RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-ride-special-counsels-report-way-white-house-avoids-potholes

Former President Donald Trump can ride Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Joe Biden’s “diminished faculties” all the way to the White House if he does these three things:

1. Leans into voters’ concerns about the disastrous border crisis – and tells them how he’ll fix it.

2. Talks up his plan to keep the economy humming through deregulation, keeping taxes low and also by pushing his “Drill Baby Drill” plan to expand America’s energy stockpile and independence, and…        

3. Shuts up about everything else. Don’t feed Democrat narratives with threats to abandon NATO or impose 60% tariffs on China. Stop whining about the 2020 election, stop denigrating rival and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s husband and wardrobe, and lay off President Joe Biden. The president is destroying his reelection hopes all by himself; he doesn’t need any help. 

Also, talk less about what a great job you did before and more about how you’ll do it again, even better. Voters want to know and they want optimism. 

There’s been a lot of chatter about what Joe Biden should do to confront the terrible blow delivered by Special Counsel Hur. There has been less commentary about how the presumed GOP nominee should navigate this gift from the blue. My view – don’t interrupt Biden’s decline and fall.  

Odds makers have Donald Trump in the lead, with one site giving him a 52% chance of winning in November, against 27% for Biden. Shockingly, Michelle Obama is next most likely to become president, with a 15% chance. That says everything. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/contemplating-the-unthinkable-harris-2024/

EXCERPT:

Kamala Harris’s Chances

Late last week, after President Biden’s disastrous prime-time press conference, our Phil Klein delivered an assessment that sounded insane . . . and yet, in light of recent events, deserves serious consideration: “Democrats would be better off facing Donald Trump with [Kamala] Harris as their presidential nominee than taking their chances with a rapidly declining [Joe] Biden.”

I can hear readers now: Harris is a joke, a liability, a walking disaster who is so self-evidently a weak candidate and leader that not a single prominent Democrat has called upon Biden to announce he’s serving just one term.

But as these past few days have made abundantly clear, Biden’s age is the single biggest problem jeopardizing the Democrats’ chances of keeping the White House. Never mind that a super-majority of Americans thinks Biden is too old to serve another term; a super-majority of Democrats thinks Biden is too old to serve another term, according to the latest polling from ABC News:

According to the poll, conducted using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, 86 percent of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president. That figure includes 59 percent of Americans who think both he and former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, are too old and 27 percent who think only Biden is too old. . . .

73 percent of Democrats think Biden is too old to serve.

This is a problem that cannot be fixed. Biden cannot get younger. There’s something a little sad about Democrats who think that the problem can be solved if the White House and Biden campaign staff just put the president in front of the cameras more:

Top party operatives are warning Biden aides that the president cannot retreat in response to the special counsel report that fueled concerns over his age and mental faculties. They say President Joe Biden, having largely shied away from interviews and press conferences, needs to be out in public far more.

They want to see him engage with the press and voters in the off-script and punchy exchanges he’s been known for in the past, which they believe will help chip away at concerns about the president’s mental acuity. They say that it’s worth the risk of potential slip-ups that could reinforce the image that he’s declining.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-memory-special-counsel-robert-hur-democrats-2024-election-19126919?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Democrats have been reassuring themselves that President Biden’s cognitive decline is no obstacle to his re-election, but perhaps this week will be a tipping point. Special counsel Robert Hur’s report about the President’s failure to recall basic facts of his life and Mr. Biden’s multiplying public lapses are ample reason for urging him to withdraw from the 2024 race.

Mr. Hur’s account of his five-hour interview with Mr. Biden opened a rare window on the President in private. His account exposed what many Americans have suspected based on Mr. Biden’s many public misstatements and faltering physical presence. He couldn’t recall which years he was Vice President or even when his son Beau died. He said an ally in the Obama Administration’s debate over Afghanistan was on the opposite side.

Democrats are raging against Mr. Hur, but they should be grateful. Mr. Biden’s mental frailty is one reason Mr. Hur offered for not presenting the President’s document-mishandling as a criminal offense before a jury. His report is also forcing Democrats to confront the political reality that Mr. Biden’s decline could re-elect Donald Trump.

Mr. Biden compounded the damage with his performance in a rare 13-minute press appearance at the White House on Thursday night. He was angry and snappish. Worse, he confused Egypt’s President with Mexico’s in relation to Gaza, of all places. He also created a problem for Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi by saying he had to be persuaded to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

This followed Mr. Biden’s confusion in recent days over the names of German Chancellors and French Presidents he had spoken to. These episodes are more frequent, and they are typical of someone with a failing short-term memory. Episodes and names from the past fill the void of recent events he can’t recall.

Such decline is part of the human condition, and it’s not Mr. Biden’s fault. But what is his fault is telling the American people that he can capably serve another four years as President.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/here-is-how-the-dems-could-replace-biden-through-an-internal-coup/

I spent years telling skeptical conservatives that, yes Biden was going to run for reelection. Many didn’t believe it until he filed, became the automatic frontrunner, and had no opponents to speak of.

And while public perceptions of his state keep dropping, the Democrats have few options.

Sure, rank and file Dems could shift their support to Rep. Dean Philips, who is in possession of his full faculties and actually campaigning, but there’s zero sign of that happening. Instead, New Hampshire Dems wrote in Biden after he refused to even compete in their state in order to score a big hand-delivered win in South Carolina. (With 4% turnout.)

But here are the four scenarios ranked in order of probability.

1. Biden is the nominee – barring a serious medical breakdown, the frontrunner becomes the party nominee. – Most likely

2. Biden resigns – significant pressure is brought to bear on Biden, his aides and family members to get him to drop out – second most likely

3. Philips beats Biden – panicked by Biden’s poor polls and deteriorating condition, Democrats ignore the party and switch to Philips – least likely

4. DNC removes Biden  – that’s the interesting ‘X’ scenario.- third most likely

Even if Biden does drop out, the results will be messy. It’s too late for anyone else to file to run. The only other candidate on the ballot is Rep. Dean Philips who has few allies and the Dem establishment is not about to let a dark horse whom they piled on win. They’d rather have Trump than Philips. (If you’re skeptical, think of all the Republicans who would rather have had Hillary than Trump.)

But what if Biden doesn’t drop out?

Let’s go back for a moment to Hillary Clinton’s fainting incident which was publicly dismissed, but privately was taken very seriously.

Then-Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile considered replacing Hillary Clinton at the top of the party’s ticket last year after the presidential nominee appeared unsteady and stumbled following a September 11 memorial service in New York, Brazile writes in her new book.

As rumors swirled about Clinton’s health and the future of her presidential campaign, representatives of Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley contacted Brazile, she writes, apparently to offer their services.

“Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about?” Brazile writes about Biden.

Brazile writes that she considered several potential replacements for Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the vice presidential nominee, and concluded Biden and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., would be the strongest combination to beat Donald Trump in November.

Brazile, who was abruptly brought on to replace former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz during the party’s convention last summer, did not have the power to unilaterally remove Clinton and Kaine.

But DNC rules give the party’s chairman the authority to set the ball in motion.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/02/08/why-is-the-left-suddenly-talking-about-a-coup-at-the-ballot-box/

For the past three years, the left has claimed Donald Trump lied about the 2020 election and then attempted an insurrection on Jan. 6 to overturn the results. But now that Trump is leading in polls, the left is talking ominously about a “coup.” Pay attention, because if Trump wins in 2024, this will be how the left tries to stop him from getting anything done.

At a protest in Washington, D.C., a week ago – organized by a group that calls itself “Stop the Coup 2025” – Markus Batchelor, the national political director of People for the American Way, told the crowd that “Jan. 6 was just a dress rehearsal.”

So is this group predicting Trump will try to take over in 2025 even if Biden wins reelection?

Not exactly. He went on to say that coups “don’t need weapons to succeed.” He said that “coups can be committed by pen and paper,” “coups can be committed at the ballot,” and “coups can be committed by seemingly democratic processes.”

Come again?

The definition of “coup d’etat” in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary is “the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/02/07/frustrated-independents-hold-trumps-edge-over-biden-in-2024-ii-tipp-poll/

Former President Donald Trump continues to face legal charges on his return path to the presidency, while current President Joe Biden carries his age, fading mental acuity, and charges of corruption as he seeks a second term. So who has the edge now in the head-to-head electoral matchup for 2024? Thanks to solid independent voter backing, Trump still edges out Biden, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Trump wins 43% of the overall vote, while Biden gets 41% in the national online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Jan. 31-Feb. 2, with 1,266 registered voters participating. The poll has an overall +/-2.8 percentage-point margin of error.

The results for the two major parties are predictably partisan, with Democrats favoring Biden over Trump 80% to 7%, while Republicans give Trump the nod 86% to 5% over Biden. However, once again, independent voters prefer Trump over Biden by 41% to 35%, while 13% wanted “other.”

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/joe-biden-nbc-2024/2024/02/04/id/1152209/

President Joe Biden hit yet another new low in his approval rating (37%) in the latest NBC News poll released Sunday, raising concern of the Democrat pollster, who said the “damning” results show “a presidency in peril.”

Former President Donald Trump not only leads Biden by 5 points (47%-42%) in the national poll, but also leads by big margins:

23 points on mental and physical health to be president (46%-23%)
22 points on handling the economy (55%-33%)
21 points on dealing with crime and violence (50%-29%)
16 points on being competent and effective (48%-32%)
11 points on improving America’s standing in the world (47%-36%)
35 points on securing the southern border (57%-22%)

Illegal immigration has been widely deemed the No. 1 voting issue, according to exit polls in the early GOP primary states.

“What is most concerning is the erosion of Biden’s standing against Trump compared to four years ago,” Democrat pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates told NBC News.

“On every measure compared to 2020, Biden has declined. Most damning, the belief that Biden is more likely to be up to the job — the chief tenet of the Biden candidacy — has evaporated.”

The numbers look great now for Trump and “difficult” for the incumbent going into the heart of the 2024 primary cycle, according to Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies.

https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2024/02/03/donald-trump-imperfect-vessel-is-our-only-hope-n4926097

EXCERPT:

Looming global war. Global abandonment of the U.S. petrodollar. A gangrenous southern border. Total subversion of national sovereignty via WHO “pandemic treaty.”

It’s now down in the primary to Nikki Haley, an entirely superficial donor creation with no grassroots supports, vs. Donald Trump. For all intents and purposes, the primary is over, and arguably was before it ever started; even if Trump is in a jail cell come convention time, he will be the nominee. Nothing stops this train.

What we have looking ahead is a two-front political war brewing.

In the general, it will likely come down to Trump vs. Biden, barring a strategic substitution by the Democrats of their candidate with a fresher, more diverse puppet.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-brags-of-blowout-in-south-carolina-with-4-turnout/

Once upon a time, journalists were warned not to ‘bury the lede’. But in an era when the media is Pravda with snappier logos, the lede has to be buried in an unmarked grave most of the time. Take the story of Biden’s big blowout primary win.

Media headlines hype his 96% victory in the South Carolina primary. Fewer mention that it was a 4% turnout election.

I’ve said before that Biden had the DNC rig the primary calendar to favor him by putting South Carolina first and kicking out New Hampshire because he couldn’t lose in SC if he were dead.

And this primary proved it.

South Carolina secured Biden the nomination in the 2020 primaries. He paid multiple campaign visits there and spent six figures on ads in a state that was a sure thing to produce these kinds of big numbers.

And 96% (the current estimate) does sound like a lot. But it’s 96% of what? As it turns out, it’s 96% of 4%.