of a protest is to get others to join in.”
This spin is nothing like how the media spun the tea party protests against Obamacare legislation. They sought to discredit them as donor-funded “AstroTurf” (not grassroots). They went looking for the most racist or ignorant-sounding sign they could find to present protesters as a kooky “fringe” movement.
NBC’s Chuck Todd decried “town hall madness.” The front page of The Boston Globe lamented the “quarrelsome masses hollering questions downloaded from activist websites.”
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann ranted, “The truth is out about the societal sabotage dressed up as phony protests against health care reform. … When Hamas does it or Hezbollah does it, it is called terrorism.” That looks pretty funny right now, since these protesters are a much better match for that Hamas spin. All of this was about “delegitimizing protesters and their demands.”
Protests are covered in wildly divergent ways, depending on whether the activists are on the Left or the Right. This is just as true for liberal “fact-checking” organizations as it is for liberal media outlets.
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