The Epstein “client list” is a conspiracy theory

The whole Epstein “client list” is turning into a conspiracy theory cult. Almost a McCarty-like religious mania. 

Without such a list, the worldview of MAGA would crumble. Therefore, surely, the answer must rely on yet another cover up ... or so the logic goes, and hence, the DoJ and FBI are said to be lying. 

If you consider for a moment; why in the world would the President have ever mentioned them in public if he was in the files. After all, he knows who he gave his money to, or with whom he did business. He simply mentioned the “files” to whip his base into a frenzy.

We already know that they broke-off relations in 2003/4 following some sordid affair by Epstein at one of Trump’s resorts. We already know that they were friends and met at parties and events. It seems everyone (even Steven Pinker) met Jeffery Epstein. He was everywhere, and he was able to get close to so many famous and well-connected people. Trouble is that we already knew all of this information. But the hunt persists for hidden secret “lists”! Our next course is to unseal court transcripts. Maybe it’s under his bed?

What is stunning is how this cult now seems to populate among the higher echelons our government and the media. Are we really going to grab Ms Ghislaine Maxwell to testify publicly in some prison-like conference before the media? It needs to stop.

We all know that the so-called Epstein files would have already been released by the Biden administration for being too juicy a story long ago. Either way, a secret as big as the alleged “Epstein files” or “client list” would be truly impossible to keep to a small number of people. Ergo, it’s classic wishful thinking. Unfortunately, the longer this conspiracy goes on, the greater our collective slide into a post-truth world.

Brendan O’Neill writing in “At last, the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theory is falling apart” (Spiked) talks about its threat to democracy and why people indulge it:

The bigger question, though, is why so many people just can’t let go of the Epstein tale. No amount of the sunlight of disinfectant, no amount of hyper-clarified jail footage, can wake them from their Paedo Island stupor. And it’s because this conspiracy theory makes them feel good. It gives their lives meaning. It lets them circumvent the tough task of thinking seriously about power and democracy in the 21st century, and instead just say: ‘Everything is beyond our control.’ Like all conspiracy theorists – from 9/11 truthers to ‘anti-Zionist’ fruitcakes – they find strange comfort in the powerlessness bestowed on them by their own theories. Their frenzied belief in distant cabals absolves them of the far harder democratic duties of thought and discussion and change.

The lunacy is bipartisan now. Witness how well the Epstein tale lends itself to both right and left. For years it was held up by right-wing cranks as proof of the depravity of Clintonites and their Hollywood luvvies; now it is wielded to the end of damning Trumpists and ‘populists’ and what they have to hide. I don’t give a damn about Jeffrey Epstein. I don’t much care for the powerful people he mingled with either, though of course I think all are owed the presumption of innocence. I do care about democracy, though. And right now, there are few threats to democracy as insidious and toxic as the tragically fashionable belief that we are ruled by devils and there is nothing we can do about it.

There aren’t any new or meaningful files. There is no “list”. The wider conspiracy theories (incl. Epstein’s death) just aren’t true.

MAGA may have gone nuts, but the rest of us don’t have to.

Tucker Carlson’s cretinous antisemitism

Tucker Carlson has become an antisemitic crank. 

Whenever he pops up in a story, he exhibits an embarrassing decline in intellect alongside an outlandish propensity for conspiracy theories (invariably with an antisemitic bent).

For example, why describe the podcaster (i.e. non-historian) Darryl Cooper as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United states” giving him platform for his revisionist history that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain of the Second World War”; and, not Hitler. 

Recently on the Epstein debacle and the so-called “client list”, he said in a speech that Epstein was “working on behalf” of Israel:

... Where did all the money come from? And no one has ever gotten to the bottom of that because no one has ever tried. And moreover, it’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government. Now, no one’s allowed to say that that foreign government is Israel because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty. There is nothing wrong with saying that. There is nothing hateful about saying that. There’s nothing anti-Semitic about saying. There’s nothing even anti-Israel about saying that ... You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house. You have had all this contact with the foreign government. Were you working on behalf of Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of foreign government? ... (Excerpted)

And, of course, all of this from his intellectual safe house of “… just asking questions ...” - the unmistakable refuge of the demagogue.

As we know, eventually, all such conspiracy theories devolve to some Jewish angle. 

The Epstein conspiracy is no different and it seems it won’t be easily killed.

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The reasons why the Mossad-Epstein conspiracy is ridiculous:

• It doesn’t make any sense for Israeli intelligence to connect itself to Epstein. Israeli intelligence is one of the few places on Earth in which idiots aren’t running things. He was investigated in 2005 and convicted in 2008. Why would Mossad be concerned with Mr Epstein’s island? What spy-trade skills did he possess? And who would Mossad be hoping to honey-trap - Mahmoud Abbas? It's ridiculous and would unnecessarily implicates Israel in his (by then) known pedophilia and sex scandals.
• Following the Jonathan Pollard espionage fiasco, Mossad & Israel must be aware of the serious repercussions involved in underhanded activities to US-Israeli relations.
• Former Israeli PM Ehud Barak met with Jeffrey Epstein “dozens of times, flew on private plane about 30 times in 2013-2017, including 2014 private flight in Florida” — and so what? Epstein met Clinton, did that make him a CIA spy? Also met Prince Andrew and the Duchess of York? And what does that prove?

The Trump-Musk divorce

So, the romance has died – in such open nastiness and bickering. 

As I always said, Trump is not a conservative. No fiscal hawk. Cutting spending was merely a pretext to do away with programs he disliked and people he distrusted. And, now they’re gone: he’s perfectly happy to spend the savings (and then some) on stuff he wants.

Musk was naive. He bought into the notion that Trump actually wanted to get spending under control. I honestly think he was taken in with the hype of MAGA. Thus, he felt used and stupid with the tariffs and when the budget bill coming out. Musk torched his career thinking he was rescuing America just to find out he got suckered.

We all knew it would end this way. And, as always with Trump, taking the low road with insults and pettiness. This time, they both went to the gutter. Nothing more than a national embarrassment. Musk had a nasty side too. I remember him using the pedo accusation against someone who attacked him. Musk, this time, uses Epstein.

We have another 3.5 years of this embarrassment to end.

Nothing is serious anymore

The “bigly beautiful bill”.

Is everything a slogan?

The cover-up of Biden’s decline

This is a scandal. 

I watched this interview by Channel 4 with Tapper on his new book “Original Sin”.

It shows that the Democrats were willing to put the nation at risk to hold onto power.  They covered up for a man whose cognitive decline would disqualify him from any ordinary job.

Tapper would have us believe that the American journalistic community were not aware of the senility of President Biden because his inner circle kept a “tight lid” on the situation. 

The omerta-like attitude among the Democrats and the bullying by the Biden administration is interesting … but I’m just a blogger who reads the news, and it was v. clear to me that Biden was losing the plot. He looked like a confused old man most of the time last year, trying to find his words, forgetting names, trying to spit out 2-3 thoughts all at the same time resulting in garballed sentences, wandering around looking confused, falling over. Some people believed his decline was “fake news” until that disastrous debate. Since the mainstream media covered for him.

The truth is that America’s “establishment” journalists, for the most part, knew, or tried to avoid full knowledge of, the situation because (1) Biden was a Democrat, and (2) it could be “justified” because they wanted to avoid a Trump redux.

The scandal is not only about who ran the White House – but how the White House and the Democrat establishments deceived the American people, but how the mainstream media went along with it.

Deportation via the Alien Enemies Act

Very recently U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. issued a permanent injunction against the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan immigrants from South Texas who have been accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang.

In short, the judge ruled that TdA may be harmful to society, but they did not constitute an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” as per the Alien Enemies Act. Thus, the President did not have lawful authority (under the Alien Enemies Act) to detain or deport Venezuelan immigrants.

Here is a summary of the judgment by Chris Geidner. Also CBS News.

I agree with the judgment, and want to make 4 points.

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1. The President simply cannot give himself war powers (via declaring a phony invasion) to despatch illegal aliens without any notice or hearing. Even if the 10 million or so illegal aliens in the US can be regarded as a “severe threat”, it doesn’t justify shortcuts around the law.

2. The President has no inherent power to deport anyone – that authority rests entirely with Congress. The Executive can only ever act within the terms and limits of legislation (which include constitutional procedural safeguards of due process – not optional). As Andrew C. McCarthy of National Review explained (concluding that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was unlawful):

to the extent he had protection against being deported to El Salvador, it was based on a remedy — withholding of removal — that is implemented by regulations based on Congress’s statutes … the involvement of the courts in immigration enforcement is extremely limited — confined to the narrow authority Congress has vested in them … Illegal aliens detained inside the country, if they don’t agree to rapid expulsion (as many do), are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge and an appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals — again, Justice Department tribunals.

3. It is important to remember that these hearings before an immigration “judge” (technically, as McCarthy points out, from the executive and not the judicial branch of government) actually protect Americans. A tiny percentage of detainees, before an immigration judge every year, are accidentally arrested due to mistaken identity & then let go.

4. Respect for the Constitution and the rule of law are solid conservative positions.

Trump’s mercantilist tariffs

What a joke. Three points to make:

(1) There are reasons, other than financial, for giving help to other countries either via tariff programs or USAID. It is called security. The system of established levies has given the world stability with secure markets. International trade, esp. since World War II, has made the U.S. a phenomenally rich nation. Frankly, until Donald Trump, tariffs were almost always a deranged niche left-wing idea. How did this insanity get into the Republican party?

Even if, for the sake of argument, the tariffs could work in their stated goal of bring manufacturing back to America; they won’t have enough time to work. The pain of the transition will be so great the House will fall to the Democrats in 2026 and the White House will fall to them in 2028. At that point the tariffs will be lifted, if not already. 

(2) No respect or consideration given to alliances. E.g. take Israel. They have almost no tariffs on U.S. goods to begin with. As a gesture of goodwill, the Knesset abolished some few remaining tariffs a few days ago. How was it “reciprocal” to put a 17 percent tax rate on Israeli goods?

(3) Even if I agreed with these tariffs (which I don’t), I am extremely disturbed by the sweeping unilateral authority Trump is claiming under the guise of “emergency powers”. No one man, and his pen, should have this much power over the global economy.

We have to hope that the courts stop him. This is illegal because either (1) setting taxes is an inherently non-delegable legislative function and/or (2) the U.S. trade deficit doesn’t meet the “emergency” threshold definition as the required basis for the order.

The aftermath of the California wildfires

Mark Abramson. More photos can be seen on the NYT.

My heart goes out to all those who have lost their homes and loved ones. 

And all the people trying to get their lives back together.

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I saw this breathtaking photo a few days ago on the NYT. 

My God. It makes your heart stop.

November 5 US election bet - Harris will win

I think Harris is going to win.

I think it seems to lean her way, women will turn out for her, and abortion is a big issue.

Trump’s polling bumped up briefly following the assassination attempt, but that didn’t translate into any sustained enthusiasm. Moreover, from what I’ve seen, the number of Republicans who will definitely vote for him has declined over the last two months. This is because people who like Trump tend to love him — but right-leaning voters (that don’t love him) tend to be turned off by him. His path to victory relies on a surge of Republican turnout across the board; and I don't think he can generate it.

Perhaps even more importantly, I think the January 6th insurrection was a serious scandal which left many voters with existential worries concerning Trump being in power again. Its aftermath has motivated voters against him & caused many more moderate right-leaning voters to sit this election out.

Harris is dreadful ... Trump is terrible.

What a choice!

President Biden finally taken down by the Democrats

Finally. Biden has “stepped down” ... or taken down in a coup.

A sad end to one of the longest & most consequential careers in US politics. 

Propped by his party recently for so long despite voters being well-aware of the fact that the Democrats knew Biden wasn’t mentally capable. They tried to push him through the finish line anyway. 

Then, the disturbing and unsettling debate on June-27th against Donald Trump. The world was finally exposed to what insiders had known for months: Biden was in serious physical and mental decline ... Then, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump softened and buoyed the public’s perception of Trump (interesting that Trump took a more measured and “statesmanlike” approach than his erstwhile “conspiracy theory” rituals — I was expecting him to blame Biden for the assassination attempt), and made Trump seem stronger and more vigorous than Biden.

So finally, the “compassionate” Democrats knifed President Biden. One-by-one. Obama at first, followed by Pelosi ... which then created an “official” momentum to gut him. The omerta lifted. 

He made the most important and consequential announcement of his Presidency ... in a letter posted on Twitter/X. He neither appeared on camera, nor did we hear his voice. We didn’t see him at all that Sunday.

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If the Democrats lose the election, it will be a complete bloodbath.

Matthew Hennessey (below) argues that “the Democrats underestimate the price they will pay for lying this way ... The damage has been done. It’ll be a long time undoing it.”

Jill (his wife) and the White House staff must take the blame for allowing this humiliation. Biden was allowed to dig his own grave further and further — in public. He recently called himself “‘first Black woman’ to serve in White House”. He should have been treated with a bit more respect ... and honesty.

National Review has written about how President Biden was the “PiNO — President in Name Only” era:

Since at least the Afghanistan debacle, those of us paying attention have noticed that Biden’s age meant he couldn’t perform his duties like a normal president would. He made considerably fewer public appearances, appeared at few early morning or late-night events, took more time to recuperate from travel, conducted fewer interviews and press conferences, etc ... Normal presidents don’t skip Super Bowl interviews. Normal presidents don’t go nine months without a cabinet meeting. Normal presidents don’t spend almost every weekend at their beach house in Delaware, and normal presidents don’t have to use a teleprompter when making remarks to donors at closed-door fundraisers ... This is one of many reasons that, as the NR editors declare, Joe Biden should resign the presidency. He can’t do the job anymore. We have had a not-president for a while, and unless Biden resigns the office, we will have a not-president until January 20. He’s a PiNO — President in Name Only.

And, then Biden’s endorsement of Harris is her anointment in all but name in the perfunctory primary season. National Review again:

Harris has been a colossal disappointment to everyone who believed that the first woman vice president would be a heroic giant on the American political stage ... Beyond that, the laugh, her reliance on stock phrases like, “what can be, unburdened by what has been,” the constant vibe that she’s giving a book report on a book she didn’t read — there’s a nervousness or insecurity to Harris. She always seems like she’s bluffing.

In my opinion, the statesman who would add most stature to the Democrat ticket would be Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.

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President Biden, it’s time to go!

I have just been reading a fascinating deep-dive into the White House’s machinations – orchestrated on the nation – of obscuring and concealing the President’s obvious physical frailty and mental ailing.

It has become embarrassing – even painful to watch. The recent embarrassing Zelensky/Putin gaffe is just too much. Everyone is waiting for the next slip-up. As Michael Moore recently said, his remaining in office is tantamount to elderly abuse.

It is an awful thing to have to witness this. It’s like watching a friend or loved one struggle enormously in a job at the end of their careers and hang on for too long. This is far worse, and with enormous consequences. Biden is supposed to be reading briefs and papers, and analysing world changes. Travelling in his job is “tiring him”; a “simple cold” incapacities him thinking and speaking clearly at a debate; and that he needs “more sleep”. In effect, this is a declaration that this poor guy is simply not up to the rigors of the office. Instead, we have his obvious confusion. Long drawn silences. The distant-vacant stares. And the awkward smile from spectators and eye-rolls.

Biden’s handlers are disgraceful. Lies, and lies. The more we hear, the clearer it is that they have been deliberately gaslighting journalists who have been persistently asking questions about Biden’s health over the past few years. Even labelling it a Republican conspiracy. If they’d just come clean, they wouldn’t be in this mess now.

E.g. after the Trump-Biden debate, it seems the White House were forced to acknowledge a “neurologist” had visited the President …

Following Joe Biden’s disastrous performance against Donald Trump in their debate on June 27, White House reporters started poring through the visitors log at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. One name kept cropping up again and again: Dr Kevin Cannard. The neurologist and specialist in movement disorders works at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which serves the president. Eagled-eyed journalists spotted that he visited the White House no fewer than eight times between last July and this March. The revelation forced a statement from the White House which suggested Dr Cannard had only seen Biden for his three annual physicals and the other visits were related to military personnel.

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And why are people naturally suspicious?

Part of the reason why the White House’s excuses are wearing thin is that a sceptical public is aware of the long history of various White House administrations keeping the ailments suffered by past presidents secret. Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralysing stroke in 1919 and the severity of his illness was downplayed. For the final two years of his term, all communication with Wilson went through his wife Edith. It was also well known that Franklin D Roosevelt was paralysed from the waist down after contracting polio in 1921. But he carefully cloaked his disability in public using leg braces and gripping the lectern in order to stand for speeches. The press agreed not to photograph or film him in his wheelchair or being lifted out of cars. When the president’s health deteriorated following the Tehran Conference in November 1943, his doctor told the press that Roosevelt was in “robust health” and his stamina was “far above average”. In fact he was suffering from severe hypertension and congestive heart failure. He was advised to limit his work to four hours a day (which was a little tricky with the Second World War still raging) and his smoking. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1945, shortly into his fourth term.

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Why should Biden step down?

As the article noted:

One undernoted issue is that the psychodrama is preventing other senior Democrats from taking the fight to Trump. Partly that’s because they don’t want to be seen as undermining Biden, and partly it’s because the White House won’t let them. “I worry that the core cadre of counsellors around the president continues to put roadblocks in the path of some of our most effective spokespeople,” says Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who worked in the Obama White House. “Part of it seems to stem from a worry that the contrast with the president’s energy and effectiveness on the campaign trail would be put in stark relief.”

People can complain about Trump’s arrant lies … but they won’t affect his support base. President Biden, on the other hand, will dissuade people from voting for him. In the end, it will give Trump the Presidency. It’s an outrageously stupid & dangerous gamble. 

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The DT article:

The Trump-Biden debate

For those who haven’t seen it: CNN presidential debate.

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Biden lost completely

I have only v. serious doubts that President Biden is mentally sharp enough to be President after what we saw a few nights ago. This was not just a purported “cold” or “speech impediment”. Biden looked gone. And he is supposed to be occupying one of the most important and demanding roles for 4 years.

Everytime Biden glances at Trump .. it’s like he’s seeing him for the first time “😦”.

I felt sorry for him. He couldn’t even articulate a half-cogent counter-reply on abortion and Roe v Wade ... a softball question which he must have prepped for.

Without a script or teleprompter, he can barely recall a line or even a policy. I don’t think he knows half of it ... and it was clear he was also inventing statistics and making up stuff (e.g. on inflation or economy).

What a joke.

Trump won the debate, despite his (expected) flimflamming

WSJ had a v. interesting article covering the ridiculous exaggerations & near-hysterics from Trump during the debate. 

The Trump guilty verdict — some misgivings

Incredible headline yesterday — to go in history. 

The NY jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts.

A lot of people hate Trump. And for most people — as long as they agree with the result — they don’t really care about how it was obtained, or what the broader consequences might be. 

In my view, we should all care about the process. And, my provisional view is that there is something wrong with this conviction.

It feels like the law has been manipulated for political purposes.

I think Trump may have the last laugh on appeal.

Legal irregularities

Andrew McCarthy, at National Review (an anti-Trump publication), highlighted the many ways in which this case applies a wholly novel and flawed legal theory to Trump and suffers from major constitutional infirmities that will be raised on appeal. E.g., the jury instructions.

From my own readings, the obvious problems seem to be:

1. Prosecutor Bragg resuscitated a single misdemeanor — which could have been resolved with a fine etc. — and claimed that Mr Trump falsified business records in order to conceal “another crime” — which we later learned was supposed to be a “campaign finance” violation. This is because, by 2024, the statute of limitations for that false accounting charge had already expired. So, the prosecution “repackaged” it as a felony — arguing that the 2016 election had been rigged as a result of that false accounting. The felony — which has a much longer statute of limitations — is a violation of NY election law 17-152, which states that you cannot promote election “by unlawful means”. The “unlawful means” being the hush money payment.
2. Bragg’s team did not definitively state this until their closing arguments — and after the defence already addressed the court. The indictment failed to specify this crime (which it must under the constitution). God knows how, but Bragg was able to convict someone without telling them exactly what the crime was that they allegedly intended to commit. Therefore, Trump couldn’t defend himself properly. (Although, Tony Diver for DT has written about the “deny everything” flaw in Trump’s defence.)
3. Moreover, this is despite the fact that the DOJ and FEC have exclusive jurisdiction over campaign finance law (under the constitution), and had investigated this purported violation, and chose not to pursue it. Presumably because it was plain that Trump’s payment to Daniels did not qualify as a campaign expenditure.

Extra reading: vexatious prosecution

The WSJ has a very interesting editorial. The WSJ originally broke the hush-money story; and think Trump obviously committed that bit of sleaze. 

Broadly, the argument is that this was a targeted — if even malicious — prosecution. I’ve summarised the interesting bits:

Mr Bragg, an elected Democrat, ran for office as the man ready to take on Mr. Trump. When the new DA didn’t indict shortly after winning office, his top Trump prosecutors loudly quit, increasing the pressure on Mr. Bragg to do, well, something. Even after a guilty verdict, the case he ended up filing looks like a legal stretch.

To elevate these counts into felonies, the DA said Mr. Trump cooked the books with an intent to commit or cover up a second offence. What crime was that? At first Mr. Bragg was cagey. He eventually settled on a New York election law, rarely enforced, that prohibits conspiracies to promote political candidates “by unlawful means.” 

Yet what “unlawful means” did this alleged conspiracy use? The DA’s argument was that there were three: First, the hush money was effectively an illegally large donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign. Second, more business filings were falsified, including bank records for Mr. Cohen’s wire transfer to Ms. Daniels. Third, false statements were made to tax authorities, since Mr. Trump’s repayment of Mr. Cohen was structured as income and “grossed up” to cover the taxes he would need to pay on it.

In some ways this Russian nesting doll structure, to use another analogy, defies logic. Did Mr. Trump falsify business records in 2017 to cover up an illegal conspiracy to elect him in 2016, whose unlawful means included false information in Mr. Cohen’s tax return for 2017? There was hardly any direct evidence about Mr. Trump’s state of mind. Federal prosecutors squeezed a guilty plea out of Mr. Cohen but notably didn’t pursue Mr. Trump. One news report said the feds worried that his “lack of basic knowledge of campaign finance laws would make it hard to prove intent.”

A help to Mr. Bragg’s prosecution is that the jurors were instructed that as long as they were unanimous that Mr. Trump was guilty of falsifying business records to aid or cover up an illegal conspiracy to get him elected, they didn’t all have to agree about which theory of the “unlawful means” they found persuasive. Perhaps this will be taken up by Mr. Trump on appeal. He will almost certainly argue, too, that the Stormy pay-off wasn’t a campaign expense, as Brad Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, has been arguing all along.

We don’t doubt the sincerity of the Manhattan jurors, but many voters will digest all of this and conclude that, while Mr. Trump may be a cad, this conviction isn’t disqualifying for a second term in the White House. Judge Juan Merchan tolerated Mr. Bragg’s legal creativity in ways that an appeals court might not. What if Mr. Trump loses the election and then is vindicated on appeal? If Democrats think that too many Republicans today complain about stolen elections, imagine how many more might next year.

The state of America - how to overcome Trump and populism?

America is in a serious political problem. 

My suspicion is that Trump is not particularly popular among right-wing politicians or conservatives. However, according to polls in the newspapers, he is enjoying - still - v. high approval ratings. He has a large and geographically spread out contingent of loyal supporters that will vote for him. I think this comes from populists, not conservatives; and that popularity allows them to dominate the Republican party. And they tend to be fanatical & extremely loud about it (and the elected officials who follow him also tend to be similarly dumb).

We're in an age of American populism; and it's not clear how the American political system can return to "normality" any time soon. Trump is so far ahead in the polls that he doesn't need to debate with the other candidates in the Republican primary debates. That's ridiculous. According to Tim Stanley (below), they're just been sitting back, and pledging their support to him while - no doubt - hoping his campaign implodes under his legal woes.

The American two-party system serves the established party platforms. Most people don't fit perfectly in a given camp, and tend to pick the least worst option. Both parties have populists, and they used to side with Democrats, but have recently enjoyed the Republicans. They usually sat at the back of the bus with conservatives in the driver's seat. If Trump wins the Republican nomination, then the populists will be in the driver's seat. And his polls suggest he enjoys very broad support.

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