A few days ago, a reporter from one of the trades asked me for an interview. I knew there could only be one reason she would want to interview me, and it wasn’t to talk about how I ran a website for 25 years on the Oscar race.

It wouldn’t be that I raised a baby as a single mother and launched my site out of a guest house in Van Nuys, California, or that I’d worked as a sports photographer, a fake horoscope writer, a film reviewer, a janitor, and a teacher’s aide to raise my daughter without sending her to daycare and somehow built a successful business anyway.

No. This had to be about my politics and why they changed.

How did a Barack Obama devotee, an I’m With Her Hillary Clinton supporter, and a Joe Biden faithful from way back find my way into not only voting for Trump but actively trying to help the Republicans defeat the Democrats?

Now that’s a story, “How Did an Oscar Blogger become a far-right radical?”

The pitch wasn’t exactly about that. It was more about how I plan to navigate being a dissident heretic while also running a successful business in an industry that is now the same organism as the government.

I’ve been asked this question many times by people on the Right and have given many interviews to explain “what happened to me.” But this is the first time anyone on the Left, or inside the bubble of the Left, asked me to explain it.

And that’s because one, two, three, all eyes are on me. I did a boo-boo on Twitter that now has me in the crosshairs at long last. It was one thing when I stood up for JK Rowling or Ansel Elgort or when I pushed back on the hysteria that Green Book was “racist.” When Trump is involved, it’s bigger than just your average internet pile-on. This time it could mean the end of whatever it is I’ve built over at AwardsDaily.com.

The story will be about how my politics changed, or more specifically, why I felt like I could get away with a satirical tweet that said “White Power” while mocking the “White Dudes for Harris.”

Is it bad to mock white people? I thought they were fair game. Or is just saying those words bad? Some people decided that it meant something beyond that. I don’t check my mentions anymore, so I had no idea this wave of hysteria was even occurring. But then a friend wrote to “ask me about it.”

It was as though I was secretly joining the white power movement on Twitter and was signaling to all of my friends in the KKK that, look, it’s cool to be white people celebrating our whiteness again! Of course, it’s not. It’s just that they have a habit on the left of memory-holing their insanity and moving the goalposts. We’re all supposed to keep up.

Four years ago, there could have been no “white dudes for Biden” or “white dudes for Barack Obama.” It would be called any number of things, from white saviorism (which this most surely was) and even borderline racism. But not in 2024! Anything goes because they say so.

I could have deleted the tweet and apologized profusely. But I know the game, brother. They once called me a “white supremacist” for saying it wasn’t only white people who committed hate crimes (fact check true). But in my world, no matter how crazy or blatant the hypocrisy gets, you should never say a word about it.

Apologize and beg for forgiveness. Maybe they’ll give you a break. No, they won’t. They will screenshot the tweet and send it around and around. By the end of this madness, it will land in the lap of a reporter who wonders, “What happened to her?”

How did Orwell know enough to write Children's Spies in 1984? How did he know the young would be so susceptible to fanaticism? Because, of course, he knew. That’s why capturing the youth is so important to cults and utopias and why they separate the kids from the parents, as the Democrats are trying to do now.

It’s my own fault. I could have shut up, kept my head down, and complied with all of the demands—think they do, write like they do, believe what they believe, and always apologize for “mistakes made.” I could have done that. But then I think about Winston Smith and 1984. How did Orwell know?

He knew that utopias must become totalitarian dystopias because how else to maintain the purity and the vision? We’re living everything from that book, even a government that has now been weaponized to punish thought crimes.

They have condemned and convicted Trump and his supporters as “racists,” which means anything can be done to them, and no one will say a thing. Steve Bannon is in prison for the crucial months leading up to the election. The last time someone was in jail for that crime was Ring Lardner of the Hollywood Ten.

If Orwell wanted to write a book that would call out to the future to warn us that this isn’t what we want for our country, much less our culture, then loudmouths like Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and me will have to take the hit because no one else will.

Winston Smith is an obedient member of Oceana whose thoughts take him to dangerous places. Big Brother doesn’t like him remembering great books or language deemed useless. Even love is strictly forbidden. That’s how Winston finds himself being forced to admit 2+2=5.

I still feel like a liberal at heart. I still care about climate change. I still believe we should all have access to good healthcare, no matter how rich we are. So many of the issues that used to be standard for Democrats have been warped and distorted beyond the point of recognition.

[This is the podcast version of an already posted story]

It’s too late for me. I followed the feminist lie through most of my life, only to wake up much too late to have lived it a better way. You see, it takes a while to realize that it really is about the warm body next to you. It is about the laughing children and grandchildren. It is about the stories, the recipes, the memories, the picnics, the vacations.

No, life is never going to be perfect. There will be problems with every family, unforgettable tragedies, broken hearts, and dreams deferred. And there are sometimes mothers who become addicted to drugs. Not everyone grows up easy. Some of us barely make it out alive.

As I watched The Machine surround JD Vance like a pack of hyenas going in for the kill, I was disgusted on so many levels. I am sure if the Right had that kind of power, they’d probably abuse it, too. People are people, and power corrupts. But still, the level of depravity was shocking, even for them.

The absence of empathy in a culture defined by trauma is what defines the new Left. Their trauma. Someone else’s trauma. Trauma from our past. Every kid growing up on the Left will be fed one psych med or another.

When Donald Trump was shot, there was just a moment where there was a pause. Wait, they all seemed to think, are we supposed to feel something?

Yes, you are supposed to feel something. It’s called humanity. Empathy. I have been cursed with too much empathy. I get a double dose from each of my parents. My dad loved his cat Freddy so much he couldn’t bear to get him “fixed,” so he let him out to produce untold amounts of wild kittens. One day, Freddy was hit by a car, and my dad never really recovered. He loved that cat.

My mom had so much empathy that for a while there, she couldn’t bear to see her chickens sitting on unfertilized eggs, so she went to the pet store and bought fertilized eggs so they could hatch. But she kept producing too many roosters and didn’t know what to do with them, so she moved the roosters to another property she owned. I joked with her that it was like a male prison. Please, send over some hens.

And me, well, I can barely clip the leaves off of a basil plant without feeling bad about it. I save spiders. One video of an abused dog will ruin my entire year. It’s a curse—too much empathy.

But that’s what I feel when I think about JD Vance, what he’s gone through in life, and how he’s come out of it such a fine young man with a beautiful family and a promising future.

It reminds me of that wonderful scene in The Shawshank Redemption, written by Stephen King before he became Trump deranged, and back when Hollywood could still make great movies.

JD Vance said something, so what? You can’t grow up with a foul-mouthed Mamaw and not fire off a zinger now and again. I grew up with that kind of mother, a mouth so foul she’d make a sailor blush. I often remember her screaming at cars that drove by, “You mother f*cking c*cksucker!”

That’s probably why I can’t shut up. And probably why JD can’t either. But that’s not why he’s my hero. That’s a different story entirely. It has to do with growing up like a weed. You don’t really belong any place. You grow up strong anyway because something in your DNA makes you a survivor. No hothouse flower was he, nor carefully tended garden plant, but a fast-growing, persistent, ever-present weed.

I grew up not that differently than he did—the kind of family where the men leave, and the women go a little crazy. At least there were no drug addicts, but I know what it is to long for normalcy so bad it aches. I know what it is to visit “normal” families and feel envious that there were two parents, that they sat down and ate dinner, and there was lunch money.

I know what it is to keep going, no matter what ghosts chase you. I know what it is to be underestimated by everyone, but never let anyone stop you. I never fought in the Iraq war like he did. I couldn’t last one day of training to be a Marine. And I’m pretty sure I couldn’t become a Senator like he did, much less a candidate for the Vice Presidency. But I know what it is to try at life anyway.

JD Vance is my hero because everything he’s done so far in life has not killed his faith in himself, his family, his mother, and his country. I would say in his God, but I don’t know if he is religious, and I would feel like a phony if I said it that way. I’m not quite there yet. I guess I just mean this life can take you down. If you can somehow survive it, it’s a miracle.

Donald Trump said JD Vance cares about family to explain away why he is adamant about supporting mothers with kids. You’d have to grow up the way he did and the way I did to understand why someone would be so protective of the family unit. He did not have it growing up, but it was something he longed for. I know that because I felt the same way.

If the worst thing he ever did was generalize about “Childless cat ladies,” that’s not that big of an offense. The second part of it was specifically about politicians who have less of a stake in the future. Yes, it will probably alienate some voters, but honestly, is that really how you go about voting? Something someone said turns you off so you’ll vote for the totalitarians?

Maybe Trump could have picked someone who would pull in a swing state, as the Democrats do. He could have picked “a woman.” But I’m glad he picked a survivor, a tough Marine who can take whatever they have to throw at him. We know that because he’s already survived the worst of it. We hope.

I don’t know what will happen in this crazy election. It’s the totalitarians vs. the populists. But anyone who blames JD Vance for Trump’s loss, should he lose, is a fool. Trump and Vance aren’t running against other candidates. They’re running against an entire system. Don’t kid yourselves. They will attack and destroy anyone who threatens their power.

So here’s to you, JD. Thanks for fighting the good fight.

END//

[This was already posted as a story, here is the podcast version]

Trump is under no obligation to debate Kamala Harris, who was hand-picked for the nomination without so much as a single vote. They can’t just change the rules and expect everyone else to comply. On the other hand, it might not be a bad idea.

Trump can do the job the media will not. A debate might be the only time Harris will be made to answer any tough questions before the election. True, Trump runs the risk of the debate going badly for him and tipping the race to Harris - and he should listen to smarter minds than mine — but here are some things to consider.

He towers over her

If it’s a standing debate people should see the height differential. Do we want a tiny woman of 5’2 facing off Putin and Xi?

Even Hillary Clinton, at 5’5, is taller than Harris.

Here is Harris and Biden.

Trump should debate town hall-style or a standing debate for this reason. Americans are looking for strength, not weakness.

Harris likes attacking powerful men, but it often backfires.

Her attacks on men often seem, at least to me, like sound and fury signifying nothing. She tends to ask the same question repeatedly, and because it looks and sounds serious, we’re all supposed to see her as “tough.” But much of the time, there is no THERE there.

Harris went along with pushing Al Franken out of the Senate. She was a passionate believer in Russiagate and is thought of by women on the Left as the Trump destroyer. I have my doubts.

* Trump can make her look bad by coming off as a kinder, gentler version of the villain the media sells.

* Trump should be the sane one, not the crazy one.

* Trump should be nice when she is being mean.

* Trump should always pivot away from personal attacks against him to how they should be serving the people, as in, “If you spent half as much time trying to make life better for Americans instead of trying to put me in jail maybe your approval numbers would be higher.”

* “All you had to do in four years was offer people something better. You never could. That’s why they want me back. They’re desperate for anyone who will care about them instead of focusing only on identity politics.”

* “The American people are disgusted by how authoritarian this administration became. Harris will only make that worse. You won’t recognize this country after she gets through with it.”

* “This election shouldn’t be about making history for one person. It should be about making America great again for all people.”

Question her competence since becoming Veep

Harris has always been greeted with admiration and love by the media. She has failed upwards in her career, thanks to her mentorship by very powerful men, including Barack Obama.

That’s not to say she isn’t a good Attorney General or Senator. But as Vice President, she failed. She was the worst Vice President in United States history.

As long as Trump stays completely away from race or her sexual past and keeps it focused on her incompetence, she will flail.

She Betrayed Joe Biden

Harris betrayed Joe Biden not once, but twice. First, she launched an emotional accusation of racism against him:

She even sold t-shirts.

She then wrote it off as “just a debate.” Even sycophant Stephen Colbert was taken aback by this lame excuse.

She was lying at the debate, later to Joe, or to Colbert. Either way, she was lying.

She acted loyal to Joe Biden, but when it came down to it, she was happy to agree to the 25th Amendment her good friend Joe to force him out. That’s the story, anyway.

Trump should call her out on that. Who else will? If Trump does not debate her, the American public will never hear any of it.

The Last Person in the Room

Per Joe Biden, Harris was “the last person in the room” on his worst decisions—the last person in the room on Afghanistan, the last person in the room on the border, and the last person in the room on inflation.

Harris owns all of it. She owns being that close to Joe Biden “multiple times per day” and saying nothing of his cognitive decline. Here, just after the debate, she insists Biden is capable and just had a bad night. Did she really believe that or was the plan already in the works and she was playing the part of the loyal Veep?

She owns the withdrawal from Afghanistan. If Joe Biden didn’t know what he was doing, she most certainly didn’t. Is that who we want as Commander in Chief?

Afghanistan:

The Border

Harris must be held accountable for the rapes and murders because of the failed border policy.

Here is a montage of the crisis at the border, with the rapes and murders intercut with Harris’ excuses.

Inflation

It goes on and on. This administration has been one failure after another. She will never be held accountable unless Trump debates her.

How she loses her cool…

For the entirety of Harris’ career, you can count the number of hard interviews or criticisms she’s received on one hand. When confronted, which is rare, she doesn’t handle it well. As Bob Dylan would say, “She breaks just like a little girl.” AND THAT LITTLE GIRL WAS ME!

You just have to know which buttons to press. With Harris, nothing sends her into a tailspin like questioning her competence. Although she has been praised for decades for being a winner, she was a loser throughout the Biden administration and is now responsible for the state of the country.

She is not just running on Joe Biden’s record but also on her record as the “last person in the room.”

Lester Holt pressed her on her competency and kept pressing until she snapped.

This reporter did the same thing. It didn’t go well.

Her laugh, or her cackle, seems to hide the intense emotions that bubble up within her. She will lash out when she gets angry enough, and Trump should expect to see some of that in the debate.

Here is an example making the rounds on social media:

Trump should do everything he can to hit those pressure points where she feels weak. For her, that’s anyone questioning the job she has done. She could not handle the low approval numbers she received because, for her entire career, she’s been love-bombed by the media.

Here are some suggested pressure points:

* “If it weren’t for Obama, she’d never be Vice President or a presidential candidate. No other candidate who did that badly in the 2020 primary would have been made Vice President. And certainly no Vice President who did that badly would not be selected to run as President.”

* “She wrecked San Francisco.”

* “She’s more sympathetic to illegal migrants than the citizens of the United States.”

* “She went to visit Jacob Blake’s family after Kenosha burned to the ground on the lie that Blake was unarmed and there to break up a fight. He was armed, and he was about to kidnap the children. She didn’t care about the destroyed businesses or the crime in the cities after Defund the Police. She bailed out protesters.”

* “Who is the real Kamala Harris? No one knows. They’re just going to put her in office and see what happens. What could possibly go wrong?”

* “She flip-flops on whatever is popular at the time. No one even knows where she stands on any issue. She pretends to be tough on crime. But she refused to seek the death penalty for a cop-killer, choosing politics over justice.”

* “She believes in equity over equality of opportunity.”

* She is fully on board with “gender-affirming care” on minors and is supportive of biological men playing in women’s sports.

* “It’s time to turn the page. The American people want change, not the same old thing by people who don’t care about them.”

None of this will get through unless Trump agrees to debate Harris, even on her terms. It might be the only chance the American people will have to hear her speak without a teleprompter.

Trump should agree to debate her on ABC and still follow through with the debate on Fox. He should use that time to dismantle the Harris candidacy and potential presidency, with special guest stars JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and Glenn Greenwald.

If Trump skips this opportunity, the media will write the narrative, and that will help them drag her over the finish line. And that won’t be the worst thing in the world. Their empire is collapsing no matter what. Trump can go play golf and live out his life having rescued his legacy. On the other hand, Harris is exactly the kind of president who will make the Biden DOJ look like child’s play.

//end

Just when you thought America was No Country for White Men, the Democrats have once again rewritten their own rules. White people, even white men, are in. And all to show up for the coronation of the first woman of color to win an election without ever having won a primary.

It was never losing democracy. They were worried that the wrong people would have a say in this democracy. And in their minds, it was white men. Well, what a difference a Joe Biden stepping down makes.

Next, on the Greatest Show on Earth will be the choice of Veep. Desperate not to fumble the ball on their way to making history, it has been decided that it must be a WHITE MALE, preferably heterosexual.

After five years or more of de-centering white men and heterosexuality from movies, culture, and politics, it’s the white guy they now need. But it can’t be a white guy at the top of the ticket. The dream machine would never get away with that. He has to ride shotgun, like a driving instructor at the DMV.

We’re all supposed to pretend like history is really being made when, in fact, it’s history being manufactured. Harris did nothing to earn her place except be a woman of color.

I would not call that DEI, only because it’s an easy way for self-righteous people to get up on their high horses and start lecturing you about racism. No, I would talk about equity instead. If someone hands you a job you either aren’t ready for or don’t deserve, you never get the credit. The white person giving you the job gets the credit. But if you fail, you’re on your own.

For white people, especially rich white people, that’s the greatest thing ever. Finally, real purpose at long last. Finally, absolution for their sins of wealth and privilege.

The hunt for a white dude to fill the slot of Veep is looking like The Bachelor back when all the contestants were white, a legacy that would come back to haunt them later. So far, none of the shrill social justice warriors are demanding Harris pick someone other than a white male. They care about winning, too, so whatever.

The problem for them is that the names buzzing about now are all politicians who might upstage Harris. How to pick the Tim Kaine of the bunch and still defeat Trump?

We know identity matters on the Left more than anything, so this isn’t really about whether Harris can do the job. It’s whether they can prop her up to make it seem like she can.

Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Arizona’s Mark Kelly, and Minnesota’s Tim Walz all would have done better in the primary than Harris if there had been a primary. They have twice her accomplishments and a better record. But for now, they will merely be a symbol of reassurance, like a security camera to ward off criminals.

I guess “normie white guys” are good for something after all.

Vote for Kamala Harris or you’re a racist!

No group is more narcissistic and yet more self-hating than liberal white women. I should know. I was one. We spent so many decades on self-improvement to try to rid ourselves of the self-hate. Therapy that went nowhere except to make us focus even more on ourselves. Drugs that perhaps took the edge off like booze used to do. Fitness, meditation, and eventually Ozempic.

That must be why the Harris campaign thought gathering all of those white women on a Zoom call to “show up” for Harris was a good idea. Suddenly, the Harris campaign is defined by “white power.”

A white Veep to temper Harris, and now, white women to get a strict talking-to about how they have to do everything they can to ensure the woman of color wins. But just in case, they’re hitching a white man along for the ride.

To sum it up in agonizing, torturous detail is Ariell Fodor, one of those terrifying millennial women who want to control everything we say, think, do, eat, and drive. They all read “white fragility,” and they’ve already de-centered themselves from the narrative. She probably has an abandoned Tumblr out there populated with cancel culture call-outs and social justice screeds.

White power at long last, courtesy of the Harris campaign:

Not to be outdone, the white men were ready too.

The Great White Heterosexual Man Scare

I didn’t need this political election to see that the Left has all but eliminated heterosexual men from the narrative. They’ve vanished from movies almost completely. If they do exist, they’re shunted to the background as the girl boss saves the day.

It now seems obvious that what was threatening about Trump has been his unapologetic masculinity. It isn’t that Trump showcases it, but he is a masculine man who has a long history of womanizing. That he could win an election against a woman drove the first major mass hysteria event on the Left, and sparked the Me Too movement.

All manner of sexuality is allowed in parades, in parks, and in restaurants as long as the male is gay or trans. Heterosexual men are seen as perverts and predators if they express any of their sexuality.

And it’s their sexuality that the Democrats are attempting to target with this new ad depicting them as creepy and “weird.”

The word of the day that the zombie robots on the Left repeated and repeated and repeated.

There’s just one problem. They’re the weird side, and everyone knows it. In their minds, anything normal is bad. Having kids is bad. Having abortions is good. Getting married is bad. Casual sex is good. Serving in the military, attending college, and becoming a Senator is bad. Bouncing around on psych meds aimlessly until you decide you were born in the wrong body is good.

To them, this is normal:

And this:

Normal to them is using the word “chestfeeding” and calling biological men mothers and biological women fathers. Normal to them is Chelsea Handler skiing down a mountain with her dog in a backpack, smoking a joint, and bragging about being childless. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Topless transgender people at Joe Biden’s White House. Nothing weird about that.

They want this to be seen as normal:

And this:

White men, according to them, have always been the problem — until right this very minute, and now they refuse to appoint anyone other than a white male. Does that seem normal to you?

There is no such thing as a moderate Democrat.

The Veepstakes will be about finding a moderate to help Harris win in the swing states. But remember, despite how they look and how the press will position them, they are just as radical as she is. They have to be. They couldn’t survive today’s Democratic Party if they weren’t.

Normie White Guy #1

Josh Shapiro seems like a moderate. He supports Israel in the war in Gaza. He supports school vouchers. But to really expose the extremists on the Left, they have to be able to pass the “gender-affirming care” test, which none of them can. Even Shapiro appears to be supportive.

Normie White Guy #2

Tim Walz of Minnesota is among those “normie white dudes” calling JD Vance “weird,” but he’s fully on board with “gender-affirming care.”So who’s the weird one?

Normie White Guy #3

Senator Mark Kelly seems to be the closest thing to a moderate. He talks a good game and, from the looks of it, has no baggage. Does he pass the test? Nope.

Kelly was among the Democrats who voted to strip a bill of a ban on “gender-affirming care”:

A handful of Senate Democrats voted last month against legislation that would bar a military health benefit program from covering gender procedures on children that could result in sterilization — including hormone therapy and puberty blockers.

All 12 Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee — as well as independent Angus King of Maine — voted June 29 to strip the provision from the must-pass 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), opening the door for the Pentagon to fund so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors.

Panel Chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) joined Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in opposing the provision during the committee’s markup of the bill.

The Democrats pulled a fast one on us all in 2020 when they sold America on the “normie white guy” Joe Biden. He’s not a woman, not a woman of color, not a gay man, not a socialist. He’s a moderate. And yet, when Joe Biden took power he tacked far to the Left in a way that shocked us all.

And that is a cautionary tale. Her Veep choices might fool voters because they look like “normie white guys,” but in reality, they will follow Harris anywhere she wants to go. And where she wants to go is even farther to the Left than Joe Biden.

As long as Republicans push out that message, they can give independents the heads up of just what kind of fanaticism they’re about to put in power.

//

Republicans have a problem: a fast-moving narrative that will dominate the news cycle for the next few months if they allow it to. This comes courtesy of some eager beaver operative who dug up this clip of JD Vance from 2021 that has now gone viral.

The old me would have joined the outrage train on X, distorting what he said into an opportunity to wax sanctimonious and proclaim that it’s great to be a woman who chooses not to have children, and how dare he say such a disgusting, sexist thing?

She made news. Lots and lots of news, which shows you what the GOP is up against.

Team Kamala now has a great piece of propaganda to juice her already energized base.

The “Childless cat ladies” echoed what James Carville said about the Democrats not too long ago, that they were dominated by “preachy women” and that it was alienating voters, especially men."

Both of them are essentially saying the Left is dominated by a certain kind of woman, whether childless or not - meaning - they are up in everyone’s business all of the time.

I know that kind of woman. I was that kind of woman. The kind that used to be a powerful consumer demographic back in the 90s, in the Oprah era, but no longer is. Women who have been sidelined by the social justice movement that has decided feminism is too exclusionary. So what else did we have except to ask to speak to the manager and fuss over politics?

When Hillary lost our entire world collapsed. It was as though there was nothing left. We were the center of the universe one minute and invisible and powerless the next.

If anything, Vance’s comments hurt women who can’t have children more, not those who have chosen not to have them. Women have struggled with infertility, even with IVF. Aniston might be one of those women; if so, my heart goes to her. I live with regret every single day of my life that I aborted babies I could have and should have had.

Now, the abortionists want young women to see their babies as just a “clump of cells” and that it doesn’t matter. But guess what? It does matter, and they’re lying to women about it right now.

It began with the nation’s first Black President, but it would become much bigger. It would become a movement that captured every major institution in this country, including public schools, universities, corporations, and nearly all of culture. This could not last only two terms. No, this had to last forever.

When Donald Trump won in 2016, the power concentrated in the Obama coalition refused to step aside. Trump was the problem. His supporters were the problem. They didn’t like this new utopia that had become America and wanted change. But that change would never be allowed to take place.

The coup began even before Trump took office. A group of powerful elites decided it was their choice who could and could not represent the people. If one of them offended the ruling oligarchy, he was seen as a “racist” and had to be stopped by any means necessary.

They used every lever of power to stop him, to remove him, and to destroy him. They did this with the full cooperation of the nation’s press corps. They did it in full view of the Security State. And they did it with the enthusiastic support of their voters.

Get him. Destroy him. Remove him.

I was one of them. I wrote endless pieces about why Hillary Clinton had to win because history had to be made. I spent years pushing woke ideology into the film industry. It made me feel important. I was part of a movement, something bigger than myself. I had the admiration of my friends and pats on the back by powerful people. Why would I ever give that up?

I believed Donald Trump was a racist because the Democrats told me so. I believed he was a Russian spy because I watched Rachel Maddow. I believed he was a danger to our country because I read the New York Times, and I believed that the only thing that mattered in our lives was that those of us who were among the white majority did everything we could to elevate the oppressed minorities.

I

"Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength."— Theodore Roosevelt

In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was on his way to deliver a speech when he was shot in the chest with an assassin’s bullet. James Strock writes:

The history of 1912 leaves breadcrumbs if we summon the humility to look.

In the moment Roosevelt was, to put it mildly, controversial. Seeking a third term as president, he split his political party. Longtime accusations of “Caesarism” were given new life.

Nonetheless, Roosevelt’s undoubted courage under fire was acknowledged, including by political adversaries in the closing weeks of a hard-fought campaign.

Trump was shot in Pennsylvania, but he gave his speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the same city where Roosevelt gave his 112 years ago.

Politically, and in a variety of ways, TR and Trump are worlds apart. But they have one thing in common. They’re the Man in the Arena.

As I watched Twitter watch the last night of the Republican National Convention, I felt something shifting inside of me. I don’t know if it was the vulnerability on Trump’s face, his sadness after his brush with death, or his courage to give his speech anyway and do it for 90+ minutes that elevated me beyond our usual politics and forced me to look at who we are.

Strock does much of this in his excellent column on the failed assassination and how ugly things have gotten in the press to bring us to this point. That was only half of the story. The other half is how so many gathered around to “judge” how well Trump did and whether or not this means he will win in a landslide or whether it’s now a toss-up.

They want Biden’s debate and Trump’s speech to level the playing field. There’s just one problem. They’re not the same things, and everyone knows it. Trump was polling ahead of Biden even before the debate. He’s still polling ahead because there is no fixing what the Democrats have done to this country. For now, Trump has the wind at his back, whether or not he gave a great speech.

“President Trump represents America’s last best hope to restore what — if lost — may never be found again. A country where a working-class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America.” - JD Vance

Tulsi Gabbard’s voice is greatly missed from the Republican National Convention. However, it still resonates profoundly in our culture, especially after Vice President Kamala Harris insulted JD Vance’s love of country and called her out as only Tulsi Gabbard can.

So many of us, especially on the Left, don’t think much about the people who put their lives on the line every day in service of this country. However, in JD Vance, Trump found someone who can offer more than just empty words.

According to Military.com:

Vance, 39, is the first post-9/11 veteran to find a spot on a major party ticket and, if elected, would likely be the first Marine veteran to serve as the second-in-command… He is the first veteran on a major party ticket since John McCain in 2008.”

That mattered when the Gold Star families took to the stage to “say their names,” a chant heard over and over again since the catastrophic exit from Afghanistan, the first real sign to the American people and to the world that the leader of the United States did not know what he was doing.

What a difference eight years makes. When he was still green as a politician and not yet the leader he is today, Trump famously made fun of a Gold Star dad after he read out loud the Constitution at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. The press made much of it at the time, but they’ve said nothing about how our government memory-holed the deaths of 13 American soldiers.

Say their names.

Democrats and the media have repeatedly excused the disastrous military operation that would ultimately destabilize the global order — nothing to see here; move along, move along. It wrecked Biden’s approval ratings, and they’ve never recovered.

Say their names.

Up until Night 3 of the Republican National Convention—Make America Strong Again—there had never been any major ceremony or remembrance of the fallen. We saw their military funerals. There was a hearing in Congress.

But their names, faces, and personal stories had never been properly memorialized in any major way, not in the State of the Union, and wholly forgotten during the first presidential debate of 2024.

Say their names.

The general public has never called them heroes. That changed last night.

Before their appearance at the RNC, a short documentary played with interviews from the Gold Star families, all of them angry that the Biden administration had mostly ignored them while Trump hadn’t. He’d given them his time. He knew their children, they said. That matters if you’re the Commander in Chief, a job neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris are suited for.

When the families finally appeared on stage, tears were already streaming down the faces of almost everyone in the hall, as they often are when we come together to talk about military deaths. We know they died serving their country. Some grown men could be seen openly weeping at the unimaginable loss of an avoidable tragedy.

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Beautiful, elegant, strong—when Sarah Huckabee Sanders glided out on stage on Night 2 of the Republican National Convention, I could not help but think of the film Carrie. In it, the shy wallflower emerges as the beautiful prom queen moments before she’s sabotaged by two mean and bitter people who want nothing but her total humiliation.

But of course, they don’t realize what they just stepped in as Carrie turns to them, flips the switch that turns on her supernatural powers, and enacts her revenge.

It’s one of the best scenes in film history made when Hollywood could still make great movies, and Stephen King wrote great books rather than endless anti-Trump tweets.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t need to set the place on fire. Her success is her best revenge, as she’s now the Governor of Arkansas, the first woman to hold that position. Take that, bitter leftists.

What a moment that was. They did everything in their power to crush her, to humiliate her, to shame her, to destroy her. And guess what? It failed spectacularly, just as it has with Trump.

I remember back in 2018 when Michelle Wolf told unfunny jokes, selling a version of Sanders that doesn’t, in fact, exist. Her words stung, and Sanders’ reactions reflected that. Even though I was a loyal Democrat back then, I loudly criticized Wolf and my Democrat friends for defending her.

And when she was refused service at the Red Hen, a thing that happened in the Jim Crow South or Nazi Germany, Stephen Colbert did his usual sociopathic ranting disguised as humor.

I always thought we were the guys, I said. Are we the side that now mocks the way women look? Oh, she’s supporting Trump; they told me back then. She is normalizing a fascist. She deserves what she gets.

It was blatant hypocrisy from the side that proclaims tolerance and love. But there they were, as mean as Nancy Allen in Carrie.

That’s who you are now, I told them. You’re the mean girls. It was verbal abuse disguised as comedy, but it still wasn’t enough. Look at how far they had to go in an attempt to destroy her, destroy Trump, and defeat the grassroots movement known as MAGA.

Maybe that assassin wasn’t killing Trump because he thought he was Hitler. But did it matter that much? It seemed to manifest their collective hatred, with nowhere to go except pulling the trigger. Too bad you missed means two different things, depending on which side you’re on.

If you can imagine, we’re at the moment where people on Twitter are arguing over whether it’s cancel culture to fire someone who said they were upset that Trump was almost assassinated but happy that one of his supporters died.

For the record, no, I don’t support firing some dumb woman who works at Home Depot because she wrote a disgusting Facebook post. But I also would not want someone with a dark heart like that working for me.

We should never let them off the hook for who they were and what they did, especially to people like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who did nothing to deserve it except work for Donald Trump.

I heard her tell the same story about Trump she recounted at the RNC on a podcast a few years ago—I don’t remember which one—and it humanized Trump in my eyes. It made me think differently about him, and I understood their relationship better. For Sanders, Trump is a ride-or-die, as she explains here.

That wasn’t the only bright spot of the night, but it was the most remarkable. Nothing has ever felt as satisfying as watching her living her hot girl summer phase - an invisible EFF YOU to the haters.

It was a night for powerhouse mama bears who have lost their loved ones either to high crime or the fentanyl epidemic, something the Democrats seem to care nothing about. Oh, those people in the red states, they don’t matter, the racists.

Like Madeline Brame, who blew the roof off the joint and earned the rare standing ovation from Trump.

And Sara Workman:

And Anne Funder:

Real people, real problems. Your move, Democrats.

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“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” ―George Bernard Shaw

Last night, at the RNC Convention, Make America Wealthy Once Again, Donald J. Trump walked into the room like the Gray Champion he is, battle-scarred but standing tall. Teddy Roosevelt would be proud. His supporters gave him the hero’s welcome he deserved. There was not a dry eye in the house.

It was apparent to anyone watching that this wasn’t your grandfather’s Republican Party anymore. The head of the Teamsters Union, Sean O’Brien? Big Tech whiz kid David Sacks and a former model named Amber Rose? Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.

It’s Donald Trump’s party now, and he’ll build it the way he wants with what Steve Bannon calls “inclusive, participatory, nationalist populism.”

If the party could leave it to Trump, he’s got this. He’s got this so hard.

A clip with Pastor James Roemke doing a great Trump impression before the blessing.

And a powerful new Trump campaign ad:

Unfortunately, we know the Republican Party, right? We know they can’t just take the W. They will mess it up somehow, as James Lindsay says:

There’s an old joke that used to cycle around Hollywood. A filmmaking crew walks through the desert and comes upon a beautiful oasis. The writer can’t stop talking about how beautiful it is. The director envisions ways to bring it to the big screen. The producer? He whips it out and starts taking a leak. “What are you doing?!!” the others cry out. “Don’t worry,” the producer says, “I’m making it better.”

And so it goes with some of the old-guard Conservatives who are now grumbling about the MAGA takeover of the GOP. They want the party to be what it once was. But those days are gone, brother, and they ain’t coming back. It’s millennials and Zoomers from now on.

Welcome to the Fourth Turning. Once the dust settles and it’s all over, we’ll hopefully have a freer country that feels brand new. We’ll have rescued the country from the grips of the bloated leviathan that now rules over it with an authoritarian fist. It will be a country for the people, by the people, and of the people, and oh, how sweet it will be. If only the GOP could get out of their own way.

The Changing of the Minds

There is no chance I would have ever been accepted or invited into the old GOP. I lived my life exactly the wrong way, according to them. I followed the feminist lie and believed that the only thing I needed to do in life was serve myself. I had casual sex, I never got married, I had a child out of wedlock, and I had abortions. I’m not proud of it. I would take it all back if I could. I promise not a day will go by that I don’t mourn the loss of what could have been.

I did not see my life differently because I found religion or because I’m now a Conservative (I am in some ways but not in others). I see my life differently because I changed my mind.

There is nothing wrong with changing your mind. It’s healthy. And it’s brave. It took guts for the beautiful Amber Rose to take to the stage at the RNC and explain how and why she changed her mind. Her father, who served in the military, loved Donald Trump. She told him he was a racist, and her father said, prove it. But don’t listen to me, let her tell it: