The polls keep getting worse for Biden
President Joe Biden's poll numbers keep getting worse.
November started with New York Times/Siena College polls showing Trump ahead in four of the six swing states, but more indicators of Biden's electoral peril soon followed. The president’s standing in head-to-head matchups with Trump is falling: Among the latest surveys this month from 13 separate pollsters, Biden’s position is worse than their previous polls in all but two of them.
And while polls suggest most of the movement comes from voters abandoning Biden — who might become undecided but not swing to supporting Trump — the Republican has also started to gain steam. Trump’s vote share in the national polling average is higher now than at any point in the past year.
The state-level data are just as striking: In addition to those New York Times/Siena polls, within the last week and a half, other surveys have shown Trump ahead by 8 points in Arizona and 5 points up in Michigan.
Biden's recent slide — and his political predicament some 11 months before Election Day — represent a confluence of slippage with reliable Democratic constituencies like young voters, the outbreak of war in the Middle East and the rise of independent and third-party candidates who could siphon votes from both Biden and Trump.
Biden is losing young voters — but it's unclear how many.
This week’s NBC News poll had a stunning result: Trump led Biden among voters younger than 35, 46 percent to 42 percent.
Even though that was well within the high margin of error for such a small subgroup, other polls also show a close race with what has been a reliable Democratic constituency. Biden had only single-digit leads among voters 18-34 in polls this month from Morning Consult (Biden +2), Fox News (Biden +7) and Quinnipiac University (Biden +9). (Trump led Biden in all four polls among all voters.)
Only a few polls show Biden with a lead among young voters that approaches his 2020 margins, but they are the exception, not the rule.
That’s prompted a debate over whether Trump is really making the deep inroads with younger voters the polling suggests — or if those numbers are an artifact of some kind of polling bias. One popular theory speculates that liberal younger voters who are unenthusiastic about Biden and his party — over his administration’s support for Israel in its war with Hamas, for example — aren’t participating in polls right now, even if many of them will vote for him next November.
But Biden, the oldest president in history, has never polled well with younger voters. And telephone polls — of the four mentioned above, all but Morning Consult were conducted over the phone — are a difficult way to reach younger voters.
Biden's approval ratings are headed downward, while Trump’s vote share is spiking.
Biden’s sagging margins against Trump are one thing. But there are two other trendlines under the hood of these polls that spell trouble for the incumbent.
First, his approval rating — already historically low for a president at this point in his first term — has been ticking down. Biden’s approval rating dipped down to 38 percent in FiveThirtyEight’s average earlier this month, the lowest since July 2022. Similarly, when Biden hit 40 percent in RealClearPolitics’ average this month, it was his lowest reading since August 2022.
Meanwhile, Trump’s numbers are rising. Dating back a little more than a year, RealClearPolitics’ average has had Trump hovering between 42 percent and 46 percent in a head-to-head matchup with Biden. Not only did Trump break 46 percent for the first time earlier this month, this week he inched above 47 percent, about equal to his vote share in the 2020 election.
Most of the polls that show Trump with a majority of the vote don’t include undecided voters — a questionable methodological decision this far out from Election Day, especially in a hypothetical race between two candidates so disliked by the electorate. But even polls that do report undecided voters show Trump ticking up, like the Fox News survey, which had Trump with a slight lead over Biden, 50 percent to 46 percent.
It's not just the Middle East — Biden's been slipping in the polls for months.
It’s common to try attributing any change in a president’s poll numbers to recent news events, such as Israel’s war with Hamas. But for Biden, the reality is a little more complicated.
FiveThirtyEight’s average shows a fairly steady decline in Biden’s approval rating dating back to May. RealClearPolitics’ goes back to April.
Meanwhile, Trump’s average favorable rating has actually been steadily increasing over the past two months, rising from 39 percent on Sept. 1 to 42 percent as of Wednesday afternoon, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Swing states are moving with the rest of the country: away from Biden.
The bad news for Biden isn’t confined to the national polls. And that’s despite a three-month-long advertising campaign to boost the president’s numbers.
Since mid-August, Biden and the Democratic National Committee have spent about $12 million on swing state TV ads, according to the tracking firm AdImpact. For most of the fall, Biden spent about $1 million a week, though that’s been roughly cut in half for the past few weeks.
It isn’t helping. In addition to the New York Times/Siena polls showing Trump leading Biden in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Trump led Biden in six of seven swing states surveyed by Morning Consult and Bloomberg News.
There were also some eye-popping results in other Biden-won states from 2020. Trump was ahead by 8 points last week in a Noble Predictive Insights poll in Arizona and by 5 points in an EPIC-MRA poll in Michigan.
Third-party candidates are still having an uncertain impact.
One of the most striking things about the daunting poll numbers for Biden is that they come in head-to-head matchups with Trump — and don’t include the third-party candidates who could draw even more votes from the president.
Many pollsters don’t yet include matchups with independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West or Green Party candidate Jill Stein, so there’s little evidence right now to measure their impact. Trump’s lead over Biden in RealClearPolitics’ averages is smaller when Kennedy is added but slightly larger when West and Stein are also included. Those mixed signals mean it’s too early to say exactly how independent and third-party candidates will change the electoral math for Biden and Trump.
But it’s clear Biden’s deficit is not a result of third-party candidates running — or those potentially looming, like retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). And they could make it harder for Biden to recover, especially if the independent candidates gobble up significant shares of support among groups like young voters.
The paid agent behind the Oval Office desk
Via John Hinderaker of Power Line, Andy McCarthy at National Review has a stunning piece outlining the depths of Joe Biden's involvement as China's little agent, tying together details which will make you wanting to take a shower afterward.
He writes:
Thanks to the extensive excavation of Biden financial records by Senators Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), followed by the dogged reporting of the New York Post once Hunter’s abandoned laptop was exposed, the outlines of the story were publicly available before Election Day 2020. The Biden/China scheme may not have been sufficiently known, but it was eminently knowable — so much so that I presented it in detail in “A Collusion Tale: China and the Bidens,” which we published on October 31, 2020 — the weekend before the election.
The story has gotten more damning with the additional evidence unearthed by the Oversight Committee under the direction of Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.). But it hasn’t changed.
CEFC, the Shanghai-based energy conglomerate with which Joe Biden and his family joined forces, was China. To describe it as a “thinly veiled” arm of Xi Jinping’s monstrous regime would exaggerate the camouflage. It was run by Ye Jianming, whom the Bidens deemed a protégé of Xi — as the president’s brother, Jim Biden, conceded to federal investigators.
How could it be otherwise? As I recounted in October 2020, CEFC’s position as a privileged “private” company was established by the regime in 2006 (when Xi was the rising star of the CCP).
The fake Chinese front company disappeared from view along with its agents, as soon as its activities got brazen enough for lawmen to start examining them -- in an instant. But the Bidens had already gotten their money, and performed their services, and it was a lot of money -- big $10,000,000 amounts. The Chinese not only used the Bidens to find out little things like what the FBI had on their agents, they also used it to muscle other countries to jump onboard with their One Belt, One Road initiative and other projects, letting them know that they already had the Bidens in their pocket so there was no protection out there for them:
This, of course, is why the Biden connection was so valuable — why CEFC was willing to pay millions of dollars for it. Doors were opened by the association with Joe Biden, one of America’s most prominent, influential politicians. If CEFC could brandish cordial relations and a business partnership with the Biden family, then other targets of China’s OBOR blandishments would be more willing to transact.
China is famous for getting the hooks in in a string of third world nations, all of which have become remarkably uncooperative with the U.S., and not even interested in making alliances with it any more. We've lost influence as joining in the China-led BRICS bloc has become the hot new thing.
Does it sound like Joe Biden has undermined our international interests with his takings from the Chinese regime, all to buy those mansions and fancy cars? Somehow, the U.S. doesn't have the influence it used to have internationally, and it's not just because of President Obama's constant apology tours. It was having Joe on their string that pretty well negated the U.S. as a global player. It also doesn't help that with Joe around, we also lose wars and sport wokester troops on hormone treatments, wearing makeup and dresses.
I'd still like to know what Hunter Biden did with that diamond the Chinese agents presented him with, likely to avoid bank monitoring laws.
Acting as an agent of a foreign regime while in public office is treason by anyone's definition. It's also an impeachable offense, as is bribery, according to the Constitution's Article II, Section 4:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Where's the impeachment of this one, given the clarity of the charges?
Previous House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hemmed and hawed on it, believing perhaps that because past presidential impeachments have been on trivial matters and have always failed, this one wouldn't be any different.
But it is different, with millions of dollars changing hands and U.S. influence waning significantly. If this isn't dealt with in Congress, the stage will be set for any elected leader to do the same. Now that the facts are known, Andy McCarthy argues, that Joe cannot escape his China scandal paper trail at the very least. One hopes that he is right because the bribery and treason here couldn't be more real.
Image: Screen shot from a camera aimed at a television set, processed with Adobe CameraRaw.
KAMALA HARRIS - ONE MORE GAMER LYING LAWYER JUST LIKE JOE!
19. Why did your office decline to investigate the health supplement fraud cases involving companies your husband’s law firm represented? Did you, as California’s attorney general, ever purposefully decline investigating or prosecuting clients of your husband’s law firm?
The best-case scenario is that she’s a progressive who repeatedly violated her own principles so that she could promote her career. In the worst-case scenario, she’s just another corrupt, rotten, regressive prosecutor. JESSER HOROWITZ
Kamala Harris poses for Thanksgiving photo in front of a gas stove
What is it about kitchens that brings out Kamala Harris's inner phony?
Here's her latest, from a Thanksgiving photo released to the public:
She posed in front of a gas stove.
Here's the Biden-Harris administration's stance on gas stoves:
Gas stoves for me, but not for thee, is that how it goes? Only the nomenklatura get them?
Based on this picture, that sounds about right. And as for an additional phony factor -- why is she cooking so much food for a two-person Thanksgiving dinner? Maybe there are other people, but why are they not in the photo?
Harris, recall, is fond of very fancy cookware, which is how she spent her first visit to France, presumbly on the down time. She spoke English loudly in a Paris shop before plinking down $562 for some fancy cookware. That cookware goes nice on a gas stove, doesn't it?
Harris also posed in this kitchen before, when she donned an apron with factory folds, presumbly to make her famous jerk chicken. Nobody believed that.
Notice, though, that the kitchen is the same one in Brentwood, California that she posed in for her later kitchen pictures.
That's her gas stove all right and she's not giving it up to save the planet. Maybe the Bidenites ought to wise up to the fact that people are noticing.
Image: Twitter screen shot
19. Why did your office decline to investigate the health supplement fraud cases involving companies your husband’s law firm represented? Did you, as California’s attorney general, ever purposefully decline investigating or prosecuting clients of your husband’s law firm?
45 Questions the Media Should Ask Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) will appear in their first joint media interview on Sunday after accepting their party’s nominations this week.
However, unlike President Trump, Biden and Harris have thus far declined to take questions from the media in an open joint press conference where no questions or topics are off-limits.
In the event that such a press availability arises, here are 45 questions the media should ask them. This list is by no means exhaustive.
QUESTIONS FOR JOE BIDEN:
1. Why did members of your family keep getting lucrative business opportunities overseas while you were vice president?
2. How did your brother, Frank, secure $45,000,000 in taxpayer loans from the Obama administration for his Caribbean projects?
3. How did a newly-minted firm employing your other brother, James, receive a $1.5 billion contract to build homes in Iraq despite having no experience in construction or international development?
4. Why did your son Hunter accompany you on your official trip to Beijing in December 2013? What did he do on that trip? Who did he meet with? What should the American public make of the fact that just 10 days after this trip, your son’s boutique private equity firm secured a $1 billion investment deal from the state-owned bank of China (later expanded to $1.5 billion) despite having no prior experience in China, and with this deal, the Chinese government granted your son’s firm a first-of-its-kind arrangement to operate in the the recently formed Shanghai Free-Trade Zone—a perk not granted to any of the large established financial institutions?
5. Should the American public be concerned that your son’s private equity firm partnered with a Chinese government-owned aerospace and defense conglomerate to facilitate the purchase of an American company that produced strategically sensitive dual-use military technology that the Chinese government wanted?
6. Does your “Build Back Better” proposal contain any provisions to ensure that American taxpayer-funded technology is not bought off by Chinese state-backed enterprises working with private equity firms like your son’s?
7. Back in 2000, you voted in favor of giving permanent Normal Trade Relations (NTR) to China. At the time, you said that this would not lead to “the collapse of the American manufacturing economy” because China is “about the size of the Netherlands” and could not possibly become “our major economic competitor.” Furthermore, you predicted that free trade with China would establish “a path toward ever greater political and economic freedom” for the people of China. Do you still stand by these statements today after 3.4 million American jobs have been lost to China and millions of China’s citizens have been imprisoned, surveilled, disappeared, and used as slave labor by an increasingly authoritarian regime enriched by 20 years of record trade imbalances from flagrant trade violations?
8. The People’s Republic of China has a bold plan called “Made in China 2025” to dominate the key technologies of the future in order to overtake the United States militarily and economically. Do you still contend that China is “not competition for us”?
9. Why did you promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to financial special interest groups when research was clear that the deal would make it easier for corporations to move U.S. jobs overseas?
10. Do you believe Xi Jinping kept his promise to Barack Obama to end cyber-espionage against the United States? If not, what are you prepared to do about it?
11. Do you accept that the coronavirus originated in China? Do you think China was honest with the world in its handling of the coronavirus? Are you satisfied with China’s explanations for how it spread? Do you believe their claims about the number of cases and fatalities in China?
12. Do you think China should be held responsible in any way for its handling of the coronavirus? If not, why not? What, if any, repercussions should there be for China in its handling of the coronavirus?
13. Did you suggest investigating Michael Flynn under the Logan Act, as Peter Strzok’s notes suggest?
14. You said in your DNC acceptance speech that America is ready to “do the hard work of rooting out our systemic racism.” What did you do in your 36 years as a U.S. senator and 8 years as vice president to root out systemic racism? Why didn’t it work?
15. You have called for “revolutionary institutional changes.” What does that mean in practice?
16. You have vowed to rescind the Trump tax cuts. Can you think of a single example of a country that recovered from a recession by raising taxes?
QUESTIONS FOR KAMALA HARRIS:
17. Why did you refuse to prosecute even one sexual abuse case involving the Catholic Church in San Francisco when you were attorney general, despite the pleas of victims’ groups?
18. Also, why did your attorney general’s office refuse to release the documents obtained from the San Francisco archdiocese with all the information about priests accused of sexual abuse? Victims’ rights groups have criticized your office for deliberately burying these documents and thereby covering up the crimes and leaving the public unprotected. Why did you do this? The San Francisco district attorney’s office claimed in 2019 that they no longer have these documents in their possession. What happened to them? How can you claim to be a defender of children when you declined to prosecute the abusers of children?
19. Why did your office decline to investigate the health supplement fraud cases involving companies your husband’s law firm represented? Did you, as California’s attorney general, ever purposefully decline investigating or prosecuting clients of your husband’s law firm?
20. You said you believed the women accusing Joe Biden of inappropriate touching. Do you believe Tara Reade? If not, why not? If so, how do you justify supporting him now?
21. You once attacked a judicial nominee on the basis of his membership in the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus, which is the largest fraternal organization in the world and includes among its past and present members many prominent Americans like President John F. Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA), and Vince Lombardi. Do you believe that being a member of the Knights of Columbus disqualifies a person from holding public office? Would you refuse to hire someone on the basis of their membership in the Knights of Columbus or any other Catholic organization? In your questioning of this Catholic judicial nominee, you singled out the issue of the Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life. Would you disqualify a job applicant on the basis of their Catholic beliefs, including their beliefs about abortion? Do you believe that being pro-life disqualifies someone from employment?
22. Why did you single out journalist David Daleiden for prosecution for undercover journalism that others do without penalty?
23. Your chief-of-staff, Karine Jean-Pierre, wrote an op-ed last year attacking the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Americans who associate with it, stating “You cannot call yourself a progressive while continuing to associate yourself with an organization like AIPAC that has often been the antithesis of what it means to be progressive.” Do you believe that pro-Israel activism is incompatible with progressive values?
24. The Biden campaign has adopted a version of the Green New Deal that calls for 100 percent renewable electricity generation by 2035. California has adopted similar “green” goals, but now it can’t keep the lights on due to the state’s reliance on wind and solar energy. California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newson admitted this week that the Golden State needs a “backup” plan for energy because the current blackouts caused by lack of wind and overcast skies have shown the danger of relying solely on “green” energy. Why would the nation fare any better than sunny breezy California in keeping the lights on if we adopt 100 percent renewable energy?
25. You said in the past that we “need to hold China accountable” for trade violations, but you are against the use of tariffs. How do you intend to hold China accountable? You also said that “we need to export American products, not American jobs.” How do you intend to make sure we don’t export more American jobs to China? How would your policy differ significantly from the same policies that led to the loss of 3.4 million jobs to China?
QUESTIONS FOR BIDEN OR HARRIS:
26. You both supported the George Floyd protests, which you claimed were peaceful. Have you spoken to any victims of the riots — people who lost loved ones or businesses?
27. Do you believe that the looting of the Magnificent Mile in Chicago was a “form of reparations,” as one Chicago Black Lives Matter organizer claimed? Is looting an appropriate form of protest as a means of reparations?
28. Seattle Black Lives Matter protesters stormed a neighborhood last week, demanding that residents “get the f*** out” and “give black people back their homes” as reparations. Do you support that style of protest?
29. If elected, would you object if protesters decided to tear down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square across from the White House? What about statues to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington? Would you be willing to sign a written pledge to protect our national monuments and statues?
30. What is the maximum number of illegal immigrants you would allow into the country before securing the border to stop more from entering?
31. The Obama administration deported an estimated 3 million illegal aliens. Was that a bad thing?
32. With 30 million Americans unemployed due to the coronavirus, would you support a halt on work visas for foreign workers competing with Americans for jobs?
33. Do you still support a ban on fracking? If so, what do you say to the estimated 7.5 million American jobs that will be lost due to such a ban, which includes an estimated 550,000 jobs lost in Pennsylvania, 500,000 jobs lost in Ohio, 363,000 jobs lost in North Carolina, 353,000 jobs lost in Colorado, and 233,000 jobs lost in Michigan?
34. Wall Street has praised the choice of Kamala Harris as VP. Why do you think financial special interests support her so much?
35. Will you be following the advice of your Wall Street and Silicon Valley donors in negotiating with China? If not, whose advice would you seek out in negotiating with China?
36. Do you support China’s actions in Hong Kong?
37. Do you support China’s actions in Xinjiang province where an estimated 3 million predominantly Uyghur Muslims are imprisoned in what the Pentagon has described as “concentration camps”? Are you concerned about the fact that Hunter Biden’s China-backed private equity firm invested heavily in the surveillance technology used to spy on the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province?
38. Do you disagree with how the Trump administration is handling Huawei? Do you think Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou should be extradited to the United States for trial?
39. Do you believe China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a form of colonialism or is it a good program that Third World nations should sign up for?
40. What are you prepared to do if China invades Taiwan or uses military force to assert its claims in the South China Sea?
41. Do you believe the U.S. should return to the Iran nuclear deal? Would you make further concessions to Iran to secure that? Do you believe the Iranian regime should be allowed to buy weapons again?
42. Are you pleased with the results of the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya?
43. Why did the Islamic State fold up so much more quickly under Trump than the Obama administration predicted?
44. Would you advise Arab nations to follow the UAE’s lead and make peace with Israel, or should they hold out for big concessions to the Palestinians?
45. Should the United States apologize for demanding NATO partners meet their financial commitments? If not, why didn’t the Obama administration ever do that?
Rebecca Mansour is a Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on Twitter at @RAMansour.
Kamala Harris Failed to Investigate Client of Husband’s Law Firm as California Attorney General
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) failed as California’s attorney general declined to investigate faulty advertising claims against one of the nation’s leading nutritional supplement companies, which also happened to be a client of her husband’s law firm.
As California’s chief law enforcement officer between 2011 and 2017, Harris racked up a record as a tough on crime prosecutor. From cracking down on school truancy to opposing marijuana legalization—with more than 1900 people being prosecuted for possession of the drug under her tenure—Harris was California’s self-acknowledged “top cop.”
That record, however, did not extend to clients of Venable LLP, the law firm where Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, was a high-profile partner. Harris, in particular, failed on numerous occasions to investigate the nutritional supplement giant Herbalife. At the time, Herbalife was a high-profile client of Venable, paying the firm hundreds of thousands of dollars for its legal services every year.
One such instance occurred in 2015 when prosecutors from the San Diego-branch of Harris’s attorney general’s office sent her a “lengthy memorandum” expressing the need for an investigation to be opened into Herbalife for fraudulent marketing practices, according to Yahoo News. Even before the memorandum was sent, Herbalife had a long and complicated history in California, at one point even generating nearly one thousand complaints about its marketing practices.
It is unclear if Harris ever saw the memorandum in question as no investigation was ever opened by her office. More notably, shortly after the memorandum was sent by the San Diego prosecutors, Harris appeared at a $1,000-dollar-a-had fundraiser in Washington, D.C. hosted by the Podest Group, which then represented Herbalife as a lobbying client. Later that same year, Emhoff would be promoted to managing director of Venable’s West Coast operations.
This was not the only time that Harris declined to take action against Herbalife. In April 2015, Harris refused to join 14 other state attorneys general in asking Congress to open an investigation into the herbal supplements industry for not appropriately disclosing ingredients in their products. At the time, Herbalife was explicitly mentioned by the attorneys general as one of the companies that warranted further scrutiny.
The revelations are detailed more fully in Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite—a book released earlier this year by Peter Schweizer, a senior contributor at Breitbart News and president of the Government Accountability Institute.
Harris and her husband’s ties to Herbalife come back into view as the California lawmaker has catapulted onto the national scene after being chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate.
The best-case scenario is that she’s a progressive who repeatedly violated her own principles so that she could promote her career. In the worst-case scenario, she’s just another corrupt, rotten, regressive prosecutor.
JESSER HOROWITZ
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) failed as California’s attorney general declined to investigate faulty advertising claims against one of the nation’s leading nutritional supplement companies, which also happened to be a client of her husband’s law firm.
As California’s chief law enforcement officer between 2011 and 2017, Harris racked up a record as a tough on crime prosecutor. From cracking down on school truancy to opposing marijuana legalization—with more than 1900 people being prosecuted for possession of the drug under her tenure—Harris was California’s self-acknowledged “top cop.”
That record, however, did not extend to clients of Venable LLP, the law firm where Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, was a high-profile partner. Harris, in particular, failed on numerous occasions to investigate the nutritional supplement giant Herbalife. At the time, Herbalife was a high-profile client of Venable, paying the firm hundreds of thousands of dollars for its legal services every year.
One such instance occurred in 2015 when prosecutors from the San Diego-branch of Harris’s attorney general’s office sent her a “lengthy memorandum” expressing the need for an investigation to be opened into Herbalife for fraudulent marketing practices, according to Yahoo News. Even before the memorandum was sent, Herbalife had a long and complicated history in California, at one point even generating nearly one thousand complaints about its marketing practices.
It is unclear if Harris ever saw the memorandum in question as no investigation was ever opened by her office. More notably, shortly after the memorandum was sent by the San Diego prosecutors, Harris appeared at a $1,000-dollar-a-had fundraiser in Washington, D.C. hosted by the Podest Group, which then represented Herbalife as a lobbying client. Later that same year, Emhoff would be promoted to managing director of Venable’s West Coast operations.
This was not the only time that Harris declined to take action against Herbalife. In April 2015, Harris refused to join 14 other state attorneys general in asking Congress to open an investigation into the herbal supplements industry for not appropriately disclosing ingredients in their products. At the time, Herbalife was explicitly mentioned by the attorneys general as one of the companies that warranted further scrutiny.
The revelations are detailed more fully in Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite—a book released earlier this year by Peter Schweizer, a senior contributor at Breitbart News and president of the Government Accountability Institute.
Harris and her husband’s ties to Herbalife come back into view as the California lawmaker has catapulted onto the national scene after being chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate.
The best-case scenario is that she’s a progressive who repeatedly violated her own principles so that she could promote her career. In the worst-case scenario, she’s just another corrupt, rotten, regressive prosecutor.
JESSER HOROWITZ
Unethical conduct plagues legal career of Kamala Harris
Posted on February 27, 2019 in Opinions
On Jan. 2019, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris declared her candidacy for President of the United States of America to great fanfare.
She earned quick praise and frequent comparison to former President Barack Obama. A recent Democratic Party straw poll by the Daily Kos ranked her in the top tier of Presidential candidates, with 27 percent of respondents voicing their support for her candidacy. So far, she has pitched herself to the American people as a strong progressive with a particular passion for criminal justice reform.
Harris has a reasonable chance at winning the Democratic Party nomination. She’s charismatic, smart and very likely to bridge the growing divide within the party between the progressive left and the centrists. If she wins the nomination, she might even defeat Donald Trump in the general election. I understand why some voters in the party have decided to rally around her: She’s a promising alternative for Democrats who want someone progressive like Bernie Sanders but better than he is at speaking to identity politics.
However, I would like to encourage my fellow Democrats to approach Senator Harris with a healthy dose of skepticism. As a prosecutor and California State Attorney General, Harris has engaged in blatantly unethical behavior for her profession and embraced positions that actively hurt her constituents. While this does not necessarily have to be a red line for everyone—and it certainly will not prevent me from voting for her should she win the Democratic nomination—our party should hold Harris’ feet to the fire here. Even more concerning than her past positions is that she refuses to own up to them, portraying herself as a long-time, progressive criminal justice reform activist.
I want to clarify that I have no inherent issues with a prosecutor being elected to the presidency. We need prosecutors; we need people who serve the public good rather than represent the interests of paying clients. However, if your job requires you to make decisions that could potentially ruin people’s lives, the ethical standards should be higher, not lower. If you, like Kamala Harris, decide you want to run for President of the United States, it becomes imperative that the public thoroughly and mercilessly scrutinizes every facet of your political career.
In 2015, law enforcement caught Robert Murray, a prosecutor in Kern County, committing one of the most egregious offenses a prosecutor could perpetrate. Specifically, he falsified a confession transcript that connected the defendant with a far worse crime than that with what he had actually been charged. When the defense demanded a copy of the original tape recording, Murray admitted to his crime but said that it was merely a harmless joke. The judge disagreed. He stated that the court refuses to tolerate such outrageous conduct and dismissed the indictment on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct (Observer, “California Prosecutor Falsified Transcript of Confession,” 03.04.2015).
How does this incident involve Senator Harris? At the time, she was the Attorney General of California. In that capacity, she appealed the indictment. According to Sidney Powell of The Observer, this was the third time she had appealed a prosecutorial misconduct dismissal in less than three months. As of March 2015, Murray was still allowed to work as a prosecutor (Observer, “California Prosecutor Falsified Transcript of Confession,” 03.04.2015).
As Attorney General, Harris has a history of fighting to keep men she knew were innocent in prison and of hiding cases of significant illegal activity conducted by law enforcement. In 1999, Daniel Larsen was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for possession of a concealed weapon. There had been nine witnesses who could testify that Larsen was not guilty, but the court called none of them at the trial because of his incompetent and now disbarred attorney. With the help of the Innocence Project, he was able to prove his innocence, and the court overturned his conviction in 2009.
How does this involve Senator Harris? She challenged his release not because she believed he was guilty—she did not dispute his innocence—but because he hadn’t presented proof of his innocence quickly enough. And so, she fought to keep a man she definitely knew was innocent behind bars for life (NBCLosAngeles, “After 13 Years in Prison, Man Found Innocent of Crime Freed,” 3.20.2013).
In another incident, law enforcement discovered that Deborah Madden had purposely sabotaged the drug results of multiple cases as a technician at a San Francisco crime lab. But even though the highest levels of the district attorney’s office knew about Madden’s unreliability as a drug expert, Kamala Harris and her office hid this information from defense attorneys. Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo ultimately ruled that Harris’ office had violated defendants’ rights through this act of prosecutorial misconduct, calling into question the convictions of nearly 40 defendants (SFGate, “Judge rips Harris’ office for hiding problems,” 05.21.2010).
However, perhaps Harris’ most egregious example of immoral conduct happened in 2014. A federal judge ordered that all non-violent second-strike offenders be eligible for parole in California in an action against constitutional prison crowding. Kamala Harris, then the Attorney General of California, disagreed with the decision. She argued in court that by releasing these inmates early, prisons would lose “an important labor pool” (Los Angeles Times, “Federal judges order California to expand prison releases,” 11.14.2014). Despite pitching herself as a lifelong champion for criminal justice reform, Harris had advocated that the need to keep nonviolent offenders as slaves outweighs their constitutional rights. How would the Democratic Party call itself progressive if members threw their support behind someone with such an atrocious record on civil rights issues?
Even worse, Harris has yet to apologize for her actions and in fact has refused to even acknowledge them (Reason.com, “Kamala Harris Hopes You’ll Forget Her Record as a Drug Warrior and Draconian Prosecutor,” 01.31.2019). At a town hall, she responded to a question calling her out on her past actions by answering “I’ve been consistent my whole career,” and then explained how the record supports her claim that she has been progressive on prison reform (CNN Twitter, “I’ve been consistent my whole career,” 01.28.2019).
I won’t delve into her argument because, in my view, it’s irrelevant. When you actively cover up police misconduct, try to keep a man who you know is innocent in prison and refuse to release nonviolent offenders because you need their involuntary labor, you don’t get to reframe your narrative.
Kamala Harris is not owed an audience. She is not entitled to one simply because she wants to be president. We should not give her the benefit of the doubt, because she refuses to even acknowledge her wrongdoings. We don’t have the right to forgive her; that right belongs to all the people she’s wronged over the course of her long career.
For that reason, I ask you not to vote for Kamala Harris in the primary, no matter how attractive a candidate she is or how well she explains away her inconsistent career. It’s possible that her past really won’t have much of an impact on how she’ll be as president, but why should we wait and see? The best-case scenario is that she’s a progressive who repeatedly violated her own principles so that she could promote her career. In the worst-case scenario, she’s just another corrupt, rotten, regressive prosecutor.
Posted on February 27, 2019 in Opinions
On Jan. 2019, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris declared her candidacy for President of the United States of America to great fanfare.
She earned quick praise and frequent comparison to former President Barack Obama. A recent Democratic Party straw poll by the Daily Kos ranked her in the top tier of Presidential candidates, with 27 percent of respondents voicing their support for her candidacy. So far, she has pitched herself to the American people as a strong progressive with a particular passion for criminal justice reform.
Harris has a reasonable chance at winning the Democratic Party nomination. She’s charismatic, smart and very likely to bridge the growing divide within the party between the progressive left and the centrists. If she wins the nomination, she might even defeat Donald Trump in the general election. I understand why some voters in the party have decided to rally around her: She’s a promising alternative for Democrats who want someone progressive like Bernie Sanders but better than he is at speaking to identity politics.
However, I would like to encourage my fellow Democrats to approach Senator Harris with a healthy dose of skepticism. As a prosecutor and California State Attorney General, Harris has engaged in blatantly unethical behavior for her profession and embraced positions that actively hurt her constituents. While this does not necessarily have to be a red line for everyone—and it certainly will not prevent me from voting for her should she win the Democratic nomination—our party should hold Harris’ feet to the fire here. Even more concerning than her past positions is that she refuses to own up to them, portraying herself as a long-time, progressive criminal justice reform activist.
I want to clarify that I have no inherent issues with a prosecutor being elected to the presidency. We need prosecutors; we need people who serve the public good rather than represent the interests of paying clients. However, if your job requires you to make decisions that could potentially ruin people’s lives, the ethical standards should be higher, not lower. If you, like Kamala Harris, decide you want to run for President of the United States, it becomes imperative that the public thoroughly and mercilessly scrutinizes every facet of your political career.
In 2015, law enforcement caught Robert Murray, a prosecutor in Kern County, committing one of the most egregious offenses a prosecutor could perpetrate. Specifically, he falsified a confession transcript that connected the defendant with a far worse crime than that with what he had actually been charged. When the defense demanded a copy of the original tape recording, Murray admitted to his crime but said that it was merely a harmless joke. The judge disagreed. He stated that the court refuses to tolerate such outrageous conduct and dismissed the indictment on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct (Observer, “California Prosecutor Falsified Transcript of Confession,” 03.04.2015).
How does this incident involve Senator Harris? At the time, she was the Attorney General of California. In that capacity, she appealed the indictment. According to Sidney Powell of The Observer, this was the third time she had appealed a prosecutorial misconduct dismissal in less than three months. As of March 2015, Murray was still allowed to work as a prosecutor (Observer, “California Prosecutor Falsified Transcript of Confession,” 03.04.2015).
As Attorney General, Harris has a history of fighting to keep men she knew were innocent in prison and of hiding cases of significant illegal activity conducted by law enforcement. In 1999, Daniel Larsen was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for possession of a concealed weapon. There had been nine witnesses who could testify that Larsen was not guilty, but the court called none of them at the trial because of his incompetent and now disbarred attorney. With the help of the Innocence Project, he was able to prove his innocence, and the court overturned his conviction in 2009.
How does this involve Senator Harris? She challenged his release not because she believed he was guilty—she did not dispute his innocence—but because he hadn’t presented proof of his innocence quickly enough. And so, she fought to keep a man she definitely knew was innocent behind bars for life (NBCLosAngeles, “After 13 Years in Prison, Man Found Innocent of Crime Freed,” 3.20.2013).
In another incident, law enforcement discovered that Deborah Madden had purposely sabotaged the drug results of multiple cases as a technician at a San Francisco crime lab. But even though the highest levels of the district attorney’s office knew about Madden’s unreliability as a drug expert, Kamala Harris and her office hid this information from defense attorneys. Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo ultimately ruled that Harris’ office had violated defendants’ rights through this act of prosecutorial misconduct, calling into question the convictions of nearly 40 defendants (SFGate, “Judge rips Harris’ office for hiding problems,” 05.21.2010).
However, perhaps Harris’ most egregious example of immoral conduct happened in 2014. A federal judge ordered that all non-violent second-strike offenders be eligible for parole in California in an action against constitutional prison crowding. Kamala Harris, then the Attorney General of California, disagreed with the decision. She argued in court that by releasing these inmates early, prisons would lose “an important labor pool” (Los Angeles Times, “Federal judges order California to expand prison releases,” 11.14.2014). Despite pitching herself as a lifelong champion for criminal justice reform, Harris had advocated that the need to keep nonviolent offenders as slaves outweighs their constitutional rights. How would the Democratic Party call itself progressive if members threw their support behind someone with such an atrocious record on civil rights issues?
Even worse, Harris has yet to apologize for her actions and in fact has refused to even acknowledge them (Reason.com, “Kamala Harris Hopes You’ll Forget Her Record as a Drug Warrior and Draconian Prosecutor,” 01.31.2019). At a town hall, she responded to a question calling her out on her past actions by answering “I’ve been consistent my whole career,” and then explained how the record supports her claim that she has been progressive on prison reform (CNN Twitter, “I’ve been consistent my whole career,” 01.28.2019).
I won’t delve into her argument because, in my view, it’s irrelevant. When you actively cover up police misconduct, try to keep a man who you know is innocent in prison and refuse to release nonviolent offenders because you need their involuntary labor, you don’t get to reframe your narrative.
Kamala Harris is not owed an audience. She is not entitled to one simply because she wants to be president. We should not give her the benefit of the doubt, because she refuses to even acknowledge her wrongdoings. We don’t have the right to forgive her; that right belongs to all the people she’s wronged over the course of her long career.
For that reason, I ask you not to vote for Kamala Harris in the primary, no matter how attractive a candidate she is or how well she explains away her inconsistent career. It’s possible that her past really won’t have much of an impact on how she’ll be as president, but why should we wait and see? The best-case scenario is that she’s a progressive who repeatedly violated her own principles so that she could promote her career. In the worst-case scenario, she’s just another corrupt, rotten, regressive prosecutor.
THERE IS ONE THING JOE'S CRONY HIGH TECH BILLIONAIRES WANT: WIDER OPEN BORDERS, BOATLOADS OF 'CHEAP' LABOR FROM INDIANS AND NO LEGAL NEED APPLY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.
HAS JOE PAID BACK HIS HIGH TECH CENSORS?
IT WAS JOE'S HIGH TECH CENSORS WHO KNOCKED OFF THE INTERNET ANYTHING ABOUT ROBERT F KENNEDY AND ANYTHING ABOUT JOE'S CORRUPTION, INCLUDING INFO ON HUNTER BIDEN'S BRIBES SUCKING FOR THE 'BIG GUY', ALONG WITH ANYTHING THAT OPPOSED JOE'S MASS INVASION OF 'CHEAP' LABOR
Alex Marlow: Joe Biden’s A.I. Oligarchs Plan for Our Future — Harness U.S. Government, Team with China, and ‘Break’ Capitalism
No administration in history has been so thoroughly infiltrated by the influence peddling industry than Joe Biden’s.
The entire world knows that Biden’s administration is for sale. From foreign governments to America’s tech and defense sectors, the money will stay flowing so long as Biden’s policies stay favorable to them. This is a running theme in nearly every chapter of my latest New York Times bestselling investigative book, Breaking Biden.
While Joe poses as a working-class guy, he is beholden to a class of aristocrats from ultra-wealthy enclaves on America’s coasts. Their partnership is what sustains Joe and allows for these elites to grow their wealth and power.
The latest—and by far the scariest—way Biden World intends to accelerate this trend is with artificial intelligence (A.I.). Earlier this week, Biden announced an A.I. executive order that contains the beginnings of a blueprint to create a permanent majority for the left-wing. Though it was framed as an effort to regulate the A.I. sector, Axios notes that “Biden’s approach is more carrot than stick.”
It appears as though the Biden administration’s first goals when it comes to A.I. is to use robots to enforce censorship of “misinformation” (i.e., normative conservative thought).
What’s more, this executive order will put America on the path to enshrining trendy woke opinion as cold-hard facts. The law “must advance the goals of ‘civil rights’ and ‘equity’ — aka, the left’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) framework,” Breitbart Senior Tech Writer Allum Bokhari wrote.
These are dog whistles to Joe’s base.
Next on the agenda will be a massive expansion of the security state in the name of freedom.
“The order commits to ‘ease AI professionals’ path into the Federal Government’ and offer expanded AI training to bureaucrats,” Axios summarized.
All of these new controls—designed by oligarchs and carried out by machines—will be all be sold to Americans as necessary to protect us.
Biden and Kamala Harris (his A.I. czar) are tasked with regulating this modern-day Wild West, but many of the most powerful people and entities they will be regulating are their biggest donors.
What could go wrong?
Everything actually.
President Joe Biden signs an executive order on artificial intelligence (A.I.) at an event with Vice President Kamala Harris in the White House on October 30, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As usual, the American right—particularly the Republican establishment and donor class—is simply not prepared for any of this. We cannot wait for them to figure it out. The first step to fighting back is to understand what is happening and who are the instigators.
The A.I. Public-Private Partnership to Control Your Life
Last, week, I introduced readers to Biden’s “billionaire cabinet,” the impossibly wealthy and powerful people who empower Joe and who Joe empowers in return. One name that might not have been familiar to you is tech billionaire Dustin Moskovitz.
Moskovitz won the cosmic lottery by meeting Mark Zuckerberg in college. The pair co-founded Facebook with a couple of Zuckerberg’s roommates. Moskovitz left the company four years later as the world’s youngest billionaire.
Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, delivers his keynote address on October 24, 2007, in San Francisco, California. (Kimberly White/Getty Images)
In recent years, he has poured tens of millions of dollars into the effort to elect Biden. But Moskovitz didn’t merely fund Biden’s campaigns. According to a recent report from Politico, Moskovitz now has government workers on his payroll. His objective appears to be to shape the future of the next high tech gold rush: artificial intelligence.
To do this, Moskovitz will need to use his extensive network and wealth to influence the Washington political establishment.
Last year, Open Philanthropy, a nonprofit organization primarily funded by Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, launched a new organization called the Horizon Institute for Public Service. The Institute “helps the US government navigate our era of rapid technological change by fostering the next generation of emerging technology policy talent.”
Translation: the company is bankrolling federal officials tasked with overseeing policy toward A.I. Yes, these tech billionaires are literally paying the people who are going to be tasked with regulating them. Together, they are shaping the future of tech regulation while pioneering new mechanisms for corruption.
It goes without saying that billions of dollars are at stake.
Dustin Moskovitz speaking at an event on November 8, 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal. (Horacio Villalobos – Corbis/Getty Images)
Moskovitz has devoted millions in funding to OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also a major investor in Moskovitz’s own company, Asana, a topic covered in Breaking Biden. Altman has said that A.I. will hopefully “break capitalism.” He has called on the U.S. to work with China on A.I., ostensibly to counter risks, but to perhaps control the world. Altman has acknowledged that his company will “make a lot jobs just go away.”
As CNN put it, “Sam Altman warns AI could kill us all. But he still wants the world to use it.”
Creepy stuff.
To the surprise of no one who is paying attention, Altman has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Joe Biden.
Biden Administration Champions Legal Corruption (Again)
As Breitbart Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer often says, the real scandal in Washington often isn’t what’s illegal, it’s what’s legal. This is the story of Joe Biden’s reign over America. Moskovitz’s rise as a political power player is no exception to that rule. Horizon’s efforts to control the future doesn’t appear to be the product of an illicit backroom scheme, far from it.
It’s happening out in the open.
Horizon’s own website brags about their connections to the U.S. government: “[o]ur fellows have done placements at the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services; the Senate Commerce Committee and House Science Committee; and the Center for Health Security, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, among many other host organizations.”
Screenshot of the Horizon Institute webpage
As I document in Breaking Biden, since Joe Biden took office, entire swaths of his administration have been on the payroll of tech billionaires and giant corporations.
Google’s Eric Schmidt pays the salaries of dozens of Biden administration officials, including employees in Biden’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), through Schmidt Futures, a similar grant program. According to Politico, over a dozen other OSTP officials are current or former associates of Schmidt.
Consulting firms like WestExec—the company cofounded by Secretary of State Antony Blinken which has employed at least 16 high-level Biden officials—are perhaps the most direct way for corporations to work their way into the pocketbooks of government officials. According to federal ethics disclosures, former WestExec employees who are now working in the Biden administration have previously advised Google, as well as Open Philanthropy itself.
All of this is openly corrupt yet apparently legal, as is the pattern.
Screenshot of the Open Philanthropy WestExec grant report
According to its website, Moskovitz’s Open Philanthropy paid $540,000 to WestExec to produce a report promoting the adoption of A.I. by the Department of Defense. Avril Haines, who spearheaded the project, now serves as Biden’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI). She’s not alone — more than three dozen high level Biden appointees worked for WestExec or similar consulting firms.
As DNI, Haines pledged to tackle the “disinformation” epidemic. She now oversees the Foreign Malign Influence Center, an office established last year to quarterback the Biden administration’s disinformation efforts. According to Haines, the Center’s responsibilities include “our election threat work, essentially looking at foreign influence and interference in elections, but it also deals with disinformation more generally.” This is intentionally vague, but in essence, she is the information police and her powers are expanding.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines introduces President Joe Biden during a visit to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in McLean, Virginia on July 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Next: Hypercronyism
Vast swaths of the federal bureaucracy are bought and paid for by Big Tech, laundered through “consulting” agreements and nonprofit grant programs. Even the Clintons must be envious of the Biden administration’s brazen profiteering.
The era of A.I. will only accelerate the cronyism. The tech oligarchs will continue to pose as the saviors of our galumphing government. All the political establishment will have to do in return is provide assurances that it won’t over-regulate the places where the American Oligarchy makes its money and expands its powers.
Joe Biden and his administration know this. This is their system, and it will keep them in power until the citizens decide they’ve had enough of it.
Breaking Biden is available now in hardcover, eBook, and audiobook read by the author.
Alex Marlow is the Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart News and a New York Times bestselling author. His new book Breaking Biden is available now. You can follow Alex on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @AlexMarlow.
Having Obama advise Biden on AI is like having the fox guard the hen house
By Jack Hellner
Why does Joe Biden think that President Obama or Kamala Harris have any valuable input on artificial intelligence (AI)?
See here:
Former President Barack Obama quietly advised the White House over the past five months on its strategy to address artificial intelligence, engaging behind the scenes with tech companies and holding Zoom meetings with top West Wing aides at President Joe Biden’s request, according to aides to both men.
What in their history should give the public any confidence that they have any valuable knowledge that would protect the public from abuse?
Obama has always been essentially a lobbyist for Google and Google returns the favor by having a major bias against Republicans.
Why would anyone trust Obama to be fair and unbiased on a strategy with AI when he allowed Google to have so much input into policies while he was president?
Report finds hundreds of meetings between White House and Google
Google and its affiliates have had at least 427 meetings at the White House during President Obama’s tenure, according data from the Campaign for Accountability and The Intercept.
There's also this, dating from 2016:
Over the past seven years, Google has created a remarkable partnership with the Obama White House, providing expertise, services, advice, and personnel for vital government projects.
Precisely how much influence this buys Google isn’t always clear. But consider that over in the European Union, Google is now facing two major antitrust charges for abusing its dominance in mobile operating systems and search. By contrast, in the U.S., a strong case to sanction Google was quashed by a presidentially appointed commission.
Obama, Biden and others falsely promoted net neutrality as a method to help the little guy and consumers but it was actually a major kickback to companies like Google, Netflix and Facebook who were the biggest users of bandwidth.
With net neutrality they essentially get the technology for free.
How Big Tech Uses Net Neutrality To Subvert Competition
Big Tech is the primary lobbyist for net neutrality and funds many academics and civil society organizations to advocate for it. This may sound counterintuitive, but net neutrality delivers big economic rents for Big Tech.
And as soon as Obama got out of office, he got a huge payday from Netflix despite having no experience and no content. $65 million is a heck of a paycheck for being a lackey for high tech companies for eight years.
Obama Netflix: What the Former President and First Lady's Deal Is Worth and What They're Producing
After completing their two terms as president and first lady, Barack and Michelle Obama have signed up for some pretty lucrative projects.
The first, announced in February 2017, was a joint deal worth an estimated $65 million to publish their memoirs.
Obama shouldn't be trusted as an advisor on anything. He has actively been trying to remake and destroy our great country for 15 years now.
Look at what he is saying about Israel and Hamas. He is saying we are all complicit. No one should listen to Obama until he admits that his deal with Iran that pledges death to Israel is responsible for Hamas having the money and weapons to kill Jews.
It is a true shame that so many journalists and others think Obama is a brilliant and honest man.
Image: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, via NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive (detail) // public domain
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