The Trump Investigations are Becoming a 2024 Landmine for His Primary Opponents

By Maggie Severns (Mark Weaver quoted)

Shortly after launching his presidential campaign, Ron DeSantis told a Tennessee talk show host that 2024 GOP frontrunner Donald Trump “is a different guy today than when he was running in 2015 and 2016.” 

“I don’t know what happened,” the Florida governor added.

Yet as DeSantis and the former president spar on the campaign trail for the Republican nomination, DeSantis has stuck closely to Trump when it comes to the swirling cloud of unprecedented state and federal criminal investigations hanging over him. 

Recently, DeSantis went a step further during a podcast interview in saying he would be “aggressive [in] issuing pardons” to those involved in the January 6th riots. Trump had said as much himself two weeks earlier.

DeSantis’ decision to stand by Trump – even mimicking his statements about the Manhattan district attorney being “Soros-backed” – reflects a belief shared by many Republican strategists that there's not much to gain on the campaign trail by criticizing the former president over his legal problems. Yet some rival candidates are staking out a different approach as they try to distinguish themselves and their message from the growing field.

(Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images) Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images

Rival Asa Hutchinson pledged last week there will be “no blanket pardons” for people involved in the January 6th riots if he were elected president. This week, two more candidates who have been intertwined with the Trump presidency plan to enter the race: Chris Christie, an early supporter and finalist for the vice presidency in 2016who has been critical of Trump since the 2020 election, and former Vice President Mike Pence – who testified before a grand jury as a witness in Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Trump probe. Liz Cheney, the ex-congresswoman who drew headlines for her leadership on the January 6th committee, recently ran an adattacking Trump in the early primary state of New Hampshire, a sign she is considering a run for higher office, too.

Polls and internal party research suggest that 2024 candidates are safest with the Republican base if they sidestep the Trump investigations. This is the only way to possibly win support from Trump’s base of supporters and thus nab the Republican nomination, many GOP strategists say. But there is also little to gain in a crowded field of candidates by idly watching the unprecedented investigations into Trump play out — and some theorize they need the former president to falter in order to capture some of his devoted following, not to mention in order to beat President Joe Biden in a general election.

“We believe there will be a tipping point” with Trump, said one operative working with a rival campaign. “There will come a time when people are exhausted.”

But hoping that an indictment will cause Trump to falter is “whistling past the graveyard,” countered Mark R. Weaver, an Ohio-based Republican strategist and litigator.

“He was impeached twice — and look at his numbers,” Weaver said.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis Megan Varner/Getty

Court dates colliding with the campaign trail

The question of how to grapple with Trump’s court battles is likely to continue for many months and perhaps longer, especially if additional indictments put more court dates on the calendar during the Republican primary season.

Already there are moments when the different criminal investigations are scheduled to collide with the demands of the campaign trail. The Department of Justice’s Smith is expected to soon announce the results of his probe into classified documents at Mar-a-Lago just as the GOP field of presidential candidates continues to grow.

In August, Republicans are slated to hold their first primary debate hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee. That event coincides with the timeline spelled out by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has spent the last two-plus years investigating Trump’s 2020 well-publicized efforts to overturn Georgia's presidential election results. 

Trump’s criminal trial is set to begin next March in New York for the allegations that he made illegal hush money payments to an adult film star during his 2016 campaign. That’s shortly after the mega-primary voting on Super Tuesday and during a stretch when states will hold primary elections on a weekly basis. 

At some points — and especially during a trial — Trump will have to juggle his campaign with the courts, even if the president’s legal team keeps working to delaythe proceedings against him as much as possible. It’s a contrast he’s already been busy highlighting on his social media site.

“They forced upon us a trial date of March 25th, right in the middle of Primary season,” the former president recently wrote on Truth Social. “Very unfair, but this is exactly what the Radical Left Democrats wanted. It’s called ELECTION INTERFERENCE, and nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before!!!”

The court cases will grab national headlines, making it difficult for rivals to avoid as they hit the campaign trail. And some candidates are not avoiding the topic: New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, another potential contender, told CNN last week that issuing pardons to the Jan. 6 rioters is “nothing I would do.”

Christie, the former New Jersey governor who’s been an outspoken public Trump ally, has needled Trump over the hush money case, too.

“All this bravado from the Trump camp is bologna,” Christie said in April on ABC’s This Week, shortly after Trump posted online that he expected to be indicted by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. “He’s going to be charged officially on Tuesday. He’s going to have to be mug-shotted, fingerprinted and he’s going to face a criminal trial in Manhattan.”

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

How voters view Trump’s troubles

During a normal primary campaign it would be expected for the presidential candidates to seize on an opponents’ legal issues as a weakness. That logic seems to fall apart for the GOP in 2024.

Polling indicates Republican voters are not swayed so far by the investigations into the former president. After Bragg indicted Trump on criminal charges in New York, a Quinnipiac University poll found a majority of Americans (57 percent) believe criminal charges should disqualify Trump from running for office.

But Republican voters felt differently: 75 percent disagreed, saying criminal charges shouldn’t disqualify Trump from making another run for the presidency. And 93 percent of Republicans said they believe Bragg’s case is “mainly motivated by politics” as opposed to the law.

“It appears his base is his base, and he’s not losing ground with his base,” said Tim Malloy, polling analyst at Quinnipiac University. “And frankly, if they’re not going away now, when would they go away?”

DeSantis is currently Trump’s leading rival; several recent polls have shown him capturing more than 20 percent of the primary vote while other challengers fail to top single-digit support.

The challenge for the Florida governor and other candidates who want to peel off Trump voters will be to make a case that they’re a better option than Trump. They’d need to do that while not angering Trump’s supporters or disregarding his achievements that are popular with Republican voters, said Weaver, the Ohio-based strategist. 

It would get even trickier for DeSantis or another candidate if he or she somehow won the GOP nomination and made it into a general election against Biden. Then, a candidate who didn’t criticize Trump during the primary would be in the difficult position of having to defend his or her primary-season comments to potential swing Democrats and Independent voters who could be vital for winning the White House.

“Trump is the elephant in the room for Ron DeSantis. How do you walk through that room without engaging that elephant? This is the great strategic question they have to solve,” said Weaver, the strategist and lawyer. “You have to praise the obvious Trump wins, and point out that more wins like that are possible with a different candidate who has a similar philosophy.”

Opinion: Path to break gun control advocate response loop

By Matt Dole, published by the cincinnati enquirer

Every mass shooting is undoubtedly tragic. There are bad people out there willing to do terrible things. We should do everything we can to fix this. That starts by acknowledging the cultural influence. Violence on TV and in video games desensitizes us to the horrible real-world ramifications. Violence in movies, TV and video games are more vicious than ever. Call it thought pollution, with similar long-term effects.

A video game player can control an avatar − the supposed protagonist − in a realistic world as he or she carjacks someone, shoots that victim, steals the car, and runs over people on the sidewalk who get in the way. It’s a sure sign of a growingly secular society that has lost its moral compass.

Gun control advocates contend that law-abiding, pro-gun rights citizens are the ones out of cultural touch. We hear them claim that our founding fathers used muskets − limiting constitutional protection to only those kinds of guns. Such a narrow view would mean that the Constitution’s "freedom of the press" doesn’t protect news delivered by radio, video, or online. The Bill of Rights is better than that. It’s a list meant not for the founders, but for the descendants of the founders. It reminds us that our rights and liberties come from God, and shall not be infringed upon by the government.

We also hear gun control advocates mock with derision the idea that the Second Amendment serves as a deterrent to government overreach. People with AR-15s, they laugh, fighting against the U.S. Army? As if the might of the U.S. military cancels out the right of the people to stand up to tyranny. Tories similarly sneered at the idea of New England farmers standing up to the colossal British military. Should a day of actual tyranny come, gun control advocates’ eyes will be opened like latter-day Scrooges after a visit from the Ghost of Government Oppression, and off they’ll go to the nearest gun store to start the clock on a government-required waiting period.

Following the most recent school shooting, a teacher quickly tweeted, "they won’t let us pick textbooks, but they want to give us guns?" Yes. Correct. This isn’t inconsistent. It’s entirely reasonable to oppose teachers intentionally indoctrinating children into their worldview and political beliefs and also to support trained and willing volunteer teachers being armed to protect kids’ lives.

Now, we’re moving through the phases of what I’ve termed the Gun Control Advocate Response Loop. First comes anger. Anger is understandable, but gun control advocates rarely direct it at the actual culprit. Instead, blame gets thrust on guns themselves, law-abiding gunowners, stores that sell guns and gun manufacturers.

Next comes finger-pointing. Joe Biden, whose party held the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress for nearly two years, inexplicably blamed Republicans for standing in the way of solutions. The president could bypass his perceived GOP roadblock by calling for conventions of the states to consider amending the Constitution, but he won’t.

The next stop in the loop features gun control advocates demanding action, taking the president’s example by yelling about Republicans’ refusal to support "commonsense" solutions. This is code for solutions that aren’t constitutional, and thus aren’t very common. Or agreed upon by most common folks.

Eventually the hubbub will die down again until the next tragic shooting − when they’ll start around the loop all over again with even higher pitched fervor.

We need to break this cycle. That starts by rejecting untenable options mislabeled as common sense for realistic, constitutional solutions. Like, yes, arming teachers. Well-trained teachers, who feel comfortable being armed, would both serve as a preventive measure and as an effective response in the event of an active shooting.

Or ensuring that schools have resource officers trained both as a liaison to students and to respond in a crisis. That would be common sense, but we’ve seen liberal school boards expel police on the grounds that they make some students feel uncomfortable.

Or improving our mental health system so that people who need and want help get it quicker, and making sure that those who are judged truly an imminent threat are disarmed and properly monitored would go a long way.

We should and must come together on this. The path forward isn’t through a repeating loop, it’s the same trail we’ve traveled since 1776, lit by the bright shining beacon of freedom.

Matt Dole is a communications consultant who lives in Newark and works in Columbus.

Pennsylvania Must Learn From 2022 →

By Libby Krieger, published by the American Spectator

Keystone State conservative politicos gathered this weekend at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, the largest state conservatism conference in the nation.

Elected officials, activists, suburban moms, high-dollar donors, and many more came together to listen to conservative giants like John Gizzi of Newsmax, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Kellyanne Conway, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Conversations of candidate quality were a theme of the three-day conference. Some speakers urged attendees to consider a candidate’s electability — others dismissed the notion that primary voters should really care.

Well, both may be true, but the heart of the matter was summed up by a line in DeSantis’ speech: “The winners get to make policy. The losers go home.”

If Republicans don’t consider who can win, they will go home and pave the way for Democrats to impose their radical agenda on the American electorate without check. 

This is a lesson Pennsylvania should know well. Both Dr. Mehmet Oz and Pennsylvania Sen. Doug Mastriano lost statewide in 2022 in the Senate and gubernatorial races, respectively — and it wasn’t even close. Oz lost by almost 5 points, and Mastriano lost by nearly 15 points. 

Let’s focus on Mastriano: While another candidate may still have lost against now–Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro, the magnitude of the loss was an avoidable one had Republican primary voters considered which candidate had the better potential to win in a general election. Mastriano had no appeal to swing voters, and that was clear in the primary.

Republican primary voters must learn to step back from a candidate’s sweeping momentum and critically think of the type of quality candidate who can support conservative values and still win a general election — not just a primary.

It would be amiss to not address the concerns of those who dismiss candidate quality. They believe that if Republicans only consider electability, we will end up voting in “moderates” who don’t courageously defend conservative values. That’s a valid concern — which is why electability is an important consideration, but not the only one.

This chatter on candidate quality is most often applied to the 2024 presidential nominee hopefuls. Should Republican primary voters support Donald Trump? DeSantis? Another candidate? Who has a fighting chance to beat the Democrat (at this point, Joe Biden)?

But Pennsylvania should be thoughtful in considering what candidate quality means, not just for the presidency — but for the Senate as well.

Unsurprisingly, jokes about John Fetterman were a staple of the three-day conference, with chatter of how his health issues will unfold.

While we should all hope he gets the medical and mental health care he needs for recovery, we cannot ignore the obvious deficiencies he has in representing Pennsylvania well in the U.S. Senate.

Talk about a likely resignation ensued in the hallways and the main stage of the conference. But what happens if that’s the case?

Shapiro would appoint someone to fill Fetterman’s spot. Some talk of his wife taking his spot, but hums of “moderate” former Rep. Conor Lamb have grown. And, from the Democrat’s point of view, a moderate is a better strategy in the purple state.

Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. will also be up for reelection come 2024, meaning there’re possibly two chances Pennsylvania Republicans will have in the next couple years to correct their failures and pick candidates with fighting chances.

The choice in the forefront of everyone’s mind right now is former Republican Senate candidate David McCormick.

Though he narrowly lost to Oz in the Republican primary, he’s been touring the state with his newly released book Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America. He spoke at the conference, has momentum, served in the military, and excels with a business background.

But with the possibility of another seat open, who else may rise to the challenge?

Former Republican Rep. Keith Rothfus also made his presence known at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, even introducing his friend and former colleague DeSantis on the main stage.

His notable presence could signal some form of reentry into the political scene. He has the experience, authenticity, and strong conservative principles to represent the Republican electorate well.

Is he vying for a hypothetical rematch with Lamb? Or, perhaps, a new challenge against Casey?

With it still being early, other candidates may pop up. But from the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, McCormick and Rothfus are the two with the resources to be real competitors. Maybe they’ll run for different seats, or maybe they’ll be primary opponents.

Either way, Pennsylvania Republicans need to learn from their mistakes in 2022, slow down, critically think, and vote for the most conservative Republican who can still reasonably win a general election.

This article was published in The American Spectator.

Transgenderism on Trial: Michael Knowles vs. Brad Plumb →

By Libby Krieger, published by the American Spectator

Much to the dismay of thousands of angry protestors, a debate between conservative Daily Wire podcast host Michael Knowles and libertarian journalist Brad Polumbo was held last night at the University of Pittsburgh. 

The debate was met with several roadblocks in the weeks leading up to it: 11,000 signatureswere collected demanding the school shut down the debate, Knowles’ original opponent, a transgender professor, backed out of the event, and protestors literally set the street on fire. 

During the event, police had to report a “public safety emergency” after an “incendiary device” went off outside the location. 

Protestors also set fire to a dummy with Knowles’ face on it. What a “warm” welcome!

So, here’s the question that enraged so many last night: Should transgenderism be regulated by law?

Knowles and Polumbo both agreed that children should not be able to have gender transition surgeries. However, this shared position comes from two different foundational perspectives — conservatives versus libertarian — on the role of government.

The libertarian perspective promulgated by Polumbo asserts that although children shouldn’t be able to move forward with such a decision, adults should have the right to decide for themselves to adopt a new gender identity and undergo surgeries to match that identity.

Knowles pushed back, saying we must have a consistent policy for children and adults.

“It would seem to me that what transgenderism is proposing is an anthropology — it’s an idea about what human nature is,” Knowles said. “So, if it is true, then it is true for children … if it’s true then it would seem to be very cruel to prevent a child from transitioning, especially before puberty.”

Some accuse Knowles of being “extremist” or authoritarian. But Knowles is arguing for the traditional conservative perspective, one founded on philosophers such as Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, and William F. Buckley Jr. 

This stance promotes the idea that the government has a role in promoting the good, the true, and the beautiful — and therefore should necessarily discourage or outlaw what is harmful to that good, true, and beautiful. 

His perspective, though more aligned with the conservative tradition, has become lost in a generation inculcated in the libertarian mantra “live and let live” — a position that is much easier to posit without backlash.

Another side to Polumbo’s libertarian position is his belief that the government should not be the arbiter of acceptable ideas.

“Michael keeps saying that transgenderism is false, and if it is false, it should be banned,” Polumbo said. “I don’t believe government should be in the business of banning false ideas.”

Essentially, Polumbo would prefer that the government act with a viewpoint-neutral position, as to not take any side.

Knowles pushed back on this notion that the government can ever really be neutral.

For example, either the law establishes and enforces that women have separate public bathrooms, or it doesn’t. The two opinions cannot exist together — one necessarily must win out.

“The law must necessarily say something,” Knowles said.

So, who will win? 

Last night, the debate was between a conservative and a libertarian. But today, the debate rages on between truth and falsehood.

This article was originally published in The American Spectator.

GOP divided over how to handle Trump indictment

By Alexander Bolton (Matt Dole quoted below)

The unprecedented indictment of former President Trump creates a political puzzle and problem for Republican leaders in Washington who are divided over how to respond to it and have differing views about what it means for the future of their party. 

Some Republicans, such as Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), are lambasting the indictment as an “abuse of power” and a “weaponization” of the justice system, predicting it will fuel public support for Trump in 2024.  

“The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account,” McCarthy declared last week.  

But other prominent Republicans, who want the party to move past Trump, such as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Senate GOP Whip John Thune (S.D.), are staying quiet about the news bombshell.  

“It seems like he’s gotten the base strongly behind him. Does that change over time? We’ll see, especially since there’s more legal trouble going on,” said one Senate Republican aide. “It’s probably prudent for Republicans to take a deep breath and see what he’s actually charged with. 

“It’s a puzzle right now and no one really knows how this all plays out, politically and legally,” the aide added.

The aide warned that Republicans racing to defend Trump have “really put themselves out there on a limb.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to the Senate GOP leadership team, said last month he would prefer to see House Republicans working on the issues that helped them win the majority instead of battling with Bragg.

He offered a measured statement on the indictment. 

“It looks to me like this is an opportunity for this DA to make headlines and gain publicity,” he said Friday.  

Some of Trump’s critics within the party think that even if the latest development helps him consolidate support in the party, it may further weaken his viability in a general-election matchup against President Biden and hurt the GOP brand.

“I really, truly think that there is fatigue over the circus that comes with Donald Trump. I think a lot of people want to support him and be supportive of him and agree with him on the policies but are fatigued by the circus,” said Matt Dole, a Republican consultant based in Ohio, a Senate battleground in 2024.  

Dole said the silence of prominent Republicans such as McConnell and Thune reflects that “fatigue.” 

“I think you’re seeing people just tired of the circus,” he said, noting GOP leaders are bracing for the possibility of additional indictments from Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith and Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

“There’s no doubt that you could make the case that this is a politically motivated indictment,” he said of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump. “Republicans can think it’s a political indictment and also be sick of the circus. 

“If you think that other indictments are coming and you’re fatigued, the notion of coming out and saying, ‘This is a political indictment,’ well, then the next one you’re going to have to say something,” he added. “Staying quiet then I think is just an acknowledgement that there’s more to come and we’re going to let him sort it out in the court.”  

One Republican strategist said Trump already struggled with swing suburban voters because of his pugnacious style and penchant for controversy.

“An indictment like this with two more potentially coming down in the future really hurts his chances to win back these suburban voters,” the strategist said.  

“For any Republican candidate to succeed in a presidential race, they need to bring these right-of-center voters back into the fold and this latest development really hurts his chances to be the best candidate do that,” the strategist said.  

Other Republicans think the indictment will pave the way for Trump to win the nomination next year.

“I think this is an enormous political gift to Donald Trump,” Cruz said on his podcast, “Verdict.”  

“If I were a Democrat, I might well report Alvin Bragg to the Federal Election Commission for making the single greatest in-kind contribution to a presidential campaign in history,” he added. “This will help Trump.”  

Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, predicted the indictment will strengthen Trump’s support from the Republican base.

“I think it solidifies in a general election that portion of the Republican electorate that for a long time has been committed to Donald Trump. I think they’ll stick to him like a stamp sticks to a love letter,” he said.  

And he projected “there may be initial sympathy” for Trump from independent and swing voters. 

“That may be based on the complexity of the charges, which of course we haven’t seen yet,” he added, noting that Democrats did well in the 1998 midterm election after House Republicans impeached former President Clinton for having an affair with a White House intern.  

Some Republican strategists think Bragg’s case could stretch out for months — well into the 2024 election cycle.  

“If it’s being litigated, it’s going to be in appeals court, they’re going to be appealing different aspects of the case,” said Brian Darling, a GOP strategist and former Senate aide. “It’s helping Trump raise money now, no doubt. 

“It’s going to help Trump raise a lot of money for his reelection,” he added. 

Trump’s campaign and allied groups, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent out fundraising appeals citing the indictment immediately after news of it broke Thursday.  Darling said McConnell’s early silence on Trump’s indictment wasn’t surprising.  

“McConnell doesn’t like Trump. He’s not going to make any statement that would be beneficial to Trump’s potential reelection,” he said.  

Thune, who has stood in as the Senate Republican leader in recent weeks while McConnell recuperates from a concussion, indicated that Republicans are getting tired of having to regularly answer questions about Trump’s legal problems instead of talking about President Biden’s record or problems afflicting the economy, such as inflation.  

Asked if it’s frustrating to keep on getting sucked into Trump’s legal dramas, Thune replied: “What do you think?” 

At the same time, Thune acknowledged that “a lot of our members, colleagues” are wondering why the Manhattan district attorney is prioritizing charges against Trump that other prosecutors have declined to pursue “when there are so many serious crime issues in New York.”  

Bragg has come under fire from Republican lawmakers for circulating a memo to prosecutors in January of last year advising them to only seek prison sentences for the most serious crimes.  

His record of downgrading 52 percent of the felony cases in his jurisdiction down to misdemeanors and winning convictions in just more than 50 percent of felony cases has also drawn criticism.  

“How can President Trump avoid prosecution in New York?” asked Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a tweet Thursday.

“On the way to the DA’s office on Tuesday, Trump should smash some windows, rob a few shops and punch a cop. He would be released IMMEDIATELY!” he wrote in a follow-up tweet.     

Even Republicans who aren’t viewed as staunch Trump allies see it as good politics to rally to his defense given Bragg’s record in New York and the support from Color of Change PAC, a group that accepted money from financier George Soros.  

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Trump’s leading rival for the presidential nomination, said Thursday that Florida would not assist with any extradition request Bragg may make to bring Trump to stand trial in New York. No such request was likely to come given Trump’s willingness to go to New York, but the statement showed DeSantis wanted to be seen as standing up to Bragg.

Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso (Wyo.), the third-ranking member of Senate GOP leadership team, accused Bragg of acting on political motives.  

“If it was anyone other than President Trump, a case like this would never be brought,” he said. “Instead of ordering political hit jobs, New York prosecutors should focus on getting violent criminals off the streets.”  

East Palestine has now become the subject of political battle

By Nathanial Reed (Mark Weaver quoted below)

February 21, 2023

(Scripps News) — An Ohio community reeling from the toxic train disaster threatening their health now finds itself at the center of a political battle intensifying this week with President Joe Biden traveling overseas.

The criticisms have come most loudly from Republicans who feel Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and President Biden should go to the crash site.

"This was an area of the state of Ohio that voted massively for President Trump, not a community that they necessarily care about," Riley Moore, Republican congressional candidate for West Virginia, said on "Fox and Friends."

"A lot of people in Ohio are wondering why Joe Biden spent so much effort to secretly go to Ukraine when he could have publicly gone to East Palestine," said Mark Weaver, crisis communications consultant and former deputy attorney general of Ohio.

But members of the president's own party have criticized the federal response as well. 

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who has broken with the administration on major issues, said in a statement last week, "It is unacceptable that it took nearly two weeks for a senior administration official to show up."

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has defended its handling of the situation.

"We are committed to supporting the people of Palestine every step of the way, and we are going to be on the ground helping them as long as it's needed," said Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary.

"The federal government will be here for as long as it takes," said Michael S. Regan, EPA administrator. "The president has called the governor and offered the federal assistance that he needs, and I trust that the governor will accept that offer. And we will be here as long as it takes."

Former president and candidate Donald Trump is latching on to the outcry, making a visit to East Palestine Wednesday.

"Someone who's running for office tends to do things to help their political prospects," Weaver said. "I think we can guess that's what former President Trump is doing, feels like more of a distraction to me than anything else."

But leaders in Ohio and neighboring Pennsylvania have found some room for bipartisanship. Ohio's Republican Gov. Mike Dewine and Pennsylvania's Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro held a joint event Tuesday. And Ohio's Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Republican Sen. JD Vance sent a joint letter last week to the EPA requesting more toxicity testing.

Weaver, a Republican who has advised numerous political candidates, says the Biden administration missed an opportunity to coordinate a fast federal response, but the blame for the incident still falls squarely on train operator Norfolk Southern.

"Right now people in East Palestine and people in eastern Ohio just want to see a coordinated federal response," Weaver said.

An Anti-ESG Crusader May Vie Against Trump in 2024. And He's Not DeSantis →

By Mark Niquette [Mark Weaver quoted below]

(Bloomberg) -- Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s railed against “woke” investing based on environmental, social and governance principles, is laying the groundwork for a potential Republican run for the White House.

Ramaswamy, 37, a native of southwest Ohio, has been meeting power brokers and giving speeches in Iowa and key states to gage audience response, highlighting his belief that the US has moved away from the values and ideas on which it was founded.

“Yes, I am strongly considering it,” he wrote when asked if he was planning to run for president.

“If you ask most people in my generation what it means to be an American, you get a blank stare,” Ramaswamy said. “I’m on a mission to deliver an answer to that question. We need to revive the basic ideas that set this nation into motion nearly 250 years ago.”

Politico earlier reported that he was mulling a White House bid.

Ramaswamy would bring business expertise to what could be a crowded Republican field in 2024. By going after ESG, he is targeting one of the favorite lanes of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is also expected to jump into the race.

Ramaswamy began his career as a biotech investor after graduating from Harvard with a degree in biology and a law degree from Yale. He founded Roivant Sciences in 2014 and led large biotech initial public offerings in 2015 and 2016, as well as founding other health-care and technology companies, according to his website.

He’s the author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” and he co-founded Strive Asset Management that launched last year with backing from billionaire investors including Peter Thiel and Bill Ackerman after issuers such as BlackRock Inc. backed ESG funds in recent years. Strive is focused on “leading companies to focus on excellence over politics,” Ramaswamy said.

Ramaswamy has been helping lead the charge among conservatives against “woke capitalism” which he defines as companies focusing on cultural and political issues rather than profits and innovation. DeSantis has also been building a national brand opposing ESG policies and “woke” corporations like Walt Disney Co.

Ramaswamy’s criticisms are starting to get some traction but he hasn’t yet held elected office and doesn’t have a national profile in politics. Mark Weaver, a veteran GOP consultant in Ohio, said it might make more sense next year for Ramaswamy to run for the US Senate seat currently held by Sherrod Brown unless he’s angling to be considered for a vice presidential slot.

“Vivek is a very talented man with a strong message about equality in government,” Weaver said. “But he will need to prove himself at a lower level in government before he runs for president.”

This article was originally published in Bloomberg.

Dole: Fiction crosses party lines in DC

Published in the daily Caller

His claims are laughably false. The notion that he holds high office is embarrassing. Even Mitt Romney would give him a piece of his mind. I’m not talking about newly elected Congressman George Santos. I’m talking about President Joe Biden.

Let’s dispense with Santos. He’s been rightly pilloried for his tall tales and fanciful fibs. When he said he was Jewish, what he meant was that he’s Jew-ish. Really? Republican leaders denied him committee membership in Congress. The Ethics Committee is swooping in to investigate. And the voters of his New York’s district will have a chance to right their wrong when the next congressional election comes their way, just next year.

Voters aren’t entirely at fault here. The media played a role in the creation of Congressman George Santos. His election might be a consequence of the current shrinking news landscape, but it wouldn’t have taken a mob of reporters to poke holes in George Santos’ claims before the election. In Ohio, a candidate’s momentum stopped dead when one reporter wrote about his inflated military resume. Just one embellishment, not the fully fictionalized example of Santos. There was something more ominous with the media here; a laziness – or, at least, a malaise-iness.

Now let’s turn to President Biden. He wants a debt ceiling increase because he has plenty of plans to spend more of other people’s money. His answer to fighting inflation, largely caused by overspending, is – wait for it – more spending. He’s mad that Republicans in the House are demanding financial accountability in exchange for letting the nation put more money on our federal credit card. Actually, he’s mad that he has to lower himself to negotiate with Republicans at all.

He started his rhetorical bullying this year by branding the debt ceiling increase vote as a crisis. Republicans, he says, are already causing trouble in the House. If they refuse to vote to increase the debt ceiling or impose fiscal restraint measures in exchange for a vote, he claims, Republicans will submerge the country into chaos from which we can’t recover. This is a fever dream. Fiction.

The national debt is the crisis – the floor, not the ceiling. As this is being written, the national debt is ticking away north of $31.5 trillion. For the “tax the rich” crowd, the Forbes 100 list has a total estimated net worth of just $4 trillion. That’s everyone. If you just tally the United States, it’s $2 trillion. So Biden could – hypothetically, because it would be illegal – shake every last cent out of the richest U.S billionaires and we wouldn’t even have a down payment on paying off our debt.

So, a rational discussion about increasing the debt ceiling isn’t a crisis – the debt itself is. The debate, in fact, may very well be the most important thing Congress does during the next two years.

But Joe Biden didn’t stop with that alarmist rhetoric. Now he’s moved on to the Democrat’s favorite play in their playbook – deceptively invoking the safety nets. With a straight face, no less. Without raising the debt ceiling, Social Security will be at risk. Medicare. Sound the alarms. Stephen King couldn’t fictionalize horror this well.

Make no mistake, Social Security really is in crisis, but not because of the debt ceiling vote. It’s in crisis because its economic model isn’t sustainable. More old people living longer are needing more medical treatment that’s getting more costly. Do the math – you’ll gasp. But every time leaders worried about our financial future dare to acknowledge that truth, they’re accused of hating old people and wanting to eliminate Social Security. Democrats are much more interested in exploiting the crisis for political gain than solving it for the good of the people.

The public policy irony here is, of course, that without having to pay interest on the debt, we’d have plenty of money to stabilize the safety nets. But Joe Biden was doing the George Santos routine from way back and he knows: fiction sells.

President Biden’s fabrications aren’t isolated incidents. Like the Congressman from New York, Biden’s resume is peppered with falsehoods. And like Santos, the media is at least partly to blame. In Santos’ case, they lazily covered a relatively uneventful congressional race. In Biden’s case, it’s intentional complicity. President Biden is treated, at worst, like a gentle grandpa telling another whopper. But these aren’t fishing stories.

George Santos will be a footnote to history, thanks in large part to a media that missed the story now making amends. But the media’s soft treatment of Joe Biden isn’t a footnote; it’s the enablement of behavior that has led to foreign policy gaffes and economic blunders resulting in record inflation and real crises ignored while “The Joe Biden Story” is a run-up the bestseller list – for fiction. And it’s going to have terrible consequences for our seniors and everyone else.

Oberlin College's complicity in false racism charge against bakery reeks of McCarthyism

By Mark R. Weaver

June 30, 2019

Sixty-five years ago this month, there was a whiplash-level turning point in history. An exasperated attorney for the Army was tired of hard-charging Communist-exposer Senator Joseph McCarthy outing the names of alleged communists during a televised hearing. That lawyer asked the question many others were thinking: "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

Communism was and is serious business. It was the executioner’s theme for millions murdered in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and elsewhere. McCarthy used that specter to punish his enemies and amass political power.

Many historians identify that moment as the first stumble in McCarthyism’s downfall. But McCarthy’s true blunder was shaming with too broad a stroke, as some accusations were well-founded. When the Iron Curtain tumbled down, official documentation emerged that verified what many suspected all along: there were Soviet spies in our government. So, if McCarthy was substantively correct, why did so many turn their backs to him? 

By overstating the problem and overplaying his hand, he overlooked the need to be responsible with such an important topic. His credibility collapsed like a bad alibi.

History has arranged a similar pivot point to coincide with the anniversary of that incident. Earlier this month, jurors in Northeast Ohio called out a different kind of attempt to exploit a serious issue — racism. And it was Oberlin College called to account.

A $44 million mistake

The Gibson family bakery and store has served the Oberlin town and gown for more than a century. If students shoplift there, the store presses charge — without regard to skin color. Townspeople revere the family, now staffed by three generations of Gibsons.

In 2016, when three underage black students tried to steal alcohol from the store, an owner confronted them, which led to the students assaulting him. The students at Oberlin initially cried racism. Later, when they admitted guilt in court, they acknowledged the bakery's staff had not acted in a racially motivated manner.

This happened right after President Trump’s election, when the campus was in full political pout. Despite no evidence of racism by the store, the already-agitated campus erupted in protests. The Gibsons were targeted with death threats and loss of business. Surprisingly, the college egged on the demonstrations, even after they knew racism wasn’t involved. College staff distributes flyers falsely alleging racial profiling by the Gibsons and ended a program where the bakery provided food for student dining. Emails showed some college administrators acting as irresponsibly as many students.

Unlike many tainted by false accusations, the Gibson family didn’t let these slanderous slurs slide. At a time when accountability seems like a quaint notion of the past, they sued and the jury ordered the college to pay $44 million in damages. It’s as if the jurors turned to college officials and their student cohorts and asked them, "have you no decency?"

The lesson? Making false allegations of racism is egregious and morally bankrupt.

Racism is a problem, but not in every heart

When I was a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, I worked on heinous cases where innocent people were abused because of their skin color. Racism is a sin against God’s own notion that we’re all equal and created in his image. It’s a genuine problem. Only the ignorant or ignoble deny this.

Yet racism does not reside in every heart, it cannot be found around every corner, and it has unquestionably lessened dramatically as America found its footing of fairness following the Civil War of the 1860s and the Civil Rights reforms of the 1960s. Only the ignorant or ignoble will deny that.

Sadly, Oberlin College’s actions aren’t unique. Their accomplices across America, and in grimy corners of the internet, regularly brandish false allegations of racism. Worse yet, they do it to punish enemies and amass political power. This despicably dishonors heroes like Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King.

Just as Americans rebuffed the demagoguery of McCarthy when he exploited and inflated the indisputable problem of Communist infiltration to expand his power, we should reject those demagogues who exploit and inflate racism for political gain.

These jurors, imbued with common sense and common decency, may have activated the turn signal in what could be a national lane change in a country where — sadly — insults masquerade as logic and victimhood impersonates character. Like the man who called out McCarthy, they deserve our gratitude.

This article appeared in USA Today and Real Clear Politics.

The FBI Colluded With Twitter to Suppress Free Speech. Where Is the Outrage?

By Mark R. Weaver

December 21, 2022

For the past few weeks, journalists have been reporting on what they've found in the "Twitter Files"—thousands and thousands of documents they were given access to by Twitter's new owner and CEO, the billionaire Elon Musk. The revelations have been astonishing and deeply troubling, exposing solid evidence of collusion between top executives at the FBI and their cozy counterparts at Twitter.

FBI leadership and Twitter censors conferred constantly about how to shut down political speech based on its content, confirming the suspicions of, well, anyone who was paying attention. And it proves without a doubt that over the past few years, countless Americans have undergone a real violation of their First Amendment rights.

The First Amendment mandates that government can't abridge—meaning limit or censor—speech based on its content. Even if attempting to advance the noblest of causes, government actors must not collide with this constitutional guardrail. The Constitution simply isn't optional. Government officials must treasure it like gold and defend it like hearth and home.

This is the part in the play when some rowdy voice shouts from the cheap seats that "Twitter is a private corporation, it's not government." True enough, but the government can't enlist a private citizen or corporation to undertake what the Constitution precludes it from doing.

The U.S. Supreme Court settled that decades ago with what's known as the law of agency, which allows a "principal" to assign an agent to do something on the principal's behalf. It's a limited transfer of power. And what the government is forbidden from doing it is also forbidden from subcontracting to an agent.

Thus, when Twitter acquiesced to the FBI's urging, it essentially became an agent and of the government, and then wrongfully acquiesced to censor the speech of American citizens.

The evidence is now all out there: The FBI handed out Top Secret security clearances to Twitter employees, ostensibly without the weeks of extensive background checking that I and other top Justice Department officials had to undergo.

Then, FBI officials created a special, secure online portal for Twitter staff, where the two sides could secretly exchange information about who was saying what on the platform and how that speech could be squelched. In this virtual "war room," the FBI made dozens of requests to censor political speech. Twitter chirpily complied.

Talking daily with government agencies through a secure government channel, having a government security clearance, and carrying out orders from the government is what an agent of government does. And that's what Twitter did.

This government-big tech partnership violated the First Amendment, a classic deprivation of civil rights.

The Biden administration and others casually dismiss this troubling arrangement as a rationale to somehow prevent election "misinformation." Yet misinformation is in the eye of the beholder. And since the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that speech in and around elections has more First Amendment protection than any other, government agents meddling in it will almost always be acting unconstitutionally. Indeed, lying about an election may be wrong, but it is fully protected speech. The minute Twitter started cooperating with the FBI, it needed to therefore be protected on the platform.

At the end of the day, it is up to the governed—not the government—to decide what's misinformation. The FBI has zero legal authority to stop it, and by using Twitter as its agent, it violated the free speech rights of the people who were censored.

The violations are even more egregious now that that nearly everyone acknowledges the documents on Hunter Biden's laptop that discussed foreign money being funneled to Joe Biden were legitimate. Yet at FBI urging, Twitter and Facebook limited the reach of that story.

Politics aside, none of this can stand. Congress must promptly undertake a bi-partisan investigation into Twitter's malfeasance as an agent of the state. Americans deserve to know which of their federal employees linked arms with high-tech censors and sneered at the First Amendment. There must be a reckoning.

And if your voice was one of those censored by the cabal of collusion between federal law enforcement and some dirty birds at Twitter, now might be a good time to call a serious-minded lawyer.

This article originally appeared in Newsweek.

Alec Baldwin Finally Charged Over Accidental Shooting →

By Libby Krieger

January 19, 2023

This article was originally published in The American Spectator.

Actor Alec Baldwin will be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter over the deadly October 2021 shooting of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the film’s armorer, will also be charged with involuntary manslaughter, according to Santa Fe district attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies.

Carmack-Altwies explained in her statement that in the event Baldwin and Gutierrez Reed are found guilty, the jury will also decide which count of involuntary manslaughter they are guilty of.

“The first charge can be referred to simply as involuntary manslaughter. For this charge to be proved there must be underlying negligence,” her statement read. “Under New Mexico law, involuntary manslaughter is a fourth-degree felony and is punishable by up to 18 months in jail and a $5,000 fine.”

The second possible charge is involuntary manslaughter in the commission of a lawful act. This “requires proof that there was more than simple negligence involved in a death. This is also a fourth-degree felony punishable by up to 18 months in jail and up to a $5000 fine.”

If found guilty of the second charge, a firearm enhancement would be added. This would make the crime punishable by a mandatory five years in jail.

Baldwin claims he never pulled the trigger, but an FBI forensic audit revealed that the gun could not have been fired without the trigger being pulled, ABC News reported. 

Despite these facts, Baldwin’s attorney, Luke Nikas, called the new charges a “miscarriage of justice.”

“Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun — or anywhere on the movie set. He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds,” Nikas told the New York Post. “We will fight these charges, and we will win.”

As Americans, we understand that each individual is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But without making a rush to judgment, one can reasonably ask: Why was Baldwin ever pointing a weapon — even one he didn’t think was loaded — at another individual?

The first rule of firearm safety is to always assume the gun is loaded and therefore never point it at someone. 

The Firearm Industry Trade Association posits this as its No. 1 rule.

“If everyone handled a firearm so carefully that the muzzle never pointed at something they didn’t intend to shoot, there would be virtually no firearms accidents. It’s as simple as that, and it’s up to you,” its website reads. 

So, as justice is pursued, here’s the firearm safety lesson Alec Baldwin — and all of us — should take from this tragedy: “Never point your gun at anything you do not intend to shoot.”

New York City Will Abort Children For Free →

By Libby Krieger

January 18, 2023

This article was originally published in The American Spectator.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday that the city will offer free abortion pills at four clinics.

According to a New York City press release, the free abortions are “aimed at dismantling decades of systemic inequity” and are part of a “Women’s Health Agenda.”

This move makes the New York City Health Department the first in the U.S. to offer the life-ending drug. The irony would be funny if it weren’t so outrageously evil.

Adams pandered specifically to women, saying that Congress would not restrict abortion if men could get pregnant.

“For too long, health and health care has been centered around men,” he said. “If men had periods, pap smears, and menopause, they would get a paid vacation. And if men could get pregnant, we wouldn’t see Congress trying to pass laws restricting abortion.”

And the crowd (of liberal women) went wild.

I should point out one of the many problems with Adams’ statement. This issue affects more than women. Men can get pregnant too! Or so the Left has screamed at us. 

(To this point: “Men can have pregnancies, especially trans men,” said Dr. Bhavik Kumar, a medical director for Planned Parenthood, on the floor of Congress in September.)

The FDA recently announced that the abortion pill can now be dispensed by retail pharmacies. That announcement has been challenged by a group of 22 attorneys general in a letter to FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf. 

The letter, penned by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, reads: “In direct contravention of longstanding FDA practice and congressional mandate, the FDA’s rollback of important safety restrictions ignores both women’s health and straightforward federal statutes. We urge you to reverse your decision.”Marshall also noted the all-too-convenient timing of the FDA’s decision to allow abortion pills to be sold at retail pharmacies: six months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. 

“About six months after Dobbs was decided, the FDA announced a wholesale change to the REMS for mifepristone that purports to authorize its remote prescription and administration. This change isn’t the result of an analysis on how to help promote women’s health,” the letter reads.

Free abortion pills are just one aspect of the Big Apple’s efforts to provide women with more chances to kill their pre-born children. 

The city also offers an “abortion access hub” to connect callers to abortion providers, regardless of their immigration status or financial situation. 

You don’t even need to live in New York City to access their abortion hub. How inclusive!

So, while Mayor Adams should be committed to decreasing crime in New York City — which was up 23.5 percent in 2022 over 2021 — he is instead coordinating and facilitating grave moral crime.

Hillary Clinton Has a New Gig: Professor →

By libby krieger

January 5, 2023

his article was originally published in The American Spectator.

Former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton will become a professor of global politics and policy this fall at Columbia University. 

The Ivy League university’s president, Lee Bollinger, announced today that Clinton will be a professor of practice at the School of International and Public Affairs and a presidential fellow at Columbia World Projects, according to Bloomberg. 

Bollinger, of course, sang the failed presidential candidate’s praises: “Given her extraordinary talents and capacities together with her singular life experiences, Hillary Clinton is unique, and, most importantly, exceptional in what she can bring to the University’s missions of research and teaching, along with public service and engagement for the public good.”

As much as we hear about a revolving door of politics that circulates elites to and from the bureaucracy, lobbying jobs, and public office, there is also a newer path for the political elite: politics to academia. 

Many figures in recent times have been known to move from significant political offices to roles in higher education.

For instance, President Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, Larry Summers, later served as the president of Harvard University. 

Former Secretary Clinton’s move also demonstrates that the Left has won the institution of higher education in America. An Econ Journal Watch study found that there are 11.5 Democrats for every one Republican in social science disciplines. Historians, meanwhile, had a startling ratio of 33.5 Democrats for every one Republican. 

This is further evidenced by a report from Harvard University’s student newspaper. It found that over 80 percent of surveyed faculty identify as liberal.

Clearly, higher education leans left. But Columbia University has an even more sinister background.

The Frankfurt School, which included cultural Marxists such as Herbert Marcuse, was associated with Columbia University.

It should be no surprise that a progressive institution like Columbia would bring on a mainstream leftist politician with influence. It’s a win-win for both parties. 

Clinton receives an elite role at a prestigious institution. Columbia gains political capital among the Left while also virtue-signaling its support of progressivism.

“She is a remarkable leader who has been on the frontlines of virtually every critical challenge facing our world today—from the global fight to save democracy, her advocacy for women’s rights, and her staunch defense of marginalized people everywhere,” Columbia Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo said.

Saving democracy, women’s rights, and defending marginalized groups. What a wonderful grouping of leftist rallying cries!

Maybe it really is the perfect gig for Madame Secretary.

T

DeSantis’ Inaugural Address Offers a Preview of What His Presidency Could Look Like

BY libby krieger

January 4, 2023

This piece originally appeared in The American Spectator.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis delivered a moving inaugural address Tuesday. While DeSantis has taken aim at culture war issues in his first term, he signaled in his speech that he’s not done yet. 

The governor repeated a phrase that received significant attention after his reelection victory: “Florida is where woke goes to die.”

He touched on woke ideology, the federal government’s reckless spending, open borders that bring in illegal immigrants and drugs, COVID mandates, energy policy, and more. 

Though these topics are important for Floridians, they are also important for Americans in the other 49 states. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty wrote, “this section could be delivered in a presidential campaign announcement speech, verbatim.”

Here is the section Geraghty referred to: 

We reject this woke ideology.

We seek normalcy, not philosophical lunacy!

We will not allow reality, facts, and truth to become optional.

We will never surrender to the woke mob.

Florida is where woke goes to die!

Now Florida’s success has been made more difficult by the floundering federal establishment in Washington, D.C.

The federal government has gone on an inflationary spending binge that has left our nation weaker and our citizens poorer, it has enacted pandemic restrictions and mandates – based more on ideology and politics than on sound science – and this has eroded freedom and stunted commerce.

It has recklessly facilitated open borders: making a mockery of the rule of law, allowing massive amounts of narcotics to infest our states, importing criminal aliens, and green-lighting the flow of millions of illegal aliens into our country, burdening communities and taxpayers throughout the land.

It has imposed an energy policy that has crippled our nation’s domestic production, causing energy to cost more for our citizens and eroding our nation’s energy security, and, in the process, our national security.

It wields its authority through a sprawling, unaccountable and out-of-touch bureaucracy that does not act on behalf of us, but instead looms over us and imposes its will upon us.

The results of this have been predictably dismal.

This has caused many to be pessimistic about the country’s future. Some say that failure is inevitable.

Florida is proof positive that We the People are not destined for failure.

Decline is a choice. Success is attainable. And freedom is worth fighting for.

This speech is far from the first clue that DeSantis will be a formidable Republican primary candidate for president in 2024. A recent poll conducted by USA Today/Suffolk University found that Republican likely voters preferred DeSantis over Trump by a margin of 23 percentage points.

“Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump,” David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told USA Today.

A political wave is growing in favor of DeSantis. Will he ride it?

Whether or not DeSantis decides to run for president, he is clearly offering Americans an alternate path. 

Open borders or law and order. Wokeness or common sense. Reckless spending or fiscal responsibility.

Why the J.D. Vance Victory Wasn't All About Trump

By Mark R. Weaver

May 17, 2022

This article was originally published on the Washington Post.

Mark R. Weaver, a media law attorney and communications consultant based in Columbus, Ohio, is the author of “A Wordsmith’s Work.”

The next senator from Ohio — a reddening state — will likely be J.D. Vance. Donald Trump’s endorsement in hand, Vance bested six other Republicans on Tuesday and Cleveland Plain Dealer politics reporter Seth A. Richardson judged him“clearly the favorite” to win in the fall against his Democratic opponent, Rep. Tim Ryan.

How did it happen? For starters, it wasn’t all about Trump. Too many incorrectly ascribe every good outcome to Trump’s purported brilliance or blame every bad thing on his supposed malevolence. Neither voters nor Trump himself are so one dimensional or easily analyzed.

Yes, Trump’s endorsement boosted Vance from a distant third place. Endorsements can help a candidate, but they are most effective when made by a popular endorser (as here) on behalf of an unknown or undefined candidate —which, by the time the endorsement was bestowed — doesn’t describe Vance.

Also, by the time Trump finally backed Vance on April 15, tens of thousands of Republican voters — including red MAGA hat owners — had already cast early ballots for other candidates or had settled on their choices. And the endorsement wasn’t exactly a ringing one: Speaking about the GOP Senate field on Tuesday, Trump said, “they’re all very good.” Nearly 70 percent of voters in the primary didn’t vote for the Trump-endorsed candidate. Trump’s late timing might well have blunted the full effect of his support.

As important to the Vance victory was the assist from an ally who was earlier to the barricades — Peter Thiel, who weighed in with $15 million in rather savvy super-PAC support. Vance was also aided by competitors who either peaked too early or brought subpar efforts.

What probably contributed little to Vance’s success was his best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The book was more popular with the NPR and Whole Foods crowd, who typically vote in Democratic primaries. He would have gotten more traction with many likely Republican voters from his repeated appearances on Tucker Carlson’s FoxNews show.

So, what can the rest of the nation learn from all this?

First, the former president might be more prudently spending his political capital. Consider this: Of all the Ohio U.S. Senate wannabes Trump could’ve endorsed, he chose the one who had said the harshest things about him. Trump, in a nonstrategic revenge mode, might have embraced any of the other candidates groveling for his approval. Instead, he wisely overlooked Vance’s past barbs and chose with head rather than heart. Trump has endorsed about 130 candidates this cycle — many of them incumbents in safe seats — and we’ll know in November whether his seemingly newfound political shrewdness is taking hold.

Second, populism is now an oak-hard structural beam in the party that Abraham Lincoln built and that Trump now dominates. Country-club Republicans who drink fine wine, drive expensive cars and resent tax increases find themselves in political alliance with country-music Republicans who drink domestic beer, drive work trucks and resent government mucking up their lives.

Third, money matters as never before. An open Senate seat is as rare as a loyal cat and much more valuable. People with money to burn will eagerly light it afire if consultants make even a halfway convincing case that it could result in a Senate win. I have advised campaigns all around the United States, but I’ve never seen so much money expended on a single statewide primary. All told, 21 issue groups and 10 campaigns spent in the neighborhood of $100 million on this one. Free speech has never been so expensive.

With several self-funding candidates in the race, it was difficult for anyone to sustain a lead — creating the most wide-open primary Election Day in decades. We’ve turned a gilded corner onto a shiny street where the wealthy (and their even wealthier friends) can buy name recognition and avoid the kind of scrutiny of character and policy that comes with running for and achieving local offices before running statewide. Mike Gibbons, who spent about $14 million of his own money, seemed especially unprepared for such a steep endeavor and would have been a liability in the general election.

One other takeaway: Remember that the Trump stamp of approval might have hurricane strength in some Republican primaries but dwindles to a drizzle in a general election. By November, partisans will support fellow partisans. But independents — who will likely lean heavily toward the GOP this cycle and dictate many results —don’t care much about what Trump recommends. Vance may be the midterms favorite, but he’s smart enough to know that he can’t coast to victory on Trump’s backing alone.

Trump Didn't Cause America's Division and Biden Won't Heal It →

By Mark R. weaver

November 10, 2020

This article was originally published in Newsweek.

Many political soothsayers predicted that voters would robustly rebuke President Donald Trump's bid for reelection. Joe Biden's anemic victory burst that bubble.

Rather that reflect on the biases that clouded their view of reality, some now suggestthat a Biden presidency will somehow heal our frayed nation. While only charlatans and chuckleheads claim to foresee the future, I don't recommend placing a bet on national unity in the years ahead.

That's because Donald Trump wasn't the reason for the divide that vexes us—it's been festering for decades. Years before Barack Obama became president, he lamented how the country had already split, red against blue. Yet, like Trump, Obama offered rhetoric and actions that further alienated us from one another.

During the Obama years, waves of anger frothed on the crosscurrents of American political discourse. We saw tumultuous riots in Baltimore and Ferguson and winced as social media slap fights became the rule rather than the exception. Further dissent emerged, via thousands of Tea Party rallies, where aggrieved Americans protested government transgressions—though in a way that left windows unbroken, stores unlooted and police officers uninjured.

Did the gap grow worse over the last four years? Undoubtedly. But like a political tumor, this domestic discord would have swelled no matter who inhabited the White House.

We're a country in conflict. Swapping leaders won't change that any more than changing hats will quell a migraine. Resolving an obstinate problem requires dogged digging for the underlying cause.

Finding the source of our disunity is imperative because national conflict can occasionally turn deadly. More than 600,000 died in the American Civil War. One side advocated state sovereignty and held a despicable devotion to slavery. The other advanced national unity through God-given freedom and equality. It was more a clash of ideas than culture.

Contrast that with the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where racial and class disparities exploded into the butchery of more than half a million people who shared a language, religion and regional history. The slaughter was identity politics gone mad. Ideas didn't matter—but what someone looked like or which group was in power did.

We all want to forestall conflicts, especially those based on identity. So, how to assemble a national jigsaw puzzle that seems like a jumble of pieces from two different boxes, one red and one blue? I suggest an agreement on a national touchstone. Happily, the Founding Fathers provided us one. In 1776, when those bold men gathered in Philadelphia to declare independence, they realized the world would want to know why the new nation was forming and what ethos it would establish.

In the Declaration's introduction, a line stands out that states plainly what our nation believes: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

This is the American creed. If anything should unite us, it's this sacred notion. It acknowledges that individuals inherit rights from God and legitimate governments are only formed by the consent of, and with deference to, those rights-endowed people. It took a few centuries for this "promissory note"—as latter-day Founding Father Martin Luther King, Jr., called it when praising the "magnificent words" of the Declaration and the Constitution—to become more perfectly fulfilled. Yet fulfilled it was.

No one is required to believe the American creed and we, rightfully, don't jail or exile those who sneer at it. Yet that doesn't alter its underlying truth or salience. And our national estrangement stems from a baseline misunderstanding of it.

Americans are not tribesmen. We're individuals fully responsible for our own actions and abjectly unaccountable to any group—particularly one based on things over which we have no control. Judging people on such immutable characteristics is reprehensible. This is why, for example, our nation rejects as bigotry all race-based preferences and distinctions. Herding people into groups and pitting them against each other is anti-American because it's antithetical to our creed. Worse yet, it inflames our current national discord.

In his Gettysburg address, Abraham Lincoln wondered whether a resentfully riven nation could long endure. This compelling question hung over the Obama era and lasted through Trump's tenure. It will remain relevant during the Biden administration.

If Americans are to unite, it won't be around a politician or a political party. Joe Biden, a doddering D.C. dinosaur, can't heal the wounds—perceived or actual—caused by President Trump. Nor is he likely to mend or even confront the damage inflicted by the hateful sliver of the populace that burns, loots and defaces cities and our very system of justice.

If you expect a politico to deliver unity, you'll be waiting longer than a calendar full of election days. That's because reconciliation isn't the province of politicians—it falls to us. We'll come together only when we embrace the notion that we are a nation of individuals, responsible and accountable for ourselves and owing neither allegiance nor alliance to a tribe.

Nurturing unity requires us to rebuff those who diverge from our national creed and uplift those who speak and live it. Let's look beyond Biden and Trump; political parties will eventually perish. Yet our American creed, when kindled and commended, can last forever.

Mark R. Weaver is an Ohio attorney and national crisis communications expert who formerly served as spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington. He is the author of the book "A Wordsmith's Work." Twitter: @MarkRWeaver

Biden must finally decide between moderates and Democratic Socialists →

By Libby Krieger

November 24, 2020

Come January, if we transition to a Biden administration, the Democratic Party will be left with a stark choice regarding the future of their platform. During the election, rather than supporting specific policies, Democrats largely unified against President Trump. However, while this decision may have been successful, will Democrats be able to unite over any issues other than their hatred of Trump in a post-Trump world?

Read the rest at The Daily Wire by clicking the title.

Limiting speech only pushes people to the fringes →

By Matt dole

This article was originally published in The Cincinnati Enquirer.

January 11, 2021

Today’s examples of actual censorship – Twitter blocking accounts, Facebook suspending pages, or Amazon removing an entire platform, Parler, from its cloud hosting servers – portends grave danger on our societal horizon. That people applaud these constrictions of speech in the name of their personal political ideology is at least disappointing in its ignorance, and at worst dangerous in its short-sightedness.

The First Amendment protects citizens from government infringement upon their free speech rights. It’s up to the rest of us to stand up and call out other breaches of free speech, so let me do just that: Limiting speech and allowing any entity – from the government, a private company, or a neighbor – to decide what speech is acceptable and what should be censored is Soviet-style culture. 

Remember that the the phrase, "politically correct" started as an unironic description of how a resident in post-revolutionary Russia could survive under the regime. And what of those who found it difficult to be politically correct? They and their families were simply disappeared.

Limiting speech, even that which one might find particularly offensive, moves us towards totalitarianism. Its advocates will be very surprised when the figurative cannon of censorship is turned upon them, followed quickly behind by the literal cannons of dictatorship.

With Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon taking action against conservatives, it’s liberals who are quick to point out that these are corporations who get to make their own rules. That’s debatable given both their status as publicly-traded companies and their fundamental role as publishers of content on the internet. What if FedEx or UPS (Or Amazon!) decided to stop delivering to homes with those "this house believes" signs? Under that scenario, we’ll see liberals quickly adding free speech to their list of things about which to be "woke."

You might argue that social media is frivolous compared to the tangible service of delivering packages, but you’d probably do your arguing on Facebook or Twitter, which indicates these platform’s important places in our lives (whether we like it or not). Furthermore, let’s not forget that the liberal’s current mantra, "private companies can serve who they want," also served as a 1960s rallying cry for segregated lunch counters.

The giddiness shown by some about such censorship illustrates a certain lack of vision. I’m reminded of Democratic Sen. Harry Reid doing away with the 60-vote threshold on presidential nominations before the U.S. Senate. Reid’s followers were thrilled by that in the moment, but they weren’t so happy when Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell used it to affirm three U.S. Supreme Court justices and nearly 250 total judges.

It can happen to you.

Here’s the worst part: censorship cannot achieve the goals of those seeking it. Stopping someone from expressing an opinion, doesn’t stop them from holding that opinion. It does make them angrier and more entrenched in their belief. It pushes people to the fringes, makes them more extreme, and causes them to seek out disruptive leaders. Disruptors like Donald Trump. 

An open and free expression of ideas is the very thing that leads us to solutions acceptable to the largest number of people. That’s not just true during debates in the halls of Congress, it’s true even on Twitter, Facebook and Parler. Limiting speech and giving voice to only one side causes suspicion and dug-in opposition.

Allowing companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon to decide what ideas they’ll allow isn’t a solution. And the genie won’t be put back inside its bottle after Trump leaves office. In fact, like toddlers learning to walk and talk, the Technocrats are just starting to test their boundaries. That the road to sharing ideas goes through the Silicon Valley campuses of our tech overlords should scare you to death.

As we lament society becoming more and more fragmented, some are staring the leading cause of fragmentation in the face and actively cheering it on. Parler built a platform because of liberal-approved Twitter and Facebook censorship. Fox News exists because the press was seen as not giving conservative ideas a fair shake. This didn’t start in 2016, but it has certainly accelerated exponentially since.

Here’s the thing: free speech is either free or it isn’t. Seems simple enough, but people’s action today proves the need for a reminder. There’s no middle ground. It’s not "speech my segment of society agrees with is free." Speech isn’t subject to that great democratic principle of majority rule. Fifty-one percent of the people don’t get to decide that some speech isn’t free. All speech is free speech, 100% of the time. That’s the only way it can work – speech must be immune to cultural attack. 

The solution is what we did for 240 years. If one disagrees or deems something hateful, don’t invite those people into your house. Change the channel. Express your own view about how wrong the offender is. Cancel your subscription. And, as it relates specifically here, unfollow, unlike, or delete your account. Your account. Not theirs.

Celebrate free speech, don’t limit it. One path may lead to uncomfortable disagreement, but the other path leads to Soviet-style despotism. We must all be on the same path. If Big Tech companies want to act like toddlers pushing boundaries, we must respond in kind – sticks and stones may break my bones, but free speech will never hurt me.

Matt Dole is a communications consultant who lives in Newark and works in Columbus.

Uh-oh, the polls may be undercounting Trump-friendly Republicans again →

By Mark R. Weaver

October 3, 2022

This article was published in The Washington Post.

Read any polls lately? A Marist poll published Sept. 21 attracted wide notice with its findings that the Senate race in Ohio between Republican J.D. Vance and Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan is a “dead heat.” That’s big news in the Buckeye State, which has been solidly Republican for several years, and even bigger news for the midterms, when control of the Senate could hinge on a single seat.

As an Ohio resident and political strategist who has advised hundreds of campaigns in this state and elsewhere, I was startled to learn that Vance, closely aligned with former president Donald Trump, wouldn’t be doing better in a state that Trump won twice by margins of about eight percentage points.

A look at the Marist poll’s fine print suggested something that should make Democrats nervous in the run-up to Nov. 8: Pollsters might be seriously undercounting the Republican electorate — specifically, the working-class White voters who were crucial to Trump’s electoral success.

What caught my attention in the poll’s details was the information that 45 percent of respondents had a college degree. A check of the most recent census data indicates that in Ohio, only about 29 percent of the adult population has a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Even adjusting for the fact that likely voters tend to be more educated, it’s clear that Trump supporters likely to favor Vance were significantly underrepresented.

This isn’t just about a single poll or a single state. I regularly talk with pollsters and campaigns, and I hear a common lament: Trump voters distrust pollsters and the media that reports on poll results, and simply won’t participate, out of protest or paranoia.

Or, if they do respond, they might present a problem that has long vexed political pros: social desirability bias, wherein people answering a poll-taker’s questions tend to shade their opinions and provide what they perceive as the socially acceptable answer.

Trump supporters might have the added worry of being attacked for frankly stating their views. Stories of those affiliated with Trump being arrested, subpoenaed, doxed or mocked — with Trump providing angry amplification — result in a lower social trust of strangers inquiring about political views.

The perceived targeting of Trump supporters might have made the polling problem more obvious, but the undercounting of conservatives isn’t new. In 2016 and even more in 2020, polling firms expressed concerns that “shy Trump voters” — those unwilling to talk about Trump to a stranger — were skewing their results in a blue direction.

For now, polling that doesn’t meaningfully capture a cross-section of views becomes a rapidly expanding distortion field — the polls’ misleading topline announcements prompting misleading news coverage and commentary, driving perceptions that can affect spending, donations and even turnout.

The problem may be affecting polls in other battleground states. One recent Pennsylvania poll had the Senate race between Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman tied but also showed 48 percent of respondents had a college degree or higher; census data for the state pegs the population at 32 percent. A North Carolina pollshowed the Senate race between Republican Ted Budd and Democrat Cheri Beasley tied, but 40 percent of the respondents had a college degree or higher; the true number for the state is 32 percent.

The undercounting of voters who lack college degrees could also mean missing some Democratic-leaning Black and Hispanic voters, of course, but they make up a much smaller portion of the electorate and, in any case, don’t tend to share the protest-or-paranoia mind-set that makes Trump-friendly Republicans difficult to poll.

One national pollster has called these under-polled Trump supporters “submerged voters,” and the term seems apt, given how much can occur underneath the whitecaps of a roiling political seascape. He isn’t alone. Other pollsters have told me they share this view, and even their diligent efforts to counteract the effect — such as moving away from phone calls toward more online surveys and oversampling known GOP voters — have been unavailing.

FiveThirtyEight polling maven Nate Silver challenges the presumption that 2022 polling inaccurately favors Democrats, but acknowledges that his organization’s modeling “actually assumes that current polling probably does overstate the case for Democrats.”

One thing seems obvious: Until most voters trust the institutions and individuals in the political sphere, submerged voters will sink ever deeper, not surfacing until Election Day, to cast their previously untracked votes.