'What are you talking about?'

'He’s a crooked person'

She swooped in with $6 million just before the film was shut down

Kamala Harris is running a campaign against herself. The vice president is a left-wing Democrat with an unsalable record in office. So, candidate Harris pretends to be something else—a newcomer with a happy message and a bevy of Republican supporters. The trick isn’t working, as recent polls favoring Donald Trump demonstrate. It’s almost as if nobody—independents, Republicans or Democrats—associates Dick Cheney with good vibes. Yet Harris is out on the trail boasting of his support. That’s not joy. It’s desperation. Harris was counting on winning the election by surprise, replacing President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket before voters could stop to ask what they were getting. She put off doing major interviews as long as she could, for fear they’d lead to exactly the difficulties everyone saw in her Fox News appearance last week. The vice president didn’t want to be asked about her record because it’s atrocious. Month-on-month inflation peaked above 9% midway through the Biden-Harris years. She’s a border czar presiding over a broken border, while in foreign policy, Harris and Biden have delivered only humiliation and horror from Afghanistan to Ukraine and the Middle East. Four more years of the same isn’t a pitch voters will go for. Instead, Harris tries happy talk—but she’s not at all pleased when voters talk back. “You guys are at the wrong rally,” she scolded attendees who shouted, “Jesus is Lord!” at a Wisconsin stop. Her campaign messaging is growing increasingly apocalyptic—and hypocritical. Harris surrogates and media amplifiers can’t stop talking about fascism and the end of American democracy, even as they rebuke Trump for intemperate language. Comparing Harris’ opponent to Hitler isn’t enough anymore: Anne Applebaum at The Atlantic now claims “Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini”—all at once! Democrats have waged nonstop “lawfare” against the Republican nominee. Yet Harris insists it’s Trump who wants to use government power against his opponents. Trump isn’t a soft-spoken campaigner, to say the least. But his genius lies in combining galvanizing rhetoric with disarming humor. He was in his element last weekend when he stopped by a Philadelphia-area McDonald’s to try his hand as a fry cook. Trump had a political point to make: He was teasing Harris about her claims to have worked for the fast-food giant when she was in college. But that jab was secondary to the sheer merriment of having Trump don a cook’s apron and learn to scoop fries, as the restaurant’s regular employees looked on and smiled. The scene spotlighted the kind of joy that’s in short supply inside Harris’ campaign. The contrasting emotional resonances couldn’t be sharper: Trump and the golden arches of America’s most popular burger chain on one side, Harris and everything voters associate with Dick Cheney on the other. Yet Harris has good reason to tout ties to yesteryear’s Republicans—because she hardly wants to be identified with today’s Democrats, least of all with her record alongside Biden. Her only hope is to run as an outsider to her own administration. The Republicans she’s using to weave the illusion that she’s something other than a typical Democrat, however, are the furthest thing from outsiders: Indeed, that’s why they’re endorsing her: They’re insiders angry about Trump’s war on the political establishment. The Cheneys feel closer to Harris than they do to the grassroots Republicans who booted Dick’s daughter Liz out of Congress. The Harris campaign is a last redoubt for the old guard in both parties, Cheney Republicans and Biden-Harris Democrats alike. Harris likes to talk about “what is possible, unburdened by what has been.” But Harris is nothing if not burdened by what she has been, and now she’s looking to Republicans out of the past to save her from voters’ judgment about the current administration. She wanted to run on vibes, but now they’ve all turned bad, and Trump, after surviving two assassination attempts, has become the more joyful campaigner. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Kamala Harris’ Vanishing ‘Vibes’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

So Much for That Boing, Boing, Boeing Contract

'They're in Total Disarray': Arab American Voters in Michigan Still Abandoning Harris

The head of the Los Angeles Times editorial board quit her job, crying racism and sexism because the paper declined to endorse Kamala Harris for U.S. President. Mariel Garza, the board’s editor, resigned on Wednesday, “to make it clear that” she is “not okay with us being silent.” “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up,” she told the Columbia Journalism Review.  This is the first time the paper will not endorse the Democratic nominee for President since 2008. Garza claims the board had intended to support Harris, and that she had even drafted their endorsement. “It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist,” she whined in her resignation letter obtained by the Review. Plans were allegedly scrapped on October 11, when the paper’s new owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong informed the board they would remain neutral, a decision that took Garza “aback,” according to the Review. It’s also the “the latest blow” for Harris, according to her opponent, former President Donald Trump.  “In Kamala’s own home state, the Los Angeles Times—the state’s largest newspaper—has declined to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket, despite endorsing the Democrat nominees in every election for decades,” the Trump campaign stated in an email obtained by the Review. “Even her fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job. The Times previously endorsed Kamala in her 2010 and 2014 races for California attorney general, as well as her 2016 race for US Senate—but not this time,” his campaign continued. The Times, founded in 1881, had originally leaned Right. The paper endorsed every GOP nominee for President, but quit after receiving backlash for supporting Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign.  When Los Angeles turned fully Leftist, so did they. Now that Shiong saved the Times from what the Review describes as the “doomed and recently bankrupt Tribune Company,” he aims to take things into a “non-partisan” direction. In a post on X, Shiong justified the paper’s non-endorsement as an effort to “let the readers decide” who they want to lead their nation. So many comments about the @latimes Editorial Board not providing a Presidential endorsement this year. Let me clarify how this decision came about. The Editorial Board was provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH… — Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong (@DrPatSoonShiong) October 23, 2024 But Garza, who had also led the paper’s endorsement of President Joe Biden in 2020, insists most of their readers “are Harris supporters.”  “We’re a very liberal paper. I didn’t think we were going to change the outcome of the election in California,” she told the Review. Garza insists supporting Harris was a “logical step,” given all their previous rants “about how dangerous Trump is to democracy.”

According to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, former President Donald Trump was dismayed at the cost of the funeral of Army Private Vanessa Guillen, a child of Mexican immigrants who was brutally murdered at Fort Hood in 2020. As Goldberg tells it, Trump raged, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” At 4:30 PM Eastern on Tuesday, Guillen’s sister Mayra tweeted the article was “hurtful & disrespectful,” that Trump showed the family nothing but respect, and that she voted for him. However, only 1 of 9 MSNBC stories on the article from the time off Mayra’s tweet through the end of Wednesday mentioned her rebuttal. CNN mentioned the rebuttal in more than half of their stories—6 of 10—but the amount of emphasis they put on it varied greatly.   Wow. I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics- hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today. https://t.co/o8cDrKOKBV — Mayra Guillen (@mguilen_) October 22, 2024   MSNBC Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace quoted from the article before elaborating, “That's Donald Trump using the F word to describe a funeral that he had offered to pay for, for a member of the United States military. With 14 days to go, we apologize for the profanity but we want to quote Donald Trump accurately and be faithful to this extraordinary body of reporting.” On All In, Chris Hayes ridiculed the campaign’s denial, “His campaign denied he made those comments. You can make up your own mind as to whether or not that sounds like something Donald Trump would say and do.”  Morning Joe co-host Jonathan Lemire welcomed Goldberg and asked him to “tell us, if we will, a little more about this story and what else it tells you and can tell us about how Trump does view those who have, at times, put their lives on the line in military service for this country.” Goldberg claimed Trump’s public displays of empathy for the family were just for show “I mean, it's very typical in the sense that the story exhibits his racism because he had -- he used an expletive to describe this soldier who was a Mexican-American daughter of Mexican immigrants. It shows the parsimony. One of the triggering -- constantly triggering things in his life is the fear that he's being ripped off or robbed. So, in a meeting -- so he meets with the family on July 30th, 2020, and he performs fine, he performs well, he's very sympathetic or as sympathetic as he can evince be to the mother and sisters of this murdered soldier.” Jansing also told Independent Americans host Paul Rieckhoff, “She was horribly murdered. And it's reduced to ‘an F-ing Mexican.’ Do you think that, with the larger community, used to be the military was sacred if you were a politician, right? And maybe even just with people who are part of the military family, it makes a difference when they hear that.” Rieckhoff agreed, “To have Trump hit this story and this person in this way is especially egregious and outrageous and cuts to the core of who he is. This is outrageous and he has to be in charge of the most diverse military on the planet. How can we do that when he speaks about so many people in this country like that.” Later, Katy Tur thought that if it rings true, it must be true, “NBC News has not confirmed the reporting and Donald Trump's campaign flatly denies all of the allegations. Still, Goldberg's reporting underscores what John Kelly is arguing about Donald Trump's character, what John Kelly said he witnessed.” On his show, Jose-Diaz Balart was the only one to mention Mayra’s tweet and he only did so in the most casual way as he asked Alexi McCammond, “Guillen’s sister challenging that, Mark Meadows is denying the report. What do you see as the impact of this? McCammond didn’t care, “I mean, it's just abhorrent. It's disgusting language. It's a disgusting racist sentiment from someone who was the former president and wants to be the president again. It speaks to the way he views women, women of color, people who died in this country while serving our country.” CNN While CNN was better than MSNBC, it was still downplayed. For example, Scott Jennings had to bring it up because The Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer failed to do so, “Well, everybody involved in that, in that episode, people who were in the room, her family, I mean, everybody who was involved in this has said that didn't happen.” Other instances included hosts casually bringing it up, just so Goldberg could try to debunk it. During The Source, Kaitlin Collins asked him on Tuesday, “what do you make of those denials?”  Goldberg, as he did in the article itself, dismissed them, “I don't make much of them at all. The sister wasn't in the meeting. The lawyer for the family wasn't in the meeting.” On Wednesday’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, Goldberg claimed that “I understand why they're hurt by this story, and I obviously feel very sorry, as we all do for this family. But the fact remains when the family visited Donald Trump, as I note in the story, he said kind words and offered to pay for the funeral. Five months later when the subject came up, he had very unkind things to say about the funeral and I would note, he didn’t pay for the funeral.” Earlier in the day, Jim Acosta and Jeff Zeleny included quick little disclaimers as part of larger anti-Trump segments, the former’s including an interview with 2016 DNC speaker Khizr Khan. The worst CNN offender was Laura Coates, who, before welcoming Khan to her program, opined, “’it doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury an effing Mexican’ unquote. I mean, just hearing and reading those words it's unimaginable that we're talking about a former president of the United States.” *** It was common that stories that omitted Mayra did mention that the Trump campaign and Mark Meadows have fiercely denied the allegations, but in a credibility contest between Trump and Goldberg, MSNBC and CNN viewers are going to go with the latter. However, the Guillen family is hard to dismiss as a bunch of unprincipled Trump hacks, which is why the decision to omit Mayra’s tweet is journalistic malpractice.

Two former Democrats (now free speech advocates) scolded their party’s shift toward authoritarianism and “dystopian” censorship of dissent. During the Oct 14 episode of the Keeping it Real podcast, host Jillian Michaels and guest Dave Rubin (host of the Rubin Report) expressed their disgust over the increasing popularity of censorship in America and abroad—and explictly called out high-profile Democrats for wanting to stifle the First Amendment. “I’m seeing the most alarming things like John Kerry saying the First Amendment is a barrier to the truth,” Michaels said, recounting the recent calls for censorship by prominent Democrat leaders like two former secretaries for State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. She referred to a forum Kerry participated in during the World Economic Forum, where he openly attacked the First Amendment. “Hillary Clinton suggesting that people who spread disinformation—which is absolutely like, who's the arbiter of that?— … suggesting people who do that should be criminally prosecuted and charged,” Michaels said. This comment referred to a CNN interview where Clinton called for the overturning of Section 230, and subsequent imprisonment of users. ICYMI: Hillary Clinton Pushes Censorship, Expresses Fear of Losing Control Without It Michaels went on to decry the global push for censorship: “This is so deeply alarming and dystopian, as a mom, as a global citizen, we’re seeing this spread into Europe, into Brazil, I don't even consider this political.” “You have the left knowing the Steele dossier is not real, knowing that the Hunter Biden laptop is real, and then effectively leaning on the media to either censor something or put out disinformation. “That has to come from an extraordinary nefarious agenda,” Michaels said. Rubin shared an experience of censorship with Michaels. “On July of ‘21, I tweeted out that the vaccines are not working properly, and we’re about to get vaccine mandates, and I got banned on Twitter for that,” he continued. “Elon, once he released the Twitter files, Congressman Jim Jordan from Ohio told me at the capitol, that that tweet was taken down in cahoots with the government” Ruminating on the current state of the Democratic Party, Rubin continued: “So my First Amendment rights were violated, and you have no recourse. The reason that Hillary wants to reverse the 230 protections is she wants Twitter and Facebook and everybody to be legally liable for all the speech on there because that will force them to have to basically censor everybody.”   Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representative and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable

Arizona election officials in Maricopa County — the fourth most populous county in the U.S. — are apparently planning to take their sweet time tabulating the votes in the 2024 election. Whereas elsewhere in the country and the Western world, election results are frequently tallied within hours of polls closing, Maricopa County deputy elections director Jennifer Liewer indicated at a press conference Tuesday that it could take nearly two weeks to count the votes. "We do expect that it will take between 10 and 13 days to complete tabulation of all of the ballots that come in, but we ask for the community's patience," said Liewer. "We want to make sure that this is a secure process, but we also want to make sure that it is an accurate process." Over 2.1 million votes are expected in the county this year, where over 400,000 ballots have already been cast. 'We are being scammed.' The high volume of votes is anticipated to retard the tabulation process along with the fact that the ballot this year is atypically long — two pages with an average of 79 contests per ballot. Liewer further indicated that the county anticipates that the two-paged ballots will generate some confusion when processing advance votes: We will have some voters who might return page one and page two. We might have voters who only return page one or page two. In both of those scenarios, it is easy for us to continue with the work. But we will have some voters who, maybe their partner or their husband or wife returns two page ones or two page twos. That will create issues because we don't know which ballot is tied to that voter in that early voting process. Election officials suggested that these factors won't just mean a longer wait for results, but longer lines on Election Day. "If I have one message for voters here today, it is this: that the longer ballots and higher interest in this 2024 general election will create longer lines on Election Day, and that's OK," said assistant Maricopa County manager Zach Schira. "But if you want to save time and you want to avoid those lines vote early, either in person or by mail, that'll save you time, and it'll help us report more results on election night." Liewer indicated the county is planning on onboarding more staff for ballot processing, adding additional night shifts, and taking other steps to ensure the tabulation process goes "as smoothly as possible." The possibility that the Arizona county could drag out the election for over a week did not sit well with some critics. BlazeTV host Steve Deace told "Blaze News Tonight," "I don't know what the margins of cheating are anymore. To be fair to Maricopa County, Trump is polling way ahead of where he was the last two times he ran, and so they clearly don't know how many votes they're going to need to — ah, I'm sorry — count. It's going to take a little bit longer to come up with that number." New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino noted, "There is absolutely no legitimate reason for this. None whatsoever. We are being scammed." Geiger Capital signaled the delay was far from normal, highlighting how in the recent Taiwanese election, where voters were required to show photo ID and use paper ballots, "It's all done in 6 hours." "Taiwan has a population of ~24 million," continued Geiger Capital. "Meaning ... every US state could easily do this and count every single vote in a couple hours. We would know every state's exact results by midnight of Election Day. No security worries, no controversies, no waiting for days or even weeks." "Our system is broken," tweeted Elon Musk. Wall Street Silver responded, "Our system is working great[,] exactly as they want it to work in certain blue counties." Maricopa County supervisor Bill Gates went on the defensive, writing, "Our system isn't broken. @maricopacounty is counting ballots faster than ever and on pace with every other state. Arizona law requires processes that dictate the timing by which we count the ballots. More importantly: I'll take accuracy and security over speed every time." The Arizona Republic's Laurie Roberts branded concerns over the delay as the stuff of conspiracy theorists, suggesting it was no big deal as Maricopa County has historically been a laggard — with two-week delays in 2012 and 2018 and a 17-day delay in 2008. Roberts added that Arizona law permits early ballots to be dropped off at the polls until the polls close on Election Day but prohibits their counting on election night. Unlike Maricopa County, Pennsylvania's Allegheny County is attempting to reverse the trend of delayed results. KDKA-TV reported that whereas it took Allegheny County several days to count ballots in the 2020 election, this time around officials intend to have the results in on Election Day, by midnight. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!