Confronting Fake News

On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article about President Trump’s debunking some recent fake news.

The article reports:

President Donald Trump went scorched earth on reports that the Iranian regime cut off contact with the U.S. over Israel’s recent military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote, “Fake News Reports that the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the U.S.A., stopped speaking a few days ago are false and erroneous.”

This is what the President posted on Truth Social:

The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago, and today. Where they lead, one never knows, but as I told Iran, “It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal. You’ve been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer!”

The Iranian state media has claimed that Iran suspended the talks because of Israel’s activities in Lebanon.

The article notes:

However, he (President Trump) also stressed that he had not heard this directly from the regime and posited that the reports were meant for media outlets to pick up. Trump on Tuesday said he believes Washington and Tehran could come to an agreement that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz while pushing Iran toward giving up its nuclear program.

…Trump has consistently demanded that Iran abandon its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, material that can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. Iran has rejected full concessions on the nuclear matter, but expressed willingness to draw down its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions and other demands.

Meanwhile, Americans are dealing with heightened gas prices as a result of Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which it started shortly after the war started.

It really is time for this to be over, one way or the other.

The Truth Behind The Shutdown

The current government shutdown doesn’t make a lot of sense–ICE has already been funded through the year, so the only people hurt are the Transportation Security Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Transportation, Department of Health and Human Service (source here).

On Tuesday, LifeZette posted an article suggesting what the current government shutdown is really about.

The article reports:

Sen. Markwayne Mullin criticized Democrats over the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, arguing during an exchange with Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer that the impasse was designed to coincide with the State of the Union rather than reflect genuine negotiations.

Hemmer asked the Oklahoma Republican whether there was a path forward to reopen the government.

“My question to you is, do you see a way out today as a way to get out of this?” Hemmer said.

Mullin responded by saying meaningful negotiations have not been taking place.

“Well, if we were actually negotiating on actual terms, to reopen, yes, but that’s not the state of play here. The state of play is to be shut down during the State of the Union for DHS, and that’s what it’s always been. If it was actual conversation about reforms. It wouldn’t have taken them 10 days to come back with a proposal after they shut us down almost three weeks ago.”

Mullin said that when a proposal was eventually delivered, the White House responded quickly, but talks did not continue.

On January 7th, USA Today reminded us when the State of the Union address would occur:

On Jan. 7, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) formally invited President Donald Trump to deliver his State of the Union address on Feb. 24.

Johnson posted a copy of the invitation sent to the president on X. In it, the Speaker praised Trump for his “bold action” and leadership and said the United States “stands stronger, freer, and more prosperous.”

“Since his return to office, @POTUS has not stopped working for the American people and delivering on his promises. The best is yet to come,” Johnson said on X.

The speech on Feb. 24 will mark Trump’s first State of the Union of his second term. 

Even without a majority, the Democrat party is intent on throwing any wrench it can into the governance of America. It is truly time to go back to a talking filibuster and make the Democrats stand up for what they supposedly believe.

Does He Even Believe This?

On Sunday, The Daily Caller posted an article about Senator Schumer’s explanation of the reason for the defeat of so many Democrats in November’s election.

The article reports:

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that voters “didn’t realize how much” the Democratic Party had done for them over the last four years heading into November’s elections, claiming it played a key role in his party’s demise.

President-elect Donald Trump scored a historic win for Republicans in November, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote, while Vice President Kamala Harris failed to even match the numbers President Joe Biden had received in 2020. On “Meet the Press,” NBC host Kristen Welker questioned Schumer about his thoughts on the “root cause” of the Democrats’ loss, noting that Democratic strategist James Carville had blamed the state of the economy under the Biden-Harris administration.

“I told my caucus and I’ll say it here, too. We should regard this election, certainly it was a loss, but it’s also a challenge, and we did some things right against very severe headwinds. We kept four of those seven contested Democratic seats, but we did some things wrong and we have to look in the mirror and see what we did wrong,” Schumer said.

“Then there’s some things we didn’t do that we should have done. One of the things we have to do is we must focus on the working families of America,” Schumer added. “We believe in them and we passed all kinds of legislation that helped them with the infrastructure bill which made our economy stronger and employed lots of people.”

Meanwhile, back in reality, on December 22, 2024, The Center Square reported:

President Joe Biden is only a few weeks away from the end of his time in office, and one key part of his legacy is undeniable: inflation.

Biden has battled inflation from the start, but critics say he helped fuel it with trillions of dollars in deficit spending during his four years in office. Federal debt spending is offset in part by printing money, which increases inflation.

Biden has boasted bringing inflation rates down from about 9% earlier in his term to roughly 2.5% currently.

While the rate of inflation has slowed, that doesn’t mean prices have decreased. In fact, they continue rising, albeit slower than earlier in his term.

The federal government released a a key inflation marker Friday, its Personal Consumption Expenditure index, which rose 2.4% last month, a bit less than expected.

Overall, though, prices have risen more than 20% since Biden took office.

It really is the economy, stupid.

As The Facts Emerge

On Monday, Jonathan Turley posted an article on the information that has recently come out regarding January 6th and the Congressional investigation of the riot.

The article reports:

On Jan. 6, 2021, the nation was rocked by the disruption of the certification of Joe Biden as our next president. With Donald Trump set to return to the White House in 2025, it is astonishing how much of that day remains a matter of intense debate.

Those divisions are likely only to deepen after a slew of recent reports that have challenged the selective release of information from the House January 6 Committee.

January 6 remains as much a political litmus test as it is a historical event. Whether you refer to that day as a riot or an insurrection puts you on one side or the other of a giant political chasm. I viewed the attack on that day as a desecration of our constitutional process, but I did not view it as an insurrection. I still don’t.

It was a protest that became a riot when a woefully insufficient security plan collapsed. And that is a view shared by most Americans. One year after the riot, a CBS poll showed that 76 percent viewed it as a “protest gone too far.”

A Harvard study also found that those arrested on that day were motivated by loyalty to Trump rather than support for an insurrection.

A recent poll found that almost half of the public (43 percent) felt that “too much is being made” of the riot and that it is “time to move on.” Of course, that still leaves a little over half who view the day as “an attack on democracy.”

The continued distrust of the official accounts of Jan. 6 reflects a failure of the House Democrats, and specifically former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), to guarantee a credible and comprehensive investigation.

The House Select Committee to investigate January 6 was comprised of Democrat-selected members who offered only one possible view: that January 6 was an attempt to overthrow our democracy by Trump and his supporters. The committee hired a former ABC News producer to create a slick, made-for-television production that barred opposing views and countervailing evidence. The members, including Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney, played edited videotapes of Trump’s speech that removed the portion where Trump called on his supporters to protest “peacefully.”

The committee fostered false accounts, including the claim that there was a violent episode with Trump trying to wrestle control of the presidential limousine. The Committee knew that the key Secret Service driver directly contradicted that account offered by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Although I do not entirely agree with Attorney Turley’s conclusions, he is correct to say that we know very little of what actually happened that day.