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For months, Democrats have predicted that a guilty verdict in the controversial New York hush money trial would doom former President Donald Trump’s reelection hopes. Instead, new polling data from Scott Rasmussen suggests there is “no measurable impact.”
Rasmussen’s polling firm, RMG Research, had both Trump and President Joe Biden tied at 42% in its poll immediately preceding the May 30 verdict. Following the conviction, Trump gained a percentage point, leading 43% to Biden’s 42%.
“[T]he conviction of Donald Trump in a New York courtroom had no measurable impact on Election 2024,” Rasmussen wrote in a memo shared with The Daily Signal. “Survey results following the conviction are virtually identical to results preceding the conviction.”
Rasmussen first unveiled his findings Sunday on Merit Street Media’s “The Scott Rasmussen Show.”
Meanwhile, the percentage of voters who viewed Trump as less ethical than other politicians remained the same before and after the jury’s decision to convict him on 34 counts.
“This suggests any baggage carried by the president has long since been baked into the public’s assessment of him,” Rasmussen wrote in his memo. “In other words, the jury decision wasn’t news that surprised anyone.”
Also working in Trump’s favor: A majority of Americans, 52%, think his conviction will be overturned on appeal. Less than a third, 32%, disagree.
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Biden’s ethical lapses—and potential criminal behavior—are a factor contributing to the latest poll numbers, Rasmussen wrote. More than half, 51%, believe Biden committed crimes that could put him in court once he leaves office. Another 41% say Biden is less ethical than most politicians.
More than 6 in 10 voters, 62%, want the audio tapes from Robert Hur’s interview of Biden to be released to Congress, including 45% of Democrats. The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, Judicial Watch, and CNN are suing the Justice Department for access to the recordings.
In a recent development, the Justice Department admitted to altering the Biden transcript by removing “filler words” such as “um” or “uh.” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that “the transcript is not accurate and was changed in a way to help Biden.”
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An overwhelming number of Americans agree: Upon being told of the edited transcript, 69% said Congress should have the opportunity to review Biden’s interview to confirm its accuracy.
Nearly two-thirds, 65%, think the Biden tapes contain embarrassing statements, while 59% believe the audio’s public release would harm Biden’s reelection bid.
The RMG Research polling data on Trump’s trial is from a June 3-4 survey of 1,000 registered voters; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The data on Biden’s audio tapes is from a June 5-6 survey of 1,000 registered voters; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
The post How Will Trump Verdict Effect His Election Prospects? New Poll Offers First Clue appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Lunden Roberts, the mother of Hunter Biden’s daughter Navy Joan Roberts, told British host Piers Morgan on Thursday that President Joe Biden has never contacted his granddaughter.
Roberts formerly worked as Hunter’s assistant and has spoken out about dealing with him following their child’s birth in 2018, noting both the president and his son’s efforts to distance themselves from Navy. Roberts on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” said neither the president nor his son has ever met Navy in person and that the elder Biden has never even reached out to his granddaughter.
“Have you ever heard from either President Biden or the first lady directly?” Morgan asked.
“No. No, I have not,” Roberts answered.
Morgan followed up by asking if she thinks that’s “surprising,” with Roberts answering she does not.
Roberts also told Morgan that Hunter has never met his daughter “in person.”
“Hunter’s relationship with his daughter has been built through Zoom,” she said. “He was required to call once a month or something like that. Navy gets to pick out one of his paintings, and that’s how they would start building a relationship. However, Hunter went above and beyond. He not only called her once a month, but once they started building a relationship, he wanted to call weekly or sometimes a couple of times a week just to talk to her. When she goes into surgery, he wants to Zoom and talk to her. He calls to check on her at different times and things like that. He has gone above what the time frame required and has done that for her, which I appreciate tremendously.”
Morgan asked if there are any plans in place for them to meet in person.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Roberts answered. “Me and Hunter haven’t worked the details out with that. But, I mean, like, the world knows. Hunter has a lot on his plate right now. I think that that needs to be his main focus, and getting through this time and then the rest can come after. Navy is well aware. She knows that her father’s very busy right now, and he’s got a lot of things going on and she’s waited five years; she can wait a couple more months.”
Roberts and Hunter resolved their child support dispute in June 2023 and the Biden family finally acknowledged Navy in July 2023.
Roberts told Morgan that the “door is always open” for the president to meet his granddaughter and it “always will be.”
Hunter gave his daughter some of his paintings and he paid Roberts’ legal fees. She unsuccessfully attempted to grant her daughter the Biden last name as part of their child support dispute.
Hunter’s federal gun trial began Monday and he is facing three charges brought by special counsel David Weiss in September, which include providing false statements and knowingly possessing a gun while being addicted to drugs.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The post Mother of Hunter Biden’s Daughter Says President Still Has Never Met or Contacted Granddaughter appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Nearly 14 months after the first of four unprecedented criminal prosecutions against former President Donald Trump commenced in earnest, the Democrat-lawfare complex got its man: The Soviet show trial in “Justice” Juan Merchan’s dingy New York City courtroom produced its preordained “guilty” verdict.
It is perhaps hackneyed to observe that, in convicting and seeking to incarcerate a former president and current leading presidential candidate, we have “crossed the Rubicon.” Well …
The Rubicon, truthfully, is a shallow, inconsequential river in Italy. That it is so shallow helps explain why Julius Caesar was able to cross it so easily. At this juncture in American history, it no longer suffices to speak of crossing a Rubicon. We are now rapidly crossing great seas—perhaps even circumnavigating the globe. You might call President Joe Biden and the rest of the Democrat-lawfare complex our modern-day Magellans.
Ruinous or not, however, their precedent has now been set. And that raises the obvious question: For Democrats, will all of this, and especially their multifront anti-Trump lawfare, prove to be worth it?
That obvious question, in turn, has an equally obvious answer: absolutely, positively not.
First, Democrats do not seem to be getting much of a bump in the early polls after last week’s verdict. In each of the two major national polls that have been conducted exclusively after the verdict, from pollsters Emerson College and Morning Consult, Trump leads by one point. As even the liberal Washington Post conceded on Thursday, “Other polls conducted before and after the verdict suggest between no change and a two-point shift toward Biden. The shifts are quite a bit smaller than pretrial polls suggested they could be.”
Considering that Trump was already leading in most national horse race polling and that the Republican Party currently has a built-in Electoral College advantage wherein its presidential candidate can slightly lose the popular vote while still prevailing in the electoral vote, the Biden-Harris campaign ought to be worried.
Democrats’ lawfare isn’t winning over many swing voters.
Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom May 30 during his since-ended “hush money” trial in New York City. Democrats got their preordained “guilty” verdict, but there’s no evidence it gave them the polling bump they hoped for. (Photo: Michael Santiago/Getty Images)
Second, the damage the Democrat-lawfare complex has caused to the American public’s faith and trust in the justice system is simply astronomical—and likely irreparable. Even prior to the onslaught of Trump indictments filed last year, many of us “deplorables” were already convinced we have a two-tier system of justice in this country: Consider the wholly disparate prosecutorial treatment of the BLM-Antifa rioters and the “J6-ers” present during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol jamboree, for instance.
But the Democrat-lawfare complex’s serial overreaches have now removed any doubt as to the blatant impartiality and patent unfairness of our regnant legal order. It is impossible not to be jaded or cynical. Leviticus 19:15 commands: “You shall commit no injustice in judgment; you shall not favor a poor person or respect a great man; you shall judge your fellow with righteousness.”
Does anyone think this describes America today?
Third, the Right finally seems to be snapping out of its long lull and beginning to gear itself for pitched battle against a domestic foe that wants to punish us, prosecute us, subjugate us, and remove us from the entirety of American public life. That portends poorly for leftists.
My friend John Yoo, the Bush-era Justice Department official and law professor normally a bit less pugnacious than yours truly, opined: “Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you.”
Megyn Kelly, the influential broadcaster who has had a complex relationship with Trump going back to the 2016 GOP presidential primary, said after the verdict: “I’m going to utter words I never thought I would utter in my life: We need Steve Bannon.” The famously combative Bannon appears headed for an unjust four-month prison sentence in a few weeks, but her point stands.
Democrats have no idea what they have unleashed. Perhaps worse, they don’t even care.
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The post Democrats’ Lawfare Proves Politically Impotent, Likely to Come Back to Haunt Them appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—North Carolina election officials were perplexed about how to follow President Joe Biden’s directive to expand voting among convicted felons, according to emails obtained by The Daily Signal.
Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which put the power of federal agencies behind mobilizing voters, calls for the Justice Department to ensure that convicted felons know how to restore their voting rights. Those rules vary by state.
State election officials were set to have a Zoom conference June 25, 2021, with White House officials on implementing the president’s order, including questions and suggestions.
A day before the conference, Karen Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, emailed staff about what points they wanted to address.
“The main one I can think of ideas for is about felons and voting,” Katelyn Love, general counsel for the Board of Elections replied via email, before citing the U.S. Department of Justice. “We don’t get notice from DOJ when a felon completes their sentence. This would be helpful information for us to have, so we know that the person is eligible to register again.”
Love continued: “If they don’t already, DOJ could provide information to NC felons when they start probation or when they are placed on supervised release (it’s not called parole anymore) that they are not eligible to register and vote until they complete their sentence.”
Kelly Tornow, associate counsel for North Carolina’s election board, responded: “Those are great felon ideas.”
Tornow said she was primarily concerned with enlisted U.S. service members and the Defense Department, and wrote that “the military should provide information to the service member about registering to vote.”
The Daily Signal obtained 159 pages of documents from the North Carolina State Board of Elections regarding Biden’s order on voter mobilization through a public records request.
Critics use the term “Bidenbucks” to refer to the president’s controversial executive order, which they say is meant to use the force of government to tip the scales in elections.
Federal agencies have coordinated with transparently left-leaning advocacy groups to implement Biden’s order.
Further, several Republicans in Congress contend that Biden’s order on turning out the vote could violate the Antideficiency Act, a law that prohibits federal employees from obligating tax dollars not authorized by Congress.
The lawmakers also express concern about federal agencies’ engaging in partisan political activity in violation of laws such as the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using work time or resources for partisan political activities.
Last year, on March 13, Sarah Bolton, former policy director for North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, forwarded an email to Bell, the executive director of the state election board, who at the time was secretary-treasurer of the National Association of State Election Directors.
The email forwarded by Bolton was about paying college students to register voters. Students are viewed as a key constituency for Democrats.
Bolton told Bell to “let me know if this might be of interest. If it is, I can connect you directly.”
She forwarded a message from Michael Dannenberg, senior fellow for the College Promise and a consultant with the Foundation for Civic Leadership, in which he wrote:
We’re hoping Karen in her new role with the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) might consider joining, maybe even leading, a non-partisan effort to get state and local officials to urge [U.S. Education Secretary Miguel] Cardona to make clear that government entities, notably offices that NASED members lead, and non party-affiliated, non-profit 501(c)(3) organizations like the League of Women Voters can pay work study students with Federal Work Study funds for non-partisan voter registration work just as colleges now can for identical work.
Mitchell D. Brown, equal justice work fellow for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, sent an email Aug. 17, 2021, to Damon Circosta, then chairman of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, about the need to “target federal agencies and programs that we think would be good opportunities for voter registration.”
Copied on the email was Laura Williamson, then associate director of democracy at Demos, a liberal think tank that drafted Biden’s executive order. Demos also is working with several federal agencies to implement the order.
Brown’s email included an attachment with recommendations for using federal agencies to get out the vote. They included using U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services through its naturalization ceremonies; signing up voters on Healthcare.gov; and registering voters through the interagency Transition Assistance Program and the Labor Department’s Pathways Home program.
The documents released to The Daily Signal include a May 24, 2023, email from Doug R. Hess, a political scientist and consultant with the Institute for Responsive Governing. That organization is fiscally sponsored by the liberal Arabella Advisors’ New Venture Fund, which financially backs multiple left-leaning organizations.
Hess’ email, with a memo attached, isn’t addressed directly to North Carolina, but notes that targeting Medicaid recipients for voter registration could advance the goals of Biden’s executive order. Hess wrote:
Consider this concrete example: Six states and D.C. recently adopted automatic voter registration for Medicaid. Based on my exploratory analysis, I believe these reforms may result in an impressive number of voter registration applications, perhaps far more than social service agencies have produced in the past. Federal health and program participation surveys could advance our understanding of this reform in ways that state administrative data alone cannot. Data from these surveys would also substantially benefit the growing political science literature on policy feedback and health policy. Regarding the feasibility of this proposal, this expansion would further the goals of President Biden’s Executive Order 14019—Promoting Access to Voting.
The post ‘Great Felon Ideas’: Battleground State Struggles to Apply Biden’s Election Order appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Earlier this year, Joe Biden’s campaign manager said, “We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it.”
That’s a heady statement, but an intentional one. The president himself uses the term “our democracy” frequently, as do most progressive politicians and pundits as they wring their hands about the coming election.
Book titles such as “Reclaiming Our Democracy,” “The Future of Our Democracy,” and “Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy” are popping up increasingly as well.
A conspiracy? Doubtful. But neither is it merely coincidence.
According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, an online tool that searches historical sources to track word usage over time, only twice before has the term “our democracy” been in use more frequently than today: the late 1880s (around the time the Statue of Liberty was dedicated) and the late 1930s (during the height of the Great Depression and the onset of World War II).
Between 1950 and 1970, the term “our democracy” was rarely seen in print. But its usage has ratcheted up steadily since the Reagan Revolution began in 1981, and especially since 2000. It’s a development about which we all should be dubious.
I recall learning in 10th grade civics class (for readers born after 1980, that used to be a thing) that America is not a democracy, but a democratic republic. This is a distinction with a very clear difference, most notably the delegation by the people of various and vital public decisions to elected officials.
Although many will say that the term “our democracy” is an innocent shortcut, a catchall phrase for our nation specifically or rule by the people generally, the author of our Constitution would disagree. James Madison made clear in Federalist 14 that “under the confusion of names, it has been an easy task to transfer to a republic observations applicable to a democracy,” and that there are dangers in confounding the two.
Those dangers are manifest today. Progressives’ widespread and increasing use of this innocuous-sounding term is weakening our constitutional checks and balances and undermining the Bill of Rights, the only things standing in the way of what Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.”
Those who most traffic in the term wish to eliminate the Electoral College and reapportion the Senate by population rather than by state. They are working on multiple fronts to weaken First Amendment protections for speech and religion. They have long had the Second Amendment in their sights. And they consistently oppose individuals and organizations that push back against draconian federal restrictions such as public health lockdowns and climate change regulations.
If “our democracy” wants it, “our democracy” should get it, goes their reasoning, oblivious to Booker T. Washington’s admonition: “A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right, and evil doesn’t become good, just because it’s accepted by a majority.”
During this election cycle, however, progressives are putting “our democracy” to work in an even more pointed way. Like a magician using sleight of hand to distract his audience, they’re using the phrase to present a false binary to American voters. In sports, this is called “hiding the ball.”
Donald Trump, according to the Left, is an authoritarian who not only will take away our rights but eliminate elections. The charge is, of course, ridiculous—Trump stepped down despite his objections to the 2020 election results, and last I checked it’s his opponents who are using authoritarian tactics to ensure he doesn’t win reelection. But the charge is useful, which to a Marxist mind is all the justification it needs.
Contrasting the potential “autocracy” of a second Trump administration with Biden’s ostensible defense of “our democracy” is meant to distract us from recognizing the real decision that confronts the voters and the actual threat to our republic: the creeping totalitarianism of the administrative state.
Totalitarianism is defined as “subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation, especially by coercive measures.” Ask anybody who lived through COVID-19 if that sounds familiar.
And if you visit Britannica.com—the modern iteration of the company whose encyclopedias we used in 10th grade civics class to learn about things like history and government—you’ll see a more expansive description:
Totalitarianism is a form of government that attempts to assert total control over the lives of its citizens. It is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. It does not permit individual freedom. Traditional social institutions and organizations are discouraged and suppressed, making people more willing to be merged into a single unified movement.
I could have sworn I heard something like that last line in a video at the 2012 Democratic National Convention: “Government is the only thing that we all belong to.”
Britannica goes on to say that it was Italian dictator Benito Mussolini who first used the term totalitario, meaning “all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state.” It cites as examples of totalitarian states not only Mussolini’s Italy but Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, and Mao’s China.
Given the growth of the federal government over the past century, totalitarianism certainly represents a greater threat to the United States than authoritarianism.
We’re not there yet, and thanks to America’s exceptional institutions perhaps we won’t get there. But as the recent violent increase in antisemitism shows, something we thought could “never again” happen very well might—all it takes is one generation of historical ignorance.
Those same institutions that have protected us from anything approaching authoritarianism increasingly are becoming our totalitarian masters. As William F. Buckley once observed, it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom.”
Whenever you hear talking heads refer to “our democracy,” pay special attention to what comes next. Don’t assume they’re referring to the democratic republic handed down from our Founding Fathers or trying to preserve our Constitution and its safeguards.
More likely they’re taking advantage of our increasing historical ignorance resulting from the Left’s capture of our educational institutions (which was all part of the plan).
Let’s call our nation what it is: a republic. Whether out of ignorance or malevolence, saying “our democracy” is less likely to strengthen our heritage than seed our demise.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post The Problem With ‘Our Democracy’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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