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    Pollsters Missed the Target – Overreacted to Favoring Dems by Favoring GOP in Midterms

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    0
    Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    ANALYSIS – ‘Red ripple.’ For at least the last several elections, pollsters have consistently oversampled Democrats and undercounted Republicans, wrongly skewing the polls in the Dems’ favor.

    This is something I have written about before, and the pollster errors include the ‘shy Trump supporter’ effect where conservatives simply shun pollsters or avoid giving their true views out of fear of retribution or being ‘canceled.’

    Frank Luntz, a political strategist said to The Hill: “We knew from 2016, 2018 and even 2020 that Trump voters tended not to respond to pollsters because they thought that the results would be used against them.” 

    This time around the pollsters seem to have screwed up in the opposite direction, overcompensating by overweighting Republican supporters and predicting a ‘Red Wave’ in the midterm elections that never materialized.

    I must admit, I too assumed that the pollsters would continue to err in favor of Dems and hence believed the polling was still undercounting Republicans.

    But as they say – you should never assume because then you make an ‘ass out of u and me.’

    And as Luntz added, “past errors caused pollsters to over-index Republicans.”

    The Daily Caller News Foundation just did a solid analysis on this latest pollster screw-up.

    As the Daily Caller reports:

    Weighting Republican respondents more heavily than Democratic respondents in polls led to an overestimation of GOP support, which created the mirage of a “red wave” this midterm season, polling experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

    In the House of Representatives, FiveThirtyEight, based on an aggregation of major polls, predicted a 228-seat GOP majority as the most likely outcome, while RealClearPolitics had projected at least 227 seats, with additions from 34 tossup races. In the Senate, FiveThirtyEight forecast 51 seats for the GOP, with 52 and 53 seats being as likely, while RealClearPolitics forecast 53 seats for Senate Republicans.

    The results were significantly different from these projections. Though some races are yet to be called, Democrats retained control of the Senate, having won 50 seats as of writing, while Republicans, though projected to win the House, will have a narrow majority close to the 218 seats necessary for one.

    The Daily Caller continues:

    In the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, former President Donald Trump significantly overperformed polling in several states that pegged him to lose, with his unexpected 2016 wins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina giving him an Electoral College majority to win. Though Trump lost the 2020 election, he still won states like Florida and Ohio and came close to winning races in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, which polling firms had estimated would be easily won by Joe Biden.

    In all, in 2020, polls underestimated the presidential popular vote, swing-state vote, Democratic House majority and the Democratic Senate majority. The American Academy of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) called it the “worst performance for polls since 1980.”

    And this appears to have caused the severe pollster overcompensation we saw leading up to the midterms.

    In artillery, you often fire beyond (long) and before (short of) a target to close in on it and ‘fire for effect.’ This is called ‘bracketing.’

    The idea is that on the third salvo you should hit the target close to spot on.

    Let’s see if these varied pollster results that undercounted GOP voters and then overcounted them were the ‘bracketing’ needed prior to their getting the 2024 polls right.

    I’m not optimistic. GAND

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: THIS IS How We Win!

    By
    Amanda Head
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    1
    PBS logo via Wikimedia Commons

    Is it time to cancel PBS? Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt is leading the charge and says it’s time to stop using taxpayer dollars to fund controversial programming to indoctrinate kids.

    Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    New Plan for Old Biden: Tennis Shoes and Baby Stairs on Air Force One

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    6
    The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – In case you missed it, Joe Biden tripped again recently going down the stairs of Air Force One. And these weren’t the normal tall stairs used by proud Commanders in Chief, that rise all the way to the top of the majestic presidential aircraft, but the very short baby stairs that are used by ‘the help’ that go into the lower bowels of the plane.

    That is the new normal for our aging and decrepit occupant of the White House. That and tennis shoes worn with business suits and seeing a physical therapist. All to avoid tripping, slipping, or falling, and not being able to get back up.

    This latest slip occurred just hours after Axios reported Biden’s campaign is “working on a critical project for his re-election bid: Make sure he doesn’t trip.”

    ‘Operation Don’t Let Biden Fall’ would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. But as Axios notes: “Biden’s team is betting that any mockery he receives over using the shorter Air Force One steps and wearing tennis shoes will be worth it to avoid another public stumble.”

    Many Democrats worry about Biden having a bad fall like Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, 73 at the time, had in September 1996, when he fell off a stage at a rally weeks before the election.

    Democrats already had been knocking Dole about his age compared to the 50-year-old Bill Clinton running for re-election.

    Biden has repeatedly stumbled and tripped in public, including, most dramatically on stage at the Air Force’s graduation in June. 

    Biden’s physician has diagnosed Biden’s stumbles as likely caused by “a combination of significant spinal arthritis” and “mild post-fracture foot arthritis.” 

    Folksy old Biden might just say he is getting long in the tooth.

    Biden, the oldest-ever serving U.S. president, turns 81 in less than two months. Three-fourths of Americans see Biden as too old for office, according to an AP-NORC poll last month.

    Another poll from the Washington Post and ABC News in late September found that 3 out of 5 Democrats would prefer someone else be the party’s 2024 nominee.

    The president’s doctor has recommended special exercises for balance, which he called “proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.”

    Unfortunately, Axios noted, no one has ever heard of these “maneuvers.”

    “I have never heard the term ‘proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.’ It is not a clinical term in standard use,” said Professor James Gordon, associate dean and chair of the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California.

    Biden’s doctor is just as good as Biden at using made up words or as good as the White House Press secretary is at blowing smoke.

    As bad as his obvious physical frailty is, Americans should be just as concerned, or more so, about Biden’s severe mental decline. 

    And it must be bad, when even the establishment media has noticed. NBC News reported in July:

    Apparent to anyone paying attention is that the Biden they may remember from the Robert Bork Supreme Court confirmation hearings of 1987, or the vice presidential debate with Sarah Palin in 2008, is a different man today. His gait is less steady, his speech not as fluid. He has confused Iraq with Ukraine and Rolling Fork, Mississippi, with “Rolling Stone.” At a conference last year, he looked out at the audience and called for a congresswoman who had recently died in a car crash.

    The outlet added that Biden is “relying on “extra-large font on his teleprompter and note cards to remind him of the points he wants to make in meetings.”

    I must note that I’ve seen the extra-large font on his teleprompter, and it is embarrassingly HUGE.

    Meanwhile, the New York Times reported in June that Biden’s “staff schedules most of his public appearances between noon and 4 p.m. and leave him alone on weekends as much as possible.”

    But there is only so much you can do to hide the fact that this man should be in a rocking chair with his grandkids, not leading the free world. 

    It is doubtful that Team Biden can keep their man from falling during the camapign, it is even more doubtful that – barring keeping him isolated in a soundproof bubble – they can keep him from babbling incoherently.

    Either way, we definitely don’t want Biden answering what Hillary Clinton in 2008 called “the 3am phone call” to the White House in a major crisis. And I can see a lot of those calls coming in over the next four years.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Mexican Cartels Ready to Overwhelm Border with 1 Million Migrants

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    4
    CBP Photography, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    ALERT – “I’m sorry, you’re screwed.” It is long known among intelligence and border control officials that the powerful Mexican drug cartels use illegal migrant flows to smuggle drugs into the United States. 

    As the migrant numbers surge, so does the drug smuggling. And illegal immigration has exploded under Joe Biden to unprecedented levels.

    Migrant encounters increased from 480,000 in 2020 to 2.3 million last year, according to CBP. 

    This is partly why we have a deadly fentanyl crisis in America right now. 

    As Fox News previously reported:

    The cartels have established effective — and lucrative — smuggling operations and use the migrant surge to bypass overwhelmed Border Patrol officials, according to Lines. Migrants can pay the cartels to help them cross the border, but if they can’t afford the cost, then they can traffic drugs or work off their debt in lieu of cash.

    A George Mason University professor told The New York Times that cartel fees for migrants crossing the border range between $4,000 and $20,000.

    This is why many migrants reportedly remain “indebted to the cartel” after crossing into the U.S., and are forced to work off their debts.

    And now Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) has said that these Mexican narcos are preparing to overwhelm U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) by inundating the southern border with between 700,000 and one million illegal immigrants as soon as Title 42 is lifted.

    This, Biggs says, is according to a county supervisor from his state, whose county sits right on the border. 

    The county official was just briefed by the CPB sector chiefs from San Diego through Yuma to Tucson. They warned that there are between 700,000 and one million migrants currently massing south of the border.

    And as soon as Title 42 is lifted the cartels plan to “overwhelm the system.” Biggs said CBP officials are telling local officials: “I’m sorry. You’re screwed.”

    Biggs reported this on Steve Bannon’s ‘War Room.’

    Referring to the incoming tsunami of illegal migrants, Rep. Biggs said the CBP does not have the resources to “keep them in detention and processing facilities.”

    “When those facilities get full…they’re going to just take pictures. They’re not even going to do full on processing. They’re going to take pictures. If we’re lucky fingerprints, [but] probably not even that,” Biggs warned. “And then they’re going to release them right into the local communities along the border.”

    In January, Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines told Fox News that Mexican cartels control the southern border in his Arizona county and they endanger Americans as they smuggle drugs and violent criminals into the U.S.

    “This is not a political discussion,” Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines warned. “This is a national security issue.”

    “Unless this situation changes and we take back control from the cartels, for the trafficking coming across our border, it will only get worse,” Lines said. 

    Not only that, but terrorists are coming through as well. According to CPB, nearly 100 known or suspected terrorists were arrested at the southern border last year. That is four times the number of 26 arrests over the previous five years.

    How many terrorists can we expect to be hidden now among the one million migrants ready to swarm the border?

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Biden Weaponizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be ‘Woke’

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    0
    President Joe Biden delivers remarks in National Statuary Hall on the one-year anniversary of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Thursday, January 6, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

    ANALYSIS – Question – What’s worse than regular people being indoctrinated to be woke leftists? Answer – a global woke leftist Artificial Intelligence (AI) helping them. 

    And apparently, and not unsurprisingly, that’s what Joe Biden and his team want. And they are working hard to achieve this nefarious goal. 

    And it is terrifying.

    The American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a government watchdog group, recently warned that Team Biden is actively using the federal government’s vast power to regulate AI to promote a “woke” ideology in the basic architecture of the revolutionary, powerful, and dangerous new technology.

    That ‘woke’ ideology promotes affirmative action racism under the guise of ‘anti-racism,’ and radical transgenderism as gender ‘equity.’ Please note ‘equity’ is the opposite of equality. It means forcing equal results not providing equal opportunities.

    It is essentially un-American – simply a new way to say socialism.

    But Orwellian doublespeak is the way the left sugarcoats and soft peddles its poison.

    After researching Team Biden’s plans for artificial intelligence, AAF concluded that Biden administration officials are planning to feed emerging AI platforms with “dangerous ideologies.”

    Add that to the growing list of the dangers of AI.

    AAF just released part one of a multi-part “investigation into WOKE AI.”

    “They have plans to rig AI in the name of fighting ‘algorithmic discrimination,’ ‘harmful bias,’ and ‘data that fails to account for existing systemic biases in American society,’” the group tweeted on June 25.

    Fox News reported:

    “Under the guise of fighting ‘algorithmic discrimination’ and ‘harmful bias,’ the Biden administration is trying to rig AI to follow the woke left’s rules,” AAF president Tom Jones told Fox News Digital.

    “Biden is being advised on technology policy, not by scientists, but by racially obsessed social academics and activists. We’re already seen the biggest tech firms in the world, like Google under Eric Schmidt, use their power to push the left’s agenda. This would take the tech/woke alliance to a whole new, truly terrifying level.”

    Arati Prabhakar, director of Biden’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, seen in the twitter thread above, recently touted Biden’s signing of an executive order that, in her words, “promotes data equity,” directs agencies to fight “algorithmic discrimination” and ensures these agencies use AI to advance “equity…”

    Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden named “AI czar” is supposedly in charge of the National Science and Technology Council which oversees all science and technology efforts across the federal government.

    As part of that effort, the White House’s Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence released the National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan, which calls for additional resources to fight “harmful biases.”

    Fox reported that the AAF memo showed another example of how Team Biden is weaponizing AI.

    The “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” released by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy last October talks of “algorithmic discrimination” in which AI systems treat people differently based on their race, sex or other characteristics and calls for data “used as part of system development or assessment” to be “reviewed for bias based on the historical and societal context of the data.”

    To address such concerns, the blueprint recommends, among other steps, that “proactive equity assessments as part of the system design.”

    But AAF isn’t the only one sounding the alarm about Biden’s woke AI, Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk also warned about the danger of “woke” artificial intelligence being weaponized to push political agendas through false information.

    Last December, he tweeted: “The danger of training AI to be woke — in other words, lie — is deadly.” 

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    VP Vance Predicts ‘Dumbest’ Democrat Candidate Will Secure Nomination In 2028

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
    -
    0

    Vice President JD Vance took aim at the Democratic Party’s likely 2028 presidential contenders during a lighthearted but pointed exchange on Fox News, joking that the party’s “dumbest” candidate is most likely to emerge from the primary.

    In an exclusive interview released Wednesday on Jesse Watters Primetime, Watters raised speculation about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s national ambitions, noting the governor’s frequent media appearances and rumored White House aspirations.

    “Gavin Newsom, obviously, is running for president. Have you seen this guy cross his legs? Have you ever seen anyone cross their legs like that?” Watters asked jokingly.

    “My legs don’t cross like that, Jesse,” Vance replied with a laugh. “You can interpret that however you want to.”

    Watters went on to frame the looming Democratic contest as a showdown between Newsom and Vice President Kamala Harris.

    “Gavin and Kamala are on a collision course,” Watters said. “Who’s gonna win?”

    “The dumbest candidate will probably win,” Vance quipped. “That’s my guess with the Democratic Party.”

    Vance argued that the current Democratic bench reflects deeper structural problems within the party, particularly its fixation on identity politics over competence.

    “I mean, look, the Democrats have a couple of big issues, and one is that they lean so far into wokeism that they can’t see the obviousness of the fact, which is that Kamala Harris is not qualified to be president of the United States,” Vance said.

    “That’s why she got the vice presidential nomination. That’s why she got the presidential nomination. This is who Kamala Harris is.”

    Vance contrasted Harris with Newsom, describing the California governor as emblematic of failed progressive governance.

    “Now, the flip side is, I think you have an unbelievably corrupt and incompetent governor in Gavin Newsom,” he said. “The fact that those are the two frontrunners just suggests how deeply deranged the Democrat Party is. Let them fight it out. We’ll figure it out.”

    A Weak Democratic Bench for 2028

    While Newsom and Harris dominate early speculation, Democrats face a thin and fractured 2028 field. Other frequently mentioned names include Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—each of whom carries significant liabilities with general-election voters. Many Democrats privately acknowledge that the party lacks a unifying figure with broad national appeal, particularly as voters continue to recoil from progressive economic and cultural policies.

    Republicans, by contrast, are positioning themselves as the party of stability, affordability, and public safety heading into the next election cycle.

    Cost of Living and Accountability

    Watters noted that Democrats are expected to campaign heavily on cost-of-living issues in upcoming elections, a strategy Vance dismissed as deeply hypocritical.

    “That’s a pot-meet-kettle situation,” Vance argued, pointing to Democratic-led policies that fueled inflation, higher energy costs, and housing shortages.

    He credited the Trump administration with reversing those trends.

    “We haven’t even been in office for a year, and you’ve already seen prices start to come down. You’ve seen rents start to come down. You’ve seen groceries leveling off,” Vance said.

    “Is there more work to do? Absolutely. But the people who are going to do that work is the Trump administration, is the president of the United States, who is solving the Democrats’ affordability crisis.”

    “You don’t give power back to the very people who set the house on fire,” he added. “You give more power to the person who put the fire out.”

    Impeachment Politics

    When asked whether Democrats would attempt to impeach President Trump again if they regain control of Congress, Vance said such a move would be predictable—and revealing.

    “I’m sure he’ll get impeached,” Vance said. “Look, they have nothing to actually run on or govern on.”

    “Their entire obsessive focus of that party is they hate Donald Trump,” he continued. “So, if they ever get power, are they going to lower Americans’ taxes? No. Are they going to make your life more affordable? No. Are they going to solve the crime crisis? No.”

    “What they’re going to do is they’re going to spend all their time and all of your money trying to get Donald Trump.”

    Vance urged voters to focus on results rather than partisan theatrics.

    “I think the American people should vote for the people who want to make their life more affordable, who want to make their neighborhoods safer,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to deliver every single day.”

    Newsom Responds With a Meme

    Newsom’s office responded to the interview with a digitally altered image of Vance crossing his legs in an exaggerated pose, captioned: “We all know JD copies Daddy.”

    House GOP just rolled out the OFFICIAL America 250 Membership & you’ve been selected for a coveted spot on the roster. This celebration will be remembered for DECADES — and we want you to have a front-row seat to it all. We’re asking a select group of TOP PATRIOTS to answer the following questions and join the House GOP’s official America 250 Membership. [Respond HERE]

    Should Trump Bring Back His Winning ’16 Campaign Chief?

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    2

    ANALYSIS – Will Kellyanne Conway return to Team Trump? As Kamala Harris, who recently stole the campaign from her boss, Joe Biden, basks in her current sugar high glory, some in the Trump campaign are wondering if his team needs a reboot. 

    Or maybe an injection of a 2016 winner.

    And who better to revitalize Trump’s campaign, than his winning campaign manager from 2016, Kellyanne Conway.

    At least Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, reportedly thinks so.

    And a recent post on X showing pics of Conway and Trump together in New Jersey has fueled the speculation that a return to the campaign is in the works.

    In 2016 the brash flaxen haired pollster-turned campaign chief swooped in after the campaign’s failing start with its B Team and is rightly credited as helping to get Trump across the finish line to victory against Hillary Clinton.

    According to the Daily Beast:

    Donald Trump is looking to bring in Kellyanne Conway to shake up his faltering campaign, according to a new report.

    The outspoken adviser is seen as a trusted confidante by both the former president and, importantly, by Melania Trump who is “pushing” for Conway to return because she sees her as “a familiar face amid a sea of relative newcomers,” says Tara Palmeri in the online magazine, Puck.

    Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and wife of Trump’s son, Eric, is also said to be pushing for Conway to be brought on board to reignite campaign stalwarts taken by surprise by Kamala Harris’ fast start after Joe Biden’s sudden departure.

    One adviser told Puck that Trump listens to powerful women, more than men. “He listens to Hope Hicks. He listens to Brooke Rollins,” they tell Puck. “Ironically, he likes powerful women. If you’re a sharp woman, he will listen to you. Hope and these people could tell him the hardest shit. He may not have done anything, but at least he listens.”

    While she was a key player in Trump’s 2016 win, eight years ago, she could still be the spark that relights the fire of a campaign still unsteady after Harris’ surprising Democrat Party coup and subsequent rise.

    Puck notes:

    …it may also be fair to question whether his brain trust is living in the past. Chris LaCivita, who famously ran the Swift Boat Veterans campaign against John Kerry, has spearheaded an attack on Walz’s military record, but it’s yet to have the same impact as it did in 2004, when the U.S. had recently invaded Iraq. Other Trump allies are wondering if pollster Tony Fabrizio is likewise frozen in carbonite, as he considers a race-baiting strategy against Harris akin to the Willie Horton ads against Dukakis back in 1988. 

    Team Harris has raised $310 million in July, and another $36 million in the 24 hours after announcing her stolen Valor radical VP choice, Tim Walz.

    So far Team Trump hasn’t been able to land any significant blows on his younger female political opponent.

    According to Puck, Trump’s campaign team is split in half over whether she should return in a similar role to the one she had in 2016.

    Meanwhile, Conway is smoothing over any ruffled feather with JD Vance after openly suggesting Marco Rubio as Trump’s VP.

    As part of her mending relations effort, Conway recently tweeted “Brilliant” to Vance’s stunt when he landed at the same airport as Harris and Walz and challenged her to debate.

    One big potential drawback to Team Trump is the fact that Conway recently registered as a $50,000- a month foreign agent for a Ukrainian oligarch.

    This is already provoking accusations among her critics that it would be a conflict of interest. However, a campaign manager or advisor is not the same as a member of the administration. So, that issue may not matter much in these final three months of the campaign.

    The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.

    Biden Defies Law Requiring Release of COVID Lab Leak Docs While Meeting with Communist China

    By
    Donny Ferguson
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    3
    Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    President Joe Biden has defied a federal law, which he signed, requiring him to declassify all government documents on the origins of the COVID-19 virus, including intelligence on leaks from Communist China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.


    And, as U.S. Senator Mike Braun (R-IN) notes, Biden’s failure to release the documents under a mandated 90-day deadline came on the same day his administration met with Communist Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

    “The White House is now overdue to declassify their COVID lab leak intel, and there is no ‘Secretary of State is meeting with Xi Jinping’ exception in the law President Biden signed,” Senator Braun said. 

    “We need to know the truth about how this pandemic started and China’s role in covering it up, and the White House must respect the text of the law passed unanimously in both chambers by the people’s representatives,” Braun added.

    “Last week, Senators Braun and Hawley sent a letter to President Biden demanding he implement the COVID Origins Act of 2023, and declassify and release all information related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic,” a statement from Braun continued.

    That letter asked Biden to comply with the COVID Origins Act of 2023, which Biden signed into law in March, requiring Biden to “declassify intelligence related to any potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of the Covid pandemic within 90 days.”

    That deadline passed June 18, while the Biden Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met with, and praised, Xi.

    That has not stopped others from uncovering more evidence of the role of Communist China’s regime in causing the global pandemic.

    “Last week, reporters Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi reported the names of the three Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers who were the first to contract COVID, as sourced from multiple government officials,” Braun’s office notes.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: My Thoughts on the Speaker Votes

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    1

    It’s been a long week in the House of Representatives. A tumultuous battle for House Speaker has put Congress on hold indefinitely.

    Watch Amanda break down the ongoing situation below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Is Vivek Ramaswamy The GOP’s New Trump ‘Lite’?

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    13
    Vivek Ramaswamy speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

    ANALYSIS- Who is this skinny guy with the funny-sounding name? (That was his opening line at the debate). Vivek Ramaswamy wasn’t supposed to be at the center of the first Republican presidential candidate debate in Milwaukee.

    Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the viable GOP alternative to Donald Trump. A two-term governor of the third most populous state in the union, DeSantis, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq, is as conservative as they come.

    And he has a proven track record of fighting the left in Florida – and winning.

    But despite his solid bona fides and resume, DeSantis has a personality problem. He just doesn’t exude charm or confidence, and that’s hurting him – a lot.

    Meanwhile, Ramaswamy the 38-year-old Trump-defending, Cincinnati-born, biotech billionaire (worth at least $950 million), son of Pakistani immigrants, kind of stole the show at the debate.

    According to former FBI agent and body language expert, Joe Navarro: “[Ramaswamy] consistently looked the most comfortable on stage.”

    He was also the most openly and unabashedly pro-Trump. He was the first candidate to raise their hand when asked who would support the former President as the party nominee even if he is convicted on felony charges that he’s facing.

    He has also promised to pardon Trump if elected. But he went even farther than that.

    “President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century,” Ramaswamy said in a clip from the debate Trump posted on Truth Social.

    And Trump loved it.

    “This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH. Thank you, Vivek!”

    The ever-smiling political newbie Ramaswamy, who seemed to be having a blast on stage, was also the target of many of his GOP rivals.

    As TIME reported:

    Maybe it was Ramaswamy’s consistent and confounding defense of All Things Trump. Maybe it was his smooth talk and culture-war acumen. Maybe it was just the fact that Ramaswamy frankly does not care how things were done before and might just have enough self-made money to go the distance.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie snarled that he had “had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” an A.I. battery. He then dismissed Ramaswamy as someone on the same level as a political figure universally loathed in the GOP. “The last person in one of these debates… who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What is a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama. And I am afraid we are dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight,” Christie said.

    But the quick witted Ramaswamy’s riposte to Christie was a zinger: “Give me a hug like you did to Obama, and you’ll help elect me just like you did to Obama. Give me the damn hug, brother.”

    Ramaswamy was referring to the 2012 incident when Christie was accused of “hugging” Obama during his visit in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy which hit days before the 2012 presidential election.

    It’s a claim that Christie has been denying since then, saying: “I didn’t hug him.”

    Photos at the time seem to back up Christie, but the zinger still worked.

    Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN under Trump, and ex-South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, who is of Indian descent, hit Ramaswamy too: “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”

    I would agree with that assessment and believe he has made a few deeply flawed important national security statements – including on Ukraine and Israel.

    But he is super smart and can learn quickly.

    Then Vice President Mike Pence took a Christie-like jab at Ramaswamy, attacking the very same quality that originally helped raise Trump in the GOP base – that he is not a politician.

    “Now it’s not the time for on-the-job training,” retorted Pence. “We don’t need to bring in a rookie. We don’t need to bring in people with no experience.”

    AS TIME noted: “Attacks during debates are the norm but this was different. Ramaswamy’s competitors really don’t like him. Not even a little.”

    However, there is one important GOP rival who seems to like Ramaswamy – Donald Trump. And that could be all that matters.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

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