by Constitutional attorney Robert Barnes
Trump’s Next Big Hurdle is Himself
Trump’s virtue and vice reflects two sides of the same coin: his stubborn independence from outside voices and abundant self-confidence. On the good side, it makes him immune from elite critics, orthodox thinking, establishment mindset, and institutional narratives. On the difficult side, it makes him unlikely to acknowledge errors, reverse course when needed, or look beyond his own horizon. A few examples of this.
During his response to the State of the Union, he wanted to remind everyone how wonderful the vaccines were, and why he deserves credit, not Biden. This tone-deaf response led to an avalanche of criticism on his own Truth account, and triggered Trump deleting the statement. But it reflected a stubborn unwillingness to acknowledge he got taken for a ride by Big Pharma and it’s institutional allies in 2020 to the detriment of his own Presidential legacy and his core constituency.
It reflected a trend. Trump remains mute on Julian Assange, who his own administration secretly coordinated the imprisonment of. Trump remains silent on Edward Snowden, whose disclosures first outed the great dangers of the Obama administration’s weaponization of the intelligence community ultimately turned on Trump. Trump failed to comment on Amos Miller, when his own Department of Agriculture under Dumber Boss Hogg Sonny Perdue instigated the harassment of. Trump skipped support for Brook Jackson, whose case his own DOJ slow rolled to keep secret the Pfizer fraud of the Covid vaccine he just again celebrated.
Trump promised to hire the best and drain the swamp. Instead, he hired the Swamp. Barr’s own DOJ sabotaged his 2020 campaign. Rosenstein greenlit the Mueller onslaught. Pompeo promoted the Deep State at State. Bolton killed the North Korea nuke deal. His own generals sabotaged withdrawal from Syria. RussiaGate, and Ukrainegate, led from within his own administration, derailed détente with Russia. Elliott Abrams continued foolish coups in Venezuela. Miley almost induced war with Iran. Pence made his 2020 challenge DOA.
The administrative state remains fully intact at the end of his term, and used his power to make sure his reelection was doomed. Trump recently endorsed a host of establishment and deep state candidates over populist challengers, while considering corporatist Noem and war whore Tim Scott for the Vice-Presidency, a Deep State death invite for Trump, while employing critical campaign aides deeply embedded within the establishment.
Trump’s vulnerability – aside from the weak side of his instinctual refusal to admit error, a stubbornness that can come in handy when refusing to change many of his populist policy preferences from elite critiques – is he tends to see the world from his own horizon. To Trump, the problem with the lawfare is just it’s use against him, not an institutionally ill system of state power that corrupts all it touches and threatens all Americans’ liberty. This failure to appreciate the institutional problems divorces him from the true source of the lawfare against him, as well as the solutions essential to a successful second term for himself and the country. Institutional problem require institutional solutions, not individual ones.
This is why Trump’s next big hurdle – as he dominated Super Tuesday, ended the nomination early, won SCOTUS blessing of ballot access, and may be on the verge of dismissal or post-election delay of his criminal exposure – will be Trump himself. His best skill set for handling this hurdle is his marketing instincts and competitive impulse: the threat of a Kennedy campaign stealing votes for Trump can be his best incentive to shift toward policy prescriptions that mirror the institutional illnesses infecting our governance. The question is: will he?
Somebody typed a prompt, and a virus came out.
Sixteen of them. Genomes written by artificial intelligence, ordered as synthetic DNA, assembled on a bench, and grown into stocks that replicated and threw off offspring. Thirteen carried mutations that match no known natural sequence. The scientific paper ran in the publication Science, and its senior author disclosed funding from the Gates Foundation.
Six years ago, on April 6, 2020, Bill Gates sat with Trevor Noah and said a vaccine was the only thing that would let us return to normal — and announced that his foundation would start building the factories before anyone had seen efficacy data. Scale during testing, he said, rather than waiting for results. A great many people heard optimism. Some of us heard a schedule.
-- Dr. Peter McCullough
"There are times when a people tolerate an evil for so long that they cease to recognize its enormity. The evil acquires procedures, professional language, political constituencies, legal protections and respectable explanations. Eventually bloodshed receives a clinical name, partiality becomes public policy, and injustice—once sufficiently regulated—begins to look almost ordinary."
-- Bill Evans
The @EU_Commission met today with Meta & TikTok on the situation in Ceuta.
"Platforms must act decisively in keeping the integrity of the digital space, in particular during crisis situations. Monitoring must increase, cooperation with fact-checkers to be strengthened."
What has social media been commanded to do? Cover up the fact that 72,000 military aged males invaded Spain over a two day period? Spin the story? Hire fact checkers who say, "Don't believe the misinformation. It was only 72 migrants." What were the orders given to social media regarding the Hungarian election of 2026? What orders are being given to the new puppet government of Hungary by the EU?