Closing arguments were finally <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/27/asia/jimmy-lai-hong-kong-trial-intl-hnk">completed</a> at the end of August in the National Security Law trial of Hong Kong businessman Jimmy Lai. Mr. Lai stands accused of colluding with foreign powers and faces life in prison. In all likelihood, the court will find Jimmy Lai guilty and sentence him to prison. 
While we await the final verdict, the West should make a plan to help free Jimmy Lai.
To say Jimmy Lai has lived a remarkable life is an understatement. Born in mainland China, the now 77-year-old Lai moved to British Hong Kong when he was 12, where he believed he would have a better future. Starting out working in a factory, Lai worked his way up, eventually owning his own factory before starting the world-famous fashion brand, Giordano. As a billionaire with homes in London, Paris, and New York, Lai could have easily rested on his laurels and enjoyed a quiet retirement. However, Lai had a great appreciation for the political and economic system that allowed him to build his wealth.
As a British colony, Hong Kong enjoyed the rule of law and free market economics that allowed it to thrive. However, the handover of the city back to communist China loomed large. In an effort to fight for the values that made Hong Kong great, Jimmy Lai founded the Apple Daily newspaper. Becoming one of the largest pro-democracy newspapers in Hong Kong, Apple Daily and its founder fell in the crosshairs of the communists in mainland China through its pro-liberty content. Lai himself drew attention through his annual commemoration of the Tiananmen Massacre, a huge sore spot for Beijing.
While <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown">promised</a> a degree of autonomy for 50 years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has gradually encroached on the freedoms of Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million people. The Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitution, promises freedom of speech and rule of law; the past few decades, however, have seen a gradual erosion of these rights. For example, millions of Hong Kongers took to the streets to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49340717">protest</a> a proposed law that would allow Hong Kongers to be extradited for trials in mainland China. While this law was retracted, it wasn’t long before something similar was implemented to take its place.
That brings us to the <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/03/what-is-hong-kongs-article-23-law-10-things-you-need-to-know/">National Security Law</a> (NSL), which came into effect in 2020. Essentially, the NSL criminalizes any speech or behavior that the government sees as threatening its authority. For Jimmy Lai and other pro-democracy activists, this put them in danger. As was feared, the NSL has resulted in the arrest of hundreds of people. In a city once famous for its independent courts, the NSL has seen a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/29/china/hong-kong-47-verdict-intl-hnk">conviction rate</a> near 100%.
It was shortly after the implementation of the NSL that Jimmy Lai found himself in legal trouble. In August 2020, Lai was <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/900758905/prominent-hong-kong-publisher-arrested-under-new-national-security-law">arrested</a> and paraded through Apple Daily’s office, allegedly for colluding with foreign powers. The truth, however, was that Lai objects to the authoritarianism of the CCP and wants to fight to preserve the freedoms that made Hong Kong great.
<div id="attachment_971739" style="width: 876px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-971739" class="size-large wp-image-971739" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-1227987205-866x576.jpg" alt="HONG KONG, CHINA - AUGUST 10: A handout photo from Apple Daily showing Hong Kong business tycoon Jimmy Lai led by police officers during a search at the headquarters of Apple Daily after Lai, was arrested at his home on August 10, 2020 in Hong Kong, China. Hong Kong police arrested seven people, including business tycoon Jimmy Lai on Monday on charges of violating the territory's new national security law. Police officers raided the pro-democracy newspapers headquarter while leading Mr. Lai and the company's chief executive, Cheung Kim-hung, through the offices in handcuffs. (Photo by Handout/Getty Images)" width="866" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-1227987205-866x576.jpg 866w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-1227987205-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-1227987205-768x511.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-1227987205.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 866px) 100vw, 866px" />Handout/Getty Images</div>
It isn’t just the cause that makes Jimmy Lai a hero: Lai didn’t need to face the risk of arrest. In addition to his various homes around the world, Lai is a British passport holder. He could have fled Hong Kong at any time after the NSL became law. Many Hong Kongers already have. Running, however, is not in Jimmy Lai’s nature. As he <a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/jimmy-lai-and-fight-freedom-hong-kong-1">put it</a>, “I am one of the troublemakers. I cannot cause trouble and then leave.” Lai risked everything by fighting for liberty and again risked it by staying when he could have left.
Even while he waits for a verdict, Lai faces terrible <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2025/09/04/jimmy-lais-life-at-serious-and-immediate-risk-in-detention/">prison conditions</a>. He is being held in solitary confinement, 23 hours a day. He has significant health problems but is being denied proper care. There is a good possibility that Lai could die in prison simply due to the conditions of his imprisonment, which is why the West must act quickly.
What can be done? For starters, political figures across the West should continue calling for Lai’s release. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/13/china/trump-jimmy-lai-closing-arguments-intl-hnk">President Trump</a> has joined the chorus of <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/the-dissident-beijing-cant-break-jimmy-lai-hong-kong">international voices</a> calling for Lai’s freedom. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer needs to fulfill his country’s obligation to stand up for Hong Kong’s autonomy. Lai is a British passport holder and therefore he is Starmer’s responsibility. In addition to public pressure, Starmer must also pause the construction of a new <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c864w2942vdo">Chinese mega embassy</a> in London. China should not be allowed a larger presence in the British capital while it actively persecutes dissidents.
Western governments can also sanction those involved in the administration of NSL trials. The U.S. has already <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-sanctions-six-individuals-for-undermining-hong-kongs-autonomy">sanctioned</a> several Hong Kong officials, but it can expand them to include senior HK officials such as Chief Executive John Lee, as well as the judges involved in these trials. The “One Country, Two Systems” framework promises Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, something the NSL interferes with.
Finally, other economic tools can also be applied. Legislatures should consider efforts such as tariffs on Chinese goods as a way to put pressure on Beijing. Restricting the flow of advanced microchips into China would hit the Chinese government where it hurts and impose a cost for its oppression of Hong Kongers like Jimmy Lai.
The Chinese will, of course, counter by saying this is foreign interference in an internal matter. The problem with that argument is that China’s promises to Hong Kong are recorded in a legally binding international treaty, the <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8616/">Sino-British Joint Declaration</a>. Sanctions are an appropriate response to breaking that treaty.
So, why should the West care about what happens to Jimmy Lai? First, what happens in Hong Kong doesn’t necessarily stay there. The Chinese government already has an extensive network set up to threaten dissidents living abroad. The construction of the mega embassy means these efforts will only continue and affect more British citizens. Second, Lai represents a voice for liberty in Hong Kong and China as a whole. If we want freedom to thrive, the world needs people like Jimmy Lai.
The clock is ticking for Jimmy Lai. Any day now, the judges hearing his case could sentence him to life in prison. His health and prison conditions mean his stay behind bars could quickly lead to his death. If the West wants to preserve its own freedom and that of Hong Kong’s, it needs to act to save Jimmy Lai.
* * *
<a href="https://www.joinyv.org/talent/matthew-cookson">Matt Cookson</a> is an alumnus of the Young Voices Contributor Program and was a Middle East History and Policy Fellow with Young Voices. He also works in the supply chain for a U.S. Defense Contractor. His commentary has appeared in the Mises Institute, Real Clear Politics, the National Interest, Providence Magazine, China Source, and the Idaho Freedom Foundation. You can follow him on X @<a href="https://x.com/MattCookson95">MattCookson95</a> and Substack @<a href="https://substack.com/@thewaythecookiecrumbles?utm_source=user-menu">thewaythecookiecrumbles</a>. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

China Imposes National Security Law In Hong Kong

The Clock Is Ticking For Jimmy Lai. Time For The West To Act.

China

Democracy

Free Speech

Great Britain

Hong Kong

Jimmy Lai

Opinion

While global attention has remained fixed on Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the threat they pose to international peace, a nationwide strike by tens of thousands of Iranian truck drivers — launched around May 21, 2025 — has signaled deeper unrest brewing inside the country.
Far from faltering under the weight of violent reprisals, judicial intimidation, and empty promises from the clerical regime, the protests swelled, spreading to 140 cities across 30 provinces and inspiring solidarity across diverse sectors. This burgeoning unrest, now encompassing bakers, retirees, teachers, oil workers, nurses, women, and activists, signals a profound challenge to the Islamic Republic’s authority. With its echoes of past uprisings and its potential to galvanize a broader pro-democracy movement, the current wave of labor protests demands urgent international attention and support to amplify the Iranian people’s aspirations for a free and representative government.
The truckers’ strike, which has paralyzed key transit highways, reflects deep-seated grievances rooted in the regime’s economic mismanagement and disregard for its citizens’ livelihoods. The catalyst for this unprecedented action was the government’s plan to restructure diesel subsidies under the guise of combating smuggling — a policy that would devastate truckers’ already precarious incomes. This move mirrors the 2019 decision to hike gasoline prices, which ignited protests in over 200 cities and laid bare the regime’s prioritization of its own power over the needs of ordinary Iranians. That uprising saw the regime unleash lethal force, killing approximately 1,500 protesters in a matter of days, a brutal reminder of its willingness to suppress dissent at all costs.
<div id="attachment_931999" style="width: 778px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-931999" class="wp-image-931999 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-1782800695-768x576.jpg" alt="11/16/2019 Shiraz, Iran. Protest after authorities raised gasoline prices, across all around the country of Iran. Demonstrators angered by a 200% increase in government-set gasoline prices blocked traffic in major cities and occasionally clashed with police after a night of demonstrations punctuated by gunfire. (Photo by Anonymous / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP) (Photo by ANONYMOUS/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)" width="768" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-1782800695-768x576.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-1782800695-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-1782800695.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />11/16/2019 Shiraz, Iran. Protest after authorities raised gasoline prices, across all around the country of Iran. ANONYMOUS/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images</div>
Yet, the current protests reveal a regime wary of repeating such overt bloodshed. While arrests have been reported in cities like Isfahan, Hormozgan, Fars, Kermanshah, Ardabil, and Khuzestan, and the IRGC has deployed convoys to break the strike, there have been few reports of fatalities thus far. This restraint may reflect the regime’s fear of domestic and international backlash or uncertainty about the repressive capacity of institutions like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). However, as the protests grow — bolstered by statements of solidarity from diverse groups, including child rights advocates and anti-execution activists — the likelihood of escalation looms. The regime’s threats, which vowed to seize fuel cards and impound vehicles, underscore its desperation to quash the movement.
The scope of these protests recalls the 2019 uprising and the even more seismic unrest of September 2022, sparked by the morality police’s killing of Mahsa Amini for allegedly improper hijab-wearing. That movement, widely regarded as the greatest challenge to the regime since the 1979 revolution, saw millions demand systemic change. Despite its suppression, which claimed hundreds of lives, the 2022 uprising galvanized a network of “Resistance Units” affiliated with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48433">leading pro-democracy</a> opposition group. These units, undeterred by the regime’s crackdowns, have continued to organize and are likely a driving force behind the current labor protests. The strike’s expansion to new cities coupled with its cross-sectoral support, suggests a movement on the cusp of transforming into a nationwide pro-democracy uprising.
The regime’s response has been a mix of coercion and hollow promises. Officials like Reza Rostami and parliamentary leaders have pledged to review freight rates, insurance, and fuel issues by June 21, 2025, but truckers have rejected these overtures as ploys to fracture their resolve. Meanwhile, repressive measures intensify: the IRGC has arrested individuals filming strikes in Bandar Imam, and Yazd’s transport authorities have threatened to suspend services for non-compliant drivers. Such tactics reveal a regime acutely aware of the strike’s threat to Iran’s road-based supply chain, which, as the state-run Donya-ye-Eqtesad noted on May 29, 2025, is “the lifeblood of production” in an economy where over 90% of goods are transported by road.
This moment is a clarion call for the international community to act decisively. The 2022 uprising was a missed opportunity, as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and others criticized Western democracies for their tepid response. Explicit public support from the United States, Britain, and the European Union, coupled with maximal economic and diplomatic pressure on the regime, could have tipped the scales toward regime change. Today, the same opportunity beckons. The Iranian people, led by workers and bolstered by the MEK’s Resistance Units, are voicing a universal demand for a government that rules by consent and serves its citizens’ needs. The international community must not repeat past mistakes. By recognizing the Iranian people’s right to resist tyranny and by amplifying their call for democracy, global leaders can empower this movement to achieve a historic victory — a free, democratic Iran that reflects the aspirations of its entire population.
* * *
Dr. Kazem Kazerounian, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Connecticut and Dean of the College of Engineering from 2012 to 2024, is an expert on Iran and the Middle East. He has contributed widely through scholarly articles, invited talks, and media interviews on regional affairs and the democratic movement in Iran.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=wisepops&amp;utm_campaign=dad&amp;utm_content=fathersdaygiftpopups">Gift Dad an All Access Membership. Use code DAD40 at checkout to save 40%!</a>

Truck waiting to cross from Turkey into Iran at border to Bazargan.

From Fuel To Freedom: Iranian Truckers Lead Wave Of Labor Strikes In Islamic Republic

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Iran

Iran Nuclear Deal

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps

Middle East

Protests

President Donald Trump blasted Harvard University on Thursday, calling the Ivy League school &#8220;Anti-Semitic,&#8221; &#8220;Far-Left,&#8221; and &#8220;a threat to Democracy.&#8221;
The president is in the midst of a legal battle with Harvard after the Trump administration revoked billions of dollars in federal funding. The Trump administration froze more than $2 billion in financing for Harvard after it rejected demands to dismantle its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and do more to curb student anti-Israel protests.
&#8220;Harvard is an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution, as are numerous others, with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart. The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER AND HATE. It is truly horrific! &#8221; Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114393194962253226" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> on Truth Social.
&#8220;Now, since our filings began, they act like they are all &#8216;American Apple Pie,'&#8221; the president added. &#8220;Harvard is a threat to Democracy, with a lawyer, who represents me, who should therefore be forced to resign, immediately, or be fired. He’s not that good, anyway, and I hope that my very big and beautiful company, now run by my sons, gets rid of him ASAP!&#8221;
Harvard was at the center of anti-Israel protests that emerged across the country in the fall of 2023 and the spring of 2024. The university was accused of ignoring antisemitism on campus, and in 2023, then-Harvard President Claudine Gay refused to say before Congress that calling for genocide against Jews violated Harvard’s rules. Gay later apologized for her testimony and shortly after, resigned from her position in the wake of a plagiarism scandal.
Last week, Harvard President Alan M. Garber <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/harvard-rejects-trumps-demands-as-white-house-considers-yanking-billions-in-federal-funding?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Harvard+Rejects+Trump%E2%80%99s+Demands+As+White+House+Considers+Yanking+Billions+In+Federal+Funding" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rejected</a> Trump&#8217;s demands for more government oversight of the university, writing, &#8220;No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.&#8221;
Lawyers representing the university pushed back on the Trump administration&#8217;s demands, arguing that they “circumvent Harvard’s statutory rights by requiring unsupported and disruptive remedies for alleged harms that the government has not proven through mandatory processes established by Congress and required by law.” Harvard <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/20/us/harvard-white-house-funding/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filed a lawsuit</a> against the Trump administration on Monday, arguing that the federal government is executing &#8220;a pressure campaign&#8221; that &#8220;violates Harvard’s constitutional rights.&#8221;
The Trump administration is also reportedly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-admin-wants-irs-to-quash-harvards-tax-exempt-status-report?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Admin+Wants+IRS+To+Quash+Harvard%E2%80%99s+Tax-Exempt+Status%3A+Report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">urging</a> the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to revoke Harvard&#8217;s tax-exempt status, and the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services have told the university that it &#8220;must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin&#8221; by August of this year.

Donald Trump

Trump Calls Harvard ‘An Anti-Semitic…Threat To Democracy’

antisemitism

Education

Executive

Harvard

Politics

Trump Administration

Trump’s tariffs go into effect at midnight as foreign leaders and state governors scramble to negotiate last-minute deals. Populist leader Marine Le Pen is banned from running for office in France after being found guilty of embezzlement. And, Elon Musk says he&#8217;s uncovered millions of non-citizens on the social security rolls, including thousands who allegedly voted.
It’s Tuesday, April 1st, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tariff-time-marine-le-pen-convicted-in-france-4-1-25/id1576594336?i=1000701702406" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>
<h2>Trump Tariffs Take Hold</h2>
<div id="attachment_900809" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-900809" class="size-large wp-image-900809" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Trump-Tariff-EO-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Trump-Tariff-EO-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Trump-Tariff-EO-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Trump-Tariff-EO-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Trump-Tariff-EO-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Trump-Tariff-EO-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Trump-Tariff-EO-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Trump-Tariff-EO-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Just hours from Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day,” consumers, corporations, and international trading partners are preparing for a slew of new tariffs that could reshape the global economy.
For weeks now, the president has floated various ideas on tariffs, sometimes saying he’d match the rates set by other countries, then floating the idea of a universal 20 percent rate, before saying that he could be “much more generous” with our trading partners. We’re still not entirely sure what the details of Trump’s “Liberation Day” policy will be – that ambiguity is almost certainly intentional.
The Art of the Deal: By waiting until the last minute, Trump has left the door open for negotiating. On Friday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum met with Trump officials to discuss her plans to improve border security, clearly hoping to ease looming tariffs on her country. The president has fielded calls from the prime ministers of Canada and Great Britain — both men reportedly made their last-minute pitches seeking to dodge tariffs. In the last 72 hours, lawmakers in both parties have also been calling the White House to lobby for exemptions for particular industries in their states, and a flood of business leaders have made their case to the president, some vowing to bring manufacturing stateside and pour money into investments and jobs in exchange for lower tariffs.
While that shifting picture might benefit Trump from a negotiating standpoint, it has spooked markets. Wall Street saw its second worst day of the year on Friday and continued to see-saw Monday:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The DOW Jones was <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/djia">up 1%</a> at market close after a tumultuous day of trading</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The NASDAQ was down <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/">0.14%</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/spx">S&amp;P 500</a> was up by 0.55%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Japan’s <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/nik?countrycode=jp">NIKKEI 225 index</a> was down by more than 4%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Various <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/data-news/european-stocks-weaken-for-fourth-day-7859828b-bf1ee26684a5?mod=mw_quote_news">European stock exchanges</a> have been trending down for days</li>
</ul>
Amid the market swings and concerns over potential price increases from these tariffs, there’s no doubt that more voters have soured on President Trump’s handling of the economy — the issue he’s typically been the most popular on. Numerous polls show his approval rating on the economy lower now than at any point in his first or second term. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-poll-immigration-tariffs-trade-b7a430909606d6b8b27cfbc5049a32b4">The Associated Press</a>, for example, had him at 40%. If Liberation Day results in considerable price increases, there’s a real risk those numbers could fall even further.
<h2>French Opposition Leader Banned</h2>
<div id="attachment_900815" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-900815" class="size-large wp-image-900815" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Le-What-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Le-What-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Le-What-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Le-What-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Le-What-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Le-What-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Le-What-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Le-What-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by Tom Nicholson/Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Marine Le Pen, the populist frontrunner for France’s 2027 presidential race, has been convicted of embezzlement and banned from seeking office for five years.
Marine Le Pen is the leader of the National Rally, a right-wing political party in France. She has generally been characterized by the leaders of France’s establishment parties as an extremist but has proved to be very popular. She came in first place in the first round of the last French presidential election, and <a href="https://www.ifop.com/publication/les-intentions-de-vote-a-lelection-presidentielle-5/">polling</a> continues to show that more than 1 in 3 French voters back her and her party, more than any of the other prospective candidates. National Rally also holds a plurality of seats in France’s national assembly, 126/577, although they have been consistently kept out of government by coalitions of other parties.
Le Pen was found guilty of misappropriating several million euros in European Union funds. Her party was entitled to a certain amount of EU funding to pay staff to work for general European political operations, but the court determined she used that money to the benefit of her party rather than restricting it to EU-related expenses.
However: Ellen Fantini, managing editor of The European Conservative, told Morning Wire that virtually every major party in Europe uses these funds similarly. She says the way the conviction is being carried out makes it very clear that this is about sidelining Le Pen as a candidate.
“Under French law, of course, she can appeal the conviction, like in the United States,” Fantini said. “But the prohibition on running for office is in execution as of basically today, even though she has the right to appeal. So it&#8217;s obvious that that&#8217;s the real thing they wanted.”
Critics of the case against Le Pen have condemned it as a blatant weaponization of the justice system against a political opponent and compared the legal battle to the various efforts to convict Donald Trump on state and federal charges in the lead-up to the 2024 election. Leaders of right-wing parties across Europe have spoken up in support of Le Pen:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">On Monday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban posted, “Je suis Marine!” [I am Marine].</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing populist League party, called the ruling a “declaration of war by Brussels.”</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">“I am shocked by the incredibly tough verdict against Marine Le Pen,” Geert Wilders of the Netherlands’ right-wing Party for Freedom, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/le-pen-fall-far-right-france-3650ad8276aaee462c8e92f2904f400f">said</a>. “I support and believe in her 100% and I trust she will win the appeal and become President of France.”</li>
</ul>
Le Pen has already indicated that she will appeal the case, although her chances of overturning the ban before the 2027 election deadline are slim.
“This evening, millions of French people are indignant, indignant to an unimaginable extent seeing that France, the country of human rights, judges have implemented practices that were thought to be the reserve of authoritarian regimes,” Le Pen said in an interview on Monday.
<h2>Non-Citizen Social Security</h2>
<div id="attachment_900819" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-900819" class="wp-image-900819 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Social-Security-Stock-Photo-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Social-Security-Stock-Photo-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Social-Security-Stock-Photo-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Social-Security-Stock-Photo-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Social-Security-Stock-Photo-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Social-Security-Stock-Photo-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Social-Security-Stock-Photo-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Social-Security-Stock-Photo-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by Douglas Sacha via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Elon Musk and venture capitalist Antonio Gracias have alleged widespread fraud in the Social Security system.
Senior figures within the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project claimed to have uncovered millions of non-citizens who were collecting Social Security benefits and potentially voting in American elections. Musk and Gracias said on Sunday that 2.1 million non-citizens received Social Security Numbers last year alone, and 4.8 million received SSNs over the last four years. That alone isn’t necessarily evidence of fraud – non-citizens in the country under certain rules are eligible for Social Security Numbers – but the number of non-citizens receiving them surged under the Biden administration.
“The defaults in the system from Social Security to all of the benefit programs have been set to max inclusion, max pay for these people, and minimum collection,” Gracias <a href="https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1906675223304228870">sai</a>d on Sunday. “We found 1.3 million of them already on Medicaid as an example.”
Social Security is currently deep in the red – the trust fund that handles retirement benefits, for instance, is expected to run out of money in 2033.
Musk claimed that the surge in illegal immigration and increased access to government benefits during the Biden years were intentional government policy. “They weren&#8217;t asleep at the switch. It was a massive, large-scale program to import as many illegals as possible, ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States and disenfranchise the American people and make it a permanent deep blue one party state.”
Gracias says that some of these non-citizens who received Social Security numbers showed up to vote. “We actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records and we found people here registered to vote,” Gracias said. “We found some by sampling that actually did vote, and we have referred them to prosecution.”

Trump Threatens New Tariffs On Multiple Countries As Second Term Nears

Morning Brief: Trump’s Tariffs, Le Pen Barred & Social Security Fraud?

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

DOGE

Europe

France

Illegal Immigation

Marine Le Pen

Social Security

Tariffs

Trade War

The newest cringe <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/kamala-harris">Kamala Harris</a> endorsement ad comes courtesy of some stars of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/marvel">Marvel</a> film, “Avengers: Endgame.” The staged phone call between the actors was posted to leftist activist Mark Ruffalo’s X page on Thursday.
Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Danai Gurira, Don Cheadle, and Paul Bettany participated in the project.
&#8220;We&#8217;re back. Let&#8217;s #AssembleForDemocracy. In the #ElectionEndgame, every <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/2024-election">vote</a> counts,&#8221; Ruffalo wrote in the post caption. 
“Don’t sit this one out. It’s the one where we will lose big: Project 2025, women’s reproductive rights, climate change, LGBTQIA+ rights, public education, student debt relief, Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and as of today, life saving vaccines. This s*** is real and it’s going to come for you,” the actor continued in a <a href="https://x.com/MarkRuffalo/status/1852086652753035272">follow-up</a>. “Take 3 friends and know, no matter what you are a hero. Always give it all.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
We&#39;re back. Let&#39;s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AssembleForDemocracy?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AssembleForDemocracy</a>. In the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ElectionEndgame?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ElectionEndgame</a>, every vote counts 🗳️ <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VoteBlue?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#VoteBlue</a>! Vote <a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KamalaHarris</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Tim_Walz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Tim_Walz</a> <a href="https://t.co/Xp7YdUEqxa">pic.twitter.com/Xp7YdUEqxa</a>
&mdash; Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkRuffalo/status/1852086517596119453?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The video included the Marvel stars discussing a new potential catchphrase for Harris. 
&#8220;How about this? I’m just off the top of my head: ‘I can do this all day,’&#8221; Evans said.
&#8220;What about something punchier like—&#8221; Downey said.
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/?_gl=1*jtghwp*_gcl_au*ODQ1NjYzNTg2LjE3Mjg5MDk3OTE.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczMDEyMDgwOS40OS4xLjE3MzAxMjA4MzkuMzAuMC4w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+</a>
&#8220;Boom! You looking for this?&#8221; Cheadle suggested.
&#8220;Kamala forever,&#8221; Gurira said.
&#8220;How about ‘I’m down with democracy?&#8217; It’s clean and simple,&#8221; Bettany chimed in. 
&#8220;I’m Kamala Harris and I say down with democracy,&#8221; Cheadle said jokingly. &#8220;Yeah, together we got to tear down democracy.&#8221;
By the end of the video, their suggested slogan had been revised to, &#8220;I’m Kamala Harris, and I am down with democracy.&#8221;
The social media mockery of the new ad was swift and fierce.
“Um, a little too much honesty here… Kamala Harris ‘tearing down democracy!’” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz <a href="https://x.com/tedcruz/status/1852148187760410757">posted</a> on X.
“I believe we can safely say Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the Hollywood douchenozzle vote,” another reaction <a href="https://x.com/CarmineSabia/status/1852116791947927844">said</a>. 
This isn’t the first time these stars participated in a video supporting the Democratic candidate for president. In 2016, Downey Jr., Johansson, Ruffalo, and Cheadle joined other celebrities in an ad <a href="https://youtu.be/nRp1CK_X_Yw">attacking Donald Trump</a>. 
In that video, Cheadle described Trump as a &#8220;racist, abusive coward who could permanently damage the fabric of our society.&#8221;

Avengers

‘Avengers’ Stars Assemble For Latest Awkward Kamala Endorsement Video

'Avengers' Stars Assemble For Latest Awkward Kamala Endorsement Video

2024 Election

Elections

Entertainment

Kamala Harris

Mark Ruffalo

Marvel

Robert Downey Jr.

More Americans now believe that former President Donald Trump was merely “exercising his right to contest the [2020] election” than they did a few years ago, while fewer believe he “went so far that he threatened American democracy,” according to a newly-released survey.
More Americans still believe the latter over the former, but the gap between the two beliefs has closed in recent years, according to the latest New York Times/Siena National <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/27/us/elections/times-siena-poll-toplines.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">poll</a> on the question. This same poll has asked registered voters the question since at least July 2022, and since then, voters have shifted toward the belief that Trump had every right to contest the election and away from the belief that he threatened democracy.
When the question was asked in early July 2022, 39% of respondents said they thought Trump was exercising his right, while 55% said he threatened democracy. This was more than a year after the events of January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters entered the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop then-Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the 2020 election results as questions about the validity of the ballots remained.
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/?_gl=1*jtghwp*_gcl_au*ODQ1NjYzNTg2LjE3Mjg5MDk3OTE.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczMDEyMDgwOS40OS4xLjE3MzAxMjA4MzkuMzAuMC4w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+</a>
Now, however, the number of people who believe Trump was just exercising his rights has risen to 46%, while the number who believe he threatened democracy has dropped to 49%. The number of people who said they were unsure or refused to answer has also dropped nearly in half, from 7% in July 2022 to just 4% now.
The latest poll with the question was conducted just after news broke that former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney had communicated with an anti-Trump January 6 hearing witness. Cheney, then representing Wyoming, communicated with the “star witness” of the hearing behind the witness’ attorney’s back, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/liz-cheney-communicated-with-anti-trump-j6-witness-behind-her-lawyers-back" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. The initial communication was facilitated by then-Trump strategic communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, but Cheney later communicated directly with the witness, Cassidy Hutchison.
“Cheney interacted with the witness, former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, through ex-Trump strategic communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin — and later directly — in an effort to compel further testimony …” the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/10/15/us-news/ex-rep-liz-cheney-talked-to-jan-6-committee-star-witness-behind-lawyers-back-damning-texts-show/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=nypost" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
“Though she worked behind the scenes to obtain Hutchinson’s juiciest allegations in 2022, some of which were <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/03/11/us-news/house-gop-report-debunks-ex-trump-aide-cassidy-hutchinson-testimony-to-jan-6-panel/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">later found to be false</a>, Cheney never mentioned the backchannel talks with Hutchinson or Griffin in her book ‘<a href="https://r.nypostlink.com/?btn_ref=org-19984c113c692001&amp;btn_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FOath-Honor-Warning-Liz-Cheney%2Fdp%2F0316572063%3Ftag%3Dnypost-20%26asc_refurl%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fnypost.com%2F2024%2F10%2F15%2Fus-news%2Fex-rep-liz-cheney-talked-to-jan-6-committee-star-witness-behind-lawyers-back-damning-texts-show%2F%26asc_source%3Dweb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Oath and Honor</a>’ about the riot,” the Post added.
The conversations between Hutchinson and Griffin began two months before the hearing began. Hutchinson’s communications with Cheney started three days before the hearing.

Fewer Americans Believe Trump Threatened Democracy After 2020 Election: Poll

Capitol Riot

General

January 6

Poll

The results of a new poll in Georgia have upended the Democratic Party’s insistence that reelecting former President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> would equal “a danger to Democracy.”
In the <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/773070429/cbsnews-20240924-ga" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CBS News/YouGov poll</a> of registered voters in the state, taken between September 20-24, more respondents agreed that a Trump victory would mean making the “U.S. Democracy” stronger compared to a Vice President Kamala Harris win.
In the poll of 1,441 registered Georgia voters &#8212; taken after the Trump-Harris presidential debate &#8212; respondents were asked, “If Harris wins, do you think her policies would make U.S. democracy&#8230;stronger or weaker?&#8221; Forty-two percent said stronger while another 45% thought it would make it weaker.
They were also asked, “If Trump wins, do you think his policies in a 2nd term would make U.S. democracy&#8230;stronger or weaker?&#8221; In response, 45% of voters said that it will make the U.S. stronger compared to 42% who felt it would make the country weaker.
The poll also found “among likely voters, including those leaning toward Harris or Trump,” that “if the 2024 presidential election were being held today between Harris and Trump” 51% would vote for Trump, compared to 49% who said they would pick the VP.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/CBSNewsPoll?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CBSNewsPoll</a>/<a href="https://twitter.com/YouGovAmerica?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@YouGovAmerica</a> Georgia 2024 Presidential Election Poll:
Total 
🔴Donald Trump 51% (+2) 
🔵Kamala Harris 49%
Men 
🔴Donald Trump 56% (+13) 
🔵Kamala Harris 43%
Women 
🔵Kamala Harris 53% (+7) 
🔴Donald Trump 46%
Sept. 20-24 
1,417 likely voters<a href="https://t.co/Jq6wEFyxWk">https://t.co/Jq6wEFyxWk</a> <a href="https://t.co/N9n4gxHx3A">pic.twitter.com/N9n4gxHx3A</a>
— Aron Goldman (@ArgoJournal) <a href="https://twitter.com/ArgoJournal/status/1839056495981346840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 25, 2024</a></blockquote>
The voters were chosen “according to gender, age, race, and education based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey, and the U.S. Census Current Population Survey, as well as 2020 Presidential vote,” the CBS Poll noted. The definition of “likely voters” was determined “using a regression model that incorporates current, self-reported intentions to vote, along with individual-level and aggregate data about voters, such as demographics and vote history.&#8221;
The results of the Georgia poll were similar to other polling this week, specifically that of <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/651092/2024-election-environment-favorable-gop.aspx">Gallup</a>, which for the first time in decades found more voters identifying with the Republicans than Democrats, as previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gallup-for-the-first-time-in-decades-more-voters-identify-as-gop">reported</a>.
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1726313279401000&amp;usg=AOvVaw115_qPFFEePDP86-Fvo-Vd">Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!</a>
In an average of Gallup polls taken between July and September, 48% of voters surveyed either identified as Republicans or leaned Republican, while 45% of voters identified as Democrats or leaned Democrat. 46% of voters thought that the GOP was better able to handle the most important problem facing the country, as opposed to 41% who chose the Democrats. Gallup listed the issues that voters thought were most important as the economy and immigration.
50% of voters deemed the GOP better equipped to keep America prosperous, while 46% thought the Democrats would do the job better. A whopping difference came between the 54% of voters who thought the GOP was better able to keep America safe from international threats versus the 40% who chose the Democrats.
Hank Berrien contributed to this piece.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrats-say-trump-is-a-threat-to-democracy-theyre-projecting" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Democrats Say Trump Is A Threat To Democracy. They’re Projecting.</a>

Voting

CBS Poll Upends Democrats’ Insistence That Trump Is A ‘Danger To Democracy’

CBS Poll Upends Democrats' Insistence That Trump Is A 'Danger To Democracy'

CBS News

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from Dr. Jordan B. Peterson’s new DailyWire+ series <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/foundations-of-the-west" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Foundations of The West</a>. Join Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and his esteemed colleagues in this new 5-part series exploring the ancient cities that shaped the West.
Start time: 12:17
<div id="attachment_787709" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-787709" class="size-large wp-image-787709" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/pnyx-1024x450.jpg" alt="Pynx Hill, Greece. Credit: ecotourism-greece.com" width="1024" height="450" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/pnyx-1024x450.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/pnyx-300x132.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/pnyx-768x337.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/pnyx-1536x674.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/pnyx.jpg 1897w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Pynx Hill, Greece. Credit: ecotourism-greece.com</div>
Jordan B. Peterson: Where are we?
Spencer Klavan: We are on the sight of a miracle. This is what&#8217;s called the Pynx. It comes from a Greek word meaning “closely packed together.” From 507 B.C. onward, the Athenian citizens would gather here to debate and discuss the fate of their city. There was nothing, basically, that they couldn&#8217;t decide if they voted on it here in almost every context — in war, in peace. This was the site where the Ecclesia, the Democratic Council of Citizens, met to debate and vote on every question you can imagine. There was almost no choice that couldn&#8217;t be made here by the people and by a vote. Initially, we think it had about a 5,000 person capacity. Most of the original Pynx is no longer visible at this point. It is remarkable to consider. You come up here, you sacrifice to Zeus, who is, you know, Zeus of the Council, Zeus of the Gathering. And then that cry goes out: “Who wishes to speak?” And you&#8217;re gazing out upon this sparklingly new row of columns rising up effectively out of the hill as you spoke.
The closest thing to the Pynx in modern America is the town hall. In the painting called &#8220;Free Speech&#8221; by Norman Rockwell, a man gets up and just addresses the crowd. It refers to our American belief that every man is created in the image of God and endowed with liberty by his Creator. That&#8217;s the spirit of the Pynx alive in America. 
<div id="attachment_787693" style="width: 459px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-787693" class="size-large wp-image-787693" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/dp-260937-22-449x576.jpg" alt="Norman Rockwell Museum Collections; SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis" width="449" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/dp-260937-22-449x576.jpg 449w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/dp-260937-22-234x300.jpg 234w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/dp-260937-22-768x985.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/dp-260937-22.jpg 936w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 449px) 100vw, 449px" />Norman Rockwell Museum Collections; SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis</div>
We believe fundamentally in the same idea that the Greeks had of equality before the law and freedom of speech. It doesn&#8217;t matter who you are or where you&#8217;re from. You get a say. That&#8217;s the idea. What&#8217;s astonishing about this place is the temple not far from here, the Temple of Zeus (Olympian Zeus), was built under a tyranny. Cleisthenes, who was of these very famous and wealthy aristocrats, led what became a popular uprising. And every other city around this region reacted in the same way. They had an uprising, a revolution, and the installation of a tyranny because that&#8217;s a natural response, a revolution to extreme wealth and equality. This sort of thing has happened since time immemorial. The miracle to me is that what happened instead in Athens, they turned to this guy Solon, and they gave him the sole archonship of the city. He canceled the slavery of debt, but what he didn&#8217;t do is redistribute property or take tyrannical control. So that choice had left the Athenians in this unique position among all their contemporaries. They still had this inkling, this tradition, that actually there was another course here. 
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/athens-and-the-logos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Foundations of the West, Episode 2: Athens And The Logos, with Jordan Peterson and Spencer Klavan</a></h4>
Peterson: How did the democratic state arise to begin with? Why did the aristocrats abandon their power or distribute it? What emerged to foster that? 
Klavan: Well, it&#8217;s a great story of high morals and low venal ambition. At the end of the sixth century B.C., leading into the fifth century, we get what we would now call a democracy. Cleisthenes, in an allegiance with the Spartan King Cleomenes, marshals the people to his aid. What you end up with is an aristocrat who is so cornered that the only people he can turn to are the people. So that&#8217;s where you get this extremely direct democracy. They would meet on this hill, which they then chiseled out into this audience space, and they would ask, “Who wants to speak?” There was still a hugely powerful aristocracy. But fundamentally, what you now had was a situation in which anybody within the citizen role, from the lowest farmer to the bluest blooded aristocrat, had something to say. It&#8217;s a shocking turn of events, and it makes Athens distinctive for the rest of its history. During the Persian War, when they beat back this massive empire — whereas the Persian forces were being driven by the lash of their great king, who was the embodiment of Ahura Mazda — these guys were fighting for their freedom, and it was only because they stood up for that that we even have an idea of democracy at all. It was itself a bad word in antiquity. It was very suspicious to a lot of people. 
<div id="attachment_787695" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-787695" class="wp-image-787695 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1301327411-865x576.jpg" alt="This is a drone photo of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and the Acropolis of Athens, Greece. The theater was renovated in the 1950's and it is used for theatrical plays and concerts in the summer. George Pachantouris. Getty Images." width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1301327411-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1301327411-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1301327411-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1301327411-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1301327411-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1301327411-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1301327411-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />George Pachantouris. Getty Images.</div>
Peterson: Yes, well, why would you give the rabble a voice? 
Klavan: Why, indeed. Freedom inevitably creates more potential for chaos. The genius of the American founders was that they lived during a time when these questions were being reexamined and reanimated, and the founders were looking out at this enormous expanse of land and territory. And they were looking back at Athens and saying, “Well, ok, this is very beautiful that they fought for their freedom. But ultimately, of course, they ended up in a kind of disarray.” The Peloponnesian War comes, so they were looking back at the fall of that and thinking, well, it&#8217;s really Rome, the Republic of Rome, and the representative government that works best. Our whole idea of politics comes from the word polis, and a polis is a city. From that, we have our word politique, which is the art, the technique of gathering together in community and living life together. That&#8217;s not just a list of laws. There&#8217;s so much more to politique, to the art of politics and of community. And what Aristotle says is that mankind is a political animal, and by that he doesn&#8217;t mean that we&#8217;re born naturally into the world with an interest in tax policy or economic figures. What he means is that everywhere we live, we live in structured community together. The question is going to be how? What is the most just? The best way to organize our lives? That&#8217;s what politics is.
<div id="attachment_787741" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-787741" class="size-large wp-image-787741" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Peterson-and-Klavan-Athens9-384x576.jpg" alt="Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Spencer Klavan in Athens. Gregory Woodman. DailyWire+." width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Peterson-and-Klavan-Athens9-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Peterson-and-Klavan-Athens9-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Peterson-and-Klavan-Athens9-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Peterson-and-Klavan-Athens9-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Peterson-and-Klavan-Athens9-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Peterson-and-Klavan-Athens9-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Peterson-and-Klavan-Athens9-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" />Woodman. DailyWire+.</div>
Peterson: In the Judeo-Christian tradition, in Exodus, Jethro tells Moses that tyrant judge plus rabble isn&#8217;t a good model of government; there has to be hierarchical levels intermediating, and that&#8217;s the alternative to the tyranny and the desert. It&#8217;s something like the hierarchical organization of authority, which is, by the way, how your brain works too. It interacts with the world in nested concepts that are hierarchically structured. If that hierarchy is performing optimally, then you get the right balance between chaos and order. Then you could see in democracy that the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Athenian tradition stack. The combination of those two in some sense is the core of modern conservatism. Power should be distributed down to the hierarchy, to the lowest, most local possible level of decision. And you could say, “Well, that should just be democracy where everyone has their voice.” But the problem with that is it gets very, very fractious, and it doesn&#8217;t scale.
Klavan: The problem with democracy is that it devolves into mob rule, which opens the way for a strong man and a tyranny.
Peterson: That&#8217;s what people clamor about when they talk about the danger of populism.
Klavan: Yes, exactly.
Peterson: The mob has gotten out of hand; now, they&#8217;re going to elect a tyrant.
Klavan: Really, the republic is a perpetual motion machine. It&#8217;s designed to take that cycle and just freeze it essentially.
* * *
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/athens-and-the-logos">WATCH: Foundations of the West, Episode 2: Athens And The Logos, with Jordan Peterson and Spencer Klavan</a></h4>

GREGORYWOODMAN_DW_GREECE2022066

Foundations Of The West: Jordan Peterson And Spencer Klavan Explore Athens And The Logos

DailyWire+

government

Greece

History

Jordan B. Peterson

Spencer Klavan

Democrats are now talking about “saving democracy.”
“Democracy” technically means that if we&#8217;re all in a room together and we want to make a decision, we all vote on that specific decision. A republic means you have representatives, which means you don&#8217;t vote directly on many of the decisions that are being made. Instead, you delegate the power to vote on those decisions to a representative government. Typically, that representative government has a series of checks and balances.
The United States is a republic. It is not a direct democracy. It&#8217;s a democracy in the broader sense, which is that we vote. But it&#8217;s not a democracy in the technical sense in which you vote on every issue or in which a pure majoritarian popular will decides every single issue.
In fact, the founders decried exactly such a system. They saw that as what they would call a mobocracy. They didn’t want just a series of referenda on every single issue to go to the popular vote, which is why intervening institutions in the government exist.
It&#8217;s why Congress is represented on a popular level, but the Senate was originally supposed to be represented at the state level by the state legislatures. Originally, state legislatures were supposed to pick their senators. It&#8217;s why the Senate itself is not proportional; Montana and California have the same number of senators. It is why a series of checks and balances between the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judiciary exist. It is why an electoral college exists.
There are all sorts of institutions in our republic that are designed to check excesses of the mob. That was very much at the forefront of the founders’ concerns, as is evidenced by the Federalist Papers.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1986-member-exclusive">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
Why is that important? Because a shift in the way people thought of democracy in the United States took place, which started in the late 19th century as a take-away from German progressivism. Much of modern American government, our structures, particularly the administrative state, are drawn from it.
Woodrow Wilson, who was the dean of Princeton University before he became the President of the United States, greatly admired that system. He wrote extensively about German progressivism and his vision for what democracy should look like. He believed that the Constitution of the United States had outlived its sell-by date, that the Constitution’s checks and balances were useless.
Wilson, a Democrat, wanted something that was both more democratic and less democratic: He wanted a popular vote for one man who would make all the decisions with the help of administrative bureaucrats who were experts on the issues.
In other words, he wanted a government of expertise. He believed all the checks and balances thwarted that government. In 1908, he famously <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/education/classroom-resource-library/classroom/8.6-primary-source-quotes-on-executive-orders" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>, “The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit; and if Congress be overborne by him, it will be no fault of the makers of the Constitution, it will be from no lack of constitutional powers on its part, but only because the President has the nation behind him, and Congress has not.” 
In other words, the president is elected by the public, effectively speaking, which means he should have as much power as humanly possible. That was important to Woodrow Wilson because he believed in the setup of the administrative state, an entire branch of the government that was effectively independent of the popular will.
When Democrats say democracy, this is what they mean. They do not mean that they respect the institutions of the Republic. They don&#8217;t respect the Supreme Court of the United States except when it is giving them precisely what they want.
The Democrats like to say the word “democracy” because they want to portray Donald Trump as an incipient fascist. But it is actually Joe Biden who is hell-bent on undermining the actual democratic republic.
CNN, which is hosting the first presidential debate, interviewed several Trump supporters and asked about him undermining democracy. The Trump supporters correctly responded that we don&#8217;t live in a democracy; we live in a republic, which is true. We live in a representative democracy with a series of checks and balances that thwart the popular will on a regular basis.
CNN tried to say it&#8217;s very bad to say that we live in a republic, not a democracy. They interviewed author Anne Applebaum, who <a href="https://x.com/tomselliott/status/1802653350803988619">said</a>:
<blockquote>These words were used in different ways in the 18th century. And it&#8217;s true, the Founders didn&#8217;t want direct democracy, by which they meant people gathering on the town square. They wanted representative democracy. But I think the reason why this conversation about language has risen now is because there is a part of the Republican Party that would like to rule as a minority, and they need an excuse for why that&#8217;s okay. And so they have begun to say, we&#8217;re not a democracy, we&#8217;re a republic. It&#8217;s not 100% clear what that means, but I think they mean, we want Donald Trump to be able to do whatever he wants.</blockquote>
This is truly Orwellian because it&#8217;s total projection. The people who want the president of the United States to do whatever he wants without any checks and balances are typically Democrats.
So with the polls indicating Trump is winning, Democrats are already preparing to do what they want to do: subvert the institutions of the Republic.
They are looking to subvert the democratic institutions of the Republic. They are looking to subvert the legislature. They&#8217;re looking to subvert the presidency. They&#8217;re looking to subvert the courts.
In an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/16/us/politics/trump-2025-democratic-resistance.html#:~:text=Opponents%20of%20Donald%20J.%20Trump,Internal%20Revenue%20Service%20against%20them." target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a> titled, “The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started,” the New York Times stated:
<blockquote>Opponents of Donald J. Trump are drafting potential lawsuits in case he is elected in November and carries out mass deportations, as he has vowed. One group has hired a new auditor to withstand any attempt by a second Trump administration to unleash the Internal Revenue Service against them. Democratic-run state governments are even stockpiling abortion medication.
A sprawling network of Democratic officials, progressive activists, watchdog groups and ex-Republicans has been taking extraordinary steps to prepare for a potential second Trump presidency, drawn together by the fear that Mr. Trump’s return to power would pose a grave threat not just to their agenda but to American democracy itself.</blockquote>
Understand how Orwellian that is. They are saying they need to do non-democratic things to save democracy. They need to burn down the village in order to save the village. One of the actions they are going to take is to stack the administrative state. The Times continued, writing:
<blockquote>Interviews with more than 30 officials and leaders of organizations about their plans revealed a combination of acute exhaustion and acute anxiety. Activist groups that spent the four years of Mr. Trump’s presidency organizing mass protests and pursuing legal challenges, ultimately helping channel that energy into persuading voters to oust him from power in 2020, are now realizing with great dread they may have to resist him all over again. … The Biden administration pushed through a flurry of regulations in the spring, meeting a deadline to ensure that those rules could not be summarily overturned next year under a 1996 law if Mr. Trump wins the election and Republicans take total control of Congress.</blockquote>
This is a thwarting of democracy. It is hilarious to watch all the same people who are shouting to the rafters about the evils of Trump and his attacks on democracy now attempting all the same measures that they say Republicans should never attempt.
This is how the Left thinks of our institutions, that they own these institutions. Any outside threat to these institutions, including the future boss of the institution, must be destroyed.
This is stealing democracy: actively setting up structures that prevent the fundamental working order of the government, so long as the Republican is the person who is running the government.

Donald Trump Speaks At Turning Point Convention In Detroit, Michigan

Democrats Say Trump Is A Threat To Democracy. They’re Projecting.

Democrats

Joe Biden

Readers Pass

Republic

For those who don&#8217;t spend their Sunday mornings glued to the television — and their Sunday afternoons attempting to dig through a week&#8217;s worth of network and cable news media spin — The Daily Wire has compiled a short summary of what you may have missed.
Sunday&#8217;s media spin took aim at the 2024 presidential election — which is looming ever closer as the Memorial Day weekend will kick off a summer replete with campaign events, major party conventions, and more. And based on the tone of the Sunday political shows, the narrative the mainstream media networks plan to carry into the election season is a simple one: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
For former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, the message on her MSNBC show &#8220;Inside with Jen Psaki&#8221; centered around former Governor Nikki Haley (R-SC) and her decision to endorse Donald Trump after months of criticizing him and even running a campaign against him that lasted through Super Tuesday.
Psaki compared Haley to other Republicans who had chosen to turn on Trump, saying that she had &#8220;seen this movie&#8221; before — and that she had come to expect Republicans to &#8220;fall in line&#8221; even after the former president attacked them because they feared being ousted from the party altogether.
&#8220;Republican speaks the truth about Donald Trump… Trump smears, attacks, and belittles them… Republican falls in line rather than face excommunication from the party. How many times have we seen this movie?&#8221; she said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/jrpsaki?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jrpsaki</a>: “Republican speaks the truth about Donald Trump… Trump smears, attacks, and belittles them… Republican falls in line rather than face excommunication from the party. How many times have we seen this movie?” <a href="https://t.co/Ob6tr2oCZl">pic.twitter.com/Ob6tr2oCZl</a>
— Inside with Jen Psaki (@InsideWithPsaki) <a href="https://twitter.com/InsideWithPsaki/status/1794764179900871104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 26, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Psaki&#8217;s guest Sarah Matthews took it a step further, arguing that in Haley&#8217;s case, the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. was also likely forfeiting any leadership role in the Republican Party once Trump was no longer leading it.
&#8220;She could’ve – maybe in a post-Trump Republican party – been the leader. Instead, she chooses to bend the knee, kiss the ring,&#8221; she said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
“She could’ve – maybe in a post-Trump Republican party – been the leader. Instead, she chooses to bend the knee, kiss the ring.”<a href="https://twitter.com/SarahAMatthews1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SarahAMatthews1</a> on what Nikki Haley gives up by supporting Trump. <a href="https://t.co/YS8ooiBwxJ">pic.twitter.com/YS8ooiBwxJ</a>
— Inside with Jen Psaki (@InsideWithPsaki) <a href="https://twitter.com/InsideWithPsaki/status/1794766696290386283?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 26, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
On NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Meet the Press,&#8221; anchor Kristen raised the specter of Americans refusing to accept election outcomes when she sat down with four secretaries of state and asked whether any of them had been threatened simply for attempting to do their jobs.
&#8220;It has impacted not just us, but also our families,&#8221; Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D-AZ) said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
WATCH: <a href="https://twitter.com/kwelkernbc?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@kwelkernbc</a> asked four secretaries of state to raise their hands if they’ve received threats for doing their jobs.
They all did.
Arizona Sec. <a href="https://twitter.com/Adrian_Fontes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Adrian_Fontes</a>: “It has impacted not just us, but also our families.” <a href="https://t.co/8RxZ0qMC5a">pic.twitter.com/8RxZ0qMC5a</a>
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) <a href="https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1794737852149870623?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 26, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Fontes added, &#8220;Threats against elections officials in the United States &#8230; is domestic terrorism &#8230; We&#8217;re working with law enforcement across the country to really start to address these things. It&#8217;s not too little too late.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
WATCH: Arizona Secretary of State <a href="https://twitter.com/Adrian_Fontes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Adrian_Fontes</a> (D) says &#8220;threats against elections officials in the United States &#8230; is domestic terrorism.&#8221;
&#8220;We&#8217;re working with law enforcement across the country to really start to address these things. It&#8217;s not too little too late.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/tO5plcKtgZ">pic.twitter.com/tO5plcKtgZ</a>
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) <a href="https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1794735581894767056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 26, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Welker framed the conversation — with Fontes and three others — around the upcoming election and polls that suggest a majority of Americans believe that &#8220;democracy in the U.S. is under threat.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Good Sunday morning —
In just over five months, voters will pick 11 governors, 34 U.S. senators, 435 members of the House and choose thousands of local and statewide officials.
It comes as more than 80% of voters say democracy in the U.S. is under threat. <a href="https://t.co/rPUnQI6NK7">pic.twitter.com/rPUnQI6NK7</a>
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) <a href="https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1794730592065511546?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 26, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
What Welker did not mention was that the same Georgetown University poll that revealed 81% believed democracy was in danger — and 51% thought Trump posed a risk — also stated that 47% believed the mainstream media was a threat to democracy.
ON CNN&#8217;s &#8220;State of the Union,&#8221; anchor Dana Bash fomented fear of another January 6th when she continued to beat the same dead horse so many network hosts trot out every time they interview a Republican senator: &#8220;Will you vote to certify the election no matter who wins?&#8221;
Senator Tim Scott was on the receiving end of that question on Sunday, and his answer was simple: &#8220;Well, certainly, we expect a fair and honest election. And as a result of that expectation, we will certify the election and certify President Donald Trump as our 47th president.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
BASH: “Will you vote to certify the election no matter who wins?”
SCOTT: “Well, certainly, we expect a fair and honest election. And as a result of that expectation, we will certify the election and certify President Donald Trump as our 47th president.” <a href="https://t.co/x43PncK8uu">pic.twitter.com/x43PncK8uu</a>
— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) <a href="https://twitter.com/CNNSOTU/status/1794745278378996027?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 26, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
As the election draws closer — and it becomes clearer that the multiple court cases against Trump have either failed to sideline him or won&#8217;t be decided prior to the election — media appears ready to pull out all the stops to make sure they keep telling people to be afraid of the former president.

Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit – Day 3

Spin Cycle: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

Abortion

Media

It&#8217;s been several days now, but the outrage mob is still having conniptions over a speech given by a Catholic NFL kicker at a Catholic college, in which he dared to suggest that some women want to be mothers. That was too much for the Left and certainly for most media outlets, who have spent the last several days panicking and, in many cases, <a href="https://x.com/thehill/status/1791280753600262545" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lying</a> about what Harrison Butker said.
But if we were a sane culture, there&#8217;s another commencement speech that would be attracting considerably more negative attention. It was delivered yesterday by Joe Biden at Morehouse College, the historically black school in Atlanta. And in the span of about thirty minutes, Joe Biden did everything they&#8217;re falsely accusing Harrison Butker of doing — and then some.
Biden actually did demean and insult millions of Americans, very clearly. He also deliberately stoked hatred and lied repeatedly, with the apparent goal of dividing this country even more than it&#8217;s already divided. And of course, all of this is more concerning than anything Harrison Butker could possibly say, because Harrison Butker is a football player. And Joe Biden, at least nominally, is the president of the United States. What he says reflects how the Democratic Party intends to govern if they remain in power.
That said, as you&#8217;d expect, Joe Biden didn&#8217;t resemble the president of the United States at any point during this ceremony. He looked more like a half-conscious, decaying muppet on the stage, particularly as other speakers were delivering their remarks. 
Take a look at Biden&#8217;s face as the Morehouse valedictorian spoke, for example:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Biden Face" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_u6NfMfGR7A?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
He looks like he’s literally dying right in front of us. To be fair to Biden though, the speech from the Morehouse valedictorian wasn&#8217;t easy to listen to: &#8220;It is my stance, as a Morehouse Man — nay, as a human being — to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza strip.&#8221; 
Yes, he actually uses the word &#8220;nay,&#8221; as if he&#8217;s delivering an address in front of the House of Commons in the 18th century, and not a random college in Atlanta with an average SAT score just north of 1,000. There&#8217;s no self-awareness whatsoever. Who wouldn&#8217;t squint in pain at least a little bit, in the face of that kind of pretentiousness? In what universe would the Morehouse College valedictorian think he can &#8220;call&#8221; for a &#8220;ceasefire&#8221; in any conflict, outside of maybe a food fight in the school cafeteria?
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1371-biden-inspires-black-graduates-by-telling-them-that-democracy-is-dead-and-white-people-are-out-to-kill-them-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
Of course, being realistic, Joe Biden wasn&#8217;t squinting in pain so much as confusion. So he claps at the end of the remarks, presumably because everyone else was clapping. Every time Biden goes out in public, we&#8217;re reminded that he&#8217;s barely hanging on. He&#8217;s certainly not governing the country right now.
As if to underscore that point, Biden began his commencement speech with one of his trademarks: He made an outlandish claim that&#8217;s clearly false. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Morehouse Men" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XnXT6zMA6WA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
As a general rule, when Joe Biden says &#8220;I&#8217;m not kidding,&#8221; he actually does mean it. He&#8217;s not kidding — he&#8217;s lying. 
There is no council of insightful Morehouse College graduates in the White House telling Joe Biden what to do. In fact there don&#8217;t appear to be any high-ranking Morehouse grads anywhere in the Biden administration, as far as I can tell. There are Duke grads like the White House chief of staff, Columbia grads like the press secretary, Yale grads like the national security advisor, and Oxford grads like the CIA director. But Morehouse graduates — nay, Morehouse men — don&#8217;t appear to be well-represented.
This is a recurring theme in Biden&#8217;s career, where he pretends to be an everyman populist while keeping the commoners as far away from himself as possible. It&#8217;s the same scam Barack Obama pulled, only Biden isn&#8217;t remotely subtle about it because his brain has disintegrated.
But you knew that already. The bigger issue on Sunday were Joe Biden&#8217;s prepared remarks — because those prepared remarks were written by the people who actually run the government. In particular, Biden&#8217;s team thought this clip from his speech was so profound that they proudly posted it to his Twitter page. This was the excerpt from the 30-minute speech that the White House felt really underscored the president&#8217;s message. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Biden Building a Democracy" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4MLWAwDytpE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
It is indeed a profound clip, but not in the way the White House thinks. It&#8217;s actually a profound illustration of what our leadership has become. The president of the United States stood in front of young adults who had just graduated college and angrily ranted about how America hates them, white people are out to kill them, and how democracy is a &#8220;trail of broken promises.&#8221; Biden&#8217;s message, as always, was depressing, demoralizing, unpatriotic, and most of all: false.
He says George Floyd was murdered. No, he wasn&#8217;t. George Floyd was one of a rapidly growing number of black men who died of a drug overdose in 2020. You rarely hear it mentioned — Biden certainly didn&#8217;t talk about it at Morehouse — but overdose deaths among blacks <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/s0719-overdose-rates-vs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">jumped</a> by nearly 50% that year. The overdose epidemic is a real crisis that is killing thousands and thousand of Americans of every race, but our political leaders can’t even pretend to care about it. Biden certainly can’t pretend. Then again, he can’t do anything.
Rather than address that problem in any way, Democrats like Joe Biden decided to blame police officers. In fact, in their platform in 2020, the DNC claimed that millions of people have &#8220;good reason&#8221; to fear being murdered by police officers. So, the police pulled out of black communities, resulting in even more crime and death.
Biden doubled down on this approach at Morehouse on Sunday. He said black men are being &#8220;killed in the street.&#8221; That&#8217;s true in a sense. But Biden&#8217;s implication is a lie, because he wants us to believe that black men are being killed by white people (including all those white supremacist police officers). But the truth is the opposite. Nearly all black victims are killed by other black people. And a black person is far more likely to kill a white person than the reverse. Last year, for example, 86 black people were <a href="https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1792294685546823746" target="_blank" rel="noopener">murdered</a> by whites. But the number of whites who were killed by black assailants was more than five times higher, at 488.
This is data that holds up year after year. Here&#8217;s <a href="https://national-conservative.com/interracial-homicides/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a chart</a> that the National Conservative has prepared on this. It shows the number of interracial homicides so far this year. What do you notice?
<div id="attachment_739601" style="width: 526px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-739601" class="size-large wp-image-739601" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/004_Interracial-homicides-copy-516x576.png" alt="Courtesy: National Conservative." width="516" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/004_Interracial-homicides-copy-516x576.png 516w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/004_Interracial-homicides-copy-269x300.png 269w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/004_Interracial-homicides-copy-768x858.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/004_Interracial-homicides-copy-1375x1536.png 1375w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/004_Interracial-homicides-copy-1833x2048.png 1833w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 516px) 100vw, 516px" />Courtesy: National Conservative.</div>
Black-on-white crimes dominate the chart, followed by Latino-on-white and black-on-Latino crimes. You have to willfully ignore all available evidence to come to the conclusion that white supremacy is the problem here.
But willfully ignoring all available evidence was a theme of Biden&#8217;s speech. Joe Biden went on to say that the black community is being &#8220;left behind&#8221; by &#8220;broken promises.&#8221; What broken promises, exactly? Democrats have run many major cities in this country for a long time, without any real opposition. And without exception, they&#8217;ve all become much less desirable places to live. Go for a walk after dark in Chicago or Selma or Baltimore or D.C. some time if you don&#8217;t believe that. The black community is leaving itself behind through rampant crime, violence, drug use, and fatherlessness. Also by continuing to vote into office Democrat politicians who promise to make everything worse — and do. So there are no broken promises. Only bad promises, faithfully kept.
But instead of telling the truth to his audience at Morehouse, Joe Biden kept lying to them. He also declared that as a nation we &#8220;say&#8221; that we are going to &#8220;end racism and poverty.&#8221; Really? When has the nation ever said that? I’m in this nation and I never said it. Nobody I know has ever made this declaration. Neither racism nor poverty will ever be ended. There isn&#8217;t a country on the planet, at any point throughout history, that&#8217;s eradicated racism or poverty. It&#8217;s impossible to do so.
You have to wonder how long Democrats will buy this messaging. In order to believe Biden&#8217;s pandering at Morehouse, you&#8217;d have to ignore the fact that he&#8217;s been in the White House for the past several years. You&#8217;d also have to ignore the fact that Barack Obama had eight years in office — at the beginning of which, all the way back in 2008, he promised to build a, &#8220;more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.'&#8221;
Now Democrats aren&#8217;t even pretending to want any of that. Instead, they want absolute power. And they intend to obtain that power by lying and dividing this country as much as possible. Whenever institutions get in their way, Democrats intend to ignore them.
At Morehouse yesterday, Biden made that explicit. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="005 Biden Mocks Supreme Court" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VbEZdO47OGQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
He&#8217;s talking there about &#8220;forgiving student debt,&#8221; meaning redistributing that debt to taxpayers. Forcing working class Americans to pay the debts of college graduates, who on average have a higher net worth than they do: &#8220;When the Supreme Court told me I couldn’t, I found two other ways to do it.&#8221; Nowhere in his speech does Joe Biden even pretend that this is legal. He just celebrates that he got it done, to applause from his audience.
In 2024, that&#8217;s what &#8220;democracy&#8221; means to Biden and the White House. When they say they&#8217;re preserving democracy, they mean they&#8217;re enacting Democratic Party agenda items by force, without regard to checks and balances.
Implementing policy like this only works if a majority of the country despises the other side — to the point that they&#8217;re not willing to play by the rules anymore (otherwise known as the Constitution). Biden&#8217;s speech at Morehouse makes it clear, once again, that this is the strategy the White House has chosen for the upcoming election.
I&#8217;d be lying if I said it wasn&#8217;t effective. Other than a few Morehouse students who turned their backs on Biden, pretty much everyone in attendance seemed on board with this. Millions of Americans see no problem with it, either.
They can&#8217;t tolerate Harrison Butker&#8217;s message emphasizing personal choice and fulfillment because it&#8217;s the polar opposite of Biden&#8217;s screed pushing racial animosity and lawlessness. Only a deeply broken country, careening towards more division and more chaos, would make a scandal out of the former commencement address and cheer for the latter.

President Biden Delivers Commencement Address at Morehouse College

Biden Inspires Black Graduates By Telling Them That Democracy Is Dead And White People Are Out To Kill Them

American Universities

Blacks

College

Matt Walsh

Academics have a bone to pick with the authors of &#8220;White Rural Rage: The Threat To American Democracy,&#8221; a best-selling book that argues rural voters — many of whom have <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/01/28/rural-voters-favor-trump/72337833007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rallied behind</a> former President Donald Trump — pose a danger to the United States.
Journalist Paul Waldman and professor Tom Schaller are being accused of negligence by some of the very same researchers they cited in their book, which publisher Penguin Random House <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734507/white-rural-rage-by-tom-schaller-and-paul-waldman/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says</a> is about how &#8220;rural Whites&#8221; have become the &#8220;most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions&#8221; with the encouragement of GOP politicians and conservative media.
<div id="attachment_720427" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-720427" class="size-full wp-image-720427" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/9780593729144.jpeg" alt="Penguin Random House. February 2024." width="300" height="450" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/9780593729144.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/9780593729144-200x300.jpeg 200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Penguin Random House. February, 2024.</div>
Nicholas Jacobs, a political scientist from Colby College, said in an <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/05/white-rural-rage-myth-00150395" target="_blank" rel="noopener">op-ed published by POLITICO</a> Magazine on Friday that his research and the work of others are &#8220;being misinterpreted and misunderstood.&#8221; The authors made &#8220;two persistent types of errors&#8221; when examining the data on rural Americans, he explained.
The first, Jacobs said, is they &#8220;routinely fall victim to the logical fallacy of composition when they attribute group characteristics to individuals.&#8221; He cited as examples attempts to suggest rural voters who support Trump are more likely to be authoritarian, claim their communities are beset by Christian nationalism, and ignore the smaller numbers who back Democrats.
The second &#8220;persistent error,&#8221; Jacobs said, is the authors &#8220;cite polling data with little attention to issues of quality, which less sloppy scholars would question to make sure their conclusions were valid,&#8221; including on race and immigration as well as the &#8220;birther&#8221; claim regarding former President Barack Obama and whether he was born in the United States.
&#8220;This shoddy analysis and faux expertise does real damage,&#8221; Jacobs wrote, dismissing the central focus of the book. &#8220;It is clear that the overwhelming portrayal of rural America as angry and irrational feeds into and amplifies the divisions between rural and urban Americans, overshadowing the shared challenges and aspirations that cut across these geographic lines.&#8221;
Jacobs also joined with B. Kal Munis to write in a post published on <a href="https://reason.com/2024/03/07/the-truth-about-rural-rage/#:~:text=The%20overarching%20argument%20of%20White,rural%20communities%20than%20within%20them." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reason.com</a>, saying they were two of the scholars whose work the authors of &#8220;White Rural Rage&#8221; got wrong, going as far as to accuse Waldman and Schaller of &#8220;academic malpractice&#8221; in their book.
&#8220;Schaller and Waldman favorably cite our research showing that there is a modest correlation between rural resentment and racial resentment, a commonly used attitudinal measure of negative racial stereotyping,&#8221; the pair <a href="https://reason.com/2024/03/07/the-truth-about-rural-rage/#:~:text=The%20overarching%20argument%20of%20White,rural%20communities%20than%20within%20them." target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in their op-ed from March. &#8220;What they fail to note is the only statistically and intellectually sound conclusion that could be drawn from our data: While this slight correlation exists, rural resentment is an attitude distinct from racial prejudice.&#8221;
In response to the criticism, Schaller and Waldman spoke with The New Republic editor Michael Tomasky in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTdo5eAW1Ws" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recent interview</a> and touched on the veracity of their work. The book &#8220;is right, right now,&#8221; said Schaller, who then quipped about hoping that in 10 to 15 years they will have to &#8220;retract a lot of it because white, rural Americans&#8221; will have returned to their roots and support a &#8220;secular, pluralist constitutional democracy.&#8221;
Waldman said they have &#8220;taken a lot of criticism even from people who say, &#8216;This book is why rural people are resentful.&#8217; That it&#8217;s the &#8230; condescension of the snooty Eastern elitists and that&#8217;s the end of the story and you don&#8217;t have to interrogate really where that belief comes form, but we&#8217;ve also heard from a lot of people in rural American of all kinds just ordinary people — journalists, activists — &#8230; who have said, &#8216;This is an accurate reflection of what&#8217;s going on in my community. This is a real problem and we have to address it.'&#8221;
The criticism, however, keeps coming.
Kristen Luna Trujillo, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/white-rural-rage-cites-my-research-it-gets-everything-about-rural-america-wrong-opinion-1877917" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> for Newsweek that the authors cited but did not misrepresent her work, yet she chastises them for how they &#8220;do criticize rural Americans for their anti-intellectualism, building on tired tropes of rural people being backward, dumb, violent, and ignorant, while pushing a narrative that worsens such distrust in the first place.&#8221;
Another assistant professor, Tyler Austin Harper of Bates College, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20240406214424/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/white-rural-rage-criticism/677967/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> for The Atlantic that he spoke with 20 scholars in the &#8220;tight-knit rural-studies community&#8221; and most of whom are cited in &#8220;White Rural Rage&#8221; or thanked in the acknowledgments. He said these academics &#8220;left me convinced that the book is poorly researched and intellectually dishonest.&#8221;
Harper said he found a pattern after fact-checking many of the book&#8217;s claims and citations that showed most of &#8220;the problems occur in sections of the book that try to prove that white rural Americans are especially likely to commit or express support for political violence.&#8221;
Claiming the authors are &#8220;bending the facts to fit their chosen scapegoat,&#8221; Harper wrote they &#8220;mislead the public about the all-too-real threats to our democracy today. As serious scholarship has shown—including some of the very scholarship Schaller and Waldman cite, only to contort it — the right-wing rage we need to worry about is not coming from deep-red rural areas. It is coming from cities and suburbs.&#8221;

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