Drive-By Muthings: Newsom, Hochul, Trump…and John Lee

(Chuck Muth) – California Gov. Gavin Newsom has made his selection to replace late U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein. As promised by the identity-politics guv, it’s a black woman, Laphonza Butler.

But she’s got some sugar on top: Butler’s also “openly LGBTQ,” a former labor union boss, a former adviser the Kamala Harris, and the head of an abortion rights group.

Oh…she also doesn’t live in California.  She lives in Maryland.  Apparently, none of Cali’s other 39 million residents could tick off every “woke” box.

Meanwhile, Democrat New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has changed her tune on illegal immigration.

Early in her administration, she called for turning New York into a “sanctuary” state.  But now that NYC is being inundated with illegal aliens – more accurately referred to as “undocumented Democrats” – she wants Congress to stop the flow…

“Well, we want them to have a limit on who can come across the border. It is too open right now. People coming from all over the world are finding their way through simply saying they need asylum. And the majority of them seem to be ending up in the streets of New York. And that is a real problem for New York City, 125,000 newly arrived individuals.

“We are one of the most diverse places on Earth because of our welcoming nature, and it’s in our DNA to welcome immigrants. But there has to be some limits in place. And Congress has to put more controls at the border…and not talk about eliminating positions for Border Patrol when we actually need to double or quadruple those numbers.”

Spoken like a true…Republican?

And speaking of illegal immigration…

I attended or watched numerous Donald Trump campaign rallies before and during his presidency.  And one of the most repeated and memorable campaign promises he made was some version of the following…

“I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.” – Donald Trump, June 16, 2015

Well…it didn’t happen.  Got some of it, yes.  But it’s never been completed.  And Mexico hasn’t paid for it.  To which Trump responded in a campaign speech this weekend…

“So when you hear these lunatics back there say, ‘Trump didn’t get anything from Mexico’ – well, you know there was no legal mechanism because I said they were going to help fund this wall.  But there was no legal mechanism.  How do you go to a country and say, ‘By the way, I’m building a wall, hand us a lot of money.”

Of course, that’s NOT what he said during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

But more importantly, his GOP primary opponent, Ron DeSantis, maintains there IS a way to make Mexico pay for it.  Trump just didn’t do it.  Here’s what the Florida governor wrote on Twitter today…

“Admitting that the famous promise from 2016 to have ‘Mexico pay for the wall’ was just an empty campaign slogan is bad enough. What makes it worse is that there is actually a way to get Mexico to pay for the wall: impose fees on remittances sent to Mexico (and other countries) by illegal aliens.”

Trump promised a lot of things.  And he did a lot of things.  But he also failed to do a lot of things he promised to do and hasn’t explained why “this time” things would be different – including ending “birthright citizenship” by executive order.

It’s one of the reasons why many former Trump supporters are now supporting someone else this time around.

In Nevada political news…

Former North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee has made it official: He’s running for the 4^th Congressional District to take on incumbent Democrat Rep. Steve Horsford.

Lee has extensive experience in the Nevada Legislature, where he was a rare Democrat who was pro-life and pro-gun. But he finally couldn’t stomach the hard-left crazies controlling today’s Democrat Party.

So he switched parties two years ago and ran for governor last year as a Republican.

Lee immediately becomes the front-runner in the GOP primary.  And is clearly the strongest threat to dethroning Horsford since Rep. Cresent Hardy in 2014.  Don’t be surprised if Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo endorses him.

By the way, liberal blubber-blogger Jon Ralston hates Lee with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns.  Don’t be surprised if he acts as Horsford’s unofficial press secretary for this race (he’s already started).

Speaking of endorsements, this was in Politico’s “Weekly Score” column this morning…

“Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dave McCormick was endorsed by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania. It’s the latest sign of Republicans in the state coalescing around a candidate early after last year’s loss against now-Democratic Sen. John Fetterman.”

Early endorsements like this are what responsible political parties focused on winning elections do.

This is NOT what the Nevada Republican Party does.  It’s more focused on rigging primary elections internally instead.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“Biden Is Finally Achieving Equality: Everyone Is Getting Poorer.” – Stephen Moore, Committee to Unleash Prosperity

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views, and founder of CampaignDoctor.com.  You can sign up for his conservative, Nevada-focused e-newsletter at MuthsTruths.com.  His views are his own.