A NOVENA PRAYER CHAIN FOR ACE!!!
LinkedIn posting by Vivek Ramaswamy to share what he likes best about Donald J. Trump is that he is really good with kids! We re-posted to say what we really like about Vivek Ramaswamy is his ability to recognize the good in others!
Without a doubt, the Government is in dire need of a Department of Government Efficiency! Thanks Elon Musk for sharing!
Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearing on legalized sports gambling, watch Josh Hawley EXPLODE at the NCAA president, Charlie Baker, who REFUSES to take responsibility for putting women in danger!
Josh Hawley says: Everyone is to blame except you, right? What is wrong with YOU?
The bill would fund the government until mid-March and includes $110 billion for disaster relief, $30 billion in farm aid, and a 1-year extension to the farm bill.
President Joe Biden will not stand in the way of a funding package passed by the House on Dec. 20, the White House announced.
“President Biden supports moving this legislation forward and ensuring that the vital services the government provides for hardworking Americans—from issuing Social Security checks to processing benefits for veterans—can continue as well as to grant assistance for communities that were impacted by devastating hurricanes,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
That statement criticized Republicans’ decision to walk away from a previous 1,547-page proposal that ignited a social media firestorm following its release on Tuesday. President-elect Donald Trump opposed the legislation, while his ally Elon Musk vowed to primary any Republican who voted for it.
House Approves Government Funding Package
The House of Representatives on Dec. 20 approved a package to keep the federal government funded through March 14, potentially averting a government shutdown.
Lawmakers approved the funding bill in a 366–34 vote. The bill was brought to the floor under suspension of the rules, meaning that it required two-thirds support to pass. 196 Democrats joined in support of the package, while all votes against the legislation were from Republicans. 1 Democrat voted present.
Aside from extending the deadline for a government shutdown, the 118-page legislation includes $110 billion in emergency hurricane relief, extends the farm bill for one year, and includes a series of other minor provisions. It doesn’t include any measures on the debt ceiling, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s call that the issue be dealt with during the current lame-duck session.
McConnell Warns Against Shutdown
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) used what is likely to be his last floor speech as the Senate’s Republican leader to warn his colleagues against shutting the government down.
“I don’t care to count how many times I’ve reminded our colleagues and our House counterparts how harmful it is to shut the government down and how foolish it is to bet your own side won’t take the blame for it,” McConnell said.
“Recent history doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for interpretation on that one. When you try to use normal government function as a bargaining chip, you pay a political price.”
Republicans Release Government Funding Plan C
Republicans have released their “Plan C” legislation for funding the government with less than eight hours until a shutdown begins.
During a Dec. 20 conference meeting, Republicans decided to move forward with the 118-page plan, which would punt the government funding deadline to March 14. It wraps in an extension of the farm bill for one year, $30 billion in farm aid, and includes $110 billion in emergency hurricane relief funding alongside a series of other minor proposals.
It doesn’t include any measures related to the debt ceiling—for which President-elect Donald Trump has advocated as part of the funding package—hoping to head off a fight with congressional Democrats on the issue in mid-2025.
White House: Biden Spoke With Top Democrats
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden has spoken with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) about the status of the spending negotiations.
“I can confirm just moments ago, the president was able to connect with Leader Schumer and Leader Jeffries,” Jean-Pierre said at an afternoon press briefing on Dec. 20.
WSJ: How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge
Investigative reporting -? something the media used to do with regularity until the advent of the Ministry of Truth.
In a throwback to the good old days of solid investigative reporting, the WSJ today published a bombshell report on the concealment of Joe Biden's mental and physical condition, or should I say deterioration.
To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, [Biden’s closest aides and advisers] told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.
Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.?
Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn’t talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.?
Presidents always have gatekeepers. But in Biden’s case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations. There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed.
Throughout his presidency, a small group of aides stuck close to Biden to assist him, especially when traveling or speaking to the public. “They body him to such a high degree,” a person who witnessed it said, adding that the “hand holding” is unlike anything other recent presidents have had.
The White House operated this way even as the president and his aides pressed forward with his re-election bid—which unraveled spectacularly after his halting performance in a June debate with Donald Trump made his mental acuity an insurmountable issue. Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him on the Democratic ticket and was decisively defeated by Trump in a shortened campaign—leaving Democrats to debate whether their chances were undercut by Biden’s refusal to yield earlier.?
This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations.? [And that is old-fashioned investigative reporting; not the advocacy journalism and propaganda dissemination prevalent in the MSM today.]
The staggering details are in the story below.
The American public was gaslit.
Jared Silverman Email:?? [email protected]
During the 2020 presidential primary, Jill Biden campaigned so extensively across Iowa that she held events in more counties than her husband—a fact her press secretary at the time, Michael LaRosa, touted to a local reporter.
His superior in the Biden campaign quickly chided him. As the three rode in a minivan through the state’s cornfields, Anthony Bernal, then a deputy campaign manager and chief of staff to Jill Biden, pressed LaRosa to contact the reporter again and play down any comparison in campaign appearances between Joe Biden, then 77, and his wife, who is eight years his junior. Her energetic schedule only highlighted her husband’s more plodding pace, LaRosa recalls being told.
The message from Biden’s team was clear. “The more you talk her up, the more you make him look bad,” LaRosa said.
The small correction foreshadowed how Biden’s closest aides and advisers would manage the limitations of the oldest president in U.S. history during his four years in office.
To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, they told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.
Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.?
Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn’t talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.?
Presidents always have gatekeepers. But in Biden’s case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations. There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed.
Throughout his presidency, a small group of aides stuck close to Biden to assist him, especially when traveling or speaking to the public. “They body him to such a high degree,” a person who witnessed it said, adding that the “hand holding” is unlike anything other recent presidents have had.
The White House operated this way even as the president and his aides pressed forward with his re-election bid—which unraveled spectacularly after his halting performance in a June debate with Donald Trump made his mental acuity an insurmountable issue. Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him on the Democratic ticket and was decisively defeated by Trump in a shortened campaign—leaving Democrats to debate whether their chances were undercut by Biden’s refusal to yield earlier.?
This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations.?
Many of those who criticized Biden’s insularity said his system nonetheless kept his agenda on track.?
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden “earned the most accomplished record of any modern commander in chief and rebuilt the middle class because of his attention to policy details that impact millions of lives.” Bates, who rejected the notion that Biden has declined, added that the president has often solicited opinions from outside experts, which has informed his policymaking.?
He said it is the job of senior White House staff to have high-level meetings regularly and that they were executing Biden’s agenda at his direction.
He also said that staff alerted the president to “significant” negative news stories. Bernal, via the White House press office, declined to comment.
‘Good days and bad days’
The president’s slide has been hard to overlook. While preparing last year for his interview with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents, the president couldn’t recall lines that his team discussed with him. At events, aides often repeated instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage, that would be obvious to the average person. Biden’s team tapped campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood mogul, to find a voice coach to improve the president’s fading warble.?
Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.?
The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.
The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.?
The strategies to protect Biden largely worked—until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words and unable to complete his thoughts on live television. Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.
Biden, staffed with advisers since he became a senator at age 30, came to the White House with a small team of fiercely loyal, long-serving aides who knew him and Washington so well that they could be particularly effective proxies. They didn’t tolerate criticism of Biden’s performance or broader dissent within the Democratic Party, especially when it came to the president’s decision to run for a second term.
Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term. Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.?
They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time: The exchanges should be short and focused, according to people who received the message directly from White House aides.?
Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.
The White House denied that his schedule has been altered due to his age.
If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,” the former aide recalled the official saying.
While it isn’t uncommon for politicians to want more time with the president than they get, some Democrats felt Biden was unusually hard to reach.
That’s what Rep. Adam Smith of Washington found when he tried to share his concerns with the president ahead of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Smith, a Democrat who then chaired the powerful House Armed Services Committee, was alarmed by what he viewed as overly optimistic comments from Biden as the administration assembled plans for the operation.
“I was begging them to set expectations low,” said Smith, who had worked extensively on the issue and harbored concerns about how the withdrawal might go. He sought to talk to Biden directly to share his insights about the region but couldn’t get on the phone with him, Smith said.?
After the disastrous withdrawal, which left 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghans dead, Smith made a critical comment to the Washington Post about the administration lacking a “clear-eyed view” of the U.S.-backed Ashraf Ghani government’s durability. It was among comments that triggered an angry phone call from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who ended up getting an earful from the frustrated chairman. Shortly after, Smith got an apologetic call from Biden. It was the only phone call Biden made to Smith in his four years in office, Smith said.
“The Biden White House was more insulated than most,” Smith said. “I spoke with Barack Obama on a number of occasions when he was president and I wasn’t even chairman of the committee.”
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said his interactions with the White House in the past two years were primarily focused on the reauthorization of a vital section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes broad national security surveillance powers. Biden’s senior advisers and other top administration officials worked with Himes on the issue, and he praised the collaboration.?
But Biden wasn’t part of the conversation. “I really had no personal contact with this president. I had more personal contact with Obama, which is sort of strange because I was a lot more junior,” said Himes, who took office in 2009. Congress extended the surveillance authority for two years instead of the administration’s goal of five years.??
Bates said that in every administration, some in Washington would prefer to spend more time with the president and that Biden put significant effort into promoting his legislative agenda.
One lawmaker who did get one-on-one time with Biden noticed that the president lacked stamina and heavily relied on his staff: Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat-turned-independent who held up chunks of Biden’s legislative agenda during the first half of Biden’s term. Manchin said the job required a level of energy that he wasn’t sure Biden had been able to sustain.
“I just thought that maybe the president just lost that fight,” Manchin said in an interview. “The ability to continue to stay on, just grind it, grind it, grind it.”?
Instead of Biden directing follow up, Manchin noticed that Biden’s staff played a much bigger role driving his agenda than he had experienced in other administrations. Manchin referred to them as the “eager beavers”—a group that included then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. “They were going, ‘I’ll take care of that,’ ” Manchin said.
Klain, who was chief of staff for Biden’s first two years in office, said that “the agenda and pace” of the White House was at the “president’s direction and leadership.”
Dealing with advisers
Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said.?
One top cabinet member met one-on-one with the president at most twice in the first year and rarely in small groups, another former senior cabinet aide said.?
Multiple former senior cabinet aides described a top-down dynamic in which the White House would issue decisions and expect cabinet agencies to carry them out, rather than making cabinet secretaries active participants in the policymaking process. Some of them said it was hard for them to discern to what degree Biden was insulated because of his age versus his preference for a powerful inner circle.
Bates said Biden has daily conversations with members of his cabinet. Several cabinet secretaries contacted the Journal at the White House’s request to attest to the smooth operations between their agencies and the White House. They said Biden would call them individually on the phone when seeking information or to give direction.?
“I spoke with him whenever we needed his guidance or his help,” said Denis McDonough, Biden’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs and former chief of staff to Obama. “A lot of times it was him reaching out to us.”
Most often, however, they dealt with the president’s advisers, not the president himself, some of them said.
“If I had an issue or I needed attention on something, I had multiple avenues to explore to raise the issue,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “You don’t always have to raise the issue with the president.”?
Vilsack, who also served as the agriculture secretary under Obama, said that presidents should primarily get involved when there’s a dispute between agencies.?
Obama would often meet with smaller groups of cabinet members to hash out a policy debate, former administration officials said.?
But that often wasn’t the experience under Biden’s administration. Instead, cabinet members most often met alone or with a member of the president’s senior staff, including Brainard, the economic adviser, or National Security Adviser Sullivan. The senior adviser would then bring the issue to the president and report back, former administration officials said.
Former administration officials said it often didn’t seem like Biden had his finger on the pulse.??
Traditionally, presidents have more frequent interactions with certain cabinet secretaries—often Treasury, Defense and State—than others.?
But Treasury Secretary Yellen had an arm’s length relationship with the president for much of the administration. She was part of the economics team that regularly briefed the president, but one-on-one discussions were more rare, and she typically dealt with the NEC or with the president’s advisers rather than Biden directly, according to people familiar with the interactions.?
Some current and former administration officials said they would have expected a closer relationship between the two.
Bates, the White House spokesman, said Biden “deeply values Secretary Yellen’s expertise and counsel” and is “grateful for her service.” The Treasury Department declined to comment.
Defense Secretary Austin also saw his close relationship with Biden grow more distant over the course of the administration, with Austin’s regular access to Biden becoming increasingly rare in the past two years, people familiar with the relationship said.?
During the first half of the administration, Austin was one of the cabinet members who would regularly attend Biden’s presidential daily briefing on a rotational basis each week. That briefing would be followed with a routine one-on-one in which Austin and Biden would meet personally behind closed doors.?
Officials familiar with these meetings said they helped cabinet members to understand the commander in chief’s intentions directly, instead of being filtered through others, such as Sullivan, the national security adviser.
But in the past two years—a period when the wars in Ukraine and Gaza demanded the president’s attention—Austin’s invitation to the briefing came less frequently, to the point where the one-on-one meeting was seldom scheduled. When the one-on-one meetings did take place, they were more typically virtual meetings, not in-person. Still, Austin could always get an unscheduled meeting with the president if he needed it.??
Bates disputed that there was any decline in regular contact or attendance to presidential daily briefings, adding that Austin “is a fixture in these briefings and they speak often.”?
A Pentagon spokesman said Biden frequently called Austin on the phone for matters that varied from urgent to lower in priority.
Biden has a close relationship with Secretary of State Blinken, whom he has known for decades, former administration officials said.?
Over four years, Biden held nine full cabinet meetings—three in 2021, two in 2022, three in 2023 and just one this year. In their first terms, Obama held 19 and Trump held 25, according to data compiled by former CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller.?
Early in his vice presidency during the Obama administration, Biden sought to gather cabinet leaders once a week, saying in a speech that the synergy brought about by the regular meetings made the government more competent.
The White House said Biden meets with smaller groups of his agency heads and that the contemporary work environment means full cabinet meetings can be fewer and farther between.
In the fall of 2023, Biden faced a major test when Hur, the special counsel, wanted to interview him. The president wanted to do it, and his top aides felt that his willingness to sit down with investigators set up a favorable contrast with Trump, who stonewalled the probe into why classified documents appeared at Mar-a-Lago, according to people familiar with the sessions.
The prep sessions took about three hours a day for about a week ahead of the interview, according to a person familiar with the preparation. During these sessions, Biden’s energy levels were up and down. He couldn’t recall lines that his team had previously discussed with him, the person said.
A White House official pushed back on the notion that Biden’s age showed in prep, saying that the concerns that arose during those sessions were related to Biden’s tendency to over-share.
The actual interview didn’t go well. Transcripts showed multiple blunders, including that Biden didn’t initially recall that in prep sessions he had been shown his own handwritten memo arguing against a surge of troops in Afghanistan.?
The report—one of just a few lengthy interviews with Biden over the past four years—concluded with a recommendation that Biden not be prosecuted for having classified documents in his home because a jury was likely to view him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
Insulated on campaign
Biden’s team also insulated him on the campaign trail. In the summer of 2023, one prominent Democratic donor put together a small event for Biden’s re-election bid. The donor was shocked when a campaign official told him that attendees shouldn’t expect to have a free ranging question-and-answer session with the president. Instead, the organizer was told to send in two or three questions ahead of time that Biden would answer.?
At some events, the Biden campaign printed the pre-approved questions on notecards and then gave donors the cards to read the questions. Even with all these steps, Biden made flubs, which confounded the donors who knew that Biden had the questions ahead of time.
Some donors said they noticed how staff stepped in to mask other signs of decline. Throughout his presidency—and especially later in the term—Biden was assisted by a small group of aides who were laser focused on him in a far different way than when he was vice president, or how former presidents Bill Clinton or Obama were staffed during their presidencies, people who have witnessed their interactions said.
These aides, which include Annie Tomasini and Ashley Williams, were often with the president as he traveled and stayed within earshot or eye distance, the people said. They would often repeat basic instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage.?
The White House said that the work by staff to guide Biden through events is standard for high-level officials.?
People who witnessed it felt differently. In the past, aides performing these duties were often on their phones, chatting with other people or fetching something from a car or a computer nearby, they said.
The president’s team of pollsters also had limited access to Biden, according to people familiar with the president’s polling. The key advisers have famously had the president’s ear in most past White Houses.?
During the 2020 campaign, Biden had calls with John Anzalone, his pollster, during which the two had detailed conversations.?
By the 2024 campaign, the pollsters weren’t talking to the president about their findings, and instead sent memos that went to top campaign staff.
Biden’s pollsters didn’t meet with him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting the data that they were sending him, according to the people.
People close to the president said he relied on Mike Donilon, one of Biden’s core inner circle advisers. With a background in polling, Donilon could sift through the information and present it to the president.
Bates said that Biden stayed abreast of polling data.
But this summer, Democratic insiders became alarmed by the way Biden described his own polling, publicly characterizing the race as a tossup when polls released in the weeks after the disastrous June debate consistently showed Trump ahead. They worried he wasn’t getting an unvarnished look at his standing in the race.
Those fears intensified on July 11, when Biden’s top advisers met behind closed doors with Democratic senators, where the advisers laid out a road map for Biden’s victory. The message from the advisers was so disconnected from public polling—which showed Trump leading Biden nationally—that it left Democratic senators incredulous. It spurred Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to speak to Biden directly, according to people familiar with the matter, hoping to pierce what the senators saw as a wall erected by Donilon to shield Biden from bad information. Donilon didn’t respond to requests for comment.?
On July 13, Biden held an uncomfortable call with a group of Democratic lawmakers called the New Democrat Coalition, aimed at reassuring them about his ability to stay in the race.??
The president told participants that polling showed he was doing fine. He became angry when challenged, according to lawmakers on the call. At one point, Biden looked up and abruptly told the group he had to go to church. Some lawmakers on the call believed someone behind the camera was shutting it down.
Biden dropped out of the race eight days later.
Gordon Lubold and Erich Schwartzel contributed to this article.
Commentary's Seth Mandel comments on the WSJ blockbuster report on Biden's diminished capacity.
Back in 2016, Tevi Troy wrote a book called Shall We Wake the President? The title references Hillary Clinton’s campaign ads asking whether she or her opponent should be the one to answer 3 a.m. phone calls at the White House. But aides to the current president had a bigger challenge: “Shall we wake the president” was a 24-hour riddle.
The Wall Street Journal’s report on Biden’s presidential hibernation adds to what we know in two crucial ways. First, it tells us that Biden wasn’t up to the job on day one, let alone day 1,000. Second, the reporters provide us with examples of how global conflicts were affected by the White House staff’s cover-up of the president’s condition.
Jared Silverman Email:?? [email protected]
Back in 2016, Tevi Troy wrote a book called Shall We Wake the President? The title references Hillary Clinton’s campaign ads asking whether she or her opponent should be the one to answer 3 a.m. phone calls at the White House. But aides to the current president had a bigger challenge: “Shall we wake the president” was a 24-hour riddle.
The Wall Street Journal’s report on Biden’s presidential hibernation adds to what we know in two crucial ways. First, it tells us that Biden wasn’t up to the job on day one, let alone day 1,000. Second, the reporters provide us with examples of how global conflicts were affected by the White House staff’s cover-up of the president’s condition.
In the early months of Biden’s term, advisers “noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.” From then on, they ordered, one-on-one time with Biden would be limited in time and scope even when it came to “powerful lawmakers and allies.”
That meant the global crises that arose during Biden’s presidency were dealt with by reducing the flow of information to and from the president—a recipe for disaster. In 2021, the first such disaster struck: the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Rep. Adam Smith, “a Democrat who then chaired the powerful House Armed Services Committee, was alarmed by what he viewed as overly optimistic comments from Biden as the administration assembled plans for the operation,” the Journal reports. So he tried to get a word with the president, to no avail. In the event, 13 Americans and 170 Afghans were killed in the clumsy and ill-conceived operation.
Yet the administration had the temerity to scold Smith when the congressman criticized the withdrawal.
Smith, as well as Democrat Jim Himes, who led the Intelligence Committee, both told the Journal they had interacted far more with Barack Obama during Obama’s presidency despite the fact that neither were committee chairs at the time.
Rather than being an anomaly that was quickly corrected, the Afghanistan pullout set the course for the administration’s handling of foreign affairs.
In fact, as the president’s condition worsened, he needed more time, not less, with key Cabinet secretaries. But because a coverup was in place, the White House went in the opposite direction.
For the first two years of the term, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin attended the president’s briefings weekly, and then would meet Biden one-on-one afterward. “But in the past two years—a period when the wars in Ukraine and Gaza demanded the president’s attention—Austin’s invitation to the briefing came less frequently, to the point where the one-on-one meeting was seldom scheduled.”
The Journal then drops the revelation that from that point on, one-on-one meetings (already rare) were not in person but “were more typically virtual meetings.” Which means the meeting wasn’t really one-on-one, doesn’t it? Nor is there any expectation that a president who can’t pay attention in person will be productive in a Zoom setting, presumably with aides within earshot, further splintering his attention.
This means, above all, that most people stopped seeing the president entirely.
There was a land war in Europe, Americans were taken hostage in Gaza after dozens of Americans were among the 1,200 killed in Hamas’s brutal rampage. And yet, the president was stored away in some utility closet somewhere.
Meanwhile, we can gather more information about his handling of foreign-policy crises from the details regarding his reelection campaign—which went on as planned, despite everything, until the president imploded in public: “Biden’s pollsters didn’t meet with him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting the data that they were sending him, according to the people.”
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He didn’t know he was on pace to lose in a landslide because, apparently, no one told him. At some point, his reelection campaign looks more like elder abuse than anything else.
It also tracks with what the Journal reported about Biden’s insulation from criticism more broadly: “Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president.”
We don’t know exactly which stories those were, but we know the president’s aides were avoiding giving him bad news. Did Biden even know what was really happening on the ground in Ukraine? When the administration froze the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza for months, dooming a number of the hostages and allowing Hamas to regroup and thus prolonging the war, who was responsible for that freeze? Who tried to hit “pause” on reality like it was Netflix? And if the president was the one who made that call, what kind of information was he going on?
The fact that we have to ask the questions at all, as well as the fact that we know we won’t get answers until the administration leaves office and the subpoenas start flying, is perhaps enough of an answer to know that the world paid a dear price to protect the fragile mental state of the American president.
Leonhardt [NYT]: Electoral wishcasting [Harris candidacy]
During the presidential campaign, NYT columnist David Leonhardt was staunchly anti-Trump, promoting, first Biden, then Harris, as the superior candidate.? In this column, Leonhardt says "Oopsy", maybe there was a problem with the quality of the Democrat candidate, namely Kamala Harris.
The Democrats’ 2024 defeat had many causes, starting with inflation and immigration. In today’s newsletter, I’ll examine another item on the list: candidate quality.
This subject might seem backward-looking, given that neither of this year’s candidates, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, is likely to be the party’s presidential nominee again. But it’s relevant to the party’s future. The party will probably help its chances in 2028 and beyond if it can become more forthright — and less wishful — about its own leaders.
The Harris selection
The first key moment in this story occurred in the summer of 2020, when Biden was choosing a running mate.
Biden was then 77, almost as old as Ronald Reagan was when he left office. The likelihood that Biden would serve two terms was lower than with most nominees, which gave extra significance to his choice of a vice president: Biden and his aides were anointing an heir.
That fact offered reason to pick a strong general-election candidate. The United States, after all, is a closely divided country where the two parties pursue starkly different agendas on abortion, climate change, immigration, taxes and more. Modern presidential elections tend to be close and to have high policy stakes.
Even so, Biden and his team seemed to put little weight on the future when they chose Harris. Yes, she had big strengths. She had been a successful attorney general and shone as a senator during contentious hearings. She was also the country’s most prominent Black female politician near the height of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. Harris would be a historic vice president.
As a potential presidential nominee, however, she had major weaknesses. She was a Californian with little experience winning swing voters. During her brief presidential run in 2020, she struggled with basic aspects of campaigning (as I and others noted at the time). She had a hard time explaining why she wanted to be president, and she seemed to dislike giving interviews. [This was known before her selection.] She performed so poorly in that campaign that she dropped out before the first caucus.
Some of Biden’s advisers recognized these issues and argued for other candidates, such as Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, a purple state. Yet he chose Harris. From then on, she was the Democratic heir apparent.? [Biden made a public commitment to have a black woman as his running mate. Game over for Whitmer.? Similar thinking seems to have taken place in Harris selecting Minnesota governor Tim Walz over the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro.]
Age-related denial
The rest of the story revolves around Biden’s age. Before his presidency was half over, polls already showed that most voters worried he was too old to serve a second term.? [See the WSJ story How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge about how Biden's physical and mental condition was hidden from everyone.]
Democrats responded by denying the problem. Biden’s aides minimized his number of public appearances. Dean Phillips, an obscure Minnesota congressman who challenged Biden in primaries this year, struggled to raise money or get coverage on MSNBC. Democratic strategists optimistically — and incorrectly, as my colleague Nate Cohn’s work made clear — claimed that it wouldn’t matter because the country had an “anti-MAGA majority.”
After Biden finally dropped out, after his terrible debate performance, most Democrats fell in line behind Harris and rejected calls, from Nancy Pelosi and others, for a more open process. Harris ran a solid campaign in some respects, including an excellent debate. But her weaknesses from 2020 re-emerged.
Her message could be cautious and gauzy (“Forward”). She had a hard time explaining why she had changed her position on major issues (like fracking and immigration) or how she would differ from Biden. She emphasized themes (abortion and democracy) that played better in California than in swing states. Sure enough, she lost every swing state.
Sunny spin
Post-election analysis always involves hindsight, and the 2024 election would have been difficult for any Democratic nominee given Biden’s unpopularity. But the party made its job harder by evaluating its candidates more hopefully than honestly. Both of the candidates’ major weaknesses — Biden’s age and Harris’s lack of swing-voter appeal — were evident long before 2024. And the party never seriously considered an alternative.
It isn’t easy for any organization to be honest about the shortcomings of its own leaders. Those leaders have usually ascended to their positions for good reasons. That is the case with Biden and Harris, who are among the country’s most successful politicians with a long list of accomplishments. [Name them. The voters rejected that claim.]
But successful organizations find ways to constrain the natural human tendency toward wishcasting. The Democratic Party didn’t always do so over the past four years. That’s one reason, among many, that the party won’t control any branch of the federal government starting on Jan. 20.
Related: Some senior Democrats have tried to put a sunny spin on the 2024 defeats, arguing that they could have been worse, Reid Epstein wrote.
There is an elephant in the room, a specter that Leonhardt dare not mention because he likes his job.? It is the complicity in all of the above by the MSM, especially the NYT.
Jared Silverman Email:?? [email protected]
Reason: Is Javier Milei a madman or Argentina's savior?
There is a drama unfolding over the size and expense of the US federal government.? To avoid a government shutdown (Would most people notice?) a coalition of House Republicans and Democrats put up a 1500 continuing resolution (CR) to finacne the government for a few months.? It was a Christmas Tree Bill, [For those who have forgotten their high school civics, or never took the course, it is a bill that attracts many, often unrelated, floor amendments and consists of many riders. The amendments which adorn the bill may provide special benefits to various groups or interests.] laden with pork [Again, high school civics - Pork barrel, or simply pork, is a metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to direct expenditures to a representative's district.] special interest legislation and legislation aimed at stopping the Trump agenda. Obviously, it was opposed by Trump, Musk and fiscal conservatives.? It never made it to the floor of the House. A substitute "clean" CR went down to defeat last night.
The Trump-originated Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy seems to be up and operating, and attracting followers.? Comparisons have been drawn between the DOGE philosophy and that of Argentinian president Javier Milei. For that reason, this Reason report card on Milei is important.
Argentina elected the first self-identified libertarian president in history. Is he a madman? Or a savior??
Can his libertarian ideas transform Argentina into a beacon of prosperity? Reason visited Argentina to find out if Javier Milei's reforms are working. [Reason is a libertarian publication. (AllSides media bias - Center)]
I can go on about the article, but you get the idea.? Read the entire article.
Jared Silverman Email:?? [email protected]
?Argentina elected the first self-identified libertarian president in history. Is he a madman? Or a savior?? [See Reason's video on Milei here.]
Can his libertarian ideas transform Argentina into a beacon of prosperity? Reason visited Argentina to find out if Javier Milei's reforms are working.?
On the ground in Buenos Aires six months after Milei took office, a massive protest filled the public squares and streets outside the national legislature and presidential palace. Congress was voting on a reform package that would deliver on part of his agenda.?
Nearly one in three Argentinian workers belong to a union, and organized labor holds tremendous political power and the ability to mobilize large protests like the one we witnessed opposing Milei's reform package. Participants say Milei's agenda helps the rich and handicaps the poor.?
"None of what's happening [with the law] serves the interests of the people," says Sylvia Saravia, national coordinator for a left-wing populist political party present at the protest called Free Movement of the South, which opposed Milei. "For example, fiscal reforms that benefit the rich and hurt the poor."
If Milei gets his way, unions will be crippled by the time he leaves office. He wants to privatize sectors like the airline industry, which is dominated by organized labor, and to end the mandatory deduction of union dues. That would mean workers would have to actively choose to hand over part of their salaries to these groups.
"What [Milei] is doing is destroying science, destroying technology, destroying public education," says Saravia.
Protesters waved Marxist hammer-and-sickle flags and pictures of Che Guevara, the communist icon. Che was the ideological brains behind the Cuban revolution—but he was born here in Argentina.
"We stand with Che and everything he fought for," says Daniel Aguirre, a protester with the Argentine Rebel Movement, a Marxist political group. "We must share the wealth. It shouldn't be concentrated in the hands of the few."
Argentina was never communist, but the government has played an outsized role in the economy since the end of World War II. Protestors regularly take to the streets to defend the status quo against Milei's agenda—but that status quo has brought the country to the brink of ruin.?
Argentina faced 25 percent monthly inflation when Milei took office because the government was printing money to pay for things it couldn't afford. As a result, roughly half of the people in this country of nearly 50 million were living in poverty.
Milei blames Argentina's downfall on "la casta," which essentially means the "elite political class."
As the protest grew in front of the legislature and presidential palace, across town a different-looking crowd was gathering to hear Milei speak. At the luxurious Hilton Hotel, it was the final day of a conference cohosted by two libertarian think tanks, Argentina's Fundación Libertad y Progreso and the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute.?
"After repeated failures, we've forgotten that economic freedom brings prosperity," Milei told the crowd.
Ian Vásquez, Cato's vice president of international studies, who brought Milei to the stage, says that Argentina was once a "classically liberal country."
"So [Milei] draws on those traditions to make his case and overturn 80 years of statism," says Vásquez.?
Nineteenth-century Argentina was never anything close to a libertarian utopia—it had a large government under the sway of wealthy landowners. But thanks to its 1853 constitution, which was modeled after the U.S. founding document, it became a more or less a laissez faire democracy.?
Tellingly, about 6.6 million European immigrants migrated to Argentina in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, seeking economic opportunity and refuge from war. They coined the phrase "rich as an Argentine."
The economy grew by 7 percent a year before World War I—faster than that of the U.S., Australia, and most of Europe.
Buenos Aires' historic buildings hint at the nation's former grandeur. Now, many are decrepit and in need of updating. Milei wants to reverse the century of decline and restore Argentina to its former glory.
"The history of the last 100 years of our homeland was a warning," Milei told the conference attendees. "It's a small window into what can happen in the free world if you let down your guard and let yourself be seduced by socialism.…Guys, I'm a libertarian. I'm not going to do that kind of crap. I believe in freedom. I don't believe that politicians are gods."
Vásquez describes Milei as having "become an international leader at a time when so many countries are going in the other direction," one whose influence extends far beyond Argentina. Elon Musk beamed in as the warm-up act for Milei. During his first six months in office, Milei, the first Argentine president to become an international celebrity, spent significant time in the U.S. meeting with business leaders.?
Milei, an academic economist, made tackling the monthly double-digit inflation and spiraling deficits left behind by his predecessors the central theme of his speech at the conference.
"We were facing what was going to be the worst crisis in all of Argentine history," says Milei.
Since he took office, Argentina's inflation has dropped to under 4 percent per month, which is still dreadful but also a spectacular improvement. His spending cuts led to the first budget surpluses in more than a decade. And while the economy was shrinking for six months prior to his election, six months into his term, economic activity increased year over year, despite predictions to the contrary.?
Milei eliminated stringent regulations on rental contracts, and the supply of available apartments in Buenos Aires roughly doubled.?
"Nobody expected the turnaround that much," says Vásquez. "We always knew that this policy change, and especially this thoroughgoing libertarian reform agenda in Argentina, was going to be a titanic task. I mean, the Peronists are still in Congress."?
What Milei calls "la casta" has its origins in the post–World War II era, when President Juan Perón built vast patronage networks and gave political interest groups outsized influence over the economy. Perón was inspired by the orderliness imposed on society by the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, whom he once called "the greatest man of our century."
The Eva Perón Foundation, named after the first lady who is still a cultural icon, displaced the Catholic Church as the main provider of Argentina's social safety net, funding its so-called social justice mission largely through state subsidies, union dues, and big business shakedowns.
The song "And the Money Kept Rolling In" from the musical Evita offers a critical take on Peronism. As the money rolled in, it came with a heavy dose of Peronist propaganda: The government—and the loving and generous president and his wife in particular—had come to take care of the needs of their people.
Peronism carried on in Argentina through the generations. President Néstor Kirchner was succeeded by his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and together they held office from 2003 to 2015. They governed with a progressive agenda shrouded in a Peronist personality cult.?
Milei's immediate predecessor, President Alberto Fernández, had served as an adviser to the Kirchners and continued the Kirchnerist policies of high taxation, deficit spending, and heavy regulation.?
The Kirchnerists and Peronists still hold almost half the seats in Argentina's national legislature, where they fought Milei's reform bill, as the protests grew violent outside.
Many Argentinians are under economic duress. Foreign goods became more expensive when Milei cut the formal value of the peso against the dollar. He slashed spending on energy and transit, and laid off 50,000 government workers with plans for 70,000 more. The real value of government pensions has declinedsignificantly, and for most retirees, they're not enough to live on.
Milei has said that welfare recipients are "victims, not perpetrators" who are "on welfare as a consequence of the intrusion of the state in the economy." Accordingly, he pushed through some modest increases in benefits to cushion the impact of his cuts early on.?
Milei's critics questioned his administration's priorities when, last April, it spent $300 million on 24 F-16 fighter jets, although Argentina faces no foreign military threats. His spokesman says they were purchased at a good price and bolster the country's security.?
A major challenge for the disruptive administration has been dealing with protesters who show little respect for public or private property. During the protest against Milei's reform bill, some of them burned a car belonging to a news station that gives favorable coverage to the president. Others threw Molotov cocktails.?
"We are at a crossroads," Milei told the crowd at the Cato event. "Either we persist on the path of decline, or we have the courage to choose liberty. That battle is even going on in the street….Fortunately, we have a great Minister of Security and she is putting the house in order."
Big protests are common in Buenos Aires, occurring at least once a month during the first half of 2024 after Milei assumed the presidency. His minister of security, Patricia Bullrich, has moved to impose limits. Peaceful demonstrations on sidewalks and public squares are permitted—but blocking traffic is not.
"Those who set cars on fire, those who destroy public property. What are they if they are not criminals? Explain it to me," she said at a press conference.?
Vásqeuz calls it a "tricky thing for any democracy" to deal with destructive mobs.?
"They block people's access to the roads to get to their jobs. They plunder businesses. They destroy property. They overturn cars. They do that in order to get a particular political outcome. So obviously you can't just let that happen," says Vásquez.
Milei has proposed that the government use AI to identify faces in the street, and he's threatened to cut off welfare payments to anyone caught blocking the roads. In January, he sent unions and activist groups a $66,000 bill for the cost of additional cops. Shortly after police clashed with protesters outside of the legislature, Bullrich posted a video glamorizing the crackdown.
"We cannot allow a group of misfits, no matter how big or how small, to disobey the law, damage both private and public property, and turn violent against security forces," Milei's spokesman Manuel Adorni told Reason.Like many members of Milei's inner circle and fledgling political party, he is a political outsider, having worked as an economist and opinion journalist before joining Milei's administration.?
Bullrich is also a drug warrior, regularly posting images of narcotics busts to her social media. Adorni says that Milei is "philosophically anarcho-capitalist" and opposes the drug war in principle. But he believes legalization isn't feasible with Argentina's large welfare state intact.
"The President has explained it to me on more than one occasion, we have a state that tries to fix everything," says Adorni. "We can't legalize something if the whole society pays the cost of your addiction. When you have such a large state, first you have to restructure things."
One of Milei's heroes is the Austrian-school economist Murray Rothbard, author of—among other books—For a New Liberty, which explains how a capitalist society would function without any government at all. But as president, Milei has set out to work within the system.
"One has to accept the chasm between the ideal of anarcho-capitalism and the world we're living in," says Adorni. "The state is here to stay, and we have to accept it. And what President Milei understood before entering politics is that if you're going to reform the system, you have to do it from the inside."
Milei's law-and-order approach and disdain for the left have often led the media to compare him to former President Donald Trump. Milei doesn't seem to mind the comparison, hugging the president at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, where Trump gave his famous slogan an Argentinian twist, proclaiming his enthusiasm to "make Argentina great again."
The two share a background in television, a strong sense of showmanship, and a penchant for inflammatory rhetoric. Like Trump's critics in the U.S., Milei's critics view him as dangerous, unstable, and even outright psychotic. Even Milei's supporters call him "El Loco," or the madman, a nickname from his childhood.
His eccentricity generates constant media fodder. There are his chainsaw antics, the cloning of his beloved English mastiff Conan five times, and his close relationship with his tarot card–reading younger sister Karina, a key political adviser he refers to as el jefe, or "the (male) boss."
But the economic crisis was so severe that many voters were willing to take a chance on "El Loco."
"Many people say, well, maybe this guy is a little bit unstable or whatever, but, you know, we tried with all these other [establishment] guys," says Emilio Ocampo, an economist who advised the Milei campaign. "This guy at least seems to have strong convictions. He's not corrupt. He has integrity. Let's try with this guy."
Milei's opposition has seized on his wild antics as a pretext to stop him.
As the protests against Milei's economic reform bill roiled outside, one legislator on the inside attempted to short-circuit the proceedings with a motion to allow Congress to deem Milei mentally unfit to hold office and to remove him as president.
"It's a culture of controlling everything. An addiction to power," says Rep. Damián Arabia, a Milei ally. He says Peronists would rather bring down the government than yield control.?"Honestly, some of them want to destabilize the government."
Adorni calls their antics "the modern coup d'etat," meant to wear down the president until he leaves.?
"Media and the opposition, who are losing their power, try to discredit people like me, because we are different," says Lilia Lemoine, a member of Congress and part of Milei's fledgling political party.
Lemoine is another political newbie drawn in by Milei's antiestablishment message.?She's also a tabloid favorite because of her brief romantic relationship with Milei and interest in cosplay.?
"I don't come from politics like many in our movement," says Lemoine. "I'm here because I wanted to change my country. Because I want to be a mother. I want to live in my country. I don't want to leave it. So I've been fighting for it."
Her opponents also paint her as a loony conspiracy theorist because she hosted a TV program discussing whether the Earth is flat. She says it was for entertainment purposes and that she doesn't actually believe the Earth is flat. She says she does believe in at least one conspiracy: The conspiracy among academics and politicians to hide the true cause of inflation from the public.?
"[Inflation is a] monetary phenomenon. That's something that libertarians know. But I will dare to say that politicians, even if they know what causes inflation, they cover it up because they need to keep printing money to pay for their political life….We are uncovering that."
Many members of Milei's governing coalition by and large don't share his libertarian views. They were drawn in by the cultural battles he's waged more so than his libertarian economic agenda. Milei dissolvedArgentina's Ministry of Women, rolled back quotas for hiring transgender workers in government, and banned schools and government offices from using "gender-inclusive" terms.?
Unlike many libertarians, Milei supports banning abortion. One member of his party promoted a bill to criminalize the practice, a move that likely would've provoked enough backlash to shatter his fragile legislative majority and threaten his entire economic agenda.
"It was the wrong time to do it," says Lemoine of the attempted abortion ban.?
Arabia, who describes himself as "gay, liberal, capitalist, and pro market" in his X profile, says he has no worries about Milei's social agenda, who is on the record supporting the right of gay people to marry in Argentina. Arabia says the libertarian approach to women's or LGBT rights shouldn't be to create special government ministries, but to expand liberty for everyone.
"We don't want the state to meddle in our lives," says Arabia. "Basically, just leave us alone."
Milei's unusual personality provides ammunition for those who say he's crazy—but that unusual personality also helped him get elected. Milei and Trump became famous television personalities before rising to the presidency, but from the standpoint of policy, the differences are huge.?
Trump is a nationalist and a protectionist, while Milei is a committed free trader. Government spending exploded on Trump's watch, although his "government efficiency" appointee Vivek Ramaswamy pledges to follow Milei's lead and slash spending in Trump's second term.
But there's no doubt that Milei shares Trump's flamboyance and social media acumen, and that both are crucial to his political success.?
"Milei himself always said that his campaign was done through social media," says Augusto Grinner, a producer with a popular YouTube channel who helped spread Milei's message through memes and videos during his presidential campaign.?
"Sometimes I hear people saying, 'Argentina is libertarian.' No, Milei didn't win because he's libertarian," says Grinner. "People voted against the status quo. It was because he was so radically antiestablishment."
Argentina's ruling class was so unpopular that Milei eventually won against the country's former economic minister with a larger percentage of the vote than any president since Argentina's return to democracy in 1983.?
But it was fury over the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that first vaulted him to social media stardom among Argentina's youth. Buenos Aires had the longest continuous lockdown in the world at 234 days.?
A group of activists who do youth outreach for Milei attended the conference and later sat with me at a café to explain their support for the president.
"I think that Milei's honesty and his attitude and the way he communicates made people say, 'Whoa, I really like this guy,'" says Patricio Adreani Manny.
During Argentina's COVID-19 lockdowns, Milei's predecessor, Alberto Fernández, was caught hosting a dinner party for his wife in the presidential palace.
"That picture was all around Argentina. And people start thinking, 'If I meet up with my friends, I'm a murderer, right? The president does it, like, nothing happens,'" says Santiago Vietes, another one of the youth activists.
Sociologist Pablo Seman, who has written about the rise of the libertarian movement in Argentina, says the pandemic became a "symbol for the lack of freedom" in Argentina—a lack of freedom that hit young people the hardest.?
Argentina's youth came for the fiery lockdown critiques and stayed for the economics lessons. Milei offered an explanation for the inflation and poor economy that many had never heard before.?
"Previous to the quarantine, I think that nobody in Argentina had the courage to call himself a liberal or libertarian. It was like a bad word," says Vietes. "Then Milei came and he started to talk about libertarianism, about the Austrian school of economics, about free markets."?
Vietes says living through Argentina's inflation accelerated his adoption of libertarianism because you don't know what the price of food and other essential goods will be day to day. Another activist we spoke to called it "a crime" that politicians can print money as they see fit.?
Milei and the economists supporting him believe they have a two-step solution to vanquish inflation once and for all: First, stop printing money. And then, abolish the central bank.
"One key weapon in the arsenal of populist governments printing money to finance deficits. And by taking that option away, taking it off the table, you eliminate that danger, which is hyperinflation," says Ocampo, who briefly advised Milei on how to achieve his campaign promise of abolishing Argentina's central bank and converting its debt to U.S. dollars to prevent future administrations from ever running the money printer again.
But Milei hasn't pushed forward on that pledge. Scholars from the Cato Institute say failure to dollarize and abolish the central bank would imperil his entire agenda.?
"I personally think that they could have dollarized raised already," says Cato's Daniel Raisbeck. "They're really going after the deficit. And it's just a political decision…if the left-wing Peronists return to power, it will be far easier for them to print money again if you have the central bank, if you have the peso. Whereas if you dollarize, it's practically impossible for them to revert it."
Despite the intense media criticism, attempts to strip his powers in Congress, the political inexperience of his party members, and opposition in the streets, the Senate approved the bill with a tie-breaking vote from his vice president, giving Milei a watered-down version of the legislation he wanted—but a victory nonetheless.?
The bill will allow him to privatize parts of the energy sector, cut labor regulations, and grants Milei temporary emergency legislative powers to push his agenda forward without congressional approval for one year, which Ocampo says is "a bad tool" but one that has become "a typical Argentine thing" that all of his predecessors have used.?
Milei has since used that emergency power to push forward the privatization of the national airline.?
Grinner says his biggest concern is that Milei's movement won't outlast his presidency. He once was close to Milei, but more recently they've had a falling out. He says that Milei has pushed away many former allies, replacing them with sycophants and political operatives from prior administrations. They may sabotage his libertarian agenda and "la casta" will reassert power.
"I told him this is happening, they are hiring militants. They are bringing in Kirchnerists," he says.
Argentinian society remains divided on Milei. His public approval rating dipped below 50 percent six months into his term, though he still remains far more popular than his predecessor.?
"Today, there is no political alternative," says Seman. "The opposition is very discredited, and the opposition doesn't even realize that it is discredited….The opposition is waiting for Milei's apocalypse."?
Whether or not that will happen will become clear during the 2025 midterms.?
In his inaugural address to the nation, Milei was clear that as he followed his mandate to steer Argentina in a different, more libertarian direction, the road ahead would not be easy.?
"A hundred?years of failure don't come undone in a day, but one day it begins, and today is that day," says Milei.
Raisbeck says that if Milei succeeds, it will "change the game in the entire region" and make it easier for other Latin American countries to adopt libertarian reforms. But on the flip side, "if it fails in Argentina, then it will be very, very difficult for libertarians in the next few decades to put our message across because the left will always be pointing to that example if it doesn't succeed."
The above JPEG was inspired by my mother who had the guardian angels placed in our rooms back in Cuba.
Please join us in prayer. We started this NOVENA on 12-17-2024, the miraculous day of San Lazaro, the healer. We have received prayers from all over the world and we thank you for joining us in the POWER OF PRAYER...
Read what is written above: A PRAYER FOR ACE
"Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you today with heavy hearts, praying for your healing touch upon our precious child, ACE, who is currently very sick.
We ask that you would surround ACE with your love and comfort, easing his pain and bringing strength to his little body.
Guide the hands of the doctors and nurses, and grant them wisdom in his care.
Give us, friends, neighbors and to ACE’s parents, and grand parents, the strength to remain hopeful and trust in your perfect plan.
We believe in your miraculous power to heal, and we surrender this situation to you.
Thank you for your love and mercy. Amen.".
12-20-2024 Derek & Beth; Bonnie; Miriam; Enid; Hope; Alex; Boris; Perside; Georgina; Jan; Alcides & Celina; Luiz; Marilyn