Daily Caller
Let Them Eat Cake
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Bob Ehrlich
It is “lessons learned” season for the political class, but recent anecdotes reflect the left’s selective takeaways from the campaign and election of 2024.
— Former President Bill Clinton bemoans the advent of “zillions” of right-wing websites as a reason why the Harris-Walz ticket had such difficulties in reaching out to rural America.
— Donna Brazile insists (on Bill Maher’s show) that while the Democrats’ primary challenge remains poor communication, the voters still really do agree with the Party’s platform.
— Bernie Sanders (again) criticizes the out-of-touch “economic elites” presently in charge of the Democrat Party because…they are not progressive enough.
— The city council president in Erie, Pa., associates red-hatted supporters of President-elect Donald Trump with the KKK … and does not back down when confronted by the media and MAGA supporters.
— Actors Alec Baldwin and Sharon Stone deride American voters as “ignorant,” “uneducated” and “uninformed” at an Italian film festival.
These and similar storylines are illustrative but certainly not new. Indeed, I still remember following a Democratic member of Congress on one of the cable networks (in the aftermath of the 2016 election) wherein he lamented Hillary Clinton’s hemorrhaging of working-class voters — after which he assured the audience that his party would continue to protect sanctuary cities…
Some will write off these tin-ear reactions to post-election frustration or simple hardheadedness, but there is something more profound going on here. To wit, this generation of Democrats is far too captive to progressive ideology for them to conduct a detached, deep-dive postmortem on why so many people who work with their hands, do not subscribe to The New York Times and have never visited Martha’s Vineyard have become so turned off by woke values (some on the right diagnose it as a “mind virus”) and the progressive platform foisted on them these past four years.
Alas, there is another problem for the Democrats going forward that has far less to do with substance but far more to do with attitude. To wit: Flyover America has been paying attention and is now intimately familiar with the litany of “Let Them Eat Cake” Trump-era indictments that have spewed forth from members of the ruling class directed to the ways, means, tastes and preferences of middle America. (President Joe Biden’s “garbage” characterization of Trump voters and Mark Cuban’s weird but instructive charge that Trump lacks “strong, intelligent women” around him now joining Obama’s “bitter clingers” and Hillary’s “irredeemable deplorables” in the Democrats’ Hall of Shame.)
This mean but persistent and tone-deaf attempt to defame half the country may go over well in front of the appropriate crowd (Harris’ advising two pro-life protestors to leave her rally and go to the smaller Trump rally down the street comes to mind) but remains a major obstacle to any serious attempt to recapture Democrats’ support within working class America. Phrased another way, when so many people tell you what they really think of you over an extended period of time … you should probably believe them. And now — to the dismay of millions of self-righteous progressives — it appears church/synagogue/mosque attending, Walmart consuming, Second Amendment believing, woke rejecting, blue supporting America Firsters received the message loud and clear.
They voted accordingly.
Bob Ehrlich is a former governor of Maryland, member of Congress and state legislator. He is the author of five books on American politics and opinion pieces that have appeared in America’s leading newspapers and periodicals. He and his wife, Kendel, can be seen and heard on their weekly podcast, “Bottom Line with Bob & Kendel Ehrlich.”
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Wallace White
The liberal parliament in the United Kingdom is on the brink of a collapse after a scandal involving mass rape perpetrated by migrant gangs rocked national politics across the pond.
Jess Phillips, the Home Office Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls and a Labour Party member, blocked an inquiry by the town of Oldham into Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s conduct while overseeing the prosecution of a migrant grooming gang’s sexual abuse of children in the town from 2011 to 2014, according to a Jan. 2 report from the Telegraph. The move prompted mass outcry and renewed attention to the UK’s ongoing crisis involving organized migrant grooming gangs, largely consisting of Pakistani nationals, stemming from waves of unchecked immigration.
Chiefly, critics accuse Starmer of failing to tackle migrant rape gangs when he headed the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) from 2008 and 2013, complicating his political situation amid calls for his resignation and a tanking approval rating. Starmer, in his capacity as prime minister, allowed illegal immigrants to apply for asylum even after arriving in the UK, according to the BBC.
In 2009, the CPS under Starmer dropped charges against a Pakistani grooming and rape gang in Rochdale — despite the prosecution having DNA and hours of video evidence of the crimes — claiming the teenage victim wouldn’t have been viewed as a “credible” witness, the BBC reported in 2012. The case was reopened in 2012 when Nazir Afzal took over as a prosecutor for the CPS, where he secured convictions for eight men involved in the gang.
Ex-detective Maggie Oliver, who helped uncover the abuse in Rochdale, said that Starmer is complicit in the mishandling of the investigations into the rape gangs, according to The Telegraph.
“The time is long overdue for a full national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal,” Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, said on X Jan. 2. “Trials have taken place all over the country in recent years, but no one in authority has joined the dots – 2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice.”
The Labour Party, led by Starmer, has had a historic polling collapse according to Sky News polling released Dec. 22., and for the first time, the party’s polling dipped below 27% despite winning one of the largest majorities in parliament history just five months prior. It is currently projected to lose its majority in the upcoming May election, and the Reform UK party, started by conservative politician and architect of Brexit, Nigel Farage, could supplant the Labour Party as the most popular in the UK and win a majority of seats, according to an analysis by the Telegraph.
The UK’s immigration policies remain one of voters’ top concerns, according to YouGov polling from Jan. 6. As of 2022, 14% of the UK’s population was foreign-born. Asylum seekers made up 4% of the foreign-born population in the UK the same year, and a majority were from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, India and Bangladesh, according to Migration Observatory.
Foreign nationals living in the UK are three times more likely to be arrested for sex offenses than British nationals, and twice as likely to be arrested for crimes in general, The Telegraph found.
Billionaire tech mogul and President-elect Donald Trump’s confidant Elon Musk, who has become increasingly outspoken about UK politics, accused Phillips on X of trying to protect Starmer amid his political struggles by squashing the national inquiry request. Musk’s interest in the scandal and recent involvement brought the issue international attention.
Starmer, in response to the public outcry, accused people of “jumping on the bandwagon of the far-right” for calling attention to the issue.
“It is so disrespectful it is beyond belief,” Sammy Woodhouse, activist and independent reporter covering the grooming scandal in the UK, said on X. “[Starmer is] branding people again as ‘far-right.’ This is not being ‘far-right,’ this is people having genuine concerns and outrage [sic] … we are talking about children being groomed, abused, raped, tortured, trafficked, murdered, blamed, ignored, impregnated, criminalized.”
Multiple local reports over the years have detailed the astonishing extent of sexual abuse by foreign migrants.
In 2014, a report from the town of Rotherham found that at least 1,400 girls were sexually exploited, mostly by Pakistani migrants, between 1997 and 2013. Local authorities were also apprehensive about identifying the ethnic background of the perpetrators for fear of reprisals.
Ten members of the Labour council wrote to the Home Secretary, Conservative Amber Rudd, in 2016 claiming that allegations of abuse in the town of Telford were “sensationalized,” according to the Free Press. It was later revealed by The Mirror in 2018 that “up to” 1,000 underage girls were raped and abused there in what was deemed an “ongoing” crisis at the time, that started in the 1980s. The report claimed that authorities feared accusations of “racism” for sharing details about majority-Asian assailants.
Starmer’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Daily Caller
Musk Completely Derails UK Political Establishment, Accuses PM’s Party Of Covering Up Muslim Rape Gangs
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Thomas English
Elon Musk ignited a political firestorm in Britain after accusing Prime Minister Keir Starmer of complicity in the “rape of Britain” Friday, reanimating a years-old debate over organized child sexual exploitation by predominately Pakistani men.
Musk has ravaged Starmer and other U.K. officials in a barrage of tweets over the past week, primarily accusing Starmer of inadequately prosecuting rape gangs during his tenure as director of public prosecutions (DPP) from 2008 to 2013. The SpaceX founder also attacked Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips, who he said “deserves to be in prison,” for blocking a government-led inquiry into child sexual exploitation by gangs in Oldham, a northern England town.
“Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for 6 years,” Musk wrote. “Starmer must go and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain.”
The recent flurry of attacks mark the world’s richest man’s latest incursion into international political affairs, with Musk now focusing in particular on the United Kingdom’s decades-long struggle to curb the proliferation of “grooming gangs” primarily comprised of Pakistani-descended men who mainly target native Briton girls for sexual exploitation, The Telegraph reported in an analysis of the persistent issue.
The most infamous cases involving these gangs occurred in northern England towns like Oldham, Telford and Rotherham — the severity of which has been whitewashed for fear of accusations of Islamophobia, according to The Telegraph.
“To protect ‘community relations’, the British state has gone to immense lengths to cover it up,” he wrote. “Reports have been blocked and deliberately kept out of the public eye. Any connection with ethnicity, immigration, or Islam was downplayed … the evidence that British Pakistani men were over-represented among the perpetrators was spiked to avoid uncomfortable truths.”
Musk Starmer and the Labour government with operating a two-tiered justice system, suggesting in a meme Thursday that the prime minister prosecutes “rape and violent crime” with leniency while instead focusing on policing online speech. He also said the Labour Party “opposes a national inquiry on the mass rape of little girls in Britain for one reason only: It will show that they were complicit.”
The prime minister defended his prosecutorial record as DPP in a press conference Monday, saying he “brought the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming gang in this particular case” and “changed the whole prosecution approach.” While largely avoiding mentioning Musk by name, Starmer also condemned the spread of what he called “lies and misinformation” from detractors who are “interested in themselves” rather than the victims.
Starmer also defended Phillips in the press conference, insisting she has done “a thousand times more than they’ve even dreamt about when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse throughout her entire career.” Phillips blocked a Tory-led motion Thursday to hold a public inquiry into the historic sexual abuse in Oldham because it was for “Oldham council alone” to decide whether one was necessary, according to The Telegraph.
Musk’s attacks are not limited to the Labour Party alone, however. The Tesla CEO also called for Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit and the leader of the Reform Party, to be replaced as party leader because he “doesn’t have what it takes.”
The comments come hours after Farage referred to Musk as a “friend” in an interview with the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg” program.
“Well, this is a surprise!” Farage wrote in response to Musk. “Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree. My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I will never sell out my principles.”
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