Diversity Equity Inclusion

Dunces 2.0

By Steve Woodward

Amid my eternal quest to understand the deranged Left in 2025, a long-forgotten book title jarred my feeble brain as I inhaled the longleaf pine-infused air on a Spring evening.

“The Confederacy of Dunces”, published in 1980, was written in the late 1960s by an iconoclast named John Kennedy O’Toole.

“The novel offended the progressive sensibilities of publishers based in New York,” wrote historian Auguste Meyrat in 2024. “It took a fellow writer from Louisiana, Walker Percy, to agree to read the manuscript and advocate for the book’s publication nearly a decade after Toole committed suicide.”

And what happened next? The book was declared to be a literary classic. And what did it, and central character Ignatius C. Reilly, reveal that resonates today?

“There’s a whole generation of Ignatius’s today: vain, overeducated young adults who can’t hold a job, live healthily, own any property, or maintain a friendship or romantic partnership, and yet often feel proud of themselves,” writes Meyrat. “Like Ignatius, they feel qualified to deliver their opinion on a whole range of issues they have no clue about. Without a doubt, if Ignatius existed today, he would likely be an online influencer hosting a popular YouTube channel or podcast.”

Ignatius is the poster boy for today’s Democrats, in other words. Their narratives, compliantly advanced by an ever more corrupt media, never have been more absurd, or delusional. We need to call them out for what they are. Dunces. Consider:

Tariffs are imploding the economy to permit a few Trump cronies to short the stock markets and make billions. (The tariffs are, in fact, causing a flurry of requests for Oval Office visits and phone calls by freaked-out foreign leaders knowing the gig is up).

The economy is teetering (but never mind the easing of inflation as reflected by the March consumer price index).

The deportation of illegal immigrants tied to murderous gangs is just a pretext in a grand scheme to mass deport American citizens. (If true, start with Hunter Biden).

The Department of Government Efficiency ultimately plans to dismantle Social Security and Medicare to deprive American citizens of their “God-given” entitlements. (False, but at least DOGE will end Social Security payments to the deceased).

Luigi Mangione, who shot a UnitedHealthcare CEO in cold blood, is a brave martyr and, damn, he’s handsome, too. (Who knew the steely eyes of a crazed killer are a turn-on?)

Karmelo Anthony had to carry a knife to a Texas high school track competition and stab a fellow teenager in the chest because, like every black teen amid confrontation, an unarmed white kid is intent on killing him. (Media spin: the dead kid is not the victim).

Every business venture that became wildly successful under Elon Musk, especially electric vehicle production and space travel, is a threat to democracy and reminiscent of pre-World War II Germany. (And Trump is Hitler because if you repeat it often enough …)

Trump’s mass deportations are cruel and astonishing Executive branch overreach. And unprecedented. (Except Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden deported millions of illegal immigrants without inspiring one court injunction or Supreme Court intervention).

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a “Maryland man” who was deported to an El Salvadoran prison by a heartless Department of Homeland Security. He should be returned immediately to his wife and three children because he committed no crimes on U.S. soil.

(Entering the U.S. illegally 14 years ago was/is a crime. Maintaining ties to the notorious MS-13 gang – evidenced by Garcia’s identifying tattoos — poses a threat to Marylanders. And only a feckless Federal Bureau of Investigation spared Garcia from arrest and charges after he was pulled over for speeding in Tennessee in December 2022 with eight passengers in tow from Texas. They presented IDs showing the same home address but traveled without a single piece of luggage. Say it with me: human trafficking).

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) flew to El Salvador to score a photo op with Garcia (photo nearby), knowing there was no possibility he would be freed. But it turns out Van Hollen is not the most deranged among the apologists for thuggish gang members living in our homeland illegally.

A New Mexico magistrate judge was arrested and has been banned from the bench for life after homeland security officers raided his Las Cruces home, responding to a tip about who was living in the judge’s guest house. In March, officers arrested Venezuelan illegal immigrant Christhian Lopez-Ortega, 23, in the home of Judge Jose Cano, a Democrat. The Tren de Aragua gang member had been living with the judge’s family after his wife hired Lopez-Ortega to perform several home improvement chores.

The judge and his wife were said to be complicit in allowing their immigrant house guest to handle household firearms.

And what is the fate of the “adopted” Venezuelan? Another Democrat judge overturned his bail and suggested Lopez-Ortega be returned to the custody of his fellow judge because they, the two Dem judges, are friends. He remains detained while a hearing to decide the gang member’s fate is pending.

Did John Kennedy O’Toole contemplate dunces as extreme and pathetic as these? In 2025, who is the dunce? The illegal thug or the New Mexico judge? China’s hijacking of the U.S. economy or Trump’s overdue tariffs? Deported illegals or politicians who coddle them? The healthcare CEO assassin or the dead CEO? A knife wielding high school punk or his dead, unarmed victim?

Waiting.

Bye bye, DEI

By Steve Woodward

When the end is near, when the gig is up, and when the blinding light of truth pierces the darkest recesses, entrenched keepers of the status quo are reduced to tantrums and fear mongering.

Recall combative House Democrats, including unhinged Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), recently showing up at the Department of Education, demanding entry and a meeting with the acting secretary, and becoming agitated when access was flatly denied.

Why did Waters and fellow Democrats march over to the Department of Education? It seems that the Left is really quite concerned about Donald Trump’s pledge to weaken their grip on the Educational Industrial Complex.

At the core of their hysteria is the imminent demise of the ever pervasive phenomenon known as “diversity, equity and inclusion”. While American corporations have begun a rapid phase-out of DEI in their hiring and advertising — acknowledging that promoting unqualified people up the ladder and alienating customers eventually impacts the bottom line (did someone say Bud Light?) — academic institutions in some cases have doubled down on devotion to DEI infiltration.

But then along came the ascendance of Donald Trump and a tsunami of common sense executive orders during the opening hours of his second term as president. He first ordered DEI (and thinly veiled DEI programs with benign sounding names) abolished within all federal agencies, then turned his attention to federally funded institutions, including colleges and universities.

Other than its illegality under the Constitution, DEI is a vestige of affirmative action which has been nullified as a college admissions standard by a Supreme Court decision. A more accurate interpretation of the DEI acronym is: “Destroying Educational Integrity”.

Trump’s executive order laid bare why DEI must be DOA on college campuses: “Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity … undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement … (and promote a) pernicious identity-based spoils system.”

Even before the DEI death knell began to toll, defenders were complaining that “political influences” were becoming too burdensome for college faculty members to bear. A study referenced in a late 2024 article published by the academic journal Nature blamed crackdowns on DEI doctrine as the cause of declining “morale” within faculty lounges at Southern universities. Those darn conservative politicians who think federally funded schools should prioritize academic rigor are, instead, now threats to “academic freedom”.

Moore County’s local and heavily biased newspaper, The Pilot, ever the reliable mouthpiece for Leftist wrist wringing, recently published a letter submitted by a reader who laments that too many professors are being run out of southern schools or quitting academia altogether. The author fears “brain drain”. Yet, it’s unclear if an already damaged organ can be drained.

If so-called political interference is such a deterring force on southern campuses, what explains openly anti-Israel voices among faculty at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack in Israeli soil? Less than a month after the attack killed 1,200 Israelis and others, the Duke Academics and Staff for Justice in Palestine (DASJP) was quickly formed and had launched a web site.

All of the manufactured hysteria about the assault on DEI is merely posturing. What the academic elites really worry about is Trump making good on threats to shut down federal funding spigots and the many grants that coast along on autopilot.

An author who was among the first to expose entrenched woke agendas on college campuses, Christopher Rufo, is pulling for massive reform advanced by Trump’s edicts and under the leadership of his nominee for secretary of the Department of Education, Linda McMahon (whose first act would be to terminate her own department). But Rufo acknowledges it will not be easy to derail $50 billion in federal grants that universities receive annually.

“The Trump administration must renegotiate the deal between the citizens and the universities,” Rufo writes in a February 8, 2025, post at Substack.com (and accessible on X, where he has 782,000 followers), “conditioning federal funding on three popular demands: first, that the schools contribute to solving the student-debt crisis; second, that they adhere to the standard of colorblind equality, under both federal civil rights law and the Constitution; and third, that they pursue knowledge rather than ideological activism.”

The plot became a bit thicker when the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a letter on Valentine’s Day establishing a 14-day compliance deadline and issuing a clear reminder that federally funded institutions must adhere to civil rights laws.

“Under any banner (including DEI),” the letter cautions, “discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal.”

Has it come to this? The radical Left, always and relentlessly accusing its ideological foes of systemic racism at every turn, facing a deadline to denounce systemic racism?

What a time to be alive.

Carrboro’s power play

By Steve Woodward

We probably should have seen this coming. Amid the steady, predictable demise of misguided policies imposing “diversity, equity and inclusion” on education, large corporations, small businesses, law enforcement and the U.S. military industrial complex, virtue signalers were becoming desperate. They needed to find another hill on which to DIE absent DEI.

If, in fact, DEI is destined to fail in its mission to cripple for-profit entities and elevate individuals into positions of power and influence because of their skin color or gender identity, another destructive path had to be identified.

And now we are learning that it runs through North Carolina. Last week, underwritten by an obscure environmental activism operation with an ominous name (NC WARN, aka, Waste Awareness and Reduction Network), the municipality of Carrboro filed a lawsuit against Charlotte-based Duke Energy, a dominant coal generated electricity provider and natural gas holding company. According to the Duke Energy website the company provides services to 8.4 million customers in Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio and South Carolina, and provides natural gas service to 1.7 million customers across five states.

The complaint filed December 4, 2024, in Orange County (N.C.) superior court “seeks compensation for the damages that it has incurred, and will incur in the future, as the proximate result of Defendant Duke Energy Corporation’s knowing deception campaign concerning the causes and dangers posed by the climate crisis”.

NC WARN’s attorney, Matt Quinn, told The Washington Post that the town has hired consultants to assess the cost of climate-induced damages, and expects it may be up to $60 million.

Good luck covering the consultants’ fees. The suit’s filing is littered with the climate cult’s tired, baseless claims connected by hedgy words such as “may” and “likely”.

Naturally, the petulant mayor of Carrboro, Barbara Foushee, and her band of hysterical municipal “leaders”, many of whom are indoctrinates of the University of North Carolina in nearby Chapel Hill, have completely overlooked the irony of going after Duke Energy for the sin of providing reliable energy to the town, county and state for decades.

Electricity literally lifted Carrboro out of obscurity. It was incorporated in 1911 but did not take on its present name until two years later. In 1913, one Julian Shakespeare Carr, owner of the town’s grist mill, made a generous offer to deliver electricity and expand the mill. At the time, nobody cared that Carr was a well-established white supremacist who supported the Ku Klux Klan, opposed the 15th Amendment that gave black men the right to vote, and bought the News and Observer newspaper to provide a platform to advance his views with the help of editor Josephus Daniels, a fellow, virulent white supremacist.

(Editor’s note: Daniels? Sounds familiar, huh? His grandson, Frank Daniels Jr., was publisher of the N&O for 26 years, retired and subsequently purchased The Pilot of Southern Pines in 1996. Daniels’ ancestors still own the publication to this day, and while they denounce their white supremacist DNA, we wonder what old Josephus would think of their rabid endorsement of a drag queen show in the local theater in 2022).

The Carrboro climate zealots not only are blind to irony but also are lousy at optics. The mayor unveiled the lawsuit by staging a highly rehearsed press event in a well illuminated room with panels of electric lighting in the ceiling and a large flat panel monitor bearing Carrboro’s funky green (of course) town logo. They might have gathered outdoors as a nod to “Mother Earth”. Instead, they flipped on the lights to underscore the implausibility of life without electrical power.

One of the tenets of the lawsuit is that Duke Energy has consistently deceived citizens “into believing that climate science was in dispute, that climate change was not real, that humans were not causing the climate crisis, that climate change did not present an urgent risk to the Earth and public, that fossil fuels were not causing the climate crisis, that fossil fuels were necessary, and other such mistaken beliefs.”

The lawsuit pins all of the looming threats facing the people of Carrboro to one entity, Duke Energy, although it is undisputed that the United States has a much lower, and persistently declining, carbon “footprint” compared to other developed nations, namely China, India and Russia. But the disingenuousness does not end there.

Climate risk data analyst First Street assesses risk factors in municipalities across a spectrum ranging from flooding, fire, wind, air quality and heat. First Street chronicles one major flooding event in Carrboro, in September 2018. Ninety-seven properties were impacted. Overall, reports First Street: “The city of Carrboro has minor risk from flooding. There are 640 properties in Carrboro at risk of flooding over the next 30 years(emphasis added). This represents 11.7% of all properties in Carrboro.”

There’s more:

This year 11.3% of properties in Carrboro have risk of flooding. In 30 years 11.6% of properties in Carrboro will have risk of flooding, First Street projects.
“Dangerously hot days and heatwaves may occur more often,” First Street acknowledges. Yet, the projections do not exactly strike end-of-the-world fear in a normal person who knows better than to run a marathon in 100-plus degrees.
Thirty years ago, Carrboro experienced 11 “dangerously” hot days (100+), compared to 23 such extreme days in 2024. Based on its projection model, First Street sees a possibility that Carrboro will contend with 41 sweltering days in 2054. Assuming this is accurate, Carrboro’s extreme heat days might increase at a rate of 0.6 days per year. Or not. (Across the ages, climate “changes” in both directions but that’s not a fact the climate cultists acknowledge).

Mayor Foushee was asked by a WRAL TV reporter about the timing of the lawsuit targeting Duke Energy.

“Why not now?” said the town’s first black woman mayor (photo nearby). “The opportunity presented itself. … When you talk about righting wrongs, or facing injustices, someone has to step out and give it voice and take action.”

Based on Carrboro’s crime data, one is left to ponder as to whether the mayor is using climate as a diversion from more pressing issues. According to NeighborhoodScout.com, the crime rate in Carrboro is considerably higher than the national average across all communities in America from the largest to the smallest. The chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime in Carrboro is 1 in 50. Based on FBI crime data, Carrboro is not one of the safest communities in America. Relative to North Carolina, Carrboro has a crime rate that is higher than 66% of the state’s cities and towns of all sizes.

Perhaps Carrboro’s esteemed leaders are counting on the town’s propensity toward violence to further engage Duke Energy in the battle to save the planet. Who knows what a combination of fear mongering and climate religiosity might accomplish?

A former television meteorologist in San Francisco, Brian Sussman, elaborates on this frequent confluence in a new book, “Climate Cult” (PostHill Press, May 2024)

Sussman was run out of the weather forecasting profession because he challenged “global warming” as long ago as 1996. Sussman’s book presents a road map toward exposing and defeating the war on life, liberty and property waged by the climate tyrants.

“The premise of climate change has become similar to a system of ecclesiastic belief, based on pseudo-facts and science, while manifesting traditional religious elements of guilt, revelation, repentance, devotion, and duty. … Leaders of the cult preach dreams of a new world, a pristine environment, a calmed climate, a manageable population, and universal salvation through sustainable development, which, in turn, will expunge the world of social injustice and inequity.

“This cult has its own prophets and evangelists dedicated to converting the masses through the cataclysmic messaging of fear. … Guilt is repressed through acknowledgment of (indulgence)and the subsequent pursuit of a frugal existence and reduced carbon footprint; these are all paths of self-righteousness and outward virtue.”

Duke Energy pledges carbon-zero emissions from electrical power generation by 2050. But what if the cultists decide that’s not soon enough? What if a well-educated graduate with multiple degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill or Duke University decides that Duke Energy executives have evaded responsibility for killing the planet for far too long? What if Carrboro’s lawsuit advances through the court system and stalls?

That person wouldn’t think of making the ultimate sacrifice, would he? That person would never contemplate shooting a Duke Energy executive in cold blood on a city street, would he?

Rogan’s heroes

“It may be that this present system, with no modifications and no experiments, can survive. Perhaps the money-making machine has some kind of built-in perpetual motion, but I do not think so. To a very considerable extent, the media of mass communications in a given country reflects the political, economic and social climate in which it grows and flourishes. That is the reason our system differs from the British and the French, and also from the Russian and the Chinese. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. And our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.” — Edward R. Murrow, October 15, 1958, speaking to the Radio and Television News Association’s annual convention

By Steve Woodward

Distilled to its essence, CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow’s speech delivered to broadcasting colleagues 66 years ago warned that television, then in its infancy, already had begun to betray its audiences and imperil its long-term viability. There is no one even remotely similar to Murrow remaining in the 21st century corporate media. Murrow cared about truth, substance and an informed population, all now obsolete.

Murrow also said this during his remarks in 1958 in Chicago: “I have decided to express my concern about what I believe to be happening to radio and television. … I have no feud, either with my employers, any sponsors, or with the professional critics of radio and television. But I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage.”

The Democrat Party’s precipitous march to the ideological Left likely began long before Murrow’s speech, around the time Woodrow Wilson ascended to the U.S. presidency in 1912 espousing “progressivism”. It ebbed and flowed in the decades ahead, revived by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.

But the Democrats soon entered a period of near extinction in presidential politics, putting forth presidential aspirants named George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. Carter was the only one who actually made it to the Oval Office as president but his gain was the Democrat’s loss. His ineptitude assured Carter will be remembered among the most failed presidents.

Then, in 1992, along came William Jefferson Clinton, the youthful but obscure governor of Arkansas. It is notable that his ascension to the presidency coincided with the first cracks in network television’s absolute information dominance. Cable TV’s CNN cemented its legitimacy during riveting coverage of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The internet was coming into its own with 10 web sites up and running (including the Raleigh News & Observer’s Nando.net, one of the first digital platforms adopted by a newspaper). There would be nearly 3,000 functional web sites by 1995. And a former disc jockey named Rush Limbaugh was conducting an experiment that would become a genre — conservative talk radio, of which he would be king for 30 years.

Deep beneath the surface, something else was happening that would influence and corrupt mainstream media in ways Murrow could not have foreseen. Public schools and institutions of higher education pulled away the veil. Educators devolved into indoctrinators committed to diminishing American exceptionalism, severing the connective tissue of Judeo-Christian values that defined its citizens, and challenging every societal boundary by seeking to normalize transgenderism, relativism (the end of delineating between right and wrong) and climate-change hysteria. Despite progress toward diminishing racial inequality made by the civil rights movement, the mantra among educators increasingly was moving toward dismissing the U.S. as irredeemably and systemically racist to its core.

This was the precursor of a cultural shift across mass media. Newsrooms and television studios gradually became infested by graduates of these institutions, today’s editors, producers and reporters who view journalism through an activist lens. As the Democrats moved further Left, the media went with them, no longer inspired by the objective nobility of their journalistic forefathers — Murrow, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, John Chancellor and Charles Kuralt, et al.

The election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 opened the floodgates of a newly emboldened state-run media, not beholden to scrutinizing the powerful but more prone than ever to fawning over Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America and enabling those in his orbit to increase their power.

The zenith of Obama’s iron boot control over a compliant and corrupt media came amid the 2012 election cycle during a debate between Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, aka, the Candy Crowley debate. The media had spent weeks running interference for the Obama-Hillary Clinton debacle in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, when four Americans died amid a terror attack on the U.S. embassy. During an October debate moderated by CNN’s Crowley, Romney seized on the Obama administration’s refusal to acknowledge the coordinated assault as an act of terror. Crowley jumped to Obama’s defense on live television. “(Obama) did call it an act of terror,” she said. (In reality, Obama and Clinton shamelessly blamed the attack on a viral internet video beyond their control).

That debate, artfully choreographed by CNN, enabled Obama to move the race from a dead heat to a decisive victory (332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206) despite his tepid approval rating (46%), high unemployment (8.3%) and growing contempt toward ObamaCare. Of course to have used these realities against Obama would have been dismissed as “racist”, which is what the Left often said about Limbaugh and his millions of loyal listeners.

It is sadly ironic that Limbaugh passed away just as alternative media was beginning to take root in the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 dismantling of Hillary Clinton’s coronation. Trump became the first president to recognize the utility of social media, going after his adversaries and corrupt media outlets with his so-called “mean tweets” using Twitter (before he was blackballed by the tech elites).

But this alternate media landscape was coming rapidly to the fore as critical thinkers (Conservatives) watched Trump Derangement Syndrome transform The Atlantic magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and, to a lesser degree, Fox News, into naked appendages of the Left. The corner was turned during pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and the ascension of Joe Biden to the White House by precise leveraging of COVID hysteria.

The mainstream media overlords were dismissive of Steve Bannon’s War Room, and the Joe Rogans, Dinesh D’Souzas, Charlie Kirks, Sebastian Gorkas and Dan Bonginos expanding audience across the live streaming spectrum. By the time Trump launched his bid for re-election, millions of MAGA faithful were tuning into Newsmax, the Real America’s Voice network, Rumble and, more recently, the Tucker Carlson Network, where the likes of Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat down for lengthy, granular interviews.

Trump’s campaign recognized the influence of alternative outlets, most notably Rogan’s vast audience. A three-hour interview with Rogan attracted a seismic 45 million views on You Tube, and 25 millions across Spotify and other platforms (The Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2024). Trump also did 90 minutes of live-streamed chat with a video gamer phenom named Adin Ross (at the behest of Trump’s teen son, Barron). Across all of 2024, Trump was a guest on 20 podcasts, the Journal reports. (Kamala Harris dodged Rogan altogether).

The net effect of this dramatic shift raises a question future Republican presidential candidates must ask: Why would I consent to a network controlled, prime time television debate with a Democrat ever again? Answer: You wouldn’t. You shouldn’t. Consider this stunning data point. The Journal, citing the Associated Press VoteCast survey, notes that Trump got the support of 56% of male voters ages 18 to 29. Where do these youngsters go for news and analysis? TikTok and podcasts. Period.

The TV networks are bleeding viewers and that erosion was bad news for the Harris-Biden bid for reelection. CNN’s prime time lineup does not even reach one million households (it has fallen to 792,000), and its viewers’ median age is 69. MSNBC’s 1.3 million prime time household audience has a median age of 70. These folks have likely never have heard of Rogan, Kirk and their media peers.

The Journal’s Kimberley Strassel observes that the media’s fierce defense of the Left backfired this time because “a narrative full of fantasy enabled Democrats to live in a world disconnected from the mood and worries of the country”, which were laser focused on the economy, illegal immigration and the absurdity of men competing in women’s sports.

In the aftermath of Trump’s resounding comeback win on November 5, there is something else to celebrate (and relish). Think about it. The smug network bastards who despise 80 million-plus Americans who voted for Trump/MAGA — Jake Tapper, Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, Anderson Cooper, Margaret Brennan and David Muir, along with many others — are hurtling toward complete irrelevance. It’s over.

Morrow foresaw this moment coming.

“This instrument (television) can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire,” he said in 1958. “But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box.”

Kill box

By Steve Woodward

“They put Trump in a kill box.”

Podcaster and investigative journalist Benny Johnson arrived at this grim conclusion after spending a day in Butler, Pennsylvania, with his production crew and two members of Congress, Eli Crane (R-AZ) and Cory Mills (R-FL), on the site of a July 13, 2024, campaign stop where an assassination attempt targeted President Donald Trump.

Rep. Cory Mills (left) joins Rep. Eli Crane on infamous Butler, PA, roof

Crane is a former Navy Seal sniper, who was deployed five times during a 13-year career. Mills is a retired member of the U.S. 82^nd Airborne Division and Joint Special Operations Command, who was wounded during a deployment to Iraq in 2006.

During an extensive visit to the open field in Butler on July 26, 2024, Johnson and his traveling companions captured drone video and climbed atop the roof of the now infamous building that was ignored by Secret Service ahead of and during Trump’s rally.

They also revealed how a chain-link fence on one side of the property separated the rally stage from an open space where many individuals gathered. This area was in closer proximity to the podium – about 80 yards — than the roof where Thomas Crooks fired eight shots from about 140 yards. No one behind the fenced area was subject to security screening. They were outside the perimeter established by Secret Service. Various television news reports capture these groups of people calling out to law enforcement after they spotted Crooks on the nearby roof. Their warnings were ignored.

“You’ve been lied to,” said Johnson at outset of his podcast, The Benny Show, which has 2.27 million YouTube subscribers and a total of eight million-plus subscribers across multiple podcast platforms. “The truth is so much worse than you could possibly imagine.”

If you want to understand the sheer incompetence and mysterious indifference exhibited by Secret Service agents and local law enforcement personnel assigned to the Butler rally, setting aside 90 minutes to watch the July 27 podcast is strongly recommended. Click here to watch. It’s riveting.

During Johnson’s daylong investigation he said they encountered no one representing the federal government, the Secret Service or any law enforcement agency. There was no police tape protecting any area or structure. “There wasn’t anybody trying to preserve the crime scene,” he said.

Johnson’s reporting delivers three dominant headlines.

First: The American Glass Research building, its easily accessible roof, and its proximity to the rally was deliberately ignored by security. After seeing it in person, Johnson could draw no other conclusion. Second: If a nearby water tower, the tallest structure for miles, had been manned by snipers Crooks never would have survived his arrival atop the AGR building. He would have been taken out immediately. But the tower also was ignored. Third: An opening along an unmonitored, unsecured fence could have been exploited by any person or group bearing explosives or weapons, which would have turned the rally into “a war zone”.

“It’s going to take me a long time to process what we just witnessed because what we just witnessed was, without any question in my mind, a deliberate attempt to ensure that something bad happens to President Trump,” Johnson said.

Upon returning to his Tampa studio from Butler, Johnson provides a detailed account of what they observed, and what additional information sources close to Crane, Mills and Johnson himself have provided. These are among the unavoidable conclusions that the corrupt corporate media are unlikely to report:

“(Crooks) tried to enter the Trump event — that’s brand-new information. He was turned away at security. Where are those security guards? Where’s their body cam? … He was flagged as behaving very suspiciously and was turned away. … Security had already rebuffed Thomas Crooks and said you will not enter and flagged him as suspicious. Why did they let him go? Why did nobody track him? Why was nobody looking at Thomas Crooks?”
The Secret Service assigned to Butler were denied requests for drones to surveil the rally grounds.
“Whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS, Department of Homeland Security, officials were not in fact Secret Service agents but instead drawn from the Department’s Homeland Security investigations unit. This is especially concerning given that the HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocol typically used in these types of events.”
A sniper team that was in (an adjacent building with a view of the AGR rooftop where Crooks took his position) was incapacitated. “One member was sent home. How that’s possible? … One guy gets locked out of the building (after he was) told to go investigate (Crooks’ whereabouts). He gets locked out and the other (remaining) sniper gets removed from his post and goes to check on his buddy locked out of the building. The result, no matter how it all happened, is that Thomas Crooks was able to get his shots off without any engagement.”

Butler water tower captured by Johnson drone

The most scandalous lapse of that ill-fated day (that resulted in the shooting death of Corey Comperatore, 50) was the absence of federal snipers atop a massive water tower. “The tower has a railing along the side (on top) that is perfect for a security detail. You could have put 10 men on this tower to have a virtually 360-degree perfect, eagle-eye view of everything at the event. Every single sniper location, every one, every single security position is made irrelevant by this tower since this tower is so much higher and is so much more protective of President Trump.”

“There were hundreds if not maybe thousands, in the aggregate, of individuals who were able to bring lawn chairs, who were able to bring roller bags, who were able to bring luggage, who were able to bring pelican cases, to bring tailgating equipment within 80 yards of President Trump (separated only by a chain-link fence).”
“What if just 10, 20, 40 (terrorists) were able to walk up to this fence line, and they had rocket propelled grenades in their little roller kits; they’re just walking in with a little cart. They just roll up with that cart. It’s filled with RPGs. It’s filled with firearms. It’s filled with, God forbid, who knows, and what if these people were tactical?”

Congressmen Crane and Mills have since appeared on various news outlets describing what they observed in Butler while accompanying Johnson’s crew. They are certain that the tragic moments that unfolded on July 13 are not to be written off as resulting from a comedy of errors.

On July 29, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced the formation of a 13-member task force to investigate the assassination attempt. One member, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), was in attendance during the rally and is familiar with local law enforcement personnel. Another, Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD), recently visited the scene in Butler.

Crane and Mills, despite their thorough investigation on site and extensive sources, were not named to the panel.