Patriots – RESOLVE

Trump ascends

By Steve Woodward

There is a Santa Claus, after all. His name is Jack Smith. Rather than jolly, he is a petulant, tormented “special counsel” who was tasked with sending Donald Trump to prison for a long time. Smith, and his enabler, Attorney General Merrick Garland, had it all figured out. Almost. They missed one detail. They never imagined Trump’s resurgence as a presidential candidate in 2024. They never thought he would win. Again.

Framing the Thanksgiving season as the start of the most wonderful time of the year is, suddenly, more than just a recitation of an old lyric. Smith has made it so by dropping, suddenly, baseless criminal cases against Trump. The highest profile was a four-count case purporting that Trump and his allies sought to “overturn” the 2020 presidential election results. An even more flimsy case also was halted — the one alleging Trump improperly retained classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago residence (though he had every right to possess them).

Smith was unapologetic even as his pirate ship sunk into the murky waters of irrelevance. “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant,” Smith insisted in a statement after the November 25, 2024, announcement. He would have us believe that Trump was doomed if not for those pesky elections results earlier this month.

This, of course, ignores more significant defeats Smith absorbed at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court throughout the arduous process. A July 1 SCOTUS ruling was the kill shot. “The court issued its landmark opinion in Trump v. U.S., which gutted the J6 case by concluding most of the conduct cited in the indictment represented official acts protected by presidential immunity,” writes independent reporter Julie Kelly.

“Even if Trump had lost the election,” Kelly continues, “the J6 indictment would not have survived another immunity test before the Supreme Court.”

If Smith is Santa, assign head elf status to New York Judge Juan Marchan, who recently delayed indefinitely the sentencing of Trump in connection with 34 so-called felony convictions Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg manufactured last summer. Like Smith, Marchan faced the reality that the persistent “lawfare” gig is up. It’s over, folks. Trump dodged a real bullet and now has been spared this unprecedented judicial firing squad.

Our American legal system is not as fungible as those who sought to exploit it had presumed. This year we can ignore seasonal advertising campaigns to ignite our Christmas “spirit”. Instead, in this historic season, we can embrace something much more inspiring than a TV ad showcasing a Mercedes-Benz topped by a giant red bow covered by fake snow.

Look no further than the pollsters. They have pivoted from swing state prognostication on Trump vs. Harris to polls seeking to gauge the “national mood”. Even some Democrats are feeling giddy, and admitting it.

A recent CBS News/YouGov poll (November 19-22, 2024) instructs us that more than half of Americans (55%) feel happy or satisfied about Trump’s win. Even more revealing is this: Among Democrats surveyed in the same poll, 56% said they are motivated to support Trump or, at least, are not motivated either way (to support or oppose his policies). What is left unsaid is the likely conclusion that these Americans can’t imagine Trump will not deliver measurable improvements easily surpassing the Biden-Harris dumpster fire.

YouGov conducted a separate poll (November 17-19), through which we have learned that 57 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 hold a favorable view of Trump. That is staggering optimism coming from a bracket of young people who have been educated to regret their nation’s founding and condemn its inherent racism and inequality. In fact, the further we are removed from Election Day’s verdict, the more that palpable optimism is building among the youngsters. Trump’s favorability increased by 19 points compared to YouGov’s poll posing the same question between November 9 and 12.

I encountered a young man who is part of the 18-29 demographic after he arrived in Pinehurst for Thanksgiving week. He attends an elite East Coast university where woke anti-semites have protested to demand a “free Palestine”. But none of that was on his mind when our paths crossed.

Without prompting this came out: “I’m so happy that we have a new president,” he said.

So much for college kids being swept up by a Harris-Walz wave of joy. It’s beautiful to behold. College students rejected them. Black men abandoned them. Hispanic voters will be taken for granted by Democrats no longer. Consider that in 2020 about one-third of Hispanic Catholics voted for Trump. He saw their support surge to 53% in this election, according to CNN exit polling.

A concerted effort by Ralph Reed and his Faith and Freedom Coalition to inspire Christian voters to cast ballots for Trump — a new survey released earlier this year revealed that 51% of “people of faith” planned to sit out the election (decline to vote) — delivered results, too.

From ReligiousNews.com: Exit poll data from CNN and other news outlets found that 72% of white Protestants and 61% of white Catholics said they voted for Trump. Among white voters, 81% of those identified as born-again or evangelical supported Trump, up from 76% in 2020.

While cable TV’s arrogant chattering class panics, as its ratings and relevance plunge toward an abyss, cultural commentator Bill Maher suggests acknowledging that the American people brutally rejected the narrative that MSNBC and CNN have repeated, first to protect a mentally declining Joe Biden, and ultimately to help people decipher Harris-Walz “messaging”.

“(Trump) is not who I would choose to administer the colonic, but it’s not like the bureaucracy isn’t bloated,” Maher said. “It’s not like the debt isn’t $36 trillion. It’s not like there aren’t thousands of regulations that do stop people from living lives that they could live better and don’t do anything. There is woke in the military. Whatever they’re going after … I’m not going to pre-hate anything.”

The pre-hating of Trump’s cabinet appointees already is under way. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, as it turns out, was pre-hated by Republicans who remain deeply skeptical of the MAGA movement (at their peril) even more than the media knives that were out for Gaetz. Don’t be surprised if the next act in this saga is a Gaetz boomerang that destroys these Swamp creatures, including South Dakota Sen. John Thune — the new Republican majority leader — who was fine with Merrick Garland for AG in 2021 but would not stomach Gaetz. (Thune has an ally, North Carolina RINO Sen. Thom Tillis).

Eventually, Trump will have his cabinet of disrupters and change agents, and the Leviathan will be tamed. The ascension of MAGA will not be deterred as it was during the first Trump administration. But even more glorious to behold will be the comeuppance imposed on the Jack Smiths, the Braggs, the Merchans, and the frothing D.C. judges who have maniacally jailed American citizens who entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to defend what our founders and American soldiers died for.

As legal scholar Mike Davis observes, the Conspiracy Against Rights clause of the federal code can (must) be used to charge these judges with felonies for violating the Constitutional rights of Americans.

“These judges are culpable,” Davis said during a November 25, 2024, appear on Steve Bannon’s War Room program.

If there is a thread of justice left in this world, these January 6 judges soon will occupy the same cells vacated after Trump pardons the patriots who sat in them and were vilified because they refused to back down in the face of a massive fraud plot in 2020. They arrived at the U.S. Capitol with a viable request: Delay certification and audit the small number of states in which massive shifts in vote totals occurred between the evening of November 3, 2020, and the following morning after which, in the case of Pennsylvania, poll workers were sent home in large numbers.

Meanwhile, the snowflakes at The Atlantic are melting down and turning on their own, placing blame for Jack Smith’s demise on AG Garland, owed to his habit of being “obsessive about proceduralism” (following the rules) because this “attention to detail meant the system failed to do the basic work of holding (Trump) accountable (for) … serious crimes.”

But what the fierce defenders of Trump Derangement Syndrome never will understand is that the 2024 election outcome never was about these sham lawsuits and court cases. They occupy a smoldering pile of discarded ploys and narratives also littered by masks, social distancing and needles that dispensed dangerous mRNA serums.

Playwright David Mamet seizes on why voters rejected all of it and embraced Trump’s MAGA revolution. He expresses it beautifully.

“The horror of the past four years—the appeasement of terror, the slavish support of our enemies, the abandonment of the state of Israel, the assaults on free speech—seemed to me the descent into chaos which has been the end of every world power,” Mamet wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“Rome, Greece, Nineveh and Tyre, Babylon, Nazi Germany—all were eventually returned to dust. … The Old Testament is a record of decline of those civilizations which fall away from God; and promises that a return to his precepts will restore his grace. We know that one day America, as all things, will go one with Nineveh and Tyre. But not today.”

Not in our time. America’s comeback begins now. See ya, Kamala. Good luck, Jack Smith.

Collateral damage

By Steve Woodward

In the aftermath of a glaring security failure that allowed a deranged man-child to aim his rifle and fire multiple rounds at President Donald Trump, wise media overlords are warning that we must strive for national unity. This is a vile diversionary tactic intended to spin a narrative that every American is equally to blame for the so-called polarization that defines our times.

Instead, it must be loudly vocalized that what we observed on July 13, 2024, in rural Pennsylvania was a perfect storm of a vast mentally ill sector of our population converging with the relentless weaponization of corporate media, social media and our legal system.

The latter has been taking aim at Trump and his 75-million-plus legion for eight tumultuous years by trivializing physical threats against Trump or, worse, ignoring them.

But we’re once again called upon to unite, and lower the “temperature” of political discourse. It’s a sophomoric, hollow ploy to provide cover to the Biden regime’s army of surrogates in the White House, on Capitol Hill and within the corrupt, decaying journalism profession, all solely responsible for stoking smoldering embers of wrath.

“(Trump’s) opportunity now is to present himself as someone who can rise above the attack on his life and unite the country,” instructs a Wall Street Journal editorial.

It is “on all Republicans, all Democrats to come together, to lower the temperature (and) to measure the rhetoric,” said U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) during a television interview. Republicans? Are Republicans the ones drawing frequent comparisons between and Adolf Hitler and Trump? Are Republicans cheering on deeply corrupt attorneys general intent on imprisoning Trump?

The blue ribbon for post-Pennsylvania sermonizing goes to the Journal’s Gerard Baker, who wrote: “If there is room for emotional restraint in the aftermath of this horror, there is also reason to hope for a small movement toward de-escalating the mutual loathing to which so many Americans have fallen prey.”

Let us unpack the absurdity of Baker’s bloviation: Conservatives, many guided by Judeo-Christian principles, loathe hypocrisy, deceit and threats to our inalienable rights and freedom. Conservatives have not called for the execution of Joe Biden, however.

By contrast, the Left hates us. As people. You. Me. Our very existence. There is no pleasure to be gained from knowing this, but there is no escaping the reality that it is so. If we are collateral damage in their war on American exceptionalism it’s our fault. We keep getting in the way. Military veteran Ashli Babbitt got in the way of a bullet on January 6, 2021, the day she died in the U.S. Capitol, an unarmed protestor. What explains a Capitol Police officer’s impulsive firing of a pistol that took her life? Rage? Contempt? The question never was formally asked. Lt. Michael Byrd was not charged.

The Left coldly refuses to contemplate the collateral damage trailing in its relentless wake. Consider the the human toll during nearly a decade of Trump Delusion Syndrome. Lives lost. Jobs lost. Careers destroyed. Businesses closed or vandalized by BLM brigades. Kids trafficked.

Something resonated with the Pennsylvania shooter. How can we not conclude that this mentally damaged person believed his cause was just? He believed that Trump needed to die. What triggered that belief and his act of terror might never be known. Take your choice on what influenced him. Trump is 21st century Hitler. Trump is an existential threat to “democracy”. Trump’s supporters are racist, sexist, transphobic. These narratives have bubbled like a toxic brew for years. Suck the hope out of human souls for long enough and some of them will snap.

The collateral damage in Butler, PA, was a firefighter, 50, attending Trump’s rally, Corey Comperatore. He is deceased. He took bullets to save his wife and daughter. David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74, remain hospitalized and critically wounded by the gunman’s erratic shots.

These names are added to the rolls of lives ended, or upended, by the a weaponized federal government during the Trump presidency, and by the current Biden regime. Many of these shortened lives include growing numbers of victims of murderous illegal aliens swarming our homeland, aided and abetted by Team Biden’s open border betrayal.

Recent victims of immigrant misconduct are Lisbeth Gutierrez-Salazar and her two sons, Juan Gutierrez-Salazar, 10, and Julian Cardona-Gutierrez, 7 (photos nearby), who died in an arson fire set in Stockton, CA, by three-time deportee Jose Carmen Cardona. Joining the list of needlessly deceased: Kristie Thibodeaux, 43, of New Orleans, fatally shot by three illegals, including Joshua Bonifacio-Avila, 19, a Honduran citizen who illegally entered the U.S. on an unknown date at an unknown location. Authorities say he was arrested for theft and released on two previous occasions. In New Mexico, Tiger Gutierrez, 22, was killed by a drunk hit-and-run driver on July 1, 2024. Mexican national invader Jesus Sandoval-Martinez, 21, is charged with vehicular homicide.

These incidents are just a few of many happening almost everyday across the homeland. And this is only one category of Biden-era carnage.

After then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s self-acknowledged refusal to bring in 10,000 National Guard troops to the U.S. Capitol ahead of an openly scheduled January 6, 2021, rally, Capitol security is seen welcoming citizens through the doors (contrasted by smaller pockets of more aggressive protestors). Rather than take responsibility for encouraging crowds to surge in, Pelosi and fellow Democrats doubled down. More than 460 January 6 patriots have been or are imprisoned. More than 1,260 have been charged with offenses. Matthew Perna, 37, one of those charged, committed suicide more than one year later as the feds prolonged an investigation without explanation.

Capitol police officers were not unscathed by the orchestrated free-for-all. At least two committed suicide in the aftermath

Trump surrogates have suffered greatly amid perpetual law-fare waged by the Left. Gen. Michael Flynn. Roger Stone. George Papadopoulos (the alleged Russian collusion agent). Peter Navarro (who will complete a four-month federal prison sentence on July 17, 2024). Steven Bannon (who reported to federal prison to begin a four-month sentence on July 1). Navarro and Bannon refused to testify before a sham House panel “investigating” January 6.

Finally, let us not diminish victims of Left-imposed pandemic hysteria, lockdowns and forced injections. Thousands were fired or suspended from jobs. Military service members were demonized and stripped of pensions for refusing the mRNA jabs. Teen suicide was rampant. But once the Left recognized that compliance was widespread, and that a virus during an election year worked to its advantage, there would be no further introspection, no reassessment. No regrets, certainly.

Former Centers for Disease Control chief Dr. Robert Redfield testified on July 11 to what many Americans knew instinctively three-plus years ago when he observed, “They never should have been mandated. It should have been open to personal choice. (mRNA jabs) don’t prevent infection; they do have side effects.”

The overlords are begging us to embrace a side effect of the bloodied side of Trump’s head. Unite, they say.

But Trump had it right as he rose, defiant, from the stage. Fight.

20 + 1

By Steve Woodward

Although far too many Americans know nothing about our nation’s history, we would not have one — a nation or a history — were it not for a determined collection of men, who might in another era have been celebrated for their intellect but were, because of the time in which they lived, best known for their courage.

The Founding Fathers. I suppose, today, we might encounter more than a few in academia who dismiss these men as racist white supremacists. They were indeed supreme. They envisioned a nation born of independence from tyranny — an idea that in that day was seen as ludicrous.

Here we are in 2023. History is repeating. Twenty members of the U.S. House of Representatives gathered their ranks, stood in the breech and, in the spirit of our founders, said, HELL NO!

It has been hilarious to watch cable TV morons calling out the “chaos” being imposed on our government because 20 Americans, duly elected, decided to crush the status quo. Who elected them? Why were they elected? To carry out the will of citizens across the land who have no voice.

The 15 rounds of voting that resulted in Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becoming Speaker of the House were not a side show, were not disruptive, were not scandalous. The Declaration of Independence was not etched with a rubber stamp. It was fought for by wise individuals who knew how to deliberate.

The “20” have restored the fight inside the corridors of power and in doing so honor our Founders. Among them was North Carolina’s Dan Bishop, who represented Moore County during his just concluded term and was elected to represent a different district (NC-08) in November.

During 11 rounds of voting for Speaker, Bishop stood firm against McCarthy. On January 5, Bishop (photo nearby) nominated young up-and-comer Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL). After “the 20” squeezed McCarthy’s camp on concession after concession to empower conservatives on key House committees, Bishop relented on the 12th vote and swung to McCarthy — but not without having the last word.

“Let me help my colleagues in the minority understand, we are doing the peoples’ business,” Bishop said. “We are committed to (bring) change to this institution that has lost its way. It is epitomized in the $1.7 trillion omnibus rammed through this institution just two weeks ago. Ladies and gentlemen, I came to fix this broken system.”

Challenges to McCarthy led by Reps. Lauren Boebert (CO), Matt Gaetz (FL) and Chip Roy (TX), among others, were not personal in nature. They were designed to restore order to the governing process and end the operation of the House as a “fiefdom”, as observed by Real America’s Voice contributor Frank Gaffney.

To prove that he is serious and was not merely caving under the intense scrutiny imposed by Freedom Caucus zealots (which are needed in greater supply), McCarthy now must shepherd through an extensive “rules package” that he agreed to to preserve his ambitions to be Speaker. These are not ground breaking new rules that will remake the House but are, in fact, a return to fundamental tenets of governance. In other words, a complete denunciation of Pelosi-era iron fist rule.

Accepting his ascendency to Speaker in the wee hours of January 7, McCarthy revealed that there was a 21st individual who helped sway the outcome. He also is known as 45. President Donald Trump. McCarthy said Trump influenced a scenario in which five others joined Florida’s Gaetz in voting “present” on the 15th vote for Speaker, which lowered the number of votes McCarthy needed to prevail.

McCarthy praised Trump for being “with me from the beginning.” On that point the Speaker missed the point. It is more plausible to assume that Trump’s artful dealing behind the scenes intended to defang McCarthy and impose rules on House conduct that will contain impulses among uni-party Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) to betray conservatism.

Seems that rumors of MAGA’s death were greatly exaggerated.

Two years later

By Steve Woodward

While generally skeptical about so-called resolutions prompted by one month bleeding into another, I nonetheless resolve to torment hypocrites and Marxists (Democrats) as never before in 2023.

What other choice do we have? Anthony Fauci is retiring but his legacy — gain-of-function, fear, masking, boosters — is not going away. In fact, it is going to places heretofore uncontemplated. Vaccinated sheep (citizens) we are told now are more vulnerable to upcoming “variants” of the Wuhan virus. And pay no attention to vaccinated healthy young adults becoming ill or dying “suddenly”.

The blank canvas that is 2023 should not be frittered away at the hands of status quo Republicans. The battle in the U.S. House of Representatives to name its speaker reinforces a pressing need to deflect establishment forces. Our Founding Fathers did not create their framework to limit conflict within a party; they envisioned a battlefield upon which bold ideas and deep passion would overwhelm hypocrisy and political fraudsters.

Were we to summon a fraction of the determination that drove the Founders just think what we might accomplish. Locally, we would create a coalition to insure that a drag show never would darken our community again. We would direct our school board to eradicate gender grooming and race theory from public education. And we would challenge our county commissioners to marginalize the county board of health — over which it presides — so that it never again intrudes on public education by recommending school closures, masking and subjecting children to experimental mRNA injections.

But we also must stand resolute against purveyors of revisionist history as we approach the second anniversary of the unity rally of January 6 in Washington, where your correspondent traveled to chronicle what would unfold. We know many brothers and sisters who came and went without so much as raising their voices an octave, while raising objections that D.C. government chose to limit rest facilities apparently in an effort to disperse the “mobs” of seniors, families and young Republicans. The choice was clear: urination or defend the nation.

Apart from the planted, scripted disrupters who raged into the Capital two years ago, those who merely showed up are now, two years on, still sobered by what our nation looked like after the crowds went home and the Biden Administration ascended. Where we are in 2023 affirms that our motivation to assemble in Washington on that fateful January day in 2021 was prescient.

To the extent that a few hundred people swelled into the Capitol we now see how that modest demonstration pales in comparison to the trampling and burning down of societal norms in the aftermath. We might ask, where was the outrage on that January afternoon amid news that the lone fatality was an unarmed military veteran (Ashli Babbitt) who was gunned down in cold blood by a Capitol police officer? Why does January 6 merit a “commission”? Where are the commissions denouncing violence on America’s streets that, by comparison, make that citizens’ rally look like a county fair? Innocents who participated that day still rot in D.C. jail cells charged with taking selfies. But who was doing the plundering of our democracy in reality? Facebook and Twitter, of course. When will those digital accomplices be shackled and sent away?

Two years on, the Left is waging its own insurrection. Look no further than an essay I endured in a recent, Dec. 31-Jan. 1 weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal. It is worth noting that, in order to fill up the sections in weekend Journals, editors give voice to authors who would prefer to be published in The New York Times. The Journal helps them audition.

Zachary Karabell, who is the founder of the ominously named Progress Network, wrote to praise 2022 as as year in which “far more went right … than most of us recognize”. One can only imagine from which penthouse or city brownstone the author was perched as he typed fervently to remind us that 2022 was the year “climate technology was supercharged” by $400 billion allocated through Biden’s absurd Inflation Reduction Act. (In China, the equivalent would be the Oppression Reduction Edict).

Mr. Karabell is positively giddy in reminding readers that voter suppression laws failed (but misses the point that no such laws existed). Without a hint of irony, he claims “voters surged to the polls in (2022) despite fears (expressed only by left wing media) that laws passed in states such as Georgia and Texas would lead to voter suppression.”

The illogical Mr. Karabell goes on in his rambling essay to praise wage gains for citizens he disparages as “workers” — up by 6% in 2022 — “that did not (emphasis added) for most of the year keep pace with inflation.” Not to worry, he writes, “inflation moderates”. Just as urban crime waves sweeping our nation moderate. Some nights are less deadly than others.

2022 was a train wreck but, apparently, Mr. Karabell blissfully travelled on a parallel track.

The reliably moderate Gerard Baker, in his weekly Journal column, tried to ease into a new year by calling for an ideological truce. “Can we start to work to eradicate the binary mind-set that has seized our thinking about the kind of society and world we think we should live in?” Baker asks.

He answers his own question near the end of the column — as if the more he kept typing the more he was talking himself out of the premise. (As editor emeritus, Baker should impulsively have send the column back for a re-write).

Baker continues: herein is “the great conundrum for the more skeptical among us: Advances in the lot of humanity have rarely come from calls for moderation and humility, but from true believers — zealots who convinced enough people that the choice they faced really was a binary one between good and evil.”

Citizens who endure wages ravaged by bad economic policy, and law and order dysfunction driven by the “woke”, deserve our fierce defense of their liberties, no matter the cost.

If parents with children in government run indoctrination centers (schools) must become zealots to reform the system, let them do so boldly. If mechanical ballot tabulation presents a binary choice between integrity and fraud, we must go full binary to expose the Left. If U.S. border security is de-emphasized even as Ukrainian border security is funded by an American Congress to the tune of $100 billion; if medical tyranny advanced by thinly veiled lies threatens livelihoods, mental health and the well being of healthy young adults; if we observe the normalization of transgenderism and the rejection of Judeo-Christian values in our communities; if the very foundation of American exceptionalism is crumbling under the iron boot of the Left’s Great Reset in pursuit of a one-world order; well, then what?

With grudging apologies to Mr. Baker, the task is not to eradicate a mind-set. The task is to eradicate enemies within.

Matt Hintz

By Steve Woodward

Matthew Hintz appeared within the ranks of the Moore County Republican Party almost out of thin air, and during the past roughly two years he inspired many of us through his passion and deeply rooted convictions. Often, his passion was mistaken for rage but his friends knew better. Many most likely found their passions wanting by contrast.

Matt rejoiced in his children and his marriage. When he came to realize that local public education was fraught with peril for young minds, he and Melissa chose to home-school their two boys of school age. He was deeply engaged in their homeschooling activities before earlier this year sending them off to a Christian school.

We worked together on a team that organized the Moore County School Choice Expo last May. By all accounts it was a resounding success, attracting both private and charter schooling advocates, and a steady stream of visitors from the community.

I will certainly miss Matt’s warmth and thoughtfulness. He was indeed a kind soul with a sharp wit and an unassuming presence though his intellect was substantial. In the face of hypocrisy and deceit, Matt was the first to stand up and speak up.

When Matt recognized that thousands of retired military veterans in our midst are unregistered voters, he wrote a powerful radio ad calling on them to fulfill a solemn duty and honor their oaths by voting.

Matt entered God’s eternal kingdom on November 23. We no longer can hear his voice, but let us vow to be his voice.

This broken world too often turns its back on the very individuals best equipped to heal it. Thus, how can we mourn too long when they leave us in search of peace? I pray that Matt is now immersed in peace.