Billionaire Trump ally says Lutnick would implement change
Trump backs Whatley to lead Republican National Committee
Billionaire Elon Musk voiced support for Howard Lutnick in the race for President-elect Donald Trump’s next Treasury secretary, offering a late boost to the candidacy of the Cantor Fitzgerald LP CEO as the incoming cabinet takes shape.
Musk said on his social media platform X that he saw Lutnick as a disruptor compared to Key Square Group LP founder Scott Bessent, another finalist for the position who met with Trump on Friday.
The reelection of Donald Trump was an absolute repudiation of the Democratic Party, President Joe Biden's record and Kamala Harris' candidacy, campaign message and strategy.
On every level, it was a historic election defeat that has created a new bloc of voters who will affect every future election – the hidden Trump Democrat.
The question is, why? And maybe more important, how did we not see this coming?
As to why, it was simple enough to see even before this election. These voters grew tired of being lectured at by a cadre of political, social, cultural and establishment elites who minimized or outright ignored the serious economic pain they felt over inflation or the grave concerns they felt over illegal immigration, let alone other issues like crime or international conflict.
Even worse, they were told by these same elites that they had to subscribe to an ultra-liberal cultural orthodoxy or face a fusillade of personal and social media attacks.
Millions of these traditional Democratic voters went silent. They kept their anger hidden to themselves, ready to explode on Election Day – and explode they did.
What is clear, for those of us who professionally try to understand voters objectively, is that this frustration and anger was self-evident, if Democratic Party elites only cared to stop and listen.
Consider this: For almost four years, in nearly every poll and focus group I have done, inflation and the economy were the top issues for voters. This was true in private and public polls.
Yet, the Biden administration ignored these concerns, viewing them as transitory. When Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is someone I have long advised, penned a prescient op-ed in The Wall Street Journal years before the 2024 election and declared the threat of inflation, the White House and D.C. elites all but mocked it as hyperbole.
Well, it wasn’t. To hardworking middle-class and working-class people who pay those grocery or utility bills, inflation was a mortal economic threat.
On immigration, as nearly every public poll showed, voters ranked it as one of their top issues for the past four years. The response by the White House and Democratic elites was to wait until months before an election to pretend that the time has come to act. Seriously. This was not only a failure of leadership, but a failure to listen to their voters.
Voters were outraged over both inflation and immigration for years, but instead of addressing these two top issues head on, the Democratic Party and elites screamed them into silence. They dismissed them with condescending lectures about how the economy was great and the border has been long broken. Don’t worry, they said, we will fix it eventually.
So, voters seethed, and they went quiet, hid and waited until Election Day.
My firm has conducted national public opinion research for our clients for over a decade. Over the past four years, in focus group after focus group, in poll after poll, we saw this economic and political anger in vivid color.
It was soul crushing to hear good people, from the left, middle and right, talk about how much economic pain they felt over inflation. These were not racists or misogynists; they did not hate Biden, Harris or Democrats. They didn’t even particularly like Trump. All they wanted was someone in Washington to listen and help, not lecture and talk down to them.
Democrats need to stop listening to elites
Many lessons will be learned from this epochal disaster for the Democratic Party – I hope. My biggest hope is a simple one for the Democratic Party, pollsters and those in the media: Stop listening to your fellow elites who mostly already agree with you.
For God’s sake, stop listening to celebrities or coastal elites – they know nothing about the price of milk or eggs.
Instead, talk to real people, real folks in different parts of the country regardless of their political affiliation.
Most important, stop talking ‒ and listen without feeling compelled to explain to them why they are wrong for feeling this way: You will be stunned by what you learn.
This week, Donald Trump signalled a seismic shift in American science and public health. Fulfilling his campaign promise, he endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the largest federal department with a $1.7 trillion annual budget and over 80,000 employees. Kennedy’s statement in response vows to “bring together the greatest minds in science, medicine, industry, and government to put an end to the chronic disease epidemic”, as well as to “clean up corruption” and return the health agencies to “gold-standard, evidence-based science”.
Left-leaning outlets, such as the Atlantic, Washington Post, PolitiFact, and Forbes — as well as the predominantly Left-leaning medical establishment — were quick to lambast the choice, using selective quotations and a narrow focus to smear Kennedy. But establishment mandarins who focus on his sometimes eccentric scientific claims, from vaccines to AIDS, overlook the single most important factor in his success: the anti-science, authoritarian policies of the Covid years. As a result, they miss what matters most in the Kennedy phenomenon: his broadly appealing, and thoroughly centrist, reform agenda.
This knee-jerk reaction hides the dilemma that members of the medical establishment face: do they position themselves as defenders of an increasingly untenable status quo, or do they embrace the opportunities of RFK Jr.’s reform agenda, much of which aligns with values and concerns that they have been raising for years?
Medical officials failed badly in the Covid era by supporting lockdowns, school closures, toddler masking, and mandates. Their championing of anti-science policies has caused massive health and social harm, which reverberates today. The 2024 US election was a vote against the establishment and in favour of fundamental reforms; it is unsurprising that the same establishment which endorsed lockdowns and mandates now fights kicking and screaming against oncoming change.
The rot, having accumulated over decades, was plain for all to see. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose annual budget is $45 billion, orchestrated under the leadership of Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci a massive suppression of scientific debate and research. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exaggerated risk and issued policy guidance with little evidence in support of unprecedented vaccine mandates. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry meant vaccines and therapeutics were approved with little to no evidence, sometimes based on faulty modelling. And the Biden administration pushed all of this with orchestrated PR campaigns, spreading falsehoods and misinformation.
Clearly, the status quo is no longer tenable. Trust in American physicians and hospitals dropped from 71% to 40% between 2020 and 2024, according to a July study in JAMA. A Covid-era political realignment facilitated Trump’s electoral win last week, with a coalition that included disenchanted Left-liberals who rejected the centralised power of scientific bureaucrats and found an ally in Kennedy. Yet the officials continue to deny their own culpability, avoiding a long look in the mirror.
Kennedy can be that mirror. A successful environmental lawyer and erstwhile darling of the centre-left — so much so that Barack Obama floated him to lead the Environmental Protection Agency in 2008 — he is the most high-profile figure to tackle these problems head-on. His rebranding of MAGA to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) can carry broad appeal for Americans.
His agenda will focus on decentralising power in America’s recalcitrant scientific and medical institutions, offering an opportunity to allow true scientific research and evidence-based policy to flourish. With his focus on chronic disease and children, research priorities will realign with public health ones. Kennedy also plans to confront the veil of secrecy and dishonesty that inhibits transparency and integrity in public health and medicine. He intends to strengthen checks and balances in Government health bureaucracies to confront groupthink and undue corporate influence. More than that, he is seeking to ensure open public debate in medicine, recognising that science is incompatible with censorship.
The central argument against Kennedy from the medical establishment pertains to some of his scientific claims, for example about vaccines, wireless radiation and cancer, raw milk, and neurodevelopmental disorders caused by water fluoridation. Kennedy is not a scientist, but his good-faith calls for better research and more debate are echoed by many Americans. If he remains true to this promise, scientists will be able to work to address the challenges of evidence in ways that previous administrations have not. The status quo is not working for the public interest or patients. If the medical establishment becomes obsessed with resistance, it will marginalise itself and lose what little trust the public currently places in it.
The American public voted for disruptors like RFK Jr in 2024, and academic medicine now has an opportunity to atone for its Covid-era blunders. If it engages constructively, it can participate in crafting and implementing reforms that would, indeed, make America healthy again.
Jay Bhattacharya is a professor at Stanford University Medical School, and a public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations. Kevin Bardosh is a research professor and Director of Research for Collateral Global, a UK-based charity dedicated to understanding the collateral impacts of Covid policies worldwide.
It has been absolutely fascinating to see whom CNN is trotting out to oppose the president-elect’s new appointments, especially the (now) former Rep. Matt Gaetz to the Department of Justice or the former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence. John Bolton, Adam Kinzinger, Andy McCabe, and Jeh Johnson are unhappy, and on CNN, talking about how each of these picks are “unqualified.”
Enough ink has been already spilled to oppose the stinking credentialism often mistaken for meritocracy and the “consensus politics” that goes on in the name of bipartisanship in the capital of this country; it is not the job of this magazine to defend those called upon to serve, as they will face their own inquisitions, and will have to come out of them bold and gracious. That said, there are some egregious accusations that deserve to be scrutinized for the sake of propriety.
Two of them include Gabbard’s stances on Syria and Ukraine, the epitome of liberal hubris. The trotting out of Obama-era Democrats to denigrate Gabbard shows that they have not forgiven her for her cardinal sin, the heresy of opposing the prophet at the height of liberal internationalism.
Gabbard opposed the toppling of Assad in Syria by force, going against Obama and the U.S. government’s stated policy of “Assad must go.”
Consider Gabbard’s own statement justifying her views. “Assad is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States,” she told The View. The congresswoman and then presidential aspirant further tweeted, “We heard attacks from warmongers in politics/media before. Those opposed to Iraq/Libya/Syria regime change wars are called ‘dicatator-lovers’ [sic] or ‘cozy’ with evil regimes. Rather than defend their position, they resort to name-calling & smears. American people wont [sic] fall for this.”
In 2016, she wrote an op-ed arguing against U.S. interventions in the Middle East, where she correctly assessed that “to maintain order after Assad’s fall would require at least 500,000 troops in a never-ending occupation.”
“Our actions to overthrow secular dictators in Iraq and Libya, and attempts now to do the same in Syria, have resulted in tremendous loss of life, failed nations, and even worse humanitarian crises while strengthening the very terrorist organizations that have declared war on America,” Gabbard wrote. “A recent New York Times article reported that these ‘rebel groups’ supported by the United States ‘have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, formerly known as Al Nusra.’ How the United States can work hand-in-hand with the very terrorist organization that is responsible for the killing of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 boggles my mind and curdles my blood.”
The idea that a secular dictator might be better than ostensible democracy infused with hardline Islamists in a region that is culturally incompatible with Madisonian democracy might be an amoral position, but it is a realist one, and is supported by evidence and international relations literature.
On the question of NATO, opposition to Gabbard bordered on the cusp of outright libel and calumny.
She tweeted in 2022, “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border.” POLITICO called her “Russia-friendly” for that.
The fact that Russia has a legitimate security interest in its near abroad, has defined redlines, and is reactive to perceived encroachment of the same, isn’t a controversial position. It is validated by research, including a book-length analysis by your humble columnist, as well as by the statements of the current CIA director, William Burns, and the former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The fact that anyone still denies that chain of causation is a sign of severe intellectual mediocrity and corrupting ideology.
But, perhaps, the cause of liberal fear is something else. Gabbard’s appointment is also a sign that Trump is serious about reforming the intelligence apparatus of this country. Given that she's opposed to the core theological impulse of this regime—promoting egalitarianism and sexual rights often by force across the globe as a revolutionary power—this causes paranoia among those who have sinecures in the regime’s bureaucratic apparatus. And for that, and for that alone, she deserves our support and praise.
Dr Sumantra Maitra is the Director of research and outreach, at the American Ideas Institute, and a senior editor at The American Conservative. He’s also an elected, Associate Fellow at the Royal Historical Society, London.
FOX News contributors Mollie Hemingway and former Rep. Trey Gowdy tussle over President-Elect Donald Trump's selection of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) for Attorney General.
"People are sick and tired of people in Washington, D.C., doing nothing as these people tried to destroy the country and getting upset at someone who actually might root out the corruption there. We don't have a Department of Justice. We have a Department of Injustice, and that's why you get Matt Gaetz as a nominee," Hemingway said on Friday's broadcast of 'Special Report.'
BRET BAIER: With that, let's bring in our panel, Trey Gowdy, former congressman from South Carolina, Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief at The Federalist, and Democratic campaign consultant Kevin Wally. Mollie, what do you think, the reaction and kind of these picks as they're rolled out here and traditional Washington gasping?
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, FEDERALIST: Well, Donald Trump campaigned with a pledge that he would root out corruption at the Department of Justice and throughout the intelligence agencies, that he would secure our borders, return us to being a nation with borders, and to fix the failed foreign policy of the Biden administration. His picks are showing that he is very serious about that.
But even more than that, I think they show what a transformational president he's setting out to be here. It's not – you know, there are four years to go. We'll see how much he's able to accomplish with a frequently hostile, entrenched, sclerotic, permanent Washington, D.C. But he has big goals and big vision and a feeling that there's something that's just been wrong with our country for a while, and we need to return to that glory of self-governance where we don't have really corrupt agencies hurting the country, putting – stopping people from being able to produce. And that is what you're seeing in these picks.
BAIER: Trey, you know, I had Senator Thune on, the incoming Senate majority leader, yesterday. And he basically said, listen, it's not going to be easy. Some of these picks are not going to be easy to get through. But there is this mandate just by the vote that there is a feeling that Republican senators in particular, most of them, want to give the president what he wants. Some of them will be tough.
FMR. REP. TREY GOWDY: Yeah, the overwhelming majority of his picks will sail through because they were grand slam picks. But to Molly's point, you don't root out corruption at the Department of Justice by picking a corrupt person to lead it. So, Matt Gaetz, either the report comes out and he's not going to be the attorney general, or the report doesn't come out and he's not going to be the attorney general.
I mean, the problem, Brett, is all the good picks, John Lee Radcliffe, Elise Stefanik, Lee Zeldin, Mike Walsh, all the good picks, nobody's talking about those right now. They're talking about this wild card pick of someone who had to get out of the House to avoid being sanctioned by the House Ethics Committee. That dumbfounding pick is just sucking the oxygen out of all the good ones he made.
BAIER: You are referring to the situation with the report in the House Ethics Committee. Johnson puts the kibosh on the Gaetz report. This is politico. Trump announced his AG intentions. Gaetz promptly resigned his seat, which in the normal course of affairs would end the ethics probe. But keep this in mind, the report exists.
Senators examining the nomination want to see it, and it will remain a proverbial sword dangling over Gaetz's head so long as he's up for confirmation or serving as the nation's top law enforcement officer. Here's the back and forth on that.
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: I have only expressed my opinion. I wish to stick to the tradition and not release a report on a former member of the House because it would open a dangerous Pandora's box.
REP. GLENN IVEY (D-MD): There's precedent for that. I can't really get into what's going on now, but the fact that someone has left the Congress does not mean that the report can't be released... You got the Senate seeking the information so that they can meet their constitutional obligations.
BAIER: Mollie, let me just go back to you. I saw you shaking your head about this particular nomination and where it stands with that report.
HEMINGWAY: Right. Matt Gaetz was nominated for this position because we have a problem with the Department of Justice. For the last eight years, they have run roughshod over rule of law in this country. They have prosecuted political opponents. They ran the Russia collusion hoax. And too many people in Washington, D.C. did not stand up against what was happening there, and many Americans are upset about it.
Matt Gaetz is one of the most effective people at fighting that Russia collusion hoax and other information operations, whether it was the Brett Kavanaugh information operation, the Donald Trump Russia collusion hoax information operation, or the one that is referenced here, which is something that the FBI and Department of Justice, which hate Matt Gaetz, looked into and cleared him of any wrongdoing. The idea that we're that this is about the issue is corruption. It's the Department of Justice's corruption.
And people are sick and tired of people in Washington, D.C., doing nothing as these people tried to destroy the country and getting upset at someone who actually might root out the corruption there. We don't have a Department of Justice. We have a Department of Injustice, and that's why you get Matt Gaetz as a nominee.
President-electDonald Trump’swin last week inPennsylvaniawas always right in front of you if you were objectively listening to the concerns of the people and the data showing the most important, misread trend of all: TheRepublican Partyhad now become the party of work.
In interview after interview, waitresses, welders, rank-and-file union members, plumbers, HVAC small-business owners, hairdressers, and barbers would tell national news reporters, including me, that they were voting for Trump.
No matter how often these voters said this, it often was dismissed as an outlier. Or it was placed in a silo of race, meaning it was only the white working class. The blindness among reporters and Democrats was they thought it was only white middle-class voters behaving that way, missing that working-class voters of all races were voting shoulder to shoulder.
Why? Because these voters are culturally connected to each other through their communities where they live together, their children attend schools together, and they work side by side. Plus, they share other cultural touchstones, such as church attendance, elevated concerns about crime in their neighborhoods, and the economic stress that affects them all.
Middle-class Latino, black, and white voters voted together as a continuum of the working-class realignment in this state that catapulted Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. This was a direct result of Democrats shedding voters from formerly guaranteed Democratic Party constituencies.
These voters wanted both candidates to address rising costs, rising crime, and a rising sense of insecurity. They were less interested in climate change and social justice issues or in whether or not you put pronouns in your email signature, and more about who was going to make their budget stretch further or who was going to get the drug trade out of their neighborhoods.
Trump supporters wait for him to take the stage in this Cambria County city where, just four years ago, Democrats still outregistered Republicans. (Salena Zito / Washington Examiner)
Pennsylvania has always been a majority working-class state. According to the latest census data, only 35.3% of Pennsylvania residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, meaning the majority of people in the state are working in trades such as mechanics or are welders, laborers, farmers, waitresses, and barbers.
These are voters to whom the national Democratic Party rarely speaks directly. Until recently, the old Republican Party also largely ignored them. As Brad Todd, who co-authored with me The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, said, “To working-class voters, if you listen to Kamala Harris talk, it sounds like she’s running for the faculty senator at some liberal arts college somewhere.”
Angela Wade, a waitress at Wade’s Diner in Export, Pennsylvania, who 10 years ago would have been part of the Democratic coalition, said of Harris, “She spoke past me. Trump saw me and spoke to me and the concerns in my life, like the costs of groceries.”ve
When you don’t sound like you are trying to work for working-class voters, you lose — and that loss is across the board in all races. These voters are not inspired by an identity-politics message that was aimed at coastal voters and repeated on national news shows.
Voters look at that and think no one sees them or hears their concerns. Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), both Democrats who won decisive elections just two years ago, intuitively understood that when they ran for their offices. They kept the working class in their version of the Democratic coalition and won voters who also voted for Trump.
Donald Trump dances onstage after speaking at a campaign rally at 1st Summit Arena at the Cambria County War Memorial, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on Friday, Aug. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Droke)
Yes, there is an abundance of Trump-Fetterman voters and Trump-Shapiro voters, largely because both men built more traditional Democratic coalitions that picked up middle-class Democrats who have been turned off by national Democratic politicians who focus too much on social justice and less on basic economic problems.
When I asked Shapiro in the spring if he would ever call those voters “extreme MAGA Republicans,” as President Joe Biden often liked to do, he said no.
“I might have a different view,” he said. “But I do respect it. And so if you choose to vote for Donald Trump and Josh Shapiro, I assume you’ve carefully thought about it and you have your rationale and your reason for it.”
The finalist to be Harris’s vice president joked he might try to convince you there was a better alternative, “but I try to do it in a respectful way.”
Fetterman told me in both 2016 and earlier this year that Trump and the people in Pennsylvania have a connection. “Many who voted for me have a deep bond with him,” he said, adding that the last thing he would do is disparage them for that bond.
Both men won comfortably in 2022, with Shapiro running as a pragmatic manager with a mantra to “get s*** done” and Fetterman as a populist. And all three, Trump, Shapiro, and Fetterman, spent more time in places like Cambria, Luzerne, and Erie counties than in the bigger cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia where voters feel they and their issues are “seen.”
When Barack Obama defeated Republican Sen. John McCain in 2008 by a whopping 10.32-point margin of victory in Pennsylvania, he kept the New Deal Coalition, the working-class voters, in his camp by running on “hope and change.” His aspirational message appealed to those voters. By the time Obama ran in 2012, he had made the calculation that he could afford to shed most of the white working-class part of the coalition and rebuild the Democratic Party in the image of his values. It was a divisive campaign message, aimed at social justice, climate change, and internationalism, which tore into their more centrist ideals.
Obama won Pennsylvania that year over Republican Mitt Romney but by a lot less than he did in 2008, leaving a staggering 280,000 voters on the field who just decided they would not vote for either man. Obama was too progressive for them, and Romney never came across as the guy who would save their job. Instead, Romney came across as the guy who would show up with a box, escort them out of the office, and fire them.
These voters were left essentially homeless until this brash outer-borough real estate developer named Donald Trump came down the escalator and talked to them about the dignity of work, much in the same way that Bill Clinton did in 1992.
They would eventually join with an unlikely coalition of traditional Republican voters that included evangelical, suburban, and business types and shock the world and vote for Trump over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.
During the same time, Democrats’ registration edge over Republicans began to shrink from a double-digit advantage in the summer of 2008 to 4 percentage points this summer. The state was changing, and it was the working class leading the massive shift.
The election cycle of 2020 should always be thought of as a fluke in a pattern in this state for a number of reasons. First, Trump’s rival, Biden, had spent decades here parading himself as the “third senator from Pennsylvania,” showing up for Labor Day parades and getting local Democrats elected. Second, Trump’s greatest strength is as a fighter, and COVID was impossible to fight against. Biden picked off just enough (80,000) working-class voters and won.
By May of this year, long before Biden dropped out, the working-class coalition had not only moved back to Trump already but actually expanded beyond white voters as more and more black and Latino voters fled toward Trump for addressing their concerns.
Biden had failed these voters economically. He told them inflation was transitory, but it was not. He told them inflation had gone down. Eventually, the inflation rate had indeed gone down, but he just forgot to tell them that the prices were still growing, just more slowly. He told them the economy was robust, but in their lives, it wasn’t. He told them the border was closed. It wasn’t.
When Biden dropped out and Harris jumped in, what experts missed was that the die was already cast with working-class voters. She was not reaching them in the way she needed. These voters, men and women, care more about whether they can pay for a car repair when their check engine light goes on than they care about abortion access.
CNN exit polls show that Trump won 13% of black voters nationally but, here in Pennsylvania, did much better. He also won 45% of Latino voters. In 2020, he only won 32% of Latinos.
Paul Sracic, Youngstown State University political science professor, explained that in Pennsylvania, it is always the enthusiasm of the working class, along with some minor cohorts in the coalition, that places party candidates for president over the line.
In 1996, Bill Clinton won 27 of Pennsylvania’s 68 counties. By 2012, Obama had only won 13 of the counties. The rightward shift in the state has been everywhere if you looked. It happened because of counties like Luzerne, Bucks, Cambria, Northampton, and Berks — counties too few people understand but where the bulk of the working class lives.
Too many reporters and experts didn’t look there. They should have. Trump won the state with more votes than any statewide candidate in our history.
The Federal Aviation Administration released astatementlate Friday night regarding an alarming incident at Dallas Love Field Airport, where Southwest Airlines Flight 2494 was struck by gunfire near the cockpit while taxiing to the runway.
"While taxiing for takeoff at Dallas Love Field Airport, Southwest Airlines Flight 2494 was reportedly struck by gunfire near the cockpit around 8:30 p.m. local time on Friday, Nov. 15. The Boeing 737-800 returned to the gate, where passengers deplaned," the FAA said.
The FAA continued, "The flight was headed to Indianapolis International Airport. Contact local authorities and airport security for more on the investigation."
Here's a statement from the airport:
Earlier this week, three commercial jets, each operated by American Airlines, JetBlue, and Spirit Airlines, were struck by gunfire near the airport in Port-au-Prince as the Caribbean nation of Haiti implodes into further violence.
