Five Quick Things: 2024 Is Starting Too Early – The American Spectator

Perhaps, given all the money it takes to mount a presidential run, it’s inevitable — but the moves being made in advance of next November’s presidential election seem to be dizzying. We’ve got a lot going on in the meantime, you know.

For example, as Melissa Mackenzie and I discussed in this week’s episode of The Spectacle, at this point it’s far too likely for comfort that we’ll be sending our kids to Ukraine to fight Russia in a wasteful and useless war long before then. How often is it that presidents lose reelection campaigns in the middle of a major war, by the way? Has that ever happened in American history?

Maybe that’s the ace in the hole a corrupt, decrepit old hack of a president who’s out of ideas and commands none of the confidence of even his own political party might draw in attempting to hang on until he’s 86 years old.

No thanks, Joe. Kill that World War III “whatever it takes” rhetoric, please. It’s provocative. It makes us wonder if fires at food processing plants, train derailments, and other freakish disasters aren’t something other than accidents.

But … anyway…

1. Joe and the Teamsters and All of Your Money

Before we start in on all the GOP presidential infighting, how about this ugly little scandal?

Can Americans be bribed with their own money? The powers that be are certainly putting that question to the test. In recent years, we’ve seen inflation-inducing cash giveaways associated with “Covid relief.” We’ve seen the ongoing attempts at profoundly inequitable student loan forgiveness. In December, we saw a $1.7 trillion pork pie omnibus appropriations bill passed by a Congress that had no time to read it.

Lost in all of this has been one spectacular giveaway: $100,000 per beneficiary of the Central States Pension Fund (CSPF). The fund provides pension benefits to nearly 360,000 private-sector workers and retirees, mostly Teamsters Union members. U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, called the deal out in December, noting it was “the largest private pension bailout in American history” that benefited only “a tiny minority of workers.” He suggested it resulted from the insanity of “allowing those who mismanaged pensions to determine whether their funds qualify for taxpayer assistance with no safeguards.”

The $36 billion comes almost two years after the passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. That “rescue” was the Biden administration’s Covid spending bonanza. Biden signed it into law in the spring of 2021, when the economy was already well into recovery. The housing market was booming. The stock market was on a steady upward climb. It was obvious that the “rescue” would cause inflation. It was obvious Democrats were taking advantage of an opportunity to give away public largesse. And did they ever.

Thirty-six billion dollars. Can you even believe that number? And here I am calling it a “little” scandal. Of course, that’s how it’ll be reported — if it’s reported at all and if it’s reported as a scandal at all (and you can count on going 0-2 there).

Ace of Spades notes that this is nothing because when it’s the public-sector unions whose pensions funds fail, rather than just the private-sector ones, that’s when the little piddly $36 billion tab turns into some real money. And yes, they will make you cough up for that.

Unless somehow your Republican representatives in Congress are willing to spill some political blood in defense of your wallet. The Democrats are counting on that not being the case.

Look for a public-sector pension crisis to hit before the 2024 election — especially in blue states where people and money have been evacuating in droves. It could very well be the biggest issue in the race.

2. Viva Vivek (Even Though He Can’t Win)

I’m really turning into a fan of Vivek Ramaswamy, for a number of reasons. And no, this isn’t some sort of NeverTrump thing. I just like an awful lot of what Ramaswamy has been saying.

When he announced for president earlier this week, one of the things he said is that, at this stage of the 2024 game, it’s more important to decide the “what” than the “who,” and that is absolutely right. Ramaswamy’s standard speech that he’s been making at conservative confabs, think tanks, and places like Hillsdale College talks about the dire necessity to redefine a common American identity that energizes and unites the public, because that’s a vacuum at present — and the Left is trying to fill it with woke garbage like climate change, feminism, transgenderism, and critical race theory.

He’s saying something else, which is that Make America Great Again is an attempt to fill that identity void and it’s actually bigger than one man. Which is obviously what you’d say if you’re running against Donald Trump, so sure — it’s a little bit self-serving, but that doesn’t make it not true.

I’ve said for a while, including in my book The Revivalist Manifesto, which is still available at Amazon by the way, that the movement that Trump has led preceded him and will be around after he’s gone from the political scene. That doesn’t minimize Trump and it doesn’t delegitimize his accomplishments; it’s just the truth. He’s in his 70s, one way or another he’s going to be off the political stage by 2028, and before there was MAGA, there was the Tea Party, which the political establishment hated. Ramaswamy is simply validating that view, which is correct.

But pay attention to his discussion of woke capitalism and the merger between corrupt corporations out of intellectual gas, the Hard Left and their nonstop anti-American cultural aggressions, and communist China. Ramaswamy, more than anybody else I’ve seen, really gets the challenge ahead.

That doesn’t mean he’s our next president. It does mean that when we’re deciding the “what” in the 2024 race, he deserves to be heard on the question.

Oh, and by the way, stop with the “he got a scholarship to law school from George Soros’ brother” business. That had to do with the fact that he had great grades; it doesn’t make him some globalist plant. The guy has staked his entire political identity on blowing up the Soroses and Klaus Schwabs as our overlords; take the win if he wants to help.

3. This Is How You Handle the Media

Ron DeSantis isn’t in the 2024 race. Not yet. He needs to get the law changed in Florida so he can stay as governor and run for president at the same time; until he does that, he isn’t in this race.

Nevertheless, DeSantis can still help shape the “what.” And here’s an element of that.

The standard operating procedure for Republicans and other victims of the corrupt corporate media should always be to immediately shut down their lies and refuse to engage further. Yet, over and over, Republicans who are regularly smeared and hoaxed by the leftist media agree to engage them under the premise that they are acting in good faith. That’s a mistake Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his team have proved they know not to make.

Just this week, NBC’s longtime purveyor of propaganda Andrea Mitchell wrongfully claimed during an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that the Republican governor “says that slavery and the aftermath of slavery should not be taught to Florida schoolchildren.”

Shameful. This question from @mitchellreports exemplifies everything wrong with corporate media.

They’re not accidentally terrible at their jobs–they’re maliciously intent on deceiving people.@GovRonDeSantis never said this, and FL has extensive black history requirements. https://t.co/XZMRoBFuZG

— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) February 17, 2023

DeSantis’ office didn’t just shame Mitchell for spreading lies about the governor and Florida law, which requires students to learn about slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and more. The governor’s press secretary Bryan Griffin also called out NBC for being “maliciously intent on deceiving people” and threatened to cut off the media giant’s access to information, comment, and interviews from the governor, who is one of the top polling Republicans for the 2024 presidential ticket.

In an email addressed to “all of the bookers and producers reaching out to our office from NBC News and MSNBC,” Griffin wrote that the governor’s office will give “no consideration of anything related to NBC Universal or its affiliates” until Mitchell “corrects the blatant lie” and “NBC and its affiliates display a consistent track record of truthful reporting.”

“This will be the standard response from our office until @mitchellreports apologizes and your track record improves,” Griffin emphasized on Twitter.

Team DeSantis didn’t back down, and they didn’t accept a lousy fake apology from Mitchell, who more or less doubled down on the original lie. They kept charging and stayed on offense.

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