The Democratic president had previously said he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence after convictions in the two cases in Delaware and California. The move on Sunday night comes weeks before Hunter Biden was set to receive his punishment after his trial conviction in the gun case and guilty plea on tax charges, and less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House.

It caps a long-running legal saga for the younger Biden, who publicly disclosed he was under federal investigation in December 2020 — a month after his father’s 2020 victory — and casts a pall over the elder Biden’s legacy.

Biden, who time and again pledged to Americans that he would restore norms and respect for the rule of law after Trump’s first term in office, ultimately used his position to help his son, breaking his public pledge to Americans that he would do no such thing.

In a statement released Sunday evening, Biden said, “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”

The president’s sweeping pardon covers not just the gun and tax offenses against the younger Biden, but also any other “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”

In June, Biden categorically ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling reporters as his son faced trial in the Delaware gun case, “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”

As recently as Nov. 8, days after Trump’s victory, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ruled out a pardon or clemency for the younger Biden, saying, “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no.”

The elder Biden has publicly stood by his only living son as Hunter descended into serious drug addiction and threw his family life into turmoil before getting back on track in recent years. The president’s political rivals have long used Hunter Biden’s myriad mistakes as a political cudgel against his father: In one hearing, lawmakers displayed photos of the drug-addled president’s son half-naked in a seedy hotel.

House Republicans also sought to use the younger Biden’s years of questionable overseas business ventures in a since-abandoned attempt to impeach his father, who has long denied involvement in his son’s dealings or benefiting from them in any way.

“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden said in his statement. “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son.”

“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” Biden added, claiming he made the decision this weekend.

The president had spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Massachusetts, with Hunter and his family, and departed for Angola later Sunday on what may be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Hunter Biden was convicted in June in Delaware federal court of three felonies for purchasing a gun in 2018 when, prosecutors said, he lied on a federal form by claiming he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.

He had been set to stand trial in September in the California case accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. But he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges in a surprise move hours after jury selection was set to begin.

David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware who negotiated the plea deal, was subsequently named a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to have more autonomy over the prosecution of the president’s son.

Hunter Biden said he was pleading guilty in that case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after the gun trial aired salacious details about his struggles with a crack cocaine addiction.

The tax charges carry up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible he would have avoided prison time entirely.

Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month in the two federal cases, which the special counsel brought after a plea deal with prosecutors that likely would have spared him prison time fell apart under scrutiny by a judge. Under the original deal, Hunter was supposed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses and and would have avoided prosecution in the gun case as long as he stayed out of trouble for two years.

But the plea hearing quickly unraveled last year when the judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. The younger Biden was subsequently indicted in the two cases.

Hunter Biden’s legal team this weekend released a 52-page white paper titled “The political prosecutions of Hunter Biden,” describing the president’s son as a “surrogate to attack and injure his father, both as a candidate in 2020 and later as president.”

The younger Biden’s lawyers have long argued that prosecutors bowed to political pressure to indict the president’s son amid heavy criticism by Trump and other Republicans of what they called the “sweetheart” plea deal.

Rep. James Comer, one of the Republican chairmen leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, blasted the president’s pardon, saying that the evidence against Hunter was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

“It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer said on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.

Biden is hardly the first president to deploy his pardon powers to benefit those close to him.

In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump over the weekend announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the U.S. envoy to France in his next administration.

Trump, who has pledged to dramatically overhaul and install loyalists across the Justice Department after he was prosecuted for his role in trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, said in a social media post on Sunday that Hunter Biden’s pardon was “such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice.”

“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump asked, referring to those convicted in the violent Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

Hunter Biden said in an emailed statement that he will never take for granted the relief granted to him and vowed to devote the life he has rebuilt “to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”

“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” the younger Biden said.

Hunter Biden’s legal team filed Sunday night in both Los Angeles and Delaware asking the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.

A spokesperson for Weiss did not respond to messages seeking comment Sunday night.

NBC News was first to report Biden was expected to pardon his son Sunday.

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Asked about their views of Harris since she became the nominee, 48% of 1,000 registered voters surveyed said it was positive compared to 32% in July — the largest jump among politician ratings polled by NBC since President George W. Bush’s favorability rose after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Asked about Trump, 40% of those polled said they viewed him positively compared to 38% in July, the news network said. The poll, conducted Sept. 13-17, has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

A separate CBS News poll also found Harris leading Trump, by 4 percentage points, 52% to 48%, among likely voters, with a margin of error rate of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The findings are broadly in line with other recent national polls, including those by Reuters/Ipsos, that show a close contest heading into the Nov. 5 election.

While national surveys offer important signals on the views of the electorate, the state-by-state results of the Electoral College determine the winner, with a handful of battleground states likely to be decisive.

Trump, 78, is making his third consecutive bid for the White House after losing to Joe Biden in 2020, which he continues to falsely blame on widespread voter fraud while facing federal and state criminal charges over efforts to overturn the election results.

Harris, 59, is a former U.S. senator and prosecutor now serving under Biden. She would be the first woman to serve as president in the nation’s 248-year history.

“She’s been able to change this from a race that was a referendum on Joe Biden to a race that is a referendum on Donald Trump,” Amy Walter, publisher and editor in chief of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In CBS’ poll of 3,129 registered voters surveyed Sept. 18-20, Harris edged up 2 percentage points after a 50-50 split in August, shored by her performance in the Sept. 10 debate and brightening economic news.

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In a hotel ballroom in Seattle, at fancy homes in California and at stops in Illinois and Wisconsin over the past week, Biden has been betting that reminding voters about Trump’s presidency and highlighting his Republican opponent’s latest campaign statements will work to the Democrat’s advantage.

At a Seattle fundraiser Friday night, Biden brought up Trump’s recent interview with Time magazine in which Trump said states should be left to determine whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies.

“I really urge you to read it,” Biden said.

Biden, who headlined another Seattle fundraiser Saturday before returning to the East Coast, has plenty of other Trump material to draw from, too.

The president highlights how Trump has promised, if elected, to be “a dictator on Day 1”, how he has suggested the United States would not necessarily defend allies from aggression and how he has pledged to “totally obliterate the deep state” in the federal bureaucracy, which he blames for blocking his first-term agenda.

“And he said a whole lot more,” Biden said during a Chicago appearance. “But the bad news is he means what he says. He means what he says. Unless you think I’m kidding, just think back to the 6th of January. This guy means what he says,” referring to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Biden wants the 2024 election to be a referendum on Trump’s record and plans, but he also wants voters to look favorably on his own policies and actions.

Biden and his allies think the country needs reminding about Trump’s tenure and his outlandish and often concerning statements, particularly because the Republican is no longer ubiquitous on X, formerly Twitter, nor is he in front of television cameras as often as he once was.

“Chaos is nothing new for Trump,” Biden said in Chicago. “His presidency was chaos. Trump is trying to make the — the country forget about the dark and unsettling things that he did when he was president. Well, we’re going to not let them forget.”

Biden frequently highlights Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and how he stood by when supporters violently stormed the Capitol as Congress met to certify his loss to Biden. He also points to Trump separating children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border, tax cuts the Republican pushed through that benefited corporations and the wealthy and his repeated efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

Biden’s barbs have been getting sharper of late.

He opened his Seattle fundraiser on Friday night by telling donors, “Thank you for the warm welcome. Please keep it down, because Donald Trump is sleeping. Sleepy Don.” That was a riff off of news reports that the former president has dozed off during his criminal trial in a New York courtroom. Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges in a hush money scheme to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.

Biden also talks about Trump’s admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his self-described “love letters” with Kim Jong Un, the authoritarian leader of North Korea.

Biden frequently jabs at Trump for wondering aloud during the COVID-19 pandemic whether disinfectants could be injected or ingested to fight the virus. “That bleach he didn’t inject in his body; he just put it in his hair,” Biden says to laughter every time. “But, look, he’s got more hair than I do.”

Trump’s campaign said in a statement that “their records speak for themselves. President Trump created the most secure border in history and peace in the world. President Trump was the first president in modern history not to enter the U.S. in any new wars. Joe Biden’s weakness has led to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, an immigrant invasion of our border, anti-Semitic protests on our college campuses, and crime and chaos in every American city.”

Trump doesn’t hesitate to criticize Biden and his policies. Trump is spending much of his time lately sitting in court. But before and after the proceedings, he often stands in front of cameras outside the courtroom and goes after Biden.

At a recent Wisconsin rally, Trump mentioned Biden within the first 2½ minutes of his speech and referenced the president or his administration more than 60 times during his remarks.

Trump’s criticism often takes a dark turn. Last weekend, he told donors at his Florida resort that Biden was running a “Gestapo administration.”

The Gestapo was the secret police force of the Third Reich that squelched political opposition generally and, specifically, targeted Jewish people for arrest during the Holocaust. Trump’s unfounded comparison to Nazi-era tactics is part of his effort to deny and deflect the charges against him, most notably his effort to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory.

Biden’s strategy is a gamble. Voters are divided in their views of both men’s presidencies.

An April poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that nearly half thought Trump’s presidency hurt the country on voting rights and election security, relations with foreign countries, abortion laws and climate change. But more than half of U.S. adults thought Biden’s presidency hurt the country on cost of living and immigration.

For all his criticism of Trump, Biden does get around to talking about his agenda and accomplishments. He tells supporters about his work to boost the economy and to bring the country out of the pandemic. He discusses his support for abortion rights even as he highlights how Trump has taken credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade in part because of his Supreme Court nominations.

“Folks, the choice is clear,” Biden told supporters recently in the nation’s capital. “Donald Trump’s vision of America is one of revenge and retribution.”

“I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s chances,” he went on. “Not because I’m president, because of the state of the moment. The world needs us.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s most prominent gun safety groups are joining together to back President Joe Biden in 2024, an early endorsement that underscores Biden’s grip on key Democratic coalitions as the party seizes on gun policy as a politically advantageous issue ahead of his reelection campaign.

The endorsement, obtained by The Associated Press in advance of the formal release, represents the first time the groups have jointly announced support for a presidential candidate. The groups include Brady and its youth-led arm, Team Enough; Community Justice Action Fund; Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and its grassroots networks, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action; and Giffords.

It also follows similar joint endorsements from abortion rights groups, labor unions and climate organizations — a strategy meant to demonstrate Biden’s strength among various party constituencies as he faces nominal primary challengers and skepticism from many Democratic voters over whether he should run for a second term.

In their endorsement, the groups pointed to the Biden administration’s record in establishing policies meant to reduce gun violence — most notably a bipartisan law enacted last year that marked the most comprehensive effort to restrict access to firearms in three decades.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris are leading the strongest gun-sense administration in American history, a title they have earned by doing everything in their power to protect our families and communities,” said Angela Ferrell-Zabala, Executive Director of Moms Demand Action.

In all, the groups represent 15 million members. The endorsement also comes as Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at an Everytown event in Chicago on Friday.

Officials said the endorsement allows them to make an early and frequent contrast with Republican presidential hopefuls who are seeking to loosen gun laws at a time when gun violence is on the rise in the U.S., while mobilizing voters critical to Biden’s re-election strategy, such as suburban women, voters of color and younger voters.

Biden’s rhetoric has grown ever stronger around guns, including routinely calling for banning so-called assault weapons, political term to describe guns most often used in mass shootings with the capacity to kill a lot of people quickly. And he pushes a platform restricting guns that was all but politically unthinkable for Democrats as recently as Barack Obama’s term.

“We have taken the politics of yore and turned them on their head,” said Peter Ambler, the executive director of Giffords. “It is now a scarlet letter, not a badge of honor, to have the NRA endorsement.”

Ambler also added that Biden is “not just the beneficiary of a shifting politics on this issue, he is one of the people that shaped the politics of this issue through his decades of service in the Senate.”

Indeed, Biden has a lengthy and often personal history with the various gun groups. In its endorsement, Brady noted that the organization worked alongside Biden in 1994, when he was a senator, to pass a federal ban on certain high-powered firearms. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., who was nearly killed in a mass shooting in 2011 and the namesake of one of the groups that endorsed Biden, has spoken about the support from the then-vice president as she recovered from her injuries.

His aides say Biden has long understood that calling for tougher gun laws resonates with Americans, particularly after meeting with countless survivors and family members of gun violence victims, which has emboldened him to speak frequently about the topic.

“I think one of the things that’s most exciting about being president is that you can help change the conversation and change the narrative by being willing to go out there and speak boldly about an issue,” said White House staff secretary Stefanie Feldman, who previously worked at the Domestic Policy Council. “And he has done that since day one of his administration, even back on the campaign in 2020.”

In separate endorsements, Giffords, Everytown and Brady threw their support behind Biden in March 2020 – a time when the former vice president was campaigning to lock up the Democratic nomination against independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Community Justice Action Fund did not endorse in 2020.

“With their very first executive action on public safety, President Biden and Vice President Harris made historic investments in community violence intervention, demonstrating an unwavering commitment to treating gun violence as the public health emergency that it is, and taking the most significant strides toward ending this crisis in decades,” said Greg Jackson, executive director of Community Justice Action Fund.

Just over half of voters want to see nationwide gun policy made more strict, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago. And there are clear partisan divides. About 9 in 10 Democrats want stricter gun laws, compared with about 3 in 10 Republicans.

Biden’s rhetoric has grown ever stronger around guns. He routinely calls for banning so-called assault weapons, a political term to describe guns most often used in mass shootings with the capacity to kill a lot of people quickly.

In addition to last year’s bipartisan law, Biden issued an executive order that cracked down on “ghost guns,” homemade firearms that lack serial numbers used to trace them and are often purchased without a background check. He’s also moving to tighten regulations on pistol-stabilizing braces like one used in a Boulder, Colorado shooting that left 10 dead.

And last month, he announced another order that aimed to stiffen background checks to buy guns, promote more secure firearms storage and ensuring law enforcement agencies get more out of the bipartisan law enacted last summer.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris’s unflinching commitment to ending gun violence has been evident from Day One,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, campaign manager for Biden’s reelection, said Biden and Harris were “humbled” to receive the endorsement and added that “the work is far from over, as MAGA Republicans in Congress continue to side with the NRA and stonewall common-sense legislation that would save American lives.”

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The Democrats’ latest gambit is to blame all the recent bad economic news on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“High gasoline prices and inflation are Putin’s fault,” they squawk, secure in the knowledge that the NY Times, MSNBC and CNN will not contradict them, even though they all know it’s blatantly untrue.

Gasoline was $2.25/gallon when President Trump left office and it quickly rose to $3.50 in the first year of “President” Biden’s term. He was directly and unequivocally responsible for the rise from $2.25 to $3.50 as of February 14th, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Let’s review the factors that make up the retail price of gasoline.

The main price component of gasoline is the price of crude oil on the world market. There are four main elements to the cost of crude oil:

1. World supply and demand

2. Exploration — Are we looking for it? Are we actively exploring for it?

3. Oil Production/Extraction technology and capability (Thanks to horizontal drilling and the methodology to extract shale oil we’re the Saudi Arabia of the West. The president either encourages or discourages the development and deployment of new exploration technology depending on the regulations and fees the Fed government imposes.)

4. Geopolitical instability (sometimes amusingly called the “terror premium”)

The President can and does influence factors No 2. and No. 3 above.

The world oil market is a commodity market, subject to the same rules and influences as any other commodity market — the same as the pork belly or copper or citrus fruit market. If there’s a disastrous frost in Florida that kills half the orange crop, the market “knows” supply will be limited and prices increase. If the President stops oil exploration, the market similarly “knows” that future supply will be limited and prices rise. When Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and rescinded new oil exploration leases on Federal property, it sent an unmistakable signal to the oil market that new, additional oil/gasoline supply would not be forthcoming from America and therefore oil (and gasoline) prices rose significantly. This was completely Biden’s doing. This is a huge factor in the rise in prices.

Likewise, when he canceled exploration in the potentially oil-rich Alaska National Wildlife Reserve area (ANWR is a tiny, postage-stamp-sized part of Alaska), it sent the same message to the world oil market: No significant new additional oil supply from America. The market responded like commodity markets always do: Prices go up. This was all Biden. It wasn’t Putin. This was a totally self-inflicted injury by Biden.

Crude oil is refined into gasoline. Once that happens, there are other factors that come into play. The first is our total refining capacity, our ability to turn all that crude oil into gasoline. Our refining capacity is at the limit. Our refineries are always operating right at the edge of their maximum capacity. So if there is an accident or maintenance/repair is needed, then the refinery is off-line, gasoline supply drops, and prices rise.

“Just build more refineries,” you say. This is far more difficult than the average person realizes. Refineries are expensive, complicated undertakings. You don’t just wave your hand and build a refinery. The EPA dictates refining regulations and they approve new refinery applications only after exhaustive environmental impact studies. However, the EPA is extremely reluctant to do so. We’ve built exactly one new refinery since 1977. The important thing to understand here is that the EPA is a federal bureau. The President has direct influence over their actions.

Another thing: there are several different gasolines for different parts of the country, intended to be used only in very specific regions. These different blends have different pollution/emission characteristics, so “California gasoline” burns differently than, say, “Arkansas gasoline.”

This leads to distribution inefficiencies. A local spot shortage in California can’t be relieved by sending Arkansas gasoline to California, because Arkansas gasoline is not allowed there. This is an antiquated notion. Today’s cars are so much cleaner-burning than in past years that the entire rationale for region-specific gasoline blends no longer exists. Again, this is the EPA, a federal agency under Biden’s control. With vehicles today having such effective catalytic converters to reduce emissions, do we need all those different gasolines? Has anyone looked into that? The President could order this be done tomorrow.

Related to the above is the “seasonal changeover” of gasoline. Cold weather and warm weather affect gasoline differently and vehicles spew forth more or less pollution based on the air temperature. There are “winter blends” and “summer blends” of gasoline that are intended to minimize these emissions. This is a vestige of the past. We don’t need that anymore. Modern cars have effective engine computers that automatically adjust the timing and fuel mixture for optimum running. Refineries shut down during the “seasonal changeover” so they can supply the correct type of gasoline for that time of year. This creates shortages and invites refinery mishaps during the changeover itself, all of which contributes to the price. Again, the President could tell the EPA to drop this antiquated requirement tomorrow.

For the foreseeable future, say 10-20 years at least, the world’s demand for oil will continue unabated. No middle-income plumber making $53,000/year who owns a 2011 Ford Fusion with 96,000 miles is going to go out and buy a $52,000 Tesla just because Biden tells him to. Those millions of petroleum-fuel car owners around the world are going to continue to drive their cars. So, oil demand continues.

The world uses around 100 million barrels a day. In its best days, America produced around 11 million barrels a day, but now we’ve given away our energy independence. If Biden forces America to curtail that total (or not grow it), then the rest of the oil-producing world will have to make up the difference in order to meet world demand. Where and who do you want producing the oil that we don’t produce ourselves? Saudi Arabia, with their anti-Israel stance? Iran, with their terrorist-funding activities? Venezuela, with their Communist, anti-humanitarian society? Nigeria, with their unsophisticated pollution-prone methods? Russia, so they can fund their expansionist wars? See what happens when we don’t produce what we should? The demand for oil doesn’t go away just because America’s oil production is forcibly reduced. That demand just gets fulfilled by terrorist, anti-Semitic, brutal dictatorships.

This is 100% under Biden’s control.

There is so much that is under our direct control that we have only ourselves to blame for our current gasoline pricing. When a war like Ukraine causes prices to rise, that’s the perfect time for another look at things like eliminating regional gasoline blends and announcing that we’ll build new refineries. Remove outdated EPA regulations. Restart Keystone. That will reduce prices and send a positive message to the world’s oil market. Keep up the exploration for new oil. Send the best possible American message to the market. We could have minimized any war-caused price increase. That’s what the president can and should do.

Steve Feinstein | Contributed

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Looking at the 2024 contest from the other side of the race, there is no reason to expect that Joe Biden will be nominated. He has been in office for less than one year, and only diehard Democrats believe that he is not suffering from incapacitating mental deficits. The only question is which foreign adversary will take advantage of his weakness: China, Russia or Iran. So, the most likely scenario is for Biden’s resignation in 2022 or early 2023.

Trump may be popular now, but once the voters have been shocked by the disaster of one septuagenarian president why would they roll the dice on a 78-year-old Donald Trump holding office to age 82? It’s a very bad bet, especially when there are younger, capable Republicans available. Ron DeSantis is at the top of the list of strong candidates for the presidency, but by 2023 we should have other governors and several senators eager to reach for the nomination.

I believe the above makes a strong case that it would be unwise for Donald Trump to run for the presidency in 2024. That presents the big question: how to persuade Trump to play the role of “kingmaker” in late 2022 and step back from his own candidacy?

I can think of two arguments, one that has a biblical theme and one based on the movie Patton. In Deuteronomy it was written that when the Jewish people were on the verge of entering the Promised Land (Israel), Moses was only allowed to view it from Mount Nebo and died before his people entered it. Why? One interpretation is that God was punishing him for the sin of pride when he took the credit from God for finding water for his people when they desperately needed it while wandering in the desert.

The comparison to Moses would be instructive for Trump, if he were to realize that it’s not always about him. His egocentricity should not prevent him from seeing the larger issues involved in his political rise and fall. Trump’s political victory in 2016 and loss in 2020 justifies a tragic view of history. “You can’t always get what you want” to borrow a phrase from the song. His four years as President were remarkable. He accomplished so much that he could rightfully claim that he kept his campaign promises — unlike most recent presidents. Trump delivered on deregulation, taxes, economic policies, relations with America’s allies and so much more.

Imagine his frustration when he increased his vote total over 2016 by eight million votes only to lose five battleground states — all of which had suspicious ballot counting procedures. The 2020 election was successfully “rigged” as Mollie Hemingway documents so well in her book of that name because Trump’s campaign was one step behind the Democrats when they rewrote the election laws with collusive lawsuits and regulatory actions months before the election. The problem was aggravated when courts around the country, even the U.S. Supreme Court, refused to hear challenges to the unconstitutional changes both before and after the election, much less hold hearings for all the witnesses who could testify as to the election count “irregularities.”

Donald Trump has shown the way for the Republican Party to end its “capture” by corporate elitists and Washington insiders. His America First policies are as threatening to their power as Reaganism was to the party poobahs in 1980, if not more so. The Republican Party’s majority for the next few decades could be built on a base of blue-collar voters and Hispanic and Black voters, if the Anti-Trump faction of the party were to be pushed to the sidelines.

Putting it differently, Trumpism could be larger than Donald Trump if he would let it. Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, Congressman Jim Jordan in Ohio and others are ready to lead the party into the Promised Land of winning elections as frequently as a golden age from 1868 to 1916 when Grover Cleveland was the only Democrat to win the presidency.

If the analogy to Moses is not sufficient to persuade Donald Trump to throw his support behind candidates to carry on his legacy, he might find appealing a comparison to General George S. Patton. Early in the movie Patton an aide pricked the great general’s elation from a victory over the German Afrika Korps when he told him that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was temporarily in Germany and not in North Africa. The aide softened the blow to Patton’s ego when he pointed out that Patton had defeated Rommel’s war plan and thus demonstrated that he was the superior strategist.

The inverse of this could be true in 2024, if Donald Trump would lead the way for “Trumpism” to prevail over his foes both within the Republican Party and among the socialist leftists in control of the Democrat Party. His brand of patriotic populism could be the decisive difference in bringing America back from the destructive anti-freedom and even anti-American policies of the Democrats.

Trump in 2016-20 had the abrasiveness one would expect from a man from working-class Queens who pushed past the snobs of Manhattan to become a brand name in real estate development in New York City. A successful Republican candidate in 2024 would be someone carrying the Trump banner without the annoying tweets.

Donald Trump’s greatest legacy would be to transform the substance of Republican Party politics so successfully that it became a permanent and productive majority for several decades. All he must do is sacrifice some of his ego to a greater cause, while claiming the credit for showing the way into a new promised land of an America restored to its place as the “shining city on the hill” to borrow from Ronald Reagan. He could be the most transformational one-term president in American history. It’s his choice.

Patrick J. Gibbs | Columnist

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The Democratic-led House is unlikely to take it up, which means the mandate would stand, though courts have put it on hold for now. Still, the vote would senators a chance to come out against a policy that they say has sparked fears back home from businesses and from unvaccinated constituents who worry about losing their jobs should the rule go into effect.

“Every so often Washington D.C. does something that lights up the phone lines. This is one of these moments,” said Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont. At home, he said, “this issue is what I hear about. This issue is a top-of-mind issue.”

Lawmakers can invalidate certain federal agency regulations if a joint resolution is approved by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, or if Congress overrides a presidential veto. That’s unlikely to happen in this case.

Under the rule, private-sector companies with 100 or more workers must require their employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested for the virus weekly and wear masks on the job. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it would work with companies on compliance but would fine them up to $13,653 for each violation, though enforcement is suspended as the litigation unfolds.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Americans who have refused to get vaccinated are the biggest impediment to ending the pandemic. He implied that some of the resistance to mandated vaccines is based on politics.

“Some of the anti-vaxxers here in this chamber remind me of what happened 400 years ago when people were clinging to the fact that the sun revolved around the Earth. They just didn’t believe science. Or 500 years ago when they were sure the Earth was flat,” Schumer said.

Schumer said social media has played a role in spreading falsehoods about the vaccine, and “so has the far right.” He urged senators to vote against the resolution, sponsored by Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind.

“The worst thing we can do is to tie our own hands behind our backs, and let these new variants spread and grow and new ones after omicron and so many others,” Schumer said. “But that is what Republican-pushed, anti-vaccines would do.”

Republicans said they are supportive of the vaccine, but that the mandate amounts to government overreach. They said it may even contribute to people not getting vaccinated.

“I think, actually, the mandate has made it worse in terms of hardening people who don’t want to be told what to do by the government,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said a telephone town hall she recently held with constituents made clear they are concerned about their long-term ability to keep a job if the mandate goes into effect.

“If you look at my state, 40% of my state’s workforce stands to lose their job under this mandate,” Capito said. “It will be a killer to our economy.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., indicated last week he would join with Republicans in voting to void the vaccine rule, saying in a tweet that he does not support any federal vaccine mandate for private businesses. In an evenly divided Senate, one Democrat joining all Republicans would be enough to pass the resolution.

Deaths in the United States stemming from COVID-19 are running close to 1,600 a day on average. The overall U.S. death toll less than two years into the pandemic could soon reach 800,000.

KEVIN FREKING | AP News

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Even more striking, the survey found that Republicans lead Democrats on the generic congressional ballot by 10 points, 51% to 41%, an unprecedentedly strong showing for the GOP that forecasts an earthquake, tsunami and maybe a few more natural disasters for Democrats come next fall.

And who can be surprised? Biden is stumbling, out of touch and weak. Two of his major initiatives, at the border and in Afghanistan, created completely avoidable catastrophes. He has given no sense of being in control of events or even his own party. He is an accidental president who is running smack into his own inadequacies and absurd pretensions. No one in Washington over the last four decades ever said that Joe Biden was just the man with the foresight, wisdom and deft political touch to lead the free world.

No, he was an average senatorial bloviator whose first two presidential campaigns flamed out in embarrassing fashion, before he hit the jackpot when Barack Obama choose him as his running mate in 2008.

The best case for Biden’s presidency was that he could be a kind of consensus caretaker — restoring a sense of normality and maintaining a low profile while riding in the slipstream of improving economic conditions and a diminishing pandemic.

Instead, he’s been carried along by the left-wing tide of his party and repeatedly engaged in unconstitutional executive overreach. On top of it all, he’s brought his own brand of incompetence, exemplified by the botched pull-out from Afghanistan.

His foremost mistake was overestimating an attenuated electoral mandate for pedestrian governance as a permission slip for passing nearly the entirety of the progressive agenda in the space of less than a year. Not only has there been sticker shock over the price tag of the Biden agenda, but it has little connection to things people truly care about. The infrastructure bill polls well, but no one goes about their daily lives worried about the alleged crisis of crumbling bridges and tunnels.

Meanwhile, the Build Back Better bill started as a $3.5 trillion grab bag of everything that progressives want but couldn’t get in the infrastructure bill. Passing as much spending as you possibly can before you lose Congress a year from now, which is essentially the rationale behind Build Back Better, is not a compelling reason for a historic spate of federal spending. That legislation has been pared down to largely a child care and climate change bill.

That’s an unnatural pairing that came about not because those are the top two things that the public wants from Washington, but because they happen to be what Democrats think they can pass.

Only now is the White House trying to argue that the infrastructure bill and Build Back Better will address real public concerns, namely the supply chain disruptions and the inflation that is outpacing wage growth. This is clearly a tendentious, after-the-fact argument.

The White House can hope that the supply chain bottlenecks ease and inflation declines, but Biden’s disastrous first year speaks to a more intractable problem with the lackluster occupant of the Oval Office himself.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.

RICH LOWRY | Columnist

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Joe’s football weighs a hefty forty-five pounds. It is not composed of pigskin and compressed air. Instead black leather and aluminum hold classified papers and a satellite radio set.

The papers provide information ranging from the relatively mundane to the apocalyptic. Stapled sheets instruct how to use the emergency broadcast system. Loose leaf papers in one binder list secure sites for continuing the government. A second binder, the “Black Book,” lists nuclear strike options. This list can run to seventy-five pages.

The football, or Presidential Emergency Satchel, has existed since the Eisenhower administration. The football is carried by a military aide and should accompany the president at all times. The football gives the president the ability to order a nuclear strike regardless of his location.

A strike order can launch a single nuclear-tipped cruise missile or a full retaliatory barrage of ICBMs. With macabre humor, a former White House official described the incineration power of an order as varying between “rare, medium, or well done.”

On his person, the president is supposed to carry a plastic card nicknamed “the biscuit.” If the president issues a nuclear strike order, alphanumeric codes on the biscuit will authenticate his identity.

In other administrations, the biscuit and the president have become separated. President Carter left his biscuit in a suit coat that was sent to the cleaners. After President Reagan was shot, his card ended up inside one of his shoes at the hospital. President Clinton, in his typically irresponsible manner, lost his card and didn’t tell the Pentagon for several months (thankfully the Cold War was over).

To foil an interloper, valid as well as invalid codes reside on the biscuit. The president must memorize the location of the valid codes. The current president could have trouble remembering the correct location. Perhaps Dr. Jill helps him with that.

Initiation and execution of a nuclear strike would generally proceed as described below (STRATCOM is the United States Strategic Command).

If the President did choose to respond with a nuclear attack, he would identify himself to military officials at the Pentagon with codes unique to him. These codes are recorded on an ID card, known as the “biscuit,” that the President carries at all times. He would then transmit the launch order to the Pentagon and STRATCOM. The Secretary of Defense would possibly contribute to the process by confirming that the order came from the President, but this role could also be filled by an officer in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. STRATCOM would implement the order by preparing to launch the weapons needed for the selected option. According to Bruce Blair, an expert on U.S. command and control, once the order is “transmitted to the war room, they would execute it in a minute or so.”

As General Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA noted, the system “is designed for speed and decisiveness. It’s not designed to debate the decision.”

Relay of the order is governed by the two-man rule. That is, it takes the approval of two authenticated individuals for the order to proceed down the chain of command. This ensures that no one person, deranged or not, can initiate a nuclear strike.

Well, almost. The commander-in-chief is the exception. The two-man rule does not apply to him. Quoting former Vice-President Dick Cheney:

“[The president] … doesn’t have to check with anybody. He doesn’t have to call the Congress. He doesn’t have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in.”

So we come to the crux of the matter.

The crux is not whether an increasingly addled, inept, frustrated, and callous Joe Biden would order a nuclear strike. This summer, the pressures on him have grown immensely. The months of fall and winter promise no relief. This president is likely close to the cracking point, if he has not already arrived.

The crux is whether the chain of command would follow through on a strike order issued by this president? Especially if the strike was not in response to an attack, but motivated by the need for Joe to lash out at his tormentors?

The compliance to the insane order to abandon Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan provides a nauseating clue. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and everyone down the chain had to know the order would result in catastrophe, but they obeyed anyway. Not a single soul resigned in protest.

Joe, of course, would not order a strike against the true enemies of the United States. The heinous regimes of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela have little to fear. Who, then, would seething Joe move against?

His domestic opponents make for the most tempting target. Has not Joe already referred to those who would take on his administration as needing F-15s and nuclear weapons? Meaning “I’ve got them and you don’t.” Opposition in the country to his authoritarian (and unworkable) policies and proposals is growing. Reaction to his six-point vaccine mandate is the latest example.

From the Supreme Court to the red states to certain Democratic senators he is meeting determined resistance. His poll numbers are nosediving. He is mocked and ridiculed as never before. Even the formerly fawning media is heaping on criticism.

Joe could escape all this by tendering his resignation.

Or he could, in his addled anger (here and here), order strikes against the red states where reside the most resolute of his opponents. Qualifying areas of purple states could also make the attack list.

Precision strikes could vaporize the deplorables (with the well done option) while sparing blue urban areas. Such gratifying action would provide the extra benefit of securing forever a Democrat lock on Congress and the Electoral College.

How would the chain of command react to such orders? Especially if the orders were framed as necessary to counter widespread insurrection and treason?

To even ask the question shows the dangerous pickle we are in. Woke warriors Secretary Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley might applaud the order. Those officers below could well obey, to save their careers and pensions, and to further demonstrate how little they now adhere to the concept of Duty, Honor, Country.

Far fetched? Perhaps.

In the recent past, the Democrats have introduced legislation requiring the president to obtain the consent of Congress before ordering a nuclear launch and also to forbid him from ordering a first strike. These proposed laws were aimed squarely at Donald Trump. Republican opposition killed them. The Republicans probably now regret that.

As a postscript, we should note the vice-president is also issued a football.

Clayton Spann | Columnist

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Now things have changed. Last night on Capitol Hill:

Tensions rose as lawmakers returned for the evening session and a band of moderate lawmakers threatened to withhold their votes for the $3.5 trillion plan. They were demanding the House first approve a $1 trillion package of road, power grid, broadband and other infrastructure projects that’s already passed the Senate.

But as the evening dragged on the chamber came to a standstill and plans were thrown into flux as leaders and lawmakers huddled privately at the Capitol trying to broker an agreement.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi implored Democrats during a private caucus not to bog down and miss this chance to deliver on the promises Biden and the party have made to Americans.

The $1-trillion “infrastructure” bill, along with its Bernie Sanders–crafted $3.5-trillion “reconciliation” bill, are falling apart fast. The Associated Press is making no bones about it. Nancy Pelosi is begging her own moderates to play ball, and time is running out. Nine Democrats are vowing to withhold votes, likely because they are hearing from voters, and Pelosi can afford to lose only three. These Democrats seem to be OK with passing the $1-trillion “infrastructure” stimulus but are balking at attaching the $3.5-trillion rider, which is all about pork — free education, a Green New Deal, amnesty for illegals, election-rigging, and metering cars to tax them on how far they drive among the goodies, and taxpayers or the monetary presses left to pay the bills. Might that sudden hesitation be because of Biden’s failure in Afghanistan? It’s as good a guess as any. Nobody likes to be associated with a loser, and Joe Biden’s popularity with the public has taken on water fast. The media fawning is vanishing. Why attach your name to this pig of a bill as voters are rejecting Biden as incompetent? The recalcitrant Democrats, numbering nine, are likely hearing from voters who have had enough and can see the guided missile this pork bill has in store for the economy and the American way of life. For one thing, the oversized pork bill should bankrupt America at a time of high inflation, leaving the country in a sea of Argentina-like debt with no cash for a national security emergency, as Sen. Joe Manchin has pointed out. Think we might get some national security challenges now that tens of thousands of Afghani refugees are being let in with uncertain vetting, and China and Russia are licking their chops? Beyond that, the amnesty should encourage millions more border-crossers as if there weren’t already enough with Joe’s open border. Those are just a couple of things, and potential for greenie corruption in this bill is bound to be amazing.

The Democrats had been docile under Pelosi’s thumb, right up until the Afghanistan catastrophe. Apparently, some are waking up, not out of a sudden concern for fiscal discipline, but more likely a desire to keep their congressional seats. They know that a red wave is coming with this Afghanistan fiasco, and it’s going to get big soon. The so-called moderate Democrats resemble rats now, fleeing a sinking ship, although to be fair, the big ‘rats are staying behind. Nancy Pelosi is holding fat-cat fundraisers where only dark-skinned servants wear masks in tony Napa County, California. On the Senate side, Chuck Schumer is hoofing around to gangsta rap with Stephen Colbert in New York’s Central Park, both fiddling while Afghanistan burns.

It seems that for Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who continuously tell us all’s well in Afghanistan and Joe’s the hero, reality is coming to bite them. The Taliban have a clarifying effect on voters. Joe’s signature accomplishment bill is now collapsing. Afghanistan’s eating Joe’s and Nancy’s pork.

Monica Showalter | Columnist

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