The Bishop doctrine

By Steve Woodward

What is remarkable about Dan Bishop is how he so comfortably infiltrates Republican establishment territory like a stealth weapon. The North Carolina congressman has little patience for the status quo in Washington that, time and time again, hands Democrats victories. But he rolled into Moore County in the early days of his campaign for state attorney general, and guess what happened?

Donors wrote checks, and Richard Hudson introduced Bishop to an intimate gathering of said donors. Hudson (NC-09) currently represents Moore County in the U.S. House; Bishop (NC-08) briefly represented Moore (2019-22) before yet another district map was hijacked by an activist court and moved Bishop’s territory to a swath just south of Winston-Salem and east of Charlotte.  

While there is geographic proximity between the two districts there is a stark contrast between their representatives. Hudson is a gifted politician and reliable conservative voter on the major issues who has risen to No. 4 in the House hierarchy. He is not averse to falling back on Washington-speak such as “government shutdown” and “continuing resolution”, which were rolling off tongues earlier this month in D.C. 

Nonetheless, Hudson’s leadership is potentially consequential. He says he is working to recruit Republicans to run for 37 House seats next year in an effort to take out vulnerable Democrats. If he succeeds in picking off even half of that number it would have tsunami-like impact, but only if the newcomers arrive with fiscal chainsaws. 

Bishop instinctively votes against “continuing resolutions” — a procedural scheme used by the establishment to defer serious attempts to cut entitlement spending — and boldly supported last January the removal of feckless House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as a member of the media-maligned Gang of 20. He voted with 94 others against the recent November 15 “laddered” continuing resolution that will “fund the government” — and leave runaway spending unchecked — into January 2024. They were no match for 336 status quo “yea” votes.

But Bishop soon made an even more important decision — he’s not voting for compromise anymore. Bishop ultimately backed off voting to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy (who was going down either way after 10 months of unkept promises) and, consequentially, launched a run for attorney general. Why toil amid the infantry if you’re ready and able to lead?

Bishop’s inclination to turn off auto-pilot and fly into a storm probably was met by curiosity among some of his colleagues. For many, making it to the D.C. swamp triggers a desire to buckle up and let the plane fly itself with little regard for fuel costs or a final destination. With so few resolute conservatives remaining among House Republicans, Bishop calculates that he can watch the U.S. economy crash and burn from a front row seat or a rear view mirror, in Raleigh, where an iron fisted litany of attorneys general have ruled since the 19th century. (Regrettably, that’s not a typo).

He never will say so out loud, but an attentive ear lent to his November 27 remarks during a Moore County fundraiser heard a tone of caution about the race for N.C. governor next year. Republican Lt. Governor Mark Robinson and the presumptive nominee is taking on current Attorney General Josh Stein, an unabashed Leftist who has tagged teamed well with Governor Roy Cooper in a state awash in conservative red in many mostly rural locations.

Robinson’s less than robust record as No. 2 after an unlikely rise to political fame in 2020 won’t be his biggest obstacle between now and next November. It will be the cash gushing into Stein’s campaign war chest from many of the same shadowy outsiders who funded his 2020 run for AG. 

Bishop referenced this as he placed emphasis on his own fundraising objectives. He will have no difficulty demonstrating how he differs on the so-called culture war issues (defending abortion law, parental rights in education, restoring law enforcement) from his Democrat opponent — in fact, Bishop will remain through 2024 in Congress fighting spending battles and brandishing conservative values in real time. Presumably, said opponent will be U.S. House first-termer Jeff Jackson. Yet Bishop knows that Jackson will be riding a crest of cash raised by lame duck Cooper, who leverages Republican vetoes of everything the Left holds dear by converting those vetoes into donations from the pearl clutching Left.

Bishop remembers well how money saved Stein in his AG race four years ago. Stein narrowly defeated Republican Jim O’Neill by 13,622 votes. The spread that mattered was a Stein campaign funded by $12.6 million compared to O’Neill’s $1.25 million operation, the Associated Press reported post-2020 election.   

Democrats will be flush with cash again in 2024, especially in the AG race. They’ll leave no money source untapped to stop Bishop from becoming the state’s first Republican attorney general since 1896. In a twist of irony, the fiscal conservative needs supporters who spend with both fists. 

Israel as prologue

By Steve Woodward

When you read or hear a reference to “the Israel-Hamas War” please step back. If you’re paying attention at all, the characterization is absurd on its face. 

Israel is a defined populace. Hamas is a branch of a terrorist organization operated by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is funded by Iran. Is this a war? The lazy, corrupt American media would have us believe that. The depiction post-October 7 is that Hamas attacked Israel to exact vengeance on an evil occupier of a land mass called Palestine, and now we are advised that Israeli military forces are killing innocent citizens of a municipality called Gaza, the population center of the Palestinian “people”, in retaliation.

Beware of two truths. The media is defaulting to its norm: deceit. And the war is not a black-and-white conflict that will render a victor and a loser.

“Israel and Hamas are closing in on an internationally brokered deal to pause fighting and free some of the roughly 240 hostages taken by the militant group … amid heightened scrutiny of the civilian toll of Israel’s operation in Gaza,” reported The Wall Street Journal on November 20, 2023.

Let us cut through the BS. Hamas, savage bands of terrorists funded by billionaire elitists in Iran and Qatar, seeks a “deal” whereby Israel stops bombing it into oblivion. During this “pause”, Hamas turns over “some” of the relatives of Israeli citizens who avoided being murdered on October 7 only to be taken into bondage. This is not diplomacy. This is lunacy.

A correct military response by Israel would be to escalate its tactical military attacks within Gaza, under which there is a network of tunnels that provide safe passage to the vicious rebels who killed more than 1,400 Israeli citizens of all ages during an unprovoked attack on October 7. Why would Israel pause anything? What proof exists that these hostages are living, breathing? What would convince a normal person that these innocents also were not mutilated and beheaded? Israel’s mission must be clear: destroy every tunnel. Every last one. 

But there will be casualties in Gaza, in Palestine! Why the moral outrage? Hamas and its overlords in Iran did not bother to calculate the loss of life when it waged its sneak attack on October 7. Yet, Israel must measure its response so as not to exact collateral damage on “Palestine”? (Photo: Dr. Laura Mullen stepped down from her position as Wake Forest University’s Kenan Chair of the Humanities after an ‘X’ post backing Hamas’s brutal October 7 gunfire assault on an open-air concert in Israel that killed at least 230 citizens).

That Americans would even waste a moment engaging in this moral equivalency conversation illustrates how comprised our culture has become. The Biden regime refuses to align its shoulders with Israel. It is intent on pursuing the most repugnant goal of a “two-state solution”, which defies the Biblical right of Israel to exist and placates to the empty narrative that Palestine is relevant.

The Biden regime’s weakness emboldened Iran and Qatar to target Israel, just as it emboldened Russia to invade Ukraine, and just as it panders to China’s ambition to seize Taiwan. But the Marxists who have hijacked the Democrat party in America are not merely weak on the world stage, standing by as history plays out. They are blind, ideologically or deliberately, to what the so-called “Israel-Hamas war” leads to.

It leads to jihad against the United States that will make 9/11 look like a petty crime. A former Columbia University professor, a once wholly indoctrinated scholar, and a Jew, Liel Leibovitz, regrets that he participated in the “mind rot” of America’s poisoned educational institutions, and today warns of what is coming. He imparted this dire forecast during a November 19 interview hosted by podcaster Josh Hammer.

“Before we even figure out or try to answer this very good and very pressing question, when does this war end, we would be well served to ask ourselves what this war is. It is not a war between Israel and Hamas. It is a war between the so-called axis of resistance … comprising of course Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis (in Yemen), and with the enthusiastic support of both the Russians and, to a larger extent, China. 

“It is a war between the axis of resistance and the civilized world which includes Israel, the U.S. and France, but also India and Saudi Arabia and Armenia. And a bunch of other nations fighting the same oppression, under different management, under different guise. I think once you understand it like this, you have a very different set of aims. It is not just that Israel must now eradicate Hamas, a terror organization of several, 10 thousand cretans, who, God willing, will be destroyed very, very quickly. 

“It’s not even that Israel would then have a sizable problem on its hands about what to do with a civilian population of about two million who have been completely brainwashed for decades that the only cause for their existence is to slaughter and murder jews.

“The larger problem and the larger question is, how do we fight the larger war? It would be a damn shame to see American boys and American dollars lost to this conflict. And, thankfully, I think there is a pretty easy path forward. The first is to let the people who already fully committed to fighting this war fight this war. Israel is very, very dedicated to assuring its own survival, obviously. I think the United States needs to simply get out of its way, and not impose any needless ultimatums, or requests, or demands, that have much more to do with Joe Biden’s electoral needs in, say, Michigan (and its large Muslim population), than they do with the actual national security interests of the United States.”

Leibovitz breaks it down very clearly. But this path forward is not being articulated on America’s elite college campuses, where anti-semitism is in favor and Hamas is a “victim”. On the streets of America’s cities hoards are gathering to denounce Israel in defense of the “defenseless” Palestinians (photo nearby: NC Highway 147 near Durham). The flag suddenly likely to be burned on a college campus is not Old Glory; it is the Israeli flag. Meanwhile, images of the Palestine flag, which does not unite a “people”, are turning up constantly in Amazon and Google search engines. 

“The philosophy of those marching with Hamas (around the world) and against the West is clear and obvious,” writes political commentator Ben Shapiro, a Jew, in a Daily Signal post. “The West is powerful; the West has exploited; the West is white; therefore, the West is powerful because the west is White and exploitative.”

It is likely this anti-American climate will escalate until the next attack on our homeland, which will be orchestrated from afar and executed by combat ready young men who have poured across the U.S. southern border and organized into cells, awaiting instructions even now. This scenario forecasts an even more devastating day of terror on our homeland. It will look like October 7 in Israel more than September 11 in New York City. 

The next attack will not target the well heeled titans of commerce in their glass towers. It will play out as a vicious, medieval rampage infiltrating small towns, farmers’ markets, street fairs and parades. Blood will flow out of dead, mutilated bodies strewn along the familiar streets of Pinehurst, Southern Pines and Aberdeen. Electrical grids will be decimated, wreaking economic chaos. For good measure, perhaps another “virus” proliferates. October 7 was a dress rehearsal. It did not trigger a war. It launched a reconstituted global jihad.

Off with your head, baby

By Steve Woodward

The American Left expects citizens to harbor permanent outrage about the pro-Trump, pro-election integrity gathering in Washington on January 6, 2021, as if we’re to forget the role of China’s bioweapon that spawned a fake pandemic that derailed our economy and normalized election fraud.

Yet, less than three years later, it demands that we also must appease pro-terror, pro-massacre enablers in a geographic footprint called Palestine who openly celebrate exterminating Jews and fein disbelief that Israel would retaliate on behalf of its slain brothers and sisters (and their decapitated infants).

As it turns out, hating Israel is a global phenomenon (after recent protests in Madrid, Paris and other European population centers). On American university campuses and the streets of our already crime ravaged cities, Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel and exacted a death toll that surpasses 1,400 innocents, including U.S. citizens, are celebrated under the thin guise of pro-Palestine “demonstrations”. These disturbing protests are not Palestinian pride demonstrations; far from it. These are full throated displays of pent up hatred of Jews and their homeland, Israel.

A group of Jewish students at a New York City university escaped into a library behind a locked door. But Cooper Union College campus security did not seek to protect them by dispersing “Save Palestine” protestors nearby. The Jewish students were merely encouraged by a librarian to hide “upstairs”, out of sight. (Anne Frank chronicled what it felt like to be hunted in a similar manner in 1940s Nazi Germany).

A pro-Palestinian rally in Washington Square Park, near (New York University’s) campus, featured a demonstrator with an antisemitic sign reading, “Please keep the world clean”, reported The Times of Israel. (October 26, 2023)

And, after years of hand wringing about a so-called swarming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, apologists for the Left in the corrupt news media barely batted an eyelash when defiant young protestors occupied the very same Capitol (the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building) as recently as October 18 because they’re worried sick about the fate of defenseless Palestine residents who cheered the slaughter of defenseless Israelis on October 7.

Ultimately, more than 300 were arrested for illegally demonstrating and three people were charged with assaulting police after protesters descended on Capitol Hill to call for a cease-fire, reported the Associated Press. But what will be their fate? What punishment will they receive? The arrested were summarily released, other than the trio who were held pending a court appearances. They’ll likely be fined, or merely admonished.

Contrast this measured response with the plight of American citizens held in Washington, D.C., jails, and other jail cells, with no court dates pending, for months after January 6. Often they were held in solitary confinement. After all, they also were “unvaccinated”. Hopefully, history will record how the fundamental rights of these decent people were trampled by corrupt courts. Remember Joe The Plumber who confronted Barack Obama? Today, these same “Joes” are sent to prison.

Yet, they are the lucky ones compared to those sentenced to insane prison terms for the sin of being physically present on that bleak January day. The longest sentence was handed down to one who was not present — Enrique Tarrio. The Proud Boys leader is sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy. He watched January 6 unfold from Baltimore.

The mother of a U.S. military veteran gunned down at close range by a Capitol police officer on January 6 was arrested on the two-year anniversary of her daughter’s murder for the crime of protesting on a Washington street.

Now, consider an even more stark contrast: A trial under way in Denver in which an activist Leftist judge is hearing from lawyers representing six citizens who seek to remove Donald Trump’s name from the 2024 Presidential ballot in Colorado, using a flimsy 14th Amendment interpretation strategy. In opening remarks, a Trump loathing attorney tried to make a case that January 6 would never have happened minus Trump’s role as a catalyst via his social media posts calling for “violence”.

This exercise would be hilarious as a desperate act of “lawfare” were it not, like so many ongoing show trials targeting Trump’s destruction, made to seem so feverishly legitimate by a compliant, Trump loathing media. Fortunately, the lawyer defending Trump was defiant in his countering, opening remarks, during which he dismissed the trial merely as a weak attempt to embellish now exiled Liz Cheney’s contrived “January 6 Report” that emerged from made-for-TV proceedings orchestrated by a Hollywood producer. Her January 6 commission desecrated the U.S. Capitol much more deliberately than a few hundred energized Americans posing for selfies that day.

We have arrived at a crossroads. Moral equivalence — a favorite cautionary buzz phrase on the Left — is turned on its head. Israelis must die but Hamas-ruled Palestinians must live. Trump supporters must be eviscerated, silenced, marginalized but kangaroo courts must be normalized in direct defiance of the will of our Founders. The Left is King George III; MAGA is the Continental Congress of 1775. The former heeds that we back down, the latter replies, bring it on.

Bring it on, Hamas. Bring it on, special prosecutor Jack Smith. Bring it on, New York district attorney Letitia James. Bring it on, and watch what happens in November 2024 when American voters turn out in numbers that will defeat the Left and even the margin of election fraud.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the globe on October 30, and he spoke the words of a leader who knows well that history is being made before our eyes. The divine providence he references is directed toward Israelis and defenders of their homeland and basic human rights. But he also echoes the determination of those who fight in America every day to deflect the destructive aims of the Marxist Left.

“This is a time for war. Today we draw a line between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism. Israel will stand against the forces barbarism until victory. Israel’s fight is your fight. Israel’s victory will be your victory.”

The fixers

By Steve Woodward

Cara Mathis demonstrated grace and optimism throughout her campaign for Pinehurst Village Council. She expressed determination to serve and pursue measured goals as a council member. She campaigned as a happy warrior and Pinehurst ambassador. 

But during the past four years around here many residents have awakened to a toxic, bitter vein of humanity that courses beneath Pinehurst’s sandy soil and infests civic dialog, turning neighbors into sworn enemies.

A tiny but loud, tormented band of citizens remind us interminably that they did not move to the area to endure the offshoots of inevitable population growth and economic prosperity. They say they don’t like traffic and free spending, noisy tourists. The traffic circle scares them. They are emotionally fragile despite the beauty that surrounds them. The pine trees oxygenate the atmosphere but they say they can’t breathe.

At some point, a normal young adult awakens to this insanity and says, Enough! These people never will be satisfied. Even the most well intentioned public servant is unlikely to skirt their wrath. 

So as dusk settled over Pinehurst on October 17, Mathis announced she has suspended her campaign in front of a Village Hall assembly of citizens who had listened to candidates answering questions during a forum. Then she did something rather unexpected. Mathis (photo nearby) asked the citizenry to ignore her name on the ballot and cast their votes for Barb Ficklin and John Taylor, both first time candidates and considerably longer in the tooth.

(Ficklin was a long time Clarendon Gardens homeowners association president. Taylor and Mathis are fellow historic preservation stewards).

Mathis’s day will come, and Pinehurst will still be Pinehurst when it does, even if other candidates insist on envisioning life here as a perpetual Norman Rockwell portrait. Never mind that American culture long ago become more Andy Warhol than Rockwell, more Bill Maher than Mark Twain. 

And, who knows, perhaps in due time some of our hair-on-fire malcontents, overwhelmed by a general feeling of malaise that sweeps over them when they see an out-of-state license plate in the next-door driveway, will be inspired, indeed, compelled to acquire out-of-state license plates of their own. 

They can move to communities where the streets are patrolled day and night by ravenous citizens outfitted in iron boots with their phones at the ready to speed dial law enforcement. Where backyard parties are monitored by decibel meters. Where knocks on doors after dark foretell squads checking occupancy rates in private homes. 

Perhaps they will then find their nirvana, a community stripped of life’s pleasures and devoid of visible humanity. A community resembling the Outlands in the Lion King film, where psychologically troubled hyenas rule.

Judging by dire warnings issued by candidates for village council and mayor during Tuesday’s forum, Pinehurst is plunging toward Outlands status and we had better elect them to “fix” it. And it’s a good bet that many of the folks motivated to attend the forum arrived with bellies full of Bad Karma Kool-Aid. They were not disappointed.

In their answers to rehashed lamentations about traffic, parking spaces, “affordable” housing, and private homes placed in short-term rental pools, candidates assured their tense disciples that only they recognize just how bad it is. Our way of life is “threatened”. Economic growth is an “intrusion”. “Strict enforcement” is the only solution. Tourists must be obedient and heed warnings to “behave” when visiting 28374. They must adhere to “Pinehurst’s terms”. 

Overall, the forum was an exercise in mastery of one-minute sound bites. Anyone who has been paying attention this campaign season generally learned nothing new or enlightening. Mostly the forum reminded us that in Pinehurst we take for granted the luxury of obsessing about trivial things. 

John Taylor, a self described numbers guy, issued a data point that should terrify the hyenas. During the next 25 years, Moore County’s population is projected to grow by 50,000 to 60,000 residents. In other words, good luck to the folks who want to run Pinehurst like a homeowners association. 

Bannon’s cannon

By Steve Woodward

How often do our elected “servants” (a.k.a., public officials, leaders, lawmakers) provoke deep inside of you a profound sense of disappointment? Then, after you process the disappointment, how often does this begin to corrode your natural optimism? And then, when do you cross into the abyss where disappointment is channeled into intense anger, followed by consuming rage that becomes freedom?

Freedom? Yes, friends. Your shackles can be broken.

Those of us who know, know. To borrow from the recently acclaimed documentary, we know the sound of freedom when it rings. It is an inner voice that liberates the soul. It is a stirring within that unleashes absolute clarity of purpose. 

Embracing this is rewarded by an awakening to the hypocrisy, deceit and hollowness that defines American politics, even, and especially, at the grass roots.

This is why I can’t wait for, in fact I am giddy about, the arrival of Stephen Kevin Bannon in Moore County on the occasion of the annual Lincoln-Reagan Dinner hosted by, and for the benefit of, the Moore County Republican Party. 

The party’s overlords eagerly agreed to bring in a nationally known Conservative standard-bearer who will whip us into a frenzy. What a golden opportunity to raise money and fortify the local coffers. That it is.

But let me issue a warning. Mr. Bannon (photo nearby) is not coming to Moore County on October 27 to endear himself to those who can set him up with desirable golf tee times, or a nice hotel room. He will not appease Republican establishment types so as to be a polite guest. He is coming to crush the Leviathan. The host of the daily, live streamed War Room — an oasis in defiance of compliant corporate media — is coming to inspire and unify the MAGA movement. There is certain to be a stirring of our “January 6” souls during Bannon’s remarks.

Not all souls, of course. We witnessed a clear line of demarcation within the Moore delegation attending last summer’s North Carolina Republican Party convention. Around half of the delegates were unwavering in their support of censuring U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, who betrayed core principles when seeking to “reach across the aisle” on an immigration “reform” bill in the Senate in 2022.

The others in the Moore delegation refused to stand in support of the censure. Tillis (photo nearby) also was willing to cave and was lured into the Left’s mission to protect LBGTQ “rights” and undermine Second Amendment rights, legitimate, Constitutional rights.

But what about party unity? cried fellow Moore Republicans. As if we had misunderstood Tillis’ intentions. As if he knows best. Ridiculous. But now we connect the dots from 2022 to the present. We know hundreds of thousands – hundreds – of illegal immigrants have crossed the U.S. southern border. We know thousands upon thousands are young men who can easily be trained as enemy combatants on our soil. 

Perhaps censuring a U.S. senator who does not recognize the inherent danger of a porous border, or who weighs any “deals” that grant amnesty to savages, does not go far enough. Images of blood soaked, decapitated civilian bodies in Israel warn us what an unchecked border invasion portends for the United States. What do weak Republicans like Tillis and Democrats need to see on our city streets? Do we need breathtaking images of decapitated bodies on Fayetteville Street in the heart of Raleigh to realize the consequences of their indifference, or worse, facilitation?

“That day is coming,” Bannon said during his October 9, 2023, War Room live stream.

(On his official web site, Tillis is a border security hardliner these days. Coincidence?)

U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson (NC-09), if he shows up, will be out of his comfort zone in the ballroom of the Country Club of North Carolina. During his Reagan dinner remarks, Bannon might remind Hudson, indirectly or not, that his implicit, unwavering support of disgraced, feckless House Speaker Kevin McCarthy indicts him as an accomplice in the crime of spinning up the national debt centrifuges.

U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson (NC-08) tames a RINO on the House floor, January 6, 2023.

You don’t think Bannon will go there? He might just be getting started. Hudson, if he shows up, is low hanging fruit. He votes for CRs. A longtime, self-described advocate for American military men and women due to his district’s proximity to Fort Bragg, Hudson nonetheless is in lockstep with sending billions upon billions of dollars to Ukraine to fund a “war” against Russia that has no strategic or outcome strings attached. Hudson has yet to respond to a direct question about where he stands on the impeachment inquiry opened to expose the Biden crime cartels.

Who was asking? Your humble messenger. Silence also was the response to questions about McCarthy’s failed speakership or appropriation bills versus an unchecked omnibus spending bill (a.k.a., business as usual).  

Rep. Dan Bishop (NC-08), who is moving to Moore County and running for NC Attorney General in 2024, might be skewered, too. 

Bishop was one of 21 full throated House Republicans who decried unchecked spending and continuing resolutions during the recent showdown. But Bishop would not vote to end McCarthy’s speakership. Bishop told a news outlet he feared unseating McCarthy would sow seeds of chaos. But let’s ask a practical question out of the War Room handbook: Is chaos not a desirable alternative to a bankrupt U.S. economy? It’s not a kicked can bouncing down the road to serfdom, it’s a trash dumpster. And it’s on fire. 

As an enlisted member of the War Room posse and regular viewer/listener, I can guarantee Bannon will take down the Biden administration and its surrogates with tactical precision when he addresses us. Not only is Ukraine an ongoing failure, now we watch the devastating Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, which never happens if the Chinese bioweapon was not unleashed in late 2019. This handed the Left in the United States a perfect storm through which to compromise election integrity and leverage a looming health “crisis”. 

Now, here we are in 2023. Trump is not president but the MAGA movement is surging. Pollsters are thinking about committing suicide because their surveys forecast another Trump term, despite, or because of, virulent lawfare waged against him, his family, and his business empire.

Despite the present scenario, let us not ignore the fact that so-called centrist Republicans, better known as RINOs, have within their ranks committed Never Trumpers, and still others who suffer, they say, from Trump fatigue. He should go away. He can’t win. And let us also not ignore that some of these anti-Trumpers, card carrying members of the Moore County GOP, will be seated in the ballroom on October 27 when Bannon approaches the podium dressed in his signature all black garb.

Bannon has no patience for these weak Republicans who quietly choose to live in a mediocre country and shudder when contemplating  a Trump victory in 2024. They watch the staged “presidential debates” on Fox News Channel hoping for the emergence of a Trump Light figure. Bannon has no patience for those of this ilk. Correctly, he calls Ron DeSantis and other 2024 pretenders the “Keebler Elves”. 

When Bannon goes down the path where prisoners are not taken, the proctologists in the house will be thankful they are not on call. That dull sound engulfing the ballroom will be all of the puckering sphincters puckering in unison. 

Bannon will remind these navel gazers that under Trump we tallied victories. Under Biden we tally body counts. In Afghanistan, 13 American soldiers dead after a botched (or deliberate) mass exodus (photo nearby). In Ukraine, since the Russian invasion began, we mourn more than 26,000 civilian casualties, yet Biden will keep sending billions of dollars without any assurance that Ukraine will turn the tide and save its innocent citizens from slaughter. In Israel, as of this writing, nine U.S. citizens are confirmed dead as a result of the Hamas terror attack indirectly funded by a $6 billion U.S. care package sent to Iran. (Untold U.S. citizens are missing in Israel. Is it a matter of time before a U.S. corpse is paraded through the streets?)

At home, there is a running Biden death tally, too. In 2022, 73,654 people died from a fentanyl overdose in the U.S., more than double the deaths from three years prior in 2019. Fentanyl often originates in China before it crosses the U.S. southern border via paid smugglers who are not deterred by immigration authorities.

During a recent War Room diatribe, Bannon previewed what we can expect to hear during his Pinehurst visit. My advice to the staff at CCNC: Keep the cash bar open late. Some of our folks are going to need a drink. They just don’t know it yet.

Bannon (October 6, 2023, War Room): “Being a Southerner it’s disgraceful that the South, almost as a block, with a few, limited exceptions … votes as a block for the Uni-party. How does that work? … If you’re from the South, if you’re a Southerner, a proud Southerner, call, ask. Why is the South always voting as a block for the establishment? Why are you bagged and tagged, why are you owned? 

“(During the upcoming vote for House speaker) I want to hear from this (War Room) audience. This is you. We own it; you drove it. Now we’ve got to take it to its ultimate conclusion. We need radical transparency. Not behind closed doors, not a big group hug (of) unity. We want to see the sausage being made, and we want to see the votes as they’re cast (for the next Speaker). You’re not going to hide. We want to know where you are on every ballot, just like we did it in January.

“Why are we doing this (post-McCarthy)? Because the cartel, the lobbyists, the corporate interests want to do it behind closed doors. Because they’re putting the knife in you, and (will) not be blamed. No. We want it all out in public, we want radical transparency. We’re not going to let you hide. We’re going to turf all of you out. You’re not going to hide from the American people, and you’re particularly not going to hide from MAGA. MAGA got you in here. You’re not going to stiff (us).”