Author, columnist, speaker
When They Claim They've Changed, Don't Believe Them
By Robert Knight
As the midterm elections loom in less than three months, voters had better get used to terms like “cherry-picked” and “taken out of context.”
Those are the standard replies of Democratic candidates caught saying indefensible things in past online posts.
Recently, podcasts from 2023 of Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed surfaced in which he called football part of a “toxically masculine culture.”
He also said that historical violence in America, such as “destroying Native Americans” and the “trans-Atlantic slave trade,” are “echoed in the ethos of football.”
Michigan fans might remember his words when their Wolverines face Ohio State’s Buckeyes on the gridiron. If they forget, Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate, can remind them via campaign ads.
In a now-removed video from July 2024, Mr. El-Sayed is shown saying "fireworks suck," along with clips in which he argued that the Second Amendment should be replaced with a constitutional right to healthcare.
When CNN asked about these statements, his campaign replied, “Abdul is the former captain of his high school football team, loves Michigan football on Saturdays, and celebrates the Fourth of July with fireworks like the next Michigander. Cherry-picked comments from old podcasts don't reflect his beliefs today."
Indeed, the “old podcasts” were in the Bronze Age of 2023-2024. Conversely, Democrats constantly bring up America’s sin of slavery, which a bloody civil war ended 151 years ago, as if it were yesterday.
Texas U.S. Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico is backpedaling from comments about hating Christianity, God being “non-binary,” six genders, and finding barbecue disgusting and veganism more appealing. That was just old stuff, he says.
In a recent online photo, Mr. Talarico is draped in a Texas flag shirt, posing with a rack of ribs in front of his mouth. So, are the “Beyond Meat” people making ribs now, or what?
Mr. Talarico’s disingenuous culinary ploy to fool Texans would actually work well in a campaign ad—for his Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton.
It’s right up there with the much-mocked shot of 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis poking his little, helmeted noggin out of a tank turret to show off his masculine appeal against genuine war hero George H.W. Bush.
Perhaps the richest mine of all for opposition Republican ads is the Hasan Piker trove.
The online “Twitch” influencer campaigned with Mr. El-Sayed and other leftist Democrats like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Wisconsin gubernatorial nutcase Francesca Hong, who wanted to cancel Thanksgiving and abolish prisons and police. She lost by less than 1 percent to a slightly less nutty leftist.
Mr. Piker is an anti-American racist (against white people). He’s also an Islamist who in 2019 said “America “deserved 9/11, dude, f---it.”
When asked about this, Mr. El-Sayed commented that it was “dumb,” and continued campaigning with Mr. Piker.
Mr. Mamdani, in whose city nearly 3,000 were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, Islamist terrorist attack, called Piker’s words “objectionable and reprehensible,” but has kept Mr. Piker in his entourage.
Thanks to the internet’s bottomless feed, Mr. Piker’s foul-mouthed rants just keep popping up.
In an undated video that came to light this past week, Mr. Piker proclaimed,
“We’re going to keep bringing immigrants into this country on purpose. Just so they can f----your sister, and then maybe even your daughter. We’re going to destroy the white race, b====!”
The party of tolerance and inclusion seems to have no trouble with stuff like this. Remember, it’s ancient history.
Since 2020, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, has appeared multiple times on Mr. Piker’s podcast.
On Aug. 9, on ABC's "This Week," host Jonathan Karl asked her if Mr. Piker should play a role in the progressive movement. She declined to disavow Mr. Piker, pivoting to concern about how Democrats need to appeal to “young people.”
She also tried to put distance between previous comments that she and other leftists made earlier, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, “I have a local city councilman that has this saying: 'Woke 1.0 was crazy'" and that it’s “not rhetoric that we would use today.”
She then laughed. Ha ha ha.
Oh, okay then. So, trashing and censoring people who questioned the bat sandwich theory of origin, the lockdowns, masking, and forced injections, and all the ruined lives, was just something we can all laugh about now.
Wokeness also entailed smearing conservatives and Christians as “Nazis” and “fascists” and relentlessly pushing transgender insanity.
On a May 2024 podcast with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, the pro-Hamas Mr. Piker said the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 Israelis was a “direct consequence” of President Donald Trump’s pro-Israel policies and the signing of the Abraham Accords.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez responded, "10,000%.”
The Democratic socialists who are taking over the Democratic Party will be busy in the next few weeks, pretending to be harmless patriots.
Don’t believe them for a minute.
They are still anti-law enforcement, want open borders, a government takeover of health care, socialist economics, unlimited abortions up to the moment of birth, lopping off children’s sex organs, gun confiscation, no voter IDs, and more subsidies for the free stuff army.
But all those bizarre comments they made over the years? Just cherry-picking.
One more thing. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s joking about Woke 1.0 is clearly part of an effort to recast herself for a wider electorate.
This is not only dishonest and self-absolving. It should send a chill.
It implies there will be a Woke 2.0.
Illustration by Alexander Hunter / The Washington Times.
Beware of the Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
By Robert Knight
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear appears to be readying for a presidential run in 2028.
The telegenic Democrat was on a speaking tour last year in early primary state South Carolina. In September, he has a book coming out entitled, “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country,” a reference to Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan.
His publisher summarizes it this way: “By regrounding faith in compassion and kindness, he believes we can start to heal as a country.”
Compassion and kindness are God-given, but I thought we were in the midst of healing from the nightmare of the Biden years, with its promotion of atheism, illegal immigration, sexual anarchy, and attacks on Catholics and pro-lifers.
Mr. Beshear, like Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, identifies as a Christian and a moderate and gets priceless media cover while supporting the Democratic Party’s radical social and economic agenda.
In 2023, for instance, he tried to block a state bill protecting minors from “gender affirming care.”
The law prohibits doctors from subjecting gender-confused teens to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible, disfiguring surgeries.
The law also bans males from competing on girls’ sports teams. Most people think this makes sense.
Beshear insisted that such a law “would hurt kids and their families” and violate “parental rights.”
He claimed there was no evidence of widespread harm. To which I would say one butchered child is too many and that evidence of harm is voluminous, including the growing number of suicides and trans-related violence.
On the same day of Mr. Beshear’s veto, both houses of Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode it. Naturally, a federal judge, Rebecca Grady Jennings, issued an immediate injunction halting enforcement. The case is still in litigation.
A year earlier, Ms. Jennings, one of President Donald Trump’s few clunker appointees, struck down a Kentucky law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks and requiring medical oversight for abortion pills.
Gov. Beshear also vetoed that bill, and the legislature overrode him.
In South Carolina, which went for Mr. Trump by 30 points, Mr. Beshear emphasized his Christian faith while boasting that he was “a proud, pro-LGBTQ+ governor.”
This is a stance that ignores Jesus Christ’s clear restating of God’s creation of male and female and God’s marriage-based sexual morality from Genesis.
According to the Washington Post, Mr. Beshear said, “My faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids.” How about protecting them from quacks who sterilize them and turn them into lifetime medical cases?
By the way, politicians love to haul out the term “children of God” like a magic amulet. The Bible says we’re all created in the image of God, but that we’re not children of God unless we believe in Him and submit to God’s authority. Until then, we’re on the other team, and I don’t mean the New Jersey Devils.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name,” John 1:12 says. If we’re automatically children of God, we wouldn’t need to be, as Jesus said, born again.
Anyway, Mr. Beshear is not the only wolf in sheep’s clothing. Democrats have become quite adept at using Christianese and buzzwords to fool people. President Barack Obama often gave biblical scholars heartburn over his misappropriating Jesus’s words to justify sexual sin and confiscatory redistribution of wealth.
In Texas, state Rep. James Talarico is battling hard-left U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator. Like Mr. Beshear, Mr. Talarico touts his Christian faith while cleaving to a radical agenda.
“He delivers left-wing orthodoxy in centrist packaging and fights Christian nationalism with Scripture,” the Wall Street Journal explains.
If you’re a patriotic Christian, he’s talking about you and your family as a threat to America.
Much of his rhetoric revolves around Marxist class envy, such as, “Make billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.”
During remarks opposing a bill protecting kids from transgender treatments, he said, “Jesus never once condemned transgender people.”
Well, Jesus didn’t need to, and He welcomed all repentant sinners. The Hebrew Scriptures are crystal clear on sexual morality. Sexual confusion is the province of paganism, which historically often involved child sacrifice as well.
Any comparison to the pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ Democratic Party inferred by readers at this juncture may not be coincidental.
In a 2024 interview with MSNBC, Mr. Talarico said, “Christian nationalism is dangerous. … When politicians use the Bible to push division and hate, they’re not following Jesus; they’re using His name for their own agenda.”
This is classic projection, accusing your opponents of exactly what you’re doing.
Illustration by Alexander Hunter / The Washington Times.