In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Let's examine some data points. Dr Fauci's sidekick, Dr Deborah Birx, was able to retire on generous terms after she was caught violating COVID protocols. (Her job in any case, of course, was simply to stand next to Big Doc and nod while he spoke): A top public health official on the White House coronavirus task force has said she will retire after it emerged she hosted a holiday gathering. Dr Deborah Birx, who is 64, cited the criticism she had faced for a family get-together over Thanksgiving in Delaware in her decision to step aside. . . . Late on Tuesday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted President Donald Trump's good wishes, saying he "has great respect for Dr Birx and likes her very much. We wish her well". In an interview with US news network Newsy aired on Tuesday, a masked Dr Birx did not specify when she would stand down, but said she would help the incoming Biden administration and "and then I will retire". So ...

I've noted before that once the Watergate scandal got well under way, there was a regular pattern whereby Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler, would make some assertion that the White House wasn't involved in any sort of coverup, only to have documents surface in subsequent days that showed the opposite was true. Ziegler then became famous for declaring his previous statements "inoperative". We seem to be returning to the days of inoperative statements . Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump's estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president's claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News. The memos show then-White Hou...

The biggest story yesterday without a doubt was Dr Fauci's announcement of his resignations from his interlocking positions within the deep state, although he stressed this wasn't "retirement". Fauci is currently the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, and chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden. “I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci revealed in a statement. Fauci’s decision significantly moves up the timeline of his retirement, as he said in July he would resign at the end of Biden’s first term. Just two Saturdays ago, I noted that Dr Fauci had been booed while throwing out the first pitch at a Seattle Mariners game. Did this have anything to do with his decision? I wouldn't rule it out, but too much else has been happening. For instance, his former sidekick Dr Birx is starting t...

I continue to be intrigued by the logical incoherence of any attempt to explain the objectives of the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid. The prevailing interpretation is that the FBI was trying to find something that Trump wanted to keep hidden. That might be something damaging to Trump himself, like the pee tape or maybe evidence of a January 6 conspiracy, or it might be something Trump knows will damage the deep state that he's withholding until the proper time. The problem with any version of this is that the FBI is assuming that although it's very high value information, Trump is storing it in a low-value repository, a home office safe where any journeyman safecracker can get at it. Trump is smart enough, and he has the resources, not to do this. It's also worth recognizing that Trump has been the focus of investigations since before his presidential run in 2015. He's been a reality TV star and a generalist celebrity, thus fair journalistic game, for decades. During hi...

As I've noted, in the two weeks since the Mar-a-Lago raid, there's been a chorus of Deep Throats who allegedly have knowledge of the FBI's inner workings feeding backgound info to overcredulous news writers. It's worth tabulating what they've been saying, if only to see if it might fall together into some kind of working hypothesis, although there's a logical problem with any theory that says the search was intended to retrieve a particular document or artifact. Let's start with the analysis of Peter Strzok himself, who surfaced last week to give his own take : Please oh please keep asking how you can turn down the temperature in the country. And why does he have two passports? The Russian passport, of course, is kept in a vault at Yasenevo and only swapped out at third country meets, so it can't be that one. pic.twitter.com/Hbk8iL39Ax — Peter Strzok (@petestrzok) August 15, 2022 Clearly Strzok still believes there's a Putin connection, quite p...

Consider developments for Trump in the less than two weeks since the Mar-a-Lago raid. The polls: The FBI raid on former President Donald Trump‘s estate bolstered his support among GOP primary voters and widened his lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to a new poll. The Politico/Morning Consult poll found that 57% of primary voters would back Mr. Trump if he ran and the primary were held now, a 4-point jump from the 53% who backed the ex-president in a mid-July poll. Mr. DeSantis, meanwhile, saw his support slide from 23% to 17%, meaning Mr. Trump saw a 10-point boost over his nearest rival after agents searched his Mar-a-Lago estate. The never-Trump Allahpundit at Hot Air senses Maybe the "DeSantasy" really is over: I was, am, and will remain bullish that DeSantis still stands a chance at the 2024 nomination, at least as long as you-know-who isn’t indicted. In the bizarro world of modern-day Republican morality, criminal charges against Trump really ...

Within days this week, Brian Stelter announced his departure from CNN after the cancellation of his show Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart indicated that some parts of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant affadivit could be released and ordered the DOJ to submit proposed redactions next week, against its wishes Donald Trump began a highly visible campaign of ironically endorsing far-left Democrat candidates, on the assumption that if his endorsements of Republicans have worked so well, they should for Democrats as well. A federal judge granted an injunction that prohibits the Marine Corps from enforcing the Biden administration’s military vaccine mandate against Marines who filed for religious exemption from the mandate and who were denied Dr Walensky announced plans to overhaul the CDC Wednesday — while admitting to major “mistakes” in handling the pandemic. In particular, the week prior, the CDC reversed many of its public COVID guidelines even before ...