Tag: Trump

Commentary: What Does the Republican Party Stand for?

Virginia Star Staff
trump-speech_840x480

For two fleeting years after Trump was elected president, the GOP controlled the White House and both houses of the U.S. Congress. This level of one-party control for the GOP was almost without precedent. Apart from 2003-2007—the end of George W. Bush’s first term in office and the beginning of his second—you have to go back all the way to 1953, the first half of Dwight Eisenhower’s first term, to find a GOP president and a GOP-controlled Congress.

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Commentary: Biden Will Prove Reagan Right About Big-Government Incompetence

Virginia Star Staff

Respected Washington Post journalist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria has thrown down the gauntlet by betting that President Joe Biden “can show us that Reagan was wrong” when the Gipper said that “government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem.”

The headline in the Washington Post was “Biden is showing government can work,” and this assertion was supported by a commitment from a Biden White House official that “For people like us who believe in government, task number one is to make government work.”

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CNN Losing Viewers Following Trump Exit

Virginia Star Staff

CNN has been losing viewers at a record rate since former President Trump left office, dropping nearly 50% its audience in key metrics since January, Fox News reported.

The cable news channel had averaged 2.5 million primetime viewers from November 4 through Inauguration Day on January 20, according to a Fox News analysis of Nielsen data.

However, data shows once President Joe Biden took office the network averaged only 1.6 million total primetime viewers from January 21, through March 15, according to the report.

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‘That Is Not Leadership Position’: Pelosi Refuses to Back Effort to Remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from House

Virginia Star Staff

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that Democratic leadership won’t back the effort to remove Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from the House.

California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez introduced a resolution Friday to remove Greene from the House, saying the congresswoman “advocated violence against our peers, the Speaker and our government,” CNN reported. The resolution was backed by 72 House Democrats.

“I’m not gonna get into that,” Pelosi said. “Members are very unhappy about what happened here and they can express themselves the way they do. What Mr. Gomez did is his own view, and that is not leadership position.”

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‘I Fought Back Tears’: Democratic Senator Says He Witnessed Separated Children at Biden Border Facility

Virginia Star Staff

Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said he “fought back tears” after witnessing a sobbing girl separated from her grandmother at a U.S. border facility Friday.

A young girl was seen sobbing at a border facility Friday while explaining through a translator how she had been separated from her grandmother, Sen. Chris Murphy said in a tweet after he toured the facility with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Murphy said he witnessed hundreds of kids packed into “big open rooms.”

“Just left the border processing facility. 100s of kids packed into big open rooms,” Murphy tweeted. “In a corner, I fought back tears as a 13 yr old girl sobbbed (sic) uncontrollably explaining thru a translator how terrified she was, having been separated from her grandmother and without her parents.”

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Man Sentenced for Threatening Trump Supporters Online, Brandishing Assault Rifle at George Floyd Protest

Virginia Star Staff

A Texas man was sentenced to 46 months in federal jail over brandishing an assault rifle at a George Floyd protest, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Prerak Shah announced in a Wednesday press release.

Emmanuel Quinones, 25, acknowledged “he brought a loaded Smith & Wesson .223 caliber semi-automatic rifle” to the protest protesting Floyd’s death, plea papers said, according to the Department of Justice press release. Quinones also acknowledged he made threatening posts online before the protest.

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Commentary: PolitiFact Says 90 Percent of Biden Stimulus Spending Not Directly Related to COVID-19

Virginia Star Staff

President Biden’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” could soon become law.

The budget-busting legislation, sold as emergency COVID response and “stimulus,” passed the Senate over the weekend. But even the liberal-leaning fact-checking website PolitiFact is pointing out that almost all of the bill’s spending is unrelated to the health effects of COVID-19.

“Total spending directly on COVID-19’s health impacts ranges from $100 billion to $160 billion,” fact-checker Jon Greenberg writes. “At the high end, direct COVID-19 spending represents about 8.5% of the bill’s $1.9 trillion cost.”

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Joe Biden Reportedly Will Keep Trump’s Sanctions on Chinese Tech Threats

Virginia Star Staff

President Joe Biden will reportedly keep a rule proposed by the previous administration that would allow government officials to stop some Chinese technology transactions, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Biden will allow the Commerce Department to impose the rule even as his administration continues its broad review of former President Donald Trump’s outstanding executive orders related to China, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

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Commentary: Biden Wants Unity Moving into the Democratic Party

Virginia Star Staff

Mainstream voters in both parties feel that neither major party represents them, and that their opinions and wishes hold little sway over government policy.

Establishment Republicans failed the average American by becoming captive to extreme Libertarian ideology that is divorced from the reality of most people’s lives.

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Commentary: The U.S. Post-Trump Era

Virginia Star Staff

These are only the opening days of what is supposedly the post-Trump era, and whether the country has really seen the last politically of Donald Trump is a matter that depends upon Donald Trump. The principal Trump-hate outlets are still pleased to refer to him as “the disgraced former president” but, of course, he has not been disgraced and there is no indication that he will be.

All of the Democrats and about a third of Republican officeholders are engaged in an elaborate and strictly observed pretense that Trump was a freakish and horrifying interruption of the normal, serene, bipartisan devolution of events in Washington. Like a dreadful meteor, he came and he went, pushed into the instantly forgotten past by a united effort of civilized Americans.

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Analysis: Nine Things You Should Know About Ranked-Choice Voting

Virginia Star Staff

Proponents of overhauling elections to allow voters to have a backup plan if their candidate doesn’t win went 1-1 at the state level in the 2020 election, but are looking to change how elections work in other states. 

More than 30 bills on ranked-choice voting have been proposed in state legislatures across the country, according to Fair Vote, the nonprofit group that is promoting the system nationally. 

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Trump Turns Down Nikki Haley Meeting Request

Virginia Star Staff

Donald Trump this week refused to meet his former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.

Politico’s Playbook reported details of the meeting requested by the prospective 2024 presidential candidate, citing a “source familiar” with the incident, according to Breitbart.

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Commentary: Republicans Acquit Trump, but Leave His Supporters Defenseless

Virginia Star Staff

For years we have heard from Democrats about the obligation of Republicans to “stand up to Trump.” These lamentations have taken on new ferver since the GOP denied Democrats their latest wish, by voting to acquit Donald Trump of inciting “insurrection.” 

Democrats tell us this acquittal was merely the latest attack on democracy by the Republican Party which, we are to believe, has totally devolved into QAnon-inspired “domestic extremism.” 

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Commentary: Koch Proxies Threaten to Destroy Conservative Populism

Virginia Star Staff

A recent guest column in the Dallas Morning News offers new evidence that Conservatism, Inc. is bent on destroying conservative populism. The piece also underscores the primary streams of money in American politics: Trillions of dollars flow to progressives, billions flow to libertarians, and millions—on a good day—flow into the conservative populist movement.

The column is headlined “By supporting Trumpism, the GOP is in danger of losing libertarian support,” with the subtitle adding that “Many libertarians split from the party to vote for Biden.” The authors are Daniel Smith, an associate professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University and director of the Political Economy Research Institute, and Alexander Salter, an associate professor of economics at Texas Tech University and a research fellow at Texas Tech’s Free Market Institute. But these two professors are not some random intellectuals. They are part of a billion-dollar machine, built to produce paid-for ideas.

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Commentary: The Republican Ship of Fools Sails On

Virginia Star Staff

In what CNN’s Chris Cillizza accurately described as a “gut punch” to the GOP’s Trumpian faction, the House Republican Conference decided against removing Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump. Republicans voted 145-61 on a secret ballot in Cheney’s favor.

Cillizza zeroed in on Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, an ardent defender of the former president. “Make no mistake,” he wrote, “Gaetz, Trump, and the rest of that crowd wanted to make an example of Cheney. They, rightly, viewed her impeachment vote—and the ensuing controversy—as the first major battle for control of the post-Trump Republican Party.” He also notes that “Trump had released a poll last month purporting to show Cheney in trouble in Wyoming for her impeachment vote.” And according to The Dispatch’s Stephen Hayes, Trump was “calling R House members to encourage them to sack Cheney.”

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Commentary: GOP Election Fraud Deniers Face Reckoning

Virginia Star Staff

So here’s the official company line promoted by establishment Republicans to defend the outcome of the 2020 presidential election: Of course the election had some irregularities like all elections but nothing that would change the result and, by the way, the country needs some major election integrity reform before this happens again.

The doublespeak designed to refute what election fraud deniers call “the big lie” was best expressed over the weekend by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, failed presidential candidate, and now paid ABC News shill. While attempting to shame fellow Republicans for bolstering Donald Trump’s complaints about how the election was handled in states that flipped to Joe Biden in 2020, Christie falsely claimed there wasn’t any evidence of vote fraud. “I don’t think there’s any question that the country needs to focus on in terms of our elections is making sure we have some effective electoral reform . . . we need to make the system better for 2022,” Christie told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “But this election was not stolen.”

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New Evidence Implicates FBI Higher-Ups in Dishonesty of Anti-Trump Lawyer

Virginia Star Staff

For the past year, defenders of the FBI have consistently downplayed the significance of an FBI staff lawyer falsifying evidence in the government’s investigation into Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia. They argue Kevin Clinesmith’s crime of altering a CIA document to obscure the fact that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page worked for U.S., not Russian, intelligence was a rare lapse in judgment by an overworked bureaucrat. It was not, his apologists say, part of any broader conspiracy to conceal exculpatory information from surveillance court judges, who never learned of Page’s history with the CIA before approving FBI warrants to wiretap him as a suspected Russian agent.

But such explanations are challenged by new revelations from court papers filed in the case, which some civil libertarians call the most egregious violation and abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) since it was enacted more than 40 years ago.

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Commentary: The Coalition Forming to Topple California’s Newsom Offers Hope to the Nation

Virginia Star Staff

Gavin Newsom may not be the worst governor in the history of the United States, but he is a figurehead for what is definitely the worst ruling class this nation has ever seen. The elites who prop up hapless tyrants like Gavin Newsom are utterly self-serving, filthy rich, and concerned only with appearances and power.

California is a political and financial stronghold for the progressive oligarchy that controls America. But California also has some unique characteristics that could result in it becoming a center of opposition to this progressive oligarchy.

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Top House Democrat Calls on FBI to Investigate Parler’s Financing, Possible Ties to Russia

Virginia Star Staff

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the Democratic chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, on Thursday called on FBI Director Christopher Wray to investigate financing for Parler, including whether the social media site has any ties to Russia.

Part of Maloney’s rationale for investigating Parler’s links to Russia is that the social media site’s CEO, John Matze, founded the company shortly after traveling to Russia with his wife, who is Russian.

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Where the Republican Party Stands: Virginia’s Political Shifts in the 2020 Election

Corinne Murdock

The 2020 election outcomes revealed a telling political trajectory occurring in Virginia and the nation. Final tallies indicated that Republicans’ future chances of winning in the state may be ever-slimming. A consistent theme across the board – Republicans fell short with the unprecedented number of absentee voters.

Although Republicans increased their presidential vote totals from 2016 by about 185,000, Democrats increased their votes by nearly 400,000. In every election since 2008, Democratic candidates had only enjoyed about a 10,000 vote increase per year.

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Virginia House Delegates Candidate Nick Freitas Talks Confidence With Absentee and In-Person Voting Numbers

Julie Carr

Monday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host John Fredricks welcomed Virginia House of Delegates member Nick Freitas to the show to weigh in on the current ground game and enthusiasm for Trump that he was seeing in Virginia.

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Hogan Gidley on Joe Biden Campaign: ‘You Can’t Run This Country on Gumdrops, Rainbows and Unicorn Hair’

Julie Carr

Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host John Fredricks welcomed Hogan Gidley, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, to the show to discuss the Trump ground game in Florida and early voting polls of Democrats and Republicans.

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Dems With Power Flex Their Muscles Ahead of Election Day to Push Agendas, Punish Trump Supporters

Virginia Star Staff

As Election Day draws near, Democrat business owners and politicians are increasingly flexing their muscles to push their politics into peoples’ faces and punish those who have opposing views. There have been multiple reports in the past year about Trump supporters being fired for expressing their support for the president.

In the past couple of weeks, two more Trump supporters have been fired and a CEO of a major software company has sent a mass email to millions of customers telling them to vote for Joe Biden.

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TRUMPDATE: Latest From the Trump Team Virginia Campaign for September 29

Jordan Bondurant

Welcome to the Tuesday edition of our daily Virginia Trump campaign update! We will provide our readers with daily updates on the Trump Virginia campaign from today to November 3 (and after…if need be!).

It’s officially 35 days until the election on November 3 – and 33 days until early voting in Virginia closes. The deadline to register to vote in time for the 2020 election is October 13.

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FBI Agent Who Led Flynn Probe Said Mueller’s Team had a ‘Get Trump’ Attitude

Virginia Star Staff

An FBI special agent who worked on Crossfire Hurricane told prosecutors last week that he saw little reason to investigate Michael Flynn and that he believed that members of the special counsel’s team prosecuted the former national security adviser in order to “get Trump,” according to a memo released late Thursday.

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Trump Intends to Visit Virginia After Denouncing Gov. Northam and Endorsing Bob Good

Corinne Murdock

President Donald Trump announced his intentions to visit Virginia after denouncing Governor Ralph Northam and endorsing congressional candidate Bob Good.

Trump tweeted his remarks on the first day of Virginia’s early voting and submission of absentee ballots, September 18.

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Steve Bannon on The John Fredericks Show: How Democrats Plan to Steal the Election

Corinne Murdock

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon appeared on The John Fredericks Show (JFRS) to share how Democrats are undermining the election. The exchange is part of Bannon’s newest national tour, “Plot to Steal 2020.”
Bannon unveiled the tour in his first interview since his arrest. The War Room – Pandemic host claimed that the fraud charges against him are part of a bigger plan targeting Trump’s associates ahead of the election. 

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Commentary: Trump Takes on the Real Pandemic of ‘Critical Race Theory’

Virginia Star Staff

At long last, the president tackles the “critical race theory” infecting the federal workforce.
To be a freedom-loving individual in the year 2020, and to have a proper understanding of modern history and current events, is to be terrifyingly aware of just how much the liberty, prosperity, and stability of America and the free world depend on one thing and one thing alone—namely, the continued physical and intellectual health of a certain preternaturally brave, brilliant, and energetic 74-year-old named Donald Trump.

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Man Fired for Refusing to Remove ‘Trump 2020’ Hat

Jordan Bondurant

A worker at the Newport News Naval Shipyard was fired recently after refusing to remove a Trump 2020 hat.

Dave Sunderland believes with the November 3 presidential election weeks away, he was unfairly targeted by a superior for wearing a baseball cap showing support for President Donald Trump’s re-election.

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Virginia Trump Delegates Celebrate the Last Night of the GOP Convention and Trump Nomination

Jacob Taylor

Members of Trump Virginia delegation gathered at a local Innsbrook bar Thursday evening to celebrate the fourth and final night for the Republican National Convention, and the official nomination of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. 

Bishop Leon Benjamin, a congressional candidate in Virginia’s fourth district, was the main speaker and crowd-pleaser of the event, offering a plethora proclamations about the upcoming election and the efforts of Virginia delegation. 

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Trump Campaign Details Counter-Programming Plans to Respond to Democratic National Convention

Sam Medley

Election season is in full swing, and with the Democratic National Convention (DNC) underway, the Trump campaign and Republican National Convention (RNC) are busy with counterprogramming this week.

Samantha Cotten, the Regional Communications Director for the Trump campaign, said that Republicans are focusing on 17 battleground states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

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Steven K. Bannon: The Democrats Are the Party of Death and Destruction

Julie Carr

Tuesday morning on the John Fredericks Show, host John Fredericks welcomed Steven K. Bannon to discuss the Democrat’s campaign of death and destruction and the road to victory for Trump.

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Kodak Company Flips to Pharma

Corinne Murdock

A Kodak moment for the books: the former film giant flipped to pharma in a move aimed to rejuvenate the company after nearly two decades of hardship. Several reports state that Kodak branched out to offset the large-scale loss of its film business – punctuated by a bankruptcy in 2012 after the concept of the digital camera that it invented rendered many of its product offerings obsolete.

Initial talks of Kodak’s new active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) division, branded “Kodak Pharmaceuticals,” began as early as a few months ago according to Kodak CEO Jim Continenza. He says the move shouldn’t be all that surprising.

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Trump is Cutting Regulations Between the West And its Water Supply

Admin

by Tim Pearce   President Donald Trump signed a memorandum Friday ordering Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to cut regulations slowing water supply and hydroelectric projects. The Trump administration’s memo is aimed at speeding up environmental reviews and simplifying the approval process for building permits in…

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Victor Davis Hanson Analysis: Could Trump Win 20 Percent of the Black Vote in 2020?

Admin

by Victor Davis Hanson   The provocative Donald Trump certainly seems to be disliked by a majority of African-American professional athletes, cable news hosts, academics and the Congressional Black Caucus. Yet there are subtle but increasing indications that his approval among other African-Americans may be reaching historic highs for a…

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While Know-It-Alls Lecture on Tariffs Against China, Trump Dials Up New Trade Deals with UK, Europe and Japan

Admin

by Robert Romano   While President Donald Trump continues to bring the pressure to China, so far with 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods shipped to the U.S., rising to 25 percent in Jan. 2019, which comes atop another 25 percent tariff on $50 billion of goods…

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Commentary: Dems’ Beautiful Blue Wave More Like Stagnant Algae-Filled Millpond

Admin

by Jeffrey A. Rendall   It’s always curious when political pundits and media figures use terms like “waves” to describe forthcoming or just concluded elections results. According to the dictionary, a “wave” (used as a noun) is, “a long body of water curling into an arched form and breaking on…

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Principal Replaced After Making a Student Take Off His Trump Jersey at a Patriotic-Themed Football Game

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by Neetu Chandak   A North Carolina high school principal was replaced after she asked a student to take off his Trump jersey at a patriotic-themed football game. Cindy Gordon, the former principal at Harnett Central High School, asked Matthew Collins, 18, to remove the jersey because it was political,…

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Kevin McCarthy Rolls Out Bill to Fully Fund Trump’s Border Wall, Cut Off Sanctuary Cities

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by Will Racke   House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy formally introduced Friday a bill that would set aside more than $23 billion to build President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, drawing attention to a key concern of Republican voters ahead of the November midterm elections. The proposal, known as the…

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Promise Kept: Trump Signs Law That Ends Gag Orders Against Pharmacists Sharing Money-Saving Information

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by Evie Fordham   President Donald Trump signed a law that ends insurance companies’ pharmacist gag clauses in an effort to lower drug prices Wednesday. “If there’s anything bipartisan it’s lowering drug prices,” Trump said while signing the Patients’ Right To Know Drug Prices Act according to CBS News. Currently, insurers…

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A Senate Democrat Reportedly Outsourced Parts of the Trump-Russia Probe to Operative Linked to Soros, Fusion GPS

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by Chuck Ross   A Democratic senator outsourced parts of the investigation into possible Trump-Russia collusion to a former Senate staffer with links to George Soros and Fusion GPS, according to a New Yorker report. The New Yorker reports the unidentified senator contacted Daniel Jones, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, around…

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Commentary: The Coming Red Tide

Admin

by Brandon J. Weichert   Republicans are slated to lose the midterms next month. History is against them. The “experts” don’t think the GOP has a snowball’s chance in Florida. Generic polling shows the Republicans facing a nearly hopeless situation in the House of Representatives, and there is even some question as to whether they can hold…

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VP Pence Visit to Conservative Lee University Triggers Left Wing Lunacy

Julie Carr
Mike Pence

Conservative political commentator and Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill of The Gill Report, broadcast live on WETR 92.3 FM in Knoxville, stated in disbelief the left’s infiltration into Lee University, one of Tennessee’s top Christian schools – and in particular one Lee University student’s petition to cancel a Vice…

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