Trump’s Economic Boom
America got great news this morning—the economy grew at a healthy rate in the second quarter of the year, beating the clueless “experts” who predicted 2% growth. Instead, it grew at 3% or 50% more than predicted. In addition, inflation is showing signs of slowing.
Every day since Trump’s inauguration, Democrats and leftist pundits have been trying to talk the economy down. They insisted that “Trump’s tariffs will cause a recession!” Left-wing activists are actually trying to tank the economy. (Here and here.)
So, where is the recession?
Once again, the fake news media, socialist politicians, and Marxist economic professors have demonstrated that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
A City In Crisis
You may have seen the stomach-turning video of a mob beating in Cincinnati, Ohio. That ugly event took place just a few miles from where I grew up.
The video shows a small group of mostly middle-aged people being set upon by a wolfpack of mostly younger attackers. There appears to be a racial component to the brutal violence. All the victims were white. All the attackers were black.
Several victims were repeatedly kicked in the head as they were lying on the ground. A single mother was knocked out by a young thug with one punch, and the mob kicked her, too.
This vicious mob violence was cheered on by at least 100 bystanders, but there was only one 911 call. As skulls were cracked and the blood flowed, there was a celebratory mood on the streets of what has historically been called “The Queen City.”
Most of the country heard nothing about this attack. It was only covered by Fox News, the New York Post, and conservative social media posts.
Cincinnati’s police chief held a press conference in which she lashed out not at the criminal thugs but at the media for posting the video. She claimed the media were giving the city a bad name and there was no context to the video.
Well, what could be a “context” that wouldn’t reflect badly on this mob beatdown? When pressed for specifics, she failed to provide any and simply wanted to bury the story.
A Culture In Crisis
Commentator and historian Victor Davis Hanson, as usual, went right to the heart of the matter and provided the cultural context surrounding the violence in Cincinnati.
He reminds us that when black actor Jussie Smollett claimed he was beaten by two MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporters at 2:00 a.m. in Chicago, the media accepted his claims as true, without any evidence. Smollett became a symbol of “Trump’s racist America.”
Hanson pointed to the experience of the Catholic boys from Covington, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati. When they came to Washington, D.C., and refused to be pushed around at the Lincoln Memorial by a radical black organization and a Native American rabble rouser, they were immediately branded as “bigots” and “racists.” But the whole narrative was fake.
Hanson also recalled the confrontation in Ferguson, Missouri, involving a white police officer and a young black man. That confrontation gave us the phrase “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” After days of violent riots, we learned it was all fake. The young man didn’t have his hands up, and he was trying to take the officer’s weapon.
These fake narratives, Hanson said, are being driven by a narrative of “tribal identification” where everyone is either oppressed or an oppressor. And when the facts don’t fit the Left’s narrative, events like the one in Cincinnati are ignored.
Anti-Israel Propaganda
The New York Times is under fire for publishing a heart-wrenching photo of what it claimed was a starving Palestinian child in Gaza. It was meant to reinforce a false narrative of “mean Jews are killing Muslims by denying them food.”
Anybody looking at the whole photo would first notice that the child’s mother did not look emaciated. Another photograph shows the child’s older brother. He looks normally fed and healthy. Apparently, the starvation in this household is very selective.
Well, actually there is no starvation. The child in this now viral photo is suffering from several severe medical issues that prevent his body from properly metabolizing food.
His condition is tragic, but it has nothing to do with Israel.
The New York Times ate a little “crow” yesterday, finally admitting that the child had “pre-existing health problems.” But “correction” still avoided the serious lack of journalism involved in this story.
If there is mass starvation in Gaza, why show only one child? There must be thousands of starving people they could photograph. Sadly, this isn’t the only example of anti-Israel propaganda being passed off as “news.”
Moral Clarity
Here’s the bottom line on this Gaza controversy: The entire world, including the American people, is being immersed in a propaganda campaign against Israel by radical Islamists, their media allies, and increasingly the Democrat Party.
There is no shortage of food in Gaza. There is plenty of food. The problem is that it isn’t being distributed.
The U.N. bailed out. So, the United States and Israel stepped in. But Hamas is disrupting the distribution of food aid because controlling the availability of food is a major way the terrorists intimidate the people of Gaza.
Hamas is also demanding that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) must control all the aid coming into Gaza. That’s because Hamas successfully infiltrated UNRWA. And if UNRWA can’t or won’t deliver aid, Hamas is perfectly happy to let the “starving children of Gaza” propaganda against Israel continue.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) made a statement that some might find callous. He said Israel is under no moral obligation to feed the people of Gaza and that it was being held to a standard not applied to any other country. He’s right.
When we were at war with Nazi Germany, we didn’t believe it was our responsibility to feed the German people during the war.
When we were at war with Japan, we did not launch a major effort to ensure the Japanese were eating well.
While everyone is demanding that Russia get out of Ukraine, no one is demanding that Russia feed the Ukrainian people.
Sadly, many in the West are falling for Hamas’s propaganda. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) accused Benjamin Netanyahu of using food as a weapon, a view increasingly held by many Democrats.
Even worse, France and Great Britain are now threatening to formally recognize a Palestinian state. That’s outrageous and wrong! The end result of this war that Hamas started must not be Hamas being rewarded with “Hamastan.” That would be a victory for terrorism and Islamic supremacy.
Red Storm Rising
No, this isn’t about a GOP/MAGA wave in next year’s midterm elections. It’s the other “Red”—as in socialist Red.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is taking some heat from her left-wing base. Why? Because she recently voted to provide funding for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. In the past, she has voted against funding for Iron Dome and also voted “present.” And now she voted for it.
AOC is finally seeing the light. After all, she’s supporting a candidate for mayor who is an even bigger Israel-hater than she is.
No, this is more serious. She’s planning a run for the Democrat presidential nomination, or she’s going to convince the nominee that the only way they can win is to accept her as vice president.
Don’t laugh. In a new poll of hypothetical 2028 presidential matchups, J.D. Vance beats her by just three points.
In related news, a polling company decided to test the conventional wisdom about the New York City mayoral race. I confess that I had also accepted that conventional wisdom.
They tested Marxist Muslim Zohran Mamdani against the other candidates in one-on-one contests. The idea is that the only way to defeat Mamdani is for the other candidates to stop dividing the vote. Sadly, the Big Apple may be more rotten than anyone realized.
In one-on-one matchups, Mamdani beats Andrew Cuomo by 12 points among likely voters, and he beats Mayor Eric Adams by 27 points.
Speak Up For Truth
The Trump/Vance administration is taking bold actions to protect our children from transgender insanity. A major part of this effort is taking place at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which combats “unfair or deceptive business practices” and “false advertising.”
If anything meets the definition of “false advertising,” it’s the insane claim that doctors can change someone’s gender. That’s impossible. No matter what drugs are administered or what body parts are cut off, DNA does not change.
The Federal Trade Commission is currently accepting comments from the public on whether children have been harmed by so-called “gender-affirming care,” whether doctors failed to explain the risks, and whether doctors made “false or unsubstantiated claims about the benefits or effectiveness” of transgender procedures.
This is our opportunity to speak up for our children and the truth. Comments can be submitted at Regulations.gov through September 26th.