With inflation at gas pumps and supermarkets forcing Americans to pinch pennies, rising violent crime spreading fear and public schools pushing racial and sexual indoctrination, most voters say it’s time for a change in Washington.
The Democrats holding power have run out of excuses and even stopped making promises of quick progress. But they do have plans to entertain you in hopes you’ll forget your worries — and stick with the party that’s bringing you all those problems.
Lights, camera, propaganda!
That’s what they are offering, starting Thursday with a primetime House hearing on the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. It’s been more than 500 days since that awful event and while most people have moved on, Democrats refuse to.
And they’re going to make it hard for you to refuse to watch their performance because all their media handmaidens have signed on to provide live coverage.
Wall-to-wall means ABC, CBS, NBC and the cable friendlies will be showing the same thing at the same time. Given how openly the party is talking about the event as a key part of its survival strategy in the November elections, the TV coverage ought to be considered a campaign donation.
The one major exception is Fox News (where I am a contributor), which is sticking with its top-rated primetime lineup and showing the hearing on Fox Business.
Beyond the dated subject matter, there are other drawbacks to staging a primetime-palooza. Congressional hearings and most members of Congress are dull by definition, which is why the House has hired a former ABC-TV executive, James Goldston, to put some pizzazz into the production.
Unless he plans upbeat singing and dancing, Goldston faces a challenge because documents and testimony gathered at confidential hearings months ago don’t necessarily make for riveting viewing. Moreover, the meaning of incremental evidence might not be clear when edited to fit the agenda of showing a wide conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
Perhaps the solution is to label the Thursday show as “based on a true story” rather than claiming to be actually true. That would also be more accurate, given that viewers are only going to see and hear a version of events that fits a distinctly partisan narrative.
The scheme sounds hokey enough for high school, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi has never been more serious. The entire select committee probe has been an openly partisan exercise on the public dime since it began, with Pelosi blocking Republicans who objected to the fact that she started by putting a target on the entire GOP.
She promptly proved the critics right by removing the members whom Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy nominated and replaced them with Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, whose talking points sound more Democratic than those of most Democrats.
And Pelosi isn’t stopping at just one hearing. A total of six are scheduled for June, proving that T.S. Eliot was wrong when he wrote that “April is the cruelest month.”
The stakes include the fall election but don’t end there. Pelosi and her minions are squeezing Attorney General Merrick Garland for indictments not only of the actual rioters who entered the Capitol but also of members of then-President Donald Trump’s administration.
Naturally, media supplicants supplied the public pressure while it’s a sure thing Pelosi and the White House were twisting arms behind closed doors.
The pressure has been at least partially successful. Although Garland’s grand jury declined to indict former Trump aides Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino for contempt of Congress reportedly because they engaged in discussions and provided some documents, the Justice Department did indict their former colleague Peter Navarro, who ignored a subpoena and refused to cooperate at all with the House committee.
Navarro was arrested by the FBI Monday as he was about to board a domestic flight, handcuffed and taken to a federal lockup where he said he was put in leg irons and strip-searched while being treated “like an al Qaeda terrorist.”
Steve Bannon is the only other former Trump aide who has been criminally charged after he too ignored committee subpoenas for testimony and documents.
Still, the aides are merely steppingstones to Pelosi’s ultimate target. Twice she impeached Trump, and twice the Senate declined to convict him. She continues to want his head on a platter.
She can’t impeach him now, but dollars to donuts she’s aiming to get him charged with a crime for his actions before and during the events of Jan. 6. If he were convicted of a felony, Trump likely would be ineligible to hold elective office again, meaning he could not run for president in 2024.
Trump also refuses to supply documents, citing executive privilege, though that comes with a complicated legal issue because Joe Biden waived the privilege.
That move, as with many other aspects of the Pelosi probe, sets a dangerous precedent of weaponizing congressional power and that of the Justice Department for obvious political purposes.
But that’s par for the course of the entire Trump era. Starting with the FBI spying on his campaign during the Obama-Biden administration, the Deep State leaks that led to the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax after his election and the nonstop effort by congressional Dems to sabotage his presidency, one government institution after another has forfeited its credibility in a partisan feeding frenzy.
The media’s corrupt role in the whole takedown effort is why most Americans no longer trust much of what they see and read.
But forget all that. It’s showtime, and voters are invited to dance to a raft of conspiracy theories. And eat lots of cake, too.
Adams is ‘dead’ serious
The most important quote about the future of New York comes from Mayor Eric Adams. Speaking about the revolving-door justice system Albany and the courts have created, he said Monday: “No one takes criminal justice seriously anymore. These bad guys no longer take them seriously. They believe our criminal justice system is a laughingstock of our entire country.
“We have to get serious about this ’cause innocent people are dying.”
Touché.
Bossed & confused
Keith Linton reads a lot and is troubled by much of it, writing: “I read where Joe Biden is seething and reminded his staff that he is still the president. Then I read where his wife and sister are urging the White House staff to let him get back on the road.
“Neither of these sentences depict a president who is in charge. And I have never had my wife or sister intervene for me in my workplace.”
NY Times’ cop flip-flop
Reader Ray Starman succinctly sums up the changing attitude at the New York Times about police and crime, writing: “In other words, cops are no good until you need one.”
