A Couple More Data Points Support Yesterday's Conspiracy Theories

Yesterday I raised two possible hypotheses that might explain the puzzling constellations of events that led a freelance whack job off the plane from Hawaii to find just the right spot at the golf course fence to set up a shot at Trump when nobody was supposed to know he was on the golf course at that time. The one I tend to favor is my own, that some deep state cabal knew of Trump's golf plans because they'd bugged Mar-a-Lago during the August 2022 raid -- in fact, its main aim was simply to gain access to the place, especially the office and conference areas, to plant the bugs, not to retrieve documents.

This tweet supports my theory:

Can I just point out again, yes again, that in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case; a case against Trump where the official position of the DOJ asserts a "vital national security interest;" there is almost virtually guaranteed to be a Title-1 FISA authorized warrant.... The… https://t.co/MsdO6CZc0S pic.twitter.com/ipoZpTTfsf

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) September 19, 2024

The other hypothesis I mentioned yesterday is from Arizona Rep Eli Crane, that there's a mole in the Secret Service. Missouri Sen Josh Hawley raised questions on Jesse Watters's show last night that suggest there may have been a method to the weaponized incompetence the agency displayed at both Butler and the golf course:

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley on Wednesday sent a letter to the Secret Service, demanding answers on allegations from a whistleblower about alleged "known vulnerabilities" at a golf course that led to a second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

. . . Hawley claimed in the letter to acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe that a Secret Service whistleblower, identified as an agent who has protected Trump at the golf course in the past, alleged that the agency failed to address "known vulnerabilities" at the golf course, including areas that offer a clear line of sight of people playing on the course.

"[T]he whistleblower alleges that it has been Secret Service protocol to 'post up' agents at these vulnerable spots when Trump visits the course," the senator wrote. "That apparently did not happen on September 15. Instead, the gunman was permitted to remain along or near the fence line for some 12 hours."

The senator also stated that it was unclear if the Secret Service used drones or did a sweep of the golf course perimeter before the former president visited on Sunday. He then asked whether the allegations were true, and questioned why the suspect was not spotted by security earlier. This story has more detail on the whistleblower allegations:

According to a whistleblower, protocol requires them to put agents at the areas of vulnerability that exist around the course. They normally put people there; they've done it many times before.

Yet they didn't this time, as the suspect lay in wait.

Hawley said the whistleblowers told him, "That's strange. That's out of protocol."

"It's not even clear Secret Service swept the perimeter before Trump took to the course," Hawley said. If they had, they likely would have found the suspect.

Hawley said this was a breach of protocol, and the whistleblowers want to know why this happened. "The Secret Service deserves to give us answers."

Think about that a moment. It's protocol to check the perimeter. It's protocol to put people at those vulnerable spots. They know about the vulnerable spots. Yet somehow, on this occasion where there's a suspect lying in wait, they throw all the protocol out the window? And the suspect somehow knew that Trump would be there, despite it not being on his schedule.

How do you have that on top of failing to secure a roof with a direct line of sight to Trump in Butler?

These data points, and the possible explanations for what lies behind them, aren't necessarily in conflict. If the FBI had Mar-a-Lago bugged and was able to get non-public information on Trump's movements, if there was a deep state cabal involving the FBI and the Secret Service, they could then have passed instructions on to their patsy Routh based on inside knowledge both of Trump's movements and the specific vulnerabilities of the golf course fence. Sen Hawley asks,

Secret Service is stonewalling: it’s been over 2 months since the Butler assassination attempt

Secret Service has yet to hand over docs. Why? pic.twitter.com/f3pZFy5PBN

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 19, 2024

This post at The Last Refuge adds,

The U.S. Secret Service gave congressional investigators a briefing on the Trump assassination attempt by Ryan Routh at Trump National in Florida. . . .

[Florida Rep] Mike Waltz repeats how the FBI are keeping all of the pertinent details surrounding the assassination attempt concealed from the investigating committee under the auspices of an ongoing investigation. Waltz is calling for transparency in both the Pennsylvania attempt and the Florida attempt; however, despite the USSS providing information, anything from the FBI is not being shared.

Let's back up for a moment. The most sophisticated investigative agency in the world knows who the perp is, and he's in custody. They have his phone, which means they can track where he's been. They have his texts and e-mails. Given his travel schedule and location tracing, they have tapes of every time he stopped to buy a burger, every time he passed a traffic camera. Normally, law enforcement would be saying a great deal more -- persons of interest, maybe additional arrests.

So far nothing.

“There Is A Very Real Possibility That There Is a MOLE In The Secret Service”

Arizona Republican Rep Eli Crane said,

My advice to the President is to bolster your private security around you not only to fill holes in the gaps that the Secret Service continues to leave open but also to watch the watchers.

There is a very real possibility that there is a mole in the Secret Service team surrounding the President or at the highest levels of the Secret Service. So he needs somebody, like a group of individuals around him that are loyal to him.

He's not the only elected official who's uncomfortable with the organs of state security, Florida Gov Ron DeSantis said on the Jesse Watters show Monday night:

I don't think it's in the best interest of this country to say that agencies like the FBI and DOJ, which are trying to prosecute Trump in South Florida, they're on appeal at the 11th Circuit trying to reinstate an indictment that had been dismissed, that they're the best people to turn around and one, give us the truth about this defendant, but also to prosecute the case where they don't have as strong of jurisdictional claims.

On top of that, the Special Agent In Charge of the Miami FBI office, which is leading the investigation into the golf course assassination attempt, has a history of anti-Trump social media posts:

[A] whistleblower told the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI made Veltri scrub his anti-Trump social media posts before promoting him to lead the Miami Field Office, according to The Washington Times.

“It was well known that Veltri was adamantly and vocally anti-Trump,” the whistleblower said in a disclosure, reported by the Times.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Director Paul Abbate, and Executive Assistant Director of Human Resources Jennifer Moore were all allegedly involved in telling Veltri to whitewash his online posts. According to the Times, the whistleblower said those officials were worried about whether “information related to Veltri’s political bias can be removed from the public domain” rather than about his “bias against Trump.”

“Wray, Abbate and Moore wanted to ensure that Veltri appeared non-political, [so] Veltri was ordered to remove all of his Facebook and social media posts that were anti-Trump,” the whistleblower said.

The whistleblower also said, if an agent was deemed to be a “right-wing radical,” Veltri was in charge of efforts targeting those agents’ security clearances.

As I noted yesterday, Ryan Routh's activites had come to the attention of the FBI, the State Department, and presumably other intelligence agencies over the past five years due to his extensive travel to Poland, Ukraine, and Romania, as well as his attempts to recruit Afghans to fight in Ukraine. This is the sort of thing that raises red flags on any security-related background check, and it's hard for me to believe somebody within the organs of state security didn't have their eye on him.

There are multiple potential problems for the organs in these circumstances. At minimum, questions could come up over whether various reports -- for instance, that he was a felon-in-possession, or that he was possibly involved in human trafficking -- were taken seriously. That alone could place the organs in a bad light and threaten careers. But if, as I think is entirely possible, he was employed as some type of freelance informant by one of the organs while on his various quixotic missions, things would begin to look miuch worse.

If one of the organs had been covering his travel expenses, even if it had nothing to do with the golf course episode, it wouid be worse yet. A writer called Sam J notes on Twitchy, observing he told the court at his arraignment that his income was only $3000 a month:

How the Hell could someone living on $3000 a month be able to afford travel, weapons, and GoPro equipment? And he flew from Hawaii ... see what we mean? It makes zero sense. Then you add in all of his bizarre connections to Ukraine and strange history with law enforcement, media, and yes, even Washington D.C. and it just turns into a giant ball of tinfoil filled with conspiracy theories.

But let's leave all the conspiracy theories about the organs aside and simply theorize that, completely under the organs' radar, Routh was being paid by someone, Ukraine, Romania, Elbonia, whatever. And maybe it had absolutely nothing to do with the golf course business, they just wanted his expertise as a roofer. There would be cries from Congress simply over the fact that the organs missed this. There is simply no upside for the organs that the golf course business happened at all, but if they're involved either in giving money to the guy or deliberately ignoring reports about him, it's much, much worse.

And this leaves aside the other issues that are quite plausible -- that, as Rep Crane suggests, there could be a mole in the Secret Service, or as I suggested yesterday, the FBI bugged Mar-a-Lago during the August 2022 raid, or some other deep state cabal was behind Crooks, Routh, both, or someone else. I think we've alreay begun a process of slow-walking this second investigation, and it doesn't even need to be because any single thing needs to be covered up, because any serious scrutiny of the organs and how they function will be disastrous.

It intrigues me that they've got Routh's phone, they've presumably got his travel records, they've no doubt got his bank and financial records, there's been plenty of time to get any needed warrants, and this is a hot button investigation -- but nobody else seems to be a person of interest, much less arrested. Ronald Rowe, acting Secret Service head, is in West Palm Beach for the foreseeable future. And Jeffrey Veltri is running the investigation. So far, we don't have a motive for the suspect, but the G-men are on the case.

Yeah, right.

How Could Multiple People Not Be Involved In The "Golf Course Episode", And How Could The Organs Of State Security Not Already Have Known About Ryan Routh?

Throughout yesterday, experienced law enforcement and intelligence observers raised perfectly reasonable questions about Ryan Routh, the people he must have worked with, and the extensive knowledge the organs of state security must already have had of him, his contacts, and his activities.

For starters:

A veteran FBI agent said Monday that he would be “shocked” if intelligence agencies did not already have would-be Trump assassin Ryan Wesley Routh on their radar for his travel and apparent efforts to recruit foreign fighters for Ukraine.

“I asked about it in almost every case I had, especially in counterterrorism Division at the FBI when I was there, what did the other intelligence agencies know about this American citizen out on the battlefield and who was recruiting in Afghanistan?” Jeff Danik told the John Solomon Reports podcast Monday.

"These are target countries, high criteria intelligence collection points for—are legitimate collection points—for our CIA, our NSA and our five eyes partners,” he said.

. . , “So an American traipsing around in that battleground is going to perceive focus, I would be shocked if one of the intelligence agencies didn't have his devices compromised,” he said. “All that data and collection is going to be classified, of course, but my question is, does it even exist? Do we know who he was contacting, who is contacted with it?”

In fact, several stories have emerged that indicate Routh was in fact on various agencies' radar. First,

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Routh alarmed people after he traveled to Ukraine hoping to join the fight against Russia shortly after President Vladimir Putin's forces invaded in 2022.

One nurse, worried about Routh's threats of violence after she encountered him in Kyiv, said she reported the man to a Customs and Border Protection officer at Washington's Dulles airport in June 2022.

Chelsea Walsh told the officer that Routh was among the most dangerous Americans she met during her six-week visit to Ukraine, WSJ reported.

Sarah Adams, a former CIA officer who helped run a network that linked 50 aid groups to share information and coordinate humanitarian and volunteer efforts, said Routh was known as a "fraudster" and "kind of a whack job," the outlet said.

In early June, aid groups banned Routh from their Signal Messenger groups, and reported his activities to the State Department. Adams said the groups were concerned Routh might be engaging in human trafficking or immigration fraud.

But the FBI knew of Routh even before 2022:

In a press conference, Jeffrey Veltri, the FBI Special Agent in charge of the Miami field office that is investigating the attempted assassination against Trump, admitted the FBI received a “tip” on Routh in 2019.

Veltri stated, “I can also share with you that Routh was a subject of a previous closed 2019 tip to the FBI where it was alleged he was a felon in possession of a firearm.”

“The alleged complainant was interviewed and did not verify providing the initial information. The FBI passed that information on to local law enforcement in Honolulu,” added Veltri.

Next, Martin County Sheriff Will Snyder, whose deputies arrested Routh as he tried to escape up the I-95, raised other questions at a press conference:

Reporter: Does Ryan Routh have any ties to Martin County?

Snyder: “The answer to my knowledge, the answer is no. I think what we’re finding out is he’s not from this area…”

“Which, of course, raises the bigger question, how does a guy from not here get all the way to Trump International, realize that the president, former president of the United States, is golfing and is able to get a rifle in that vicinity?”

“I think that’s the question the FBI and the Secret Service are laser-focused on today… is this guy part of a conspiracy?”

“Is he a lone gunman?” Sheriff Snyder asked. He continued, “If he’s a lone gunman—–President Trump is that much safer because we have him. But if he’s part of a conspiracy, then this whole thing really takes on an ominous tone.”

Now we come to the questions Sheriff Snyder raised. For instance, Routh's behavior wasn't random or disorganized; it showed clear planning and purpose based on information that wasn't public:

Ryan Wesley Routh, the alleged would-be Trump assassin, set up a sniper’s nest near the former president’s golf course and hid there for nearly 12 hours before the apparent ambush attempt, federal prosecutors said Monday.

Routh’s cellphone pinged to the spot on the edge of Trump International West Palm Beach starting from 1:59 a.m. Sunday, the federal criminal complaint said.

. . . SKS-style rifles are not manufactured in Florida and the weapon was either brought in from another state or country, the complaint reads.

In addition, although Routh was from Hawaii and, as the sheriff noted, isn't local to West Palm Beach or Florida, he knew about a specific spot on the golf course perimeter where Trump could be surreptitiously observed:

The gunman who allegedly staked out former President Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course with an SKS rifle was able to exploit a security hole that the Secret Service has known about for years.

News photographers — including those hired by The Post — have had no problem repeatedly securing spots around the perimeter of the course to snap pictures of Trump playing golf or driving around in a golf cart.

They have even taken images — which require a clear line of sight to the 45th president — unnoticed through the bushes with telephoto lenses. Some have gotten as close as 75 yards — without so much as a sideways glance from the Secret Service.

. . . However, the location Routh chose to lie in wait in West Palm Beach wasn’t particularly favorable for photographers, owing to tricky angles and long distances.

“Routh could easily have picked a better spot, but maybe he was worried about being seen by a photographer,” the source added.

So Routh traveled from Hawaii to West Palm Beach and had with him a weapon from somewhere other than Florida, with the specific intent of assassinating Trump. Somehow he knew of a specific spot where this could be done, although he wasn't aware from any public source of when Trump might appear on the golf course. Nevertheless, he arrived at the spot in the very early morning fully 12 hours before Trump arrived at the fifth hole. This brings us to another big question:

Monday on Fox News’ “Mornings with Maria,” former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker told host Maria Bartiromo that 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, who allegedly tried to assassinate the former president at Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, might have used “inside information” from a “3rd party” to determine Trump’s whereabouts.

“I want to know how that person knew to be there, at that golf hole, at that time, that day,” Swecker said in a clip posted to the social media platform X.

. . . Whereas the Butler rally was a public event, announced in advance, Trump’s golf round on Sunday was not.

“He’s either surveilling Donald Trump or he received some inside information,” Swecker said of the alleged would-be assassin Routh. “That’s pretty sinister if that’s the case because that implicates a 3rd party either wittingly or unwittingly.”

A press conference yesterday featuring local and federal law enforcement, if anything, confused the situation. On one hand,

Analysis of Routh's cellphone location data "corroborates witness testimony of Routh's presence at the scene on Sunday," and [Miami FBI chief Jeffrey] Veltri said further analysis "will compile his movements in the days and months leading up to the 15th." He confirmed that Routh was in the vicinity of the golf course for 12 hours before the incident.

On the other hand,

Taking questions from the press, Veltri said that they are still investigating Routh's exact travel route to Florida from Hawaii and how he obtained the rifle. Veltri and Rowe said there is no information at this time indicating that Routh knew for sure that Trump would be at the golf course that day.

But it was also revealed at the press conference that Routh's backpack contained "a black plastic bag containing food". Short of somehow directly reading Routh's mind, wouldn't his presence at the golf course perimeter, armed, and with a black plastic bag containing food, be sufficient for a reasonable person (such as a juror) to infer that Routh knew Trump would be coming to the fifth and sixth holes of the golf course within about 12 hours?

In fact, another perfectly reasonable surmise from the circumstances we've been told is that Routh was able to get inside information on Trump's movements for September 15. Remember the story from November 2016, when National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers told Trump his transition headquarters in Trump Tower was bugged, and as a result, Trump moved the transition to his Bedminster golf club? Do you suppose the organs of state security might possibly be doing something similar now? For instance, when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, might they have planted bugs as well as rifling through Melania's dresser drawers?

But of course, if the organs of state security had access to Trump's non-public schedule, someone within the organs would have had to pass this information on to Routh. Does anyone else feel uncomfortable about the FBI conducting the investigation here?

Yeah, A New Warren Commission Seems Like A Good Idea

The photo above is alleged wannabe assassin Ryan Routh on a 2023 trip to Washington to meet with diplomats and such. Note the understated outfits, the How-to-Dress-for-Success ties. The guy looks like he's just driven in from Bethesda, but he has a criminal record and works as a roofer in Hawaii. Somebody got him tricked out pretty well for this visit, huh? How'd that happen? That's just one of the questions I have about this whole story.

Let's recall that just a few weeks ago,

Donald Trump said he would release “all of the remaining documents pertaining to the assassination of John F Kennedy” if he were elected president in November, as part of a proposed new commission on presidential assassination attempts, including the one that targeted him.

Well, of course, cross out the "one" that targeted him and, at least for now, insert "two". Meanwhile, the same FBI that is said to have promised a report on the investigation of the first attempt within 60 days is now assiduously investigating the second. At least Gov DeSantis says Florida will do a separate investigation, so there's hope. I doubt we'll ever get a full picture unless Trump is elected in November.

The data points we see are troubling. The perp, Ryan Wesley Routh,

has an extensive criminal history in North Carolina that includes convictions between 2002 and 2010 of felony possession of weapons of mass destruction and possession of stolen goods and misdemeanors carrying a concealed gun, hit and run and resisting law enforcement, among other charges. Routh states on LinkedIn that he has moved to Hawaii.

. . . He’s also known to have worked for United Roofing. It was there he fled Greensboro police in 2002 after a traffic stop and, with a gun in his hand, barricaded himself inside the business, according to The News & Record. He had a fully automatic machine gun, the newspaper reported. Routh was interviewed in 2022 by Newsweek Romania and in 2023 by The New York Times for helping to recruit civilian volunteers to help Ukraine fight in the war against Russia.

. . . Trump’s schedule Sunday was not public, and it’s not clear how the attempted assassin knew where he would be.

Elsewhere,

Records show Routh's issues with the law go back to the 1990s and include lesser charges of writing bad checks. But in 2002 he was charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction, a felony, according to North Carolina Department of Corrections records. In another incident, he was charged with misdemeanors, including a hit-and-run offense, resisting arrest, and a concealed weapons violation, the records show.

Although he was charged with a felony, this account doesn't mentioon the disposition of the case. This link says he received probation. Had he been convicted, it would have been illegal for him to possess the rifle he left at the scene at the golf course. But while he was a dangerous guy, he seems to have had high-level Washington contacts:

In a telephone interview with the [New York] Times in 2023, when Routh was in Washington, he spoke with a self-assurance of a seasoned diplomat who thought his plans to support Ukraine’s war effort were sure to succeed. But he appeared to have little patience for anyone who got in his way. When an American foreign fighter seemed to talk down to him in a Facebook message he shared with the Times, Routh said, “He needs to be shot.”

In the interview, Routh said he was in Washington to meet with the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission “for two hours” to help push for more support for Ukraine. The commission is led by members of Congress and staffed by congressional aides. It is influential on matters of democracy and security and has been vocal in supporting Ukraine.

And CNN confirms the mention in one of the links above that the golf outing wasn't on Trump's public schedule:

Former President Donald Trump’s golf game on Sunday was a last-minute addition to his schedule, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Trump had no public events on his schedule for Sunday.

What adds to the puzzle is how Routh, on such apparent short notice, was able to scout a potential location for his attempt. This map is from the New York Post:

Knowledgeable observers note that the Trump National course is lsrgely out of sight from local highways, and the spot Routh chose is one of the few available for such an attempt. As a retired FBI assistant director said to Newsweerk:

"The biggest question to answer is: 'How did the would-be assassin know to be at that location at that time?'" he said. "There are only three possible answers: He guessed and got very lucky; he conducted surveillance on Trump and followed him to the golf course or he had inside information about Trump's schedule.

"The last answer is scary and has implications that another person was involved."

By the way, Routh lives in Hawaii -- what was he doing im West Palm Beach? How long had he been there? He owned a small business that built sheds. Who paid for his trip to Florida? How did he get the AK-47 style rifle with an apparent felony cnnviction on his record? Who dressed him like a member of the political class for his 2023 trip to Washington, when his background was as a roofer and petty crook?

While this is a fast-moving story, I have a feeling we won't be getting answers to these and other questions any time soon, if ever.

Debate Team Is What The Nerds Do To Get Into Harvard

I was thinking about another puzzle when I got up this morning: why do "the polls" say most people thought Kamala "won" the "debate", when the more respectable polls say Trump is inching ahead in electoral preference? The title of this post came to me in the shower: debate team is what the nerds do to get into Harvard. Look at Nate Silver's Wikipedia entry, for instance:

As a student at East Lansing High School, Silver won first place in the state of Michigan in the 49th annual John S. Knight Scholarship Contest for senior high school debaters in 1996.

Silver actually went to Chicago; same differece. But this reminds me of a presentation on cognitive dissonance I heard from psychology profs as an Ivy sophomore myself: looking back, it was remarkably cynical. Their point was that experiments had shown that the more unplesant an experience was -- like, just for instance, hazing -- the more respondents were inclined to rate it as valuable. The experiments involved things like requiring subjects to memorize nonsense syllables under harsh conditions, being told that this would lead to intense personal development or something.

Indeed, the subjects reported they'd been broadened and enriched by the experience. Ever since, I've been scratching my head over what those profs actually knew -- here they were talking to a bunch of underclassmen who'd been dragooned into sacrificing much of a normal childhood and adolescence in the elite university admissions rat race under the pretext that it would lead to their personal development or something. By the time they'd gotten into an Ivy, they'd been flattered into thinking they'd achieved something enormously worthwhile from a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

Winning first place in the State of Pennsyltucky in the 63td annual Throckmorton P Davis Scholarship Contest for senior high school debaters is just one part of that process. And let's face it, it's boring and unpleasant, so it must be really important. So we have a presidential debate, which all the important people tell you is really important and really decisive, but just because it's a debate, who are people goimg to say "won" it? Obviously, the nerdy teacher's pet who's bound for Harvard. Definitely not Don, the class clown, with his wisecracks about eating the dogs and cats.

This is how Kamala fits into the scheme. She's the annoying Social Studies teacher with the nasal voice, the one whose class you've got to sit through and say all the right things, and you've got to stay on her good side to avoid visits to the assistant principal. Don the class clown has flirted with suspension all year for his wisecracks in her class. But she's the debate team's faculty adviser.

So who "won" the "debate"? 95 of 100 couldn't care less, but if pressed they'll say they guess the nerdy teacher's pet. Whom do they like? Don the class clown, of course. Not all of them will admit it to a stranger over the phone, or worse, to an online poll that has their name, address, and social security number, and probably too, the e-mail of their employer's HR department.

This goes to the brilliance of the people behind the Trump campaign. They put an unflitered Kamala out in front with every opportunity:

Kamala speaking in her fake accent says "hello to all my divine 9 brothas and sistas" followed by a loud cackle pic.twitter.com/DJ3NUqC10j

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 15, 2024

Nasal voice, angry schoolmarm facial expressions, fake accent, cackles -- she's pnony, annoying, and unpleasant, which is why she "won" the "debate". But as Sundance pointed out on Thursday,

If candidate Kamala Harris becomes visible, talks or tries to discuss policy, her tenuously fabricated support levels will collapse. Or, as those around Brian Fallon openly admit, if Harris campaigns, she loses.

If Kamala Harris campaigns, holds press conferences, or talks publicly about her policy proposals, she will lose. This is the problem that Brian Fallon is trying to manage[.]

The Trump campaign is doing all it can to help her get her message out.

Yeah, Trump Lost The Debate All Right

Via the Mew York Post,

The internet is lapping up a catchy new parody song poking fun at former President Donald Trump’s “they’re eating the cats” debate comment — with the music video raking in hundreds of thousands of views Friday.

. . . A video of the tune had raked in more than 267,000 views on X Friday — with fans howling with laughter and calling it the purr-fect fall “banger.”

It’s “too too, too good,” one listener gushed, while another called it “brilliant.”

So all of a sudden, a 78-year-old teetotaling Republican becomes a Gen Z icon. Love him or hate him, they love him. But let's check in with Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics, who as I've been saying all along has brain waves amazingly well tuned to the conventional wisdom, as he acknowledges here:

Let’s start out by stating that the emerging conventional wisdom surrounding Tuesday’s presidential debate is probably correct. The night started out promisingly enough for former President Donald Trump. He handled initial questions about the economy reasonably well; the opening theme, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago,” is exactly the theme he wants heading toward November. Trump seemed surprisingly confident and calm. Vice President Kamala Harris seemed nervous and a bit off of her game. For the first five minutes or so, it didn’t seem like a repeat of the June debate, but it did seem like one where Trump might be fighting to a draw.

Harris then proceeded to grab Trump by the combover and drag him around the debate stage for 85 minutes.

. . . Overall, though, from a debater’s standpoint, it wasn't close. Trump was defensive, erratic, and made claims that either confused facts or were simply at odds with them. Harris, on the other hand, was confident and prosecuted the case against Trump with precision.

Well, I would find it entirely plausible if Sean Trende had actually been co-captain of his middle school debate team. "From a debater’s standpoint, it wasn't close" indeed. By the Friday after the debate, the pundits are writing ponderous think pieces under photos of Kamala making Lily Tomlin Ernestine faces, while ordinary people are grooving to Trump's TikTok video on their phones. Sean Trende and everyone else is ignoring the big takeaway from the debate:

One of the big problems for campaign director Brian Fallon, is Kamala’s linguistic pattern, ie. how she talks. There has never been a successful politician in history who talks through their nose in a nasal dialect; it is just too annoying to the average ear.

The same principle applies in business; there are very few people in leadership positions with linguistic afflictions (nasal talkers specifically). The only person with nasal linguistics (speech and dialect patterns) who came close to success, was Ross Perot.

Kamala Harris has a speech pattern that is very annoying. This sounds shallow, but it is a factual challenge that Brian Fallon is trying to overcome by keeping the principal quiet. Quite simply, every time Kamala Harris opens her mouth, she loses votes.

Her policies have nothing to do with it. All the Ivy League Republicans who keep urging Trump to stick to policies are missing the big point: listening to Kamala is like hearing fingernails scraping a blackboard. When Trump announced there would be no more debates, I felt a wave of relief that I wouldn't feel obligated to sit through another 90 minutes of nasal weepiness. But all the co-captains of all the middle school debate teams don't see things that way:

This week, after a debate with Vice President Harris that he apparently did not take entirely seriously, Trump said he would not debate her again. He said there was no need for a “third debate” because he had clearly won the first two. He was including the June 27 debate he had with President Biden, who had been the presumptive Democratic nominee at the time.

Perhaps that was not surprising, as Trump kept Biden in his sights throughout his debate with Harris this week — name checking Biden repeatedly without naming Harris once.

But what was surprising was Trump’s claim to having won both debates. Few would question he won the June 27 meeting with Biden, who seemed so diminished as to be hard to recognize.

. . . Yet here was Trump, on the afternoon after the debate, telling reporters he was not interested in a rematch with Harris because he had “won the debate according to every poll — every single poll, I think.”

Another indicator is Gutfeld: when Joe withdrew from the campaign, I sensed that Gutfeld was at a loss for a schtick to replace poopy-pants jokes -- through the end of July, they weere nightly, sometimes more than once a night. Now they're just once a week or less. But all of a sudden, Haitians eating dogs and cats have replaced poopy-pants, and Gutfeld is back on his stride.

That's become the most memorable moment from Tuesday's debate, which Trump clearly lost -- except nobody can drop Haitians eating dogs and cats, and nobody wants to hear Kamala talking through her nose.

My theory has been that it wasn't the June 27 debate that took Joe down -- Gutfeld had already done it with poopy-pants jokes. Beware the meme of Haitians eating dogs and cats.

What Does Springfield Tell Us About Aurora?

I ended yesterday's post with a puzzle. According to the links, the Springfield, OH city elders somehow made a policy decision to encourage Haitian immigrants to move into town, because the local proletariat was unreliable, ungrateful, and unsuited to the low-pay jobs the employers had to offer. Bringing in a replacement working class was thought to be a win-win, the employers would get docile, grateful, and hard-working new employees, while the town would prosper. The links yesterday weren't completely clear on whether the Haitians were legal or illegal, but this story in the UK Daily Mail says,

Springfield experienced a wave of legal Haitian migration in 2020 in a bid to revitalize the struggling local economy.

Willing to do the blue-collar jobs locals were unenthusiastic about, the Haitians, who were already in the country legally, moved to the town.

Within a few years, 20,000 immigrants arrived, swelling Springfield's population, which was only 58,000 in 2020. These people arrived with social security numbers and working permits, they've paid taxes and occupied previously boarded up, abandoned homes.

Thw story here implies these Haitians are legal immigrants, but apparently they are only in the US under Temporary Protected Status, which allows them to work and travel but doesn't give them legal residence. As a result, the account is misleading, and as we'll see below, there may be a parallel situation in Aurora that's leading to similar results there.

Of course, the Springfield story has anything but a happy ending. There are unconfirmed complaints about the Haitians eating pets and waterfowl and traffic accidents resulting from their unfamiliarity with US traffic laws, but leaving those aside, there are confirmed issues with the Haitians crowding the native-born poor out of medical and housing benefits, to the point that state officials have had belatedly to address the problems.

But if the Haitians are prospering as the new town proletariat, why are their families overwhelming puiblic assistance resources? This just doesn't compute. And I'm scratchinmg my head at the reference in the Daily Mail story that they've renovated previously abandoned homes. That costs money, no matter how much sweat equity you put into it, yet the Haitians are overwhelming public assistance. Who is paying to rehab the bandos?

Are these rehabbed bandos rental units, or what? If so, who are the landlords, and who pays the rent? This brings me to the X post I embedded yesterday:

This is an absolutely insane video.

A Springfield, Ohio homeless advocate tells the city council that landlords are kicking people out of their homes and replacing them with Haitians and that the Biden-Harris government is paying them to do it.

He says he personally knows… pic.twitter.com/edNKl4tpDz

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 12, 2024

The gentleman here strongly implies that the rehabbed bandos are in fact rental units, and the migration incentives favor the Haitians, to the point that the landlords can renovate the homes and get some type of voucher money for the rent, which is above the market value that the native-born poor had been paying. So far, we don't know the details of whatever program is being used to subsidize renovations or provide vouchers for rent -- the mainstream media is neglecting its responsibility here, but a link below gives details of a possible equivalent program in Aurora. I'll see what I can do to fill in the gaps as the story progresses.

But the question of how the slumlords benefit from government subsidy of illegal or quasi=-legal immigration brings us to the stories about Aurora, CO and the apartment blocks said to have been taken over by the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang.

Beginning last year, a large influx of Venezuelan migrants, some of them members of the notorious Tren de Aragua street gang, reportedly had “taken over” a series of apartment buildings in Aurora—and unleashed terror. Last month, Venezuelan migrants were allegedly implicated in an attempted homicide, an arrest of purported gang members, and shocking security footage that showed heavily armed men forcibly entering one of the apartments. In response to the chaos, police mobilized en masse and vacated one of the complexes after the city, alleging code violations, deemed it uninhabitable.

The root of the problem, as I've begun to suspect with Springfield, turns out to be subsidies to slumlords for housing illegals or quasi-legals. In Aurora, "a landlord called CBZ Management, a property company that operates the three apartment buildings[, is] at the center of the current controversy."

The story begins in 2021, when the Biden administration signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) into law, allocating $3.8 billion in federal funds to Colorado. The City of Denver, which had declared itself a “welcoming city” to migrants, drew on this reservoir of money to launch its Emergency Migrant Response resettlement program, with the goal of housing and providing services to a massive flow of migrants.

. . . According to public records, between 2023 and 2024, [two non-profits,] ViVe Wellness and Papagayo received $4.8 million and $774,000, respectively; much of this funding came from the Migrant Support Grant, which was funded by ARPA. Then, in 2024, ViVe secured an extra $10.4 million across three contracts, while Papagayo received $2.9 million from a single contract to serve migrants; two of those five contracts were awarded to implement the Denver Asylum Seekers Program, which promised six months of rental assistance to nearly 1,000 migrants.

. . . We spoke with a former CBZ Management employee, who, on condition of anonymity, explained how the process worked. Last summer, the employee said, representatives from Papagayo began working with CBZ Management to place Venezuelan migrants in the company’s Aurora apartment complexes. When a Venezuelan individual or family needed housing, the NGO would contact the regional property manager, who then matched them with available apartments.

It was a booming business. According to the employee, Papagayo arranged hundreds of contracts with the property manager. The NGO provided up to two months of rental assistance, as many migrants did not have, or were unable to open, bank accounts. Within six months, according to the employee, approximately 80 percent of the residents of these buildings were Venezuelan migrants. The employee also noted that the buildings saw gang activity and violence.

The employee, however, alleges that these agreements were made on false pretenses. To convince the hesitant employee to accept the migrants, Papagayo made assurances that the tenants had stable jobs and income. With limited English and facing a minimum six-month wait for work permits, though, many migrants were ineligible for legal employment, struggled to find stable jobs, and ultimately fell behind on rent.

It sounds as though these circumstances are what's also going on in Springfield: although some of the Haitians are apparently good, steady workers, many others are not; their work permits may be delayed, their English and other skills may not be what the employers need, and they aren't actually working -- but the slumlords get subsidies for their rent. The circumstances outlined above indicate that the slumlords are complicit in setting up situations where gamgs can take over their apartment blocks. According to the New York Post,

A Colorado landlord has agreed to sell a troubled apartment complex that was taken over by the violent Venezuelan migrant gang Tren de Aragua.

Landlord Zev Baumgarten has been fighting with the Denver suburb of Aurora over the Aspen Grove after the city accused him of allowed it to become a trash-ridden, gang-infested hellhole, according to records obtained by the Denver Gazette.

Baumgarten is also the owner of another apartment complex where a viral video showed a crew of gun-toting thugs breaking into a unit, according to the Gazette.

. . . In June, attorneys for the landlords had sent letters begging police and local officials for help, claiming Tren de Aragua had “forcibly taken control” of Aspen Grove. The city finally deemed the site a “criminal nuisance” and evicted the residents.

Last month, a video surfaced at a separate apartment complex showed a gun-toting crew breaking into a unit.

That’s when Baumgarten found himself facing more than 80 charges for building code violations, ranging from vermin infestations to power outages.

But it looks like Baumgarten enabled the whole situation by playing the NGOs' game, accepting both their subsidies and the gang member tenants they provided while placing them in uninhabitable facilities -- and then blaming the problem on the police!

I strongly suspect something similar has been going on in Springfield, and no doubt in many other places all over the country. Both sweatshop employers and slumlords are political donors and have friends in the local machine, which I'm sure is why the Springfield mayor, city manager, and police department all deny there are any Haitians eating pets in their town. Somebody needs to look into who's renting those rehabbed bandos, to whom they're renting them, and what kind of subsidies they're getting for doing it.

My guess is that what;s trickling out now is just a tiny part of the story.