Presumptuous Politics

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Trump to resume trademark campaign rallies after coronavirus hiatus


President Trump will resume hosting campaign rallies sometime in the next two weeks, returning one of the president's most potent weapons to his arsenal as the 2020 campaign season enters a pivotal stretch, Fox News is told.
Trump had suspended the rallies, which energize his base and allow his team to collect a treasure trove of voter data, in early March amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Americans are ready to get back to action and so is President Trump," Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale told Fox News. "The Great American Comeback is real and the rallies will be tremendous. You’ll again see the kind of crowds and enthusiasm that Sleepy Joe Biden can only dream of.”
As late as March 9, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, remarked that going to campaign rallies may not be a bad idea.
"You know, I can’t comment on campaign rallies," Fauci told reporters. "It really depends. We are having as we all said — this is something in motion. This is an evolving thing. ... If you want to talk about large gatherings in a place you have community spread, I think that’s a judgment call, and if someone decides they want to cancel it, I wouldn’t publicly criticize them."
Days later, the president pulled the plug. “I’m not going to do it if I think it’s going to be negative at all,” Trump said. “I don’t want people dying.”

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Bojangles Coliseum, Monday, March 2, 2020, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Bojangles Coliseum, Monday, March 2, 2020, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Monday's announcement that the rallies would resume comes as some polls show the president's support significantly trailing rival Joe Biden.
“CNN Polls are as Fake as their Reporting,” Trump tweeted early Monday. “Same numbers, and worse, against Crooked Hillary. The Dems would destroy America!”
The change-up also follows statements by many Democrats in charge of big cities -- including several who once insisted on strict quarantine measures -- championing the nationwide mass demonstrations over the in-custody death of George Floyd, sans social distancing. Epidemiologists, too, have abruptly changed their tune, even though they once said lockdown measures were so important that they justified widespread unemployment and business closures.
"We spent the last couple of months being hectored by public health experts and earnestly righteous media personalities who insisted that easing lockdown policies was immoral, that refusing to social distance or wear masks was nigh upon murderous," Jonah Goldberg wrote for the G-File. "They even suggested that protests were somehow profane. But now that the George Floyd protests are serving as some kind of Great Awokening, many of the same are saying 'never mind' about all of that. Protests aren’t profane, they’re glorious and essential—if they agree with what you’re protesting about."
More and more states are now reopening pursuant to federal guidelines and local leaders' assessments, and the nonenforcement of quarantine measures during the Floyd protests has left governors with little room to argue for extending the lockdowns.
Nevertheless, the left-wing taxpayer-funded radio station NPR ran a story late Monday suggesting that the rallies will be dangerous. NPR did not indicate that the Floyd protests would be dangerous in posts covering those demonstrations.
Prior to suspending rallies in March, the Trump campaign had previously been eyeing, but had not yet announced, a rally in Tampa, Florida, on March 25.
The massive events are often an opportunity for Trump to hone attack lines against his opponents -- but also present chances for them to hit back. At a campaign rally in late February, for example,  Trump calls Democrats' criticisms of his coronavirus response "their new hoax."
Biden and other Democrats then falsely accused Trump of calling the virus itself a hoax. Several fact-checkers, including The Washington Post, make clear that Trump was referring to the Democrats' response to the virus.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Donald Trump Jr. says Dems calling for police to be defunded should first call for security details to be cut


Donald Trump Jr. on Monday called out Democrats looking to defund police departments in the wake of George Floyd protests should start by cutting their own security detail.
Trump said that the entire country has called for the end of police brutality but said calls to cut funding for police departments would do little to stop abuses and would make the most vulnerable communities more vulnerable.
“Will those same anti-cop Dems call for their security details to be cut?” Trump asked.
Democratic leadership in the House and Senate on Monday unveiled legislation that would increase the accountability of police officers and remove immunity from legal consequences stemming from acts committed in the line of duty. But came up short from calling for police departments to be defunded.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar have been two vocal advocates to take drastic action. Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told Spectrum News 1 that some of the NYPD's $6 billion in annual funding should be redirected to address systemic racism. She said the $6 billion budget for the city police “costs us books in the hands of our children and costs us very badly needed” investment in public housing.
Omar, D-Minn., took it a step further and said that the Minneapolis Police Department is “rotten to the root” and should be dismantled. She called the department a cancer that needs to be amputated so it does not spread, the New  York Post reported.
Key Democrats, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, are distancing themselves from the “defund” push.
“I don’t support defunding the police. I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency, honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community, everybody in the community,” Biden told “CBS Evening News” on Monday.
Floyd, a handcuffed black man, died May 25 after a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air. His death set off protests, some violent, in Minneapolis that swiftly spread to cities around the U.S. and the globe.
Derek Chauvin,  a former Minneapolis police officer charged with second-degree murder, appeared in court Monday and Hennepin County Judge Jeannice M. Reding raised his bail from $500,000 to $1 million
Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that he tasked the city to “identify $250 million in cuts” to invest more money into the black community, communities of color, women and “people who have been left behind."
“It’s time to move our rhetoric towards action to end racism in our city,” he said, according to Deadline. “Prejudice can never be part of police work…It takes bravery to save lives, too.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were asked by a CNN reporter if they supported the movement to defund the police entirely.
“That’s a local decision,” Pelosi said.
Fox News' Brooke Singman and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Ex-acting DNI Grenell calls politics in 2020 'a fight between Washington and the rest of America'


Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Monday that his time in the Trump administration has shown him that the great political struggle is no longer between Republicans and Democrats, but between the District of Columbia and the rest of the U.S.
In his first TV interview since leaving the administration, Grenell explained a tweet he posted Saturday in response to criticism of Trump from former Defense Secretary James Matts.
"The fact of the matter is," Grenell said, "we have a real problem in Washington, D.C., because it’s a system that it no longer is Republicans and Democrats pushing against each other to create good policy. It’s a fight between Washington and the rest of America."
"What we have [is] a system in Washington where people get jobs if you're there, if you know someone and you work your way up, and it’s like musical chairs from one agency to another," Grenell added. "There is no outside thought, there's no outside perspective."
Grenell, who also spent two year's as U.S. ambassador to Germany, characterized Trump as a great disruptor of this insular system.
"He's breaking their system," he said. "He doesn't play by the rules.
"I saw that at ODNI," Grenell added. "I saw that by entering the intelligence world, and senators from the Democratic Party saying, 'You have no experience, what are you doing -- why should you be there?''"
Grenell specifically called out Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, by noting that Grenell had received his first intelligence briefing back in 2001, before Warner was elected to public office.
"He said that I wasn’t qualified," Grennell said of Warner. "I actually am a receiver of intelligence, and [I'm] an expert on the consumer part of the intelligence and how to utilize it, but that perspective is never brought to Washington."

Sunday, June 7, 2020

Cancel Culture Cartoons









Greg Gutfeld slams Cuomos, de Blasio, Newsom, CNN for making 'The Purge' a reality


"The Purge" movies have become reality -- but blame only those on the left, Greg Gutfeld said Saturday.
"Last week was a victory for mayhem, left-wing violence disguised as justice, and the media gets the assist with a disguise," Gutfeld said on the "Greg Gutfeld Show."
"I remember dystopian science-fiction movies I'd watch as a child: 'Soylent Green,' 'The Omega Man,' 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,' and wondered, 'How could that happen? Is it caused by overpopulation? Lack of resources? Cocoa Pebbles?' I assumed our society was too rich and resourceful for anything like that to happen. I was wrong to say these are weird times. It's like saying Rome around 476 A.D. was weird times."
"The Purge" films and television series center on one night per year where there is no law -- thus no legal consequences for any crime committed that night.
Gutfeld blamed liberal leaders and the media for permitting the lawlessness that resulted following the death of George Floyd.
"'The Purge' occurred and -- sorry, Hollywood script writers -- it didn't come from some autocratic right-winger," Gutfeld said. "No, Stephen King, Cher and anyone else snorting horse tranquilizers behind a gated community who thought Trump was Hitler: It was actually your side."
Gutfeld then listed CNN's Chris Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and California Gov. Gavin Newsom as likely villains -- along with liberal news network CNN.
He ripped Cuomo for recently saying, "Show me where it says the protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful."
"Say that to the black man who watched his business burn down or the immigrant facing his boarded up deli," Gutfeld said.
Gutfeld also slammed Cuomo's brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for defending rioters and looters.
"So as New York implodes, its governor thinks the biggest problem is people seeing the implosion, the death, the mayhem, the desecration of Mr. Floyd's memory -- like this video of David Dorn, a retired 77-year-old police chief who bled to death after being shot by looters. I'm sorry, I meant peaceful protesters," Gutfeld said.
"Please don't watch because you might blur the lines between peaceful protests and looters. But who is blurring the lines? It's those who accuse you of demeaning protesters when you are pleading for help to stop the violence."
"And that allows cities to burn," he said, "because it makes it impossible to stop the mob if you continue to deny it exists."

Ivanka Trump rips ‘cancel culture’ after she’s dropped as commencement speaker

Ivanka Trump, senior adviser to U.S President Donald Trump, speaks during a press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020. (Associated Press)
Run by a bunch of stupid ass Liberal Leftest.

Ivanka Trump took to Twitter Friday evening to call out cancel culture after she was dropped as a commencement speaker for Wichita State University.
“Our nation’s campuses should be bastions of free speech. Cancel culture and viewpoint discrimination are antithetical to academia,” she said. “Listening to one another is important now more than ever!”
The president’s daughter and senior White House advisor also posted a video of the remarks she had planned to give.
“I know that all of these talented graduates will dream big and aspire to make the world a better place!” she said.
Ivanka was dropped by the university after student protests online over President Trump’s response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week.
“Ivanka Trump, obviously, represents her father’s administration as one of his closest advisors,” Jennifer Ray, associate professor of photo media said in a letter posted online, which drew hundreds of signatures from students, alumni and faculty. “To many Americans, that administration has come to signify the worst of our country, particularly in its recent actions toward those peacefully protesting against racist police brutality.”
A joint statement from Wichita State President Dr. Jay Golden and WSU Tech President Dr. Sheree Utash offered no explanation for why she was dropped as a speaker.
“The WSU Tech commencement plans have been refocused more centrally on students — student voices in particular,” they said.

Massachusetts Trump supporter, 82, ‘violently assaulted’ by motorist, 27, police say


Nobody should be attacked for their political views, Charlie Chase says.
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But according to authorities, that’s exactly what happened last week to the 82-year-old U.S. military veteran and supporter of President Trump.
The Fall River, Mass., man says he was holding a Trump sign and wearing a Trump hat when suddenly a motorist allegedly got out of his car and charged toward him.
“Give me the (expletive) sign!” the suspect said, according to police.
“The guy, when he came at me, I had never seen a horror story … that the face was so filled with hate and anger, as his was,” Chase told WPRI-TV of Providence, R.I.
Everything happened so fast that Chase had to ask a buddy what transpired, he said.
“According to the other fella that was with me, I didn’t know that [the suspect] had lifted me up, but he apparently lifted me up and flung me down on my back to the ground,” Chase told the station.
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The suspect, identified as Aidan Courtright, 27, of Fall River, also grabbed Chase’s Trump sign, tore it in half, and threw it on the ground, the Providence Journal reported.
After Chase landed on the ground, the suspect allegedly kicked the elderly man in his ribs and legs before returning to his vehicle and driving away, police said.
Police responded to the scene on a call that Chase was “violently targeted for his political views and violently assaulted,” the Journal reported. The offices saw visible bruising on Chase’s lower back and he was treated at a local hospital, the report said.
Courtright later turned himself in after being contacted by authorities. He was charged with a civil-rights violation with injury, assault and battery on a person over 60, vandalism of personal property, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, the report said.
Donald Trump Jr. learned about the story and posted a Twitter message Friday.
"What kind of person commits violence against an elderly man?" Trump wrote.
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After a hearing Thursday, the suspect was released and ordered to have no contact with Chase or post anything political online, with a date to return to court Aug. 6, WPRI reported.
Chase told the station that political differences should be addressed through conversation rather than violence.
“If you’ve got something, listen to what they’re saying, figure out whether you agree you don’t agree -- ‘Ah some of that’s good, maybe I should change some of the things I think’,” he said. “That’s the American way.”

Curtis Hill: Defund police in response to George Floyd killing? It’s an insane idea that would increase crime


In normal times, no one would feel the need to point out the total absurdity of a movement called “Defund the Police.” The insanity of such a concept would be self-evident to anyone possessing the faculty of reason.
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The move to cut funding for police departments around the nation is motivated by the brutal and clearly unjustified May 25 killing of George Floyd, a black man who died when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Floyd was handcuffed on the ground, not resisting arrest and posing no threat to the four officers who arrested him for allegedly committing a minor crime – passing a counterfeit $20 bill. All four officers have since fired and been charged with either second-degree murder or aiding and abetting second-degree murder.
Floyd’s killing – captured on cellphone video – has shocked millions of people around the world. As a result, we are no longer in normal times. Peaceful protests – as well as rioting and looting – have broken out in many American communities.
Some of the groups protesting to achieve racial justice have gained frightening traction pushing the idea that slashing police budgets nationwide would help create safer communities and more peaceful interactions between blacks and whites.
This is utter nonsense.
We are a nation that continues to grapple with violent crime. According to the FBI, for example, an estimated 16,214 people were murdered in the United States in 2018. If we had fewer police on our streets that tragic figure would be higher. And you can bet that criminals would commit more robberies, assaults, rapes, burglaries and other crimes as well if there was a smaller police presence on the streets.
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We need police to continue to fulfill their vital function of protecting the innocent and holding lawbreakers accountable.
And so, anyone who cares about America should proclaim from the rooftops that “defunding the police” would produce terribly dangerous consequences.
Police officers in the United States risk their lives to serve and protect their fellow citizens. The overwhelming majority of officers are outstanding public servants who each day perform their difficult duties for all the right reasons.
This defunding makes as much sense as cutting funding for a hospital or a school where a doctor or teacher has engaged in criminal conduct against a patient or student.
Certainly, there are individual cops unworthy of the badges they wear, whether due to corruption, incompetence or hot tempers that get out of control. A small number of officers hired to fight crime turn into criminals themselves, violating the rights of citizens, engaging in police brutality, and – on rare occasions – even killing innocent people of all races.
But the solution to this problem lies in specifically identifying the officers acting improperly within police agencies – and removing those who are incorrigible. Further, when whole departments show systematic patterns of improper behavior, wholesale leadership changes must be made
The truth is that a small number of people in every profession engage in criminal conduct. We’ve all seen news stories about pedophile priests, doctors who rape patients, teachers who assault students, lawyers who swindle elderly clients out of their life savings, corrupt politicians who take bribes, and more. In all these professions, wrongdoers must be identified and removed from their positions – and imprisoned if convicted of crimes.
In the slow and excruciating death of George Floyd, our nation witnessed just how horrific a situation can become when bad cops walk the street. Fortunately, justice now appears to be moving swiftly in that Minneapolis case.
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Defunding police departments, however, would only make positive reforms all the more difficult to achieve. In a troubling move, for example, the mayor of Los Angeles has proposed cutting as much as $150 million from funding for the city’s police department.
This defunding makes as much sense as cutting funding for a hospital or a school where a doctor or teacher has engaged in criminal conduct against a patient or student. In all these cases, the criminal cops, doctors and teachers would not be the ones to suffer as a result of defunding. Hospital patients, students and the general public would suffer instead.
When our communities hire police officers, we ask them to risk their lives to keep our families and neighborhoods safe. According to the FBI, 89 officers were killed around the nation in the line of duty in 2019. These deaths were a tragedy that should not be ignored.
The least we can do for our police officers is to ensure they have the best possible training and equipment – and enough funding for adequate staffing.
Years before he became president, Teddy Roosevelt served as New York City’s police commissioner. In his autobiography, he wrote about his longstanding commitment to adequately fund police departments. “I have not the slightest sympathy,” he wrote, “with any policy which tends to put the policeman at the mercy of a tough [criminal], or which deprives him of efficient weapons.”
With the turmoil and strife that have wracked our nation following the killing of George Floyd, perhaps it’s understandable that many people are acting and reacting out of emotion rather than logic. But we can do better.
It is shameful that a real opportunity to tackle unresolved racial discord is being hijacked by anarchists who want to destabilize our nation.
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Following the killing of George Floyd, we have witnessed at least a dozen additional deaths in senseless violent riots.
One of these tragedies occurred with the death of David Dorn, age 77, who was killed while trying to protect a friend’s pawnshop from rampaging looters in St. Louis.
Dorn, a black man, was a retired police captain. His black life mattered. The fact that he was killed by looters rather than by white police officers does not make his death any less tragic.
A former colleague recalled Dorn as someone “very dedicated to youth, especially disadvantaged youth” who “wanted to see them succeed.” Dorn “wanted to be a role model for those young men and women,” the former colleague said.
We owe it to the memory of officers such as David Dorn – and all honorable police officers continuing to serve their communities – to keep supporting the work of law enforcement.
And even more than that, we owe it to all our fellow citizens to pursue policies – including adequately funding our police agencies – that will best protect our families and neighborhoods going forward.
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As Americans of all races and backgrounds, let’s work together to make our police forces better. Let’s consider any and all substantive proposals truly aimed at their improved performance.
Let’s help all officers embrace the role of “guardian” as passionately as they embrace the role of “enforcer.” Let’s continue our quest for equal rights and equal justice for all. And let’s continue our journey toward racial reconciliation and improved race relations.
But let’s set our sights on real solutions rather than becoming distracted by nonsensical faddish slogans such as “Defund the Police.”

Saturday, June 6, 2020

Take A Knee To Looters and Rioters Cartoons











President Trump signs executive order on commercial fishing


OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 1:45 PM PT — Friday, June 5, 2020
President Trump has signed a proclamation to reopen rich fishing waters off the coast of Maine, which were previously designated as a sanctuary by the Obama administration.
During Friday’s roundtable in Bangor, the president ensured he will bring back commercial fishing industries “in a big way.”The move walked back an Obama-era executive order that banned fishing in the area due to conservation efforts. The president claimed the prior administration’s policies were excessive and caused serious economic harm to the lives of fishermen.
He went on to say he will continue fighting for fishing rights with his plans to crack down on illegally harvested seafood. The president is also hoping to confront the EU over what he called “unfair tariffs.”

CartoonDems