Jailin' Joe's Junta: Biden's Best Bet
Felonies (and loss of voting rights) for all Trump voters!
One of the most frequent topics on this ‘Stack is censorship — both “official” government censorship and censorship by private companies (often at the behest of government). Another frequent topic is the use of lawfare in order to advance political agendas.
Last week, these strategies combined when long-time Trump supporter and adviser Steven Bannon was ordered to begin serving a sentence for contempt of Congress, just months before the 2024 presidential election.
This story mirrors that of Peter Navarro, who began serving his sentence in March. Both men were found guilty after ignoring subpoenas from the now-disbanded January 6th committee. (Reminder the committee edited footage, rejected Republican committee members, failed to interview then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, and ultimately deleted evidence before disbanding.)
Not many people remember that Bannon ultimately did offer to speak with the committee, but in a live, public hearing. This, of course, would not do. Bannon hosts the popular podcast “War Room”, and is DANGEROUSLY good at talking. In an interview with NPR, Bloomberg Businessweek correspondent Joshua Green explains:
What Trump and what Bannon would like better than anything is to go in and testify at a public hearing and cause all sorts of a ruckus, to seize the narrative that the January 6 committee has very carefully constructed and offer a counter-story, misinformation about who really won the election, the sort of thing that Steve Bannon is very good at doing, if you listen to his podcast or any of his public speeches. So what's going on here, I think, is two things. No. 1, Bannon really doesn't want to go to jail, and so he's trying to avoid accountability for having spurned the subpoena. And the second thing is, I think he'd like to change the narrative around the January 6 committee.
The last thing that the January 6th committee wanted was for ANYBODY to “change the narrative” — by pointing out facts — surrounding 1/6 or the government’s “investigation”. (Especially if it happened on live TV!) So the government ignored his offer and now he’s in jail for refusing to speak to the government.
This recent filing highlighted by Julie Kelly highlights just how serious Bannon’s offense was:
Oh no! A media figured used his platform to mock members of the government! Somebody listening might have STARTED ACTING VIOLENT! (Which of course would then be Bannon’s fault!) He makes a mockery of our totally serious sham committee!
Long-time readers might recall I am guilty of these exact same offenses — because I tell the truth. And the truth is the January 6th Committee WAS a secretive sham borne of desperation to maintain the lie that 1/6 was an “insurrection”. Democrats have made it the focal point of their political campaigns ever since — even while ignoring similar protests from the left.
But Bannon is up charges because he’s guilty of the worst sin of all — he’s EFFECTIVE. Listen to how “Morning Joe” describes the situation:
Sure is “lucky” that Bannon is silenced for basically the duration of the election! Just like it’s “lucky” that Epoch Times CFO Weidong Guan was just indicted on money laundering charges, and that Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay $150 MILLION to the Ray Epps of election workers. It’s so “lucky” that government keeps silencing its critics!
But all snark aside, ignoring Congress is a very serious offense, and NOBODY IS ABOVE THE LAW!
I’m sure that Attorney General Merrick Garland is writing up Hunter’s arrest paperwork now — and he’ll turn it in as soon as he’s done ignoring his OWN Congressional subpoena:
You see, some requests from Congress are legitimate, but some can be ignored. It’s a very complex system that boils down to “Fuck you, that’s why.”
But ultimately it doesn’t matter if you’re good at getting people to vote FOR Republicans or good at getting people to vote AGAINST Democrats — as Matt Tabbi’s recent article explains.
During the leadup to the 2018 midterm elections, Brandon Straka released a 6-minute video explaining his reluctance to continue supporting the Democratic party:
This video launched the #WalkAway campaign, which quickly grew to over 100,000 members — many of whom created videos similar to Straka’s that explained their own reasons for “Walking Away” from Democrats.*
As Taibbi’s article explains, The Swamp leapt into action, discrediting the movement as a Russian operation via bogus “analysis” by groups such as Hamilton 68. (Which “luckily” showed up to counter “Russian misinformation” in 2017!)
As we learned in a later round of “The CTI Files”, Hamilton 68 simply labeled ordinary right-wing posters as “Russian bots” — with the obvious result that every “right-wing” story automatically becomes “Russian disinformation” because it’s amplified by leading figures in conservative media.
This is eerily like the “Ukraine’s enemies list” just published by US-funded NGO “Texty.org.ua”. Included in the list: Donald Trump and his supporters, Tucker Carlson viewers, Ron Paul libertarians, CODEPINK, and “The Squad”. Now, anything done by any of those people — or those they are affiliated with — can be dismissed because it comes from “Enemies of Ukraine!” (In a related note, I want to apologize to my readers for not making this list. In the future I shall endeavor to further emphasize how much of a waste it is to fund Ukraine — for war OR biolabs. Perhaps then I’ll make the list like Matt Taibbi and Jordan Schachtel — congrats to them!)
All these stories prove that when you’re effective at getting an unapproved message out, you get attacked — no matter the issue. In 2022, Texas Children's Hospital proclaimed it had stopped issuing puberty blockers and performing surgeries for transitioning children.
In May 2023, Eithan Haim leaked files proving the hospital was lying. You’ll guess what happened next:
Instead of being shielded by government’s whistleblower protection, government sent in armed goons:
In a comment further down the thread, Haim claims that defending himself would run at least $500,000 in legal fees, stating “We need a miracle at this point.”
That’s the brutal reality of lawfare — going against an opponent with unlimited funds who wants nothing more than to make an example of you for making them look stupid (and evil). As we learned during covid, nothing shuts up people faster than threatening their livelihoods.
The silver lining here is that other people are horrified by this increasing lawfare and are coming to the same conclusion I wrote about last week — the first step in reversing our path down the censorship/lawfare road is removing Joe Biden (or an equally terrible replacement candidate) from office.
“In a straight choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, if you care about democracy, if you care about freedom, I don’t know how you could do anything other than vote for Donald Trump for precisely the reasons that they claim that you can’t,” Brand told Pipko.
“They act as if a vote for Donald Trump is almost like you’re directly voting for Armageddon, like you see hysterical performances outside of courtrooms, endless MSNBC bombast,” Brand continued.” But I’m starting to think that no, a greater threat to democracy is this kind of technological feudalism, that tells you that it cares about you and that it’s protecting vulnerable people, all the while increasing censorship, increasing the funding of wars, increasing the division between ordinary Americans.”
And while Russell Brand is now smeared as “right-wing”, he certainly didn’t start there — and his “transformation” didn’t happen overnight. As a comedian and podcast host, Brand places free speech VERY high on his list of priorities. (As did Straka in 2018.)
Brand isn’t the only one speaking out about the dangers of this road. During a recent trip to Washington DC, outspoken rapper Curtis Jackson (known as “50 Cent”) noted the lawfare against former President Trump has backfired in the black community. Poll numbers seem to suggest he’s correct:
A Wall Street Journal poll from April found that 30 percent of black men and 11 percent of black women have intentions to vote for Trump in the upcoming election. This represented an increase from 2020 when only 12 percent of black men had voted for Trump. Six percent of black women stated they would vote for Trump in 2020.
Surely lawfare isn’t the SOLE reason that support levels from black males is 250% of 2020 and black females is almost 200% of 2020, but it’s certainly a major factor.
This isn’t the first time Jackson has made a stir with pro-Trump comments. I’ll finish this article with a clip of Jackson’s ex-girlfriend Chelsea Handler doing an interview with Jimmy Fallon after Jackson’s comments in 2020. Try not to wretch.
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
I failed.
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*: After founding “WalkAway”, Straka eventually supported Donald Trump in 2020 and was sentenced to three years probation for taking part in January 6th. This gave Facebook the excuse they needed to close the #WalkAway group, which had over half a million members.
"...the Defendant has leveraged his media platform to mock members of the committee through offensive name calling, deride the Committee's investigation through rhetoric that risks inspiring violence..."
What they're suggesting is that Bannon is a "stochastic terrorist." The idea is that a prominent person with a big enough platform and broad enough reach knows that someone, somewhere is listening and will basically become a Manchurian Candidate who attacks a specific target on their behalf.
This is one of the Left's favored speech suppression tactics now, and it's an especially disgusting one because people like Bannon (and Trump) can be associated with all manner of imaginable violent or immoral acts even if no act has been committed. And the more you assert that they're engaging in "rhetoric that risks inspiring violence," the more immediately you can pin the blame on them the moment something does happen, regardless of details.
Never mind that Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, Jen Psaki, etc. have basically been begging someone to assassinate Trump for months now.
Did that white lady say she had to remind 50 cent that he is black and therefore can't vote for trump???🤣🤣🤣 why do these people say things out loud?