Category: Politics

We can hope this stick 3 years from now, making the 2028 race much more interesting as Newsom was pretty much considered to be a strong probable.

Palisades Fire Incinerates Future Career of Mayor Karen Bass, Gavin Newsom’s Presidential Aspirations.

have been following the progress of the Palisades fire and several others in the Los Angeles area since my initial post last night.

According to Watch Duty, the blaze charring Pacific Palisades now covers over 15,000 acres and is ZERO percent contained…just as the Santa Ana winds are about to begin peaking.

However, other significant wildfires are burning through the region as well. The Eaton Fire in the Altadena/Pasadena area has already destroyed 10,000 acres and claimed five lives. The Hurst Fire around Sylmar has already hit 700 acres. There is also ZERO percent containment for both of these blazes.

Of course, it is hard for understaffed firefighters to suppress wildfires when there is no water to quench them.

 

The lack of firefighting resources is just one of the long-term problems that contributed to the historic destruction of Los Angeles. The magnitude of destruction is so vast that any of our nation’s terrorist enemies would be delighted to claim responsibility for it.

However, the state and local leaders ultimately created all the conditions that resulted in a disaster that will likely outstrip Maui’s total devastation in our collective memories. I will note many of these problems have been discussed at Legal Insurrection whenever we have reviewed wildfires in California previously.

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If the underlying laws and regulations are not also dealt with, the enforcement of them will simply fall to another bunch of bureaucraps.
Otherwise, it’s just another example of Political Kabuki Theater.

Rep. Lauren Boebert Introduces Bill to Abolish the ATF

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R) has introduced legislation to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

The bill is H.R. 129 and it comes at a point when Republicans are just weeks away from holding the House, Senate and White House.

Newsweek noted Boebert’s push to do away with the agency is the latest in line of Republican pushes to see the agency undone.

For example, in November 2024, Rep. Eric Burlison (R) called for the agency to be abolished as well.

On November 25, 2024, Breitbart News reported that Burlison told FOX News the ATF is “a disaster.”

He said, “For several decades they’ve been a disaster agency [which has] been violating the Second Amendment.”

The ATF issued numerous rules during the Biden/Harris administration, one of which criminalized owners of legally purchased AR-pistol stabilizer braces. Another one of the ATF’s rules declared that 80 percent complete firearm frames are firearms and therefore can only be acquired via background checks. Yet another ATF rule circumvented Congress via new regulations against private gun sales.

On January 2, 2024, Breitbart News pointed out that Biden’s ATF director, Steven Dettelbach, tendered his resignation effective January 18, 2025, two days before Trump retakes the White House.

Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms chairman Alan Gottlieb cheered the resignation, saying, “That’s one less person Trump will have to fire after he takes office, and it is one less gun prohibition lobbyist on the government payroll.”

159 Democrats voted to value illegal aliens who commit crimes over you. Let that sink in.

Another BFA-backed bill headed to governor, provides civil immunity for self-defense for nonprofits

Another piece of legislation supported by Buckeye Firearms Association has passed both the Ohio House and Senate and is headed to the governor for his signature.

Senate Bill 32, sponsored by Sen. Tim Schaffer (R-Lancaster), provides civil immunity to a person who acts in self-defense and protects members and/or guests of a nonprofit under certain circumstances.

Once it takes effect, the new law:

  • Specifies that the immunities currently provided for nonprofit corporations for any of the following also apply to a for-profit corporation that leases its property to the nonprofit corporation or permits its property to be used by the nonprofit corporation for any purpose: Injury, death, or loss to person or property allegedly caused by or related to a concealed handgun licensee bringing a handgun onto the premises or to an event of the nonprofit corporation; injury, death, or loss to person or property allegedly caused by or related to a decision to permit a licensee to bring, or prohibit a licensee from bringing, a handgun onto the premises or to an event of the nonprofit corporation.
  • Generally grants civil immunity to a person for certain injuries allegedly caused by the person acting in self-defense or defense of another during the commission, or imminent commission, of an offense of violence to protect the members or guests of a nonprofit corporation under certain circumstances.
  • Specifies that a person who approaches or enters a nonprofit corporation’s premises or event with intent to commit an offense of violence is presumed liable for any injury, death, or loss to person or property resulting from an act of self-defense or defense of another against that person.

Earlier this month, the Ohio Senate voted to send amended Senate Bill 58 to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk — legislation that would prohibit requiring firearm liability insurance or being required to pay a fee for the possession of a firearm, part of a firearm, its components, its ammunition, or a knife.

Senate Bill 148, which was amended into SB 58, prohibits financial institutions from tracking firearms purchases and to prohibit government entities from maintaining a registry of firearms or firearm owners.

Both SB 58, sponsored by Sens. Terry Johnson (R-McDermott) and Theresa Gavarone (R-Huron), and SB 148, sponsored by Sen. Terry Johnson, fight recent efforts by gun control advocates to make gun ownership more expensive and less private for law-abiding gun owners instead of cracking down on the actual criminal misuse of firearms.

BFA has supported all three bills since the beginning of the legislative session and has testified in both the House and Senate.

Buckeye Firearms Association thanks the House and Senate for passing these important bills and urges Gov. DeWine to sign them into law immediately. It is time to stop trying to punish and infringe the rights of ordinary, law-abiding gun owners for the acts of criminals.

BLUF
Only when we’ve plowed the soil of the Deep State with salt can we talk about a truce. But the damage personal damage we inflict over the next four years, in terms of jail time, bankruptcies, and legal judgments, must so terrify that second tier of Deep Staters that no matter what another batch of Democrat operatives cook up, they will refuse to get involved.

Op-Ed: Lawfare Will End When the Left Is Too Terrified to Contemplate Continuing It

Now that Donald Trump is headed to the White House, he has to make a decision vital to the Republic’s health. Over the last eight years, President Trump and his allies have been the subject of a non-stop stream of lawfare attacks designed to cripple him while he was president and later, after he peacefully turned over the reigns of power to the addled Joe Biden, to imprison him for what could have been the rest of his life.

The campaign to jail him was clearly a conspiracy involving Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Fulton County, GA, District Attorney Fani Willis. The extent to which the civil cases against him were coordinated with the criminal cases has never, as far as I know, been explored, but it is hard to imagine that it did not exist.

This use of the judicial system to attempt to impoverish and imprison political opponents is foreign to the United States and to its founding principles. The decision that Trump has to make is to either ignore the attacks calculated to ruin his life or should he be faithful to the promise he made at CPAC in March 2023 and seek retribution.

In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today I add I am your Warrior, I am your Justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your Retribution.

Andy McCarthy, writing in National Review, makes the case that Trump should end lawfare by ending lawfare.

You don’t have to be an admirer of Bannon or Navarro to see these prosecutions as toxic partisan lawfare. Or to understand how, in the end, this helped Trump with voters

— not because Americans have affection for these men, but because the Democrats’ unabashed exploitation of the government’s law enforcement apparatus for their own political advantage was despotic and frightening.

It’s not the sort of thing that shouldn’t be done to our side; it’s a betrayal of justice that shouldn’t be done, period, full stop.

Other than being wrong, McCarthy argues that the actions of all public officials have the same immunity that the Supreme Court declared applied to President Trump; see BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules on Presidential Immunity.

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BLUF
Learn and memorize your rights, exercise them, and protect them every single day.
If you truly want politics and government to leave you alone to live your life in peace, you have to pay attention. That is your ultimate responsibility.

Citizen Responsibilities

As far back as elementary school, I remember teachers telling kids that we, as citizens of the United States, had responsibilities to ourselves and the country. I know that a lot of people would prefer to avoid politics and political topics altogether. I get it. Politics is frustrating, angering, annoying, and at times boring (ever try to read a policy proposal? I highly recommend them if you have insomnia and don’t want to take any drugs). But we as adult citizens have a responsibility to keep this country running as well as possible, oppose bad policies, and most importantly, we have a responsibility to pay attention so that we are fully aware of what is going on with our politicians and institutions. It’s our responsibility to pay attention and stop them from going off the rails.

I don’t care that you don’t want to pay attention to politics. YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO DO SO. Especially if you want everything to become or remain “normal.”

I will discuss equality of opportunity versus equity of outcomes in a future post. That is not the topic for today.

Responsibilities of citizenship go beyond simply turning up to vote every couple of years. Although that is one of the most important activities you can do. HOWEVER, if you are an uninformed voter, you are not helping anyone. Uninformed voters simply go along to get along and vote as they’re told or as they always have without regard to any changes in party platforms, policies, candidates, funding sources, anything. All of those things should inform you, the voter, as to whether or not your preferred party is engaging in business as usual or has changed course. Or no longer matches your values and preferred outcomes.

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Well, Circuits (besides, of course the Supreme Court) are where actual binding ‘case law’ s made, so …….

Senate Dems and GOP strike a deal on judicial appointments for Trump and Biden

A deal struck earlier this week between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate will enable President Joe Biden to possibly outperform President-elect Donald Trump in terms of the number of federal judges appointed in each of their term in office.

The trade-off is that Senate Republicans will allow Democrats to confirm 12-14 lower-level district court nominees without procedural delays, and Senate Democrats will not attempt to confirm four higher-level appeals-court judges, which will instead be saved for Trump to fill once he is in office. 

“It looks like the Biden administration is going to best the first Trump administration in terms of the amount of judges that are seated on the federal courts by the end of his term,” Devon Westhill, president and general counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity said, according to the Washington Examiner.

Senate Democrats have confirmed 220 of Biden’s federal judicial nominees, while Trump had 234 in his first term, according to the outlet.

So far Biden has confirmed 173 district court judges and 45 appeals court judges. Meanwhile, Trump confirmed 174 district judges and 54 appellate judges during his first term.

Regarding the Supreme Court, Trump appointed three justices and Biden one. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Thursday that he wasn’t sure if Biden appointing more judges would top the number of Trump’s appointments.

Leftist Governors Retaliate Against Election Results by Threatening Second Amendment Rights of Citizens

The 2024 Presidential Election saw a large shift across the country, with Donald Trump winning all seven battlegrounds and receiving more votes in Democrat-controlled states than ever before, flipping many counties red in traditionally blue strongholds.

While this can be credited to the fact that President-Elect Trump connects more broadly with working-class citizens than do the self-proclaimed “elitists” on the left, much of the evolution is in response to the failures of the Democrats that have plagued Americans, especially over the past four years.

From inflation, border security, and migrant crime waves, to the woke administrative state being turned against political opponents and the handling of overseas conflicts, many Americans have been left hungry, exhausted, and desperate to return to a more prosperous time.

Despite the prevailing climate, and with a clear rejection of sanity and reason, it has become increasingly apparent that the extreme left in the United States refuses to learn from their lessons.

While this can be served up like low-hanging fruit to ridicule and despise, it can be used more efficiently and to benefit Americans as an opportunity, one that we pray Donald Trump’s second administration, including conservatives across the country, will seize, particularly when it comes to the Second Amendment.

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Devon Eriksen

Cenk has seen the writing on the wall, and knows the dems have no future.

Problem is, the fact that he is able to pivot so smoothly and quickly means that he wasn’t drinking the koolaid.

Which means he knew Trump wasn’t Orange Hitler. That he knew most of the things said about him were lies. Because if half the stuff they said about him was true, no sane person would work with him.

So, if he knew before that it was all a lie, but he’s only pivoting now, that means this is self-interest, not enlightenment.

Which means he is not trustworthy.

This is something to keep in mind as more and more lefties try to pivot to the Trump Coalition, which they will.

Keep an eye on when they turned, and what they said before they turned. Not just about Trump. About covid. About immigration. About white people. About middle America. About heterosexuals. About the working class. About men.

Check the receipts.

Doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t work with them, but it means we must be judicious about how much trust we extend.

Works the other way, too. Ron Paul was laying tracks for the Trump Train before even Trump was on it. Hell, before there was a train. At great personal cost and risk.

The compass needle is swinging away from “experts” with academic credentials from certifying institutions, and towards those with a track record of accomplishment, skin in the game, and, most of all, proven loyalty to the American tribe over the political class.

America is a blood-and-soil nation, like all the others, and, while we have a permissive culture about allowing others to join the club, they must prove their loyalty to be allowed to do so.

Let’s remember to keep that in mind as the rats start to abandon the ship.

Can the Republican Senate protect the 2nd Amendment?

Donald Trump needs to protect the Second Amendment with Senate leadership choices who won’t negotiate our rights away.

Trump has already put forward a plan that, in the words of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., should earn him a space on Mount Rushmore.  But there is another problem with our ever persistent RINOs who insist on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  Although the First Amendment is being shored up, we have to be concerned with the prospects of the Second, simply because all of our rights are mutually supportive.

The best analogy for this is fortifications with interwoven fields of fire — a case where a gun emplacement can fire to cover another part of the fortification for mutual support.  These were prevalent during the time of the masterful development, writing, and ratification of the founding documents.

In other words, the First Amendment protects the Second, and the Second protects the First.  All the amendments are vitally important, and when one is weakened, the rest are weakened as a result.

The current problem is that Mitch McConnell has scheduled a vote for the Senate leadership this week, attempting to get this under the radar, while everyone is still celebrating the win and no one is paying attention to RINO shenanigans.  Unfortunately for them, many pro-freedom patriots are aware of this and are voicing their opinions on the matter, and it seems as though our politicians are “aghast at the effort.”  Braden from Langley Outdoors Academy has the latest rundown on this issue.

Part of the problem is that the three choices are insufficient, to say the least.  Thus, it’s up to pro-freedom patriots to offer alternatives to the current slate of RINOs, such as Kentucky senator Rand Paul, Texas senator Ted Cruz, Utah senator Mike Lee, or Missouri senator Josh Hawley.  This is why people are calling the U.S. capital switchboard to have the RINOs removed in favor of the far superior alternatives.

We had a fantastic victory last week.  There’s no reason to water it down by putting in place GOP RINOs who have a history of negotiating our rights away for absolutely no benefit.  Senate leadership is vitally important for implementing the Trump agenda, so there is no reason to go “wobbly” within a few days of defeating the Undemocratic party.

Gun Owners Made a Difference in the 2024 Election Results.

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is today congratulating the nation’s gun owners—especially those in critical “battleground” states—for obviously making a difference in the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election.

“America’s gun owners saw the threat of a Kamala Harris presidency and took action,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Millions of ‘gun voters’ turned out to reverse the nation’s course on firearms rights, and keep Kamala out of the Oval Office. It was gun owners who also made the difference in Montana, re-electing pro-gun Gov. Greg Gianforte and replacing Democrat Sen. Jon Tester with Republican Tim Sheehy, thus shifting the Senate majority to GOP control.

“In this election,” Gottlieb observed, “the Democrats shot blanks and the voters buried their gun ban agenda. 

“But,” he cautioned, “I bet they will double down on gun prohibition because they know that it was gun owners that removed them from power and they are gunning to get even. The fight to defend gun rights is not over and every gun owner who helped win this battle must remember that the war on gun rights is ongoing.”

Gottlieb said Trump’s triumphant return to public office “will become the stuff of legend.” He added that the importance of gun owner participation in this historic achievement cannot be overstated. 

“Here is a man who endured four years of turmoil while he was in office,” Gottlieb noted, “and he suffered from Democrat-engineered ‘lawfare,’ and survived two assassination attempts including one which nearly cost him his life. Yet, despite his wound, he refused to call for more gun control, and encouraged his supporters to fight. And that is exactly what we intend to do, because the right to keep and bear arms is what protects this nation from tyranny, and frustrates the enemies of liberty.”

Trump won in Pennsylvania, which made it impossible for Harris to win the election.
Why did he win?
The Amish vote that the Republicans went out for.
Overzealous state bureaucraps, mostly demoncraps, went and did it to themselves.

Amish turn out for Pennsylvania vote in ‘unprecedented numbers’

Republicans could see a boost in Pennsylvania from a demographic rarely seen at the polls: the Amish.

The state’s famed “Pennsylvania Dutch” registered to vote in “unprecedented numbers” in response to a January federal raid on a local raw milk farm in Bird in Hand, Pa., a source familiar with the situation told The Post.

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture stormed Amos Miller’s farm Jan. 4 after reports of illnesses in children linked to raw dairy products purchased there, according to the local media outlet Lancaster Farming.

The Amish community saw the move as an overzealous reach by the government and was planning to vote for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose party favors less government intervention.

“That was the impetus for them to say, ‘We need to participate,’ ” the source said of local Amish voters. “This is about neighbors helping neighbors.”

The Amish community rallied around Miller, who cited his religious beliefs as a reason for not adhering to Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

“If you think about Amish people and their connection to nature, I mean, some of these people work in the fields barefoot to be closer to the earth,” the source told The Post.

Actual numbers of Amish voters were unclear as of Tuesday night, though horse-and-buggy rigs were seen at polling locations in photographs from the region.

Poll Shows a Quarter of Americans Believe Civil War May Erupt After the Election

America hasn’t been this divided since the Civil War. But does that mean that if the election doesn’t go the way that either party wants, another civil war will break out?

According to a poll taken by The Times, about a quarter of the U.S. population fears that civil war may break out after the election.

Barbara Walter, a noted Civil War historian, wrote a 2022 bestseller, “How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them.” She said that measured against a checklist of the factors that could lead to civil war, “the United States … has entered very dangerous territory.” She added that “we are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe because of “political extremism, cultural tribalism, the embrace of conspiracy theories, proliferation of guns and militias and the erosion of faith in government and democracy.”

Only the final item on her checklist matters. Neither the right nor the left has faith in our institutions to govern us. The right doesn’t trust the vote-counting process while the left thinks Trump will “destroy democracy” if he wins. It’s an incendiary mix that doesn’t bode well for the post-election period.

Fears that an eruption of violence is very or somewhat likely are shared across the political divide by 27 per cent of American adults, including 30 per cent of women and 24 per cent of men, YouGov found in a survey of 1,266 registered voters on October 18-21.

Twelve per cent of respondents said they knew someone who might take up arms if they thought Donald Trump was cheated out of victory in under two weeks’ time. Five per cent said they knew someone who might do the same if they thought Kamala Harris was cheated.

Does this really point to a “civil war” where there are two identifiable sides fighting for control of the government? If there is going to be violence after the election, it will be in the form of riots more than a military campaign.

Rebellions take planning and organization. The glorified brawl that took place on Jan. 6, 2021, was not a rebellion, no matter how the left wants to describe it. No court has ever said it was a rebellion. No insurrection charges were ever filed against any of the 1,200 defendants.

Whatever happens after the election, any violence will serve only to divide America further.

Concern over Trump’s response to losing again on November 5 was shown elsewhere in The Times-YouGov poll, with 66 per cent of voters saying the former president would not accept a narrow loss, compared with 27 per cent who said the same about Harris.

Among Harris supporters, 5 per cent said she would not accept a narrow loss and 90 per cent said the same about Trump; among Trump supporters, 50 per cent said Harris would not accept a narrow loss and 39 per cent said the same about Trump.

Trump is just as likely to accept the results of the election if he loses as not. Trump has a habit of doing exactly the opposite of what his enemies say he’s going to do, so anything is possible.

What’s not possible is Trump openly calling for armed resistance to the results. And without that, a large-scale revolt is not possible.

Not many respondents believed that Kamala Harris would offer armed resistance if she lost. Far more likely is an avalanche of legal filings challenging the results in several states.

But don’t ever refer to her as an “election denier.”

Dead Terrorists Are Good, Actually

Wow. Remind me never to start a war with Israel, huh? The bad guys got a jump on them a year ago, but ever since, the Jews have been kicking ass.

I thought Operation Beep-Beep-Boom would be the highlight, but they saved the best for last. Witness the glorious farewell of October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar:

 

It’s good to see that before they put him out of his misery, he was literally disarmed.

Sinwar has now ceased firing.

“What has one thumb and just got pwned by the Jews? This guy!”

That scumbag’s last great act of defiance was lobbing a stick at a camera drone. Yet according to his fans (mostly American college students and Congressional Democrats), Sinwar “fought to the end.”

LOL!

Gotta say, putting a hole in this guy’s head only improved his looks. As the great Andrew Stiles puts it: “World’s ugliest terrorist killed in war he started.”

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Remember John Kerry going on about deer hunting back in ’04? Just as ignorantly stupid here. One would think they would have learned not to try this after Dukakis’ idiot stunt in a tank back in ’88.

“I talk to anybody. I always call it my

“I speak to the construction workers and the cabdrivers, and those are the people I get along with best anyway in many respects. I speak to everybody…. You’ve got to know your audience, and by the way, for some people, be a killer, for some people, be all candy. For some people, different. For some people, both.”

Said Donald Trump in 1989, talking to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in “A lost Trump interview comes back to life/The yet-to-be-president holds forth on strength, friendship, dealmaking, public service and building violations” (WaPo)(free-access link, so you can read it all and click on the recordings).

Woodward — who’s pushing his new book from which this is an excerpt — exclaims “What a remarkable time capsule, a full psychological study of a man, then a 42-year-old Manhattan real estate king.”
I think Trump comes across very positively, so thanks to The Washington Post for making this available.
Here’s one more Trump quote, short and sweet: “I believe in having great friends and great enemies.”
Great enemies. That’s so funny — makes me think of Batman, James Bond — and Trump does have great enemies. Putin. Pelosi. Who else? The big categories: establishment Republicans and establishment Democrats. But who are the individuals? Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris really aren’t that great, as enemies… or even opponents. He needs someone he can really go big with.
Putin is big, and yet he can’t go big with Putin. He has to be trickier, tricky enough that people would say Putin is his great friend, not his great enemy. But there’s the idea: “for some people, be a killer, for some people, be all candy…. For some people, both.”
Here’s the commission-earned link for Woodward’s book: “War.”

I said that Joe would quit campaigning for reelection over Jill’s dead body.
I think she, as much or more than Joe, is behind this back stabbing

Are we witnessing President Biden’s revenge tour?
A Kamala loss would mark the ultimate “I told you so” moment.

Hell hath no fury like a corrupt politician scorned.

You can’t help but notice that “Dark Brandon” isn’t exactly falling in line these days.

President Joe Biden finds himself a victim of the Democrat establishment mutineers, stripped of an opportunity at two-term greatness, and with quite a few interesting incentives coming into the November election.

More and more polling points to the possibility that Kamala Harris may lose by a significant margin in November. Donald Trump’s momentum keeps building, with nothing but tailwinds at his back. The Biden family is keenly aware of all of this, and they seem to be positioning the president for the ultimate “I told you so” moment for his legacy. Should Kamala Harris fall in defeat, President Biden becomes a man both wronged by a political establishment and righteous for being the one man who could defeat the GOP nominee.

We need not rehash the bizarre events of July 21, but it’s worth recalling that Biden was seemingly forced out of the running for his second term, and Democratic Party power brokers (Obama, Soros, Pelosi, Schumer, etc) hastily selected VP Kamala Harris as the nominee. Furthermore, they filled the lame-duck months on Biden’s schedule with instructions to stay quiet and soak up the sun in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Since that fateful week in Delaware, Biden’s tone has changed dramatically.

In his rare public appearances, the president is attempting to transition into political retirement as an elder statesman, and he’s almost always doing so far removed from the instructions of his teleprompter. His newfound rhetoric is far removed from his infamous verbal dumpster diving of the Biden-Trump debate (and the vast majority of his presidency). He’s now linking arms with supporters of the one-time “threat to democracy,” reframing his legacy as Scranton Joe, the bipartisan blue-collar president. He never once engaged in such deliberate bipartisan appeals, on or off script, for his entire presidency.

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