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Ep. 823 A Fleet of Honda Odysseys

Ep. 822 July 4th and Minivan Talk

Gain endless wisdom from Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on his live Q&A. 

Ep. 821 Diet Advice With Dr. Peterson

Ask Brett anything! Join her All Access Live show.

Ep. 820 Puppy Chaos

Ep. 819 Longest Little League Home Runs

Get an early end to your Klavanless week on Andrew's All Access live show!

Ep. 818 A Show I Enjoy

Ep. 817 Ben’s Lightsaber Personality

Ep. 816 Brett And Her Many Dogs

Ep. 815 The Fast Food Debate

Ep. 814 Mount Rushmore of Comedy

Catch up with Brett on her All Access Live show! 

Ep. 813 Tangents on Tangents

Join Michael on his live Q&A. Ask him anything!

Ep. 812 Atlas Shrugged Gets All the Hate

If you had asked me a little less than half a week ago whether Joe Biden was going to be ousted by his own party, forced out the door, perhaps even bribed to go away, I would have said that seemed very, very unlikely.
But the momentum is building.
And the problem for the Democrats is that they are all now starting to come out of the woodwork and say that Joe Biden needs to go.
How do you put that genie back in the bottle if he doesn&#8217;t? This is the biggest problem with which the Democrats have presented themselves. They have now said the quiet part out loud; that the old man is senile and is not capable of carrying out his duties as president of the United States.
But if Biden refuses to go, how do they then twist everything they have been saying for the last week into a narrative where that man has to be president of the United States?
That’s why they&#8217;re banking on Biden leaving. Whether he does or not is going to be up to him and really, more importantly, up to the greatest doctor of all time, Dr. Lady Macbeth.
The entire Democratic Party apparatus at this point is beginning to turn on Biden — and is doing so publicly. They&#8217;re doing so through leaks. They&#8217;re doing so through public statements. At long last, they&#8217;re acknowledging the obvious.
The reality is that they have to do this. If they do not, their entire credibility is blown. What Biden did last Thursday night in the presidential debate was not just debate poorly. It was a historically bad decision. The entire Democratic Party apparatus and the entire legacy media were banking on Team Biden to provide them plausible deniability so they could continue to lie that he was basically fine behind closed doors.
That has meant only letting Biden out for extremely short periods of time and not putting him in a position where he looked the way he did at the debate. Then they could plausibly claim he was probably fine, probably ok, and everybody was exaggerating.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1997-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
But Team Biden pantsed everyone, and Biden personally pantsed everyone on his own side. He embarrassed all of them. He made them look like fools because now we can all see they&#8217;ve been lying for a year or two or three. That makes the entire Democratic Party look terrible. Their credibility is shot. The entire legacy media looks terrible. Their credibility is shot. All because Joe Biden insisted to his aides he was ready and raring to go and that he wanted to debate Donald Trump and would take him down in one fell swoop.
It turns out that listening to the demands of a delusional, senile old man in the middle of a presidential election is a really, really bad idea.
Before the debate, I would have said the chances of Biden dropping out of the race were 1% or 2%. But now that has risen to 30 or 40%. Can Joe Biden withstand the rising tsunami of rage inside his own party?
They might figure out a way to get Biden to relinquish the nomination. Perhaps they go to Joe and say, “Listen, if you step out, if you declare you&#8217;re not going to run again and you hand this thing over to Kamala Harris, we&#8217;ll find some way to get you a $100 million check. We&#8217;ll find some way to make you and your family exorbitantly wealthy for the rest of time. We&#8217;ll build you a beautiful presidential library. We&#8217;ll make the entire Democratic National Convention about the historic achievement of getting rid of Donald Trump and about the magic that you have done as president. And then you can give an amazing valedictory speech and walk off into the sunset as a hero of the Republic who recognized that he couldn&#8217;t stop Trump, but he had to step out of the way for someone who could.”
It&#8217;s an inside-outside game. They&#8217;re making that friendly pitch inside on the outside. The Democratic Party has turned like a snarling dog against the guy who is leading their party.
It&#8217;s something I&#8217;ve never seen in American politics before. I&#8217;m not sure anyone has seen it in American politics before. The closest comp might be the Democratic rebellion against Hubert Humphrey as the nominee after Lyndon Johnson stepped out and Robert F. Kennedy was killed in 1968.
But even that is not comparable because Humphrey was not the sitting president of the United States at the time. Joe Biden is the sitting president. This race is still somewhat tight, although Trump is starting to pull away in the aftermath of this debate. A new <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/02/politics/cnn-poll-post-debate/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CNN poll</a> published this week shows Trump is now nationally leading Biden by six points, the same result CNN had back <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/28/politics/cnn-poll-trump-biden-matchup/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in April</a>. 
But even if Biden were to argue that the debate hasn&#8217;t changed the race, it doesn&#8217;t change the race he would lose. If Biden were to lose the popular vote by six points, that would be a historic whooping, the likes of which we have not seen in the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
The evidence that the Democratic Party has turned on Biden is clear, based on all the leaks happening now. The Biden administration was not particularly leaky before. All of a sudden, it has sprung leaks like the Titanic. It hit the iceberg that was the debate, and the water is pouring into the whole team. Biden is shifting deckchairs up top, but the rest of the Democratic Party is loading into those lifeboats.
<a href="https://puck.news/biden-plunges-in-swing-states-in-leaked-post-debate-poll/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Puck News</a> obtained a Biden internal polling memo and found that in virtually every state, he has dropped at least two points in the polling.
Those leaks of polling numbers are being accompanied by new leaks to the New York Times and other friendly publications about just how non compos mentis Joe Biden is. These leaks undermine the case that the legacy media, Team Biden, and the Democratic Party are making, which is that we are “shocked, shocked to find that Joe Biden is senile.”
But aides are now coming out of the woodwork and trying to protect themselves by basically saying, “Listen, we were told to lie, right? We were just being good soldiers. We&#8217;ve known for a long time that Joe Biden is out of it. But we are the people who want to stop Donald Trump. The party told us that we had to stop Donald Trump by propping up the old man, and so we did it.”
So there is an internal battle inside the Democratic Party: people who want to keep Biden, which is basically just the Biden family at this point, and then everyone else. And there is an internal battle between the Biden aides, who are trying to defend their own record, and the Democratic Party and the legacy media trying to claim, implausibly, that they had no idea Biden was this bad.
What you&#8217;re starting to see is a full-scale collapse inside the Democratic Party.
No one wants to be the first one to knife Julius Caesar, one Democratic Party official <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/joe-manchin-biden-debate-democrats-drop-out/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
But — no matter who didn’t want to be the first one, Julius Caesar got knifed.
Barack Obama is also now coming out of the woodwork, leaking to the press that maybe Joe doesn’t have it. No one in the world would be happier than Barack Obama to see Joe Biden go down in absolute flames. He would love it. Why? Biden and Obama do not get along. Obama does not like Biden; he thinks he&#8217;s a fool. He nominated him in an attempt to look somewhat moderate in 2008, and he&#8217;s been living with that bad decision ever since.
Biden&#8217;s collapse presents an existential level threat to the legacy media, which stapled themselves to Obama&#8217;s a** cheeks in 2008 and have not been able to separate themselves from the Democratic Party ever since.
Now, they can ride this bomb all the way down to the ground like Slim Pickens in “Dr. Strangelove.”

President Biden Delivers Remarks At Medal Of Honor Ceremony

Momentum: Enraged Democrats Prepare To Throw Biden Out 

2024 Election

Barack Obama

Ben Shapiro

Biden

Democratic Party

Democrats

Kamala Harris

Opinion

Presidency

Readers Pass

On Monday, all hell broke loose.
It didn&#8217;t break loose because of a Supreme Court decision. It broke loose because the Left has decided, along with the media and the Democrats, to lie about the Supreme Court decision in order to revive the flagging hopes and dead body of Joe Biden. We’ll get to why the Democrats are doing this at the end of this column.
Let’s start at the beginning.
On Monday, the Supreme Court released a decision about presidential immunity. This decision was rooted in Donald Trump filing a lawsuit to stop the various Jack Smith lawsuits against him. His claim was that as President of the United States, no matter what he did while he was President of the United States, he had full immunity from criminal prosecution.
That is not true. That is a step too far. The idea that the president of the United States is never to be criminally prosecuted for any activity is incorrect. If the president of the United States decided to murder a housekeeper in his home in the White House, for example, could he be criminally prosecuted? The answer, of course, is yes.
However, there is the idea that the president is, in fact, criminally immune from certain activities that a normal person would not be. For example, if I authorized somebody to go kill somebody abroad, I&#8217;d be criminally liable for that. If I&#8217;m president of the United States and as commander in chief, I authorize SEAL Team 6 to take out Osama bin Laden, I&#8217;m not going to be criminally liable for that.
Thus, there are numerous actions the president of the United States has to be able to perform in order to ensure the functioning of the executive authority of the United States.
The president does have outsized powers under our Constitution, but those powers are not endless. Immunity is not eternal and endless; that is not the way that immunity works. And that&#8217;s essentially what the Supreme Court found.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1996-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
In order to understand why the Left and President Biden are lying about this decision and why political games are now being played, understanding the decision itself from the Supreme Court is necessary. 
Jack Smith has been pursuing a couple charges that are basically dead on arrival. There are also several charges that are not dead on arrival and that will likely be upheld when this case is reverted back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals because that&#8217;s effectively what the Supreme Court did.
Vis-à-vis a couple of charges, they said the president has immunity for this sort of activity. Then they said they were not going to rule whether the president has immunity on the sort of activity about many of the other charges. Instead, they would send it back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to determine whether the president has immunity. 
Judge Tanya Chutkan is the judge in that particular case. Presumably, she&#8217;s going to rule that President Trump does not have immunity on those particular charges.
In essence, this decision by the Court was an in-between decision, which one could figure out as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the decision. Roberts is a fairly moderate justice. He is not Justice Samuel Alito; he is not Justice Clarence Thomas. He&#8217;s not one of the more Right-wing members of the federal judiciary. (It was Roberts who saved Obamacare back in the day.)
Justice Roberts has a view of the court that it should be minimalist in how it approaches decisions; it should draw decisions as narrowly as possible. In this particular case, he seemed to think, “Ok, we&#8217;re going to try to create some sort of system, some sort of framework, for thinking about when the president is immune from criminal liability and when he is not. But we are going to restrict our judgment to very specific aspects of the charges being brought against Trump. We&#8217;re going to say that in a couple of these charges he has absolute immunity, and the rest of this we will push back to the courts.”
That does not sound as if former President Trump or any other president has endless immunity.
What does the decision say? The Supreme Court starts its decision by defining the crimes for which Trump is being charged, and they essentially break them down into five categories. 
<ol>
<li>He tried to get state electors to change their votes. </li>
<li>He organized fraudulent state electors. </li>
<li>He tried to use the DOJ to conduct what Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has called sham investigations, meaning investigations into electoral fraud that were really poorly based and resulted in nothing. </li>
<li>He tried to persuade Mike Pence to alter the results. </li>
<li>He tried to convince members of Congress to delay certification. </li>
</ol>
All those things, in my opinion, would be morally wrong — but that does not mean that they are legally criminal. That&#8217;s particularly true if you&#8217;re president of the United States because, as the Court pointed out, the president is the head of the DOJ. There are only three branches of government; the DOJ is not an independent branch of government. The Department of Justice works for the President of the United States.
If the president orders the DOJ to go forth with an investigation, it becomes the job of the DOJ to go ahead and investigate because the decision falls within the president’s purview of authority. 
The Supreme Court <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>The parties before us do not dispute that a former President can be subject to criminal prosecution for unofficial acts committed while in office. They also agree that some of the conduct described in the indictment includes actions taken by Trump in his unofficial capacity. They disagree, however, about whether a former President can be prosecuted for his official actions.
Trump contends that just as a President is absolutely immune from civil damages liability for acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities, he must be absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for such acts. And Trump argues that the bulk of the indictment’s allegations involve conduct in his official capacity as President. Although the Government agrees that some official actions are included in the indictment’s allegations, it maintains that a former President does not enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for any actions, regardless of how they are characterized.
We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office. At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity. At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity must be absolute, or instead whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient.</blockquote>
So why does a president need immunity at all? The answer is that the executive has to be able to function in the constitutional order. So as the Supreme Court wrote:
<blockquote>A President inclined to take one course of action based on the public interest may instead opt for another, apprehensive that criminal penalties may befall him upon his departure from office. And if a former President’s official acts are routinely subjected to scrutiny in criminal prosecutions, “the independence of the Executive Branch” may be significantly undermined. The Framers’ design of the Presidency did not envision such counterproductive burdens on the “vigor” and “energy” of the Executive.</blockquote>
They also wrote:
<blockquote>We must, however, “recognize the countervailing interests at stake.” Federal criminal laws seek to redress “a wrong to the public” as a whole, not just “a wrong to the individual.” There is therefore a compelling “public interest in fair and effective law enforcement.” The President, charged with enforcing federal criminal laws, is not above them.</blockquote>
In other words, the president is not above the law, but there are core constitutional functions where the president is immune. For example, criminal prosecution could not be brought against Barack Obama for droning Anwar al-Awlaki despite the fact that Awlaki was an American citizen overseas who was a terrorist. 
For all the Democrats who are freaking out today (among them Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who hysterically wrote in her dissent, “The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”), I might point out that if Donald Trump had that authority, the current president is Joe Biden. So he could do that to Trump today.
But Biden isn&#8217;t doing that because he doesn&#8217;t believe this malarkey. No one believes the claims the Left are making about this particular case.
So why are the Democrats doing this?
Because Joe Biden is a failed candidate. That&#8217;s all.
Trump is still going to be prosecuted on a number of these charges, but that doesn&#8217;t matter. They have to proclaim that the end of the Republic is nigh. If Biden were leading in the polls, up by a significant number, nobody would care because this is a very rote, noncontroversial decision.
The Democrats have to pretend that there was an inflection point on Monday. They have to, because if there was no inflection point, Biden will lose the election. They have to pretend because Biden physically died during a debate.
And if Joe Biden died physically during a debate, they can&#8217;t claim that Donald Trump is such a threat to the Republic that Biden has to be elected.

US-VOTE-POLITICS-TRUMP-RALLY

Wait, Can Donald Trump Drone His Political Enemies Now?

Donald Trump

executive power

Supreme Court

There are no good days left for the Joe Biden campaign.
The only good thing that could happen to Joe Biden in this campaign is something bad happening to Donald Trump.
There is no capacity for Biden to develop an independently good campaign. It&#8217;s not possible anymore. Why? It turns out that, as always in politics, the cover-up is worse than the crime. We all knew for years that Biden was in a state of mental and physical decline. We all saw it right in front of us, and we were lied to.
We were lied to by everyone. The Biden family. Everyone in the White House. Everyone in the media. All of them kept telling us it was all in our heads, the images we were seeing were “cheap fakes,” and it was all nonsense. Behind closed doors, Joe Biden was doing chess preparation with Bobby Fischer and quadratic equations, as well as an underwater upside-down Parcheesi with Albert Einstein.
It was insane. We were told those lies over and over. Then Biden went out and wet the bed during the debate with Trump in a way that no one expected and no one has ever seen in the history of American presidential politics.
So that means any credibility all these people had is gone. In order for you to advance an argument, you have to have the credibility to advance that particular argument.
Is anyone going to believe anyone in Biden-land again when they say he is fit for the presidency? There&#8217;s no possible way, especially when the DOJ, dominated by Biden, is refusing to turn over the six-hour tape of his interview with special prosecutor Robert Hur. They keep that tape away from you because they know that it will show the exact same thing you saw in that debate.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1995-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
Remember, the case for Biden being in the presidency after November is not the case for him being in the presidency today, which is a shaky case as it is; it is a case for him being in the presidency in five years when he&#8217;s 86-years-old, and the high likelihood is that he certainly will not be sentient and he may very likely not be alive.
Thus, a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris, and we all know it. The media have no credibility on these issues anymore. If you thought they hadn’t blown out their credibility over the Russiagate hoax, BLM or the 2020 COVID coverage, they&#8217;ve certainly blown their credibility over the most obvious lie they have ever told, including tons of lies during my lifetime.
They told the lie that Bill Clinton was an upright citizen who would never sleep with his employees. They told us the lie during COVID that you had to stay in your homes ad infinitum, indefinitely in order to protect everybody around you. They told us the lie that if you were rioting for BLM during that lockdown, somehow the virus was noncontagious.
But all of those lies remain, bizarrely, somewhat arguable in the public mind. The media have such extraordinary power in the American body politic that they can promote a lie. And even after their lies turn to bones, they continue to promote the lie.
For example, when Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, it became perfectly obvious from both the local investigation and the federal investigation that he was shot justifiably by a cop. Yet in 2024, a decade later, Democrats will still say that Michael Brown was a martyr of BLM. There&#8217;s a huge percentage of the population that still believes that nonsense. 
In other words, just because the lie is a lie doesn&#8217;t mean that the debunking of the lie takes hold in the public imagination. 
In the murder of Matthew Shepard, the case became the basis for a huge push in the gay rights movement because a gay guy in Wyoming was killed, and the idea was that he was killed in a hate crime.
It turned out he was probably killed in a drug deal gone bad. The story was debunked within the first two years. But it is still the going story about Matthew Shepard, 25 years later.
With all that said, there&#8217;s one thing you cannot lie about and retain any credibility: the thing right in front of your face. 
The case that is being made about Joe Biden having dementia is a thing we all saw. This is like lying about the sun coming out in the morning. This is like lying about the sky being blue. There are no two perspectives on this: Joe Biden has dementia.
He is addled. We all saw it. That means that every clip of Biden from here until the election that shows him doddering around will be fodder for the American body politic.
No amount of denial, no amount of “it&#8217;s cheap fakes; it&#8217;s out of context,” is going to make us believe that anymore because we all saw it live for 90 minutes.
It is a full-scale disaster. It is perfectly obvious to everyone.
You want to know why many members of the media are acting with outsized outrage and horror today? Because they got completely pantsed by Biden. They&#8217;re angry at him for manipulating them. They figured they could maintain this lie, and his behavior would not fully expose the lies.
The entire media knew he was diminished. Everyone in the White House knew he was diminished. But they figured, “Ok, we can somehow pull the wool over America&#8217;s eyes. We can shoot him full of whatever we shot him full of before the State of the Union address. He&#8217;ll barely get into the White House. And then if he dies, he dies. That&#8217;s the way that it goes.”
It turns out, he decided on his own to destroy both himself and them. He destroyed their credibility because now they either have to pretend to be shocked or admit they were lying all along. 
They have to say, “I never knew Joe Biden was this bad. My God, I never knew that.”
And there is no mechanism to replace Biden on this ticket. None. Biden himself would have to determine that he is stepping out. The problem with him stepping out is the person backing him up is Kamala Harris, who&#8217;s even worse than he is.
So the good days for the Joe Biden campaign are over.

Donald Trump And Joe Biden Participate In First Presidential Debate

The Good Days For The Biden Campaign Are Over 

Biden Administration

Joe Biden

Thursday night was the first and probably only <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/debates" target="_blank" rel="noopener">debate</a> between Donald Trump, former President of the United States, and Joe Biden, the current President of the United States.
Before this debate, I said it was going to be one of the only debates in my lifetime that really, really mattered; it was going to be a turning point because there has been no new information added to this process for legitimately a year. It would go one way or the other.
The worst possible thing that could happen for Joe Biden was for him to show up on stage and fall apart.
And that is precisely what happened.
Trump was disciplined, gave the best debate performance of his career, and did it on a night when Biden assumed room temperature.
Joe Biden effectively died on the stage last night.
I don&#8217;t even mean that in terms of a figurative performance. I mean that he looked as though he was physically going to die on the stage. It was pretty horrifying on an emotional level to watch an 81-year-old man being trotted out by his team, the Democratic Party, and his family to be humiliated on national television in front of the whole world.
As an American, it was deeply depressing and disturbing because the most evil people around the world are looking at this and licking their chops. They believe they have a window between now and when Trump presumably takes office in January where they have to go ahead.
The world just became a much more dangerous place.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1994-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
The feeling everyone experienced when watching this was stunned disbelief, just absolute stunned disbelief. I think everybody thought, “Ok, they&#8217;ll shoot Biden full of some cocktail, and he&#8217;ll probably just make it through. It&#8217;ll probably be OK. And then the question will be about whether Trump is too volatile or blew right past the moderators or whatever.”
But Trump&#8217;s performance was outstanding. This was easily the best performance of his life. He kept himself contained. He kept himself restrained. He was pointed when he needed to be.
But this debate was not about Donald Trump. It was all about Joe Biden. And that is why this race is now all about Joe Biden.
The sheer panic breaking out among Democrats this morning is astonishing to watch. Nearly every major Democrat in the media, including public officials, are talking openly — not just behind closed doors — about whether they have the capacity to remove Biden from the ticket.
We are less than two months out from the Democratic National Convention. All the delegates have already been pledged. They would have to force Biden to either resign the office to Kamala Harris, declare that he is not going to run again, and thereby free up his delegates, or they would have to wrest it from him in some sort of coup.
And by the way, it really isn&#8217;t the Democratic National Committee; the DNC is all for optics. They have a somewhat fake DNC, a virtual convention, where they are going to ensure the nominee is nominated 40 days from now. There is no time for any of this.
The state of insane panic that is breaking out in the Democratic Party is amazing.
The conclusion after last night is that Trump absolutely crushed Biden because Biden is not alive. He is not with it. He is senile.
Which brings about another subject: The media are some of the most abject liars in modern history. We all knew this already. We knew this about COVID, Black Lives Matter, the 2016 election, and the 2020 election.
The legacy media should be ashamed of themselves. What the legacy media have done is humiliating and sick. They have spent three years declaring Biden is mentally fit, doing back handsprings, and reciting Virgil in Latin. They have declared Biden is definitely “with it.” They&#8217;ve been telling you not to believe your eyes, not to believe your ears, not to believe your brain, that the things that you are seeing are all fake; they&#8217;re just “cheap fakes.”
When clips surfaced of Biden wandering off into the woods, falling upstairs, or spacing out as he stared into the darkness like Simon and Garfunkel, they continued to proclaim that it was all fake. It was all in your minds, all in your brains, all in your head, because you were the crazy one.
After a Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/joe-biden-age-election-2024-8ee15246" target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a> expressed concern over Biden having become “slower now,” a variety of Democratic commentators ran to praise Biden’s mental stability and fitness. A few include:
<blockquote>MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “Start your tape right now because I&#8217;m about to tell you the truth. And eff you if you can&#8217;t handle the truth. This version of Biden is the best Biden ever. In fact, I think he&#8217;s better than he&#8217;s ever been.”
Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman: “President Biden has a photographic memory. His understanding and mastery of a complicated geopolitical situation, remarkable.”
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas: “He is sharp, intensely probing, and detail-oriented and focused.”</blockquote>
But during the presidential debate, we were all watching Biden fall apart in real time. And all these people had been telling us that we were crazy.
Abjectly destroyed by their own lies, they are now in a state of panic, not just because they think Trump is going to win or that it’s obvious to everyone that Joe Biden is senile.
They’re panicking because their own credibility just exploded into tiny bits of shrapnel last night.
All of which means the threat the media posed to the country is very real because it is clear someone else has, in fact, been running the country for the past several years. The person we saw on stage last night is not capable of running a country. He is not capable of walking to the bathroom.
Someone else has been running the country. It is not Joe Biden. It might be Jill Biden, Edith Wilson-style. Maybe it&#8217;s all the Obama holdovers.
Whoever it is, it is not Joe Biden. And you know who knows that?
All of America&#8217;s enemies. The world became so much more dangerous — regardless of the election — when the President of the United States performed like a befuddled Alzheimer&#8217;s patient at an early bird dinner at the nursing home.
Do you think Iran is more scared now or if Trump were president? Right now, Iran is going to accelerate the process of seeking a nuclear weapon dramatically before January. If China is thinking about blockading Taiwan, they&#8217;re going to do it before January. If Russia is considering a massive war move, they will do it before January because the President of the United States is non compos mentis, of unsound mind.
The media are actively seeking Biden to be removed from the ticket, which is insane. It is currently the end of June. Only July, August, September, and October remain. That&#8217;s it. There are four months until the election. And the people who are talking about removing the incumbent president and major party nominee from the ticket are not those of us on the Right; they are the people on the Left.
The rest of the world is looking. Our enemies are licking their chops. We are entering an exceptionally dangerous period in American history.
But Democrats won&#8217;t change course. They won&#8217;t change course because they&#8217;re ready to play. They’ve got the brake on the accelerator, but this sucker is headed for the cliff.

TOPSHOT-US-VOTE-POLITICS-DEBATE-BIDEN-TRUMP

Trump Crushes Corpse Biden In Disaster Debate

Elections

Politics

Presidential Debate

Tonight is the big presidential debate, the most important presidential debate of my lifetime. 
Who is the burden on with regard to this debate? Who needs the debate more? Right now, the answer is: Joe Biden needs this debate. He needs to win this debate. It is not enough for Biden to simply remain alive because if all of the prior questions going into this debate remain after the debate — questions about his health, his fitness, his policy — and if the focus is on him after this debate, Biden is going to lose.
Biden needs a radical change in the direction of this electoral cycle in order for him to win. Just a week ago, a lot of talk surfaced about Biden possibly regaining momentum, that the polls were tightening.
But now, we have a bevy of new polls, and they are showing that Donald Trump is actually pulling away. 
This is a disaster for Joe Biden. 
Trump now has the largest lead in the <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Real Clear Politics</a> national average that he has had in three months — nearly two points. Not just that, but there are also a couple of national polls that are mirroring the same in one another. The New York Times is so freaked out about this — because they&#8217;re <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/26/us/elections/times-siena-poll-likely-electorate-crosstabs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">one of the polls</a> — that they are trying to determine whether they are an outlier poll or not. There are certain polls in every cycle that are a little bit different than all the other polls, and sometimes the outliers are right. 
But it&#8217;s not really an outlier when within the same couple of days that you release your poll, there&#8217;s another poll from Quinnipiac that mirrors your poll. Quinnipiac has been a very pro-Biden poll throughout this entire electoral process and has shown him tied or leading virtually the entire cycle. But according to <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3900" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Quinnipiac</a> now, Trump is at 49. If you&#8217;re looking at registered voters, including leaners, Biden is at just 45. Trump currently has a 10-point advantage with independents. 
That means Biden is going to lose. 
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1993-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
It turns out that about 73% of respondents in the Quinnipiac poll say they&#8217;re going to watch the debate tonight, which means Biden particularly needs a strong showing because a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/26/us/elections/times-siena-poll-likely-electorate-crosstabs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Times/Siena poll</a> shows he is also down four points, 48-44. That is the biggest lead Trump has had in the Times/Siena poll among likely voters in months. Trump&#8217;s lead with registered voters is six percentage points. 
These are truly terrible numbers for Biden. Swing states are even worse for him. According to a report from the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/26/biden-trump-swing-state-poll-democracy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Washington Post</a>, more than half of voters in 6 swing states that Biden narrowly won in 2020 say that “threats to democracy are extremely important to their vote for president.”
But Biden’s problem is that more of those voters actually believe Trump handled threats to democracy better than Biden. So in other words, the entire Biden message that Trump is a threat to democracy, January 6, election denialism, is totally falling flat. It turns out that when people look at Biden and his executive actions, which are, in fact, tyrannical; his rants about how he&#8217;s going to end around the Supreme Court; or his use of executive agencies to do things like “relieve student loan debt”; or his attempts to cram down vaccine mandates on 80 million Americans, they don&#8217;t think Biden is standing for democracy. 
Yesterday, the Washington Post published an article <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/26/biden-trump-swing-state-poll-democracy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stating</a>, “The results offer troubling indicators for Biden, who needs voters who may be unenthusiastic about his candidacy to decide they must reject Trump to preserve America&#8217;s system of representative government. ‘Many Americans don’t recognize Biden’s custodianship of our democracy, which is a bad sign for his campaign,’ said Justin Gest, a professor of policy and government at George Mason University.”
Among all key state voters, 44% said they believe Trump would do a better job handling threats to democracy than Biden. Only 33% of voters said Biden would do a better job handling threats to democracy than Trump. 
If those poll numbers are remotely accurate, Biden is toast, unless he has a magnificent performance tonight in the debate. Saying Trump is a threat to democracy is not just the tip of the spear of Biden&#8217;s entire argument; it’s the whole spear. There&#8217;s nothing else. He can&#8217;t run on the economy. People don&#8217;t like the economy. He can&#8217;t run on his foreign policy. His foreign policy is a  burning dumpster fire of trash and excrement. He can’t run on the border. He can&#8217;t run on social policy. 
What exactly is he going to run on? His entire campaign was predicated on his speech at Independence Hall, with blood-red in the background, where he declared himself the man standing in the breach on behalf of democracy. 
If more Americans in the swing states believe Biden is the threat to democracy, not Trump, Biden is finished.

Preparations Underway In Atlanta For First Presidential Debate

Debate Day Is Here

U.S. Politics

CNN hosts will moderate the presidential debate on Thursday — and why not? They have such amazing journalistic credibility.
On Tuesday, CNN’s Sara Sidner interviewed a drag queen, a woman who dresses up as a man who dresses up as a woman. (This woman couldn&#8217;t just be a woman; she had to dress up as a man dressed up as a woman. We have moved beyond the boundaries of logic.) This person goes by Brigitte Bandit. During the interview, Bandit talked about how it&#8217;s a scary time to exist in America as a drag queen.
Apparently, it’s not a scary enough time in America that Bandit can’t appear on national TV wearing drag.
When I first saw this, I wondered which one of these people was the CNN anchor because CNN is so filled with clowns. A CNN anchor is interviewing a woman dressed up as a man dressed up as a cartoon woman whom we are all supposed to take very seriously. We are all supposed to worship before the power of drag and acknowledge that this is what the Founders saw when they enshrined the First Amendment. Brigitte Bandit <a href="https://twitter.com/BrigitteBandit/status/1805634853779415422" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pontificated</a>:
<blockquote>We already see so many attacks on our queer community. I already don&#8217;t feel safe in my own hometown, just dressed in drag like this. And it&#8217;s very scary for queer people to exist in a time where we see this kind of rhetoric being pushed by our lawmakers and the people who should care about other issues that actually affect the American people, other than attacking our community, our LGBTQIA+ community. It&#8217;s very disappointing and I hope for better for our country.</blockquote>
Why would people look weirdly at this person? Why? Why would you give weird looks to that person walking down the street with those eyebrows, that plastic Barbie doll stewardess outfit from 1955, and that weird eye makeup — while being a man?
Why would you look weirdly at that?
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1992-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a> </h4>
But CNN has its own perspective on this. Sidner praised the look: “The queens are calling on lawmakers to pass a national equality act. It could amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act, providing explicit protections for LGBTQ individuals. Joining me now is drag queen and activist Brigitte Bandit. Thank you, darling. Wow, what a wonderful look you have this morning. I know that took you some time.”
That&#8217;s a woman dressed as a man who is dressed as a woman.
But it&#8217;s society that has a problem, folks. It&#8217;s society and our lack of tolerance.
Bandit is “non-binary” and uses the personal pronouns “she,” “her,” “they,” and “them.”
What a country we&#8217;ve created for ourselves. George Washington would have been so proud.
Apparently CNN is.

MixCollage-26-Jun-2024

The Amazing Credibility Of CNN 

Capitol Hill

Drag Queens

A lot of controversy is breaking out over the moderators in the presidential debate.
Attacking the moderators is a popular debate strategy, and in this particular case, it would be worth it to Trump to engage in such a strategy.
The moderators are Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, who are obviously and strongly oriented against Trump. Tapper clearly does not like Trump; he likens him to Adolf Hitler.
Last December, Tapper <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/cnn-debate-moderator-jake-tappers-100037319.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stated</a>, “The dehumanizing rhetoric of Adolf Hitler is once again alive and well on a national political stage. This time, of course, in the United States.” That same month, he also said, “Trump, a couple of times over the weekend, referred to immigrants from South America, Africa, and Asia, he did not mention Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia as ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’ which if it&#8217;s not hyperbole, that does very directly echo Adolf Hitler&#8217;s language before World War II, before the Holocaust.” 
Further, Tapper commented, “If you would open up a copy of Hitler&#8217;s ‘Mein Kampf,’ you would find the Nazi leader describing the mixing of non-Germans with Germans as poisoning. … There&#8217;s really no other way to say it. Donald Trump&#8217;s language mirrors this directly.” 
After the first presidential debate in 2020, Tapper and Bash had <a href="https://x.com/TheLeadCNN/status/1311140249158942720">this exchange</a>:
<blockquote>Tapper: That was a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck. That was the worst debate I have ever seen. In fact, it wasn’t even a debate. It was a disgrace. And it’s primarily because of President Trump, who spent the entire time interrupting, not abiding by the rules he agreed to, lying, maliciously attacking the son of the Vice President.
Dana Bash: You just took the words out of my mouth. You used some high-minded language. I’m just going to say it like it is: that was a s***show!
Tapper: The President does not think he’s going to win this election. And he wants to bring the rest of us down with him.</blockquote>
On Election Night 2020, Tapper stated, “For tens of millions of our fellow Americans, their long national nightmare is over.” After Biden’s 2024 State of the Union Speech, Bash crowed, “They wanted him to be a fighter, and, boy, a fight did he deliver.”
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1991-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
CNN&#8217;s Kasie Hunt interviewed Trump surrogate Karoline Leavitt, and they had a bit of a brawl because Leavitt pointed out these moderators are strongly oriented against Trump and Hunt got mad at this. Their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgr36RJemGM" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exchange</a> got a bit heated: 
<blockquote>Leavitt: President Trump is knowingly going into a hostile environment on this very network, on CNN, with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well-known over the past eight years in their biased coverage of him. So, President Trump is willing to bring his message to every corner of this country, to voters, to ensure that he wins this election in November. He looks forward to doing that. And I know the American public look forward to hearing from him. 
 
Hunt: So, I&#8217;ll just say, my colleagues, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, have acquitted themselves as professional as they have covered campaigns and interviewed candidates from all sides of the aisle. I&#8217;ll also say that if you talk to analysts of debates previous, that if you&#8217;re attacking the moderators, you&#8217;re usually losing. So, I really want to focus on what these two men are going to do and say when they stand on the stage. 
</blockquote>
Their conversation continued:
<blockquote>Leavitt: It would take someone five minutes to Google Jake Tapper Donald Trump to see that Jake Tapper has frequently likened President Trump to Adolf Hitler. 

Hunt: If you are here to speak on his behalf, I&#8217;m willing to have this conversation. 
 
Leavitt: I am stating facts that your colleagues have stated in the past. Now, as for this debate, the expectation for —
Hunt: I&#8217;m sorry, guys, we&#8217;re going to come back out to the panel. Karoline, thank you very much for your time. You are welcome to come back at any point. She is welcome to come back and speak about Donald Trump.</blockquote>
So why aren&#8217;t you allowed to talk about the moderators? The moderators are obviously an issue. They&#8217;ve been an issue in every presidential debate of my lifetime.
Speaking of Kasie Hunt, this is not somebody who doesn&#8217;t have a political dog in the fight here. A couple of years ago she mocked Rand Paul after he got pummeled by a neighbor, saying, “New details today on the incident that left Senator Rand Paul with six broken ribs. This might be one of my favorite stories… ”
But don&#8217;t worry. There&#8217;s no bias in the media.
CNN put out a <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4737344-cnn-debate-dana-bash-jake-tapper-thursday-trump-biden/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> saying, “Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well-respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined. They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN&#8217;s Republican presidential primary debate this cycle. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion.”
Sure.

US-POLITICS-VOTE-DEBATE

CNN’s Debate Moderators: Don’t Expect Fairness

Dana Bash

Debates

Jake Tapper

There is a new documentary called “Taylor Swift Vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” which covers the infamous feud between Taylor Swift and super-manager Scooter Braun. Braun owns Ithaca Holdings, the company that bought the record label Taylor Swift first signed with, including her albums.
The documentary spans events from June of 2019, when Braun&#8217;s company acquired Big Machine Label Group, the record label Swift was signed to for the first 13 years of her career. That acquisition included the rights to her first six albums, from her self-titled debut to “Reputation,” which was released in 2017.
The documentary is divided into two episodes. Episode one is Swift’s version, which is just her being obnoxious. It is Swift and all of her friends and allies suggesting that she is a victimized feminist, that she’s fighting “The Man,” and “Oh, my goodness, how everyone is so mean to Taylor Swift — and Scooter Braun is mean, mean man — he&#8217;s super mean.” She’s much more famous and rich because of his involvement, but she’s the victim. 
You often see this in celebrity culture: people who are not victims, who make lots of money from particular companies and then claim victimhood. It&#8217;s not rare to see Taylor Swift do this sort of thing. And here she is, again, doing that sort of thing. That&#8217;s episode one.
Then, in episode two, Scooter Braun shares his side of the story. That&#8217;s the side where they explain what happened legally in fairly meticulous detail. It’s the side where everyone recognizes he bought a company and, along with that company, he bought her records and then she complained about it. A lot.
As you might guess, HBO finishes by saying, ”Who can tell? Who knows?” Then the documentary points out that Swift is a very important cultural and musical figure.
Who cares? That&#8217;s not the issue. Will she be an important cultural figure in 20 years? I doubt it. In 100 years? No.
But that&#8217;s irrelevant to the question at play here. The question is whether she&#8217;s kind of a bad person, because it turns out that people who routinely violate their contracts and then claim victimhood are not nice people. And that&#8217;s Taylor Swift. She&#8217;s used her platform in order to attack Scooter Braun over and over and over.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1990-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
For example, she used her platform at awards acceptance speeches to criticize Big Machine and Scooter Braun. At her Grammy acceptance speech, she announced her “Tortured Poets Department” album. As I said after listening to that album, my only question about the “Tortured Poets Department” is where do they torture the poets and how do I join?
In any case, the documentary shows her being manipulative and weaponizing her fans to attack Scooter Braun, and she won&#8217;t call them off even after Braun releases the threats on his family&#8217;s life. And of course, she has lots of feuds with lots of other people because she&#8217;s not a particularly nice person.
So here&#8217;s the thing. The general public doesn&#8217;t tend to understand business deals. They don&#8217;t tend to understand legal issues. This is why you hire a lawyer, because if you&#8217;re not a lawyer, you don&#8217;t understand how legal things work, you don’t understand what provisions do.
You sign contracts with provisions in case something bad happens. And then, when the bad thing happens, the contract governs.
But for the general public — oh, my goodness, a bad thing happened. Now they think they have to figure out who&#8217;s right and who&#8217;s wrong.
No, they don’t. That was the purpose of the contract in the first place.
As it turns out, Taylor Swift&#8217;s actions — lying to her fans, lying to the public, rerecording all the old songs and releasing them — it all gets papered over with this “I’m a Feminist Icon” nonsense, which is a great “Get-out-of-Jail Free” card for being a cheat in business.
That&#8217;s Taylor Swift&#8217;s shtick. And don&#8217;t worry, she&#8217;ll continue the shtick as long as people are willing to humor her nonsense.
It&#8217;s a lucrative business, pretending to be a 16-year-old victimized feminist while making billions of dollars by violating your contracts.

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift Hides Business Cheating Behind Feminist Sloganeering

Music

The following is an edited transcript of Ben Shapiro&#8217;s new &#8220;Facts&#8221; episode: &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/facts-ep-12-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Fall Of The Roman Empire</a>,&#8221; now available on DailyWire+.
Why did Rome fall? At its height, the Roman Empire was an unparalleled superpower, encompassing vast territories across Europe, Asia, and Africa. It boasted advanced infrastructure, a complex political system, and an extremely powerful military. However, by the fifth century A.D., the Empire was in severe decline.
So what exactly happened? That question has been asked by dozens of major authors over the course of centuries. For some, like Edward Gibbon, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was largely a question of moral turpitude or lack of civic virtue. For others, the fall was more about military overreach and environmental catastrophe. The truth is, like all history, it’s incredibly complicated.
<div id="attachment_755025" style="width: 975px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-755025" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-755025" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1371482166-965x576.jpg" alt="Italy: 'Romans during the Decadence', oil on canvas, Thomas Couture (1815-1879), 1847. Currently housed in the Musee d'Orsay, Paris. (Photo by: Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" width="965" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1371482166-965x576.jpg 965w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1371482166-300x179.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1371482166-768x458.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1371482166.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 965px) 100vw, 965px" />Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</div>
The Western Roman Empire — the territory comprising modern day Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, and much of Northern Africa — fell because of a confluence of factors. Those factors break down into essentially four: economic, governmental, environmental, and social. 
Let&#8217;s begin with the economic. 
The Roman Empire was a heavily centralized economy, with the Roman government setting prices, currency rates, and quotas. While early emperors had allowed some elements of the free market, later emperors began to squeeze outlying areas in favor of subsidies closer to home in an attempt to resolve financial issues. 
Roman emperors repeatedly reduced the silver content in coins, leading to rampant inflation. This erosion of monetary value, debasing the currency, severely weakened the economy and eroded trust in the government&#8217;s financial management. Without a free market, the heavy hand of the Roman military had to be applied more broadly in order to gain resources. That also meant higher costs. Meanwhile, taxes increased on the wealthy. The Empire also became more and more dependent on slaves, given that freedom and wages required a free market.
<div id="attachment_754995" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-754995" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-754995" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1808417586-864x576.jpg" alt="IURII BUKHTA. Getty Images. A treasure of Roman gold and silver coins.Trajan Decius. AD 249-251. AV Aureus.Ancient coin of the Roman Empire.Authentic silver denarius, antoninianus,aureus of ancient Rome.Antikvariat." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1808417586-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1808417586-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1808417586-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1808417586-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1808417586-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1808417586-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1808417586-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />IURII BUKHTA. Getty Images.</div>
Thanks to raging inflation and taxation increases, the Emperor Diocletian (218-305 A.D.) attempted price controls. More centralization of the economy followed in the footsteps of the failures of such measures. In the words of historian Bruce Bartlett, “In the end, there was no money left to pay the army, the forts or ships or protect the frontier.” Barbarian invasions, which were the final blow to the Roman state in the fifth century, were simply the culmination of three centuries of deterioration in the fiscal capacity of the state to defend itself.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/facts-ep-12-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Ben Shapiro&#8217;s new FACTS episode: &#8220;The Fall Of The Roman Empire&#8221;</a>
Next, let&#8217;s turn to the Roman government. 
As the Roman government became more and more centralized in terms of power, support of the army became the crucial factor in obtaining leadership. This meant that anyone who could gain credibility with the army could make a play for the throne. And that&#8217;s precisely what happened: repeated military coups. The third century A.D. saw 29 different emperors. Emperors were frequently overthrown or assassinated, leading to a rapid turnover of leadership. This political turmoil weakened the central authority and made it difficult to implement consistent policy.
<div id="attachment_515033" style="width: 995px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-515033" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-515033 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/03/GettyImages-587489068-985x576.jpg" alt="The death of Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate - painting by Vincenzo Camuccini (1771-1844) Napoli, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)" width="985" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/03/GettyImages-587489068-985x576.jpg 985w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/03/GettyImages-587489068-300x175.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/03/GettyImages-587489068-768x449.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/03/GettyImages-587489068-1536x898.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/03/GettyImages-587489068-2048x1198.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 985px) 100vw, 985px" />Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images</div>
The division of the Empire into Western and Eastern Roman empires by Diocletian was intended to make administration more manageable. But it also created a rivalry between the two halves. While the Eastern Empire, which would become known as the Byzantine Empire, managed to survive for another thousand years, the Western Empire struggled to cope with internal divisions and external pressures. The importance of the army also meant a constant attempt to maintain military support, which meant both bribery and frequent military action.
The pressure from barbarian invasions further exacerbated the Empire&#8217;s woes. Various tribes, including the Visigoths, Vandals, and Huns, began to penetrate Roman territories in the fourth and fifth centuries. The Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 A.D. and the Vandals in 455 A.D. were catastrophic blows that symbolized the Empire&#8217;s vulnerability.
<div id="attachment_755007" style="width: 873px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-755007" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-755007" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1331264987-863x576.jpg" alt="Max Zolotukhin. Getty Images. Ruins in the Roman Forum under a picturesque sky." width="863" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1331264987-863x576.jpg 863w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1331264987-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1331264987-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1331264987-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1331264987-2048x1367.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1331264987-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-1331264987-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 863px) 100vw, 863px" />Max Zolotukhin. Getty Images.</div>
Now, the environmental.
Epidemics, such as the plague of Cyprian in the third century A.D., decimated the population, reducing the number of able-bodied men available for military service and labor. Additionally, soil depletion and deforestation from centuries of agricultural exploitation led to decreased agricultural productivity, contributing to food shortages and economic decline.
Finally, the social.
Edward Gibbon famously suggested that the moral character of the Roman people had been sapped over the course of centuries and military overstretch had brought home “the vices of strangers and mercenaries and thus first oppressed the freedom of the Republic and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple.”
Historian Victor Davis Hanson argues, “Clearly the pernicious effects of affluence and laxity, warped Roman sensibility and created a culture of entitlement. It was not justified by revenues or the creation of actual commensurate wealth, and the resulting debits, inflation, debased currency, and gradual state impoverishment, gave the far more vulnerable Western empire far less margin of error when barbarians arrived or rival generals marched on Rome.”
<div id="attachment_755009" style="width: 914px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-755009" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-755009" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-505871610-904x576.jpg" alt="Crisfotolux. Getty Images. Relief panel with battle scene between roman cavalry and dacian barbarians, from beautiful Arch of Constantine in the center of Rome." width="904" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-505871610-904x576.jpg 904w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-505871610-300x191.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-505871610-768x489.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-505871610-1536x978.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/GettyImages-505871610-2048x1304.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 904px) 100vw, 904px" />Crisfotolux. Getty Images.</div>
Does any of that sound familiar? Too much affluence, too much laxity, a belief that wealth was simply a part of life as opposed to something to be created, high levels of taxation, centralized economics, imperial overstretch. All this sounds a little bit familiar. 
After the fall of Rome in 476 A.D., the Western Roman Empire fragmented into a patchwork of smaller, often competing kingdoms. This period, known as the early Middle Ages, or less accurately, as the Dark Ages, saw significant political, social, and economic transformations.
The centralized Roman administration collapsed, leading to a decline in urban centers, trade, and literacy. Germanic tribes like the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Franks established their own kingdoms on former Roman territories. The Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire, continued to thrive, preserving much of Roman culture and knowledge. The Catholic Church emerged as a unifying force in Europe, providing stability and continuity with spiritual and administrative roles. 
This era set the stage for the development of medieval Europe, characterized by feudalism, the rise of monasticism, and the gradual fusion of Roman, Christian, and Germanic traditions. The collapse of Rome wasn&#8217;t merely a sudden event, but a gradual decay fueled by internal corruption, economic instability, and the erosion of foundational values.
Today, we stand at a crossroads where similar challenges threaten our stability. The Roman Empire teaches us that no civilization, regardless of its power and influence, is immune to decline if it fails to uphold the principles of responsibility, civic virtue, cultural integrity, and freedom.
It&#8217;s incumbent upon us to learn from history, to strengthen our institutions, and to foster a society that values freedom, resilience, and relentless pursuit of truth. By doing so, we can ensure that our legacy is not one of downfall, but perhaps of enduring greatness.

Colosseum in Rome with morning sun

The Fall Of The Roman Empire

History

Roman Empire

We are just a few days away from a massive, important political debate between former President Trump and President Biden.
This race is extraordinarily tight, and it could go either way.
The outcome revolves around Trump&#8217;s performance more than Biden&#8217;s; Trump has much more to lose in this debate than Biden.
Everyone perceives Biden for what he is: a bad president. He may be extremely old, he may not be mentally all there, but he can surpass expectations because of that. All he has to do is show up, speak even somewhat coherently, and not fall over. The expectations bar has been set so low by the Trump campaign and the media that if Biden does so it will be deemed a big Biden win.
Trump, on the other hand, has to buck many factors. He has to buck the fact that the moderators hate his guts and do not want him to be reelected. They think he’s an actual Hitlerian figure.
He has to buck the fact that there&#8217;s no audience in the room. Donald Trump thrives on having an audience; he responds to the audience.
Some people think that the mics being muted might help Trump because it&#8217;ll prevent him from talking over Biden, but the problem with this is that Trump will not be able to jump in and get in a quick quip.
There are a lot of factors that are stacked against Trump here. But the biggest factor that is stacked against Trump is Trump himself because Trump&#8217;s tendency is to go extremely hard and aggressive to defend everything he has ever done.
In reality, what Trump needs to be is cool, calm, collected, and meticulous in his attack on Biden&#8217;s presidency. That’s because if the debate is a referendum on Biden&#8217;s presidency, Joe Biden loses. If this is a referendum on Trump&#8217;s character and his foibles, then Donald Trump loses.
Here’s how I think Trump should handle the debate: He needs to shift every attack directed at him back into a jujitsu attack on Joe Biden.
Before Trump even starts, he needs to lead off by setting the predicate for the debate. He needs to say:
<blockquote>Joe Biden is a dishonest man. He lied to you in the last round of debates I did with him. You&#8217;ll recall that in the last round of debates, he openly stated that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation and that Hunter had never taken any money from any Chinese source, for example. Those were lies. Joe Biden lies to you all the time. Joe Biden lies to you about the economy. Joe Biden lies to you about illegal immigration. Joe Biden lies to you about foreign policy. Joe Biden lied to you about the solidity of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Joe Biden is a liar. So what he says up here on the stage cannot be trusted because he is not a trustworthy figure.</blockquote>
That would set the groundwork for when Biden says things that are not true, Trump can say, “He&#8217;s lying. That&#8217;s not true.”
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1989-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
The second piece of groundwork Trump needs to set about Biden is that he is tyrannical, that he&#8217;s used the power of the executive branch in unprecedented ways.
He should say:
<blockquote>Joe Biden has had more executive orders than any president in modern history. He has used the power of the presidency in order to, in his own words, “avoid the rulings of the Supreme Court.” He has threatened 80 million Americans with vaccine mandates he said he would not initiate. He has shut down state attempts to close the southern border. He is tyrannical. Joe Biden does not care about the boundaries of government. He can pretend he&#8217;s standing up here for democracy, but he thwarts democracy with every step he takes.</blockquote>
Thirdly, he should declare Biden is an incompetent rube of a president and say:
<blockquote>Inflation reached a 40-year high under Biden and is now embedded in the economy. He has brought you a disastrous foreign policy; there are now two massive ongoing conflagrations across the world. Plus, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping are all hanging out together and plotting their next moves. The enemies of the United States lick their lips when they see Joe Biden in the White House.</blockquote>
Those are the three points Trump should set up as the predicate for the debate: Joe Biden is a liar, tyrannical, and incompetent.
Additionally, if Biden comes to the end of an answer but has time left on the clock, which will undoubtedly happen, and says, “Well, anyway, I don&#8217;t want to get into that,” and the moderators turn to Trump, Trump should say, “You know, Joe, you have a minute left on the clock. I really think the American people deserve to hear your thoughts.”
That will completely throw Biden. He won&#8217;t know what to do with it. It&#8217;ll be a great moment for Trump.
We know the lines of attack that are going to be used by Biden because he has used them already.
The number one line of attack will be January 6. He believes that this is his trump card. He believes it to be his get-out-of-jail free card, to say January 6 over and over.
What Donald Trump needs to say is:
<blockquote>Joe, you and I disagree on what happened in the 2020 election. I think that your party rigged many of the voting rules in advance of the election in order to ensure an extraordinary number of mail in ballots ballot harvesting. I think that you worked with the media in order to prevent the dissemination of a story about Hunter Biden&#8217;s laptop in the last month of the election and you and your son, knowing that the laptop was real, lied about it to the American people.
We can disagree about what happened in 2020, but none of that matters to the American people because right now the calendar reads June 27, 2024. No one in America is thinking about January 6, and the only reason you are is because you are a cynical actor attempting to avoid the consequences of your own failed presidency. Most Americans are concerned about how they put food on the table today. And that&#8217;s your fault because you&#8217;re the president. It doesn&#8217;t matter who I think won the presidency. You are the president. You&#8217;ve been the president since January 2021, and you&#8217;ve been terrible at it.</blockquote>
The second issue that Biden presumably is going to bring up is a corollary of the first, which is that Trump is a threat to democracy. He&#8217;s going to suggest that Trump wants to overturn the election and he&#8217;s threatened to be a dictator on day one. 
Trump&#8217;s proper response on the “threat to democracy” is twofold. He should say:
<blockquote>Joe, you keep saying I’m a threat to democracy because I don&#8217;t believe I lost the 2020 election. I notice that Hillary Clinton doesn&#8217;t believe she lost the 2016 election, and that&#8217;s apparently just fine. And she keeps saying that it was Russian disinformation or that I stole the 2016 election.
You seem just fine with that. Half your party is fine with that. But put that aside. In reality, you are the threat to democracy. Democracy means, in the United States, a democratic republic with two elected branches of the legislature who are supposed to initiate bills and then you are supposed to effectuate those bills once you have signed them.
But that is not how you run the government. You set your political allies on me in the courts. You&#8217;ve had your party&#8217;s members from New York to D.C. to Florida to Atlanta target me for political reasons. I had zero criminal investigations into me into my eighth decade of life until I decided to run for reelection, at which point I got inundated with them. I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s a coincidence. So I want you to explain, Joe, why it is that your DOJ let you off the hook and tried to get a sweetheart deal with Hunter before they were caught, but has been sicced on me in every jurisdiction you can find? Does that sound democratic to you? Trying to use the courts to go after your political opponent? 
You used OSHA to mandate vaccines for 80 million Americans. You violated the Constitution to try to allow people to skate on their student loan debt so you can let a blue collar plumber pay for the tuition in the future of some gender theory major over at Wellesley. You violated your constitutional oath by keeping the border open and letting through at least seven million illegal immigrants.
That sounds like a threat to democracy to me and you’re baking all of these regulations into the administrative state so that even if I&#8217;m elected, it makes it difficult for me to change your policy. You have effectuated the establishment of a fourth unelected branch of government, independent of even the executive, unless the executive happens to be a Democrat.</blockquote>
That is response number one to the democracy issue.
The second response would be to say, “You have been a dictator the entirety of your presidency,” and then list the litany again. 
The third issue will be the criminal conviction of Trump.
I think if Trump brings up Hunter Biden in response that would be a mistake, and he’ll walk right into a trap because Biden will throw his son under the bus and say, “I respected the justice system for my own son, so I certainly respect it for you.”
What Trump should say is:
<blockquote>Joe, you&#8217;re right. I was convicted by a Democrat judge and a Democrat prosecutor who coordinated to set up a series of specious charges in a district that you won overwhelmingly in an extraordinarily blue district in Manhattan, which is why the case was filed there. You&#8217;re right. I was convicted in that case. But at least I was found competent to stand trial. Your own Department of Justice refused to prosecute you for mishandling classified information, for keeping classified documents in your drawers, telling your ghostwriter about them, and keeping them in your car and garage. Your own DOJ refused to prosecute you because they effectively found that you are too old and too wavering mentally for a jury to convict you.
And now your own DOJ is stonewalling. They won&#8217;t even release the tape of you talking to them for a prolonged period of time. Why? Answer it, Joe. Why? Why won&#8217;t you authorize your DOJ to release the tape? You&#8217;re the president. You can release the tape today. Release the tape. If you say that you are so coherent and that Robert Hur’s a liar about your mental status, why not just release the tape of the interview?</blockquote>
Finally, the issue of style. This is going to be the most important element for Trump because he&#8217;s going to have to contain himself. And when Trump contains himself, he can be quite good at this. The truth is that in debates, Trump has historically done well in situations in which he has been more contained. If you remember the debates with Hillary, he was more contained.
The first debate with Biden in 2020 was disastrous because he wasn’t contained, but he likely won the second one because he was more contained.
Let Biden talk. That&#8217;s all. If he lets Biden talk for prolonged periods of time, people are going to see that he can&#8217;t even realistically defend his own policies.
The whole purpose of a debate is to be pointed and bring people&#8217;s attention where you want it. Trump needs to spend the entire debate redirecting attention from him to Biden — but that runs against Trump&#8217;s grain because he believes that when people are talking about him it means he&#8217;s winning.
But that was not true in 2020 and is not true in 2024.
Focusing on Biden and his record is the road to victory.

Donald Trump Holds Rally In Pennsylvania

Here’s How Trump Can Win His Debate With Biden

Debate

The Louisiana governor signed into law legislation that requires a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in all public classrooms. 
And the Left absolutely lost its mind. 
The ACLU, who used to stand for free speech but now stands for radical leftism, immediately announced this was unconstitutional and they were going to stand up against it. 
CNN&#8217;s Elie Honig was asked if the display violated the First Amendment. He replied: 
<blockquote>Yes, flagrantly, in my view. If you wanted a perfect example of what the First Amendment prohibits, I think this is it. The First Amendment says Congress, government, shall make no law respecting establishment of religion, meaning state entities can&#8217;t do things that endorse any particular religion or religiosity in general. 
 
And if you look at those 10, there are some — I know one of the defenses is, well, these are themes that are consistent throughout civilized society and throughout religion. Shall not kill, number six, I&#8217;m cheating, because I&#8217;m looking. But you know, don&#8217;t kill, don&#8217;t rob, don&#8217;t steal, that kind of thing. But there are some Commandments that are inherently religious. Observe the Sabbath day. I&#8217;m the only God that you may worship. So, it&#8217;s an inherently religious document.</blockquote>
Here is the problem with this particular argument: The United States is not a fundamentally secular country. 
The First Amendment was designed to guarantee the practice of religion against the federal government. The idea that there is a separation wall between church and state in the sense that religion was never supposed to impact people&#8217;s values in how they vote, or religion could never be promoted in the public square, or religion could never be promoted against irreligion generally by the government is also untrue. There is no historical basis for this. 
The First Amendment specifically says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This was never originally supposed to be implemented in the states. It took all the way until the 1940s for the Supreme Court to declare that this was now going to be applied at the state level.
In fact, nine of the 13 colonies had established churches at the time of the Revolutionary War. Connecticut maintained its Congregationalist church, a state-sponsored church, until 1818. New Hampshire had one until 1819. Massachusetts had one until 1833.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1988-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
Well past the establishment of the First Amendment, there were states in the United States that established religions. Why? Because the goal here was to stop the federal government from establishing its own generalized religion that would prohibit people at the state level from having their own religions.
The idea that secularism was supposed to predominate in the United States is obviously untrue; none of the Founders believed that. Even the Founders who leaned toward atheism tended to believe religion had an extraordinarily positive effect on the body politic. The promotion of religion generally was considered a good thing by the Founding Fathers.
As President, John Adams wrote <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a letter</a> to the Massachusetts militia, saying: 
<blockquote>We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government for any other.</blockquote>
George Washington <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/george-washington-first-inaugural-address-1789" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in his first inaugural address: 
<blockquote>The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality … there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness. </blockquote>
Thomas Jefferson, the guy everyone talks about in terms of coining the phrase “separation between church and state,” <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/jefferson/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recognized</a> “the moral branch of religion” as “how to live well and worthily in society.”
But for the last several decades, the courts have done something that is completely unprecedented and stupid: They have read the establishment clause and the free exercise clause as being opposed to one another.
The Constitution says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
There are two ways to read that, and the Supreme Court has read this in the dumbest possible way. One way is that Congress shall not prohibit you from freely exercising a religion. The second way is that Congress shall not establish any religion. And the Court has read them completely separately.
What that&#8217;s done is put them in conflict with one another because it turns out that if you express your religion freely in the public square, then the Supreme Court might say you&#8217;re violating the establishment clause.
But that&#8217;s never how these provisions were meant to be read. They were meant to be read in tandem. The basic idea was that you couldn&#8217;t establish any religion as the official religion of the United States, because in doing so, you would quash the free exercise of people of other religions via compulsion.
That is what the Constitution was designed to prohibit: compulsion in religion.
But there&#8217;s nothing compulsory about a sign on a classroom wall. If there were something compulsory about a sign on a classroom wall, there&#8217;d be all sorts of serious free speech issues in a classroom because it turns out classroom walls are filled with all sorts of stuff.
The argument is made that if I walk into a public school and there is a sign that quotes the Bible in a nondenominational way, it still violates my free speech. And the Ten Commandments are nondenominational because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all agree that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses, and they agree on the content of the Ten Commandments. 
In 1971, the Supreme Court took up the case Lemon v. Kurtzman. And they came up with an incredibly stupid test to determine whether some sort of government action violated the separation of church and state. They said that any law had to fulfill three conditions. One, it had to have a secular purpose. Two, it had to have a predominantly secular effect. And three, it had to not foster excessive entanglement between government and religion.
When you read that, it is, on its face, nonsensical. It basically doesn&#8217;t set any standard at all because you can make an argument for virtually any religious display that it both violates the Lemon test and also does not violate the Lemon test.
In 1980, when the Supreme Court ruled in Stone v. Graham, there was a law that required classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, and the Supreme Court found that it was unconstitutional because it had no secular legislative purpose. They said the Ten Commandments convey a religious undertone because they include the religious duties of believers worshiping the Lord God alone, avoiding idolatry, not using the Lord&#8217;s name in vain, and observing the Sabbath day. 
But that was based on a fundamental misreading that is enshrined in Lemon, that the government of the United States has to take no position between religion and irreligion, that the government of the United States has no interest in promoting public morality via generalized religion, that the government has to be absolutely agnostic about whether it is promoting the Ten Commandments or whether it is promoting paganism. 
In 2005, there was a similar case about a public display of the Ten Commandments. Justice Antonin Scalia dissented in this case. He <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-1693.ZD.html">wrote</a>, “What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle.”
He was ripping the Lemon test. He was saying there&#8217;s no consistently applied principle. He continued:
<blockquote>That is what prevents judges from ruling now this way, now that–thumbs up or thumbs down–as their personal preferences dictate. … the Court acknowledges that the “Establishment Clause doctrine” it purports to be applying “lacks the comfort of categorical absolutes.” What the Court means by this lovely euphemism is that sometimes the Court chooses to decide cases on the principle that government cannot favor religion, and sometimes it does not. …
Besides appealing to the demonstrably false principle that the government cannot favor religion over irreligion, today’s opinion suggests that the posting of the Ten Commandments violates the principle that the government cannot favor one religion over another. That is indeed a valid principle where public aid or assistance to religion is concerned, or where the free exercise of religion is at issue … but it necessarily applies in a more limited sense to public acknowledgment of the Creator. 
If religion in the public forum had to be entirely nondenominational, there could be no religion in the public forum at all. One cannot say the word “God,” or “the Almighty,” one cannot offer public supplication or thanksgiving, without contradicting the beliefs of some people that there are many gods, or that God or the gods pay no attention to human affairs. With respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation’s historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.</blockquote>
In other words, every time Joe Biden finishes his speech and says, “God bless our troops,” why isn&#8217;t that an establishment of religion in the same way it would theoretically be an establishment religion to put the Ten Commandments in a public school classroom? 
The answer is because it&#8217;s not establishing religion. Biden isn&#8217;t forcing you to do anything, and neither is the sign on the public school classroom. It is encouraging you to abide by the central fundamental moral premises of the West.
The attempt to remove the Ten Commandments says more about the society than the attempt to replace them. All of Western civilization is based on a merger of Judeo-Christian ethics found in the Old and the New Testaments and Greek reason.
Here’s why the Ten Commandments are important: They take certain fundamental principles and put them beyond the scope of debate, which is good. You don&#8217;t want to live in a society where “thou shalt not kill” is a debatable proposition. How about “honor thy parents”? We&#8217;re now a society that does not honor our parents and scorns our parents as racists and bigots and white supremacist and vestiges of the past.
How about “do not bear false witness”? We live in a society in which you are allowed to bear false witness so long as the political motivations of the person against whom you are bearing the false witness are suspect.
A society that abides by the Ten Commandments is going to be better than a society that does not.
The centralizing philosophy of the United States used to be grounded in Judeo-Christian virtue. That is why it is good to put the Ten Commandments back up on the wall. Not everyone will abide by them, but they will remind people that a functional society has to have a functional philosophy.
And the most functional philosophy over the last several thousand years has sprung from those Ten Commandments.

Ten Commandments Standing In The Desert

Bring Back The Ten Commandments

Bill of Rights

Constitution

First Amendment

Judeo-Christian Values

Louisiana

Secularism

America is in the middle of a very serious moral and economic crisis — and these two crises are deeply interconnected.
An Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/06/18/trump-gop-scotus-musk-shame" target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a> titled, “Never back down: Rich and powerful exploit post-shame society,” exposes some interesting information about this. Zachary Basu writes:
<blockquote>America is reaching the pinnacle of a post-shame society forged by Donald Trump and reinforced by powerful patrons. Nearly 50 years after Richard Nixon resigned before ever being charged with a crime, the GOP is a month away from nominating a convicted felon to be president. Polls suggest the race is extremely close. While he may represent the most extreme example, Trump isn&#8217;t the only one who has realized a lack of shame can be a crucial survival skill. </blockquote>
Put aside the fact that our “post-shame political society” actually arrived with Bill Clinton — when it turned out you could overtly make the case it was fine to mess with the interns because that was just a “sex issue.” “Post-shame society” has been in place for a very long time in the United States.
The real question in the United States is: Why don&#8217;t we have a guilt-based society?
Cultural anthropologists distinguish between two different types of societies when it comes to your internal feelings about anything you have done wrong: guilt-based societies and shame-based societies.
Guilt-based societies are internally directed; they are typically linked with Judaic and Christian moral systems. These would be systems in which you feel guilty before God because you have violated God&#8217;s moral scruples. A person feels an internal sense of guilt, whether or not anybody knows about what they did.
A shame-based society is one in which the society sets the standard, and society makes you feel ashamed and makes you “lose face.” Cultural anthropologists closely associate shame-based societies with countries like Japan or China. The idea is that you will be shamed into doing what is right.
Over the course of the last several decades as religion has declined in America, guilt-based society shifted into shame-based society, which has now shifted into a post-shame society. We were once a guilt-based society; people felt an internal obligation to act morally at the political level. That meant, politicians felt an actual sense of responsibility to solve the problems they were charged with solving.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1987-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
Politicians didn’t have to be shamed into acting morally; they felt an internal moral compulsion to try to do things that they&#8217;d been tasked with doing. They felt a moral duty to do the right thing.
With the decline of religion and a belief in moral absolutes, society shifted to a shame-based society, and political correctness replaced our moral system — and God. People would shame you into saying certain things or acting certain ways.
That has reared its ugly head in wokeness — the idea of shaming someone in public if they didn’t use the proper pronouns; say untrue things about America being a white supremacist society; put dumb lawn signs out that state, “In this house, we believe&#8230;”; or post a black square during Black Lives Matter to proclaim solidarity with people who were rioting.
If you didn’t, you were publicly shamed. We became a shame-based society because all your actions were directed toward the public and what the public thinks of you.
Now we have reached the reaction to that, which is the post-shame society. Basu is correct that we are a post-shame society, but I don&#8217;t think it revolves around Donald Trump.
I do think it has to do with our entire rootless, Godless system. Once you have a society that casts out God in favor of societal shaming and then replaces societal shaming with the blowback to that, the standards of the society are plainly wrong.
Thus, we won’t return to internal feelings about a moral God and what He demands of us. We&#8217;re going to practice moral relativism in a society that has a really bad set of standards, which means we will just have no standards at all.
You end up with shamelessness on every single side of the political realm. That means our politicians become frivolous, shameless, and stupid, and they don&#8217;t care about the actual problems facing the United States of America on a broad scale.
That is why I&#8217;m quite pessimistic about the possibility that our politicians actually solve our problems because they don&#8217;t feel they are somehow implicated in our country&#8217;s problems on a moral level.
They don&#8217;t feel a higher moral impulse to do what is right, simply because it&#8217;s right. Today, very few Americans — unless they are regular churchgoers, people who are deeply ensconced in religious community — feel an internal compulsion to do the right thing anymore.
Particular politicians may be interested in solving problems from time to time, but overall, the general kind of arc of the political universe in the United States bends towards foolish frivolity, toward bread and games as the Republic dies from the inside.
This directly relates to economics.
There is a chart from the Federal Reserve that shows the federal government&#8217;s national defense consumption expenditures and gross investments. The entrance payments on our debt now exceed what we spend on national defense every year.
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-753121" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/002_Chart-of-Doom-Federal-Interest-Payments-Exceed-Defense-Budget-copy.png" alt="" width="700" height="536" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/002_Chart-of-Doom-Federal-Interest-Payments-Exceed-Defense-Budget-copy.png 700w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/002_Chart-of-Doom-Federal-Interest-Payments-Exceed-Defense-Budget-copy-300x230.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" /></div>
This is a very real problem. If what we are paying to bondholders, many of whom are foreign bondholders, exceeds what we are spending on our national defense, that is the sign of an unstable and sick governmental structure. It means that we are not going to have the actual resources in order to arm up, to face a hostile world, to keep the seas free.
We are not going to have the ability to ensure shipping lanes. We&#8217;re not going to have the capacity to defend Taiwan; a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would disrupt the semiconductor market and amount to a global depression of extreme severity.
Meanwhile, Jonathan van Ness from “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy” is at the White House gallivanting around in a dress. There are still families of the soldiers killed in Afghanistan who have never been to the White House.
The national debt is now so extreme that it will exceed $50 trillion by 2034, according to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/06/18/national-debt-budget-projections-cbo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Congressional Budget Office</a>. They projected yesterday the federal debt will exceed 122% of the United State&#8217;s annual economic output by 2034. The deficit will swell to $1.9 trillion this fiscal year and keep growing until the overall national debt hits $50.7 trillion a decade from now.
The budget in the United States continues to expand. Medicare and Social Security are running low on funds. Within just a few years, the interest on the debt is going to exceed the payments we owe for Social Security.
This is a bipartisan problem because our frivolous political class doesn&#8217;t feel any sort of guilt-based moral impetus to solve serious problems. Instead, they push those serious problems into next week for the purposes of winning today. And then, once they win, what are the actual demands that are made upon them? Fairly minimal.
It is the job of our politicians to telescope and balance our present needs with the needs of the future. But our politicians don&#8217;t want to do this anymore. They&#8217;ve abdicated any sort of guilt-based obligation to do the right thing simply because it’s the unpopular thing.
Nobody actually wants to take responsibility for solving the serious problems that face the country. Few of our politicians are capable of even looking down the line at the serious problems we face because there&#8217;s no internal compass driving them to solve the problem.
And that is a genuine bipartisan problem.

National Debt

America’s Moral And Economic Crisis

Morality

Democrats are now talking about “saving democracy.”
“Democracy” technically means that if we&#8217;re all in a room together and we want to make a decision, we all vote on that specific decision. A republic means you have representatives, which means you don&#8217;t vote directly on many of the decisions that are being made. Instead, you delegate the power to vote on those decisions to a representative government. Typically, that representative government has a series of checks and balances.
The United States is a republic. It is not a direct democracy. It&#8217;s a democracy in the broader sense, which is that we vote. But it&#8217;s not a democracy in the technical sense in which you vote on every issue or in which a pure majoritarian popular will decides every single issue.
In fact, the founders decried exactly such a system. They saw that as what they would call a mobocracy. They didn’t want just a series of referenda on every single issue to go to the popular vote, which is why intervening institutions in the government exist.
It&#8217;s why Congress is represented on a popular level, but the Senate was originally supposed to be represented at the state level by the state legislatures. Originally, state legislatures were supposed to pick their senators. It&#8217;s why the Senate itself is not proportional; Montana and California have the same number of senators. It is why a series of checks and balances between the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judiciary exist. It is why an electoral college exists.
There are all sorts of institutions in our republic that are designed to check excesses of the mob. That was very much at the forefront of the founders’ concerns, as is evidenced by the Federalist Papers.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1986-member-exclusive">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
Why is that important? Because a shift in the way people thought of democracy in the United States took place, which started in the late 19th century as a take-away from German progressivism. Much of modern American government, our structures, particularly the administrative state, are drawn from it.
Woodrow Wilson, who was the dean of Princeton University before he became the President of the United States, greatly admired that system. He wrote extensively about German progressivism and his vision for what democracy should look like. He believed that the Constitution of the United States had outlived its sell-by date, that the Constitution’s checks and balances were useless.
Wilson, a Democrat, wanted something that was both more democratic and less democratic: He wanted a popular vote for one man who would make all the decisions with the help of administrative bureaucrats who were experts on the issues.
In other words, he wanted a government of expertise. He believed all the checks and balances thwarted that government. In 1908, he famously <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/education/classroom-resource-library/classroom/8.6-primary-source-quotes-on-executive-orders" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>, “The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit; and if Congress be overborne by him, it will be no fault of the makers of the Constitution, it will be from no lack of constitutional powers on its part, but only because the President has the nation behind him, and Congress has not.” 
In other words, the president is elected by the public, effectively speaking, which means he should have as much power as humanly possible. That was important to Woodrow Wilson because he believed in the setup of the administrative state, an entire branch of the government that was effectively independent of the popular will.
When Democrats say democracy, this is what they mean. They do not mean that they respect the institutions of the Republic. They don&#8217;t respect the Supreme Court of the United States except when it is giving them precisely what they want.
The Democrats like to say the word “democracy” because they want to portray Donald Trump as an incipient fascist. But it is actually Joe Biden who is hell-bent on undermining the actual democratic republic.
CNN, which is hosting the first presidential debate, interviewed several Trump supporters and asked about him undermining democracy. The Trump supporters correctly responded that we don&#8217;t live in a democracy; we live in a republic, which is true. We live in a representative democracy with a series of checks and balances that thwart the popular will on a regular basis.
CNN tried to say it&#8217;s very bad to say that we live in a republic, not a democracy. They interviewed author Anne Applebaum, who <a href="https://x.com/tomselliott/status/1802653350803988619">said</a>:
<blockquote>These words were used in different ways in the 18th century. And it&#8217;s true, the Founders didn&#8217;t want direct democracy, by which they meant people gathering on the town square. They wanted representative democracy. But I think the reason why this conversation about language has risen now is because there is a part of the Republican Party that would like to rule as a minority, and they need an excuse for why that&#8217;s okay. And so they have begun to say, we&#8217;re not a democracy, we&#8217;re a republic. It&#8217;s not 100% clear what that means, but I think they mean, we want Donald Trump to be able to do whatever he wants.</blockquote>
This is truly Orwellian because it&#8217;s total projection. The people who want the president of the United States to do whatever he wants without any checks and balances are typically Democrats.
So with the polls indicating Trump is winning, Democrats are already preparing to do what they want to do: subvert the institutions of the Republic.
They are looking to subvert the democratic institutions of the Republic. They are looking to subvert the legislature. They&#8217;re looking to subvert the presidency. They&#8217;re looking to subvert the courts.
In an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/16/us/politics/trump-2025-democratic-resistance.html#:~:text=Opponents%20of%20Donald%20J.%20Trump,Internal%20Revenue%20Service%20against%20them." target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a> titled, “The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started,” the New York Times stated:
<blockquote>Opponents of Donald J. Trump are drafting potential lawsuits in case he is elected in November and carries out mass deportations, as he has vowed. One group has hired a new auditor to withstand any attempt by a second Trump administration to unleash the Internal Revenue Service against them. Democratic-run state governments are even stockpiling abortion medication.
A sprawling network of Democratic officials, progressive activists, watchdog groups and ex-Republicans has been taking extraordinary steps to prepare for a potential second Trump presidency, drawn together by the fear that Mr. Trump’s return to power would pose a grave threat not just to their agenda but to American democracy itself.</blockquote>
Understand how Orwellian that is. They are saying they need to do non-democratic things to save democracy. They need to burn down the village in order to save the village. One of the actions they are going to take is to stack the administrative state. The Times continued, writing:
<blockquote>Interviews with more than 30 officials and leaders of organizations about their plans revealed a combination of acute exhaustion and acute anxiety. Activist groups that spent the four years of Mr. Trump’s presidency organizing mass protests and pursuing legal challenges, ultimately helping channel that energy into persuading voters to oust him from power in 2020, are now realizing with great dread they may have to resist him all over again. … The Biden administration pushed through a flurry of regulations in the spring, meeting a deadline to ensure that those rules could not be summarily overturned next year under a 1996 law if Mr. Trump wins the election and Republicans take total control of Congress.</blockquote>
This is a thwarting of democracy. It is hilarious to watch all the same people who are shouting to the rafters about the evils of Trump and his attacks on democracy now attempting all the same measures that they say Republicans should never attempt.
This is how the Left thinks of our institutions, that they own these institutions. Any outside threat to these institutions, including the future boss of the institution, must be destroyed.
This is stealing democracy: actively setting up structures that prevent the fundamental working order of the government, so long as the Republican is the person who is running the government.

Donald Trump Speaks At Turning Point Convention In Detroit, Michigan

Democrats Say Trump Is A Threat To Democracy. They’re Projecting.

Democracy

Republic

Something fascinating and unique is happening regarding the 2024 election.
If you look at the polling data, you see what’s unique: Republicans are breaking into the low-likelihood voter camp.
Typically, when it comes to elections, the basic logic has been that Democrats win in high turnout elections and Republicans win in low turnout elections. This has explained why Republicans seem to outperform during midterm elections, although 2022 was an exception.
In 2016, there was low voter turnout and Donald Trump won. In 2020, there was very, very high voter turnout, and Joe Biden won.
But in 2024, something unique is happening. In their “If Everyone Voted, Would Biden Benefit? Not Anymore.” article, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/upshot/election-democrats-republicans-turnout-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Times</a> explains: “A new electoral divide has emerged in America. This divide is not rooted in race, geography, age or education. Instead, it is engagement in democracy itself.”
A representation of all 200 million registered voters in the United States shows that people who voted in the 2022 primary election are favoring Biden in this election by a margin about 5%, 49 to 44. But of people who voted in the 2020 election, Donald Trump is leading. And of people who didn&#8217;t vote at all in either of those elections (2020 or 2022), Trump is leading by 14 percentage points. 
What this means is that if everyone voted among those 200 million registered voters, Trump would win. It is not Biden who would win. As Nate Cohn writes:
<blockquote>In a reversal of one of the most familiar patterns in American politics, it appears that Donald J. Trump, not President Biden, would stand to gain if everyone in the country turned out and voted. … The pattern is the latest example of how the Trump brand of conservative populism has transformed American politics. His candidacy galvanized liberals to defend democracy and abortion rights, giving Democrats the edge in low-turnout special and midterm elections. Yet at the same time, early polls suggest, many less engaged and infrequent voters have grown deeply dissatisfied with Mr. Biden.</blockquote>
So is that about Trump, or is that about dissatisfaction with Biden?
I would suggest that it&#8217;s about wild dissatisfaction with Biden. A new poll suggests Trump is now leading in Minnesota — Minnesota! — by two points. That is not a state that should be on the map for Trump. He is currently winning well outside the margin of error in Nevada, which he lost in 2020. In other words, so many people are disillusioned with Biden that he is losing even among voters who tend to be those low-propensity voters.
This is a massive problem for him.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1985-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
The biggest obstacles to Donald Trump winning are Donald Trump&#8217;s ground game and Donald Trump saying things. Democrats have had an excellent ground game for as long as I have been alive, and it&#8217;s gotten better and better. The Republican party ground game has been very weak, except in states like Florida. So Trump had better be expending the resources.
It&#8217;s one thing for Trump to complain about the possibility of voter fraud. That possibility is quite real.
But now the excuses are gone. This election is Trump&#8217;s to lose. His daughter-in-law runs the RNC. He has a massive campaign. He has millions of dollars in the war chest. That means there&#8217;s no excuse for not getting out the vote for Republicans in the swing states. And there&#8217;s also no excuse for not having an army of lawyers at the polling places to ensure every legal vote is counted.
That&#8217;s problem number one, and theoretically, the Trump campaign should solve it.
Then, there&#8217;s problem number two. The debate is coming up.
The rules for the debate have now apparently been set, according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/15/politics/trump-biden-cnn-debate-rules/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CNN</a>. This whole scenario has been stacked by the Biden campaign from the outset, when they offered debates on CNN and ABC and immediately had the dates and the moderators lined up. That means it was preset with those networks before Biden even issued the challenge. Trump didn’t want to appear chicken, so instead of saying, “Let&#8217;s settle on what those debates look like,” before accepting, he simply accepted the debate.
That is going to put him at a systemic disadvantage because the moderators in these debates are going to be wildly biased against Trump. The first debate will be hosted by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, both of whom clearly do not want Trump to be president and also believe he is a threat to democracy — which means the entire debate, if they have their druthers, is going to be about January 6 and the 2020 election.
This is the single greatest threat to Donald Trump retaining the presidency in this election cycle. If he falls for that trap, that is the biggest mistake he can make. He needs to have a swift and a quick comeback line. If they say, “Mr. President, you tried to lead an insurrection on January 6,” he should say, “Listen, I disagree with your characterization of what happened on January 6, but let&#8217;s point something out: January 6 happened in 2020. The year is now 2024. And there&#8217;s one thing the American people know: They saw me as president and they saw Joe Biden as president. Their lives under me were much better than they are under Biden because everyone knows he is a terrible president.”
He needs to keep shifting the attack back to Biden instead of getting defensive and talking about election 2020, which he wants to do because President Trump loves talking about what he believes was a rigged election in 2020.
In some ways, he&#8217;s right. Obviously, the media were very motivated to lie during the election cycle, as with hiding the Hunter Biden laptop story. Not to mention all the changes to the voting. All of that is true.
But talking about that is not going to win him votes. What will win Trump votes in the debate is focusing on Joe Biden&#8217;s actual record. The debate is only 90 minutes. And now apparently, it&#8217;s going to include two commercial breaks. This is the first time a presidential debate will include commercial breaks.
Trump should have said, “No, I&#8217;m not doing the debate if there are commercial breaks,” because Trump has the stamina to stand there for 90 minutes. Biden doesn’t.
Additionally, microphones will be muted throughout the debate, except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak. No props or pre-written notes will be allowed on the stage. Candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper, and a bottle of water. There will be no studio audience.
In other words, CNN is rigging this as much as possible in favor of Biden. No studio audience? The studio audience would certainly be much more prone to support Trump because half the Democratic Party is angry at Biden.
Muting the microphones? That is going to prevent Trump from jumping in with a one-liner, as he did with Hillary Clinton. When she was talking about how terrible things would be if Trump were president, he quickly responded, “If I were president, you&#8217;d be in jail.”
There’s one other big threat in the debate being set up right now: lowering the debate bar for Biden.
What Trump should say is, “Listen, we can all see that Joe Biden is ailing. We can all see that he&#8217;s really old. He&#8217;s falling apart. With that said, the State of the Union address proves that you can shoot that guy up with whatever you need to do to get him to be mildly alive, mostly dead. So this debate is not going to be about Joe Biden&#8217;s mental capacity. This debate is going to be about Joe Biden as President of the United States and his terrible record on everything from the economy to the border to foreign policy.”
He should be saying that from now until the election because what&#8217;s happening right now is good for the Trump campaign, which is the widespread perception that Biden is not mentally competent to be president of the United States. But it&#8217;s very bad for the debate because if Biden even shows up and doesn&#8217;t die, then he wins. That&#8217;s how low the bar is right now.
If Biden is simply breathing, if he has a pulse by the end of the debate, if he has not soiled himself on stage, then he will be deemed a sprightly, elderly winner of the debate by the media.
Donald Trump doesn&#8217;t have to point out that Joe Biden is gone. We all know it. What he needs to point out over and over again is that he was a better president than Biden is.
End of story.

G7 Leaders Summit – Day Two

2024 Is Trump’s To Lose

There’s religious adherence to the Pride flag during Pride Month, that most holy month.
In Spokane, Washington, they decided to paint a crosswalk with the Pride Progress flag.
You might think there would be a problem painting a crosswalk with Pride Progress flags because people walk and drive over it. It is a crosswalk.
It turns out there was a group of three teenagers who were on Lime electric scooters doing wheelies on the Pride Progress flag and then got caught on tape doing that.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The three teenagers seen in this video have been charged with a felony for leaving scooter marks on the Pride flag painted on the street in Spokane, WA. Prosecutors are demanding a $15k bond for the teens. <a href="https://t.co/RPg1o5pabz">pic.twitter.com/RPg1o5pabz</a>
&mdash; Catch Up Bites (@catchupbites) <a href="https://twitter.com/catchupbites/status/1800197484008128615?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 10, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
They were arrested and charged with first-degree malicious mischief. They could go to jail because they did wheelies on the Pride Progress flag.
It was later reported they were also doing wheelies in other areas of town as well. 
But — Thou Must Not Have Any Other Gods Besides The Pride Progress Flag. This religion must never, ever be faced with dissent.
Malicious mischief?
Two of the three teens were underage, and they&#8217;ve not been named. So apparently, Lime is now announcing it will be implementing a no-go zone around that crosswalk, which means a scooter driven over the mural will be shut down remotely.
Everyone has to tiptoe right around the Pride Progress flag that&#8217;s on the ground.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
I&#8217;m really looking forward to Pride Month now, including people putting Pride Progress flags on all the seats on airplanes. If you sit on one of those seats, you’ll go to jail in a flash. That would be just great. Can’t wait.
The situation in Spokane is like the child’s game “The Floor Is Lava,” except the floor is the Pride Progress flag. Don&#8217;t walk on it. Don&#8217;t do it. If you do, you will be punished.
A press release from the city of Spokane <a href="https://my.spokanecity.org/police/news/2024/06/06/multiple-arrests-make-after-downtown-pride-mural-is-vandalized/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stated</a>, “Officers observed widespread damage as black scuff marks consistent with scooter wheels were observed across the entirety of the mural. The area is clearly marked to keep traffic away as it was just re-painted to repair previous damage.”
“Attached to the [press] release were two photos demonstrating the extent of the damage, both of which showed faint black marks on the street painting consistent with thin tire marks,” The Publica <a href="https://www.thepublica.com/lime-scooters-will-now-shut-down-if-driven-over-pride-flag-crosswalk-in-spokane-wa/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. “The alleged vandalism, which was claimed by many to be motivated by homophobia, resulted in an outpouring of condemnation from Spokane’s LGBT community and those purporting to be LGBT allies.”
A local journalist complained he had seen other teenagers running over the pride mural crosswalk while he was reporting. He state, “A group of five to six kids just started doing donuts and creating skid marks on the Pride Mural.” He said they were also doing wheelies.
As we all know, there are no skid marks anywhere in America on roads. None.
If you don&#8217;t want people to drive on some image, don’t put it on the road. It feels like you&#8217;re daring people.
This is not the first time this has happened. In February, a 19-year-old was arrested after performing burnouts with his truck on a Pride crosswalk in Delray Beach, Florida. He was charged with felony criminal mischief.
This is so tiresome. Not to mention the fact that the media ignore cases where pro-life centers get burned down.
But step on a Pride Progress flag on the sidewalk and they’ll arrest you.

Palm Springs Becomes a Top CA Destination

Thou Must Not Put Skid Marks On The Pride Flag

LGBTQ

Pride Flag

Pride Month

Teenagers

Washington

On Thursday, Joe Biden went to Normandy on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, the largest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare, and attempted to channel Ronald Reagan. 
Ronald Reagan was there for the 40th anniversary of D-Day and gave an incredibly famous and wonderful speech about the boys of Pointe du Hoc and the rest of that fateful day. 
Joe Biden showed up and proceeded to possibly poop, which is under dispute. The White House suggested that the president did not, in fact, poop.
But the fact that it&#8217;s an open question is not ideal for the president of the United States, who has now been the subject of a giant <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/joe-biden-age-election-2024-8ee15246" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wall Street Journal</a> piece pointing out the obvious to all of us, which is that the president is no longer functional. 
The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/us/politics/biden-reagan-normandy-dday-speech.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>:
<blockquote>The aging American president facing a re-election campaign came to the Normandy coast of France to pay tribute to the daring Army Rangers who scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, offer a paean to democracy for which they sacrificed and perhaps even wrap himself a little bit in their reflected glory.
That was 1984, and the president was Ronald Reagan, who delivered an ode to heroism and patriotism that would become one of the most iconic moments of his presidency. Forty years later, another aging president facing re-election plans to return to the same spot Friday to honor the same heroes and effectively align himself with Mr. Reagan’s legacy of leadership against tyranny.</blockquote>
Good luck to Joe Biden if he hoped to mirror the performance of Ronald Reagan in 1984 in Normandy. In 1984, Reagan was 73-years-old, younger than both of the major party candidates this year. Biden is currently 81 and no longer in control of his faculties. 
The viral clips that were going around social media yesterday were not the clips of Biden appearing stalwart in defense of democracy. They were clips of the president doddering around, guided by his handlers, led by the hand by Dr. Jill (who&#8217;s going to need a medical degree before all of this is over, given the way that Biden is medically slipping).
Biden arrived at Omaha Beach and staggered around in his moon shoes. They have him in these moon shoes because they are afraid he is going to trip or keel over.
He got out of the car, didn’t know where to go, and stood there looking bewildered, his mouth slack-jawed. Then, he went on stage with the other world leaders, all of whom are probably half his age. He had this particularly odd moment in which he was not sure whether to sit down on a chair or not to sit down on a chair — though nobody else seemed confused. Everyone else was standing. You might feel for Dr. Jill, except for the fact that she&#8217;s the one who&#8217;s keeping him in power and has ambitions of her own.
Biden had to be led away, tottered away, by Dr. Jill before everyone else.
All the rest of the world leaders greeted all of the members of the Greatest Generation.
But Biden was gone. During the ceremony, he appeared to be lost; at times, he appeared to have his eyes closed, which has become a common occurrence for him. The Wall Street Journal reported that during meetings, it&#8217;s not clear whether he&#8217;s fallen asleep or not.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1981-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
Why does any of this matter? It matters because this is a president who clearly is not in command. So the question becomes, who is in command?
The answer is: whoever&#8217;s in command that day. There is no one consistent answer. It is not as though there&#8217;s a shadow president like Barack Obama sitting in the background manipulating all the strings. At least then you would get a bad but coherent policy from Biden.
But we are getting an extraordinary level of volatility and eccentricity in Biden&#8217;s policymaking, which makes it feel as though he&#8217;s ping-ponging off the walls, because he is. That is not unusual in a case when you have somebody who&#8217;s approaching senility; on some days, they are better than on others.
Even his greatest allies, people who perform acts of Stormy-Daniels-level sycophancy upon Biden, are starting to make jokes about the fact he does not appear to be in control of himself.
Jimmy Kimmel, lackey par excellence to the Biden administration, mocked Biden descending stairs. That&#8217;s always a great look, when even the people who love you the most are making fun of the fact you might fall down the stairs at any moment.
Democrats are fighting off the perception that this president is not only incompetent at his job, but that he&#8217;s just not with it by ratcheting up the rhetoric against Donald Trump. That’s because if they can make the election a referendum on Trump, then Trump has some trouble. If the election is a referendum on Joe Biden, the current president of the United States, then Biden has some trouble, which is why the chief goal of the Trump campaign should be to stay out of the line of fire.
Quiet Trump is the best Trump. If Trump were to actually pursue Biden’s strategy from 2020 by going into a basement and staying there until November, Trump would be president of the United States again. 
It is the job of Democrats to pull the panic alarm and push the panic button with regard to Trump, so they are really ratcheting it up.
On Thursday, Hillary Clinton issued what is one of the most egregious tweets I&#8217;ve ever seen in my life. She <a href="https://x.com/HillaryClinton/status/1798688498784079878" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>, “Eighty years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy. This November, all we have to do is vote.”
According to Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump is Hitler. And when you vote against Donald Trump, that is the same as you storming the beaches of Normandy. It’s the same as when your great-grandfather stormed the beaches of Normandy while his friends got killed by mortars.
There are a couple of reasons this is insulting: The idea that voting is in any way equivalent to military service is absurd. The idea that Trump is orange Hitler is absurd; we know he isn&#8217;t. He was president of the United States already.
Mitch Landrieu, who&#8217;s a senior advisor in infrastructure coordination for the Biden administration, <a href="https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2024/06/07/did-biden-surrogate-mitch-landrieu-have-the-worst-take-on-what-commemorating-d-day-is-all-about-n2640143" target="_blank" rel="noopener">echoed</a>, “I feel very, very confident that this is going to be a very hard fought race &#8230; but when the chips are down, the American people are going to show up just like those kids did, 80 years ago.”
“Just like the kids did 80 years ago?” As though storming off of an amphibious landing craft onto a beach marked by machine gunfire is the same as voting for the old man who may have actually pooped on himself at Normandy?
You have the Biden administration saying Trump is the incipient tyrant and voting against him is like storming the beaches of Normandy. 
That’s despicable.

D-Day 80th Anniversary Ceremony At Normandy American Ceremony

Poopin’ Joe

Poopin' Joe

France

Jill Biden

Normandy

A couple years ago, I produced a few segments in which I answered viewers’ questions about dating. Rightly so; it’s a hot-button topic. I have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-do-you-know-theyre-the-one-candace-owens-answers-questions-on-dating" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said it before</a> and I will say it again: Dating does not have to be as difficult as people make it out to be if you know what you are looking for in a significant other. So, I am revisiting some questions I have received over time to answer and give my thoughts.
<h4>Q: What are your thoughts on saving kissing for marriage?</h4>
My husband and I did not kiss until after we were engaged; however, that was mainly because of logistics and how quickly we got engaged. I don’t think kissing before marriage is a problem, and I don’t think it’s wrong to kiss someone before you get married. Ultimately, I would never expect someone to save kissing for marriage.
<h4>Q: What are your suggestions for a relationship in a rut with a lot of frustrations?</h4>
Some of the greatest words of wisdom I ever heard about being in a relationship was: When you’re dating someone, that is as good as it’s ever going to get. Many people believe if your relationship gets in a rut, marriage will be the solution to get out of that rut. They think <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/an-important-message-to-women-everywhere" target="_blank" rel="noopener">once you get married</a> and once you have children, the relationship will magically turn into “happily ever after.” (Women in particular hold this perspective, thinking that as soon as they get the ring, things will get better.) But that’s just not true. When you’re dating, you experience an emotional high, the relationship is fairly smooth, and you’re genuinely excited. If you start to see that taper off before you’re married, pay attention to those signs. You may not have found the person you’re meant to do life with.
<h4><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9N_e6L7Xk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace&#8217;s full segment on dating</a></h4>
<h4>Q: As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-vulnerability-that-will-plague-generation-tiktoks-future">a Gen Zer</a>, I wonder where I can find masculine men?</h4>
This problem is in large part due to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-is-a-story-all-about-how-the-fresh-prince-did-not-become-a-king" target="_blank" rel="noopener">culture telling men</a> to be more effeminate — and I’m sure that’s super frustrating. <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/products/make-men-manly-again-t-shirt?_pos=1&amp;_sid=4ee384564&amp;_ss=r" target="_blank" rel="noopener">(Make men manly again.)</a> But what you will find is that the more effeminate men live in city bubbles, but when you move into the rest of America, you will run into farmers, rangers, men who are working with their hands, and masculine men. Masculine men do exist.
<h4>Q: Do you keep in touch with or follow any exes?</h4>
Absolutely not. I am incredibly conservative when it comes to this issue. If you are in a relationship with another man, it’s super disrespectful — especially in a marriage — to maintain a relationship with a previous partner. I have never gone along with the “it used to be more but now we’re just friends” bit either. This is a definite no for me.
<h4>Q: I seem to be more mature than guys my age which makes it hard to date and find someone who will commit. Any tips?</h4>
This is fairly common. Men take a bit longer to mature than women, but, on average, they seem to mature somewhere in their mid-twenties. There are always exceptions, but as a general rule, younger men just tend to be a little more immature than younger women. There are likely some biological aspects to this because, for example, women likely mature quicker because we have to carry children on a biological clock’s dictations. But even little girls like playing with dolls while little boys like to rough house. Men do, however, eventually grow into being ready to commit and in a serious relationship.
<h4>Q: What is the best place to meet <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/three-new-years-resolutions-for-women-on-the-internet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">quality women</a> who aren’t fickle?</h4>
This answer is short and simple: church.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/candace" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
<h4>Q: I have been with the same man for eight years. I called off our engagement because he’s still not ready, but we can’t seem to leave each other. Advice?</h4>
Leave. I knew two girls who went through a similar situation (relationships of about ten years each), and they both ended poorly. These women gave these men their best years. Meanwhile, men tend to age like fine wine — plus, they don’t have to worry so much about their reproductive vitality. That’s not the case for women. So, if you are giving someone years to make a decision and his decision is still “I don’t want to make a decision,” you are, unfortunately, a placeholder. He will likely meet another girl, get engaged quickly, and you will be left wondering what happened to the last decade of your life. I feel so terrible for women who have gone through this. But in both cases with the two women I knew, they knew they should have left earlier, but they didn’t muster the strength to do it. Have the strength to do it. Leave. Don’t be someone else’s placeholder.
<h4>Q: There is a girl I like, but I’m nervous to ask her on a date. How should I ask?</h4>
Just ask her. The worst thing that can happen is that she says no. And while you’ll have a bruised ego for a couple of days, you will have done something manly in the long run. Girls are missing men asking them on dates — men who hold doors and have the confidence to ask women on dates rather than <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/why-everyone-hates-online-dating" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hiding behind apps</a> of Instagram DMs. Ask her to grab lunch or see a movie. If she says no, you’ll move on and find someone else to ask out.
<h4>Q: What is a good at-home date night idea?</h4>
I think cooking together is fun. My husband is also a good cook, so we enjoy doing that together. We also love to watch shows together. Granted, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kids-entertainment-out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new" target="_blank" rel="noopener">we have children</a> so we stay in more these days, but we love a good at-home dinner-date night.

Wide shot with copy space of couple sharing a dessert in cafe

A Q&A On Dating: Stop Making It So Difficult

Candace Owens

Dating

Gen Z

Marriage

Relationships

Social Issues

Women

We never quite know who the Biden administration is going to host at an event, but this year, Kamala Harris invited students from HBCU schools to the White House for a day of HBCU Triumph. At this “black excellence event,” the White House welcomed people they think embody black excellence. Apparently, they are of the belief that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/this-is-trash-who-is-pushing-this-on-black-culture-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sexyy Red</a> is one of those people since they played her song “SkeeYee” during the event for all the guests.
But is it black excellence to gather a number of students from HBCU schools and basically cater to them to let them know that you know the kind of music they listen to by playing Sexyy Red? Is that actually black excellence? Or, is that government excellence? I believe it is the latter. This is a prime example of the government playing an almost perfect hand when it comes to black America, as it has destroyed our families over the last half century.
Black Americans were outpacing white Americans in the 1950s under Jim Crow in terms of economic growth, and then, the government got involved. Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act — even though he was an avowed racist — because he was forced to. With all the unrest and rioting that was going on in the nation following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he had to sign the Civil Rights Act to calm America. Then, as soon as the Act was signed, he implemented the welfare system with the Great Society Act, saying he knew he would have black Americans voting Democrat for the next 200 years. He has basically been right.
Black Americans continue to think Democrats are their friends and saviors, as witnessed by their visit to the White House when they put on music — trash music — that is the intentional disintegration of the black soul. They are convincing black Americans that this is their culture, when, actually, it is the corrosion of black culture. In today’s society, Sexyy Red is “success” for Democrats — with all the twerking that comes with that music. Just a short time ago, we were listening to bands like The Temptations and singers like Lauryn Hill. Perhaps there is an operation spinning in Hollywood from the people who brought us gangster rap and this sort of trash.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-298-i-m-done-being-threatened-the-michael-jackson-diddy-connection-exposed-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
It’s no secret that some black Americans don’t like me because I talk about these issues. However, I want to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/are-you-black-pilled" target="_blank" rel="noopener">make black Americans aware</a> of the fact that we have been targeted <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mass-psychosis-how-villains-become-heroes-in-the-media" target="_blank" rel="noopener">and brainwashed</a> against our better interests. The media inevitably have much to say about anyone who has conversations with me on, basically, any matter, but especially those concerning black America.
I exposed the fraudulence surrounding the George Floyd case in my documentary “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/the-greatest-lie-ever-sold" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Greatest Lie Ever Sold</a>.” But black Americans said, “How dare you?” Yes, how dare I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/i-am-sick-and-tired-of-media-deception" target="_blank" rel="noopener">expose</a> that Black Lives Matter not only used George Floyd’s unfortunate death to steal millions of dollars, but also laundered those dollars to organizations that have absolutely nothing to do with black America. How dare I expose that BLM convinced black Americans to riot and loot their own communities so that business leaders would be forced to move out. And they weren’t the only ones who were forced out.
Thanks to BLM efforts, police were forced out of neighborhoods and locations where looting was occurring, so, obviously, no one wanted to live in those neighborhoods. Why would anyone volunteer to live in an unsafe neighborhood or set up a business in a looting zone? This then caused black people in these communities to end up even more impoverished in those circumstances. So, I refuse to kowtow to the Democratic world order that has effectively destroyed black Americans.
I refused to cover up the fact that George Floyd died with enough fentanyl in his system to kill a horse, nor was I willing to act as though the full video of Floyd’s arrest showed that Floyd complied with police — when he did not. Floyd was safely put in the back of a cruiser, proclaimed he could not breathe while he was sitting in the backseat, and then asked to be put on the ground. I went on a fact-searching mission and exposed all the lies and the media propaganda arm that routinely convinces black America — and, quite honestly, all Americans now — that they are a part of a victim group.
The only victim group we are a part of is the group that is, at least to some extent, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/lifes-tough-get-a-helmet-man" target="_blank" rel="noopener">being victimized</a> by the media. Without question, we are constantly being lied to so that we never look at or question who the people are who are actually controlling us.

Vice President Kamala Harris Attends Get Out The Vote HBCU Event In South Carolina

What Is Black Excellence?

Black Lives Matter

Blacks

Greatest Lie Ever Sold

Rap Music

A publication (which will remain nameless) that used to cover me quite frequently recently and abruptly stopped. After looking into it, I found out that there had effectively been a ban put on my name — an internal embargo of sorts. Of course, I was curious as to why? What exactly did I do to, all of a sudden, deserve a ban? As I came to find out, they claim that I am a “Christian nationalist.”
Now, I am a proud Christian, but I thought it was a bit strange that a media hit was put on me for the sole reason of being a Christian — because my show is not overtly Christian. There would be nothing wrong with that, but we&#8217;re not exactly praying on the show (though maybe we should be, considering everything that&#8217;s happening in society).
Regardless, I’m not sure I have any problem with either of those terms. I definitely consider myself to be a nationalist, and I am also a Christian. However, they’re saying it in a much more sinister way. If you’re paying attention, “Christian nationalist” is everywhere as of late. Suddenly, Christianity is being smeared, libeled, and attacked. It is being presented in the same vein as white supremacy.
In February alone, major media outlets published numerous headlines about Christian nationalism. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-is-christian-nationalism-and-why-it-raises-concerns-about-threats-to-democracy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PBS</a> published “What is Christian nationalism and why it raises concerns about threats to democracy,” <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/02/28/poll-christian-nationalism-americans-reject" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Axios</a> published “Poll: Most Americans cool to Christian nationalism as its influence grows” (apparently we’re now conducting polls and saying Christian nationalism is influential), <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/02/28/1234304058/christian-nationalism-survey#:~:text=Christian%20nationalism's%20support%20is%20strongest%20in%20rural%20states%20A%20new,as%20Alabama%20and%20West%20Virginia." target="_blank" rel="noopener">NPR</a> published “Christian nationalism’ support is strongest in rural, conservative states,” and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/opinion/christian-nationalism.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Times</a> published “Four Ways of Looking at Christian Nationalism.”
Those all came out within just the last month.
This topic is also getting the Hollywood spin, so, now, it will be pumped through our television screens. After all, once the propaganda goes out, it must get the Hollywood treatment. Apparently, the man for that job is Rob Reiner. Reiner is directing a new documentary titled “God and Country,” which puts Christian nationalism in America under the spotlight. On his press tour, one of his stops was CNN, and in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2024/01/30/exp-amanpour-rob-reiner-god--country-intw-013001pseg2-cnni-world.cnn" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his interview</a>, Christiane Amanpour asked Reiner why he selected Christian nationalism as his next film topic. He responded saying that over time, he has come to see how powerful and well-organized the movement has become: “I then realized that this [movement] has taken root far more and far more deeply than I had ever thought.” Reiner believes Christian nationalism is deeply embedded in society — and believes that’s a problem.
Now, I’m sure when you consider the myriad of issues facing our country today, what you’re really concerned about is that there might be some Christians who are also in love with our country. They are Christian nationalists. When you see drug dealers, illegal immigrants, crime rates, gang violence, I’m sure you’re thinking, it’s the Christians we should be afraid of. It’s an absurd idea.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-296-holy-smokes-the-media-just-put-a-hit-on-me" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
I believe this is a further attempt to divide and brainwash Christians, which is something that has gone on for decades.
Once upon a time, the Bible was taught in classrooms all across the United States, and teachers and students prayed in school. Then lawsuits were filed and all that went away, beginning in the 1960s. Since then, there has been a concerted effort to divide Christians, to make them feel embarrassed about their religion. That push just continues with more force; that is exactly what is happening again with the topic of Christian nationalism.
Hollywood is notorious for supporting initiatives like this. Believe it or not, they’re even going after Justin Bieber. Bieber, as we all know, was young and innocent when he came onto the scene, so he had much potential to be a victim of evil in the industry. Granted, he went through an intense period of partying, but in 2018, he married Hailey Baldwin — and his world completely changed. He dropped the party-boy reputation, changed his ways, and started attending church. This was and still is not the kind of story that usually circulates in Hollywood.
Hollywood has never been a fan of Christianity, so church-going people in the industry simply cannot be allowed. That makes Justin’s pastor’s post on the internet no surprise. Victor Marx took to social media to make a somewhat unusual, though understandable, request, asking for Christians to pray for wisdom and protection for Justin and Hailey, for them to draw close to the Lord, because people in the limelight often face “spiritual warfare.” Hailey’s dad, Stephen, shared the post which caused more questions in the comments. He has since deleted the post, and though we don’t know more details, it is obvious that there is some kind of spiritual battle happening.
It seems that every time we get a glimpse of truth, forces unite and more evil occurs. I cannot imagine the pressure Justin is facing, and I am sure that the evil he has experienced and witnessed in the industry is weighing heavier and heavier on his heart, especially since he has strengthened his relationship with God over the years.
So, to any person going through this type of conflict, know that Christians will stand by you if and when you are ready to share the truth. We will be there with you. We will pray for you — and the entire world. Plus, people who are not Christians will thank you, even if silently, because they know that if Christians are being considered evil, something very sinister is going on.
Pay attention, pray, and encourage each other. If we can unite in our faith, we can conquer more evil together than we can alone.

Small wooden cross and flag of USA. God save America

The Latest Attack On Christians: Christian Nationalism

Christians

Justin Bieber

Leftists

Nationalism

Rob Reiner

From 2015 to 2016, JoJo Siwa was on the show “Dance Moms” alongside her mother, Jessalynn Siwa. While she may not have been the best dancer, viewers always wanted to see more of her on screen. She has a big, bubbly personality and was always genuinely fun to watch. After two seasons on the show, she started a YouTube channel called “It’s JoJo Siwa,” which was a kids’ show—and kids loved her. It positively exploded. She gained a huge following and even created music for kids thereafter.
In January 2020, Siwa came out as a lesbian. Now, she is back in the news with a new podcast — “JoJo Siwa Now” — and a big announcement: She wants kids.
<div id="attachment_703899" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-703899" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-703899" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/MixCollage-29-Feb-2024-01-46-PM-2285-864x576.jpg" alt="WESTWOOD, CA - NOVEMBER 12: Dancer Joelle Joanie 'JoJo' Siwa attends the premiere of Columbia Pictures' 'The Star' at Regency Village Theatre on November 12, 2017 in Westwood, California. (Photo by Barry King/Getty Images)BURBANK, CALIFORNIA: (FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY) In this image released on June 15, JoJo Siwa poses for a photo backstage during iHeartRadio Can't Cancel Pride at iHeartRadio Theater on April 24, 2023 in Burbank, California. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/MixCollage-29-Feb-2024-01-46-PM-2285-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/MixCollage-29-Feb-2024-01-46-PM-2285-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/MixCollage-29-Feb-2024-01-46-PM-2285-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/MixCollage-29-Feb-2024-01-46-PM-2285-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/MixCollage-29-Feb-2024-01-46-PM-2285-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/MixCollage-29-Feb-2024-01-46-PM-2285-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/MixCollage-29-Feb-2024-01-46-PM-2285-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />[L] Photo by Barry King/Getty Images. [R] Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images for iHeartRadio</div>I have said previously that I do not believe Siwa is a lesbian, which she heard about and didn’t like. Nevertheless, I stand by it. There are, obviously, lesbians who grow up to marry women. The women I know who have chosen this route are often women who have been abused by men in some way, be it emotional or physical. They almost experience a repulsion of men for the rest of their lives. Ellen DeGeneres has talked about the sexual abuse she experienced as a child, and she has been married to a woman for many years now.
But Siwa’s story? I have seen this story and so have you: Young girls become famous and want to break away from the child-like persona that made them famous — and they go through “a phase.” Call it a coming-of-age phase, per se. These girls are the Cyndi-Lauper-type girls who “just want to have fun.” They make out with other girls at a high school or college party, but they are not really lesbians. They grow up and out of that phase. They go on to marry a man and have children.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-291-shocking-us-airmen-sets-himself-on-fire-member-exclusive">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
Take, for instance, Demi Lovato, who announced she was a lesbian, then non-binary, then back to being a woman. She is now an engaged woman. Miley Cyrus was also a temporary lesbian. She said she came out to her mom when she was younger, then she came out as a lesbian after her marriage failed with Liam. Now, she is dating a man again, a drummer who came with her to the Grammys.
<div id="attachment_703913" style="width: 752px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-703913" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-703913" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1986406892-742x576.jpg" alt="LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 04: Miley Cyrus accepts the &quot;Best Pop Solo Performance&quot; Award for &quot;Flowers&quot; onstage during the 66th GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 04, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)" width="742" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1986406892-742x576.jpg 742w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1986406892-300x233.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1986406892-768x596.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1986406892.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 742px) 100vw, 742px" />Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy</div>
 And, of course, who could forget Lindsey Lohan? She was dating Samantha Ronson for a while, another child actress who became a lesbian. But, Lohan grew up, got married, and just had a child.
<div id="attachment_703915" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-703915" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-703915" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1918716092-864x576.jpg" alt="NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JANUARY 08: Lindsay Lohan attends the &quot;Mean Girls&quot; New York premiere at AMC Lincoln Square Theater on January 08, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/WireImage)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1918716092-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1918716092-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1918716092-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1918716092.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />John Lamparski/WireImage</div>
So why does any of this matter? It matters because it impacts our children and because it’s relevant to the next generation. This type of behavior becomes dangerous. These women are famous and because their phase is platformed, it is treated as something more than just a phase.
JoJo Siwa has recently discussed on her podcast what coming out to her mother was like. She says she was 12-years-old. That’s right: 12-years-old. Do we assign meaning to anything that a 12-year-old says? Girls’ emotions are all over the place around that age when they are going through puberty; that is why people often say girls are much more difficult than boys when they are teenagers. Factually, a 12-year-old’s brain simply is not developed. In fact, it’s not developed until age 25.
Then, in regards to the conversation between Siwa and her mom, Siwa says, “My mom actually made my coming out to her super easy.” And when “everyone kinda caught a vibe” between her and a girl who ended up becoming her first girlfriend, her mom asked her, “Do you like her as a friend or as more than a friend?” All the while, Siwa has lots of children’s eyes watching her every move, hanging on her every word. They’re the kids who fell in love with her on YouTube, so they’re still listening to her while she makes her lesbian journey sound fun and easy.
Yet many lesbians’ journeys have been far from fun and easy. The highest domestic violence statistics exist amongst the lesbian community, with 43.8% of lesbian women and 61.1% of bisexual women having experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. Those are facts, and they are facts that JoJo Siwa is not considering while she goes through what I perceive to plausibly be a phase in her life.
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Plus, biologically speaking, lesbians cannot naturally have children. But on her podcast, she says she is looking for someone who is ready to have kids because she is “very near ready.” Siwa says, “That is something that I care very, very much about.” Now, I love that she is talking about wanting to have children and making that aspirational because that is actually not common in Hollywood whatsoever. However, she is clearly not considering the implications of being a lesbian and having children. To have children, she would have to go through IVF, a tremendously expensive, emotional, and painful process. The reality of IVF is not flippant; it is severe. Further, it is not guaranteed.
JoJo Siwa may just be wanting to separate herself from the big bow phase, but the lesbian phase may be one she looks back on with regret. Perhaps she will look to some of the women who have lived lives similar to hers to learn from where they are now because her current decisions are in the public consciousness. She is influencing the children who are following her by glamorizing these decisions, even if unintentionally so.

Snap Partner Summit 2023

Child Role Models: How Dangerous Behavior Is Influencing The Next Generation 

Celebrities

Demi Lovato

Ellen Degeneres

JoJo Siwa

Miley Cyrus

I have become fascinated with the Ruby Franke case. I have not publicly discussed the case because when the story broke months ago, I was not convinced that more commentary would be beneficial to add to the discussion, namely because this story was quite dark. However, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MKNgVX6u34">the statement</a> she gave in her recent court appearance was unexpected.
A Utah-based family, the Frankes became quite popular several years ago via their “8 Passengers” YouTube channel that had over two million subscribers. They fit into the YouTuber families who look like the perfect family — well-dressed, church-going (Mormon), wife, husband, six children. But by June 2020, some of those subscribers started to take note of some strange happenings in the family. Followers began criticizing Ruby Franke’s punishing techniques, they noticed the degree to which she allowed her children to prank one another, and then they realized one of her children was sleeping in a beanbag.
Viewers’ concerns escalated, and some reached out to the local Children Protection Services and went so far as to begin a petition that forcing a child to sleep in a beanbag was too harsh of a punishment. But when Franke was asked about it, she simply said the kid loved it. In 2021, Ruby and Kevin, her husband, began going to counseling with Jodie Hildebrant, a business partner who became her mentor and counselor to her children.
In August of 2022, Franke faced more criticism, this time over a lunch debacle. Her six-year-old daughter had packed a lunch but forgot it. Franke refused to take the lunch to her daughter and let her eat — a punishment obviously way too harsh for a six-year-old.
Police visited the home a few times, but it was not until August of last year when everything exploded. Franke and Hildebrant were arrested after Franke’s 12-year-old son escaped from Hildebrant’s house, ran to a neighbor, and called 911. The boy was entirely malnourished, his limbs had been duct taped, and he had visible injuries.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/beyonce-fans-don-t-come-for-me-my-review-of-her-country-music-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
Hildebrant had allegedly become a counselor to the children; however, the son later told investigators that Hildebrant put cayenne pepper and honey on wounds he had from being tied with a rope. When the Department of Public Safety arrived at the residence, they found another child, her daughter, in comparable condition who had been subjected to the same mistreatment and abuse. As more details unfolded, more abuse came to light. The mother was apparently telling her children they were possessed, and the children believed their mom. Franke told her daughter that to be absolved from possession, she must be subjected to such treatment.
This entire situation is absolutely infuriating. It involves children. Precious, innocent children. It also involves a parent with a warped brain.
This week, Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrant were sentenced to 30 years in prison — and Franke’s not fighting it. That’s what has made this case so interesting. Typically, lawyers work to get a sentence reduced, but part of the reason this court case has moved so quickly is because she is not fighting the charges. Franke gave a rather surprising <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MKNgVX6u34">statement in front of the court</a> — surprising in that it is uncommon — saying she believes she deserves to go to prison for what she has done.
In her statement, she explains how she got to her delusional way of living, coming to believe the church was against her, the government was against her, and in order to “save” her children, she must inflict these punishments on them. She was working with an exceptionally dark and disturbed woman, Hildebrant, but Franke says it was her own choice to believe what she heard. She apologizes to her husband, thanks the police officers, addresses her parents with sincerity, and pleads to God, saying her greatest desire is to one day stand in God’s courts, spotless and confident. She ends by confirming she knows this is “a necessary step” to learn until she is “ready to re-enter as a contributing member of our beautiful society.”
What Ruby Franke did is horrible. What her children have experienced is an absolute tragedy. Even with cases such as these, we are conditioned to watch people commit atrocious crimes and then explain why we should understand they committed them.
Everyone looks for an excuse and for understanding. But not Franke. Her response is surprising because people don’t take accountability anymore. They do not admit wrongdoing. They do not ask for healing, own their faults, and admit they deserve every single thing thrown at them.
To be clear, regardless of her statement, the victims are the children and that fact can never be removed. But it is a response worth discussing. What an interesting conclusion — and one we never see.
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Screen-Shot-2024-02-20-at-6.36.08-PM

What To Make Of Ruby Franke

Child Abuse

Court

Parenting

Social Media

Utah

YouTube

Keke Palmer and Darius Jackson’s relationship has been in the news since July 2023. It resurfaced in November of last year with more information, and now, in February 2024, there are still more rumblings coming from these two. My assessment is and always has been that this was an incredibly toxic relationship. But regardless of its toxicity, there are some actions that will never be acceptable in any relationship.
The private life of Palmer and Jackson started to become public in July 2023 when Palmer went to a concert in Las Vegas and was pulled on stage to dance with Usher. Her then-boyfriend, Jackson, took to X to declare his disapproval of her provocative behavior and revealing outfit. By this point, the two already shared a child, and she had given birth just a few months prior.
<div id="attachment_697009" style="width: 371px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-697009" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-697009" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/Usher-stage.png" alt="Screenshot. X/Twitter." width="361" height="512" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/Usher-stage.png 361w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/Usher-stage-212x300.png 212w" sizes="(max-width: 361px) 100vw, 361px" />Screenshot. X/Twitter.</div>
Then, in November, a month after separating, Palmer released shocking surveillance camera footage of who appears to be her ex, Jackson, beating her in her own home. At the time of the footage release, she was seeking a restraining order and full custody of their then eight-month-old son. Jackson reportedly trespassed into Palmer’s home without her knowledge nor her consent. This is still working its way through the court process, but the behavior she reported of him is beyond despicable.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/meek-mill-tweets-me-is-black-america-finally-waking-up-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
She shared stills of the footage from her filings in court at the time. In them, Jackson first looks to be forcing her in a certain direction against her will, then has his hand in the air as she loses her balance and falls over the couch, putting her hands up in a defenseless position.
<div id="attachment_697013" style="width: 508px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-697013" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-697013" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-1.png" alt="Screenshot." width="498" height="512" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-1.png 498w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-1-292x300.png 292w" sizes="(max-width: 498px) 100vw, 498px" />Screenshot.</div>
<div id="attachment_697017" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-697017" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-697017" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-2.png" alt="Screenshot." width="512" height="505" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-2.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-2-300x296.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot.</div>
<div id="attachment_697021" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-697021" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-697021" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-3.png" alt="Screenshot." width="512" height="279" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-3.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-3-300x163.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot.</div>
In the court <a href="https://www.today.com/parents/keke-palmer-custody-son-darius-jackson-rcna124585" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filings</a>, she states, “The abuse during our relationship was not just physical, but emotional and manipulative. Darius would ‘love bomb’ me and make me feel like I was the most important woman in the world, only to get extremely distant and cold over a perceived insult to him.” Palmer has repeated that Jackson was very jealous throughout their entire relationship. While this was obviously an incredibly toxic relationship, this abuse was certainly not Keke Palmer’s fault. 
Then, at the beginning of this month, Jackson took to X again, this time, with a message to all the dads who have given up custody: 
<div id="attachment_697023" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-697023" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-697023" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/Darius-4.png" alt="Screenshot. X/Twitter." width="512" height="414" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/Darius-4.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/Darius-4-300x243.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot. X/Twitter.</div>
In another post, he continued, giving advice to make sure God is the center of your relationship:
<div id="attachment_697029" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-697029" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-697029" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-5.png" alt="Screenshot. X/Twitter." width="512" height="340" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-5.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/House-5-300x199.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot. X/Twitter.</div>
If you separated these words from the situation he has currently found himself in — having beaten Keke Palmer — I would affirm that this is amazing advice. But you do not get to suddenly become a pastor after we have all seen evidence of horrific footage of you. Even in households of atheists, men know not to put their hands on women. To claim you were beating your significant other because you were not following the Good Book and the Lord? There is no excuse — ever. Let’s not hide behind God. Let’s not turn into a pastor who suddenly has sage words for other men.
I am a firm believer that it is important to weigh in when something goes against your values — so it is important to state this is wrong. This is a situation that should be discussed, not because anyone is prying into the private lives of people (this is information that has been made public), but because it’s important to take a moral position with actual values. This situation includes two people who clearly did not respect each other, nor did they understand who the other was. Toxicity seeped into their relationship, and they never should have been matched in the first place. But no woman should ever go through this, and no woman should suffer abuse. It is never the fault of any person when they are abused.
There is never a circumstance when it is acceptable for a man to put his hands on a woman. Never. Only a coward would ever do that.

2023 Atlanta Film Festival – “Big Boss” Closing Night Screening

An Unjustifiable Act In Any Relationship

Domestic Violence

Hollywood

Young women who were promised the feminist dream are now in the workforce. Growing up, they were told, “You can be just like men. Male parity is what we want! We want to work 40 hours a week. You are going to love it.” But now, at not-so-long last, the women who grew up hearing these platitudes are finding out that the feminist glory, as it was made out to be, is not all that glorious — and they aren’t actually loving it. Gez Z women in particular have found they aren’t making much money, they’re working a lot of hours, and they don’t have any time for themselves.
I’ve been extensively discussing <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-vulnerability-that-will-plague-generation-tiktoks-future">the realization Gen Z</a> is coming to, and in yet another TikTok, this topic came to my attention once again. Eliza (<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@supposedlyasystem">@supposedlyasystem</a>) has recently shared her feelings with the Internet (because that’s what you’re supposed to do on social media these days), and she has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/three-new-years-resolutions-for-women-on-the-internet">trauma dumped</a> about having to work 40 hours a week while making very little money. She carries on with this monologue for right at two minutes while crying as she does so. In her TikTok, she professes:
<blockquote>Why is it that I have to work 40 hours a week just so I can have a place to live? … I work 40 hours a week so I can have a two-bedroom apartment and an extra $300 a month. … So not only do I not have any extra money, but just working makes me so exhausted that I don’t have time either. Like, I get off work at 5:30, I come home and I am just so tired. I’m so tired… I don’t want to do that anymore, right? I don’t care how poor and miserable I would have to be, but I literally can’t have a place to live without this. You know, like, I don’t know what to do. I’m not made for this. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
She doesn&#39;t have the time, energy, or cash to enjoy her life outside of work <a href="https://t.co/9hFWMnngho">pic.twitter.com/9hFWMnngho</a>
&mdash; wilder😎🇺🇸 (@wilderpatriot) <a href="https://twitter.com/wilderpatriot/status/1752894688388943908?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 1, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
A lot of people have made fun of her for this video, but Eliza isn’t the only Gen Zer who has expressed these exact feelings — so I think we should answer her question. She is asking, why? Why is this her circumstance? Well, the answer, sweetheart, is that the big, bold, bad feminists who came before you insisted that women could be just like men.
Women are obviously not just like men; biologically, men are wired differently. We are symbiotic with men; however, our roles in life are not meant to be the same. But feminists came along and brainwashed people into believing women were no different than men and could, in fact, be just like them: Take birth control and you won’t get pregnant! they said. Go to work and be like the men! they proclaimed. Work alongside your male counterparts.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/media-meltdown-tucker-carlson-is-with-vladimir-putin-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
Fast forward to 2024 and women are finally realizing that perhaps Mother Nature had some things right. Despite this dream of freedom they were sold, women are actually kind of miserable living this “dream.” Maybe, just maybe, the ability to birth children alongside the inclination of knowing how to raise them might be a more natural route for women. I, for example, know what to do with my children in a way that does not come as naturally to my husband. Caring for children, especially as infants, does not come naturally to men in the way it does to women. Men are biologically predisposed to do the same job day in and day out, whereas women innately know how to manage a household. They can multitask while caring for a screaming child because we are designed in that way with that capability.
Unfortunately, women are still not yet willing to let go of the feminist narrative — a narrative that is not making women happy today. This “dream” may help pay the bare minimum bills, but before the explosion of second-wave feminism, the young women who are now finding it difficult to keep up a 40-hour work week likely would have, instead, found a partner, gotten married, and had kids. The husband would have made enough to support the household because women were not yet in the labor force contributing to supporting an entire family. That was a different existence in a different world. But the feminists said that was a prison.
If you ask me, quite frankly, women were happier. My grandmother, who stayed home and raised her kids, wasn’t crying every day about the stresses of raising children. She made dinner every night, managed the household, and cared for her family — all of which made her whole. When I spend the entire day with my three children, I am exhausted but deeply rewarded. Doing that is more rewarding than any feedback received in the climate of an office.
Is it every single woman who feels as overwhelmed as the trauma dumping Gen Zers? No, but in my view, a large majority of women are dissatisfied with their lives yet unwilling to look at the fact that it is our own fault for continuing to embrace this radical feminist movement. This movement started before we were born and while its creation is not our fault, continuing to hold onto it is. Furthermore, we shouldn’t look down on women who are recognizing this “dream” for what it actually is. We should, instead, all be heading in their direction.

Woman working from home

Recognizing The Radical Feminist Movement For What It Is

Feminism

TikTok

Work environment

The NFL has made the entire 2023 &#8211; 2024 football season about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/taylor-swift-has-the-maturity-of-a-15-year-old-girl" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Taylor Swift</a>. Meanwhile, NFL fans — actual NFL fans — are and have been understandably upset about it. All these people want to do is watch some football, but they’ve been promulgated all season with constant camera pans to Swift.
Obviously, Travis Kelce is having a tremendous season, but early in the season when Swift started making appearances at Kelce’s games, the NFL quickly realized they could make money off her. Since the media are obsessed with Swift, that inevitably meant the NFL showing her at games would get more people watching — not for the actual game but for this love story unfolding between Swift and Kelce.
So at last Sunday night’s Kansas City Chiefs playoff game, Taylor Swift was caught on camera appearing to mouth, “Go away, please.”
To this, I say: Fair.
<div id="attachment_689853" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-689853" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-689853" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1943420842-864x576.jpg" alt="ORCHARD PARK, NY - JANUARY 21: Brittany Mahomes, Jason Kelce, and Taylor Swift react during the second half of the AFC Divisional Playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium on January 21, 2024 in Orchard Park, New York. (Photo by Kathryn Riley/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1943420842-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1943420842-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1943420842-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/GettyImages-1943420842.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Kathryn Riley/Getty Images</div>
Now, this is Taylor Swift, and she is arguably the most famous woman in the world next to, maybe, the likes of Beyoncé. Therefore, the cameras are not going to go away, especially because she is dating someone in the public eye. It’s not as though she decided to date someone out of the limelight, which she could have done. But rather than date men who are private and low-profile, she tends to date men who are famous as well. Furthermore, people are obviously invested in her love story because, after all, her music centers around how she falls in and out of love. That’s how she’s been able to connect with her audience. So there is no way the cameras are just going to go away.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/oh-snap-woke-female-pilot-explodes-on-me-over-dei-policies-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
But I do feel somewhat empathetic to her. She is not asking for the cameras to be on her, and I’m sure it is embarrassing for her. She wants the focus to be on Travis Kelce. Even in my own life and in a much smaller circumstance, I have politely declined when someone has asked me for a picture while at one of my husband’s speaking events. A picture with me at one of his events is not the appropriate time.
While people are upset about the focus being taken away from Kelce and put on Swift, she, too, wants the focus to be on him. And I think this is legitimate. 
But the NFL is not going to stop.
This level of attention is the high cost of being someone that famous, but I sense it annoys her. Despite the fact she is incredibly famous, she still wants to take part in things like a normal person. She doesn’t want to have this embarrassing level of attention on her as she’s learning about and getting to know his family. She wants them to like her, just like any girlfriend would. What she does not want is for Kelce’s family to just associate her with lots of cameras and floods of people coming up to her, obsessed with every moment of her life. At the end of the day, she is just a person.
In the long run, I still do not think this relationship is going to work out. These were <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/flag-on-the-play-swift-and-kelces-annoying-relationship" target="_blank" rel="noopener">my early predictions</a>, and I stand by them. She might get a baby out of this, but I do not think they are well-matched or well-suited for each other for a slew of different reasons. But, as it pertains to the NFL, they have been particularly invasive — and they’ve used Swift just to make some money. That’s the worst part.
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AFC Championship – Kansas City Chiefs v Baltimore Ravens

The NFL Is Using Taylor Swift 

Sports

Super Bowl

As I’ve <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-george-soros-and-why-it-matters" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> before, George Soros has been on my radar for a long time because he continues to appear anti-democratic. As a quick refresher, Soros grew up in Hungary and was recruited into a Jewish council as a child. These councils were set up by Nazis to do their bidding against the Jews’ own people. Soros was assigned the job of confiscating Jewish property in his community. As an adult looking back on this time in his childhood, Soros has said the experience <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1C8lwDonvg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wasn’t difficult</a> at all. His own father has indicated George seemed to have enjoyed working with the Nazis.
As an adult, Soros is actively working to see the end of America, evidence which is namely in the form of his investments. He has funded electing liberal district attorneys into office while advocating for defunding the police. Yet he does this cunningly by giving to one cause to ensure it makes its way to another. His network of fact-checkers cover his tracks, and the CIA and FBI leave him alone. As I expected, out of his five children, his son Alexander is set to fill his father’s role.
Alexander Soros was named “successor” to George in the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/george-soros-heir-son-alexander-soros-e3c4ca13" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wall Street Journal</a> in June, just before his father turned 93 in August. George, of course, has been implementing legacy plans for how his work will continue which the Wall Street Journal documented in their first interview with Alexander, who plans to continue to fund leftist initiatives. Alexander is now overseeing “the $25 billion empire” and nonprofit Open Society Foundations (OSF). Labeled an American philanthropist and a younger son of the five Soros children, 38-year-old Alexander is also one of the World Economic Forum&#8217;s young global leaders of 2018 and beyond. 
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/is-nikki-haley-brown-enough-to-pull-the-race-card-i-investigate-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
This year, he spoke on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It was a rare opportunity to be able to hear him speak, but listening to him, I was genuinely shocked. He commented on technology, democracy, institutions, and Trump. At least, he said those words somewhere in his dialogue. He also said: 
<blockquote>I don&#8217;t think that that&#8217;s the fundamental, I don&#8217;t think technology is fundamental issue in in democracy. Democracy is messy. I mean, you know, democracy is about contestation of ideas. It&#8217;s about plurality. It&#8217;s about people having different truths, actually. Now, fundamentally, how society lives together, civically, in those in those contestations is, you know, is obviously, is obviously, you know, quite, quite, you know, quite tricky.</blockquote>
And:
<blockquote>And, you know, you know, we just heard this this point about untrustworthy people and we talked about things in the United States like, you know, like checks and balances which aren&#8217;t written anywhere but are customs. And one man, Donald Trump, literally came in and just took that, you know, took that, took that all away, you know, so, you know, so, you know, but when I see this, you know, when I look at this, you know, you know, more globally regarding, regarding, you know, regarding democracy, I also say to myself, when was this great time that everybody got along so well and, you know, things were going so, so great? </blockquote>
I was shocked at what came out of his mouth — or rather, what didn’t. I never imagined that. He is one of the individuals who get up on stage at this forum — a forum built around people who think they are the brightest people in the world and everyone else is too stupid to know how to live their own lives. So they sit down, plot, and think about the future of the world together because they don’t think anyone is smart enough to know how to take care of themselves.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="What You Need to Know About Alexander Soros" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U5b8_7MVy_8?start=96&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
To be sure, Alexander Soros is a trust fund baby. However, being a trust fund baby does not automatically equal stupidity. Coming from wealth also does not mean you did not earn some of your success. Yet Alexander Soros, the man who has just inherited billions of dollars and is going to represent the future, cannot so much as string together a sentence. Absolutely nothing he said made any sense. I have listened to the clip of his panel multiple times, but his words make no sense. They’re incoherent. I actually tried to figure out how he could say so much and absolutely nothing at all within a two minute span. Even someone on drugs or hungover could get a few sentences out. But not Alexander Soros.
This would actually be hilarious if it wasn’t for the fact that Soros has inherited billions and is going to shape the future of this country. He has the ability to do that because of the wealth that his father earned, which I emphasize because he clearly isn’t capable of earning that sort of wealth on his own. Alexander Soros is a trust fund baby — and he&#8217;s not a bright one.
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So I will leave you with some final words from Alexander Soros:
<blockquote>I mean, I think, you know, you know, the, you know, I think that we really have to be careful here. And, you know, in this nostalgia for a time, you know, for a time past, because a lot of the reactions we&#8217;re seeing in society are actually reactions to positive, positive things like, you know, like equality for women, you know, and, you know, and greater diversity, which comes with backlash.</blockquote>
Who knows what he was trying to say.

Closing Day Of The World Economic Forum (WEF) 2024

If Mumbo Jumbo Were A Person, It Would Be Alexander Soros

Alex Soros

George Soros

World Economic Forum

Last week, I gave some <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/three-new-years-resolutions-for-women-on-the-internet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New Year’s resolutions</a>, specifically for women on the internet. One of those resolutions was to stop engaging in the trend known as “trauma dumping.” Trauma dumping, as I explained, is when women record themselves as they’re going through an emotional moment — sharing, as they say, “vulnerable stories” or private instances of their lives for all the world to see. The unspoken goal of trauma dumping is to receive praise for their vulnerability.
A recent trauma-dumping offender who came to my attention is a girl named Brittany Pietsch. Pietsch worked for a company called Cloudflare, and after receiving an invite to a virtual meeting with her superiors, she realized that she was about to get laid off because of her performance. So, before the meeting, she did her hair and makeup and set up her phone to record herself being let go — again, because of her poor performance. Pietsch was a sales rep, and when you are in sales, you have to sell. She was, however, unable to do that.
But never fear! TikTok is here. Not shockingly, <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@brittanypeachhh">Pietsch has a TikTok</a>, so she took to her account to give her own spin on this situation, claiming she is actually the victim in this situation. That’s right: Though she was unable to do her job, she’s the victim. In this <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@brittanypeachhh/video/7323004085043612959">nine-minute long TikTok</a>, a Cloudflare employee tells her they have finished reviewing performance evaluations and since Pietsch did not meet expectations, they have decided to part ways with her.
Pietsch holds up her hand and says, “I’m going to stop you right there.” She explains she started in August, underwent a three-month ramp, and only worked three weeks in December before Christmas. She claims to have “the highest activity” on her team and continues by saying, “I have had three contracts out, done a really great job managing my deals up until the very end.” As it turns out, those three deals did not close. Regardless, Pietsch says she just does not think ending her time with Cloudflare makes any sense.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/did-i-betray-trump-for-vivek-ramaswamy-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
Let me stop her right there. Cloudflare letting Pietsch go actually makes plenty of sense. In her interrupting response, she basically says a lot of nothing. What activity is she referring to? She doesn’t specify. Phone calls? Because if so, that is not how she’s being evaluated. Their performance evaluations are based on the employee’s ability to close deals, which she self-proclaims that she has not done. Despite the fact she got contracts out over this three-month ramp period, she was still unable to close a deal. Then she seems to think that because it was Christmas, Cloudflare should be more forgiving. In actuality, the end of the year is when most deals tend to close. It sounds like Pietsch just wasn’t doing her job.
But, no matter. She took to TikTok to proclaim herself the victim, using the word “traumatizing” in the caption — the same video in which she checks her appearance to make sure she looks ok. This is incredibly performative; it’s not vulnerable. Yet people still affirmed Pietsch’s sentiments about herself in their responses in the comments telling her she is, indeed, the victim. Why? Well, because it’s TikTok and also because, apparently, TikTokers just love a good trauma dump.
People have at least pointed to the fact that according to her LinkedIn, Pietsch has a history of working in sales but she doesn’t seem to be able to hold a job for longer than a year. That is evidence for any employer — who isn’t in her TikTok generation — that maybe this is an issue. Maybe Pietsch, despite being concerned with her hair and makeup, actually just is not very good at her jobs.
Generation TikTok does not understand that the internet is forever. Pietsch may have racked up the the likes and views she wanted for her TikTok, but now, when a future employer does a simple Google search for her, this video is what they will find — a video of a young woman who decided to secretly record the company she worked for because they did what most companies do: They fire people who are not performing well. Inevitably, this won’t bode well for her future. Secretly recording your company? That’s not trustworthy. Not taking ownership of your work? That’s not responsible.
The question I keep returning to as we reflect on the past and simultaneously look to the future while beginning a new year is: Are we creating better human beings? Unfortunately, I think the answer is, obviously not.

Screenshot 2024-01-17 at 4.08.41 PM (2) copy

The ‘Vulnerability’ That Will Plague Generation TikTok’s Future

The 'Vulnerability' That Will Plague Generation TikTok’s Future

Ladies and gentlemen, I am back. The last time you saw or heard from me, I was 40 weeks pregnant, but I gave birth to my third child on November 20. I absolutely missed being here, and I am excited to catch up. And while it’s the New Year, I am the exact same Candace. Regardless of the year or where we are in it, I am going to stand by my values and instill them in my own household. I will never turn my back on saying what I believe to be true in my heart.
As we enter 2024, I am doing just that by setting some resolutions for women on the internet. Is it more of the “be brave” or “be stunning” lingo? Actually, no. It’s less of that. Less of all that. I absolutely think we should all set New Year’s resolutions, and since I have a platform and many women follow me (some who like me, scores who don’t), I thought I should outline the top three New Year’s resolutions that women on the internet should adopt for 2024. These are three simple goals for internet behavior.
<h4>1. Stop Posting Near-Naked Pictures On The Internet</h4>
I discussed this on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/candace" target="_blank" rel="noopener">my show</a> the first week I was back. I think everyone can do this. I believe it in my heart of hearts. For those who are deep into the addiction of putting the parts of your body Eve sewed fig leaves for all over everyone’s screens for likes and attention, take a small step. Try doing dry January. For the whole month of January, give it a go by not putting any of those pictures on the internet.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/women-please-stop-doing-this-in-2024-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h3>
One day, I am going to put together a rehabilitation center for these women. I really do believe this is becoming a mental disorder. I am exhausted opening my Instagram and seeing more of some women than I ever want to see. So if you could do us all a favor and put some clothes on this year, I think that would make a great first goal. In all honesty, I don’t think we’re going to be able to accomplish it, but I want to challenge everyone with the opportunity.
<h4>2. Stop Trauma Dumping</h4>
This trend has taken TikTok by storm. Some TikTokers are encouraging their followers to “trauma dump” which, according to them, involves skipping boring and uninteresting small talk to share dark, vulnerable stories instead. Others are crying in their posts with a tell-all, essentially living out private parts of their life very publicly. One TikToker in particular supports normalizing crying in your car when you think of books that make you feel sad.
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Though they want to “normalize trauma dumping,” I would like to do the opposite. I would actually like to ab-normalize trauma dumping. Crying in your car because you think of a book? Is that really something we need to normalize? I think not. Let’s not do that.
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-679437" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig3.png" alt="" width="290" height="512" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig3.png 290w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig3-170x300.png 170w" sizes="(max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px" /><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-679439" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig2.png" alt="" width="290" height="512" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig2.png 290w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig2-170x300.png 170w" sizes="(max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px" /><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-679441" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig1.png" alt="" width="288" height="512" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig1.png 288w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig1-169x300.png 169w" sizes="(max-width: 288px) 100vw, 288px" /></div>
Another TikToker is “living her trauma out loud” by posting what she calls a “very vulnerable video” in which she decries that her husband is getting more love from their child than she is. He comes in and comforts her while she cries and folds laundry.
What strikes me as most bothersome with this trauma dumping initiative is the camera set up. Before crying and folding laundry, the camera was set up in a perfect position to capture all this. It got her, her husband, and their child all in this moment. It’s as though they start to feel sad and think, let me set this camera up first. 
We’ve got to stop doing this. I want women to button it up this year. I want women to be more emotionally stable on the internet. Plus, I just don’t think it’s healthy to grab your phone, set it up, and cry in front of a bunch of strangers.
<h4>3. Stop Lying To Each Other</h4>
Lena Dunham comes to mind with this resolution. She is one of the great arbiters of modern feminism — the feminism that tells women they should be naked all the time and overshare to any and everyone. Here’s an example:
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Dunham is in a string bikini (how she often appears in posts), and she shows more of her body than any of us want to see. But what is more disturbing than the photo of Dunham in a string bikini are the comments people leave: fire emojis, heart eyes, and compliments telling her she’s “stunning” and “the hottest.”
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-679449" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig-comment.png" alt="" width="484" height="512" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig-comment.png 484w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/Candace-ig-comment-284x300.png 284w" sizes="(max-width: 484px) 100vw, 484px" /></div>
I don’t know why women keep doing this. I’m not sure if they’re lying because it makes them feel good — or because they feel bad for her. But I suggest doing some soul searching to figure it out because it’s just not true. It’s a lie — and we should stop lying. You are not required to comment when you see a photo of someone who looks like this on the internet. (If everyone would just follow resolution #1, that would help some with #3.) You do not have to pretend something like this post is the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen. So please don’t.
So, those are my three resolutions for women. Near-naked posts, crying in your car, lying to each other — none of these are requirements. No one is asking you to do this, so let’s stop. Let’s button it up. Let’s be honest. I think if all just met these goals, that would be stunning and that would be brave.
Here’s to 2024. Let&#8217;s give it our best shot.

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Three New Year’s Resolutions For Women On The Internet

Instagram

Some women are toxic. That’s not a fashionable statement to make, especially within the last ten years, but just because it’s not fashionable, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. In fact, if it isn’t fashionable to say, that probably means it is more likely to be true. Over the last two decades, we have moved into fully existing under a matriarchy that is destroying what is traditional and what actually makes women happy, such as getting married and building a family. Today, women who aspire to a traditional way of life are looked down upon: &#8220;Don’t you just want to be a free woman? You don’t need a man. All the single ladies!&#8221; We all know the song — after all, it’s empowering and catchy. And some women who do marry get mixed up with the wrong messaging and start to think their life would be better alone.
When people get divorced, they are essentially saying they don’t think they made the right decision when they got married. A breakup can end in heartbreak, but a divorce ends in the severing of a covenant relationship. Divorce is final. Yet it is a decision made after what should have already been considered forever and final: marriage. But every once in a while, someone ties the knot, regrets getting married, gets divorced, and then regrets untying the knot. Rather than think the marriage was the wrong choice, they realize it was the divorce that was wrong  — like Samantha Lee, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPublGccNbY" target="_blank" rel="noopener">who has spoken out</a> about how outsiders influenced her decision to divorce her husband. Lee was formerly married to R&amp;B singer Tyrese Gibson, who I used to listen to quite a bit when I was growing up. The couple married in 2017, happily welcomed a daughter in 2018, and promptly announced their divorce in December 2020. Lee and Gibson were married three years, called it quits, and then spent the next two years going through a divorce. According to both of them, it was an ugly situation. Now, after some time has passed, she has some regret about the divorce.
<div id="attachment_650881" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-650881" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-650881 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/432unnamed.png" alt="" width="512" height="347" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/432unnamed.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/432unnamed-300x203.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Credit: Screenshot of Hardly Initiated podcast.</div>
Lee has explained in interviews that it’s important to have wise counsel in your life because if she had been talking to different people at that time, she would not have made the decision to divorce him. She says, “Women, specifically, there will be moments where they’ll be like, ‘I’m ready to be done.’ … And because you don’t have a certain person in your life to check you and say, ‘Sis, what about this? What about these strengths? What about what he’s not doing?’ Those types of things. That can get you thinking about the positive aspects of this person that you  may not be thinking about when you’re upset. You’re only thinking about what you’re mad about. You’re not thinking about all the other positive aspects of this person. In those moments, you need somebody to be the person for that person.” She listened to the wrong voices and the wrong advice — and now, she regrets it.
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Likely, the women surrounding her at the time were largely liberal, spouting never-ending liberal messages from the mainstream media. They were likely in the same climate of toxic women who shout about earning their own money and living independently, climbing the career ladder, and avoiding any familial aspirations. Lee and Gibson were married for three years; they should have still been in the honeymoon phase. But rather than work on her marriage, she listened to her girlfriends who were making her feel “empowered.” In turn, Gibson has called her heartless, and he certainly hasn’t forgiven her. According to him, their relationship was not abusive and there was no reason for her to abruptly pack up their one-year-old child and leave — other than the fact of there being ill-advised women in her ear flanked alongside a poisonous culture.
While divorce is not necessarily a political topic, it is evidence of what happens if you follow liberal ideologies, if you buy into feminism when you are young, and if you carry on with it for too long. When you’re in your 20s, the days are long; you think you’re going to be young forever and you have all the time in the world to figure out if and when you want a family. But 30 will smack you in the face. It’s a completely different ballgame. Inevitably, women begin to feel a tug to settle down and have a family. And the difference between your life and prospects in your 20s as a young woman compared with your life and prospects in your 30s is quite dramatic.
Young women need to pay attention to these cultural examples. Pay attention to the women who make you feel empowered when you’re listening to their music, whether it’s Beyoncé, Taylor Swift (who everyone loves except me), or whomever. First, look at their lives and see whether their music is reflected in their lives. Next, if it’s not, separate their music from their life. If it is, setting aside their wealth, assess if it’s reflected in a positive manner. Do you believe they are actually happy and whole? Or do their songs just condition listeners to believe freedom will render happiness?
In reality, it is discipline that will render you freedom. Water the grass where you stand, which will make you happier in the future. That’s an important message for women everywhere.
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“Candace” Hosted By Candace Owens

An Important Message To Women Everywhere

Last week, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-shocking-truth-about-trans-surgery-briana-ivy-s-story3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I interviewed 22-year-old Briana Ivy</a>, who was born a male, began taking hormones at 15, and eventually went on to have sex reassignment surgery. I have never been more proud or more haunted by any interview I have conducted before. 
Briana’s story is not one that is broadcast in mainstream media, nor is it one that gender clinics want anyone to share. But in the face of criticism, threats, and general pushback, Briana is bravely telling his story so children and teenagers (and their parents) who are considering a route to becoming trans can understand what real life will look like. He and his family trusted the path doctors paved and social media posts painted that trans life look like everything Briana had hoped for. What they didn’t see were the tragic stories of people who had gone down the path of hormones, blockers, and surgeries — life behind the Instagram grid, the TikTok video, and the social media posts. Briana bravely shared heartbreaking details of his experience to save others from the same hurt. 
Going into this interview, I recognized it would come with tremendous consequence to Briana, but I also believed it is going to put him on a path of being a figure for those who are searching for help and need to hear this story. We started by discussing his childhood, and though Briana’s biological parents had a rather tumultuous split, his mother remarried (twice) and his now-stepfather has been a part of his transitioning process since the beginning. It was actually the experiences Briana incurred at school that were the cruelest, especially with other boys. Briana felt safest befriending girls, and at around 6 and 7, he remembers feeling uncomfortable “just being lumped in with other boys” because he was a very feminine young boy. 
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-shocking-truth-about-trans-surgery-briana-ivy-s-story-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
This made me think of one boy in particular I went to school with, and he played with dolls and stuck with the girls; today, he is a married gay man. So I asked Briana what made him think he wasn’t just gay but maybe trans. Briana explained that he felt “disgusted by the thought of growing up as a feminine man” and couldn’t envision himself as an adult gay male because “it just felt gross.” However, he did not know what being trans even was until he was about 12 or 13 and saw Jazz Jennings on television. He found more trans adults on YouTube and decided to write his family (mother, step-father, and sister) a letter to explain he thought he was transgender. They were receptive to this because, as he reveals later in the interview, Briana was so incredibly unhappy. He felt an immense amount of shame, saying, “I just didn’t like anything really about me.” So, they visited a gender clinic for guidance. 
<div id="attachment_650289" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-650289" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-650289" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/ccunnamedcc.png" alt="" width="512" height="288" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/ccunnamedcc.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/ccunnamedcc-300x169.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />DailyWire+.</div>
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Briana was 14 when he went to the clinic, where he met with a clinical social worker for a quick 30-minute meeting, met with a doctor next, and then walked home with a prescription for hormones. It was that quick and simple. No meeting with a therapist, no unpack-your-childhood conversation, no decision-waiting period. Briana was prescribed a testosterone blocker medication and injection and saw his body change very quickly. I asked Briana how he felt during the first year of seeing those changes. He explained, “I felt good. I felt like I was finally being fully feminine in a way that I felt like would be more acceptable to people.” But after moving, changing schools, discussing restroom choices with school administration, and continued bullying, Briana’s mental health was not getting better. Even at 17, when he started passing as female (he describes “passing” to be when people begin recognizing you to be the opposite gender), his mental health was still declining. “The way I felt about myself didn’t get better. I was still so desperate for something.” He explains that people were no longer even questioning if he was female, yet he still felt a void. It was then that Briana says he became desperate for surgical intervention.
Briana turned to social media and found that surgery was considered an unspoken status symbol. The trans females who looked happiest were the ones who had every procedure performed. They appeared to live better lives, and it seemed as though people saw them the way they wanted to be seen. “They had made it,” Briana told me. He thought that is what he was missing because perhaps he hadn’t transitioned enough — so he kept going. Briana and I touched on the fact that people can appear happy on their highlight reel and reality is quite different, as Briana has found to be true. Briana talked with his doctor at the clinic, and he, his mom, and his stepdad were all reassured that Briana would now look like a biological female. He was told that the younger and faster he did the surgeries, the faster he would be considered a real female.
Briana actually found a surgeon for bottom surgery on TikTok, Dr. Gallagher, but after his first consultation, Dr. Gallagher relocated to Florida and referred him to Dr. Joshua Roth. He was given options for his surgery on “a blue piece of paper and it was like taking an order.” He chose the option that was presented as a “miracle.” After they submitted for insurance approval which came back in two weeks, the surgery date was booked just a few months later. Briana is not oblivious to the fact that some people apply for insurance coverage who are in life or death situations and do not receive approval that quickly, if at all. He is also aware that he is now a lifelong patient, as he will forever be on hormones since his body cannot make the ones it&#8217;s now dependent on.
In our conversation, Briana goes into great detail involving the 7-hour surgery. During his hospital stay, other doctors and residents came to his room, which Briana recalls: “I remember there was an intense fascination with what was being done to me. … [Residents and nurses] would look at me. They would tell me, ‘This is so cool. We’ve never seen someone as young as you have this done. We’ve never seen this surgery done here.’ … Dr. Roth would bring in multiple residents to just watch me while I was sitting there, and I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t move. I was in so much pain.”  That pain resulted in numerous complications (including DVT, blood clots, epidural, inability to walk), months-long excruciatingly painful aftermath, and the heartbreaking news that his body had rejected the surgery. Dr. Roth sent Briana to other doctors to begin rectifying the complication, and those doctors refused to operate, telling Briana he could experience worse complications or not make it through at all. After numerous attempts to get in contact with Dr. Roth, Briana has no longer been able to reach him.
Briana was used like a science project, and I cannot fathom the pain and grief that he, his mother, and family have been through. He is only 22-years-old, but Briana can see the truth now and he hopes to be able to have his story reach others before they fall victim to the lies he was told and false promises he was given. Briana told me, “When you go into the gender clinic and they’ll tell you if you want to look good and be treated better, start now. Start young. But then you give up everything.”
In recent years, Briana has had the desire to begin a family, but he cannot have children now. He told me, “No one who has ever started this as a kid is willing to explain what you actually give up to do this and the lies that they’ll tell you and the fact that doctors and these gender clinics will take vulnerable children and families and they’ll sell them a promise because they’re desperate.” The entire system preyed on Briana — and it failed him. He explains in the interview that he cannot take legal action unless other doctors decide if he can pursue action. (A board of certified surgeons must decide if they believe the surgery was, indeed, experimental.)
Though Briana has experienced loss, tragedy, pain, and grief, he is using his story to help others by telling the truth. Retelling this story was hard for Briana, but he is taking the chance to give people truth. He told me that even within the last few weeks, he was at a low point and turned to God, who he had shut out for a long time. He said he needed the Lord more than ever, and from that day forward, he’s known he has the chance to turn this into something good. Unlike some, Briana’s story doesn’t involve parents who were just wanting to make a political statement with their trans kid. They were parents who were trying to help their child but didn’t know what to do. And he wants to help those parents: “It’s parents that just want their kid to feel normal because they don’t want to lose their kid. They don’t know what to do. And that was my family. And I’m glad that I can show them that there is no need to let these doctors tell you to rush this because you just cannot go back.”
I believe the whole world is going to open for Briana Ivy because he is being exceptionally brave, and it usually takes bravery first for things to change.
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I Have Never Been More Proud Or Haunted By An Interview: Briana Ivy’s Story

Transgender

transgender surgery

Until a few weeks ago, I had never even seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TmejMmwPhw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Whatever podcast</a>, and my limited knowledge of this show was that the host, Brian Atlas, sits with young women to discuss dating and relationships, and he occasionally invites a conservative to join the conversation. I found out that for the particular episode I was booked for, I would be sitting in a circle with sex workers to discuss their jobs. Not only did I not understand why I had been booked on the show, but I was also dreading the whole ordeal. I didn’t really think I was a fit for a show to sit across from women who would be talking about their OnlyFans careers and various sex work they do. I thought I would feel a lot of anger sitting with them, but, as it turns out, anger is not what I felt for these proud prostitutes.
When I sat down with these ladies, they each described what they did for a living. One was a singer and leans more conservative, but this was definitely not the case for the others. Two were on OnlyFans and two were prostitutes who claimed they save marriages because of the work they do as prostitutes and sex therapists. That’s correct. They believe they sleep with women’s husbands to save marriages.
<div id="attachment_647451" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-647451" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-647451" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/unnamed4.png" alt="" width="512" height="285" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/unnamed4.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/unnamed4-300x167.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Whatever Podcast.</div>
One legal prostitute shared with the table that she has found it difficult to date and she’s “run into a lot of insecure men” because they “can’t handle” what she does for work. Brian interjected to clarify her statement, asking if the men were insecure or if they didn’t want to date her because she is currently an active prostitute. She explained she hasn’t been dating anyone while working at the brothels, the Bunny Ranch, or the Mustang Ranch; she has only dated between jobs. When she was pressed on what makes these men insecure, she said her exes would cry about her going into work at the strip club: “I’ve had guys try to control, like, what I wear and say that I can’t work at strip clubs or do OnlyFans or whatever.” Brian interjected again: “Is it because they’re insecure or is that just them having boundaries and standards?” Her argument was that these men knew what she did for a living when they met, so if they had a problem with it, they shouldn’t have gotten involved with her in the first place.
I realized in the middle of this conversation that while I had thought I was going to feel angry sitting with these women, I actually just felt a tremendous amount of sadness for them. This particular girl is 22 years old, and she sleeps with five to ten men a night, and I listened to her justify why her relationships are not working out — because, in her eyes, the men dating her are insecure — and it’s heartbreaking. She can’t see the reason these men don’t want her engaging in this type of work is that they care about her. They want to see her get out of this lifestyle. While a man probably shouldn’t have been drawn to her in the first place considering her line of work, the point is that once they try to get her out, she sees it as an indicator that he is insecure, not that he thinks she’s better than the career she has.
Unsurprisingly, money was an underlying theme in their reasoning for doing this work. Furthermore, they speak derogatively about men in general, seeming to have a fundamental lack of understanding of what a quality man even is and where to find him. Later in the interview, the same 22-year-old who thinks her exes are insecure said she plans to get out of sex work after she’s made plenty of money. She fully plans to get married and live happily ever after. I explained that when they are older and men find out they used to be prostitutes, their prospects are going to drop dramatically in number — not because men are insecure, but because they have standards. Though men are having to work harder than generations past to find a high-quality woman — a woman who wants to stay in the home, dress conservatively, raise children, and not sleep with tons of men — for the most part, they’re willing to do it.
<div id="attachment_647453" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-647453" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-647453" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/55candace.png" alt="" width="512" height="287" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/55candace.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/55candace-300x168.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Whatever Podcast.</div>
I was adamant that the career they have chosen is going to follow them the rest of their life. This, of course, was not a point well received at the table so this same girl created a what-if scenario regarding my own husband. She posed a scenario to me: If my husband were to come to me and ask to engage in some perverse sex act with him, what would I do? She assumes most women’s answer would end up being to go see her so she can engage in that act with him thus sparing the wife but still pleasing the husband. I explained to her that one of the beautiful parts of a marriage is that I knew who my husband was when we married, so this scenario would never happen. But she continued on, asking what I would do if “things changed and maybe he wants to start exploring.” I responded that people don’t just wake up one day and think of these things; they pick them up in some perverse world and they’re not normal. She pressed further, wanting to know what I would do and if divorce would be on the table. My answer? “I would think that that individual would probably need therapy — and not the kind that you give,” as I pointed to the woman in her 40s who says she’s a sex therapist and sleeps with other women’s husbands.
While this 22-year-old seemed to be trying to trigger me, I wasn’t triggered. Rather, I felt disturbed that she was even coming up with such a scenario. But I realized her entire reality has been warped because she works in a brothel and sees up to ten clients per day — clients who probably represent to her what all men are like. It’s never occurred to her that she is seeing the most debased, pathetic men in society. It’s not your average man who goes into a brothel. It is certainly not an average happily married man who has such perverse thoughts. Yet for her, she sees that as the norm because it has become her reality. She believes that all men are like the men she sees and want what they want.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/candace" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens</a></h4>
This is where society is today, and it’s why I devote so much time to speaking about the ills of what is happening in it. This girl’s mind is utterly polluted because of what she experiences every single day. A major part of the problem is the soft pornography we have all become accustomed to; it’s what you see as you scroll through Instagram and see models showing so much skin. It’s images that are desensitizing us all. We don’t even flinch anymore when we see an ad with a woman holding a purse who is half naked because we have become accustomed to seeing this type of image absolutely everywhere.
The culmination of such a society has brought us to women who are quite literally prostituting themselves because they know they can make a quick buck. But no matter how much they make, that money is going to come at a cost — which I do not mean paradoxically. If you want to make  half a million dollars in your early to late 20s, you are going to realize later that no one wants to marry you. No one wants to have children with you. No one will respect you for the rest of your life. There is a great possibility you will end up alone — and that is deeply saddening.
At the root of all of this is a lack of faith — atheism, which goes hand-in-hand with narcissism. The focus becomes all about me and what I can do for myself. Worst of all, these women view faith as a form of perversion. In our conversation, I noticed one of the women was wearing a cross above a shirt that read “made in hell.” This particular woman was the angriest of the group, probably because she is in her early thirties and is likely realizing she has less time to find a husband and even fewer prospects. I asked her about her necklace and shirt pairing and told her I was confused. She said the stone matched her shirt and she didn’t know why she was wearing the cross: “I don’t know. I don’t think of it as religious.” In the middle of her fumbling around for an answer, she expressed that she didn’t think the cross was religious, but simply thought it was cute.
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This whole episode just shows how the West has lost the battle faith-wise. People openly mock Christianity, just like this woman. When I got up to leave, I looked across the table to the 22-year-old in the orange and told her I was going to pray for her, and she rejected my prayer. She said she did not want me to pray for her. What kind of person rejects a prayer? You might not believe in prayers, and you might not pray yourself, but to openly reject a prayer? I would never reject a prayer, no matter the faith of the person who offers it.
When I left that podcast, I still prayed for those young women. They need it, and all of us need it.

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Sex Work Is Legal, Prostitutes Make Millions, And Faith Is Nonexistent Among Workers

OnlyFans

Podcast

Prostitution

Big Pharma is getting more aggressive with its tactics to gain control. Why? Because it’s threatened by the increasing number of people who are becoming more aware of their ploys. Not everyone trusts their doctors quite like they did before. COVID led to the collapse of the medical mirage, so people have questions. And people want answers. We are prodding the narrative: What exactly are its intentions with our children? What is going on with the number of vaccines? What is going on with pharmaceutical care? Big Pharma is answering by passing legislation as to whether you should — or should not — have access to your children’s medical records, decisions, and medicines. <a href="https://www.carolinacarerx.org/#:~:text=CarolinaCARE%20is%20the%20home%2Ddelivery,Learn%20about%20CarolinaCARE" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CarolinaCARE</a> is the first of what I’m sure will be many instances to come of medical professionals deeming children as adults so parents lose access to their children’s medical records.
CarolinaCARE is a home-delivery pharmacy service owned by Atrium Health and based out of North Carolina. But CarolinaCARE serves multiple states that have different laws pertaining to access to health information, which includes prescriptions, so <a href="https://www.carolinacarerx.org/Documents/CarolinaCARE_Age_of_Majority_FAQs.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">they have sent out a notice</a> to their clients because they are making a change “to remain compliant with laws in all the states CarolinaCARE services to ensure continued privacy of your child’s prescription records.” 
Privacy from whom? From you, the parent. 
Starting November 1, children who are 12- to 17-years-old must create new accounts on their website so they have access to their prescriptions and medications because their parents will no longer have access. That’s correct: Parents cannot view or manage their children’s prescriptions. Written in black and white on their notice read the following words: “The laws are intended to allow minors to receive prescription medication for sensitive issues, without worrying about how their parents may react.” If you have questions, you are encouraged to read their FAQs.
<div id="attachment_646739" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-646739" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-646739 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Carolina-Care-text.png" alt="" width="512" height="388" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Carolina-Care-text.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Carolina-Care-text-300x227.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot: CarolinaCARE</div>
I have a lot of questions, the first being, how is that even plausible? How is it legal to essentially tell parents they are no longer parents? By making this change, CarolinaCARE is basically saying a 12-year-old is able to make a decision in terms of what prescriptions they are putting in their body. How does that happen? Children cannot do certain things until they are 18-years-old, when they become adults. So it completely defies logic that they would be able to make decisions pertaining to what prescription they should be on — prescriptions that have real-world implications. Of course, a parent should be in the room with a doctor when deciding whether or not their children should be on medication because parents are thinking about their child’s future. Adults can consider the possible impact and effects of prescriptions, whereas a child does not yet have that capability. That’s why they are children and why children have parents. Why would they do this?
My best guess is that because many adults are recognizing they should have never been put on drugs as a child, the move is going to be to take the medical decision-making power away from those adults. There has been public debate among adults about having been put on medications as a child, whether it be medications like Adderall or medications to transition them. More and more adults are openly speaking out against drugs, saying they have ruined their lives. Big Pharma knows that once people become adults, they can see that more clearly — because they aren’t 12.
<h4><a href="https://get.dailywire.com/candace/convicting-a-murderer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens&#8217; &#8220;Convicting A Murderer&#8221;</a></h4>
<div id="attachment_646743" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-646743" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-646743" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/CAM-advert.png" alt="" width="512" height="288" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/CAM-advert.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/CAM-advert-300x169.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />DailyWire+</div>
Yet CarolinaCARE is essentially signaling to 12-year-olds that they are now adults and can make adult decisions. So if a child professes they feel as though they are in the wrong body, a doctor could give that child prescription drugs to transition — drugs that will render that child infertile in their adult years. These are the same drugs given to pedophiles to castrate them. But children are not going to know that because they exist and think in the moment. They don’t consider what their adult life might be like; they don’t even consider what the next day will be like. They will fall prey to believing they can feel safer from their parents in making these decisions alone. 
To make matters worse (if that’s even possible), the state is getting involved because they want to further this. If this is successful and they are allowed to treat 12-year-olds as though they are adults and put them on medications that can potentially harm them in the future, they are inevitably going to be inundated with massive lawsuits against CarolinaCARE in the years to come. And I hope that there are massive lawsuits because this is absolutely despicable.
If a child turns 12 after November 1, this change will automatically take place. While this is hard news to digest, it’s news you need to be aware of, especially if you are a parent. Because while CarolinaCARE may only be in certain states now, it will be coming to a state near you.
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Big Pharma’s Shocking Move To Medicate Kids Without Parental Consent

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