Tag: Mike DeWine

Mike DeWine Ruined Kings Island’s 2020 Season: The danger of an out-of-control government ran by losers like the current Ohio governor

As if anybody needed a reminder about just how terrible Mike DeWine has been as governor. Apparently, there are people out there with the memory of a goldfish, so they need the reminder. Just remember on election day of May 3rd, 2022, that Kings Island, one of the greatest amusement parks in the country, in the world for that matter, is currently under a big lawsuit from season pass holders from the 2020 season who wanted a refund, and are now taking the Cincinnati treasure to court over how the parent company, Cedar Fair Amusements handled the government imposed business shutdowns during the fake Covid pandemic. Now for those who aren’t regular readers, you probably know people who were sick over Covid, who may have died. Remember about Covid, which Governor DeWine was one of the first in the country to be suckered into the Bill Gates power grab for which Covid was created. Covid-19 was made in a lab in Wuhan, China. Dr. Fauci knew about it. He and Bill Gates knew some medicines could have stopped the virus, such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Still, they deliberately suppressed that information from the public with donations made by Bill Gates to manipulate the media coverage and steer the public toward government-mandated vaccines, a multi-decade project that Bill Gates personally has funded so to usher the world toward a one-world government run by the United Nations steered by the Desecrators of Davos party. The same minds have now brought us the crises in Ukraine. And regarding Covid, the government reaction to the virus caused trillions of dollars of damage, ruined many lives, destroyed jobs, and broke the laws of our constitutions in gross ways that many thought was impossible before 2020. Kings Island in northern Cincinnati is an example of how government can ruin lives when it is unchecked and has too much power, for which Governor DeWine is guilty. 

I was on several conference calls with Ceder Fair Amusements and Governor DeWine during the spring of 2020 when the entertainment giant was making its plea to get some visibility to schedule when they could reopen operations. At that time, it was May. Being a seasonal company operating two very large amusement parks in Ohio, which Mike DeWine had prevented from opening by abusing his emergency powers as governor, Cedar Fair Amusements needed answers from the government-created travesty. They had no idea when they could open Kings Island or Cedar Point, and being a seasonal company, they were already hurt in acquiring employees for the season. On that conference call, Mike DeWine was strutting his authority under emergency powers, and it was apparent that he never planned to give up those powers. Now two years later, we still have the pandemic going. The Democrats want desperately to use Covid emergencies to shield them from election results they don’t like. That was certainly the case in 2020 when they wanted Donald Trump out of office. And it’s the case now in 2022, with midterms shaping up to be really devastating for Democrats and the terrible job they have done at the national level possessing all three houses of government, Blue state governors are still looking for Covid to shield them from poor performances. And out of all the governors in the country, Mike DeWine has governed as a blue state governor, certainly not a Republican. And on that phone call, he could not tell Cedar Fair Amusements when they could open or the plan for them ever to do so. DeWine was utterly unsympathetic to the business community’s needs and showed everyone just how dangerous government could be when it was out of control. 

That year Kings Island finally was able to open with horrendous restrictions to the public by July, after half the season was over. That year also, Kings Island had to shut down their Halloween Haunt weekend schedule and their Winterfest activities. So Kings Island was open from July 4th essentially to Labor Day. And before DeWine would let them do that, they had to agree to all kinds of unscientific social distancing rules and mask mandates after having to scramble to find enough employees even to open the park, let alone to give the customers the amusement park experience that they were craving. Kings Island was trying to open one of their big multi-million dollar Giga coasters, and the steam of the whole event was completely destroyed by what DeWine himself had done. Under emergency powers, he cut out the legislature. He took complete command of Ohio’s economy, which he didn’t have the right to do. He took hundreds of millions of dollars from Kings Island in opportunity cost. For Cedar Fair Amusements, it was a devastating summer, just as it was for many hundreds of thousands of other companies, large and small, who struggled to survive the ominous behavior of government exerting powers it didn’t have for the destruction of the people they were supposed to serve. If Covid was a virus that was built by our own Defense Department, funded by Dr. Fauci, and released by China as a bioweapon, and it robbed us of our taste buds, our health, and happiness, the government reaction to it with all the rules and regulations was far more dangerous. People might say that Cedar Fair Amusements is a wealthy company with all the money to absorb the costs. Those would be people who have no idea how much money it takes to run an amusement park. 

I thought what Kings Island did that year was good; they essentially gave all season pass holders for the 2020 season a free renewal of the 2021 pass. Even that following year, Covid was still a problem, and DeWine had just reopened the state against his will. The Senate passed a bill to take those emergency powers away from DeWine, and it finally went into effect in June of 2021, and then and only then did DeWine step away from the lockdowns. The government had spent over a year terrifying people over Covid, which certainly hurt Kings Island’s business model. It will likely take them a decade to recover what was lost in just that one year. The current lawsuit is over how Cedar Fair Amusements managed Covid, which was entirely out of their control. Some people wanted a refund of their 2020 passes because they couldn’t use them. My wife and I went one time to ride the new Orian ride but didn’t go the rest of the year because the mask mandate was impossible to deal with in the hot summer sun, and it wasn’t worth it to us. We thought it was nice that Kings Island honored our passes for the following year. In 2021 we went often but noticed that many of the normal crowd had not returned. Some people were still worried about Covid, and they might never feel comfortable going out in public again. Those are the people suing Kings Island because they wanted a complete refund of their passes for 2020. The government had so terrified those people that they were permanently damaged. So now, with the summer of 2022 coming, Mike DeWine is running for a second term. And Kings Island is in court trying to defend itself from actions that Governor DeWine caused by his horrible mismanagement of Covid in the summer of 2020. Anybody who votes for him after that terrible performance is an idiot and an enabler of abuse.   

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Lofty Expectations of the Ohio Statehouse: Senator George Lang is a politician it can be proud of

It was a great treat for me to get a day to visit the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus to see a good friend of mine, Senator George Lang. It was good for me to put things in perspective as some of the issues of the hour are intense and changing by the minute. The Ohio Statehouse is a grand vestige dedicated to a republic form of government, and it was built with love and ambition. I think all statehouses try to do the same thing. The Ohio Statehouse is a special place dedicated to intelligence, study, and the difficulties of a republic that spans thousands of years in the past. It’s a place of ambition and hope reflected in the Greek architecture, the various marble ornaments, and symbolic statues. Whenever I go there, I am reminded that much of the hard work that is done in politics, even when it often falls so short of expectations, is worth the effort. Even when people complain about the cesspool of politics and the corrosive elements of lobbyists, I see the work that goes on in places like the Ohio Statehouse as the best that there is in the world. I’ve been to the Parliament in London and other places where the work of politics is done, and I see the purity of the Ohio Statehouse as something special, unique. I am possessive that it exists to do the work all people in Ohio need done. Even if people disagree on what that work is, the place is there to make sure it has a chance to happen. 

Another friend of mine took a picture of me on the House floor, and that’s what I was thinking. I don’t usually get sentimental about those types of things, but I had just had a good meeting with Senator Lang with the door closed. I was very happy to hear what he was working on. But more than that, I saw the same eyes alive and well within him that I have known for many years as he was one of the original members of the West Chester Tea Party. George is still that same person who gives out copies of Atlas Shrugged at Christmas and believes in small government, fiscal responsibility, and a business-first political strategy which is the key to all wealth-building in any culture. George Lang is a good person, a very good person. And as I was thinking about the Ohio Statehouse and all its ambitions, most of the time, we resent politics because we give politicians all these great tools to work with, like the Ohio Statehouse.   Most of the time, the people we send to the congress and senate fall short of our expectations, leading to perpetual disappointment. But George Lang is one of those exceptions. He actually lives up to the lofty expectations. The building seems to have been built specifically for people like him.

I say all those nice things because I had an extended chance to watch him work with other members of the House and Senate. And to interact with Governor DeWine. George is friendly, engaging; he’s a great salesman. But while he is doing all those things, he’s also guarded and measured. He’s a hard nut to crack for a lobbyist because it’s hard to tell where to get a hook into him. What is the vice of George Lang? What makes him tick? Where is he vulnerable? It’s one thing to be sociable and even polite. George has been involved in Columbus politics for many years now. When our schedules match up, I speak to him quite a bit here and there, but he’s a busy guy. So, to be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect in his office with the door closed and talking about the business that needs to happen for the state. To talk about the upcoming primaries, his Business First Caucus, politics back home in Butler County, Ohio. But what I found was a person who loves doing a good job, that had not been swept away by any trace of corruption, and the same wide-eyed person I have known since he was a trustee in West Chester. And with all that has been going on, where the world presents us with disappointments at every juncture, especially in politics, that was refreshing. 

In that House chamber and its lofty contents, it was apparent that most of the members went to Columbus with big goals and that they were getting swept away by the ornate atmosphere. Just before that photograph, I had just heard from a politician who wanted me to know how smart he was and that he was reviewing the legal complications of a land purchase for a solar farm, filled with all kinds of rancid ESG requirements that he thought were great. He was a guy who had been chewed up and spit out of the meat grinder, and I could see that the chamber walls were almost ashamed of him. He did not live up to the expectations. But those big stone walls and finely carved woodwork would see many more like him over the years, as they had. But when George was in that room, the actual chamber seemed happy. There was a person worthy of the Statehouse. There was someone who would do the work and, when done, dash off to his wife and grown children at every opportunity. And I think that is the secret to George Lang working there. The Statehouse was built for people like him, who love their country, their state, and their communities, but more than anything, their families. When the rubber hits the road, that’s how he has managed to survive Columbus and live up to the lofty expectations that come with business there. 

It wasn’t just because I like George. Governor DeWine was walking around shaking hands and taking pictures. Most everyone he interacted with couldn’t wait to lick the shoes of DeWine and pander to him for the powerful seat he sat in. Those same people might badmouth DeWine the minute they were away from him, but when shaking hands and taking pictures, they were like little girls at a pop-rock concert backstage. Power was a seductive force, and they were undoubtedly under its influence when around the Governor. But not George Lang. While respectful, he stayed very true to himself and represented his district exceptionally well. And it wasn’t an act. I wasn’t always somewhere that George could see me. It was just how he was, and I was proud of him. It gave me hope that all the hard work in preserving our republic, first at the state level, then at the federal level, was worth it. That day at the Statehouse is how it’s supposed to be in politics. It’s an example of how to do it right. We build the temples to a republic that has taken us thousands of years to perfect. And our government in Ohio is supposed to be contentious. It’s not supposed to be a fraternity of consensus builders. The Statehouse was built to debate and flush out the best and brightest ideas from the weakest. And over the many decades that the Ohio Statehouse has been there, it has suffered many disappointments in the elected representatives who have gone there to do our work. But George Lang isn’t one of them. If the Statehouse could smile, it surely would when George walks into a room, for that is the reason the place exists.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Mike DeWine’s State of the State Speech: He is the Dr. Fauci of Ohio and the leader of the lockdowns

It was a good reminder of just how bad Governor DeWine is for Ohio to see him at the statehouse in person at his State of the State speech in Columbus, Ohio.  Of course, DeWine canceled the public speech over the last few years because of Covid, which he led the nation in following Dr. Fauci’s advice, so this was his first speech since his first one, which was in 2019, a time when the world was somewhat normal.  Since then, BlackRock and other money managers have attacked the Ohio power grid with progressive intention and knocked out several politicians who had been powerful during that first DeWine speech.   On DeWine’s watch as governor, he has let the Desecrators of Davos in the backdoor of Ohio to shut down coal plants and advocate in favor of solar and wind, just as Al Gore has always dreamed of which has cost all of us a lot of money.  Ohio is number 1 now in corruption, which seems to follow DeWine in every office he has ever had.  But worse than all that, the destruction left behind because of how Governor DeWine behaved during the Covid pandemic.  He was the leader of the country in following United Nations sustainable development using health concerns to advance progressive causes in worse ways than any Democrat would or could have.  He was the leader of the lockdowns as he was the first to open that door, for which many blue-state governors followed.  Yeah, Mike DeWine has been a disaster in every way that a Democrat would have been for Oho, but worse, because the damage was done while people had their guard down thinking he was a Republican. 

Jennifer Gross, my Congresswoman, has openly endorsed Jim Renacci even though there has been a lot of pressure to back DeWine

This all came up as I spoke with Republican friends at that speech in Columbus and in the days leading up to it.  They asked me if I would vote for Mike DeWine now that he signed Constitutional Carry in Ohio and other Second Amendment types of legislation leading up to it.  It astonished me that they asked, but then I remembered that not everyone remembers who was responsible for Ohio’s terrible reaction to Covid, which took the nation into the lockdown frenzy that destroyed so many lives and is just now being calculated in terms of sheer destruction.  Many of these Republicans were more conventional put their finger to the wind types who only measure things from four months ago.  And DeWine is counting on that shallow memory to squeak him by in this primary that is supposed to happen in May of 2022, where Jim Renacci is polling well and, depending on voter turnout, could remove DeWine as the next option for governor.  As I told them and to everyone who has an ear to listen, DeWine only signed the Constitutional Carry bill because of Renacci’s pressure on his leadership.  He didn’t do it on his own.  If there wasn’t a serious Trump-like challenge to DeWine, he would be fighting against the Second Amendment, not signing things in favor of it.  But DeWine is hoping to use these last-minute Second Amendment red meat topics to hide his past, which I’ll never get over.  And seeing him in person trying to worm up support ahead of the election only strengthened my anger at him over what he had done to Ohio in just four short years, destroying so much industry, traumatizing so many lives, and allowing corruption to sink deep roots into our energy infrastructure that is unforgivable.  Rather than defend FirstEnergy and the progressive attacks on coal plants, he joined progressives in attacking other Republicans in a ploy to really remove them from power so they couldn’t challenge him later.  Mike DeWine has his own Game of Thrones going on, and it is evident that he hoped this State of the State speech would put all that into a distant memory.

The Great George Lang

The most significant danger of Mike DeWine is that he is essentially a carbon copy of Dr. Fauci.  Both were polling very well during the Covid pandemic, which we now know was created in a lab in Wuhan and released by China for all the intentions of creating an economic reset by the Desecrators of Davos people.  Hindsight has given a better vision into Fauci’s behavior with Bill Gates paving the way with money manipulating the media in favor of their global scam of progressive change state using the Covid virus to give more power to the Administrative State.  And the first person to fall in line with this “New World Order,” where the United Nations conducts all our local affairs at the state and county level and the World Health Organization was to become our new community doctor; Mike DeWine was the first to sign up for this new brand of tyranny which he imposed on Ohioans with a smile on his face and all the maliciousness of a power-hungry dictator.  The ultimate insult to all the Republicans who voted for Mike DeWine as an establishment type was that he did the unthinkable by putting Amy Acton, the abortion supporter, onto his staff to run his health department.  He followed her right over the Fauci cliff, making the lockdowns possible and leading the country in submission to the CDC and WHO, giving them power that no bureaucrat should ever have over people’s individual lives under any condition.  Not all states were as stupid as Ohio.  Ron DeSantis was great in Florida, and the results are easy to see looking back upon the last two years.  DeSantis resisted the Covid power grabs, whereas Mike DeWine fully embraced them.

Thomas Hall, the Future is Bright

I told my Republican friends that there was no way I would ever vote for Mike DeWine, even after seeing him in person trying his best to make everyone forget.  I had been on several conference calls with DeWine as he spoke to business leaders in Ohio during the lockdowns, and I will never forgive him for what he did to people, all in the name of safety.  DeWine attached himself to Dr. Fauci, and now that time and distance are starting to show how ill-advised that was, there is only one option.  With Jim Renacci, we have a Trump supporter who has promised to lead Ohio in the way that Ron DeSantis has in Florida, and that would be great for everyone, even liberals.  Always at public events like the State of the State speech, there is a ceremony-like atmosphere that focuses on all the positives that we want to feel.  But in truth, and this was obvious by DeWine’s over-emphasis on things that he does when he speaks in public to people he knows want to metaphorically cut him up into little pieces and feed him to some pigs someplace for the villainy he has conducted behind the scenes, the fluff about Intel, about spring, about his love of Ohio were thin masks to the administrative tyrant that is at the core of his personality.  Mike DeWine will go down in history as the arm of Dr. Fauci in Ohio, the mindless bureaucrat who punted Ohio’s fate to the gods of the World Health Organization, and ultimately the money of Bill Gates’ influence.  DeWine didn’t lead; he followed, as he does on all issues, including Constitutional Carry.  He thought the pressure from Republicans on other issues could be reduced if he gave them something they wanted.  And that is how we got into trouble in the first place, because DeWine wanted to make the Dr. Fauci types happy, the tyrants of the United Nations, and ultimately the economic terrorists who are behind it all who need people like the governor to give them power into all our lives.  No, I won’t be voting for Mike DeWine under any conditions.  To vote for DeWine is the same or worse than voting for a Democrat. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Jim Renacci is the Trump Candidate for Governor in Ohio: The corrupt DeWine counts on the swamp to protect him in a low turnout primary

I know it’s tough. Nobody likes Mike DeWine, the current Governor of Ohio. Even the establishment Republicans who have kissed his ring and endorsed him through the State Central Committee. Everyone I talk to would like to vote for an option, but they think the reality is defined by corruption and that DeWine’s money machine will win in the primary no matter what happens with Jim Renacci. Since the primary is near, I must remind everyone of how it was in 2016 when Trump was on the ticket. All the same, characters were backing John Kasich. He was the establishment guy, the unbeatable goliath. Trump didn’t stand a chance.

Nobody cared because Trump was just an old television celebrity who wrote a few books when I went to events and met Trump. In the political world, that’s how they saw him. What did he know about politics? I would go to VIP events and see seat reservations for all the well-known area Republicans who went unfilled. The people who ended up sitting in those seats were truck drivers, factory workers, and other pick-up truck driving, flag-waving patriots who were there for the same reason I was, to vote for a guy who most represented us, not the Deep State Swamp. Of course, after Trump beat Kasich in Ohio, the political world was shattered, and those empty seats quickly filled with supporters who were nudging in front of me to get a picture with President Trump. I didn’t care. I was happy to see it. Trump brought unity to the Republican Party in ways I had never seen before, and as for John Kasich, he disappeared from the earth quickly. Where is he today? Well, he and Dr. Fauci are likely in a hot tub together someplace hiding from the world, which would be good advice for them.

If the Trump Republicans show up to vote for Jim Renacci in the May primary, DeWine will be defeated. I know the risk is that whoever comes out against DeWine will be remembered. He’s like that. He is a powerful politician not because he is good but because he runs his place in the Republican Party like a mob boss. Get on his bad side, and you’ll find yourself swimming with the fishes. He won’t physically kill you. He’s a shrimpy little man and would be easy to swat away. But he has made up for that over the years with political command of the world around him.   There is a reason Ohio is the first state in corruption among all 50 states. It’s not just the FirstEnergy scandal driven by greenie weenie assaults on Ohio’s power grid; it’s because of how Mike DeWine runs his political circles. Nobody wants to work with Mike DeWine the day after an election where they got caught speaking out against him. It’s a huge risk to their careers. I get it. But just remember, fortune favors the bold, and the way politics is supposed to work is that these politicians work for us, not the other way around. Mike DeWine is number 1 in corruption because of this sentiment. He uses politics to gain power he doesn’t otherwise have, which we saw firsthand during Covid. Mike DeWine ran Ohio during his first term as Governor well to the political left of most Democrats. He runs as a conservative but the minute he wins an office; he legislates to the extreme left. 

I said months ago this was how it would be; all kinds of good Republicans smell the blood in the water and think they can beat DeWine because he’s so weak politically because of how terribly he destroyed people’s lives during the Covid shutdowns. Mike DeWine was just as bad as even the worse of the Blue State governors. In many ways, DeWine led all governors into the shutdown protocols, which opened the door for the massive devastation that occurred to Ohio businesses during Covid. Even more troubling, Mike DeWine asked the legislature for emergency powers a year before Covid happened in 2020.   DeWine has a history of serving the United Nations much more than he does the United States, and he seems to be involved in every Deep State scandal with his ear to the wind. We’ve seen some scary stuff from Mike DeWine during his first term as Governor of Ohio, and we have a chance to remove him and put someone much better in power. Someone much more Trump-like, or even more specifically, like Ron DeSantis of Florida. With Jim Renacci, we have a chance to have a candidate like that. If the Trump supporters show up on primary election day and vote, Mike DeWine wouldn’t have a chance. To me, it’s a low-risk endeavor. But the traditional machine politicians who have thrown themselves behind Mike DeWine know that primaries don’t have typical voters in them. They are the Central Committee types who care about politics seven days a week, not just one time a year or every four years like what we see in popular elections. So for them, voting for Renacci is a gamble many of them can’t afford to lose because it’s all about voter turnout, which they don’t think will be very robust.

Jim Renacci, who I have gotten to know a bit over the years, is the only candidate for Governor in Ohio who can call President Trump any time he wants. Blystone is a good guy in this Governor’s race. And I like Candace Keller and others who want to get involved. But in a tight race, and this is what the DeWine people know, all those challenges are going to split the rebellion vote, meaning the smart money will be left behind DeWine, and the Governor would then win a second term, even though he doesn’t come close to deserving it. DeWine has played this game before. He knows what the other establishment Republicans know, that primary elections are low voter turnout endeavors, and people likely won’t be thinking about Trump. So they will be shy to rally behind Jim Renacci and vote for him in the primary. The actual die-hards who want to see change and reform will split their votes up among the other challengers because none of them could get their act straight before the election, and chaos prevails, giving us more of Mike DeWine. That is how corruption stays in power. That is why we still have Mitch McConnell as the projected leader in the Senate. That is why more people in Congress do not fight to defend our border from illegal immigration. That is why the Swamp just gets deeper and deeper in Washington. In the end, the Swamp is deep because people keep voting for it. The fault ultimately falls on the voters for supporting it in elections like this one. People complain about how corrupt Mike DeWine is and how it would be great to get rid of him. They know that the 20 billion investments from Intel are coming to Ohio despite Mike DeWine, not because of him. Ohio is a great place. It just has had bad, bad governors, from John Kasich to now the extreme leftist from Yellow Springs hippie town, Mike DeWine. And with a perfect alternative right in front of our faces in Jim Renacci, the only Trump candidate on the ballot, the option we have is evident if only we have the guts to take it. 

There is a difference between supporting Trump and being a Trump candidate. I think most of the DeWine challengers are supportive of Trump. But when I first met Jim Renacci, for the very first time, it was coming off Air Force One with President Trump and Melania; the best First Lady America has ever had. Trump had asked Jim to run against Sherrod Brown in the Senate so that Republicans could gain a seat in the Senate. Jim almost beat the long-time progressive. He came very close. And in this case, DeWine is a very weak candidate. He is very weak with the Republican base, so if we are ever going to take down an establishment RINO, this would be the time. For those who want to vote for Trump and want an Ohio version of Ron DeSantis’s style of government, Jim Renacci is that person.   But first, people have to have the guts to show up and vote in the primary, at a time when most people are thinking about spring and summer and aren’t thinking about politics. It starts with voters. If they stay home and allow corruption to gain another term with Mike DeWine, then who is it to blame? Voters have a chance, but do they have the guts to take it? I certainly think it’s worth doing, and I will be voting for Jim Renacci no matter what, with great enthusiasm. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Intel is Coming to Ohio Despite Mike DeWine, not Because of Him: The Governor bans Russian Standard vodka

It was just another reminder of how embarrassing Governor Mike DeWine has been for Ohio. When DeWine ordered vodka made by Russian Standard for sale in Ohio’s 487 liquor agencies banned from purchase in the state, it was Covid all over again. An out-of-control power-hungry governor who loves to take orders from the United Nations, a politician all his life worth more than 20 million dollars for public service. A politician who was at the center of almost every corruption story around him during that entire duration. Here he was telling store owners what they could sell and when they would sell it based on some version of geopolitical circumstances only he understood. How much of an unstable business environment could you ask for from a governor with such a terrible track record during his first term. If we had elected a Democrat, we likely would have had a more conservative governor. And with all that said, it’s incredible that the microchip processing company Intel is planning to build a $20 billion facility in New Albany, Ohio, just north of Columbus by 2025. The DeWine reelection people are trying to take credit for the big announcement, but I would say that Intel is coming to Ohio despite DeWine, not because of him. 

Ohio is such a great place for businesses. For Intel, they were looking for a lot of flat land access to plentiful water supplies. They needed access to some of the nation’s best universities, which within 200 miles of the New Albany Intel site are many of the biggest, including Ohio State, right down the road. And from there are some of the best highway access routes in the world, with I-71 running north and south and I-70 running east to west. You can get anywhere from central Ohio, making it one of the most attractive sites in the world for building a semiconductor plant. Taiwan has a great location, and so does South Korea. But given the state of the world these days and the need for Intel to become the dominant chipmaker once again, this move to Ohio is a tremendous strategic opportunity not just for them, or Ohio, but for an America First agenda. America can not become a top manufacturer of anything ever again without controlling chip-making. I know that our Ohio House and Senate have done a great job over the last ten years creating lots of deregulations that would attract business to Ohio, so it’s all those things that made it possible for this to happen. We are fortunate that Ohio is so attractive that Mike DeWine couldn’t screw that up too.

However, think about how much better it could be if we had a governor more like Ron DeSantis from Florida rather than Mike DeWine in Ohio. DeSantis obviously is a Trump Republican, whereas DeWine is to the left of John Kasich, the blue-turning progressive who predated DeWine. Ohio has had some bad governors. It’s had some good legislators and senator members, but a string of governors have run as Republicans and turned hard left while in office toward extreme progressives. With DeWine, he was a disaster with Covid orders. He fell in love with ordering people around all during Covid and cost many billions of dollars in losses, harmed many businesses, and destroyed the lives of countless people. For anybody who thought that trend went away, all it took in the world was for Putin to invade Ukraine, and suddenly DeWine wanted to ban the sale of vodka to people wanting to buy it. How does he know the people selling the vodka from Russia support Putin? That’s like being attacked by space aliens and then DeWine banning the sale of Star Wars figures from our local Target store. For him to pick such an extreme position in a war that isn’t even our business is a clear indication to all companies that if there is some geopolitical circumstance that might befall them, they could lose their business at the drop of a hat by a governor’s order. Mike DeWine is a tyrant, not a leader.

We could get rid of DeWine in the upcoming primary, but the corrupt money machine behind his tyrannical imprint is hard at work trying to find a way to make the Governor look like he did something right. They are trying to give him credit for this Intel deal. But what we see there are looters like Sharrod Brown, Joe Biden, and Mike DeWine, all trying to hang their hat on a real necessity that Intel has to control their supply chain. But luckily, we have an option this time; we have Jim Renacci, who has promised to be Ohio’s own version of Ron DeSantis. Florida, Texas, and many other red states would love to have Ohio’s resources for many more opportunities to arrive than just Intel. Intel is just the tip of a technological iceberg. But we need a real governor to make that happen, not a looting loser beyond corruption who craves desperately to boss people around even over their choice in vodka. The situation in Russia and Ukraine is terrible no matter how it gets sliced up.

On the one hand, you have an extremist in Putin who is bent on war. On the other, a creation of the United Nations, who have done lots of bad things in their own way. That Mike DeWine would so quickly side with the United Nations position actually explains a lot about the level of corruption that has always followed so closely behind him. It certainly shows how under his watch, FirstEnergy was able to be taken over essentially by green activists from Davos from money management firms imposing ESG scores. Instead of defending Ohio’s power grid from an outside attack, DeWine used the situation to get rid of a political rival who was Speaker of the House at the time. DeWine is the king of dirty politics and is a spiteful little man who loves authority much more than should ever be healthy for a public servant. 

If we could get rid of DeWine, Ohio could really bloom into prosperity. There are a lot of companies like Intel out there who would love to set up shop and bring great jobs to the infrastructure. But there needs to be a good governor to go with a good House and Senate to make it conducive for significant investment, like what it takes to make the move. It wouldn’t take much for Ohio to beat out Florida and Texas for some of the great opportunities that are in Ohio for the reasons that Intel cited for coming. But to convince them, we need a good governor.  Intel decided, not because Mike DeWine was in office but even though he was. Suppose we had a governor like Jim Renacci. He actually understands how businesses work and isn’t trying to punish liquor stores just because they happen to sell Russian vodka during a painful period of global politics. In that case, we might be able to acquire hundreds of billions in investment. But to do that, Ohio would have to have a stable business environment for such investment. And what Mike DeWine reminded everyone with his ban on vodka is that he’s not that guy. Instead, he did remind everyone of his authoritarian nature and a deep desire to boss people around over every little thing, just as he did against churches during the Covid shutdowns. And as he did when he put an abortion rights activist in his administration with Amy Acton, the Dr. Fauci of Ohio. And now he’s done it again over vodka sales. What will it be next?   Well, if we vote him out at the primary in May of 2022, we won’t have to worry about it. The power is in our hands.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Foreign Power Attacks Ohio’s Energy Grid: The Real story of corruption behind FirstEnergy, The Fed and Mike DeWine

ESG scores (Environmental Social Governance) are for business what CRT (Critical Race Theory) has been for public schools. Once parents found out what the game was in sliding CRT under the door and trying to program their children into outright Marxism using race as the mask, they became enraged and have started the process of retaking control of their public schools. Businesspeople, too are on the cusp of a similar necessity. That is why I have never accepted the FirstEnergy scandal as being what the FBI tried to paint it as. Over the summer of 2021, I watched pretty enraged at a press conference the Ohio FBI had boasting that they had received a settlement from FirstEnergy over a bribery scandal they had been investigating, which involved the Speaker of the GOP House, Larry Householder, and many others. It was a story that put Ohio in the number 1 state for corruption in the entire United States, and Governor Mike DeWine was right in the center of it. The FBI proudly bloviated that FirstEnergy settled the case with $230 million, which they indicated was an admission of guilt. The story for me was always about a much more sinister kind of corruption, one that actually points to ESG scores and environmental wacko policies that are an attack on our infrastructure in America from foreign interests. In this case, it all points back to the Party of Davos, the billionaire types who attack countries without a country of their own and seek to impose politics on those countries that bypass their elections domestically. What these finance companies like BlackRock, Blackstone, and Icahn Capital were doing to the nuclear power capability in Ohio was no different than if a country like China had attacked them with missiles and planes to take them out and destroy our power grid. And here was the FBI helping them do it. And the money for all the power leverage came straight out of the American Federal Reserve, created by Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell over a ten-year period to put money behind ESG rankings to impose climate change politics on us all.

After that FBI press conference, around December of 2021, Blackstone bought up 1 billion dollars in stock, which will put yet another activist investment board member on the Board of Directors at FirstEnergy, which will continue to direct the company toward a zero-emission world, to get their ESG scores at the targeted range. Back in 2019, when this ESG imposition was just becoming a practice, the management of FirstEnergy thought the regulatory burdens were ridiculous as these money management firms were pushing them to implement zero-emission standards. Of course, these requirements come from the United Nations, which are driven by the World Economic Forum, which sets them with Al Gore, Klaus Schwab, and the BlackRock CEO himself, Larry Fink. These are extreme left-wing wackos who wouldn’t get the time of day in a political theater, but when they tie themselves to our money, now suddenly they have all the power in the world. And it is through those methods, FirstEnergy was imposed upon through ESG scores to move their coal and nuclear plants to zero emissions by a ridiculously impossible deadline, which would essentially shut them down. FirstEnergy tried to fight back; they funneled $61 million in donations to the GOP through Larry Householder to protect them from these United Nations standards reflected in the ESG means of measurement. The GOP created House Bill 6 to roll back some of the environmental burdens that were killing companies like FirstEnergy. Suddenly the FBI was busting members of the GOP, but not these radical investment firms connected to the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. They were clearly attacking the American power grid to destroy coal and nuclear and replace them with wind and solar. 

Many of my friends in the House and Senate in Columbus wanted to distance themselves from Larry Householder as he was strung up and ran from his seat. It looked like dirty politics to me, and internal power struggles between Householder and Governor DeWine. But some of the other people who took money from FirstEnergy were never-Trumper types leftover from John Kasich, so there wasn’t much of a desire to fight to defend them in public. But the issue continued to bother me. That year of 2021, my wife and I traveled extensively in the West, everywhere from southern New Mexico and Texas to Montana all the way out to Utah and Idaho. I wanted to get away and think about some of these big things clearly. And during that trip, I saw what many truckers have been talking about, the changes to our country that were happening, with these giant wind farms, everywhere, from Iowa to Texas and everywhere in between. This wind power thing was much more advanced than I had been led to believe. In fact, at the Iowa 80 Truckstop, the largest of its kind in the world, I had a chance to see up close the trucks bringing these massive wind turbine blades to their construction sites. This was an enormous project that was going on everywhere, yet not much discussion was happening about it on the news. How was all this happening? Indeed, Americans weren’t imposing this on themselves. 

Doing a lot of research from then until now, it’s quite clear what has been happening. These wind power farms were not coming from the people of America but from energy companies and states seeking better ESG scores to stay compliant with their shareholders, like Blackstone, Icahn Capital, and of course, BlackRock. And the rate of manufacturing has been consistent with all the money the Fed has been printing through quantitative easing over the last decade, creating a dangerous asset bubble that directly contributed to the rise in power of these money management firms. The leverage and power these gained in managed resources, which allowed them to buy all these stock options, to start controlling these companies at the level of the Board of Directors, came directly from the inflated wealth the Federal Reserve created through their ZIRP policies and quantitative easing. Otherwise, BlackRock would have never had the financial leverage to impose these ESG scores on all these companies. And how convenient was it for Blackstone to buy up $1 billion in stock after the settlement story broke about FirstEnergy driving the price down. And guess who pushed FirstEnergy to settle the case, Icahn Capital. 

So as everyone can see, the story is much more sinister than an Ohio energy company trying to prevent itself from being put out of business by ESG politics that come not from the American government but from the United Nations and the Party of Davos. They sought help from the GOP-controlled House because it was their only option. But obviously, the game was rigged against them from the start. And now we see too late that the United Nations fully intends to close down all coal and nuclear power plants in the country and switch us all over to these solar and wind options. We know from California wind and solar alone is not sufficient for the power needs of our economy. But for the enemies of America, that is kind of the point. These finance companies taking control of these Boards in companies all across America over ESG scores are not on an America First agenda. They seek a zero-emission world and massive wealth redistribution from rich countries to poor ones, where they have already leveraged their financial bets. And we have been the pawns in the game because we have let this attack happen, unchecked completely. 

The actions we can take immediately is to understand how ESG policies became part of our SEC rules, at the Federal and State levels.   Because those rules are directly attacking our business infrastructure from elements outside our county.  We need to remove those ESG policies, legislatively.  From there, we need to stop our Fed from funding Wall Street so that an open door to foreign investment can flow money into the backdoor of our country and buy our political system behind our backs destroying our vote through finance and attacking the very heart of our republic without a single shot fired by military aggression.  Make no mistake about it, it’s a war just the same. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Dark Money Tries to make the Pig DeWine Look Good: But Renacci is 8 Points up on the governor, and growing

As I was listening to 55 KRC recently, an ad by Free Ohio, a Super PAC for Ohio’s lost stooge, Mike DeWine attempting to show the troubled governor in a contrasting light to Joe Biden, let me know that after all these years, these political insiders haven’t learned a thing.  After all that Republicans should have learned regarding the Trump presidency, it is evident that these dark money professionals still didn’t understand modern politics.  Mike DeWine has been a disaster for Ohio.  When he runs for office, he always runs as a conservative, but when he’s in office, whether as a senator, Attorney General, or a governor as he is now, he becomes overnight a liberal.  And if Ohio had elected Joe Biden as Governor of Ohio himself, we wouldn’t have done any worse.  So, it was laughable that there was an assumption among the professional political class out there that just a few months before the primary in May of 2022, money spent on ads like the ones Free Ohio is putting out would shape public opinion enough to change minds.  People were there to see how badly DeWine managed the state, especially during Covid, in which he led the nation in lockdowns, being the first to do so and to change election laws which led to the massive corruption of the 2022 election.  DeWine was the first in the country to change election laws during a primary, opening the door to all the other states that did similar things with mail-in ballots, all in the name of “maintaining social distancing during the Covid Plandemic.” 

I had a chance on several occasions during those terrible days of lockdowns in Ohio where members of the business community were on mass conference calls with Governor DeWine to attempt to work out concessions to the rules he and the liberal Obama activist Amy Acton came up with that were costing everyone millions and millions of dollars, by the day.  I have met Mike DeWine at a few events here and there but never really had a chance to talk to him.  Let me just say, DeWine is one of the dumbest people I have ever heard speak.  Under those conference call environments, he had no clue what to do and punted everything in Ohio to the CDC and the Dr. Fauci types, which was scandalous even then.  Now in hindsight, we know that to be even worse advice.  But even when few people really knew the severity of Covid was, DeWine sounded like a complete idiot giving the keys to Ohio over to a bunch of bureaucratic health department types to run all our affairs the way some pot-smoking, stringy-haired hippies might only fantasize about.  I always wondered how DeWine ever called himself a conservative coming from Yellow Springs, Ohio—certainly not my favorite place.  You can almost always smell the pot smoke in Clifton Gorge from Yellow Springs when visiting.  It’s not likely many Republicans would be able to put up with such an environment.  And obviously, getting to know Mike DeWine a bit over these last several years, he’s not a conservative, but the very definition of RINO that there is in the world. 

The Super PAC plans to spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars on this attempt to paint DeWine as a contrast to Biden.  Unfortunately, like many have tried over the last several years, thinking of Mike Bloomberg in Florida against Trump and the Bush money machine against Trump in 2016, they could never move the needle in a significant way in those races.  It is unclear why they would think they could move any opinions in Ohio when the people living in the state have very recent memory and pain over how DeWine ran the state.  Without question, Fox News and traditional outlets like Clear Channel radio corporate advertising are all too happy to take the money of this Super PAC.  For them, that’s what politics is, a chance to sell ads and pay for their content.  But reality shows that DeWine and Joe Biden have been aligned on just about everything over the last four years.  Even topics that don’t involve Covid.  It would be impossible to tell Joe Biden and Mike DeWine apart on paper by voting record.  And to think that money can change people’s memory of these things is pretty insulting, really.  Without question, some people don’t know much about these issues and might fall for such ornamental hype.  But in a primary, which is very surgical in nature, it’s a different kind of voter.  Primary voters are very engaged on the topics and not so easily fooled. 

As I’ve said many times, it’s hard to beat someone in a primary, especially with the corrupt money machine behind DeWine.  He has his voters who profit off the way he has done business over many years in politics.  But with an above-average primary turnout, someone like Jim Renacci could easily beat him in the primary.  Even with all this dark money flowing into traditional media, Jim Renacci is 8 points over DeWine going into February of 2022, which is horrible news for the current governor.  This is good news for those who want to see a more conservative governor in the general election this fall.  But that’s a steep hill for changing opinions no matter how much money is spent.  I suppose it’s worth trying from their perspective, but do they really think that the voters in the upcoming primary are watching Fox News?  I would say most of those people have moved over to other options, more Trump-friendly options.  And Trump is still the kingmaker in Ohio, and of the two candidates that are most in consideration in the primary, Renacci is the Trump guy.  DeWine is about as far from Trump as a Republican can get.  The last time DeWine was on stage with Trump in Ohio, he was booed for being there because of his role in the Covid lockdowns.  Trump is an executive and can get along with anybody.  But he’s certainly not going to go out of his way to support DeWine.  And an endorsement of any kind by Trump can erase away millions and millions of dollars spent by dark money to attempt to change opinions in traditional media. 

More than anything that has been exposed here is the distance between perception and reality.  Fundraising and what can be done with that money is part of the problem in politics.  The money machine creates leverage; that’s how DeWine was able to get many politicians to endorse him for the primary.  If they don’t support the money candidate, which DeWine certainly is, then they would find themselves short during their next election fundraising cycle, which all politicians dread.  One of their biggest problems is picking up the phone and raising money for their campaigns; no matter how good they might be at it, it’s something none of them likes to do.  But listening to this ridiculous Super PAC of DeWine unroll their 2022 primary strategy reveals just how archaic the current system truly is.  Traditional media has lost a lot of power over the last few years, and Trump showed that money in politics couldn’t beat a good message or a great candidate.  And that is certainly the case between Renacci and DeWine.  Renacci is an excellent candidate.  DeWine is a really corrupt and terrible one.  And no amount of money in the world can make the lipstick on that pig look good.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Sheriff Jones Endorses the Governor of the Most Corrupt State in America: A solution to the stupidity of Mike DeWine

Another Reason Corruption is Good to See

This is precisely why I value the measurement of corruption, which I talk about extensively in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. For the last several weeks, people around me have been asking, “what is going on with our great Sheriff Jones” the Butler County figure that is internationally known for his support of President Trump. Suddenly he has thrown his support to Governor Mike DeWine and made a whole lot of other flip flop decisions that seem ultimately at odds with the MAGA movement. So there is a bit of a panic on the matter, which I have explained as a form of corruption that must be accounted for to understand the decision-making process of Sheriff Jones. Corruption isn’t always just about money, but in the case of Jones and DeWine, without a Trump in the White House, many in the Republican Party are drifting back into the cave of power for the sake of it, and that is why we are seeing rifts forming ahead of the Ohio primary coming up in May of 2022. Unless we have a way of understanding the nature of corruption, we would otherwise have no other means of comprehending these strange behaviors. Trump has at least three more years before he’ll have a chance to be back in the White House. Naturally, Jones must align himself to the world between now and then. Yes, he is perfectly willing to adjust his beliefs to the power void that has formed in Trump’s wake, and from his point of view, the smart money points at the current governor of Ohio, the most corrupt state in all of the United States, Mike DeWine. 

As all this is going on, the challenging governor and my pick for the upcoming primary, Jim Renacci, is up 8 points over the incumbent DeWine. I had the opportunity to listen to Mike DeWine on many conference calls during the Covid mishap that his administration unleashed on Ohio. I have seen behind the veil just what an idiot DeWine was. I voted for him in the last election because he called himself a Republican. What I heard during the government-imposed shutdowns was a complete fool out of touch with reality. One moment in particular that impacted me was when I had to listen to Cedar Fair Amusements in May of 2020 try to explain their problem to DeWine about the trouble with not knowing when they could open their amusement parks because they had to hire, prepare their parks, and take all kinds of measures to get ready for a summer season that government had destroyed, and couldn’t give any guidance going forward. As a right-to-life governor, DeWine had put the pro-abortion Obama activist Amy Acton as head of his Health Department. She was running the state the way a stringy-haired pot-smoking hippie would run it, which was costing the business community billions of dollars during a lockdown over Covid that nobody could see the end of, especially Cedar Fair Amusements who ran a seasonal operation in two Ohio locations. It was worth hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and DeWine wouldn’t commit to anything to help them out. That was pretty much what DeWine said to everyone on those many teleconferences concerned over their businesses. His message was, we’re the government, and we’ll tell you when and what you can do and how long you can do it, and you’ll like it. Mike DeWine showed himself to be just as bad as the worst of Democrats during his first three years in office, and what he has done to Ohio will take decades to fix. So for me, it’s easy; Jim Renacci is the answer to the Mike DeWine debacles of the first term in office as governor.  DeWine has been a disaster.

Sheriff Jones has been something of a thorn in DeWine’s side while Trump was in office. DeWine was one of the first in the country to attempt mask mandates leading all other governors to the mandate first, just as he did with lockdowns. Without DeWine, many other governors only fantasized about it. DeWine was the first to do it. He was also the first to unconstitutionally alter election laws which would then pave the way for massive cheating that the Democrats would perform later that year with mail-in voting to remove Trump from office before the courts could even process the assault. Sheriff Jones, who advertised himself as a “pro Trump” member of law enforcement, suddenly endorsed DeWine for governor after all that DeWine had done to Ohio. Why? Well, the first thing is that the DeWine money machine is kicking in. Corruption and DeWine are never far from each other, and Sheriff Jones is always attracted to a kind of power. I’ve known Sheriff Jones for several years and what’s most valuable to him is his brand. For instance, when his brand is aligned with the Trump White House, it’s a wonderful thing. But I’ve seen it negatively align with big government union business, especially in 2013 when he backed the Lakota school tax increase, which he put his name behind to get it to pass by the most narrow of margins. So the Sheriff isn’t always a hard conservative; he just plays one on TV and in public appearances. And with Biden in the White House for the foreseeable future and Jones up in years himself, he needs to protect his brand while the political world sets itself in a new reality. 

What does Sheriff Jones like to do with his brand? Well, we have seen what he did to Thomas Hall, an Ohio Representative from Middletown who didn’t vote the way that the Sheriff wanted him to vote in Columbus, so the Sheriff used his name to berate the young man on WLW radio to thousands of people, personally attacking Thomas. Nobody elected Sheriff Jones to control other members of congress that we have elected to vote on our behalf. The Sheriff is supposed to take care of law enforcement concerns, not to dictate the terms of how other Republicans vote in our community by bullying them to his will. As a reaction to Thomas, the Sheriff went out of his way to put a primary candidate up against the Ohio Rep by dragging Matt King into the race, which naturally was pitting Republicans against Republicans on purpose for the intention of getting his way and making his point as being the “king maker” of the party, which put all kinds of people into a difficult position. Sheriff Jones didn’t care. He just wanted to show who had the power and what they had to do to kiss the ring to appease him, to hell what the voters of Butler County thought about the matter. That is why Jones had to align with Mike DeWine. Even though the governor is known to be attached to corruption, that power overflow gives Sheriff Jones the power to his brand that feeds his need to stay relevant as a man coming to the end of his career. Jones doesn’t have time to wait for Trump to be back in the White House. The need for power is always present, and DeWine is the quickest way to keep it. 

Now, of course, Jones would never admit to any of this. I’ve spoken to dozens and dozens of people affected by this situation, and they don’t know what to think about it. They feel betrayed and don’t have the words to put to the matter. That is why I like corruption so much, because if we didn’t have some way to measure corruption, no matter what form it exists, we wouldn’t have a way to explain this behavior. From his big labor union perspective, everyone thinks they are doing right; Jones thinks he’s doing what’s right for the Republican Party. He’s a moderate at best, and Thomas Hall has turned out to be way too Trump for his taste, so he is taking action. DeWine loved the way Amy Acton’s hair smelled after she took a shower, so he gave her the keys to Ohio and let her destroy it. As a long-married guy who is a closet Democrat, DeWine thought Acton knew what she was doing, so he defended her against all those evil business leaders who were outraged that DeWine and Acton had closed them down over Covid. DeWine showed himself to be an idiot who thought he was doing right. That’s why we have elections so that when we learn these things about people, we can get rid of them with an option, in this case, Jim Renacci. But honestly, there is only one right, not the right that Sheriff Jones comes up with, or his new buddy, Mike DeWine. But in our Republic, for it ever to really stand, it takes the taxpayers and respect for their vote. If they pick Thomas Hall, it’s not for Sheriff Jones to decide otherwise. Or for DeWine to attempt to hide four years of horrible management of Ohio behind one deal from Intel worth 20 billion dollars and to ride it like a bucking bronco at a rodeo. Corruption seeks to hide its misdeeds behind a façade that, if you know what you are looking at, can tell you the truth about the matter and allow voters to understand who they are getting involved with. And that is why corruption is a lot better to understand than to pretend like it doesn’t exist at all.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Mike DeWine and Joe Biden are One in the Same: It’s all about Trump in Ohio

Vote for Jim Renacci

It is way beyond coincidence that Joe Biden and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine did precisely the same thing in reaction to the Omicron Covid variant making its way through America presently.  Both progressive executive branch personalities applied federal troops to assist with what they say would be crowded hospitals due to a surge in illnesses.  And, of course, both of them are wrong.  It is a sad state to say that the highly liberal Joe Biden and the worst president in the history of our republic are just like that so-called Republican Mike DeWine, but that is the case.  They are reading from the same playbook, which leaves me to drool over the primary election in May of 2022, where I can’t wait to cast a vote for Jim Renacci to primary DeWine.  Ohio would have probably done better to elect a Democrat for governor because at least we would have known what we were getting instead of this old establishment tyrant that emerged under Covid.  DeWine was a disaster as governor, and the costs are so enormous as to what he cost us in our state that we will still be talking about the damage decades from now.  After the much-criticized speech by Joe Biden in response to public pressure to say something about Omicron, the thick plot of corruption and malice was evident to anybody with eyes to see it.  Mike DeWine was never a republican.  He was always a progressive to complete communism.  How do we know?  Well, when a governor sets up a system where he decides what time a restaurant must close or whether or not we can attend church, we can know that we have the wrong guy in public office as they are obsessed with central authority any way they can get it.  And thankfully, in Ohio, our legislature took that power away from him.  We must remove him and replace him with a Trump Republican, Jim Renacci. 

Ironically, and I don’t see how anybody could think of Jim Renacci this way, many people think he’s a RINO too.  Well, I know Jim, and he’s no RINO.  I am fully in support of Jim Renacci without any reservation.  People have been asking me why I’m not supporting the cowboy hat-wearing Joe Blystone.  After all, he’s probably more my kind of guy.  I like Blystone a lot.  Not for governor this time around, but I could vote for him for any number of positions.  I think Jim Renacci gets the RINO label because people know he’s wealthy, and they assume that corruption comes from that wealth.  I see Renacci as a business guy like Trump, who is entirely in the Trump corner, and it will take that to beat the DeWine machine in the primary.  There is no room for a weak-kneed approach on this issue.  Getting rid of DeWine is a mandate we must all get behind.  The fight we are fighting is against hard-left Democrats.  Mike DeWine has obviously been on Dr. Fauci’s inside tract of authority thinking for a long time. Otherwise, he never would have hired the abortion supporting Amy Acton as his chief health director, which essentially ruined Ohio during Covid.  DeWine was always on the progressive side of things, and he showed most recently just how much so being entirely in lockstep with Joe Biden.  But there are many Republicans who still think DeWine is a conservative, and they will vote for him in the primary.  Whoever runs against him will need something significant in their corner, like a Trump endorsement, to pull off an upset against the machine. 

If I were Joe Blystone and wanted to help do something good for Ohio, I would get involved in the Renacci campaign.  If it’s a matter of wanting to be governor of the state for the sake of some name recognition, well, that’s another thing.  But if Joe wants to help Ohio, he would get behind Jim Renacci and support the campaign to beat the DeWine machine, the real villain.  Many would say, why not do it the other way around.  Why not have Renacci support Blystone or some other independent-minded challenger?  Well, it’s because of Trump.  Trump is connected to Renacci in a big way.  Few candidates in the United States can call up Trump and get his attention as Renacci can, and it’s essentially the only way to generate the kind of votes it will take to beat DeWine in the May primary.  Blystone certainly won’t win against the machine on his own.  There are not enough Republican voters who will crawl out on that branch without some massive effort to generate participation.  Primary voters are not the same as those in general.  They tend to be the type of people who give to campaigns, and over the years, lots of people have given money to Mike DeWine, and they are going to be slow to admit what a terrible investment it was.  When it comes time to vote, Trump will have to get involved to generate interest in voters who usually don’t vote in primaries. That’s the only way to beat DeWine.

I’ve met Trump on many occasions.  But one of those was when Renacci was with him.  That is actually how I met Renacci is when he was with President Trump coming off Air Force One.  I am 100% sure that Trump will run for re-election in 2024.  I am part of the America First Policy Institute, so I am seeing all the work going on behind the scenes getting ready for the new social media company Trump is getting ready to put out, and what kind of positioning will launch AFPI influence into the 2022 elections and then setting up 2024 for Trump.  Trump is a winner.  He will not leave this life, allowing what happened to him and his supporters in 2020.  He will burn down the whole house of progressive cards if it takes that to win again. I’ve seen it in his eyes. I’ve seen the same thing in Jim Renacci’s eyes. I’ve felt it in handshakes with both people.  I know their hearts, so it is up to us to put the right people in the right places for what is coming, not necessarily what we have seen.  In the next 12 months, the political landscape will change dramatically, and the best person poised to make the best of it is Jim Renacci.  There is room for people like Joe Blystone in this new world.  But the game for governor means we must build a team of Republicans.  Renacci knows the game and can pull them into his camp under a Trump endorsement.  And Renacci is independent enough to appeal to Blystone voters.  Renacci proposes to govern like Ron DeSantis in Florida, which we can all get excited about. 

I’m looking forward to pulling the lever for Renacci.  I don’t think it will be an issue, but this far out, there seems to be a lot of people on the fence still, which I would say, look at Joe Biden.  That is the enemy that must be defeated.  Mike DeWine is just like Biden. We have the power to do something about it right now, to remove one of these detrimental political characters and send a powerful message to the political establishment.  Renacci is not an establishment person, no more so than Trump is.  What makes Renacci particularly good is that he doesn’t need the money or the job like Trump.  He just wants to do something good for the country and use his influence to do it.  It would be my advice to understand the strategy and get behind Renacci because it will take everything we all have to knock off Mike DeWine, even with all the problems he has brought to Ohio. It’s a numbers game, and while many people complain about DeWine, they don’t typically vote in primaries.  We need a way to make them want to vote in this one.  Splitting the vote between political activists in the minority in a primary will only help the Joe Biden’s of the world, like Mike DeWine.  So vote for Jim Renacci, and let’s make history in 2022 as Trump launches his ambitions for our benefit.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Ohio Jim and Joe Show: For governor, in the May 2022 primary it’s all about Trump

Jim Renacci picks Joe Knopp as a Running Mate in Ohio

I didn’t know much about Joe Knopp when I attended the special press conference of Jim Renacci on Thursday, December 2nd, 2021.  I knew I liked Jim Renacci and supported him emphatically to run for governor of Ohio.  The current governor, Mike DeWine, had not shown that he was a conservative during his first term, and his Covid response was a disaster against the Constitution.  He was the first governor in all of the nation to attempt to alter election laws and shut down our economy, and we have all seen enough.  He had to go, and Jim was the best replacement.  But this particular event was a bit of a surprise.  Jim was going to announce his Lt. Governor.  Naturally, I was thinking of the apparent picks; it would have to be a conservative woman of some kind because that’s what everyone does these days.  But no, instead, Jim was thinking outside the box when he announced that he was putting Joe Knopp on the ticket, another privately successful person.  The more I thought about it and got a chance to meet Joe, the more I liked him.  He was, after all, the producer of the Trump movie, The Trump I Know.    

About halfway through the Joe Knopp introduction, I started putting everything together.  Joe was the guy who produced the movie showing all the great Trump women who came out right before the election in 2020.  It told the story that nobody covered about Trump, all the little things he does behind the scenes that made him such a great president, and how he treated women in his campaign and organizations.  It all came to an excellent little focus during the press conference, especially during the question and answer session where reporters asked what Renacci planned to do about Ohio being the number 1 state in all of America for corruption.  Sometimes we all start accepting dysfunction to such an extent that we think of it as reality.  But the reason the media hated Trump, as the Swamp itself does, was because of these independent business guys, people like Trump, and his friend Jim Renacci.  Joe Knopp wanted to eliminate the dark money cookies that all the Swamp creatures get to eat off of.  Columbus, Ohio was every bit as much of a swamp as Washington D.C., Just on a different scale, and essentially, Governor DeWine is like the Joe Biden in the executive branch.  A deeply compromised person who has become rich off dark money hated people who challenged that structure.  From the media to the politicians, it was all an addiction to dark money that they considered such a threat.  So much so that they would have destroyed President Trump if they could.  But the Trump women that Joe Knopp captured in his film so beautifully told the absolute truth, which is what voters saw.  And in Ohio, we were going to get to make the same kind of decision in favor of the Jim and Joe Show. 

This is a different kind of race for the governor.  As Renacci will say, he’s not running against Mike DeWine; he’s running for Ohio.  But this is a primary race that would generally be protected from challengers because they are typically low turnout elections. The people who show up are usually inspired by dark money. That’s how people like Mike DeWine get power and keep it.  And it’s everything that’s wrong with Ohio.  So to run against Mike DeWine is running for Ohio.  But we’re talking about swamp creatures who are the only benefactors.  We need in Ohio essentially what Trump was able to do at the federal level, and it takes people who are independent of that dark money to make it happen.  Playing a conventional game of politics that sets up a specific media narrative would not make Ohio any less corrupt.  It’s essentially the media that is in on it all, they set the parameters of the dark money game, and they all feed off each other.  No, what we want in Ohio is freedom from those kinds of people.  Jim Renacci is independently successful and is personal friends with President Trump.  And so is Jim’s pick for Lt. Governor. 

Of course, the media narrative of the Joe Knopp announcement was that he was a Christian filmmaker, which is true.  But that doesn’t begin to tell the whole story of who Joe Knopp is.  It’s like saying that Steven Spielberg is a liberal film director.  That may be an aspect of who Steven Spielberg is, but it can’t be argued that Spielberg films generally reach out to all audiences.  And that was certainly the case with Joe’s movie, The Trump I Know.  The media doesn’t like people who make Christian movies that are every bit as good as Academy Award-winning films made in Hollywood.  Joe is very much a product of Hollywood and a realization that the political left has, which makes them very uncomfortable, that they don’t control the entire movie-making industry.  So to emphasize that Joe is a Christian for them is an attempt to limit his reach not only in the primary but also in the general election.  Yet, all this conventional thinking forgets is that for the first time in the history of America, especially under the DeWine administration, churches were closed while abortion clinics were open.  And DeWine put the abortion activist Amy Acton on his staff to essentially run Ohio for an entire year.  Voters have had some cold water thrown in their faces, where the government interrupted their religion and showed the fangs of the state’s power.  Ohio voters are primed to vote for an honest Christian crusader who loves President Trump and pledges to attack corruption without becoming consumed himself.  Yes, picking Joe Knopp was an intelligent move for Jim Renacci.  It’s not business as usual, and that’s the point. 

I left the Renacci event happy.  Finally, we would have a positive choice in Ohio by a few really good people who were independently successful and beyond the corruption of dark money.  And to have a chance to remove DeWine and replace him with Renacci with such staff, people like Joe Knopp start to repair what has been broken in Ohio after the Covid shutdowns by DeWine.  The best justice for all the bad things DeWine did would be to replace his place in the Swamp with the drain of Renacci and Knopp.  These are people that real conservatives in Ohio can truly cheer for and feel good about voting for.  Many of the years in the past when the voter turnout has been low, partly because the candidates are always swamp creatures like DeWine, which nobody gets excited about, options like these didn’t seem possible.  But Renacci and Knopp, well, there’s something that people can get excited about.  It’s great to have a choice finally, and in meeting Knopp, I can only say that he is one of the nicest people I have met this year.  Such a good person, and such a nice family.  To have people like that to vote for in an election is truly a treasure, and I think Ohio will enjoy the option.  True, the dark money monster is out there, but I think these guys have a good chance of getting new voter turnout activated.  And for that to be an option is a huge opportunity that will make 2022 a year of justice to remember.

Rich Hoffman

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