Remembering
James Robison

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The Brew: Trump’s Purple Reign and a Pardon for Pro-Life Prayer Warriors Persecuted by Biden

By Al Perrotta Published on January 24, 2025

Happy Friday!

Anybody else ready for a relaxing weekend after a madcap, historic week? Not that the pace has slowed yet — at all.

Trump Pardons Pro-Lifers Persecuted for Praying and Demonstrating at Abortion Mills in Time for March for Life

President Trump on Thursday pardoned nearly two dozen pro-life activists and prayer warriors whom the Biden administration persecuted for demonstrating and singing hymns at abortion facilities. “This is a great honor to sign this,” he said.

Biden-Harris utilized the FACE Act to hunt down pastors, grandmas and young mothers, to the point of sending armed agents to raid their homes, in an effort to stifle the pro-life movement. At the same time, the regime practically ignored the violent attacks against churches and pro-life pregnancy centers by abortion-thirsty radicals.

The pardons come just in time for Friday’s March for Life in Washington. Let there be joy in the streets!

Trump Declassifies the JFK, RFK, and MLK Assassination Files

May we finally be on the verge of knowing the truth about what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963? Trump signed an executive order Thursday requiring the release of all remaining government files connected to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

For years, the intelligence community has been fighting the release of those documents. During his first term, Trump gave in to the CIA Director-turned-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to hold some of them back. Not this time.

The Purple Tie

Yesterday, Trump spoke to and fielded questions from the World Economic Forum. He also signed another series of executive orders. While what he said was important, he actually spoke more loudly with his clothing. As he has on a couple of occasions since the inauguration, Trump rather than his usual MAGA red tie, sported a red and blue one that from a distance looks purple. In eight years (heck, since his days on The Apprentice) can you recall Trump ever wearing a purple tie? Overalls on Saturday Night Live, sure. But a purple tie?

Perhaps his supermodel wife nagged him to mix it up. Or Trump spilled Big Mac special sauce on all his red ones. Or — as is more likely — Trump is signaling his aim to unify the red and the blue. That rather than fighting another four-year pitched partisan battle, he’s all in on unity, president for all the people. Dare I say it, a purple reign?

Trump Heading to Disaster Areas in North Carolina and California

Today Trump may want to wear a purple face mask. On his first trip since returning to office, the president will be heading to the disaster area in North Carolina largely abandoned by the Biden administration during and after Hurricane Helene. Then he’ll be flying to fire-ravaged Los Angeles, where a fresh round of flames is filling the L.A. Basin with smoke. Gov. Gavin Newsom might want to wear a flame-retardant suit, because it’s a good bet Trump is going to light him up for his failure to properly prepare his state to deal with the blazes.

Musk Mocks Nazi Claim While Late Night Hosts Lament Trump’s Return

During an inaugural celebration, Elon Musk saluted the crowd. The hoax machine saw his gesture and went into overdrive. “It’s a Nazi salute! Musk is a Nazi!” they cried.

What the Democrats and media astonishingly still don’t understand is the American people are over the smear-and-destroy game, and have been proving it with rapid-response humor. Immediately, social media was filled with images of assorted Democrats making the same gesture — including AOC, one of the leaders chanting, “Nazi! Nazi!” (Yes the same lady who pals around with Hamas terrorist sympathizers. But I digress.) They also posted memes of ballerinas making the same gesture. (Oh, but perhaps they’re dancing to Wagner.) Even animals.

Perhaps most enjoyable is seeing the targets of these smears laughing them off, rather than cowering or offering bitter responses. For example, Musk posted this on X yesterday:

“Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming.”

Reflecting on the week and the miraculous return of Trump and some sanity to our shores, I submit that humor, right up there with perseverance and prayer, pulled the nation through. How often did a funny meme improve our mood during the day? How often did a Babylon Bee headline have us spitting coffee and racing to send it to friends and family? How hysterical was it to see Trump’s mug shot turned into swag and tattoos! How much did “Let’s Go Brandon!” fuel us forward?

And how sweet was it to watch a non-liberal Greg Gutfeld become the King of Late Night Comedy?

Which gets to the other late night hosts, particularly ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and CBS’s Stephen Colbert who were simply miserable after Trump’s inauguration. They were making like Pagliacci, rather than making light. Trump is back, which alone is comedy gold, and this time he’s brought a cast of colorful characters with him. Those late-night hosts should be as happy as puppies. They will not lack for material ever. Heck, with Trump you don’t even have to write jokes, you just show clips. The guy is funnier than most stand-up comedians.

The Kimmels, Colberts, Stewarts, and Myerses of the world have a choice: ride with and build on the buoyant mood of the American people, or continue to dampen the spirit of their audience, while belittling the majority of the country that’s ready to rock and roll. Heck, they can continue to be dour sourpusses because their side lost the election — or they can embrace the lesson of the MAGA folks who, after seeing an election stolen (and their free speech censored, and their president, his associates, and supporters rung up on false charges, and seeing inflation wrecking their finances) chose to laugh.

As someone who was in the business of writing topical humor, whether the president was one I loved or loathed, I beg them to chose the latter, wiser, healthier path.

Otherwise the joke is on them.

Hush Up About the J6 Pardons

House Speaker Mike Johnson announced Wednesday that a new House subcommittee will really investigate J6. The committee also will likely take a close look at the antics of the original J6 Committee, which is accused of destroying and burying exculpatory evidence, to say nothing of focusing their attention entirely on destroying Donald Trump. I mean, now that Joe Biden has pardoned the committee and a couple of officers who testified, shouldn’t we know why? Innocent people never need preemptive pardons, so what was that all about?

Meanwhile …

Democrats and the media are getting the vapors while bemoaning Trump’s mass pardoning of J6 prisoners. They need to stop. Now.

With so much going on, it was hard to keep up with the egregious, Soviet-style prosecutorial and judicial abuses of our citizens. “Walk Away” founder Brendan Straka, who is now free to speak openly after being pardoned, revealed that the feds forced him to either plead guilty or face 30 years in jail … all for standing outside the Capitol on J6 and silently filming the events for eight minutes. Straka had to be punished because of his effectiveness in getting people to walk away from the Democratic Party. He was a name. He had to become an example.

But what about the average citizen caught up in the persecutions? Insurrection Barbie plucked out a random J6 prisoner and tells his story in a long post on X.

Every defense motion was denied. Every prosecution motion was accepted. Charges were predicated on things that simply did not happen. “Bearing false witness” is such a no-no, it made God’s top ten list of commandments. But these prosecutors made it as common as ordering lunch.

The story caught the eye of the vice president. “This is extraordinary,” J.D. Vance reposted, “and in the worst way.”

Huh? “How Labeling Cartels ‘Terrorists’ Could Hurt the U.S. Economy.”

I can’t believe I missed this. At some point, The Babylon Bee must have purchased The New York Times. Did you know that? I mean, that’s the only explanation for this story published by The New York Times this week, titled “How Labeling Cartels ‘Terrorists’ Could Hurt the U.S. Economy.”

Seems the Times is worried the terror label may hurt companies fearful of violating sanctions against the cartels. For example, “companies in the risk-averse American financial sector may simply refuse to wire money to a Mexican factory, for example, to facilitate cross-border production and trade, or to wire money between personal accounts.”

Then we get to the rub.

If money transfer companies like Western Union also stop transactions to Mexico over worries about properly vetting Mexican clients, it could affect the remittances the country relies on.

That would be devastating for the Mexican economy, which received $63.3 billion in remittances in 2023, nearly 5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

So it’s not really the U.S. economy they’re worried about. It’s Mexico’s.

The cartels are facilitating the deaths of countless Americans, the trafficking of untold hundreds of thousands of innocents, the smuggling into our country of millions of illegals, to say nothing of violence on both sides of the border. Perhaps the Times might want to include the economic costs of that in its calculations, rather than sounding ridiculously pro-cartel.

Along The Stream…

John Zmirak posted (and has now updated, thanks to the good news out of Washington), “Why Donald Trump Should Pardon the Pro-Lifers.”

Meanwhile, Wanda Alger has a sobering word for faith leaders: “Get Your Hands Off the Cart!”

 

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.