The subject of this week’s offering is the emerging story of the at least $1 billion fraud perpetrated by Somali immigrants in Minnesota.  The piece concerns Minnesota Congresswoman, and insufferable Squad member, Ilhan Omar.  Its title is a reference to the legend of Omar the Tent Maker.

The Omar legend is a story unto itself.  It originated with a 1922 silent film sporting that title.  The film was a biography of Persian poet and mathematician Omar Kayam.  However, the legend that made Omar the Tent Maker a household name was far less literary.

The popular notion of Omar the Tent Maker was that, when Arabs stopped living as nomads and moved into houses, Omar no longer had a market for his tents, so he adapted his products from tents to dresses for big-boned women.

This may have been insulting, but it was damned funny.  I know this is true because during my childhood, scarcely a week went by that my father didn’t suggest that some big person got his or her clothing from Omar the Tent Maker.  And it wasn’t just him.  It must have been a generational reference, because a contemporary of my father, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, actually referred to Omar the Tent Maker in one of his memorable First Amendment opinions.  But I digress.

For some reason passing understanding, Minnesota is home to more than 100,000 Somali immigrants to the U.S.  The Somalis were admitted to the country by Il Duce Obama.  Remember the furor over the 2018 Donald Trump comment about why we let in people from “shithole countries?”  He had Haiti in mind, but Somalia is an equally repugnant shithole, from which we shouldn’t have taken immigrants.

The average income in Somalia is less than $2 a day.  Somalis are poorly educated, and lack proper sanitation.  The one thing they do really well is procreate.  More than half the population of Somalia is under age 15.  They also lack a functioning government.  The government collapsed after a civil war in 1991, to be replaced by local warlords and criminals.  This is the cancer that Obama imported into our country.

According to NPR, the large block of Somalis gravitated to Minnesota because  Minnesota is known for its “hospitality.”  And they have taken full advantage of Minnesota hospitality, as about 75% of them are receiving welfare benefits.

But the Somalis are enterprising people.  The current fraud investigation makes that abundantly clear.  During the Wuhan pandemic, the U.S. went on a well-meaning, yet ruinous spending spree that increased federal spending by some $2 trillion a year.  All manner of new social welfare programs sprung up, and apparently, nobody in the government was looking.  Enterprising Minnesota Somalis went to work.  Ilhan Omar, in perhaps her only legislative accomplishment, sponsored the bill that funded the fraud, and she appeared in a video promoting this “nonprofit” program.

So far, prosecutors have found that $1 billion was stolen, of which only $50 million has been recovered.  The largest scandal is the Feeding Our Future case, where approximately $300 million intended to feed low-income children during the pandemic was siphoned away in what federal prosecutors describe as the largest pandemic-relief fraud scheme charged in U.S. history.  Most of the shell companies and meal sites were operated by Somali Minnesotans.

That’s right, not all the fraudsters were Somali.  Just 79 of the 87 defendants charged to date.  The fraudsters claimed to have served 91 million meals, for which they fraudulently received nearly $250 million in federal funds, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota.

Some of the money was distributed to Safari Restaurant to provide meals to schoolchildren.  The restaurant’s owner, Salim Ahmed Said, provided no meals, and just pocketed that cash.  Ilhan Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party at Safari Restaurant.  Just a coincidence, I’m sure.  One witness has claimed that Said disclosed a gang affiliation and threatened to kill him if he reported the fraud to authorities.

Instead of feeding children, Said used the funds to buy a $2 million Minneapolis mansion and a $9,000-per-month shopping spree at Nordstrom.  Other participants in the scheme spent your money on luxury cars, lavish lifestyles and purchasing property in various places from Minnesota to Kenya. (Kenya borders Somalia.  Even the Somalis know better than to return from whence they came).

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is taking heat for failing to stop the fraud, but in fairness, in 2021 the Minnesota Department of Education grew suspicious and tried to stop Feeding Our Future funding.  Proving they have assimilated into the U.S., the fraudsters sued, alleging racial discrimination.  A judge ordered the state to restart reimbursements, enabling the scheme to escalate.

Another Somali engineered scheme defrauded the Minnesota autism-treatment program of millions of dollars.  One scammer, Asha Farhan Hassan, had  pocketed about $465,000 from the Feeding Our Future fraud, but that was just pocket change.  Hassan billed Medicaid for fake therapy sessions, used untrained staff and paid parents $300 to $1,500 a month to keep their kids in the program.  She sent hundreds of thousands of dollars abroad, including to purchase real estate.  The autism program’s budget jumped from $3 million in 2018 to nearly $400 million in 2023.  Autistic kids got no treatment.  The taxpayers got screwed.

The scale of program growth stunned federal officials, who are still uncovering new schemes.  The Housing Stabilization Services program was projected to cost $2.6 million annually but paid out more than $100 million last year. Where did all the money go?  Well, in addition to spreading the graft around the Minneapolis Somali community, it looks like substantial sums were sent back to Somalia, reportedly diverted to the Somali terrorist organization Al-Shabaab.  A House investigation and a Treasury Department probe are underway.

Was Representative Ilhan Omar involved in the frauds.  There’s no hard evidence of that yet.  But she has proven herself to be a more successful investor that even Nancy Pelosi.  When she was first elected to Congress in 2018, she reported a negative net worth, and her 2023 filing showed a net worth of about $65,000.  According to a financial disclosure statement filed this May, her net worth, combined with her husband’s assets, spiked to $30 million, a 46,000% increase.

This is circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but as my late father-in-law was fond of saying, “Nobody gets that kind of money quickly by working for it.”  For her part, Ilhan Omar denies any involvement.  She attributes the fraud to a lack of federal guardrails monitoring the COVID-19 money.  On the subject of money being sent overseas to fund terrorism, she said, “There are people who have been prosecuted, and who have been sentenced.  If there was a linkage in that the money they have stolen going to terrorism, that is a failure of the FBI and our court system in not figuring that out.”

In other words, you stupid Americans made it easy for us to steal the money, and if you can’t figure out where we stashed it, shame on you.  Omar played the race card, painting Minnesota Somalis as the victims of the frauds.

So is Ilhan just an ignorant dupe, or is she Omar the Fraud Maker?  Decide for yourself.

The Trump Derangement Syndrome default position of “whatever Trump’s for, we must be against it” has been extended to ridiculous proportions in recent days, as the latest expression of the mental disorder has Trump opponents defending foreign drug dealers who are transporting into the United States tons of illicit drugs, including enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman and child within our borders.

Our laws permit the State Department to designate entities as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), thereby exposing these organizations to a number of sanctions, including military action.  In order to be an FTO, the entity must be foreign, engaged in terrorist activities, as that term is defined in law, and be a threat to U.S. national security interests, such as our defense, foreign relations or economic interests.  “Terrorism” is broadly defined as any action which is designed to kill or seriously injure American citizens.

The law has been used over the years to designate groups worldwide as FTOs, including Middle East terrorist groups, as well as foreign narcotics distribution organizations based in Central and South America.  In January, President Trump designated the Mexican drug cartels, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, and others as FTOs.

There followed a surge of U.S. military assets to the Caribbean, and a succession of attacks by the military, destroying boats being used to transport illegal drugs from Venezuela to the U.S.  At least a dozen of these watercraft have been blown up in recent months, and those onboard killed.  Democrats, and other Trump haters are unhappy.

Based on the definition of terrorism, there’s no doubt that organizations that transport tons of narcotics into the U.S. are FTOs.  More than a million Americans have died of drug overdoses since 1999.  Cocaine and heroin were bad enough.  Adding fentanyl to the equation raised the stakes dramatically.

More than 100,000 Americans die every year from fentanyl poisoning.  I say poisoning because these are not traditional overdoses.  Someone who abuses heroin or cocaine surely is at risk of death from overdose, but at least they know what they’re ingesting.  Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is added to cocaine, heroin, or other less dangerous substances.  The users don’t know they’re taking it, and a very small amount is lethal.  They are being poisoned.

The fentanyl is manufactured from precursor drugs made in China, transported to Mexico and Central and South America, there refined, and then transported to the U.S.  It is a plague that traditional law enforcement techniques have been unable to stem.  Law enforcement generally speaks of reducing supply by interdicting and seizing drugs, coupled with programs such as drug rehab  and education to reduce the demand for drugs.  Think of the Trump boat attacks as the final word in supply side interdiction.

To date, more than a dozen drug boats have been destroyed.  The attacks have slowed down of late, possibly because it’s getting harder to recruit drug boat crews, or maybe they’re just running out of boats.  From the start, the Trump haters have voiced objections, which have covered the the gamut from lies, damned lies, and nonsense, all the way to monumental insults to our intelligence.

They said the strikes are illegal.  They’re not, see the law described above.  By the way, it’s the same law used by Il Duce Obama to carry out 563 airstrikes in seven countries, dropping 26,000 bombs in 2016 alone, and killing about 4,000 people, including 326 civilians.  No Democrat ever complained, but that was then and this is Trump.

Trump calls the drug cartels narco-terrorists, a term previously used by one Senator Joe Biden, who advocated taking action against State sponsored drug distributors.  Democrats now say there is no such thing.  Let’s study that notion.  An FTO is a foreign group designed to kill and maim Americans.  Islamic terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers in 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.  Foreign groups were designated as FTOs, and we went to war for more than 20 years, suffering 61,000 military casualties, including 7,000 killed.  Groups using planes to kill are FTOs.  Groups using guns, knives, and bombs to kill are FTO’s.  Those terrorists killed about 10,000 Americans over 20 years.  The narco-terrorists are killing 100,000 Americans every year.

The fact that their weapon is a drug, rather than a bomb is immaterial.  Drugs kill people, and destroy families.  Drug abuse fuels crime, and not just drug crime, but burglary, robbery, and murder.  Illegal drugs fuel the urban gangs engaging in shootouts that kill 10,000 people a year.  Narco-terrorists have done far more damage to America than have Islamic terrorists.

Democrats said these were not drug boats, only fishing boats.  Seriously?  Very little commercial fishing is done from open boats, without nets or fishing gear, speeding along at 70 knots.  One of the boats sunk carried 1,000 kilos of cocaine, another had 8 tons.  One craft encountered was a submarine.  Just fishing, right?  Fishing, my ass.

Another Democrat bullshit story is that the boats are shipping drugs, not to the U.S., but to Europe.  Okay.  First, I thought they were only fishing boats.  Then, how is it that these Democrat “experts” know where the drugs are headed?  Who told them, and exactly how would that work?  These “go fast” boats have top speeds approaching 90 knots, so they can outrun the Coast Guard.  It’s more than 4,000 miles from Venezuela to Spain.  These are small open boats, not the Kon-Tiki.  They don’t carry enough fuel.  Maybe the submarines are refueling them.

Then there’s this excuse.  “These aren’t the drug lords piloting the boats, just poor people trying to earn some money.”  Give me a break.  I guess this excuse should come as no surprise.  These are the same people who don’t want to enforce laws in America, so why on the high seas?  Anyhow, the “I was just following orders” defense didn’t work at Nuremberg, and it won’t work here.  They need another “just poor people” story.  I’ve got it.  The poor Venezuelans can’t afford vacation cruises on the big ships, so they’re using these small boats.  It’s not a drug ship, it’s a cruise ship.  The Grim Reaper of the Seas.

The latest edition of “We’ve finally got Trump and Hegseth now” involves the destruction of a boat and crew in which two missile strikes were used.  This is being denounced as a war crime.  As with all things Democrat, it started with a lie.  Pete Hegseth authorized the strike, then after the first explosion, ordered a second strike, to “kill them all.”

Chilling, isn’t it?  You can almost see Hegseth twirling his moustache, and sneering, “Kill them all.”  Only problem is, it never happened.  Even The New York Times admits that no such order was given.  No matter, say the Dems.  A second strike, or double tap, is a war crime.  I guess this falls under the non-existent legal doctrine, “Shoot me once, shame on me.  Shoot me twice, shame on you.”

Killing survivors is a war crime.  German Uboats were ordered to machine gun survivors in life boats after torpedoing a ship.  That was a war crime.  The drug boats are another matter.  They are being destroyed by missiles from aircraft miles away.  The object is to destroy the boats.  If two shots are required to do the job, so be it.  There aren’t going to be any survivors.

The bottom line is that Trump Derangement Syndrome has forced Democrats to support unconscionable causes.  First criminal aliens, and now foreign drug cartel members who are killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.  Given the choice of protecting their own constituents, or the enemy, Democrats chose death.  Maybe that should be their new motto – Death before the Donald.

People like to throw around the term “conspiracy theory” to disparage opinions they don’t agree with.  Sometimes they’re right.  The Epstein files conspiracy theory comes to mind.  The government supposedly has a list of powerful people, many connected to politics, who partook in sex games with underage females.  Then there’s the ever present flying saucer conspiracy theory.  The government supposedly has had information about extra terrestrial aircraft, as well as bodies of the ETs, at Area 51 for 70 years.

The problem with these conspiracy theories is the government secret keeping component.  Our government ordinarily isn’t good at keeping secrets.  In point of fact, our government is an undisciplined, corrupt, and leaking sieve, from which sensitive information is constantly being dispensed for fun and profit.

If the Epstein list and attendant incriminating evidence actually did exist, one of two results would have occurred.  Either Epstein would still be alive and out of prison, having used the evidence to blackmail those on the list, or the government sieve would have long ago spilled the beans.

The same principle applies to the extra terrestrial conspiracy.  It’s impossible for something like that to have been going on for decades without somebody who was involved telling all.

There is, however, one exception to the “government is unable to keep quiet” rule.  That comes into play when the governmental officials involved have incurred criminal liability.  And this exception lasts only so long as one governmental wrongdoer doesn’t have to rat out another to save his or her own skin.

All too often, however, denouncing something as “a conspiracy theory” is merely a convenient way to deny the truth.  This often works, because the American people have been lied to for so long, and so convincingly, by politicians and the media that they’re bound to disbelieve just about anything.

The grand conspiracy to which the title of this piece refers may rightly not be considered to be a conspiracy at all.  Conspiracies normally are covert, unholy agreements between and among shadowy figures.  The grand conspiracy is anything but covert.  It’s being conducted openly, by coconspirators who make no secret of its purpose.

The purpose of the grand conspiracy is, of course, the hindrance, frustration, defeat, and even destruction of a Donald Trump presidency, by any means necessary.  Many means have been tried, dating back to 2016.  They include spying on his campaign, illegal electronic surveillance, false swearing on court warrant applications, insubordination by the FBI management, illegal domestic use of the CIA, enlistment of foreign intelligence agencies, phony special counsel investigations, lawsuits, indictments, harassment and imprisonment of Trump allies, 24 hour a day defamation by the media and political opponents, legislative sabotage, judicial overreach, and attempted assassination.

The coconspirators are mainly Democrats, but not exclusively so.  Many Republicans, who never have forgiven Trump for interfering in their crooked livelihoods, have joined the ranks.  The Bushes and the Cheney’s come to mind.  Prior to the arrival of Donald Trump, both Democrats and Republicans treated the federal government as one common slop trough, from which all the pigs could gain sustenance.

The Parties had it down to a science.  Both treated their respective bases to endless promises, and each harangued the other.  It really didn’t matter who won, because it always was business as usual.  Promise them anything.  Get their votes, and then forget the voters.  There was money to be made, by members of Congress, by administration officials, and by NGO’s;  Nongovernmental Organizations like Catholic Charities, other leftwing interest groups, and labor unions, let’s not forget them.

Democrats and Republicans made sure to spread the graft around.  For Democrats it was your money well spent, because they could rely on generous kickbacks, er, excuse me, contributions, from the organizations which had been greased by Uncle Sucker.  It all was a big show.

Enter Donald Trump.  His calls to “drain the swamp” meant only one thing.  The money burning charade that had become the federal government would come to an end.  The show would be over.  They had to protect their phony baloney jobs.

The resistance to Trump, up to and including attempted assassinations reached that level for several reasons.  One was personal.  Trump had beaten Hillary, the homicidal shrew, and that upset lots of apple carts.  Then you had all he FBI, Justice Department and CIA people who broke countless laws in pursuit of Trump.  They had to destroy Trump to cover up their crimes.  That would have been bad enough, but then Trump turned out to be telling the truth when he promised to drain the swamp.  He understood how the show worked and was determined to stop it.  This was like showing a vampire the cross.

Remember the Big Beautiful Bill that cut out wasteful spending, like all of      USAID, PBS, and the like?  That was the final straw.  The political bullshit machine requires a steady supply of your hard earned money to keep itself going.  Think how many deserving political leaches were being paid off with wasteful grant money.  And don’t forget the CIA.  What do they have to do with grant money being sent to Zimbabwe, and elsewhere?  Plenty.

The CIA has a budget, and is supposed to be overseen by Congress.  But the CIA spends lots of money off the books, from what are called “black” accounts.  Money that is not traceable to the CIA, and which can be used to fund all sorts of mischief that the CIA would rather not explain to Bernie Sanders.

USAID was funneling billions to supposed social welfare projects overseas.  What better place to skim millions of dollars for CIA black projects.  You didn’t really think we were spending all that money for sex change operations in Cambodia, did you?  Trump’s Big Bill zeroed out the USAID budget.  The money tap was shut off.  This strengthened the resistance against Trump.

Who are the coconspirators?  You have liberal Democrats who have been cut off from their grant funding and kickbacks by the Big Beautiful Bill.  You have the radical wing of the Democrat Party, the Democratic Socialists, and their Antifa army, who are always spoiling for a fight.  You have the dispossessed kickback receivers and NGO’s, you have Democrat Governors who are resisting federal law enforcement for making their streets safer, and increasingly, you have the judiciary, which truly has lost its way in its headlong war against Donald Trump.

Every Executive act of the president has been the subject of legal action.  Federal judges have abandoned their role as arbiters of real legal cases or  controversies, and have assumed the role of a Super-Executive, seeking to micro-manage every action of the President.  There is  a method to this madness.  Judicial decisions are being resorted to in order to frustrate and delay the actions of the Trump Administration.

The Constitution forbids the Judiciary from usurping the powers of the Executive.  The radical judges don’t care.  They have constantly usurped Trump’s Executive authority to run the various executive departments, to exercise his powers as Commander in Chief, his every decision.

The judiciary has even inserted itself into the operations of the Justice Department.  Grand Juries in the Eastern District of Virginia indicted James Comey and Letitia James.  A federal judge this week dismissed the indictments, deciding that the Trump appointed U.S Attorney was illegally acting because the Senate had not yet confirmed her.

The failure to confirm the U.S. Attorney is part of the grand conspiracy, Senate Democrats using every artifice to delay Senate action.  This decision will be reversed.  The judge ruled the indictments illegal because the Trump U.S. Attorney presented the cases.  This is nonsense.  If the judge was right, not only the Comey and James indictments would have to be dismissed, but every indictment issued by the District would be illegal, because Trump’s U.S. Attorney signed off on them.  I cannot believe the Circuit Court, much less the Supreme Court would countenance such a result.

The object is to delay Trump until he is gone on 2029.  It’s not a theory.  It’s a real conspiracy to defraud our nation and to undo an election.

When a political Party stands for something, has ideas, policies, and scruples, it tells the public what it stands for, and trusts the voters to do the right thing.  When a political Party has no ideas, no policies, and no scruples, it must resort to sleight of hand.  Like any self respecting magician, it relies upon misdirection.  While it’s doing one thing with its right hand, it’s distracting the public with its left hand.  They’ll tell you anything you want to hear, except for the truth.

The best laid plans of the Democrat Party clearly went awry.  After Donald Trump upset their plan to have Hillary Clinton continue the fundamental transformation of America begun by Il Duce Obama, they lost their minds.  They gave up all pretense of defining policies.  They ignored their own history, and thereby abandoned everything they had stood for for decades.  They sacrificed standards, the rule of law, scruples, and any semblance of common decency.  Simply put, they went nuts, and embarked on a singular crusade.  The destruction of Donald Trump, at all costs.

Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real disorder.  Recently, a New York psychiatrist confirmed that many of his patients are obsessed with an unnatural hatred of Trump that is destroying their hopes for a happy existence.  Since liberals believe they’re always right, it wasn’t hard for them to convince themselves that Trump’s 2016 victory must have been illegal somehow.  They acted accordingly.

They weaponized the government to sabotage Trump, before and after the 2016 election.  They hounded and imprisoned Trump employees and supporters.  They concocted a phony Special Prosecutor investigation.  They impeached him.  They sued him.  They indicted him, and tried to bankrupt and imprison him for life.  They even tried to kill him.  They were sure they had slain the Orange dragon.  They miscalculated.

But that was impossible.  Since they were always right, they couldn’t be at fault.  Who to blame?  Donald Trump, of course.  They just hadn’t worked hard enough against him.  They had to redouble their efforts.  Resistance was their mantra.  Whatever Trump was for, they had to be against it.

Now, political opposition is to be expected.  But opposition against every policy or idea, regardless of its wisdom, or of reality itself, is not the exercise of politics.  It’s suicide.  Trump didn’t fail to notice this calamitous mistake.  He supported so-called 80-20 issues, seizing the popular, common sense positions, and leaving the extreme 20% positions to the Democrats.  He’s for lower taxes?  Dems want them higher.  He wants to enforce the law?  They’re against it.  He’s improving public safety?  Democrats even oppose that.  It worked.

The grand plan of the Democrats backfired.  The Democrat lawfare  campaign against Trump failed.  And instead of being destroyed, Trump reemerged, stronger than ever, and the Democrats weaker.  Their total war against Trump permitted their fringe elements to take over the Party.  The inmates now are running the asylum.

Democrats tried to stop Trump in 2024, but they were unprepared.  They had abandoned all popular positions in pursuit of Trump, and were handicapped by their chosen leaders – Sleepy Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris.  A hopeless senile dolt, and the exclusive North American distributor of word salad.

To the horror of Democrats, Trump won, but they had rendered themselves powerless to oppose him on reasonable, political terms.  They thereupon resorted to the violence we’ve seen in Portland, Chicago, and Charlotte.  And they resorted to their only non-violent alternative – misdirection.

They had to distract the public from realities which they could not refute.  Lower inflation.  Lower taxes.  Trade agreements that greatly benefited the U.S.  Trillions of dollars of foreign investment in the U.S.  Iranian nuclear sites bombed to oblivion.  Safer streets.  Mideast peace.  With no plausible answer, they chose misdirection.

A 7 week useless government shutdown that only further weakened Democrat fortunes.

Nonsensical railing against Trump’s White House renovations, which is nothing less than stupid.  Since first being built, the White House has changed constantly.  George Washington chose its site.  John Adams first resided there.  After the British burned it in 1814, it was rebuilt, at government expense.  It continued to change.

The South Portico was added in 1817; the North Portico in 1829; in 1902, the West Wing; in 1909, the Oval Office; in 1913, the East Wing.
In 1948, after Harry Truman’s bathtub nearly fell through a rotting floor, the White House was totally reconstructed.  In 1970, Nixon closed the swimming pool to create the press briefing room.  Taxpayers paid for all these renovations.

But then came Trump.  He installed two large flag poles at his own expense.  Democrats complained.  He renovated the Oval Office and the Rose Garden, using privately raised funds.  Democrats denounced him.  Then he began a $250 million project to construct a ballroom in place of the East Wing, using privately raised funds.  Democrats went berserk.  Why?  When Il Duce Obama changed the tennis court into a basketball court, no Democrat dared object.  But this was Trump, the devil himself.

They had to resist, but resist what?  No one from any Party denied the need for a ballroom in which to conduct State dinners.  Trump had offered to build and pay for the room under Obama, when the cost was $100 million.  Obama refused.  The price went up, and yet the job is being done at no cost to the taxpayer.  No matter.  They must resist.  They have nothing else to offer.

The ballroom distraction didn’t get much traction.  Democrats followed that with the No Kings protests.  Since we never had a King, that didn’t work.  Democrats then  moved on to their crowning misdirection.  Jeffrey Epstein.  The files, the files, crow Democrats.  Release the files now.  Trump didn’t immediately comply, so he must be guilty.  Guilty of what?  It doesn’t matter, just guilty.

Here are the facts.  Jeffrey Epstein was a pervert, who somehow amassed hundreds of millions of dollars, and who courted, and was courted by the rich and powerful, nearly all of whom were Democrats.  Epstein trafficked in and abused underage females.  He owned an island in the Virgin Islands, and flew the rich and powerful to and fro on his private jet.

Donald Trump was on the jet – once.  He flew from Florida to New York with his wife and daughter also onboard.  Shocking, huh?  Trump definitely had contact with Epstein, until about 2003, when he discovered Epstein’s misconduct, banned him from Mar a Lago, never spoke to him again, and later, as President, prosecuted him.

The Democrats are aware of all of this, but they have nothing else to offer, so Epstein it is.  Release the files!  Release the files!  These are the same files that the Biden Administration had full access to for four years, during which time Biden was exhorting AG Garland to prosecute Trump.  They had to make things up to try to get Trump, without success.   Does anyone truly believe that if the dreaded Epstein files had anything remotely damaging to Trump, that they wouldn’t have used it by now?

Democrats got their wish.  The files will be released, but watch out what you wish for.  The list of Epstein frequent fliers includes Bill Clinton, Woody Allen, Obama Cabinet member Larry Summers, late New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Bill Gates, and a cast of many other prominent Democrats.

Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are the only people who are known to have committed crimes.  Epstein is dead, and Maxwell is serving 20 years.  Everyone else whose names may come to light are just collateral damage.  What do Democrats call such people, oh yes – leverage.  It won’t work, but pay no attention to the Democrats behind the curtain. Look, look over there!

When it comes to our government, we truly live in strange and interesting times.  We’re approaching the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.  Such an anniversary should be proof of the strength and durability of our Republic, but it’s not.  Instead, we find ourselves at a delicate and precarious time in our politics.

Our Constitution says nothing at all about political Parties.  In fact, George Washington warned of the danger of political “factions.”  That said, for more than 200 years, with rare exception, our elections have been dominated by two Parties, but not the same two Parties we know today.  Stick with me on this, there is a point.

For the first two presidential elections there were no Parties.  Washington was the obvious choice.  The Federalist Party grew from Washington’s Administration, and in 1796 John Adams won under that banner, against the Democratic-Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson.  When the Democratic -Republicans won 6 elections in a row, the Federalist Party just faded away.  The second Party became the Independent Republicans, and then the National Republicans.

Think the Trump MAGA takeover of the Republican Party in 2016 was novel? It wasn’t.  In 1828, Andrew Jackson turned the Democratic-Republicans into the Jacksonian Democrats.  A splinter Democrat Party sprung up 4 years later.

1836 saw the birth of 2 new Parties.  The Democrats, who were more populist, and the Whigs, who favored wealthier interests.  The Democrat Party has endured.  Not so the Whigs.  The Whig Party was torn apart, largely over the issue of slavery.  Northern Whigs split from Southern Whigs, and by 1848 the Whigs ceased to exist.

They were replaced by various factions.  The Free Soil Party sought to contain slavery in the South.  The American Party, or the Know Nothings, were fervently against immigration.  Yes, immigration was an issue even back then.  The Republican Party appeared for the 1856 presidential election.  In 1860, 4 Parties vied, leading of course to the Civil War.

Why the history lesson?  The point is that people change, interests change, and political Parties, torn by competing interests, don’t last forever.  They come and go, and as this is written the Democrat Party is approaching one of those watershed moments in its history.  Indeed, both Parties have been changing of late.

For most of my life, the accepted wisdom was that the Democrats supported the working man, while Republicans favored the moneyed interests.  The influence of Donald Trump has changed that landscape, and Republicans have become the populists.  Maybe that’s not all due to Trump.  The landscape was changing for many years, and Trump profited by the changes.

About 25 years ago, we saw the advent of the Dotcom billionaires, who took in vast sums of money.  Vast sums of money are very valuable for political Parties.  As the newly minted billionaires were largely from the liberal Left, they began financing the Democrats.  They became so important to the Democrat cause that they exerted more and more influence over our elections.

In 2016, Donald Trump became the skunk at the garden party for Democrats, who, in 2020, used their alliance with the Leftist billionaires to smear Trump, and block his usage of their social media platforms, ushering in the reign of Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden.  Throughout this period, the Democrat Party progressively (how’s that for a turn of phrase) moved itself further and further to the Left.

This leftward movement of Democrats begat the so called Democratic Socialists, whose so called “Squad,” AOC and company, only accelerated the leftist shift, and correspondingly accelerated the polarization of politics in America.

Not so very long ago, the Democrats and Republicans were not so far apart.  Democrats always leaned closer to expanding social welfare programs, going back to LBJ’s War on Poverty.  The abiding difference between the Parties was largely one of perspective.  While both understood the need for a governmental social safety net, Republicans viewed the net as a trampoline, from which recipients would be propelled into the workforce once put on their feet by government assistance.  Democrats, however, fancy the safety net a hammock, into which generation after generation of recipients could be settled, thereupon being forever reminded who was supplying the butter they were spreading on their EBT acquired bread.

The Democratic Socialists, emboldened by the election of Biden, and confident that they had slain the evil Orange Dragon, Trump, began to drop the pretense that they were merely the good old Democrats of yore, and openly exhibited their true colors – a bright shade of Red.  Simply put, they’re Marxists, bent on “fundamentally transforming” the U.S. into the latest Socialist paradise.  Think Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, writ large.  The election of Mamdani in New York, an avowed Socialist who boasts plans for free buses, rent freezes, defunded police, and government controlled grocery stores, was just the red icing on the cake.

Donald Trump has profited by the leftward shift of the Democrats.  More conservative Democrats found themselves unwelcome in the Democrat Party.  The so called Reagan Democrats in Congress are long gone, replaced by doctrinaire leftists.  JFK, RFK, Jr., and even Bill Clinton could never be nominated by today’s Democrat Party.

More importantly, essential elements of the Democrat Party base, long looked upon as sure Democrat voters, are being torn away by the populist message of Trump and the new Republicans.  The 2024 election proved that point, as a disturbing number of black and Hispanic voters moved away, sensing that the Republicans are better attuned to their needs than are the Dems.  It seems that these groups, including many union members, aren’t comfortable with the prospect of a government that will dictate their compensation and benefits, so as to better the lives of American and illegal alien hammock dwellers.

Finally, even the left wing billionaires got the message (I don’t know what took them so long) that a Socialist/Marxist government would put their business interests, and as a result their fortunes, in the hands of profligate spenders who have never run anything other than their own mouths, much less a business.

Yet, after last November, the Democrat Party still hasn’t gotten the message, or maybe has gone past the point where it can turn itself away from the precipice it’s approaching.  The Party is increasingly in the hands of the Socialists like Bernie Sanders and AOC, and it continues to steadily march to the Left.

Witness the recent government shut down.  The Republicans passed a clean continuing resolution, which maintained spending at its current obscene level.  Democrats resisted, shutting down the government for 7 weeks, denying pay to the military and to air traffic controllers, but not to members of Congress.  It became known as the Schumer Shutdown, as the Detestable Chuck Schumer prevented the Senate from voting to open the government.

Schumer, no moderate he, knew better than to do such a thing, but he was powerless to do otherwise, lest the crazy Left wing base of his Party stage a revolt – against him.  He learned this the hard way when he signed off on an identical continuing resolution last March, and got his head handed to him by the Socialists.

Schumer’s 7 week resistance this time profited him nothing.  Eight Democrat Senators finally voted to open the government, getting nothing more than the promise of a vote on health care subsidies, a promise they were offered weeks ago and refused.

The loony leftist Democrats are now incensed, and want Schumer out as Leader.  The 8 Democrats who voted to open the government are being denounced as traitors.  Add to this the unfortunate Democrat prediliction to inciting violence to get whatever they want, as Antifa thugs attack police officers in the streets, and conservative voices, such as those from Turning Point USA, on college campuses, and the Democrat Party is facing the same sort of schism that did in the Whigs so very long ago.

The end of the Democrat Party as we know it is not inevitable, but it remains a distinct possibility.  A continued exodus of Hispanic voters, many of whom came here to escape Socialism, and of sensible union members who are not ready for a Communist revolution, would render the electoral success of the Democrat Party, as currently constituted, impossible.  Any further losses to the evil Orange Man and his followers would inspire only more violence, further hastening its demise.

It’s possible that cooler heads will prevail, but I wouldn’t care to bet on it, at least not now.  Yes, the times truly are strange and interesting.  We can only hope to avoid the warfare that ensued when the Whigs went away.