There’s a lot of that pearl clutching on the right today. But I think every official in the Democratic party sent their thoughts and prayers right after it happened and now it’s passed through the memory hole. Isn’t that how this is supposed to work?
Now this is funny:
That’s right. Minnesota is teeming with foreigners and Tim Walz is a Chinese agent. You heard that right. James Comer has sent a letter to FBI Director Wray telling him that his committee is conducting a big investigation into Chinese political warfare and has some questions about Walz:
It has come to the Committee’s attention that Governor Walz has longstanding connections to CCP-connected entities and officials that make him susceptible to the Party’s strategy of elite capture, which seeks to co-opt influential figures in elite political, cultural, and academic circles to influence the United States to the benefit of the communist regime and the detriment of Americans. Reporting about Governor Walz’s extensive engagement with CCP officials and entities while serving in public office raises questions about possible CCP influence in his decision-making as governor—and, should he be elected, as vice president.
FFS. Public Notice has Walz’s story and it’s actually pretty great:
In 1989, when he was all of 25-years-old, Walz spent a year teaching high school in China. He went on to lead many student trips to the country, something Comer and his fellow goons have tried to spin as nefarious.
Comer got some help spreading his latest innuendo campaign Monday evening from Fox News’s Jesse Watters.
“If an American goes to China 30 times in the ‘90s, they have surveillance footage of him,” Watters vamped.
“China thinks long term,” Comer agreed, affecting grave concern while invoking old-timey Orientalist stereotypes. “It’s very possible that China would be grooming an up-and-coming rising star in the political process to try to have a foothold in our government.”
How wise of the CCP to have noticed this high school teacher 35 years ago and intuited that he would one day be the vice president!
“When you look at Hunter Biden’s ties with Communist China, it was for money,” Comer went on. “It looks like Walz’s ties may be for ideology. And this is something that we should be concerned about.”
From Walz’s 24-year military service and his career as a school teacher Comer deduces that the governor harbors communist leanings.
“If you look at Walz’s background, if you look at his ideology and the things he talked about when he ran for attorney general and he ran for governor, this is a guy that really has embraced China’s view of the world,” he went on, despite the fact that Walz is not a lawyer and never ran for attorney general.
But that didn’t stop the intrepid congressman from denigrating a lifetime of public service and a modest bank account as red flags for Red China.
“We have a guy who’s never been in the private sector, he’s worked for the government his whole life, from looking at his financial background, it doesn’t look like he owns any stocks, his retirement’s in a government pension plan,” said Comer, who has held public office since 2001 when he was 28-years-old and will collect both state and federal pensions. “This guy’s very dependent on the government, and I believe he thinks that the business model that China’s had may be the ideal business model for the united states.”
The usual suspects profess to be very disturbed.
“Tim Walz owes the American people an explanation about his unusual, 35-year relationship with Communist China,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio went even further, calling Walz “an example of how Beijing patiently grooms future American leaders” to “push for policies that allow China to steal our jobs & factories & flood America with drugs.”
In reality, Walz has been a steadfast critic of the Chinese government’s human rights abuses, while at the same time advocating for greater engagement with the Chinese people. He’s met with the Dalai Lama and accused the CCP of ethnic cleansing of minorities, including the Uyghurs.
“What I saw was not just modernization. I saw the cultural shift, or the culturacide, if you may,” then-Rep. Walz said at a 2009 congressional hearing on Human Rights and the Law in China.
None of which is going to please the Chinese government or allow Beijing to “steal our jobs & factories & flood America with drugs.” But that will not stop the GOP from pretending the former football coach and National Guardsman, who retired and then re-enlisted after September 11, is a Chinese spy.
Sen. Ron Johnson further condemned him for getting married on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square. Seriously.
Walz is a very interesting person who is not only a salt-o-the-earth guy who spent his life in public service. Hes also a sophisticated man of the world who has spent time outside the country and understands how the world works. We should value these things in our leaders instead of extolling phonies like Orange Julius Caesar whose entire worldview was formed by watching Larry King back in the 1980s and reading the NY Post.
Tim Walz’s knowledge and experience in China are a huge asset. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. .
I don’t know if its 2016 PTSD or simply a recognition that almost half the country is still in thrall to a con man but it’s obvious that the Democrats. as giddy as they are after a successful convention, are not going to take anything for granted this time.
Brian Beutler has a good piece on this in his excellent substack newsletter Off Message today. An Excerpt:
In his speech to the convention Wednesday night, Bill Clinton alluded to two elections it must have killed him to see Dems lose: his vice president’s and his wife’s. “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen,” he warned, “when people got distracted by phony issues or overconfident.”
Overconfidence and phony issues alike derailed Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and Bill Clinton was not alone worrying they could overtake Harris’s too. Michelle Obama articulated more precisely how the early Harris momentum might slip.
“No matter how good we feel tonight or tomorrow or the next day, this is going to be an uphill battle,” she said. “We cannot be our own worst enemies. No. See, because the minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands. We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right. And we cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.”
This, too, was about 2016—about the likelihood that Republicans will stumble upon a line of attack that turns out to be sticky, or that Harris takes a position that some of her natural allies view as too extreme or too conservative. Beating Trump is more important than that everything is just so.
Against the backdrop of a four day party, this was the flipside of mobilization: insurance against demobilization.
Barack Obama’s role, by contrast, was persuasion—to widen the party’s appeal by depicting it as an organization that will generously welcome all people of good faith. “We’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices,” he said. “If we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidates, we need to listen to their concerns and maybe learn something in the process. After all, if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. We recognize that the world is moving fast, that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us.”
In past elections, particularly in 2016, progressive Democrats would grouse about the party’s willingness to share the stage with Republicans. This year, there was much less complaining. For one thing, progressives are now among the leaders in the party, and can expect prominent speaking roles without having to fight for them. But Democrats understand the assignment better now.
As Brian Schatz noted Wednesday, “Our message is simple. We can fight about the rest of it later. We can fight about the size and the scope of government later. We can fight about libertarian issues or social issues later. We have freedom and democracy to preserve together, and there are certain principles that are bigger than party politics.”
He also noted that, to be truly effective, the proposition has to come from Republicans, like when Adam Kinzinger spoke Thursday and said of Harris, “whatever policies we disagree on pale in comparison with those fundamental matters of principle, of decency, and of fidelity to this nation… to my fellow Republicans, if you still pledge allegiance to those principles, I suspect you belong here too.”
(Consider subscribing to read the whole thing. It’s very good as are all of his writings. )
He’s right about this. There are many things that could happen to derail us. If there’s one thing I’ve learned the hard way over these past few years (decades, actually) it’s to never assume you have it in the bag. Too many times I’ve sat up on election night staring blankly at the returns, feeling like I’ve been hit over the head with a 2×4. Elections are almost always close these days and you just can’t assume anything.
The Democrats have been given a second chance in this election and they know it. Let’s hope everyone can just keep their heads down, get out the vote and be prepared for what the GOP has in store for election day and beyond.
This was heartwarming for me to see:
The convention was extremely respectful and appreciative of women and elder statesmen and it was really good to see. An it was especially welcoming to progressive champions like Warren which has not happened much in the past. The unity was not feigned. It was real and it was sincere.
Trump attempted to live tweet Harris’s speech last night. Here are some ofhe highlights:
He called in to Fox immediately after the speech. Sad!
After Fox hustled him off he called Newsmax:
He’s fine. Nothing to see here.
Apparently RFK Jr is dropping out and is going to endorse Trump today. And Trump is welcoming him with open arms.
Though his odds of victory were quickly diminishing – a recent CBS News poll measured his support at just 2% – Kennedy’s decision to bow out 74 days before the election nevertheless presents another twist to a race already unlike any other. And amid a momentum shift that has catapulted the newly installed Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, into close contention with Trump, there is hope within the former president’s operation that Kennedy’s exit could prove decisive if certain battlegrounds are decided by thousands of ballots, just as they were in 2020.
It’s hardly certain what Kennedy’s backers will do. Whether many of them ever intended to vote for him or at all is difficult to gauge, and some may choose to sit the election out without an alternative on the ballot.
Still, the Trump campaign has long worried that Kennedy’s campaign, built on conspiracies and anti-vaccine rhetoric, pulled directly from their side, especially in a handful of key states. Trump’s advisers now see an opening to court some of Kennedy’s voters, particularly those Americans who sit at the overlap between supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ past presidential campaigns and the GOP’s anti-establishment right wing. There is a presumption among Trump’s team and his allies that conservative-leaning mothers – a demographic the Republican nominee has struggled to win over – could also be swayed. Women were more likely to support Kennedy than men, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, though other polls haven’t shown a meaningful difference.
It’s another Don Jr. special like JD Vance:
As it became clear that Kennedy’s days in the race were numbered, several of Trump’s top allies, including his son, Donald Trump Jr., have maneuvered behind the scenes to arrange for an endorsement. Meanwhile, the former president has showered Kennedy in overtures, telling CNN he might find a place for his onetime rival in a future Cabinet.
“If he endorsed me, I would be honored by it,” Trump said Thursday on Fox News. “I would be very honored by it. He really has his heart in the right place.”
Good luck with that. It certainly provides lots of fun and fodder for the libs.
Update:
Many thanks to Tom Sullivan for representing! We are seen!
From Meidas Touch:
Trump will be hosting a “J6 Awards Gala” at Trump Nation Golf Club Bedminster on September 5th. Attendees have a chance to win a plaque commemorating the fact that MAGA folks bought a bunch of copies of his J6 “song” called Justice for All earning him a fleeting spot on the Billboard music chart.
A flyer for the “J6 Awards Gala” shows Trump has been invited to speak and also shows indicted co-defendant Rudy Giuliani will be there. Trump is not only hosting the event at his property, but there is a good chance he will be speaking at it too.
A promotional video for the event shows Trump calling J6 rioters, “peaceful,” and “J6 hostages,” promising pardons, and calling for them to be released. The video has audio of Trump claiming, “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly.”
It’s possible Trump won’t speak at this event. It’s a fundraiser and he may not have to be there. But it’s at Bedminster and it has his imprimatur.
Remember:
We interrupt our coverage of the flawless Democratic National Convention to bring you the news that – shocker – JD Vance & his team remain *terrible* at this 1) he does not know how many donuts to order without help 2) his team picked and sent him into a place where the staff literally wants nothing to do with being on camera this is an awkward an off-the-record stop as you’ll ever see.
You can sense his anger at that clerk for not wanting to be filmed and not knowing who he was. He’s an ass.
Lol. Update:
I’m not sure how much longer I can take this fatuous nonsense. The Democrats have to put him away once and for all.
David Frum compiled some of Trump’s foreign policy “achievements”
He accepted the help of Russian spy agencies to win the presidency in 2016 …
directed tens of millions of taxpayer and foreign government $ to his own businesses … https://axios.com/2024/01/04/report-trump-received-at-least-78m-in-foreign-payments-during-presidency…
ordered a religious test on immigrants and visitors to the United States – rewrote it three times until a friendly Supreme Court disgraced the country by inscribing the rewritten ban into law … https://npr.org/2018/06/26/606481548/supreme-court-upholds-trump-travel-ban….
started trade wars not only with China, but against friends like the European Union, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. He encouraged close ally Britain to exit the EU – then refused Britain the US-UK trade treaty he’d promised … https://washingtonpost.com/world/us-uk-trade-deal-trump-boasted-would-be-fantastic-and-big-boosters-may-be-dissappointed/2020/03/02/0d8577c2-5c90-11ea-ac50-18701e14e06d_story.htmlas…
as his anti-China trade war rapidly proved a costly fiasco https://forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/01/trumps-trade-war-cost-us-company-stock-prices-17-trillion/…, then connived in the Chinese cover-up of the deadly COVID outbreak through the pandemic’s crucial early weeks … https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/07/when-trump-covered-chinas-alleged-coronavirus-coverup/…
made deals with Putin that he concealed from his own national security team … https://washingtonpost.com/world/2019/03/05/trump-met-putin-helsinki-more-than-days-later-will-we-ever-find-out-what-they-said/…
and blackmailed Ukraine, denying that democracy weapons unless it fabricated political dirt against his expected election opponent … and was only barely dissuaded from quitting NATO altogether according to his own highest aides … https://nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html…
mocked and defamed America’s most honest war dead https://theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/…
and their grieving families … https://npr.org/2016/08/01/488213964/gop-criticism-mounts-as-trump-continues-attacks-on-khan-family…
. stole ultra-classified government documents on his way out the door, including nuclear secrets – which he later showed to paying customers at Mar a Lago, including foreign nationals. https://nytimes.com/2023/10/05/us/politics/trump-nuclear-submarine-classified-documents.html…
That’s just for starters. I would add that he appears to have taken a $10 million bribe from Egypt and his son in law took a $2 billion payoff from Saudi Arabia.
Look at what he’s saying about Israel today:
He says h’s done more for Israel “than any other person and it’s not even close.” Have you ever heard anything dumber than that?