NOVEMBER 8, 2016: Then-President-Elect Donald J. Trump speaks to supporters on Election Night in New York York City. (Photo: Associated Press)
The USC Dornsife/LA Times Presidential Election Poll and Investor’s Business Daily TIPP Poll are taking victory laps for predicting Donald J. Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton. But they, and those in the media citing them, are inaccurately claiming those two polls were the only two that got it right.
“Not one other national poll had Trump winning in four-way polls,” IBD Editorials falsely claimed last week.
Sorry, but that’s incorrect. In fact, they predicted the eventual winner, but missed the actual margin.
Since July, millions of political junkies and consumers visited People’s Pundit Daily to keep tabs on our national tracking poll, which not only gauged the four-way race but did so months before the IBD/TIPP tracking poll even began.
On Election Day, our final results with undecideds allocated had President-Elect Trump winning by a 0.6% margin, which was and still will be closer to the final popular vote margin when all the votes are counted.
IBD/TIPP’s final results gave Mr. Trump an edge of 1.6-points in a four-way race. The LA Times Poll, which I defended in October against an almost unanimous chorus of scrutiny, showed Mr. Trump up in a two-way race by 3 points.
While they didn’t poll the four-way contest–something that was always an unrealistic hypothetical–it will still be several points off the actual margin.
On the state level, only Trafalger Group, a Republican polling firm that correctly caught last-minute movement to Mr. Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania, came close to PPD. The final PPD Keystone State Battleground Poll released on November 6 found Donald Trump taking 48.4% of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 47.8%, a statistical tie that nearly nailed the vote exactly.
The final results: Mr. Trump got 48.8% of the vote to 47.6% for Mrs. Clinton. It doesn’t get much closer than that, particularly in a state Republican presidential candidates have failed to carry for roughly 3 decades. In Florida, where we are based, the final PPD Sunshine State Battleground Poll found Mr. Trump leading by 2 points. He won by about 1.4%.
In Michigan and Wisconsin, the final PPD Battleground State Polls found the two candidates tied but leaning to the Republican nominee by less than 0.5%. In Colorado, the final PPD Rocky Mountain Battleground State Poll found Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Trump by 3 points, 48% to 45%. She won by 3 points, 47% to 44%. The final PPD Tar Heel State Battleground Poll found Mr. Trump leading by 3 points, 49% to 46%. He won by 4 points, 51% to 47%.
Here’s the bottom line: People’s Pundit Daily (PPD) is now America’s most accurate pollster and election forecaster, and we won’t soon be letting people forget it. Here’s why.
In 2014, the PPD Election Projection Model clobbered the competition–i.e. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Cohen at Upshot, Larry Sabato at the Crystal Ball and just about everywhere else. We did so in large part because of our in-house data analysis and polling models. In 2016, knowing full well we’d get hammered and/or dismissed, we decided to release our polling results for public consumption.
Against our readers’ numerous objections and requests, RealClearPolitics.com refused to aggregate our results. In fact, they never even bothered to contact us despite several of their employees following me on Twitter. Upon request, we gave more than enough information to HuffPost Pollster, who falsely claimed they would aggregate our polling.
They ultimately did not.
The PPD Election Projection Model was again the most accurate election forecaster in 2016 and, overall, put out the most accurate polling before Election Day. As we explained last week, we’re publicly claiming the mantel until media pollsters perform well enough to take it back from us.
That will eventually happen. But based on what we know about the challenges the polling industry faces, their repeated failures and resistance to evolution, we don’t expect that anytime soon.
Supporters of Hillary Clinton, along with other groups of fringe radical leftists, burn American flags during protests against the election of President-Elect Donald J. Trump.
The presidential election is over. Here we are now, at a time to reflect on what is going on with and in our nation. We have people rioting in the streets, destroying businesses, burning the American flag, and creating pain for those who have not wronged them in any way.
The people destroying their cities are doing so in the very neighborhoods in which they live. Sure, there are paid-for outside professional protestors and remnants of Hillary Clinton’s birddogging campaign against President-Elect Donald J. Trump, but should they be expected to respect the rights and properties of others less simply because they do not live in their communities?
These rioters and “protestors” are not doing so for political expression, but rather using it as an excuse to commit crimes, and get away with it. These rebellious children, many of whom are deeply disturbed and have no direction, are just hiding under the guise of political expression.
A true protester holds a sign and chants their grievance, but they typically avoid disrupting the life of everyday people. By all means, if you disagree with the legitimate outcome of our political process, then express it in a non-violent way. For the protestors, the only thing they are on track to accomplish with these violent acts is self-destruction.
The public, which already sided with the Law and Order candidate, will not soon be persuaded against him by these tactics. For the Democratic Party, these “protestors” are the fruits of their labor, a result that further threatens to weaken their electoral coalition. Put simply, no one is going to vote for a party that produces and represents anarchists.
“We are going to have this kind of vigorous protest. My hope is that it would be non-violent,” the late great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said. “I would hope that we can avoid riots because riots are self defeating and socially destructive.”
It is time for these adult-aged protestors to start acting like adults, which insinuates they are fully grown and developed mentally and physically. I do not see adults. I see babies that are easily manipulated for $15 an hour. The violence needs to stop.
In the United States Of America, we have a political process for electing a president every 4 years. When Barack Obama was elected and reelected, there were no violent protestors or chants of “Not My President” in the streets. There were no attempts to overshadow a day we as a nation honor the sacrifice of others by babies with temper tantrums who never sacrificed anything.
It is time to reflect. President-Elect Donald J. Trump will be the next President of the United States and that means he’ll be the president for all Americans. Mr. Obama legitimately got his chance, not we all must give Mr. Trump his legitimate chance.
A broker reacts as the newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump shows up on a television screen at the stock market in Frankfurt, Germany. (Photo: AP)
Despite the same dire predictions the British were given before the Brexit vote, traders in U.S. markets ended on the best 5-day period since 2011 and new highs. Investors and traders came to the realization that economically-friendly policy under a new Trump Administration outweighed the uncertainty after their preferred candidate Hillary Clinton was defeated.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDEXDJX:.DJI) closed at the bell up 39.78, or a new record high of 18,847.66 (0.21%), one day after it saw a previous high fueled by Donald Trump’s surprise victory on election night. The Dow crossed the unchanged line more than 150 times during the session and ended more than 5% up from the previous week and 8% on the year.
The S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) finished down by 3 points, or 2,164.45 (-0.14%), but not before tacking on weekly gains of 3.79%. It’s up 5.6% on the year now. The NASDAQ Composite (INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC) closed up 28.32 points to 5,237.11, or 0.54%. It advanced to gain 4% year to date.
“For the moment, investors appear to see the prospects of tax reform and fiscal stimulus as the most important result of Mr. Trump’s victory. Much is still unknown, however, and the initial reactions could evolve as the new administration’s policy proposals and appointments take shape,” said economists from Goldman Sachs in a note Friday. Goldman backed Mrs. Clinton heavily and failed to largely hedge against her defeat.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is seen speaking on a television on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. U.S. stocks fluctuated in volatile trading in the aftermath of Trump’s surprise presidential election win, as speculation the Republican will pursue business-friendly policies offset some of the broader uncertainty surrounding his ascent. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
Meanwhile, financial stocks also saw big gains from the post-election Trump rally, with the sector jumping more than 11% on the week. Headlines detailing Trump’s plans to dismantle Dodd-Frank legislation enacted in the aftermath of the financial crisis certainly helped, as it is widely viewed as a positive for community banks.
Big industrials and health care stocks also posted big weekly gains of 7.9% and 5.82%, respectively. Prior to the election, the nation’s largest insurers announced they would not be participating in the ObamaCare exchanges, but the marketplaces and rising costs associated with them are soon to be a thing of the past. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Wednesday announced his eagerness to work with the new president to repeal and replace the deeply unpopular healthcare law.
The bond market was closed on Friday for Veteran’s Day, but the four trading days this week sent the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond yield to its biggest one-week gain in three years as it rose to 2.118%.
The yields, which traditionally hold an inverse relationship to prices on other long-term bonds, still moved higher. The two-year yield hit 0.906% and the 30-year gained to 2.928%. The shift in bond prices, which Goldman’s economists say is the “most impressive” change in post-election trade, indicates investors anticipate fiscal stimulus enacted by President-elect Trump would help boost inflation.
NASA video observing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in action. (Photo: Courtesy of NASA)
It’s easy to define and/or understand most statist policies.
We know that a tax increase is when politicians take (or, given the Laffer Curve, try to take) more of your money based on your decisions to work, save, shop, or invest.
We know that protectionism is when politicians use taxes and other policies to restrict your freedom to buy goods and services produced in other nations.
We know that a minimum wage mandate is when politicians criminalize employment contracts between consenting adults, thus harming low-skilled workers.
We know that Keynesian “stimulus” is when politicians borrow from one part of the economy and spend in another part of the economy and pretend there’s more money.
The list is potentially endless, but there’s one statist policy – cronyism – that I haven’t added to the list because I haven’t thought of a simple definition.
Are bailouts cronyism? Yes, but it’s more than that. Are subsidies cronyism? Yes, but it’s more than that. Are favors in the tax code cronyism? Yes, but it’s more than that. Are trade barriers cronyism? Yes, but it’s more than that.
You’re probably noticing a pattern, which is why this new visual from the Mercatus Center is helpful. It illustrates that there are many policies that should be considered cronyism.
And Mercatus comes up with a definition that we can add to our list.
We know that cronyism is when politicians create “privileges that governments give to particular businesses and industries.”
Speaking of which, one of the most damaging features of cronyism is the way that it gives capitalism a bad name.
Many people equate free markets with “business.” So when people in the business sector get special favors, regular folks conclude that capitalism is a “rigged” system.
In theory, this false impression could be offset by an aggressive educational campaign by those who support free enterprise. Unfortunately, that task is rather difficult since many people assume Republicans are the pro-capitalism party. So when they see the GOP favoring corrupt handouts to business such as the Export-Import Bank and the sleazy ethanol program, they conclude – once again – that capitalism is rigged for the politically powerful.
And the battle to separate capitalism from cronyism is further hindered when major figures in the business world (such as Warren Buffett) get in bed with government.
Another example is Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, Solar City, and SpaceX. He is known as a visionary entrepreneur, which is good. But Andy Quinlan of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains that he also has put taxpayers on the hook to underwrite and prop up much of his business activities.
It was announced this week that one of Elon Musk’s companies, Tesla Motors, will buy one of his other companies, SolarCity, for an all-stock deal worth $2.6 billion. …With the amount of taxpayer support both companies have received, perhaps the rest of us should get a vote… The deal comes as SolarCity has floundered despite significant taxpayer support through a bevy of state and federal tax credits and subsidies. Nevertheless, the solar energy company’s stock has been in long term decline as the company struggles to develop a profitable market not reliant on generous helpings of taxpayer support. Tesla, too, has fed repeatedly at the government trough. The government provided federal loan guarantees and tax credits to help manufacture its electric vehicles. It also subsidized the purchase of those same vehicles to increase sales. Even still, the company makes more money selling “carbon credits” to other manufacturers than it does electric vehicles. …Musk’s other endeavor, SpaceX, also relies heavily on government. Obviously much of its business comes from government contracts, but more interesting is how those contracts are apparently obtained. …this year’s National Defense Authorization Act contains an amendment from Senator John McCain designed to eliminate from competition the Defense Department’s current supplier of rockets and pave the way for SpaceX to take over, despite the fact that its rockets aren’t yet powerful enough for the job.
Writing for Reason, Veronique de Rugy adds her insight
Elon Musk delivered a much-anticipated speech…where he laid out his vision for colonizing Mars…a testament to human innovation and determination. …it might be more impressive if Musk could provide a vision for how his companies can succeed here on Earth first, especially without heavy reliance on taxpayer support. …Musk is no stranger to cozy relations with federal and state governments. All three of his companies have benefited heavily from taxpayers. Yet despite generous green energy handouts, his SolarCity is heavily indebted. He now wants to merge it with his electric car company, Tesla Motors, which also benefited from almost $1.3 billion in subsidies. Solidifying his crony credentials, the epitome of crony capitalism itself, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, has subsidized the payloads for numerous SpaceX launches. The Ex-Im Bank’s chairman misrepresented this as support for “small business.” …There’s no doubt that Musk is an impressive salesman and innovator. …Now that he has set his sights on Mars, let’s hope—for the future of science and exploration—that he…has the courtesy to leave taxpayers out of it.
Amen.
It’s great when entrepreneurs are successful. And I don’t resent their wealth in the slightest.
But only if they earn their money honestly, in a genuinely free and competitive market.
Cronyism, by contrast, is a cancer that compromises and erodes genuine capitalism.
P.S. Let’s close on a more upbeat and entertaining topic, which is the bipartisan mockery of politicians.
I shared a very funny post about American leftists escaping to Canada after the Tea Party election of 2010.
Here’s some related humor about Canada closing the border for the next eight years.
One unfortunate aspect of being a libertarian is that you’re almost always unhappy about whoever becomes President. Indeed, I’ve only been pleased with one President who has served in my lifetime.
So I’m not overflowing with sympathy for Republicans who were unhappy after the 2012 election. And I’m similarly immune to feelings of empathy for Democrats who are unhappy about this election.
Especially the leftists who are engaging is hysterical hyperbolic histrionics (how’s that for alliteration!) about Trump. Here’s some great satire about the millennials protesting against Trump’s victory.
As anti-Trump rallies nationwide turned hostile overnight with widespread reports of violence, looting, vandalism, and death threats against the president-elect and his supporters, police in numerous major cities were able to instill calm and regain control by handing out participation trophies to all millennial protesters who were enraged about losing the election, sources confirmed. …“It’s a foreign notion to them. Even in sports—win or lose, everyone won, and everyone got a trophy no matter what. This is the millennial way,” he said. “So I had the idea—hey, why not start handing out participation trophies to the protesters, and telling them ‘Hey, you know what? You may have lost the election, but look—everyone gets a trophy. Everyone’s a winner.’” Seeing how the trophies had an instantaneous calming effect on the millennials and filled them with a sense of fulfillment and achievement, word spread quickly among police departments nationwide, and emergency trophies were procured by the thousands for use at the rallies.
Speaking of which, here’s an amusing image that has a serious message. I agree with leftists who fear that Trump may abuse the vast powers of the federal government. But they supported Obama’s dubious expansion of executive power, so they don’t have much credibility on the issue.
Reminds me of this clever poster that the Libertarian Party created to mock the Occupy crazies.
U.S. Capitol Building on Capitol Hill. (Photo: iStockPhoto)
Now that Donald Trump has been elected, one of my main goals will be to convince him and his team that it would be wrong to leave government spending on autopilot (and it would be even worse to spend more money and increase the burden of government!).
Since Trump semi-endorsed the Penny Plan, I don’t think this is a hopeless quest. But it will be an uphill battle since populists have a “public choice” incentive to appease interest groups.
But we have a very powerful weapon in this battle. It’s called evidence.
And now there’s even more data on our side. The Institute for Economic Affairs in London has just published an excellent new book on fiscal policy. Edited by Philip Booth, Taxation, Government Spending, & Economic Growth is must reading for those who want to understand the deleterious impact of the modern welfare state.
The IEA’s Director General, Mark Littlewood, explains the goal in the book’s foreword.
The authors of this monograph have taken a rigorous and data-driven approach to discovering and documenting the size of the state and how government spending and regulation affect the wider economy. But, most importantly, they have undertaken a major and original statistical analysis of the economic costs of high taxes and, equally importantly, which taxes cause the most economic harm.
The most depressing part of the book is contained in Chapter 3. As you can see from Table 7, the burden of government used to be rather modest in western nations. Indeed, I’ve made the point that it was during the era of small government that the western world became rich.
And the book is filled with lots of useful information in that quest. In Chapter 4, David Smith explains the interaction between fiscal policy and economic performance, noting that excessive government not only reduces the level of economic output, but also the future growth rate.
…increased governmental consumption appears to reduce national output. This is likely to be because the resources diverted to supply such expenditures would be better employed in the private sector. In particular, the evidence from international cross-section and panel-data studies suggests that almost all increases in the share of governmental expenditure in GDP lead to a near one-for-one reduction in the share allocated to private capital formation. This under-capitalisation takes the economy onto a lower, but parallel, growth path according to ‘neo-classical’ growth models but leads to an additional permanent reduction in the growth rate in the context of a ‘post-neo-classical endogenous-growth’ model.
He provides a micro-economic explanation for why various government activities hinder growth (I offer eight reasons in this video, by the way).
Transfer payments are likely to reduce economic growth in various ways, not least because of the supply-side effects of the taxes necessary to finance them. Unlike with government investment, there is unlikely to be any offsetting effect on growth. These have grown rapidly over the last century. Transfers in the form of pensions and other payments to people at older ages are likely to reduce saving in the private sector and fixed capital formation. However, the most potentially counter-productive public expenditure appears to be paying means-tested welfare benefits to the population of working age. These reduce potential GDP because of their impact in reducing the supply of labour to the private sector, which exacerbates the effect of the taxes necessary to finance them. …there has been a big increase in government spending over the last 100 years. However, within the government spending envelope, there has been a particularly large increase in those items that damage the economy most while those items that tend to have a beneficial effect on growth or which damage the economy least have been reduced.
In other words, he’s saying that not only is government too big. He’s also pointing out that much of the spending is seemingly designed to impose economic damage by discouraging the productive use and allocation of labor and capital.
…statistical evidence that suggests that the negative effects of higher taxes and budget deficits on private activity are identical in the long run and quite similar in the short term. This confirms that the primary issue is the size of state spending compared with national output and that the choice between tax and bond finance is a secondary consideration. Ultimately, government spending is financed either by taxes levied now or deferred taxes.
He then reviews some of the research on the “Rahn Curve.”
…it is reasonable to ask whether there are ‘growth-maximising’ or ‘welfare-maximising’ levels of government expenditure. …The growth-maximising share of government spending in GDP was some 20–25 per cent of GDP. This was based on the fact that ratios in this range were typical of the fast growing South East Asian ‘Tiger’ economies, countries such as Japan and Korea in their high growth phases, and even Australia, Canada and Spain in the 1950s. This indicative range should probably be revised down to some 18.5–23.5 per cent, using current (June 2016) UK definitions.
Incidentally, I like and dislike what he wrote in this section.
I like it because the obvious conclusion is that the burden of government is excessive in both the United States (37.9 percent of GDP according to OECD fiscal data) and the United Kingdom (43.3 percent of GDP). And we can use this data to argue for much-needed spending restraint.
But I don’t like the above passage because I think the growth-maximizing size of government is well below 20 percent of GDP. As I’ve previously explained, academic researchers are constrained by the lack of data for small-government economies. So when they crunch numbers (relying in all cases on post-WWII data, and in most cases on much more recent figures), they basically find that Hong Kong and Singapore grow the fastest and they think that implies the public sector should consume 20 percent of economic output.
But that implies, if you recall the data in Table 7 from above, that nations would have enjoyed more growth in 1870 if they doubled the burden of government spending. I think that’s nonsensical. What’s really happening is that researchers are simply measuring the downward-sloping portion of the Rahn Curve.
But just because Hong Kong and Singapore are the first two jurisdictions that can be plotted, that doesn’t mean the Rahn Curve peaks at that point.
But I realize I’m nit-picking, so let’s go back to the book.
In the following chapter, Professor Patrick Miniford shares some additional research on the link between government spending and economic performance. I especially like how he shares a very useful table looking at some scholarly findings on the relationship between the overall fiscal burden and national prosperity.
He also shares the conclusions from additional research.
Later studies show similar associations. For example, Afonso and Furceri (2008) examine a number of EU and other OECD countries over the period 1970–2004. As well as several components of government expenditure and taxation, they include variables such as initial output, population growth, investment ratio, human capital and openness. Their finding is that a 1 percentage point rise in the government spending to GDP ratio cuts growth in the OECD by 0.12 per cent and in the EU by 0.13 per cent. …overall, the tax (or government spending) and growth studies, indicate a strong association between the two variables. As a rule of thumb, it would appear that a 10 percentage point fall in the share of national income taken in tax would lead to slightly more than a 1 percentage point increase in the growth rate – results of this order of magnitude occur over and over again.
And he discusses some new statistical findings, along with the potential implications for the United Kingdom.
…the relationship between the growth rate of GDP per capita, the tax rate, a dummy variable specific to each time period, and a dummy variable specific to each country is modelled. Panel data were used that were averaged over consecutive decades from 1970 to 2000 for 100 countries. …overall, the modelling found an overwhelmingly strong negative relationship between tax and growth…there is an elasticity of growth to tax of approximately –1.4 at the mean of the growth rate (1.6 per cent). …a fall in the tax rate by 25 per cent of its existing value (from about 40 per cent to about 30 per cent of national income in the UK) would lead to a rise in the growth rate to 2.7 per cent if the initial growth rate were 2 per cent. This is roughly in line with the growth regression results discussed above.
I’m sure the data and conclusions also apply to the United States.
Which brings me back to where I started. I fretted yesterday that Trump’s election will be a challenge to advocates of economic liberty. Indeed, he explicitly called for more infrastructure spending and implicitly called for more VA spending in his acceptance speech. Combined with his apparent rejection of entitlement reform, this doesn’t instill much confidence.
But that’s all the more reason to disseminate this new research on the bad consequences of letting America become more like France.
A journalist writes a material as she watches a live telecast of the U.S. presidential election standing at portraits of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Union Jack pub in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. Russia’s lower house of parliament is applauding the election of Trump as U.S. president. (Photo: AP)
The atmosphere in Moscow has been euphoric since Donald Trump’s stunning electoral triumph Tuesday. The prevailing wisdom in the Russian capital is that Mr. Trump will bring peace with Russia for the long term, a goal that most everyone in both countries badly desires.
But that belief rests on a shaky assumption — that Mr. Trump will be more inclined to bow to Russia’s interests, behavior and demands.
That, I think, is a serious miscalculation.
I do believe that Mr. Trump will usher in a new era of cooperation with Russia. There are many areas where we can work together for the good of both nations.
Take the War on Terror, where Russia faces at least as much risk from Islamic State as the U.S. and its European allies. The Caucasus are a flaming caldron of jihadism that could spill over into the heart of Russia if Mr. Putin is not careful. The beheading of a 4-year-old girl in Moscow earlier this year was evidence of the danger that lurks under the surface in a country where 30 percent of the population is Muslim.
But what everyone will soon learn is that Mr. Trump is a nationalist first and foremost, just as Mr. Putin is a nationalist. Both leaders have embraced a mission, in Mr. Trump’s campaign mantra, to make their countries “great again.”
Mr. Putin wants to restore the old Russian empire, from Poland to San Francisco, reversing a humiliating post-Cold War decline. Mr. Trump wants to restore American prosperity, pride and influence, all severely damaged during the Obama presidency. In some instances, these agendas will clash, and both sides have to be prepared for this.
Disagreement does not need to turn into conflict. One area where Mr. Trump will be different from President Obama is respecting the Russian nation. There will be no sophomoric public slights belittling the Russian leader or the Russian economy. This will go a long way to forging a good working relationship between the two leaders.
Mr. Trump understands how to make a good deal that works for everyone, and that doesn’t mean appeasement. It means beginning the negotiation process long before you sit down with the opposing party. It means preparing the battlefield before the battle. It means not disarming unilaterally and then expecting the other side to do the same.
Mr. Trump will simply look out for the interests of the United States of America, its people and its national security. And if the president-elect needs to be firm with the Kremlin, I have no doubt that he will do so.
In addition, Mr. Trump will rebuild the ability of the U.S. to negotiate from a position of strength — economically, militarily and psychologically. The coming military buildup should make the Kremlin temper its behavior around the globe. Yes, Russia is well along in its plan to modernize its armed forces, while America is just getting started. For Moscow, pulling out of arms control treaties with the United States may not look like such a good idea in a few years as Mr. Trump takes the self-imposed shackles off.
Rebuilding American power may mean that the U.S. looks inward for a period of time as it focuses on restoring its infrastructure, working down its huge national debt and bulking up its military might. At some point, however, Lady Liberty will raise her head again and look around, and she will be in a much better position to deal with threats to her citizens’ security and way of life.
I spoke to a Muscovite Thursday morning, asking what Russians are saying about the U.S. election. He said there were many jokes about the Putin-Trump “bromance” and a general sense of optimism. But he also cautioned that anyone with any sense would realize Mr. Trump will focus on restoring U.S. economic power, and that will have little effect on Russia as it deals with its own economic malaise.
That sounds like good advice because, at the end of the day, with a Trump presidency, Russia may need to be careful what it wishes for.
[brid video=”74625″ player=”2077″ title=”Bernie Sanders to Clinton Shill Wolf Blitzer ‘I Intend To Work With President Trump'”]
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said he is looking forward to working with President-Elect Donald Trump during an interview with CNN Thursday. There is little doubt that on trade, tax, and other populist positions the self-proclaimed socialist has more in common with the Republican populist than his former corporatist rival Hillary Clinton.
“I intend to work with President Trump on those issues where he will, in fact, work for the middle class and working families of this country,” Sen. Sanders told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, the anchor WikiLeaks exposed as a shill for Mrs. Clinton against him and Trump. “Absolutely we need a new trade policy,” Sanders said. “I will work with him to get corporate America to start investing in this country, not just in China and in Mexico.”
Sen. Sanders on several occasions called on Mrs. Clinton during the primary to release the transcripts of paid speeches given to investment banks like Goldman Sachs. In response, she said on the campaign trail and in debates she would “look into” releasing the transcripts.
Perceived leftwing bias at CNN earned it the nickname the “Clinton News Network,” but emails released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks revealed complete corruption and collusion with the Democratic Party. They also proved the targeted destruction of candidates opposed to Mrs. Clinton by the corrupt relationship wasn’t limited to Republicans.
Donna Brazile, the current interim DNC chair, took over after Debbie Wasserman Schultz was ousted just before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Nearly 20,000 hacked emails exposed how the party, including Wasserman Schultz, worked to help Mrs. Clinton and actively against Sen. Sanders.
Brazile, who was also Bernie-bashing, recently came under fire after another earlier email indicated she gave the Clinton campaign a death penalty question before a CNN-hosted town hall event later that same month. That exchange began with Brazile sending Palmieri the text of the question with the subject line: “From time to time I get the questions in advance.”
Yet another email was released from Brazile to Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri stating, “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash.” It came the night before the March 6 primary debate in Flint, Michigan, a state both Sen. Sanders and President-Elect Trump carried against Mrs. Clinton.
[brid video=”74456″ player=”2077″ title=”Rush Limbaugh GOP Shouldn’t “Apologize for Winning” Weren’t Elected to Unify “]
Rush Limbaugh said Republicans should not “apologizing for winning” or talk about unifying with “losers” until “we have forced them into surrender.” The most listened to man in talk radio, who was one of only few to realize there was “more upside than downside” to nominating Donald Trump, reminded listeners how Barack Obama and Democrats behaved (and would’ve again) when they controlled the government.
He also reminded everyone that the so-called “Trump Protests” are organized by Democratic political operations who use radical fringe elements to disrupt and destabilize civil society. Bringing up the WikiLeaks emails and Project Veritas videos, Limbaugh said they’re “bought and paid for” by Democrats who want Trump to fail.
“So now we have all these riots going on, exactly as I predicted. And, folks, aside from these little snowflakes that are melting on campus today, the kids, all of these riots that you’re seeing in New York and Philadelphia and Chicago and Los Angeles are bought and paid for. They are not real in terms of springing up genuinely and organically,” Limbaugh said.
“They’re bought and paid for, and we know this from the WikiLeaks email dumps from John Podesta, and we know it from Project Veritas videos.”
U.S. Border Patrol agents prepare to launch a raid by the Rio Grande that separates the U.S. from Mexico in McAllen, Texas, on Tuesday, November 25, 2014. The troopers patrol the river all day to catch illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border.
President-elect Donald J. Trump was the first candidate ever to receive an endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council. Mr. Trump, who defeated Hillary Clinton on Tuesday in the biggest Electoral College victory for a Republican since 1988, made the the promise he would secure the border and enforce current immigration law central to his campaign.
Now, even without lifting a finger, and certainly without a deportation force on the march, reports from the border indicate immigrants residing in the U.S. illegally are already leaving. Why? Because roughly 1.4 million illegal immigrants signed up to receive benefits under two amnesty programs and could now face deportation under a Trump administration.
“I was surprised anyone would be stupid enough to sign up for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans). Yet apparently hundreds of thousands of people did so anyway,” John Miano of the Center for Immigration Studies wrote in a blog post.
President Barack Obama had asked those “living in the shadows” to sign up for the controversial program. Of the 1,443,762 applicants, roughly 1 million are from Mexico, 607,000 live in Texas and California, and 119,788 came from either El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras.
As People’s Pundit Daily recently reported just before the election, scores of immigrants from around the world were pouring across the U.S.-Mexican border. The prevailing wisdom was that Mr. Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton, who along with her party had been for years attempting to lure Latin American migrants as new voters.
The Democratic Party’s share of the white vote has fallen precipitously. As of now, the populous New York businessman won 71% of the working class white vote, topping the previous record held by Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Art Del Cueto, a Border Patrol agent in Tucson, Ariz., said they were “not getting any backing” from D.C. and “we need to start enforcing every single immigration law we have on the books.”
“We are overwhelmed,” one veteran agent in McAllen, Texas, said. “We are seeing 800 to 1,000 apprehensions every night.”
Their views are wildly shared with other agents in Texas. As People’s Pundit Daily reported last year, government officials in Guatemala and Venezuela say the Obama administration had put out the word that the door was open, which was exacerbated by the campaign rhetoric during the cycle.
“People think if one candidate wins, certain things will happen, like a giant wall being built and then they can never get through,” said Chris Cabrera, an agent in the Rio Grande Valley. “Another faction believes that if the other candidate wins, they’ll get amnesty if they’re here by a certain date.”
In fiscal 2016, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 117,200 immigrants from Central America, representing almost one-third of all apprehensions. This year, the agency said the number of apprehensions is 5,000 more than during the surge of 2014, the year that was considered an all out border crisis.
The agency says they also apprehended 5,000 Haitians, up from just 700 last year. The number of immigrants apprehended claiming to be from Africa and Asia–countries that are known terror hotspots like Somalia and Yemen–are also way up, the agency says.
But now sources in states and at the border say on Wednesday after it became clear Mr. Trump was victorious, the number of exit immigrants began to increase.
President-Elect Donald J. Trump meets with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office on November 10, 2016. (Photo: AP)
President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama met at the White House and pledged to work together as the transition of power begins. The two men publicly setting aside years of animosity in hopes of moving the nation forward in the future.
The presidential victor’s visit to Washington is the first since winning the November 8 election in the largest landslide for a Republican since 1988. There was no visible sign of division between Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama after what the president viewed to be an unlikely meeting that went on for roughly an hour.
“It is important for all of us, regardless of party, regardless of political preferences to now come together, work together,” Mr. Obama said. “If you succeed, the country succeeds.”
“It could have, as far as I’m concerned, gone a lot longer,” Mr. Trump said after what was supposed to be a 15-minute meeting in the Oval Office. “We discussed a lot of different situations, some wonderful and some difficulties. He’s explained some of the difficulties.”
They took no questions from reporters who were allowed into the Oval Office briefly after they finished.
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