Election Uncensored

Here’s where we left you Monday…

Stocks were experiencing a face-melting slide during pre-market hours.

The round numbers?

DJIA down 1,000 points. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 down 5% and 4% respectively.

At which point, we planted a flag: The Fed should make an emergency rate cut of 50 bps. Now.

We weren’t alone…

Moments after we published, Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel put the Fed on blast, calling for an emergency rate cut of 75 bps.

We find the Fed has only done something similar — made an unscheduled rate cut — about a dozen times in its 110-year history.

Including: October 1987… October 1998… 2001… 2007-2008… and March 2020.

If you’re keeping score, the Fed made surprise cuts, usually to the tune of 50 bps, (1) to short circuit inflation/hyperinflation or (2) in response to Black Swan events, including 9/11 and a global pandemic.

(But, let’s be real, these emergency cuts mainly backstop the stock market.)

This morning, the likelihood of an emergency rate cut is much lower than it was Monday.

But we’re not taking it off the table either…

As Paradigm’s macro expert Jim Rickards said in May:

“If the Fed cuts rates,” — before achieving its 2% inflation target — “it’ll be for very bad reasons. It’ll be because we’re in a recession that’s undeniable, that’s getting more severe, that’s going to take the stock market down.”

It’s that “r” word — recession — that’s top of mind for investors today.

And voters…

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Your Rundown for Wednesday, August 7, 2024...

If We Have a Recession, the Election Won’t Be Close...

Other than Main Street investors hoping to retire someday, the person with the most to lose Monday was… Kamala Harris.

What James Carville told Bill Clinton in 1992 holds true today: It’s the economy, stupid.

When the specter of a recession looms large, voters generally run for the exits, far away from the incumbent party.

Nonetheless, Vice President Harris maintains: “Bidenomics is working.”

One simple question, however, obliterates that myth.

“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Reagan asked voters in 1980.

Today, the answer is clearly no…

That’s a snapshot of how everyday Americans perceive their personal economies — having to put food on the table, a roof over their heads, gas in the tank.

“Whatever stories Americans are told about the strength of the economy under President Joe Biden,” says economist James Galbraith…

… they are not going to be persuaded to look past the issue of their own living standards.

Word.

As the dream of the Fed engineering a “soft landing” for the U.S. economy disappears…

So too do Kamala Harris’ presidential prospects.

And her choice of a running mate yesterday might have sealed her fate.

We’ll leave it there for now, reader. But check back Friday for more on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Market Rundown for Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024

S&P 500 futures up 1.10% to 5,325.

Oil futures are up 2.40% to $74.95 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold futures are up 0.35% to $2,440.90 per ounce.

Bitcoin is up 0.60% to $57,100.

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Happy Monday! And welcome to the first installment of our supercharged election-centered content.

I had another issue in the can today…. But sometimes life comes at you fast.

If you haven’t checked out your mainstream financial news feed this morning, there’s one story that’s creeping to the forefront.

Dow futures are down 1,000. The tech-heavy Nasdaq has lost 5%.

And?

In futures trading this morning, the S&P 500’s down over 4%.

Obviously, the market’s responding to an economic picture that’s looking pretty grim right now…

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Your Rundown for Monday, August 5, 2024...

Rate Cut Coming… Right?

On Friday, the July job numbers revealed that unemployment has ticked up steadily for four months in a row — now at its highest level in three years.

Manufacturing just tanked to its lowest point since late last year.

And the VIX, Wall Street's go-to gauge for measuring expected market turbulence, just shot up to levels we haven't seen since October 2020.

For the past couple of years — interestingly — such negative economic news often had a positive effect on the market.

That’s because it increased the likelihood of the Fed cutting rates.

Now, with a September rate cut widely expected, that narrative has flipped.

So bad economic news is back to being, well, bad.

All that to say…

The Fed's way behind the curve.

We're careening towards a recession.

And that September 25 bps rate cut is too little, too late.

We’re sticking our necks out this morning: The Fed will make an emergency intermeeting rate cut of half a point, 50 bps.

There’s one precedent we could find: Going back to March 2020, during the early days of the Coronavirus.

That was the Fed’s signature move at the time; we expect nothing less today.

And we’ll likely then get a huge rally… but what comes after that?

Stay tuned… more on Wednesday… and once again, welcome to Election Insider!

Market Rundown for Monday, Aug. 5, 2024

S&P futures are down 4.30% to 5,135.

Oil futures — down 2% to $72.07 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold futures are down 2.40% to $2,410 per ounce.

Holy cow! Bitcoin is down 14% to $50K.

Send your comments and questions to, feedback@newsyoucanacton.com

That’s the question investors should be asking about Kamala Harris in her role as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. That’s not my forecast; I still have Trump in the lead. But the race is closer and it would be a huge mistake for investors or Republican campaign officials to count Kamala out. In this edition of Situation Report, we look at the Kamala Harris candidacy in the cold light of the post-Biden environment.

Prior to the bloodless coup d’etat of July 19-21 when Joe Biden was forced out of his race for the Democratic nomination for president by a cabal led by Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, Biden was on track to lose the election. Trump had significant leads in every battleground state (AZ, GA, PA, NC, MI, WI and NV), but had also expanded the battlegrounds to include Minnesota, Virginia, New Hampshire and New Mexico where Biden’s lead was down to low single digits or, in the case of Virginia, even tied. Trump was well on his way to an Electoral College landslide of perhaps 330 to 208, among the biggest in U.S. history.

The Real Kamala

We don’t yet have reliable polls on where things stand in a two-way race between Trump and Harris; they’ll be arriving in stages over the coming weeks. But we know enough to say that the race has tightened in some of the swing states especially Virginia, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Trump still has a clear path to victory, but he’ll have to work harder to keep that path open.

Meanwhile, the canonization of Kamala Harris by mainstream media and the collateral gaslighting of the American people has begun in earnest. She was a failed Border Czar, but now the media pretend that never happened and she was just some kind of goodwill ambassador to Guatemala. Whatever. This is the Orwellian approach of sending bad news down the memory hole and pretending it never happened. Fortunately, in a world of ubiquitous social media, that’s harder to do than it used to be. We don’t need the media to tell us who Kamala is and what she would do. We know already.

She’s an empty pantsuit with a low IQ and a weird ability to give long explanations that make absolutely no sense punctuated by cackles. It’s fair to say that the cackling is just a nervous tick and her way of dealing with difficult questions and situations she is ill-prepared to handle. At some level, she knows her own shortcomings. The effort to keep up the façade gets to be a full-time job with the cackle as a side effect.

Harris also has an abysmal reputation as a manager and boss. Of the 71 original staffers who worked for her in the White House, only four remain. The rest all quit or were fired, usually after screaming matches where Harris insulted, demeaned and degraded the staffers in front of others. In one infamous incident, outside the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room she yelled “Anyone who’s staff, get the f**k out of here!” That’s the real Kamala.

As for foreign policy chops, she doesn’t have any. She has gone on a number of junkets to Europe, Asia and Africa but left no impressions. There are no policy initiatives or aid programs that were originated by her. She forged no strong relationships with any foreign leaders. She mostly lectured people with canned lines and cliches.

In one of her most famous public statements, she described the origins of the War in Ukraine (which goes back to at least 2008, perhaps further) in the following terms:

“Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine, so, basically, that’s wrong.”

This is third-grade level geopolitics. Don’t expect any improvement if she is president.

What Investors Need to Know

A Harris victory means more of the same with even worse execution. She's an Obama puppet. Even though Biden and Harris can't stand each other, they both carry the Obama baton. What that means is more government dysfunction. It means more of the Green New Scam including attacks on big oil and gas and a hold on new leases for drilling on federal lands.

It means a wider war in Ukraine with more dead Ukrainians and a risk of escalation to a nuclear war. It means higher taxes on the middle-class and more regulation or small and start-up businesses. It also means slower economic growth, not by design but as a result of excessive government debt relative to GDP.

Get ready for new wars and expanded weaponization of the Department of Justice, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security. You’ll have continued open borders resulting in lower wages for all Americans. The uncontrolled influx of illegals means widespread diseases like whooping cough and tuberculosis from the unvaccinated aliens. More government censorship with the White House working hand-in-hand with Google and Meta will be the norm.

This list goes on, but no guesswork is required. This will be Bidenomics and neo-fascism on steroids. Investment winners are Big Tech, Big Pharma, China and the Green New Scammers. Investment losers are oil and natural gas, defense and mining. Unfortunately, none of this can be ruled out. Trump is still ahead (for now) but progress by Harris seems likely.

One game changer could be a debate in September. The July debate was the Waterloo for Biden and a September debate could be the same for Kamala. She won’t be able to use a teleprompter or pre-prepared notes on stage. That means she’ll have to think on her feet, something she’s notoriously unable to do. Let’s hope so, because an actual Harris presidency is far scarier than any imaginary threats the Democrats are trying to conjure up about Trump.

The world may have been surprised by Biden’s decision yesterday to drop out of the race for the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States. But there’s one group who were not surprised – the readers of Strategic Intelligence. Here’s what we wrote in our October 2023 issue almost ten months ago:

“Meanwhile, the Democrats can't wait to get rid of Biden. They're preparing to tell him he has to step down or at least announce he's not running. This will clear the way for Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Jay Pritzker or one of the other pretenders. … DNC rules may have to be heavily revised since it is likely that Biden will control a large share of the delegates if this substitution process occurs late in the primary season. There may be other elements in the bargain, including an agreed pardon for the Biden family by Harris (similar to the Ford-Nixon pardon). At the end of an ugly process, the Democrats will have what they believe is a viable candidate to face off against the Republican nominee.”

There you have it. And here we are. In just over three weeks, we’ve gone through one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. political history. Beginning on June 27 with Biden’s face plant debate performance, continuing through the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, then the nomination of Donald Trump and selection of JD Vance as his VP candidate on July 18, and now the Biden announcement on July 21 that he’s not seeking the nomination.

What Comes Next?

No incumbent president has ever dropped out of a presidential election campaign this close to Election Day – just 106 days from now. We can hypothesize, but no one really knows what will happen next, including the leaders of the Democratic Party.

That’s more than most voters can digest in an entire campaign cycle, let alone in a matter of weeks. And it’s not over. Biden’s endorsement of Kamala Harris as the Democrat nominee for president does not resolve the issue of whom the nominee will actually be. We’re in for at least another month of political chaos, maybe more. Put your crash helmets on.

There’s more that we don’t know than we know of what comes next. That’s OK. It’s not too soon to pose the key questions, frame possible outcomes, and use our proprietary predictive analytic techniques to estimate the path ahead while being ready to pivot as and when key new facts emerge.

Biden’s announcement came Sunday afternoon in a letter released on social media. The letter was not even on White House stationery; it was on Joe’s personal letterhead. What an insult to the American people. Could he not come out and give an Oval Office address explaining his reasons for this decision? In 1968, when Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the nomination race after the primaries had begun, LBJ gave a 4,000-word address to the American people on live TV. That’s class. Biden stuck with his low-class style to the end.

By the way, who said Biden actually wrote the letter? It’s almost certain he did not. But did he read it or understand it before it was sent? We don’t have to be conspiracy theorists to ask simple questions about the origins of the letter and the process of releasing it. Are we witnessing a bloodless coup d’état in America? I’ve seen the CIA push foreign leaders under the bus for decades. Have they finally turned their techniques to getting rid of a U.S. president?

A Process, Not A Coronation

Biden promptly endorsed Kamala Harris as his preferred candidate for the presidential nomination of the Democrat party. So what? We don’t live in a hereditary monarchy. Harris should go through a process to secure the nomination. What’s the process? Various ideas have been floated including “mini primaries” in the next few weeks to get Kamala the delegates she needs. What if the delegates don’t play along?

Harris has a favorability rating of only 29% in a recent CNN poll. That’s lower than Joe Biden himself! Even Joe gets 39% in favorability ratings. Harris failed miserably as the “Border Czar” with a mission to control illegal immigration. Instead, she went to Guatemala and babbled about “root causes” before washing her hands of the whole thing. The catastrophic results are all around us.

Harris cannot speak extemporaneously, a key skill for debaters and candidates. She resorts to third-grade baby talk about “big yellow school buses” and “the big moon up in the sky.” She laughs in a high-pitched tone at inappropriate times, no doubt a nervous tick to cover for the fact that she can’t think on her feet. Biden may be demented, but Harris is a dunce. The Democrats will have as much difficulty covering up her low IQ as they did covering up Biden’s dementia.

Interestingly, Obama, Pelosi and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have not endorsed Harris so far. Obama talked about a “process.” What’s the process? Delegates are not bound to vote for any particular candidate at this stage. There are more than 4,600 delegates. They are not pledged. Party elites are trying to whip them into a quick vote for Kamala, but there’s no assurance that effort will work. Right now, the DNC is calling the 50 state party chairs, asking them to caucus their state delegations, and come back with a yes or not vote for Kamala. This process may collapse into chaos in the coming days.

Many others could jump into an open primary or an open convention. These officials include Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Jay Pritzker, and Gina Raimondo. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has already announced that he’s interested in running. Even long-shot Marianne Williams said she would like to be considered. Hillary Clinton, anyone? Don’t rule it out. She polls better against Trump than the other top Democrats despite her 2016 loss to Trump.

Unfit To Run, Unfit To Serve

Biden said he is dropping out of the presidential nominating contest, but he will remain as president. The Republicans wasted no time in asking: If Biden is unfit to run, how can he be fit to serve? You’ll be hearing that phrase over and over in the coming weeks. At a minimum, Biden is a lame duck as of now. Lame duck presidencies can be dangerous because foreign adversaries know the president’s power is circumscribed as staffers bail-out and hop on the next winning bandwagon. Government processes can grind to a halt. That’s not what the country needs right now.

A Back Room Deal?

One strategy would be for Biden to resign the presidency in the days ahead, make Kamala the president and let her reap the benefits of running as an incumbent president instead of an anointed elite outsider. It’s also a way for Biden to get presidential pardons for the Biden Crime Family without having to pardon himself. That’s a smart strategy. For that reason, you can count on Biden not to do it.

There could be serious legal challenges to any “hand off” from Biden to Harris (or anyone else) as currently contemplated by the Democrats. Nominations are determined by party rules, but ballots are determined by state law. There may be states where a simple hand off from one candidate to another at the top of the ticket is prohibited. That means litigation and more uncertainty.

What about Democrats who totally supported Joe Biden until the end including Bernie Sanders and AOC? They’ve been hung out to dry. That may hurt Democrats in November in terms of reduced turnout from the left wing of the party, which is almost the only group the party has left.

Did Biden get a golden parachute in exchange for his decision (if it was his decision)? Promises of a pardon? Money for a Biden Presidential Library? Big ticket consulting fees for Hunter and Jill over and above a presidential pension? Time will tell.

The Cover-Up Blown Wide Open

What about accountability for the scores of staff liars who told us for years that Biden was “sharp as a tack,” “worked harder than any of us,” and similar deceptions. I knew Biden was cognitively impaired in 2020 as did others. Before 2020, his impairment was not as pronounced but his low IQ and serial fables were well known as far back as the 1990s when I spent a lot of time on the Senate side of Capitol Hill.

The significance of the June 27 debate was not that Biden appeared mentally impaired (we already knew that), but that the Democrats realized they couldn’t hide it anymore. That game was over. That’s when the replacement game began. The Democrats don’t care about the voters or democracy. They only care about power and they talk down to everyday Americans like they’re children. We’re not. We get it. Good luck trying to earn trust when you’ve squandered it for the last eight years.

Who will the Harris VP pick be? We don’t know yet. Harris has to get the nomination locked down first. Then again, she may find that an early selection (perhaps in the coming days) will help her to lock down the nomination in the first place. We’ll know soon.

It’s not clear how the Democrats will continue to label Trump as a “threat to democracy” when they just trashed their own democratic primary process and discarded 15 million votes for Biden cast by loyal Democrats. Still, the Democrats have no shame so they might just carry on with the same old slogans as before. At least there’s some red meat for the true believers.

The next key date is August 1^st. That’s the day the Democrats plan to conduct their “digital roll call vote” in an effort to hand Kamala the nomination as quickly as possible. This means the August 19 Democratic convention in Chicago will be just for show. One could make the case that the entire Democratic nominating process since 2023 has been just for show.

The policy implications of this coup d’état in America are enormous. A Harris – Trump contest will impact everything from Ukraine to tax cuts, regulations, and the Green New Scam. Trillions of dollars of subsidies are at stake one way or the other. We don’t have time to cover all of these policies in this special report, but we’ll certainly be discussing them in depth in future issues of Strategic Intelligence.

One Last Warning

Even if Trump goes on to win the election on November 5^th, the Democrats still have one trick up their sleeves. On January 6, 2025, they will introduce a resolution declaring Donald Trump an “insurrectionist” under Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment.

If that passes, Trump’s electoral votes can be discarded. Kamala (or whomever) will not have 270 votes to win. This means the election goes to the House of Representatives; (the new House elected on November 5^th, not the existing House). In that case, anything can happen, including a compromise Nikki Haley presidency. Something like that did happen in 1800 and again in 1824.

As Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

Most readers are probably tired of the endless debate and TV coverage of the mess around Joe Biden’s viability as the Democratic nominee for president. You know the drill. Leading Democrat politicians and advisors want Biden to drop out of the race both because he won’t win against Trump and because he is mentally gone. Biden is not just slow in terms of cognition; he’s gone. Biden is complete unfit to be president and the Democrats know it.

The rest of us knew Biden was unfit at least four years ago. I took that view during the 2020 presidential campaign. Remember when he yelled “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier!” at an innocent town hall attendee who just happened to ask a hard question?

As the years went on, more people came to the conclusion that Joe was unfit. Still, the reality was covered up the media and by White House enablers who kept Joe under wraps, made sure any speeches were with a teleprompter, and kept any non-scripted remarks short with few if any questions.

Even that wasn’t enough. Biden couldn’t read the teleprompter at times (he sometimes read cue marks like “Wait for applause” that were not meant to be read). His words were slurred, he referred to recent meetings with world leaders who died long ago and some of his comments were just bizarre. All of that is completely consistent with advanced dementia and possibly Parkinson’s Disease.

The Debate Revealed the Cover-Up

At the live debate with Donald Trump on June 27, the veil was finally lifted, and it became apparent that Biden was not mentally or physically stable. That’s when the debate about his ability to be president and to remain on the Democrat ticket kicked into high gear. Now, it wasn’t just conservative media and everyday Americans sounding the alarm. The Democratic Party establishment went into full panic mode and have remained there ever since.

The media have been covering the Dem panic full time. You hear establishment types saying Biden should stay in the race and that he’s the only one who can beat Trump. You hear others saying Biden is unfit, the campaign is doomed, and he should drop out (or be forced out) right away. Many more Democrats are just keeping their heads down and waiting for a resolution without taking sides.

The Republicans have been mostly silent. That’s smart. One of the oldest bits of political wisdom around says: When your enemies are tearing themselves apart, keep out of it and let them have at it. The damage will be done with no expenditure of political capital on your part.

Of course, there’s a lot of hypocrisy around. The media types who are calling for Biden to step down are the same ones who participated in the mental health cover-up for the past four years. Their credibility is zero and will remain so regardless of the outcome.

Ladies & Gentleman, Place Your Bets

So, what will the outcome be? The situation is fluid and seems to change by the hour. It’s impossible to know for sure. The principals themselves don’t know so we’ll all just have to watch the death match. Still, there are surveys that offer some insight. The most obvious ones are polls including both polls on Biden’s viability among Democrats and polls showing how Biden will fare in a match-up with Donald Trump.

Another source of data with which readers may be less familiar is betting odds. These are websites and actual gambling venues that allow participants to bet real money on whether Biden will be the Democratic nominee or not.

One of the most active betting markets is called Predictit. You can find their web page for updated odds on many political outcomes here.

Below is the chart for a bet on whether Biden will win the nomination or not. Each bet earns $1.00 if Biden is nominated. Of course, you can bet as much as you want and potentially win (or lose) accordingly.

As recently as June 27, a $1.00 bet on Biden cost about $0.87. That price plunged after the debate that day and was only $0.60 the next day. The price has plunged even further since then and has been highly volatile. It went up to $0.60 on July 8 when Biden issued a letter firmly committing himself to stay in the race. Then it plunged to $0.43 on July 11 when George Clooney, Nancy Pelosi and others pulled the rug out from under Biden’s chances.

Currently, a bet on Biden cost about $0.71 since the replacement talk has been put aside temporarily with the assassination attempt on Donald Trump as the main headline. But calls for removal are not going away. Who knows what tomorrow may bring.

Here are some observations on the chart and what it means:

To state the obvious, this data does not have to do with whether Biden will win in November or not. It's about whether he will even get the nomination. That particular race will likely be decided before the end of July.

People often confuse betting odds with polls. Polls show the distribution of voters on one side of an issue or another and how voters support two candidates. Allowing for the margin of error and skews in selecting participants, polls should be a decent reflection of how the final vote will come out.

Betting odds are different. Participants are expressing views on a binary outcome: win/lose. It's a degree distribution around the binary outcome. When you see 40% for Biden (as shown on July 10 PM) it does not mean Biden would get 40% in a hypothetical mini-convention. It means 40% of the participants believe he will win the nomination regardless of the degree of hypothetical support.

Put differently, if Biden got 50.1% in a hypothetical vote (or higher), the 40% bettors would win their bet (thus beating the odds). It is valuable data, but it's not the same as a poll. It's just people betting on a binary outcome and taking odds on the outcome. More like a racetrack than a poll.

Running Out the Clock

I find the data fascinating because people are betting real money, not just giving answers to a pollster. That should lend some weight to their views. That said, Wall Streeters and elites who tend to bet in these venues are usually awful at analyzing politics. They may be great traders and investors, but unless you're a real Washington insider, they tend to have naive views on politics.

I do a lot of political forecasting and I use hedge fund billionaires as a contrary indicator. They always get it wrong! If you look at people like Ken Griffin, Ray Dalio, Paul Singer and many others, they always support the losers like Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Mitt Romney. Nothing personal (on the hedge fund crowd or the candidates), but they have an awful track record of picking winners. Find out what the big money is doing, then bet the opposite and you'll do fine.

The volatility in the chart is easy to explain. Biden and the leaders in the party have no idea what they're doing. Someone asked me whether Biden would remain on the ticket and I said, "What time is it?" That meant that the expected outcome shifted several times a day in both directions so you practically had to update hourly. It's not as if someone had the answer and all you had to do was crack the code. That's easy. What's difficult is when no one knows the answer and you're just shifting in the wind based on the latest speech, letter, endorsement or withdrawal of support and so forth. That's what we're seeing and that's why the chart is so volatile.

This is like college basketball before the shot clock. The Biden team is trying to run out the clock by passing the ball in the backcourt and the opposing team (Obama, Clinton, Pelosi) is trying to steal the ball and they don't mind committing fouls to do it. Meanwhile the game clock is counting down. We'll know the answer by late July (or early August) when the Democrats have their digital Zoom convention. The scheduled convention on August 19 will be a party inside with violence on the outside and no real business because the nomination will come pre-packaged.

The next edition of Insider Intel will be released in two weeks. In the meantime, look for new trade recommendations and close-out alerts, which are distributed on an opportunistic basis when entry points and exit points look best based on our proprietary predictive analytics.

We’re all relieved and grateful that Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination at a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last Saturday. He was grazed by a bullet fired by the shooter Thomas Crooks. The shooter was killed seconds after shooting Trump, but not before firing multiple rounds at Trump and the crowd.

Our prayers for Trump’s safety and recovery have been answered. Our prayers also go out to Corey Comperatore, a rally participant who was shot and killed by Crooks while trying to shield his family from the killer’s bullets. We also pray for Comperatore’s family and others critically wounded by the shooting.

What We Know

We know some of the pertinent facts, but there’s far more we don’t know. The shooter used an AR-15 style rifle with 5.56 mm rounds (NATO standard) and fired from an adjacent rooftop at a distance of about 150 yards. The AR-15 is a highly accurate rifle, the 5.56 mm is a high pressure bullet, and 150 yards is a relatively short distance for any experienced shooter. I’ve fired the same weapon with the same ammo at that distance. As noted, the rifle is accurate with low recoil. A longer barrel sniper-type weapon is not needed to hit a target at that relatively short distance.

Trump was grazed in the ear by one bullet, which led to bleeding but miraculously was not worse. Still, the bullet came within a few millimeters of being a fatal headshot. Trump turned his head away from the shooter’s aim a split-second before the bullet hit. God was with him. Yet, others were killed and critically wounded as Crooks continued to fire. Finally, a police sniper on a rooftop close to Trump shot Crooks in the head and he died on the scene with his murder weapon at hand.

Trump’s reflexes after being shot were remarkable. He ducked beneath the bullet-proof podium for cover as Secret Service officers piled on top of him as human shields. Once the shooting stopped and the area was deemed clear, Trump got back on his feet looking disheveled and slightly dazed but still focused. As he was being escorted off the stage by the Secret Service, Trump pumped his fist in the air and shouted “Fight” to the crowd. This was an amazing display of strength, courage and presence of mind and gave encouragement both to the rally attendees and a global TV audience.

Trump was rushed to a hospital, treated and then released. He was back at his Bedminster, New Jersey estate Saturday evening and was actually on the golf course by Sunday morning. He is now on his way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to attend the Republican National Convention and should have arrived there by the time you read this. The convention itself will proceed as planned, including the announcement of Trump’s choice for vice president probably late Monday or first thing Tuesday.

Recollections of TR

By the way, Trump’s brave behavior is akin to that of Teddy Roosevelt during the 1912 campaign. TR was president from 1901 to 1909. He left the White House to William Howard Taft from 1909 to 1913 but was disappointed in Taft’s administration. In 1912, Roosevelt ran for president again on the independent ticket resulting in a three-way race among himself, Taft and the Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

On October 14, 1912, Roosevelt was shot at point-blank range by a deranged saloonkeeper. Instead of going to the hospital, TR went to a scheduled venue and delivered a 90-minute speech with blood seeping into his shirt. Only later did he seek medical care. Asked by a reporter how he felt, Roosevelt said, “I’m fit as a bull moose.” From then on, Roosevelt’s party was called the Bull Moose Party. Trump showed the same kind of courage under fire. Bully!

What We Don’t Know

That’s what we know. The list of things we don’t know is much longer. It’s critical not to jump to conclusions, but it’s not too soon to ask some hard questions. Here’s the list:

Why on earth was the shooter’s position not occupied by the Secret Service? It’s an obvious vantage point and potential sniper nest. This was a security failure of the utmost magnitude.

A number of witnesses have said they saw the shooter climbing up the roof with his rifle in hand. They warned the local police and Secret Service with minutes to spare. Nothing was done. Why not?

The police snipers on the roof closest to Trump spotted the shooter in their scopes. They kept him in sight but did not kill him as should have been required under the circumstances. Once the shooter opened fire, the police snipers killed him but not before five or six shots were fired including the one that hit Trump. Why the delay? Some unverified reports say that the Secret Service refused to permit the police snipers to kill the assassin before the shooting began. Why?

Some of the Secret Service detail closest to Trump acted heroically and shielded his body with their own while the area was being secured. But not all. In particular, three female Secret Service officers with Trump looked like the Keystone Cops. One cowered behind the podium for cover instead of putting her body in harm’s way as required.

One officer was so short that Trump towered over her, which means she offered no body protection at all. Donald Trump is 6’3”. Officers protecting him should be 6’4” or taller. It’s not rocket science. The woman protecting him appeared about 5’7”, was chubby and seemed out of shape. She could not holster her pistol and instead waved it around as Trump was being pushed into his car. The three female Secret Officers ran in circles near Trump’s car instead of forming a solid security perimeter. One appeared more concerned with getting her sunglasses on than protecting the former president.

It was a clownish performance. Was this the result of DEI policies at the Secret Service implemented by Kimberly Cheatle, the new Secret Service head who publicly stated that DEI was one of her priorities? There will be congressional hearings on this topic beginning next Monday. Hopefully, there will be some accountability before copycat assassination attempts begin.

What Happens Now?

The impact of the attempted assassination on Trump will be straightforward. His popularity will increase and his likely margin of victory as expressed in polls will expand. States that were not previously considered battlegrounds such as New Hampshire, Minnesota, Virginia, and New Mexico are suddenly in play. Biden’s lead in reliably Democrat states such as New York and New Jersey are now down to single digits and could fall lower.

Another political plus for Trump is that the Democrats have had to cancel a despicable advertising campaign they had planned referring to Trump as a “rapist,” “convicted felon” and more. The budget for this ad campaign was $50 million and it was timed to run during the Republican convention this week. Those plans are on hold and may have to be scrapped completely as sympathy for Trump grows.

Democrat politicians in down ballot races for governor, senator and House member are in full panic mode. We could be looking at an Electoral College landslide for Trump of perhaps 340 to 195, which would be one of the largest Electoral College wins in U.S. history. The Republicans could top that off by winning the Senate 55-45 or better and expanding their majority in the House to 230 Republicans to 205 Democrats. Numerous governorships and state legislatures could fall the Republicans’ way as well.

The Biden Collapse

This brings us to the most widely discussed political topic prior to the assassination attempt – Biden’s collapse into senility, his physical infirmity, and the conflicting Democrat attempts to cover-up the reality of Biden’s health or to push him aside in favor of Kamala Harris.

Let’s be blunt about Biden’s mental and physical health. Biden is in the late stages of cognitive decline. He refuses to take any cognitive tests (or if he has, to release the results) and to receive a proper diagnosis.

Biden’s personal physician is an old crony who has been in on Biden family rackets, so he’s hardly an objective source. Jill Biden is more of an Acting President than a caring spouse and she’s lousy at both jobs. A number of competent physicians have said that, in their view, Biden has advanced Parkinson’s disease as evidenced by immobility in his right arm and shaking in his left hand in addition to the mental lapses.

Biden’s recent public appearances are either totally scripted right down to flash cards with reporter’s names and pre-arranged questions and answers, read from a teleprompter, or pre-recorded (and who knows how many flubs were left on the cutting-room floor). It’s all a facade.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson has compared Biden’s condition to the last days of Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist leader who died in 1982. Long before Brezhnev died, he was physically and mentally disabled and propped up by continuous lies and propaganda about how he was in good health and in command. That artifice and wall of lies is exactly what we are encountering in the case of Biden today.

Late Sunday night, Biden gave an Oval Office speech in reaction to the Trump shooting and referred to the last president as “former Trump” and made repeated references to the “battle box” instead of the ballot box. Biden topped this off by almost saying “Make America Great Again” before catching himself in mid-sentence and pivoting away from the MAGA Republican mantra. It was a pathetic performance in tightly controlled circumstances. Biden is beyond functioning capably in the real world of politics, foreign crises and ongoing wars, let alone a political campaign.

A Coup d’état in America

Who’s really in charge at the White House? It depends on the issue. When it comes to high level policy, it’s the Obama team including holdovers like Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and Obama flunkies on the sidelines like Susan Rice and Victoria Nuland. When it comes to technical matters that are part of the progressive agenda, the Deep State swamp creatures in the bureaucracy are in charge.

But where the presidential campaign and Biden’s determination to remain a candidate are concerned, power rests with a small cabal. The members of this inner circle are Taco Jill Biden, the convicted felon Hunter Biden, Joe’s sister Valerie Biden Owens, and a few close aides including Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Bruce Reed, Anthony Bernal, and Annie Tomasini. Donilon is the son of Obama’s National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. Bruce Reed is an old hand from the Clinton administration. Bernal and Tomasini are close aides to Jill Biden and are practically an extension of the Biden Crime Family. Ricchetti is a lawyer and one of Joe Biden’s longest serving aides.

That Gang of Eight are the only people with regular access to Joe Biden. They are the ones insisting that he’s staying in the race and issuing the propaganda that says everything is fine with Biden. Even regular White House staff such as Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, former Chief of Staff Ron Klain, advisor Anita Dunn, and Biden’s lawyer Bob Bauer cannot get close to Biden anymore given the encasement established by the Gang of Eight. Their posture can well be likened to a coup d’état in America. It’s not violent, but it is real. The Gang of Eight are running the country. Biden is a zombie.

At the same time, another gang of so-called Super Friends of Biden including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi are preparing to tell Biden he must withdraw from the presidential race for the good of the party and endorse Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The shoot-out between the Gang of Eight and the Super Friends will happen by next weekend. You can think of it as the 1881 Gunfight at the OK Corral between the outlaw Clanton and McLaury brothers on one side and Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday on the other. The difference is that the OK Corral featured bad guys versus good guys whereas the battle between the Gang and the Super Friends has bad guys on both sides. They’re all looking out for themselves.

Nothing public on the Democratic side will happen this week because the news will be dominated by the Trump shooting and the Republican convention. By Friday, the knives will be out for Biden.

The Democrat’s plan is to nominate Biden and Harris in an all-virtual digital roll call vote in late July ahead of their scheduled August 19 convention in Chicago. This means there will only be ten days at most between the end of the Republican convention and the Democrats’ virtual roll call. That’s a short window for the Super Friends.

Biden’s Gang of Eight may have successfully run out the clock. We’ll know more next week, but for now it appears the Dems may be going with the zombie candidate for better or worse. The Biden family may emerge the winner. The American people are most certainly the losers.

You probably don’t need to read more about Joe Biden’s problems these days. He’s clearly suffering from dementia in some form. I’m not a doctor, but like many I’ve had to deal with the declining cognitive ability of others in certain situations and I know it when I see it. He’s also a physical wreck, with a stiff gait and a rigid stare into the middle distance. He wears oversized orthopedic shoes to keep him from tripping up and down stairs, which he has done many times.

No one takes pleasure in these observations. Candidly, it’s sad. His family should intervene for his own good, but they seem to be more interested in the perks of power and refuse to do the right thing. If Biden were not president, and if he had a family that cared, they would have moved in court to appoint a legal guardian long ago. He’s that far gone.

All of which has put pressure on Biden to drop out of the presidential race. He probably should for the good of his party. He should also consider resigning as president for the good of the country. So far, Biden refuses to do either of those things. He says he’s “in it to win it” and is the only one who can beat Trump. The polls, betting odds, and pundits all say the opposite, but Biden seems oblivious to all of that.

The real problem is that Biden is so far gone he doesn’t even know how far gone he is. He’s isolated by family and a few staff members and no one else can cross the moat. What could stop Biden from going down this reckless path? Some members of Congress have called on Biden to step down, but he dismissed them as “elites.” He positions himself as somehow the man of the people even though Biden has been in high office for 50 years. The media turned on him (like rats deserting a sinking ship), but Biden quickly found some friendly shows to prop him up.

The Money is Drying Up

If his family, the politicians and press can’t persuade him, what will? The answer is money. The big donors to the Democrats, the kind who give $10 million donations (or more) are putting their checkbooks away. These people are media moguls, tech billionaires, celebrities and big-time property developers. When they refuse to give money to Biden, they are also hurting the down ballot races from senators to House members to governors. Politicians are notorious for saying “Show me the money.” For now, big donors have an answer: “Just say no.”

The Deep State is in Charge

With Biden’s mental incapacity now apparent (it has been for years, but the liberal media just recently stopped the pretense), it begs the question: Who’s really in charge at the White House? In terms of high-level policy, there’s little doubt that the Obama holdovers like Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Susan Rice (plus Obama himself) have been calling the shots. In terms of more technical policies on issues like climate change, science, and financial regulation, it’s clear that the swamp is in charge. The so-called experts buried in a thousand agencies, from Cabinet level to the Federal Reserve, keep pushing their agendas with no one to push back. Biden just signs whatever they put on his desk.

In terms of public appearances, press conferences and scheduling, there is a small group of White House staffers and speechwriters who control Biden’s image mostly by not letting him out of the White House or his Rehoboth Beach house any more than is absolutely necessary. And on the critical issues, like whether to drop out of the presidential race, it’s the Biden Crime Family who are making the decisions. The family includes “Taco Jill” (Jill Biden once compared Hispanics to breakfast tacos), Hunter Biden (recently convicted of felony gun-related charges), sister Valerie Biden Owens, and Joe’s brothers Frankie and James. Most assume that Jill Biden is the real power behind the throne and has the last word on whether Joe Biden will drop out of the presidential race or just carry on. She’s powerful, but it’s becoming more apparent that Hunter Biden may be the one Joe listens to most closely.

Hunter has huge personal reasons for wanting to keep his dad in the White House, including his need for pardons from his felony convictions and possibly new pardons since he faces criminal tax charges going to trial in early September. Hunter is also at the center of the web of bribes and sweetheart deals that all depend on his father remaining in office. Jill may be running around and screeching into microphones at public events, but the best evidence is that Hunter is sitting in on Oval Office meetings and learning about highly classified matters despite his criminal record and not having a security clearance. Biden dropping out of the race and resigning as president would be the best outcome for the Democratic Party and the United States. Just don’t count on that happening as long as Hunter Biden is in the hunt.

The Final Act

Biden’s problem with dementia is not anything new. It’s not just Joe Biden’s dementia, but the impact of Biden’s response to dementia and how that makes everything worse. Biden's refusal to leave the race is a symptom of why he should. Biden was clearly cognitively impaired in 2020 but the pandemic and media collusion allowed his handlers to cover it up with the “basement strategy” where Biden campaigned from his basement in Delaware with teleprompters and scripted remarks while Trump was doing rallies with 25,000 or more supporters at each one. The media let Biden get away with this under the excuse that an old man needed to be safe from COVID.

While so-called gaffes unfolded (remember Corn-Pop?), the media played along as if these were harmless stories instead of outright lies told by a mean-spirited old man whose stock in trade was lies. Biden’s mean temper was often revealed such as the time he called a participant in a town hall event “a lying dog-faced pony soldier.” The media spent days trying to source the quote (there wasn’t one) instead of just admitting that it was a nonsensical outburst by someone in rapid mental decline. Biden’s racism is often on full display. Remember when he said he could support Obama because he was a “clean” black person? Remember when Biden told a black DJ, “You ain’t black” because the man indicated support for Trump? The list goes on.

The point is that Biden’s mean spirit, racism and dementia have been on display for a long time, but the media have swept it all under the rug and fellow Democrats just looked the other way. The truth is Biden should have left the stage long ago. We’ll see how long it takes for the final act to end and for the curtain to fall.

Staying updated on fast-moving political news is more important than ever, especially now with a Biden replacement watch still gripping the nation. Go Here Now for YOUR Election 2024 Uncensored Access and check back frequently.