Sunday, February 9, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

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Musk has donated $75 million to Trump – in three months

US presidential election

Published 17 October 2024
– By Editorial Staff
Elon Musk and Donald Trump at an election rally.

Over the past three months, multi-billionaire Elon Musk has donated around $75 million to Donald Trump’s campaign through his political action committee America Pac, making him one of the Republican presidential candidate’s biggest donors.

Filings by America Pac with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show Musk donating $15 million in July, $30 million in August and another $30 million in September – and what sets America Pac apart from most other political action committees is that Musk is the group’s sole donor.

In a short time and in relative silence, America Pac is said to have become perhaps Trump’s most important partner and now has more door-to-door canvassers in key states than the Trump campaign itself – around 400 per state. They are now working frantically to convince undecided voters to go to the polls and vote Republican.

It is unclear what influence Musk would have over the Trump administration if it wins the election with the backing of America Pac, but the presidential candidate has already said that he could see Elon Musk in some kind of important role in his cabinet during a second term.

Political right turn

It should also be noted that Musk has recently stepped up his personal involvement in Trump’s campaign, announcing last week that he would be travelling to the key state of Pennsylvania in the run-up to the election for a “series of talks”.

In the past, Musk has said he sympathised with the Democratic Party, but in recent years he appears to have taken a right-wing turn politically, and it has been reported that he has donated money to various conservative causes, including those related to migration and LGBTQ.

He also funds the right-wing group Building America’s Future, which works to persuade black voters to vote Republican and has been highly critical of Biden and Harris’ immigration policies.

Despite Musk’s staggering donations, there are those who have given even more to the Trump campaign, according to filings – Israeli-American Miriam Adelson, wife of Jewish financier Sheldon Adelson, has given a whopping $95 million to another pro-Trump political action group.

Harris in the lead

The US electoral system has long been heavily criticised for making it difficult to seriously challenge and compete without the backing of big business and other wealthy financiers, and while Trump has amassed some very wealthy supporters, it is the Democrats and Kamala Harris who have by far the most money in their “campaign coffers”.

According to people with insight into Harris’ campaign, she passed the billion-dollar mark in September – while other data suggests her campaign has raised around $650 million. Whichever figure is correct, it is significantly more than the roughly $340 million raised by the Trump campaign.

The money is generally used to fund physical campaigning of various kinds – but also aggressive marketing on television, in newspapers and, not least, on social media, which has become an increasingly important arena for reaching voters.

“Anti-advertising” is also common – that is, ads, features and articles that are not primarily aimed at highlighting the advantages of one’s own candidate – but at smearing and demonising the opposing side.

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Trump avoids punishment in hush money case

US presidential election

Published 14 January 2025
– By Editorial Staff

President-elect Donald Trump has been convicted of accounting violations in the high-profile “hush money” case but still escapes punishment.

During a court hearing via video link in New York on January 10, 2025, the judge announced that Trump will receive an unconditional release, meaning he will avoid both a prison sentence and a fine.

The case involves payments to buy the silence of several people, including porn actress Stormy Daniels, ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump has consistently denied the allegations, describing the process as a politically motivated attempt to undermine his chances in the 2024 election.

It’s been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and, obviously, that didn’t work, Trump said during the hearing.

The unconditional release decision means that the conviction remains on Trump’s record, making him the first presidential candidate in US history with such a charge. However, Trump plans to appeal the conviction.

Keir Starmer accused of meddling in US elections

US presidential election

Published 14 January 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Keir Starmer and Joe Biden during a meeting last summer.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces allegations that the Labour Party influenced the 2024 US presidential election by sending volunteers to assist Kamala Harris’ campaign.

At the same time, criticism of the Prime Minister is growing at home, where he is accused of failing to act against Pakistani grooming gangs and a former Labour politician was arrested in a pedophile scandal days after he took an official stance on Starmer.

A political storm with international ramifications began in October 2024 when Donald Trump’s campaign accused UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party of trying to influence the US presidential election.

According to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Labor Party sent volunteers to the United States to assist Kamala Harris’ campaign, which the Trump campaign described as “blatant foreign interference”.

– To protect our democracy from illegal foreign influence, it is imperative that the Federal Election Commission investigate this matter immediately, said Gary Lawkowski, campaign lawyer for Trump.

The complaint specifically pointed to a now-deleted LinkedIn post by Labor Party Chief Operating Officer Sofia Patel, in which she urged volunteers to travel to North Carolina and promised: “We will sort your housing”.

The Labor Party has not denied that volunteers traveled to the US but insists that no law was broken.

– The Labour party has volunteers, who have gone over pretty much every election, said Keir Starmer. They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers.

Criticism of Starmer’s domestic policy

Meanwhile, criticism of Starmer is growing at home. Violence against girls has reached record levels and the controversy surrounding grooming gangs continues to dominate the debate. During his time as head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Starmer has been accused of failing to act forcefully against these groups, leading to widespread abuse scandals in towns such as Rotherham and Rochdale.

Last August, there was a knife attack in Southport in which three girls were killed. The incident has become a symbol of rising crime in the UK and led to riots in several cities. Four months later, in January this year, Elon Musk tweeted “Prison for Starmer ” in reference to the attack, further increasing pressure on the Prime Minister.

Starmer defender arrested in pedophile scandal

The crisis for the Labor Party deepened recently when former Labor MP Ivor Caplin was arrested after a sting operation carried out by citizen activists. Caplin is accused of trying to arrange a meeting with a 15-year-old boy.

Caplin, who had previously called Musk’s criticism of Starmer “unacceptable” and “unfounded”, was arrested just days after he publicly defended the prime minister. He has been released on bail pending the investigation.

How polls can be used to influence public opinion

US presidential election

Many pollsters predicted a very close presidential election in the United States - or even a clear victory for the Democrats. The question is whether the explanatory models for the major "miscalculations" hold up, or whether the institutes are really being used to influence opinion rather than to research it.

Published 19 November 2024
Opinion poll presented on American ABC just before the presidential election.

In the run-up to the US presidential election, both domestic voters and international audiences were told that the election would be an uncertain affair. It was claimed that Harris had “momentum” and a good chance of defeating Donald Trump – with several polls even showing her as the clear favorite to win by several percentage points.

As we know, that didn’t happen – at all. Trump won all seven battleground states and won 312 electoral votes – compared to a measly 226 for Harris. Despite losing big states like California, Trump also won the most popular votes in the US election. The result can probably be described without exaggeration as a landslide victory for Trump.

In the aftermath of the election, there have been many attempts to explain it away. Some claim that the pollsters and those behind the polls “underestimated” Trump’s voters. Others claim that they failed to “reach out” to Trump’s voter base, and that is why they were so wrong.

Some also argue, somewhat sweepingly, that the purpose of the polls was never to give an accurate picture of the situation or predict the outcome of the election, but only to show “patterns”, “attitudes” and “more or less qualified assessments” – and that therefore one should not react to the fact that in many cases they gave a seriously misleading picture of Harris’ and Trump’s real support among the American people.

People prefer a winner

Overall, there is much to suggest a very different and more sinister explanation for why the polls “happened” to be wrong about the outcome of the election. Rather, it may be that they have been systematically used as an active tool to influence elections.

Officially, of course, they say that they are only “investigating” what voters intend to vote for. In practice, there is evidence that these results have been both exaggerated and skewed in various ways in favor of the Democrats, making it appear that Kamala Harris was on her way to victory, when in fact she had almost no chance.

The reason would be very simple and logical – to try to shape public opinion to get the more politically insecure masses to go out and vote for Harris – and at the same time to make the more moderate Trump supporters feel resigned and stay home – because their candidate could not win this time either.

Psychologically, the strategy is not difficult to understand. A candidate who is portrayed as a winner or with a strong tailwind will attract more supporters than a candidate who is portrayed as a perceived loser. If voters perceive that their candidate has no real chance of defeating the opponent, many will abstain from voting – while many of those who are politically uncertain will tend to join the “winning team”.

Peer pressure is real

Despite the fact that there is often a lack of transparency in the activities and practices of pollsters and analysts, they enjoy an almost sacrosanct position in media coverage – or at least are widely interpreted as neutral, as actors without ulterior motives.

This view may be considered naive. These are not actors driven by a sense of justice, but by political ambitions and financial interests, and of course this does not only apply to the US presidential election. Opinion polls can strongly shape people’s views on many controversial issues – whether it’s NATO membership, migration policy, government support for the LGBT lobby, or whether Swedish arms should be sent to Ukraine and Israel.

The impact of peer pressure on human behavior is very real. Standing out and going against the grain is perceived by many as something unpleasant – with the risk of attracting social stigma in various ways. This is a basic psychology that politically conscious actors are of course aware of, and therefore inclined to use to their advantage. If a reluctant citizen who is leaning towards voting for the Sweden Democrats reads at the same time that 9 out of 10 Swedes would never consider voting for the party, the decision to actually do so becomes psychologically more difficult.

In the case of the US presidential election, there is much to suggest that support for Trump’s campaign – and perhaps above all dissatisfaction with the ruling Democrats for a variety of reasons – was so strong among broad segments of the population that it was simply not possible to manipulate public opinion to his detriment to the extent necessary to determine the outcome of the election.

Nor did it seem to matter that the entire left-liberal media establishment did everything it could, year after year, to paint Trump as a criminal, rapist, racist, fascist, extremist, or generally irrational lunatic. The explanation seems to be that a growing number of Trump supporters simply don’t care – largely because their trust in those pushing such messages has already been so badly eroded that the attempts to character assassinate Trump have not been effective enough.

So the subtle influence of the pollsters is by no means omnipotent, but for the discerning observer it is definitely a factor to consider in how opinion is actually shaped in practice.

 

TNT Editorial Team

FEMA supervisor ordered aid workers to skip Trump supporters’ homes after hurricane Milton

US presidential election

Published 18 November 2024
– By Editorial Staff
Public confidence in FEMA is at an all-time low after it was revealed that the agency failed to help Republican hurricane victims.

FEMA relief workers were told by their supervisor to avoid helping Donald Trump supporters after Hurricane Milton, which claimed around 30 lives.

The supervisor has now been fired for her actions, which her boss calls “reprehensible”.

According to a report by The Daily Wire, a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official has instructed disaster relief workers to avoid homes with signs supporting Donald Trump while working in Florida after the hurricane.

Internal correspondence shows that Marn’i Washington, a FEMA supervisor, ordered his team to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they surveyed the damage in Lake Placid, Florida, to determine which residents might qualify for federal aid.

Multiple federal employees confirmed to The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were skipped over between late October and early November because of this specific instruction.

Images from the system used by federal aid workers to track homes visited also showed notes such as: “Trump sign no entry per leadership” and “According to management, no stop at Trump flag”.

– I volunteered to help disaster victims, not discriminate against them. It felt wrong to discriminate against Trump supporters when they were most vulnerable, said one relief worker.

“Clear violation of FEMA’s core values”

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell responded to the revelation by firing Washington, stating:

“More than 22,000 FEMA employees every day adhere to FEMA’s core values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors. Recently, a FEMA employee departed from these values to advise her survivor assistance team to not go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump”.
“This is a clear violation of FEMA’s core values & principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation”, she continued.

Damaging the agency’s credibility

The incident has prompted the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability to schedule a hearing to investigate the conduct. Committee Chairman James Comer has asked Criswell to testify before lawmakers on November 19. In addition, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has launched a statewide investigation into the incident.

The exposed scandal has led to massive outrage in the United States, with many questioning whether the agency can be considered a serious player at all – or whether it should be seen as a haven for hostile left-wing activists who let their political beliefs determine who gets help and who doesn’t.

Deanne Criswel, however, insists that the behavior is “reprehensible” and that, like Marn’i Washington, any other staff member who behaves in a similar way will be fired.