Month: October 2018

The Murder of Jamal Khashoggi and Domestic Violance Case of Sherrod Brown: Understanding the media agenda on big news stories

So who cares if Jamal Khashoggi went to pieces, literally. The former Muslim Brotherhood reporter for the Washington Post disappeared in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey several weeks ago and after being pressed on it his murder had been admitted to. Immediately 18 Saudis connected to the situation were arrested and the Crowned Prince has denied direct involvement, but who cares? It’s very strange that with all the violence in the world that this particular story has been front page news all week. I mean nobody wants to see people being killed, but don’t be naïve, it happens everywhere all the time. Why would this one guy, who has been buddies with Osama bin Laden and is certainly not a friend to peace in the world, be so important? Well, part of the answer comes from an article published Friday just ahead of the Saudi admission to the murder shown below. The only reason that anybody cares about Jamul Khashoggi is that he was a reporter, and reporters want to believe that they are part of a ruling class that has some immunity to the violence of the world, that they can cover stories without actually being connected to them, and without fear of becoming the story itself such as Jamal did.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/conservatives-mount-a-whisper-campaign-smearing-khashoggi-in-defense-of-trump/ar-BBOA6kY?ocid=spartandhp

Yet there is something even more fishy about this story of murder that has taken the world’s imagination by storm. Reporters knew a lot about it early in the process even down to the grotesque details of the torture of Khashoggi finger by finger as his body was cut up into little pieces and taken off site for who knows what next. And reporters have personally made President Trump connected to the story as if he had something to do with the actual murder himself by his friendly association with the Crowned Prince of Saudi Arabia. It was Turkish officials from Istanbul who leaked the story of Khashoggi’s dismemberment while his fiancé Hatice Cengiz waited over four hours outside before finally raising the alarm. There was a price on the head of the anti-reformist reporter who was at odds with the regime of the Crowned Prince’s administration, that is the number one purchaser of American military equipment in the world. Saudi Arabia is also the number one ally against the aggression of Iran and the efforts of Israel, so Jamal Khastoggi was hardly just another beat reporter covering news stories in the Middle East. He was an activist and he wanted to marry Cengiz, so he was there to pick up the papers that would allow him to do so, but he never came back out. He had walked into a place he knew would be dangerous for him almost daring his rivals to take action, and they did. So how is it President Trump’s problem?

This is a very similar story to the one that is taking place in Ohio where Sherrod Brown is a three-term senator that suddenly finds himself under scrutiny for domestic violence that occurred early in his life, but under the #METOO movement is suddenly a problem for him. Only the media doesn’t want to touch the story because they want Brown to win the election against his challenger Jim Renacci. The media is willing to put on blinders to the actions of a Democrat but if it involved a Republican, the story would be plastered all over the news. In the case of Sherrod Brown, the obvious bias is clear which makes it relevant to this murder story of Jamul Khashoggi. The media isn’t just reporting news, they are trying to make it.

What the media as an entity is trying to do is cause a disruption between the relationship President Trump has with Saudi Arabia ahead of the November elections hoping that the economy will be torpedoed and voters will be angry with Trump instead of enamored with him which will help with this mythical “blue wave” they keep talking about, which is turning out to be a mere ripple in a kid’s pool. Gas prices are low going into the election and people are enjoying the benefits of a very strong economy, and Saudi Arabia plays their part by keeping prices on barrels of oil low. They also help by keeping Iran on their heels bringing a period of peace to the Middle East that is unprecedented. But nobody has illusions that all the elements of the world are a kid’s game. To maintain that level of peace in one of the most hostile regions anywhere violence does occur—often.

The media is certainly fanning the flames of this murder to hurt President Trump and to put him in a position that would cause harm to the relationship he has with the Saudis. Trump has made great ground around the world eliminating threats and befriending just about everyone, and the media can’t stand it, because they want violence and turmoil. They want North Korea testing nuclear weapons, not thinking of building condos on their beaches. They want Iran strong and powerful, not withering under the feet of a U.S. backed Saudi Arabia. The media as an organization doesn’t want a successful President Trump, they want stories of discontent and rebellion so that they can inspire a socialist takeover of the American capitalist system. They want the midterms to knock Trump out of power and they will do anything to achieve it, even if it causes an international incident.

We often say on the conservative side of things that The Washington Post is the official blog of Jeff Bezos who is very much an anti-Trump activist. Jamal Khashoggi did some work for The Washington Post so his politics fell very much on the side of the average radical reporter that has been beating on president Trump since his inauguration. None of these reporters are interested in just reporting the news as it happens, they are activists employed by news organizations taking big liberal money to reshape the world. We aren’t talking about freedom of the press here, we are talking about aggressive action to overthrow regimes and inspire Marxist ideas to destabilize entire regions, if not the entire world. Trump and the Saudis are the enemy to such strategies, so the media is using the death of this Jamal Khashoggi as a sacrificial lamb to the media’s greater cause.

So what should President Trump do, or the United States for that matter? Well, the big picture must always stay in focus. Khashoggi, the Washington Post, CNN and many others pushing this story of murder were anti-Israel, pro Iran radicals who need to understand what kind of game we are playing here. In that game sometimes if you go into the consulate of a sovereign nation you have been provoking, you don’t come out, even if your soon to be wife is waiting outside. That’s just the way the ball bounces. And nobody should be afraid to say that, because it’s the truth. We aren’t playing patty cake here; the world is a dangerous place and the media isn’t interested in peace. They are trying to stage an overthrow of power on many levels by hiding behind their press passes and using the justification of their cowardice to declare a freedom of the press. The evidence is quite clear, we can see such massive coordination on easy cases like the Sherrod Brown situation in Ohio, where the media work well together to bury a story so they can achieve a greater political objective. Yet on something more obscure such as this case with Jamal Khashoggi, the pattern of behavior is just as predictable. Nobody in the media cares about the dismembered body of a murdered member of the Muslim Brotherhood and Washington Post reporter. All they care about is stopping Donald Trump any way possible. And if they can cause an international incident to derail the confidence of the President with allies he has worked hard to build—for which are helping fuel a great American economy, then so be it. They don’t care how many people die so long as the media gets their revolution of Marxist ideas out into the public, and that is the real truth behind this dangerous matter.

If I were President Trump I wouldn’t send sanctions to Saudi Arabia, I’d send them something better, a gift to show how strong our friendship still is, like maybe a free subscription to Amazon Prime. Or a poster of Jeff Bezos to hang on their palace wall. Because let’s face it, the world is at war. This won’t be the last death. What matters is that the right-side wins, and this time around, the Saudis are helping America bring stability to the Middle East. And if being friends with them makes that happen, then we shouldn’t let some little issue like this Khashoggi murder stop anything. And we should stand by those who are willing to do the dirty work where the rest of us would rather not be.

And while we are waiting for the body of this Washington Post reporter to turn up, remember, we are still waiting to see the body of Osama bin Landen.  We were told to just trust the Obama administration about the burial.  How is this any different?

Rich Hoffman

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Republicans Coming Together at George Lang’s Fundraiser: The war of the midterms is about to occur, then what?

You can’t be the rebel forever, at some point if you are smart and diligent the reigns of power are going to pass over to your direction and you’ll get a chance to show what you are made of. I’ve been a Republican all of my life without ever going through any kind of period where I thought of being affiliated with some other party. But I am also very happy to be a lone wolf who lives on the outskirts of society, so I’ve never been big on the more social side of politics, except when there is a war to be won or a battle that needs everyone to come together to achieve a very defined objective. And it is in that regard that I have an obsession with politics, I do love the smell of a battlefield in the modern context. Politics is very much about wars as different philosophies pound out ideas to shape the nature of society, and to me that is very, very exciting. On the surface, politics looks stuffy, and boring. But when you know what’s going on and who the players are, what might look like a stagnant chess board comes to life and suddenly there is a compelling drama, and that was kind of a central theme at a Republican fundraiser for George Lang that occurred in West Chester, Ohio on October 18, 2018.

I’ve stayed on the parameter for a long time because my brand of Republicanism was way too much John Wayne as opposed to Roy Rogers and before Trump became the flagship of the party I can honestly say that I didn’t think that there was much for a guy like me to get excited about. I don’t want to negotiate with Democrats and find ways to work with them, I want to wipe them off the map as insurgents against American ideas and that kind of attitude really isn’t conducive to “party building.” But something happened in October of 2016 within the Ohio Republican Party where the John Kasich supporters rebelled and ran away from the newly formed Trump Republicans and since then much of the G.O.P. has coalesced around the president in very positive ways, and one of those Republicans is George Lang. So attending his fundraiser for me was a seminal moment. The kind of Republican Party that I had always wanted to see was forming. Some of the players were the same as they had been, but the game of politics was shifting. Republicans weren’t just trying to hold their own against Democrats, they were trying to beat them and that was something I could get excited about. The smell of battle was in the air and I simply love that.

Talking about battles, Ohio Republicans have won a lot of them and sometimes in the spoils of war people have disagreements, and there were people at George’s fundraiser that I hadn’t spoken to in a few years because of some of those moments. But it did give me a great opportunity to get in touch with them again, and that was good. Ultimately the differences were that I was wanting to go in a Trump direction before there was a Trump, and conventional politics at the time said that was dangerous. Conventional wisdom said that the Republican Party was going to be shaped by John Kasich, so political alliances become very much like an episode of the Game of Thrones. But just as quick all those same people are looking at each other in the face and pulling together for the next great battle and there is something very pure in that type of relationship. People are brought together to vanquish a common enemy. We might disagree how to dispose of the battlefield waste, but we do agree on our desire to win and that united people of all different affiliations at George Lang’s fundraiser in a very positive way.

Going into these midterms I have a very strong feeling for the end of a war that has long been coming, and I am happy to know many of the contributors. That doesn’t mean that we can take anything for granted at the polls, we need to show up and support our candidates on November 6th. But I have a very strong feeling that if we do that, we will pick up seats in the House and Senate and the Democrats will be headed for the fate I revealed on a radio show several years ago when I predicted their party would come to an official end. I don’t want to just beat Democrats in elections, I want to destroy them. The political spectrum is just too varied with their inclusion. If we are truly a center right country, which I think we are easily. Not to get too metaphorical but the new Halloween movie says a lot about what kind of country we are and it is making loads of money at the box office. 40 years after the original Halloween this new one has many conservative ideas in it and people are going to see the movie. To me the movie box office results say a lot about the kind of country we have, yet Hollywood producers refuse to acknowledge it to their own detriment. That is because much of the money that flows into Hollywood has radical left leaning intentions behind it, and that is why the Hollywood product these days is so wishy-washy. And understanding that, we at least in politics need a much more targeted representative basis to form our discussions on managing our country. For instance, we should all agree on the kind of education we want, we should all agree that its good to have a mom and a dad raising children. We should also all agree that economics is built by risk takers and investors looking for profit and that jobs are created in that exchange. We need to get the socialism crap out of our discussions in America before we can ever really be effective in communication with one another. So political victories, such as these upcoming midterms are very important, you have to win these wars so you can advance your ideas, which is why I love politics so much.

In America especially, these political exchanges have replaced armed battles on a field of contention. A lot of lives have been saved by creating the republic of America that uses elections to govern instead of armed insurrections and it’s a great system. Trump was a product of that system and these upcoming midterms are a battle to win a war that has been a long time in the making. George Lang is a part of winning that battle, and he can count himself among hundreds if not thousands just like him across the country contributing to the victory. But when the smoke clears that won’t be the end, but only the beginning. Once the Democrats are destroyed the hard work will just be starting, the responsibility of actually becoming one of the rulers instead of just a rebel scratching for a seat at the table. And when we get to the table, we all better know what to do when we get there. And based on what I saw at George’s fundraiser for the first time in over twenty years I think the future is very bright indeed.

Rich Hoffman

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Sherrod Brown Must Step Down: The Rules of #METOO dictate so

It really became apparent for me during the first debate between Jim Renacci and Sherrod Brown for the highly contested senate seat in Ohio, that it’s really a one-person race. Sherrod Brown, who is currently the three-time senator and its his seat that the battle is over, is effectively not qualified to run. It’s not even a political issue, it has nothing to do with any “dog” bills that Brown worked on to help Ohio residents with their “pets,” it has nothing to do with jobs, or Medicaid expansion. It has everything to do with the rules that we all now live under with the #METOO movement. Because Sherrod Brown was involved in a domestic violence case where his ex-wife had to file a restraining order against him, the Ohio Senator must step down. Sherrod Brown must step down. That’s all there is to it. It’s not dirty politics, its by the rules that his party have helped manifest, and under those guidelines, which were presented in the Judge Kavanaugh hearings as the established criteria it doesn’t matter how long ago an offense against a woman took place, or even whether or not the woman forgave the man—it only matters that the man did something and if a woman says such a thing from her lips. And in this case its more than an accusation, there are court documents which present the case beyond speculation of innuendo. Sherrod Brown was involved in a domestic violence situation for which he was the aggressor and that now disqualifies him for public office.

Before the Judge Kavanaugh hearings where a girl from high school, a woman named “Dr. Ford” came forward with allegations of rape during a drinking party when she was something like 15 years old, we might say that something that occurred that long ago would be purely political in motivations to bring up during a campaign. But Democrats did just such a thing to block the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s second pick to the Supreme Court. And they were more than willing to destroy the good name of Brett Kavanaugh to keep him off the court—and the entire media played along. Lucky for the courts there were enough votes to nominate Judge Kavanaugh to the high court anyway, but the Democrats opened up a lot of cans of worms in the process and introduced them as methods of appraisal for the future. They made a very strong case against Kavanaugh and were willing to stick by them even to the point of having their supporters scratch at the doors to the Supreme Court like cats trying to get inside from a freezing snowstorm outside. They made quite a spectacle of themselves all in the name of the #METOO movement.

Yet Sherrod Brown is trying to hold a critical senate seat against a worthy opponent and the debates between the two are good showing two paths for Ohio voters. Both men are distinctly different giving Ohio a real choice between two options. But after the Kavanaugh hearings and the methods of appraisal that the Democrats introduced, they essentially torpedoed their own candidate in Sherrod Brown. The rules had changed and under those new rules Brown was expected to step down immediately. All that mattered was that sometime within the past thirty years Sherrod Brown was involved in domestic violence. That is the end of the story, he is immediately disqualified. Even if he were to win his seat back, it would be illegitimate due to his documented history as a volatile male aggressor. The proof is in the court documents that his ex-wife filed against him.

Obviously, the Democrats are crying foul, and so is Sherrod Brown. They are used to throwing these kinds of things out there and making political monstrosities out of little issues, but they are not used to those things being applied to them. The media itself looks at the Sherrod Brown case and wants to cry political foul, but they were silent when Democrats were doing much worse to Brett Kavanaugh. We were supposed to believe that this straight-laced judge was a drinker and rapist when all he was ever doing was following the rules of a popular kid in high school. The standard that Democrats were trying to paint on Judge Kavanaugh not a single Democrat would ever be qualified for elected office for the rest of their lives, but they went for broke anyway. Now they must live with the consequences. They introduced the standard that they now have to live with.

Democrats can’t have it both ways, either we are to consider what women say about men and take their word for it 100% or we use other considerations such as a person’s actual record to judge them. Under the terms of the #METOO movement it doesn’t matter how many dogs Sherrod Brown has saved over his career, or how much he worked with the fellow Democrat John Kasich to expand Medicaid, what matters is what he did and how those rules apply to the sentiments of our day. Sherrod Brown was involved in domestic violence and that means that he must step out of public office. It would have been nice if they could have done all this well before the election so that Democrats could have found someone else to do that job but as it stands, timing is irrelevant according to the #METOO movement. We were to believe that the introduction of Dr. Ford’s testimony days before Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote was to occur was out of compassion for the women involved in the case. Well so too is the court documents of Sherrod Brown’s ex-wife. It doesn’t matter that she has come out stating forgiveness because the act of violence occurred regardless of her opinion about it. We all know that at the time of the domestic violence Sherrod Brown was a nobody. Since then he has spent the rest of his years in public office and has accumulated a lot of money as a top donor of lobby investment, so money has a way of inspiring forgiveness and Brown’s ex-wife has now seen the benefits of his public life and what it could do for her and her children. So she has come out and forgiven her ex-husband for the kind of violence that inspired her to seek a restraining order against him. But in the context of #METOO, the act itself is all we are to consider even if the action occurred over 30 years ago. Those are the rules.

If Democrats don’t hold Brown to the rules, then they can never use them against Republicans for any future election. By letting Sherrod Brown slip by, Democrats give up the opportunity to use the #METOO rules in any future election. While that may seem like a good idea today to preserve one senate seat, Democrats may want to consider the long-term options. As it stands, Republicans are going to pick up seats in the senate. They aren’t going to lose them. So what’s one silly little seat in the scheme of things? Is it really worth protecting Sherrod Brown and giving up their #METOO leverage? I say either way Republicans will end up winning. But for those who really think that the Judge Kavanaugh case was about women being abused, how can you really let Sherrod Brown off the hook? The answer is you can’t.

Rich Hoffman

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The Decline of Groupthink: Lakota schools, Stormy “horseface” Daniels, and Leslie Stahl getting her ass handed to her

That article I wrote previously about the V.I.P. pass at the Trump rally in Lebanon had to be done to set up something far more sinister in need of explanation. It’s at the center of everything we are dealing with presently and is at the heart of how evil is spread across the world. It starts with little innocent things and ends with truly tragic circumstances and is something we’ll have to really fix as a civilization before we can truly Make America Great Again. When we talk about “again,” there was a time when Americans had it together. Unfortunately, we didn’t have yet the status of the world’s most powerful economy to match it, and it didn’t last more than a few years before ancient grudges and social traditions jealously conspired to make themselves the center of attention again. But when it is asked why people love Donald J. Trump so much and why he feels he must do what he did after he won a lawsuit against Stormy Daniels by calling her “horseface” it is this kind of corrosive thinking that Trump has been fighting and people who are smart and aware of it see the possibility of such a person sitting in the White House and what he can do for the kind of American swagger that most of us crave to have—except for the people who want the opposite, like that lady in the media I had previously discussed. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. You could see all this on full display when President Trump gave an interview recently to 60 Minutes where he skewered Leslie Stahl rather unceremoniously by letting her know that she, or nobody else in the media was the president. He was.

Lakota schools had one of their “community conversations” hosted by the progressive Jeff Stec to discuss school safety. This is one of those expensive consensus building activities that they are conducting in that public establishment to avoid what the Trump administration has proposed, and that is the arming of teachers to make them first responders in case a gunman attacks one of the 22 buildings in the district. Lakota has a math problem, they have only hired 19-armed security personnel to protect kids which means the resource officers have to rotate around to cover all the schools. A potential gunman won’t know where they will be or when, so that type of risk is considered appropriate to the gun hating administrators at Lakota who think its more important to continue their position of weakening the Second Amendment, ignoring President Trump, and holding the entire education system to the kind of learning that causes much of this mess for the benefit of their political affiliations. Jeff Stec’s specialty is in consensus building exercises, what we have called in the past The Delphi Technique. After years and years of this type of consensus building we as human beings arrive at what we accept as a reality. The media of course maintains that reality and people growing up in our society have three typical choices coming out of the government education system and arriving into adulthood, as its designed now. They can join the military, they can join college or they can dig ditches or other manual labor jobs that offer little prestige socially. All those traditions involve some means of breaking down individual thought and processing people into a kind of group think. Some people fall through the cracks and become people like Donald Trump, but they often don’t arrive so late in life so confident and able to function independently. That is why the media despises Trump so much, because they see their job as maintaining that social order, not rebelling against it. Yet Trump’s movement is all about freeing people from that process so a tremendous amount of resentment is forming along the social norms of our culture. Leslie Stahl represented the social norm, President Trump was supposed to play the timid office holder that was about to lose his majorities in the House and Senate, so he was supposed to play nice. Instead he gave them the opposite.

Anyway, back to Lakota, under Jeff Stec’s leadership groups formed of 5 to 6 to meet and discuss ideas and questions for the moderator, in this case Stec, to discuss with the whole audience of about 55 people. The people in the group were students, board members and those with children in the schools. There were a few citizens from outside those social groups as well, but not many. By the time all the talk had occurred, only 4 or 5 people favored guns on teachers while the rest of the group was against the idea. Therefor Jeff Stec’s “community conversation” could then report that Lakota schools was against the arming of teachers as this statistical sampling suggested. But of course, there is more at work here than just talking to people and taking a vote, and it shows up in how the media does polling, such as the many mistakes they make in regard to President Trump. When human beings become socialized they are reluctant to act outside the parameters of group acceptance. For instance, if 7 people go out to eat together individuals will be more inclined to behave as the group does than what their personal preferences may suggest. Maybe two of them aren’t hungry at all and are on a diet, but the other five are getting large meals with a soda or a mixed drink. The other two are going to be inclined to break their diet so they can actively participate in the group activity. They do not want to do anything that might make them isolated from the group with too much individualized input which might cause them to be castigated. That is how consensus building happens and it is the method of the Democratic Party, and has been for most of this past century. We learn the methods in our government school system then spend the rest of our lives typically trying to escape from it, mostly without any success. That is until a Donald Trump comes into our life and inspires us to think for ourselves again.

That is what the media is struggling to do with Trump, put him on his heels and make him that lone voice that nobody wants to listen to. They isolate individuals from the group so that they can control them emotionally. That’s what happened to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News and even Alex Jones, they were removed from the warm blanket of public approval by having their content banned either for sexual harassment accusations, much like was attempted with Brett Kavanaugh, or they were edited by their conduct against the social norm. Just this past week I had a similar experience. I get good numbers on my blog, but for well over five or six years I have been banned by all the social media sites. I don’t care because I write so much that it gets out anyway, but it happens often. Well, this week I saw just to how much of an extent. The systems that shadow ban me went down for about 45 minutes and in that time, I had 400 hits on my homepage from search engine results in that duration. As soon as the system was back up, those numbers dropped off the map completely and were back to normal, about 20 to 30 per hour. Again, just like in the consensus building of Jeff Stec, or the motivations of the media, or the shadow banning by the big tech companies, their goal is to shape the public toward a social norm that they set.

When Trump said to Leslie Stahl that she was not president, this is what he was talking about, and part of what Making America Great Again means is that his administration is out to make people great again, as individuals. That process is in direct violation to everything liberal society believes, so of course their faces are melting. But they never had a right to attempt to change the message. Just as in the case of the Lakota gun issue, just because 55 people determined that school resource officers would be enough and that no decision on arming teachers was appropriate doesn’t mean that guns in schools isn’t the answer. But what it does mean is that the means of allowing people to arrive to that conclusion as individuals has been tampered with. The social norms that we have all been programmed to respond to are getting in the way of proper decision-making. But Trump’s appeal that is growing is that he is changing that and the gate keepers of our social norms, the media, Hollywood, the political structure of our elected offices hate it. But with the midterms coming up quick and polling going the opposite way that liberals would like to see, it is evident that a major change of social norms is on the horizon and it will be quite shocking to all those who have made their livings as those social restrictor plates. And I will cheer quite loudly as those advancements are made.

Rich Hoffman
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What a V.I.P. Pass Means: The refusal of the press to understand Trump supporters

I am always grateful when someone gives me a V.I.P. pass to some event, whether its political or some sporting endeavor—or the opening of some new restaurant. When I do something, I like to get up close and personal with it, but I do not have the time to wait in lines. I am not a line kind of person largely because it’s a time management issue. I have too much going on all the time to really spend too much time on one thing. So, When I get the opportunity to be a V.I.P. at an event I take it very seriously and am always very appreciative. Usually if it’s a political event, like the Trump events always are, if I go it’s because somebody thought enough of me that they offered me a V.I.P. experience. Such a way of attending allows a person like me the time to do what I do without making it into an entire day’s event. So it was in that context that I saw the fangs of the national media at the Trump rally in Lebanon in a way I wouldn’t otherwise have, and it was obvious.

Usually at these kinds of political rallies there is a general entrance and there is a V.I.P entrance that is usually near where the media enters. In fact, the last three or four times that I had been to a Trump event, the V.I.P. entrance was in the same place as the media entered. So it was only logical as we parked in Lebanon, Ohio and came to the entrance to the Trump rally that I notice the media sign-in table, so I asked them where the V.I.P. entrance was. The girl who answered me was about a year shy of 30 and was pretty smug. She repeated what I had said like some puppet and pointed at the long line that was about a quarter-mile long that everyone else was standing in waiting to get into the event. I paused on her face because I wasn’t sure if she was challenging me to a fight or was trying to be helpful. An older man who was standing next to her and was much more reasonable pointed around a chain link fence just to the other side of their position and told me that the V.I.P. table was there.

We stepped around the fence avoiding the long line and got to the table where some really sharp young ladies were doing the check ins, so I felt that whatever that was I encountered with that bizarre lady was over. Another thing I like about V.I.P. lines is that the security is usually less intrusive. They figure that you wouldn’t have a V.I.P. pass unless you knew someone important so they treat you differently, as not a potential terrorist posing as a Trump supporter, so security is usually much smoother, and in this case, it was. Not less stringent, but more respectful for sure. Once we were through I was immediately thankful for our passes. I had brought my daughter on this particular event because out of all my family, she hadn’t yet had a chance to see the president yet, so this was going to be a treat for her. Even though we had the passes we still showed up three hours early and it was a good thing that we did because the place was already stuffed with people. Under the big roof of the main stage the entire floor was packed and there wasn’t a seat to be found. It was astonishingly crowded.

But the event organizers were very nice when they saw we had the badges and they directed us to our seats in the bleachers just behind where the president would be speaking. I was thinking about what the media lady had said as we approached, it was obvious that she thought anybody coming to a Trump rally with a V.I.P. pass was pretentious and that it was violating some unwritten rule she lived by that was very much the way Democrats view the world. Nobody was more important than anybody else so how could someone coming to a Trump rally be more important? Well, as they showed me to our seats the bigger picture was obvious. I saw people there I knew from other events and the necessity for V.I.Ps was obvious. Trump could be assured that the people directly behind him knew what to do with the cameras on them, and they were all safe people who were good for security. Mostly the people sitting around us were all either big political players or major donors, so they were invested in the safety of the president, and we were part of the show. In my own way I give a lot more to the plight of the president than people who one or two times in their life wait all night to get a seat in the arena. We all do what we do and all those things were needed for this type of show. So I didn’t feel guilty about being taken to a nice seat while the people in the pit were stuck standing for up to six hours. And they didn’t seem to resent us, we all understood the larger context. Everyone was just happy to be there.

But as the media started doing zoom checks of the crowd from their position some of the organizers caught what was going on around the media area and discussions were brewing about the bright yellow badges that the people in the V.I.P area had around their necks. And the media was talking about it in a negative way. Apparently other media types were just as appalled by the signs of a V.I.P area as that girl was that I encountered. So the event staff came by and asked us to conceal our badges and to stay in our seats. The venue was too packed to get up and move around anyway. There was no way to really go use the restroom or to get some food so the only thing we could do is stay put. That is when it really became clear to me why the media hated Trump so much, he was making even political rallies cool again by breaking down norms the press had long accepted, basic rules of practice. V.I.P. passes certainly aren’t a new thing, and Democrats have those types of things at their events as well, but the media had in their minds that Trump supporters were still a subspecies of political activism and that Trump’s people couldn’t be that organized as to have a V.I.P. base to draw from. It is a denial of their own making, but it did have an impact on the way they covered the Trump events.

It was a fascinating observation and a new level of hatred that I hadn’t seen before, but the disdain was quite clear. Perhaps at other events the thoughts were that Trump would never make it to the presidency or that if he did, Democrats would knock him out of power. So there wasn’t much consideration about different status levels of Trump support from his base. But now everything was a little more real for them, the media was getting tired of covering Trump every night and having him berate them. But they had to go because their media bosses needed the ratings of covering Trump and they were becoming very resentful. And to make matters worse were the obvious evidence of Trump’s ground game, the financiers, the provocateurs, the political support that became the members of the V.I.P. section. The media had been wanting to think that we were all playing political house, and some people still refused to believe that what they were seeing was real. But it was quite real, and even more than that—it was better than what was going on with the other side. Wherever there are V.I.P. passes that are as valuable if not more so than a back-stage pass to a rock concert, there is value that justifies them. I appreciate that value immensely. But the media obviously had a hard time accepting the obvious. They weren’t the only ones with special access, or in the case of that rally, limited access. They were able to be in the press area, but they weren’t able to get to where we were and that seemed to bother them. And that is a very subtle sign of winning that doesn’t get talked about very much. But it is one of the biggest bits of evidence of these changing times and it makes me even more proud of that little souvenir that I will never forget. It meant more to me than just being able to get a decent seat. It was the evidence of some changing times that are getting better by the day. And I’m looking forward to those continuous improvements.

Rich Hoffman

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After this, Sherrod Brown Must Step Down: Jim Renacci just destroyed him in an Ohio debate–it wasn’t even close

These statewide debates are always very polite, but in that context Jim Renacci’s first debate with the three-term senator from Ohio Sherrod Brown was a disaster for one of the most liberal members of the senate. You can see the whole debate below but if you just go to the end the summation will be quite clear, Sherrod Brown walked off the stage and left the building not even giving interviews after Jim Renacci tore him to pieces. Renacci was very well prepared and stayed on issue the entire time. It was quite clear that Jim Renacci knows how to win these kinds of tough elections, which is why President Trump personally picked him to run against Brown. But it was surprising just how much on his heels Brown was during the entire debate, except for one time when Renacci brought up the domestic abuse case that had been hanging around Sherrod Brown’s neck for over thirty years. At that point Brown turned to Renacci and indicated that he should be ashamed of himself for even bringing that up because his ex-wife had forgiven him long ago. But the effect of that line left a very uncomfortable stench in the air that Renacci had successfully exposed.

As a nation we had just watched Brett Kavanaugh have to explain his high school year books when a woman from way back then accused him of rape and it was Democrats themselves who indicated that Kavanaugh just for the accusation of such a monstrosity should be removed from consideration for Supreme Court. Yet Sherrod Brown had the audacity to look at Jim Renacci and say that his challenger should be ashamed of himself for considering specific factual evidence of domestic abuse coming from the Brown household. It really didn’t matter if the ex-wife forgave him, what did matter as established by Democrats is that it happened at all. In the Kavanaugh case it was his word against hers, in this case there is evidence and court documents. If Sherrod Brown had abused women 30 years ago, he was still prone to do so according to logic. So why wouldn’t Brown be knocked out of contention for the senate race in Ohio just by the modern definitions of the #METOO movement? That’s what we’ve all been told by Democrats is supposed to happen.

The reason Brown’s statement to Renacci about the domestic abuse had such an ominous appeal to it that left the room gasping for air because it put on full display a truth we all know, but don’t often see in the light of day. We know there is a double standard in the media between Democrats and Republicans and how the media applies rules of conduct for each. Obviously, the media leans heavily to the political left and they won’t jeopardize a liberal senate seat in Ohio, they are more than willing to give Brown a free pass. And they planned to help Sherrod Brown out with his #METOO problem. His ex-wife was certainly willing to help out but we have seen out of the political left intense hypocrisy applied to President Trump and many others over much less than what Sherrod Brown did. Even at the worst-case scenario if President Trump did have a fling with Stormy Daniels and some other women and it was all consensual, we were told that those events made him not fit for the presidency. But with Brown we were supposed to buy into his sincerity when he looked hurt that Renacci even brought it up. Up until that moment I hadn’t been thinking too much about Sherrod Brown’s domestic violence problems from the past, but by the way he looked at Renacci and expected a different set of rules, it was quite clear that there is a lot more to the story than the media was willing to adhere to.

On every topic Brown was on the back of his feet, it was clear that he didn’t come prepared for the debate. And when Renacci pushed Brown on the lack of work that Brown actually did for Ohio Brown gave a fine example of his behavior right after the debate when Renacci worked the press completely alone. Brown didn’t stay for any questions. Likely he didn’t feel he needed to with a big lead in the Real Clear Politics poll, but as we know, that’s not very reliable. More than that, I think Renacci hit him too hard on the domestic violence issue and it cause trouble at home, and Brown had to fix that rather than talk to the press. Whatever the situation, Renacci showed that he was a much more stable person, and a much harder worker interested in the job. Renacci won the night in both deed and action, it was a brilliant performance.

The choice between Brown and Renacci is very simple. Brown demonstrated that as a guy who had been in Washington for over 30 years that he still hasn’t a clue as to what makes an economy work. Workers don’t have any jobs if not for corporations, so by making big business an enemy, how can anybody expect to create jobs? I mean anybody with basic economic understanding knows that progressive talking points like “global warming,” “tax the rich.” and “being friends with Wall Street” are stupid and idealistic, not rooted in any kind of reality. If workers don’t have jobs because all the employers have been taxed to hell and back and pushed out of the United States, then what good are they? Even for a polished politician Sherrod Brown sounded like a kid in the 1st grade trying to explain economics, he didn’t seem to understand even the basics. But Renacci was an accountant by trade and he knows numbers. He made Brown look like a complete idiot in all economic discussions.

Yet the zinger of the evening was the domestic violence problem for Sherrod Brown. His own party has set the stage for his voluntary removal from office. They established the criteria he must live up to. It reminds me of the Bill O’Reilly situation when liberals were so happy that they used allegations of sexual misconduct to get the long time and popular newsman knocked off the air at Fox News. Then Democrats realized that they had people in their party doing much worse, like big time fundraiser Harvey Weinstein. After Democrat men started dropping like flies the #METOO movement cooled off a lot. Conservatives live pretty good lives, they can throw rocks in glass houses a lot better than Democrats and liberals had to realize that they had opened a can of worms they couldn’t endure themselves. But they reopened that can with the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and now one of their precious senators in Sherrod Brown was guilty of much, much worse—and the facts were there to prove it. That leaves Democrats with no choice really, one way or another they are going to lose that liberal Ohio senate seat because under the modern terms of #METOO, Sherrod Brown must step down. He is not fit to serve—otherwise liberals can never use such an allegation ever again. Just think if Donald Trump looked at his accusers and said what Brown did, that they should be ashamed of themselves for even bringing up something from his past for political reasons? Liberals can’t have it both ways, and Renacci hit the center of the issue during the debate because he dared to ask the question—a question that Democrats cannot answer without giving everything else up. Is one seat worth all that to them? I don’t think so.

If Renacci pushes this issue Democrats will have to abandon Brown, and that little revelation is what emerged from that first debate in Ohio between Renacci and Brown. Brown is vulnerable emotionally on the issue and that sets the stage for a very interesting upcoming three weeks.

Rich Hoffman

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The Trump Strategy: Changing the way politics is conducted forever

It was different this last time, when President Trump visited the Warren County Fairgrounds to deliver a speech in favor of several GOP candidates that were on the ballot for November 2018’s midterms. I’ve seen Trump in person a few times since he had been elected president in 2016 but this campaign rally at the very unusual building on the fairgrounds site provided an almost cinematic appeal as if some Hollywood production designer had brought all these strange elements together for the benefit of the story than just happenstance. It was a Friday night in the historic town of Lebanon, Ohio and it was lightly raining, with a snow mix falling with the raindrops and President Trump was stoking the minds of thousands of people who had packed into every available spot to listen to him give essentially the same speech over and over again. But nobody cared, they were happy to be there and didn’t seem to ever want the event to end. For this particular venue I had a really fantastic seat, one just outside the television cameras and on a high perch so I could see everything that was going on. I could even see the president arrive and leave from behind the show’s façade and for me it was perfect because it facilitated my high thoughts on the matter with great conductivity.

In the short run the threat was real, Republican voters needed to hit the voting booths and support the candidates that Trump was speaking for. But from my perspective a lot had changed since the last rally I attended at U.S. Bank Arena in October of 2016 and this one in Lebanon in October of 2018. For the first time in my lifetime Republicans had a good, positive brand and they had a President who could sell it. Trump has actually changed the way campaigns work—he has changed the rules of the game itself into something that Democrats will not be able to follow. They don’t have the energy or the message leaving Trump in command of the political process for what will turn out to be the first half of the 21st Century.

I think it’s quite amazing that Donald Trump is willing to attend so many rallies across the country in order to build a team that he can work with in 2019 on the legislative side. He’s almost acting like a college coach recruiting star athletes for a football team. The tireless work he has been willing to put into the effort is truly stunning for anybody. And that effort showed in the event organization and even the crowd. There was a lot to complain about. During the speech some people actually passed out and needed medical help. But the show went on as the medical staff gathered up the sick and took them away to be cared for. And nobody complained. The Secret Service didn’t overact. The crowd wasn’t overly dramatic, and Trump never even paused. The show just went on and everyone was focused on the success of the evening.

There is no way for the two sides of politics, the liberal view and the conservative view to work out differences between each other for a sustainable republic. The two sides are not equal, they do not have shared values to build a foundation of friendship from. In the Republican Party that has been the problem from the beginning, if there were any compromises that had to be made it was always from the Republicans because they were always the only side functioning from value to barter with. Liberals were all for the abandonment of values, so they never gave anything up and that left Republican supporters always feeling shortchanged. But now there some wins under Trump’s belt and there was more to this rally because the foundations of success were there to talk about, as opposed to just a bunch of theories from two years prior. Now there was a track record and the obvious view of many more things that could be accomplished. And the Democrats had nothing to offer but complaints and emotional desires to be considered equally important. Trump’s Republican Party was willing to stick its head up out of the ground and to actually emerge into the light of day unafraid and be pace setters and that is something you don’t see every day.

Yet the show itself was very slick, the volunteers were enthusiastic and the base of support was willing to do their part and show up at each of these rallies a whole day before just to get a good place in line. While people waited volunteers handed out swag to the audience all of it well-managed and constructed. The sheer logistics to pull off one of these shows by the support staff is quite staggering. What was involved for just the Lebanon event was enough to impress, but the very next night Trump was in Richmond, Kentucky doing nearly the same thing with a lightly modified speech. Trump had done several rallies during that week in different parts of the country all of them just as complex and with similar people willing to brave the elements and waiting times to attend. In the case of Lebanon, I noticed later that the local media markets were very happy with the Trump visit, they gave him great coverage for at least two days before and after. Trump’s changes to campaigning gave local media the two things they always wanted, so the coverage turned out to be fair and positive. First were the traffic shutdowns, the news loves to talk about traffic jams and the President’s motorcade shut down traffic during rush hour all the way from downtown Cincinnati to Lebanon, Ohio over 30 miles to the north. Then the second things were the feel-good stories about how the positive rallies made people feel to be near a sitting president. I could see a brilliance in Trump’s strategy that was always there for anybody to attempt, but now Trump has made it a Republican method.

And that brought the whole thing to a kind of grand fortissimo, the difference between Republicans and Democrats fundamentally. Democrats were essentially seeking to ride the Vico cycle into the future, the endless cycle of human endeavor going from theocracy, to aristocracy, to democracy then to anarchy only to return over and over again to the beginning. Republicans however are the opposite, they are about human pro-growth and continued expansion into the future. Democrats are the hippies of Woodstock while the Republicans are the scientists trying to expand mankind’s reach to the moon. The vision from each party is not conducive and are at odds with each other and a choice has to be made. We can’t have it both ways. For me personally, I’ve always been a pro-growth guy. It makes me very sad to think that all the work we’ve done through art, literature and engineering would be tossed away only to dig at the ground like a pathetic primitive and not understand the complexities of the universe. But until Trump, Republicans didn’t know how to sell a pro-growth agenda, so the plight of the primitives dominated politics leaving Republicans to chase after. But now those roles have been reversed and it looks like a great opportunity is unfolding in front of us, and at the center of it is the remarkable Manhattan builder himself who has a pro-growth message that people can finally relate to. And the effect is obvious, and lasting. It’s a very exciting time indeed.

Rich Hoffman

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What Makes President Trump So Special: A magic night in Lebanon, Ohio

There were some deeply touching moments in the Trump rally in Lebanon, Ohio which I partially expected. But we’re talking about a sitting president stumping for some midterm candidates here, politics is not supposed to be this exciting and people normally don’t show up five, six and seven hours early to stand in the cold and in the rain to watch a 72-year-old man talk. This is a human phenomenon that is unsurpassed in the history of the world, I don’t even think the great Winston Churchill could have brought out the crowd that greeted President Trump at the Warren County Fair Grounds on Friday October 12, 2018. I was just a little stunned by the event. I had a feeling that there would be a large crowd, but the sheer magnitude of it was just jaw dropping. There was a collision of Americana present that was obvious and inspiring and I thought John London from Channel 5 News in Cincinnati put his finger on it perfectly in his summation of the night.

There is a lot to unpack from this event and it will certainly take more than one article to cover it all but for the sake of brevity here I have to thank the people who gave my daughter and I the opportunity to witness this spectacle from the comfort of the V.I.P. section. Yes it was freezing cold and we got rained on and we did stand most of the time. But at least we had a seat and a good vantage point to watch this unusual moment in history.

I always feel sorry for people who don’t have that kind of access to these big Trump events, but as I looked at people’s faces on the floor, many who had been standing under the roof for more than four hours—before President Trump even arrived—they were happy people just willing to be near the star of the show if even for a moment. People were packed everywhere that people could put themselves for as far as the eye could see and it was quite something to witness. It was inspiring to say the least. If these people were willing to show up in the cold and rain of an October in Ohio, they would surely show up to vote for Republicans Trump endorsed in the upcoming election.

This was my oldest daughter’s first time to go to one of these events with me and she was very touched by it. She is a professional photographer and shares with me a tendency to like to view the world through big picture vantage points. The event organizers couldn’t have put us in a better spot for that particular venue, we had the top row of the bleachers just behind the president. I’ve watched President Trump speak many times so it was good to be behind him because my interest was mostly the crowd. The media never does justice to what the crowds look like from Trump’s point of view and we were fortunate to see the whole thing more from the president’s perspective even watching the motorcade role in to drop him off, and turn around all the vehicles to take him back to Lunken afterwards. President Trump does many very subtle things that only a polished pro like him can do on such large operations with many moving parts coming together seamlessly. He is super smart, from where I was standing I could see him staging up his entry onto the stage to match perfectly the various cable news top of the hour broadcasts, and he ended everything right on time like such a seasoned performer. But he’s of course juggling much more than that just in the complexities of his job. Yet while Steve Chabot was talking the President could get a sense that the crowd was drifting. People not under the roof of that magnificent structure on the fairgrounds were getting soaked, including my daughter and I. People next to us were starting to head for the exit. Trump was watching and he ever so subtly tapped Steve in the middle of the back to change things up a bit. Chabot took the cue and sped up his speech and Trump seamlessly changed gears and held the audience to his next twenty minutes of oration. Most people might not even see the value in such a thing, but that is one of the very raw distinctions that Trump has over everyone else in the world. He is literally a master communicator and he knows exactly what he is doing all the time. I continue to be impressed by President Trump every time I see him live, I don’t think I’d ever get sick of it.

After the event was over and people headed out to the parking lot, which used to be the old horse racing track that was moved to Miami Valley gaming several miles to the west my daughter and I lingered around watching the press. I literally stood next to an AP writer and watched her write the news feed of the event, which she mostly got all wrong. But she was shivering and tapping her feet viciously trying to stay warm. For people who haven’t been to these types of things before the media are always given a spot near the back of a rally to photograph from, and behind that raised camera platform is usually rows of tables so that writers can get their stories out. Mostly these reporters are like anybody else, they just want to get their jobs done and get home. Once the Trump supporters had left for their cars the reporters could relax a bit and get their stories out to their employers to meet their deadlines. Most of those reporters didn’t go to the trouble that John London did at Channel 5. They see hundreds of these types of rallies so there is no magic in them that they can see, they only care about the surface stuff. But one thing that everyone missed from a reporter’s standpoint that was very clear to me was how Trump handled the weather.

Remember when Obama had to have a military official hold an umbrella over him while he gave a speech in the Rose Garden? Well in these times of high insurance rates and overly cautious appraisals of everything I didn’t think Trump’s people would let him take the stage because it had been raining so long. The stage was soaked. Part of the stage entry was raised and ran outside of the roof that most of the rally was under, so it was exposed to the weather. Rain had clearly soaked it after many hours. But Trump did the right thing when he arrived. Some of his security wiped off the platform with towels and Trump walked out across it without any concern for his safety which these days was highly unusual. Lesser people would have called the whole thing off, but not this president.

Trump shows up to talk to his supporters under any condition, and that is part of his appeal. But when he left the rain had been coming down even harder. The safe thing would have been for Trump to take the steps down into the pit and stay under the roof, but no, he went back out the way he came in and the ramp wasn’t dried off at all. Trump walked across it like a seasoned pro not even worrying about slipping and falling. Trump isn’t afraid of little things like that and that is part of what distinguishes him from everyone else. It’s a subtle little thing, but those add up and they make Trump and all those he endorses that much more appealing.

Trump has made the Republican Party much, much better. I’ve always identified myself as a Republican, but I have never been prouder to be affiliated with it. Trump is a superstar, he was before he ever ran for president, yet he’s not so pretentious that he’s afraid of rain, or hard work. And nobody works harder than President Trump.

These rallies may cost a fortune to put on, and may be traffic nightmares, but one thing that comes out of them is that Trump talks directly to people who support him. He doesn’t hide out in the White House enjoying the luxury of the office. He works, and he works hard—and he’s willing to endure the cold and the rain if his supporters are. And that is what makes Donald J. Trump special, and why the Republican Party has a new life because of him. The Democrats don’t have anybody even close and they likely never will.

Rich Hoffman

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The Power Behind the Trump Name: Democrats are in real trouble

Just for perspective when news coverage of something like President Trump’s visit to Lebanon, Ohio occurs network news always feels they have to cover equally the Democratic response. I suppose they think it avoids the optics of appearing to lean to one side instead of the other. But with something like Trump coming to a Northern Cincinnati suburb of great historic value, so many people showed up that it essentially shut down the city as people poured into the fairgrounds of Warren County just a few miles north of the famous Golden Lamb profusely. In fact dear reader, as you are reading this, I am at that event and as far as you can see its Trump Republicans who have swarmed in from all over the countryside. Yet the news coverage of this massive rally featured a kind of Democrat response, a rally of their own called “We Deserve Better” which had about four people and a cat show up. I didn’t think there were any Democrats in Warren County, but a few showed up, and their rally looked pretty pathetic in comparison. Not even on the same level of politics which I thought said a lot about the reality of the upcoming midterms.

As I’ve said from the beginning of this latest political season, it’s going to come down to voter turnout of course. Democrats are energized, but honestly, I think we are seeing what’s left of their party on the news every night. They are fluffing themselves up to look relevant, but in all actuality, they aren’t. Just as the Channel 9 people in Cincinnati felt they had to cover the Democrat response to the Republican rally–truthfully there aren’t enough people in the Cincinnati market who even care anymore to justify the airtime. That is why Trump is able to draw these huge crowds who are more than a little enthusiastic to show up on a chilly October night in Ohio to watch a president two years into office give a stump speech for fellow Republicans. There isn’t anybody like that in the Democrat Party now or in the foreseeable future and that has further coalesced Republicans around Trump. I think it’s quite clear that the amount of people who showed up to see Trump exceeded expectations. Meanwhile, the Democrats were trying to fluff up their feathers to appear as an equal party offering alternatives to the Republican proposals, but people know now what they are really about, it’s socialism and now that they cat is out of the bag, most Americans just aren’t comfortable supporting such a concept on American soil. And it shows with the support of the Democratic Party.

Yes, you can tell a lot about enthusiasm from the population by the size of their rallies. For instance, when I wrote about this very topic two years ago as Trump was looking to be knocked out of the presidential race by the Access Hollywood tapes I was at the rally at U.S. Bank Arena which filled up to the luxury boxes. Hillary had come the week before and had a hard time filling up the little space just a few blocs down the road in downtown Cincinnati between the Ohio River and the Banks development. There is a little park there and Hillary gave a speech and they had to push everyone in tight to make the crowd look bigger on television. I could see then that nobody cared about the Access Hollywood tapes. Trump was different and he was re-writing the rules of politics, rules that the Democrats had controlled for nearly 100 years. Trump had changed them all for the better in just a few months on the campaign trail as president.

I’d like to say that you can believe polls, but here’s the problem with them, pollsters have to call many thousands of people in order to get a statistical sampling of a few hundred, because most people they call don’t want to participate. Of that percentage it is well-known that Republicans don’t answer their phone whereas Democrats are more prone to do so. Democrats are very social creatures, that’s why they lean toward collectivism and political socialism. Conservatives are self-reliant and are often busy with something productive, so they don’t take calls from phone numbers they don’t recognize. Pollsters under pressure to get constant results to the networks that buy them have to produce the results they can get rather than wait for a proper number of Republicans to answer the phone, and that’s how all these polls get screwed up. I don’t think most of the races around the country are as close as they try to make them sound. Networks do with all the races just as they did with the Trump rally, they try to make Democrats look like a viable competitor. But in all actuality the Democrats aren’t even a blip on the map.

I continue to be impressed with Donald Trump, he knows his stuff and nobody outworks him, that’s for sure. This past week he did a rally almost every day and on Thursday before this event in Lebanon he had Kenya West at the White House which really gave some positive media coverage.  It is good marketing to show access to this president, and it was very smart of event organizers to have the wherewithal to string these events together in this way. But Trump gets the credit for having the stamina to pull it all off. The guy just never stops working and it shows. The desperation that the Democrats are now showing is that they don’t have a way to match that energy and they are getting frustrated.

Granted the Lebanon Trump rally is in very conservative country, I’m not sure there are any Democrats who live in the surrounding area. But Trump has shown time and time again that he can pull the same kind of numbers in inner cities and in places where Democrats are running things. In this case, Trump was stumping for so many politicians it made sense to have a rally in the middle of all their districts to accommodate everyone. But to even make a decision like that you have to have the power behind the name to most utilize the President’s presence. Lebanon was a perfect place to have a rally, and it’s a good thing too, because they needed the room for all the people who showed up. Seeing the crowd up close and the energy that was coming from them it is very obvious that things aren’t nearly as close as the media would like to make things appear. That doesn’t mean that Republicans can afford to stay home on election night, but that if they show up Democrats won’t be winning anything. They are a tired party selling an old message of socialism that isn’t very exciting and they are getting torched politically by Donald J. Trump. Even with everything Trump has been through over the last couple of years, he has endured the worst of it and the storm clouds are finally starting to break and his supporters are still there, which was quite obvious in Lebanon, Ohio on October 12, 2018. It looks to me after this next election that Democrats won’t be looking for a president to run against Trump. They will be looking for candidates just to run for local positions, and they won’t be able to find them, because the party itself is about to become extinct. The media won’t say that because they want the ratings of a perceived race between them and Republicans. But I’ll say it.

Rich Hoffman

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Eric Holder and Michael Avenatti want to Fight: I say, great–just tell me when and where, sounds fun!

So Michael Avenatti wants to fight does he? He has challenged Donald Trump Jr. to an MMA match of three rounds in the octagon. If Trump doesn’t want to do it, I’d be happy to take his place. It would be really fun to smash Avenatti’s face into a bleeding husk of disorganized flesh. Anytime Michael, anytime you New York softy. And Eric Holder is talking tough too, he said that when we “Republicans” go low, that they “Democrats” will kick us. Sounds like a threat to me. Hey, it’s not Republicans who are shooting up baseball games, or blocking off roads in protest, or are scratching at the doors to the Supreme Court throwing fits like a baby because they didn’t get what they wanted. Basically, all I have to say to these advocates of violence is that they don’t want to go there. There is nothing to be afraid of from some stringy haired leftist. If the political left thinks they are going to win anything with violence, they have already lost everything. I can say that I’m not going to put up with it. If one of these losers gets in my face, that will be the end of them. Generally, Republicans have been good about not provoking violence, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. Republicans still believe in the rule of law, so they leave those kinds of acts to the authorities. But if you take away that option, I wouldn’t put any bets on Democrats to be the more aggressive. If they want to fight, I personally would welcome that approach. I’d much rather fight than talk.  They are incorrect when they say the way to earn Republican respect is to get “tough.”  From my perspective, it just pisses me off, and if they think that challenging conservatives to a fight is smart, they need a forceful education it would seem.

Violence and the threat of it is one of the most primal emotions for human beings and it is the way that collectivist-oriented people mean to enforce their solidarity. Without the threat of violence, the political left really has nothing to negotiate with. It’s interesting that they have now revealed these strategies openly. But they were always there, violence and bullying is what Democrats have always done to advance their cause. Without their ability to evoke fear in people, they have no way to get people to accept their goofy philosophies. However, that doesn’t work so well in real life. Its one thing to talk tough within your own circles of influence, it’s quite another to challenge people who are actually tough and are not inclined to being pushed around.

As a Republican I’m a bit old fashion, if someone hits me in the face or insults me in some way, I have no problem dishing it back out to them. I don’t go around looking for fights, but if someone brings one to me, I do enjoy fighting. I don’t think Avenatti, Eric Holder or Hillary Clinton understand what the real people who make up the flyover states are all about. Empty threats lose their luster really fast. It’s one thing to threaten violence to a bunch of millennial latte sippers at Starbucks, it’s quite another to step up to a shooting range in Ohio and start rattling off their mouths. This is essentially why Democrats are for gun control, they understand that for their way of governing to work, people can’t have the ability to defend themselves. But in my own case, I would never turn to the gun first with those people. Fists and stamina would be all that would be required.

The best thing when it comes to conflict is to be able to have discussions, and to be able to articulate your position. You should never have to turn to violence, because if you do, you have already started to lose. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy fighting. Personally, I love fighting. I have some conflict with someone somewhere every few weeks. These days they don’t end up being physical altercations where fists are thrown. When I was younger and untested that kind of thing happened a lot more, but these days the fights are usually verbal, and they get intense—and nobody beats me. I have what many would call a “vicious” temper. And I don’t stop once I get going. Some punk like Michael Avenatti wouldn’t stand a chance. The loser Eric Holder wouldn’t even break a sweat. I could turn him into a screaming girl within a minute. If these people want a fight, I would love to give it to them. We aren’t the ones asking for it, but we sure as hell can finish it.

I think such a system of settling issues is good, there are worse things in life than fighting. By not fighting it allows wimpy people like Avenatti and Holder to believe themselves to be tough, because nobody calls their bluff. But one way to have a more honest society is to be able to distinguish between illusion and reality. When someone challenges you to a fight, there is almost a moral responsibility to call them out on it in the name of honesty, otherwise the aggressor is allowed to advocate a falsehood of threatening content for the aims of evil. We aren’t so civilized in life that we have outgrown the need for fighting. These people in the Democratic Party are the mainstream and they are calling for fights, so we have an obligation to set the record straight. Eric Holder won’t be kicking me let me make that clear, nor will anybody else. It will never happen.

I’ve managed most of my life to live with a good, moral disposition. Sometimes challenges come along, and you have to do what you have to do. Sometimes fights are fast, sometimes they last decades, but it is always my focus to win every one of them. There is nothing wrong with having a never surrender attitude, it can help in all aspects of life. But when challenged like these leftist insurgents are prone to do these days, we have to let them know that such threats are not permissible. It doesn’t matter obviously to them that physical threats of violence toward others is illegal. So is drug possession, and many other things that liberals do. But they truly believe that the rules do not apply to them and that they can run around our streets harassing good people with threats of violence. Protestors do not have a right to shut down roadways, they put themselves at risk of being run over. They do not have a right to punch Trump supporters in the back of the head without being destroyed in retaliation. If they aren’t going to live by the laws of our land, then why should we?

There is no higher path–taking the “high” road when it comes to conflict–it is not the best option. What is, is to crush your enemies with verbal and or physical violence. It is best to avoid such circumstances, but if the former attorney general of the United States wants to evoke violence, then he can deal with the mess. But compliance is not an option. Yielding to a bully isn’t either. Threats against us cannot go uncontested and speaking for myself, I really do hope one of these losers tries their aggression with me. It would be fun to deal with it—kind of a free pass legally to decimate them completely, because they started it. So I say to them, bring it on.

Rich Hoffman

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