On Friday, we faced yet another black swan event. We’ve had an attempted Trump assassination, the surprise coup against President Biden, and now Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s, defection and joining up with Donald Trump. Before getting into this and a discussion of the DNC convention in Chicago, I want to expose the partisan perfidy of NPR’s Judy Woodruff and the ease with which she and the press are manipulated by the deep state.

Press Patsies

During the convention, Judy Woodruff reported (using the most authoritative voice and concerned visage she could muster) that Donald Trump had a telephone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during which he told him to reject the Biden ceasefire deal because accepting it would help Biden’s reelection. Both Netanyahu and Trump denied the claim upon which Trump was instantly being charged by the usual shills with a violation of the Logan Act. When pressed to substantiate her charge, Woodruff “clarified” her remarks and said she’d relied on accounts in Axios and Reuters and had done no independent verification. In fact, neither publication reported what she had said was the content of the conversation. More damaging to the credibility of her “clarification,” days before her assertion both accounts had reported the men denied having any phone conversation regarding the proposal. (I think it likely they got the same tip Woodruff did, but they fact checked it, discounted there had been any conversation, and then the tipster juiced it up some more and whispered it to Woodruff for a second shot at it.)

Did she misread the articles?  I think it obvious she repeated something someone in the administration told her, someone whose identity she dares not reveal for fear of losing valuable access. The claim was seen by many. How many know of her “clarification” is hard to know, but the claim advanced the Administration’s interests in providing a cover for a failed ceasefire deal while smearing both Trump and Netanyahu with prolonging the war for personal partisan interest.

In a similar though less egregious bit of malpractice, a number of press patsies ginned up viewers for the last day of the convention and Kamala’s appearance by stating there was going to be a surprise celebrity appearance that day -- most said Beyonce but some said Taylor Swift would also be there, and another added a third celeb -- George W. Bush. None of this was true, but I imagine the press lies were also sourced by Harris insiders and repeated without independent verification by a credulous media doing everything they can to aid Harris.

The DNC Convention

Fabulously wealthy speakers demonizing wealth -- pretending they are victims of racism and income inequality; pretending they are just folks -- a party that lives on credentialism, contending that a poor kid who made it to  Yale law School is not what we are; a candidate whose entire game plan is (a) to hide her policies (b) tout her experience while at the same time ignoring the fact that she’s been in office for 3 ½ years and had a big role in the dire consequences which (c) it is claimed she will definitely fix if only she gets elected; hiding the party’s agenda while peddling fluff and lies by the barrel; praising Biden who they just defenestrated and unpersoned.

Oprah

Oprah is nearly three times a billionaire so it’s a mystery why they called up her to whine that she was “on the receiving end of racism, sexism and income inequality.” Years before he switched parties, she urged Trump on her TV show to run for president and as she spoke against his candidacy, Trump released a letter she had written him wishing she was his presidential running mate. 

Michelle Obama, gussied up in about three grand worth of designer clothes and shoes and stepping away from her four mansions and almost 200 million dollars in assets, also played the race and class card, wagging her finger at the rich and saying her parents were “suspicious of folks who took more than they needed.” Ignoring the multi-millions the Obamas set aside for her own children, she talked about the fact that most “will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.” Translated, this means she’s still for reparations and redistribution of wealth -- though surely not from her. The Babylon Bee could not resist this dig at Michelle’s Eat the Rich speech. On the same roster as Mrs. Eat the Rich were Caroline Kennedy’s son Jack Schlossberg, due to inherit about $100 million; Governor J B. Pritzker, scion of a family worth over $3.6 billion, Doug Emhoff, worth about $10 million, and Senator Gary Peters, also a multi-millionaire. 

Barack Obama

As usual the world’s shuck and jive master put on an oleaginous performance, as the X account called Cynical Publius put it:

The best government is a LIMITED government, one where the government’s powers are carefully circumscribed and the powers that the government is not specifically granted belong instead to the People, and not the bureaucrats. I describe, of course, the American way of government -- a 235-year experiment in freedom that smooth-talking Marxist monsters like Barack Obama have sought to destroy for the past 100 years.

Obama’s speech last night was the seemingly compelling story of every totalitarian since Karl Marx first slithered out of his mother’s unholy womb. “Give us your freedoms, give us your wealth, put your trust in us and we will build a shining city on a hill.” This siren song is how Lenin came to power. And Mussolini. And Hitler. And Stalin. And Mao. And Pol Pot. And Kim il Sung. And Hugo Chavez. And the tyrants currently transforming the UK into a fascist hellscape. Every genocidal maniac in the past 120 years assured his followers that THIS TIME the government would be for the people, that a message of “Hope” and “Change” would FINALLY work and create a world of equity and joy. That promise that suckered so many well-meaning victims always ended the same -- in poverty, in oppression, in work camps, in famine, in genocide. The pattern has never not ended this way.

Anti-credentialists?

The party always made a big deal about Bill Clinton, the boy from Hope who made it to Yale Law School. Now J.D. Vance, who’s done the same, was derided by Harris’s running mate Tim Walz, ostensibly for abandoning his roots. He did this on a speakers roster which included these DNC mouthpieces who went to Ivy League schools: Cory Booker (Yale), Amy Klobuchar (Yale), Bill Clinton (Yale), Jared Polis (Princeton), Olivia Troye (Penn), Mindy Kaling (Dartmouth), Pete Buttigieg (Harvard), Amanda Gorman (Harvard), and John Legend (Penn).  Iowahawk had fun with this attempt to portray Walz and his party as hardscrabble Midwesterners:

“I can't tell you how hilarious I find all this sudden dueling Gravel Road Cred stuff…

There's only one way to determine who is the real Authentic Hardscrabble Midwesterner in this contest: drifting jacked up rusty Camaros in a snowy Kmart parking lot after a Loverboy concert.”

Lies by the Barrel

I can’t think of a thing Kamala and her backers said at the DNC which was not a bold-faced lie.  Kristine Christlieb writes in The Federalist:

A big part of that psy-op is to lie and mislead brazenly about everything. On the opening night of the convention, Biden repeated the infamous “very fine people on both sides” hoax and the “suckers and losers” hoax, both of which anyone can easily look up in 30 seconds. He also claimed that 500,000 new electric vehicle charging stations have been created under his administration (the actual number is seven), among many other blatant falsehoods. 

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker repeated the “injecting bleach” line about Donald Trump and Covid. Former President Barack Obama lied about Trump’s tax cuts, claiming they only benefited the wealthy, and about how many jobs have been created under the Biden-Harris administration. 

Michelle Obama falsely claimed Trump wants to outlaw IVF. Tim Walz was introduced as a “Command Sergeant Major,” a rank he never achieved. Capitol Police Officer Aquilino Gonell claimed he “almost died” on January 6, when in fact he suffered no injuries. On and on, lie after lie -- and of the most lazy and obvious kind.

The biggest lie of all, though, is that President Biden wasn’t forced out of his reelection campaign in what amounted to a coup last month. A key part of that lie is to downplay the fact that Harris is currently the vice president and present her instead as a new entrant to the race who brings new ideas and energy. But she’s been in office for nearly four years now. Biden’s failed policies are her failed policies.

Democrats are caught in a bind here. If they tout Harris as an integral part of the Biden administration, a trusted advisor and partner to the president, who as VP was given real responsibilities, how can they claim she doesn’t then bear responsibility for what’s happened while she’s been in office? 

Harris taking the stage and proclaiming, “When I am president, I will bring down the cost of groceries,” elides the reality that she’s been in office since 2021. If she’s so committed to bringing down the cost of groceries, why hasn’t she done something about it? Why is everything so much more expensive than it was before Biden-Harris were in charge?

Same goes for immigration and the border, the economy, foreign policy, and everything else. At some point, Harris will have to explain why she shouldn’t be associated with Biden’s failed presidency. 

Or she won’t. She’ll just keep lying about Trump and deflecting tough questions about her role as Biden’s vice president. And the media will let her get away with it. In that case, her candidacy will be plagued by an air of unreality, which is why Democrats are relying on the psy-op. 

If Harris continues with her current strategy, we should expect the psy-op to get more intense. We should expect ever more shrill insistence that Harris and Walz are “normal” but Trump and running mate J.D. Vance are “weird” -- despite all evidence to the contrary. We should expect more frequent and heavy-handed claims about what a regular guy Walz is (Obama went out of his way to tell us Walz’s flannel shirts are real) and gosh darnit, look how joyful and relatable he is.

And of course we should expect a flood of lies, too many to correct, week over week, until the bitter end.

Victor Davis Hanson does a yeoman’s job at mopping up the outrageous, lengthy list of Harris lies.

Kamala’s lies about Israel and Gaza are well documented.

Bad Acting

The NY Post gave out Oscars for the phoniest actors at the convention. My favorites are these:

[Nancy Pelosi] We will not soon forget the way in which she said that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had “established one of the most successful presidencies of modern times.”

And then put such emotion into her voice while talking about infrastructure on rural broadband!

But the standout moment was her tribute to Joe Biden. Only a few weeks ago, Pelosi went to see Joe and brutally ended his career, reportedly telling him that he must either stop his run or get pushed out “the hard way.”

This week was always going to be a mountain for Nancy to climb. But she managed it.

[Kamala Harris] Finally we are being told that someone who has been vice president for the past four years was both in charge and not in charge, knows what to do but hasn’t done it so far, and can both claim credit for the economy and yet insist that it needs fixing.

In the process the Democrats have managed to create a whole new candidate.

[Cardinal Cupich] Cupich deserves a mention for his hilarious performance as a “Catholic Cardinal.” [snip]

Cardinal Blase Joseph Cupich delivered an invocation at the DNC -- despite the abortion trucks stationed outside the arena. [snip]

The Cardinal had clearly not toured the abortion and vasectomy trucks which were doing big business outside the convention. Nor the huge, 20-foot inflatable IUD that was also hovering around. 

(Incidentally, in a bid for the low-information women, the party keeps lying about Trump’s stand on abortion and the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs and on that they are showing success, if we are to believe the polls. Trump always said leave the issue to the states, and the very forces who complained about abortion policy being set by nine unelected mostly white men on the Court are in a twit because the court agreed with them and said voters should decide.)

Image: Michael Ramirez, No winds of change

Another Black Swan

In any event, for all the media fluffing, the blatant hypocrisy, all the fancy lies and bad acting, the appeals to racism and classism and sexism, the hundreds of millions the DNC spent on this shindig, the decision of Robert F Kennedy Jr. to align himself with Trump and withdraw from the race punctured their hot air balloon. Roseanne Barr said it most succinctly:

“I haven’t seen [D]emocrats this upset since Lincoln outlawed slavery”

Kennedy was polling 3-5 % in a number of critical states before he withdrew, but his criticism of the party’s antidemocratic censorship, media control, and weaponization of the federal agencies seems to have struck a chord appealing to some Democrats and independents which would add to Trump’s already committed base. The evening he announced he was warmly greeted by a crowd of over 20,000 in Arizona at an overflow Trump rally.

The best-laid plans of the party Michael Walsh calls “a criminal organization masquerading as a political party” seem to have gone astray.