There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
On August 1, 2023, Jack Smith announced four charges against former President Donald Trump as part of his investigation into the 2020 election.
Trump’s Justice Department went scorched earth on Monday and fired more than a dozen officials who worked on former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team.
Acting Attorney General James McHenry said Jack Smith’s prosecutors and aides cannot be trusted so he terminated more than a dozen of them.
The names of the fired officials were not released.
Former US Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate Trump in November 2022 just one day after Trump announced his reelection bid.
Jack Smith indicted Trump on more than 37 counts in a Florida court in an Espionage Case related to presidential records lawfully stored at Mar-a-Lago. Separately, Jack Smith indicted Trump on 4 counts in a DC court in a case related to January 6.
Both cases were torpedoed after Trump won the 2024 election.
Jack Smith released volume one of his report related to his January 6 case but a federal judge blocked his classified documents report from being shared with Congress.
Jack Smith resigned from the DOJ earlier this month.
The Justice Department is firing more than a dozen key officials who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team prosecuting President Donald Trump, after Acting Attorney General James McHenry said they could not be trusted in “faithfully implementing the president’s agenda,” Fox News Digital has learned.
McHenry has transmitted a letter to each official notifying them of their termination, a Justice Department official exclusively told Fox News Digital.
It is unclear how many officials received that letter. The names of the individuals were not immediately released.
“Today, Acting Attorney General James McHenry terminated the employment of a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” a DOJ official told Fox News Digital. “In light of their actions, the Acting Attorney General does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda.”
This action “is consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government,” the official told Fox News Digital.
Jack Smith’s top hatchet man, Jay Bratt, abruptly resigned from the Justice Department earlier this month.
Jay Bratt was one of the main prosecutors who spearheaded the Mar-a-Lago raid, he threatened a lawyer defending Trump’s valet driver and admitted the DOJ tampered with evidence.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Culture
Walmart rides the anti-DEI wave: Elections have consequences, and one of them is the movement of institutions in response to the clear-cut will of the American people. Such appears to be the case at the nation’s largest retailer, where Walmart has announced changes to its DEI policies and thus joins a growing list of major corporations that are putting the kibosh on wokeness. As Fox Business reports, Walmart might’ve been feeling some heat: “Anti-woke activist and filmmaker Robby Starbuck, who has been leading a campaign exposing major corporations’ woke policies, said on X on Monday that he warned Walmart executives last week that he would be doing a story on ‘wokeness’ at the retail giant. … Starbuck outlined the changes Walmart agreed to make, including working to remove sexual and transgender products inappropriately marketed toward children and reviewing grants to Pride events to avoid funding sexualized content targeting kids.” Whether Walmart really saw the light or simply saw some bad PR on the horizon, we’re happy to see it arrived at the right conclusion.
U.S. military may medically discharge trans members: We could practically hear the anguish in the voice of the UK Times when it reported that Donald Trump was weighing an executive order that would undo the morale-depleting scourge of so-called transgenderism from the U.S. military. “The order could come on his first day back in the White House, January 20,” reports The Times. “There are believed to be about 15,000 active service personnel who are transgender. They would be medically discharged, which would determine that they were unfit to serve. It would also lead to a ban on trans people joining the military and would come at a time when almost all branches of the American armed forces are failing to meet recruitment targets.” While it’s true that all branches have struggled to hit their recruiting numbers in recent years, The Times seems to be incapable of connecting the dots for this shortfall. Could it be that young American warrior-types have been turned off by the prospect of serving in a woke military? If so, such a ban is just what the doctor sergeant ordered.
Judge allows male in women’s volleyball: U.S. District Judge S. Kato Crews ruled against removing San Jose State University volleyball player “Blaire” Fleming, a male identifying as a “transgender woman,” from the women’s team for the Mountain West Conference championship. Eleven current and former members of the SJSU team and an associate coach filed the lawsuit seeking to get the Transgender Participation Policy revoked prior to the tournament, which would have resulted in Fleming getting booted from the team. In his ruling, Crews wrote, “Considering the nature of this relief, the Court finds it alters the status quo because SJSU’s alleged trans teammate has been on its roster since 2022 and throughout the 2024 season, and because the TPP has been in effect (whether or not posted publicly) since August of 2022.” Furthermore, he contended that the emergency motion request came too late in the season — i.e., after the tournament seeding and brackets had already been determined. The conference winner will go on to the national NCAA Division I championship tournament. If SJSU ends up winning the Mountain West championship, the havoc will only get worse.
Missouri judge says a law banning surgery, medications for gender-confused minors is constitutional (AP)
Transgender British police now allowed to strip-search women (Not the Bee)
Government & Politics
GoFundMe for DNC layoffs: A number of Democratic National Committee staff are raising a stink after they were abruptly laid off last week in the wake of Kamala Harris’s election loss. The laid-off staff members called it a “betrayal” of party values, as they were given little notice and “no severance” package. In an effort to compensate them, DNC union organizer Jill Brownfield set up a GoFundMe account, writing, “We are heartbroken to see our colleagues — who dedicated countless hours to electing Democrats up and down the ballot — depart under these circumstances, and we are furious with DNC leadership for failing to provide severance to those affected.” The DNC defended its actions, stating, “Every cycle, political organizations scale up to meet the demands, and as the cycle comes to a close, it’s a tough reality of our industry that we must part with talented, hardworking staff.” The union blasted the DNC, contending, “The DNC’s senior leadership has chosen to leave loyal staff scrambling to cover rent, medical expenses and childcare costs.” Maybe next time these laid-off staffers will think twice about working for a Democrat Party that spent more than a billion dollars on the Harris campaign — and still ended up in debt.
Harris’s future: What will Kamala Harris do after a crushing election defeat to Donald Trump? She apparently still envisions a future for herself in politics. Harris has reportedly told her allies and advisors that she is “staying in the fight,” which might mean another presidential run. “Could she run for [California] governor? Yes,” said former Harris aide Brian Brokaw. “Do I think she wants to run for governor? Probably not. Could she win? Definitely. … Could she run for president again? Yes.” Current polling shows Harris with a lead over other prominent names like California Governor Gavin Newsom and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro for the 2028 primary. Such polling is not uncommon immediately following an election loss. Hillary Clinton held similarly leading numbers following her loss in 2016. Yet Harris is a loser, and at least one Democrat strategist “can’t conceivably imagine the party turning to her a second time.” Brokaw observed, “She takes, sometimes, a painfully long time to make decisions. So I would pretty much guarantee you she has no idea what her next move is.” One thing is certain: Republicans would love to see Harris run again.
Have downtrodden lefties turned off the news? As children, we sometimes cupped our hands over our ears and yelled “La la la la la la” when we knew bad news was coming. It’s hard to tell whether that’s what leftists are doing now, but perhaps the prospect of four years in the political wilderness has them shutting out the bad news. After Donald Trump’s election win, “several outlets have seen ratings plummet,” reports Fox News. “MSNBC posted its lowest ratings in 25 years in the week following the 2024 presidential election with an average of 487,000 total viewers. CNN managed only 337,000 average total viewers to finish fifth among cable networks.” We hate to see it. Hate to see these lefties so distraught and these corporate purveyors of fake news taking it on the chin in the ratings game. But it seems to be the reverse of what we saw in 2016 when Trump’s improbable electoral victory led to a spike in ratings for left-leaning news sites. The Trump Bump has given way to the Trump Slump, at least temporarily.
HHS spent $911M on COVID propaganda: The House recently issued a report on how the Department of Health and Human Services handled the COVID pandemic. One revelation: HHS spent some $911 million from 2021 to 2023 on its “We Can Do This” campaign. That campaign pressured Americans into adhering to the Biden administration’s COVID recommendations, including vaccines, boosters, masking, and social distancing. Many of these recommendations have subsequently been shown to be scientifically suspect and flawed. To push this COVID propaganda, HHS partnered with the Fors Marsh Group, a firm that focuses on “behavior change research and strategy.” The report notes that Fors Marsh used “a strategic mix of paid and earned media with exclusive radio partnerships, research-based messaging, and reinforced messaging from trusted influencers, celebrities, and sports figures.” Fors Marsh used Big Tech to monitor and categorize people to cater its messaging to manipulate people’s behavior, which the report contends raises “serious questions over further entrenching Big Tech’s role in surveilling Americans and in seeking to influence public opinion.” The next HHS secretary must clean up a lot of corruption.
Biden proposes Medicare and Medicaid cover costly weight-loss drugs for millions of obese Americans (AP)
Economy
Trump says he will impose new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China on first day (The Hill)
Trump planning to lift Biden’s LNG pause, increase oil drilling during first days in office (Fox News)
Newsom wants CA consumers to pay to replace $7,500 federal EV credit, Tesla excluded (Just the News)
More high school grads are choosing trade jobs over college: If ever there was an idea whose time had come, it’s that of young Americans saying “no thanks” to the woke racket of higher education and “yes please” to the prospect of far more practical skilled-trades education. “More college-age students have shunned costly degrees and pursued nonacademic ‘microcredentials’ to work in the skilled trades,” The Washington Times reports. “Microcredentials are short, hands-on courses that industry employers recognize as certifications for skilled jobs. They can be acquired within a week to less than two years and are often ‘stackable,’ allowing earners to return for broader credentials, certifications or degrees.” Such a degree would seem far preferable to the massive debt often racked up by a young person pursuing a typical college degree — to say nothing of the relative worthlessness of so many college degrees these days. “The incentive is quality education that doesn’t put them in debt,” said David Will, the engineering school dean at one such microcredentialing school, Ivy Tech. “We give them hands-on skills for a lifelong career to support their families.” What’s not to like?
Misc.
Americans strongly supportive of Trump’s mass deportation agenda (Daily Wire)
Ahead of expected truce, Israel vows to act forcefully to stop Hezbollah regrouping (Times of Israel)
Humor: Eight better things to argue about during Thanksgiving than politics (Babylon Bee)
Democrats waged lawfare against Donald Trump in hopes that Republican primary voters would nominate him so he would lose to either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. Then, they could gleefully watch him be marched off to jail in handcuffs. That was the script, anyway, but the American people had other ideas come November.
After Trump won the election — in no small part because of the Left’s transparent attempt to use the courts as political weapons — Democrats are all but admitting that the lawfare was entirely political. In New York, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Judge Juan Merchan aren’t even pretending. They aim to hold sentencing for the trumped-up “34 felonies” until after Trump leaves the White House in 2029.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has likewise tried to keep alive her case against Trump for trying to “overturn” the state’s election results in 2020. After revelations of her affair with a subordinate and other issues with the case, it has been on hold for months.
Special Counsel Jack Smith doesn’t have the same luxury of foot-dragging.
But Smith will have you know that he is fastidiously concerned with upholding the Rule of Law. “It has long been the position of the Department of Justice (DOJ) that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President,” Smith wrote in a filing requesting the election case be dropped. “But the Department and the country have never faced the circumstance here, where a federal indictment against a private citizen has been returned by a grand jury and a criminal prosecution is already underway when the defendant is elected President.”
He added, “The [Justice] Department’s position is that the Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”
By 2029, Trump’s supposed crimes would be well beyond the five-year federal statute of limitations. However, Smith requested dismissal without prejudice, meaning, in theory, the same charges could be brought again unless Trump pardons himself. Trump’s hush-money scheme was also beyond the statute of limitations, and … well, we see how that worked out. Dismissal is also just around the corner for the case regarding classified documents, which Smith had tried to resuscitate before filing Monday to abandon that appeal also.
“The Government has moved to dismiss the Superseding Indictment without prejudice,” wrote U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday in response to Smith’s filing for dismissal. “Defendant does not oppose the Motion … and the court will grant it.”
Smith is admitting defeat only to circumstances, though. The DOJ’s “prohibition is categorical,” he insisted, “and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government stands fully behind.”
Sure thing, Jack.
Trump promised to fire Smith “within two seconds” of taking office, but Smith won’t stick around that long. He aims to resign well before Inauguration Day, albeit after doing as much political damage with reports as he could prior to the election.
A final note as the last federal prosecutor of Trump folds up the circus tents to go home: The various investigations of Robert Mueller, John Durham, and Jack Smith have cost taxpayers a cumulative $90 million. For all that, Democrats are left with nothing but destroyed credibility and the bitter, self-therapeutic lie that this all means Trump “gets away with it.”
Douglas Andrews: Where’s the Resistance? — Eight years ago, the Left was utterly defiant in the face of Donald Trump’s election. This time around? Not so much.
Thomas Gallatin: American Youth Ain’t Happy — In an age when everyone seems to be complaining and despairing about life, the key to finding happiness lies in thankfulness.
Emmy Griffin: Leftists Threaten Thanksgiving Boycott — Some unhinged women are now declaring they won’t attend holiday gatherings with conservative relatives.
Jack DeVine: Giving Thanks — It’s simple: Ours is the best nation on earth. We are blessed beyond measure.
Editor’s Note: Each week we receive hundreds of comments and correspondences — and we read every one of them. Click here for a few thought-provoking comments about specific articles. The views expressed therein don’t necessarily reflect those of The Patriot Post.
Rachel Maddow Breaks Down — MSNBC’s leftist host chokes back tears over the possibility that Elon Musk could buy the Leftmedia cable station.
TV’s Most Famous Fake Scientist Exposed — Bill Maher absolutely torpedoed Neil DeGrasse Tyson in a debate over the reality of scientific biological sex differences.
States Ban Lab-Grown Meat — It looks like meat, tastes like meat, and is made from real animal cells — but lab-grown meat is under attack. Florida and Alabama don’t want you to try it. Why?
“Have we left the country in better shape than we found it? [T]onight, I can say with all my heart, the answer to that question is a resounding ‘Yes.’” —Joe Biden
Who Wants to Tell Him?
“It was a close election at the end of the day.” —House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries
Demagogues
“The Justice Dept and the court system failed to uphold the principle that no one is above the law. DOJ by neglecting to promptly investigate the events of Jan 6, and the courts by willfully delaying progress of the case and providing immunity. The public deserved better.” —Congressman Adam Schiff
“The Constitution is very clear that [Trump] cannot serve another term. And what my fear is is that … Donald Trump is well on his way to dismantling our government.” —Congressman Dan Goldman
Braying Jennies
“If you think that you can vote for what people see as their destruction and then demand that they still are cool with you … and have Thanksgiving with you, I think you’re kind of missing the point of what people are upset about. They’re afraid. And autocracy and fascism are things that are legitimate to be afraid of. So, you may want to step back.” —MSNBC’s Joy Reid
“Musk and Ramaswamy have already promised massive cuts to eviscerate federal agencies Republicans don’t like. … So, you know, get ready to enjoy unregulated financial markets, polluted air and water, and raw unpasteurized milk, likely without ObamaCare to help you out at the ER.” —Joy Reid
“How did a convicted felon resonate more with Americans than a hyper-qualified woman of color?” —”The View” co-host Sunny Hostin
“We have bathrooms here in this building. It just says, ‘All genders.’ Why can’t they just do that everywhere?” —”The View” co-host Joy Behar
For the Record
“If you’ve received a prescription for ADHD medicine you are ineligible to join the US military. But if you are a mentally ill man who thinks they are a woman, you can join the military and the U.S. government will pay for your sex change.” —Congresswoman Nancy Mace
Re: National Security
“The one thing that the Ukraine war has done is accelerate warfare with the development of drone technology. So now the threat [to the president] is not just a guy with a rifle; it’s an assassin with a drone who can watch it from beyond visual range.” —former Navy SEAL and Blackwater founder Erik Prince
And Last…
“Biden achieved his lifelong dream of becoming president — and then ensured he would be widely remembered as a failure.” —Jim Geraghty
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