One, we’re in a presidential election year. So let’s go through a little history journey. As a party of Lincoln, Republicans allied with 4 million former American slaves to pass the 13th 14th and 15th. Amendment to the United States Constitution. These amendments, they abolished slavery, granted citizenship and civil rights to newly emancipated blacks, as well as they guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied based on race, color, or previous conditions of servitude. why Democrats in the south, they weren’t too happy with the outcome of the Civil War. So they then how are these amendments so they’d started disenfranchising many blacks during the 1870s 1880s 1890s, with poll taxes and a whole lot of other very discriminatory practices, known today as Jim Crow laws. Democrat Woodrow Wilson subsequently initiated segregation in the federal government after his 1912 presidential election, and a response, black subtly voted for Republican presidential candidates through the 1932 election. However, following the Great Depression, and enactment of FDR New Deal, saw switch, he garnered strong support from blacks in the 1936 election, and blacks began voting in larger numbers for Democrat candidates in every subsequent presidential election. In 1956. However, President Dwight Eisenhower, who Republican attained 39% of black vote after abolishing segregation in the military, integrating Washington DC and hire more blacks in the Foreign Service than ever before in history. However, black support for Republican candidates plunged after Barry Goldwater oppose the Civil Rights Act during the 1964 election. Then Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson signed civil rights legislation into law and passed his Great Society program in the mid 60s and black voters began to become more wedded to big government. Republicans by then they had lost interest to regain their support. And thus this lack of attention continued through the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and blacks became very, very entrenched in voting for Democrat presidential candidates. And this peaked then in 2008, when Barack Obama won 95% of the black vote.

Interesting change in history in 2019. Under President Trump, black saw real median income grew by 7.9%, a record increase that brought black income to a new high and black poverty rates to a record low. Trump seemed poised to make real serious gains with black voters. But the COVID 19 pandemic disrupted this progress in 2020, and then the death of George Floyd. Wow, that really increased racial tensions. Trump at that point garnered 12% of the black vote in 2020. But some polls suggest that he could make significant gains in 2024 in February 2020 For CBS YouGov poll 81% of black said that the economy will be a major factor in how they vote. 44% said the economy is currently in bad condition. And 41% think the economy was good under President Trump.

In February 2023 Real Clear Opinion Research poll found that 73% of blacks support school choice, a policy that Trump supports and Biden opposes. History shows that black voters respond to policy differences will soon know how the differences between Democrats and Republicans impact black voters in our next presidential election, November 2024.

Political developments in Europe have been fascinating, driven by a variety of things that have made Europe under great pressure. First of all, there’s a huge tension between the bureaucracy that exists in Britain, Brussels, which represents in theory, a European wide system that really represents the bureaucrats who run the European system doesn’t represent the people who have no direct impact on second, you have greater and greater strength in the nations where people like the Italians are the Greeks of the Hungarians resent the amount of power that Brussels have, and want to take power back to their local national systems, then you have the challenge of an economic problem. That’s very real. The objective reality is that the Americans have emphasized innovation, the Europeans have emphasized regulation. Well, in the long run, you create a lot more new products, a lot more wealth, a lot higher standard of living, if you’re innovating than if you’re regulating. And that’s begun to make the gap in European standard of living get bigger and bigger compared to what’s happening in the United States. Finally, European immigration stress is very different from the American system. The European systems to cultures don’t really accept outsiders very easily. The result is that when immigrants arrived, mostly Muslim, often from North Africa, or Syria, or parts of the East, or Somalia,

they don’t don’t get absorbed. And they develop their own neighborhoods. In Paris, for example, their entire areas that are called no go areas, because the police cannot go in there, unless they bring a huge amount of force with them. And those are now self governing entities, essentially, outside of French control. So you’re seeing all of these different things come to bear. And the results have been fascinating. In Italy, for example, you had the election of Giorgio Maloney, who, who ends up being very successful Prime Minister, and has really become I think, the most popular Prime Minister in modern times. At the same time, she’s basically on a very pro Italian, critical of Belgium, of Brussels, kind of approach. You also have seen places like Hungary, where you now have a government, which is very conservative, very nationalist, has basically fence the country and against any kind of immigration is actually also very pro Russian, which is a little troubling. And then you have some fascinating elections. There is a Danish poet. There’s a Dutch politician who has been running for years and years. Well, his party, which is a very strongly anti immigrant party, has gained a great deal of ground and is now much more important than it has ever been before.

Then you get to the three big areas, the Germans are in total disarray. The fact is that their governments basically incapable of functioning right now, because it is so split up in terms of who has power. At the same time.

The French have had a wild series of elections. President McCrone got tired of being attacked and yelled out for the right. He called a sudden snap election for the French Parliament. It’s a two round election. If you don’t get over 50% the first time, then you run a second time. And on the first round, the conservative wing did very, very well looked like they were going to be the dominant wing. In the second round a week later, all the other groups ganged up on them, and they lost ground considerably. But that put the left to socialist and even beyond socialist was the largest single block. So right now the French Parliament’s divided, with the socialist left being the largest group, microns moderates being the second largest group, and the conservatives have grown dramatically, but not enough to replace the other two. So France is going to be in turmoil. Finally, you get to

Great Britain. It is a mess.

After 14 years in government, the British Conservatives so mismanaged the economy, the politics and the culture that they were smashed. This is the worst election in the history of the British Conservative Party. Going back to 1832.

The Labour Party is winning a victory so large, they got 35% of the vote, but in a very fractured environment with the Conservative Party

In a brand new Reform Party, the Scottish nationalist party, a new Muslim party, all of them taking votes away, and then the classic liberal party, all of them took votes away. So labour came in first with 35%. But because of the British system, where if you come in first you win 35% It was a surprisingly big victory across constituency after constituency.

Labour will now have a majority so large that everybody agrees there’ll be in charge for at least the next 10 years. That’s how much things have changed in Europe. So we’ll have to keep watching because there’s a lot going on

Donald Trump’s core critique, the one that has led him to face a Ruling Class onslaught that has  seen him spied upon, slandered as a Russian agent, sabotaged, impeached, indicted, gagged –facing political, legal, and character assassination is that our institutions are so corrupted and incompetent that the purported experts who run them cannot or will not execute their most basic functions. 

The failed literal assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump – one that comes in an environment of hysteria and outrage fueled by the very Ruling Class that repeatedly called him a fascist, a would-be Hitler who aims to destroy democracy – vindicates Trump’s critique. 

The Secret Service has a singular mission: To protect the life and limb of protectees.

Unfathomably, this critical organ of the most powerful and sophisticated security apparatus in the history of mankind failed in spectacular fashion on July 13 in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

It allowed a would-be assassin with supposedly little tactical capability, supposedly operating alone, to assume a position a stone’s throw from the former president and fire at him, piercing his ear with a bullet.

The number of failures culminated in the shots fired at the president are so egregious and voluminous as to defy belief.

let’s go through a few of them

Well in advance of the tragic incident, the shooter’s parents called law enforcement fearful he was missing. 

Three hours before the shooting, reports show authorities observed that the shooter possessed a rangefinder. 

Reports indicate he had somehow hid his rifle near the Trump rally, yet security … never found it.

There were no drones flying in the air over the rally.

An hour prior to the shooting, the Secret Service flagged the shooter as a “person of interest.” Counter-snipers at one point saw the shooter scanning for them, with the Secret Service telling lawmakers the shooter was spotted with a rangefinder 40 minutes prior to the shooting. 

20 minutes before the assassination attempt – and ten minutes before Trump took the stage – Secret Service saw the shooter on the roof of the building from where he would fire. 

Authorities reportedly occupied the building, but didn’t secure its roof! 

Despite the threat, they let Donald Trump go on stage. 

And minutes before the shooting, screaming civilians observed the shooter crawling into firing position.

Supposedly the delay in shooting him may have been because counter-snipers lacked a clear line of sight to the roof. 

After authorities eliminated the shooter, Trump stood once again exposed as a target on stage by agents too short to cover him. 

Finally, security rushed the former president to an exit vehicle, where an agent flanking him strained to simply holster her gun.

Whether the Secret Service failed to properly plan, resource, communicate, and/or act – and some have said it was constrained by suicidal rules of engagement requiring shooting at would-be assassins only after receiving fire – this was an unmitigated disaster.

It was an inexplicable disaster.

There are only two possible explanations for what transpired: 

That, notwithstanding the courageous actions of some agents, the Secret Service is grossly incompetent, or that something more sinister was afoot.

Gross incompetence would be by far the best explanation. It is buttressed not only by the failures, but the fact they come from a security service led by a director picked seemingly out of personal favor over merit by the Bidens, who indicated that agents may not have been perched on the roof from which the shooter fired because of its dangerous “slope.”

The Secret Service has suffered many scandals ranging from White House fence jumpings, to abiding dangerous approaches of presidents, and the compromising conduct of carousing agents in Cartagena.

Congressional investigators were probing allegations of inadequate training among agents.

Past evidence shows the agency suffers from mission creep. 

DEI policies pervade the agency, suggesting it is prioritizing political correctness over the mission.

The more disturbing and conspiratorial conjectures about what transpired are fueled in part by disbelief the Secret Service could have failed so badly, plus the patsy-esque profile of the shooter, the evasiveness of authorities over basic questions about what transpired, and that the untrusted, Trump-targeting FBI is leading the probe into the failures.

More broadly, the national security and law enforcement apparatus has served as the leading edge of the effort to politically and legally destroy Donald Trump dating back to Russiagate.

To alleviate conspiratorial concerns, the security state is going to have to explain how it could have failed so badly and in so many respects, and why we should believe it.

Whether driven by gross incompetence or something more nefarious, the Deep State that has for years targeted Trump and millions of dissenting Americans failed to protect the former president’s life last Saturday.

The failures proved his critique of the administrative state and our leading institutions correct. 

President Biden’s performance in the first presidential debate has made many Democrats nervous, causing a growing number to call on Biden to step aside as his party’s nominee. Biden has resisted such appeals and has received support from Senator Bernie Sanders, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other ‘progressive’ leaders.

In order to maintain support from his progressive base, Biden has proposed a series of policy initiatives that are high priorities on the progressives’ wish list. The most notable idea is transformation of the federal courts – especially the U.S. Supreme Court.

For decades, progressives have used the courts and executive branch agencies to advance a policy agenda they couldn’t enact through Congress or most state legislatures. They have imposed a massive regulatory regime, radical gender ideology that allows biological men to compete in women’s sports, and mandates that prevent parents from being informed about school curriculums and major decisions in their children’s lives.

Recent Supreme Court decisions have returned authority to Congress and the states, recognized the right of parents to guide the upbringing of their children, and upheld protections for religious freedom. Progressive elites have expressed outrage against the Court as their ability to impose a progressive agenda on American society has been constrained.

As Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Former Senator Joe Biden called the idea of packing the U.S. Supreme Court “a bonehead idea” that put in question “the independence of the most significant body” in this country – “the Supreme Court of the United States of America.” Yet, that is exactly what leading progressives have proposed to do by introducing legislation to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from 9 to 13.

As Biden clings to power and further commits to a progressive policy agenda, the independence of our judiciary hangs in the balance. Our Constitution balances power between three branches of government, and voters will decide if they’re willing to put that at risk in 2024.

Joe Biden is trying to out Trump Trump. And in doing so, he’s harming our economy, making life worse for American families and businesses. When Donald Trump was president, he imposed tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum. Joe Biden attacked those tariffs back in 2020. But as a 2024 campaign heats up, Biden is expanding those Trump tariffs, and they will now apply to steel and aluminum imported through Mexico. Tariffs are taxes, and they are not paid by foreign companies or governments. They are paid by the Americans who import goods or materials. Higher taxes on raw materials will benefit some US manufacturers, those who make steel or aluminum, but it will hurt other US manufacturers, those who use steel or aluminum, who uses steel and aluminum. The three main uses of steel and aluminum in the US are construction, cars, and machinery. So the very first impact of the Biden Trump tariffs is to make it more expensive to build homes. That means there are fewer homes built and those that are built cost more to buy. America currently has a housing shortage, and Biden is exacerbating it by slowing down homebuilding. Cars are mostly aluminum and steel. Taxing these materials, obviously makes a new car more expensive, which in turn probably makes use cars more expensive. This is bad for the environment, too. Because when new cars are more expensive, folks hold on to their less efficient clunkers for longer. But it’s not only consumers who suffer. It’s also American automakers and their workers. Auto Workers were so important. Last time Biden was in the White House that the Obama Biden administration made their bailout of the big three, a centerpiece of the reelection campaign with these tariffs. Biden is putting us carmakers at a disadvantage compared to foreign automakers. And machinery includes farm equipment and factory machinery. So the Biden Trump tariffs harm those businesses and their workers. Biden knows that his tax increases will harm auto workers, homebuyers and factory workers. But he hopes that these harms will be less visible than the benefits to steel workers. These tariffs are taxes and the folks who pay them are the regular Americans. Election Year protectionism is something every president does. But that doesn’t make it okay.

the nomination of Donald J. Trump, to be the Republican candidate for president is a remarkable historic moment. Remember, in June 2015, when he and Melania came down from that long escalator. He’d never run for office, not for anything, not dog catcher, state legislator, anything. And he had 22 Good Republican opponents. And he beat all of them. And then he had Hillary Clinton, who was part of the most successful democratic political team up to that point. And he beat her. He became president had a very tumultuous four years, with large parts of the establishment, including the FBI, and the intelligence community, and almost all the news media attacking him every single day. He lost very narrowly, in a period when COVID had dominated and changed almost everything. And people thought he was gone. He slowly, steadily, relentlessly kept working, and began making a comeback. And it was an amazing process. He’s been in all 50 states, he has recruited people everywhere. And he won the Republican nomination decisively and early, he now stands astride his party in a historic way, matched by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, but not many other people. He is the Republican nominee, because he has become the personification of the Republican Party. Now the challenge for him is to reach beyond that extraordinary base, and it’s a big base. But I keep telling people don’t think of Trump as a candidate. Think of him as the champion for millions of Americans who believe he is their only hope, of bringing the national establishment under control, and cleaning up the corruption and getting back to the rule of law. So he has an enormous level of energy behind him. But he also has people on the other side, who deeply disliked him partially because he really is a direct threat to the entire structure of power, which liberals have built since 1932. It’s going to be a fascinating general election campaign. And of course, in August, we’ll get a chance to see how the Democrats do and what kind of shape at that point, President Biden is in. But I can tell you, President Trump today is much stronger than anyone thought he would be much more capable. And I think he’s in a position where he could be a dominant figure, both in winning the election, and in reshaping government, and in getting America back towards a more conservative or more patriotic, and a more energetic country. It’s an amazing moment. This convention is an amazing thing. And I think it’s a gathering of a nation, which has stood up despite everything and said, No, we’re not going to let you drive our champion out of life of public life. We’re not going to let you dominate us, and we are thrilled to have a chance to have Donald J. Trump on the ballot this fall. So it’s going to be fascinating. This is the beginning

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “Russia is interfering in the election and it’s trying to help Donald Trump win.”

Just four months out from a presidential contest that sees Joe Biden behind in the polls, and with Democrats looking like they are in disarray — fighting openly over whether to jettison the declining octogenarian from the top of the ticket in an election where they claim democracy hangs in the balance — the intelligence community has come out and once again put its thumb on the scale against former President Trump.

Last week the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an “election security update” assessing that Russia “remains the primary threat to our elections,” and that “Russian influence actors are planning to covertly use social media to amplify narratives to sway U.S. public opinion in U.S. swing states and diminish U.S. support for Ukraine.” 

The IC says it is beginning to see Russia target “specific voter demographics, promote divisive narratives, and denigrate specific politicians.”

In a briefing to the media, an ODNI official indirectly indicated that Russia’s purported social media-driven interference aimed to elect Trump. 

“We have not observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections, given the role the U.S. is playing with regard to Ukraine and broader policy toward Russia,” the official said.

So the national security state is once again interfering in our domestic politics to the detriment of Trump and the benefit of Democrats – “Trump is Putin’s man,” The Regime is saying. 

This coming from a security state that has lost all credibility when it makes these proclamations based on how hyper-politicized and weaponized it has become, against Donald Trump and his supporters.

Recall, the Russian collusion hoax was a fraudulent narrative pushed on the American people to delegitimize and undermine the Trump presidency, punish those in Trump’s orbit by process, justify surveilling them – while generating damaging leaks — and of course smearing Trump’s supporters as traitors; 

the efforts to show that Russian trolls’ crude social media posts and paltry ad buys somehow had any impact on U.S. elections whatsoever were completely unconvincing – with one academic study showing there was “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior” among those exposed to the efforts who were overwhelmingly Republicans; 

and the assessment that Russia wanted Trump to win in 2016 was disingenuously framed as an assessment of the entire intelligence community when it wasn’t. The assessment was shown to be lacking in analytical rigor as well. In reality, it was a political product pushed by a CIA Director, John Brennan, who hated Donald Trump, drafted in part by a CIA official who had donated to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, to sabotage his presidency – a sabotage effort that emanated from the Obama administration.

The intelligence community loathed Donald Trump in no small part because of his criticism of it, and because of his anti-establishment national security and foreign policy agenda that threatened the power and privilege of those at the security state’s helm.

Now they are interfering to damage him again.

This purported intelligence community assessment – an intelligence community that is supposed to stay out of domestic politics – leverages the prestige of the national security apparatus to damage Trump; pre-delegitimizes an election that on paper it looks like he is poised to win; and also creates a predicate for both massive social media censorship once again – to defend us from malign foreign actors – and perhaps surveillance of those in Trump’s orbit and again political leaks from that surveillance. It threatens to once against cast a cloud over a Trump presidency.

One need not even comment about the fact the Trump administration constrained and was tough on a Russian regime – checking its bellicose activities – while under Biden that regime, now closer than ever to our Chinese and Iranian adversaries, invaded Ukraine. 

The fact of the matter is that because the national security apparatus has never been held accountable for its past meddling in our elections and assaults on the civil liberties of Americans, we can expect perpetual domestic interference in our elections – and remember, this is the intelligence community springing to action alongside a law enforcement apparatus also being wielded as an arm of the Democrat Party to silence, break, bankrupt, and jail Donald Trump.

This is a dangerous disgrace to our nation.

Foreign nations of course will try to create dissent in America, influence Americans in their preferred directions, and with malign intent.

We have grappled with those threats historically, including during the Cold War.

Far more disturbing is when our own authorities tasked with defending us against foreign adversaries wield their power to influence our domestic politics – as our adversaries operate against their own populations.

We are far closer to being destroyed from within than without today – and from the very people who claim to be defending “our democracy.”

reeling from a debate in which he lost his train of thought several times and looked like a deer in the headlights. President Biden and his political handlers were desperate to change the subject. When the Supreme Court handed down their decision that presidents have legal immunity for their official actions, but not private actions. Biden and his team recklessly argued that the court had given the president license to do all kinds of horrible things. Biden’s Ultra liberal nominee to the High Court who previously couldn’t tell senators the difference between a man and a woman argued that the President could poison a cabinet secretary rather than just remove him or her from office. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor allege that a president could direct SEAL Team Six to murder a political opponent.

In the courts majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked such irresponsible fear mongering. The dissents in his words strike a tone of chilling doom. That is wholly disproportionate to what the court does today. In quote, Roberts also said in quotes coming up short on reasoning, the dissents repeatedly level variations of the accusations that the court has rendered the president above the law. In quote, Roberts further stated that the positions espoused by the far left justices have another quote, boiled down to ignoring the Constitution’s separation of powers and the courts precedence and instead fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals in quote, pointing to the liberal justices opinions to give their reckless arguments a thin veneer of credibility. Biden, Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and all their allies on liberal TVs, they went on liberal TV networks to overdrive, about this topic, and they started attacking the courts and whipping up fear, especially among their liberal base and viewers. Ironically, Biden’s politically motivated attack on the court threatens to undermine our third branch of government, which is supposed to be immune from political pressure and threats from ideological activists. To borrow a phrase from him his own rhetorical arsenal. Biden’s reckless fear mongering is a threat to democracy and the rule of law. Another the Supreme Court’s decisions this season, limited the ability of federal agencies to impose policies that have not been authorized by Congress. If Biden Harris wins reelection with a liberal Congress, they will use their hysteria to pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices. You can believe that and they will be the ones to create a government that will truly threaten our rights and freedom. The stakes in this election could not be higher.

{LEON ARON]
What happens to Russia after Putin? What should the West be prepared for? 

We cannot of course predict the future but we can look at several factors that could shape post-Putin Russia. Some are hopeful, others rather depressing. 

In Russian history, we see a pendulum swinging from generally repressive, sometimes tyrannical regimes to somewhat less brutal ones, what we might call more liberal.

We saw this change in the early 17th century with Mikhail Romanov actually being elected tsar by the National Assembly of the Nobles after the death of the sadistic Ivan the Terrible.

After a 40-year interlude of misfits and perverts, the totalitarian Peter the Great was replaced by Catherine the Great, who corresponded with Voltaire and had Diderot as her guest in St. Petersburg.

Following the cruel disciplinarian and martinet Paul I in the early 19th century, Alexander I initially embarked very liberal trajectory. Half a century later, the classical reactionary Nicholas I was succeeded by his son Alexander II who liberated the serfs. 

And, of course, closer to us in time, Khrushchev’s thaw came after Stalin’s horrors and Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost revolution occurred after the Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko stagnant neo-Stalinism.

So history points to the possibility of a less repressive, less belligerent regime in Putin’s wake. 

Within this general direction, two circumstances are most relevant for us today. First, the pendulum of regime changes has swung wider after Russia’s military setbacks. 

The Alexander II liberal revolution-from-above followed Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War. Russia’s 1905 revolution, which resulted in an essentially constitutional monarchy, had been precipitated by the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. And the February 1917 democratic revolution as well as the Bolshevik takeover seven months later occurred after setbacks in World War I. Quagmire of Afghanistan contributed to Gorbachev’s liberalization.  

So Russia’s defeat in Ukraine is critical not just for Ukraine and the West but for Russia’s future as well: it makes a wider swing away from Putin’s Russia much more likely.  

But here’s the rub. 

As we look at the Stalin to Khrushchev transition I’ve just mentioned, when Stalin died, the most powerful institution in the Soviet Union was the Ministry of State Security, or MGB, under Stalin’s top henchman and executioner Lavrentiy Beria. It was the most powerful agency in the country – but not the only powerful one. There was the Communist Party apparatus, there was the government, there was the military, there were various ministries. Sitting on the ruling Politburo were men in charge of these institutions. Men like Nikita Khrushchev, Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan and Moisey Kaganovich. 

When Stalin died they took on Beria and prevailed with the help of the military.

Yet in almost quarter century of the Putin rule,  the FSB and other secret and semi-secret services have subverted, hollowed out, and destroyed all Russian institutions. As Russian analysts put it, the FSB “podmyalo pod sebya,” literally “crushed under” every Russian institution: the courts, the federal and local bureaucracies, the governors. The recent arrests of the generals at the very top of the ministry of defense have demonstrated the FSB’s total control of the Russian military.

As a result, institutionally Russia is like a desert in which the FSB horsemen raid this or that settlement, seizing people and assets as they please. 

Can anyone name the head of the government, the Russian prime minister? Or the head of the supposedly ruling party, United Russia? Of course not, because they are completely irrelevant.

The two most powerful men in Russia after Putin are his colleagues from the Leningrad KGB in the mid-1970s: the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, and the head of the so-called Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, who was Putin’s classmate in Leningrad State University’s Law Department. 

And so here’s the takeaway: If the lessons of Russian history hold, post-Putin Russia should hew to a more palatable direction, especially if is defeated in Ukraine. Yet standing in the way of this change is the legacy of virtually unlimited power of the secret police.

And all we can do is to keep fingers crossed and stay tuned.  

I hope you’ll take some time to watch the upcoming Republican convention. And for that matter, to watch the Democratic Convention in August, I think you’ll find them remarkably different places with dramatic, remarkably different messages. Conventions really matter. I’ve been to many conventions in my career. And I like going to, because of in each side, Democrat and Republican, people come from all over America, you see, old friends, you may not have seen since the last convention, you get a chance to find out what’s happening in their neighborhood. What do folks think back home, what’s going on, and you come together for a common purpose. Each of the two great parties has a tradition of defining itself in a platform. And I think the platforms this year, are going to be very interesting. And if you really want to know, you can put together the two side by side. And then because you’ll be able to get both of them online. And you’ll see how really different the two futures are based on who wins. On the Republican side, of course, we intend to nominate Donald J. Trump, former president knighted states, and the first pres former president, who really has a good chance to become the next president, since Grover Cleveland did it in 1888. So it’s going to be pretty fascinating to watch and see, and you’ll be watching history in the making. On the Democratic side, you’re gonna have a chance to see President Biden, in effect, given the chance to lead his party one more time. And these conventions become a symbolic moment where the party talks to itself, and talks to the country where different factions come together. And they argue out what should be in the platform, what they should stand for, what it’s really all about. I think this is a very important time. And I think this year, is an extraordinarily important election. We’re at an enormous Crossroads as a country, and we’re going to make some very big decisions about where we’re going in the future, and what kind of country our children and grandchildren are going to inherit. And that’s why I encourage you to take some time, and watch some of the proceedings, both in the Democratic and the Republican conventions, to get a flavor for what’s happening. Because this is the history of our country. It’s the history of our time, and it will directly affect you and your family. I think it’s an exciting time, I’m certainly gonna be paying attention to both conventions. Obviously, as Republican, I’ll be a little more enthusiastic for what goes on in Milwaukee, and for what’s going to go on later on in Chicago. But as somebody who has been studying politics and working in politics, for my entire lifetime, I’m fascinated with how the American people evolve, how their parties evolve, how we talk to ourselves, way beyond talk radio or television or social media. We have ways of gradually finding a path forward. And that’s made us an amazing country for a very long time. So I hope you’ll take some time and join your country as it talks to itself.