Live Free Or Die: America (and the World) on the Brink (5 page)

With that in mind let me close this chapter with another inspiring anecdote involving Ben Franklin. In his notes summarizing the last day of the Constitutional Convention, James Madison reported, “Whilst the last members were signing [the Constitution], Doctor Franklin, looking towards the Presidents Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have, said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.”
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It is our duty to ensure that our “sun” continues rising. I believe President Trump reveres this nation, its Constitution, and the unique liberty tradition it guarantees. He recognizes the forces that imperil our liberties and is fighting to defeat them every single day of his presidency. We Americans who value our constitutional heritage and who believe in our nation's benevolence and its divinely inspired founding must continue to support the president's efforts.

Having reviewed the importance of our founding principles, how we've slowly veered away from them through the years, and why we must dedicate ourselves to restoring them, I'll detail in the next two chapters the Democrats' thoroughly radical agenda and demonstrate how it will destroy everything that makes America unique unless we join together to thwart it.

We conservatives so often point to the extremism of today's Democratic Party that we might risk numbing ourselves to the seismic shift that has taken place among its ranks. This is important, folks, and so in the following pages I specify how deep and widespread it is, and how much further left the party has moved even in the short years since Obama's term expired—and it was already far too left then.

During the 2008 presidential campaign I repeatedly outlined Barack Obama's radical past and his far-left views. Too many breezily dismissed our warnings, and I pray that they do not do so today—or the tattered flag shown on this book's cover will tear completely in two.

We did tons of investigative reporting on Obama's record—work that the Obama-worshipping mainstream media mob wouldn't do. We are one of the only TV shows anywhere that vetted Obama. We took a deep dive into his associations with militants like Frank Marshall Davis and ACORN, and revealed Obama's use of the cynical, manipulative tactics of community organizer Saul Alinsky. We also gave you volumes about his close relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor behind the infamous “G-d d—n America” sermon, and an adherent of the radical black liberation theology.

We reported in depth on Obama's links to leftist extremists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, cofounders of the Weather
Underground—a communist revolutionary group that bombed public buildings, including the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, and New York police stations.
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After the Pentagon bombing Ayers and Dohrn became fugitives. When the Weather Underground issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the United Sates government in 1970, Dohrn was placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.
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Obama claimed Ayers was just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” but I told you differently, and I was proved right when it emerged that Obama and Ayers were partners in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education foundation that funneled more than $100 million to community organizers and radical education activists.
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With one exception, the media wholly ignored Obama's relationship with Ayers. Had Donald Trump had such a nefarious relationship, you can be sure the media would have asked him about it a thousand times, which is a perfect example of why American patriots don't trust the media mob.

Don't listen to anyone who tells you Obama wasn't a leftist president, and especially don't listen to the liberal media. They lied to you throughout the Obama years, and they're still lying today. I wish Americans had heeded our warnings because Obama was serious when he vowed to fundamentally transform the nation. He proved it during his eight long years in office by ramming through Obamacare on a party-line vote, appointing activist judges, issuing unconstitutional executive orders, downsizing our military, traveling the world apologizing for America, engineering long-term economic malaise, waging war on coal and coal miners, haranguing the cops, conferring legal status on more than one million illegal aliens via Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and aggravating race relations in this country.

I'm not rehashing the Obama-Biden years out of some obsession. This book is about America's present and future, but we must learn from past mistakes—and as a society we made a major mistake in failing to recognize the threat Obama posed to the republic. Our battle against the left is a constant, never-ending struggle in which we must never lower our guard. Though Obama may seem less extreme than
today's crop of hard-core leftists, his presidency paved the way for their ascendancy. He moved society as far left as was politically possible at the time. However, as shown by the backlash after the Democrats forced through Obamacare—when they lost sixty-three House seats, control of the House, and six Senate seats
⁴
—there were limits to how far Obama could take his transformation. We should remember this shellacking when Democrats and Never Trumpers gloat over the Republicans' loss of congressional seats in the 2018 midterms.

Even as Obama remade America, he sometimes projected a false image of moderation and bipartisanship that his media cheerleaders obediently amplified. He famously pretended to oppose same-sex marriage until he decided it was politically feasible to announce he had “evolved” on the issue. Even his adviser David Axelrod later admitted that during the 2008 campaign Obama lied in saying he opposed same-sex marriage—for reasons of political expedience.
⁵
He downplayed his health-care ambitions, claiming to reject a government-run, single-payer health-care system even though years earlier he'd privately told his labor union supporters that that was exactly what he wanted.
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But try as he might, Obama couldn't always hide his militant partisanship.

I'll never forget his revealing utterances. While referring to his political opponents in a 2008 speech, he said, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
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All throughout Obama's first campaign for president, he mentioned me more than a dozen times—even threatening me by saying, “I'll put Mr. Burgess [an Obama supporter] up against Sean Hannity. He'll tear him up.” He told his supporters they were “his ambassadors” and urged them to “argue with [their neighbors]; get in their face.”
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Implying Republicans were lazy obstructionists, he said, “We're down there pushing, pushing on the car. Every once in a while we'll look up and see the Republicans standing there. They're just standing there fanning themselves—sipping on a Slurpee.”
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Obama also often displayed his socialist leanings. He famously told Joe the Plumber, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.”
¹⁰
And let's never forget his infamous line: “If
you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
¹¹

Today's Democratic leaders and presidential candidates dispensed with even the pretense of moderation. Whereas Obama at least pretended you could keep your health insurance plan, which was named “Lie of the Year” by the left-leaning PolitiFact,
¹²
Senator Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid with a promise of eliminating private insurance. Every one of the Democratic presidential candidates on the stage at the July 30, 2019, Democratic presidential debate supported a public option for Obamacare that even the liberal 2010 Democratic Congress rejected.
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All the candidates at the June 27, 2019, debate supported federally funded health care for illegal immigrants. Two of the top candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, supported “Medicare for All,” an outright government-run socialized medicine scheme.

The Democrats' radicalism goes way beyond health care. Every candidate at the February 7, 2020, debate either cosponsored or supported the Green New Deal, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's utopian plan to remake the American economy at a cost of unknown trillions of dollars. Indisputably, Democrats have become the party of socialism, open borders, sanctuary cities, the elimination of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), underfunding the military, abortion on demand, infanticide, environmental extremism, gun confiscation, higher taxes, radical identity politics, suppression of free speech and religious expression, and among some Democratic members of Congress, undisguised anti-Semitism. They're also the party of intolerance, smears, lies, character assassination, besmirchment, and fake Russian dossiers. They are singularly obsessed with their hatred for President Trump and his supporters. As the Brett Kavanaugh Senate Judiciary Committee hearings showed, they have abandoned any sense of fundamental decency, fairness, or common sense.

What are Democrats thinking? Why are they showing their hand so openly? Have the American people taken a sharp turn to the left? They haven't, but there are worrying trends. Conservatives still outnumber liberals by 9 percentage points, but this gap has shrunk from 19 points in 1992. Gallup reported that in 2018, 35 percent of Americans described themselves as conservative, 35 percent as moderate, and 26 percent as liberal. The majority of Republicans call themselves conservative, but for the first time, a majority of Democrats identify as liberal.
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These numbers don't indicate socialism would be a winning message in the country overall. And of course, it's possible Joe Biden will suddenly moderate his message after winning the party primaries. However, he did the opposite to win the Democrat nomination over Bernie Sanders. It'll be nearly impossible for Biden to walk back his newfound radicalism. Besides, he seems to mean it. After all, the base of the party is very radical, as are their younger cohorts in Congress, led by AOC and her “squad” of like-minded extremists.

Like Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic congressional veterans sometimes show they understand the need to
appear
more moderate, but when push comes to shove, their policy positions are not much different from the squad's. In fact, more than 25 percent of Democrat lawmakers voted with AOC 95 percent of the time in the first quarter of 2019, and even more damning, Pelosi initially held the coronavirus relief bill hostage to her demands for including Green New Deal provisions in the legislation.
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There is simply no truth to Pelosi's dismissive claim that the party's AOC wing represents only “like five people.”
¹⁶

Indeed, as Karine Jean-Pierre of
MoveOn.org
made clear early on, it won't be easy for the Democrats' establishment wing to rein in the radicals. “[T]here's one thing we already know about the 2020 Democratic nominee: She or he must offer a clear, unapologetically progressive alternative to Donald Trump,” writes Jean-Pierre. “Because [voters
have] made it abundantly clear that the last thing they want to see in their nominee is a middle-of-the-road Democrat who won't go far enough to turn our country around.”

Consider that for a second. Democrats controlled the executive branch for eight years under Obama and produced nothing but problems, from health-care chaos and unaffordability, to economic stagnation, to foreign policy aimlessness. Under President Trump, prior to the coronavirus panic, the nation was reinvigorated, with an unprecedented economic boom, strong foreign policy leadership, deregulation, exceptional judicial appointments, and energy independence. What, exactly, would the left have us turn around? Do they want a rebirth of malaise, executive overreach, and an America-last foreign policy? Do they want to reimpose the Obamacare mandate? In fact, yes, you can bank on it.

“Progressive candidates don't hesitate when it comes to supporting universal health care, or the fight for the $15 minimum wage, or the right to vote,” says Jean-Pierre. “I can tell you this: [the Democratic presidential nominee] will be the most progressive candidate the Democratic Party has ever seen.”
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Do you hear an implied “or else” at the end of that sentence? You should, because it's there. The party's ultimate rejection of Sanders in favor of Biden doesn't disprove Jean-Pierre's prophecy. Considering where the party is today and Biden's leftward turn, Biden will be the most progressive candidate the party has nominated. The Democratic base is feeling emboldened and uncompromising. Even if the party leaders were open to a more moderate course—and there's no evidence of that—their base wouldn't allow it.

Early in 2019, Congresswomen AOC and Rashida Tlaib made Pelosi squirm as they presented their radical proposals. AOC announced her plan to raise income taxes to help pay for her delusional “Green New Deal” to end the use of fossil fuels in about a decade. Without a hint of self-consciousness, she compared her program to President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. “If that's what radical means, call me a radical,” she said.
¹⁸
But eventually we saw Democrat leaders, one by one, fall in line behind AOC's crazy ideas.

Naturally, impeaching Trump was a top priority for the newcomers. Hours after being sworn in to Congress, Tlaib told a cheering crowd at a
MoveOn.org
event that “we're going to go in there and we're gonna impeach the mother——r.”
¹⁹
That quote became pretty famous, though some people forget she was retelling what she'd said to her
thirteen-year-old
son. But forget Tlaib's inappropriate way of talking to children. Notice that the crowd went crazy for a vow to impeach Trump before his phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky even occurred. And why not? The exit polls from the 2018 midterm elections showed that almost 80 percent of Democratic voters favored Trump's immediate impeachment—and some 6.5 million Democrats had already signed a petition to impeach him.
²⁰
Some party veterans, like the late Elijah Cummings, cringed at the newcomers' unmasked radicalism and militancy, knowing the country wasn't ready for it, but their nods to restraint were mere posturing. The party was dead set on impeachment, just waiting on a suitable pretext, as we quickly saw.

AOC, Tlaib, and the rest of the squad are in sync with the Democratic base, and they are the party's future. They are not outliers, and—truth be told—they are not that far apart from the old guard except in their style and bluntness. “I was not sent to Washington to play nice,” said Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.
²¹
Still, the stylistic differences are enough to provoke skirmishes between the two wings. Retired Democratic senator Joe Lieberman said, “With all respect, I certainly hope [AOC is] not the future and I don't believe she is.”
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AOC responded with a flippant tweet: “New party, who dis?”
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