On Wednesday, French prosecutors demanded right-wing leader Marine Le Pen receive a jail sentence and be banned from public office for five years over charges she embezzled European Parliament funds. What is striking is that wherever the right wins elections or starts to take the lead in some ‘democratic countries,’ the leader gets hit with […] The post Prosecutors Want Le Pen Imprisoned, Banned from Running for Office appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

On Tuesday, President-elect Trump rolled out Pete Hegseth, the author, Army veteran, and Fox News host, as his choice for secretary of defense. And the usual suspects are going absolutely insane. My favorite response came courtesy of Politico, which lost it over the fact that Hegseth is an outsider. They published a piece saying defense industry lobbyists were very upset. They wrote: One assessment was more blunt. “Who the fuck is this guy?” said a defense industry lobbyist who was granted anonymity to offer candid views. The lobbyist said they had hoped for “someone who actually has an extensive background in defense. That would be a good start.” Here’s the problem: The people who have been running our defense apparatus for nigh on two decades at this point have done a horrendous job. The Department of Defense has been signally responsible for the worst botched pullout in American history in Afghanistan, a completely failed response to terrorism by the Houthis in the Red Sea, and an unbelievably weak response to Russian invasion of Europe. That’s what the Department of Defense has done. They’ve burdened the Department of Defense with a bunch of woke nonsense. Additionally, they have not actually built to spec, meaning that they are not interested in preparing for the next war. They just keep building for the last war. There needs to be a tremendous overhaul inside the Pentagon, and Pete Hegseth is the guy to do it. You can sense it from all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth from all the right people. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show Elizabeth Warren, who is super upset, tweeted, “A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense. I lead the Senate military personnel panel. All three of my brothers served in uniform. I respect every one of our servicemembers. Donald Trump’s pick will make us less safe and must be rejected.”  I would like to point out that Warren says that her qualification to lead the Senate military personnel panel is that she has siblings who served in the military. To Ms. Warren might it be said: Hegseth is an Army major and was in the National Guard. He served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and was awarded the Bronze Star twice. I know Pete Hegseth. He’s awesome. He’s going to break all the right brains. He’s going to go in and clean house. Pete is a young 44-year-old go-getter. He is obviously very bright. He went to Harvard and Princeton. Plus, there’s his military record. He’s literally writing the book on how to clear the military of all the deadwood. I interviewed him just a few months ago about his brand-new book, which is all about cleansing the military of woke ideology. He explained what he thought America’s foreign policy should be like: It goes all the way back to we’re not even declaring wars anymore because no one wants, they’re so politically untenable as to what way they’ll go. So no one actually wants to invest in them or is willing to. And so you get these forever wars, which is a bad phrase because they’re not forever wars, but it’s the way it ends up being described because there is no actual end state. Tell me what the end state is in Ukraine. I could tell you what the end state is in Israel. And what’s the only thing the American military and the American diplomats are doing right now? Trying to stop Israel from finishing the fight. There’s one thing that Israel could do: kill every last one of those Hamas mother***ers now and then the war stops. And by the way, Israel didn’t start it. That’s how wars end. That’s how peace breaks out for thousands of years, somebody actually wins the war. And when they win the war, then there’s a new reality, a new geopolitical reality. We don’t fight that way. We let the lawyers lead. We let international institutions have too much say and it percolates. I tell stories directly as a platoon leader down to: Can you shoot? Can you not shoot? Our guys being criminalized after the fact, put in jail. Donald Trump pardoned a bunch of guys I advocated for in his last couple of years in office. They killed the right guys in the wrong way, according to somebody. I’m done with that. We need to fight total war against our enemies when we do. You don’t kill civilians on purpose, but you kill bad guys, all of them: You stack bodies. And when it’s over and you let the dust settle, you figure out who’s ahead. It turns out we’re the ones with the big guns right now.  I am all in on this. All in. I like this. This is great. In regards to reforming U.S. military leadership, Hegseth said: Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s*** has got to go. … That’s the only litmus test we care about. You got to get DEI and CRT out of military academies. … Whatever the combat standards were, say, and, I don’t know, 1995, let’s just make those the standards. And as far as recruiting to hire the guy that, you know, did Top Gun Maverick and create some real ads that motivate people to want to serve. That is right. That is correct. More young men will join the military with Hegseth as secretary of defense. Why? Because people who are joining the military look at that and think, that dude is a bad***. And that’s somebody who I want heading up the Department of Defense. It’s hilarious because the entire Left is bringing out clips of Hegseth, and every time they do, supposedly showing him as terrible, all I can think is, “Stop. I’m already supporting him. You can’t make me support him any more than I already do. It’s not possible.” Some of them brought out a clip of him talking about how women should not serve in frontline combat positions. What’s controversial about that? Is their idea here that women should be in frontline combat positions next to the big bulky Navy SEALs and guys like that? That’s their proposition? Keep bringing out more clips of Hegseth. Every new clip makes me more adamant on my support. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ Trump is deliberately going outside the system of the military structure. He’s apparently pursuing a draft executive order that would create a board to purge the woke generals. I know a lot of people who are serving in America’s military. Everyone will say the biggest obstacle to military success in the United States military is the political generals, the people who’ve kissed enough a** to make their way to the top of the heap. That’s not every general, but there are some who have made their way to the top of the heap by playing the game. That military bureaucracy is what prevents the United States military from adapting, from innovating, from being quick and responsive. Wiping all of that out would be great. Am I supposed to listen to people who think that Rachel Levine ought to be an admiral? They’re the people I’m going to listen to about military policy? These are  people who believe the way that you recruit people to the United States military is by waving rainbow flags. That is not how you recruit people to the military. We have a massive shortfall in the number of people who want to join the military. We have a massive shortfall in terms of the military technology we actually have to develop. It’s a rough world out there. And Pete Hegseth knows that better than anyone who is being looked at for this position.

Former CNN host Don Lemon said the time has come to leave social media platform X as he claimed it’s no longer a place for “honest” debate after President-elect Donald Trump won, with the support of X owner Elon Musk. In two now-viral posts he made on Wednesday, Lemon wrote and then said in a video that he has “loved connecting with all of you on Twitter and then on X for all of these years, but it’s time for me to leave the platform.” “I once believed that it was a place for honest debate and discussion, transparency and free speech, but I now feel it does not serve that purpose,” he added, without explaining further. He then pointed to changes in terms and services on X that will become effective on November 15, which states that “all disputes related to These terms or the Services” that arise between users and X as a company “shall be brought exclusively in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, or state courts located in Tarrant County, Texas…” My statement on leaving Twitter pic.twitter.com/9tYcfqHhhC — Don Lemon (@donlemon) November 13, 2024 Lemon claimed that these new terms put all disputes on the platform “in courthouses that are a hub for conservatives, which experts say could make it easier for X to shield itself from litigation and punish critics.” “I think that speaks for itself,” Lemon wrote, pointing to where followers could find his content like YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, etc. Hollywood star Jamie Lee Curtis also joined him in announcing on Instagram that she had left the X platform, without giving a specific reason she made the decision following Trump’s victory. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” Curtis wrote on Instagram. “Courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.” The U.K. news outlet The Guardian also announced on Wednesday that it would no longer be posting on the platform due to its “often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism,” without providing any further information. “The U.S. presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse,” the news outlet added. Following news that Trump had indeed won reelection last week, outspoken leftist activist actress Bette Midler deleted her account. TV host Piers Morgan appeared to mock the grand announcements from stars like Lemon and Curtis and instead announced that he would be staying. “ANNOUNCEMENT:  I am not leaving X,” Morgan wrote in a now-viral post.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) mocked Vice President Kamala Harris this week over her failed presidential campaign, saying that it was like the Fyre Festival. Cruz made the remarks during the most recent episode of his “Verdict” podcast with co-host Ben Ferguson while talking about the disastrous campaign that Harris ran, including how her campaign ended up $20 million in debt. “Kamala Harris ran the Fyre Festival of campaigns, and it points out that Trump’s campaign spent roughly $488 million, and Kamala spent more than a billion,” Cruz said. “So, she outspent Trump more than two-to-one, and Kamala campaign ended up $20 million in debt.” The Fyre Festival is the name of a hyped festival that was supposed to take place in 2017 that ended up falling so far below what was expected that the term “Frye Festival” is now a meme for something that is an epic disaster. “Where did that money go? Well, one of the things that it went to is they paid many of [the] ‘celebrities’ who supported her,” Cruz noted, adding that they were given “significant sums” of money. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ “Look, I’m a fiscal conservative, damn it,” Cruz said. “If you want to be there and you believe in saving the country, stand up and save the country, and if not, get the hell out.” “Like, what is it with these lefties who, ironically, they want to put socialists in office who make it impossible for people to earn a living, and yet they’re such capitalists that they’re like, show me the money to do it. I mean, there is an intense hypocrisy on this,” he added. LISTEN: After she spent millions bribing celebrities to endorse her, Kamala Harris’s campaign is millions of dollars in debt. This is going to deeply demoralize Democrat donors. It is outrageous that donors gave their hard-earned cash to enrich celebrities.https://t.co/Et7wlOPde5 pic.twitter.com/UhImgKVSAl — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 13, 2024

Along came Pete Hegseth to blow them all away

The 2024 presidential election shattered two monopolies the Left had counted on for decades. One was the lock it had over that section of Americans labeled as “Hispanics” and the other one was over the media. In this column, I will deal with the second one. Breaking the leftist monopoly on Hispanic Americans, the subtitle of a book I wrote in 2014, shatters a long-standing strategy by the Left to win power. But seeing the legacy media crumble after decades of watching them snootily dictate to all of us is not just equally monumental but also more gratifying because it is to many such well-deserved retribution. It’s not just that the voter has now said the press have no clothes. More importantly, President-elect Donald Trump was able to use an online ecosystem that now far outstrips anything the legacy media have to offer. Conservatives have a right to be excited about this brand-new development. Part of the reason people have been flocking to nonlegacy media sources, including the many podcasts Trump went out of his way to appear on over the course of his campaign, is that the legacy media long ago shed all semblance of impartiality. Newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, broadcasters such as NPR and the three major TV networks, as well as wire services such as The Associated Press and Reuters have behaved as though it were up to them to prevent a Trump victory. And they didn’t care if it was obvious. The Media Research Center, a conservative outfit that has performed invaluable service studying the media for years, confirms that this year’s coverage, in particular, was the worst of any election in history. Its analysis of how the two candidates were treated in the networks’ evening news showed that Vice President Kamala Harris received 78% positive coverage, while Trump’s share of positive coverage was only 15%. That was a Democratic advantage of +63, compared to +58 in 2020, +35 in 2008, and +22 in 2004. The public knew it. A YouGov poll revealed that only 7% “trust the media to tell the truth.” As a former journalist of almost 20 years, I experience no schadenfreude in writing this. Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, himself lowered the boom by writing a column that defended his decision not to have the paper endorse Harris in this context. It began thusly: In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working. … Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. Writing in The Hill, Becket Adams correctly observed before the Nov. 5 election that this extreme partisanship by journalists who are supposed to be objective showed they were panicking about a possible Harris loss. “A confident team doesn’t resort to these types of desperate measures,” he wrote. Underlining this panic was the media infighting, always a sign that things are internally coming apart, that accompanied the decisions by The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times owners not to endorse Harris.  And post-election, the media are still stuck between denial and anger. There is no self-reflection, repentance, or even taking stock. There is no plan. But if you are a media outlet lacking credibility, you need a plan because consumers are abandoning a stultifyingly sectarian product and flocking to podcasts, YouTube channels such as the NELK Boys, X accounts, TikTok, and other internet-based platforms on which speech is freewheeling. As mentioned before, Trump made ample use of them. On this score, members of the media are paying attention, but only to decry that it is happening and call for regulation (read censorship). “So here’s how we got beat,” commentator Van Jones said on CNN. “We got beat because the Republicans and conservatives built a different media system that has to do with online, that has to do with podcasts, that has to do with streaming platforms.” Over at MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” an equally despondent Anand Giridharadas had a meltdown. “What they have done in their online media ecosystem is build a radicalization engine,” he said. “It’s an elaborate, multibillion-dollar infrastructure, and there is nothing like it on the pro-democracy side. … We don’t have the equivalent of Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson to move that man in a feminist direction.” It is comically unself-aware that Giridharadas calls his side—which believes in censorship, lawfare, and running a presidential candidate who didn’t get a single primary vote—the “pro-democracy” side. But put that aside, and the analysis is spot on.  There isn’t a liberal Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Joe Scarborough certainly aren’t. The “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast has 14 million Spotify followers and 17.9 million YouTube subscribers, making Rogan the most listened to U.S. podcast, according to Newsweek. Over at The Washington Post, there was the same need for smelling salts, as writers decried that Trump’s use of these platforms meant that men “between the ages of 18 and 29 swung enormously for Trump.” “Trump’s staggering showing among this demographic was the culmination of a yearslong effort to reach young men devoted to the beacons of American machismo: pranks, combat sports, stand-up comedy and the often-misogynistic online fringe known as the ‘manosphere,’” the authors of an analysis agonized. So, even if they know they are facing competition, don’t expect media companies to do anything about it. With Trump in power, their hopes of government censorship likely won’t materialize. As Vince Coglianese said in his popular radio showmon WMAL, the media’s reckoning, at least for the moment, has been limited to crying that “our spells don’t work anymore. The magic’s gone.” Or, as Elon Musk put it to his followers on X, which he owns: “You are the media now.” Originally published by the Washington Examiner The post The Election’s Second-Biggest Loser? Legacy Media. appeared first on The Daily Signal.

THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Democratic governors and other liberal elected officials have lined up to declare that they will fight back against President-elect Donald Trump’s hardline agenda against illegal immigration. Trump, who won the Nov. 5 election, has promised to conduct mass deportations across the country and withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities, along with a slate of other hawkish enforcement proposals. However, Democratic governors in Massachusetts, California, and Illinois—all seen as potential 2028 presidential contenders—and other elected leaders have said they will use their authority to push back against the upcoming second Trump administration’s agenda. “I think that the key here is that every tool in the toolbox has got to be used to protect our citizens, to protect our residents and protect our states, and certainly to hold the line on democracy and the rule of law as a basic principle,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said to MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell after Trump’s victory. Healey confirmed that Massachusetts State Police would “absolutely not” help the Trump administration’s deportation plans. The entire state of Massachusetts is already described as a “sanctuary” haven by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based group that supports enforcement of immigration law and tracks sanctuary laws and policies. Healey’s reluctance to help the incoming administration’s enforcement efforts follows her state’s struggles with the ongoing border crisis, having publicly asked illegal immigrants not to go to her state and offered plane tickets for them to leave. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called Nov. 7 for a special session of the state Legislature to “protect California values” from the incoming Trump administration. “The special session will focus on bolstering California legal resources to protect civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate action, and immigrant families,” a statement from the governor’s office reads. “On immigrant protection, California has advanced policies that support immigrant families and is investing in their protection. Like Massachusetts, the entire state of California is also deemed a “sanctuary” jurisdiction for statewide policies that forbid cooperation between local law enforcement officials and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Newsom’s office told The Associated Press that the special session for lawmakers will help “Trump-proof” the state’s laws. In addition to conducting the “largest deportation program in American history,” Trump has also said he would end birthright citizenship for those born on American soil by illegal migrant parents, bring back the “Remain in Mexico” program, hire more Border Patrol agents, and establish a compensation fund for victims of what he calls migrant crime. The president-elect announced late Sunday that he was picking former ICE acting Acing director Tom Homan to be the border czar in the new administration, making clear the upcoming administration will be adopting a tough stance on enforcement. The president-elect announced late Sunday that he was picking former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan to be the border czar in the new administration, making clear it will adopt a tough stance on enforcement. “To anyone who intends to come take away the freedom and opportunity and dignity of Illinoisans, I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said during a press conference after Trump’s victory. “You come for my people, you come through me.” Pritzker said Illinois would remain a sanctuary state and vowed to take the second Trump administration to court if it attempts to withhold federal funds over the issue. The president-elect has pledged to force sanctuary cities and jurisdictions to cooperate with immigration authorities by stripping them of federal public safety grants. Numerous local Democratic elected officials have also signaled that they will do what they can to stymie Trump’s agenda on illegal immigration, with several members of the Los Angeles City Council saying that they will fast-track passage of a sanctuary city ordinance, according to the Los Angeles Times. The LA legislation, still under review by city attorneys, would prohibit federal immigration enforcement officials from accessing Los Angeles databases. A spokesperson for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment when asked by the Daily Caller News Foundation if she would support the bill. Many liberal organizations have also declared they are ready and waiting to fight the Trump administration tooth and nail, including the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has filed over 400 legal actions against Trump and his previous administration since 2016, a large portion targeting immigration directives from Trump’s first term. “Starting on Day One, we’re ready to fight for our civil liberties and civil rights in the courts, in Congress, and in our communities,” the ACLU said after Trump’s election victory. “We did it during his first term—filing 434 legal actions against Trump while he was in office—and we’ll do it again.” Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Democrat Governors, City Leaders Pledge to Shield Illegal Aliens From Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.

About That Hegseth Guy and the Pentagon He's Walking Into

Our children are under attack like never before. From leftist indoctrination in schools and drag queens in libraries to obscene LGBTQ+ “family-friendly” parades and the relabeling of sexual predators as minor attracted persons, the agenda to sexualize and destroy our children is blatantly obvious. And now we have another atrocity to add to the list: Mattel’s new line of “Wicked” Barbies based on the up-and-coming movie starring Ariana Grande feature a link to a porn website on the back of the boxes. Mattel is claiming that it was “just a giant mistake,” says Allie Beth Stuckey skeptically. “If they are targeting kids — little girls ages 4+ — I think it is of utmost importance to get the link correct on the back of the box,” she says. Although Mattel has issued a statement calling the incident an “unfortunate error” and promising the company is “taking immediate action to remedy this,” it’s hard to believe that this wasn’t intentional. “I cannot imagine something like this slipping through the cracks at a place like Mattel. You've got so many hands and so many eyes that a product like this has to go through,” says Allie, pointing out that this “misprint” has major consequences. “It's not just like it got sent to some unpurchased domain and it was just, you know, a letter off. … This was an entire word off, and you would think that there would be someone employed at Mattel or someone on the ‘Wicked’ production end of things that would have tested the URL,” she criticizes. Currently, the products are “no longer available” or appear to be “out of stock” on vendors’ websites. Mattel has also advised that consumers who have already purchased the product “discard their packaging.” Even still, many are not convinced that this was actually a misprint. Libs of TikTok certainly isn’t. In a tweet posted last Sunday, the account expressed its skepticism. Allie agrees and recalls the semi-recent Balenciaga scandal when the company created a line of bondage/BDSM teddy bear handbags. Some of the advertising included children. One ad also featured the documents for “a Supreme Court decision that involved child sex abuse material.” Like Mattel, Balenciaga claimed it was “just a giant mistake.” While she hopes she’s wrong, Allie thinks that there are people at these mega corporations who are “sick and twisted and nefarious.” To hear more about the scandal, watch the episode above. Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.