So the other night as I was watching CNN I had a revelation. CNN? My excuse was that I was at the gym, working off a cross-country plane flight, and CNN is right next to the NFL Network on the row of TVs.
Not many people watch CNN anymore. However, for those who are the “right” (or I should say “Left”) people, CNN and other media outlets serve as the rear guard protecting the retreating rout of the broken post-election leftist army. As such they are worth watching, though perhaps not as much as the replay of last year’s 49ers-Packers game on the TV next to it.
I have to admit I stopped watching the game, started focusing on CNN, and then ended up applauding a master stroke of intrigue that would have rivaled that of the royal courts of old.
So keep in mind that the rule of thumb for the human mind to remember something is to develop it within a pattern, usually of “3”; after all, it was Goldfinger who said: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” In politics as in business, if you show something is happening in sets of three, people start to draw inferences.
The only tactic the Left has left at the moment is to attack Trump’s nominees, and the basic technique is clear: go after them as inexperienced outsiders (rather than seasoned swamp creatures) who have some major ethical problems. The Left got the Republican squishes in the Senate to deep-six Matt Gaetz for (sketchy) allegations that he was using recess appointments as dating opportunities.
The next one up? Pete Hegseth, who is being given the Kavanaugh treatment with allegations of sexual assault dug up from a distant past — allegations that were investigated and dismissed by law enforcement. The next hit on Hegseth was from years ago during his time in the service when someone alleged that his Jerusalem Cross tattoo was a white supremacist symbol. Of course the tattoo still exists, and ontologically speaking you don’t need to have some strange past allegation to determine whether a tattoo is white supremacist in nature or not (hint, it is not) as opposed to simply looking at it.
I should add that it is nice of the media to do more investigating into Hegseth’s past during the past two weeks than they did of Biden over the past five years.
Note to CNN and the New York Times: Hegseth has a strange tattoo on his right arm that strikes me as insurrectionist. It says “We the People.”
Number three? I was thinking it would be RFK, Jr. but now I’m thinking it’s Tulsi Gabbard.
This past August several Homeland Security whistleblowers revealed that Gabbard had been placed on a security watchlist (Quiet Skies).
A few things to note here. First, she was apparently put on the list because her past travel had tripped parts of an algorithm.
However, in this case not only was she was placed on the list (though still allowed to board planes), she was followed on each flight by at least five DHS personnel. This wasn’t just some algorithmic glitch: DHS was throwing a lot of resources over an extended period of time to surveil somebody. To put it another way: DHS was putting in a lot more effort to surveil somebody who they knew was not only an officer in the US military, but also a former Congresswoman and presidential candidate, than they did somebody who was part of a notorious Venezuelan gang and who DHS was flying for free to Georgia on his way to murdering Laken Riley.
This was no accident. Gabbard thought it was done to intimidate her after she criticized Kamala Harris, but I think it was more than that.
Getting put on a watchlist is just like any other serious allegation — it stays on your “record,” waiting like a bureaucratic Kraken to rise from the sea into the public eye when the right time comes. It doesn’t matter whether the allegation has any validity, its mere existence is enough to cast doubt on an individual.
While Gabbard didn’t formally join the Republican Party until last month, it was obvious for months that she was going to play a role in a future Trump administration. Having someone in Trump’s entourage on a security watchlist, no matter how bogus, is worth some political coin.
So, on CNN that night they spent an entire segment discussing Gabbard, the ”Quiet Skies” watchlist, and her subsequent fitness to be the Director of National Intelligence. The guests? Everyone’s favorite Never Trumper, a man of complete objectivity, John Bolton. He was followed by John Pistole, former deputy director of the FBI and head of TSA. I guess putting on Andrew McCabe, another CNN talking head, would have given the game away.
Both Bolton and Pistole separately expressed concern over Gabbard’s fitness to be DNI because, after all, if she was on a watchlist then by definition she had to have done something suspicious.
Not only this but the Left and their media auxiliaries have been driving home a narrative that according to “national security officials” Gabbard is a security risk due to her links to Russia.
If you are keeping count, we are now up to #2 on Gabbard, As far as #3? The pattern setter? They’ll point to her “lack of experience in the intelligence field” as the clincher, proving that she’s unqualified. It’s coming.
Who’s the target of this operation? Not Trump, he knows how the game is played. More than likely it’s going to be the squishy part of the GOP Senate caucus. Hinderaker at Power Line cited this quote regarding incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune:
“John Thune is not Mitch McConnell. I think what was interesting about our candidate forum the Monday night before the vote is it was pretty much repudiation of Mitch McConnell’s one man dictatorship,” the senator revealed. “It truly was. I mean, there was not much of a difference in terms of how Cornyn, Thune, or Rick Scott spoke, in terms of how they wanted to be a leader,” he said, describing all three of them as “far more collaborative, engaging the conference in developing a strategy…
There was a lot to dislike about McConnell, but the one thing he did was keep the caucus together on several big issues such as the Supreme Court and the Democrats’ 2021 reconciliation bill. Senate caucuses are an entropic lot — it’s not the House, and McConnell got his over the years to hold tight through some (though not all) tough battles.
Then there is Thune and the upcoming “collaborative” development of strategy? Oh, boy.
They’re going to go after Gabbard, fueled by lies and smears, and they are going to try and get some GOP senators to break.
Anyone here believe that her placement on a Quiet Skies list was on the level?