Shaping the World in 2024

In a 67-32 vote on Thursday, 17 Republican senators voted alongside their Democrat colleagues to advance a $95 billion “emergency security spending bill” that included $60 billion in aid to Ukraine and, according to The Washington Post, billions of dollars to “Indo-Pacific allies and $10 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza.”

This bill was introduced in response to the failure of its so-called bipartisan predecessor, championed by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell and his Oklahoma-lackey Sen. James Lankford. The previous legislation that supposedly bundled border and foreign aid would have codified the ongoing southern border invasion into law by largely preventing meaningful action from being taken unless there was, as Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi noted, a “rolling average of 5,000 border encounters per day for a week, or 8,500 encounters in a single day.”

Subsequently, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer opted to advance the “emergency security spending” legislation, which prioritized foreign assistance without any funding for border security. The Hill reported Schumer as saying, “First Republicans said they would only do Ukraine and Israel, humanitarian aid with border. Then they said they would not do it with [the] border. Well, we’re going to give them both options. We’ll take either one. We just hope they can come to ‘yes’ on something.”

Democrats view the border invasion with optimism. The multinational horde of fighting-age men serves their agenda. Obviously, they’re fine playing politics with this existential threat. Republicans have no excuse; border security is supposed to be a make-or-break issue for them.

So, in light of recent events, it’s worth revisiting comments from 13 of these defective Republicans who vowed to prioritize securing the southern border but have decided that Zelensky’s rainy-day fund is more important than American sovereignty.

Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia

Previously viewing solidifying the border as an issue of “national security,” Capito highlighted the national government’s inability to verify who the millions of illegal migrants were or where they were coming from.

She said in December, “With 2.4 million (migrants) coming across the border last year and with the highest October ever, and the highest month ever in September — I mean these numbers are just exceedingly way, way over what could have ever been predicting coming across the southern border,” adding, “We don’t know who they are. We know some of them are on the terror watch list. We know some of them are from countries that have terrorists.”

Having previously called for a “four-prong approach” providing aid to “Israel, the border, Ukraine and Tawain,” Capito appears content leaving Americans to fend for themselves.

Bill Cassidy, Louisiana

Despite previously saying, “We got to support our allies, but we got to secure our own border first,” Cassidy opted to forsake his promise to end the “chaos” he adamantly claimed “[t]he American people rightfully so want” to see end.

Cassidy’s Thursday vote, however, calls into question why he is more aligned with the Biden administration’s foreign priorities than ensuring the rights of Americans “to feel safe in their own country.”
Susan Collins, Maine

Although never a reliable conservative, Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, previously told The Washington Post that border security is an “absolutely essential part” of a bill to send more money to Ukraine.

John Cornyn, Texas

“They want tens of billions of dollars to help our friends and allies overseas, but they’re not willing to do what’s necessary to prevent a potential crisis at the border,” Cornyn previously lamented, adding, “The Biden administration just does not seem to care.”

Cornyn has also now prioritized funding America’s proxy war with Russia over fighting for border funding that could save countless lives and prevent further lawlessness in his home state.

Joni Ernst, Iowa

Noting that Ukraine should not be America’s priority over ensuring our own sovereignty, Ernst previously called on lawmakers to prioritize “national security.”

“The issue is not Ukraine, and it’s not President Zelensky. It’s our own national security at our southern border,” Ernst said in December.

Yet despite there being no significant change in the status of the Ukraine-Russia war, Ernst decided it was more important to send billions abroad instead of fighting to shore up the southern border.

Chuck Grassley, Iowa

“We have to have the same consideration about our own border,” Grassley previously said, calling for domestic action to be taken before any further commitments were made to “the border of Israel and Gaza, Russia and Ukraine.”

John Kennedy, Louisiana

“We’re as serious as four heart attacks and a stroke,” Kennedy previously claimed when calling for border security to be prioritized over foreign assistance.

He said, “Now, the president sent us a national security bill and we said, OK, we’re going to do national security, but we’re not going to pass your bill until you close the border. And the president said, surely you’re not serious. And the Republicans in the Senate said, don’t call me Shirley and we are serious.”

Clearly, Republicans are in no way, shape, or form serious people. If they were, Kennedy and his ilk wouldn’t have lied to the public about how important they consider the border to be.

Mitch McConnell, Kentucky

It’s to be expected that McConnell will always ruin everything. But even he once appeared adamant that there would be no further “supplemental legislation” passing the upper chamber until the border crisis was addressed.

“As my colleagues and I on this side of the aisle have made abundantly clear, national security begins with border security. And any serious supplemental legislation with a shot of passing the Senate in the coming weeks will have to take meaningful steps toward fixing the Biden Administration’s border crisis,” the Senate minority leader said last November.

McConnell’s consistent role as controlled opposition and inability to deliver results has led to several of his colleagues demanding he resign from his role in Senate leadership.

Mitt Romney, Utah

“We’ve got to secure the border,” Romney once demanded. “Any effort that doesn’t do that will be rejected Republicans.”

But much like McConnell, Romney exists to spike the football at the one-yard line. He’s never been serious about advancing a conservative agenda and appears to be similarly uncommitted to protecting America’s borders.

Mike Rounds, South Dakota

“Any bill with aid for Israel and Ukraine must include policy changes at our Southern border,” Rounds proclaimed in November.

Well, so much for that.

John Thune, South Dakota

Noting many congressional Republicans’ commitment to meddling in foreign conflicts that in no identifiable way benefit Americans, Thune said in December, “A lot of us Republicans are very eager to get Ukraine the aid it needs. But we cannot — we cannot — tend to our national security interests abroad while ignoring the national security crisis on our own doorstep.”

But because of Republicans like Thune, the crisis on our doorstep will continue to be ignored, and American lives will be needlessly lost.

Roger Wicker, Mississippi

“We needed to demonstrate that Republicans are not going to pass a supplemental appropriation bill unless it takes care of very important restrictions on the southern border,” Wicker said just a few months ago.
Todd Young, Indiana

“I don’t believe we should take this off the table. … Let’s get something consequential done for the American people,” Young recently said, referring to the importance of fighting for causes like border security that actually benefit Americans.

But he, just like the other Republican defects, is nothing more than a sellout.
What Now?

In the coming days, the Senate will hold further votes to solidify foreign aid packages before the legislation gets sent to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson and House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers claim anything without sufficient border guarantees is dead on arrival.

In that time, it’s likely more Republicans will move to support sending billions of dollars abroad before anything close to resembling a serious border policy comes to the floor. Senators like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are requesting amendments be added to the legislation that, according to The New York Times, would “cap the number of migrants that could be paroled into the United States at 10,000 annually.”

This legislation requires 60 votes to move forward. Republicans can gain control of the situation and force the national focus to fully be on the southern border, as it should be. Elected Republicans and conservative voters need to remind the defectors that they were elected to protect America, not Ukraine.

During the run-up to the 2020 Presidential Election, election processes were changed to roll out “no excuse mail-in voting.” Some states even went as far as sending ballots to every voter on the voter registration roll. Most of these changes were made without the consent of the state legislatures, as mandated by the US Constitution in Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1.

As a result of this, the number of mail-in ballots cast, according to the US Elections Assistance Commission, went from 33 million mail-in ballots in 2016 to approximately 65.5 million in the 2020 Election, despite warnings from a 2005 bipartisan report from President Jimmy Carter and former US Secretary of State James Baker in 2005 that stated mail-in balloting was “one of the major sources of fraud.”

As mentioned in the Heartland Institute report, the narrative in the Mockingbird Media shifted from calling out the dangers of no-excuse mail-in ballots prior to 2020 to falling in line with the idea that mail-in balloting was perhaps “even more secure than in-person voting” (NY Times, May 2020) and “voting by mail is the surest path to a more inclusive, more accurate and more secure election.” (Times, August 2020)

Last December, the author of the report, the Heartland Institute, partnered with Rasmussen Reports to conduct a poll of 1,085 people who voted in the 2020 Presidential Election. The results were shocking. The Gateway Pundit covered this poll as well as some of the warnings issued in the build-up to the 2020 Election.

The Heartland Institute took the polling results a step further: they measured “the effect of mail-in ballot fraud in the Trump-Biden race for the White House” through their report, titled “Who Really Won the 2020 Election?”

Spoiler Alert: President Trump wins outright in 26 of the 29 scenarios. If you include a tie-breaker, Trump wins 27 out of 29.

Before reporting the results of the individual assessments of swing-state races based on varying levels of fraud, it is worth acknowledging the results of Heartland’s poll with Rasmussen that formed the basis of their assessments.

In a poll of 1085 voters in the 2020 Election, 30% responded they voted by mail. Of those:

• 21% of mail-in voters admitted that in 2020 they voted in a state where they are “no longer a permanent resident”
• 21% of mail-in voters admitted that they filled out a ballot for a friend or family member
• 17% of mail-in voters said they signed a ballot for a friend or family member “with or without his or her permission”
• 19% of mail-in voters said that a friend of family member filled out their ballot, in part or in full, on their behalf

The report’s analysts were able to determine that “28.2% of respondents who voted by mail admitted to committing at least one kid of voter fraud”:

After analyzing the raw survey data, we were also able to conclude that 28.2 percent of respondents
who voted by mail admitted to committing at least one kind of voter fraud. This means that more than
one-in-four ballots cast by mail in 2020 were likely cast fraudulently, and thus should not have been
counted.

Next, the Heartland analysts took the electoral results and applied varying levels of mail-in voter fraud to each of the “swing states”, for which the report defined as Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. They then assessed each state individually based on the following assumptions of fraud levels:

• 28.2% fraud – President Trump wins AZ, GA, MI, NV, PA, and WI. Trump wins Electoral College 311-227
• 27-14% fraud – same result as above. Trump wins Electoral College 311-227
• 13-6% fraud – President Trump wins AZ, GA, PA, and WI. Biden wins MI and NV. Trump wins Electoral College 289-249
• 5-4% fraud – President Trump wins AZ, GA, and WI. Biden wins MI, NV, and PA. Electoral College is a tie at 269-269. This would have triggered a US House vote with each state’s legislature getting exactly 1 vote for the Presidency. Since the Republicans control more state legislatures, President Trump likely would have won.
• 3% – President Trump wins AZ and GA. Biden wins MI, NV, PA and WI. Biden wins Electoral College 279-259
• 2-1% – President Trump doesn’t win any states. Biden wins Electoral College 306-232

The report also assessed what would happen if the fraud occurred at different rates. While the sample size was insignificant, the Rasmussen/Heartland poll did find that “Biden voters admitted to committing at least one form of fraud at a rate of 23.2%, and Trump voters self-admitted fraud rate was 35.7%.” Even with the adjustment, President Trump would have won Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. This would have resulted in a 278-260 Electoral College win for President Trump.

Several “proactive” and “preventative” recommendations were also offered in the report. The “proactive” suggestions included updating and verifying registration rolls annually, requiring identification to vote in person, encouraging in-person voting, requiring a witness or notary signature on all mail-in ballots, and requiring a valid excuse to request a mail-in ballot.

The “preventative” measures suggested were outlawing ballot harvesting, forbidding unattended and unsecured drop boxes, requiring signature verification for mail-in voting, and perhaps the two most important: establishing state-level agencies to investigate claims of election law violations and passing laws that impose harsh penalties for those who commit voter fraud.

Heartland Institute suggested requiring a notary to validate all ballot signatures and went as far as recommending the notaries do it for free or offer a program that reimburses notaries for the service.

The report concludes that “even if the level of fraud shown by our survey (28.2 percent of all mail-in ballots) substantially overstates the true level of fraud that occurred, Trump would still have won in most of the likely scenarios, with only three exceptions.” The authors claim they have “no reason to believe that [their] survey overstated voter fraud by more than 25 percentage points”.

During this week’s broadcast of FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) was asked by host Maria Bartiromo to speculate on what was driving President Joe Biden’s policy decision-making.

Noem suggested Biden was not running the White House and whoever was in charge was promoting a “socialist, communist agenda.”

“He’s weak,” she said. “And somebody’s — somebody is running the White House. I don’t believe it’s Joe Biden. He’s never been this extreme. This is an extreme remaking of America, and it is a socialist, communist agenda. I think that they have so infiltrated the Democrat Party that it’s no longer the Democrat Party of 20 years ago. It’s now a socialist party that does not want a strong America. The people that are coming across that southern border aren’t coming here to be like American citizens, to love our country, to protect our freedoms.”

“They’re not coming here because they love our Constitution,” Noem added. “Some of them are coming for opportunity, but they’re being manipulated by the Mexican cartels and put in very dangerous situations. And the fact of the matter is that you talk to anybody who’s in Border Patrol, in ICE, down there in the Texas National Guard or public safety, they say you have to come to this country right. Yes, the humanity and the inhumanity of what we’re seeing down here is horrific, what Joe Biden’s allowing to have happen. But you have to do things right, or else you have consequences that we will pay for with our freedoms.”

To say I was “fascinated” and “riveted” by “fired Fox News host,” as he playfully calls himself, Tucker Carlson’s interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin is actually an understatement and does not really reflect the experience of watching the event.

It was an interview unlike any other I have ever watched—something that seemed more out of fiction, a play by Bertolt Brecht or an encounter ripped from the pages of Leo Tolstoy or Fyodor Dostoevsky.

We were being offered a real-time glimpse for over two hours into the reasoning and personality of an often-ruthless dictator, albeit one who remains popular, to a great extent, in his own country.

How many times have we been able to see that?

I can think of none.

Those who criticize Mr. Carlson for offering us this either have total disrespect for the intelligence of the public, quite common among our politicians and pundits, or their own personal axes to grind—envy, perhaps.

Watching and listening to Mr. Putin generates many complex reactions, from thinking he’s a deranged thug to being beguiled by him, but these are the kinds of contradictory responses an adult mind must be able to contain to be a, well, adult mind.

It will take a long time to digest fully what we have seen, if indeed we ever can.

The host evidently feels the same way.

Since we are friends, I texted Mr. Carlson my congratulations after viewing. I think I can fairly give his response because it seems something he would easily say in public. Also in these times, anyone who thinks their text messages are private is delusional.

He wrote: “Thank you. It was fascinating. I’m still thinking about what it meant.”

I’m certain most of us watching have a similar reaction.

Mr. Putin, per his own wishes, began with a half-hour disquisition on the history of Eastern Europe, what he called for obvious reasons “The Russian Lands.” It’s hard to explain—everyone must see this for themselves—but this was simultaneously boring, even tedious, but also fascinating.

You could read this confusion in Mr. Carlson’s expression. Few, if any, of us know that history in such detail.

Unlike leaders we can think of, Mr. Putin did not seem the slightest bit senile, but on occasion on the edge of a certain kind of madness.

This was all by way of preparation for Mr. Putin’s well-planned attempt to explain himself and his attacks on Ukraine to the American public and much of the Western world as well.

These were again contradictory, sometimes making some sense yet often sounding defensive and fake.

In reality, he just wanted those “Russian lands” back. He insisted he would go no further than unspecified parts of Ukraine, probably the Donbas region, and that the idea he would go after the rest of the former Soviet Union—Lithuania, Latvia, and so forth—was ridiculous.

Frankly, I believed that last part on the grounds that he, and most likely the Russian people, had had enough.

But what interested me most in the interview is that between the lines, maybe not so far between, is that Mr. Putin believes the real battle between nations is between their more permanent intelligence agencies, not their impermanent and superficial leaders.

He is an ex-KGB agent, after all, and pointed, during the interview, to the role of the CIA in upending the leadership in Ukraine and thus being the inadvertent instigators of the war that has transpired.

Do I believe that?

Let’s put it this way: I don’t disbelieve it.

It would be interesting to hear what presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has to say about the matter, since his criticisms of the CIA, particularly in the matter of the assassination of his uncle President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, are well known.

Someone should ask if he has seen the interview.

Was Mr. Putin just “passing the buck,” or was he onto something?

Also notable during the interview was Mr. Putin’s contention that President Bill Clinton at first considered the idea of Russia joining NATO and then reneged on the advice of his “team.”

True or false? Will we hear from Mr. Clinton? Would we believe him if we did?

As our host said, ”I’m still thinking about what it meant.”

In my case, I may never come to a conclusion. But I have seen… something.

I say that although I am no stranger to Russia. I have spent time in the country, twice during the Soviet era and twice thereafter. Still, it is conundrum.
At the end of the interview, Mr. Carlson launched into a plea for Mr. Putin to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich that the Russians have accused of spying and have incarcerated for a year.

Mr. Putin wobbled for a bit but at the end appeared to lean toward a release. If this happens, score one for Tucker.

Bread and circuses manipulation has never been laid so bare.

Former President Donald Trump mocked fellow Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley during a speech Saturday by asking why her husband hasn't been on the campaign trail — even though he is deployed.

Michael Haley, who serves in the South Carolina Army National Guard, began his year-long deployment to Africa in June. He serves as a staff officer with the 218th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade.

Trump was seemingly unaware of his deployment when he started questioning his whereabouts during a campaign stop in Conway, South Carolina, on Saturday.

The former president began his rant by calling Haley a "birdbrain."

Former President Trump mocked Nikki Haley by asking where her deployed husband was on Saturday.

"Birdbrain loves mass asylum," Trump said, prompting laughter from the audience. "There's nothing nice about her."

"'I will never run against President Trump. He's a great president, the greatest president in my lifetime,'" Trump quoted Haley as saying. "She said, ‘I will never run against him.’"

"Then she comes over to see me at Mar-a-Lago…'Sir, I will never run against you.' She brought her husband."

The Trump Organization founder then turned his attention to Haley's spouse.

"Where's her husband?" Trump questioned. "Where is he? He's gone. He knew, he knew."

Haley did not mince words when she shot back at Trump two hours later in a social media post.

"Michael is deployed serving our country, something you know nothing about," the former South Carolina governor wrote on X.

"Someone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being commander in chief."

Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump and Haley campaigns for comment, but has not heard back.