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In Aug. 2012, a left-wing MSNBC aficionado named Floyd Lee Corkins armed himself with a handgun and extra magazines. He drove to the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the socially conservative Family Research Council, planning to shoot it up. Corkins, who later cited the Southern Poverty Law Center for the proposition that the FRC is an “anti-gay” organization, was also carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches, which he hoped to stuff in his dead victims’ mouths. Corkins, who served as a volunteer at a local LGBT community center, was stopped by an unarmed security guard.
In June 2017, a left-wing MSNBC afficionado named James Hodgkinson armed himself with a rifle and handgun. He drove to Alexandria, Virginia, in hopes of assassinating the Republican team practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. He severely wounded then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who thankfully survived after receiving multiple blood transfusions and surgeries. Five others were also injured. Hodgkinson was a 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign volunteer who, in a Facebook post three weeks before the shooting, wrote: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”
In June 2022, a young Californian named Nicholas Roske flew to the nation’s capital. Roske attained a handgun, zip ties, a tactical knife, a hammer, a screwdriver, a crowbar, duct tape, and other burglary tools. At 1:38 a.m. local time, about a half hour after a taxi dropped him off in front of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Chevy Chase, Maryland, home, Roske had second thoughts and called 911. After his arrest, Roske told police he was angered by the leaked draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case. Roske had written in a private chat: “Im gonna stop roe v wade from being overturned.”
In March 2023, Audrey “Aiden” Hale, a transgender individual, slaughtered three children and three adults at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. A former pupil at the Christian school, Hale took precious time during the rampage to divert and unload seven rounds into a stained-glass depiction of the biblical character Adam in a church next door. As this column asked last year: Why, exactly, would a transgender former student of a Christian school return to that school to murder innocent Christian children and shoot up a stained-glass representation of no less symbolic a biblical figure than Adam? We don’t necessarily need Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out. Leaked excerpts of the murderer’s manifesto corroborate Hale’s sinister, anti-Christian motive.
This Sunday, former President Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination for the second time in a span of roughly two months. The first would-be assassin, the mysterious Thomas Crooks, donated $15 to ActBlue, the well-known Democratic fundraising platform. The second would-be assassin, the considerably less mysterious Ryan Routh, has a prolific public record. Routh, a convicted felon and supporter of Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, had an over-the-top, creepy obsession with Ukraine—one of the defining causes of the contemporary Left. Routh’s social media accounts were rife with de rigueur left-wing platitudes about the alleged unprecedented threat posed by Trump to America’s democracy and constitutional order.
Murderous political violence in the United States today is not an all-of-the-above phenomenon. Yes, such violence must be condemned by all responsible political and civic actors, as we inch ever closer to an irrecoverable national abyss. But MSNBC’s daily on-air histrionics to the contrary notwithstanding, all sides are not equally culpable for the terrible situation America finds itself in today.
Trump may not always be the most circumspect rhetorician, but he has never actively called for his supporters to physically assault their political opponents—including on Jan. 6, when he called for his throng of supporters gathered at the Ellipse to “peacefully and patriotically” demonstrate at the Capitol. The same cannot be said for Trump’s opposition, such as when Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., said earlier this year on MSNBC that Trump is “unfit,” “destructive to our democracy,” and “has to be eliminated.” According to a poll released on Wednesday, a whopping 28% of Democrats said America would be better off if Trump were assassinated—and another 24% of Democrats confessed uncertainty.
This is unconscionable.
The Left has had a violent streak going back at least as far as Karl Marx’s calls for a global revolution of the proletariat—and the French Revolution even before that. And in today’s post-truth world, an expedient narrative often trumps cold facts. But Trump is not a “fascist” or “dictator.” On the contrary, Trump’s first term was, if anything, marred by excessive deference and an unwillingness to fire insubordinate bureaucrats.
If MSNBC talking heads and their left-wing confreres fail to tone down the rhetoric, reasonable observers will conclude they agree with the 28% of Democrats who want Trump dead.
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We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post Why Are the Nutjobs Trying to Kill Political Opponents All Left-Wingers? appeared first on The Daily Signal.
In 1990, in the midst of a heated—and racially charged—U.S. Senate race in North Carolina between Republican incumbent Jesse Helms and Democratic challenger Harvey Gantt, Chicago Bulls superstar guard Michael Jordan issued one of his most famous lines.
Jordan, who grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina, and won a national championship in 1982 for the famed University of North Carolina Tar Heels basketball program, was asked whether he would endorse Gantt. Jordan’s memorable response, which OutKick founder and syndicated radio host Clay Travis subsequently adopted for a book title, was: “Republicans buy sneakers too.” Jordan, in other words, refused to politicize his brand and thus risk sacrificing sales of his signature Air Jordan sneakers, which Nike had first unveiled six years earlier.
It was an admirable assertion of political neutrality—a refusal to bend the knee to those mandating a stifling and homogenous political correctness. As Jordan would later tell ESPN during the filming of its docuseries “The Last Dance,” which aired in 2020, “I never thought of myself as an activist. I thought of myself as a basketball player.”
Jordan’s neutrality from decades ago was criticized, during the ESPN miniseries, by someone who knows a lot about exacerbating race relations: former President Barack Obama. In response to that criticism, Jordan doubled down, effectively flipping two middle fingers to the 44th president: “It’s never going to be enough for everybody, and I know that. Because everybody has a preconceived idea for what I should do and what I shouldn’t do.”
As a lifelong college basketball fan of University of North Carolina archrival Duke and a 1990s-era childhood pro hoops fan of the Bulls’ perennially hapless Eastern Conference rival, the New York Knicks, I am loath to credit Michael Jordan. But in this instance, “MJ” was spot-on. In today’s hyper-politicized era, it raises an obvious question: Do Republicans still buy sneakers too?
Taylor Swift seems to think not. In a viral Instagram post earlier this week, the megastar singer-songwriter endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Citing a litany of left-wing pet causes, such as “LGBTQ+ rights,” in vitro fertilization, and the pro-abortion euphemism of “a woman’s right to her own body,” Swift concluded that Harris is a “steady-handed, gifted leader” who has earned her vote.
Swift is the first-ever music industry billionaire, so perhaps she has cynically concluded that she simply does not need conservative or Republican patronage. It’s been at least a decade and a half since Swift sang something approximating country music, and she may simply no longer care about alienating the southerners and churchgoers who disproportionately constitute country music’s fanbase.
Swift, who is dating Kansas City Chiefs all-pro tight end Travis Kelce, was on hand in Las Vegas in February to see Kelce’s Chiefs prevail in a thrilling Super Bowl overtime victory over the San Francisco 49ers. She stood just offstage as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recognized star Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes, for the third time this decade, as Super Bowl MVP.
Mahomes is an evangelical Christian who has spoken about how he prays before every game to “thank God for those opportunities.” Mahomes’ wife, Brittany, furthermore, “liked” an Instagram post last month from former President Donald Trump. It is thus not a very well-kept secret that Kelce’s own quarterback Mahomes, as well as Mahomes’ wife, Brittany, are a contemporary conservative Christian power couple.
All of that makes it even more remarkable that Mahomes, when asked at a press conference earlier this week what he thought of Swift’s high-profile presidential endorsement and whether he himself would be issuing an endorsement of his own, stuck to Jordan’s neutrality position. As Mahomes put it: “I don’t want my place and my platform to be used to endorse a candidate. … I think my place is to inform people to get registered to vote. It’s to inform people to do their own research, and then make their best decision for them and their family.” Hear, hear.
Mahomes—like Jordan before him—intuitively understands something that Swift does not. Americans routinely tune into sports games on their TVs and listen to music on their radios as a distraction from our chaotic news cycles and the political tumult of the day. It is not merely a commercial proposition—that Republicans might also buy Air Jordans, and pro-lifers might also purchase Swift albums. It is certainly that. But it is also a matter of basic decency—of using one’s massive platform in order to assuage, and not exacerbate, the domestic tensions that have brought our politics to a frenzied fever pitch. Swift’s endorsement won’t move the needle. But it is condemnable.
Let’s seek out celebrities who would elevate us and play into our better angels—not those who would tear us apart and tear us down.
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We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post The Political Chasm Between Taylor Swift and Michael Jordan appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The modern Democratic Party operates like a Mafia family. Like the Mob, Democrats have a specific organizational hierarchy. There are the grand bosses who sit atop the entire food chain, such as the Obamas and the Clintons. There are the trusted consiglieres, such as Attorney General Merrick Garland and outside super-lawyer Marc Elias. There are caporegimes, such as Govs. Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul. Heck, there was even a yearslong omerta vow of silence surrounding President Joe Biden’s obvious physical and mental decline.
And then, as in any organized crime outfit, there are the street-level foot soldiers—the hit men. The role of the foot soldier is to dutifully execute the orders of his principals. Often, the foot soldier’s assigned tasks are less than reputable—intimidation, extortion, racketeering and, yes, knocking off those rivals who pose a viable threat to the family’s territory or prestige.
In the year 2024, so-called special counsel Jack Smith—yes, only so-called, as both Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge Aileen Cannon recently concluded—is the foot soldier par excellence for the Democratic Party, and the Democrat-lawfare complex that now serves as the party’s tip of the electoral spear.
No one should have been under any preexisting illusions that Smith was a noble lawman dedicated to upholding a neutral rule of law. Smith, after all, charged a former president of the United States with violating the Espionage Act—the controversial World War I-era statute normally reserved for such extreme cases as those of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. After last week, however, the jig is truly up: Smith’s naked politicking and electioneering has been exposed for all to see.
But let’s first take a step back. Earlier this summer, Smith was rebuked by the courts in at least three distinct ways.
First, in Fischer v. United States, a 6-3 Supreme Court majority held that a provision of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act pertaining to obstructing an “official proceeding,” found at 18 U.S.C. 1512, could not be used to charge participants in the Jan. 6 jamboree at the U.S. Capitol. Rather, that provision of Sarbox had to do with corporate fraud and impairment of physical documents—not with such constitutional events as the formal counting of Electoral College votes in Congress.
Second, in Trump v. United States, a slightly altered 6-3 Supreme Court composition emphatically rejected Smith’s argument that a former president enjoys no immunity from criminal prosecution following his presidency. Rather, the court ruled, the president enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution for all plenary constitutional acts taken while in office, and a rebuttable presumption of immunity from prosecution for all “official” acts taken more broadly.
Third, Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion in Trump v. United States suggested, and Judge Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled, that Smith is not a legitimate U.S. Department of Justice special counsel because Congress has not properly established his office “by law.” Judge Cannon’s ruling thus tossed Smith’s Espionage Act case against former President Donald Trump, entailing a much-publicized classified document dispute at Mar-a-Lago. Smith is now appealing Cannon’s dismissal.
The combined effect of these rapid-fire developments should have sent an unmistakable message to Smith: Abort your mission. This is doubly true given the impending November election, for which a certain criminal defendant will appear at the very top of the ballot. After all, the DOJ’s own internal Justice Manual stipulates that “federal prosecutors … may never make a decision regarding an investigation or prosecution, or select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges, for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”
Come again?
Any reasonable prosecutor—or so-called prosecutor—would have conceded defeat and dropped the lawfare madness. Instead, in his superseding indictment filed last week in Washington, D.C., Smith doubled down in every possible way.
Smith only made cosmetic changes to his original charging document, removing certain factual allegations that clearly involve a president’s plenary constitutional conduct but retaining other alleged acts that still fall under the broader scope of “official” presidential conduct. Astonishingly, Smith left in both his counts against Trump that invoke the very Sarbox provision the Supreme Court just held in Fischer cannot be invoked for Jan. 6-related prosecutions—including Smith’s anti-Trump case in Washington. And perhaps most offensive, the dimwitted Smith simply hasn’t gotten the memo: Like a spurned lover, he still thinks he’s a real “special counsel.” But he isn’t.
Speaking as a lawyer myself: Smith is not very good at this whole law thing. He really ought to consider another profession. I hear the U.S. Secret Service is hiring.
The American people can definitively send Smith—and the rest of the Democrat-lawfare complex—packing this November.
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We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post Jack Smith, Democrat-Lawfare Complex Hit Man appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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