Hannity is right. Journalism really is dead.

Several years ago, Bob Schieffer of CBS News spoke to journalism students at SMU in Dallas. I was an unofficial guest.

The moderator asked Schieffer about disintermediation in media. That is to say the internet’s empowerment of bloggers and social media posters – the people who no longer need to be at a place like CBS to practice journalism.

“Well,” laughed Schieffer dismissively, “that’s not journalism. We have editors. We have standards. Before something gets on the air, it has been fact checked and vetted. That’s not the case with some random person out there reporting on the internet,” he said, with a self-satisfied smile.

I will go to my grave regretting what I’m about to tell you.

As I say, I was a guest. I had no standing. The event was for the students. I therefore felt bound to mind my manners and to not create an awkward moment for the organizers. So, at Q&A time, I refrained from asking the obvious question.

So, Mr. Schieffer, where were your vaunted editors and fact-checkers and what happened to your lofty newsroom standards with respect to the phony 30-year old letter that Dan Rather featured on ’60 Minutes’ saying that George W. Bush shirked his duty while in the National Guard? Wasn’t it in fact, sir, a blogger – a ‘random person out there’ – who debunked the fakery and in so doing, did the real journalism on that story?”

Please forgive me – I will never forgive myself – for not asking that question.

It was then that I began appreciating just how smug, insulated, provincial and toweringly condescending the members of America’s elite media really are. These people live together in a bubble and spend their days affirming to one another their own superiority. Nothing penetrates the bubble.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: How are these people “mainstream?”

This Schieffer anecdote illuminates what has happened since last week’s column in which we detailed how Uri Berliner, an NPR editor of 25 years, blew the whistle on NPR’s ever-increasing and ever-more obvious leftist bias.

Berliner’s thoughtful essay at The Free Press provided an opportunity for some much-needed introspection at NPR. A thoughtful response to his exposé would have been to convene a meeting of top brass and editors and rank & file reporters to consider the possibility that Berliner has a point.

But NPR – along with ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, et.al. – have no interest in any point that Mr. Berliner might have. Their sole interest is the advancement of their predetermined leftist narrative. Nothing can come in the way – least of all a balanced assessment of facts and a considered hearing of dissenting points of view.

So, NPR suspended Berliner for five days and told him he’d be fired if he dared speak out again. Berliner has since resigned.

Example made. Problem solved.

Sean Hannity says it all the time and I’m afraid he’s right. Journalism in America is dead.

That’s no small thing. The need for an informed citizenry in a free republic is enshrined in our very founding documents.

The accelerated devolution from that ideal is going to cost us. Dearly.

A liberal journalist’s full confession.

Uri Berliner is a senior business editor at National Public Radio – NPR. He has been there for 25 years. This week he did the unthinkable. He pulled back the drapes, threw the windows open wide and let disinfecting daylight shine into the newsroom at NPR.

In a Tuesday Free Press article, Berliner gives up the game on what is still called “journalism” in America.

That someone like me might be critical of NPR isn’t particularly noteworthy. But Berliner’s article is especially noteworthy because of his inside status and because of his self-description as a Sarah Lawrence-educated, Subaru-driving New York liberal. “I fit the NPR mold,” he says. “I’ll cop to that.”

Give the man props. I have met few liberal coastal elites capable of such personal insight.

In his amazingly detailed and candid essay, Uri Berliner blows the whistle on the left-wing bias that guides every important editorial decision at NPR. As an example, he admits that NPR went all in on the Russia collusion story solely because they thought it would hurt Donald Trump. Here he is on Bari Weiss’s podcast called, “Honestly.”

After a while we started covering Trump in a way like a lot of the legacy news organizations – that we were trying to damage his presidency. Anything we could to harm him. And I think what we latched on to was Russia collusion, like a lot of news organizations, which was, as I write, sort of catnip, although it was just rumors and a lot of it based on pretty shoddy documents or evidence. It wasn’t really solid. But I think it was compelling.

In other words, they just couldn’t help themselves.

RELATED: The New York Times revealed

Berliner further admits that for as much as they wanted to damage Donald Trump, they on the other hand didn’t want to damage Joe Biden. So, they made a purely political — as opposed to journalistic — decision to ignore the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Berliner’s piece has muzzle velocity. It’s nothing short of a full confession.

But the real story here isn’t NPR per se. It’s American brand name journalism in general. Take Berliner’s story, and wherever NPR appears, substitute any of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, the New York Times or the Washington Post. The story still stands up.

Berliner’s essay gains significance the more you think about it. It does nothing less than help explain why we, as a society, are at each other’s throats.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said:

It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

But journalism in America has abandoned the mission of helping the people be well-informed and has taken up political activism instead. The horrifying results are now on display.

To be sure, Uri Berliner is still a coastal liberal. But give him credit.

He’s at least honest.

America in need of therapy.

Some time ago I attended the seminar of an ordained protestant minister who gave up the pulpit in favor of going into private practice as a licensed therapist. He called his practice, “Reality Acceptance, Inc.”

It was his observation that if he could get patients to accept reality – which is to say accept the truth – the need for therapy would go away.

He told us that getting patients to accept reality is much easier said than done. Most patients, he said, would rather rationalize their pathological behavior than face the uncomfortable process of changing it. He went on to say that of all the animal species on Earth, the human species is the only one capable of rationalization.

And there you have a near perfect explanation of our politics today. A very large proportion of the people who vote are engaged in rationalization on a massive scale. Let’s take just two examples.

Unfettered, unvetted mass illegal immigration is unsustainable and dangerous. It hurts everyone, but none more so than minorities and poor people. Mass illegal immigration poses a threat to national security, public safety, public health, and public education. Illegal migrants crowd out American citizens for base labor and entry level jobs, which disproportionately hurts minorities and poor people. This is true whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.

But Democrats believe that they will ultimately profit from illegal immigration by creating a massive cohort of people who, being dependent upon the kinds of liberal social welfare benefits that Democrats support, will vote accordingly. They rationalize that kind of cynicism by telling themselves that they’re helping poor people have a better life. They choose not to acknowledge that what they’re really doing is making poverty permanent.

Regarding poor people and social welfare benefits, the massive federal spending that funds those benefits is also fiscally unsustainable and dangerous. Among its many ill effects is the resulting inflation, which makes it increasingly difficult for people to afford food, transportation and shelter – thus increasing the need for social welfare benefits. This is also true whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.

Those are just two examples. There are many others ranging from a woke and shrinking military that is fixated on gender pronouns at the expense of readiness to DEI programs that are bringing about the very ill effects of racism that DEI programs are supposed to address to colleges and universities that have abandoned classical education in favor of progressive indoctrination.

The reality is that we can’t afford illegal immigration, we can’t afford massive federal deficits, indoctrination over education never ends well and we suffer a weak and woke military at our peril.

These are the sorts of things that the majority of us once accepted as realities. The fact that such broad acceptance no longer exists goes a long way toward explaining the candidacy of a polarizing guy like Donald Trump.

So, grab the tissue box. America is going to be spending a lot of time on the therapist’s couch.

The prophecy of George Orwell.

The word “Orwellian” is an adjective that describes a societal condition that English author George Orwell regarded as antithetical to the ideals of a free and open society. His famous 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, centers on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation. It was Nineteen Eighty-Four that put the pejorative term “Big Brother” into the cultural lexicon.

American entrepreneur Gordon Bowker, one of the co-founders of Starbucks, perfectly defines Orwellianism:

Orwellianism isn’t just about big government. It’s about authoritarianism coupled with lies.”

Bowker’s definition is aptly applied to the Biden administration. The latest example comes from the Environmental Protection Agency. This week, the EPA released a slew of strict automotive exhaust regulations intended to aggressively push adoption of electric vehicles via the mechanism of regulating internal combustion vehicles out of existence. The stated goal is for EVs to comprise 70 percent of new vehicle sales by 2030 – just six years from now.

This EPA regulatory zeal is driven by a Biden administration fixation on climate, a fixation that borders on being a fetish.

We haven’t the space for a dispositive discussion on the reasons that an ill-considered headlong mass conversion to EVs is a bad idea. The full list is too long.

But the short list includes the fact that EVs are too expensive for most people to buy (particularly in the absence of the individual federal tax credits that have propelled EV sales so far); the fact that the mining of rare earth minerals necessary for making EV batteries does enormous environmental damage; and the fact that the U.S. power grid as it sits doesn’t come close to having the capacity to charge millions of electric vehicles.

Oh, and there’s one more reason. Consumers don’t want them. Just ask Hertz Rent-a Car CEO Stephen Scherr, who this week was pushed out of his job for having bet too heavily on EVs to the tune of billions of dollars in losses.

But it’s not really about EVs anyway.

What it’s really about is who gets to decide how you live your life. Here’s a hint. The Biden administration doesn’t think it’s you. And they won’t stop with cars.

They’re on to cows. Flatulent cows pass gas that the enviros tell us is destroying the climate. Don’t be shocked when the USDA regulates beef into scarcity driven by unaffordability.

If your car is relatively new, it’s already trackable. When you start getting punitively taxed on your excessive mileage, remember that I warned you.

Did you install one of those smart thermostats that you can control with your phone? Great. If you can control it, so can your government-regulated electric utility. Big Brother will decide for you if your house is cool enough.

Your car. Your house. What you eat. What else?

Control over your life by an Orwellian bureaucracy acting beyond the reach of the ballot box is limited only by the imagination. And if nothing else, leftists have vivid imaginations.

George Orwell was more than a novelist. He was a prophet.

What really matters.

For the umpty-umpth time, please let me disclaim that I know that Donald Trump is an imperfect human being. I’ll stipulate that he can be painfully boorish. I acknowledge that he is given to exaggeration (though I simultaneously point out that his exaggerations are usually grounded in clearly observable truth).

He frequently “punches down” against his critics when remaining silent would better serve. His name calling is too often gratuitous.

I also say again that I wish these things weren’t so.

But with that said, he also has his virtues – principal among which is that he isn’t insane. And given what we’ve suffered these past three-plus years from the Biden administration, that alone recommends him for a return to the White House.

Allowing 10 million poor, unskilled, unvetted migrants from every corner of the globe to cross into the country illegally and then remain here unsupervised is insane.

Certifiably insane.

It’s insane because self-harm is prima facie evidence of mental illness. And current administration immigration policy is the very embodiment of national self-harm.

In any large population cohort, there is a statistical certainty that a percentage of them will be criminals, drug dealers and other bad actors. Allowing millions of people to pour into the country illegally guarantees the importation of criminals and fentanyl just as it guarantees the importation of an uncomfortably large number of incipient terrorists.

Proposing a national budget that intentionally adds $3-plus trillion to an already unsustainable and life threatening $34 trillion national debt is insane.

Turning the armed forces into a national social experiment in gender identity is insane.

Mandating a poorly considered rush to electric vehicles that will result in deep dependence upon China – our principal adversary – for the batteries to power them is insane.

Trump may be unlikable to some. But he’s not insane.

Since his now famous escalator ride in 2015, I have had countless conversations with people – Democrats and Republicans – who can’t stand Donald Trump. Those conversations usually go something like this:

“I hate Trump.”

“Why?,” I ask.

“He’s just horrible.”

“OK, which of his policies as president did you find to be so horrible?”

“Well, his tweets, and the way he puts people down and calls them names and the way he has treated women.”

“OK, I might not disagree with you on those things. But my question was about policy. Which of his policies did you object to?”

At this point, the person I’m conversing with – stuck for an answer to my policy question – usually says something like,

“Well, let’s just agree to disagree.”

Look, if you just don’t like Trump’s personality, that’s fine. But personality isn’t policy and policy is what matters. Particularly now.

Trump’s immigration policy was sane. His foreign policy was effective. His regulatory policy unleashed enormous economic growth. Ditto his energy policy.

It comes down to this. The country was more prosperous and the world less dangerous when Donald Trump was president.

Consider that and consider what we have now I’ll happily put up with Trump’s personality shortcomings.

Buckle up.

I recently returned from a broadcasters conference in Washington, D.C.

At a Tuesday session, we listened to a pair of political pros – one Democrat and one Republican – brief us on the state of the presidential race. They told it straight. No party spin. No talking points. Just a candid assessment of where things stand.

The Dem was honest about Biden’s vulnerabilities. The Republican was equally candid about Donald Trump.

They agree that 2024 is going to be a Trump-Biden rematch.

The impression the Dem gave was one of accepting – without directly coming out and saying so – that the odds now favor Trump. The Republican cautioned to never underestimate the unique Republican capacity for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

One of them – and I honestly now can’t remember which – said something important. He said that we’ve never had full acceptance of the results of 2016. That fact colored what was already going to be a contentious, COVID-colored 2020 election.

Buckle up, then, for 2024.

I recall saying to my wife a week or so following the 2016 election that the Dems – gobsmacked by Trump’s unthinkable victory – would need a little time to have their freakout before eventually getting over it.

Boy, was I wrong.

In addition to members of Congress promising impeachment even before he was inaugurated, in addition to demonstrations by women wearing headgear intended to represent more southerly anatomy, in addition to celebrities holding up beheaded effigies of Donald Trump, official Washington – aided and abetted by the Hillary Clinton campaign – spun up the “Russian collusion” yarn to explain Hillary’s otherwise (to them) inexplicable loss.

The three-year Mueller probe – intended to delegitimize Trump’s presidency – followed. The FBI, the Department of Justice, top Dems and top members of the corporate media all knew the Russian collusion story was a crock. It didn’t stop them.

As to 2024, any doubt as to Trump becoming the GOP nominee was laid to rest on Super Tuesday. Doubts as to his likelihood of returning to the White House diminish in direct proportion to Joe Biden’s cratering poll numbers.

The Real Clear Politics average of polls has Trump leading by a factor greater than the margin of error in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — four of the six battleground states. If you’re betting the grocery money, put it on Trump.

And if you thought the lefty meltdown was over the top in 2016, just wait. If Trump wins, this hissy fit will be several orders of magnitude worse. The Left will stop at nothing to cripple a second Trump administration. Nothing will be out of bounds.

2016 is going to seem like a church social.

And be clear about this. Though the incandescent reaction by the Left will be targeted full force upon Donald Trump, he’s not really the target.

The real target is you – for being so manifestly stupid; for showing such blatant disrespect for your social and intellectual betters; and for having the temerity to vote for the candidate of your own free choosing.

Seeing the race with perfect clarity.

I am a man of many deficiencies. (Ask my ex-wife.) But being muddled and confused and unable to see things clearly is not one of them.

I have superb clarity as to the 2024 Republican primary season.

It’s over.

Oh, sure, we have Super Tuesday next week. Fifteen states – including California and Texas – are holding primaries (or in the case of Alaska, a caucus). Nearly three quarters of the delegates needed for the nomination are still up for grabs.

After Super Tuesday, there will still be 30 state primary elections on the calendar. These things are what keep Nikki Haley going.

But none of it matters. It’s over. The remaining primaries are mere formalities. Donald Trump is the Republican nominee.

I’m not the least bit confused as to what that means. It means pure and simple that Republicans have a binary choice. Get on board with Donald Trump, or, run the all-too-real risk of giving Joe Biden what would certainly be a catastrophic second term.

There is no third option. Thus, the word, ‘binary.’

For all who have expressed concerns about a Trump 3.0 candidacy – present company included – it’s time to get over it. We’ve had our say.

Yes, Trump is given to verbal excesses that gain him nothing while costing him with independents and moderates. Yes, it’s entirely appropriate to worry about the effect that the avalanche of grotesquely unfair attacks on Trump by the unhinged Left and the partisan media will have on those independents and moderates. Yes, Trump’s legal challenges are draining precious time and resources – and will continue to do so all the way to November.

These concerns have all been given due consideration. Republican primary voters have made their decision. They want Donald Trump.

If you call yourself a Republican or a conservative, it’s time to respect that decision and get behind it.

The polls show Trump leading by a factor greater than the margin of error in four of the six battleground states. That’s great. Make no mistake, though. Joe Biden could still win the election. So far this year, the Dems have raised half again more money than the Republicans. That matters.

But here’s what matters more. If Biden wins, it will validate the abominable tactics of the increasingly radical Democratic Party. “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime,” – a quote attributed to Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria – will become standard procedure against every Republican candidate for president from now on.

Another 10 million of the world’s poor (along with unknown numbers of its criminals) will pour into the country across our southern border.

Crime will further destroy cities.

And Lord alone knows what Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin will do. (Hint: nothing good.)

So, Nikki Haley, you Never Trumpers, you “traditional” Republicans. The country is on the line. Whatever your concerns about Trump, they are dwarfed by the cold, relentless, unremitting fear of a second Biden term.

So, get over it and get on board with the Republican nominee.

It’s crunch time.

The wisdom of John Adams.

John Adams was the first vice president of the United States and he didn’t much care for the job. He is famously quoted as having described it as:

…the most insignificant office ever devised.”

But in a less famous quote, he also said:

I am vice president. In this I am nothing. But I may be everything.”

All our adult lives we have largely looked upon the party nominee’s selection for VP through Adams’s insignificant office lens. We pay only nominal attention to who the presidential nominee picks as a running mate, and that attention is almost totally driven by political considerations. We talk about how the VP nominee might help with this or that group of voters, or how the VP nominee might help bring his or her state across the finish line in the Electoral College.

But events today call upon us to consider the office from Adams’s “I may be everything…” perspective.

Here’s why.

The White House’s contortions of language to the contrary notwithstanding, it is now obvious to any observer possessed of even the tiniest shred of objectivity that President Joe Biden is badly diminished.

Just listen to the progression of his decline.

Here he is at the Vice-Presidential debate against Paul Ryan in Danville, KY on October 11, 2012 (and disregard what he says and instead concentrate on how he says it):

Let’s look at where we were when we came to office. The economy was in freefall. We had the Great Recession hit. Nine million people lost their job. One point seven, $1.6 trillion in wealth lost.”

That was a bit more than 11 years ago. He sounded sharp.

Here he is from the second presidential debate against Donald Trump in Nashville in October 2020.

I represent all of you, whether you voted for me or against me. And I’m going to make sure that you are represented. I’m going to give you hope. We’re going to move. We’re going to choose science over fiction.”

A little weaker but still OK.

But here he is last Friday in East Palestine, Ohio:

I also want to thank…uh…, EPA administrator here with me…[unintelligible]…okay…Administrator Regan…as well.”

Political pundits are punditing as to whether he hangs on to become the 2024 Democratic Party nominee. What about hanging on to the end of his term? If he doesn’t, here’s what we get to take his place:

Talking about the significance of the passage of time. Right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time.”

That was Vice President Kamala Harris – someone I regard as an industrial strength idiot – a year ago in March in Sunset, Louisiana.

The two presumptive nominees for president in 2024 are 81 and 77 years old. If elected, either will be a one-term president.

Which is to say, 2024 will likely prove that John Adams was right. The vice president could very well be everything.

Let’s hope, at the very least, that Donald Trump picks accordingly.

The leadership we wish we had.

I’m only a casual football fan. I can’t run down the names on the roster for the Dallas Cowboys. My life doesn’t go on hold every Sunday afternoon in the fall. I like the game. I like watching it. But I’m not eaten up with it.

I do watch the Super Bowl every year. Only I tend to avoid Super Bowl parties in favor of watching in my own chair eating my own food. And when the game is over, I’m over it.

But I’ll admit. This Super Bowl got to me.

I watched this Super Bowl with a bit more interest than usual for the simple reason that we in East Texas had a dog in the hunt named Patrick Mahomes. I don’t usually care who wins. This time I did.

The game was boring until it wasn’t. And with it tied at the end of regulation, it was anyone’s ball game. Given how well the San Francisco defense had held the Chiefs all day, some of the smart money was on the ‘Niners to win it.

But when Kansas City held San Francisco to a field goal and got the ball, I said to my daughter, “Kansas City’s going to win this thing.”

And they proceeded to prove me right.

With everything on the line, Patrick Mahomes’s performance was a thing of beauty. You could see the coming victory on his face when he took the field following the touchback of the San Francisco kickoff.

Watching him lead his team when it was win-or-go home, watching him convert two fourth downs and one third & long on the way to setting up first & goal, was a tour de force. He was calm. He was confident. He was in charge.

In the post-game show, wide receiver Mecole Hardman, who caught the winning touchdown pass, said of Mahomes:

How much confidence is there in the world? Whatever that is, that’s what we have in him.”

One of the virtues of NFL football is the fact that it remains a pure meritocracy – among the last in the culture. The ideologically blinded scolds of wokeness and DEI have exactly zero influence in roster decisions. The only way to get a job playing football in the NFL is to be the very best of the best. I am fond of saying that the worst player on the worst team in the NFL is one hell of a football player.

This Super Bowl got to me because of the state of things all around it. The country is a mess. The political leadership – on both sides of the aisle – doesn’t evoke the confidence among Americans that Chiefs players have in Mahomes.

What a relief then, however momentary, the Super Bowl was. For a few hours, talent, hard work and confident, selfless leadership were given the room to flourish.

According to the TV ratings, we ate it up.

In our politics, we don’t have an analogue to Patrick Mahomes. The Lord knows we could use one.

Dangerous and uncharted territory.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: This column is a revision and a re-posting of the column that I originally published Thursday afternoon. This reposting was necessitated by developments that occurred shortly after that original publication.

Yesterday, Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate the mishandling of classified material and documents by President Joe Biden – mishandling that spans decades dating back to when he was a senator – released his report and recommendation to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The report is damning. Not so much for the criminality that it reveals. But instead for the reason given for not prosecuting that criminality.

In a nutshell, Robert Hur’s report recommends that Biden not be prosecuted for the reason that he is too old and his mental faculties too diminished for a jury to convict him. Here’s a quote from the report:

Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,”

Merrick Garland and the country are now in a quandary. Either Biden is, as he angrily asserted in a hastily called press conference last night (more on that presser in a moment), fully in possession of his faculties, in which case he is prosecutable for multiple felonies. Or, he is, as special counsel Robert Hur reported, too old and senile to be prosecuted.

Which means he is therefore unfit to be President of the United States.

The nominal greatest nation on the planet is now in uncharted territory. It’s now indisputable that the president’s ability to remember important facts and to form and express a coherent thought is embarrassingly bad and rapidly getting worse.

Here’s an example from a press conference Wednesday at which he couldn’t remember that it’s Hamas against which Israel has been fighting since October 7.

There is some movement and I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna… [long pause] [mumbles] …choose my words. There’s some movement… there’s been… a response… from… the, uh… the… the… there’s been a response… from… the opposition… but uh… it uh… [voice off camera suggests, ‘Hamas’]… yes, I’m sorry, from Hamas…”

But last night’s presser that Biden called on the fly in an attempt at damage control from the special counsel’s report, was an order of magnitude worse. Biden was simultaneously angry and confused. Here is an example. He brought up the subject of the Israeli war in Gaza and then said this:

As you know, initially, the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him.”

President El-Sisi isn’t the president of Mexico. Mexico is nowhere near Gaza or Israel. El-Sisi is the president of Egypt.

Given the cognitive infirmity that is obvious and undeniable and that is now of record in a criminal investigation, it makes perfect sense that Biden’s comms team has had him avoiding live interviews and debates and press conferences to the greatest extent possible. Last night was a perfect illustration.

But he’s still the president. The ability to form and express a cogent thought is implicit in the job description. So, too, is the capacity to immediately call to mind the names of world leaders and the names of our geopolitical adversaries.

Members of the political pundit class (on both sides of the divide) will spend much time on the question of what Biden’s rapid and obvious decline means for the 2024 election.

I have a much more sobering question.

Knowing that China’s Xi Jingping has read Hur’s report and that he saw that calamitous presser last night, to what degree are his nefarious designs – and those of the world’s other geopolitical gangsters – emboldened by the now undeniable and alarming state of Biden’s mental decline?

It’s a long nine months until election day. If you’re not asking yourself that question, and if you are then not scared to death by the obvious answer, you’re not paying attention.

The choice is becoming startlingly clear.

I have been taken to task by some of you who listen to me on the air at KTBB 97.5 FM in Tyler-Longview, Texas — or who follow me here on this site — for being anti-Trump.

Let me hasten to say it. I am not anti-Trump.

From 2017 to 2021, I posted dozens of articles on this site in full-throated support of his presidency. (You can sample some of those articles here, here, here, here, here and here (among many others). I believe that Trump’s policy successes during the four years of his presidency speak for themselves. Economic growth was robust. Unemployment was at historic lows – most particularly among blacks and Hispanics, two demographic groups who saw the lowest unemployment rates since records began being kept. For the first time in 30-plus years, real wages for the middle class began to rise.

Trump energy policy resulted in the lowest inflation-adjusted prices for gasoline and diesel since the 1960s, and the first time that America could claim energy independence since the Truman administration.

The Abraham Accords were, at last, bringing real peace to the Middle East. Bad actors like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jingping and Kim Jong Un were minding their manners.

And in stark contrast to what’s happening today, the southern border with Mexico was well under control and illegal border crossings were at their lowest levels in recent memory.

Trump had, by most objective measures of policy, an extraordinarily successful presidency.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had concerns about him. As of this writing, he is doing very well in the polls. But I believe it would be a huge mistake to underestimate the Herculean challenge he faces in his attempt to become Grover Cleveland II in 2024.

I worry about his appeal to independent and moderate voters – the very cohort that ultimately determines the outcomes of American presidential elections.

That concern drives my worry about his ability to generate a cheat-proof margin in the key swing states that will decide the election. I further worry that his penchant for unforced verbal errors will cost him just enough votes in those states to cost him those margins.

Not only do I worry about these things, but I also staunchly defend my right to worry. The prospect of a second Biden term frightens me to my core.

But my worry beads aside, I recognize that the voters have had – or will soon have – their say. Barring some sort of cosmic intervention, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president. I therefore acknowledge the resulting binary choice. It’s Trump vs. Biden (or some other far-left loon that the Dems will put up when Biden’s growing decrepitude makes it impossible for him to carry on).

That is, as the cliché says, a ‘no brainer.’

The border catastrophe alone is enough to disqualify Biden. Add in a weak economy, a shrinking middle class, unsustainable federal spending, a historically weak American military (against the backdrop of a world on fire that he is wholly unprepared to address), and the case against Joe Biden becomes the unequivocal, undeniable, full-stop case for Donald Trump.

Little more need be said.

What would you do?

What would you do if you were in Governor Greg Abbott’s shoes? I ask because of an encounter I had with a woman in New Hampshire this past Tuesday. I was outside a voting location in Manchester collecting interviews for our coverage of the New Hampshire primary.

I asked as she was leaving the polling place if she would talk on camera to the folks in Texas. She made a face and said, “Eewww, Texas.” I smiled and said, “Oh, my goodness, why the face about Texas?,” and she said, “Your governor is a racist.” (Some of the voters who would talk to us can be seen here.)

I’m going to guess that she called Greg Abbott a racist for two reasons. One, he’s famously taking a firm stand against the tidal wave of illegal immigration washing over our border with Mexico because he obviously hates people with skin darker than his. That’s backed up by reason number two; any disagreement with a liberal on any subject at any time in any context for any reason is because of racism.

If not for illegal immigration, no one in New Hampshire would know Greg Abbott’s name. But he has locked horns with the Biden administration over this very contentious subject. At immediate issue is Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas.

Eagle Pass is a town of about 28,000 that sits on the bank of the Rio Grande River. Across the river, 300 feet away, sits the city of Piedras Negras, Mexico. The city of Eagle Pass, together with its city park, are now a flash point in the illegal immigration crisis currently gripping the country.

In a letter Wednesday to the Biden administration, Governor Abbott said,

Under President Biden’s lawless border policies, more than six million illegal immigrants have crossed our southern border in just three years. That is more than the population of 33 different States in this country.”

Though it’s not military in nature, Texas is being invaded at Eagle Pass. Thousands cross the bridge and cross the river every day. The costs to the state and to local governments is both staggering and unsustainable.

Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution provides that the federal government must defend states against invasion. Article 2, Section 3 provides that the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Biden is doing neither.

So, Governor Abbott has taken matters into his own hands. He is putting the incoming hordes on busses and sending them to “sanctuary cities” (to the great chagrin of the liberals that run those cities). And he has put up concertina wire in Shelby Park.

The Biden administration is angry. Lawsuits have flown in both directions. Nice liberal ladies in New Hampshire now make faces when they hear the name ‘Texas.’

But I ask Biden and I ask my grimacing New Hampshire liberal lady, given a relentless flood of impoverished and unskilled illegal migrants in need of food, housing, clothing, and medical attention costing in the hundreds of millions of dollars, what would you do if you were in Gregg Abbott’s shoes?

Inside the Legacy Media Bubble.

Two amazingly small pieces of real estate, one each in Washington, D.C. and in Midtown Manhattan, comprise one of the most comfortable cloisters in all the world.

Within about a square mile in each of these two cities sit the workplaces of the legacy media. Together, these areas comprise a bubble that is occupied by mostly attractive people who are well paid and intensely cosseted.

Let’s call it the “Legacy Media Bubble,” or “LMB.” It truly is a bubble and if you can manage to land a job there, it’s one of the cushiest places to work in all the world.

There are many perks attendant to the LMB. You make a lot of money. You have access to celebrities and politicians at the highest levels. You get a good table at the nicest restaurants. And you get perhaps the greatest perk of all: near total exemption from the consequences of being wrong.

That exemption is huge. If you or I get things wrong enough, long enough, not only do we lose our jobs, but the reputation that attaches to being wrong for long follows us as we seek other employment.

But not so inside the LMB.

For example, the Trump-Russia collusion story that the legacy media promoted breathlessly and endlessly for three years (beginning immediately after having been spectacularly wrong about the 2016 election) and for which some LMB members received Pulitzer Prizes and the like, turned out to be a total crock. Never mind that the evidence upon which the story was premised was flimsy to the naked eye. The denizens of the LMB ran with it anyway until it blew up in their faces.

Yet, there was no reckoning. Certainly, no apology.

The same for their pointed refusal to even consider the possibility that Hunter Biden’s laptop was, in fact, exactly what it appeared to be.

There’s another thing about working in the Legacy Media Bubble. You get to be superior. Because of your high income and your celebrity and your access to people to which ordinary folks will likely never get within a thousand yards, you get to look down your nose. You get the delicious pleasure of condescension. You get to be secure in your certainty that only people in your rarified circles are competent to have opinions as to how the country should be run.

Donald Trump might very well win the Republican nomination for president in 2024. If so, the Legacy Media Bubbleheads will lay into him with renewed and righteous fury. They will vigorously amplify every fault. They will studiously ignore every virtue.

But don’t think it’s Trump they’re after. Don’t think it’s Trump they loath. Trump is only a symbol – a manifestation.

Their true loathing is reserved for you – you tax-paying, hard-working, church-going member of an ever-shrinking middle class. You, an unlettered peasant, who would presume to call out the tiny cohort of insufferable elites who have made a hash of everything they’ve touched – and yet somehow still believe that they are better than you.

The state of American journalism: Exhibit A

If you’re among the dwindling number of Americans who watch the legacy network Sunday shows you saw this past Sunday a prime example of what’s wrong with what we call, with ever increasing derision, “journalism” in America.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was interviewed on CBS’s Face the Nation by Margaret Brennan. She was trying to discredit Johnson as an election denier for having spearheaded the filing of an amicus brief in the case filed by Texas in the United States Supreme Court following the 2020 election.

Here is and edited transcript of the exchange:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Back in 2021, you were the lawmaker who circulated the legal brief known as the Texas amicus brief, challenging the 2020 election outcome in a number of states, which by CBS editorial standards, makes you an election denier.

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: That’s nonsense.

BRENNAN: Can I get you on the record on that?

JOHNSON: I’ve always been consistent on the record. Did you read the brief? Did you get a chance to read what we filed with the Supreme Court?

BRENNAN: (awkward laugh) Well, I have read extensively some criticisms of that, but…

JOHNSON: You read commentary about the brief, but not what we submitted to the court, right?

BRENNAN: But you recognize that President Biden won the 2020 election. Can you just put that…

JOHNSON: President Biden was certified as the winner of the election. He took the oath of office. He’s been the president for three years. The argument that we presented to the court, which is our only avenue to do so, was that the Constitution was clearly violated in the 2020 election. It’s Article II, Section 1, and anyone can Google it and read it for themselves. The system by which you choose electors to elect a president of the United States must be done by the individual states, and the system must be ratified by the state legislatures. That is language, plain language of the Constitution.

BRENNAN: So, you still have issues with the validity of the 2020 election…

JOHNSON The Constitution was violated in the run up to the 2020 election. Not always in bad faith, but in the aftermath of COVID many states changed their election laws in ways that violated that plain language. It’s just a fact.”

 

Give Speaker Johnson credit. He could have annihilated Brennan. He chose instead to be a gentleman and to patiently explain, as if showing a child a card trick, what the case brought by Texas was really about.

The amicus brief is all of 17 pages. I’ve read it. You can, too. It’s right here.

But the moderator of the once-great Face the Nation can only bother to read bias-confirming “criticism” before interviewing the third highest-ranking elected official in the U.S. government. This is what now passes for journalism at the highest levels.

One big reason that we in America are at each other’s throats is that we have no longer have any reliable, commonly agreed and accepted sources by which to inform our opinions. Margaret Brennan of CBS just showed us why.

It goes much deeper than Biden and Gay.

Claudine Gay is now the former president of Harvard. Reaction to her catastrophically bad testimony before the House Committee on Education following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel had the catalytic effect of revealing her serial plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia. It was the plagiarism that got her.

Joe Biden is still the President of the United States. But his catastrophically low poll numbers suggest that he won’t be come January 20 of next year. Biden’s poor approval numbers are driven by voter concerns about declining personal economic well-being, growing fear that the U.S. will become embroiled in a foreign conflict, rising crime and a self-inflicted illegal immigration crisis.

Harvard will be better off without Claudine Gay. The United States will be better off without Joe Biden.

But it’s not that simple. Getting rid of Claudine Gay won’t fix Harvard. Getting rid of Joe Biden won’t fix the United States. In both cases, the ineptitude, malfeasance, ideological blindness and moral rot will remain when new administrations take over.

The problems at Harvard go well beyond Harvard. Harvard is emblematic of what’s wrong throughout academia. Today in America it is largely the case that the higher the tuition and the higher the perceived prestige of a university, the higher the likelihood is that leftist indoctrination – that includes a near pathological fixation on race and gender – has crowded out academic rigor and the passing down of beneficial knowledge and appreciation of the culture to the next generation.

The problems of the country go well beyond Joe Biden. As we have repeatedly said in this space, we the people of a nominally democratic republic have been thoroughly misgoverned by politicians from both parties for more than 30 years.

The nation is $34 trillion in debt. Trust in once respected government departments and agencies – such as the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control – has been forfeited by leaders of those institutions who were inept at best and corrupt (more likely) at worst.

Power-addicted politicians in league with power-addicted bureaucrats are incrementally crowding out even the pretense of government of the people, by the people and for the people.

All these things have happened and continue to happen because we – the people – have let them happen.

Even as universities have shifted ever more left while lowering academic standards, we have been unquestioningly accepting the premise that every kid needs to go to college. We then let our kids borrow ruinously to cover tuition that goes up at three times the rate of inflation.

Even as government becomes more bloated and less responsive to the will of the people who pay for it, we continue to simply shrug our shoulders at every misspent dollar and every encroachment on personal liberty.

Vote for whomever you wish in 2024. But know that your vote will be largely meaningless absent the stomach, the spine and the attention span needed for the long hard slog of putting the country back on the footings of its founding principles.

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