Liberty & Prosperity Blog

Before starting with the article, I'll just thank Ed Morrissey for hiring David Strom as a writer for HotAir. On Thursday, David wrote this great article about Donald Trump's disgusting behavior just prior to and during the hurricane. David didn't pull punches, which I appreciate, when he opened the article by saying "Trump’s superpower is his outspoken aggressiveness, and his kryptonite is his petty self-centeredness. Unfortunately, he married the two during Hurricane Idalia and behaved like an ass." Later in the article, David wrote "Starting a couple of days ago it was rumored that Trump sent out the word that he didn’t want any of his supporters to do anything that might make DeSantis look good–including sharing public announcements about the storm. I didn’t bother to write about it because it may have been propaganda to make Trump look bad, although subsequent searches of Trump’s followers showed that even Trump’s Florida-based influencers were remarkab...

During the GOP Debate in Milwaukee, WI, "moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum asked the GOP candidates about abortion." In one of his best replies, Gov. Ron DeSantis told the story of Penny . Naturally, Gov. DeSantis' "detractors on social media were quick to dismiss Penny's story. Several accused DeSantis of lying." That's sad but not surprising. It's sad because it's easy to see that Gov. DeSantis is one of the most honest people in politics. If he's the GOP nominee and Joe Biden is the Democrats' nominee, the biggest difference between Gov. DeSantis and Joe Biden won't be their age. It'll be that Gov. DeSantis is honest and Joe Biden is a serial plagiarist . Another significant difference between them is that Gov. DeSantis is intelligent. Biden isn't. There's no polite or diplomatic way of putting it so I just said it. If that bothers people, write your congress critter. I won't lose a split-second of sleep ov...

James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, issued this statement asking for "documents, communications, and manifests related to then-Vice President Biden’s misuse of Air Force Two and Marine Two." In the statement, Chairman Comer said "Then-Vice President Joe Biden abused Air Force Two by allowing his son to jet set around the world to sell ‘The Brand’ to enrich the Biden family. This is yet another example of then-Vice President Biden abusing his public office for his family’s financial gain. There must be accountability for this abuse of taxpayer-funded resources. We fully expect the National Archives to provide this information to the Oversight Committee so that we can provide the transparency that Americans demand and deserve." Devon Archer testified before the Committee recently. In that testimony, Archer identified then-VP Joe Biden as "The Brand." Rep. Andy Biggs asked Archer "When you say 'Biden family' ‑‑...

As with most things Biden, Joe Biden tried rewriting history by taking credit for reopening schools. It isn't surprising that a serial plagiarist is trying to rewrite history. Let's take a quick look at Biden's history of plagiarism before going into his reopening of schools lie. In 1987, Time reported "A few days before they began, video surfaced that spliced together footage of U.K. Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock giving a speech and Biden clearly quoting Kinnock at the Iowa State Fair without attribution. More examples of misattribution came to light, and the plagiarism scandal became more memorable than his leadership during the Bork confirmation hearing. His mouth — or rather, what he failed to say — got him in trouble again." Some lefty articles insist that this was simply an instance that Biden didn't make the proper attributions. Back in the time when the press was interested in the truth, that spin got shot down fairly quickly. Paul Tully, a senior...

It's time to admit that Donald Trump fights dirty, not just hard. It's ok to fight hard. It's disgusting to fight dirty. Yesterday, Trump posted something on his social media company, which is ironically called Truth Social. Truth doesn't have anything in common with this post: Wait this is real? pic.twitter.com/VhApxWsNSJ — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 28, 2023 That's just part of Trump's dirty barrage against anyone that anything remotely negative. Remember this hate-filled crap ? Kayleigh 'Milktoast' McEnany just gave out the wrong poll numbers on FoxNews," Trump wrote. "I am 34 points up on DeSanctimonious, not 25 up. While 25 is great, it's not 34. She knew the number was corrected upwards by the group that did the poll. The RINOS & Globalists can have her. FoxNews should only use REAL Stars!!!" Actually, I watched that segment. Trump, not McEnany, was wrong. McEnany stated correctly that Trump led DeSantis by 34 in April...

Mark Schmitz, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, who was one of the 13 U.S. service members killed in a bomb blast at Abbey Gate at the Hamid Karzai Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, has held his criticism of Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan prior to Tuesday's hearing. During Tuesday's hearing, Mr. Schmitz expressed his righteous indignation with the Biden administration. When he spoke, Mr. Schmitz didn't hide his feelings, which he said he'd withheld at the dignified transfer of the 13 flag-draped coffins. Yesterday, Mr. Schmitz said "Not a single person has been held accountable. Our so-called leader can't seem to even utter their names in public, not even once. You are a disgrace to this nation. You have no business having ultimate command over our military, and I regret not saying that to your face when I had the opportunity in Dover. I felt it more important to bite my tongue, but I also had more important things on my mind at that tim...

Let's clarify something about last Wednesday's debate. DC pundits of varying political stripes have called different candidates the winner of the debate. Donald Trump insists that he won because nobody touched him. His son, Donald Trump Jr., insists that Gov. DeSantis lost because, in Trump Jr.'s words, DeSantis needed a big performance but didn't get it. To that, I'll simply say that actions speak louder than words. That brings us to the mass shooting in Jacksonville, FL, and the approaching tropical storm that's soon to be a hurricane. While Gov. DeSantis would love to be campaigning if the situation permitted, that isn't what he's doing. He's suspended his campaign's events to tend to his official responsibilities . The reason for President Reagan's landslide victories was because he got important things done right and because he was a plain-spoken man. People had confidence in him because he didn't make mistakes very often. Yes, he ma...

David Weiss's independence from Merrick Garland's embattled DOJ just got demolished . Thanks to the Heritage Foundation's victory in a FOIA lawsuit, we now know that Weiss's office coordinated with Main DOJ. We know that thanks to The Federalist's reporting. The Federalist's Margot Cleveland wrote "Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, initiated the FOIA request and then filed suit against the DOJ after the Biden administration attempted to slow-walk the production. Howell told The Federalist the emails show that while Garland was claiming Weiss had the independence to bring whatever charges he wanted, Garland was 'simultaneously running communications from Weiss to Grassley through the political controls of Main Justice.' 'It is a slap in the face," Howell said." It isn't surprising that Garland brought the communications into his control, especially after Weiss's confusing communications with J...

Thanks to the hard work done by Brian Kilmeade and his team, Americans will get their first extended interview of the prosecutor that Joe Biden got fired. It's amazing that Kilmeade is the first journalist to ask to interview Shokin. Further, Shokin said he's been poisoned twice while living in war-torn Ukraine. UPDATE: The interview has been published on YouTube . It's approximately 7 minutes long and well worth watching. Why was Shokin fired? SHOKIN: I have said repeatedly in my previous interviews that Poroshenko fired me at the insistence of the then-vice president Biden because I was investigating Burisma. Kilmeade: So did President Poroshenko tell you that? That he wanted you to stay on the job but there was pressure from Vice President Biden? SHOKIN: You understood me correctly. That is how it was. There were no complaints, no problems with how I was performing my job, but because pressure was constantly put on President Poroshenko, that is what ended up in him ...

Friday night, Tammy Bruce was part of a 3-woman panel with Pam Bondi and Kim Strassel on Hannity. During her first question, Bruce said "Not just anybody is going to do it. It's going to take a Donald Trump for another term because this idea of holding Washington accountable is anathema to anyone who wants to go to the parties and be invited to the White House and not have the drive by media hate them. So this is key and I think Sen. Rubio needs to look in the larger context of how did this happen and what are we going to do to fix it." With all due respect to Ms. Bruce, Trump is part of the problem. He's the CEO who didn't fire Jim Comey as FBI Director for 3 months. He should've fired Comey his first day in office. Then he made things worse by hiring Christopher Wray as Comey's replacement. What's nastiest about that is that Wray came as the recommendation of Sen. Chuck Schumer. Next, he hired David Weiss on the recommendation of Tom Carper and Chri...

The day after the debate, Larry Kudlow opened his program with a panel analyzing the GOP Presidential Debate. The panel consisted of Mark Simone, Charlie Hurt and Joe Concha. Before Kudlow asked his first question, he said "I didn't think they made the case. I was dying for a good MAGA." The answer might lie in the question of whether Trump's America First agenda is exclusively about the economy and the border or whether it's about other things, too. The original Trump America First agenda didn't focus much attention on school choice nor did it focus much on stopping the cartels and fentanyl poisonings. Part of that is due to the fact that COVID hadn't started and Trump's border attention was focused on building his wall. These days, school choice hadn't jumped up as a priority because COVID hadn't exposed Randi Weingarten's and Joe Biden's corruption. Ron DeSantis has stepped into the gap regarding school choice and fentanyl poisonings...

It's getting tiresome listening to the DC chatterboxes who are swooning over Vivek Ramaswamy, whose main goal Wednesday night seemed to be kissing Trump's backside, perhaps in his attempt to be Trump's running mate. Whatever his goal was, he pretty much failed except with the DC chatterboxes. He was the know-it-all on stage when he wasn't getting upstaged by Nikki Haley on foreign policy . The question that pundits aren't asking is the obvious question. Do the candidates not named Trump come across as credible presidents. Can you picture Vivek Ramaswamy a heartbeat away from the Oval Office? Can you picture Tim Scott or Nikki Haley delivering the State of the Union Address? Can you picture Gov. Ron DeSantis delivering on the reforms that DC needs? The answer to the Ramaswamy question is 'Definitely not.' The answer to the Haley/Scott question is 'that's fairly believable.' The answer to the DeSantis question is 'Without a doubt. He's alre...

If Trump Fatigue is slowly building, which I think it is, is it most likely to manifest itself when Trump plays the 'inevitable nominee' card? Or is it more likely to happen when Trump plays the 'nobody treats me fairly' card? Anyone that's paid attention to Mr. Trump the last 6-9 months knows that he's adept at playing both cards, sometimes playing both in the same interview. If Trump is in the dominant polling position that he tells us he's in virtually on a daily basis, then it comes across as sour grapes when he plays the victim card. For a man who's attempting to portray himself as the most powerful political figure in the U.S., it's time for him to stop acting like a whiny little wimp. Rich Lowry's article does a nice job of highlighting Trump's weird affinity for the victim card. He wrote "There are many words that presidential candidates commonly seek to apply to themselves — 'brave,' 'principled,' 'independe...

Wednesday night's GOP Presidential Debate ought to be renamed. It should be renamed 'Ron DeSantis' coming out party'. Let's start with what I thought was Gov. DeSantis's strongest answer of the night. It came on the issue of abortion. Bret Baier asked him about one of his supporters saying that he'd need to moderate his position on abortion. Gov. DeSantis replied "Well, I would say that we sold the biggest landslide election victory in the history of the Republican Party in the state of Florida in 2022. That's what I did. But second of all, look, you've got to do what you think is right. I believe in a culture of life. I was proud to sign the Heartbeat Bill." DeSantis continued, saying "One of the most impactful things in my life was when I heard the heartbeat of my oldest daughter in my wife's womb and then I saw the sonagrams of all 3 of my children. What the Democrats are trying to do on this issue is wrong to allow abortion rig...

One of the things that FL Gov. Ron DeSantis can brag about at tonight's debate is Florida's school choice scholarship program. Florida's school choice program has been in place since 2001 so it isn't something new. Still, Florida deserves recognition for expanding their program over the years . For instance, to stand out from other private schools or charter schools, Florida's Catholic schools have had to innovate because of the competition with other schools. The WSJ editorial says that "in order to stand out on a landscape where parents have more choices every day, many Catholic schools here are offering distinctive programming on top of the core features that have always made Catholic schools attractive and effective.' Several schools now offer International Baccalaureate programs and other specialized courses." The result? "Of the 10 states with the highest Catholic school enrollment, Florida is the only one where Catholic school enrollment ha...

On the eve of the first GOP presidential debate, Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign pretty much ended . It ended because "Ramaswamy then accused the government of infiltrating agents onto the 9/11 flights that crashed into the World Trade Center." H/T: Ed Morrissey/HotAir Quoting from the article: During one of his "truth" monologues at the Lincoln Dinner, Ramaswamy told the crowd, "We can handle the truth about what really happened on January 6." As the bus rolled north, I asked him: What is the truth about January 6? "I don’t know, but we can handle it," he said. "Whatever it is, we can handle it. Government agents. How many government agents were in the field? Right?" Then, suddenly, he was talking about 9/11. "I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers. Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anyt...

If Donald Trump wants to have surrogates in the Spin Room after Wednesday night's debate, there's only 1 way that should be allowed. If Trump wants his surrogates to have access, then Trump has to debate the other candidates and he has to sign the pledge to support the eventual nominee. If that isn't acceptable to his highness, then he can take a hike. What can these surrogates add to the Spin Room? Can they talk about how their candidate (Trump) laid out his vision for the next 4 years? They can't say that their candidate had the best moment of the night. In other words, Trump's surrogates wouldn't add a thing to the post-debate event. Let's look at this through a realistic prism. Andy McCarthy posted his opinion on Trump's chances of winning re-election when he said "Very simple: Trump can’t win. 65% already against him. That’s before Dems launch barrage after getting him nominated. If we finally grasp that, his support will collapse. If not, we ...

Anyone that thinks that David Weiss isn't the gift that hasn't kept on giving to Hunter Biden isn't paying attention. Let's correct that mischaracterization. That person is the personification of being comatose. Bill McGurn's column highlights some, though not all, of Weiss's gifts to Hunter and Joe. For instance, McGurn wrote "The plea deal is only the latest favor to Hunter. Arguably bigger was allowing the statute of limitations to lapse on offenses from 2014 and 2015 (think Burisma). If Mr. Weiss now comes back and charges Hunter with more-serious offenses, the obvious question will be: Why was he willing to go along with a sweetheart plea deal in the first place?" The other question I'd have is this: Why shouldn't I think that he's been intimidated by Merrick Garland and/or Joe Biden? NRO's Andy McCarthy is quoted in the article as saying "Weiss has all along compliantly acted as the vehicle by which the Biden Justice Departm...

Earlier this month, I wrote this post to highlight Donald Trump's supposed ace-in-the-hole. I wrote "Trump's strategy has been to hold his base together. He's been successful at that. Gov. DeSantis' strategy has been to grow the Florida GOP. Gov. DeSantis hasn't just been successful at expanding the Florida GOP. He's been wildly successful at it. First, Florida's population has exploded compared with other states." Trump might be in bigger trouble than the polls suggest if Kyle Peterson's WSJ article produces. AFP, aka Americans for Prosperity, has a plan. Peterson writes "To quote an ad from AFP Action, an associated super PAC: 'If we nominate Trump, Republicans lose.' Canvassers are knocking on the doors of 'soft' Trump voters, and according to a polling memo posted by AFP, '41% of Trump supporters say they are open to supporting an alternative.'" I've been talking quietly with friends about how DeSanti...

A little over a week ago, I wrote a post titled " It's the Inflation, Stupid ." It's time Republicans figured out that the economy overall isn't Biden's weak spot. Biden's weak spot is inflation. That's best personified by spiking gas prices, which are now approaching $4.00 a gallon nationwide. BTW, that's 30 cents higher than a month ago. Some idiot in the White House thinks it's ok to talk up Bidenomics . That person couldn't be more wrong. According to the WH Bidenomics white paper, "Even as they faced an immediate economic and public health crisis—with a raging pandemic, elevated unemployment, snarled supply chains, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses at risk of shuttering—the President and Vice President understood that it wouldn’t be enough to simply go back to the economy we had before the pandemic. That economy was saddled with longstanding challenges that held America back—including rising inequality and disinvestmen...

Apparently, Donald Trump has confirmed that he feels he's entitled to the GOP presidential nomination. Earlier Sunday, Trump took to Truth Social for his daily pile of BS . In his posting, Trump said "New CBS POLL, just out, has me leading the field by "legendary" numbers. TRUMP 62%, 46 Points above DeSanctimonious (who is crashing like an ailing bird!), Ramaswamy 7%, Pence 5%, Scott 3%, Haley 2%, Sloppy Chris Christie 2%, “Aida” Hutchinson 1%. The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had, with Energy Independence, Strong Borders & Military, Biggest EVER Tax & Regulation Cuts, No Inflation, Strongest Economy in History, & much more. I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES! " Notice who isn't mentioned in his daily blather -- the people. Apparently, Trump doesn't think he needs to lay out his vision going forward in a competitive setting. In a competitive setting, the candidates -- mostly Ron DeSantis -- would have the ...

Alan Dershowitz was quick to insist that David Weiss, the U.S. Attorney for Delaware and just named as the Special Counsel for the Hunter Biden investigation, wasn't a legitimate pick as Special Counsel. That isn't a controversial opinion anymore. He's got plenty of company who agree with him. For instance, Andy McCarthy said right after the announcement that Weiss shouldn't have been picked. Just after the announcement, McCarthy said "This is a sham, there is no special counsel investigation and there is no Biden investigation. The special counsel regulations, what makes a special counsel special is that you are a lawyer who is brought in from outside the United States government. Not just outside the Justice Department, outside the government. This U.S. attorney is being appointed notwithstanding that he is an attorney who is a top official in the Biden Justice Department and Garland made clear is going to remain a top official in the Biden Justice Department....

MAGA Inc. is trying to create something out of nothing. MAGA Inc. is attempting to convince MAGA voters that Gov. Ron DeSantis disrespected Trump supporters. That isn't what happened. What happened is that Gov. DeSantis was given the opportunity to set the record straight on whether he's controlled by the Bushes and Cheneys and whether he's a RINO. Gov. DeSantis replied that he's never seen an establishment Republican do the things he's done. Instead of whining, he stated the things he's done that establishment Republicans have never done. More on that later. According to Bonchie's article , what's likely to have gotten Trump's attention is Gov. DeSantis strongly hinting that one man (Trump) shouldn't set the definitions of who is or isn't a conservative. In the past, Trump has called Rep. Chip Roy and Rep. Thomas Massie RINOs despite their sterling conservative records. Apparently, MAGA Republicans define RINOs as anyone who isn't a MAGA...

It isn't often that CNN is caught committing truth in their reporting. When that happens, it's definitely a noteworthy event worthy of media attention. Such a rarity just happened. Nick Arama wrote about it for RedState in this post . In his post, Arama talks about Jake Tapper committing such a truth. During the panel discussion, Tapper played a clip of Trump debating Biden in 2020, with Trump accusing Hunter of making a fortune in China, Ukraine and Moscow. Biden replied "that simply isn't true." One of the panelists is a former Democrat congressman from Michigan named Andy Levin. Levin's role in this panel, apparently, was to recite that dads sometimes have blind spots when it comes to their sons. Levin then said "Nothing has tied the President to any of Hunter Biden's dealings. There's no whiff of him being involved or him being implicated in it and I think it's something that voters don't really much about." It's possible that...

Ron DeSantis just got endorsed by one of Iowa's highest-profile conservatives. DeSantis just earned Steve Deace's endorsement. The Washington Times published Deace's op-ed explaining why he's endorsing Gov. DeSantis. Deace opened his op-ed by saying "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has done more damage to the leftists intent on destroying America than any politician I’ve seen in my lifetime. He threw out the Republicans’ losing playbook, took no prisoners, and showed conservatives what it looks like to go on the offensive and win. When he made promises, he delivered — and then some." Apparently, Gov. DeSantis's leadership qualities have impressed Deace. So has Gov. DeSantis's ability to go on offense against Woke Inc. and by delivering on things like Florida's parental rights bill against the odds. Disney threw the kitchen sink at Gov. DeSantis. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out that Disney dominates the corporate landscape in Flori...