Oh, Its Political Season!

September 19, 2024 by Karl Denninger

While I wish there was something reasonable to say here -- there isn't.

First, Trump has had a second "would-be-likely-assassin" captured.  I say likely because he was caught with a rifle, hiding near a hole of a golf course the former President was yet to play in his round, and there was no other reasonable expectation of someone he would target.  Oh, and he had a scoped rifle, makeshift armor plates in what look like hand-made carriers for cover and similar.  The detail assigned to Trump saw the rifle, gave chase and ultimately he was captured on a nearby freeway trying to get away.

I didn't report on this immediately because the 24 (or 48) hour rule applies to such things, but there are several oddities here.  One of them is that the guy was apparently a resident of Hawaii and formerly NC, was rather-well known as "scary" among the people in NC but not for specific reason and has a long history, 20 years worth, of arrests for several felonies to which he has been adjudicated guilty -- one of them being possession of a machine gun -- yet apparently never served prison time.  Now granted that was quite some time ago -- but now we add to this quite a litany of really odd stuff like attempting to organize people to go fight in Ukraine and offering to pay them (where's the money coming from?), no visible means of support (he's not independently wealthy and while he used to own a business it was small and appeared to have failed) and yet here he is jetting all over the world which is not cheap.  Never mind that while felonies won't stop you from getting a passport they will stop you from getting into many nations and as such there's some question as to whether there was a bit of "help", shall we say, from various three-letter agencies in some of the things he was doing.  Oh and then there's the firearm which of course as a felon he couldn't buy in a store -- so how did he get it?  Its not like a person who is more than a bit erratic and has a bit of a criminal bent along with some crazy-eye for whatever foreign policy thing is going on wouldn't be of interest to exploit by said agencies, is it?  Oh no, that's not bog-standard stuff for those guys (uh yeah it is.)

He's been charged with a federal firearms offense (being a felon in possession is one of those sort of things you know) and there's probably more.  He also, from reports, smiled and thought it was funny in court.  Yeah, ok, we'll see how that all works out for him.  Best guess, from what I can determine from his record?  He's a nutball who had delusions of grandeur related to Ukraine and many other things -- and the "nutball" part got stoked by rhetoric that his side "can't lose" and, being mentally deranged the rest isn't tough is it?

Then there's the affidavit on the "debate."  Bill Ackman has highlighted it and I've read it (see ttps://x.com/BillAckman/status/1835497041151300069 -- put the "h" back in the link as X doesn't like to validate stuff) which lays forward very specific allegations against ABC and thus Disney, a multi-billion dollar public corporation which owns them.  The affidavit was executed prior to the debate and has very specific allegations that amount to ABC "News" and thus the Disney corporation trying to "rig" it for Kamala Harris, including a specific prohibition on topics not to be discussed.  As a specific condition of the debate the Harris campaign demanded various topics, including anything related to her time as AG in San Francisco, be excluded.  Finally the conditions are claimed to have included no "fact checking" of Harris, which was upheld even when she twice deliberately lied about Trump and his attachment to certain events, specifically the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" (which he was not involved in drafting) and the "very fine people" hoax which was discredited many years ago, both of which Harris did invoke during the debate without challenge.

Is this what it appears to be?  I'm not at all sure but if it is then it is not only wild-eyed misconduct from a journalism point of view that sort of one-sided and secret negotiation with one of two parties to a "debate" is arguably an unpaid in-kind and very illegal, due to its size were the campaign to BUY said airtime, contribution to the Harris campaign.  Since this facially would wildly exceed the $10,000 threshold for FECA prosecution and was knowingly done it could quite-easily be under the FECA (52 USC Sub 1) a criminal felony with up to five years in prison being imposed on every person involved in the scheme, including the two debate "moderators" on a personal basis.

I've often commented that when it comes to corporations of significant size and prosecution "that basically never happens for real", and never does when the penalty on the table is a prison sentence.  That's wrong and we must stop it; there's nothing wrong with expressing a preference for one candidate or another but this sort of act by subterfuge and arguably fraud, in that the public was promised a fair debate and in fact ABC declared "the rules" at the beginning without any such mention of what they really were, and its fair to assume Trump would never honor such conditions if he knew about them, is an entirely different thing.

Does Disney, or any other firm have a right to do this?  No -- not only a matter of reason but as a matter of actual law.

Now do politicians have a right to lie?  Sure.  They do it all the time.  Jeffries was doing just that in the hours before the second attempt on Trump.  Both his claim of Heritage's "2025" plan and that Trump wants and would sign a national abortion ban are debunked lies and, in the case of the second wildly illogical on top of being a lie because that would be to return to federal control that which Trump deliberately, and at great political cost, ejected from the Federal Government.  Jeffries is extremely upset about this, by the way, as is Pelosi and many others on the left because doing so means they can't concentrate their fire in one place and now have to go fight it out in all 50 State Legislatures.  That was the entire point of rescinding Roe -- to make it much harder to play "gotcha" politics on a national basis while at the same time allowing people with either set of extreme positions, or anyone anywhere in the middle, access to their point of view in representation and if necessary the act of abortion itself irrespective of whether someone else liked it or not.

What's so tough about that?  If you have a problem with "access" in states like Tennessee, Alabama or Florida then take up fundraising and offer transport to a state where its available to anyone who wants or needs it.  The Constitution prevents that act from being enjoined by any state and thus the rank hypocrisy of the left's demand is laid bare on the table, as is that of those who demand a federal ban on abortion.  Trump rejected both extremes which, incidentally, happens to be somewhere in congruence with roughly 90% of the American population who all have opinions that fall somewhere between "never" and "always" when it comes to "should this be available" but exactly where the line is differs from person to person.

That there are Republicans who would like a national ban to happen, or who support Project 2025, doesn't change any of this.  I know some of the organizations involved in the Project 2025 document (by their own self-declaration within it) and that document (which I've read) is nothing more than a grab-bag of common right-side positions, some of them fringe right, that they hoped they could get a buy-in on.  They didn't, so there you are, just like there are left-leaning organizations that put out documents and wildly left-leaning policy papers that they are hoping to get a buy-in on (and usually -- but not always -- fail to find traction with.)

But there's a difference between politicians lying (which they all do in my experience, without exception) and a news organization claiming to proffer a "debate" that they deliberately and secretly negotiated terms on that applied to only one person.  That, when it implicates what would otherwise be paid political advertising wildly beyond the limits for said contributions, and this does, is a criminal offense.

We are well past the point where there must be immediate and resounding liability for these sorts of events.  In addition every bit of interaction with this latest "assassin" must be laid bare on the table, including every agency within the United States, its knowledge of him and his history (particularly given his association with supporting Ukraine) and any sort of material support whether direct or indirect he received and for what purpose.  He had income and means so lets have the answers.  When your nutjob takes actions that, on balance, appear to be an attempt to kill a Presidential candidate any excuse of "operational interest" is void because we now have reason to believe that our own government agencies may be involved in it at least by omission if not direct act.

I want answers and I want them now.