The most central and important rule of the Biden administration is that nothing that happens is ever the fault of the Biden administration. It’s not just that the buck doesn’t stop with the president, it doesn’t stop anywhere in the executive branch, including, we now know, the Secret Service.

In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, we’ve heard that the once and likely future president was being protected by a mix of Secret Service agents and state and local police. And as it has become more obvious that the Saturday attack was a catastrophic security failure, the finger-pointing and ass covering has begun.

According to Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, the federal agency was only responsible for the actual grounds where Trump spoke, not the surrounding area, which he claims was the responsibility of the local police. This is abject nonsense.

The idea that the Secret Service was not responsible for a building with perfect sniper sightlines 150 yards from where Trump was speaking doesn’t just strain credulity, it snaps it in half. And the idea that guarding Trump was up to local cops and not the agency whose sole mission is keeping protectees safe doesn’t pass the smell test.

We are talking about the life and death protection of a former and, at this point, likely future president of the United States. You don’t outsource that to local cops in a town of 13,000 people. It’s like asking Andy Griffith to hunt down ISIS.

The director of the Secret Service, Kim Cheatle, we have to come to understand, is a massive proponent of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. After Biden in 2022 made her just the second woman ever to lead the agency, she boasted Security Magazine of her prowess at breaking glass ceilings and the agency’s website states that Cheatle is responsible for executing the agency’s integrated mission of ‘protection and investigations by leading a diverse workforce.’

It’s too soon to say that this obsession with DEI came at the expense of Trump’s safety, but we all saw the video of the shooting’s aftermath, where a female agent a foot shorter than Trump tried to cover his body and another struggled to holster her gun. It made the Keystone Cops look like Kojak.

Allow me to be blunt, Cheattle should be fired. It should have happened days ago, but as Trump pointed out at the debate, nobody ever gets fired by Joe Biden.

Jake Sullivan still has his job after saying the Middle East was calm about 10 minutes before Hamas’ heinous Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Alejandro Mayorkas is still running the broken and busted border, and now a Secret Service Director’s incompetence and bizarre priorities have come within a whisker of getting Trump killed. 

At this point, I have no idea what somebody would have to do to get fired by Biden. Maybe burn down the White House?

We all know that people make mistakes, and that sometimes people just aren’t good at their job. If that person is an office manager or barista, we’ll all survive. When your job is to keep the leader of the free world breathing, you don’t get to make oopsies.

Now would be a good time to start changing all that, for Biden to summon his inner Harry Truman, and say the buck does stop with him, and that he does have the backbone to let people go when their incompetence puts America and the lives of its citizens at risk.

But we all know very well that that isn’t going to happen. Once again, there will be no consequences, no transparency, and no accountability, just the same shameful pat on the back, and you’ll do better next time we always see.

America deserves much, much better than this. Corey Comperatore, who was murdered under the not-so watchful eye of the Secret Service certainly does, as did the three other victims, including Trump.

It didn’t seem to be a coincidence that when Donald Trump made his surprise appearance on Monday at the Republican National Convention, his Secret Service detail looked much different. Members were taller, more male, and more like law enforcement and less like a Benetton ad. But it is too little too late.

It was too late to save a brave American husband and father, and nearly too late to save the Republican presidential nominee. It needs to stop, before more Americans lose their lives.

There is already an ocean of commentary on the attempted assassination of former President Trump, and I will not add to it here, except to write: If you are not both grateful that he was spared and also mourning for the dead and wounded, see a mental health professional as you are seriously unbalanced. 

Given that surfeit of commentary on President Trump’s escape from murder, I want to focus on a much less covered topic from last week.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is nearing the end of his record-setting run as leader of a party in the United States Senate. McConnell was first elected by Kentucky voters in 1984, and McConnell was elected by his colleagues in the Senate Republican Conference to be their leader in 2007. When McConnell voluntarily yields that job in the next Congress, he will have spent a record 18 years as leader of a party in the Senate. 

Last week McConnell laid out the outline of his last mission as Leader. McConnell may run for re-election in 2026 and if he does he is certain of victory. Whether he does or not, however, his views will not change on the need for the United States to lead the West and to adhere to the national security policy of the first of the seven presidents he has served alongside, Ronald Reagan. It is a view shared by the majority of Republicans according to the annual summer survey on national security issues conducted by the Ronald Reagan Foundation. 

McConnell used last week’s NATO summit as the backdrop to a speech he delivered at the Washington D.C. headquarters of The Reagan Institute, a piece of the Reagan Foundation’s overall structure. McConnell’s remarks are a complete defense of Reagan’s ‘peace through strength’ foreign policy and a powerful reminder to the GOP’s delegates to the national convention now gathered in Milwaukee about what the last century’s most popular Republican president laid down as the central mission of the United States. 

‘The West must ensure that our promises and our threats are backed by hard power,’ McConnell stated. ‘And,’ he added in the direct language that is supported by a majority of Republicans and American generally, ‘nowhere are the West’s interests and the credibility of its commitments more plainly and immediately at stake than on the front lines of Ukraine.’

Mitch McConnell doesn’t care whom he offends —he doesn’t need any more Christmas cards and he doesn’t much care what online masters of their own universes exclaim about him. He never has, whether the snarks are from the carpers on the far corners of American political left or right. They have never held a serious office, elected or appointed, and they are of no consequence to the real enemies of freedom. So McConnell does not care what they think about Ukraine’s war of survival, any more than he cares a bit about the opinions of enemies of Israel or the output of troll farms of Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party or that of Putin’s bot factories. 

The very real quartet of criminal regimes allied against the West right now in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea do not intimidate McConnell, so the great pretenders to influence in the virtual world barely register with him if they do at all. His contempt for the illusion of influence is quite as complete as his rejection of the threats from totalitarians abroad. The latter, however, present real threats to the West, as real as those which the now defunct U.S.S.R. presented to Reagan during his presidency.

‘[W]hat exactly does a Reagan foreign policy mean in the current moment?’ McConnell asked of an audience of serious folks gathered at the Reagan Institute’s gathering inside the Beltway. ‘What does the call to ‘peace through strength’ require of us in the face of revanchist powers, rogue states, and rabid proxies?’ 

‘I would suggest that, first, we ought to focus on the places where peace is threatened the most, and recognize their most urgent needs,’ McConnell continued. 
‘Our friends on the front lines of authoritarian aggression and terrorist savagery don’t need hand-wringing hesitation or second-guessing. They need the tools to defend themselves, to impose costs on their aggressors, and to negotiate from positions of strength.’

Leader McConnell’s most significant achievement of his record-setting tenure is that he saved the Constitution from its slide into a shape-shifting ‘living Constitution’ that could be easily manipulated by transient majorities and populist crazes. McConnell did his most important work when he announced immediately after the untimely death of Justice Antonio Scalia in the middle of February 2013. By announcing that he and his conference would not hold hearings or votes on any nominee sent to them by lane duck President Barack Obama because of the approach of the 2016 election and the precarious balance of the Supreme Court, McConnell chose to trust the people. Some weak-kneed Republicans fretted then over McConnell’s decision when the older and (the) apparently moderate Merrick Garland was nominated by then President Obama despite McConnell’s declaration. Critics within his own party questioned whether McConnell was refusing ‘half-a-loaf’ given what they saw as the inevitability of a Hillary Clinton presidency in that late winter of 2016. 

McConnell held tough in 2016 when the direction of the Supreme Court and thus of the Constitution was on the line, trusting in the American people and his legendary ‘Long Game’ (also the title of his memoir, among the best every written by an American legislator, both as to the operation of the upper chamber of the Congress and to the conduct of American politics in the past 40 years.) 

McConnell’s principled stand contributed to the election of former (and future) President Donald Trump. The three justices Trump nominated and McConnell led the confirmation of: Neil Gorsuch, Bret Kavanuagh and Amy Coney Barrett remade the Court into a properly ‘constitutionalist’ one with ambitions only to apply the Constitution as written and amended in its original intent, consistent with the history and tradition at work at the time of ratification or amendment. 

The work of those three justices, joined with the efforts of Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have returned the Court to its original purpose which, again, is to defend the Constitution, as amended, in its original working, as intended by those who ratified it or any of its amendments. It is the ‘Roberts Court’ of course, but it could just as fairly be called the McConnell Court.

McConnell could have rested on that laurel, for it as significant as any that history can bestow: a defender of a genuine Republic. But he laid out a sort of farewell address as ‘Leader McConnell’ in his remarks to the Reagan Institute, just as George Washington did in 1796 when he prepared to leave the presidency. A legislator is not a soldier or an executive, but a legislative leader of McConnell’s stature and endurance will be noted as much by historians as any of the leading citizens of the republics of the past. 

‘Credibility, capability, and capacity can’t be surged at a moment’s notice,’
McConnell argued. ‘They can’t be purchased at the corner store. They must be honed and preserved over time.’

The keystone principles of the West and thus the key pillars of the Reagan Doctrine are still what ought to drive American national security today. McConnell spelled them out: ‘Territorial integrity. Sovereignty. Freedom of navigation.’

‘These are not just abstract principles,’ McConnell states. ‘They’re the same core interests that guided President Reagan’s leadership. And they’re being challenged today all over the world by Russia, China, and Iran.’

‘Isolationists on this side of the Atlantic must face the fact that American leadership is as indispensable today as it was 40 years ago… That our credibility is not divisible… And that European security and prosperity is tied inextricably to our own.’

McConnell is not going anywhere except to the Chairmanship of some Senate committee for at least two more years. The Leader took the opportunity of the NATO summit’s backdrop to remind his party and the country of the commitments it must uphold around the world with the boldness and consistency of his even as he upheld his commitment to the Constitution and the especially the First Amendment.

Hugh Hewitt is host of ‘The Hugh Hewitt Show,’ heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

Donald Trump is on an epic winning streak.

Not only did the former president by the grace of God just escape a would-be assassin’s bullet, but the Supreme Court recently ruled in his favor regarding presidential immunity. In addition, Trump trounced Joe Biden three weeks ago in their first presidential debate. That calamitous encounter for President Biden, in which he appeared confused and frail, split the Democratic Party wide open, with many calling for the president to step out of the race. 

To top off that history-making (and head-spinning) series of events, the judge overseeing the government’s prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling secret documents, which legal analyst Jonathan Turley has called the ‘greatest threat to the former president,’ has just tossed the case. Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed to his position by Attorney General Merrick Garland and did not therefore have the authority to bring the case. 

Boom! All these favorable happenings increase the chances that President Trump will be reelected in November. Betting odds for a Trump victory have soared to 65%, and that was before the critical documents win.

Democrats have thrown absolutely everything at Trump: bogus legal prosecutions that have resulted in absurd fines and 34 felony counts, unconscionable smears and lies about him, his family and his platform, and attempts to remove his name from the ballot. Nine House Democrats even teamed up to deny the former president Secret Service protection. Imagine. 

Through it all he has persevered, and is currently in the strongest position ever to claim the Oval Office. The Real Clear Politics average of polls show Trump ahead of Biden by almost 3 points, and that was before the attempted assassination.

Perhaps more convincing than polling is that in the aftermath of the shooting Republicans in deep blue cities like San Francisco and New York are emerging from their hidey holes wearing MAGA hats and showing their support for Trump. Until very recently, doing so would have been risky.

To be sure, it is a long time until November. But it is worth noting that never once in 2020 did Trump lead in the national polling. What changed?

Very simple. Voters have now experienced a Biden presidency, and they can compare it to the years that Trump occupied the Oval Office. The comparison does not favor the incumbent. Rampant inflation brought on by sky-high government spending has lowered the average American’s standard of living and made people angry and anxious. Consumer confidence under Biden has persistently been lower than it was under Trump, even with COVID ravaging the economy in 2020.

People are also angry about Biden’s open border, which has allowed millions of people to enter the country illegally and caused havoc in towns and cities around the country. The president has kowtowed to Leftist pro-immigrant groups but Hispanics have borne the brunt of the drugs and violence imported by dangerous gangs and have abandoned Biden. As the Washington Post reports, ‘A post-debate New York Times-Siena poll found Biden and former president Donald Trump roughly even among Hispanic likely voters, 47 percent to 46 percent…In 2020, exit polls showed Biden winning Latinos by 33 points.’

Meanwhile, under Trump, the world was at peace, while under Biden it has become more dangerous, with Russia invading Ukraine, Israel under attack by Hamas and China ever more combative. Many think that the weakness and incompetence displayed by Biden as he directed the catastrophic retreat from Afghanistan encouraged our enemies while Trump’s toughness kept them in place. 

But the biggest surprise for Democrats may be that their lawfare attacks on Trump have boomeranged. In the 24 hours after he was found guilty of 34 felonies in a biased New York court he raked in $58 million dollars from donors disgusted by the unfair prosecution. 

Which brings us to Judge Cannon’s decision to throw out the documents case, which Turley describes as a ‘seismic development.’ Prosecuting Donald Trump for mishandling the nation’s secrets has always appeared unjust, since President Biden also hid classified materials in his unlocked garage in Delaware and also in an office at the University of Pennsylvania. Special Prosecutor Robert Hur, who investigated Biden’s documents scandal, declined to prosecute the president, saying that juries would view him as an ‘elderly man with a poor memory.’

Hur made that decision even though as a senator and as vice president, Biden had less authority to hold secret documents than Trump, who, as president, could legally declassify information. Also, many remember that Biden and his Attorney General Marrick Garland withheld announcing the politically-damaging discovery of documents in the president’s office and home until after the 2022 midterm election; CBS finally broke the story in January.

Judge Cannon’s decision will undoubtedly be challenged, but it comes as a welcome common-sense moment in what has been an unprecedented full-bore weaponization of the Department of Justice against a political adversary.

As the Republican convention gets underway in Milwaukee, the stars appear to be aligning for former President Trump. Democrats are in disarray, Biden’s approval ratings are the lowest ever for a modern-day president and his entire campaign has collapsed.

Because Trump came within an inch of being killed – an event that shocked the nation -President Biden has had to abandon his endless vilification of his opponent. In the hours following the shooting, his team took down all their advertising. That is not surprising. They knew that Republicans would blame their hate-filled language and lies for helping to convince a deluded young man that Trump had to go.

Now Biden will try, he claims, to unite the nation – a promise he campaigned on in 2020. That ship has sailed. Is it possible that Trump can do better? He has defied the odds on every front; perhaps bringing the country back from the brink will be his ultimate victory.

The GOP vice presidential nominee is only a freshman senator, but has years of experience outside the political arena that is likely to boost the Republican ticket in November. 

On Monday, former President Donald Trump tapped JD Vance of Ohio to be his running mate. Vance is the New York Times bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, a Yale Law School graduate, former Marine, and recently elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.

‘I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,’ Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. 

‘J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance,’ the former president added.

But before building his political career, Vance was a successful venture capitalist. Yahoo Finance reported that Vance’s Silicon Valley contacts first helped him bring investor dollars to his home state of Ohio, and then helped fund his campaign for the Senate and have already helped contribute to the Trump campaign.

After graduating from Yale Law school in 2013, Vance moved to San Francisco, where he worked at Mithril Capital, a firm co-founded by former PayPal CEO and Republican donor Peter Thiel, the outlet reported. 

Vance also spent time in his early career near the nation’s capital working for former AOL CEO Steve Case’s venture capital firm, Revolution LLC. There he spearheaded a project to expand capital opportunities to small towns like Middletown, Ohio — where Vance was born, Yahoo notes. 

‘J.D. Vance has become a leading voice for people across the country who feel left behind, so he is the perfect person to help us expand Rise Of The Rest,’ Case said in 2017, according to the outlet. 

In 2020 Vance launched his own Cincinnati-based fund, reportedly with the backing of, Marc Andreessen, Eric Schmidt, and Scott Dorsey. Yahoo reports that firm was founded to help redirect big East Coast dollars into investment opportunities in states like Ohio.

Earlier this year, Vance helped to organize a fundraiser for Trump’s campaign with billionaire investor David Sacks. That fundraiser, hosted at Sacks’ home, marked Trump’s first visit to San Francisco in years and resulted in a $12 million boost to Trump’s re-election fund. 

In June, Vance spoke to Fox News’ Lawrence Jones, who asked him what a ‘JD Vance economy’ would look like. 

‘A lot more manufacturing jobs than we have right now,’ he said. ‘If you look, the economies that really, really thrive, they’ve got a foundation of strong manufacturing. They’re developing their own energy.’