Hello, my friends!
Hope you’ve had an outstanding week!
Well, another week down, another conviction to discuss (which I’ll get into below).
Before we do, I want to cover one other quick story. As you know, I’m one of the few people who thinks Biden will win in a big victory. (I did finally hear another analyst the other day (former Republican Stuart Stevens) say he thinks Biden will win big, as well.)
But I did want to make clear to you all that I am in the minority on this. Almost everyone says this will be a close race and that’s the safer bet. And in the interest of full disclosure, I just want you to know that most analysts disagree with what I’m saying.
More evidence emerged to back up my long-shot belief though this past week, in some news that I can almost guarantee you that you didn’t make it to your ears.
A Democrat in a nearly 30-point pro-Republican district nearly beat his oppent.
Even more shocking, his campaign raised less than $30,000 for the race, while the GOP opponent raised nearly $700,000. (The two will face each other again likely in November, and look for lots of money to pour in from national Democrats to try to grab this Dark Red seat in Ohio that’s now only barely read.)
Full story here: Democrat Stuns With Massive Performance in One of Trump's Strongest Districts
Let’s get to the second conviction story, and a couple of much larger points I want to make. (I previously made this argument on my podcast this week; you’re signed up for that, right?!)
I want to start with a couple of political points, but if you can hang with me for just a moment, you're going to see how this ties into a larger overall theme that I'm going to make.
As I am sure everyone heard, last week, former President Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts.
34 felony counts.
On each of the charges, the jury was unanimous on each of them.
34 felony counts.
Now, of course, he derided the decision and called it rigged, said that he couldn't possibly get a fair trial in New York, which is, of course, where he's from. He also blamed the Biden administration for using the Department of Justice to come after him, even though it was a local district attorney making the case.
So these were some of the main points he made.
This week, in a similar situation, the president's son, Hunter Biden, was found guilty of three convictions himself, also in his original home state, by a jury that was unanimous on each of the three charges.
3 felony counts.
One interesting part of this conviction is that the Biden Justice Department was actually who was behind the conviction. This wasn't a local attorney or district attorney. This wasn't a state attorney. It was the Biden Justice Department.
Keep in mind that Hunter Biden could face up to 25 years on these charges, which is far more than the four years that the former president is facing in his felony convictions in New York.
Let me make a couple of other points on this, because it bears noting.
First, Hunter Biden also faces additional charges in California, which are also brought by the Biden Department of Justice.
These are all by Special Counsel David Weiss. This was an individual who was initially appointed by former President Trump.
Now, it gets a little interesting here, but even though former President Trump appointed this U.S. attorney who later became a special counsel, Trump also criticized him.
In fact, in 2023, he criticized him and said that he had failed to bring proper charges after a four-year investigation, and that the special counsel was trying to move the case to a more Democrat-friendly venue in Delaware.
Those were the exact words of former President Trump in 2023.
Now, I think it's worth noting that President Biden could have stopped all of this by granting a pardon before even the trial began. And this is something that we've seen in the past.
In fact, we saw it just a few years ago with the predecessor to President Biden. Back when Trump was president, he granted a pardon way back before all the court dates happened and all the charges were fully vetted.
He granted a pardon to several big-name campaign advisors and top political staff members, including Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, and even George Papadopoulos.
All of these were granted pardons.
So I think, even without being biased one way or the other, you have to say that President Biden deserves applause for not intervening in this case, and Biden has now already stated he will not intervene after convictions have been dropped, nor is he going to intervene in the case in California.
I think you can also, without bias, give him credit and props for not attacking the investigation. He has not been talking about it day after day, as Trump did with his trial.
President Biden has been silent about the entire thing. And I think any fair observer would say that was the correct way to handle it.
Let's get to one of the bigger points that I wanted to make. After the convictions came down against Hunter, the folks on the right had no idea how to handle it because everyone was so convinced that this was a jury situation or some kind of a fake trial and that he would never be found guilty.
Charlie Kirk, who is clearly a very big voice on the right, even went so far as to call it a fake trial that would try to make the justice system appear “balanced.”
And Charlie Kirk said, “Don't fall for it.”
And I was thinking after I saw that comment that I'm pretty sure that if you were Hunter Biden, you really would have loved for this to have been a fake trial because there's nothing fake about it at all.
He is facing up to 25 years. He won't get that much. He may not get too much at all, but it will complicate the trial in California because he's going to have previous convictions.
And over there, he's facing years and years of jail time as well.
So this case is going to impact that case. So there's nothing fake about this at all. What has happened is that the conviction has helped turn on its head the argument from some on the right that there's some kind of rigged justice system.
And I say all of this because I think we take for granted the jury system that we have. I think we forget how just amazing our justice system is so that you can get a trial in front of a jury of your peers. It's not just some judge who's deciding whether you're guilty or not.
You get a chance to present a defense, also evidence, and a chance to even testify should you choose.
We take that for granted, and it's just frustrating seeing the attacks on our justice system on, honestly, almost a daily basis. But back to one of the larger points I was trying to make.
You would think after seeing this conviction of Hunter Biden, after for more than a year saying it wouldn't happen, obviously I have pointed out former President Trump had criticized the selection of where the trial would take place. After all the criticism and after the conviction, instead of saying, “Wow, we were wrong,” many on the far right immediately leaped into an even deeper conspiracy.
I'm going to share a clip from Congressman Andy Ogles, who's actually from Tennessee, partly why I'm playing it, who was on with Maria Bartiromo, and they were on Fox Business. And I want you to just hear this crazy conspiracy that they're sharing, which I've heard others say, but I can't believe they're still saying this all the way into June.
If you don’t want to watch the video, here’s what the two said:
Ogles: “I think it also creates an opening for Democrats to slip someone like Michelle Obama in here. The Biden family can say, hey, we're going to take care of our house, we're going to take care of our son, and then allow Michelle Obama to come in and run. Because again, Joe Biden can't win this election, and they know that, and they are desperate for another candidate.”
Bartiromo: “"I got to tell you, I am increasingly thinking that Joe Biden withdraws from this race by the time November 5th comes along. I am buying into what you're saying there because I agree that the Democrats are desperate right now. They are very worried.”
I just have to laugh at that. It's insane, honestly.
First of all, Biden has already run through the primary, received tons of votes, he's been nominated. This isn't something he can just suddenly step down easily. Political parties haven't been nominating people going all the way back to the 70s.
So Biden will be the choice, Trump will be the choice.
No one wants to really accept that, but that is the reality.
Furthermore, Michelle Obama hates politics. She absolutely hates it. If you read her biography, if you read Obama's biography, if you read half of the interviews she's put out there, she didn't even want Obama to run for president either of the terms.
She hates politics. She barely even enjoyed or pulled off the duty of being First Lady. It was service to the country. She did not enjoy it. It's crazy that someone would throw out that she's going to suddenly just jump in, as if all these other Democrats, such as Governor Gavin Newsom or the Vice President herself, Kamala Harris.
You don’t think these people wouldn't absolutely lose it if they just suddenly put in Michelle Obama?
The amount of crazy stuff that's put out there by the far right is just mind-blowing. I bring all of this up, and I want to try to make a bigger point (I know I've gone into this a little bit deep), but I bring all of this up because we have to start getting serious as a country, and we have to get serious as informed citizens, as informed voters.
The reality is, is within the past week, one-fifth of House Republicans voted to defund NATO. I mean, that is off-the-charts crazy.
That is completely loony. NATO has been one of the most effective cornerstones of peace and deterrence, bar none. NATO helped us in Afghanistan. European soldiers deployed to Asia. They sent soldiers and vehicles hundreds and thousands of miles from their home to help us in Afghanistan after the atacks on 9/11.
And people are talking about defunding NATO? People are talking about, not just talking about, people are voting to defund NATO when you've got Russia on the march?
Are we crazy? Why are we allowing this kind of stuff to happen?
We have to take this stuff way more serious than we've been taking it.
Almost as crazy as that vote is what Speaker Mike Johnson did. The leader of the House is finally facing some pressure for appointing two people to the House Intelligence Committee who absolutely should not be on that committee.
Johnson bypassed numerous Republicans who have had far more experience and should be on that committee, but all because former President Trump told Mike Johnson to do it.
Mike Johnson appointed two people who, any reasonable, rational person would look at their backgrounds and say these two people are too much. They're too much of firebrands.
I won't even get into the past and all the reasons they shouldn't. But they are just political hotheads, who should not be on the House Intelligence Committee seeing the absolute most top secret intelligence that's out there.
And the worst part is, is Speaker Mike Johnson didn't even tell the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
He was given no advance warning.
Just completely was blindsided because former President Trump wanted his two people there. Let's not forget that the Democrats did save Speaker Mike Johnson and keep him. in the position he's in because once he finally brought a Ukraine vote to the floor, following a six-month delay of course.
But they helped save his job but now it appears he's once again kind of going back to acting irresponsible not acting like a leader, who does have a lot of power.
So I think you may see more repercussions because of this irresponsible behavior that Speaker Mike Johnson has taken.
We'll just have to see on that. But I hear you out there. You say, why Stan? Like, why does it really matter? It's just politics. It's just, you know, Trump's the head of his party. It's no big deal if you put these two people on. They're loyal to him. They're pretty well liked inside the GOP.
Like, how big a deal is it if you put a couple of hotheads on there? Let's put this in perspective and this is the top point that I've been building up to. This is why this matters. This is why I have led up to this point because this point I'm about to make right here, this is what it's all about.
This is how high the stakes are.
And I'm not going to use my words on this, but I'm about to play a clip for you. Just imagine if we could have prevented World War II. And you might say, well, Stan, how would we have prevented World War II?
I'm going to play a clip that I think is pretty convincing on how we could have prevented World War II. All the gas chambers. All the hundreds of thousands that have served in the United States and all the other countries. The dropping of two atomic weapons. Am I suggesting that could have possibly been prevented? Yes.
And I'm not the only one suggesting it. I want you to listen to this clip. This is why we have to take this stuff serious. And when we don't, you just allow pressure and bad things to build until it's so big you have to completely go all out to try to put out the fire.
Listen to this incredible clip. This clip is from Timothy Snyder. He's an American historian who specializes in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and also the Holocaust. Listen to what this professor at Yale University said just a few weeks ago.
I don't feel like his words got enough attention, so I'm sharing them now.
Here’s what he said if you don’t want to listen and would rather read:
We're about to be in 1939. I'm going to agree with you in a certain way. My comparison would be 1938. This is 1938 that Czechoslovakia has chosen to fight. In that world where Czechoslovakia resists, there's no Second World War. The Czechs had a good army. They could have held the Germans back.
It was largely a bluff on the German side. If the Czechs resist, then the French and the British and maybe the Americans eventually start to help. There would have been a conflict, but there wouldn't have been a Second World War. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it was invading Poland with the Czech armaments industry, which was the best in the world.
It was invading with Slovak soldiers. It was invading from a geographical position that it only gained because it had destroyed Czechoslovakia. So if the Ukrainians give up, or if we give up Ukraine, then it's a different Russia making war in the future. It's a Russia making war with Ukrainian technology, Ukrainian soldiers, from a different geographical position. Then we're in 1939. We're in 1938 now. In effect, what the Ukrainians are letting us do is they're letting us extend 1938.
There you go. I think that's pretty persuasive. That's probably better said than any of the arguments I've heard in the past about how Neville Chamberlain in the United Kingdom kept letting Hitler just take steps, take steps, because by then it was too late.
This is one of the stronger arguments I've heard, so I wanted to make sure you heard that. But I can hear some of you out there. Some of you still aren't convinced. Throwing out a World War II analogy is a very big, very wide, massive thing to throw out there. I hear you.
I see what you're putting down. I hear what you're saying. Here's just a smaller thing that I think we all can agree on. Just in the past few days, eight suspected terrorists from Tajikistan (with possible ISIS ties) were arrested by the FBI in New York, L.A., and Philadelphia.
That's a pretty big deal.
I think everyone can agree that's a pretty big deal. I bring that up because in 2023, a lot of folks on the right were saying we should defund the FBI. That's another just completely irresponsible, crazy thing to say.
Just as crazy, though, I will beat up the left for a moment.
These eight men came across the southern border. And the thing that frustrates me is we all get in our echo chambers on the right or on the left, and when one side makes a good point, for instance, the right has been talking about the border for years, but because they haven't been consistent and honest about other subjects, the left and many people in the middle have just said, we're not going to listen to that anymore.
Same thing from the other side. The left has tried to make some good points. People on the right don't want to hear it. I'm just saying from a larger perspective, we've got to start taking this stuff way more serious than we have in the past.
We've got to quit giving either side, even if it's our own party or your party, quit giving them a pass. They are all falling short. Our debt is horrific. We're going to have to start getting serious about that.
We've got to start getting in alignment on so many topics. It's just time we start taking this stuff way more serious than we have. There's way too much at stake to not do so.
All posts are free, so feel free to share.
Love and peace,
Stan R. Mitchell
P.S. Don’t forget that I also put out a weekly podcast about defense news and looming hotspots, which includes some motivation, wisdom, and history.
I've also written twelve fast, exciting books.
Finally, I also write a faith blog about God and the Bible. (As a child, I was wounded badly by the church and left it to study other religions, before returning to the faith of my roots.)
Thank you for the words of optimism and the 1938 comparison . There is still time to stay on track as a democracy. My family is getting fatigued by the ongoing uncivil war we are in right now. But we are soldiering on, placing our donations into causes which expose the crazy element that has infected GOP politics and participating in postcards to voters in swing states.