The civilizational inflection point in our cold civil war happened sometime between Donald Trump's second inaugural address on Monday and the end of his new presidency's second day on Tuesday. At some indeterminate moment between Monday's soaring midday speech, in which the first nonconsecutive two-term president in over 130 years artfully took a sledgehammer to the entire Obama-Biden era legacy without so much as uttering the men's names, and Tuesday's epochal executive order coming as close as legally possible to banning wokeism throughout the republic, the war ended. And as with the English capturing New Amsterdam from Peter Stuyvesant and the Dutch centuries prior, it happened without firing a single shot.
On inauguration day, President Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of the approximately 1,550 defendants convicted for their involvement with the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. He also ordered DOJ to dismiss all other pending indictments. Most of them, about 900, were for non-violent misdemeanors such as trespass and disorderly conduct. He granted the clemency all at once, and did not begin with pardoning the non-violent misdemeanor defendants first and then examining the remaining defendants on a case-by-case basis as he and others previously had suggested. Meanwhile, on the very same day, just 15 minutes before he left office, President Biden issued the last set of his own pardons. He granted them to members of his family, most notably his brothers, sister, and in-laws, as well as to members of his administration such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and General Mark Milley, and even to political supporters like the congressional January 6 committee members
With only 15 minutes to go as president, Joe Biden snatched infamy from the jaws of obscurity. With record-low polling and widely viewed as a "failed" president, Biden completed his one-man race to the bottom of ethics by issuing preemptive pardons to members of his own family. The pardons were timed to guarantee that the media would not focus on yet another unethical act by this president. He need not have worried. For four years, the media worked tirelessly to deny or deflect the corruption scandal surrounding the Biden family.
... .. That model proved gold for Democrats during Donald Trump's first term as president. The constant refrain that the "tyrant" was unraveling democracy provided their justification for tearing through standards and norms. In the name of saving the country from Trump excesses, we were told, holdover acting Attorney General Sally Yates had to defy presidential orders, the Federal Bureau of Investigation needed to lie to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a special counsel was required to dog a sitting president, the bureaucracy had a duty to "resist" Trump policy, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had to undergo a circus inquisition, and Congress had no choice but to hold Trump officials in contempt, issue unprecedented subpoenas and impeach the president.
Just before 1 a.m. Tuesday, the Biden Justice Department's hand-picked Trump prosecutor, Jack Smith, released a report on the investigation that resulted in the indictment of Donald Trump on four counts involving the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The report did not have a lot of new information in it " Smith has poured out his evidence in filing after filing for more than a year " but it did contain Smith's assessment that he could have convicted Trump had Trump not won the presidency and is thus no longer subject to federal prosecution. What else could Smith say? That he had spent all that time and money, and stirred up the country so much, on a case he thought he would lose? Of course Smith would express confidence. He had no other option. Now that he has quit, he leaves muttering, "I coulda won, I coulda won.
Nancy Pelosi's portfolio had a 54% increase last year. She's fun because she's the most blatant. But it's ridiculous how much congress critters' investments outpace those of hedge-fund managers.