Tonight, the Empire State Building tower lights will turn to a pink sparkle at 9:25 to honor the late Dolly Parton.
Dolly was a global cultural icon whose seven-decade career reached generations of fans. Beyond entertainment, Dolly leaves a significant philanthropic legacy through the Dollywood Foundation and Imagination Library, which has provided hundreds of millions of books to children worldwide.
At Nine-Two-Five tonight, we celebrate her and her legacy 💖
January, 2021. Peter Daszak, the man whose company was being funded to do gain of function research in Wuhan, leads a W.H.O. investigation into the origin of Covid.
The only theory that they ruled out was the lab leak theory. 🤪
What a clown world.
Reposting my April 2022 article noting how Mitch McConnell told a reporter late that evening that he was "exhilarated" by the events of January 6. Why? Because he got his way.
And McConnell's security chief, along with Pelosi's. had repeatedly ignored pleas by @ChiefSund for authorization to deploy the National Guard.
"A dirty little secret about January 6—one of many—is that Democrats and establishment Republicans, not Trump supporters, wanted to shut down the official proceedings of that day.
Just as the first wave of protesters breached the building shortly after 2 p.m., congressional Republicans were poised to present evidence of rampant voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Ten incumbent and four newly-elected Republican senators planned to work with their House colleagues to demand the formation of an audit commission to investigate election 'irregularities' in the 2020 election. Absent an audit, the group of senators, including Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) pledged to reject the Electoral College results from the disputed states.
The Hail Mary effort was doomed to fail; yet the American people would have heard hours of debate related to provable election fraud over the course of the day.
And no one opposed the effort more than ex-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
During a conference call on December 31, 2020, McConnell urged his Republican Senate colleagues to abandon plans to object to the certification, insisting his vote to certify the 2020 election results would be 'the most consequential I have ever cast' in his 36-year Senate career.
From the Senate floor on the afternoon of January 6, McConnell gave a dramatic speech warning of the dire consequences to the country should Republicans succeed in delaying the vote. He downplayed examples of voting fraud and even mocked the fact that Trump-appointed judges rejected election lawsuits.
'The voters, the courts, and the States have all spoken,' McConnell insisted. 'If we overrule them, it would damage our Republic forever. If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral.'
Roughly six hours later, McConnell got his way. Cowed by the crowd of largely peaceful Americans allowed into the building by Capitol police, most Republican senators backed off the audit proposal. McConnell, echoing hyperbolic talking points about an 'insurrection' seeded earlier in the day by Democratic lawmakers and the news media, gloated. 'They tried to disrupt our democracy,' he declared on the Senate floor after Congress reconvened around 8 p.m. 'This failed attempt to obstruct Congress, this failed insurrection, only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our Republic.'
Congress officially certified the Electoral College results early the next day.
While he projected a sober tone to the American public, McConnell privately was ecstatic, a new book about the 2020 election reveals. 'I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow finally, totally discredited himself,' McConnell told New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin late on January 6, 2021 about Trump. Martin is the co-author of This Will Not Pass, of which excerpts were published in the Washington Post this week. Martin in the book recounts his midnight conversation with McConnell.
Trump, McConnell claimed, 'put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger,' Martin writes. He then asked the reporter what he had heard about members plotting to invoke the 25th Amendment. Calling Trump a 'despicable person,' McConnell reportedly bragged how he 'crushed the sons of bitches' on January 6 and promised to do the same to them in the 2022 primaries.
Now, that seems like an oddly celebratory demeanor for someone who just survived an 'attack on our democracy' and an alleged attempt to 'overthrow' the seat of government power, doesn’t it? And why was McConnell so certain the four-hour disturbance would spell the end for Donald Trump?
Further—and more importantly—why did McConnell’s office fail to protect the Capitol on January 6?
His Sergeant at Arms at the time served on the U.S. Capitol police board, a four-man body that manages security at the sprawling Capitol complex. McConnell appointed Michael Stenger in 2018 to serve in that role; Stenger, in addition to his House counterpart, Paul Irving, rejected multiple requests by the Capitol Police chief for extra help in advance of January 6.
Steven Sund, a Capitol Police captain, said he spoke with Stenger on January 4, 2021 to ask for National Guardsmen. 'Instead of approving the use of the National Guard, however, Mr. Stenger suggested I ask them how quickly we could get support if needed and to ‘lean forward’ in case we had to request assistance on January 6.'
He spoke with Stenger again on January 5; the board still refused to advance his plan for extra guardsmen.
As the chaos unfolded right as the joint session of Congress convened on January 6, Sund said he 'notified the two Sergeant at Arms by 1:09 p.m. that I urgently needed support and asked them to declare a State of Emergency and authorize the National Guard.' Stenger and Irving, who were together that afternoon, said he was waiting for 'authorization' by congressional leadership.
That approval came an hour later, but with a caveat: Sund also needed the Pentagon’s authorization.
'Almost two hours later, we had still not received authorization from the Pentagon to activate the National Guard,' Sund testified in February 2021. 'Mr. Stenger offered to have Senator McConnell call the Secretary of the Army to expedite the request. I agreed that this would be a good idea. I followed up approximately 20 minutes later to check on the call and express the need for leadership to call to assist in expediting the request.'
Guardsmen did not arrive until 5:40 p.m., four-and-a-half hours after Sund’s first dispatch and after the protest had ended.
McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser—the three leaders responsible for protecting the Capitol on January 6—still have not explained their failure to do so. Not only did McConnell’s top law enforcement officials purportedly overlook the potential for violence on January 6, he denied requests for more officers days before and delayed sending guardsmen to Capitol Hill that afternoon.
And it will be nearly impossible to find out why: Stegner, along with Irving and Sund, all resigned on January 7, 2021.
So, perhaps there is a darker explanation for McConnell’s giddiness on January 6. What unfolded that day on McConnell’s watch ended Republican demands for an election audit; criminalized criticism of the 2020 election, which McConnell still describes as 'fair' and legitimate; vilified Republican lawmakers; and prompted Trump’s second impeachment. McConnell also believed the protest would spell the end of the Trump movement, something the Beltway crony long attempted to quash.
Like the Biden regime, congressional Democrats, and the national news media, the aftermath of the Capitol protest achieved all sorts of political ends for Mitch McConnell.
🚨 Unimaginable fraud in Maryland
#BREAKING - The state of Maryland “accidentally overpaid” $807.4 MILLION in unemployment benefits — Problem is, a large percentage of people NEVER RECEIVED A CHECK
The state says this money cannot be recovered. Oops our bad..
So, who got that money???
NATIONWIDE FRAUD… they are stealing our money in every single state and now it’s all being exposed!
https://t.co/JxWWmGp0cy
12 people burned alive, 7,000 homes burnt to the ground, and over $50 billion in losses in the last 10 months alone. Billions added to the state deficit, increased homelessness, imaginary train to nowhere, and most expensive gas prices in the nation. But yah, no one has had a better two years than Newsom.
@SenSchumer Do you REALLY want the Epstein files revealed?? Do you REALLY want the shutdown to stop because isn’t it a diversion to sidetrack the Dem voters from watching the hearing regarding who was actually running our government for the past four years??
Like all of you, I am utterly stunned and heartbroken and sick to my soul today. It is unimaginable to write these words. I met Charlie Kirk when he was 18 years old, a young man so eager and determined that I immediately turned to a friend and said, “That kid is going to be the head of the RNC one day.” Charlie became even bigger and more important than that. It was a privilege to watch this principled man stand up for his beliefs and create the single most important conservative political organization in America. But more importantly, Charlie was a good man, a man who believed in right and wrong, who stood by his Biblical values. All of us will miss him, and I can’t imagine the pain of his beautiful young family, and we must all pray for them. And we must pick up the baton where Charlie left it, fighting for the things he believed in so passionately. And we must fight for a better America - an America where good people can speak truth and debate passionately without fear of a bullet. I weep for Charlie’s family, and I weep for my country today. Most of all, I weep for Charlie.